Where her feminine charms had failed, her pity was victorious; a potent venom stinging its target. In the chamber of Parliament, his hunting ground, Černý would have batted aside the barbs of his opponent in a show of imperious authority, his voice booming in total and absolute control. But here he was a gladiator robbed of his arena. He looked again at his caricature, knowing that Hedvikova’s words were true; if he were younger he would not have made such a concession. He would not have even been asked to. He would have demanded control of the party on Herbert’s death and his colleague’s would have insisted he take it. But those days were gone.
“It was right she became leader, but she was wrong to rob you of your respect. And now she has put her own survival above the good of both countries.” She moved to stand behind Černý, bending low to whisper in his ear, her breath raising the follicles on his skin. “But she will not get away with such selfishness, and you Karol, can stand with us as President.”
Černý’s eyes lifted at the words, the spark of curiosity returned.
“President?” he quizzed. “What would your Mr Čurda say about that?”
“Jaroslav is a nobody, a lazy opportunist who enjoys the trappings of ceremonial power while shirking the work such a position involves. He has no love for his people, merely his own position.” Hedvikova’s disgust was obvious and her display gave Černý the opportunity he needed to restore a more even keel to the conversation.
“A trait the two of you seem to share,” he mocked. “Or have you not just extolled the virtues of Svobodova’s death, so that you may replace her as the ‘Queen of Eastern Europe’?”
“If Svobodova can do it, so can I!” Hedvikova shouted the words, no longer bothering to mask her feelings. “She has rejected chance after chance to come to heel and so she must accept the consequences. We must retain our independence!”
“And what good is a country which vehemently claims its independence, to the point of dismissing its own brothers, but which exercises its sovereign power within limits defined by others?”
Hedvikova’s cold smile returned to her face, the passion gone from her voice and replaced with a patient calm.
“Karol, you have a choice. You can stand with Svobodova, the usurper whose skirt train you seem so desperate to carry, and march with her into oblivion dreaming of a Czechoslovakia that will never be. Or you can stand with me, and when she is dead and your party and Čurda finished, take your reward as President of the Czech Republic; the culmination of a career dedicated to our people, a just recognition of your service to the country. The choice is yours.”
“Recognition,” asked Černý, “or authority without power?”
“The latter of course, Karol,” she answered icily. “A fitting position for a political eunuch wouldn’t you say?”
She moved quietly to the door, turning her head to the old statesman as she reached it. “I look forward to hearing your answer Karol,” she said, “only don’t wait too long to give it. The wheels are turning, and I would so hate to see you fall beneath them.”
With that, she was gone and Černý sat in the room, his fierce mind analysing every word spoken and processing every emotion felt. And he felt something of which he had only dim recognition. Anger he was used to, resentment a regular bedfellow; but for the first time, perhaps since his youth, Karol Černý was lost in confusion.
Confusion was likewise behind the fog in Jonathan Greyson’s mind as he bustled into his hotel suite after another stormy conference call with the PM. Greyson shouldn’t need reminding, the PM had lectured, that the administration was very new, the government’s position already precarious where Europe was concerned. And any provocation of The Institute, which, Greyson thought, the PM was not wholeheartedly surprised to learn of, was precisely the last thing Britain need involve itself in. Furthermore, Greyson, said the PM, should be busying himself with his first big PR victory in his new role, instead of pandering to the egos of relics.
“Get McShade on the phone,” he snapped irritably at Bland as he passed by her desk. “Tell him from me that he can stick this Institute business, we’re out.”
He banged open the bedroom door, and stopped by the bed, hands on hips, willing his stresses away with each breath. “Caroline?” he shouted, conscious that she had not responded to his order. “Are you making that call?”
He stepped out into the main room of the suite, ready to voice his frustrations on his junior colleague, but made it only a few steps before he stopped and recoiled. Bland sat slumped in the hard backed chair, her head awkwardly on the desk alongside a small pile of fine, white powder. It had blown across her papers and smudged the dark material of her suit jacket, while still more clung possessively and startlingly white on her left nostril. Her eyes, wide open in a permanent show of resentment, stared straight at Greyson, who managed to swallow back the vomit once before it returned with a vengeance, spilling through his fingers onto the carpeted floor beneath him. Caroline, he realised, would not be making that call, or any other. Ever again.
CHAPTER 20
MCSHADE RETREATED DEEPER into his black overcoat as the cold wind bit into his cheeks and the grey sky threatened the imminent return of rain. He sat slouched on one of the many metal framed benches alongside the Vltava, nonchalantly allowing the motion of the passing boats to complement his gentle intoxication brought on by at least several large scotches. If nothing else it granted him a modicum more protection against the weather. Even despite the sensation, he was aware of footsteps hurriedly tapping in his direction and had a reasonable idea of their source. They stopped just behind him, replaced for some moments by gently laboured breathing.
“Here at last?” McShade opened. “Ready to damn me for deals done and souls sold?”
“She’s dead.”
“Where is your security detail?”
“Far away from me and being asked some searching questions as to how she came to die.”
