The House of Cards Complete Trilogy (105 page)

Her hand went to her throat in alarm. From six feet away the barrel waved, fell, once, twice, three times, indicating the buttons on her blouse. He nodded as her fingers found them; she was nervous, trembling, had trouble unfastening the first. The others came away more easily.

The barrel flicked to the left, then the right as though brushing her shoulders, and her bra straps fell. The whole garment dropped to the floor to join the blouse. She shivered as a breeze from off the sea, soaked in the scent of jasmine, crept through the open window and across her bare skin. Her nipples tightened, and so did the lines of his mouth.

Remorselessly the barrel continued its march across her body. She stepped out of her skirt and was left standing in only her underwear, her arms crossed around her as though in penitence.

Again, the barrel. She didn’t answer its call this time, hesitating at the final barrier, but the barrel beckoned again, more impatiently, violently. And she did as it commanded, her breasts falling generously forward as she bent to obey. She stood, her feet apart, her legs and all his thoughts leading to but one carefully shaven point.

He stared for a long while; she felt as though she were melting inside. Then he gave an epic grunt.

“You want the job?”

“
Yes
, Kyrie.”

“Good. My brother Dimitri says you’re imaginative. Come and prove it. Then we’re going to go and smash the Government.”

Twenty-Nine

Loyalty is for dogs.

Claire’s journey had been tiring, its purpose—Jeremy Critter—tiresome. He was one of life’s natural critics, the diminutive and fortyish Member of Parliament for South Warbury, who found it impossible even for a moment to hide his ambitions, still less his frustration at not having achieved them. He was a natural focus for media conjecture that he might join the Makepeace rebellion and it was speculation he encouraged since he could never resist having something new to say about himself. To pained inquiries from Downing Street he had replied in his usual blustering manner that his constituency association was applying considerable pressure and he was honor-bound to listen; in their view, he said, the Government of Westminster, of Francis Urquhart, seemed to be all too distant from the mist-filled reaches of South Warbury and lacking in concern. Perhaps if the Prime Minister had made some gesture of recognition for the loyal support that both the constituency and its Member had given over the years, they might have concluded otherwise, but in the circumstances, when loyalty was not repaid…

This was no more than Critter’s usual bumptiousness. His constituency association amounted to little more than a superannuated branch of the union of rural seamstresses sprinkled with a few old bowlers who hadn’t raised stumps in years; they’d do anything he cajoled them into, including, it seemed, jumping ship. With the desertion of Makepeace, Critter had seen his chance to squeak; Claire had volunteered as rat catcher.

She’d got herself invited as guest speaker to the association’s annual general meeting, a collection of fewer than thirty souls gathered in the back room of a pub. Beyond the partition wall behind her she could hear the ribald commentaries that accompanied a frame of snooker as, beside her, the association chairman rose to address the faithful. A gangling, stooped former colonel, he took a large brass fob watch from the top pocket of his jacket and laid it on the table in front of him as though waiting for the evening artillery barrage to commence.

Business began. Reports on the state of association finances—“a balance of fourteen and threepence. I beg your pardon, ladies, that should be fourteen pounds thirty
pee
…deteriorated…further deteriorated…may have to consider closure of the office and we were all very sad to see Miss Robertson go.” And a row about whether the ladies’ luncheon club should allow in gentlemen members. “At our age, don’t make a lot of difference,” one progressive soul offered. “And since there are no nominations for new holders of office,” the Chairman was continuing, raising his voice above the unsavory language that was beginning to filter through from the snooker table next door, “I’d like to suggest that the present office holders simply continue.”

“Can’t do that,” a voice objected from behind an active pile of knitting.

“And why not, pray?” the Chairman inquired.

“Miss Tweedie, our Vice President,” the knitting continued. “She passed away last week.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Does make it difficult, I suppose…”

On Claire’s other side, Critter beamed at them all like a dutiful son. No wonder he had them in his pocket. Could buy the lot for forty quid a year and a bus outing to Minehead. And this was the hotbed of rebellion that threatened to make national headlines by pulling behind Tom Makepeace? “Not inevitable,” Critter explained to her as the meeting almost came to blows about the projected car boot sale. “But they feel so isolated, unappreciated. If only the Government could find some way of showing its concern for this constituency…”

“Like making you a Minister,” she whispered.

