The Final Cut (35 page)

'Last night Greek Cypriot sources in London were demanding to know
if
Britain, whose deciding vote awarded the disputed area to the Turkish side, knew beforehand
of
the likely existence
of
oil

The response of the leading daily in Nicosia was far less conditional. In a banner headline across its front page, it announced simply:

'betrayed!'

They had organized a demonstration outside the Turkish Embassy in Belgrave Square. The call had gone out that morning on London Radio for Cyprus and even at short notice a band of nearly two hundred had gathered, even tried to get inside to deliver a letter of protest, but the entrance to the embassy was guarded by bomb-proofed security which saw them coming before they'd begun to cross the road. They were orderly; a single armed policeman from the Diplomatic Protection Group turned them back and they spent the morning staring sullenly and shouting sporadic protests from behind security barriers. By the weekend their numbers would have grown tenfold.

Passolides was not amongst them that morning. As so often in his life he'd ploughed a lonely furrow, taking himself not to the house of the hated Turk what was the point? - but to the gates of Downing Street, where the source of this latest betrayal could be found.

Had not the British betrayed his people more consistently than any other conqueror? Stealing the whole island for almost a century, stealing the bases for even longer. Stealing his brothers. And their graves. Now taking the oil. You knew what to expect from a thieving Turk, they made no pretence at their nature. An absolute, uncomplicated enemy who would spit in your eye as they sliced through your throat. You could trust them to be what they were. But the British! They showered you in hypocrisy, fought with weasel words. Smiled and talked of the rules of cricket as they shafted you and sold your homeland into slavery.

He'd been gripping the barrier by the great iron gates of Downing Street for nearly half an hour when a policeman, wondering at the intensity of the old man's concentration and whitened knuckles, approached him.

'What are you doing, grandad?'

'Minding my own business.'

'If you're standing there, it's my business too. What are you doing?'

'Waiting to see your Prime Minister.'

'You're in luck. He's just on his way out.'

As the Daimler rushed through the gates it slowed before entering the traffic of Whitehall, and Urquhart looked up from his papers to see an old man staring at him from across the barrier. Their eyes met, held each other for no more than a moment, but in that short time the force of those eyes burning ruby in hate had scorched across Urquhart's mind. And dimly, through the blast-proof windows, he heard the one word which the man's cracked voice hurled at him, and remembered its meaning.
'Prodoti-
i
-
i
-
i!
'

He recollected the first time he had encountered it - how could he forget? Carved into the chest of an eighteen-year-old boy they had dragged from the side of his family in the middle of his sister's marriage service and shot as he cringed against the church wall like a rat in a barn.

Traitor.

There are few obvious targets for an anti-British protest in Nicosia. British Leyland no longer exists, British Rail doesn't run that far, even intermittently. The British High Commission provides an exceptionally unpalatable opportunity, being stuck by the accident of invasion on a finger of land barely a hundred metres wide which squeezes past the armed watch towers of Nicosia Gaol on one side and the still more heavily armed watch towers of the Turkish Cypriot border patrols on the other. The chances of surprise are nil, the chances of success even poorer, the chances of a bullet from one side or the other excellent, so most Nicosian dissidents search for other options.

The British Council down from the Paphos Gate is scarcely more welcoming. Since the last riot on its doorstep it has been heavily fortified behind steel shutters from which bricks and bottles bounce pointlessly, even if the sentries in the barracks at the end of the street co-operate by turning a blind eye.

So Dimitri, who had responsibility for the organization but who had little concept of the Britishness of institutions such as Marks & Spencer and Barclays Bank, opted for British Airways and its glass-fronted operational headquarters which lay on the Avenue of Archbishop Makarios III.

The vanguard arrived soon after dusk, transported from the now-permanent camp of protest outside the Presidential Palace aboard a convoy of mopeds, vans, even taxis. Soon they were joined by many others on foot or using their own resources. The Word had spread.

An exceptional degree of discipline was evident in the early proceedings. Banners were handed out, instructions and advice issued. It helped, of course, that the stewards were theological students, many of whom were from the same village as Dimitri and his brother. An extended family. The Firm had been carefully constructed on foundations of rural solidarity and tribal loyalties; it wasn't going to fail its most famous son.

It also helped that the demonstrators far outnumbered the police, who seemed content to stand back and monitor proceedings. Several were smiling.

More demonstrators were arriving, the avenue was blocked. The police contingent began to concentrate its effort on diverting the traffic. One of the stewards chattered into a mobile phone, listened attentively, then nodded. Slowly his hand began to circle around his head, stirring the cauldron. The crowd, peaceful up to that point, began chanting, waving their banners, surging forward like a human oil slick on a flowing tide, lapping around the building and clinging to its plate-glass windows. The sound of oil was everywhere.

'British Out! Bones and Bases!'
they shouted; not very creative, perhaps, but there is little originality in anti-imperial protest.
'Make War, Not Peace'
was also much in evidence.

The windows, great sheets of glass set between concrete pillars, were pounded - they bent, buckled, bowed, but did not break, not until a sledgehammer had materialized and one by one they were all systematically shattered. Even then, the control was exceptional. They didn't ransack the offices; instead, the steward exchanged his mobile phone for a can of spray-paint and covered the walls and display units with slogans.

By the time he had stepped outside again, two barrels of oil had been positioned either side of the shattered doorway; from the lintel above was hanging a spittle-drenched effigy of Nicolaou. A placard around his neck stated simply:
Turk
Lover'.

