Ten Minutes to Turn the Devil

by Douglas Hurd

  They were seated round the Cabinet table at 10 Downing Street in the last half hour of the last meeting of preparation for the summit. John Kettle, the Prime Minister, sighed inwardly. He knew he had been right to promote Martin Pringle, thin, bespectacled and young, to Foreign Secretary. But sometimes he would have preferred at his right hand someone a little less intense, a little less like the efficient Baxter … someone who might conceivably have heard of P.G. Wodehouse. He decided on a minute or two of mischief.

  ‘Of course, you and I, Foreign Secretary, know how these summits go.’ In fact it would be the Foreign Secretary’s first such experience. ‘We plan, we calculate, we set the agenda. But then occurs something unforeseen, some thunderclap called X. And the press won’t let us think, speak or act anything except X. Tell me, at Edinburgh, what will be our X?’

  The Foreign Secretary was nettled and ill at ease.

  ‘I hardly think that this time, Prime Minister … for example, last night on Newsnight …’

  ‘You gave an excellent interview on convergence. But what about the hostages in Lebanon?’ For a week now an unknown fundamentalist group in Lebanon, Strength Through Prayer, had been picking up hostages: a Swiss archaeologist from the hills above Beirut, a French aid worker, an eccentric British cyclist and his Dutch girlfriend. No demands yet, no harm apparently done to them, just disappearance and mystery.

  ‘We are doing all we can,’ said the Foreign Secretary. ‘We are making representations in Damascus as well as Beirut. The RAF in Cyprus is on stand-by to pick them up if they’re released. The International Red Cross in Geneva …’

  ‘Quite so, quite so. Let us hope all goes well.’

  As discussion returned to the convergence policy, the prettiest of the Downing Street secretaries came in with a message. She looked, for a Treasury girl, slightly flustered.

  John Kettle read the note and passed it to Pringle. There had been a coup in Escobar. Further report as soon as possible. ‘The X?’ mused the Prime Minister. ‘Or Y? Or possibly even Z?’

  At the Caledonian Hotel in Edinburgh only one person was clear whether or not Professor Antonio Darco Platani was still Prime Minister of Escobar. The professor himself was in no doubt. The television in the outer room of his suite showed bonfires and dancing in Escobar City. He turned it off.

  ‘The police will sort out that nonsense tomorrow. I have just talked to the Minister of the Interior,’ he announced to the people gathered in the room. He gazed round – two ministers, the Chef de Cabinet, press spokesman, secretaries, newspapers, briefs, the debris of a working lunch. Everything normal.

  ‘Anyone want to leave?’

  No one spoke. The spectacles on the professor’s nose trembled with satisfaction.

  ‘Then we present ourselves tomorrow exactly as normal. Nothing untoward has occurred. We are the delegation of Escobar. The British are polite and, above all, correct. No one will throw us out unless we ourselves show doubt. You are all resolved?’

  ‘Resolved,’ they murmured.

  When he had left they turned on the television again. Paola Francesca was announcing the formation of an Anti-Boredom International. ‘Telegrams,’ she said, ‘were pouring in from all over the world.’ There was still dancing in the background.

  Regretfully, they turned her off and began to put the professor’s briefing papers in order.

  ‘In spite of everything she is rather beautiful,’ said the youngest member of the Cabinet. ‘And amusing,’ he added. This was daring, but he was the son of the professor’s niece and could not easily be removed.

  By lunch-time on the first day, Martin Pringle was pleased. As he collected his papers together at the end of the session he caught the eye of one of the kings of Scotland on the wall opposite. They were a job-lot of medieval monarchs, painted in a hurry by a second-rate artist for an early Stuart in urgent need of ancestors.

