The Final Cut

by Michael Dobbs

  Business began. Reports on the state of association finances - 'a balance of fourteen and threepence. I beg your pardon, ladies, that should be fourteen pounds thirty pee .. . deteriorated . . . further deteriorated . . . may have to consider closure of the office and we were all very sad to see Miss Robertson go . ..' And a row about whether the ladies' luncheon club should allow in gentlemen members. 'At our age, don't make a lot of difference,' one progressive soul offered. 'And since there are no nominations for new holders of office,' the Chairman was continuing, raising his voice above the unsavoury language that was beginning to filter through from the snooker table next door, 'I'd like to suggest that the present office holders simply continue.'

  'Can't do that,' a voice objected from behind an active pile of knitting.

  'And why not, pray?' the Chairman enquired.

  'Miss Tweedie, our Vice President,' the knitting continued. 'She passed away last week.'

  'Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Does make it difficult, I suppose ...'

  On Claire's other side, Critter beamed at them all like a dutiful son. No wonder he had them in his pocket. Could buy the lot for forty quid a year and a bus outing to Minehead. And this was the hotbed of rebellion that threatened to make national headlines by pulling behind Tom Makepeace? 'Not inevitable,' Critter explained to her as the meeting almost came to blows about the projected car-boot sale. 'But they feel so isolated, unappreciated. If only the Government could find some way of showing its concern for this constituency ...'

  'Like making you a Minister,' she whispered.

  'Are you offering?'

  'No.'

  His jaw - what there was of it - hardened. 'I value what Francis has been able to do in his many years most highly, of course. Pity he doesn't seem to value me. But this isn't personal, you understand. My association is genuinely disaffected.'

  'So tell them to stop it’ she demanded. 'A word from you and they'd get straight back to crocheting tea cosies.'

  'I shall listen, not instruct,' he muttered pompously. 'My association is very traditional. Likes to make up its own mind. On principle.'

  The Chairman was drawing to the end of his remarks. Soon Critter would be on his feet. His body had turned half away from her, its language spoke of defiance, of a man preparing to leap. And he had never been able to resist jumping into a headline.

  'Such a pity for you’ she whispered.

  'What is?'

  'Your association and its principles.' 'What d'you mean?'

  'I was simply wondering, Jerry, how these dear little old ladies will react to the fact that their conscientious Member takes so much work home with him.'

  'What are you going on about, woman?'

  'That new secretary of yours. Taking her home with you, to your apartment in Dolphin Square. Every lunchtime.'

  'For work. Nothing else.' He was staring straight ahead, talking out of the comer of his mouth, unwilling to meet her eyes.

  'Of course. It's simply that you men don't understand the problem. You make so little provision for women at Westminster and force us into such overcrowded surroundings that all we have to do while we're queuing to wash our hands is gossip. You'd be amazed at the rumours which get round.'

  'Like . . . what?' His teeth were gritted, his complexion draining like a chicken on a production line.

  'You know, mostly missed periods and missing Members. Like why you missed Standing Committee last Wednesday. And why a pair of your monogrammed boxer shorts fell out of her handbag while she was searching for her lipstick. We all laughed; she said you'd been in something of a hurry . ..' 'For God's sake!'

  'Don't worry. I can think of very few circumstances in which I would be tempted to betray the secrets of the ladies' locker room. Very few. It's like a confessional.'

  He swallowed hard.

  'Just as I'm sure, Jerry, you can think of very few circumstances in which you would be tempted to betray our party.'

  The Chairman was finished now, was tapping the glass of his watch, while the flock applauded for its Member to rise and speak.

  As Claire made the long and lonely drive back to London, she reflected that rarely had she heard such a comprehensive and carefully argued endorsement of the need for party loyalty than the one delivered that night by her colleague, the Honourable and Missing Member for South Warbury.

  The ninety-nine square miles of British sovereign territory located within Cyprus and deemed vital to the security of Old Blighty consists of a number of fragments, like a mosaic left incomplete by a bored artisan. Within the two main bases of Dhekelia and Akrotiri lies a host of facilities central to the defence effort, from radar-based intelligence-gathering operations and an airfield capable of accommodating the largest military transport and reconnaissance planes, to a full-sized cricket pitch, a Royal Military Police gaol, seven schools and several pubs. Each is separated from the other, some facilities are surrounded by barbed wire, some are not. In between there are many other facilities, including terraces of neat cubicle houses, fruit farms, ancient ruins and several Cypriot villages.

  There are no signposts or other markers to indicate the frontier between British and Cypriot territories, except for Catseyes. The British seem to have a passion for marking the middle of their roads in this manner, the Cypriots do not. There it begins, and ends.

  The aspect of the bases is beautiful, the duty is dull. And security is a nightmare. In the event of civil unrest, the British resort to cordoning off a few of their facilities as best they can, leaving by far the greatest area without guard or protection, and trusting in the traditional moderation and common sense of the Cypriots. Such trust is usually well founded.

