The House of Cards Complete Trilogy (88 page)

“We’ve got to stop, Tom.”

“You’ve got to get back to the House?”

“No. Stop for good. You and me. All this.”

She could see the surprise and then injury overwhelm his face.

“But why…?”

“Because I told you from the start that falling into bed with you did not mean I was going to fall in love with you. I can’t fill the gaps in your life; we’ve got to stop before I hurt you.” She could see she already had.

He rolled onto his back and studied the ceiling, anxious that she should not see the confusion in his eyes; it was the first time in many years he wished he still smoked. “You know I need you more than ever.”

“I cannot be your anchor.” Which was what he so desperately needed. As the currents of politics had swirled ever more unsteadily around him, some pushing him on, others enviously trying to snatch him back, the lack of solid footing in his private life had left him ever more exposed. His youngest son was now twenty and at university, his academic wife indulging in her new freedom by accepting a visiting fellowship at Harvard that left her little more than a transient caller in his life with increasingly less to share. He was alone. Fifty had proved a brutal age for Makepeace.

“Not now, Claire. Let’s give it another month or so, talk about it then.” He was trying hard not to plead.

“No, Tom. It must be now. You have no marriage to risk, but I do. Anyway, there are other complications.”

“Someone else?” Pain had made him petulant.

“In a way. I spent an hour with the PM this morning. He wants me to be his PPS.”

“And you accepted?”

“Don’t make it sound like an accusation, Tom. For God’s sake, you’re his Foreign Secretary.”

“But his PPS, it’s so…personal.”

“You’re jealous.”

“You seem to have a weakness for older men,” he snapped, goaded by her observation.

“Damn you, leave Joh out of this!” Her rebuke hit him like a slap in the face and hurt more.

“Forgive me, I didn’t mean…It’s just that I’m concerned for you. Don’t get too close to Francis, Claire. Don’t lash yourself to a sinking ship.”

“Dispassionate concern for my welfare?”

“I’ve never advised you badly before.”

Which was undeniable. Makepeace had guided Claire in her first political steps, sustaining her when successive selection committees had determined that her looks were too distracting or that her place was with the children. When she had persevered and her persistence paid off, he’d helped her find her feet around the House and prepared her for its sexual bombast, had even tried to gain her entry to one of the exclusive dining clubs that generate so much useful contact and mutual support around the House of Commons—“like smuggling an Indian into Fort Apache,” he had warned. He’d been a constant source of encouragement—although, she reflected, he had never suggested that she become his PPS.

“PPS to Francis Urquhart,” he continued, “is such a compromising position. Politically.”

“We all have to compromise a little, Tom. No point in being the virgin at the feast.”

“Moral ends justifying compromising means?” He was accusing again.

“Do you mind if I get out from between the damp sheets of your bed before we discuss morality? Anyway, you know as well as I do that politics is a team game, you have to compromise to have any chance of winning. No point in pretending you can score all the goals by yourself. I want my chance on the team, Tom.”

“Some of the games Urquhart wants to play I have no desire to join, let alone help him win.”

“Which is another reason why we have to stop seeing each other like this. There’s so much talk about the two of you being set on collision course, you must have heard the whispers.”

“Drumbeats accompanied by a native war dance, more like. Tony Franks on the
Guardian
bet me that either I or Urquhart would be out of Government within a year. He’s probably right.” His face hovered above hers, creased in pain. It would hurt, losing his place in politics. He came from a long line of public servants; his great-grandfather had been a general who had insisted on leading from the front, and in the mud of Flanders had died for the privilege. But politics was so much more dangerous than war; in battle they could kill you only once. “Is that the real reason you want us to stop? Divided loyalties? Are you backing Urquhart against me?”

She took his head in her hands, thumbs trying to smooth away the lines of distress. “I am becoming his PPS, Tom, not his possession. I haven’t sold my principles, I haven’t suddenly stopped supporting all the things you and I have both fought for. And I haven’t stopped caring about you.”

