by James Philip
“We have made certain undertakings to the FI,” he reminded the other man. “If we abandon Machenaud now it won’t look good around the World.”
“No, it won’t,” Shelepin agreed. “But I am not going to go to war with the British, or the Americans, over a few mountains in France. Besides, our vital strategic interests all lie a lot closer to home.”
“Yes, I agree.” It deeply troubled Andropov that he still did not know how, exactly, his leader wanted to play things. Gorshkov was a powerful man. “Comrade Sergey Georgyevich has a lot of support within the Defence Ministry. The Red Army and Air Force think he is ‘acceptable’, but…”
“In the absence of a candidate they can both agree on,” Shelepin growled, “they are quite happy with the status quo?”
“Yes, Comrade First Secretary.”
It happened that having a Red Navy man as his deputy admirably suited Alexander Shelepin in all respects bar one, that the man in question was Sergey Gorshkov. However, regardless that Gorshkov’s position in the Troika effectively prevented the Army and the Air Force obtaining a controlling influence over its affairs, and that Shelepin was, in some sense, still in the Admiral’s debt, the time had come to put his over-reaching comrade firmly, and if necessary, brutally in his place.
Hopefully, without starting a civil war like the one the Americans had just gone through!
Pragmatically, if he demonstrated to the others around him, particularly the nascent trouble-makers in the Politburo, and all those generals desperately looking for a way to promote their causes, that he had Gorshkov under his thumb, or if it came to it, he was prepared to crush him, Shelepin’s own position would be doubly secure for the foreseeable future.
“I wanted to talk to you, man to man,” he explained to Andropov, “because we both know that while I have decided, at this time,” he qualified coolly, “that I do not wish to appear to be harshly disciplining, or for that matter, actively demoting Comrade Sergey Georgyevich, I must be seen to be ruthlessly acting against those ‘responsible’ for recent real or perceived errors of judgement at the highest levels of the Party. In this connection I am of the opinion that we simply do not have enough good people, especially in the middle ranks of Party and Governmental administration, that we can afford, like in the old days, to indulge in indiscriminate purges.”
Personally, Yuri Andropov was old-school about these things and he was a little shocked to hear such sentiments spilling from the Shelepin’s lips.
“Oh…”
Shelepin was suddenly brisk, business-like.
“I have prepared two lists. You can do what you wish with the names on List Two, throw the families of the men and women on that list out of their homes, or send them to labour battalions. Whatever you want, I leave you to use your imagination. I know that you have a talent for these things.”
Andropov waited.
“List two is a long list by today’s ‘liberal’ standards,” Alexander Shelepin explained, sensing the KGB man’s suspicion of half measures. ‘There’s no need for executions. I want a handful of show trials. The Politburo will show clemency, commuting death sentences to life imprisonment or internal exile.”
“No executions?”
“No. people who have survived the last four years don’t fear death the way they did before the Cuban Missiles War.”
Yuri Andropov had never really thought about it that way.
Notwithstanding that it was an extraordinary thing to say he conceded that his leader might have a point…
“List One,” Shelepin went on brusquely, as if he was a tiny bit uncomfortable with what he was about to say. “Is a schedule of demotions and expulsions from the Party, included are several non-punitive redeployments. There will be no special measures enacted against any family member, friend, or associate of the people named on List One. Nobody on List One is deemed to be in any way an enemy of the people, or worthy of ongoing KGB surveillance. The names on List One will retain their current security clearances.”
This seemed an entirely novel way of disciplining the scapegoats required to save Admiral Gorshkov’s face. His expression must have inadvertently betrayed Andropov’s misgivings.
“Is that clear, Comrade?” Shelepin demanded softly.
“Yes. Of course.”
“Good.”
The KGB man thought he was about to be dismissed.
However, Alexander Shelepin had not finished.
