Dirty Tricks, page 19
‘What a question!’ Zina said. ‘Only a man could ask it. I was terrified until you got back safely. You may not have noticed it but I padded out your briefcase with some extra papers to make the pistol less noticeable.’
Yakovlev shook his head despairingly. ‘I’ll never understand women. I never have and I never will.’
‘You’ve never understood me. You’ve always taken my loyalty, for granted. That’s why I had to confess my doubts to you. You see I have been thinking about poor old Comrade Rakitin. He once loved Comrade Borisenko, yet he turned against him when he believed he was doing something that was ruinous to the country.’
‘And you think that one day you might do something like that?’ Yakovlev asked.
‘I nearly did, didn’t I? Or, at least, I think I nearly did.’
Yakovlev, whose professional life had been spent trying to delve into people’s characters, rose from his chair and put his arm round Zina’s shoulders, the first sign of physical affection he had ever displayed.
‘Zina, my dear, what you have told me is the best proof I could possibly have of your loyalty and your trust in me. You will be doing me a great service if you will join me. Your boss and your leader will now be one and the same. And after all,’ he added, feeling that the situation was becoming a little too tense, ‘who else can make tea as well as you do?’
Zina smiled inwardly, for there was an intriguing secret about her tea-making, then said, ‘There is one thing I would like to know before I make up my mind. The truth about Viktor Kovalsky’s death. Was he killed by us – by you, in fact?’
Yakovlev folded his arms and sat on the edge of the desk. ‘I give you my word that he was not,’ he said categorically. ‘He was killed by the CIA.’
‘But did you know they would kill him when you sent him out?’
Yakovlev was clearly embarrassed. ‘I have to admit that I thought it possible. He was part of the events which have prevented war and saved so many lives.’
‘So you were at least party to his death.’
‘In a way, I suppose. Viktor was a soldier in an undercover war and I sent him into action because I knew that, whatever happened, he would never really defect. He died for his country.’
‘I just don’t understand what part he could have played,’ Zina said.
‘I’m not in a position to explain. I may one day. But you can take it from me that his role was essential. Any soldier has to be expendable and he knew that.’
Zina seemed to be as satisfied as she was ever likely to be on the subject.
‘Will you join me then?’ Yakovlev asked.
‘Do you really need me?’
‘Yes I need you.’
‘Then I’ll come.’
Yakovlev put his arms round her and kissed her on the cheek.
‘Secretary-General, we must be careful,’ Zina exclaimed, looking apprehensively at the heavy door.
Yakovlev released her and laughed. ‘Not now, Zina! Not now! Now we can do anything we like.’
Chapter Fifteen
By late afternoon King-Lander had made up his mind. He had briefly considered the obvious alternative – that he should kill himself – but, as he realized Quinn must have surmised, he was a survivor. Instead he had chosen what he knew to be a truly cowardly way. He decided to telephone Winifred first and tell her the news in the hope that, in defiance of his instructions, she would be unable to resist informing her husband. He felt it would then be easier for him to lie to the friend he so much admired.
‘Winifred, I need your support. I don’t know how we are going to tell Bert but your fears have been entirely justified. I’ve been wrong. He has got a heart problem.’
‘Oh dear, is it serious?’
‘Serious enough if he doesn’t take a long rest, and a permanent one from politics.’
He could almost detect a note of delight, or at least relief, in her voice as she asked, ‘Shall I tell him?’
‘No, Winifred, you mustn’t. I should tell him first. That’s my duty. I’ll make an excuse to call in and see him this evening. Is that possible?’
‘Yes. He’ll be free for a few minutes around 6.30 pm. Then we have to dress for dinner … ’
There was a pause as the implications began to sink home. ‘Perhaps we’ll have to cancel it now,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose Bert will feel like eating.’
‘You’ll have to cancel a lot of things, Winifred. I’ll be round soon after six unless I hear from you. We should have a brief chat first.’
King-Lander was not surprised to receive a telephone call from Downing Street within the hour. It was the Prime Minister.
