Читать книгу Whispers of Betrayal - Michael Dobbs - Страница 7

‘George, this is all you ever do. I watch you, your lips move as though you’re talking to me, I listen, I even concentrate, but all I hear is gobbledegook. Incomprehensible nonsense about PPPs and PSBRs and OEICs and PESC rounds. Like you’re still on some acid trip at Oxford. Can’t you come down to earth for once? Say what you mean?’

George Vertue, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a man noted for his East Anglian reticence and who at university had experimented with nothing more lethal than an occasional mutton biryani, winced and sought time by smoothing out some invisible flaw in the nap of the brown baize tablecloth. ‘I’m trying, Prime Minister,’ he replied. ‘Believe me, I’m trying.’

The two sat alone in the Cabinet Room on opposite sides of the table, the leader young, with foundation still upon his cheeks and hair a suspicious shade of chestnut, the second-in-command neither young nor old, simply beyond time, with a sad, almost molten expression reminiscent of a walrus that had spent too long at Whipsnade.

‘Seriously, George, we need something that’s going to sell in Salford.’ The Prime Minister had just returned from a tour of the north-west and was, as ever, keen to reveal his roots on the factory floor, even though in practice they amounted to little more than a student vac spent sweeping the floors of a metal-bashing operation outside Basingstoke. ‘Up there,’ he continued, eyes raised as though Salford were part of the spirit world, ‘they think a PESC round is a day out ratting with terriers. Language, man. Language. Remember the focus groups.’

‘What I’m attempting to communicate’ – the Walrus counterattacked in an attempt to stifle the Prime Minister’s march through the provinces – ‘is that unless we do something quickly, all they’ll be selling in Salford, or anywhere else, come to that, is their wives and daughters. We’ve got to find another five billion or else.’

‘Or else what?’

‘Or else our masters in Brussels won’t allow us a permit to run a car boot sale.’

Jonathan Bendall studied his Chancellor, a former don, of media studies, bottle-bottom glasses and eyebrows like seaweed washed up on a shore. Depending on one’s point of view Vertue was either a notoriously dour man or a cold-blooded bastard. Perhaps in the end it didn’t really matter which. A Chancellor’s personality always played second fiddle to his navigational skills, and right now the economy was stuck fast on a sandbank and facing an approaching riptide. Whispers of impending crisis had even penetrated behind the closed doors that led off the Treasury’s endless oval corridor, and they were always the last to know.

Bendall took a classical view of such situations. If the gods were angry, they needed placating. A sacrifice, some head upon the plate. He had a reputation for being a willing carver and had already put two Chancellors to the sword since the last election, but it had been a cut too far and now the dining rooms of Westminster echoed to the cries of angry ghosts auditioning for the role of Banquo. No, laying down the life of yet another Chancellor was no longer an option; they were in this together, up to their necks. He would have to continue to wade with the Walrus, no matter how dire it got.

‘What about the Contingency Fund, George?’

‘What Contingency Fund?’ The seaweed wriggled on Vertue’s brow. It was as close to a display of emotion as he ever came. ‘The last of that was swept away during the autumn floods.’

‘Nothing left?’

‘Not even a tidemark.’

The Prime Minister sighed and felt the sand shifting beneath his feet. ‘OK, George, so that’s the bad news. What’s the good news?’

The seaweed wriggled once more, but then subsided.

‘Come on, George, humour me? Or do I book an appointment at the Palace this evening?’

They both knew this game. The Chancellor was a man of little traditional charm but meticulous planning, which made him an excellent player in the guerrilla warfare of Whitehall. He had a reputation for never opening negotiations without at least one hand grenade to toss across the table. The Walrus always went armed.

‘My suggestion, for what it’s worth …’ – the Walrus examined his leader with an expression he usually reserved for a plate of bad oysters – ‘is that we lay to rest the Youth Unemployment Programme.’

It was as if he had suggested legalizing incest.

‘Scrap the Yuppie initiative? But that was a core election commitment.’

The Walrus flapped his fins distractedly, as if he were irritated by flies. ‘We could always close a few hospitals, or even cut the old age pension. If you’d prefer.’

‘You’re kidding,’ Bendall responded breathlessly, struggling to keep up. The approaching sea seemed to have become boiling hot. The Walrus smiled. It was not a natural act.

‘Cut Yuppies?’ Bendall continued. He drew in a deep breath. ‘We’d lose the Employment Secretary.’

‘A tragic loss.’

‘But wait a bit.’ Bendall was lengthening his stride. ‘He’s muttering about wanting to go at the next reshuffle anyway. So why not get in there first, bring the changes forward? Better to push him, don’t you think, rather than let him jump?’ Already Bendall’s keen presentational nose was to the fore. It was said he could sell snow to Eskimos but his speciality was selling indulgences to the middle classes, a task he had performed with remarkable success in every region from Hampshire to the Highlands. Up to now.