The shouting reached a crescendo, the pressure of numbers was growing, it would be difficult to control for much longer. It was time. Into each of the barrels was dropped a flare, and out of each began to pour vast quantities of choking black smoke. Oil smoke, which gushed into the night air, smearing the faces of those standing nearby, infesting every corner of the shattered building and burning itself into the morning's headlines.

As soon as he saw the smoke, the senior police inspector on the scene began issuing his first substantive orders. Lights flashed, sirens moaned, a fire tender began to edge through the crowd. But already the protesters were beginning to melt away into the Nicosian night, mission accomplished, message delivered.

Not a single arrest was made.

Dark spots of hate were breaking out across the Cypriot night.

Three streets away, in the back of his official

Mercedes, Theophilos replaced the phone. A good evening's work. Exceptional work. God's work.

Francis Urquhart, when he heard about it, was of the same opinion.

Amidst the stormy seas of stratagem devised by man, outcrops of nonsense stick defiantly above the waves. None stuck more defiantly than the case of Woofy.

Woofy - in fact, his full name was Woofer - was a three-year-old King Charles spaniel, the pet
in loco infantis
of Mr and Mrs Peregrine Duckin who lived in comfortable retirement in a white stucco villa overlooking Coral Bay, a sand-strewn corner in the south west of the island. Their Greek was fragmentary, as were their relations with the indigenous population, which amounted to little more than a nodding acquaintance with several local traders, but a substantial number
of the five thousand or so civ
ilian Britons who lived in Cyprus did so in this area and they did not want for friends.

The Duckins were to need them. For when they returned from a bridge party organized by one of their more distant neighbours they discovered that their cherished villa had, inexplicably and without warning, burnt to the ground.

What was worse, there was no trace of the still more cherished Woofer. All night long they searched, crying his name, calling out across the bay, cursing for the fact that the Cypriot fire brigade seemed to have taken an unconscionable time to arrive, then crying some more. But Woofer was nowhere to be found.

Dawn rose as the Duckins stood amidst the smoking ruins of their home, imploring all passers-by for news of their beloved dog. One of those passers-by happened to be a freelance journalist enjoying a few days' break but, wherever intrepid journalists tread, disaster is sure to be found. He sympathized, listened carefully, took photographs, shared with them their inexplicable loss - although, in light of other anti-British outrages, the loss was perhaps -no, surely - less inexplicable than at first seemed. A story for its time, lacking nothing but raped nuns.

It duly appeared the following morning, splashed across the front page of Britain's leading tabloid. A forlorn British couple standing amidst the ruins of their shattered Cypriot dream. Caught between the growing crossfire.

And beneath a blazing headline.

'cypos ate my woofy.'

The effect of halogen lights spraying across old black brick at night gave the scene a distinctly monochrome cast. A little funereal, perhaps, Urquhart mused, but appropriately melodramatic. He adjusted his tie. Behind him, the Secretary of State for Defence stood starchly to attention. News cameras flashed as the Prime Minister stepped, stem of mouth, to the Downing Street microphones.

'Ladies and gentlemen, I have an important announcement to make. Events in Cyprus have taken a further turn for the worse. Not only has our High Commissioner still not been returned, but it is obvious that the Government in Nicosia is unable to guarantee the safety of British assets or personnel. Clearly the situation is being exploited by people of ill intent, and I have a duty to protect British citizens and military personnel. Therefore, with great reluctance and purely as a precautionary measure, I have been forced to place the British bases on a state of alert and restrict Cypriot access to them. British lives and property must be protected, and our troops will have full authority to do precisely that. This is a sensitive matter, and I ask you to treat it with the seriousness it deserves.'

The scrum of reporters in front of him swayed as they pushed in unison, hands thrust forward waving microphones, tape recorders and assorted electronic tendrils like a harvest of triffids. One scribe who looked as if he had only moments before clambered out of bed was all but bent double over the security barrier in his attempt to get as close as possible. 'Prime Minister, what does this all mean?'

'It's a message to troublemakers. Keep off our patch.'

'Doesn't this rattle sabres, raise the stakes, though?'

'The stakes have already been raised by others. Those who have kidnapped our High Commissioner. Who attacked British property and placed British lives in peril. I have a duty to respond.'

'To attack?'

'This is an entirely defensive measure.'

'Will the Cypriots see it that way?'

The expression around Urquhart's mouth grew yet more stiffly grim; he couldn't betray the ironic smile that played around the paths of his emotions. He knew the Cypriots, their passions - and their polemicists, in whose hands a state of alert would be turned into something akin to a force of invasion. This was going to get much, much worse before it got better. He couldn't smile, so he simply shrugged.

'Do you have the permission of the Cypriot President for this move?'

'I don't need it. Our bases in Cyprus are British sovereign territory. I no more need permission to put our troops there on alert than I would to move tanks across Salisbury Plain. I have, of course, informed him.'

'How did he react?'

In agony. With pleading. Said it would inflame the hotheads. Would play into the hands of those who opposed the peace deal, increase the pressure on British bases. Begged to be given a few more days to obtain the release of the High Commissioner. But he'd already had several days
...

'He regretted the necessity for this action. As do I. But men of goodwill everywhere will understand and must support this action. My first duty is to protect British interests.'

'Play hell with the island's tourist trade, Prime Minister.'