‘What the hell’s all this, Alan? I thought you told me there was nothing wrong.’
‘I’m sorry, Bert, but I was badly mistaken. Medicine is far from being an exact science, you know, and the dangerous symptoms have just shown up on the last tests.’
‘You say “dangerous”?’
‘Yes. I’m afraid that’s right, and I’d rather not talk about it on the telephone. Let me call and see you at six-thirty.’
‘All right, but why the hell did you tell Winifred before telling me? She’s doing her nut. Saying I’ve got to resign today, cancel tonight’s dinner … ’
‘I’m sorry, Bert. I shouldn’t have told her but you know how emotional she is. I needed to prepare her for the shock. I told her not to tell you anything. I suppose she was too upset. I assure you that my intentions were for the best.’ He almost added, ‘And it’s intentions that matter’, as he heard a grunt and the telephone went dead.
Replacing the receiver with a sigh, King-Lander realized that Henderson would be fighting all the way to ignore the medical advice. With Winifred in the know he at least had a strong ally.
Soon after six, King-Lander presented himself at the front door of Number Ten, where the duty policeman who recognized him as a regular visitor pressed the bell to request entry. As he climbed the main staircase he passed, on the wall to his left, the array of portraits and photographs of Britain’s former Prime Ministers. Henderson’s, which was at the top of the stairs, would soon be moving down one place, if the unpleasant mission he faced proved successful.
Whose photograph would be there in three weeks time when the ballot for a new Labour leader had been completed? he wondered. Someone far less fitted for the post than Bert! Of that King-Lander was sure. What a tragedy!
With two hours to mull over the possibilities, Henderson had decided that he would rather die in harness than spend the rest of his life in a cottage with Winifred. That prospect was too daunting. Helping his wife with the historical romance she had been talking about for years but never started! God Almighty! Better to collapse in the Cabinet Room than rot in some wretched backwater, pandering to cabbages and chickens. Besides, who was there with his skill and experience to lead the Party, or the country for that matter? Torn apart, through the continued entry of Left-wing extremists and Communists posing as Socialists, the Party needed a manipulator of his capability to hold together at all. The possible successors were either committed to the Right or Left. And there was all that controversial legislation in the pipeline. No! His departure at such a critical time would be a national disaster.
With his mind made up he was in almost buoyant mood. He tidied the papers on the desk in his first-floor study, which overlooked St James’s Park and had been re-decorated first by the Wilsons and then, in more elegant taste by Edward Heath, and left to join his wife and King-Lander in the upstairs flat.
‘Now what’s all this nonsense, Alan?’ he asked breezily.
‘I’m afraid it’s not nonsense, Prime Minister. I must be absolutely frank with you, and I may as well say it in front of Winifred. If you do not retire from political life without delay you could be dead in three months. Your cardiogram shows an inverted T-wave, and there are other symptoms which indicate that, unless you unburden yourself of all stress, you could suffer a massive coronary thrombosis at any time.’
The doctor’s demeanour shocked Henderson into temporary silence. His face was blanched and his hands tightly clasped as Winifred said quietly, ‘You see, Bert, it is really serious.’
‘But I can’t quit now,’ Henderson complained. ‘I’m the only one who can cement our relations with the new Soviet leadership. I’m the only one who’s met Yakovlev. All this guff in the newspapers about him being a villain because he was head of the KGB must be alienating him. He’s not a bad man. And he’s just my age group. I could do business with him.’
‘Someone else would have to do it if you did die suddenly,’ King-Lander pointed out sympathetically. ‘Nobody’s indispensable, Bert, and too many good men have driven themselves into early graves believing that they were.’
‘And you are indispensable to me, dear,’ Winifred said, touching his hand.
‘But a few more weeks or months would make no difference, and then … ’
‘I’m afraid they could make all the difference,’ King-Lander warned. ‘There could be some sudden political crisis and you’ve already admitted that you have been working an eighty-hour week.’
