Chapter 28
A week later, on October 28, the day after I got back from Bermuda, I had an e-mail from Peter Foster, the new man in Carole’s life, attaching copies of floor plans of the Panoramic. He appeared to have been talking to the developers on my behalf, which was ridiculous — Sheila Murison was handling all that. I supposed he had been talking to them anyway about his own possible purchase, and talking about mine as well strengthened his hand. In another e-mail, he put his mortgage broker in touch with me, and I passed the details on to my own accountant, whom I’d been with since 1982. Again there seemed little harm in it.
The business of the blind trust was very difficult. I couldn’t discuss it with Tony, yet I couldn’t spend a quarter of a million pounds on a stranger’s say-so, however much Carole might sing his praises, which she did nonstop. So I made an appointment the following Saturday to view the property myself. I also contacted a couple of real estate agents and arranged to see another place the same morning.
So I went. Two of the available flats were next door to each other, and it occurred to me that if I got both, I might trigger a discount. Then Euan could be in one, and I could let out the other. Mortgage rates were low, and I needed somehow to build up capital so we could eventually buy a house. I discussed the possibility there and then with the person showing me round and offered an overall figure of £430,000, which in the end was what I paid.
The next day an e-mail arrived from Peter Foster. Carole was obviously relaying everything that was going on, but given that she had just told me she was pregnant, this wasn’t the time to be prickly. I knew how much she longed for a baby, and my heart went out to her. This was probably her last chance. Her boyfriend was obviously pitching for a job, but the truth was that I didn’t have any need of him. In one of his e-mails, he said he knew some rental agencies, so to keep Carole happy and him out of my hair, I said he could forward me their details. I was puzzled by his wanting to get involved and started feeling distinctly uneasy.
The administrators of the trust agreed to allow £100,000 to be invested, and, as planned, I raised the rest by mortgage in the normal way through my bank. We exchanged contracts on November 22 and completed the deal a week after.
On Sunday, November 24, the Downing Street special protection officers received a report from colleagues in Cheshire. They’d had a tip-off: a convicted con man called Peter Foster was claiming he was involved with the Blairs through Carole Caplin. He planned to involve her in a scam concerning a diet tea, which had already landed him in prison. There was also some talk of involvement in a property deal, and he’d boasted that he’d met the Blairs’ son Euan. Then Alastair rang. He’d just had a call from a former newspaper colleague, Ian Monk, now working in PR. He was advising Carole and Peter Foster, he said. Foster had just lost a deportation case, and as Carole was now expecting his child, he was looking for “advice.” Foster also claimed he was being blackmailed, by the man who had tipped off the police about Foster’s questionable dealings, and having contacted the News of the World, they were planning to set up a “sting” — that is, to record a meeting between me and Carole and Peter Foster.
I felt sick, Tony was beside himself, and Alastair was merely grim. Sooner or later, probably sooner, he said, it would come out. For him this was the ultimate “I told you so.” Carole would now have to go. We saw Carole at Chequers that Sunday and confronted her with the information. She confessed that she knew all about Foster’s past but claimed that he was completely innocent: he’d been stitched up by the security services.
“Please, Carole,” Tony said, clearly exasperated. “This is ridiculous. The man is a fantasist. You’ve got to understand; we cannot be connected with a criminal.”
She then presented Tony with an extraordinary letter from a lawyer in Fiji, “putting into context” Foster’s shady past. This was hardly reassuring to anybody who had ever spent time around villains and criminals, as both Tony and I had done as barristers. It was classic stuff. To say he was dodgy would be putting it mildly, and we told her so.
“You’re talking about the father of my unborn child,” she said, and burst into tears. It was horrible. It was as if it had just occurred to her that if he went away, she’d be left literally holding the baby. Frankly, neither of us could spare the emotional energy. Tony had Iraq to contend with. Politically things were very hot, with antiwar groups becoming increasingly vociferous. The last thing he needed was this, and I knew it. I was supposed to be his support, not his undoing. As for me, in addition to my official engagements, for two weeks from November 25 to December 5, I was sitting as a recorder in Isleworth Crown Court. I also had late-afternoon appointments with former Prime Ministers’ wives for the book.