  No one would think it was my first summit, Pringle confided proudly with the king. The first item on the agenda had been the size of the cohesion fund. There had been a satisfactory line of net contributors against the five countries who drew from the fund, and four of the five had scaled down their demands. The total of the fund for the next five years looked like being within spitting distance of the modest figure concealed in Pringle’s brief. A dispute which had tormented the Community was almost solved. Only Escobar stood out for more. The professor had not budged from his original bid of £1,200 million. Everyone knew that was because of troubles in Escobar. Everyone sympathised. The Community worked on the principle that colleagues in difficulties at home deserved help – up to a point and within reason. They would find a bit extra for Escobar in the end, but not before the professor had begun to budge downward.

  Before his lunch for fellow foreign ministers, Pringle had just enough time to do a World at One interview. It would hold the position with the media until evening. The efficient head of his news department hovered at his elbow, proffering a brief entitled ‘Bull Points On Convergence and Cohesion’. Pringle liked his staff to be like himself – efficient, quick with detail, preferably thin and bespectacled. The head of the news department passed all these tests. He hovered uneasily.

  ‘Well?’ asked Pringle.

  ‘There will be questions about Escobar. And even more about the hostages in Lebanon.’

  ‘I said the interview was to be on the economy only.’

  ‘They know that, but all the news this morning … No one at Meadowbank is talking of anything except hostages and Escobar.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Paola Francesca has left Escobar City. Rumoured to be heading here. Nothing definite. In Lebanon, five more hostages confirmed held by Strength Through Prayer: two Dutch, three Iranian. And a report, unconfirmed, of a Scottish family missing in the area.’

  ‘Family?’

  ‘Young man and his wife, two three-year-olds. Twins …’

  ‘What the hell were they doing in Central Lebanon?’

  ‘On their way by car to the triennial philatelic exhibition in Jerusalem. Both of them keen stamp collectors.’

  Sometimes Pringle despaired of his fellow countrymen. Jokingly, he ventured: ‘Do the twins also collect?’ The humour was lost on the civil servant.

  ‘I’m not sure, Secretary of State. I’ll check.’

  It had rained particularly hard just before lunch, when the guests arrived at the castle. The heads of state and government had been delivered dry to the entrance of the room where they were to eat. The foreign ministers had to dash across a courtyard because the gateway was too narrow for their mini-bus. They were all wet. Nothing substantial was achieved at lunch.

  ‘Better change the afternoon session, I think,’ said Kettle. The afternoon session was billed to be on institutional development.

  ‘Change to what?’ asked Pringle.

  ‘Hostages.’

  ‘To achieve what?’ Pringle had always thought that to change a plan was to show weakness.

  ‘Oh, nothing in particular. Just to avoid being pilloried as useless, irrelevant, out of touch, cruel and heartless.’

  The Prime Minister had acquired an early edition of the Edinburgh Evening News. The thick black headline read: Summit Plans SAS Rescue Bid. Under a slightly smaller headline, FALKIRK TWINS SNATCHED AT DAWN, were pictures of two boys named Kirkwood. Their grandmother, interviewed at length, was stalwart enough. Their mother and father, pictured wearing shorts and clutching stamp albums, looked bemused.

  ‘But what would be the outcome?’

  ‘A joint appeal, an emissary … get your people thinking and drafting.’

  ‘That’s nonsense about the SAS?’

  ‘Of course. But as a story, par for the course.’

  The Prime Minister asked about Escobar. Pringle explained the latest news.

  ‘Poor Professor Platani. Hasn’t done badly by his country. And if being dull is a sin …’ Then he asked a wayward question to which Pringle had no answer.

  ‘That
new Escobar woman, doesn’t she have some Arab connection?’

  The rain had ceased by evening but the dockside at Leith shone with puddles, stirred occasionally by the biting wind. A floodlight picked out the huge Royal Standard flying above the Royal Yacht Britannia. Philip’s job that evening was once again not the sort of thing he had joined the Foreign Service for, but it had a certain self-contained satisfaction. The Queen’s dinner guests had to arrive in reverse order of precedence, calculated according to the length of time the guest had held office. The Chancellor of Austria, who had been in office for three years and two months, had to go up the gangway immediately after the Prime Minister of Denmark who had mustered only three years and a day. Since the guests were staying at five different hotels in Edinburgh, the timing of each journey had been nicely calculated to produce the desired result. Philip sat in an office car by the dock gate counting them in. It gave him a thrill to see these great men obediently following his plan, There came Spain, exactly on time, though their drive from the Hilton was one of the longest.

