The Final Cut fu-3

by Michael Dobbs

  Elpida let him grovel until she could see fear stretched tight across his face like a piano wire. Then she fired and blew Dimitri's right knee cap into a mush of skin and bone fragments. 'Next time, you bastard, you'll come crawling to me.'

  Dimitri's body began to jerk, trying desperately to get hands around his shattered leg while every movement sent a thousand volts of agony shooting through his body. He was screaming at the top of his voice.

  As though she were handing out refreshments during a hot afternoon on the lawn of the Presidential Palace, Elpida gave the gun to Darwin and went to tend to her father.

  The Captain felt sick. He'd lost control, the game plan was unravelling. It seemed certain that the gunshot and Dimitri's cries of agony would have been heard by those still unaccounted for. He had the hostages secure, but the job was not yet finished. And he'd have to do the rest on his own.

  As he contemplated the stairs, his mouth went dry and his finger stiffened around the trigger. He had little idea what to expect – Urquhart's briefing had only extended as far as the ground floor – and there were too many doors leading off the landing, any of which could leap open in a blaze of gunfire. Like O'Mara Street near the river in Derry, a dishevelled terraced house with peeling wallpaper and no carpet, on a miserable November day when he'd been sent to pick up an IRA suspect. At the top of a short flight of stairs there had been only two doors, but one of them had opened, just a fraction. He had hesitated – was it an innocent civilian, a child perhaps, coming from the bathroom? Or the suspect about to surrender?

  The answer had come in the form of a 5.56 mm bullet fired from an Armalite which had sliced clean across his collar bone and through the throat of the corporal giving him cover from behind. They had both ended up at the bottom of the stairs, Darwin curled in a ball of pain, staring directly into the lifeless eyes of his fellow soldier. The corporal's widow had got a pension, Darwin had got sick leave and a commendation, and the IRA murderer a sentence of life imprisonment when eventually he had given himself up. That was eight years ago; he could be paroled and out on the streets in less than another two. In Darwin's dreams the eyes of the dead soldier had stared back at him for months afterwards. That wasn't going to happen again.

  All the Bishop's men with the exception of the still writhing Dimitri had had their hands wired behind their backs; he grabbed the nearest and thrust him forward. Up the stairs. A shield. Insurance.

  They climbed, and Darwin's senses were ringing; the nearer he came to the tin roof and the beating of the blades, the more insistent became the pounding inside his head. Even the wooden floor trembled. A sheet of metal roofing was working loose, beginning to bang methodically in the down-draught. Deafening. Like volleys of artillery fire.

  Left at the top, the hallway dark and decorated like some Victorian boarding house. Prints, oil paintings, lamp shades with gently vibrating tassels, antique-stall bric-a-brac. And doors, too many bloody doors.

  'You speak English?' Darwin had to shout directly into his prisoner's ear. 'I have a Masters from Bristol University.' 'You want to die?' The prisoner shook his head.

  'Then you open the doors. Very slowly. And start praying your friends recognize you.'

  He rebound the prisoner's hands in front of him, and they crept along the corridor, Darwin pushing his human shield, until they reached the first door. Gingerly the brass knob was turned, the door swung open – to reveal nothing more threatening than a linen cupboard. For a moment Darwin felt a fool, until he reminded himself that at least he was a fool who was still breathing.

  Onward. Behind the second door was a bathroom, behind the third an unoccupied bedroom. A sense of urgency grew, he had to get on with it. Darwin wiped away the sweat that was dribbling freely into his eyes.

  The next door unlatched in faltering fashion, the prisoner's damp and bound hand slipping around the polished brass. It opened a fraction, then a few more inches. And before them, back turned, looking out of the window in the pose of a statue dedicated to a Latin American warrior, stood the Bishop. Three respectful steps to his rear, attention also focused out of the window, was the missing guard. They hadn't heard a thing.