‘But I’m young enough to cope … ’
King-Lander shook his head. ‘The fifties are now the most dangerous decade for coronary disease. And the younger you are the more serious an attack is likely to be. One would expect the reverse, but sadly that is not so.’
Winifred reached across and put her hand on her husband’s knee. ‘Oh Bert, please see sense and do as Alan advises. He’s your friend as well as your doctor. It’s for the good of all of us. For me and for the children. You don’t want to leave them fatherless when they need you most and look like doing so well at University.’
‘There’s also the country to consider,’ King-Lander ventured.
‘The country! What do you mean?’
‘I mean that in your condition it would be irresponsible for you to continue in office. Others have done it, including some of your predecessors against their doctors’ advice. And remember Roosevelt at Yalta. The results have been catastrophic.’
‘Oh, God!’ Henderson muttered under his breath. It must be far more serious than he had imagined. King-Lander was being much more adamant than he had expected.
‘I can get you a second opinion,’ King-Lander proposed. ‘But I can assure you it would do no good. The symptoms are too clear-cut – including of course those chest pains you’ve experienced for so long. You have to face the facts, Bert. Not just the facts of life, the facts of death.’
From Henderson’s gesture he could see that he was not interested in a second opinion, such was his confidence in his friend’s ability. King-Lander decided to firm up the diagnosis.
‘My advice is that you should resign without delay and then take Winifred on a holiday – somewhere you can relax. Just one more Cabinet meeting to announce the news to your colleagues. Then off you go to the sun. I’ll come with you if you like. We could play some gentle golf – that’s not contraindicated provided you don’t overdo it.’
Henderson was not encouraged. ‘And when we return? What then?’
‘Settle down somewhere quiet and write your memoirs. You’ve a great story to tell. All about your work for peace.’
‘Oh yes, dear,’ Winifred enthused. ‘We could write together. You your memoirs, me my historical romances.’
Oh God! Historical romances! It was plural now was it? Henderson thought. ‘I need to be alone,’ he announced peremptorily. ‘I won’t be long. You stay with Winifred, Alan.’
He left and walked down the stairs slowly towards the Cabinet Room on the ground floor, passing two servants on the way as though unaware of them.
‘Do you think he’ll be all right?’ King-Lander asked with some concern.
‘Oh yes,’ Winifred replied. ‘He just wants to cry. He cries at the drop of a hat when he’s alone or with me, but never in front of anybody else.’
The Cabinet Room, the pinnacle and power-house of Henderson’s ambitions, seemed bigger than usual and as he sat down in solitude in his usual seat he felt smaller. He sought, through habit, for his pipe but then replaced it in his pocket and holding his head in his hands allowed the tears to flow.
God, life was unfair, he told himself. He had striven so hard through so many lean years to snatch the Party leadership and eventually the Premiership. Now he was being deprived of it all. And through no fault of his own. The thought of leaving Downing Street and all it signified was shattering. He had everything to offer – youthfulness, experience and the constructive attitude to international relations of which East-West cordiality was infinitely the most important, with each side physically capable, for the first time in history, of literally destroying civilization and poisoning the world.
The events of the past few days had convinced him that he had been right and the so-called ‘mandarins’ of Whitehall, like that mad Irishman Quinn, had been utterly wrong. The Russians wanted peace and the way to peace was undoubtedly through East-West trade, as Harold Wilson had seen; as he had seen. Now all his plans had collapsed just because of some squiggle on a heart chart.
All he could see in the immediate future was a dreadful, unedifying squabble over the vacant leadership with a pack of envious and over-ambitious nonentities, who owed their positions to him, behaving like hyenas round some carrion carcase.
Damn it and blast it! A breakdown of his health was the one thing he had not foreseen. Sure he had belly-ached privately about the grind of an eighty-hour week but that was no more than a legitimate grouse. He could eat the bloody work! And see that his ministers worked just as hard! He looked round the table visualizing the familiar faces and wondering how they would react when they heard the news.