“If we are to survive,” he said quietly. “If we are ever again to stand as equals to the Americans and their British lackeys we must change. We must strive for World Revolution; we must spread the Marxist-Leninist dialectic but that does not mean that we must go back to the bad old days of Stalin. Our people have been through so much, they deserve better. That,” he concluded solemnly, “is why, while I am Chairman of the Party there will be no new terror.”
Chapter 7
Monday 30th January 1967
Stanford, San Francisco, California
Sir Roy Jenkins, the United Kingdom’s Permanent Representative Designate to the United Nations was finding life in California exceedingly convivial. He was not the ‘Champagne Socialist’ his accusers back home in the Labour Party had derisively labelled him but he did enjoy fine red wines, leisurely meals and the company of attractive, intelligent women and after surviving the various privations of life in the British Isles these last few years, he was very nearly, and unashamedly, in seventh heaven on the West Coast. That he also felt that for the first time since he had served - for over a year as Home Secretary - in Margaret Thatcher’s Unity Administration, that he was actually ‘making a difference’ and again, very much a round peg in a round hole, rather than a square one in an irregular octagonal one trying to work, struggling pointlessly most of the time, within the Labour Party. An intelligent, academically inclined historian, superbly articulate in personal conversation if not in public due to a slight lisp, he was a man who prided himself on his command of detail and the reasonableness of his arguments. Basically, he might have been born for his present job.
Once US Secretary of State, Henry Cabot Lodge, had got used to the idea that he had more in common with his Democratic domestic detractors, than with the ‘communistically inclined deadbeats’ that hard-core Republicans associated with the British Labour Party, he and his English luncheon guest that afternoon in his rooms at Stanford, had got on famously. Both men were erudite, believed that there was nothing good men could not agree to disagree about, and that between them very few problems were going to be insuperable going forward. Which was exactly what the British Ambassador, Sir Nicholas ‘Nicko’ Henderson had told Roy Jenkins before he got on the plane for San Francisco.
It had not been decided whether Nicko would be accompanying his Prime Minister when she flew to the West Coast in a couple of days. She and the President’s, separate arrivals in San Francisco had been delayed for at least another twenty-four hours; not a propitious sign. Everybody in DC had tacitly assumed that the Brits would row back from their undertaking to the Chinese Communists that, they would put a motion to the new General Council proposing Nationalist China – basically, the island of Taiwan, under the dictatorial rule of Chiang Kai-shek – should be removed as a permanent member of the Security Council, and that Communist China, the People’s Republic, should be recognised and admitted as a full member to the United Nations. Whereupon, presumably, the British intended to propose that the People’s Republic assumed the vacated Permanent seat on the Security Council.
Not one syllable of this proposition was acceptable to the Nixon Administration, and there was some discussion to the effect that Nicko was going to be needed back in DC to do whatever he could to ‘pour oil on troubled waters’ while his Prime Minister and President Nixon ‘duked it out’ on the West Coast.
“Tell me what you honestly think about the China situation, Roy?” Henry Cabot Lodge invited, judging the Englishman had drunk just enough wine to be drawn out of the last vestiges of his immac
ulately constructed diplomatic shell.
“Honestly, Secretary of State?” People made the mistake of interpreting Roy Jenkins’s earnestness for pomposity, for an absence of a sense of humour. It was neither, and as now, there was often a twinkle of mischief behind the lenses of his horn-rimmed spectacles.
“Yes, honestly.”
“Very well.” The Englishman put down his glass. “Well, if we are to be honest with each other then I think we must start by calling a thing, or things, by their real names and describing them as they are, not how we would wish them to be. Also, our reference point, our mutual starting point must be where we find ourselves now, not in that pre-October 1962 halcyon era one hears so many people who ought to know better, talking of as if in those days the land was criss-crossed with rivers of milk and honey and all was well beneath a sun that never set. If that World ever existed, it is gone forever and we are, as they say, where we are.”
Henry Cabot Lodge thought about this, nodded for his guest to go on.
Roy Jenkins contemplated another sip of wine before he continued.