  With rising confidence Darwin pushed forward behind his shield, ducking down for protection, but as they crossed the threshold his prisoner stretched out with a boot and caught the leg of a chair, enough to send it toppling. The guard near the window swivelled, his mouth opened to shout, his gun levelled. He saw the human shield, recognized his companion, and fired. As Darwin fired back, the man in his hands flinched, grew heavy and slowly toppled to the floor. Darwin could see two bubbling craters in his chest and could feel the spatter of warm blood on his own cheek.

  The Bishop had turned now, attracted less by the noise than the fact that his guard who had been positioned some way behind him was now slumped against the wall at the foot of the window, his heart blown wide open by a single round.

  Theophilos faced Darwin, examined the two bodies on the floor with great deliberation. He sought for options; there were none. Inescapably, it was over. An adventure too far. He shrugged, expelled a great lungful of disenchantment and slowly raised his hands, the sleeves of his cassock slipping high up his arms to reveal his favourite Rolex and a white silk shirt. His arms outstretched in silhouette against the glowing light of sun and fire from the window gave the impression of a crucifixion.

  Darwin wiped the blood from his cheek, as he had done that day in Derry. As his eyes adjusted to the brightness he could see that Theophilos was smiling wryly. 'I surrender,' the Bishop mouthed – or might have been shouting, it was impossible to hear.

  Darwin put a bullet straight through the top of the wooden cross which hung over his heart. The Bishop, lifted from his feet, fell heavily against and then backwards through the window, which shattered into fragments like an exploding star leaving nothing but a gaping, lifeless hole. The last sight Darwin had of Theophilos was the tail of a flapping cassock, a pair of sandals and two bright yellow socks.

  Urquhart had been right. He'd apologized to Darwin, as soon as he'd finished briefing him over the satellite link about the layout of the Lodge. 'Apologize, Prime Minister?'

  'Yes, Captain. The Bishop, if captured alive, will inevitably go before a Cypriot court. He has a lot of friends in Cyprus. I suspect he's more likely to get elected President than convicted. We don't deal with terrorists very effectively, do we?' 'No, Sir.'

  'I remember in my own time, when I was a soldier doing your job in Cyprus, fighting EOKA terrorists. The Archbishop, Makarios, led the terrorists at that time, paid them from church funds, gave them their instructions. They killed not only our troops but many British civilians, women too. We knew it, even locked him up in exile. Then we let him become President of Cyprus. We're too soft, Captain.' 'Yes, Sir.'

  'Even if they lock him up for a while, it would achieve nothing. Like a serpent's egg. Put it away, and the menace only grows stronger until it breaks out in some more dangerous and reformed fashion. I've always believed there's only one thing to do with a serpent's egg.' 'What's that, Sir?' 'Crush it, Captain.' They had watched it all on the monitors. The shadows flitting between forest and kitchen window. The flash of confusion by the shutter at the front door. The fire drawing ever closer. The dark shape bursting forth from the first-floor window and falling like a sack of coal. Four grateful hostages rejoicing in sunlight for the first time in days.

  And miraculously the fire had been doused, the aim and effectiveness of the rain-makers improving as rapidly as circumstances within the Lodge.

  Much to Urquhart's private delight Youngblood had returned, commanded to do so by his superior who was insistent that, no matter how intolerably interfering and unreasonable the Prime Minister might be, a military representative had to be there to advise and, if necessary, to object. And even as Urquhart gloried in his victory, the argument was not yet done.

  The military advice, from the commanding heights of the Cabinet Room all the way down to St Aubyn on the spot
, was to transfer the released hostages immediately to the safety of Akrotiri. But again Urquhart said no and insisted. This was no longer a military matter, it had become entirely political, and the politics demanded that the victory be paraded and lauded for the benefit of the legitimate government of President Nicolaou and for the disgrace of his foes. To skulk behind British barbed wire would wipe away all the President's new-found advantage.

  So Urquhart decreed that the exhausted Nicolaou and the others were to rest overnight in a nearby hotel, and on the following morning, Sunday, St Aubyn should prepare to drive them in convoy not to a British base but to the capital of Nicosia, to the seat of Government and authority. To the media networks which would spread the word of victory throughout the island. To the symbolic ruins of the Presidential Palace. To the humiliation of all foes. And to wherever Elizabeth's letter might be.

