The House of Cards Complete Trilogy

by Michael Dobbs

  He sat in the Cabinet Room, in the chair reserved for the Prime Minister, the only one with arms. Three phones beside him. The rest of the table was bare, stripped of blotters and any other sign of Ministerial rank, covered only with a sad brown felt cloth. He wanted his Ministers to have no hiding place, no trappings of office, nothing behind which to hide. He needed to know. Outside it was drizzling.

  He had intended to start with Bollingbroke, but the Foreign Secretary was returning from a Council of Ministers meeting in Brussels and there was a delay somewhere along the way. Instead he got Whittington—how he wished it had been Whittington’s wife; then, at least, he would have found some solid response. There was a knock at the door and Claire brought him in. He seemed reluctant.

  “Come in, Terry,” Urquhart encouraged quietly. “It’s my scaffold you’re stepping on, not your own.”

  The Minister sat opposite and dabbed at his mouth nervously with a handkerchief that then slipped surreptitiously to his temple, wiping away the dew that was beginning to rise.

  “Terry, let me get straight to the point. Do I have your continued support as Prime Minister?”

  “You will always have my personal support, Prime Minister.” A whimpering smile appeared on his damp lips, then as quickly evaporated. “But I can’t see how we can win, you know, with…”

  “With me?”

  “With circumstances as they are.”

  He was bleating, even sounding like a sheep.

  “Will you make a public statement of your support for me?”

  The dew at Whittington’s temples had turned into an unmistakable nervous damp. “It’s so very difficult out there,” he muttered, waving a rubber wrist. “I would hate to see you defeated, Francis. As an old friend, I must tell you. I don’t think you can win. Perhaps, perhaps…you should consider announcing your resignation. You know, protect your unbeaten record?”

  It sounded preprepared, secondhand. A ditty passed through Urquhart’s mind, about something borrowed, something blue.

  “And what does your wife think?”

  “She feels exactly the same,” Whittington added, too hurriedly. He’d given the game away.

  Urquhart leaned forward. “A statement of clear support from my Cabinet would help give a slightly less striking impression of a sinking ship.”

  Whittington’s lips moved in agitation but he said nothing, merely flapping his arms about. He was already swimming.

  “Then will you at least give me until this weekend to decide? Before you say anything publicly?”

  Whittington’s head nodded, falling forward, hiding his eyes. They were stinging; he wasn’t sure whether from the sweat or because he was on the verge of crying.

  With a flick of his wrist Urquhart dismissed him. Claire already had the door open. It was raining harder now.

  Maxwell Stanbrook came in next.

  “So, Max?”

  “First, Francis, I want to tell you how grateful I am for everything you have done. For me. The party. For the country. I mean that, most sincerely.”

  “So you’ll support me? Publicly?”

  Stanbrook shook his head. “Game’s up, old dear. Sorry. You cannot win.”

  “I made you, Max.”

  “I know. And so I’ll go down with you, too. I’m honest enough to recognize that. Which is why you should recognize that I’m being honest about your situation.”

  “There is nothing to be done?”

  “Get out on the best terms available, Francis. Which is to announce your resignation now, before the election. Give the rest of us half a chance. And keep your unbeaten record into the bargain. ‘Undefeated at any election he fought,’ that’s what the history books will record. Not a bad epitaph.”

  Protecting his unbeaten record. The same formula used by Whittington. An interesting coincidence, if it were.

  “Will you issue a statement of support on my behalf?”

  “If that’s what you want. But in my opinion it will do you no good.”

  It hurt. He’d had hopes of Stanbrook. Deep within he felt a shaking, of foundations crumbling, of new fissures beginning to appear below the waterline.

  “Thank you at least for being so honest. Please, give me until this weekend. Say nothing until then?”

  “You have my word on it. And my hand on it, Francis.”

