Whispers of Betrayal by Michael Dobbs Read Free Book Online Page A

which he appears to have lost. He pauses, cautious, sniffing the air in suspicion before padding across the river of light.
    The old clock above the quad takes its time about striking ten, disturbing the screech owl that had found a perch on the weather vane. There is no disguising the fact that the bell is badly cracked, and getting worse. The entire clock tower is a disgrace, so dilapidated it will soon need replacing if Amadeus can find the money, or silencing if not. Another tedious battle which as bursar he willhave to fight with the governors, hand to hand, a tussle that will soak up as much of his energy as did the recapture of ‘Full Back’ on Mount Longdon, and maybe leave as many scars.
    He turns up the volume of his CD player until the voices make his office vibrate. Not a problem, since there is no one left to disturb, apart from the cat and the owls. Mozart’s
Requiem
. The work of a dying man that was destined to be left behind, uncompleted. Amadeus has revisited this music many times recently, feeling its power, beginning to understand how wrathful the composer must have felt in his frustration, and sensing his fear. So much unfinished business.
    ‘…
fac benigne ne perenni cremer igne
,’ the chorus sang. ‘Grant that I burn not in everlasting fire.’
    How Amadeus loathes his job. A travesty of his talents. Surrounded by children who have no respect and teaching staff who show no interest, parading in their crumpled jackets and tatty liberalism. When he was interviewed for the post, the headmaster suggested he had no management experience. Sure, he didn’t know how many paper clips he had in his desk drawer. But he had planned a Para battle group assault with eight hundred men and heavy drop kit, all loaded onto twenty Hercules that were then flown five hundred miles and dropped on precisely the right bloody spot at exactly the right bloody time so that no one drowned or broke his fucking back. That wasn’t management, of course, not in Civvy Street. He’d just have to get used to such subtle distinctions. ‘Look, it’s an income,’ the Officers Association had encouraged when they pushed the bursar’s position at him. Yeah, but so was mugging grandmothers.
    He took the job because there was nothing else on offer at the time, apart from the still greater humiliation of his wife’s incessant nagging. And when he sat down and considered all the options, beneath all the doubts there was the bedrock of his pride. Amazing what a man’s pride could make him do.
    Amadeus turns from his post at the window and wanders back to his desk, a route he has crossed and recrossed at least a dozen times during the evening, restless, like a refugee. From beneath the puddle of light thrown by the solitary lamp upon his desk he retrieves the copy of the
Telegraph
, tightly folded to the letter page,which contains the reply that has been printed to his own. It comes from the Minister for Defence, Gerald Earwick. He reads it again, and still his soul burns.
    ‘… distortion of the truth … time for the country to decide, arms or Accident & Emergency wards … our duty to defend our hospitals and schools, our old and infirm … an end to feather-bedding in the armed forces
.’
    On that night in the black snow on Mount Longdon, he had watched the youthful Argentinian conscript die, Scully’s bayonet stuck in an inch below his twelfth rib, the young man scrabbling uncomprehending at his emptying stomach while hope drained away between his fingers. Somehow it hadn’t seemed like a feather bed.
    ‘
We should not allow the argument to be distorted,’
Earwick’s riposte continues,
‘by the self-interested pleading of a small number of disgruntled former officers. The truth of the matter is simple. The nation’s security remains safe in this Government’s hands.’
    He reads it yet again, even though every word has already dripped like acid across his heart. The music of the Day of Judgement echoes in his