  But now something was awry. Three minutes had passed, and no Escobar. The professor had been in office for four years and 46 days. He should thus arrive immediately before the President of France. He should have arrived twenty seconds ago.

  Three new black Rovers splashed through the puddles, past the dock gate, on to the quayside. The sudden television glare revealed the Tricolour of France. The President, exactly punctual, was received at the top of the gangway by the Queen.

  Two minutes later the Escobar cortège appeared, throwing up even more spray. The front car was travelling so fast that for a moment Philip thought it was bound to end up in the Firth of Forth. It swung round at the last moment and screeched to a halt at the foot of the gangway. A marine opened the door. Out stepped a tall woman of outstanding beauty, in her late thirties, low cut dress in green and gold, diamonds on auburn hair piled high as if in battlements, and on her breast the glinting star of the Sacred Order of St Escobar. The thin crowd clapped, some knowing from the television reports who she was, others simply applauding a show. A gust of wind revealed golden shoes. As the camera lights lit Paola Francesca up the gangway to meet the Queen, Philip radioed to his superior: ‘Prime Minister of Escobar a little late, but all guests now arrived.’ It was, in a way, the crucial act of recognition.

  The professor stormed, but he was powerless. For the new regime, neutralising him had been easy. He and his Chef de Cabinet, loyal, limited, pedantic as his master, had been locked into their hotel rooms and the telephone lines cut. The rest of the staff had changed sides. Tomorrow and the next day would take care of themselves. That night the greatest difficulty had been finding another suite for Madame Cordovez to change in. She had insisted on a full-length mirror.

  It was the second and final day of the summit which went into history, but to Philip it flowed inexorably from the first. He had to take the record of Pringle’s working breakfast for the other foreign ministers. They wrestled with porridge and kippers, passing from exclamations of polite excitement to full plates quietly pushed aside.

  No one from the Escobar delegation attended. Pringle had Escobar top on the agenda. But he could not get his colleagues to focus on the issue. They had all listened to the early news bulletins and seen press summaries from their own countries. Hostages, hostages, hostages … that was the story. Strength Through Prayer was picking them up daily, and releasing names and photographs. No response yet from their leader to the appeal launched from the summit the afternoon before. Speculation about the use of military force against the STP in the Bekaa Valley. Speculation about the identity of the STP leader … A blurred photograph in three papers of a youngish man with a sharp nose. When his name, Khaled Al-Assat, was mentioned, Philip, sitting behind Pringle, pushed forward on to the table beside the porridge an overnight telegram from Escobar City. The ambassador, still full of autumnal energy, had researched Paola Francesca’s Palestinian mother and background. No mention of Strength Through Prayer or Khaled Al-Assat, but he reported her wide acquaintance with several Arab groups. Philip, much daring, had written, ‘Worth a try?’ against this passage. Pringle considered, frowned, nibbled an oatcake, took out his pen, and scribbled in red, ‘Far-fetched.’ His sympathies were still with the professor. The breakfast petered out.

  In the chair, John Kettle decided, to general surprise, to begin the main session with the cohesion fund. He had his reasons. It would be a test for that extraordinarily fine-looking woman from Escobar who had made such a hit at the Queen’s dinner.

  She was good company. But he wanted to test her on a real issue. If she continued to ask for as much money as the professor had, then there would be plenty of time later to question her credentials, to parade all these difficulties about legality and the recognition of her government.

  Paola Francesca was ready.

  A press conference had been arranged and for the third time the hall filled with the extraordinary variety of the Fourth Estate. Reporters in jeans, reporters in dark suits and waistcoats, athletic photographers shoving and shouting, intellectual American ladies, Japanese economists, Hong Kong teenagers.