‘We’d need some justification,’ he continued. ‘Apart from the bloody obvious.’

The Walrus blew his nose on a large red handkerchief, shaking himself as he collected his thoughts. ‘Well, I suppose we start by rounding up the usual suspects. You know, the competition from Eastern Europe. The financial crisis in Latin America. Short-sighted bankers. That sort of thing.’

‘Perhaps we could get Brussels to bail us out.’ Bendall threw the suggestion into the air to see how it might fly. ‘Could we get the Commission to rule the Yuppie programme invalid? You know, not only save the money but also get a good stand-up row with the French.’

‘It might be arranged.’ The Walrus nodded in appreciation. ‘But we’d still be stuck with a substantial increase in the unemployment figures.’

The Prime Minister brightened, as though television lights had been switched on. ‘No, not necessarily. You see, I’ve long been of the opinion that the unemployment figures are …’ – he paused, like a conductor with baton raised to attract the attention of the orchestra – ‘that the unemployment figures are exceptionally crude. One enormous rubbish pit into which everything is dumped. Young people who’ve never had a proper job. The middle-aged who may never get another job. The unqualified, the infirm, the idle and apathetic.’ He loved toying with phrases. Many of his policies had been built on little more than the appeal of alliteration. Phrases were so flexible. If one didn’t work out, you changed it, found another. Didn’t do much for continuity but made for great sound bites. ‘You know, I feel an overwhelming sense of public responsibility to make sure the unemployment figures are cleaned up. And broken down. Into their constituent parts. They need to be rationalized. Redefined. Redistributed. Add a few categories here, maybe take a few categories there.’

‘Create so much smoke that no one will be able to see through it clearly enough to know what the hell is really happening.’

‘Precisely. Just as we did three years ago.’

Their deliberations were disrupted by a knock upon the door. It swung open slowly and from behind it appeared the timid-eager face of Anita Chaudury, the Member for one of the Leicester seats and the Prime Minister’s Parliamentary Private Secretary. The ‘Parly Charlie’ was little more than an unpaid parliamentary gofer, a runner of errands, tasks which at times were of such menial standing that in any other profession they might have led to a lawsuit, but she loved every minute of it, from making sure there was enough Frascati in the fridge to keeping her master’s compact available but unobserved. It mattered not a jot to her that she had been chosen for the role solely to prop up the Prime Minister’s credentials on sexism and racism, his ‘double whammie mammie’, as he had been know to refer to her. For Anita it was the first rung on the ladder, the pathway to higher things.

‘Excuse me, Jonathan …’ She looked flustered but couldn’t hide the reverence in her voice. ‘I thought you ought to know straight away. It’s Sampson.’

‘Who?’

She took a couple of tentative steps into the room. ‘Sampson. One of our Members in Leeds.’

Bendall knotted his brow, trying to locate him. ‘So what’s young Sampson gone and done?’

She coughed. ‘Old Sampson,’ she began, anxious about the necessary correction. ‘I’m afraid he’s gone and died.’ She made it sound as if it were her fault.

The furrows on the Prime Minister’s brow deepened. ‘I am inconsolable, Anita. What’s his majority?’

‘Over ten thousand.’

‘A fine man. And a fine legacy. Arrange the usual letters of condolence.’ Bendall was on the point of returning to his business with Vertue when he became aware that she was already clutching a sheaf of letters. ‘Ah, you have them already. Well done. I’ll sign them immediately.’

She retreated half a pace. ‘No, no, Jonathan, these are … from the public. In response to Gerry Earwick’s letter in the Telegraph about defence cuts. Didn’t go down too well with some of the Old Contemptibles, I’m afraid.’

Bendall sat back in his chair, contemplating his assistant. ‘Tell me, Anita, what did you think of the letter?’

Her brown eyes grew large, she thought she had entered heaven. She was in the Cabinet room. Her opinion being sought. On her way. ‘To be frank, I thought it brutal.’

‘Absolutely right. Man’s a bloody Tojo.’

‘It would have been better, in my opinion,’ she continued, emboldened by his support, ‘to have found some common ground. Conciliated. Extended the hand of understanding.’

Oh, and that’s where you are absolutely wrong, Bendall concluded silently. Politics is not a game of apologies. It’s war, bloody, at times bestial. No prisoners. If Earwick’s remarks had been a trifle intemperate, they had at least revealed all the brutal instincts required to ward off sharks. A necessary man. Which is why, at the forthcoming reshuffle, he will be getting a promotion. While you, little Anita, will be cast adrift alongside the Employment Secretary. With a big label marked No Longer Needed On Voyage.

‘Tell me, Anita, can you swim?’

