Whispers of Betrayal

by Michael Dobbs

  Scratching. Burning.

  Like a moth around a flame.

  She watched as in growing numbers the MOD staff scattered down the steps beneath the towering limestone columns and headed off into what remained of the day. No idle bantering tonight, no suggestions of a casual drink in the Duke of Clarence or the club. This evening every man, woman and transvestite in the place had only one purpose, that of getting back home. The battle ahead was guaranteed to be a nightmare.

  Somehow it had all become very personal for Mary. Bendall was their target, but she had never met him. Yet she had met Gittings, had felt his hands all over her, molesting, abusing her, and suddenly she wanted to make sure he suffered, too, and to suffer more, much more, than most. If she could screw up the whole of central London, how much easier must it be to screw up just one wretched and unsuspecting excuse for a man?

  She wanted to hurt him. Compensation for some of the hurt he had caused her. Retribution. How she would find her revenge she was not yet certain, but the lure of his presence nearby became irresistible. She couldn’t draw herself away. She waited, and watched, for nearly two hours as staff descended the steps and went on their way.

  The Black Bastard was not among them.

  Yet he was there. She knew he was there, she could feel it.

  The following morning she telephoned the Ministry of Defence and asked for Colonel Abel Gittings. The switchboard put her through to an extension where a woman answered the phone. Mary asked for Gittings once again, and in turn was asked who was calling. He was there all right. She rang off.

  That afternoon she loitered beside a bus stop in Parliament Street from where she could see the other, south-facing entrance to the MoD.

  So many things might have happened to alter what took place next. He might have worked late, been lost in the crowd, or even been away on a course, but Creation is full of those unplanned and seemingly insignificant turning points that nudge a life from its path and send it hurtling down an embankment.

  There he was, striding from the entrance. A touch greyer, in a civilian pin-striped suit, a briefcase rather than a swagger stick swinging from his grip, but unmistakably Gittings. The sight of him inflamed her. She didn’t understand what she was doing; she only knew that it was right. Like a moth singeing its wings.

  He set off at parade pace. Mary followed.

  Every part of her relationship with him had been the cause of disaster for her, yet still she was drawn. It seemed so easy. He appeared to be enjoying the exercise and at times she was forced to scamper to keep pace. He didn’t look back. Mary was able to pursue him all the way to Pimlico, a brisk twenty minutes, to a stucco-fronted building on St George’s Square that had been converted into small apartments and pieds-à-terre, ideal for men like Gittings who worked in town and only saw their wives at weekends. He didn’t always sleep there. Over the next few evenings Mary found herself watching from across the square, and following. She rejected any suggestion of obsession, telling herself that it was more fun than either idleness or television soaps, particularly when her pursuit led her across the river to a small terraced house in Clapham where he spent two of the next three nights in the company of a considerably younger and ridiculously unsuitable woman.

  Like any moth, Mary thought she had found the gates of Heaven.

  Bendall was examining his belly in the bath. Last time he’d looked there’d been some sort of muscle tone, a pressure beneath the skin that spoke of vigour rather than institutional dining and the third Scotch. Now the belly button had disappeared, had become nothing more than a void, an interstellar wormhole into which many of his manly dreams had been dragged and disappeared. It spoke not so much of fleeting youth but youth that had already disappeared around the corner and scarpered.

  He had arrived back at Downing Street, overheated with humiliation, and had brushed aside all the entreaties of his private secretaries in his dash for the bathroom. He needed to cool down, hide. But he couldn’t hide from his belly. It told him that the image he had so carefully crafted, the appeal of freshness and vitality that had swept him to power, was way past its sell-by date. Trade Descriptions time.

  He would have to move on. Run on his record rather than his sex appeal. Unless, of course, he could reinvigorate the rumours about him and Kristen Svensson, but for that they would need to meet, and smile. Which brought him back to his morning. Fuck it. Then the telephone rang.

  ‘I said I wasn’t to be disturbed.’

  ‘Except in emergencies, Prime Minister. You said except in emergencies,’ the private secretary insisted. He had a slight lisp, which already made the conversation ridiculous.

  ‘So where’s the fire?’

