Whispers of Betrayal

by Michael Dobbs

But her pause for precision proved fatal, for even as she was reminding him that his position had yet to be confirmed at the AGM, he was already waving his hand to attract the attention of Olga, the Filipino waitress whose real name was Maribelle. ‘Another wound!’ he barked.

  A pause. ‘Another what, sir?’

  ‘Another wound. Of dwinks!’

  ‘We will have just one more. And only one more,’ Beryl insisted, seeming a little breathless. ‘That’s if you’d care for one, Mr Rankin?’

  ‘Delighted. Fine. You know, I’m grateful, Miss Hailstone, or may I call you Beryl? Not just for the hospitality, but your unswerving support for Tom here. Can’t tell you how much the Prime Minister appreciates it. May I recommend the Armagnac?’

  Goodfellowe sat back, almost a spectator in this little game, and as far as games go, Rodney was playing a blinder. As soon as the crystal balloons of Armagnac had arrived, he raised his glass in salute. ‘What shall we toast?’

  ‘Why, to Tom,’ Rankin responded. ‘A fine parliamentarian. And the power behind the throne.’

  All glasses were raised. Beryl sipped at hers as though to dull the pain. Rankin downed his in one in order to get on with it, but Rodney had suddenly begun to look with a fixed gaze into his glass as though he’d found a goldfish swimming in it. His eyes were moving round and round the rim as if looking for a beginning and an end.

  ‘To Tom!’ Rankin insisted.

  And Rodney threw his head back and followed suit by downing the Armagnac in a single draught.

  Then his head fell forward. ‘Excuse me, where’s the …?’ He wanted to use the term ‘rest room’, but knew it was beyond him, and was unsure whether such words as ‘loo’ or ‘lavatory’ were correct in polite Westminster company, or at least in front of Beryl. His courage failed him, as did his sense of occasion.

  ‘Oh, God. I think something has disagweed with me. Excuse me, Bewyl. Tom. And ’specially you, Mr Wank …’

  ‘You’re excused!’ Beryl cried in desperation.

  He rose unsteadily to his feet. He seemed to have left his colour at table level. His face was now like molten wax, held too close to a flame. He dipped forward, sending the small flower vase spilling upon the cloth, then he lurched back, so far that Goodfellowe had to prevent his chair from crashing to the ground. With limbs that extended in the manner of an early robot, Rodney made his uncertain way towards the back of the restaurant.

  They watched him go in silence until, with a final rush, the door banged shut behind him.

  ‘Not one for the vicissitudes of Westminster, I fear,’ Rankin offered sympathetically.

  ‘Nor for the long road back to Marshwood,’ Beryl added in a tone devoid of any trace of sympathy. ‘The bloody man was driving.’ The red tide had turned into angry hives which camped upon every part of her exposed flesh.

  ‘He’ll recover.’

  ‘Somehow I very much doubt it,’ Beryl spat.

  They watched as Beryl hustled her fallen idol out of the restaurant. She didn’t want to lay hands on him, not in public, but his progress was like that of any rake, wandering from side to side, so she was forced to dance around him and nudge him forward as though she were rustling cattle.

  ‘Thanks, Eddie. You were bloody magnificent.’

  ‘No problem, Tom.’ His stomach groaned softly inside. ‘Did it work?’

  ‘Wodney’s got about as much chance of making it to the AGM as you have of making Pope.’

  ‘The black arts survive.’

  ‘And flourish. I owe you a drink.’

  ‘Look forward to it.’ He offered a soft belch, a sigh of relief. ‘But not tonight, eh?’

  Not twenty minutes after the Chief Whip had departed to practise the black arts in other corners of his kingdom, the pager at Goodfellowe’s belt began to rattle.

  His world glowed green. Good news. He was back on a One-Line Whip, which meant that the realm would survive without his presence in the Chamber until the morning. He scrabbled to switch off the pager as though it were a nuclear accident waiting to happen, anxious to allow no opportunity for those Simple Simons in the Whips’ Office to change their minds and snatch away his evening once again. He had other things planned.

