Read The House of Cards Complete Trilogy Online
Authors: Michael Dobbs
The House of Cards Complete Trilogy (75 page)
“You!”
“Me.” He nodded. “It’s been a long time, Francis. Seems like a lifetime ago, almost a different world.”
“Bizarre bedfellows, a King and a low-born thug like you.”
“Needs must.”
“I suppose you intend to publish and promote the Royal witterings.”
“Possibly, Francis. But not to the exclusion of other important news.”
For the first time Urquhart noticed that Landless held something in his hand…a clutch of papers?
“Photos, Francis. You know about photos, don’t you?”
Landless held them out toward Urquhart, who took them as though offered a goblet of hemlock. He studied them in complete silence, unable to engage his tongue even if he had found the words.
“There seems to have been an outbreak of this sort of thing recently, don’t you think, sir?” Landless offered.
“Regrettably,” the King responded. “Francis, you’ll recognize your wife, of course. The other person, the one underneath—sorry, on top in the one you’re looking at now—is an Italian. Possibly you’ve met him. Sings, or some such nonsense. And doesn’t draw his curtains properly.”
Urquhart’s hands were trembling such that the photographs were in danger of falling from his grasp. With an angry cry he crushed them within his fist and hurled them across the room. “I’ll disown her. People will understand, sympathize. That’s not politics!”
The King could not restrain his snort of contempt.
“I sincerely hope you’re right, Frankie,” Landless continued. “But I have my doubts. People will find it very lumpy porridge when they find out about your own outside interests.”
“Meaning?” A haunted edge was creeping into Urquhart’s eyes.
“Meaning a particular young and very attractive lady who has not only been seen a lot in Downing Street since you got there, but who has also recently made a huge killing on the foreign exchanges. Anyone might think she knew something—or someone—on the inside. Or will you try to disown her, too?”
The cheeks were suddenly drained, the words tumbling between trembling lips. “How on earth…? You couldn’t possibly know…”
A huge bearlike arm was placed around Urquhart’s shoulders and Landless lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. As if on cue, the King walked over to a window and turned his back on them, preoccupying himself with the view of his garden.
“Let you in on a little secret, old chum. You see, she’s been my partner as well as yours. I have to thank you. Did very nicely out of the currency wobbles, switched out of sterling just in time.”
“This isn’t necessary,” he gasped, bewildered. “You could have done just as well with me…”
Landless looked the other man carefully up and down. “Nope. ’Fraid you’re not my type, Francis.”
“Why, Ben? Why are you doing this to me?”
“How many reasons do you want?” He raised his hand to count off the pudgy fingers. “Because you so obviously enjoyed treating me like shit. Because Prime Ministers come and go, as you’ll soon be gone, while the Royal Family endures.” He nodded his huge head in the direction of the King’s back. “And perhaps mostly because he welcomed me, just as I am, Big Bad Benjamin from Bethnal Green, without looking down his nose, when I was never good enough for you or your high and mighty wife.” He twisted over his hand so that it became an upturned claw. “So I’m squeezing your balls, as hard as I can.”
“Why? Oh, why?” Urquhart continued to moan.
Landless’s fist closed tight. “Because they’re there, Francis. Because they’re there.” He chuckled. “Speaking of which, I have good news of Sally.”
Urquhart could only raise mournful eyes in inquiry.
“She’s pregnant.”
“Not by me!” Urquhart gasped.
“No, not by you.” The voice, which had patronized, now sneered. “Seems you’re not man enough for anything.”
So he knew about that, too. Urquhart turned away from his antagonist, trying to hide the humiliation, but Landless was in full pursuit.
“She’s played you for the fool you are, Frankie. In politics, and in bed—or wherever it was. You shouldn’t have used her. All that brains and beauty, and you threw it away.”
Urquhart was shaking his head, like a dog trying to rid itself of an unwanted collar.
“She’s got new business, new clients, new capital. And a new man. It’s a different life for her, Frankie. And being pregnant, too…well, you know what women are like about things like that. Or rather you don’t, but take it from me. She’s an exceptional and very happy lady.”
“Who? Who did she…?” He seemed unable to finish.
“Who did she prefer to you?” Landless chuckled. “You idiot. You still can’t see it, can you?”
Urquhart’s whole body had shrunk, his shoulders sagged and his mouth gaped open. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, take it in.
A look of triumph suffused the publisher’s rubbery face. “I’ve beat you at everything, Frankie. Even with Sally.”
Urquhart had an overwhelming, primal desire to crawl away, to find a dark place, any place, to bury his humiliation as quickly and as deeply as he could manage, but he couldn’t depart, not yet. There was one more thing he had to do first. A final chance, perhaps, to buy a little time. He made an attempt at straightening his shoulders and walked stiffly across the room until he was facing the King’s back. His face was contorted with the effort and he drew a deep, gulping breath. “Sir, I have changed my mind. I withdraw my request for a dissolution.”
