The Final Cut

FIVE

A man's place in history is no more than that – one place, a single point in an infinite universe, a jewel which no matter how brightly it may be polished will eventually be lost amongst a treasury of riches. A grain of sand in the hour glass.

For Urquhart, this was a hallowed scene: the shiny leather bench scuffed by the digging of anxious nails, the Dispatch Box of bronze and old buriri polished by the passing of a thousand damp palms, the embellished rafters and stanchions which, if one listened carefully and with a tuned ear, still echoed with the cries of great leaders as they were hacked and harried to eclipse. Every political career, it seemed, ended in failure; the verdict of this great Gothic court of judgment never varied. Guilty. Condemned. A place of exhortation, passing approbation and eventual execution. Only the names changed.

In recent days, whenever he turned away from the lights, there were voices in the shadows which whispered it would one day be his turn to fall, a matter only of time. As he sat on the bench they were at it again, the whispers, growing assertive, impertinent, almost heckling him. And through them all he could hear the voice of Thomas Makepeace.

'Is my Right Honourable Friend aware' – the constitutional fiction of friendship passed through Makepeace's lips like vinegar – 'that the Greek Cypriot community in this country is deeply concerned about the existence of graves which still remain hidden from the time of the war of liberation in the nineteen fifties…?'

Old memories like embers began to revive, to flicker and burn until the crackle of flames all but obliterated the words with which Makepeace was demanding that the British Government lay open its files, reveal all unreported deaths and burial sites, '… so that the tragedies of many years ago can finally be laid to rest?'

For a moment or two the House observed the unusual sight of the Prime Minister sitting stiffly in his seat, seeming unmoved and unmoving, lost in another world before cries of impatience caused him to stir. He rose stiffly to his feet, as though age had glued his joints.

'I am not aware,' he began with an uncharacteristic lack of assertiveness, 'of there being any suggestion that graves were hidden by the British…'

Makepeace was protesting, waving a sheet of paper, shouting that it had come from the Public Record Office.

Other voices joined in. inside his head he heard contradiction and confusion, talk of graves, of secrets which would inevitably be disinterred with the bones, of things which must remain forever buried.

Then a new voice, more familiar. 'Fight!' it commanded. 'Don't let them see you vulnerable. Lie, shout, wriggle, abuse, rabbit punch on the blind side, do anything – so long as you fight!' And pray, the voice might have added. Francis Urquhart didn't know how to pray, but like hell he knew how to fight.

'I believe there are great dangers in opening too many old cupboards, sniffing air which has grown foul and unhealthy,' he began. 'Surely we should look to the future, with its high hopes, not dwell upon the distant past. Whatever happened during that ancient and tragic war, let it remain buried, and with it any evils which were done, perhaps on all sides. Leave us with the unsullied friendship which has been built since.'

Makepeace was trying to regain his feet, protesting once more, the single sheet of paper in his hand. Urquhart silenced him with the most remorseless of smiles.

'Of course, if the Right Honourable Gentleman has anything specific in mind rather than suggesting some stampede through old archives, I shall look into the matter for him. All he has to do is write with the details.'

Makepeace subsided and with considerable gratitude Urquhart heard the Speaker call for the next business. His head rang with the chaos of voices, shouts, explosions, the ricochet of bullets; he could see nothing, blinded by the memory of the Mediterranean sun reflecting off ancient rock as his nostrils flared and filled with the sweet tang of burning flesh.

Francis Urquhart felt suddenly very old. The hour glass of history had turned. 'Go for it, Franco,' the producer encouraged. He sat up in his chair and dunked his cigarette in the stale coffee. This could be fun.

Behind a redundant church which had found a new lease of life as a carpet warehouse in a monotonous suburb of north London lies the headquarters of London Radio for Cyprus, 'the voice of Cypriots in the city,' as it liked to sign itself, ignoring the fact that the four miles separating it from the City of London stretched like desert before the oasis. Describing the basement of Number 18 Bush Way as a headquarters was scarcely more enlightening – LRC shared a peeling Edwardian terrace house with a legitimate travel agency and dubious accounting practice. It also shared initials with a company manufacturing condoms and an FM wavelength with a Rasta rock station that fractured ears and heads until well after midnight. Such are the circumstances of community radio, not usually the cradle for budding radio magnates and media inquisitors. LRC's producers and interviewers struggled hard to convey to their small but loyal audience an air of enthusiasm even while they did daily battle with second- and third-hand equipment, drank old coffee and tried hard to remember to turn on the answering machine when they left.

Yet this item had legs. The girl was good, somewhere behind those lips and ivories was a brain, and the old man was a fragment of radiophonic magic, his voice ascending scales of emotion like an opera singer practising arias. Passion gave him an eloquence that more than made up for the thick accent; what was more, in its own way the story was an exclusive.

'Remember, you're hearing this first on LRC. Proof that there are graves left over from the EOKA war which are buried deep within the bowels of British bureaucracy…'

The producer winced. Franco was an arsehole from which a stream of incontinence poured forth every Monday and Wednesday afternoon, but he was cheap and his uncle, a wine importer, was one of the station's most substantial sponsors. 'So what do you want?' Franco asked the pair. 'We want as many people as possible to write in support of Thomas Makepeace and his campaign to have the full facts made public. We can prove the existence of two graves, those of my uncles. We want to know if there are any more.' 'And you, Mr Passolides?'

There was a pause, not empty and mindless but a silence of grief, long enough to capture the hearts of listeners as they imagined an old man rendered speechless by great personal tragedy. Even Maria reached over to touch his hand; he'd been behaving so oddly in recent days, morose, unshaven, digging away within himself, changes which were ever more apparent since she'd been spending more time away from him. When finally his voice emerged the words cracked like a hammer on ice. 'I want my brothers.'

'Great, really great,' Franco responded, shuffling his papers in search of the next cue.

'And I want something else. The bastardos who murdered them.' The voice was rising through all the octaves of emotion. 'This was not war but murder, of two innocent boys. Don't you see? That is why they had to burn my brothers' bodies. Why they could never admit it. And why this miserable British Government continues to cover it up. Wickedness! Which makes them as guilty as those men who pulled the trigger and poured the petrol.'

'Yeah, sure,' Franco stumbled, scratching his stubble, unused to anything more heated than a weather report. 'So I suppose we'd all better write to our MPs and give Mr Makepeace a hand.'

'And crucify the bastards like Francis Urquhart who are betraying our island, selling us out to those Turkish poustides…'

The producer was second-generation, not familiar with all the colloquial Greek covering the various eccentricities of human anatomy, but the intonation was enough to cause him alarm, especially with licence renewal coming up. Uttering a prayer that no one from the Radio Authority was listening, he made a lunge for the fade control. And missed. The cup of stale coffee tipped everywhere, over notes, cigarettes, his new jeans. Havoc. Evanghelos Passolides, after an armistice of almost fifty years, was back at war. The French Ambassador had begun to feel a strong sense of kinship with General Custer. Since the elevation of Arthur Bollingbroke to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, business had degenerated into bloody war, waged by the Frenchman against insuperable odds and a foe who had dispensed with diplomatic trimming in favour of wholesale scalping. Monsieur Jean-Luc de Carmoy had no illusions about the fact that the Court of St James's had become distinctly hostile territory. The Ambassador preferred to pursue his campaign with strawberries and champagne rather than the.44 calibre Winchesters of the US cavalry but, like the blond American general, he had made the deeply personal decision that if he were going to die he would do so surrounded by friends. They milled about him as he stood directing manoeuvres from the lawn of his official residence overlooking Kensington Gardens. 'Enjoying the quiet life, Tom?'

