Eight Miles High

by James Philip

  “The first indications are that the big Fleet Air Arm-RAF raid on Clermont-Ferrand went very well. It seems we caught the blighters with their trousers down and got away with very light casualties. Down in the Mediterranean, Henry Leach will be sending his gun line inshore again tonight to encourage the diehards along the south coast to carry on considering their positions.”

  “Everybody at this end is chuffed to bits that the Navy managed to get the big ships at Villefranche safely to Malta, sir.”

  That had been a very big secret from everybody – apart from the French down on the old Riviera and they seemed to have stopped talking, even for the sake of form, with the idiots in the Auvergne after those goons from Clermont-Ferrand had arrived in Nice and attempted to steal away ‘their’ ships - until those Villefranche ships had been safely moored in the Grand Harbour.

  “Good, good,” Michael Carver guffawed in an untypically jovial fashion. “The C-in-C Mediterranean Fleet tells me that practically every able-bodied man on those ships has already sworn an oath of loyalty to the Free French Government.”

  Frank Waters was loath to speak of less tractable, sordid matters. However, since he was married to the Prime Minister, he felt he ought at least to show willing. He ought at least to show an interest in his wife’s work, and all that.

  “Is there any news from California?”

  “No,” the Chief of the Defence Staff said tersely. He changed the subject. “What’s your feel for this, Frank?” He asked bluntly, focused entirely on the situation on the ground in France. “Do you think we have those Red Dawn beggars on the run?”

  Michael Carver was asking him because, for whatever reason, very few men in the British Army had had a finger in so many of the nasty little colonial wars, marking the post-Second War retreat from Empire, as Frank Waters.

  “I’ve been thinking about that, sir,” the ex-SAS man admitted. “I don’t doubt that there may yet be a hard core of fanatics out there; real Red Dawn zealots and presumably, no end of good, honest, misguided Communists and suchlike… I don’t think there was ever any such thing as a Front Internationale Army, just a bunch of these Revolutionary Guard chappies who either fight to the death or push women and children out in front of their lines and bravely run away in the other direction. Insurgency, guerrilla warfare is a damned funny thing; it is hard to know what one is dealing with at the best of times. For what it’s worth, I suspect that the farther one travels from the centre of command, down in the Auvergne, it may be that true believers are few and far between and that explains why we’ve carved through them like a knife through butter in the last forty-eight hours.”

  Carver said nothing, patiently waiting for the other man to continue, knowing he had spent a lot of time in the last few days interrogating prisoners of war and deserters.

  “From the fellows that I’ve talked to,” Frank Waters offered, “between you and I, a real shower, I can tell you; they all seem to have known their number was up months ago. Some of the cheeky sods even had the gall to ask me why we hadn’t attacked last autumn! Anyway, the rub is, I don’t get any impression that the FI is built or mentally acclimatised to a long, hard slog. This isn’t going to be like trying to chuck the Nazis out of Normandy or the Rhineland in the last show. That said, for all I know the chaps down south have got better guns, or the latest Russian kit, and they’ll fight better but seriously, I rather doubt it. It may be that the Navy turning up off the coast and a few more raids like the one on Clermont-Ferrand, will do the trick…”

  “Interesting,” the Chief of the Defence Force mused. “I’ll leave you to get on, Frank. Please give my most cordial regards to Alain.”

  Chapter 56

  Monday 13th February 1967

  City Hall, San Francisco

  The Secret Service and the San Francisco PD would have made more of a song and dance about the Prime Minister’s bodyguards firing live rounds in the air, and causing a stampede in which several people had been injured, had it not been for history.

  In December 1963 the Secret Service had allowed a deeply troubled woman employed as a White House secretary to assassinate Edward Heath in the Oval Office, when the British premier was standing next to President Kennedy.

  It later transpired that the woman responsible, Edna Zabriski, had had a long struggle with mental illness, and had finally been pushed over the edge by her husband’s disappearance in the Sammanish strike on metropolitan Seattle during the night of the October War. Thereafter, she had been preyed upon and come under the spell of a mysterious ‘preacher’, who had later turned out to be the same evil, Svengali type leader – Galen Cheney, the notoriously psychopathic would be messiah to the religious zealots who had stormed the British Embassy and for twenty-four hours, carried out a reign of terror, rape and murder at the Wister Park compound. Galen Cheney had supposedly been killed by the Marine Corps when they finally lifted the siege. What was not public knowledge was that Cheney had actually died of his wounds, wounds inflicted by Rachel Piotrowska, some hours after the Marines stormed the Embassy.

  However, this latter was not relevant to the reluctance of the authorities to make an issue of the AWPs firing a volley over the head of the press corps and the members of the public who had been allowed, inadvertently, inside the security cordons. No, the memory of the grotesque failure of the Secret Service to protect a foreign leader in the Oval Office – because of which, Edward Heath had been shot to death by the aforementioned ‘crazy woman’, Edna Zabriski – meant that it was going to be a very long time before any American was going to even think about laying down the law to the officer in command of a British Prime Minister’s security detail.

