The Touch of Innocents. Michael Dobbs

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СКАЧАТЬ but expensive British military garrison and fetid tropical climate that rotted the turbine fans on the Harrier jump jets almost as quickly as it sapped the men’s morale. Faced with the need for yet another round of economies, the Minister had sacrificed the lot, releasing the tiny Latin American country to the predatory clutches of its neighbours. As the story went, although the Minister couldn’t find Belize on the map, neither could he find it on the list of critical Government-held constituencies …

      With a sigh, Devereux turned once more to the unmarked leather-bound folder lying open on his lap which, in the most concise of forms, contained briefing on all issues of substance and urgency that his civil servants thought appropriate for the new Secretary of State.

       ‘… the SoS can expect renewed pressures from HM Treasury in the forthcoming expenditure round, in spite of recent assurances … These Treasury demands must be resisted at all costs … unforeseen scope of our commitment to the UN peacekeeping operations in South Africa … expected increase in threat from the dispersal of former Soviet nuclear scientists and weapons technologies … rising nationalist extremism in Germany … unpublicized visit last month of Joint Chiefs to Downing Street to discuss their growing concerns … hostile questioning can be expected from the Government’s own backbenches …’

      Devereux smiled. It was a catalogue of horrors worthy of any group of civil servants about to go into budgetary battle with their sceptical and unimaginative Treasury colleagues, who were capable of sinking more aircraft carriers in an afternoon than an entire Nazi wolf pack.

      One item was more specific than most, the language less florid.

      ‘23. In particular, HMG has undertaken to resolve its position on the MPAA, the proposed joint-venture fighter aircraft, by the end of this year. The project, much desired by the US Administration, faces considerable opposition within the Congress. It is unlikely to win Congressional approval without the full-hearted backing of the European allies. Most of our European partners are diffident, recognizing the military value of the MPAA in the increasingly unstable security environment but balking at the expected costs. Germany and Spain have let it be known that they will participate only if Britain does. On that decision will rest US approval itself.

      ‘24. Therefore the role of HMG and the SoS personally is likely to be decisive.

      ‘25. The funding requirements for developing MPAA are significant, but spread over ten years. Moreover, we are in a strong position to negotiate a substantial part of the design and manufacturing work and consequent employment benefits for this country, which will give the SoS a powerful hand in bilaterals with the Treasury on development funding and other aspects of the MoD budget …

       ‘27. Considerable public and international attention will inevitably be given to whatever decision the SoS makes.’

      Devereux snorted.

      ‘Considerable public and international attention will inevitably be given …’

      Encouragement? Or threat? While there was no recommendation contained within the briefing, its positive tone left no doubt as to the desires of the MoD bureaucracy. The Duster was their virility symbol, the project which would redeem them in the eyes of their Whitehall colleagues after years of being squeezed dry by Governments in search of another billion or so with which to build a reelection platform.

      Mentally he ticked off the three alternatives. He could refuse to back the project, thereby earning the gratitude of his hard-pressed Cabinet colleagues. Yet it would also earn him the relentless opposition of those powerful and privileged men within the defence establishment who had killed off more than one of his predecessors. Anyway, political gratitude, Devereux had learned, could be exhausted more quickly than a soda siphon.

      On the other hand he could fight for the project in a public battle which would inevitably be bloody. But whose blood? In victory he would be cast as the most dynamic and successful Minister in the Government, an international figure of stature, a skilled negotiator, visionary politician and ever-rising star, the man most likely to. He could write his own accolade.

      Yet if he fought, and lost, it would be a personal disaster. The successor shorn of success. The defence chief who retreated. Who came, who saw, who surrendered.

      What would his father have done? Got drunk. Then beaten his wretched wife and disappeared to that end of the manor house where the housekeeper lived. The young housekeeper. There had been a steady stream of housekeepers passing through the manor house, all of them young, and all chosen by his father.

      Devereux bit his lip. His father would have fought, and failed. But Devereux wasn’t like his father. He wouldn’t fail.

      And, anyway, he had no need for young housekeepers.

      

      In the blackness of her mind there was life.

      She couldn’t identify it as such, it kept changing shape, colour, intensity. But it was there. It was as though she and her senses were floating in the vacuum of space, approaching each other, recognizing each other, almost touching, with only the slightest nudge needed to bring them together but unable to find that final extra adjustment.

      Frustration. Anger. I feel, therefore I am. More frustration.

      The bundles of stimuli which were her inchoate thoughts passed by and were lost in the blackness or burned up like a lost body re-entering the earth’s atmosphere.

      She preferred those which burned. She took comfort in the light, and all the time there seemed to be more brilliance entering her world.

      Then came the moment when the light turned into the recognizable colours of a rainbow and the dark veil began to lift.

      ‘Mummie-e-e-e-e!’

      The first time she had comprehended any sound, the first time Benjy had uttered any word, since the accident. Her eyes opened, were assaulted by the light but struggled and blinked and gradually found focus until she could see those around her – the diminutive consultant neurologist, Weatherup, with a constrained smile of professional triumph; Primrose, the student nurse, whose smiles showed no restraint at all; McBean, who radiated a quiet sense of privilege at having been party to another of life’s minor miracles, and on whose ample blue-cottoned bosom wriggled the animated form of a young, dark-haired boy.

      ‘B … Ben … Benjamin?’ She formed the sound in the way a foal attempts its first step. Quickly they took away the cuffs and clips of the monitoring equipment so that mother and son could be reunited in an uninhibited and uninterrupted embrace. Soon Benjamin, overwhelmed, had fashioned a face like that of a latex troll and was tearfully expressing his pleasure and relief. Tears began to form in the corner of his mother’s eyes, too, but as yet she had not found the strength or understanding to express her emotions.

      ‘Where am I? What happened?’ she whispered eventually, her hand reaching out instinctively to straighten the young boy’s hair, but the effort proved too much.

      ‘Och, so you’re from across the water. American, are you?’ McBean responded to the noticeable accent. ‘And tell me. What’s your name?’

      ‘Is … Isadora Dean. Izzy.’ The reply was tentative, sounding almost a question. But a start. ‘My fath …’ She started upon her habitual self-conscious explanation that she had been named after Isadora Duncan, the avant-garde dancer and teenage idol of her father, a Wisconsin dentist who hid a number of unpredictable passions behind the crisp formality of his dental mask, but the excuse СКАЧАТЬ