‘N-no,’ she stumbled in surprise.

‘Thought not.’ He dismissed her with a wave of his hand.

‘The full tide of existence is here,’ Dr Samuel Johnson had once remarked about the crossroads that are now Trafalgar Square, and Goodfellowe was inclined to agree with him, although for the moment the tide seemed to have ground to a halt.

Goodfellowe had retreated in late afternoon to his flat in Chinatown in order to escape the inevitable demands of the Tea Room. He had both a diet to defend and a backlog of personal correspondence to clear and was behind schedule on both, but now he was scurrying back to Westminster, braving the evening rush hour to make the seven o’clock vote. Except nothing was rushing. As he manoeuvred his bicycle around the queue of cars waiting their turn to enter the square he found his path obstructed, the intersection jammed. From his eyrie, the figure of Nelson presided over a maelstrom of anger and abuse.

The square had been hijacked.

Goodfellowe struggled on for a few precious yards, only to find himself in the middle of a demonstration that had been planned with the precision of a Prussian cavalry assault. Several hundred eco-warriors mounted on bicycles had charged upon the enemy’s divisions, taking them by surprise at a time when their manoeuvrability had already been reduced to a rush-hour crawl. Within minutes the bicycles were masters of the field. Their numbers were so great and their presence so dangerously disruptive that the flow of traffic had been forced to slow, then stop completely, the way barred by impenetrable picket lines of bikes. Dozens of policemen were falling upon the square but as soon as one cycle was moved on, another took its place. So what were they supposed to do? Arrest several hundred bikes?

A young cyclist drew alongside Goodfellowe. ‘Shove it up their exhausts!’ his fellow biker greeted him, clapping him painfully on the shoulder.

Goodfellowe was inclined to agree, but only up to a point. After all, the good citizens of the rural constituency of Marshwood relied on cars for everything, including delivering his majority on voting day. There were two sides to this one and such moral dilemmas were best considered at leisure, not while rushing to make the Division Bell. He dismounted and attempted to press on through a warcry of car horns, whistles and increasingly angry noises of complaint.

In front of him a uniformed inspector was shouting into his personal radio, demanding that reinforcements be winkled out of the police canteen at Charing Cross, while nearby a Sky TV news crew had arrived just in time to witness a cyclist moaning in the gutter after being knocked from her bike by a confused motorist. Around the base of the column a group of protesters were unfurling a banner half the length of a football pitch: ‘Save Our Streets!’

Bedlam.

It took Goodfellowe several minutes to force his way to the south side of the square. He was now directly beneath the superb equestrian statue of King Charles, one of the few to have survived the Civil War. The hapless monarch gazed down Whitehall towards the site of his scaffold, around which the crowd had watched in silent disbelief as the head had been struck off at the fourth cervical vertebra with a single clean blow. Goodfellowe glanced at his watch – he was late, very late, if he missed the vote he doubted that the Whips would be as merciful – but with a final heave of his handlebars he found that salvation was at hand. The police, reinforced and now regrouping, were throwing barriers across the top of Whitehall to prevent the demonstrators descending on Downing Street itself. Beyond the cordon lay the Houses of Parliament, the way to which was entirely clear.

‘And where d’you think you’re going, Sunny Jim?’

‘Let me through, please, Constable. I’m a Member of Parliament and I’ve got a vote to catch.’ Anxiety and lack of time made him sound pompous.

It riled the policeman. The constable inspected the figure clad in luminous yellow helmet and baggy trousers that had appeared before him, then stood his ground. ‘Piss off before I nick you for obstruction.’

‘Don’t be offensive.’

‘Piss off – sir. Will that do you?’

‘Look, I’ve got a vote in the House of Commons in less than ten minutes. Let me pass. I insist!’ Goodfellowe reached out and shook the metal barrier that stood between them.

‘Don’t get violent or I’ll …’

‘Violence? Is that what you want? Because that’s what you’ll get when I report this to Chief Superintendent Ainsworth.’

The mention of his superior’s name gave the constable pause both for thought and for a little anxiety. ‘You really an MP?’ he demanded, sucking a broken front tooth. ‘Where’s your ID then?’

‘My ID?’ Goodfellowe began slapping his pockets in frustration. ‘I’m not carrying it. I rarely carry it.’

‘No ID, only cycle clips? Then they’re not going to let you into the House of Commons, are they?’

‘They all know me there, for God’s sake. Let me through!’

By this time a number of other cyclists, genuine demonstrators, had drawn up to witness the confrontation and to heckle Goodfellowe on, demanding not only that he be let through but that they all be let through. Goodfellowe groaned.