The voice betrayed its owner’s emotions and his recent tears. “She didn’t deserve that.”
“Very few of us deserve the fate we receive,” McShade answered. “What precisely was hers?”
“A cocaine overdose.” The words were bitter, hateful. “The thing is, she didn’t use the stuff, never had; but now that’s all she’ll be remembered for.”
“You can’t hush it up? Claim some tragic accident?”
“It was at the hotel, not the embassy. It appears one or two of the staff suffers from loose lips.”
McShade gave a harsh laugh.
“The Child’s discipline at work; she sought political immortality and now, in a way, she has it, while you can be assured you’ll be on the front page of every newspaper in Europe tomorrow morning, just as the PM desired.”
“The PM!” Jonathan Greyson snorted and walked from behind the bench and sat down alongside McShade, joining him in staring out over the water. “Why do I get the feeling he knew about this ‘Institute’ of yours all along?”
“The government has always known, the important branches at least. But their knowledge is less than subtlety tempered by the desire not to rock the boat. So you’re the damn Foreign Secretary, so what? You’re just there to smile for the cameras and shake hands with whichever dictator turned ‘valuable friend’ the government wants to see in the spotlight for a while.”
Greyson’s silence displayed further evidence of his emotions and McShade made no effort to soothe them, relaxing further into his intoxicated observation of the river. His stare was only disturbed by the figure of a toddler, waddling past the benches in front of them, a look of joyous pride in the achievement spread across rosy cheeks. Catching his boot on the stones, the little boy fell forward, palms outstretched, onto the ground. The inevitable cry that followed was cut short when the child’s father ran the few yards to his boy and scooped him up in his arms, telling him what a strong, brave lad he was. The child, smiling again, threw his arms around his daddy’s neck and clung to him, not wanting to be let go, whil
e the father, just as keen to prolong the affection, held his son close to him with unashamed paternal pride.
Watching the mini drama unfold, McShade grimaced and his eyes followed the pair as they made their way down the street.
“When I was young,” he began suddenly, quietly, “I had trouble sleeping. My parents would put me to bed and I’d sleep for a couple of hours but every night I’d wake up, terrified. Alone in a dark room I’d cry in fear, every shadow threatening in its own unique way. My father would come into my room and calm me down by just holding me close to him. He’d kneel on the floor by my bedside, lie me back down and pull the blanket around me. Then he’d just stay there, wordlessly holding my hand, stroking my head until I finally drifted off.”
He paused to blink away an intrusive tear.
“Later, when I was a young man, my father became ill, terminally so. He had the best attention money could buy but nothing could be done and he was left to cope with an intolerable level of pain. I moved him into my home to care for him. The first night he called for me I didn’t realise the irony, but one night, when his pain was particularly severe and he struggled to sleep, I found myself reaching out and stroking his hair, as he’d done for me all those years ago. I held his hand and shushed him, offering what comfort I could until he fell back to sleep. He never woke again.”
The young boy and his loving father were far away now and McShade turned his head back to the emotionless, cold river.
“I was never much of a father to my son.” He said. “I never properly explained to him why I left and in truth there were many reasons, the main one being that I wanted to spare him. I hoped to spare him the life I had; one of politics, of filth smeared hands, of dodgy deals with dodgier people. But most of all I hoped that the pain of having an absent father would be immeasurably easier on him than the pain of watching a beloved father die. I hope he understood that.”
“Maybe he does.” Greyson’s voice was still shaky but not unsympathetic and, for a moment, McShade thought the young man was about to put an arm around his shoulders, but no contact came. Instead, he heard the sound of a man composing himself; a man with business on his mind.
“But this has little to do with what’s happening here, now. The pursuit of an ethical foreign policy was one of the hallmarks of our campaign and now mere months into our administration, you’re asking me to get involved in subversive battles against a dictatorial group of murderers we helped create!”
“Oh, don’t be so damn childish!” McShade snapped, his voice restored to its tigerish best. “You’re in government now! You can pontificate about ethics or you can pursue foreign relations; if all you care about is ethics then grow a beard, buy a pair of sandals and get back to university.”
He sprang to his feet, wobbling slightly with the alcohol in his system.
“You talk to me about ethics and morals and ‘doing the right thing’. Well what the hell constitutes the right thing in a world like this? Hands get dirtier with every decision made, whichever side of the fence you’re on. Does it matter whether you kill in the name of tyranny or democracy? You’re still a killer. Iraq, Afghanistan and a thousand other lands are filled with the brutalised innocent while soldiers die in their hundreds from incendiary bombs and snipers. What is it that determines if it’s right or wrong, if it’s all worth it in the end? The opinion of a lawyer? The number of votes in a Parliament?”
He prowled the stone walkway in front of the bench, lost in his own tirade, barely conscious of the nervous discomfort of Greyson who sat, wide eyed and dishevelled looking, staring at the breakdown taking place before him.
“Activists galore condemn governments when they dare to execute murderers but march for the right to murder the unborn, while others cling to millennia old scriptures to justify their own hatred and merrily risk executing the innocent to preserve the principle of an ultimate sanction. Who is right and who is wrong? Whichever path you choose there will be those that praise you and twice as many who vilify, and both sides will insist to the ends of the earth that they are right; that God, or morality or humanistic principle is on their side.”