  Elizabeth was in her office. She had seemed preoccupied all evening, had been for days, in fact, but he thought he knew how to bring a smile back to her face. He’d been pondering upon it for some time, and the more he pondered the more it all became clear. Paris.

  He didn’t have the money, of course, never did, but one of his constituents had died and left him two thousand from her considerable fortune (the rest went to the cats). Yes, it happens. It would pay off the overdraft and leave just about enough. He needed a new refrigerator and a new bike, but what the hell? He could squeeze a trip to Paris from it. After all, it wasn’t every day you asked a woman to marry you.

  It had been nigh on a quarter of a century since he’d been to Paris, but the memory refused to fade. Of an endless weekend, spent walking hand-in-hand with a woman he loved (but would later forget), happy to lose themselves in the perfumed streets, to let chance take them. For a few days they had owned it all, the parks, the boulevards, that wonderful cherry-and-garlic smell of Paris in the spring. The bars on the Champs-Elysèes had their own atmosphere, of Bogart and Sartre and strangers in love but with too little time. It had been Saturday, and after nightfall they’d wandered along the banks of the Seine, the sounds of life dancing across the muddy waters, until they had come upon Notre Dame. During the day the cathedral seemed a dark and oppressive place to the deeply agnostic Goodfellowe, a place of witches and spells and soot, yet by night it was transformed into a place of hope and dreams. Flickering candlelight reflected off brass, incense filled his head while the organ announced salvation and the choir reached out to lift the congregation’s souls as it had done for a thousand years. It was one of those moments that left its mark on Goodfellowe’s mind for reasons he couldn’t entirely explain. Thereafter, even in his bleakest moments, he would remember those bent women in their shawls clinging stubbornly to their rosaries and their hopes, memories of faith that would help him cling equally stubbornly to those things in which he believed.

  To Goodfellowe, Paris continues to mean hope. And love. Which means Elizabeth.

  So now he is perching expectantly on the corner of her tiny desk. ‘Hey, I’m excused. No parade tonight.’

  Elizabeth appears determinedly unimpressed.

  ‘Thought I might hang around. Until you’re finished. Share a drink, maybe? There’s something I want to ask you.’

  A frown flickers across her brow. He needs a different tactic.

  ‘Second thoughts, maybe I’ll see if I can score with the blonde sitting over there by the mirror.’

  A pause. Still no response.

  ‘Obviously, Elizabeth, I’m doing something wrong. Am I sitting on your winning Lottery ticket or what?’

  ‘If you were I’d be feeding you through the mincer right now.’

  ‘That bad?’

  When she looks up, the answer is in her eyes. Not just distracted, despairing. Not wanting to face Goodfellowe, not wanting him to be there. Still a hostage in a cellar by the Black Sea.

  ‘Anything I can do?’

  The question seems to deflate her even further. No, he can’t help and what’s worse, she realizes with a flush of guilt that she’s never even thought he might. She feels a little ashamed. ‘The wine deal’s gone wrong. Very wrong. I can’t get either the wine or my money back and I desperately need an early night, Tom. Do you mind?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ he responds, then pauses, hoping she might change her mind. ‘Nothing I can do?’ he asks again.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Fine. I’ll see you, then.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  He is almost out of the door when she remembers. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, poppet, what was that thing you wanted to ask me?’

  ‘No matter.’ Another pause. ‘It can wait.’

  He lea
ves, to think of Paris and his Paradise postponed, while Elizabeth can think only of Odessa.

  ELEVEN

  Amadeus had taken to running, long jogs through the City at night when the traffic had gone and taken most of its fumes with it. He couldn’t think in the rabbit hutch that his wife insisted they call home, even when she wasn’t there, which was frequently. He needed space, time to figure it all out, wanting to squeeze away the last effect of those cigarettes and get himself honed for what he knew lay ahead. The Barbican where they lived might have been convenient for his wife’s shopping and social life, but to Amadeus it was worse than useless, the farthest point from any green field of almost any spot in London. He wished he were back on the mountainside of Longdon, and yearned for an enemy that could be fought with rifle and bayonet.