  Thus, when confrontation ensued at the gates of the British airfield that lies adjacent to the salt flats of Akrotiri, the proceedings had an inevitable air of unreality. Security at the gates to the airfield, which is otherwise surrounded by a double fence of chain link topped with barbed wire, was provided by two poles, painted red and white, acting as traffic barriers and swung from a central control point, flanked on either side by two small concrete guard posts that were usually unoccupied, with a sign advising that a 'Live Armed Guard' (sic) was on duty. Additional defences were provided by several well-watered rose bushes. In normal circumstances the security would not have slowed, let alone stopped, a speeding rabbit, so on this day the system was augmented by a springy coil of razor wire swung in front of the gate, a tripling of the guard (to six), and the drawing up of an ancient white Land-Rover with canvas roof and languid blue lights. Far smoother, less dated Mitsubishi patrol vehicles were available, but this was deemed to be an essentially British occasion.

  The confrontation commenced with the arrival shortly after eight in the morning of the entire population of the village of Akrotiri, not a difficult logistical challenge since the village lay only some two hundred yards from the gates of the base. The village economy was dominated by the base, for which it supplied a variety of eating and drinking establishments including a Chinese takeaway, a grocery store and a unisex hairdresser.

  'Elenaki-mou, what the hell are you doing here?'

  'I am protesting against British exploitation.'

  There was a pause in the interrogation as the questioner, a corporal who was standing guard behind the razor wire, considered the implications of what he had just heard. He was confused. He and Eleni, an attractive doe-eyed girl of nineteen, had spent the previous evening at the Akrotiri Arms pub and she had mentioned nothing of such matters then. In any event, they were engaged to be married as soon as he had finished his tour of duty. He was looking forward to it; he'd already put on five pounds.

  'No talking on guard duty!' the Station Warrant Officer snapped, who seemed to have eyes in his arse. 'The natives may be hostile.'

  Three young boys, one of them Eleni's younger brother, who had occupied the branches of an olive tree next to the guard hut roared their defiance, their faces covered in huge grins and smears of aniseed.

  Eleni
seemed less impressed. Perhaps she took that from her mother, who stood directly behind her shoulder and who was never impressed. She spoke no English, never smiled but stared. At least, after much investigation, Billy, the corporal, assumed she stared, but it was difficult to be certain since her eyes faced in different directions and made him nervous. Yet in whichever direction, they never seemed to waver. He felt constantly under her scrutiny, wherever he stood. Billy balanced his SA 80 automatic nervously in his hands as his beloved addressed the NCO.

  'You've stabbed us in the back, Sergeant,' Eleni accused.

  'It's Station Warrant Officer, if you don't mind, Miss.'

  'Then you have stabbed us in the back, Station Warrant Officer.' Her italics had an uncharacteristically sharp edge.

  'If I 'ave, it's been with me chequebook, Miss.'

  'You sell us to Turks!' The cry came from an aged man seated on top of an equally aged tractor, whose passion far exceeded his command of English. A solitary front tooth gave him a ferocious aspect. Many of the forty or so protesters raised their voices and waved arms in agreement.

  The SWO marched slowly along his narrow front line, ten paces, turn and repeat, his boots beating a steady cadence on the tarmac, steadying his troops. 'If they give you a hard time, remember, lads,' he growled. 'Stick it in. Give it a twist. Then pull it out.'

  'Billy doesn't even get that when I'm being nice to him, Sergeant,' Eleni shouted across to him.

  The soldier to Billy's right sniggered while Billy considered throwing himself upon the razor wire. The SWO turned on studded heel to face the protesters. Eleni's mother stared directly at him, without taking her eye off Billy. She hadn't got her teeth in, her gums were in constant motion as though still finishing her breakfast.

  'Station Warrant Officer’ he insisted once more in a throaty voice. 'Let's have a little proper respect with this riot of yours, Miss. Otherwise I might find myself forced to retaliate.'

  'How?'

  'Me and the lads might have to stop visiting your uncle's pub, Miss. Be a great pity, that.'

  But he had lost the initiative once more. Shouts and gesticulations broke out amongst the Cypriots, their eyes raised skywards. The SWO looked up to see, a few hundred feet above him, the fierce yellow wings of a hang glider. It was a sport much practised from the cliffs of Kourion a few miles along the coast, and this glider was pushing his luck. Not only was he well into unauthorized territory but he was also, except for his harness, completely naked, his golden-olive body clearly detailed against the outstretched wings.

  'Now that is what I call a real man’ Eleni mouthed in a stage whisper. 'I wonder if he has trouble steering.'

  'That'll bugger up Billy's private life’ a guard muttered.

  'And bugger up our radar ops, too,' the SWO added. 'What the hell will they make of that?'

  As the glider made a lower pass the young girls giggled while the older women shook their heads in memory of times past. The atmosphere had deteriorated to good-natured farce as everyone gazed into the sky, except for Eleni's mother, who still maintained a wary eye on the freely perspiring Billy.

  'But you're still all right for tonight?' Billy ventured hopefully to her daughter.

  'Not if I catch that one first,' Eleni announced loudly, her thoughts still floating aloft in the cloudless sky.

  The confrontation had been defused, for the moment, but for how long the SWO was not sure.

