The Final Cut fu-3

by Michael Dobbs

  The interruption soured Booza-Pitt's mood, distracting him from his scrutiny of delicate ankles and contemplation of indulgence. He hated last-minute cancellations that disturbed what was often months of planning; he went into a sulk, like the Duke of Wellington receiving a scrap of paper informing him that Blucher wouldn't make it in time for Waterloo. He decided to shoot the messenger.

  'So what have you done?' he demanded querulously.

  'Well, I assume we'd like another top-level politician, so I've been checking the list. You've done every other member of the Cabinet in the last twelve months apart from Tom Makepeace…'

  'This is a box at the Albert Hall, not a bloody crypt.'

  'And Arthur Bollingbroke. I've already called his secretary to check, she thinks he and his wife might be free on that evening.'

  'Bollingbroke! The man's a bloated bore, why the hell do you think I haven't invited him to anything else? I can't sit him down next to the American Ambassador and Chairman of ITN, he'd fart all through the overture while swilling down vast quantities of my champagne. Have you any idea how much that'd cost me?'

  The secretary was trying to justify herself but Booza-Pitt was in no mind to listen. The motorist stuck in the next vehicle had recognized him and was offering a two-fingered salutation; the Transport Secretary struggled to balance discretion against a sudden compulsion to get out of the car and rearrange the guy's nasal passages.

  'Perhaps we'd better wait until tomorrow, anyway,' he heard her suggest. 'What on earth for?' 'Until the reshuffle is finished.'

  'Reshuffle…?' He choked. Selina wondered if a stray salmon bone had become lodged in his throat. 'Didn't you know? It's on television right now.'

  Reshuffles had always had an adverse effect on Booza-Pitt, they made him twitch. That first time, he'd been in Parliament less than eighteen months and had refused to stray more than twenty yards from the phone throughout the day, even though his second wife had told him there was no credible chance of his finding promotion so early in his career. Yet the phone had rung while he was out in the garden – 'Downing Street' his wife had announced in awe through the kitchen window. He had run – rushed, tripped, fallen, broken his finger and ripped the knee from his trousers, yet nothing would stop him from taking the call. The Prime Minister's office. Wondering whether he could help. Of course, of course I can! A speaking engagement in a neighbouring constituency which the Prime Minister had planned to undertake, yet which he must now sadly decline. The reshuffle, you understand. Could Geoffrey fill in, tomorrow night? His eyes blurred red with pain, Geoffrey had expressed his unencumbered delight at having been asked, while his soon-to-be former wife had collapsed in convulsions.

  You couldn't keep him down, though. He'd been involved in every reshuffle since and now the hounds of hazard had slipped the leash again. Alarums would be ringing all around Westminster, causing grown men to cringe. He studied the telephone in his hand, his features drenched in disbelief. He hadn't known it was today, right this minute, with calls reaching out from Downing Street to summon the good and the gone while she jammed the line with waffle about how it was such a pity because she truly admired Tom Makepeace and… 'Get off the bloody phone!' he screamed. He was still in his shirt sleeves when he opened the front door. By the lack of subtlety in the creases, she suspected he might have ironed it himself.

  'You're going to hate me for pestering you at home.' From two steps up Tom Makepeace studied her, still munching his toast. She was tossing her dark hair nervously, the morning sun catching colours of polished coal. The lips were full, puckered in concern, her arms clutched around her in a troubled manner which seemed to lift her breasts towards him. Her coyness was a rarity in Westminster, so were the jeans.

  'I hope it's something important, Miss…?' He'd noticed the lack of a ring.

  'Maria Passolides. A matter of life and death, in a way.'

  But, damn it, this was the middle of his breakfast. 'If you have a problem, perhaps it would be best if you wrote to me with the details.'

  'I have. I got a letter in return from an assistant saying thanks but you were too busy to deal with individual predicaments at the moment. He couldn't spell "predicaments".'

  'We've had an enormous number of letters in the last few days. Mostly supportive, I'm glad to say, but far too many for me to handle personally. I apologize. Perhaps you'd care to telephone my office to arrange an appointment.' He brushed his hands dismissively of the crumbs.

