Michael Dobbs - The Final Cut

You couldn't keep him down, though. He'd been involved in every reshuffle since and now the hounds of hazard had slipped the leash again. Alarums would be ringing all around Westminster, causing grown men to cringe. He studied the telephone in his hand, his features drenched in disbelief. He hadn't known it was today, right this minute, with calls reaching out from Downing Street to summon the good and the gone while she jammed the line with waffle about how it was such a pity because she truly admired Tom Makepeace and… 'Get off the bloody phone!' he screamed. He was still in his shirt sleeves when he opened the front door. By the lack of subtlety in the creases, she suspected he might have ironed it himself.

'You're going to hate me for pestering you at home.' From two steps up Tom Makepeace studied her, still munching his toast. She was tossing her dark hair nervously, the morning sun catching colours of polished coal. The lips were full, puckered in concern, her arms clutched around her in a troubled manner which seemed to lift her breasts towards him. Her coyness was a rarity in Westminster, so were the jeans.

'I hope it's something important, Miss…?' He'd noticed the lack of a ring.

'Maria Passolides. A matter of life and death, in a way.'

But, damn it, this was the middle of his breakfast. 'If you have a problem, perhaps it would be best if you wrote to me with the details.'

'I have. I got a letter in return from an assistant saying thanks but you were too busy to deal with individual predicaments at the moment. He couldn't spell "predicaments".'

'We've had an enormous number of letters in the last few days. Mostly supportive, I'm glad to say, but far too many for me to handle personally. I apologize. Perhaps you'd care to telephone my office to arrange an appointment.' He brushed his hands dismissively of the crumbs.

'Done that, too. Five times. You're always engaged.'

He was losing this game to love, and on his service. 'It seems I'm likely to spend the whole morning apologizing to you, Miss Passolides. Tell me briefly how I might be able to help.' He did not forsake his high vantage point or invite her inside; there were so many troubled individuals, so little politicians could do, and already too many distractions from the extraordinary pile of unopened envelopes which had taken over his dining table. Yet as she talked, she touched something inside him, a pulse of interest. It was several minutes before he recognized it as lust.

'You must understand, Miss Passolides, it's a difficult time for politicians to get into the matter of missing graves, just when we seem to be on the point of peace in Cyprus.'

'That's where you couldn't be more wrong.' As she talked her diffidence had completely disappeared. 'It's not openness that will threaten peace but continuing uncertainty and any hint of a cover-up. Even the Turks have recognized that.'

He reflected on the force of her argument, his energies still weighed down by the thought of the unopened letters and unanswered calls which would pursue him for weeks to come. Life without the Ministerial machine was proving extraordinarily tiresome, with little scope for new crusades. It's all a long way from my constituency,' he offered weakly.

'Don't be so sure. There are nearly three hundred thousand Greek Cypriots in this country and a kebab shop or taverna in every high street. Overnight a politician could have an army at his side.' 'Or at his throat.'

'Beware of Greeks bearing grudges.' She stood laughing on the pavement. There was an unhewn energy, enthusiasm, impatience, passion, commitment, the raw edge of life in this woman. He liked that, and he liked her.

'It seems that the only way I'm going to get you and your army off my doorstep is to invite you in for a cup of tea. Then perhaps we can discuss the matter of whose side.' He stood aside to let her pass. 'And whose throat.' He declined his head as Urquhart strode across the threshold of Number Ten. Over the years the doorman had noticed that what had started as his brief nod of respect had developed into something closer to a cautious bow; as a good trade unionist he'd fought the tendency but found it irresistible, built upon generations of inbred class attitudes which instinctively recognized authority. Damn 'em all. The atmosphere had changed in Downing Street, especially when Elizabeth Urquhart was around, growing more formalized with the passage of time and Parliaments, a royal court dressed in democratic image. One day, the doorman reassured his wife, the great unwashed would stir and shake like a million grains of sand beneath Urquhart's feet and he would slip to his knees and be gone, buried beneath the changing tide of fortune. One day, someday, maybe soon. But in the meantime the doorman would continue to smile and bow a little lower, the better to inspect the shifting sands.

The door closed, shutting out the cries of inquisitive hunger from the press corps. They'd be thrown a few bones later. Before then, there were dishes to carve. Urquhart studied his watch. Good, the timing was perfect. He'd've kept Mackintosh waiting for exactly twenty minutes.

Jasper Mackintosh was standing in the comer of the hallway, tapping his hand-crafted shoe on the black-and-white floor tiles, trying with little success to hide his irritation. As the owner and publisher of the country's second largest and fastest-growing newspaper empire, he was more accustomed to being waited on than waiting, and after a lifetime of building and breaking politicians he was left in no undue awe by his surroundings. Several months previously he'd concluded that the time had come to start pulling the plug on Francis Urquhart – not that the Prime Minister had done anything politically damaging or offensive, simply that he'd been around so long that stories about him no longer sold newspapers. Change and uncertainty sold newspapers, and business dictated it was time for a little turmoil. Mackintosh was on a high, and in a hurry. Only last week he'd finally agreed the terms of purchase for the Clarion chain of newspapers, a lumbering loss-making giant staffed by clapped-out journalists working in clapped-out plant for a clapped-out readership, yet which offered well-known titles and great potential. The journalists could be paid off, new plant could be constructed, a new readership bought through heavy advertising and discounting, but the cost was going to be high, many tens of millions, and there was no room in Mackintosh's world for standing still. He had to get the money men off his back. That meant headlines, happenings, histrionics and new heroes. Sentimentality was a sin.

Mackintosh had already decided that Urquhart had lost this morning's game, and not simply for starting it twenty minutes late. He assumed the Prime Minister wanted to rekindle the relationship, perhaps give him an exclusive insight into the reshuffle in exchange for sympathy. No chance. In Mackintosh's world of tomorrow, Francis Urquhart didn't feature. Anyway, where was the courtesy, the deference he expected from a supplicant? Urquhart simply grabbed him by the elbow and hustled him along the corridor.

'Glad you could make it, Jasper. I haven't got a lot of time, got to dispatch a few of the walking wounded, so I'll come straight to the point. Why have you directed your muck spreaders into Downing Street?' 'Muck spreaders?' 'Driven by your editors.'

'Prime Minister, they are souls of independent mind. I have given countless undertakings about interfering…'

'They are a bunch of brigands and whatever the state of their minds, you've got them firmly by the balls. Their thoughts tend to follow.' Suddenly Urquhart called a halt to the breathless charge down the passageway. He hustled Mackintosh into the alcove by the Henry Moore and looked him directly in the eye. 'Why? Why are you writing that it's time for me to go? What have I done wrong?'