Makepeace cast his eyes at the garden crowded with guests. 'As much as you.'

'Ah, but there are differences between our lives,' de Carmoy sighed, lifting his eyes in search of the sun which shone over his beloved Loire. 'I feel at times as though I have been sold into slavery, where every rebuke must be met with a smile and every insult with humility.' He paused as a butler with hands resembling black widow spiders supplied them with full glasses before taking Makepeace by the arm and leading him towards the seclusion of a nearby lime arbour. There were obviously things to discuss. 'I envy you, Tom.' 'The freedom of the wilderness. You envy that?' 'What would I not give at times to share with you the liberty to speak my mind.' 'About what in particular?' 'Your Mr Urquhart.' His face had the expression of a leaking milk carton. 'Scarcely my Mr Urquhart.' 'Then whose, pray?'

Around them the branches of the pleached limes twisted and entangled like a conspiracy. They were both aware that the Ambassador had crossed beyond the frontiers of diplomatic etiquette but, caught in the crossfire between Bollingbroke and the Quai d'Orsay, de Carmoy was in no mood for standing still.

'Tom, we've been friends for a long time now, ever since the day you summoned me to the Foreign Office to administer a formal mutilation' – the Frenchman brushed some invisible piece of lint from the sleeve of his jacket – 'after that confidential computer tape went missing from British Aerospace.' 'Along with two French exchange technicians.' 'Ah, you remember?'

'How could I forget? My first week at the Foreign Office.' 'You were frightfully severe.' 'I still suspect the clandestine hand of some official French agency behind the whole thing, Jean-Luc'

The shoulders of the Ambassador's well-cut suit heaved in a shrug of mock Gallic confusion. 'But when you'd finished you sat me down and plied me with drink. Sherry, you called it.'

'Standard Foreign Office issue. For use only on open wounds and Africans.'

'I think I tried to get Brussels to reclassify it as brush cleaner.'

'Didn't stop you finishing the whole damned decanter.'

'My friend, but I thought it was meant to be my punishment. I remember I was swaying like a wheatfield in an east wind by the time I returned home. My wife consoled me, thinking you'd been so offensive I'd had to get drunk.'

Like old campaigners they smiled and raised glasses to toast past times and dig over old battlefields. The Frenchman took out a cigarette case packed with Gauloises on one side and something more anodyne on the other; with a quiet curse Makepeace took the Gauloise. He'd started smoking again, along with all the other changes in his personal habits. God, he'd left her only an hour ago and knew that in spite of the after-shave he still reeked of her. Pleasure and pain. So much was crowding in on him that at times he had trouble finding space to breathe. Slowly the trickle of humour drained from his eyes and died. 'How is Miquelon?' he asked. 'Blossoming. And yours?'

'Teaching. In America.' He gave his own impression of the Gallic shrug, but without the enthusiasm to make it convincing. 'You sound troubled. Let me ask…' 'As Ambassador? Or as an old friend?'

'About politics. I have no right to pry into personal matters.' In any event, the Ambassador didn't have to. At the merest mention of his wife, Makepeace's face had said it all. He'd never make a diplomat, no inscrutability, all passion and principle. 'I hear many expressions that the era of Francis Urquhart is drawing to its close, that it is only a matter of time. And much discussion of who, and how. Many people tell me it should be you.' 'Which people?'

'Loyal Englishmen and women. Friends of yours. Many of the people here this afternoon.'

Makepeace glanced around. Amongst the throng was a goodly smattering of political correspondents and editors, politicians and other opinion-formers, few of whom were renowned as Urquhart loyalists. From a distance and from behind a tall glass, Annita Burke was staring straight at them, not attempting to hide her interest.

'You've been getting pressure,' de Carmoy stated, knowing it to be a fact.

'Nudges aplenty. I suppose I'm meant to be flattered by so much attention. Now's the moment, they say, step forward. But to be honest, I don't know whether I'm standing on the brink of history or the edge of a bloody cliff.'

'They are your friends, they respect you. Virtue may be a rare commodity in politics, it may speak quietly at times, but no less persuasively for that. It sets you apart from others.' 'Like Francis Urquhart.' 'As a diplomat I couldn't possibly comment.'

Makepeace was in too serious a mood to catch the irony. 'I've thought about it, Jean-Luc. Thinking about it still, to be precise. But did any of these friends of mine suggest to you how their… ambitions for me might be achieved? Or are these no more than slurpings through mouthfuls of Moet?'

'My assessment is that this is not idle talk. There's a desperate sense of longing for a change at the top. I've heard that not just within your party but from across the political spectrum.' 'And from Paris, too, no doubt.'

'Touche. But you can't deny there's a great moral vacuum in British politics. You could fill it. Many people would follow.'

Makepeace began running his index finger tentatively around the rim of his crystal glass as though he were tracing the cycles of life. 'For that I need a vehicle, a party. I might be able to grab at the wheel, force Urquhart off the road, but it would probably do so much damage that it'd take years to get it working again. The party's scarcely likely to offer the keys to the man who caused the accident.'

'Then create your own vehicle. One that's faster and better built than Urquhart's.'

'No, that's impossible,' Makepeace was responding, but they were interrupted by another guest, the Minister for Health who was seeking to bid farewell to his host. Felicitations and formal thanks were exchanged before the Minister turned to Makepeace.

'I've got only one thing to say to you, Tom.' He paused, weighing both his words and the company. 'For God's sake keep it up.' With that he was gone. 'You see, you have more friends than you realize,' the Ambassador encouraged. 'In his case not a friend, merely a rat hedging his bets.'

'Perhaps. But they are edgy, waiting to jump. The rats, too, believe the ship is sinking.'

Makepeace was back with the rim of his glass which was vibrating vigorously. 'So often we seem to go round in empty circles, Jean-Luc. What's necessary to make it more than noise, to get the whole universe to shatter?' 'Action.'

The Ambassador reached for the finely cut crystal, taking it from his guest's hand and holding it aloft by the stem, turning it around until it had captured the rays of the afternoon sun and melted into a thousand pools of fire. Suddenly he appeared to fumble, his fingers parted and before Makepeace could shout or move to catch it the glass had tumbled to the lawn. It bounced gracefully and lay, undamaged, on the grass.

Makepeace bent his knee to retrieve it, stretching gratefully. 'That's a stroke of…'

In alarm he snatched his fingers back as, with the heel of his elegant hand-made shoe, the Frenchman crushed the glass to pieces. The helicopter swept low along the black sand coastline of Khrysokhou Bay in the north-west of the island, past the tiny fishing villages they had known as boys. Those days of youth had been long, summers when the octopus had been plentiful, the girls had eager eyes and much to learn, and sailing boats had bobbed in the gentle swell beside clapboard jetties. Not so long ago the road back through the mountain had been little more than a rutted track; it had since turned into a swirling tar highway that bore on its back thousands of tourists and all their clutter. The fishing villages now throbbed to the beat of late-night discos, the price of fish had soared, so had the price of a smile. Progress. Yet the sailing boats were still moored inside ramshackle harbours which collected more flotsam than jetfoils. Opportunities unfulfilled, yet Theophilos' marina on the nearby cape would change all that. Once he'd got the British off his back.