We told Carole that although it was her life, that man was never coming near any of us. It was all we could do. She agreed that she would keep away from Downing Street. Indeed, for the time being, I kept away from her entirely. This was a shock to both our systems: we had worked out together at the gym most days when I was in London for as long as I could remember.
On Saturday, November 28, the headline in the Daily Mail ran “Cherie’s Style Guru Has Fallen for a Fraudster.” That afternoon the Mail on Sunday sent through a list of twenty-two questions to the Downing Street press office, all Foster related. It was horrendous, and Tony was fuming.
“I told you not to buy any bloody flats.”
“He had nothing to do with the bloody flats. I have never met the guy. He has never been here; he has never been to Downing Street. What more can I say? I can’t believe you’d believe a convicted con man rather than your own wife! Telling lies is what the man does for a living!”
“So you categorically deny you have had any contact?”
“Apart from a few e-mails, no. I’ll show them to you if you like.” Technology and Tony are like oil and water, and waving that offer aside, he dashed off the form, filling in yeses and nos — mostly nos — then faxed it back. Unfortunately I think he told Alastair in very firm terms that I’d had no contact with Foster whatsoever — a version that Alastair confidently relayed to the press. I didn’t talk to Alastair at all.
For the next few days a stream of denials issued from Downing Street. Then, on Thursday, December 5, the Daily Mail published the exchange of e-mails between Peter Foster and me. Alastair’s look of superior satisfaction changed completely. I had never seen him so angry. As he saw it, he had lied to save my face, and he was determined that if anyone went down for this, it wasn’t going to be Alastair Campbell.
That morning Hilary Coffman came to my bedroom while André was doing my hair. She knew time was short: I had to be in court at Isleworth at 9:30 a.m. Within seconds she was giving me the third degree, clearly on instructions. I have known her for a long time as a faithful servant of the Labour Party, and she was clearly uncomfortable about doing it, not least because she was a friend of mine professing not to accept what I was saying.
“But Hilary, don’t you see, there isn’t a scandal. It’s you lot who are making it into a scandal. Look, I’ve used my own money to buy two flats. I’ve paid the going rate for them. Nobody paid £295,000. Okay, so I got a discount on the published price, but that’s standard — it’s a marketing ploy to make you feel you’ve got a bargain. No, I didn’t know him. No, I have never met him — I once said hello to him in passing at the gym. No, he has never met Euan. No, he has never been to Chequers. No, I did not ask him to help me avoid paying stamp duty. No, he was not my financial adviser. No, I did not find him a barrister. No, I did not intervene with immigration or any government official or legal representative on his behalf. No, no, no, no, NO, NO.”
There came a point where André could stand it no longer. “How can you do this to her? Just look at what you are doing to her! I’m going to tell someone. You cannot do this to her,” he said, and stormed off.
In the mirror was a face I barely recognized. My chin was wobbling. My reflection was blurred as I blinked to try to control the tears. On my dressing table were photographs of all the children. If things had gone differently, in two months’ time there would have been another one . . .
I was forced to issue a statement saying that Peter Foster was involved. “Damage limitation” is the term, I think.
I bumped into one of the press officers in the corridor beneath the flat at the entrance to the press office. “I’m so sorry all this is going on, Cherie,” he said.
Fiona’s take was slightly different. “Everyone in the press office hates you,” she told me. “They’ve told lies on your behalf, and none of them ever wants to work for you again. They want nothing more to do with you.”
We passed a frosty weekend at Chequers. Tony was on the phone most of the time, in his study, the door closed. Iraq. Alan was making his usual Christmas puddings, and I went with the children to have a stir and make a wish, while Jackie was keeping everybody cheerful. I found it all very, very hard. It was about to get worse. On Sunday the News of the World got in on the act. We later discovered that they had offered Peter Foster £100,000 to tell his story. Now they were questioning the discounts on my clothes. That night Bill Clinton dropped in at Downing Street and gave me a big hug.
