He swallowed hard.
'Just as I'm sure, Jerry, you can think of very few circumstances in which you would be tempted to betray our party.'
The Chairman was finished now, was tapping the glass of his watch, while the flock applauded for its Member to rise and speak.
As Claire made the long and lonely drive back to London, she reflected that rarely had she heard such a comprehensive and carefully argued endorsement of the need for party loyalty than the one delivered that night by her colleague, the Honourable and Missing Member for South Warbury.
The ninety-nine square miles of British sovereign territory located within Cyprus and deemed vital to the security of Old Blighty consists of a number of fragments, like a mosaic left incomplete by a bored artisan. Within the two main bases of Dhekelia and Akrotiri lies a host of facilities central to the defence effort, from radar-based intelligence-gathering operations and an airfield capable of accommodating the largest military transport and reconnaissance planes, to a full-sized cricket pitch, a Royal Military Police gaol, seven schools and several pubs. Each is separated from the other, some facilities are surrounded by barbed wire, some are not. In between there are many other facilities, including terraces of neat cubicle houses, fruit farms, ancient ruins and several Cypriot villages.
There are no signposts or other markers to indicate the frontier between British and Cypriot territories, except for Catseyes. The British seem to have a passion for marking the middle of their roads in this manner, the Cypriots do not. There it begins, and ends.
The aspect of the bases is beautiful, the duty is dull. And security is a nightmare. In the event of civil unrest, the British resort to cordoning off a few of their facilities as best they can, leaving by far the greatest area without guard or protection, and trusting in the traditional moderation and common sense of the Cypriots. Such trust is usually well founded.
Thus, when confrontation ensued at the gates of the British airfield that lies adjacent to the salt flats of Akrotiri, the proceedings had an inevitable air of unreality. Security at the gates to the airfield, which is otherwise surrounded by a double fence of chain link topped with barbed wire, was provided by two poles, painted red and white, acting as traffic barriers and swung from a central control point, flanked on either side by two small concrete guard posts that were usually unoccupied, with a sign advising that a 'Live Armed Guard'
(sic)
was on duty. Additional defences were provided by several well-watered rose bushes. In normal circumstances the security would not have slowed, let alone stopped, a speeding rabbit, so on this day the system was augmented by a springy coil of razor wire swung in front of the gate, a tripling of the guard (to six), and the drawing up of an ancient white Land-Rover with canvas roof and languid blue lights. Far smoother, less dated Mitsubishi patrol vehicles were available, but this was deemed to be an essentially British occasion.
The confrontation commenced with the arrival shortly after eight in the morning of the entire population of the village of Akrotiri, not a difficult logistical challenge since the village lay only some two hundred yards from the gates of the base. The village economy was dominated by the base, for which it supplied a variety of eating and drinking establishments including a Chinese takeaway, a grocery store and a unisex hairdresser.
'Elenaki-mou,
what the hell are you doing here?'
'I am protesting against British exploitation.'
There was a pause in the interrogation as the questioner, a corporal who was standing guard behind the razor wire, considered the implications of what he had just heard. He was confused. He and Eleni, an attractive doe-eyed girl of nineteen, had spent the previous evening at the Akrotiri Arms pub and she had mentioned nothing of such matters then. In any event, they were engaged to be married as soon as he had finished his tour of duty. He was looking forward to it; he'd already put on five pounds.
'No talking on guard duty!' the Station Warrant Officer snapped, who seemed to have eyes in his arse. 'The natives may be hostile.'
Three young boys, one of them Eleni's younger brother, who had occupied the branches of an olive tree next to the guard hut roared their defiance, their faces covered in huge grins and smears of aniseed.
Eleni seemed less impressed. Perhaps she took that from her mother, who stood directly behind her shoulder and who was never impressed. She spoke no English, never smiled but stared. At least, after much investigation, Billy, the corporal, assumed she stared, but it was difficult to be certain since her eyes faced in different directions and made him nervous. Yet in whichever direction, they never seemed to waver. He felt constantly under her scrutiny, wherever he stood. Billy balanced his SA 80 automatic nervously in his hands as his beloved addressed the NCO.
