Whispers of betrayal tg-3

by Michael Dobbs

  TWELVE

  If there was any humour to be found in any of this chaos, it sailed far above the head of Arnold Jumpers, the Prime Minister's press spokesman, upon whose shoulders had fallen the responsibility for mounting the first line of defence. Since there was little point in denying the situation was anything other than a calamity, he had decided upon a diversionary attack and accordingly had prepared a draft statement which blamed the mess not only on the conspirators but also the telephone company, the Daily Telegraph and even the Government's political opponents, accusing them of multiple if ill-defined crimes. There seemed little other option. It was all very well the Prime Minister ordering him into the breach once more, but in order to fill it he would need to round up as many bodies as he could find, and no one else had any sensible advice to offer. They were all too busy shouting down telephones at strangers.

  He had shown his draft to the Prime Minister, who pierced him with a look that Jumpers suspected might have been tinged with gin. 'Bring me some answers, Arnold,' Bendall had barked, 'then maybe I'll take some questions. Until then, you do it!'

  So Jumpers had called together the lobby correspondents. He had tried to summon them by telephone but he was merely mortal, not a miracle worker, and feeling more mortal by the moment. The Government Telephone Network which embraced official Westminster was not part of the 0207 fiasco but in this hour of adversity had come to resemble an overloaded refugee convoy and was going nowhere. Jumpers had been reduced to sending a runner off to the Houses of Parliament to bring the journalists hotfoot to Downing Street.

  They had, indeed, arrived hotfoot, gathering outside the basement entrance to the press lobby at the appointed time, but the door remained firmly closed. Jumpers kept them waiting – they assumed out of arrogance or an attempt to show them that he was master in his own kingdom, but in truth because he was making last-minute alterations to his draft in a state of rising panic. So the members of the lobby sat on the low wall outside the basement door, beside which some joker had placed the rat traps that were supposed to keep Downing Street free of vermin, and they had smoked and speculated and grown impatient. And waited some more. Finally the door had creaked open and a breathless junior press secretary had offered mumbled apologies before ushering them in.

  The press briefing room itself was claustrophobic, decorated in battleship grey and provided with inadequate services and small windows set high in one end wall. It was a little like a prison. In Jumpers's opinion it was precisely what they deserved.

  'Morning, Woolly,' the Telegraph's correspondent called across as the official press spokesman entered the room. 'What's the line today, then?'

  How he hated his nickname. How he hated the correspondent and the newspaper, and what it had done to him.

  Being the press spokesman at Downing Street is a little like being a lump of prime meat on a butcher's bench. So long as it's there on the bench, in pristine condition, the passing dogs will gaze upon it with a mixture of reticence and respect, but should it fall into the gutter both reticence and respect are immediately cast aside and the dogs compete to tear it to pieces. Jumpers had thrown himself into the gutter with his lies about the attacks; now the teeth were bared and he would be shown no more mercy than a string of yesterday's sausages.

  'Good morning,' he began, trying to affect a pretence of normality. He clutched the sides of his podium for comfort. The podium was new, something he'd introduced to give briefings a greater air of formality, make it seem a little like the White House. It also gave him something to hide behind. 'Nothing on the record at the moment, if you don't mind. Nothing for direct quotation. Only background.'

  'Why's that, Woolly?'

  'Because we don't yet know…' – he had to struggle to avoid saying 'what the bloody hell's going on' and instead retreated to 'the full circumstances of this situation.'

  'Hasn't stopped you before.'

  Jumpers licked his dry lips and softly muttered a phrase he'd seen spray-painted onto a wall in Kilburn. 'No one should underestimate the seriousness of this situation. This is nothing less than an attempt to cripple life in London. You'll have seen the impact on the Stock Exchange

  'Falling like a nun's knickers on bath night,' someone cracked.

  Jumpers ignored it. 'Business has all but ground to a halt. But you'll appreciate it goes much deeper than that.'

  'I hear there may be rumblings on some of the inner-city estates. Rumours about barricades going up. Gangs of youths steaming through the high street. That true, Woolly?'