  Melodramatically Stanbrook marched around to Urquhart’s side of the table and offered his hand. At close quarters Urquhart could see the lack of sleep that bruised his eyes. At least it hadn’t been easy for him.

  Catchpole, the next, was in tears. He blubbed copiously, scarcely capable of coherent expression throughout the interview.

  “What, in your view, should I do, Colin?”

  “Protect”—blub—“protect”—cough.

  “I think what you’re trying to say is that I should resign now in order to protect my unbeaten record and place in the history books. Is that right?”

  Catchpole nodded. Coincidence be damned. They’d been rehearsing, the whole wretched lot of them.

  Except for Riddington. The Defense Secretary strode in, but declined to sit, instead standing stiffly at the end of the Cabinet table near the door. His double breast was buttoned, on parade.

  “I have sat too long at your table, Prime Minister. In recent days at meetings of COBRA I have watched you abuse your position of trust for entirely political ends, putting the lives of British soldiers at risk for your own personal glorification and salvation.”

  “You never mentioned this before.”

  “You never asked me before. You never consulted anyone. You only bullied.”

  True enough. And Urquhart had expected no less from Riddington, who had refused to support him at the final gathering of COBRA, insisting with the others that St. Aubyn’s men be allowed to bring an end to their misery.

  Urquhart seemed to smile, parting his lips as though being offered a final cigarette. “So who will defend, if not Defense?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I was merely musing. I suppose a public statement of support for me is out of the question?”

  There was a whimsical tone in Urquhart’s voice as though he found humor in his situation. Riddington offered an expression of bad oysters and did not reply.

  “I have one last thing to ask,” the Prime Minister continued. “You have sat at my Cabinet table for more than eight years. In return, I ask you for two days. By Saturday I shall announce my intentions. In the meantime, if you cannot support me, I’d be grateful if you could at least refrain from making public attacks. Leave me a little dignity. Leave the party a few pieces for someone else to pick up.”

  Riddington had on his most obstinate Dunkirk expression, but acquiesced. He gave a perfunctory nod, then turned on his heel and left.

  For a long moment a complete stillness enveloped the Cabinet Room. Urquhart did not stir, did not appear to breathe. Claire, who had been sitting discreetly in a corner by the door, wondered if he had gone into a trance, so deeply did he seem to have retreated within himself. A tiny pulse on the side of his temple seemed the only sign of life, beating away the seconds until…Until. There was no avoiding it. Even he knew it. Then he returned from wherever he had been, and was with her once again.

  “Like trying to stoke a furnace with dead rabbits, isn’t it?” he muttered grimly.

  She marveled at his composure, admired his resilient humor. “I wonder what he would have done,” she asked softly, indicating the portrait of Robert Walpole, the first and longest-serving holder of the office of Prime Minister.

  Urquhart rose to examine the oil above the fireplace, gripping the white marble mantel. “I’ve been thinking about that a great deal in these last days,” he said softly. “They accused him of corruption, condemned him, even imprisoned him in the Tower. Called him a warmonger, even befor
e Mr. Mackintosh got his hands on the media.” His eyes seemed to dissolve like children’s sweets. “They compelled him to resign. Yet he always found a way to bounce back from disaster. Always.”

  “A shining example.”

  “History has a devilish strange way with the facts. I wonder whether history will be as kind with me.”

  “Is it important to you?”

  He turned sharply, his eyes burning with mortification. “It’s the only thing I have.”

  The bitterness, hemmed around by dogged humor, was about to burst forth but at that moment there was a commotion from the door. It burst open, and in bounced Bollingbroke, breathless.

  “Et tu, Brute?”

  “Beg pardon?”

  Urquhart closed his eyes, shook from them the venom and self-pity, and smiled. “My little joke, Arthur. What news of Brussels?”

  “Full of bloody foreigners. Sorry not to have got here earlier, Francis.”

  “You are with me?”

  “Till my last breath. I dictated a statement of support to the Press Association from the car telephone on my way in.”