'You've stabbed us in the back, Sergeant,' Eleni accused.
'It's Station Warrant Officer, if you don't mind, Miss.'
'Then you have stabbed us in the back,
Station Warrant Officer.'
Her italics had an uncharacteristically sharp edge.
'If I 'ave, it's been with me chequebook, Miss.'
'You sell us to Turks!' The cry came from an aged man seated on top of an equally aged tractor, whose passion far exceeded his command of English. A solitary front tooth gave him a ferocious aspect. Many of the forty or so protesters raised their voices and waved arms in agreement.
The SWO marched slowly along his narrow front line, ten paces, turn and repeat, his boots beating a steady cadence on the tarmac, steadying his troops. 'If they give you a hard time, remember, lads,' he growled. 'Stick it in. Give it a twist. Then pull it out.'
'Billy doesn't even get that when I'm being nice to him, Sergeant,' Eleni shouted across to him.
The soldier to Billy's right sniggered while Billy considered throwing himself upon the razor wire. The SWO turned on studded heel to face the protesters. Eleni's mother stared directly at him, without taking her eye off Billy. She hadn't got her teeth in, her gums were in constant motion as though still finishing her breakfast.
'Station Warrant Officer
’
he insisted once more in a throaty voice. 'Let's have a little proper respect with this riot of yours, Miss. Otherwise I might find myself forced to retaliate.'
'How?'
'Me and the lads might have to stop visiting your uncle's pub, Miss. Be a great pity, that.'
But he had lost the initiative once more. Shouts and gesticulations broke out amongst the Cypriots, their eyes raised skywards. The SWO looked up to see, a few hundred feet above him, the fierce yellow wings of a hang glider. It was a sport much practised from the cliffs of Kourion a few miles along the coast, and this glider was pushing his luck. Not only was he well into unauthorized territory but he was also, except for his harness, completely naked, his golden-olive body clearly detailed against the outstretched wings.
'Now that is what I call a real man
’
Eleni mouthed in a stage whisper. 'I wonder if he has trouble steering.'
'That'll bugger up Billy's private life
’
a guard muttered.
'And bugger up our radar ops, too,' the SWO added. 'What the hell will they make of that?'
As the glider made a lower pass the young girls giggled while the older women shook their heads in memory of times past. The atmosphere had deteriorated to good-natured farce as everyone gazed into the sky, except for Eleni's mother, who still maintained a wary eye on the freely perspiring Billy.
'But you're still all right for tonight?' Billy ventured hopefully to her daughter.
'Not if I catch that one first,' Eleni announced loudly, her thoughts still floating aloft in the cloudless sky.
The confrontation had been defused, for the moment, but for how long the SWO was not sure.
'What d'you reckon, Sir? Dickhead at - what? -two hundred metres? Vertical shot. Into the sun. Want me to give it a try?'
The SWO had suddenly lost his humour. 'You might well have to try, lad. Soon you might well have to try.'
Billy's future mother-in-law munched on.
'Damn.'
A brace of sapphire-tipped peacocks echoed the cry. He stood on the terrace of his chateau, set in the heart of the golden hills of Burgundy, and cursed again. The great house, all turrets and echoes of tumbrils, stood overlooking some of the finest vineyards in the world, row upon row of liquid gold. On a distant escarpment stood an old fortified abbey, ancient stone glowing in the melting evening sun, in between lay nothing but the thousand acres of his empire. Early tomorrow morning the first of nearly two hundred friends and business associates, drawn by the prospect of the view and the vintage, would start arriving to pay gentle homage and to savour the restored imperial splendours of his home. An empire built on oil.
But now there was too much oil, a whole drumful of it which had been poured over, across, around, everywhere on the cropped lawn leading down to the carp lake. Vandalism as grotesque as a morning raid on the Bourse.
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.