Michael Dobbs - The Final Cut

He sealed a fourth envelope. It was for Annita Burke's husband. A photograph of her and Riddington engaged in the sort of detailed discussions which were impermissible even under the loosest interpretations of collective responsibility. A double blow to the ranks of those who might succeed him.

'It is given to few to cast their shadow across the land. If you desire success then you must stand tall, not constantly be bending down to commiserate with the masses huddled in the shade. That is for nuns.' 'I am no nun.'

'But I wonder what you truly are, Claire. Whether you know yourself.'

'I am not you, Francis. Nor am I like you. That is why I want nothing from you. I already have what I want.' 'Which is?' 'A view of power. From the inside.' 'At the feet of a master.' 'A man who has destroyed himself.' 'Who may yet save himself.' 'I can't see how.'

'That's because, as you said, you are not like me. Because, after all, you are another who has turned away from me.' She could detect no animosity in his tone. He sealed another letter. To the editor of the Mail. In it was a copy of Max Stanbrook's birth certificate which showed him to be both illegitimate and a Jew. A doubly burdensome cargo which would surely sink his ship in the storm waters of a leadership contest. Pity. Urquhart liked Max Stanbrook and he was good. Perhaps too good, that was his problem.

'I haven't turned my back on you, Francis. I'm still here.' 'And I ask myself why.'

'Because I'm not a silly girl who flees in tears at the first sound of gunfire.' 'No. Leave that to the grown men of my Cabinet.'

'And because I can still learn from you. From all this mess. If you'll let me.' 'You want to watch the autopsy.'

'To find out how to do it better. When my turn comes.' 'Oh, you have ambition?'

'I thought for a while you'd destroyed it, turned me off politics and their ways. But I want to find a better way.' 'You won't have long in which to learn. But you may still have much to learn.' 'Such as?' 'Who do you think will lead the party after me?' 'Tom.' 'And if he doesn't want it? Or can't have it?' 'Stanbrook. Riddington, perhaps.'

'But you see, they have all…' – he straightened the pile of envelopes – 'destroyed themselves. They cannot succeed.' 'Then who?' 'I fear it leaves only Arthur.' 'Bollingbroke? He would be a disaster!' 'He's popular. After the party is thrashed at the election they'd cling to anything which floats.' 'He'd split the party.'

'Probably.' His eyes grew distant. 'And then how they will sit round their campfires in the depths of fiercest winter and bemoan the folly of turning on Francis Urquhart. Not such a bad chap after all, they'll say. A great chap, even. One of the finest.'

She hung her head in disbelief. 'You are a remarkable man. Why, you're trying to write history even…'

'Even from beyond the grave.' The clarity in his own thinking seemed to have brought about a remarkable transparency in her own. He rose and came around the desk to her. He took her arms. 'Kiss me?'

He intended to have her, there in the study. Desire ran through his veins, a renewed sense of life. And lust. The final flicker of a guttering candle, perhaps, but a new energy, an electricity which stiffened his body and fuelled his appetites. He would not back away this time.

She shook her head. 'Once, perhaps, Francis, but not now.' 'Have I misunderstood you?'

'No, you've misunderstood the time. And timing is everything.' It was well into the afternoon before they would allow Passolides to inspect the ruins of his home. He was allowed in with a fireman to see whether there was anything capable of salvage, before the place was boarded up.

It stank. He was surprised and disgusted at the overwhelming stench of rancid ashes and charred remnants of what a few hours before had been his life. It scraped his nostrils and stung his eyes, which began to pour.

'Upsetting, Sir,' the fireman commiserated, 'but think of it this way. You were lucky to be out of the property. Particularly at that time of the morning. Have insurance, did you?' Passolides detected the edge of suspicion.

'We'll have to put a report in. Some evidence that the fire was begun deliberately…'

The fireman prattled on as Passolides wandered desolate through the ruins, poking at the sodden ashes with his walking stick. 'Vangelis'' seemed so much smaller now that the upstairs floor had collapsed and all the partition walls had burnt down. Everything was black, charcoal, rafters and jagged wreckage scattered around like smashed bones at the bottom of a medieval burial pit. On a wall where the first floor had been, a washbasin hung at a drunken angle; the old enamel bath now lay overturned in his kitchen. In what had been his kitchen. He scratched, he prodded, hoping to find something of value which had survived the blaze when his stick struck metal. It was the British military helmet which had adorned the back of his door. Flattened like a plate. 'Vangelis'' had gone.

'Know of anyone who might want to burn you out, old man?'

Passolides was standing on the site of his food store. The walls had gone, the freezer had melted and all that remained amidst the other odours was the reek of scorched flesh. He closed his eyes. Was this how it had been, with George and Eurypides? Burnt by the same people, these British whose game of war and death never seemed to stop, even after all these years? 'They have taken everything from me.'

'Got nothing?' the fireman enquired, compassion beginning to squeeze aside the suspicion.

'My clothes. My stick,' Passolides responded. Then he remembered the gun. Tucked in his belt. He still had the gun. It hadn't all gone. 'Social services'll take care of you.'

'I have a daughter!' he spat, fiery proud of his independence; he needed nothing from these British. Then, more sadly: 'She'll be back tomorrow.'

He sank onto the seat of the overturned bath, his forehead coming to rest on his stick, a bent and bleary-eyed old man, overflowing with miseries and exhaustion. In his dark clothing and beret he seemed to melt into the soot-smeared surroundings as though he would never leave this place. The fire officer, wanting to check the stability of the party wall at the rear of the premises, left him to his private sorrow.

As Passolides contemplated the end of his world, something caught his eye, a figure standing in the screaming hole where yesterday had been the doorway. The stranger was clad in black leather and a motorcycle helmet with a courier's personal radio at his shoulder, and was calling his name. 'Package for Passolides.'

A clipboard was thrust at him and, in exchange for his signature, he was rewarded with a padded manila envelope. Without another word, the courier left.

The gnarled fingers fumbled as they sought to open the package. Tentatively he spilled the contents onto his lap. For a moment he did not understand. There was the photograph of Michael Karaolis, the young EOKA fighter with the defiant eyes and exposed neck around which in the morning they would put a noose. The photograph that, the night before, had hung on the restaurant wall. There was another photograph, a fading portrait of a young British army officer whom Passolides did not immediately recognize. And two scorched crucifixes that fell from his shaking fingers – God, how the memories pounded at him, made him gasp for breath, almost knocking him to the floor. The small engraved crosses were those he had given on their name days to George and Eurypides.

The dark world around Passolides seemed to stand still, only his tears had life, washing clean the ash-covered crucifixes as he retrieved them from the floor.

It was not finished. Two further pieces of paper slipped from the envelope. The first was a photocopy of a British Army service record, tracing the short career of a junior officer in a Scottish regiment from his induction in Edinburgh through service in Egypt. And onward to Cyprus. In 1956.