Michael Dobbs - To play the king

'It would certainly be a distraction from bellyaching about the underprivileged.'

'Governments don't solve people's concerns, they simply try to rearrange them in their favour. Can't you rearrange them in your favour?'

'Inside two weeks?' He examined the determined look in her eyes. She was in earnest. Deadly earnest. 'That's what I've spent all night thinking about.' He nodded gently. 'It might just be. With a little luck. And witchcraft. Make him the issue, the people versus the King. But this would not simply be an election, it would be a revolution. If we won, the Royal Family would never recover.' 'Spare me the pity. I'm a Colquhoun.' 'But am I a Cromwell?' 'You'll do.'

He suddenly remembered they had dug up Cromwell and stuck his rotting skull on a gibbet. He looked at the remnants of charred toast, and was very much afraid she might be right.

The ringing of the telephone startled him, intruding into the quiet of the apartment. It was late, well after ten, and Kenny had already retired to leave Mycroft working on some last-minute arrangements for the King's tour. Kenny was on stand-by; Mycroft wondered whether the telephone was summoning him to fill a last-minute vacancy on some flight crew, but surely not at this time of night?

Kenny appeared at the bedroom door, rubbing wearily at his eyes. 'It's for you.' 'For me? But who…?' 'Dunno.' Kenny was still half asleep.

With considerable trepidation Mycroft lifted the extension. 'Hello.' 'David Mycroft?' the voice enquired. 'Who's speaking?'

'David, this is Ken Rochester from the Mirror. I'm sorry to bother you so late. It's not too inconvenient, is it, David?'

Mycroft had never heard of the man before. His nasal tones were unpleasant, his informality insolent and unwelcome, his concern patently insincere. Mycroft made no reply.

'It's something of an emergency; my editor's asked if I can come on the tour tomorrow, along with our Royal correspondent. I'm a special features writer myself. You moved, have you, David? Not your old number, this.'

'How did you get this number?' Mycroft asked, forcing out every word through suddenly leaden lips.

'It is David Mycroft, isn't it? From the Palace? I'd feel a total fool talking about this to anyone else. David?' 'How did you get this number?' he asked again, the constriction in his throat drying his words. He had supplied it to the Palace switchboard for use only in an emergency.

'Oh, we usually get whatever we want, David. So I'll turn up tomorrow to join the rest of the reptiles, if you'll make the necessary arrangements. My editor would be furious if I couldn't find some way of persuading you. Was that your son I spoke to on the phone? Sorry, silly question. Your son's at university, isn't he, David?' Mycroft's throat was now desiccated, unable to pass any words.

'Or a colleague, perhaps? One of your high-flyers? Sounded as if I'd woken him from bed. Sorry to have disturbed you both so very late at night, but you know how editors are. My apologies to your wife…'

The journalist prattled on with his confection of innuendo and enquiry. Slowly Mycroft withdrew the telephone from his ear and dropped it back into its cradle. So they knew where he was. And they would know who he was with, and why. After the visit of the Vice Squad he had known it would happen sooner or later. He'd prayed it would be much later. And he knew the press. They wouldn't be satisfied with just himself. They'd go for Kenny, too, his job, his family, his private life, his friends, everybody and anybody he'd ever known, even through his dustbins in search of all the mistakes he had ever made. And who hadn't made mistakes? They would be remorseless, unstinting, uncompromising, unspeakable. Mycroft wasn't sure he could take that sort of pressure; he was even less sure he had the right to ask Kenny to take it. He wandered over to the window and glanced up and down the darkened street, searching the shadows for any hint of prying eyes. There was nothing, nothing that he could sec at least, but it wouldn't be long, maybe as soon as tomorrow.

Kenny had fallen asleep again, innocent and unaware, his body twisted in the sheets as only young people can manage. All they had wanted was to be left alone, yet it was only a matter of time before others came to tear them apart. As he lay beside Kenny, trying to share his warmth, he shivered, already feeling the exposure. The real world no longer lay beyond Kenny's doorstep, it was forcing itself right inside the room. Urquhart had arrived back late from the diplomatic reception to find Sally waiting for him, chatting over a plastic cup of coffee with a couple of Protection Squad officers in what passed as their office: a cramped closet-sized room just off the entrance hall. She was perched on the corner of their desk, supported by her long and elegant legs, which the seated detectives were admiring with little sign of reticence.

'My apologies for disturbing you at your work, gentlemen,' he muttered tetchily. He realized he was jealous, but felt better as the detectives sprang to their feet in evident confusion, one of them spilling the coffee in his haste.

'Good evening, Prime Minister.' Her smile was broad, warm, showing no after-effects of their previous meeting's misunderstanding.

'Ah, Miss Quine. I was forgetting. More opinion polls?' He attempted an air of distraction.

'Who do you think you're kidding?' Sally muttered from the corner of her mouth as they made their way from the room. He arched an eyebrow.

'If they thought you'd really forgotten about a late-night meeting with a woman who had a figure like mine, they'd send for the men in white coats.'

'They are not paid to think but to do as I tell them,' he responded waspishly. He sounded as if he meant every word, and Sally felt alarmed. She decided to change the subject.

'Talking of opinion polls, you're six points ahead. But before you start congratulating yourself, I have to tell you that the King's tour will blow that lead right out of the water. It's going to be one heck of a circus – lots of hand-wringing and talk of compassion. Frankly, not a game where your side fields a strong team.'

'I'm afraid His Majesty is going to have distractions of his own before the week is out.' 'Meaning?' 'His press officer and close friend, Mycroft, is a homosexual. Shacked up with an air steward.' 'So what? It's no crime.' 'But sadly the story is just dribbling out to the press, and in their usual disreputable fashion they will be bound to make him wish he were a simple criminal. There's not only the deceit of his family – apparently his poor wife has been forced to leave the marital home after more than twenty years of marriage in disgust at what he's been up to. There's also the security angle. A man who has access to all sorts of sensitive information, state secrets, at the heart of our Royal Family, has lied his way right through the regular vetting procedures. Laid himself wide open to blackmail and pressure.' Urquhart was leaning on the wall button which would summon the private lift to the top-floor apartment. 'And then, most serious of all, is deceit of the King. A lifelong friend, whom he has betrayed. Unless, of course, you wish to be uncharitable and conclude that the King knew all along and has been covering up to help an old friend. Messy.' 'You're not implying that the King, too-'

'I imply nothing. That's the job of the press,' he responded, 'who, I confidently predict, by the end of the week will be wading in it.'

The lift doors were open, beckoning. 'Then why wait, Francis? Why not strike now, before the King sets off and does all that damage?'

'Because Mycroft is no more than a dunghill. The King needs to be pushed not from a dunghill but from a mountain top, and by the end of his tour he will have climbed about as high as he's going to get. I can wait.'