Michael Dobbs - The Final Cut

From out in the corridor a woman's voice replied; it carried no hint of threat. Maria opened the door but kept it on the chain.

'I've brought a message for Tom,' the woman announced, addressing the eye and loose strand of hair which appeared around the door.

Tom. The password to Maria's new life. Resolved, she slipped the chain and slowly opened the door. It was Claire. Maria didn't fully recognize her, but Claire had already recognized the shirt – so it was true, they were lovers. The legs were great, long and finely toned. Tom always had appreciated good legs. 'I think I'd better come in. Both you and I are a little too exposed here in the corridor.'

The shirt, the legs and the attractive face with its long and darkly rumpled hair made way.

'Hello, I'm Claire Carlsen,' she said, extending her hand. 'Francis Urquhart's PPS.'

Instantly Maria took a step back and her look of sleepy half recognition turned to sharp disfavour. 'Get out. I have nothing to say to you.'

'But I have something to say to you.' Claire held her ground. 'Something for Tom.'

'Francis Urquhart wouldn't lift a finger to help Tom.' 'You're absolutely right. But I would.'

'You?' She made no attempt to disguise her ill-feeling. 'Why?'

How could she explain, to Maria of all people? 'Perhaps because in helping him I may be able to help myself.'

Maria studied the other woman. The blonde features were so different from her own. The salon-chic hair, the Italian shoulder bag, the considered, discreetly expensive style. Everything Maria was not. She had many reasons for distrusting this other woman, but there were also the raw eyes which said Claire hadn't slept, not since she'd heard of Tom's arrest and understood why Corder had been so keen to ensure that the driver was well out of trouble's reach. Trouble Corder knew to expect. Trouble which he must have planned. And behind Corder stood only one master.

'I don't believe I want to help anyone associated with Francis Urquhart,' Maria said firmly.

'We are all associated with Francis Urquhart, whether we like it or not. Tom above all.'

Maria stood in the middle of the bedroom, her arms folded across the shirt, aggression squeezed aside by her concerns for Tom and, perhaps, feminine intuition about this woman. 'You would betray Urquhart?'

'I prefer to think of it as being true to myself. I don't think I have been at times in these past weeks. I want to make up for it.' 'How?' 'By warning Tom. His arrest was no accident. There were politics behind it. Downing Street politics.' 'Where's your proof?' 'I have none. It's no more than a suspicion.' 'Not much to go on.' 'Enough for me to take the very considerable risk of driving through the night to come here.' 'Risk?'

'If Francis found out, there wouldn't be much point in going back.'

'This could simply be a ruse, a distraction of some sort. Another trick.'

'Please. Let Tom decide that. Tell him I think it was Urquhart.' Maria made no reply.

'One other thing,' Claire continued. 'Urquhart knows you are lovers. He'll certainly use it against you if he needs to.' 'Don't try to threaten me.' There was anger now. 'I'm trying to save you.' 'He can't prove a thing!'

'My advice to you is to stay out of his bed until the election is over. And stay out of his shirts.'

Maria started, looked down at her nightwear and then back at Claire, her intuition suddenly wide awake. 'He said there had been someone who'd hurt him. Someone in politics, very different from me.' She studied the tired eyes closely, trying to find the woman within. 'Someone who would know his shirts.' 'Someone who still cares for him very much.'

'We have more in common than I thought,' Maria acknowledged grimly. 'He still thinks about you.' 'And I still think about him, as you see.'

'But more about yourself.' Maria's tone carried accusation.

'Perhaps. And particularly about my family.' She hadn't intended all this self-exposure and sharing of secrets, she wasn't sure it had helped. 'What are you going to do?' 'What are you going to do?' 'I'm not sure.'

'Funny thing is,' Maria replied, showing her the door, 'neither am I.' A photograph of a grizzled old Cypriot dominated the front page of the Independent. He was seated on a splay-footed dining chair, old military beret pulled askew over his brow, a gap-tooth smile splitting his walnut face. A battered musket of pre-1914 vintage was propped against one knee and a lissom sixteen-year-old schoolgirl seated on the other. By such an army were the British being humbled, 'held to ransom by a combination of hockey stick and blunderbuss,' as the Independent claimed.

The Sun was less tactful, 'FU! SAY CYPOS' ran its headline. Of the carnival atmosphere amongst the Greeks there was much coverage; of the growing fear and suffering amongst the British troops very little.

The message of the media was unanimous. Francis Urquhart: from triumph to turkey. Two days is a long time in Fleet Street.

'So what is the military solution, Air Marshal Rae?'

A smell of furniture polish lingered throughout the Cabinet Room; it takes more than war to disrupt a Whitehall cleaning schedule. Over the satellite link to COBRA came the sound of an apologetic cough. 'That's difficult, Prime Minister.'

'Difficult?' Urquhart snapped. 'You're telling me you can't handle this?'

Across the Cabinet table, Youngblood began to colour. Out of sight, the climate was changing in Cyprus, too. The Air Vice-Marshal was a man minted at Harrow and moulded by his passion for the brutality of croquet; an unsuitable case for bullying. Rae blew his nose stubbornly, a noise which across the link sounded like a bull preparing to resist the matador's goad.

'Difficult, Sir, because as you will remember this was an expedition which I recommended against.' 'Schoolgirls!'

'Precisely. And I cannot envisage a military solution which would not risk endangering the lives of either those schoolgirls or my men, or both.' 'Are you telling me you can find no solution?' 'Not a military one. A political solution, perhaps.'

'You're suggesting I negotiate with a bunch of pirates?'

'They're not exactly that, Prime Minister. Which is part of the trouble. They have no clear leadership, no individual with whom to negotiate. These are simply ordinary Cypriots united around a common purpose. To get us out.' 'What about President Nicolaou?'

'Seems they want him out, too. It's difficult to find much enthusiasm for politicians in this part of the world right now. Sir.'

Urquhart ignored what he was sure was the intentional irony. He needed Rae. 'I have worked hard to bring peace to the island. If they throw out Nicolaou, they throw out the peace deal with him.'

They've never had peace, not in a thousand years. They're the sort who use sticks of dynamite even to go fishing. They'd manage to live without the treaty.'

'Then if they want a fight, Air Marshal, I suggest we'd better give them one.' 'How does the defendant plead? Guilty, or not guilty?'

Layers of dust and silence hung across the veneered courtroom, which was packed. Thousands more had congregated outside. The march had not happened today, they were needed here. Sunlight streamed in through the high windows, surrounding the dock in a surrealistic halo of fire as though Channel 4 were filming a contemporary adaptation of Joan of Arc. Did the defendant have anything to say before he was burnt? 'Not guilty!'

Others apart from Francis Urquhart seemed prepared for a fight. 'If you can't get to the convoy, Air Marshal, then get the convoy to you. Drive it out. Smash the blockade. Call their bluff.' Red-hot coals seemed to roll around Urquhart's tongue.

'You're willing to risk all those lives on a hunch they might be bluffing?'

'Strafe the ridge. Keep their heads low. Blow them off if necessary.' He spat the coals out one by one.