The House of Cards Complete Trilogy (124 page)

“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 that floats.”

“He’d split the party.”

“Probably.” His eyes grew distant. “And then how they will sit around 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 that stiffened his body and fueled 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 burned 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 that had survived the blaze when his stick struck metal. It was the British military helmet that 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 amid the other odors was the reek of scorched flesh. He closed his eyes. Was this how it had been, with George and Eurypides? Burned 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 inquired, 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.

Passolides found the name at the top of the service sheet—now he recognized the officer in the photograph. Lieutenant, one day Prime Minister, Francis Ewan Urquhart.

And the second piece of paper. A primitive leaflet. Appealing to all to come tomorrow to the rally in Trafalgar Square.

At last Passolides knew the identity of the man he had been searching for. The man who had murdered his brothers. And, with a passion for Hellenic honor fermented over endless centuries, he knew what he had to do.

***

Mortima woke to find he had stolen from their bed again. She followed the noises to the narrow galley kitchen. He was busying himself at the refrigerator when she walked in.

“I am sorry if I disturbed you,” he apologized.

“Why can’t you sleep, Francis?”

“There seems so little to sleep for.” There was a finality in his tone. “Anyhow,” he offered in mitigation, “I was hungry.” He had before him a large slice of Dundee cake and cheddar cheese, a favorite childhood delicacy the family gillie always produced during their beats across the Highland moors in search of grouse and deer. It had been years, he’d almost forgotten the sharp-sweet flavor. He began to consume the pieces slowly and with considered relish.

“You pay your midnight feast more attention than you do me in recent days, Francis. You’ve locked yourself away from me, looked straight through me, you’ve neither heard me when I’ve spoken nor offered answers to my questions. There’s an anger, an impatience within you that drives you from my bed.”

“Bad dreams. They distract.”

“I’ve been your wife long enough to know it’s not dreams that bother you,” she rebuked.

“Go to bed, Mortima.”

He took another mouthful, but she would not be moved.

“You’re not running from your dreams, Francis, you’re no child. And neither am I. You’ve never been like this with me before.” Her distress was evident. “You are angry with me.”

“No.”

“Blame me for my folly with the letter.”

“No!”

“Think that I have helped destroy you.” She reproached him and reproached herself still more.

“We destroy ourselves. All that I have done would have been done whether the letter existed or not. And all that must be done, too.”

“What will you do?”

He looked at her but would not answer. He began munching again, carefully breaking morsels from both cheese and fruit cake, gathering up the crumbs.

“You shut me out.”

“There are some journeys we can only take on our own.”

“After all these years, Francis, it’s as though you no longer trust me.”

He pushed aside his plate and came to her. “Nothing could be further from my mind. Or from my heart. Through all these troubled times you have been the only one I could rely on, could reach for in the darkness and know you would be there. And if I’ve hurt you through my silence then the fault is mine, not yours, and I beg for your forgiveness. Mortima, you must know that I love you. That you are the only woman I have ever loved.” He said it with such force that there could be no doubting his sincerity.

“What will you do, Francis?” she repeated, demanding his trust.

“Fight. With all I have, for everything I have achieved.”

“In what way?”

“So many men spend their lives in fear of doing something wrong, of making error, that they do nothing except live in fear and slip uselessly away.” His eyes blazed contemptuous defiance. “I will not go meekly into the night. The world will hear of my going. And remember.”

“It sounds so very final, Francis. You scare me.”

“If my life were to end at this moment, Mortima, there would be only one regret, that I would be leaving you behind. Yet we both know that the time must come. What matters is what I leave behind, for you. A legacy. A pride. Dignity. A memory people will applaud.” He smiled. “And that Library.”

“I can’t imagine life without you.”

“As I cannot imagine life without all this.” He waved his arms around the most private trappings of power. “But there comes a time when the body is worn, the spirit tires, the sword is blunted by battle—and even love must have its rest. What survives, for those chosen few, is the name, even after all else has faded away. Immortality. I want you to trust me, Mortima. To support me in whatever it is I have to do.”