McShade spun around, his temper self-inflamed and leaned into Greyson, his face inches from the younger man’s.
“Let me tell you something. It doesn’t matter if you entered politics with the purest motives in the world; you’re every bit as corrupt as the bastards who put this Institute together, every bit as corrupt as me! And do you know why? Because power doesn’t corrupt, it never has. It’s the desire for power that perverts us. The moment we decide to pursue power, for good or for ill, is the moment we twist ourselves into those creatures we need to be to properly wield it, and we accept that as the price of our authority. And the people, for all their protestations, for all their hatred of the political classes, secretly accept it too because deep down they are glad it isn’t they who have to make the choices, it isn’t they who have to damn themselves so everyone else can be blessed.”
His resources sapped by the scotch as quickly as it had fuelled him, he collapsed back into his seat beside Greyson, the voluminous overcoat shroud-like around him, his voice quieter once more, more measured.
“People arrogate greatness to themselves for being prepared to lay down their lives for the love of others. I laid down my soul.”
The silence that followed McShade’s breakdown was even more palpable than the passion which punctuated it, and both men felt its intimidation; refusing to break the rigidity of their posture or move their eyes from the stretch of river they had returned to. After an age, the older man spoke once more.
“So Foreign Secretary,” he began, “you have witnessed what the Institute would term a mild form of discipline. What do you intend to do now?”
Greyson exhaled, the pressures of the last few days apparent in his sigh.
“I don’t really have any choice,” he said. “The PM’s ordered me back to London where I’ll no doubt have the press crawling all over me. He won’t let me do anything to take on the Institute then, even if I wanted to.”
“And do you want to? To avenge the departed Ms. Bland?”
Greyson hung his head, as if ashamed of his answer.
“Yes, but…Yes.”
“Well then, it seems a new conversation with Ms Svobodova should be arranged, as quickly as possible.”
“The PM won’t be happy.”
“Prime Ministers rarely are.”
“But I’m supposed to be heading back and in any event what can we do, just us, the Czechs and the Slovaks? This Institute will eat us alive.”
“Then widen the playing field,” McShade said. “Choose allies, wisely, acknowledging that even the best of political friends will eventually turn on each other, but for now you can serve a mutual purpose.”
Greyson nodded through the tension.
“Opportunities can present themselves,” grinned McShade as he returned his gaze to the boats slicing through the water, “everyone has a past…”
As he spoke, a thin but visible smile began to form on Greyson’s face, the first one in all the time he had been in this city. It heralded the return of the rain as the aching clouds heaved and retched onto the ground below, causing people to scurry and flee until no-one was left except the two men, smiling on the bench, watching the rain drops strike the rippling Vltava.
CHAPTER 21
“MIROSLAVA.”
Mirushka stopped dead at the word, as sure of the seriousness to come, Peter imagined, as a child when angry parents used their full name. She kept her back to him but turned her head just slightly to the side, indicating her willingness, however reluctant, to listen.
Inside Peter throbbed with the echoing, hollow sensation of dread, a thousand times worse than when he had knelt in glass and spewed forth words of confession.
He had left his meeting with McShade confused and angry at himself for his inability to respond to the ambassador’s bleakness with some small ray of light. But he could find none to o
ffer and McShade’s certainty continued to batter Peter’s own insecurities as he mulled over their conversation in the subsequent hours, his long walk through New Town unable to inspire the magic words he searched for.
Returning to the hotel hours later, he and Mirushka had fallen wordlessly into each other’s exhausted arms, their tiredness underpinning the curious tension in the room, emphasised by the eternity of silence. Neither choosing to break the silence, they had moved to the bedroom where they made love, quietly, sincerely, their sensations heightened and their passions somehow warmer in the coldly austere saturninity of the room. Afterwards she slept, curled up to him, her head on his chest, her hand clutching in sleep as though fearful that the morning would see her empty handed. Peter’s tired, sore arm lay around her, in symbolic reassurance and practical protection while he stared into the dark, unmistakeable buzz of silent night; a general contemplating the clam ahead of impending and inevitable bloodshed. When the morning of the battle came, they had both maintained the peace of silence, offering each other genuine smiles and caressed hands, but neither wanting to voice acknowledgement of the nervous tension that had grown in the night, or that each caress might be the last.
Peter had dutifully followed her, along with Rado to the morning’s event at Petrin Hill, where they met a similarly subdued Černý for photos against the backdrop of the Tower and the trees wrapped in their autumnal dress. She had shot him glances as she posed and he had smiled back, their eyes telling more than their lips ever could. When a break had been called by one of the legion of advisers, ahead of the Q&A session, she had turned quickly away, pausing only for a messenger to whisper into her ear, while others flocked to the refreshment table to warm themselves from the gnawing cold. That was when he had followed her, calling her by name and waiting in dread for her response.
Escape to Perdition--a gripping thriller! Page 19