  “Then you are doubly welcome.”

  “Bloody thing is, Francis, it won’t do either of us the least bit of good.”

  “Why not?”

  “’Cause you and me are for the high jump, there’s no denying it. That bugger Makepeace has got this election by the balls.”

  ***

  And Makepeace marched on. To Luton. Every hour brought Makepeace more support, and closer to London. With every step the march grew in size, slowing him down and giving the Metropolitan Police Commissioner cause for concern. But after the fiasco in Birmingham, he dared not bar the march from the nation’s capital.

  So they marched, onward to Trafalgar Square. To Francis Urquhart’s funeral pyre.

  Forty-Six

  Love colors life, but it is necessary to hate in order to make a man truly happy and give him a sense of direction.

  He had stolen away by moonlight. Through the Downing Street press department, down into the labyrinth of corridors that connects Number Ten to the Cabinet Office on Whitehall, past the old brick walls where the Tudor King’s tennis court used to be. Not even Corder was with him.

  Even at midnight the center of the city was bustling with activity, mostly vehicular, Whitehall becoming something of a racetrack for delivery vans and late-night buses. The activity helped hide him, ensure he did not stand out. As he came down the steps from the Cabinet Office, past the startled security guard, he ducked away from the police presence that stood at the entrance to Downing Street. George Downing himself had been a rogue, a spy for both sides in the Civil War, a man steeped in duplicities and lacking in either principle or loyalties. Educated at Harvard. And they had given him a knighthood and named the most important street in the kingdom after him. Whereas he, Francis Urquhart, would be fortunate if they allowed his name to be placed even on a headstone.

  There were monuments to the dead everywhere. The Cenotaph. The Banqueting Hall beneath whose windows they had with one blow severed the head of their liege lord and king, Charles I. Statues to fallen heroes, in memoriam and immortal. The entire avenue stood on what had once been the old funeral route from Charing Cross to St. Margaret’s until the King, disgusted with the wailings of the common herd outside his window, built them a new cemetery at St. Martin-in-the-Fields so they could bury the dead without spoiling his dinner. At night in the shadows and with a scimitar moon overhead you could all but hear the creak of ancient bones in this place, a place of remembrance. And he so wanted to be remembered. What else was there for him?

  He stood on the stone bridge at Westminster, gazing down into the silty-ink tidal water that lapped against the piers, its gentle murmurs haunting like the witching calls of Sirens. An emptiness yawned beneath him that seemed to offer peace, release, as easily as falling into the open mouth of a grave. What fragments he had left to lose could so readily be given up. Yet he would not do it, take the coward’s way out. Not the way to be remembered.

  He rattled the spiked and rosetted gates to New Palace Yard—the Members’ entrance to the precincts of the House of Commons. Members of Parliament were forbidden access to the Palace of Westminster while an election was being fought, except for the sole purpose of collecting their letters. Even during elections constituents still complained, about drains, about neighbors, about missing social security checks, all the things that burdened a politician’s life, and a carefully worded response might yet win a vote. The policeman who swung back the gate in answer to his call offered a respectful salute—Urquhart was well past, his heels clicking on the cobbles before the semislumbering officer had recovered sufficient wit to register what he had seen and wonder why on earth the Prime Minister was calling in person and at midnight to collect his mail. But he was entitled.

  Urquhart did not head for the Members’ Post Office, which in any event was closed; instead he made his way up the stairs and through the stone archways to the rear of the Chamber; he met no one. But he knew he was not alone, the echo of his footsteps accompanied him like a cohort of distant memories. He had come to the long corridor that ran behind the Chamber, usually noisy with the bustle of errands and anticipation, now ghost still. Before him stood the great Gothic doors to the anteroom of the Chamber. They should have been locked, as should the second set of doors into the Chamber itself, but electricians had been busy rewiring the sound system and the constant unlocking and relocking of doors would have put them into double overtime. The doors swung open on their great brass hinges.