  ‘Beneath the Bundeskanzler. He’s on the phone personally. I believe the translation runs roughly along the lines of “Wherever are you, old chap, and don’t you know how much I had to set aside to accommodate your photocall?” Although nowhere near so polite.’

  ‘What the devil …?’

  ‘Remember, Prime Minister, there’s a European Council meeting in a couple of weeks. Difficult agenda. He wants a huge rebate for Germany and I believe is now in the process of reminding you that you owe him. It was my judgement that the longer we kept him waiting, the larger would be the bill. I know you’re in the bath but …’

  ‘So was Dr Crippen’s wife.’

  ‘Indeed, Prime Minister.’

  So Bendall had wallowed. In further humiliation. In impotence. In waters that were proving increasingly turbid. And tepid.

  When, at last, he had dragged himself out and was standing dripping on the bath mat, the phone had rung yet again. There were no harsh words on this occasion. He had simply listened intently for several minutes with nothing more than the odd grunt of acknowledgement until the bath mat was soaked and he had begun to shiver.

  Then: ‘Why does it always start in my bloody bathroom?’

  ‘We are still gathering information. From the CCTVs. Eyewitnesses. Early days yet, but I am hopeful.’ He doesn’t sound it. The Evening Standard is already running a front page with a simple banner headline. ‘HOPELESS!’

  ‘What makes you so?’

  ‘So what, Prime Minister?’

  ‘Hopeful.’

  The Home Secretary clears his throat, a sound of a chainsaw engine that refuses to fire, and heads for his brief. ‘As a result of the …’ – he searches for the appropriate words. He is considering something like ‘earlier outrage’ or ‘initial incident’ when the Prime Minister helps him out.

  ‘First fiasco. As a result of the first fiasco. What?’

  Hope clears his throat more forcefully, it still doesn’t fire, and embarks once again upon a voyage that he already knows will lead him into dangerously uncharted waters.

  ‘As a result, we identified all the likely targets amongst the environmentalists. Those we considered both capable and sufficiently motivated. There are, I must admit frankly, a disarming number, but we have many of them under observation.’ He gazes around the Cabinet Room. Less crowded than usual. The Cabinet has been summoned into emergency session at less than three hours’ notice and several of its members are out of London. The Foreign Secretary is still in Brussels, waiting for the arrival of the Prime Minister and the Surf Summit. ‘As a result we will be able to eliminate a large number of them from our enquiries. The net closes in.’

  ‘You can eliminate the whole damned lot.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, Prime Minister?’

  ‘Eliminate the damned lot. Your net’s so full of holes it couldn’t catch a fart.’

  The metaphor is senseless, of course, and deliberately crude. The Cabinet Secretary stops taking notes and busies herself studying Bendall’s reflection in Gladstone’s silver inkwell. It makes him seem as if he has but one enormously distended eye. A Cyclops. Across the table the Home Secretary’s back goes stiff. The sweat is gathering beneath the forelock.

  ‘I understand you’ve been caused grievous embarrassment, Prime Minister, b
ut nevertheless …’

  ‘You understand less than a bull who’s lost his bollocks!’

  Bendall’s palm smacks down on the table. The Cabinet Secretary’s pen wobbles indecisively once more. Hope has no idea what to say, so remains silent. Awesomely pale. And no one else volunteers to help him out.

  Now Bendall’s voice is lower. But not softer. There is no other sound in the room apart from the ticking of the clock on the mantle. They all strain to hear, like sentries listening for the click of a safety catch in the night.

  ‘They are not environmentalists.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘You have been wasting our time, Home Secretary. The people behind these outrages are not environmentalists, they are former Army officers. Can you advise us how many of them might be involved?’

  Hope’s lower jaw drops, but he does not speak. Indeed, he is incapable of speech.

  ‘Ten? A hundred, maybe?’ Bendall presses.

  Hope scans his briefing document like a shipwrecked sailor scans the horizon.

  ‘Maybe take an informed guess, even? How many, who they are?’

  A strangled whisper. ‘I have no information, Prime Minister.’

  ‘No clue. That about sums it up, doesn’t it? We’ve got a load of renegade boot shiners rampaging all over bloody London. And you don’t have a clue.’