“I always have.”

“And know that whatever it is I do, I do for us both.”

“Then nothing has changed.” She seemed to relax, understanding bringing a measure of reassurance. She had always known he was not like other men; he lived by his own rules, it could come as no surprise to her that he intended to depart by his own rules, too. Whenever the time came. A time perhaps of his own choosing. She managed a smile as she reached for him.

He kissed her with great tenderness. “I have so many reasons to be grateful to you, I scarcely know where to start. But let me start with your cake. It’s delicious, Mortima. I think I shall have another slice.”

“I’ll join you. If I may.”

Forty-Eight

In the total darkness of fear and defeat, even a spark of misery can bring welcome light.

The morning broke wound-pink beyond the cupola of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and already the preparations had been under way for many hours. Road diversions had been posted along the route to Trafalgar Square, lamp posts and shop windows festooned with posters and his portrait, banners were being painted, reporters were turning phrases such as “an Armada of faith” and “the irresistible gale of revolution.” Makepeace was everywhere, the word upon all lips.

No one knew precisely how many would be joining Makepeace on the final stretch of his march from Watford or how many would be there to welcome him on his arrival, but after the derision that had been piled upon the West Midlands force following the fiasco in Birmingham, the capital’s Police Commissioner had decided it was not a time for taking chances. Although there was no indication of trouble beyond the pressure of unknown numbers, the fountains in Trafalgar Square had been emptied, the great pump rooms beneath inspected for suspect packages, the metal crowd barriers collected like supermarket trolleys in neat rows across the square. The population of pigeons, avian mongrels, complained at the unexpected clatter and noise, rising in feathery spirals of protest and darkening the sky before trying to settle once again, furious at the continued disruption. Their homeland was being invaded; for the day, at least, the square would be snatched from them.

Urquhart had bathed early, Mortima bringing him a great soup cup of tea in the bath while the steam and hot waters restored the color in his sleep-starved cheeks. She thought she heard him muttering, perhaps calling for her, but when she inquired he answered that he was simply practicing a few lines for his final election speech. She had noticed that the bulky draft provided by his team of speech writers remained untouched. “They believe I can’t win,” he explained, “and it shows.” Neither had he touched his Ministerial boxes.

By the time he had completed his ablutions with a meticulous manicure, as though he had all the time in the world at his disposal, the crowd barriers were being put in place and interlocked around the square. A small number were left at sensitive points around Whitehall and particularly near the entrance to Downing Street, just in case. To keep the hounds from the bear. But little trouble was expected; in less than a week Makepeace’s militia would be occupying the corridors of power as of right.

He selected from his wardrobe his favorite dark blue suit and a white cotton shirt, laying them out across his bed for inspection. He tried several silk ties against the suit; he wanted to wear the one Mortima had bought for him from the craft stalls beneath the castle in Edinburgh, a token from her last visit to the Festival, but it was hand-painted, a little florid perhaps. He put out his regimental tie instead. Then, attired in his silk dressing gown, he breakfasted. He was in good humor and of hearty appetite; the crossword was finished before his eggs had boiled.

There had been only two disputes concerning the organization of the rally that day. Superintendent Housego, the police officer responsible for security, would not allow into the square the two mobile kebab vans that had accompanied the march from its very first day. They were like mascots, Makepeace argued, veterans of some great battle who claimed their right to be present at the victory ceremony, but the Superintendent insisted that the congestion around them would be simply too great and potentially dangerous; in large crowds people could become so easily crushed, and in violent crowds such vehicles might become battering rams, barricades, or simply bonfires. No. Not worth the risk. Makepeace resolved the problem by inviting Marios and Michaelis, the two owner-drivers, to join him on the small podium that was being erected for his speech between the Landseer lions at the foot of Nelson’s Column. “And next week you can drive all the way up Downing Street,” he joked. It was the first time he had allowed himself even to hint that he would be there to greet them.