  The darkness was intense, split only by pale splashes of moonlight from the high windows of the west wall, but he knew every inch by instinct. He had stepped onto this stage, the greatest stage of all, so many times yet it never failed to impose its majesty. The atmosphere, heavy with history, clung to him, lifted and elated him; he could feel the memories of centuries crowding around, the ghosts of the great whispering in the wings and waiting for him, Francis Urquhart, to join them.

  He pushed his way past the waving Order Papers and jabbing elbows, stepping over the outstretched legs, making his way toward his seat. At one point he stumbled, forced to rest a hand on the lip of the Clerk’s Table for support, sure he had been tripped by some extending ankle—Gladstone’s, perhaps, the rakish Disraeli’s or recumbent Churchill’s? Did he hear the clip of a closing handbag, smell stale Havana? But then he had reached it, the space on the bench left for the Prime Minister, waiting, as it always had been, for him. He sat, embracing the formal subtlety of its leather, savoring the spice of great events that lingered in its fabric and brought forth the familiar rush of adrenaline. He was ready for them. But they were quiet tonight, everyone waiting to hear him, hanging on his every word, knowing that these were momentous times.

  He stood to face them, his legs propelling him firmly upward until he was standing at the Dispatch Box, gripping its sides, rubbing his palms along its bronzed edging, afraid of no one. He would have his place in history, whatever it cost, show them all, those faint hearts and foes who surrounded him like men of Lilliput. He’d make them remember Francis Urquhart, and tremble at the name. Never let them forget.

  Whatever it cost.

  He pounded the Dispatch Box and from around the Chamber came answering echoes like the thunder of applause washing down across a thousand years. He could hear them all, great men, one woman, their voices a united chorus of approval, emerging from the dark places around this great hall where history and its memories were kept alive. They spoke of pain, of the sacrifice on which all legend is raised, of the glory that waited for those with character and audacity enough to seize the moment. And their thumping acclaim was for him. Francis Urquhart. A welcome from the gods themselves.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Urquhart. You shouldn’t be here.”

  He turned. In the shadows by the Speaker’s Chair stood a Palace policema
n.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” the man repeated.

  “You are of that opinion, too? It seems the whole mortal world is of the same view.”

  “No, I didn’t mean that, sir,” the policeman responded, abashed. “I merely meant that it’s against the rules.”

  “My apologies, officer. I only came here for…one final look. Before the election. A chance to reflect. It has been a very long time.”

  “No worries, Mr. Urquhart. I’m sure no one will mind.”

  “Our little secret?” Urquhart requested.

  “Course, sir.”

  And with a low bow of deference and a little light from the policeman’s torch, Francis Urquhart bade farewell to the gods. For the moment.

  ***

  It was Passolides’s custom to rise before dawn, the habit of mountain warfare fingering in the mind of an old man. And while he embraced the cover of night and paid silent tribute to past times, he would gather the freshest of fish from the local market. A habit with purpose.

  Unfriendly eyes watched him leave and it was while he was pondering over shells of crab and fillet of swordfish that hostile hands went about their work. Grateful, as Passolides had once been, for the cover of night.

  When he tried to turn into the street, laden with paper-wrapped parcels of food, he found his way barred by a large plastic ribbon and a police officer.

  “Sorry, sir. No one allowed in until they’ve finished damping down.”

  The parcels slid to the pavement.

  “But that is my house.”

  A hundred yards away, hemmed in by fire engines, the windows of his home stared out sightless across the street, his newly restored restaurant now a gaping, toothless grin. He had been gone little more than an hour. It had taken considerably less than that to destroy almost every possession he had.

  ***

  They set out that morning for Watford, on the very outskirts of London. It would be the final stop before their triumphal entry into the city itself, and already the route was lined with images of Makepeace and other trophies, strewn along their path like rose petals. A conqueror’s welcome for a man of peace. And one day to go.