  And, in order to maximize the magnitude of victory, Urquhart made a mental note to ensure that every television network and news cameraman his staff could get their hands on would be there to witness his triumph. It was as dusk was falling and the last of the debris of captivity and assault was being cleared from around the Lodge that Urquhart knew, with a certainty which clung to his heart as ice, that something had gone wrong. The light was dimming, the sun setting, shadows stretching across the ground – as they had done all those years before on the side of that mountain. Urquhart was contemplating the scene of his triumph on the monitor when an ember, revived in the caress of a cool evening breeze, caught on the dried bark of a pine, settled, found renewed life. As he watched, and remembered, the tree burst into all-consuming flame.

  Full circle. A cycle of life complete, finished. And from out of the screen, Urquhart saw the charred, accusing fingers of George and Eurypides pointing directly at him.

  NINE

  Victory. It had been the lead item on the Saturday evening news, even though there were as yet no new pictures to illustrate the story.

  'I asked not to be included in the formal War Cabinet. People would start speculating that I was being lined up for the succession – you know, the youngest Home Secretary since Churchill. We're in an election, not a leadership race. So I declined. But, of course, Francis consults me, all the way.'

  Across the table Booza-Pitt offered a smile which spoke of modesty, determination, achievement, I- know- you- want- to- touch- me- all-over-with- those-beautiful- lips- but-I'm- truly- very- important- and-business-comes-first. His dining companion purred in encouragement. After years of anguish she'd separated less than two months earlier from a parliamentary husband whose dedication to late-night lobbies, weekend surgeries, answering the telephone and endless piles of constituents' letters was as utterly selfless as it was, to her, irredeemably boring. She knew getting laid by Booza-Pitt would be folly, but it had been such a long time and it might be fun, particularly if he was as practised in the delivery as he was at finding the route. She hadn't climbed higher than a Minister of State before, let alone as far as a Home Secretary. She owed it to herself.

  'Really?' she incited, wondering if his performance would be as inflated as his ego.

  'It's pretty tricky right now – can't go into detail, you understand, but I advised that we should get in there as quickly as possible. Spring the hostages and teach those bloody Cypriots a lesson.' 'A good spanking.' 'Yes, something like that.'

  'You're magnificent, Geoffrey.' She fluttered her eyelids outrageously, he smiled in self-congratulation – he was so lacking in subtlety that he belonged in a zoo. She hoped.

  'It's a strain,' he admitted, heavy eyebrows twitching. 'Lonely at times.'

  Here it comes. He was about as difficult to read as a tax demand.

  'You know what I would like?' he continued, staring at her across a glass of wine which cast strange patterns across his forehead in the candlelight. 'To become Prime Minister?'

  'I've no ambitions at present beyond…' he began the litany.

  She reached out and touched a fingertip to his lips to put him out of his misery. Grief, he'd better be good in bed, he had no other redeeming features. At least it would avoid the complications of an extended affair.

  'Tell me all your secrets, Geoffrey. I'm very good with confidences.' 'Are you? Are you really?'

  'Yes. Tell me – don't if it's truly a state secret, but – are you a Virgo?' 'I wish you were here having breakfast with us, Mummy.' It was the one meal Claire insisted on trying to have with the children before politics dragged them apart for the remainder of the day. It didn't always work, even on a Sunday. 'I know, darling, but you remember what election campaigns are like from the last time.' 'Where are you?' 'Somewhere in the Midlands, to be quite honest I'm not sure where. I got picked up in a car yesterday afternoon from the train and the rest is all a blur. But I'll be back tonight. After you've gone to bed.'

  'I've run out of the little bomb for my asthma inhaler.' 'The blue one or the brown?' 'Blue.'

  'I'll find a chemist's open somewhere.' Claire scribbled a hurried reminder to herself in the margin of her Sunday Express, beside an exploding headline which shouted: 'F.U.'S FALKLANDS'. 'Bring you one back tonight. And I hope you and Abby are wearing the clothes I laid out for you.'