‘Look, Constable … 169OW. You prevent me from getting through and you’ll be in breach of the Sessional Order of the House of Commons. Can’t remember the exact quote, but something about the police ensuring that no obstruction be allowed to hinder the passage of Members to the House on pain of being inflicted with all sorts of cruel and unusual punishments. You’ll not only be on the Chief Super’s doorstep first thing tomorrow but also find your way into the pages of Hansard. Ainsworth’ll boil your balls for his breakfast. The rest of you’ll go for mince. You’ve got …’ – Goodfellowe glanced despairingly at his watch; he wasn’t going to make it – ‘about ten seconds to make up your mind or end up on the back shelf of your old mum’s fridge.’

The constable hesitated. If he let one through the others might follow and he’d have caused a cavalry charge down Whitehall. On the other hand, whoever this man was, he clearly knew Ainsworth and his appetites. God, if only he’d joined the gendarmerie he could have beaten the crap out of them all and no questions asked. The constable tossed the consequences back and forth, weighing his doubts against the merits of his manhood, until eventually he relented. ‘The rest of you get back,’ he shouted at the demonstrators, ‘just this one’s getting through.’

It took more agonizing moments of delay before they complied, the barrier was dragged back, with a muttered apology from the policeman for any misunderstanding, and Goodfellowe was allowed to pass.

As he remounted his bike and began pedalling furiously, he could hear Big Ben striking in the distance, tolling for the bodies to be brought in for counting. Already he was sweating and he’d feel like a dish rag when he arrived. He had only a few more minutes before the doors of the voting lobbies would be locked. He took a huge breath to fill his lungs with oxygen. His legs ached with the effort and suddenly he felt very middle-aged. Time was running out for Goodfellowe, in all sorts of ways. There was still so much he wanted to do, to achieve, but he knew he could do none of it left out in the cold on a bicycle. There was also the matter of Elizabeth. How was he going to hang on to someone as classy as that if all he could offer her was the back of a bloody tandem? As he raced past the Red Lion, he knew that the time had come for him to move on in his life. The bicycle clips had to go.

Goodfellowe cast a despairing, angry look over his shoulder at the confusion he had just left behind. To his surprise he thought he caught sight of Sam, almost buried in the crowd on the other side of the barrier. But no, it couldn’t be. His daughter was in her first year at London University, she’d be busy right now with lectures or essays or something, not out causing mayhem. No, it couldn’t be, wouldn’t be Sam. Anyway, he didn’t have time to stop.

Now he was on the long sprint towards Parliament, putting his back into it, the noise of battle fading. As he pedalled he reflected; how easy it had been for a relatively small number of people armed with nothing more than a little initiative to overwhelm a modern city, to clog the arteries and bring the heart of a great metropolis to the point of seizure. The Cold War military blocs had amassed their arsenals of nuclear-tipped missiles along with chemical and biological agents, weapons that they could launch from land and sea and air and even from space. Vast military machines constructed at huge and often crippling expense. When all they’d needed was a few bicycle pumps.

Goodfellowe chuckled in relief. Thank God the Soviets hadn’t been plugged in to Sky News.

‘Tom!’ A high, almost musical note, a sound of welcome.

Then: ‘Oh, Tom.’ Softer, deeper. About six feet deep. ‘By my mother’s beard, I really don’t know what to do with you. An angel in hobnail boots, if ever I saw one. Never know whether you’re coming into my office to bring me good news or give me a bloody good kicking.’

The Chief Whip waved him onto the single leather sofa and, without prompting, handed him a tumbler of whisky. ‘First you ask to see me. Then miss a bloody vote so I have to have you dragged in here by the cods anyway.’

Eddie Rankin sank wearily into the sofa beside Goodfellowe. The Chief was a Border Scot whose family over generations had seen all sides of the question as armies had tramped their way north and south across his country. His family had fought on all sides, too. Resilience and reticence were woven into the Rankin genes, which made him an ideal Whip. So unlike Battersby.

Goodfellowe had arrived at the House, panting after his dash down Whitehall, his collar askew, his hair like a nesting site for sparrows. He’d missed the vote. Battersby had been waiting for him. Wearing yellow socks. Yellow, for Christ’s sake.

‘Amazing what rubbish floats past if you sit by the river long enough,’ the Whip had weighed in. He was a little drunk, his tongue slow, and he was having trouble with the words, like some badly dubbed film.

‘Damn it, Battersby. I bust a gut trying to get here. Not my fault.’

‘Too busy shagging the waitress, were we? You gotta be careful, Tom, or the News of the Screws is gonna find out about that little arrangement of yours. Fact is, think I can guarantee it.’

‘You should be studied by ornithologists,’ Goodfellowe had countered. ‘As living proof of an old Chinese proverb.’

‘What Chinese proverb?’ the Whip had responded cautiously.

‘That everything which craps on you isn’t necessarily a bird.’