  Jumpers had no idea, it was all happening too fast for him to stay abreast. 'What I can confirm is that it will be ordinary people who will suffer most from this outrage. Think what is likely to happen after dark. Remember that many burglar alarms and security systems use an 0207 number, a number that is no longer of any use. We are talking here about a potential catastrophe…'

  'Talking of potential catastrophes, Woolly,' – there was an ill-concealed snigger from several of those in the room – 'who are we blaming today? That is, assuming we can dispense with the nonsense that this is an attack by the paramilitary wing of the World Wildlife Fund?'

  Jumpers felt his chance had come. He glanced down at his briefing paper with its list of accused in order to refresh both his memory and his morale, yet before he could begin he was interrupted yet again. It was that turd from the Telegraph once more.

  'You know who's going to get the blame, don't you, Woolly? Even if they find that Captain Beaky has robbed a bank and screwed his sister. You know who they're going to blame?'

  Jumpers paused. He had the feeling of something cruel and canine brushing up against his leg. The pack was about to pounce. 'What do you mean?'

  'They're going to blame you, Woolly. Not you personally, of course; they don't know who you are. But your boss. Hissing Sid. The Prime Minister. That's who they'll go for.'

  From a distance, across the rooftops and chimneys of Whitehall, came the sound of Big Ben striking the hour. One o'clock. Feeding time.

  'That's absurd…'

  'You see, your boss, Mr Bendall, has been fiddling with the truth. To put no finer point on it, he lied. Now, we know our lords and masters like to mess about with the truth at times, but what we don't expect is for them to get caught quite so blatantly. Trousers down, arse in the air and everything on full public display. So they're going to kick his butt and say that if he hadn't lied, this might not have happened. That's what they'll say.' At least, that's what his newspaper was going to say and, as Jumpers knew, sometimes the public are so easily led. It was the moment for him to step in, to take control of the situation.

  'Let's be clear about this. What we are facing is nothing less than a full-scale terrorist situation. It's electronic terrorism. Not even the IRA was able to bring London grinding to a halt like this. No avenue is going to remain unexplored and no stone unturned in our efforts to stamp down on these outrages.' It was going better now; they were all busy scribbling down his clichйs. You couldn't have too many clichйs, not in his job. Get them stuffed into the first four paragraphs of any news report and his job was almost done. But this one needed something more. It needed someone to blame…

  'So we have ordered Telecoms to work flat out until they have isolated the fault and corrected their computer, regardless of the expense. We are going to ensure that they have their systems back on line at the earliest possible moment. Then we can start discussions as to how they managed to let something like this happen and to see if there are any grounds for compensation…' Good, very good. Blame clearly implied without any direct attribution. Time for the personal touch. His Master's Voice.

  'The Prime Minister doesn't underestimate the seriousness of this situation. He's working on it right now in the Cabinet Room. Let's not beat about the bush. Phrases like "Goering" and "Luftwaffe" spring to mind. It's worse in many respects, because the Luftwaffe only hit a small proportion of buildings not the whole capital and – SWEET MARY AND JOSEPH WILL YOU SWITCH OFF THAT
BLOODY PHONE!'

  Jumpers almost lost it. Ever since he had started his counterattack that bitch-in-heat from the Press Association had been fiddling with her earpiece and her mobile phone, distracting him, not listening to him, and he'd just about had enough.

  'No it's not,' she responded without a trace of remorse.

  'No it's not what?' Arnold bit back.

  'No, it's not worse than the Luftwaffe,' she replied, one hand on her earpiece and the other held high to still Jumpers's agitation. 'They're playing with you, Arnold. The phones are back on. At the stroke of one, my office is telling me. The computer corrected itself and… the land lines are now working.' She paused to examine the press spokesman. 'Why, Arnold, you should be happy. It's all over.'

  The Press Secretary knew it wasn't all over. Something was going on at the level of his trouser leg. Maybe the dogs weren't pulling him apart, not for the moment at least, but something unpleasant was happening nonetheless. He had the distinct impression he was being pissed on.