  It spoke not just to the chaos outside in the streets around City Hall but also to that within the Administration, that Richard Nixon should be making what his staff promised would be a major foreign policy announcement, early in the evening on the West Coast at a time when most viewers had already gone to bed on the East Coast and back in Washington DC. Normally, major speeches were timed to hit the network TV and radio channels when the whole country was awake.

  Sensibly, the Soviet delegation had declined its invitation to the evening’s main event; presumably, Alexander Shelepin and his comrades were settled around a television set in the comfort and security of their lodge at the Presidio.

  Lady Patricia Harding-Grayson had reminded her younger friend what ‘a lucky so and so’ her Soviet counterpart was!

  Soft drinks and liquor were served at the over-crowded, noisy reception in the rotunda, a hurried, sweaty affair with dignitaries mingling uncomfortably around the base or on the lower steps of the giant staircase. Everything was running behind schedule and it was necessary to get everybody seated in the main chamber ahead of the President’s grand entrance. So, the Prime Minister and her party assumed their seats in the front row of the North Light Court.

  And waited…

  Inevitably, looking round at her surroundings, Margaret Thatcher found herself wondering if one or other of the great lecture halls at Stanford or Berkeley, or a theatre in the city might not have served better for the purpose of the President’s first, belated appearance in San Francisco since his arrival last week.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States!”

  Richard Nixon made a courageous attempt to make an entrance, smiling and waving as if for a moment he had forgotten where he was and this was an election rally, not a solemn international gathering.

  A broad lectern stood centre-stage, with two relatively slim steel microphones standing proud, rather like twin Cobras ready to strike, spitting venom in his eyes…

  The President gripped the lectern, and steadied himself.

  Rumours that the Commander-in-Chief had been unwell had been circulated, no doubt in the forlorn hope of defusing the widespread anger that he had failed to attend any of the sessions on board the USS United States. Indeed, to many of those closest to the stage, Richard Nixon did not look like a man in the ru
dest of health; he seemed hangdog, a little jowly and his make-up people ought to have done something about the bags under his eyes. He was like a man still suffering the tail end of a bout of influenza, or a bad hangover, or who had not slept properly for several days, or perhaps, an unfortunate soul afflicted by all three contingencies.

  “I will start with an apology,” the most powerful man in the world declared, his voice belying his physical appearance, ringing with practiced sincerity and gravitas. “You may have heard that I travelled to California against the advice of my doctors. Influenza these days is not to be taken lightly I was warned, and so it has proved. I am pleased to say that I am much recovered and Pat,” he grimaced, referring to his wife whom he had wisely left back in Washington with his daughters, “reluctantly, I might say, gave me permission to rise from my sick bed when I spoke to her by telephone this afternoon.”

  This actually raised a murmur of amusement, albeit of the world-weary jaundiced variety in the high-ceilinged North Light Room of City Hall. Nobody in the room could realistically claim to be completely unaware of the President’s ‘little local difficulties’, some probably even had a degree of sympathy for him; he was after all, the man who had just won the war in the Midwest, defeating a truly malevolent enemy and older, wiser heads among the national movers and shakers in his audience would have recognised that whatever Richard Nixon’s domestic opponents said about him, his problems were by no means all or even substantially, of his own making. More pertinently, Richard Milhous Nixon was not actually the American President who had set the hounds of thermonuclear Hell upon the northern hemisphere at the end of October 1962. Nor was the resignation, or some said behind their hands, overdue removal of Henry Kissinger, from the President’s circle of advisors viewed by all of those listening that evening, in any way unwelcome. In fact, to the majority of those present, the unalloyed gently patrician 1950’s attitudes and experience of veteran Gordon Gray was infinitely preferable to the less ideological, stony pragmatism of the departed cerebral Harvard academic.

  Moreover, given that only a minority – twenty-two of the ninety-two delegations which had eventually arrived in San Francisco – had been led by a national leader, or even an equivalent head of state figure. So, President Nixon’s semi-detached approach to the gathering had not exactly been exceptional, and in contrast to three-quarters of his fellow heads of state, he at least was in San Francisco.

  The President began to tick off the normal diplomatic niceties which always prolonged any major diplomatic gathering, employing a standard formulaic hyperbole praising the motives and the diligence of the participants, speaking to a generosity of spirit – of which there had been virtually none on display aboard the USS United States – and everybody’s general good intentions, evidence of which was in even shorter supply. Seasoned politicians and rapporteurs, kept straight faces and tuned out the weasel words, waiting patiently for something of substance more in hope than expectation.

  “To my mind this has been a good start,” the President declared. “A positive first initiative to repair the fabric of international relations in the aftermath of the most catastrophic war in the history of Mankind.”