  Pringle’s nameplate had been removed from the podium. Only John Kettle appeared.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the conclusions of the summit have been circulated. You have them. Please take them as read. Now I simply want to introduce three new friends …’

  Paola Francesca appeared in a new, more colourful suit. Then two little boys, reddish hair brushed, freckles scrubbed.

  The Kirkwood twins from Falkirk. Safe and sound.

  Pringle had been told. Philip had guessed. Strength Through Prayer had released the twins, and all the other hostages, as a result of Paola Francesca’s personal appeal. The boys had been flown in from Beirut with their parents by the RAF.

  One of the twins had a plaster across his forehead. It seemed that, trying to run away when the kidnappers first appeared, he had tripped and fallen.

  There was pandemonium, but no questions were being allowed. Just smiles and the endless clicking of cameras: pictures of joy.

  ‘It is a victory for humanity,’ said the Prime Minister. ‘A great day for the new Escobar and the new Europe,’ said Paola Francesca. A triumph for all.

  Later, in the restaurant, at the improvised celebrations, the Prime Minister asked Paola Francesca the question that was at the back of every suspicious mind.

  ‘Did you plan it all? I mean, all?’

  She replied simply: ‘I didn’t know the British had such complicated thoughts. But it all went well, didn’t it? No one was bored?’

  5 Roaring After Their Prey

  ‘The Duchess of Kent shot a lion across the river there, just this side of the kop.’

  Elvira did not grasp what her husband had said. She was watching the baboons playing round the swimming pool below the terrace where the guests of the game reserve sat. But she vaguely caught the royal title. It made no sense.

  ‘In the twenties, or maybe thirties,’ explained Luis. ‘There is a sepia photograph in the bar. The Governor General brought the Kents up for a week. Helderspruit was the smart reserve even then.’

  One of the baboons was sprawling on a white wooden reclining chair near the slope down into the shallow end of the pool. Its infant leapt on to the ornate iron table in front of the chair and began to search its mother’s chest for fleas. It was pleasant sitting there in the morning sun. Preposterous of course that one should be so comfortable out in the heart of the South African Veld. Arriving on the airstrip by private plane in mid-morning, they had unpacked in the hut allotted to them. They now sipped white wine waiting for the Land Rovers with the rangers and their clients to return for lunch from the morning drive.

  Their marriage had been through a rough patch. They had begun to scratch and quarrel for no particular reason. One day, after a particularly noisy spat, Luis had taken the Mercedes and driven to Johannesburg airport, leaving a curt note to say that he was going t
o London for a few days, and would be back. Frightened out of her anger, she had telephoned the small hotel in St James’s where he usually stayed, but there was no trace. Luis came back as suddenly as he had gone. He offered no explanation but that night they held a peace conference in bed, after making love. One item in the treaty they concluded was a weekend in Helderspruit, away from their friends, his business associates, her bridge partners, their errant servants, the security guards and the clutter of their lives in Sandton. They were childless. She had insisted on comfort if she was to watch animals and was certainly receiving it. It was odd to have to come to the heart of the bush to achieve His and Hers bathrooms. Lunch too would be succulent if the odours wafting from the kitchen behind them were any guide. After lunch, a siesta, and the afternoon game drive beginning at 3.30 p.m.

  She glanced sideways at Luis, in the chair beside her. Fifteen years ago she had fallen for the slim ambitious Afrikaner, son of a farmer but determined to thrust himself into the English-speaking fortress of South African finance. Twenty years her senior, he had needed a wife with good connections within that fortress.

  The physical side of love had never been of much interest to Luis. In early years she had feared that this indifference meant that he was involved elsewhere. She no longer believed this, but in any case she in turn was now indifferent. Luis was always neat and held himself well. But he had a belly now beneath the trim khaki slacks, his face had coarsened and his hair, though still black, needed careful combing to hide the bald patch.

  Because she was no longer in love she no longer had the power to know his mind. The peace treaty had laid down cold-bloodedly that they would make an effort to enjoy each other’s company once again, but in any case would stay together. The tensions of marriage seemed to both of them easier to accept than the chores of separation, the tedium of solitude or the search for intimacy with strangers.