The helicopter banked. 'Bishop's Palace in five minutes,' the pilot's metallic voice informed them through the headphones. Dimitri reached for the hand grip; he hated flying, regarding it as an offence to God's law, and would only submit to such folly so long as God's personal messenger were by his side. Trouble was that his brother travelled everywhere by helicopter, often flying the machine himself, which served only to exaggerate Dimitri's congenitally twitchy disposition. He'd give his life for his brother but prayed it wouldn't be necessary at this precise moment. He sat upright in his seat, relieved that the noise of the engine precluded conversation.

Theophilos, by contrast, displayed an exceptional degree of animation. He'd been studying a newspaper, repeatedly stabbing his finger at it and thrusting it in Dimitri's face. Dimitri was sure this was done deliberately in the knowledge that any activity other than rigid concentration on the horizon would induce in him an immediate and humiliating attack of sickness. In many ways they were still kids back on the rocks by the beach, playing, planning new and greater adventures, testing each other's courage, bending the rules. Dimitri recalled the first day his brother had returned to the family house as a priest, clad in his robes, clutching his crucifix and bible, a dark apparition in the doorway surrounded by all the panoply of holy office. Dimitri, overawed and uncertain, had fallen immediately to his knees, head bowed in expectation of a blessing; instead Theophilos had raised a leg, placed his boot squarely upon his brother's shoulder and sent him spiralling backwards to the ground. That night they'd got bladder-bursting drunk on home-made wine, just like old times. Nothing had changed. Theophilos was always the bright and ambitious brother, honed by a year at Harvard's Business School, who would lead the family Firm. Dimitri was a man of linear mind, reconciled to following. Even in helicopters.

They had landed on the helipad behind the palace and Dimitri, having cheated death once more, came back to the world of the moment. His brother was still absorbed in the newspaper, The People's Voice, a leading Cypriot newspaper in London. This in itself was not unusual since the Firm had well-watered business contacts amongst the expatriate community and Theophilos took considerable care to ensure that his press coverage was high in both profile and praise, but this item was not about him. It appeared to be an extensive report concerning missing graves, many column inches, which the Bishop kept caressing with the tips of his fingers, yet his words were inaudible, sent spinning away in the wash from the rotors. As they clambered from the cabin instinctively they ducked low, Dimitri wanting to kiss the ground in relief while the Bishop struggled to secure the flowing kalimachi headpiece. He continued to cling to the newspaper.

'What? What did you say?' Dimitri roared in his brother's ear as the noise behind them began to subside.

Theophilos stood to his full height, his holy garb adding further inches and authority. He was smiling broadly, the gold cap of his tooth much in evidence.

'I said, little brother, that you should brace yourself. We're about to catch a bad dose of bone fever.' The nudges aplenty applied to Makepeace and about which he had complained to de Carmoy had grown to outright body blows. Telephone calls, snatches of passing conversation, journalists asking The Really Serious Question, all seemed to conspire to push him in a direction he was reluctant to take.

But why the reluctance? Not for lack of ambition, nor fear of the probable suicidal consequences of taking on the Urquhart machine. Surrounded by more self-professed friends than ever before, nevertheless he felt more isolated than at any time he could remember, almost adrift. He'd been shorn of his Ministerial support machine for the first time in a decade – its secretaries, advisers, tea makers, ten thousand pairs of hands, and most of all the daily decisions that made him feel so much part of a team. Even for a man so long in political life he had been mortified to discover that for all the new supporters he appeared to have gained, others he had counted as friends now turned the other way, found things with which to busy themselves whenever he appeared. Friendship within a divided party may be Honourable by the compulsion of parliamentary etiquette, but it is far from Reliable.

Then there was his marriage. It was empty and hollow but it had had form, a regularity that was comforting even if for so many months of the year it amounted to no more than a phone call a week. He hadn't called for more than two, and she hadn't enquired why.

Exhilarating as he found such freedoms, they were also confusing and, when he was left alone to brood, almost frightening, like a climber reaching across a crevasse for his first mountain top. And behind him they kept pushing, pushing, pushing, Annita Burke in particular. She was sitting beside him in the rear of the car, Quentin Digby the lobbyist in front. Digby was going on about how the media adore fresh faces and a new story, and this would be the biggest and newest for years. Annita, her black eyes witchlike in the glow of the dashboard, sat stirring. 'The logic is overwhelming,' she was saying. 'The support is there. For you. I've talked to a posse of people in recent days. They'd follow you all the way, given half a chance.'

'The chance of anonymity, you mean,' Makepeace responded acerbically. 'Any support short of actual help for fear F.U. might find out what they're up to.'

'No, not a clandestine coup, no attempt to take over the sweet shop by stealth. It probably wouldn't work and it's not your way.' 'Then what?' 'A rival sweetshop. A new party.'

God, this had all the echoes of his conversation with Jean-Luc. He remembered Annita's display of interest at the garden party and began to wonder whether she had put de Carmoy up to it. She was a cynic and natural conspirator, perhaps too much so; how many of the other nudgers, winkers and pushers had she organized, cajoled, perhaps persuaded to imply support just to get her off their backs?

'You'd dominate the headlines for weeks. Build a momentum,' Digby was encouraging. 'After all these years of Urquhart people want a change. So give it 'em.'

'I've twelve former Cabinet Ministers telling me they would back you, and even one present member of the Cabinet,' Annita continued. So she was organizing. 'Who?' 'Cresswell.'

'Ah, the soft white underbelly. A man whose only fixed opinions seem to centre on puddings and port.' 'But worth a week of headlines.'

'Publicly?' Makepeace demanded. 'He'd come out and say so publicly?'

'Timing is everything.' Digby was at it again, leaving the question unresolved. 'Once the first few are out of the trap, others will follow. Momentum is everything. It's catching, like mumps.'

'Safety in numbers,' Makepeace muttered, almost to himself. 'It makes that first step so vital.'

'Timing is everything,' Burke echoed, delighted that Makepeace's observations appeared to be focusing on the definitive and practical. His mind was on the move, three parts there, just one last push… 'You can go all the way, Tom, if we retain the initiative. We must start organizing now, but for God's sake don't reveal your hand too soon, until everything is ready. The trouble with you is that once you make your mind up about something you're too impatient, too emotional. Too honest, if you like. It's your biggest fault.'

True enough. Exactly what Claire had told him. He could handle himself, but there were other problems. 'To fight and win an election we need a machine, grass roots in the constituencies, not just a debating society in Westminster,' Makepeace reflected. 'That's why we need time.' 'And timing.'

The car had stopped outside 'Vangelis'', where he had invited them to eat. And, it seemed, to plot. It sparked a memory of something Maria had said at their first meeting by the milk bottles. About a ready-made headquarters in every high street and overnight an army at his side.

The ghost of a smile hung on his lips. The various strands of his life seemed to be drawing together, or at least entangling themselves. Urquhart. Ambition. Maria. Passion. All pushing him in the same direction. Suddenly there seemed to be no point any longer in reluctance or resistance, he'd better lie back and enjoy it. And as Maria had said only the previous night, his timing was usually immaculate.

They disembarked from the car. 'I guess about eleven o'clock, Mickey,' he told his driver. 'Not earlier, I'm afraid. I've a feeling this dinner is going to be a long one.'