Battersby’s eyes narrowed. He was supposed to be in charge of this, yet somehow Goodfellowe always put him on the defensive. Still, he had one weapon in his locker. Time to produce it. ‘It’s not me you have to worry about, my old deary. The Chief wants to see you. Bit of a command performance, I’m afraid.’

‘Don’t worry. I had already made an appointment with him,’ Goodfellowe had smiled generously, leaving Battersby in confusion, which wasn’t all that difficult once one had progressed beyond counting to ten.

The Chief Whip was a different breed. Subtle. Even a friend, so far as politics allow. ‘You see, Tom, we’ve known each other so many years. I watched you when you were a Minister. Thought you were the one, perhaps the only one of our generation, who had the ability to make it to the top. Seriously I did. Yet now you can’t even make it to a bloody vote.’ His fingers drummed impatiently on the arm of the sofa. They were delicate, almost feminine fingers, carefully manicured, the mark of a man who had once played the classical guitar with the Scottish National Orchestra, fingers that could pick the conscience from a backbencher’s pocket without him ever knowing.

‘Not my fault, Eddie,’ Goodfellowe responded. ‘Not this time, at least. Got caught up in a demonstration at Trafalgar Square.’

‘Tom, just listen to yourself. Missed a vote because you got caught up in a mob demonstrating against your own Government? What do you think this is? A kindergarten class?’ The colour drained from Rankin’s voice. Goodfellowe was going to have to earn his whisky the hard way. ‘You’ve spent the last couple of years being about as much help as a nun in a knocking shop. We’ve been patient, sympathetic. Hell, after you lost your son, and Elinor cracked up …’ He paused in sorrow. The ancient leather of the sofa creaked as he leaned forward to refill their glasses. ‘You know as well as anybody that we’re not all prehistoric like Battersby. But we all have to move on, Tom. I’m running a parliamentary party, not a dog pound.’

‘Aren’t we allowed the occasional bark?’

‘I haven’t got time to waste on rounding up stray mongrels,’ Rankin retorted. ‘In your case, some would argue that it was better simply to have you put down. Including, so I’ve heard, some in your own constituency party.’

So, the ripples on the Marshwood pond had reached as far as the Chief Whip’s lair. Goodfellowe ran his finger around the rim of his glass. An average blend, not a single malt. Unmistakable evidence that this was serious rather than social.

‘Look at it from my point of view, Tom. If you were standing in my socks, what would you be saying?’

Goodfellowe stifled a sarcastic response – this wasn’t the moment for cheap lines – and gazed around the panelled room with its dark window and conspiratorial atmosphere. On Rankin’s desk lay a small pile of folders. Personnel files. Files from the safe, the armoury where the Whips stored most of their weapons, those little secrets and shames that were committed to paper and locked away, to be brought out and brandished whenever one of the dogs started barking. (No computer files here, too easy to copy, only the handwritten daily notes torn from the Whips’ Book, along with a few press cuttings and unpaid invoices. Perhaps even a couple of charge sheets, too.)

There were some secrets that even the Whips were unwilling to commit to paper, matters so sensitive they were confined only to that collective memory that bound together the brotherhood. Such as the whereabouts of the Foreign Secretary’s first wife, whom he had inconveniently forgotten to divorce before marrying the second. Her bank account number, too, although a slip of paper recorded details of the regular payments. There was also the identity of the MP’s daughter who fed her drug habit by prostitution and by playing the Stock Market with exceptional good fortune following her occasional visits to a Junior Minister for Industry. Nestling alongside the other secrets was the identity of the Whip, one of their own, who’d had a heart attack in his room, tied to his chair with underwear around his ankles. Women’s underwear. No need for a paper record. They would for ever remember him as Little Miss Naughty, baby pink, extra large. For a moment Goodfellowe wondered whether Rankin had been running through his own file, and what might be in it.

‘If, as you say, I were standing in your socks, Eddie,’ he responded, picking up the Chief Whip’s challenge, ‘I would say here was a mongrel of some talent. Awkward sometimes, to be sure. The sort of dog who waits until you’ve built the kennel around him, driven home the last nail, then jumps over the bloody gate. But a dog who’s looking for a new …’ – he took a deep breath while he hunted for the right word – ‘adventure.’

‘Adventure? I prefer the quiet life. No surprises.’ Yet curiosity drew him on. ‘What sort of adventure?’

‘One that doesn’t require me to cycle in the rain around Westminster and get caught up in the crowd.’

‘You want money?’

‘No, you Scottish teuchter!’ His voice rang unnaturally jocular in his own ear, too loud, trying too hard. He sipped his whisky, finding it difficult to plead. ‘I want to be back with the team, Eddie. It’s a tough game in this place and I’m tired of trying to score goals all on my own.’