  – =OO=OOO=OO-= The dismay felt by Arnold Jumpers crept from Downing Street through the streets and alleyways of Westminster like a Dickensian fog until it reached as far as The Kremlin. The day had started badly for Elizabeth. She had been forced to sack two of her staff, an under-chef and a waiter. It was time for cutbacks, even though she knew she was cutting back on the things that made The Kremlin special. Needs must. Then the fog of chaos closed in until it had all but cut off The Kremlin and wiped out the lunchtime bookings. Her profit margin for the entire week lost at a single stroke. At this rate she knew she would be closed in weeks unless something turned up.

  – =OO=OOO=OO-= 'So how far would you go?'

  At this point, Goodfellowe is still lying on top of her. One day, maybe, she'll get some feeling back in her legs.

  'How far what?' he replies. 'What are we talking about here? Group sex? Chandeliers?'

  'No, you fool. At least, not right this minute. I'm talking about things like your job. Mr Squeaky Clean gets hold of the Ministerial inkpot once more. Doesn't that mean you have to get your hands dirty?'

  'Does politics have to be a dirty game?'

  'The more relevant question is whether it can ever be clean. Tell me you didn't lie for your country when you were Foreign Minister.'

  'That was different. That's called diplomacy.'

  'And you expect me to believe you when you tell me you've suddenly fallen in love with your Prime Minister and all his works?'

  'That bit's called collective Ministerial responsibility.'

  She wriggles and hooks her legs behind his, pulling him into her, her tongue exploring his ear. He emits a low groan that sounds like a protest, but isn't.

  'Tell me, Goodfellowe, would you screw for your country, too?'

  'How could I refuse, if she looked like you?'

  She takes the sides of his head in both hands and forces it up from her body so that she is looking directly into his eyes. 'Seriously. Say there were… I don't know, say a female journalist. Drop-dead gorgeous, legs up to heaven. And she had something – apart from the bloody obvious – that you wanted.'

  'Like what?'

  'Something vital. Some piece of information, some pillow talk that was essential. Or perhaps she had a story on you, or a close friend, that you wanted to bury beneath the bedsheets. Would you do it?'

  'Does a one-legged duck swim in circles?'

  'Depends how aroused he is.'

  'How should I express it? To lay down one's life for one's country is a noble thing, but to lay down one's virtue seems to have altogether more amusing possibilities.'

  He's laughing but she's not joining in. Something's troubling her.

  'What's up, Elizabeth?'

  'No, nothing. Nothing except… You can be such a black-and-white person at times, yet the world is so full of grey. Sometimes you have to do things you don't particularly want to do. Like the lying and cheating, even worse things. How do you live with that?'

  He has caught her solemn mood, digs into a former life. 'Do you remember when it all turned nasty in Ghana? First there was the coup, then a counter-coup. CNN had a field day. Ministers being strapped to oil barrels on the beach and machine-gunned, left for the crabs. That was when I was Foreign Minister and I gave the order for all our diplomats to get out. But our ambassador telephoned. He spoke to me personally. Asked for permission to stay on in post. There were too many British aid workers around the place, he argued, he didn't want to desert them. He wanted to stay.'

  Then a silence. Goodfellowe's memories seem to be weighing him down.

  'So?'

  'So I agreed. I could hear the gunfire in the background even as we were speaking, but… I agreed. He stayed. He got most of the aid workers out, saved dozens of lives. And a week later they strung up his body from a lamppost. We both knew the risks, it goes with the job. He knew the risk was of dying, I knew the risk was of having to live with his death. Sure, sometimes you have to lie, to cheat, even to sacrifice a man's life. Occasions when almost anything can be justified.'

  'So what makes it right, or wrong?'

  'What makes a deed good or bad, I suppose, depends not so much on the deed itself, but on your motivation for doing it.'

  'Even sleeping with the devil?'

  'What, Bendall? If I climb into bed with him, it's only because there's no other way. Doesn't make me a slut.'

  She remains very silent, seems troubled. He wonders if he's disappointed her, let himself down. She can be so difficult to read.