Mickey tipped his cap. This new job was proving to be most stimulating. The pay was better than sitting around the corporate car pool, Makepeace was a kind and considerate passenger. And the gossip was a hell of a lot more entertaining than listening to businessmen wittering on about ungrateful clients and their wives' muscle-minded tennis coaches. Others were being pushed and jostled. Hugh Martin was in his forties, once fleet of foot and a former rugger wing-forward who was more than accustomed to the elbows and abuse of a line-out. He hadn't expected to find the same tactics used outside the Nicosia Folk Art Museum. The museum, which lay amongst the labyrinths behind the city's ancient fortified walls, was promoting its most recent exhibition and invitations had been issued to the city's erudite and elevated, the British High Commissioner amongst them. He had counted on a pleasant stroll around the stands with Mrs Martin, greeting old friends and making some new, perhaps even finding something to inspire his wife, who had started a small collection of ceramics. Instead he found a group of almost twenty people gathered outside the hall distributing leaflets. He had no chance to discover what the leaflets said because as soon as they saw his official Rover draw up the group turned its full attention and considerable volume in his direction.

His bodyguard, Drage, was out of the front seat first. 'I'll check it, Sir.'

But Martin was both curious and amused. If the capital's demonstrations were anything like its plumbing, the noise would far exceed the efficiency. Anyway, this was Nicosia, courteous, civil, archetypically Cypriot, not Tehran or bloody Damascus. So he followed. It was a move he would soon regret.

'British murderers,' one old crone hissed through purple gums, propelled to the fore by younger hands behind her. A banner appeared, something about graves and war crimes, and as the protesters gathered around someone behind her shoulder spat. It missed, but the swinging fist didn't. It came from too far back to inflict any real damage but the surprise caused him to gasp. Drage was at his side now, pushing and shouting for him to retreat to the car, but in turn they were being pushed back by far greater numbers and the High Commissioner, still disorientated and clutching his stomach, stumbled. Drage caught him, lifted him up and tried to move him towards the car. Martin thought the blow must have done him more harm than he had realized for he was seeing lights; to his dismay he discovered they were the lights not of mild concussion but of a television crew. Every part of the demonstration – every part, that is, which occurred after the landing of the blow – was being caught on video. The anger of aged mothers. Waving banners demanding an end to British colonial cover-up. Ban the Bases. The stumbling retreat of a High Commissioner, carried like a child in the arms of his bodyguard, fleeing into the night from the wrath of old women. The first spark of Cypriot defiance. Such an unhappy coincidence that the news crew should have found itself in the right spot at precisely the wrong time. An unpleasant outbreak of bone fever. 'The tea room's infested.'

'Mice again? I understand Deirdre all but jumped out of the window into the Thames last week when she found two of the little brutes staring up at her. They're rampant behind the panelling. Time to bring back the cat, d'you suppose?'

'Not mice. Rumour.' Booza-Pitt was exasperated with his leader's apparent flippancy. 'Tom's up to something, but no one seems to know precisely what.'

In the background the squealing serenade of children at play came from around the pool area where a dozen of them, all litter of senior Ministers, were indulging in the rare delights of a summer Sunday at Chequers. Out on the sweeping lawn the Environment Secretary was running through a few golf shots as a policeman in blue sleeves and bulky flak jacket passed by on patrol cradling a Heckler amp; Koch semiautomatic; on the patio, in the shade of the lovely Elizabethan manor with its weathered and moss-covered red brick, an air force steward served drinks. The atmosphere was relaxed, lunch would shortly be served, and Urquhart seemed determined not to be pushed. This was his official retreat, he'd handle matters in his own way.

'A leadership challenge in the autumn,' the wretched Booza-Pitt was persisting, trying so hard to impress that his eyebrows knitted in concern like a character out of Dostoevsky.

'No. Not that. He'd lose and he knows it.' Claire sipped a mint julep – the bar steward had recently returned from a holiday in New Orleans – and subsided. She was leading the Home Secretary on, Urquhart knew and was amused by it, only Geoffrey was too blind to realize. For him, the conversation had already become a competition for Urquhart's ear.

'Even so, he might. Out of spite. Inflict a little damage before he fades into the shadows.' 'No. He has other ideas.' She subsided again.

Urquhart was himself by now intrigued. She had an air of such confidence, and a voice which brushed like fresh paint on canvas, but he couldn't yet see the picture. 'Like what?' Geoffrey threw down a challenge.

Claire looked to Urquhart; she'd intended to keep this for a more private moment but he was of a mind that she should continue. A golf ball clattered around their feet, followed by a belated cry of warning from the lawn,- evidently the Environment Secretary was in considerable need of his practice. Urquhart rose from the wooden garden seat and began to lead them around the pathways of the garden, out of earshot and driving range of others.

'A new party,' she began once again. 'A big media launch with some prominent names in support. Then more to follow over the weeks ahead. Several from within our own party. Perhaps one or two even from within the Government.' 'Madness!' Booza-Pitt snorted.

But Urquhart's eyes had grown fixed, his frame stooped in concentration as he walked, studying the ground as though peering through a trap door into a personal hell. 'He'd hope for a couple of by-elections where they'd buy anything new on the shelf. Bite after bite, taking mouthfuls out of my majority. Making it ever more difficult for me to govern.' 'One step building on the next.' 'He wants to bleed me. Death by a thousand cuts.'

'Could he do it? Could he really?' Booza-Pitt had at last caught the changing wind. 'Sounds like a party no one but women's magazines would take seriously.'

'Even women take time off from painting our nails to vote, Geoffrey. We're not all hot flushes and flower arranging.'

A sense of urgency crept into the Prime Minister's step; Booza-Pitt felt he was being left behind. 'But where'd he get the money for it all?' he demanded breathlessly. For Geoffrey, the practicalities of life all came down to a question of money. He'd once found a short cut on the school cross-country run and, much to his annoyance, had made the team. He'd found consolation by selling the short cut to his friends.

'Money's not his problem, it's time,' Claire responded. 'Time to build momentum. Time to build an organization before the next election and to establish that he's more than merely a figment of the media's fevered imagination. Time to encourage our sweaty band of galley slaves to jump ship.'

'It'd be no more than a dinner party at prayer,' Booza-Pitt all but spat in contempt. Then his expression altered as though refashioned with a mallet. 'Good God. What does that mean for my Bill? I'd be giving him all the money.'

Urquhart came to a sudden halt under the limbs of a spreading cedar tree. 'Not quite what I had in mind,' he conceded quietly.

'I've… I've got to withdraw it. Somehow.' Booza-Pitt's voice trailed away, his mantle as defender of democracy in tatters even before it had been woven. 'There is another way,' Claire offered. 'One which would keep my reputation?'

'Keep the Government's reputation, Geoffrey,' she corrected. 'Your Bill will sponsor as many different groups as possible. Fine. We mustn't give Tom a clear run.'

'Nibbled to death by a thousand minnows, that was always my thinking,' Geoffrey exclaimed, wondering whether the time had come to reclaim authorship of the plan.

'And meanwhile make damn sure our own supporters have got something to get their teeth into. Let's fly the flag for them. Give them something that reminds them what we're all about, and how much they'd lose if it all went wrong.' 'Like what?' Geoffrey pleaded.

'I thought you were the one with all the bright campaigning ideas.' It was Urquhart, his tone sharp, back amongst them. 'Geoffrey, why don't you go and have a wander through the Long Library before lunch? Fascinating collection of first editions -Sartre, Hemingway, Archer. Right up your street.'

'Maybe a little later, F.U.?' he suggested, determined not to be written out of the plot. 'Geoffrey. Be a good fellow and bugger off.' 'Yes, right. Long Library. See you at lunch then.'

She marvelled at his resilience to insult. Even now, she suspected, he was working on how he would divulge to others the privilege of the PM's personal invitation to inspect his rare editions. 'He'll not love you for that,' she commented.