“Her Majesty’s Government negotiated and has since ratified, a treaty in good faith with the People’s Republic of China which, in my opinion, prevented a futile and ruinous conflict between Great Britain, and possibly several of our Commonwealth allies with the Communists over the future disposition of Hong Kong. In fact, the deal we agreed with the Chongqing regime is unambiguously advantageous to both sides and we firmly believe that the Chinese – the Communists, if you prefer – signed the pact in the same good faith as we did. Under that treaty we made certain commitments; commitments we will fulfil to the letter. We expect the People’s Republic to do likewise with its side of the bargain. I must tell you, that thus far we have not one scintilla of evidence that they will do otherwise.”
The Secretary of State allowed his nascent irritation with British intractability to show for a moment.
Roy Jenkins smiled ruefully.
“Now,” he went on, “I wholly understand that the Administration holds the view that the People’s Republic’s aggression against Taiwan in January last year, not to mention its ongoing threatening pronouncements, in some way invalidates the Hong Kong Treaty. Forgive me, this seems to me something of an intellectual-diplomatic, and indeed, semantic nonsense. Sino-Russian aggression against a regime they view as an illegitimate, revisionist, insurgent threat, is neither mentioned, considered in any way, and self-evidently immaterial to the terms of the treaty agreed between Her Majesty’s Government, its Commonwealth, the Portuguese and the People’s Republic dealing with the disposition of Macau and Hong Kong. Similarly, constantly raising the issue of our non-involvement in the second Korean crisis is not helpful; anymore,” Roy Jenkins grimaced apologetically, “than it would be if my principals were to constantly harp on about the untoward intervention of US Navy units in the Persian Gulf while Commonwealth servicemen were engaged in a life or death struggle against vastly superior Soviet forces. I think we had all hoped that we had moved on from all that in the thirty or so intervening months. Likewise, we negotiated the Hong Kong treaty with open eyes and we are not about to start re-interpreting its terms willy-nilly; any more than we would, for example, the US-UK Military Mutual Cooperation Treaty, or the re-instituted Five-Eyes intelligence-sharing agreement.”
Henry Cabot Lodge stirred uncomfortably.
Roy Jenkins was in no mood to surrender the floor.
“As I am sure my Prime Minister communicated to President Nixon, please do not imagine that our interpretation of our treaty obligations to the people of Hong Kong, and the regime in Chongqing, is not shared by our Commonwealth allies. We are partners in the CMAFTA – the Commonwealth Mutual Assistance and Free Trade Agreement – not its guiding hand. Also, to paraphrase Mrs Thatcher’s comments on the subject: ‘the United Kingdom is not, and never will be, a short cut by which the will of the CMAFTA may be subverted or marginalised.’ I would go so far as to say this is an article of faith to us.”
The US Secretary of State was quiet for several seconds.
“But are we talking practical politics, Roy?” He queried presently. “Or statesmanship in the real world?”
“We no longer live in a global environment of masters and serfs, Secretary,” Roy Jenkins observed gently, leavening his words with a wry smile.
“We’re both going to look stupid next week?” The stalwart of GOP post-Second War politics complained.
“I think not. We will be as steadfast in our agreement over numerous other issues. Friends ought to be able to sustain their alliance despite their differences.”
Cabot Lodge suppressed an inner groan.
It was common knowledge that White House insiders were demanding that President Nixon employ one or more of the sledgehammer bargaining chips at his disposal to persuade the Brits to ‘get back on the team’. The argument was that if the White House threatened to cut off the United Kingdom’s credit line, delayed, paused or temporarily halted deliveries of food or medicines, or if the Pentagon stalled the growing number of joint weapons-development projects, or the ongoing technology exchange programs, that the British would soon change their tune.
Cabot Lodge doubted it but then he fancied he understood their allies as well as anybody in the Administration, apart, that was from his President and Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon’s enigmatic National Security Advisor.
“The danger is that the Chinese will try to drive a wedge between us,” Cabot Lodge observed.
“Which Chinese?” Roy Jenkins inquired urbanely. “The Communists or the Nationalists?”
