He shouldn't have fired the gardener. He should've sliced off his balls and any other vital part of him then thrown the rest down one of the wells. And he'd still do it, if ever he laid hands on the little bastard.
'It's appalling,' his wife was complaining at his elbow, 'how much damage a little oil spread in the wrong places can do…'
Suddenly his nostrils dilated, sniffing the wind like a fox approaching a familiar copse. He smelt oil, cloying crude as it spurted like virgin butter, as it would spurt one day from rigs off the coast of Cyprus. It was a deal he had lost. But which hadn't yet been signed.
'Could be worse,' he consoled his wife. 'Might even get better,' he reflected, wondering what vandalism might be inflicted on the peace agreement by a little oil spread across its neatly trimmed edges. 'This is scarcely going to help.' Claire thrust a copy of the latest wire report across the desk at Urquhart. He read it quickly.
Industry sources revealing the existence of oil in the waters off Cyprus. The Turkish waters off Cyprus. Exploitation rights expected to go to British companies…
'Excellent,' he pronounced, throwing it back across the desk. 'More jobs for Britain.' He picked up his pen and continued writing. 'But it will infuriate the Greeks.'
'Why?' He stared inquisitorially across the tops of his half-moon glasses. 'They're losing out.' 'Even if these reports are true, they'll be no worse off tomorrow than they were today.' 'Even so, they won't like it. Wounded pride.' 'I suppose you're right. They'll probably go right over the top. There's no accounting for the excitability of Cypriots, is there?'
'And a British judge, too. This will make everything more complicated. We've jumped from a row about a few graves to one about several billion barrels of oil. Instead of hundreds of protesters there'll be… thousands. The peace deal. The election. Everything. Suddenly much more complicated.'
'As usual, Claire, you display a remarkably agile and perceptive mind behind those inspiring eyes of yours.' He went back to his writing.
Sensing the end of his interest – had it ever started? – she reclaimed the sheet of paper and began to leave. 'I wonder who leaked it?' she enquired, almost to herself, as she crossed the room.
'I've no idea,' he whispered as the door closed behind her. 'But it has saved me the trouble of doing it myself.' 'CYPOS HIT OIL', the Sun screamed.
'Billions of barrels of oil have been found off the tiny Mediterranean island of Cyprus. The discovery is expected to bring a smile to the face of the sun-kissed tourist haunt – and to the British oil companies who are queuing up for exploitation rights
By its second edition the reporter had made further enquiries and rewritten the piece under the headline: 'TURKISH DELIGHT'. The Independent took a more cautious line.
'Large deposits of oil are reported by industry sources to have been discovered off the island of Cyprus which could amount to the largest such find anywhere in the Mediterranean…
'The reported discovery comes at a delicate time in the peace process between the two Cypriot communities who are due to sign a final accord in London soon. The oil deposits are believed to lie exclusively within the continental shelf areas reserved by the Watling arbitration tribunal to the Turkish Cypriot sector.
'Last night Greek Cypriot sources in London were demanding to know if Britain, whose deciding vote awarded the disputed area to the Turkish side, knew beforehand of the likely existence of oil
The response of the leading daily in Nicosia was far less conditional. In a banner headline across its front page, it announced simply: 'BETRAYED!' They had organized a demonstration outside the Turkish Embassy in Belgrave Square. The call had gone out that morning on London Radio for Cyprus and even at short notice a band of nearly two hundred had gathered, even tried to get inside to deliver a letter of protest, but the entrance to the embassy was guarded by bomb-proofed security which saw them coming before they'd begun to cross the road. They were orderly; a single armed policeman from the Diplomatic Protection Group turned them back and they spent the morning staring sullenly and shouting sporadic protests from behind security barriers. By the weekend their numbers would have grown tenfold.
Passolides was not amongst them that morning. As so often in his life he'd ploughed a lonely furrow, taking himself not to the house of the hated Turk what was the point? – but to the gates of Downing Street, where the source of this latest betrayal could be found.
Had not the British betrayed his people more consistently than any other conqueror? Stealing the whole island for almost a century, stealing the bases for even longer. Stealing his brothers. And their graves. Now taking the oil. You knew what to expect from a thieving Turk, they made no pretence at their nature. An absolute, uncomplicated enemy who would spit in your eye as they sliced through your throat. You could trust them to be what they were. But the British! They showered you in hypocrisy, fought with weasel words. Smiled and talked of the rules of cricket as they shafted you and sold your homeland into slavery.
He'd been gripping the barrier by the great iron gates of Downing Street for nearly half an hour when a policeman, wondering at the intensity of the old man's concentration and whitened knuckles, approached him. 'What are you doing, grandad?' 'Minding my own business.'
'If you're standing there, it's my business too. What are you doing?' 'Waiting to see your Prime Minister.' 'You're in luck. He's just on his way out.'
As the Daimler rushed through the gates it slowed before entering the traffic of Whitehall, and Urquhart looked up from his papers to see an old man staring at him from across the barrier. Their eyes met, held each other for no more than a moment, but in that short time the force of those eyes burning ruby in hate had scorched across Urquhart's mind. And dimly, through the blast-proof windows, he heard the one word which the man's cracked voice hurled at him, and remembered its meaning. 'Prodoti-i-i-i!'
He recollected the first time he had encountered it – how could he forget? Carved into the chest of an eighteen-year-old boy they had dragged from the side of his family in the middle of his sister's marriage service and shot as he cringed against the church wall like a rat in a barn. Traitor. There are few obvious targets for an anti-British protest in Nicosia. British Leyland no longer exists, British Rail doesn't run that far, even intermittently. The British High Commission provides an exceptionally unpalatable opportunity, being stuck by the accident of invasion on a finger of land barely a hundred metres wide which squeezes past the armed watch towers of Nicosia Gaol on one side and the still more heavily armed watch towers of the Turkish Cypriot border patrols on the other. The chances of surprise are nil, the chances of success even poorer, the chances of a bullet from one side or the other excellent, so most Nicosian dissidents search for other options.
The British Council down from the Paphos Gate is scarcely more welcoming. Since the last riot on its doorstep it has been heavily fortified behind steel shutters from which bricks and bottles bounce pointlessly, even if the sentries in the barracks at the end of the street co-operate by turning a blind eye.
So Dimitri, who had responsibility for the organization but who had little concept of the Britishness of institutions such as Marks amp; Spencer and Barclays Bank, opted for British Airways and its glass-fronted operational headquarters which lay on the Avenue of Archbishop Makarios III.
The vanguard arrived soon after dusk, transported from the now-permanent camp of protest outside the Presidential Palace aboard a convoy of mopeds, vans, even taxis. Soon they were joined by many others on foot or using their own resources. The Word had spread.
An exceptional degree of discipline was evident in the early proceedings. Banners were handed out, instructions and advice issued. It helped, of course, that the stewards were theological students, many of whom were from the same village as Dimitri and his brother. An extended family. The Firm had been carefully constructed on foundations of rural solidarity and tribal loyalties; it wasn't going to fail its most famous son.