'Geoffrey is incapable of love for anyone except himself. His adoration of his own inadequacies is as total as it is astounding and leaves no room for anyone else. I suspect I shall survive, as will he.'

In the distance a lunch gong was being beaten and the squeals of children echoed with renewed impatience, but he ignored the summons, instead gripping her arm and leading her through french windows which brought them from the terrace into the house. They were in his study with the windows firmly closed behind them, shutting them off. Suddenly she felt claustrophobic, the rules had changed. This was no longer a summer stroll around the garden making sport with Booza-Pitt, but one on one, she and Urquhart, in an atmosphere of personal intensity she'd never felt with him before.

'I'm sorry, Francis, did I offend you, talking about the possibility of defeat?'

'No. You managed to express, and most eloquently, something that…' – he was going to say 'voices inside my own head' – 'my own thoughts have been telling me all too sharply.' 'So you think it could happen?'

'I'm not a fool. Of course it could happen. We're no more than passengers on a tide,- even as we are rushed along by it, only one small slip could sweep us under.'

'And if we were to slip and he were to win, just once, there would be no way back for us. Tom's always been committed to proportional representation – he'd change the election law himself, skew it in favour of the small parties, the minnows.'

'Who would grow into great pikes and tear any Government apart. This country would be turned over to chaos. By legislative order of Booza-Pitt and Makepeace, destroyers of civilization. Hah!' To her alarm he sounded as if he found ironic pleasure in the prospect of the Apocalypse. 'You would be history,' she warned. 'And favoured by it all the more!'

She realized why she had begun to feel so claustrophobic. She was standing beside not just a man, but a political Colossus whose deeds would be writ large. Yet she had known that from the very start; wasn't that why she had agreed to join him, for her own selfish place in his shadow, the thrill and experience of standing beside a great chunk of that story? Up so close, so privately, it left her not a little in awe.

'There is one major gap in his armour,' Urquhart continued in a state of considerable animation, 'his point of greatest vulnerability. He must keep his momentum going, appear irresistible before enough people will take their courage in their hands and march with him. But to raise an army he needs time. Time which is ours to give, or to deny. We must keep an eye on young Tom.'

'I already am,' she responded a little sheepishly. She'd intended to keep it secret, in case he disapproved, but the atmosphere of intimacy overcame her caution. 'He has a new driver who is – how shall I put it? – extremely keen to share his experiences, especially when he picks up his weekly pay cheque. From a very close friend of my husband.'

'Really? How splendid. I should have thought of that. I'm slipping.' 'Or perhaps I'm learning.'

He began to look at her quizzically, in a new light. 'I do believe you are – turning out to be a truly remarkable find, Claire, if you'll allow me to say so.' He had turned to her, taken her hands, his voice dropping to a softer register. He'd already invited her to share so much yet there was a new and pressing intimacy in this moment. 'One thing I have to ask. You've been pretty tough about Tom Makepeace. Politically, I mean. Yet from the way you understand him so well I get the impression – a sense, perhaps – that once you and he were… close. Personally.' 'Would it have mattered?' 'No. Not so long as I could be sure of your loyalty.'

Loyalty tied by bonds at least as secure as any she had shared with Makepeace. 'Francis, you can. Be sure of my loyalty.'

She felt herself being pulled by the enormous force of gravity which surrounded him. She panicked, realizing she was losing control, her lips reaching up towards him. Suddenly she was afraid, of both him and her own ambitions. She was falling, yet couldn't find it within her to resist, even in the knowledge that coming so close to him was likely to leave her burnt up and scattered like cinders. As had happened to others. She was on fire.

Then there was ice. Urquhart drew back, allowed her hands to fall and deliberately broke the spell that tied her to him. Why, she would never know, and Urquhart would never admit, even to himself.

For how can a man admit to such things? The guilt he felt for others he had taken in such a way, used, discarded, left utterly destroyed. With the passage of time he felt himself being drawn towards the day of his own judgment and such things bore more heavily on his mind. Some might even mistake it for conscience. Or was it merely the knowledge that in the past such entanglements had caused nothing but grief and turmoil, confusion he could do without in a world which, thanks to Thomas Makepeace, had suddenly grown far more complicated?

Yet there was something else which turned his blood cold. The gnawing dread that Francis Urquhart the Politician had been constructed on the ruins of Francis Urquhart the Man. Incapable of children, denied immortality. A desert, a barrenness of body that had infected the soul and in turn had been inflicted upon Elizabeth, the only woman he had ever truly loved. The others had all been pretence, an attempt to prove his virility, but in the end a pointless exercise, a scream in a sound-proof chamber.

And, as she stood before him, desirable and available, he was no longer sure he could even raise his voice. The end of Francis Urquhart the Man.

Francis Urquhart the ageing Politician stepped back from temptation and torment.

'Best that we keep you as my good-luck charm, eh?'

In the Cypriot capital the crowds streamed through the entrance gates for an evening with Alekos, a young singer of talent from the mainland who had built a remarkable following amongst Greeks of all ages. The young girls swayed to the rhythm of his hips, old women fell for the voice which dripped like honey on dulled ears, the men won over by the manner in which he crafted the images and emotions of Hellenism into music of the Greek soul more powerful than a first-half hat-trick by Omonia. He had flown from Athens for a special concert in support of the Cyprus Defence Fund. Few of the several thousand enthusiasts at the open-air auditorium gave a thought to how a concert could raise money for the CDF when all the tickets had been given away, as had the large number of banners which were being waved above the heads of the emotion-gripped crowd. We Shall Not Forget, the refrain in memory of the victims of Turkish invasion, was thrust high alongside other soul-slogans such as Let Us Bury Our Dead With Honour, British – Give Back Our Bases and, yes, even Equality With Orchids.

The Bishop was much in evidence, cloaked dark in the seat of honour and surrounded by a hard-working team of his theological students. Theophilos was well pleased. Even the occasional outbreaks of alcoholic excess brought on by the heat and the ready supply of beer he bore with paternal fortitude. For three hours Alekos and his supporting musicians stirred, scratched, tickled and whipped their passion; as the night grew deeper, he reached for the refrain of Akritas Dighenis, a tale of heroic defiance against the foreign foe, of cherished memories from the mists of time and, above all, of victory. They sang and swayed with him, lit matches and candles, their faces illuminated by hope in the darkness as the tears flowed freely from men and women alike. Alekos had them in his palm.

'Have you forgotten?' he breathed into the microphone, his voice stretching out to touch every one of them. 'No,' they sobbed. 'Do you want to forget those who died?' 'No..

'Who gave their lives for a free Cyprus? Some of whom lie buried in unknown graves?' His voice was firmer now, goading.

(Later when he heard the reports, Hugh Martin was to wince at how Alekos in one emotional sweep had entangled together the subject of British graves with the Turkish invasion.) 'No, no,' they replied, with equal firmness.

'Do you want your homeland given away for British military bases?'

He stirred the muddy waters of old hatreds like a shark's tail. In the darkness they began to lose their individual identities and become as one. Greek. Full of resentment.

'Then will you give your homeland away to bastard Turks?' 'No! Never!'

'Do you want your sisters and daughters to be screwed by bastard Turks, like your mothers were when the bastards invaded our country?' His clenched fist beat the night air, his bitterness transmitting to others. 'NO.'

'Do you want your President to sign a treaty which says it's all right? All forgotten? All over? That they can keep what they stole?' 'NO,' they began to shout. 'NO. NO. NO.' 'So what do you want to say to the President?'