‘This is a new Goodfellowe,’ the Whip responded wryly. ‘Why the sudden change?’

‘I’ve got new interests, new friends …’

‘I’d heard.’

‘New enthusiasms,’ Goodfellowe continued, now certain that Rankin had undoubtedly reviewed his file, and that Elizabeth was on it.

‘You want back on the inside of the tent?’

‘It would be more comfortable than staying on the outside. For you, too. I’m so messy when I put my back into it.’

‘So you want in. And you thought the best way to impress me was to balls-up a simple vote?’

‘Think positive. Get me off my bike, Eddie, and you rob an old rebel of his excuse.’

They held each other’s gaze, testing.

‘You pick your moments, Tom,’ Rankin eventually responded. His tone was considered, contemplative. Not dismissive. ‘The tom-toms are beginning to beat from Downing Street. Testing the tune of an early reshuffle. One or two braves to be burnt at the stake, so rumour has it. Somebody will need to take their place.’

‘I’d like it to be me.’ There, he’d said it. No ambiguity, ambition to the fore. It felt good, like favourite shoes.

‘Ah, the appetite returns!’

‘Put it down to menopausal vanity. An insane desire for a higher profile. Before I have to start dying my hair.’

‘And suddenly you’ve become enamoured of our beloved leader?’ There was no hiding the sceptical note. Rankin was a musician, he could recognize a duff score.

‘You know me better than that, Eddie. Y’know Brother Bendall better than that, too. One day there’ll be a great shaking of the ground and he’ll get buried beneath an avalanche of his own bullshit. But while History makes up her mind as to when the burial will be, I can be helpful. I want to be helpful.’

‘And some might say he needs all the help he can get,’ Rankin responded, so softly that it wouldn’t carry as far as the walls.

‘Will you put my name forward?’

‘It’s my duty, now you’ve offered.’

‘But will you recommend it?’

The Chief Whip took a slug of whisky. ‘Recommend you? Bit like recommending jumping as a cure for vertigo. Who knows? You’re such an awkward sod, Goodfellowe …’

The McDonnell Douglas MD-82 banked gently over the sea as it positioned itself for a final approach to the airport at Odessa. The sight that greeted her through the cabin window was remarkable and Elizabeth hoped it would prove to be something of an omen.

Through the window of the Austrian Air flight she could see a fleet of aircraft set out beside the runway, a testament to the might of the infant and independent republic of Ukraine. Bombers, transports, fighter planes, helicopters, MIGs, Tupolevs, Yaks and Sukhois, all ranged in straight rows like the tentacles of a great war machine ready to form a guard of honour.

‘Our air force,’ the male passenger in the seat beside her indicated. ‘Big bloody air force,’ he added. Yuri’s English was not good and was very guttural, like an engine running on its last drop of oil, but somehow throughout the afternoon flight from Vienna he had managed to make his meanings entirely transparent to his unaccompanied companion. She had already turned down his repeated invitation to dinner.

As they taxied past the aircraft on the ground he returned to his theme, jabbing his finger for emphasis. ‘Air force in mothballs. Big bloody moths, eh?’ A laugh originated from somewhere near his large intestine. ‘But no bloody balls!’

She could see what he meant. The aircraft that at a distance had looked so imposing at closer quarters revealed nothing but disaster. The place was an aeronautical knacker’s yard. There were old military planes with engines stripped, their sides still covered with Soviet stigmata, single-seater fighters shorn of their canopies and propped up on concrete slabs, helicopters with some rotors missing, the others sagging in surrender. Passenger planes, too. One huge hurry-before-they-rot-and-rust clearance sale. You could buy anything here, she’d been told, even buy a navy to match if you took a trip to Sebastopol, and for a price that was always right. An omen, indeed, she hoped.

She had heard about the wine from a Ukrainian customer who had come to dine at The Kremlin after delivering his son to his Wiltshire public school. The wine was not his personal business, that at least she had managed to gather from his fragmentary command of the language, although what his business was remained something of a mystery. When she had enquired, he frowned in concentration, hunting for elusive English words, then picked up an imaginary weapon in both hands and, with a juddering motion, sprayed the restaurant with bullets. ‘Ah, a soldier,’ she had deduced. He shook his head. ‘A policeman, then?’ He scowled in contempt, at which point she had let the matter rest. A man with access to weaponry and sufficient hard currency to send his son to English public school was not someone she wanted to press too hard. Anyway, he left a substantial tip along with a mysterious reference to wine. There was a specific mention of the Tsars, and mutterings about a lost cellar.

A few days later she received a warbling international phone call from someone who called himself Vladimir Houdoliy and whose English was, thankfully, exceptional, although delivered with intonation that was entirely American. His mastery of metaphor also left something to be desired. He introduced himself as a man who ‘has a lot of experience tucked away beneath my belt,’ which left her crippled for days. He apologized for the intrusion, called her Madam Proprietor, and explained his purpose.