  ‘I … I scarcely know what to say.’

  Bendall stretches back in his chair, as though to maximize the distance between himself and his hapless colleague. ‘There is nothing to say, Home Secretary. I think the Cabinet will understand if you wish to leave the room. While you write you’re letter of resignation.’

  ‘What … now?’

  Hope feels his chair pulling back from beneath him; it seems to have a mind of its own. He can’t move a muscle, yet finds himself being swept towards the door.

  He is almost there. His hand is on the polished brass door knob. He steadies himself, turns. All eyes are on him. Even the clock seems to have stopped ticking.

  ‘How do you know? How do you know it’s military? Not environmental?’ An edge of stubbornness. After all, he’s got a right to know. He’s the one who’s drowning.

  It is a moment that reveals the animal instincts of the Prime Minister. The instincts that require an animal to gorge upon a carcass without moderation, just in case tomorrow there are no carcasses left.

  ‘That’s privileged information. And you no longer have the privilege.’

  It is also calculated. For no one else is likely to ask the same question and risk the same fate. No one else needs to know about the other telephone call that came while he stood examining his sagging belly in the bathroom mirror. A call taken by the Downing Street switchboard in the basement by the Tudor tennis court, from a public phone box out of sight of any cameras. A call in a voice disguised so heavily that although the computers had captured every syllable it would be a work of genius to decipher anything other than that it was male, reasonably educated and probably verging on middle age – although the caller was willing to admit to all that anyway by identifying himself as the author of a letter sent earlier to Downing Street. A letter that in the last two hours has been rescued from the compost section of the Garden Room. A letter that Special Branch’s initial conclusion indicates has been written in some form of code or deliberate jumble to disguise the identity of the writer.

  A writer who demands an apology, and a change to Government policy.

  Bendall decides he’ll go halfway. The bastards’ll get a change, all right.

  Enough of No-Hopers. Now they are going to get what they bloody well deserve.

  Earwick.

  ‘Beryl says to notify you that there’s going to be an extraordinary meeting of the Executive.’ Marshwood’s part-time constituency secretary sounded unusually formal. ‘To appoint a new treasurer. But she says it’s a formality. No need for you to come.’

  A formality meant only one thing. Beryl was planning to appoint her candidate without any argument or opposition. Wanted one of her own, not another Trevor.

  ‘I’d like to attend. When is it?’

  ‘This Wednesday evening.’

  Goodfellowe groaned. All but impossible. There was bound to be a vote. Beryl knew it. Deliberate.

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  ‘Oh,’ the secretary responded, surprised. This wasn’t what she’d been led to expect. ‘I’ll tell Miss Hailstone you’re coming then, shall I?’

  ‘Thank Beryl for me. And tell her I’ll be there.’

  Bloody Beryl.

  They found themselves together in the old ground-floor toilet just outside the Cabinet Room. The Chief Whip was relieving himself, a most necessary undertaking after a meeting such as that, when the Prime Minister walked in.

  ‘So what do you think, Eddie?’ the Prime Minister growled as he stepped alongside Rankin.

  ‘As a man or as a politician?’

  Bendall turned and stared, inspected Rankin up and down, as though he could scarcely believe what he was hearing, or seeing. Enough to disturb any man when he’s urinating.

  ‘What I think, Jonathan, is that you should make sure the media are properly briefed. Before Noel gets out there and muddies the water, and starts giving the impression he walked away as a matter of principle, or even stormed out in passion. There’s a limit to what we’ll be able to say about a security matter. Don’t want to give him a head start.’ God, how he was looking forward to washing his hands after this one.

  ‘Good advice, Eddie. Yes, very sound.’ The words were fulsome, yet Bendall seemed utterly unmoved.

  ‘Do you want me to warn the press secretary, then? Get him moving?’

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t disturb him right now. He’s over at the lobby. Explaining why No-Hope had to go. How I was forced to part with the services of a lifelong friend. We go back such a long way together, you know.’

  ‘He’s briefing the press already?’

  ‘Has been ever since Cabinet began.’

  ‘You knew …?’