'N-O-O-O-O!' The cries lifted through the Nicosia night and spilled across the city. 'Then go and tell him!'

The doors were thrown open and thousands swarmed out of the auditorium to find buses lined up to take them the two kilometres to the Presidential Palace, whose guards they taunted, whose gates they rocked and whose wrought-iron fencing they festooned with their banners. By the light of a huge pink Nicosia moon, the largest demonstration in the city since the election came to pass, and twenty-three unwise arrests ensured that the stamping of angry feet would continue to grab headlines for days afterwards.

Like every other detail of the concert, even the encore had gone to plan.

'Gaiters and gongs again tonight.' Urquhart sighed. He had lost count of the number of times he'd climbed into formal attire on a summer's evening in order to exchange inconsequential pleasantries with some Third World autocrat who, as the wine list rambled on, would brag about his multiple wives, multiple titles and even multiple Swiss bank accounts. Urquhart told himself he would much rather be spending his time on something else, something more fulfilling. But what? With a sense of incipient alarm, he realized he didn't know what. For him, there was nothing else.

'I see they're pegging out the lawn for that wretched statue.' Elizabeth was gazing out of the bedroom window. 'I thought you'd told Max Stanbrook to stop it.' 'He's working on it.'

'It's preposterous,' she continued. 'In a little over a month you will have overtaken her record. It's you who should be out there.'

'She wasn't supposed to lose, either,' he reflected softly.

She turned, her face flecked with concern. 'Is all this Makepeace nonsense getting you down, Francis?' 'A little, perhaps.' 'Not like you. To admit to vulnerability.'

'He's forcing my hand, Elizabeth. If I give him time to organize, to grow, I give him time to succeed. Time is not on my side, not when you reach my age.' With a silent curse he tugged at his bow tie and began again the process of re-knotting it. 'Claire says I should find some way of calling his bluff. Fly the flag.'

'She's turning out to be an interesting choice of playmate.'

He understood precisely what she was implying. 'No, Elizabeth, no distractions. In the past they've caused us so much anguish. And there are voices everywhere telling me I shall need all my powers of concentration over the next few months.' 'People still regard you as a great leader, Francis.'

'And may yet live to regard me as a still greater villain.'

'What is eating at you?' she demanded with concern. 'You're not normally morbid.'

He stared at himself in the mirror. Time had taken its undeniable toll; the face was wrinkled and fallen, the hair thinned, the eyes grown dim and rimmed with fatigue. Urquhart the Man – the Young Man, at least – was but a memory. Yet some memories, he reflected, lived longer than others, refused to die. Particularly the memory of a day many years earlier when, in the name of duty and of his country, he had erred. As the evening sun glanced through the window and bathed the room in its rich ochre light, it all came back. His hands fell to his side, the tie unravelled again.

'When I was a young lieutenant in Cyprus' – the voice sounded dry, as though he'd started smoking again – 'there was an incident. An unhappy collision of fates. A sacrifice, if you like, in the name of Her Majesty's peace. Tom Makepeace today wrote to me, he knows of the incident but not my part in it. Yet if it were ever to be made public, my part in that affair, they would destroy me. Ignore everything I have achieved and strip me like wolves.'

He turned to face her. 'If I give Makepeace any of what he wants, he will pursue the matter. If I don't, he'll pursue me. Either way, there is an excellent chance I shall be destroyed. And time is on his side.' 'Then fight him, Francis.' 'I don't know how.' 'You've plenty of strings to your bow.'

He joined her by the window, took her hands, massaged her misgivings with his thumbs, gently kissed her forehead. 'Strings to my bow. But I'm not sure I have the strength any more to bend the bloody thing.' He laughed, a hollow sound which she chose not to share. 'We must have one more victory, one more successful election behind us. The Urquhart name, yours and mine, written into history. The longest-serving Prime Minister this century.' 'And the greatest.'

'I owe that to you even more than I owe it to myself. I must find some way of beating him, destroying him – any way! And quickly. Everything I have ever achieved depends on it.' 'And what then, Francis?'

'Then perhaps we can think about stepping back and I can become an intolerable old man in carping retirement, if that's what you want.' 'Is that what you want?'

'No. But what else is there? Apart from this I have nothing. Which is why I'm going to fight Tom Makepeace. And all the others. So long as I breathe.'

For Elizabeth it sounded all too much like an epitaph; she held him close in a way they'd not embraced for a considerable time, nuzzling into loose flesh and afraid she was falling into the deep pit of his empty old age.

Suddenly he stiffened, measurably brightened. Something over her shoulder had caught his eye. The workmen had finished laying out the stakes – miniature Union flags, would you believe – and a large lawn mower was lumbering towards them. It approached hesitantly, its progress obstructed, forcing it to slow, to stop and swerve to avoid them. It did so with considerable difficulty, chewing up the neat turf and knocking over several flags as the gardener wrenched at the wheel. Clearly it was not a machine designed to mow in such confined circumstances. Urquhart observed all this with growing interest.

'Anyway, my love, a great general doesn't need to bend his own bow, he gets others to do that for him. All he needs are ideas. And one or two have just come knocking at my door.' 'Max!' he summoned.

Ministers were trooping into the Cabinet Room where they found him at its far end, slapping his fist like a wicket keeper waiting for the next delivery, rather than in his accustomed chair beneath the portrait of Walpole.

Stanbrook made his way over as the others milled around, uncertain about taking their seats while he was still standing.

'Max, dear boy' Urquhart greeted as the other approached. 'Our little conversation about the statue. You remember? Haven't signed the Order yet, have you?'

'I've delayed it as long as I possibly could, F.U.' Stanbrook tried to make it sound like a substantial victory of Hectorian proportion. Then, more sheepishly, 'But I can't find a single damned reason for turning it down.'

Urquhart chastised with a glance, then laid an arm upon his colleague's shoulder and turned him towards the window. 'There's only one reason for turning down such a worthy project, Max, and that's because they haven't raised enough money.' 'But they have. Eighty thousand pounds.'

'That's just for the statue. But what about its maintenance?'

'What's to maintain with a statue, F.U.? An occasional scrub for pigeon droppings is hardly likely to run up bills of massive proportions.'

'But it's not just the birds, is it? What about terrorists?' Stanbrook was nonplussed.

'Home Secretary,' Urquhart called to Geoffrey, who came scampering. The others, too, began to draw closer, fascinated by what was evidently some form of morality play or possibly blood-letting of the new Environment Secretary – either way, no one wanted to miss it.

'Geoffrey, wouldn't you say that a statue of our Beloved Former Leaderene situated just beyond the gardens of Downing Street would be an obvious target for terrorist attack? A symbolic retribution for past failures? Theirs, not hers. Let alone a target for the more obvious attentions of petty vandals and graffiti goons.' 'Certainly, Prime Minister.'

'And so worthy of steps to ensure its – and our -security. Twenty-four hours a day. Perhaps a specially dedicated video security system. How much would that cost?'

'How much would you like it to cost, Prime Minister?'

'Splendid, Geoffrey. To install and maintain – at least ten thousand pounds a year, wouldn't you think?' 'Sounds very reasonable to me.'

'Then, of course, there's the monitoring of that system. Twenty-four hours a day. Plus a visual inspection of the site every hour during the night by the security watch.'

'No change from another twenty thousand pounds for that' Geoffrey offered.

'You see, Max. There's another thirty thousand a year that will have to be found.'