On Monday the ninth Peter Foster’s solicitors issued a statement saying that I had contacted them about his deportation case but that I hadn’t intervened in any way, that it had been only to reassure Ms. Caplin. This, of course, did more harm than good. But it was true. I had phoned them, but all I was doing was checking that everything that should have been done had been done. I knew perfectly well that he hadn’t a chance of winning his appeal. His record — prison terms on three continents, including in Britain — spoke for itself, but I wasn’t going to say that to my friend. And she was still my friend. I had just heard that she had lost her baby.
André arrived at 8.00 a.m. to do my hair. That night I had a reception for the Loomba Trust, whose aim it is to educate the children of widows in India. In the afternoon I had my annual children’s Christmas party. Every year children from one charity are invited for tea. Father Christmas comes and there’s an entertainer, and at the end we turn on the lights on the tree outside the front door. I’d try to enjoy myself, but I felt like a pariah.
André was just getting started when Alastair came storming into the bedroom. Until now he had refused to talk to me, either sending in Hilary to do his dirty work or using Tony as a go-between. I think even Tony didn’t want him to talk to me, instead putting himself between us as a shield because he knew Alastair was so angry.
“That’s it,” Alastair said, his arms folded, as he looked at me via the mirror. “It’s now political. The Tories are asking questions, and your husband is going to have to answer them. One more time, Cherie, did you at any point have anything whatever to do with the immigration case?”
“I’ve told you, no. You’re determined to humiliate me, aren’t you? I know you’ve been briefing against me.”
“I don’t need to. You do it all on your own.”
“Don’t you dare talk to Cherie like that!” André exploded.
“You mind your own business,” Alastair retorted. “Remember, you’re just a fucking hairdresser.”
“Apologize,” I said.
“I don’t think so.” Alastair snorted. “For the last time, I want that woman out of your life.”
“She has just lost a baby; her boyfriend is threatened with deportation. I’m not going to abandon her. I’ve said I won’t talk to her, isn’t that enough?”
“Don’t forget, you brought all of this on yourself.”
I felt terrible for Carole and very weepy. The news about the miscarriage had taken me straight back to that dreadful afternoon, only a few months before, when I’d been lying upstairs bleeding. Even with four children already, I had felt utterly bereft. How Carole was feeling, I could only imagine. Banned as I was from any contact, I couldn’t even comfort her. The whole situation was ridiculous. Tony could talk to her, but I couldn’t.
That morning I spent an hour with Lady Wilson, the wife of former Prime Minister Harold Wilson, talking about her life in Number 10 in the 1960s and 1970s. Listening to her, I realized that little had changed in forty years. She had often been lonely and unhappy. She was the first of the Downing Street wives who came from a background that wasn’t “establishment.” Her son Giles had been a teenager when they’d moved into the Number 10 flat, and even after all these years, it pained her to remember the impossibility of him simply getting in and out without a great song and dance being made of it. She remembered how she would wake in the middle of the night to find a garden girl at the end of the bed taking dictation from her husband. To retain her sanity, she told me, she would take the bus to north London, where they used to live, and cry on the shoulders of friends. The lack of privacy, the loss of identity — I heard the same stories over and over again: different women, different backgrounds, different generations, but all bound together by a strong sense of public service, seeing their role as that of support and comfort to the Prime Minister.
Just before lunch André called me from the salon. “How are you feeling?”
“Not great, André.”
“You know I’m not her greatest fan, but I think you need to see Carole.”
“She’s banned.”
“That’s my idea. You meet at my flat!”
“But when?”
“This afternoon. I have it all worked out. You turn the Christmas lights on with the kids, and I’ll be waiting out back.”
“You mean just walk out?”
“I mean just walk out. Don’t tell anybody. Be very naughty. Give them the slip!”
“But I’ve got the Loomba Trust reception.”
“I’ll get you back for that. Promise.”
So that’s what happened. Between three and four-thirty I was down in Number 10 for the children’s Christmas party. Once the tree ceremony was over, I walked back in through the Downing Street front door, turned left, and pushed the button for the Number 11 lift. I didn’t normally bother to take the lift up one flight of stairs, and this was no exception: I didn’t go up; I went down, down into the basement, through the comms office, and out into the back parking lot, where André was waiting. Nobody stopped me; nobody even seemed to notice. His flat is in Berwick Street, in Soho. Carole was already there, he said. He’d be waiting in the café across the road. But we didn’t have much time. “Half an hour tops,” he warned me. It was a few minutes after five.