Ah, there was no justice. Suddenly to be plunged from the peak of power and patronage to the abyss of impotence. From being the first man in the land to being a nobody. Would he be remembered? Had he done enough to be remembered? No. His main objectives were still in the planning stage. Anyway, peoples everywhere never remembered the men of peace. They liked their heroes to be men of war.
Who remembered Walpole, the man on the wall behind him? But in Henderson’s view Walpole had been a great creative politician; the first to realize that the House of Commons could be a power-base; the first to develop a Cabinet of senior ministers with himself in the prime position.
He wiped his eyes and felt again for his pipe. As he filled it from a rather battered pouch he looked up and down the long tapered table which was the shape of a huge coffin. Appropriate, he thought with bitter reflection, as was the ticking of the mantelpiece clock, which seemed unusually loud.
He looked at the sunbeams streaming through the windows and lighting up the motes of dust which, in spite of the almost clinical cleanliness of the room, were dancing in the moving air. Some of them seemed to have tails like tiny crotchets. Spelling out his swan-song?
Such morbid thoughts were out of character for him. It would be so much better, so much more manly, to go down fighting, to drop dead perhaps in the chair in which he was sitting. But he knew he should not delude himself. He had always been short on physical courage and it was no good pretending that he wasn’t afraid of death.
Poor Alan! It must have been terribly difficult for him. To have to admit that he had been so wrong! To have to convey the appalling news to such an old friend. Alan must be right. He was one of the finest physicians in the land. Perhaps he had been slow in spotting the diagnosis because of the very fact that he was dealing with the Prime Minister. Henderson remembered that this seemed to have happened to King George the Sixth. The early symptoms of mortal illness had been there but the doctors could not bring themselves to see the obvious because they could not believe it could happen to the King.
Oh yes, Alan was right, blast it. Those persistent chest pains! He could even feel a dull ache now. There could be recompenses. He could write his memoirs. Make some money, explain to the world what he had intended to do had fate been kinder. Then, after a rest, take on some consultancies, some committee work. But only in London. There was going to be no cottage in the backwoods. No sitting round the fireside cooped up with Winifred day after boring day. That could be a killer. No, if he couldn’t be Prime Minister he couldn’t be nothing.
He would have to make a special appointment to see the Queen. She would have to be told first. There would be some sympathy there; they had always got on well together, rather to her surprise. Then there would have to be a resignation statement to be preceded by an announcement to the Cabinet. Again he wondered how they would react. A few would be genuinely sorry. He could name them. But there were others, like the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Foreign Secretary, who wouldn’t be able to believe their luck. Older men who had given up all hope of the Premiership when such a young Party leader had been elected. They would be the most effusive with their sympathy, and the least sincere. Severing relations with them would be almost a consolation.
And there was another private consolation. As even the wretched Press had now realized there would be no possibility of war with Russia in the immediately foreseeable future. So he would be leaving a stable situation so far as that counter-productive scare was concerned. A pity he could claim no credit for it. But then nobody could. Nobody outside Russia could exert any control over coups in the Kremlin. He thought briefly about the secret report on Yakovlev’s coup which Quinn had sent him. He didn’t accept it all, but there could be no doubt that Borisenko and Volkhov had been assassinated. Well, it was a purely domestic matter in which no other nation should or could have interfered. But how he hated violence!
As he composed himself to return to the flat he felt deeply grateful that he had always been able to live and function politically in a country where leaders were elected in a truly democratic manner and could only be dismissed in the same way.
Such agonies of remorse afflicted King-Lander for what he had done to Henderson that he dismissed the idea of a holiday in the sun or anywhere else. It would be bad enough having to see him professionally, prescribing treatment and even phoney drugs of which he had no need, without having to face him for days at a stretch. He was in no doubt about how he should have resolved the situation. He should have killed himself. Now, somehow, he had to live with his conscience. There was only one effective treatment – to immerse himself in work. To accept every patient, every hospital round, every speaking engagement.