“You mean that?”

“Very much. In another life things might have been much closer between us; in this life, I want to go on being friends.”

She kissed him, and he began to respond passionately.

“One last time?” he whispered, running his hand from neck to navel.

“Is that what we’ve been about? Just sex?”

“No!” he retorted.

“Pity,” she replied, and kissed him again.

***

Passolides put down his cup with a nervous jolt, caught unawares by the high double beep of the electronic pager that summoned them. Maria leaned across the table to mop up the spilled coffee with her napkin.

“That’s us,
Baba
. It’s time.”

They had been waiting a little more than half an hour in the small coffee shop of the Public Record Office in Kew, Evanghelos refusing to take his eye for one instant off the red-eyed pager issued to all searchers after truth—at least, what passed as truth in the official British archives. Anything that smacked of British officialdom made him nervous and aggressive, a habit he’d not lost since the old days in the mountains. Even in Islington they had always wanted to snoop, to control him, sending him buff-colored envelopes that demanded money with menaces. Why should he, of all people, pay the British when they owed him so much? A health inspector had once spent an entire week spying on his front door, convinced Passolides was running a business, refusing to give up his vigil until he was dragged away by influenza and other more pressing hazards to the health of the citizens of Islington. He hadn’t known about the back door.

While he’d been suffering on the cold dank street, behind the tightly drawn curtain the friends of Evanghelos Passolides had spent their evenings toasting his victory over the old enemy. “To Vangeli!”

The aging Cypriot had little faith that the enemy would help him now. It had been Maria’s idea, something to pursue his interest in the old days, to refresh his memories, an excuse to get him out from behind the drawn curtains by suggesting they might see what information, explanation, or excuse the British documents of the time might offer. So they had traveled across London to the PRO in Kew, a concrete mausoleum of the records of an empire gained, grown, and ultimately lost once more.

The amiable clerk in the reference room had not been optimistic. “The EOKA period in Cyprus? That’ll have a military or security classification. Used to be a standard fifty-year embargo on those. You know, anything marked SECRET and vital to the continued security of the country. Like old weather forecasts or if the Greek President picked his nose.” He shrugged. “But they review the records every ten years now, and since the cutbacks at the Ministry of Defense I think they’re running out of bomb shelters to store all the boxes. So when they can they throw them away or throw them at us. You might be lucky.”

And they were. In Index WO 106. Directory of Military Operations and Intelligence. “7438. Report on security situation and EOKA interceptions in Troodos Mountains, April–October 1956.”

Passolides stabbed his finger at the entry. “They chased us across the mountains for two days, with me on a stretcher and rags stuffed in my mouth to stop me screaming,” he whispered. “That’s me.”

They had entered their order for the file on the reference computer terminal. And waited.

And been disappointed.

The PRO at Kew is not all that it seems. Away from the reference room, behind the scenes in the repository, computerization hands over to dusty fingers and cardboard boxes. Nearly a hundred miles of them. In a temperature- and humidity-controlled environment and to the strains of Roy Orbison and Lulu blaring over the loudspeakers (the whole point of the PRO is that it is not up to date) a young man had sorted through the vast banks of shelving in search of one file among the millions. Once found, it had been transported slowly on a system of electric trolleys and conveyor belts to the general reading room, when Maria and her father had been summoned.

But it was not there. Beneath the air-conditioned hush and white lighting they had searched WO 106/7438 for any reference to the pursuit of Evanghelos and his EOKA comrades during those days of high summer. How they had hidden in an underground hide with British soldiers less than six feet away and where one grenade would have killed them all. How he had begged his comrades to shoot him rather than abandon him to the clutches of the enemy. How they would have done it anyway, to avoid any risk of his betraying what he knew.