She was in a bad way. Very upset, very contrite, very tearful, not least because she had lost the baby. I told her that I wouldn’t abandon her, that as far as I was concerned, she had done no wrong. Did it do any good? I don’t know. But we both had a cry, and I think we both felt better. She showed me the contract that Ian Monk had negotiated with the Mail on Sunday for her to contribute a weekly column. She pointed out the bit that said, “Any reference to Mrs Cherie Blair shall appear only after prior approval.” She would never talk about us, she said. Then I had to go. Any idea that I wouldn’t be found out was ridiculous, of course. I had been seen leaving on the security cameras, but at least they hadn’t had time to follow us and didn’t know where I was going. It felt like a victory.
When we got back, André gave me a hug. Then I opened the car door and walked in the way I’d left. I nodded to the uniformed officer on duty. He nodded back and picked up the phone. The prisoner had returned.
The next day it got worse. The Tories were calling for an official inquiry. I couldn’t stand it anymore; I was just shaking. Alastair had had more questions through from the Daily Mail, implying that I had been trying to exert pressure on a judge. The law was my life! How could anybody think I could do such a thing? Yet Alastair was asking me as if it were a real possibility. I felt so angry that when they said they wanted me to make a statement, I agreed. They wrote it.
Eventually I added in some stuff about Carole. Alastair wasn’t happy, but I didn’t care. It was supposed to be my statement, after all. That evening I was due to present the Partners in Excellence awards, which as patron I did every year, to organizations involved with affordable child care and associated services. The venue was the Atrium restaurant, just beyond the House of Commons. Fiona suggested that we use it as a platform.
As I got into the car, Fiona sat grim-faced beside me. From the moment we passed the barriers into Whitehall, it began: flashlights against the windows of the car, the shouts of the photographers. Never before or since have I felt so hounded. I was their prey. It was that simple. Past the House of Commons, on to the Embankment, then finally we were there. The nice new ’tec opened the door, and an arm from somewhere guided me in, the lights blinding me, the voices shouting. Once inside, I stood there trembling, checking to see if the microphone was turned on. My statement had been timed at nine minutes. Just another nine minutes, and it would all be over. And these good people thought they were getting a speech on children and excellence. I thought, They are the ones I should be apologizing to. All their hard work, and they get this charade. A nod from Fiona, and I’m on.
“In view of all the controversy around me at the moment, I hope you don’t mind me using this event to say a few words. . . . You can’t fail to know that there have been a lot of allegations about me and I haven’t said anything, but when I got back to Downing Street today and discovered that some of the press are effectively suggesting that I tried to influence a judge, I knew that the time had come for me to say something. It is not fair to Tony or the government that the entire focus of political debate at the moment is about me.”
Tony was at his weekly audience with the Queen, but he saw it later on the news. There was a moment toward the end when I nearly broke down, when I mentioned Euan having left home. What we’d wanted for him in Bristol, most of all, was that he would be safe, that he would be away from the press. He’d had all that furor over going to school, then there had been the drinking episode, and he’d gone to Bristol to get away from all that. And now here he was, tangentially at least, caught up in this. I’d dragged my son, whom I’d wanted to protect, into the news. My girlfriend, who had just lost a much-wanted baby, was being hounded by the press. And on top of all that, I had to try to keep going with all my official engagements and keep relatively calm at home so that the other children didn’t get too upset. All of that I could cope with, but the mention of Euan’s name was the thing that tipped me over.
One day, a few months before the 1997 election, Philip Gould had told me that Tony was going on a long journey, and that neither his past friends nor the office could go all the way with him. The only one who could do that was me, and I needed to make sure I was by his side supporting him. I took those words to heart and vowed always to be there for him. So the worst aspect for me of the whole Bristol flats nightmare was that I had let Tony down. At the moment in his life when he needed me most, I was a drag on his energies rather than a source of support.