“Are you offering?”

“No.”

His jaw—what there was of it—hardened. “I value what Francis has been able to do in his many years most highly, of course. Pity he doesn’t seem to value me. But this isn’t personal, you understand. My association is genuinely disaffected.”

“So tell them to stop it,” she demanded. “A word from you and they’d get straight back to crocheting tea cozies.”

“I shall listen, not instruct,” he muttered pompously. “My association is very traditional. Likes to make up its own mind. On principle.”

The Chairman was drawing to the end of his remarks. Soon Critter would be on his feet. His body had turned half away from her, its language spoke of defiance, of a man preparing to leap. And he had never been able to resist jumping into a headline.

“Such a pity for you,” she whispered.

“What is?”

“Your association and its principles.”

“What d’you mean?”

“I was simply wondering, Jerry, how these dear little old ladies will react to the fact that their conscientious Member takes so much work home with him.”

“What are you going on about, woman?”

“That new secretary of yours. Taking her home with you, to your apartment in Dolphin Square. Every lunchtime.”

“For work. Nothing else.” He was staring straight ahead, talking out of the corner of his mouth, unwilling to meet her eyes.

“Of course. It’s simply that you men don’t understand the problem. You make so little provision for women at Westminster and force us into such overcrowded surroundings that all we have to do while we’re queuing to wash our hands is gossip. You’d be amazed at the rumors that get around.”

“Like…what?” His teeth were gritted, his complexion draining like a chicken on a production line.

“You know, mostly missed periods and missing Members. Like why you missed Standing Committee last Wednesday. And why a pair of your monogrammed boxer shorts fell out of her handbag while she was searching for her lipstick. We all laughed; she said you’d been in something of a hurry…”

“For God’s sake!”

“Don’t worry. I can think of very few circumstances in which I would be tempted to betray the secrets of the ladies’ locker room. Very few. It’s like a confessional.”

He swallowed hard.

“Just as I’m sure, Jerry, you can think of very few circumstances in which you would be tempted to betray our party.”

The Chairman was finished now, was tapping the glass of his watch, while the flock applauded for its Member to rise and speak.

As Claire made the long and lonely drive back to London, she reflected that rarely had she heard such a comprehensive and carefully argued endorsement of the need for party loyalty than the one delivered that night by her colleague, the Honorable and Missing Member for South Warbury.

***

The ninety-nine square miles of British sovereign territory located within Cyprus and deemed vital to the security of Old Blighty consists of a number of fragments, like a mosaic left incomplete by a bored artisan. Within the two main bases of Dhekelia and Akrotiri lies a host of facilities central to the defense effort, from radar-based intelligence-gathering operations and an airfield capable of accommodating the largest military transport and reconnaissance planes, to a full-sized cricket pitch, a Royal Military Police jail, seven schools, and several pubs. Each is separated from the other, some facilities are surrounded by barbed wire, some are not. In between there are many other facilities, including terraces of neat cubicle houses, fruit farms, ancient ruins, and several Cypriot villages.

There are no signposts or other markers to indicate the frontier between British and Cypriot territories, except for Catseyes. The British seem to have a passion for marking the middle of their roads in this manner, the Cypriots do not. There it begins, and ends.

The aspect of the bases is beautiful, the duty is dull. And security is a nightmare. In the event of civil unrest, the British resort to cordoning off a few of their facilities as best they can, leaving by far the greatest area without guard or protection, and trusting in the traditional moderation and common sense of the Cypriots. Such trust is usually well-founded.