He spoke in colourful tones, so engaging to Elizabeth on a day of leaden London skies, of his homeland and of a magnificent palace that overlooked the sea. A place of dreams, he said, somewhere on the coast of the Black Sea, a former summer residence much favoured by the last Tsar and Tsaritsa and equipped, in their time, most magnificently. Vast floors of the coolest Italian marble. French chandeliers that outshone diamonds. Statuary that would have graced Florence, fountains whose waters tumbled like a constant peal of bells, and beneath it all, dark and secure, an extensive wine cellar whose contents were the pride of the owner of the palace – Vladimir’s grandfather.

In those ancient times when riot and unrest had rushed towards revolution, Vladimir’s grandfather had grown increasingly concerned. The Bolsheviks showed such little respect for palaces let alone for French chandeliers, and no respect at all for cellars, particularly those holding the Tsar and Tsaritsa. So he had shipped out the statues, turned off the fountains, draped sacking around the chandeliers, even allowed peasants to sleep in the stables. He also decided to brick up the wine cellar in the hope that he could liberate it at a later time.

That time had never come. Grandfather had been put to the purge, the palace had been stripped of its marble and then nationalized. Lenin had promised to turn it into a sanatorium, but instead it became a munitions factory and, after a period in World War II when it had been occupied by the Germans, it had been used as a mental asylum. No one had bothered with the cellar, its secrets preserved behind crumbling brick and in faded family legend.

Yet, thank God and Gorbachev, the New Revolution had changed all that. Vladimir had been able to reclaim his inheritance and was planning to restore life to the crumbling palace by transforming it into a headquarters building for a Western company. A great opportunity for him – except for the problem of his cash flow. The chaos in those wretched currency markets, you understand? So would Elizabeth be interested in some rather fine wines? Mostly reds, of course, fortified, from the Crimea, plus a wide range of local spirits. All Russian imperial, pre-1917 vintage? At prices in hard currency that would do them both a favour?

Timing is everything in a woman’s life and Vladimir Houdoliy found his timing was all but perfect. Elizabeth needed Vladimir, or someone just like him. Recession had begun to nibble at Westminster’s sense of well-being and takings at The Kremlin were down. Not desperate, but down. There was a black hole emerging in her accounts and her bank manager, although appropriately primed with an excellent lunch and one of Elizabeth’s most daringly cut dresses, had proved unsympathetic. He had accepted a large Remy then whined throughout the refill about the slim margins and poor security of the restaurant trade. Wanker.

Elizabeth was resolved. A little fun needed to be put back into the business, and a few cases of good Tsarist vintages at the right price might prove a very considerable source of amusement.

Houdoliy turned out to be fun, too. Tall, sixty-something, with a sea of silvery waves for hair, he greeted her at the terminal with a chauffeur-driven Audi and a look of gentle mischief in his grandfatherly eyes. There was also a bouquet of yellow roses. ‘For a beautiful and most welcome guest,’ the card announced.

They had driven along the gentle tree-lined boulevards of Odessa with its pastel-painted mansions, once clearly a graceful mercantile capital, now desperately wrinkled at its many edges. ‘But safe!’ Vladimir had emphasized. ‘At night, the most dangerous things on our streets are the potholes.’

‘Why so safe?’ she had enquired.

‘Because our local mafia requires all muggers to be off the streets by sunset,’ he had exclaimed, before clasping her hand and bursting into laughter. She noticed he had smooth hands, not at all leathery like some men of his age.

He made her most welcome. He had booked her into the Shevchenko, a floating hotel moored in the harbour that had been converted from an old passenger ferry. Its rooms were small but comfortable, although the main attraction for most visitors seemed to be the much larger bar. That night he took her to The Valday, a restaurant that stood at the very top of the Potemkin Steps. The exterior was inconspicuous but it was beautifully decorated inside and offered the most absorbing dishes of fish, both fresh and smoked. There was also black and orange caviare by the forkful, a little vodka and a remarkably good local sparkling wine. Modern Ukrainian wines had a poor reputation but by heavens they were getting better – although nothing like the pre-1917 vintages, of course, Vladimir had insisted forcefully.

She discovered that for herself the following afternoon. The palace was a short drive along the coast, at a point where the cliffs swooped down to the great sand beaches of Odessa Bay to play tag with the sea. A place of princes, exactly as he had described, although not as large as she had imagined, brooding, with a cracked whitewashed portico. Outside in the grounds there was nothing but a toppled sundial and a few empty plinths, crumbling like long-forgotten graves in gardens that had been tended by nothing but a few grazing cattle for more than half a century. Inside, the palace was guarded by echoes that swirled around columns and scurried across floors that had been stripped of their marble and patched with bad cement. And deep within, behind a new steel door, he led her to the cellars, rows of musty underground enclaves that smelled of old souls where the bottles were laid out like corpses.