  'Not wrong am I? Gone too far?'

  She buries her head in her pillow. 'No, my love. I don't think you have. Not if you don't.'

  She doesn't want him to see the tears that have gathered at the corners of her eyes. He thinks this conversation is all about him. Poor, blind fool. It's not about him, it's about her. And about wine and the restaurant and ghosts from her past, and not relying ever again on any one man, even a man like Goodfellowe. And not entirely trusting herself, which is why she can't bring herself to place her trust in him, even though she loves him, which makes it all so much more complicated. Bloody men.

  He lies on top of her, content, oblivious. He doesn't realize his world is on the brink of falling to pieces.

  – =OO=OOO=OO-= London lay prostrate and in confusion. Like a man kicked in the groin or a woman who has lost her handbag, for a while the world no longer made sense. An entire city had been left gasping, disorientated, yet the causes of despair for some are viewed by others as opportunities, and Earwick was nothing if not an opportunist. The failure of the phones had played havoc with his diary for the day, causing all sorts of duties to be rearranged or cancelled. It soon became clear that a hole had appeared in his diary some time after three in the afternoon. Gaps in the schedule of a Secretary of State are as rare and as richly prized as pearls, and he resisted all the entreaties of his private secretary to spend the rest of the afternoon going through his backlog of correspondence and preparing for his five-o'clock meeting with his security advisers. Earwick looked out of his window in Queen Anne's Gate and found not fog but brilliant sunshine. He braced his shoulders and issued a decree that he would spend an hour at home, studying papers without disruption. And without his private secretary.

  A red box was hurriedly stuffed with appropriate briefing material and Her Majesty's Secretary of State for Home Affairs quit his office promptly at three. But not before he had sat down at his desk and sent a personal e-mail.

  – =OO=OOO=OO-= Brett Eatwell, the new-ish and straight-ish editor of the Sun, didn't envy the lot of politicians. Why should he? He pulled a salary three times that of the Prime Minister, plus bonuses and an unlimited expense account, he could call his staff bitches and bastards without being threatened with a law suit, and his private life was never, but never, going to be the stuff of gossip in any newspaper column. He occupied that position of respect which ensured that when he changed his mind and stood his views on their head, it wasn't called a U-turn or a retreat but
simply a matter of editorial independence.

  At this precise moment he was engaged in a particularly delicate exercise of editorial independence. Eatwell sat in his office in Wapping, sleeves rolled up and pondering the future of the Government. Up to this point he had been a reasonably consistent supporter. Bendall was a greaseball, of course, but a little grease was always necessary to oil the wheels of the presses. Better a Prime Minister up your bum than on your back. Indeed, so assiduous had the Prime Minister been that on the news desk they usually referred to him as Bendover. When he had called Eatwell to congratulate him on his birthday, the editor had played the phone call over the newsroom intercom, accompanied by extravagant and exceedingly childish hand gestures that he had first practised at public school.

  But Jonathan Bendall was beginning to be a pain. He had brought London grinding to a halt, which on the day in question had made Eatwell's proprietor late for his lunch. Now he had cut off all the bloody telephones. Politicians needed to be lucky, and Bendall's luck was beginning to look as though it had spent the night on a park bench. Perhaps it was time to drop him. Eatwell was contemplating a choice of headlines which varied from 'Kicked In The Bendalls!' to 'Telef***ed!' when he became aware of the cartoon platinum blonde on his screen. She was an icon developed by his software department to guide him through the electronic maze of his computer system, and at this point she was opening and closing her legs. This told him that he had received an e-mail message.

  Eatwell was not normally an excitable man. It was not his custom to become agitated, rather it was his pleasure to agitate others, and particularly his reporters, until they had squeezed the last traces of life from a story. But this little one was going to see him through to his dotage.

  The first anyone else knew of this was when they heard a scream coming from his office that made his secretary think he'd been setting light to his farts again – another habit from public school. She rushed in, concerned, only to be told she was a knickerless little scrubber. She was unable to obtain any further sense from him and so she summoned the news editor.