  'What d'you reckon, Sir? Dickhead at - what? -two hundred metres? Vertical shot. Into the sun. Want me to give it a try?'

  The SWO had suddenly lost his humour. 'You might well have to try, lad. Soon you might well have to try.'

  Billy's future mother-in-law munched on.

  'Damn.'

  A brace of sapphire-tipped peacocks echoed the cry. He stood on the terrace of his chateau, set in the heart of the golden hills of Burgundy, and cursed again. The great house, all turrets and echoes of tumbrils, stood overlooking some of the finest vineyards in the world, row upon row of liquid gold. On a distant escarpment stood an old fortified abbey, ancient stone glowing in the melting evening sun, in between lay nothing but the thousand acres of his empire. Early tomorrow morning the first of nearly two hundred friends and business associates, drawn by the prospect of the view and the vintage, would start arriving to pay gentle homage and to savour the restored imperial splendours of his home. An empire built on oil.

  But now there was too much oil, a whole drumful of it which had been poured over, across, around, everywhere on the cropped lawn leading down to the carp lake. Vandalism as grotesque as a morning raid on the Bourse.

  He shouldn't have fired the gardener. He should've sliced off his balls and any other vital part of him then thrown the rest down one of the wells. And he'd still do it, if ever he laid hands on the little bastard.

  'It's appalling,' his wife was complaining at his elbow, 'how much damage a little oil spread in the wrong places can do ...'

  Suddenly his nostrils dilated, sniffing the wind like a fox approaching a familiar copse. He smelt oil, cloying crude as it spurted like virgin butter, as it would spurt one day from rigs off the coast of Cyprus. It was a deal he had lost. But which hadn't yet been signed.

  'Could be worse,' he consoled his wife. 'Might even get better,' he reflected, wondering what vandalism might be inflicted on the peace agreement by a little oil spread across its neatly trimmed edges.

  'This is scarcely going to help.' Claire thrust a copy of the latest wire report across the desk at Urquhart. He read it quickly.

  Industry sources revealing the existence of oil in the waters off Cyprus. The Turkish waters off Cyprus. Exploitation rights expected to go to British companies . ..

  'Excellent,' he pronounced, throwing it back across the desk. 'More jobs for Britain.' He picked up his pen and continued writing.

  'But it will infuriate the Greeks.'

  'Why?' He stared inquisitorially across the tops of his half-moon glasses.

  'They're losing out.'

  'Even if these reports are true, they'll be no worse off tomorrow than they were today.' 'Even so, they won't like it. Wounded pride.' 'I suppose you're right. They'll probably go right over the top. There's no accounting for the excitability of Cypriots, is there?'

  'And a British judge, too. This will make everything more complicated. We've jumped from a row about a few graves to one about several billion barrels of oil. Instead of hundreds of protesters there'll be . .. thousands. The peace deal. The election. Everything. Suddenly much more complicated.'

  'As usual, Claire, you display a remarkably agile and perceptive mind behind those inspiring eyes of yours.' He went back to his writing.

  Sensing the end of his interest - had it ever started? - she reclaimed the sheet of paper and began to leave. 'I wonder who leaked it?' she enquired, almost to herself, as she crossed the room.

  'I've no idea,' he whispered as the door closed behind her. 'But it has saved me the trouble of doing it myself.'

  'cypos hit oil', the Sun screamed.

  'Billions of barrels of oil have been found off the tiny Mediterranean island of Cyprus. The discovery is expected to bring a smile to the face of the sun-kissed tourist haunt - and to the British oil companies who are queuing up for exploitation rights

  By its second edition the reporter had made further enquiries and rewritten the piece under the headline: 'turkish delight'.

  The Independent took a more cautious line.

  'Large deposits of oil are reported by industry sources to have been discovered off the island of Cyprus which could amount to the largest such find anywhere in the Mediterranean .. .

  'The reported discovery comes at a delicate time in the peace process between the two Cypriot communities who are due to sign a final accord in London soon. The oil deposits are believed to lie exclusively within the continental shelf areas reserved by the Watling arbitration tribunal to the Turkish Cypriot sector.

  'Last night Greek Cypriot sources in London were dem
anding to know if Britain, whose deciding vote awarded the disputed area to the Turkish side, knew beforehand of the likely existence of oil

  The response of the leading daily in Nicosia was far less conditional. In a banner headline across its front page, it announced simply:

  'betrayed!'

  They had organized a demonstration outside the Turkish Embassy in Belgrave Square. The call had gone out that morning on London Radio for Cyprus and even at short notice a band of nearly two hundred had gathered, even tried to get inside to deliver a letter of protest, but the entrance to the embassy was guarded by bomb-proofed security which saw them coming before they'd begun to cross the road. They were orderly; a single armed policeman from the Diplomatic Protection Group turned them back and they spent the morning staring sullenly and shouting sporadic protests from behind security barriers. By the weekend their numbers would have grown tenfold.

  Passolides was not amongst them that morning. As so often in his life he'd ploughed a lonely furrow, taking himself not to the house of the hated Turk what was the point? - but to the gates of Downing Street, where the source of this latest betrayal could be found.