  He was clear that matters had escalated beyond his control. What had started as a skirmish had grown into all-out confrontation. It happens, things slip in war. They had begun in search of an apology but apologies only counted in matters of honour and they’d been disastrously naïve to believe they might have found any shred of honour in Bendall. So now the stakes had to be raised. There was no middle way, no subtle means of getting this Government to change its policies. The Government itself had to be changed.

  The logic was compelling, inexorable. Bendall had to go.

  The consequence was equally inescapable.

  Treason.

  It was something they couldn’t admit to, of course, not out in the open. For a soldier to seek the downfall of an elected Prime Minister was an offence so inexcusable that it would force Bendall’s most implacable opponents to rally to his defence. Even the BBC would have to behave itself. It would make the bastard all but impregnable. No, a direct attack was impossible. Instead, Bendall would have to be worn down, undermined, humiliated and hounded until his position had crumbled and he crept out of Downing Street, or was dragged out by envious colleagues.

  Somehow treason had become their duty.

  This evening Amadeus had run as far as Regent’s Park trying to clear his mind, struggling to understand the process by which he had started as a loyal officer and ended up a revolutionary. He still wasn’t entirely clear by the time he had got back to the Barbican and headed for his apartment on the thirtieth floor. He used the stairs.

  As he opened his door, the first thing he saw was the answering machine blinking at him. He punched the button. A message from a Sergeant Harris at Wood Street police station. Amadeus didn’t know a Sergeant Harris, or why he should be calling, but the policeman said it was important. Amadeus was to call back any time up to midnight. Or Sergeant Harris would call again in the morning.

  Oh, bugger.

  The sun had not yet risen, yet already the Telecoms Chairman was standing at his desk, tieless, unshaven, agitated. A copy of the morning newspaper trembled in his outstretched hand.

  ‘WHIPPED!’ it screamed. ‘Bendall Humiliated As Government Loses Vital Budget Vote.’

  The front page recounted the dramatic events of the previous evening when, amidst scenes of great frenzy, the Government had been brought to its knees by the failure of dozens of its own backbenchers to vote for a vital financial measure. Yet this was neither insolence nor insurrection; to put no finer point on it, they had simply been nobbled. Only ten minutes before the vote their pagers had vibrated into action and called them off. Go home, the message had encouraged, go sleep or go play or whatever it is you do when the Whips are no longer watching – but go!

  It had been a hoax, of course. The Whips had realized that immediately and had made desperate efforts to correct it, only to discover that the telephone number assigned to their paging system was inexplicably and constantly engaged, as if someone was deliberately sabotaging it. So they had called the operator, who had explained that she was powerless to interfere, so they had shouted at her, but the more they had shouted the more she had insisted that there was nothing she could do, and would they please stop using such language. It was, she explained with commendable patience, a number that had been issued with a special security coding and under no circumstances could be interfered with. After all, someone might try to use it irresponsibly …

  By the time the Whips had battered their way through female intransigence, it was too late. Many Government supporters had been thrown into chaos, milling about in uncertainty like rustled cattle, while others simply trudged home, blissfully unaware, pagers switched off, as did Goodfellowe. Despite numerous and increasingly desperate points of order the vote had been taken. And the Government had lost.

  ‘How could this happen? How could it happen?’ the Telecoms Chairman asked yet again. Since his arrival at the office it had seemed his only form of expression. He was in a state of considerable turmoil, having been woken at two by the Prime Minister. A personal call. Usually a pleasure, for they had been room-mates at university and remained close. It was one of the reasons he’d been given the job as chairman, to use his connections to smooth the path of controversial licence applications and to blunt the edge of government competition policy. He wasn’t supposed to get hysterical phone calls in the middle of the night from a Prime Minister threatening to reintroduce transportation to the colonies especially for him.

  Over the following three hours, the problem had grown worse. He couldn’t raise his personal assistant, and so had incredible trouble raising anyone else. He’d even had trouble getting into the building when he arrived unshaven with eyes like blood drops in the snow – and without his security pass. He was chairman of the company, for pity’s sake, he didn’t need a pass! But the night security staff, at least those who spoke English, were having none of it. No pass, no come in. It was the only part of Telecoms security that seemed to be working that night.