Oh, but what a confusion of wines! Dessert wines that had been protected by their high sugar and alcohol contents, some of which were still improving. Heavy ports, red and white Muscats, Tokays. Many of the wines were from Massandra, the bottles bearing the double-headed eagle that marked them as once belonging to the Tsar himself. Like a magician, Vladimir would produce yet another surprise, stroking away the layers of dust and encrustation with the tenderness of a young lover to reveal still more wonders. An 1896 Prince Golitzin Lacrima Christi. An Alupka White Port. A Muscat in a bulbous bottle with a huge royal seal on its shoulder, made for the Tsar in the very year they had dragged him from his throne.

They sat at an old wooden table stained the colour of dried blood from the lees, and in the candlelight Vladimir subjected her to a series of temptations, first with a wine from the Crimea, then a bottle from further along the coast. They tasted wine after wine, nine in all, mostly reds but with two darkly sweet whites and a brandy. Not all of them had worn as well as Vladimir, but they inspired in spite of that, simply because of their history. From the shadows of the wall an icon of a gilded Madonna smiled contentedly, while Vladimir entertained Elizabeth with more stories of his family, of the palace, and of the purge that had emptied it of his grandfather’s family.

‘He was killed in this cellar by the NKVD,’ Vladimir explains, with a hint of pride. ‘Stood up against the same wall he had built to hide this wine and shot. On the very day they murdered the Tsar and Tsaritsa. This is more than wine, this is the blood of my country.’

‘You must find it difficult to part with.’

He nods, a short bow of his head as though submitting to God. ‘Of course. But necessary in order to restore the palace. Sadly, our bank managers are less trusting than yours.’

Which must put them in the Crippen league, she muses. Money has been mentioned. It is time to begin. ‘I suppose you’ll be expecting a good price for the wines?’

He holds his head to one side, as though considering the matter for the first time. ‘A good price, yes. But not a great price. I need to sell some of the wine quickly. Direct, not through an agent. They’re all mafia! They would charge a huge commission on the wine they sold, then steal the rest as soon as they knew of its whereabouts. No, by selling direct to you we can both gain.’

‘So … how much?’

‘Ah, Elizabeth. You are young. You are beautiful. And you are impatient!’ He chuckles as though scolding a granddaughter, but his smile is anything but grandfatherly. He is a man of refined tastes, in both wine and women. ‘Before we discuss business, let us try one last wine. Not a great vintage but a young Ukrainian wine. A Cagur. A little sweet. Like port. But strong and honest. Like our friendship!’

It is as he has promised, clean, honest, brimming with the taste of blackcurrant. This bottle they drink, not taste, as they sit across the flickering flame of the candle and he quotes the prices he expects. For the Tokay, twenty thousand hryvna a case. Which is fair. For the Madeira, nearly thirty. But it is too dense, she protests, like ink. It is like a woman’s virtue, he replies, you will get double for it in London.

She laughs, returns his stare, which in the candlelight suggests more than simply business. He is exceptionally good-looking for his age, his frame elegant and self-disciplined. Undoubtedly experienced. To her surprise she wonders what he is like in bed. She’s never been to bed with a man over sixty.

‘You are wondering, perhaps, what an old man like me is doing with such longing for a beautiful woman like you, Elizabeth?’ he enquires with startling insight. ‘Have no cares,’ he laughs. ‘Before we are even halfway through this bottle I shall probably not even be able to stand.’

Suddenly she feels elated. For as they discuss the wines she might buy and she struggles with the mental arithmetic of conversion, it’s as though a great weight has been lifted from her. She will take twenty cases. Average cost quoted by Vladimir of £2,600. She will sell half the cases at auction through Sotheby’s for what she estimates will be double the price paid. Which will leave her with another ten cases absolutely free, and available for sale at an even larger mark-up at The Kremlin. With only a little luck she might clear £75,000 on this deal, enough to sort out all her own cash-flow problems. Next time that undersized, illegitimate and copulatory bank manager of hers can pay for his own lunch.

‘Vladimir, I like this place. I like this wine.’ Without wanting to admit it, she likes him too. ‘I think we have a deal.’

‘Magnificent! So tonight we shall have a little party, you and I. But first, a toast. To beauty.’

Vladimir drains the last of his wine and with an agile flourish throws the empty glass against the cellar wall. Elizabeth, giggling and a little intoxicated from the alcohol and excitement, does the same.

Vladimir leans across and kisses her, in celebration, and not like a granddaughter. He feels warm, smells good, masculine. She notices he isn’t having the slightest trouble standing.