There was nothing. The tired manila folder was stuffed with individual sheets of paper secured with a string tag, mostly fuzzy carbon copies that appeared to have been retained at random rather than with any sense of logic or in an attempt to preserve a comprehensive record of events. Particularly difficult period, the clerk had explained. The Suez War had erupted in October and everything had been chaos as the British Army turned its attention from the defense of Cyprus to the attack on Egypt. Entire regiments had been transferred and the island had become a churning transit point for the armies of invasion. Paperwork, never the greatest strength of soldiers at war, in many cases had simply been abandoned. For the British, it seemed, Passolides didn’t exist, had never existed.

But there was something else. A memory. His finger was once again pointing at the single sheet index at the front of the file.

Item 16. May 5. Above the village of Spilia.

The date. The location. He had difficulty scrambling through the file to locate the reference; when he had done so, he trembled all the more. A single photocopied sheet of paper, an intelligence report of an action in the mountains near to where it was believed an extensive EOKA hideout was located. Two unidentified terrorists intercepted while transporting weapons and other supplies. An exchange of fire, the loss of a British private. The killing of the two Cypriots. Burning and burial of their bodies to reduce the risks of reprisals. No further indication as to the location of the hideout. A recommendation that further sweeps be conducted in the area. Signed by the officer in charge of the operation.

The officer’s name had been blanked out.

“That’s why it’s photocopied. To protect the identities of British personnel,” the clerk had explained. “Not a cover-up, just standard procedure. No way the name will be released, not while he’s still alive. After all, imagine if it had been you.”

But it had been me, and my brothers!

Passolides had tried to explain, to insist, to find out more, but his voice and clarity were cracked by emotion and the clerk was bemused by the old man’s talk of murder on a mountainside. In any event, there was nothing more to be found. No other archive, no other records. Whatever the British system had to offer was all here; there was nothing more to be found, except the name. And that he couldn’t have.

“They were only boys, buried in those graves,” Passolides groaned.

“You don’t need Records,” the clerk had offered, convinced the old man with tears in his eyes was a little simple. “You need a War Crimes Commission.”

“But first I need a name.”

Twelve

Never sleep with a politician. When they turn their back on you, they take the duvet with them.

“Damn it! D’you think they’ve got a new editor or something, Mortima?”

She looked up from her crispbread and letters.

“
The Times
crossword has become so”—he searched for the word—“elusive. Impenetrable. They must’ve changed the editor.”

No, she thought, it’s not the crossword that has changed, Francis. It’s you. There was a time when you would have slain the allusions and anagrams before porridge.

Irritably he threw the newspaper to one side. The front page was miserable enough, now the back page, too. He searched around the crowded breakfast table and retrieved another sheet of paper. “Fewer problems with this one,” he muttered with considerably more enthusiasm, and began marking off items like so many completed clues. He paused in search of inspiration. “Four or five down, d’you think?”

“Give me a hint of what we’re talking about, Francis.”

“A bit of Byng. Time to shoot a few admirals in full view of the fleet to encourage the others, I thought. Just as you recommended—to bring back a bit of fear?”

“I see. A reshuffle.”

“Four or five to go, I thought. Enough to cause a real stir, yet not so many as to look as though we’re panicking.”

“Who are you volunteering?”

“The Euro drones and iron wits. Carter. Yorke. Penthorpe—he’s so abrasive that every time he opens his mouth he all but sharpens the blade for his own throat. And Wilkinson. Do you know he actually spends almost as much time in France as he does in his constituency? Judgment’s addled by cheap wine and fraternizing.” With a decisive thrust he ran another name through with his pen.

“What about Terry Whittington? I never know whether he’s half-cut or simply sounds it.”

“Yes, a problem when the Minister in charge of the Citizens’ Charter can’t even pronounce the words without drenching the interviewer. Dull dog but, oh, such a sparkling and well-connected wife. Haven’t I told you?” He looked over his glasses in remorse. “It seems she’s been indulging in what are known as continental conversations with the Industry Commissioner in Brussels while dear old Terry’s been lashed down in all-night session with nothing more diverting than his fellow Ministers.”

“
Quelle
finesse
. Be a pity to lose such an interesting point of leverage within the Commission.”