The Final Cut

Around them the branches of the pleached limes twisted and entangled like a conspiracy. They were both aware that the Ambassador had crossed beyond the frontiers of diplomatic etiquette but, caught in the crossfire between Bollingbroke and the Quai d'Orsay, de Carmoy was in no mood for standing still.

'Tom, we've been friends for a long time now, ever since the day you summoned me to the Foreign Office to administer a formal mutilation' – the Frenchman brushed some invisible piece of lint from the sleeve of his jacket – 'after that confidential computer tape went missing from British Aerospace.' 'Along with two French exchange technicians.' 'Ah, you remember?'

'How could I forget? My first week at the Foreign Office.' 'You were frightfully severe.' 'I still suspect the clandestine hand of some official French agency behind the whole thing, Jean-Luc'

The shoulders of the Ambassador's well-cut suit heaved in a shrug of mock Gallic confusion. 'But when you'd finished you sat me down and plied me with drink. Sherry, you called it.'

'Standard Foreign Office issue. For use only on open wounds and Africans.'

'I think I tried to get Brussels to reclassify it as brush cleaner.'

'Didn't stop you finishing the whole damned decanter.'

'My friend, but I thought it was meant to be my punishment. I remember I was swaying like a wheatfield in an east wind by the time I returned home. My wife consoled me, thinking you'd been so offensive I'd had to get drunk.'

Like old campaigners they smiled and raised glasses to toast past times and dig over old battlefields. The Frenchman took out a cigarette case packed with Gauloises on one side and something more anodyne on the other; with a quiet curse Makepeace took the Gauloise. He'd started smoking again, along with all the other changes in his personal habits. God, he'd left her only an hour ago and knew that in spite of the after-shave he still reeked of her. Pleasure and pain. So much was crowding in on him that at times he had trouble finding space to breathe. Slowly the trickle of humour drained from his eyes and died. 'How is Miquelon?' he asked. 'Blossoming. And yours?'

'Teaching. In America.' He gave his own impression of the Gallic shrug, but without the enthusiasm to make it convincing. 'You sound troubled. Let me ask…' 'As Ambassador? Or as an old friend?'

'About politics. I have no right to pry into personal matters.' In any event, the Ambassador didn't have to. At the merest mention of his wife, Makepeace's face had said it all. He'd never make a diplomat, no inscrutability, all passion and principle. 'I hear many expressions that the era of Francis Urquhart is drawing to its close, that it is only a matter of time. And much discussion of who, and how. Many people tell me it should be you.' 'Which people?'

'Loyal Englishmen and women. Friends of yours. Many of the people here this afternoon.'

Makepeace glanced around. Amongst the throng was a goodly smattering of political correspondents and editors, politicians and other opinion-formers, few of whom were renowned as Urquhart loyalists. From a distance and from behind a tall glass, Annita Burke was staring straight at them, not attempting to hide her interest.

'You've been getting pressure,' de Carmoy stated, knowing it to be a fact.

'Nudges aplenty. I suppose I'm meant to be flattered by so much attention. Now's the moment, they say, step forward. But to be honest, I don't know whether I'm standing on the brink of history or the edge of a bloody cliff.'

'They are your friends, they respect you. Virtue may be a rare commodity in politics, it may speak quietly at times, but no less persuasively for that. It sets you apart from others.' 'Like Francis Urquhart.' 'As a diplomat I couldn't possibly comment.'

Makepeace was in too serious a mood to catch the irony. 'I've thought about it, Jean-Luc. Thinking about it still, to be precise. But did any of these friends of mine suggest to you how their… ambitions for me might be achieved? Or are these no more than slurpings through mouthfuls of Moet?'

'My assessment is that this is not idle talk. There's a desperate sense of longing for a change at the top. I've heard that not just within your party but from across the political spectrum.' 'And from Paris, too, no doubt.'

'Touche. But you can't deny there's a great moral vacuum in British politics. You could fill it. Many people would follow.'

Makepeace began running his index finger tentatively around the rim of his crystal glass as though he were tracing the cycles of life. 'For that I need a vehicle, a party. I might be able to grab at the wheel, force Urquhart off the road, but it would probably do so much damage that it'd take years to get it working again. The party's scarcely likely to offer the keys to the man who caused the accident.'

'Then create your own vehicle. One that's faster and better built than Urquhart's.'

'No, that's impossible,' Makepeace was responding, but they were interrupted by another guest, the Minister for Health who was seeking to bid farewell to his host. Felicitations and formal thanks were exchanged before the Minister turned to Makepeace.

'I've got only one thing to say to you, Tom.' He paused, weighing both his words and the company. 'For God's sake keep it up.' With that he was gone. 'You see, you have more friends than you realize,' the Ambassador encouraged. 'In his case not a friend, merely a rat hedging his bets.'

'Perhaps. But they are edgy, waiting to jump. The rats, too, believe the ship is sinking.'

Makepeace was back with the rim of his glass which was vibrating vigorously. 'So often we seem to go round in empty circles, Jean-Luc. What's necessary to make it more than noise, to get the whole universe to shatter?' 'Action.'

The Ambassador reached for the finely cut crystal, taking it from his guest's hand and holding it aloft by the stem, turning it around until it had captured the rays of the afternoon sun and melted into a thousand pools of fire. Suddenly he appeared to fumble, his fingers parted and before Makepeace could shout or move to catch it the glass had tumbled to the lawn. It bounced gracefully and lay, undamaged, on the grass.

Makepeace bent his knee to retrieve it, stretching gratefully. 'That's a stroke of…'

In alarm he snatched his fingers back as, with the heel of his elegant hand-made shoe, the Frenchman crushed the glass to pieces. The helicopter swept low along the black sand coastline of Khrysokhou Bay in the north-west of the island, past the tiny fishing villages they had known as boys. Those days of youth had been long, summers when the octopus had been plentiful, the girls had eager eyes and much to learn, and sailing boats had bobbed in the gentle swell beside clapboard jetties. Not so long ago the road back through the mountain had been little more than a rutted track; it had since turned into a swirling tar highway that bore on its back thousands of tourists and all their clutter. The fishing villages now throbbed to the beat of late-night discos, the price of fish had soared, so had the price of a smile. Progress. Yet the sailing boats were still moored inside ramshackle harbours which collected more flotsam than jetfoils. Opportunities unfulfilled, yet Theophilos' marina on the nearby cape would change all that. Once he'd got the British off his back.

The helicopter banked. 'Bishop's Palace in five minutes,' the pilot's metallic voice informed them through the headphones. Dimitri reached for the hand grip; he hated flying, regarding it as an offence to God's law, and would only submit to such folly so long as God's personal messenger were by his side. Trouble was that his brother travelled everywhere by helicopter, often flying the machine himself, which served only to exaggerate Dimitri's congenitally twitchy disposition. He'd give his life for his brother but prayed it wouldn't be necessary at this precise moment. He sat upright in his seat, relieved that the noise of the engine precluded conversation.