  'Done that, too. Five times. You're always engaged.'

  He was losing this game to love, and on his service. 'It seems I'm likely to spend the whole morning apologizing to you, Miss Passolides. Tell me briefly how I might be able to help.' He did not forsake his high vantage point or invite her inside; there were so many troubled individuals, so little politicians could do, and already too many distractions from the extraordinary pile of unopened envelopes which had taken over his dining table. Yet as she talked, she touched something inside him, a pulse of interest. It was several minutes before he recognized it as lust.

  'You must understand, Miss Passolides, it's a difficult time for politicians to get into the matter of missing graves, just when we seem to be on the point of peace in Cyprus.'

  'That's where you couldn't be more wrong.' As she talked her diffidence had completely disappeared. 'It's not openness that will threaten peace but continuing uncertainty and any hint of a cover-up. Even the Turks have recognized that.'

  He reflected on the force of her argument, his energies still weighed down by the thought of the unopened letters and unanswered calls which would pursue him for weeks to come. Life without the Ministerial machine was proving extraordinarily tiresome, with little scope for new crusades. It's all a long way from my constituency,' he offered weakly.

  'Don't be so sure. There are nearly three hundred thousand Greek Cypriots in this country and a kebab shop or taverna in every high street. Overnight a politician could have an army at his side.' 'Or at his throat.'

  'Beware of Greeks bearing grudges.' She stood laughing on the pavement. There was an unhewn energy, enthusiasm, impatience, passion, commitment, the raw edge of life in this woman. He liked that, and he liked her.

  'It seems that the only way I'm going to get you and your army off my doorstep is to invite you in for a cup of tea. Then perhaps we can discuss the matter of whose side.' He stood aside to let her pass. 'And whose throat.' He declined his head as Urquhart strode across the threshold of Number Ten. Over the years the doorman had noticed that what had started as his brief nod of respect had developed into something closer to a cautious bow; as a good trade unionist he'd fought the tendency but found it irresistible, built upon generations of inbred class attitudes which instinctively recognized authority. Damn 'em all. The atmosphere had changed in Downing Street, especially when Elizabeth Urquhart was around, growing more formalized with the passage of time and Parliaments, a royal court dressed in democratic image. One day, the doorman reassured his wife, the great unwashed would stir and shake like a million grains of sand beneath Urquhart's feet and he would slip to his knees and be gone, buried beneath the changing tide of fortune. One day, someday, maybe soon. But in the meantime the doorman would continue to smile and bow a little lower, the better to inspect the shifting sands.

  The door closed, shutting out the cries of inquisitive hunger from the press corps. They'd be thrown a few bones later. Before then, there were dishes to carve. Urquhart studied his watch. Good, the timing was perfect. He'd've kept Mackintosh waiting for exactly twenty minutes.

  Jasper Mackintosh was standing in the comer of the hallway, tapping his hand-crafted shoe on the black-and-white floor tiles, trying with little success to hide his irritation. As the owner and publisher of the country's second largest and fastest-growing newspaper empire, he was more accustomed to being waited on than waiting, and after a lifetime of building and breaking politicians he was left in no undue awe by his surroundings. Several months previously he'd concluded that the
time had come to start pulling the plug on Francis Urquhart – not that the Prime Minister had done anything politically damaging or offensive, simply that he'd been around so long that stories about him no longer sold newspapers. Change and uncertainty sold newspapers, and business dictated it was time for a little turmoil. Mackintosh was on a high, and in a hurry. Only last week he'd finally agreed the terms of purchase for the Clarion chain of newspapers, a lumbering loss-making giant staffed by clapped-out journalists working in clapped-out plant for a clapped-out readership, yet which offered well-known titles and great potential. The journalists could be paid off, new plant could be constructed, a new readership bought through heavy advertising and discounting, but the cost was going to be high, many tens of millions, and there was no room in Mackintosh's world for standing still. He had to get the money men off his back. That meant headlines, happenings, histrionics and new heroes. Sentimentality was a sin.