The King spun round on his heel, like an officer on parade. “Oh, do you, Prime Minister? Damned difficult that, I’ve already set the wheels in motion, you see. Prime Minister’s right to demand an election, of course, the Constitution’s clear about that. Can’t for the life of me remember the bit where it says he’s allowed to call one off. Anyway, I’m the one who dissolves Parliament and signs the Royal Proclamation, and that’s just what I’m going to do. If you find my actions objectionable on constitutional or personal grounds, I’m sure I can rely on your vote during the abdication debate.”
“I shall withdraw my proposals for constitutional reform,” Urquhart uttered in exhaustion. “If necessary, I shall make a public apology for any…misunderstanding.”
“Decent of you to offer, Urquhart. Saves me and Mr. Landless here insisting on it. I would like the apology made when you introduce the Abdication Bill.”
“But there’s no need. You win. We can turn the clock back…”
“You still don’t understand, do you? I am going to abdicate, whether you want that or not. I am not the right man for this task I was born to; I don’t have the self-restraint required of a King. I’ve come to terms with that. My abdication will protect the Crown and all it stands for much more effectively than if I try to muddle my impatient way through the murky constitutional waters. My son has already been sent for and the regency papers are being drawn up. He is more patient than I, younger, more flexible. He will have a better chance of growing into the great King I shall never be.” He prodded his own chest. “It’s the best thing for me, the man.” The finger turned on Urquhart. “And it is also the best damned way I can devise of destroying you and everything you stand for.”
Urquhart’s lip trembled. “You used to be an idealist.”
“And you, Mr. Urquhart, used to be a politician.”
Epilogue
There was a knock on the front door, a soft, tentative sort of rapping. Kenny put down his book and went to answer it. The door opened and there, on the darkened doorstep, wrapped in a new overcoat against the blustery rain, stood Mycroft.
Mycroft had prepared his explanations and apologies carefully. With the announcement of the abdication and election, things had changed. The press had new fish to gut and fry and would leave them alone, if Kenny could understand. And forgive. But as he looked up at the other man he could see the pain deep within the startled eyes, and his words deserted him.
They stood facing each other, each afraid of what the other might say, not wanting to expose once again the scarcely healed wounds. It seemed to Mycroft several lifetimes before Kenny finally spoke.
“Are you going to stand out there all sodding night, David? The bears’ tea will be getting cold.”
THE END
Copyright © 1994, 2014 by Michael Dobbs
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The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
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Originally published in 1994 in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers.
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The Final Cut
“That we shall die, we know; ’tis but the time
And drawing days out, that men stand upon.”
—Brutus, William Shakespeare’s
Julius Caesar
Introduction
The
Final
Cut
was written in 1994. All these years later the British are still arguing about Europe, the Cypriots have discovered a vast ocean of hydrocarbon wealth beneath the Mediterranean, and the Greeks and Turks are still arguing about the future of that sadly divided island. What I also hope the reader will find timeless is the enduring wickedness of FU.
Prologue
Troodos Mountains, Cyprus—1956
It was late on an afternoon in May, the sweetest of seasons in the Troodos, beyond the time when the mountains are muffled beneath a blanket of snow but before the days when they serve as an anvil for the Levantine sun. The spring air was filled with the heavy tang of resin and the sound of the breeze being shredded on the branches of great pines, like the noise of the sea being broken upon a pebbled shore. But this was many miles from the Mediterranean, almost as far as is possible to get from the sea on the small island of Cyprus.
These were good times, a season of abundance even in the mountains. For a few weeks in spring the dust of crumbling rock chippings that passes for soil becomes a treasury of wildflowers—erupting bushes of purple-flowered sword lily, blood-dipped poppies, alyssum, the leaves and golden heads of which in ancient times were supposed to effect a cure for madness.
Yet nothing would cure the madness that was about to burst forth on the side of the mountain.
George, fifteen and almost three-quarters, prodded the donkey further up the mountain path, oblivious to the beauty. His mind had turned once again to breasts. It was a topic that seemed to demand most of his time nowadays, depriving him of sleep, causing him not to hear a word his mother said, making him blush whenever he looked at a woman, which he always did straight between her breasts. They had an energy source all their own, which dragged his eyes toward them, like magnets, no matter how hard he tried to be polite. He never seemed to remember what their faces looked like; his eyes rarely strayed that far. He’d marry a toothless old hag one day. So long as she had breasts.
If he were to avoid insanity or, even worse, the monastery, somehow he would have to do it, he decided. Do IT. Before he was fifteen and three-quarters. In two weeks’ time.