  ‘The sodding Government loses some sodding vote, all because some sod sods up our sodding pager system. And what I want to know is – which sod’s responsible?’

  In fact, Bendall had made it crystal clear, in one of the more coherent portions of his telephone conversation, who he deemed to be responsible. The Chairman was responsible. Unless, that is, he could find some other copulative colon to take the blame, and quickly.

  The Chairman faced one of his staff. Just one. Sod it, even after all the redundancies he still had more than a hundred thousand on his payroll, and yet all he could find at this hour of the morning was one miserable wretch. An audience of one was not much to share his humiliation, but at least it was an audience. He needed someone to shout at. He stood behind his desk, shaking the newspaper as if to emphasize his point, although in truth it was simply his hand that was shaking.

  For a while, the young man standing before him listened in silence to the outpourings of anger until he decided that he was on the brink of one of those moments in which careers suddenly changed paths, where they might be destroyed. Or perhaps made. He was a gambler. So he jumped.

  ‘It was the Opposition.’

  ‘What? What sodding opposition?’ the Chairman demanded. ‘Anyway, who the sodding hell are you?’

  ‘Hadcock. Tim Hadcock, sir,’ the young man introduced himself once more. He was a junior member of the Policy and Presentation staff, not yet into his thirty-somethings, corporate lowlife, yet because of the bizarre accidents that litter a man’s life he was confronted at this moment by opportunity. It was a pity, of course, that his director had been forced to commute by rail from Surrey ever since he’d lost his licence and wouldn’t be arriving for at least another hour, but Hadcock was nothing if not resourceful and had no intention of hanging around waiting for one of life’s accidents. Neither had his Chairman.

  ‘Explain yourself!’

  ‘Well, sir, I’ve talked to the Director of Engineering – he’s hoping to be here shortly – and he is adamant it couldn’t have been an accident. And the Director of Security – I got hold of him at a conference in Rio de Janeiro – insists that our internal systems are practically impregnable, both physically and technically.’

 
; ‘So?’

  ‘So it means that the breach in security didn’t come from us. More than likely it came from the other end. From Westminster.’

  ‘What? What are you suggesting, Badcock? That I tell the Prime Minister it’s his fault?’

  ‘Well, I don’t suppose for a moment that the Government Whips sent out the message. So it must have been someone else at Westminster. Someone with an interest in making a laughing stock of the Government. Someone who’s familiar with Whips and pagers, who might have had the opportunity of activating the system. Someone whose presence around the House late at night would be entirely acceptable.’

  ‘You mean …?’

  ‘Someone with both the motive and the means, sir.’

  ‘Such as …?’

  ‘Someone in the Opposition!’

  The Chairman’s lips began moving as though silently rehearsing a plea. He experimented for a few moments, tried again, then shook his head in defeat. ‘What evidence do you have for this allegation?’

  ‘Not a shred.’

  ‘So how do you know it’s the sodding Opposition?’

  ‘I don’t, sir. But if you’ll forgive me …’ The young man hesitated. He was about to make that career choice. He was not a Director. Not an Assistant Director. Not even an Assistant to the Assistant. He had so little to lose. ‘I thought the purpose of the exercise wasn’t so much a matter of proof as one of … well, of presentation. We know it wasn’t us. So we need to put someone else in the frame. To take the pressure off us – off you, sir. And since we’re unlikely ever to find out who was responsible, someone else will do. Anyone else, actually.’

  The Chairman’s lips were moving once more, practising, following as Spatchcock – wasn’t that his name? – set out his case that it could have been the Opposition. It was the sort of explanation the Government would willingly embrace. No direct accusation, of course, just a whisper or two in a friendly journalist’s ear. Unattributable sources, that sort of thing. Or perhaps an allegation from the back benches under the cloak of parliamentary privilege, get everyone running around trying to identify some sort of dirty tricks squad. Press’d love that.