  Mackintosh had already decided that Urquhart had lost this morning's game, and not simply for starting it twenty minutes late. He assumed the Prime Minister wanted to rekindle the relationship, perhaps give him an exclusive insight into the reshuffle in exchange for sympathy. No chance. In Mackintosh's world of tomorrow, Francis Urquhart didn't feature. Anyway, where was the courtesy, the deference he expected from a supplicant? Urquhart simply grabbed him by the elbow and hustled him along the corridor.

  'Glad you could make it, Jasper. I haven't got a lot of time, got to dispatch a few of the walking wounded, so I'll come straight to the point. Why have you directed your muck spreaders into Downing Street?' 'Muck spreaders?' 'Driven by your editors.'

  'Prime Minister, they are souls of independent mind. I have given countless undertakings about interfering…'

  'They are a bunch of brigands and whatever the state of their minds, you've got them firmly by the balls. Their thoughts tend to follow.' Suddenly Urquhart called a halt to the breathless charge down the passageway. He hustled Mackintosh into the alcove by the Henry Moore and looked him directly in the eye. 'Why? Why are you writing that it's time for me to go? What have I done wrong?'

  Mackintosh considered, and rejected the option of prevarication. Urquhart wanted it straight. 'Nothing. It's not what you've done, it's what you are. You're a giant, your shadow falls across the political world and leaves others in the shade. You've been a great man, Francis, but it's time for a change. Let others have a chance to grow.' He smiled gently; he'd put it rather well, he thought. 'It's business, you understand. The business of politics and of newspapers. Nothing personal.'

  Urquhart seemed unaffected by the obituary. 'I'm obliged to you, Jasper, for being so direct. I've always thought we had a relationship which was robust and candid, which could withstand the knocks of changing times.'

  'That's extremely generous of you…' Mackintosh began, but Urquhart was talking straight through him.

  'And speaking of the knocks of changing times, I thought it only fair – in equal candour and confidence – to share with you some plans which the Treasury are proposing to push forward. Now you know I am not a man of high finance, I leave that to the experts like you. Extraordinary how the nation entrusts the fate of its entire national fortune to politicians like me who can scarcely add up.' He shrugged his shoulders, as though trying to slough off some unwelcome burden. 'But as I understand it you've undertaken to buy the Clarion and are going to pay for it all by issuing a large number of bonds to your friends in the City.'

  The newspaper man nodded. This was all public knowledge, a straightforward plan to raise the money by huge borrowings, with the interest payments being set off against his existing company's profits. Overall his profits would plummet but so would his tax bill, and in effect the Inland Revenue would end up paying for the expansion of the Mackintosh empire, which in a few years' time would be turned into one of the biggest money spinners in the country. Debt today, paid for by the tax man, in exchange for huge profit tomorrow, paid directly to Mackintosh. Creative accounting and entirely legal. The money men loved it.

  'The point is,' the Prime Minister continued, 'and this is just between the two of us, as old friends…'

  Somewhere inside, at the mention of friendship, Mackintosh felt his muesli move.

  '… the Treasury is planning to make a few changes. As from next week. Something about the losses of one company no longer being able to be set off against the profits of another. I don't profess to understand it, do you?'

  Of course Mackintosh understood. So well that he grabbed the wall for support. It was a proposal to slash the canvas of his creative accounting to shreds. With those rules his tax bill would soar and even the dullest underwriter would realize he'd no longer be able to repay the debt. He was already committed to buying the Clarion, no way out of it, yet at the slightest hint of a rule change the money men would wash their hands of the whole plan, walk away to their champagne bars and Porsches, leaving him with… 'Ruin. You'd ruin me. I'd lose everything.'

  'Really? That would be a pity. But the Treasury button counters are so very keen on this new idea, and who am I to argue with them?' 'You are the bloody Prime Minister!'

  'Yes, I am. But, apparently, one not long for this world. On the way out.'