Yet however bad things were, I never felt that he had abandoned me. For a quarter of a century, we had been not only lovers but best friends. I always knew there would be things that Tony couldn’t talk about, but I also knew that he would never lie to me, which was why I was 100 percent behind him over Iraq and the threat Saddam Hussein represented to world order. His preoccupation with what he had to do and the consequences for individual lives, both British troops and Iraqi civilians, weighed on him night and day, awake and asleep. In trying to get the UN Security Council to force Saddam to comply with its resolutions, he faced a titanic struggle. He was tireless in his efforts to persuade the Americans not to act unilaterally, while at the same time attempting to galvanize the rest of the world into action when it was clear that the language of diplomacy was no longer enough. Although 2002 had undoubtedly been a bad year for me, whatever problems I had faded into insignificance compared to what he had on his plate.
Following that splendid tenet of tabloid journalism “no smoke without fire,” “Cheriegate,” as it was wittily dubbed, dragged on for weeks, until eventually the press just got bored. The only positive thing to emerge were the letters I received in commiseration: the charities I was involved with, colleagues at the Bar and on the Bench, politicians from both sides of the House, priests and vicars, monks and nuns, friends and people I had never met and never would. I even got a kind letter from Prince Charles. I replied to them all, but those people will never know just how much their support meant to me.
Eventually Peter Foster was deported. (One of his more spectacular claims, worth including for its sheer audacity, was that Tony was the father of Carole’s baby.) He is now in prison in Australia, serving a four-and-a-half-year sentence for fraud. A few months after he was deported, he was in touch with the Mail again, sending it copies of fabricated e-mails purporting to show that I had tried to channel funds through an offshore tax haven. He clearly had no idea of how little money we had. The Mail, naturally, demanded yet more answers. This time, thanks to my accountant’s thorough forensic investigation of my entire computer system, Downing Street was able categorically to deny the whole thing. The Mail decided not to run the story.
The reverberations continued to rumble round Downing Street. There were more cross-examinations by Hilary Coffman. There was a belief that Carole had taken clothes either for me or herself without paying for them. I was required to contact everyone who had ever supplied me with clothes and get written assurance that the discounts I’d been given were standard, that there had been no special favors. That turned out not to be sufficient. The new Cabinet secretary, Sir Andrew Turnbull, told me that I had to repay the discounts. I refused. I wanted to know on what authority he was able to interfere with personal contracts I had made. “You show me the law that says that I have to pay this back, and I will do it. Otherwise I will not.” Eventually a private secretary was assigned to investigate the whole business of the clothes. She told me that she would try to work out a better scheme, where the rules would be clearly set out.
I had done my homework. From ambassadors’ wives to the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting, nobody else carried the burden of having to dress well for official duties without financial help and under such constant media scrutiny. As for other leaders’ wives, they expressed total disbelief that I didn’t have a budget for formal occasions. A report was apparently written and presented, but in spite of several requests, I never got a glimpse of it.
While all this nonsense was going on, the situation in Iraq was becoming increasingly tense, involving Tony not only in telephone calls round the clock but also in an endless series of bilateral talks, some of which I had to attend.
On October 11 we had flown to Moscow for Tony to see Vladimir Putin. We had first met the Putins in February 2000. Putin was then the heir apparent, and this was a getting-to-know-you trip to St. Petersburg, his hometown and power base. After a whistle-stop tour of the Hermitage, we were taken to War and Peace, a four-hour opera by Prokofiev. Refreshments during the two intervals had consisted solely of champagne and caviar. As I was then six months pregnant with Leo the trip wasn’t easy, and although the hotel was like an oven, outside it was bitterly cold.
My next visit couldn’t have been more different. It was the three hundredth anniversary of the founding of the city. In the short time since assuming the presidency, Putin had poured money into St. Petersburg and totally transformed it, or so it appeared. Much of it, we later discovered, was no more substantial than a film set: the facades of some of the houses had been painted and others disguised to make them look totally restored. It was the end of May, and the weather was lovely. (A few years later they actually sent up airplanes to disperse the clouds so that the sun could shine for the G8.)
The idea was to show St. Petersburg in all its former magnificence, and in that Putin certainly succeeded. The most extraordinary of the reconstructions I saw was the amber room in Catherine Palace. The original had dated from the early eighteenth century — a room completely lined with amber and semiprecious stones — but it had been looted by the Germans during World War II, and no trace of the contents has ever been found. In terms of the entertainment, expense was no object — ballet, fireworks, vodka and caviar wherever you looked. Rather surprisingly, I found I liked caviar. When our host saw me spooning some up, he hastened over. “You don’t want this stuff,” he said, removing my plate and bringing me some beluga.