Stanbrook had grown pale, as though haemorrhaging. 'I think the fund will just about run to that, F.U.'

'But you haven't thought of the grass, have you? A surprising omission for a Secretary of State for the Environment.'

'The grass? What's the bloody grass got to do with it?' Both his perspective and his language had collapsed in confusion. 'Everything, as I shall explain. Come with me.'

Urquhart flung open the doors to the patio and, like Mother Goose, led all twenty-five of them in file down the stairs, into the garden, through the door in the old brick wall, and in less than a minute had brought them to the site of the stakes. Startled Special Branch detectives began scurrying everywhere in the manner of cowboys trying to round up loose steers.

'Away! Away off my grass!' he shouted at them. 'This is most important.'

Security withdrew to a nervous distance, wondering whether the old man had had a turn and they should send for Smith amp;. Wessons or Geriatol.

'Observe,' Urquhart instructed, hands spread wide, 'the grass. Beautifully manicured, line after line. Until…' – he made a theatrical gesture of decapitating a victim kneeling at his feet -'here.'

They gathered round to inspect the scuffed and torn turf on which he was standing.

'You see, Max, the lawn mower can't cope. It's too big. So you're going to have to get another one. Transport it here twice a week throughout the summer, just to mow around the statue.'

'Take a bit of strimming, too, I've no doubt.' Bollingbroke had decided to join what was evidently a glorious new summer sport.

'Thank you, Arthur. A strimmer as well, Max. The whole bally production line we have created to keep the green spaces of our gracious city shorn and shaven – disrupted! Put out of gear. Ground to a halt. For your statue.'

'Hardly my statue,' Stanbrook was mumbling, but already there was another player on the field.

'Chief Secretary, what would be the cost of a small mower and strimmer, their storage and transportation from said storage about fifty times a year, plus an allowance for all the chaos to the maintenance schedule which is likely to ensue?' He made it sound as if the centre of London was sure to grind to a halt.

'I'd say another ten thousand,' a youngish man with lips which operated like a goldfish pronounced. 'Minimum.' 'So that's ten, and ten, and twenty. Makes another forty thousand pounds, Max.' 'I'll tell the Society.'

'Not just forty thousand pounds, Max. That's forty thousand pounds a year. We'll have to ensure that a fund is available to generate that sort of money for at least ten years, otherwise the taxpayer will end up footing the bill. We couldn't have that.'

'Not when I'm just about to announce a freeze on nurses' pay,' the Health Secretary insisted jovially.

'And where's the Chancellor of the Exchequer? His Prime Minister wants him. Ah, Jim, don't be bashful.'

The Chancellor was thrust by many willing hands from seclusion at the rear of the assembly amidst a chorus of laughter.

'Chancellor. A fund sufficient to generate forty thousand pounds a year for a minimum of ten years. How much are we talking about?'

Jim Barfield, a rotund Pickwickian figure with a shock of hair which made him look as though his brains had exploded, scratched his waistcoat and sucked his lower lip. 'Not used to thousands. Throw a few noughts on the end and I'd have no trouble but…' He scratched once more. 'Let's say a quarter of a million. Just between friends.'

'Mr Stanbrook, has the Society got a quarter of a million pounds? In addition to the eighty for casting said statue?'

Stanbrook, not knowing whether to laugh along with the rest, to fall to his knees and kiss the grass or to crawl away in humiliation, simply hung his head. 'No graven images!' a voice from the west flank of Whitehall insisted. The others applauded. 'Then it is with much regret…'

He had no need to finish. The Cabinet to a man, even Stanbrook, applauded as if on the green trimmed sward of Westminster they had been watching one of the finest conjuring tricks of the decade. Which, perhaps, they had.

He felt good. He had shown he was still the greatest actor of the age, it had been as important to remind himself as to remind the others. His view had been salvaged, the past exorcized. Now to exorcize the future. Claire ran into him as she was scurrying out of the House of Commons Library. She was clutching papers and he had to reach out to prevent her from toppling. 'Hi, stranger.'

'Hello to you.' The voice was soft, the old chemistry still at work. Reluctantly Makepeace withdrew his supporting arm and let her go. 'Running errands for the boss?' he enquired, indicating the papers and regretting it immediately. Urquhart had already come too much between them.

'Would it seem silly if I suggested I'd missed you? I've thought about you a lot.'

'I'm sure that's true,' he retorted, hurt male pride adding a sharper edge than he'd intended. 'I suppose coming from an acolyte of Urquhart I should take such attention as a compliment.'

She searched for his eyes but they remained elusive, darting along the corridor, falling at his feet, unwilling to allow her to inspect the wounds she had inflicted on him. He was acting more like a secret and bashful lover than when they'd shared something to be secretive about.

'I'd like to think that we could still be friends,' she offered, and marvelled immediately at her own hypocrisy. She meant it; she retained a strong sense of affection and respect for him, a man with whom she had shared so much. Yet she was also the woman who was trying to bring him to his knees. For the first time she began to be aware of how far she had moved, had strayed perhaps, from her own image of herself. She'd become two people, political animal as well as woman, in two worlds, one black, the other white, and the dark world where she stood in the shadow of Francis Urquhart was tugging her away from her roots and those she had loved.

'Claire, there are only two sides in this place right now. Those who stand with him, and those who don't. There's no room in the middle anymore.'

A colleague passed by and they both stood in embarrassed silence as though their past secrets had been betrayed to the evening press.

'I've not sold out' she began again, anxious to reassure herself as much as him.

Disdain sharpened his eye. 'Spare me that sweet talk about means and ends, Claire. Like curdled milk, I'll only swallow it once. With him, there is but one end. Francis Urquhart. And any means will do. Face up to it. You've sold out.'

'I wasn't born to all this like you, Tom. I've had to fight and scratch for every little thing I've achieved in this place. I've taken all the jibes, the patronizing, the gropers, the men who preach equality yet only practise it when they go a Dutch treat for dinner. Perhaps you can afford to, but no way am I going to pack up and walk away at the first sign of trouble.' 'I haven't walked away. Not from my principles.'

'Great. You preach, and in the meantime Big Mac wrappers will inherit the Earth. We both have our ideals, Tom. Difference between us is that I'm prepared to do something about them, to take the knocks in pursuing them, not simply sit on the sidelines and jeer.' 'I'm not sitting on the sidelines.' 'You ran off the bloody pitch!'

'There are some games I simply don't want to play.' His tone implied that in politics, at least, she was nothing more than a tart.

'You know, Tom Makepeace, you were a better man in bed. At least there you knew what the hell to do.' She didn't mean it, was covering up for her own pain, but she'd always had a tendency to a phrase too far and this one tore across their respect like a nail across silk.

She knew she'd cut him and watched miserably as a bestockinged messenger handed Makepeace an envelope bearing a familiar crest. As he wrenched it open and read she began to frame an apology but when his eyes came up once more, inflamed no longer with wounded pride but unadulterated contempt, something told her it was already too late.

'Those who stand with him, Claire. And those who don't.'

He turned on his heel and strode away from the ruins of their friendship.

10 Downing Street Dear Thomas, I am replying to your recent letter. I have nothing to add to the reply I gave in the House last week, or to the policy adopted by successive Governments that security considerations prevent such matters being discussed in detail. Yours sincerely, Francis It had been couched in terms intended to offend. His name had been typed, not handwritten; the dismissal of his request was as abrupt as was possible for an experienced parliamentarian to devise. Perhaps he should be grateful, at least, that the letter had dispensed with the hypocrisy of the traditional endearment between party colleagues which suggested that the author might be 'Yours ever'. As Makepeace entered the Chamber, the letter protruding like a week-old newspaper from his clenched hand, he trembled with a sense of his own inadequacy. There was a time, only days gone by, when a word from him would have had the System producing documents and reports by the red box load; now he couldn't raise more than a passing insult.