  'Oh, God.' Mackintosh's shoulders had slumped, the tailored suit seeming to hang like sacking. A man reduced. He raised his eyes in search of salvation but all he could find were the long drapes which stood guard beside the tall sash windows of the hallway, coloured like claret, or blood. His blood. Time to swallow pride, words, self-respect. He cleared his throat with difficulty. 'It seems my editors have badly misjudged you, Prime Minister. You appear to have lost neither your acumen nor your enthusiasm for office. I shall inform them of their error immediately. And I think I can assure you that no editor who holds anything but the highest regard for your many and varied talents will ever work for one of my newspapers.'

  For an endless breath Urquhart said nothing. The lips closed, grew thin, like the leathered beak of a snapper turtle, and the eyes ignited with a reptilian malevolence and a desire to do harm that Mackintosh could physically feel. It was the stuff of childish nightmares; he could taste his own fear. 'Good.' At last the lips had moved. 'You can find your own way out.' Urquhart had already turned his back and was a step away from the dejected Mackintosh when he spun round for one final word, the features now bathed in a practised smile.

  'By the way, Jasper. You understand, don't you? All this. It's business. Nothing personal.' And he was gone. It was a night out for the boys. Loud, rumbustious, earthy, scarcely diplomatic, not at all ecclesiastical. Hardly the place one expected to find His Grace the Bishop of Marion and the High Commissioner of the Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. But the Cypriot Bishop was one of the new breed of clerics who sought orthodoxy only in their religion.

  'Welcome, most high of high commissioners.' The Bishop, clad in the black of the clerical cassock, spread his arms in greeting and chuckled. As Hugh Martin, the British diplomat, entered, three of the four men who had been sitting alongside the Bishop rose and melted to the sidelines. The fourth, who was as broad as the Bishop was tall, was introduced as his brother, Dimitri.

  'I'm delighted you could come and enjoy what, with God's grace, will be a night of momentous victory for my team,' the Bishop continued, while two girls who said nothing through enormous smiles offered trays of wine and finger food.

  'Your team, your Grace?' Martin enquired light-heartedly.

  'Indeed,' the Bishop responded in his most earnest of tones. 'I own the team. In the name of the bishopric, of course. A fine way of extending God's bounty to the masses, don't you think?' On cue the thousands of ardent soccer supporters packed into Nicosia's Makarios Stadium erupted into a stamping war cry of delight as twenty-two players filed onto the pitch. The Cyprus Cup Final was about to get underway.

  In the corner of the private box high up in the stadium a mobile phone warbled and one of the besuited assistants began muttering into the mouthpiece. Mar
tin looked afresh at the scene. He was new to the posting in the Cypriot capital yet already had heard of the extrovert Theophilos, still only in his forties, who controlled an empire which covered not only hearts and souls but also pockets – a newspaper, two hotels, several editors, still more politicians and a vineyard which was arguably the finest on the island. But Martin hadn't known about the football team. Clearly there was much to learn about this Harvard Business School-educated, well-groomed cleric.

  The Englishman was grateful for the whirring fans which spilled the air around the box. Nicosia was one of those capitals which seemed to be in the wrong place, tucked behind the Kyrenia mountains on the wide plains of Mesaoria, touched by neither rippling sea breeze nor fresh mountain air, where even as early as May the heat and exhaust fumes built to oppressive levels. The Makarios Stadium had become a concrete cauldron nearing the boil, bringing sweat and fanatical passion to the brows of the packed crowd, yet beneath his ankle-length bishop's robes Theophilos remained cool. Elegantly he dispatched instructions via the assistants who sat behind him, all of whom were introduced as theology teachers yet who, judging by their frequent telephone conversations, were equally at home in the world of Mammon. Only his brother Dimitri, a highly strung man of fidgeting fingers whose tongue ceaselessly explored the comers of his cheeks, sat alongside the Bishop and the High Commissioner; the others remained in a row of chairs behind, except for a single man who neither spoke nor smiled but stood guard beside the door. Martin thought he detected a bulge beneath the armpit, but surely not with a man of the cloth? He decided that the sweet, heavy wine they were drinking must be affecting his imagination.