The Final Cut by Michael Dobbs

Author:Michael Dobbs
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2014-05-14T16:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Four

The game of politics usually proceeds by a succession of afterthoughts.

“Gaiters and gongs again tonight.” Urquhart sighed. He had lost count of the number of times he’d climbed into formal attire on a summer’s evening in order to exchange inconsequential pleasantries with some Third World autocrat who, as the wine list rambled on, would brag about his multiple wives, multiple titles, and even multiple Swiss bank accounts. Urquhart told himself he would much rather be spending his time on something else, something more fulfilling. But what? With a sense of incipient alarm, he realized he didn’t know what. For him, there was nothing else.

“I see they’re pegging out the lawn for that wretched statue.” Mortima was gazing out of the bedroom window. “I thought you’d told Max Stanbrook to stop it.”

“He’s working on it.”

“It’s preposterous,” she continued. “In a little over a month you will have overtaken her record. It’s you who should be out there.”

“She wasn’t supposed to lose, either,” he reflected softly.

She turned, her face flecked with concern. “Is all this Makepeace nonsense getting you down, Francis?”

“A little, perhaps.”

“Not like you. To admit to vulnerability.”

“He’s forcing my hand, Mortima. If I give him time to organize, to grow, I give him time to succeed. Time is not on my side, not when you reach my age.” With a silent curse he tugged at his bow tie and began again the process of reknotting it. “Claire says I should find some way of calling his bluff. Fly the flag.”

“She’s turning out to be an interesting choice of playmate.”

He understood precisely what she was implying. “No, Mortima, no distractions. In the past they’ve caused us so much anguish. And there are voices everywhere telling me I shall need all my powers of concentration over the next few months.”

“People still regard you as a great leader, Francis.”

“And may yet live to regard me as a still greater villain.”

“What is eating at you?” she demanded with concern. “You’re not normally morbid.”

He stared at himself in the mirror. Time had taken its undeniable toll; the face was wrinkled and fallen, the hair thinned, the eyes grown dim and rimmed with fatigue. Urquhart the Man—the Young Man, at least—was but a memory. Yet some memories, he reflected, lived longer than others, refused to die. Particularly the memory of a day many years earlier when, in the name of duty and of his country, he had erred. As the evening sun glanced through the window and bathed the room in its rich ocher light, it all came back. His hands fell to his side, the tie unraveled again.

“When I was a young lieutenant in Cyprus”—the voice sounded dry, as though he’d started smoking again—“there was an incident. An unhappy collision of fates. A sacrifice, if you like, in the name of Her Majesty’s peace. Tom Makepeace today wrote to me, he knows of the incident but not my part in it. Yet if it were ever to be made public, my part in that affair, they would destroy me.

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