The Secretary of State quirked a wan smile.
“The Communists won’t be there,” he retorted, knowing that was no answer. “Okay, what will you do if Generalissimo, Chiang himself turns up and personally takes his seat on the Security Council?”
“Is that likely?” Jenkins inquired dubiously. “My understanding was that the poor fellow is so paranoid about somebody mounting a coup in his absence, that he hardly ever leaves his compound in Taipei?”
Henry Cabot Lodge had not known his British counterpart was so well informed.
He repeated his question: “What will you do if Chiang walks into the conference room?”
Chiang Kai-shek was the only surviving member of the Second World War ‘Big Five’, the others, Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, De Gaulle and Stalin were dead.
“We should not allow ourselves to be held hostage by the past,” Roy Jenkins suggested. “In any event, Chiang and De Gaulle were junior figures in the wartime Big Five, in some ways, incidental to the ultimate victory, remembered mainly because sometimes, there are myths and legends which simply must be sustained, even in this brave new age. If the old man turns up my delegation will greet the man with the same courtesy and consideration that we will welcome Alain de Boissieu’s man, Maurice Schumann, to the table when he takes the French seat on the Security Council.”
Both men knew they were dancing on the head of a pin; there were no plans for the Security Council to convene at the forthcoming San Francisco rededication of the United Nations. Goodness, they had no idea if the Russians were even coming to the party!
Henry Cabot Lodge put down his knife and fork, sat back.
“And that’s another thing, there is no such thing as a properly constituted French government, by what right do…”
“It was either the Free French or the Front Internationale at the table,” the Englishman mischievously reminded his host.
Morally, it was a moot point which of the Chiang Kai-shek or the de Boissieu administrations, had less right to sit as representatives of their countries. Chiang ruled over a tiny minority of the Chinese population and an island – formerly Formosa – over a hundred miles away from the mainland; de Boissieu controlled less than a third of the territory of European France, and nominally perhaps half of the pre-war Fifth Republic’s overseas colonies and departments.
“Putting that aside, there is
a very simple way around the China situation,” Jenkins offered, knowing that what he was going to say next was not going to go down very well.
“Oh, no, the make-up of the Security Council is non-negotiable,” the US Secretary of State averred with a finality that boded ill for his digestion in the coming hours.
Roy Jenkins brushed this aside.
“The Security Council was a construct of the victors of the Second World War. If it was ever fit for purpose, it was, only briefly, in the particular circumstances of 1945. Forgive me for saying this,” he recollected sadly, “we no longer live in that world. How on earth can we tolerate a situation going forward in which the permanent membership of the Security Council – and with it the five powers of unconditional veto – continue to rest with the globe’s single major power, the United States, two badly damaged survivors of the October War, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, and two unrepresentative rump administrations, Chiang’s and Alain de Boissieu’s, when the two most populous nations on the planet, Communist China and India, the latter the largest democracy in history, are excluded from it, the Security Council’s, deliberations and therefore can have no commitment to any of its decisions?”
“So, what? We abandon the whole thing?”
“No, but we might seriously consider a more rational settlement…”
“And that would be the British Commonwealth’s preferred option?”
Roy Jenkins took a sip of wine, a very acceptable Californian red although not a patch on a good Burgundy.
When would there ever be another great vintage?
“Frankly, I would not care to speculate as to what the view of the Commonwealth is, or is not,” he remarked, as if turning Cabot Lodge’s question in his mind in the fashion of some abstruse geometric proof. “The broader ‘Commonwealth’ is an idea, not a fact. Within it, the signatories to the CMAFTA, several of whom, like Portugal and the Scandinavian countries, non-Commonwealth polities, have a generally similar approach to the broad sweep of international affairs. Please remember that Her Majesty’s Government presumes no license to speak for, say, Australasia, any more than,” he halted, dissonant thoughts momentarily cluttering his head, “the Argentine has to speak for any of the islands in the South Atlantic that it invaded in April 1964.”