It was a mind-boggling display of Russian power. Once again I was grateful and amazed to have been granted a ringside seat to history, to incredible people and incredible events.
Three weeks later the Putins arrived on their first state visit to Britain, and I was down to entertain Lyudmila one afternoon. As we had been taken to War and Peace in St. Petersburg, I arranged to visit the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, where we would be joined by an array of cultural people for lunch. On the Putins’ arrival in London, however, I was informed through an aide that Mrs. Putina would really like to go shopping. From what I knew of her, I judged that Burberry’s might hit the spot, so I arranged a discreet visit to their showroom just off Piccadilly Circus immediately after the lunch. Unfortunately this being a state visit, transport had been provided by Buckingham Palace, and Lyudmila arrived at Downing Street in the royal Bentley, glass everywhere, designed to provide an unrestricted view of the occupants. Discreet it was not.
The aide had been right, however; the opera wasn’t her thing. But she perked up immediately when we got to Burberry’s. No sooner had we arrived in the showroom than she stripped off down to her underwear. In the interests of diplomacy, I decided I had better keep her company. As she didn’t have any money on her, I put her considerable purchases on my credit card. The next day I was informed that a large packet had arrived from Mrs. Putina. She was repaying me in cash. I had never seen so many £50 notes. Our friendship was undoubtedly consolidated that afternoon in our knickers.
In those early days Lyudmila Putina was very unsure of herself. Her husband had fairly chauvinistic views about the role of a wife. He had two basic rules, she confided: “A woman must do everything at home” and “Never praise a woman; it will only spoil her.” Language was important to her; she had studied modern languages at Leningrad University’s philology department and spoke fluent German, the Putins having lived in Germany for several years.
After the Berlin Wall came down, she told me, she had feared for the future of Russian literature and language. In 2002 she had visited the United States to take part in the second annual National Book Festival hosted by Laura Bush, and she decided to replicate the idea. I promised that I would support her, and I did, going over with Laura for the launch and on two further occasions, when I met the First Lady of Armenia, Bella Kocharian, and the First Lady of Bulgaria, Zorka Purvanova. Without my support, Lyudmila later admitted, she probably wouldn’t have gone through with it. There’s no doubt that her book festival gave a huge boost to her confidence and, I think, her status. As a thank-you she gave us lunch in the state rooms of the Kremlin and an extraordinary private tour. By “us” I mean my “entourage”: to wit, André and Sue Geddes. (To his credit, our ambassador, who was also invited, did not balk at this unusual arrangement.) We were taken high up onto the roof by the famous golden domes, from which we could look down at the cathedral. Having been razed by Communist apparatchiks because they didn’t want to look out on it, the cathedral had been restored by Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s after its ignominious decades as a public swimming pool.
The aim of Tony’s current meeting with Putin was to persuade him that the UN needed to demonstrate unity so that America did not feel it would have to act unilaterally. It was a chance, Tony said, to show that in the new world order, the UN did have power and could make things happen. We met at Putin’s private dacha. That evening, I remember, he was at pains to point out that far from being a convinced communist, he had always been a man of religious faith with a strong attachment to the Orthodox Church. I was not entirely convinced. I sensed that the former KGB chief was still there under the surface. (He has a very powerful presence — he’s broad-shouldered and keeps himself fit with judo. He puts a lot of value on physical strength, his own and Russia’s. This is not a man you would want to cross.)
The invitation to his private cottage was a sign of favor, and that night, apart from the interpreter, there were just the four of us. The dacha was, in fact, a hunting lodge, and Lyudmila had never even been there before, their main dacha being outside St. Petersburg. The meal was heavy in the traditional Russian manner: meat and no vegetables, unless you count pickles. When it was over, Putin stood up and stretched. “And now,” he said, “I want to take you wild boar hunting.”
By this time it was about half-past ten. No one had said anything about hunting wild boars or anything else. I was dressed for dinner in high heels and a dress, and the temperature outside was well below freezing. Tony came to help me on with my coat. “Buckle down, girl,” he said, “and stop complaining.”