Claire, too, had made a fool of him – not simply because he'd said things in a clumsy manner he'd not intended, but because he hadn't realized how much of his affections she continued to command, in spite of Maria. He should know better, have more control, yet she'd left him feeling like a schoolboy.

If he was flushed with frustration as he sat down to listen to the debate on the European Union Directive (Harmonization of Staff Emoluments), within moments his resentment had soared like a hawk over Saudi skies. The House was packed, the Prime Minister in his seat with Bollingbroke at the Dispatch Box, holding forth on matters diplomatique with the restraint and forbearance of a bricklayer approaching payday.

'Emoluments!' he pronounced with vernacular relish. 'Wish I 'ad some of them there Emoluments. It says in this Sunday newspaper' – he waved a copy high above his head – 'that apparently one of the Commissioners took a personal interpreter with him on a ten-day visit he made recently to Japan. By some oversight, 'owever, the young lady turned out to be qualified only in Icelandic and Russian.' He shrugged as though confronted with a problem of insurmountable complexity. 'Well, I dunno, they probably all sound the same and I'm sure she had her uses. But it's a bit much when they come back and start asking for more.' Mixed shouts of encouragement and objection were issuing from all sides when, in a stage whisper which everyone in the Chamber (with the exception of the scribe from Hansard) had no trouble in hearing, he added: 'Wonder if I could get it on expenses?'

The debate was rapidly turning into music hall, much to the annoyance of several members of the Opposition who attempted to intervene, but Bollingbroke, as though standing defiant watch from the cliffs of Dover, refused to give way.

'And for what purpose are we being asked to pay the good burghers of Brussels more, Mr Speaker?' he demanded, waving down several who wanted to offer an answer. 'I'll tell you. One of their latest plans is to issue a standard history of Europe which can be used in all our schools. Sort of… give our kids a common perspective. Bring them together.'

Several members of the Opposition Front Bench were nodding their heads in approval. They should have known better.

'A visionary epistle. Apparently, the Germans never invaded Poland, the Italians never retreated, the French never surrendered and we never won the war.'

Pandemonium had erupted in every comer of the Chamber, the noise being so great that it was impossible to tell who was shouting in support and who in condemnation of the Foreign Secretary. But Makepeace had sprung to his feet, the flush on his face indicating beyond doubt the depths of his outrage. Bollingbroke, always willing to plumb such depths, gave way.

'In all my years in this House I have never heard such an ill-tempered and bellicose performance by a Foreign Secretary,' Makepeace began. 'When all the rest of Europe is looking for a common way forward, he seems intent on acting like an obstinate child. And his Prime Minister, who likes to pretend he is a statesman, sits beside him and cheers him on…'

Makepeace had become confused with his targets. In the seat beside Bollingbroke, Urquhart was chatting with Claire, who was leaning down from her guard post in the row behind to whisper something in his ear. From where Makepeace stood, it looked almost like an affectionate nuzzle. His sense of personal betrayal grew.

'When the rest of Europe is as one, for God's sake shouldn't we be joining with them rather than scratching over old wars?'

'In my Dad's day they called that appeasement,' Bollingbroke shouted, but did not attempt to reclaim the floor; he was enjoying the sight of Makepeace being wound tight like a spring.

'This Government is picking foreign quarrels for the sole purpose of covering its failures at home. It has lost all moral authority to continue in office…'

Nearby, Annita Burke was nodding her head in approval, urging him on, while several others around her were also trying to listen, their heads inclined in sympathy rather than joining the general commotion. Through it all, Bollingbroke could be heard scoffing: 'So he's found morality since he was kicked out of office, has he? Convenient.'

'As the bishops themselves have recently said in General Synod, this country needs a change in direction and a new sense of moral leadership – a leadership which this Government and this Prime Minister doesn't even attempt to provide.'

That was enough for Bollingbroke, who sprang to his feet and started thumping the Dispatch Box. 'What have you achieved compared with Francis Urquhart?' he was shouting. 'Compared with him you're like a pork-scratching on a pig farm. Francis Urquhart has brought prosperity to this country, peace to Cyprus…'

The mention of Cyprus arrived like a slap across the face to Makepeace. It seemed to have galvanized Urquhart, too, who was tugging at the sleeve of his Foreign Secretary. Bollingbroke, startled at this unusual intervention from his Prime Minister, subsided into his seat, his place at the Dispatch Box taken by Urquhart. The House fell to silence, fascinated to catch the next turn of the carousel.

Urquhart cleared his throat. 'I hate to interrupt my Right Honourable Friend – I was rather enjoying his contribution – but all this talk about morality, and bishops. So muddled and misleading. You know, Mr Speaker, I find it extraordinary that those who spend so much time warning about the dire consequences of wrong-doing in the afterlife are often so silent about it in this life. Turn the other cheek, they suggest.' He sighed. 'But if that's the self-appointed role adopted by the bishops, that cannot be the role for Government – at least not my Government. Our job is not to forgive those who have done wrong. Our job is to protect those who haven't.'

If Makepeace had thrown down the gauntlet of morality, Urquhart seemed intent on retrieving it and using it as an offensive weapon.

'Don't misunderstand me, I have a high regard for the contribution made to the success of my Government by the Right Honourable Gentleman while he was a member of it…' He offered a slow smile soaked in derision. 'Although I don't recall sitting round the Cabinet table hearing him expound on how we were making such a mess of things. Not until I sacked him. But loss of office can have such a distorting effect on a man's perspective and memory.' The gauntlet struck again. Slap!

'I don't doubt the sincerity of his personal values, but I do find them odd. Odd when he says we must do this or that, simply because the bishops say so. Even more extraordinary that we should follow this or that course of action because the rest of Europe says so. Where's the morality in that? In secondhand opinions which follow the herd like dogs follow a dust cart?' Slap.

'Morality is about deciding for yourself what's right. Then doing something about it. Let me have around me men of action, not moralizers with empty words. I've nothing but scorn for those' – Urquhart's eyes lashed in the direction of his former colleague – 'who sit back and carp at the efforts of others. Who descend from their high moral vantage points after the battle is over and tell the wounded and dying how they got it wrong…'

Makepeace tried not to flinch, but inside he hurt. Claire's taunt still echoed in his ears – sitting on the sidelines, she'd accused – and now this. They were out to humble him, together. He looked around him as the blows rained down. Those he regarded as supporters were shifting uncomfortably in their places while Annita's expression urged him on – do something! He rose to his feet, asking for the floor.

'No, no,' Urquhart slapped him down. 'I've heard enough theology from him to last me a good long while.'

Makepeace held his ground, demanding to be heard, his clenched hand raised – it still gripped Urquhart's letter – while Urquhart loyalists were jeering, shouting at him to resume his place. Slap, slap, slap! Makepeace stood alone, defying the blows, but was he simply to stand there – doing nothing, as Urquhart had taunted – allowing himself to be gouged and mauled? Annita's eyes brimmed with sorrow as his own brimmed with the injustice of it all.

'Since he lost office,' Urquhart was saying, 'his attitude has become so critical, so negative, so personally embittered and destructive that I sometimes wonder what he's doing in the same great party as me.'