Thus, when confrontation ensued at the gates of the British airfield that lies adjacent to the salt flats of Akrotiri, the proceedings had an inevitable air of unreality. Security at the gates to the airfield, which is otherwise surrounded by a double fence of chain link topped with barbed wire, was provided by two poles, painted red and white, acting as traffic barriers and swung from a central control point, flanked on either side by two small concrete guard posts that were usually unoccupied, with a sign advising that a “Live Armed Guard” (sic) was on duty. Additional defenses were provided by several well-watered rosebushes. In normal circumstances the security would not have slowed, let alone stopped, a speeding rabbit, so on this day the system was augmented by a springy coil of razor wire swung in front of the gate, a tripling of the guard (to six), and the drawing up of an ancient white Land Rover with canvas roof and languid blue lights. Far smoother, less dated Mitsubishi patrol vehicles were available, but this was deemed to be an essentially British occasion.

The confrontation commenced with the arrival shortly after eight in the morning of the entire population of the village of Akrotiri, not a difficult logistical challenge since the village lay only some two hundred yards from the gates of the base. The village economy was dominated by the base, for which it supplied a variety of eating and drinking establishments including a Chinese takeout, a grocery store, and a unisex hairdresser.

“
Elenaki mou
, what the hell are you doing here?”

“I am protesting against British exploitation.”

There was a pause in the interrogation as the questioner, a corporal who was standing guard behind the razor wire, considered the implications of what he had just heard. He was confused. He and Eleni, an attractive doe-eyed girl of nineteen, had spent the previous evening at the Akrotiri Arms pub and she had mentioned nothing of such matters then. In any event, they were engaged to be married as soon as he had finished his tour of duty. He was looking forward to it; he’d already put on five pounds.

“No talking on guard duty!” the Station Warrant Officer snapped, who seemed to have eyes in his arse. “The natives may be hostile.”

Three young boys, one of them Eleni’s younger brother, who had occupied the branches of an olive tree next to the guard hut, roared their defiance, their faces covered in huge grins and smears of aniseed.

Eleni seemed less impressed. Perhaps she took that from her mother, who stood directly behind her shoulder and who was never impressed. She spoke no English, never smiled but stared. At least, after much investigation, Billy, the corporal, assumed she stared, but it was difficult to be certain since her eyes faced in different directions and made him nervous. Yet in whichever direction, they never seemed to waver. He felt constantly under her scrutiny, wherever he stood. Billy balanced his SA80 automatic nervously in his hands as his beloved addressed the NCO.

“You’ve stabbed us in the back, Sergeant,” Eleni accused.

“It’s Station Warrant Officer, if you don’t mind, miss.”

“Then you have stabbed us in the back,
Station
Warrant
Officer
.” Her italics had an uncharacteristically sharp edge.

“If I ’ave, it’s been with me checkbook, miss.”

“You sell us to Turks!” The cry came from an aged man seated on top of an equally aged tractor, whose passion far exceeded his command of English. A solitary front tooth gave him a ferocious aspect. Many of the forty or so protesters raised their voices and waved arms in agreement.

The SWO marched slowly along his narrow front line, ten paces, turn and repeat, his boots beating a steady cadence on the tarmac, steadying his troops. “If they give you a hard time, remember, lads,” he growled. “Stick it in. Give it a twist. Then pull it out.”

“Billy doesn’t even get that when I’m being nice to him, Sergeant,” Eleni shouted across to him.

The soldier to Billy’s right snickered while Billy considered throwing himself upon the razor wire. The SWO turned on studded heel to face the protesters. Eleni’s mother stared directly at him, without taking her eye off Billy. She hadn’t got her teeth in, her gums were in constant motion as though still finishing her breakfast.

“Station Warrant Officer,” he insisted once more in a throaty voice. “Let’s have a little proper respect with this riot of yours, miss. Otherwise I might find myself forced to retaliate.”

“How?”

“Me and the lads might have to stop visiting your uncle’s pub, miss. Be a great pity, that.”

But he had lost the initiative once more. Shouts and gesticulations broke out among the Cypriots, their eyes raised skyward. The SWO looked up to see, a few hundred feet above him, the fierce yellow wings of a hang glider. It was a sport much practiced from the cliffs of Kourion a few miles along the coast, and this glider was pushing his luck. Not only was he well into unauthorized territory but he was also, except for his harness, completely naked, his golden-olive body clearly detailed against the outstretched wings.