  Diana ignored the question. Something else was on her mind. 'Mummy?' 'Yes, darling?' 'What is war?' 'What do you mean?' 'We're fighting Cyprus, aren't we? Why?'

  'Not the whole of Cyprus, darling. Just a few bad men.' 'And all those ladies with the baby chairs.' 'Not really.' 'But Mr Urquhart killed the Bishop, didn't he?'

  'No, not Mr Urquhart personally.' Although something in her daughter's naivety rattled chains within Claire.

  'But why?' Diana persisted, munching her way through a mouthful of wholemeal toast.

  Claire hesitated. The morning's press had been crammed to capacity with plaudits for the previous day's success in the Troodos. Even those who were not supporters of the Government couldn't avoid copious reference to 'Francis' Fusiliers'. Some of the more serious newspapers carried reports of disagreement with military advisers and of the Prime Minister unusually and perhaps inappropriately having taken single-handed control of the operation, but in light of its success the military appeared to be playing down any sense of injured pride. Victory argues its own case. So why did Claire feel so unenthused?

  'I'll explain it all to you later, darling. And remember to brush your teeth.' 'Gotcha!'

  With a snap of exultation and a flick of his remote control, Urquhart wiped the Leader of the Opposition from his Sunday morning screen.

  For almost twenty minutes on breakfast television Dick Clarence had been struggling hard to avoid his fate, but persistent questioning had worn down his linguistic ingenuity and overrun every defensive position his advisers had prepared until he was forced to capitulate. Finally he had no choice but to admit it. Yes, Francis Urquhart had done the right thing.

  'Not long for this world, I suspect, young Dick,' Urquhart reflected to Elizabeth. Fate was a harsh judge on an Opposition Leader who had lost the ability to oppose with only ten days of campaigning left.

  From the other side of the breakfast table Elizabeth looked up from her newspapers. 'The press seem already to have reached that conclusion.' She passed across to him three editorials, carefully folded and highlighted, which effectively pronounced the election over.

  He digested them alongside his Lapsang, then laid them to one side, shaking his head. 'They rush to judgement. Clarence is dead, because he is congenitally useless. But there is still opposition.' 'Makepeace?' 'Who else?' 'A man with no party.' 'But an army.'

  'An army under attack, Sir.' It was Corder, who stood filling the doorway in the quiet way to which over the years they had grown accustomed. Elizabeth didn't even adjust her dressing gown. 'You have news from the front, Corder?'

  'Yes, Sir. Mr Makepeace may have a battle on his hands. Since last night's news broadcasts, various of the extreme British nationalist groups have been organizing. Arranging a little reception for when he reaches Birmi
ngham this evening. They want to do to him what you did to the Bishop.'

  'How unfortunate,' Elizabeth mused with as much concern as if she were selecting tights. 'So what's to be done, Corder?'

  'Depends on whether you want a riot on the streets of Birmingham.' 'Violence is certain?' 'Could be. If you wanted it, Prime Minister.'

  'I think not, Corder. Too much uncertainty. Such things can get out of hand, make him a martyr. No, how much better if the threat of riots were sufficient to get Mr Makepeace to abandon his march.'

  'You think he'd do that?' Elizabeth interjected sceptically.

  'I doubt it. It would be the end for him. We could appeal, request, beseech, but I don't suppose he'd listen.' 'So?'

  'So we would have to get the Chief Constable to order Makepeace to abandon the march as a threat to good public order, wouldn't we, Corder?'

  'In my experience, Sir, Chief Constables don't always listen…'

  'He's coming up for a knighthood, he'll be all ears.' '… and aren't always listened to in such matters.'

  'But wouldn't that be wonderful?' Urquhart spread his hands in front of him as though confronting a heavenly host. 'Makepeace. Already branded a friend of terrorists. Now challenging the forces of law and order in this country. The threat of riot would seem to be his fault as much as any other's. From martyr to public menace. We'd have to arrest him.' He clapped, then subsided. 'With great reluctance, and after copious warnings, of course.' 'Public Order Act 1986, Sir. Section Thirteen, I think. Three months and a fine.' 'Precisely, Corder. Can do?' Corder nodded.