Whispers of betrayal tg-3

by Michael Dobbs

  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?'

  – =OO=OOO=OO-= '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, but 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 your 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 late. 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.

  – =OO=OOO=OO-= '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 s
he'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.

  – =OO=OOO=OO-= 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.'

  – =OO=OOO=OO-= 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 love-making 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.

  He didn't complain. She knew he'd keep that car until the wheels fell off, would never part with his memories of her, or the dent in the bonnet. He'd never abandon her, not like that bloody boy when she was fourteen.

  Yet for all her experience and experiences, she still found it so difficult to share. She kept men hungry, like Penelope at her loom, fed their desires but not their souls, and in the end it always told. The one man she had been determined to trust, her husband, had grown frustrated and eventually had gone. Not entirely anyone's fault. Circumstance. She'd been five months pregnant, there had been a car crash in which he'd been driving. She lost the baby, and her ability to have more babies, and along with it for a while had died something inside her that allowed her to trust and to share with men.

  Until she had met Goodfellowe. He was wounded, too. Both damaged goods. Something they could share.

  She loved Goodfellowe, but he was a man and so carried with him a little of the baggage of every man she had ever known. She wanted to love him more, and perhaps one day she might, but in the meantime she could find solace in her restaurant, something to which she could commit herself completely. It was a relationship she could control.

  Or so she had thought. But these were difficult times, times of cash-flow problems and cancellations.

  Salvation was at hand, of course, in the form of twenty-two crates of the finest Tsarist vintages, for which she had signed a contract in both English and Russian, lodging copies with the customs, taxation and foreign trade authorities in Odessa, and had then transferred the US dollar equivalent of almost seventy thousand pounds into an account at the People's Bank of Odessa in the name of Vladimir Houdoliy, frozen until such time as a certificate of export for the specified goods had been presented.

  Vladimir Houdoliy had become a man of great significance in her life. Perhaps too significant, for ever since the money had left her account and found its way to Odessa, it seemed to have disappeared into a hole in the ground.

  Now there was no answer from Vladimir
's phone, no matter how many times she rang.

  – =OO=OOO=OO-= 'Come in, come in… er, Tom.' Bendall seemed to be struggling for the name. 'Whisky?'

  Without waiting for a reply the Prime Minister nodded to Eddie Rankin, who busied himself at the small drinks cabinet. Goodfellowe had intended to decline, had he been given an option. He was way behind on his diet this week. Had been all month.

  They were in Bendall's study on the first floor of Downing Street with three large sash windows that offered a fine view of the silver birch in the garden and the park beyond. The windows had a faint green tinge, on account of the inch-thick glass that was blastproof and tested on the Royal Engineers' proving range at Chatham, a legacy of the IRA mortar attack that had left the garden and most of the windows looking like a bad day on the Somme. Not that the reinforced windows offered complete protection. They were so heavy they had to be opened and closed with huge winding handles, and were now far more robust than the ancient brick walls into which they were bolted. In the event of another explosion, they'd probably fall into the room in one huge piece, reducing everyone inside to specimens on a microscope slide. Not so much immunity, simply a different path to immortality.

  Goodfellowe hadn't been in this inner sanctum before. It had the unmistakable feel of a boy's den – cracked leather chairs and sofas, yards of bookshelves, disrupted piles of papers on floor and desks, the lingering smell of beeswax and alcohol. At the far end of the room, much to Goodfellowe's astonishment, stood a Sixties jukebox, switched on and ready to go, and on the wall above it a huge oil painting by some modernist that had been borrowed from the Tate.

  'So,' Bendall began after they had seated themselves, examining his cufflink as though he had nothing better to do. 'You were bloody rude at Question Time the other day.'

  'Was I, Prime Minister? If so, it was unintentional. Anyway, you were far bloody ruder.'