Lyudmila gave me a look: this wasn’t her idea of fun either. Outside it was pitch-dark, and there was nothing I could do to prevent my heels from click-clacking on the concrete path while everyone else was creeping along with exaggerated stealth. I was petrified. The machine-gun-toting Russian bodyguards were behind us, while our own protection officers were presumably somewhere behind them — at least I hoped so, in case we were about to be ceremonially assassinated. I didn’t know whether to be more frightened of the guns or the wild boars, which I’d seen pictures of and which I knew to be particularly vicious creatures.
Putin led us down to a hide and was explaining the finer points of boar hunting as he peered down the sights of a night-vision rifle. One day, I thought, I will tell my grandchildren about this. No doubt to their disappointment (but not mine), there would be no violent denouement to the evening. Not one wild boar was seen, let alone killed.
Russian hospitality is not for the fainthearted. The next day we were told we were going on a picnic. Again the temperature was subzero, but the area was very beautiful, with a huge lake and waterbirds everywhere; everything glistened with hoarfrost. A wild boar was being roasted over a roaring fire, next to which, in a kind of bower, a table had been laid, complete with white tablecloth and silver cutlery. Seeing that I was shivering, Putin ordered one of his soldiers to give me his greatcoat, which was not very different from the ones in Dr. Zhivago. I was faced with one further practical problem. In order to cut the meat, I had to take off my gloves, but if I took off my gloves, the cutlery stuck to my hands. The wild boar was delicious, but the cold was so overwhelming that I can’t say I really enjoyed it.
The meeting was generally deemed a success. Tony felt that Putin had an understanding of where he was coming from and that he wasn’t just doing this as an acolyte of the American President, but because he wanted to make the UN work.
In December, immediately after the Peter Foster nightmare, we went on a similar mission to visit the Schröders in Berlin. Gerhard Schröder had come to power in 1998, and as he was a social democrat and a modernizer, there was a natural affinity with him. His wife, Doris, had been a journalist, although she looked very fragile, with short blond hair. Unusually, we were invited to their home, where we met her daughter from a previous marriage. Again the meeting was very convivial, with just the four of us. Gerhard assured Tony that while he had to tread carefully because of his own political position, he wasn’t going to cause difficulties for the Americans in the UN. In the event, however, Schröder, Jacques Chirac, and Putin formed an alliance that torpedoed Tony’s attempts for unity. On February 24, 2003, the United States, the UK, and Spain sponsored another UN resolution. France said that it would veto the resolution “whatever the circumstances,” and it was thus never ratified.
Following that evening with the Schröders, Tony gave an interview with British Forces Radio in Germany, just before Christmas. They, more than anybody else, knew that preparations were well under way for an invasion of Iraq. When asked about the final decision about whether to go to war and how difficult it would be to make, Tony replied, “These are the hardest decisions because you are aware that you are putting people’s lives at risk and that is why we should never undertake conflict unless we have exhausted all other options and possibilities.”
And that is truly how he felt and what he had done for months and months. At the same time as Tony was trying to make an alliance with the European leaders, he was also talking with Chile, Cameroon, and Angola, all of which were then on the Security Council. Having conversations late into the night, Tony desperately sought to keep a united front, in order that Saddam Hussein would back down. That was the message. That’s why when Chirac said that he would not support the second resolution “whatever the circumstances,” Tony knew that all his careful negotiating had come to nothing. He also knew that if Saddam Hussein didn’t back down, the Americans were going to go in anyway. And that, of course, is exactly what happened. George Bush did offer Tony a way out. Via the U.S. embassy in London, the President had been told that the controversy over Iraq risked bringing Tony down. He called Tony and said that Britain did not need to be part of the invasion, that he would find a lesser role for us to play. But Tony was not going to back out. He was determined that we would support America, because he thought it was the right thing to do. He could not let Saddam Hussein get away with defying the international community and making his own people’s lives a misery. So the die was cast. After that it was only a matter of time.
On the evening of March 10, 2003, the secure phone line rang in the flat. It was the call Tony had been expecting. The Americans were going in.