  ‘As you said, Eddie, didn’t want to give Noel a head start.’

  Rankin looked down, trying to hide his ragged emotions. It seemed to him that he had shrunk and somehow felt less of a man. Sometimes he hated this job.

  ‘Something had to give, Eddie. There’s got to be more than just sitting around waiting for the next humiliation.’

  ‘You sound worried.’

  ‘Be a fool not to be. It’s all very well getting Noel to carry the can, but how long before they come knocking on my door? After all, it was my bathroom, my bloody summit. In this job you either control events or you run before them, and at the moment …’ – a slight pause, an uncharacteristic insight into insecurity – ‘I don’t control even my own bath tap. Don’t care for that, Eddie, don’t care for that one bit. So it can’t be just the one, you know, not just Noel. Others’ll have to go. Destiny calls, and for some sooner than others. We need new blood. New ideas.’ Bendall flushed the urinal, as though dispensing with a great misfortune. ‘Got any ideas?’

  Rankin began soaping his hands. ‘You will already have decided who’s going to replace Noel.’

  ‘Earwig. I was thinking young Earwig.’

  Rankin paused, and picked up the soap once more, as though he had discovered an unusually stubborn stain. ‘Then …’ He hesitated. The most difficult part of his job. Get it wrong, offer a few impossible names, and he’d go down with them. ‘Not one of us,’ they’d explain, as they flushed him away alongside the rest. ‘I think you should go for a balance. Youth. Plus experience.’

  ‘What sort of experience?’

  Rankin made a dash for the towel to give himself a further moment for consideration. He didn’t fully understand his own logic. Was he about to say this because he thought it right? Or because he thought they deserved each other?

  ‘Goodfellowe.’

  ‘What? A Burke and Hare job? Rob the graveyard?’

  ‘He was one of the best. Once
. And he wants back in.’

  ‘So do Maggie Thatcher and Joseph Stalin.’

  ‘But – and remember this – Tom was the only one in the entire country to question whether it was environmentalists behind the attacks.’

  ‘Made a bloody fool of himself in the process.’

  ‘No, Jonathan, you made a bloody fool of him. There’s a difference, you know.’

  ‘S’pose there is.’ He sounded as if he’d been offered a compliment. ‘Suppose he was right, too. Just got his timing wrong.’ Bendall inspected his hair in the mirror, redistributing the sparse fringe around the brow. ‘Man of Conscience. Hmm, could be a useful reinforcement, add a little principle to proceedings. At least until the next round of spending cuts.’

  ‘Call him in. Talk with him. Make up your own mind.’ Get out from underneath this absurd suggestion. Shove it back into Bendall’s lap.

  The Prime Minister was already heading for the door. ‘Right. Call him in. Let’s have a drink.’

  Rankin noticed that Bendall hadn’t washed his hands. Come to think of it, he never washed his hands. ‘When?’ Rankin called after him.

  ‘Wednesday evening.’

  Elizabeth was distracted. She was not at her best when she was distracted.

  She was the sort of woman who fought hard to ensure her life ran along a path she controlled and was, so far as was possible, emotionally risk-free. For all her beauty and wit, there was a deep well of insecurity that even those closest to her had trouble fathoming. To most people she was an object of envy – she had beauty, charm, her independence, a delightful wisteria-covered Kensington mews house, and the restaurant. Oh, and Goodfellowe, although few people regarded him as the most obvious of her attributes. Politicians were two a penny around beautiful women.

  Yet to see the glittering exterior was not to understand Elizabeth. Not even Elizabeth entirely understood Elizabeth, or, if she did, there were dark corners she preferred to avoid. So her wit and acid humour had been developed to help her survive, to cover up vulnerability. To keep people out, not to involve them. Her relationships had been plentiful, her lovemaking passionate and often unpredictable. On the prow of a cruise ship, for example, with a complete stranger, as she had leaned forward over the rail to embrace the star-filled Caribbean sky, also on the bonnet of a boyfriend’s brand new Ferrari as it was parked outside The Belvedere in Holland Park. She’d forgotten to take off her shoes, made an awful mess of the coachwork. Orgasms in heels can do that for a girl. And for a Ferrari.