  Oddly, the prevailing mood of the British party in San Francisco was that although the event might not have been a ‘good’ start, neither had it been a complete disaster.

  Viewed in the round, the Soviets had attended; and not walked out half-way through. The United Kingdom’s observations about the make-up of the Security Council had caused much offence; but again, nobody had stormed out, packed their bags and immediately flown or sailed home.

  The appointment of George Bush, whom members of the delegation had got to know a little better, as Ambassador to the rededicated United Nations augured well for the future. The man was clearly engaged in the process started on board the USS United States, and no kind of unthinking mouthpiece for the Administration, right or wrong. True, it was a pity Henry Kissinger had felt unable to carry on; but again, his successor was a tried and tested man with real standing in Washington, so not all was lost. And there had been no little quiet, ‘soft’ diplomacy going on in the background.

  For example, Margaret Thatcher had lunched with the new Indian Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, and it had been arranged, although not announced nor would it be for some days, that she would ‘call in on’ her fellow premier in Delhi on her way back to England from her next port of call, Australia. Further to this, the presence of so many senior figures from the New Commonwealth had been a boon, with Tom Harding-Grayson assiduously ‘doing the rounds.’ Commonwealth business would also be front and centre when she entertained both the Australian and the New Zealand delegations, both led by their respective Prime Ministers, on the long flight back to Australasia on board Commonwealth One, via a refuelling stop at Honolulu in the coming week…

  Margaret Thatcher guiltily realised she had been wool-gathering, lulled into a sense of false security by the President’s overlong introductory spiel. She hated to think it, and certainly would not admit it but frankly, on the evidence of the last few days, Soviet Leader Alexander Shelepin presently had a better speech-writer than the President of the United States.

  Of course, in Pat Harding-Grayson, by profession a very successful pre-October War novelist, it went without saying that her own personal wordsmith was the queen of expression!

  Even though at heart, Pat was every bit as incorrigible an old socialist as her rascally husband!

  “We learn things by meeting and listening to others, our friends and our opponents, those who agree with us and those who do not, and perhaps, can never agree with us. We also learn by experience,” Richard Nixon continued, quirking an unconvincing self-deprecatory smile. “Most of all we learn that one should not believe everything one reads in the papers, hears on the radio or sees on the TV. International relations are a lot more complicated than the Editor of The Washington Post will ever admit, as he should well know as a former CIA man!”

  Margaret Thatcher did not know if this was supposed to be a witty aside, or a stiletto-like stab at his leading critic. Either way, it seemed wholly inappropriate in a setting such as this to be airing one’s own dirty linen. She could not imagine Tom Harding-Grayson or Airey Neave allowing a line like that to survive in a draft of one of her speeches; or indeed, that Pat would for a moment, contemplate including such a reckless hostage to fortune in one of her carefully crafted scripts.

  The President had obvious anticipated that his barb – rather clumsy character assassination of a known political rival - would go down a lot better than it actually did, and momentarily, in his chagrin, he lost his flow. He shuffled the papers on the lectern, possibly abandoning the next paragraph of the speech he had intended to deliver.

  “Trust is the hardest thing to earn and the most dangerous thing to risk losing,” he declaimed with grating pomposity, picking up the pace. “After previous great conflicts the nations came together to discuss the post-war settlement. Sometimes, this worked out better than others. For example, at Vienna the powers which had defeated Napoleon brought peace to Western Europe for two generations and established, possibly for the first time in history, protocols and rules by which we still conduct diplomacy. At Versailles after the First War of the twentieth century, a less successful settlement emerged. At Yalta and then Potsdam, the victorious Allies arrived at another pragmatic, nonetheless imperfect agreement, having already agreed that the United Nations should replace the old, failed, League of Nations. However, even though none of these post-war solutions were ultimately successful in outlawing wars between the great powers, each at least guaranteed a breathing space. One view of history might be that Mankind wasted those ‘breathing spaces’ and another might be that we are an inherently self-destructive species.”

  Margaret Thatcher blinked, glancing to her Foreign Secretary who contented himself with a raised eyebrow, obviously content to ignore the President’s half-baked attempt at existential soul-searching.

&
nbsp; “I choose not to believe this,” the President decided, his tone increasingly stentorian. “I do not believe that we are destined to repeat, time and again, the mistakes of our fathers. We must believe that we have the power – in our own hands – to decide our destiny. War and peace are conscious choices that nations must take; not accidents of fate or even, as historians claim, commonly the consequence of miscalculations, or accidents of circumstance.”

  He paused, perspiring now under the glare of the TV lights.

  “Words alone are not enough. Truly, actions speak louder than any words. The pen might be mighty but deeds are mightier. We have come together here in San Francisco to re-dedicate the United Nations. Let us never allow this august body to become again a witness to catastrophe, powerless to halt the march of events. In 1964 and 1965 many of the nations represented here today met and attempted to address the great issues of our time at the Manhattan Peace Process, so brutally cut short by the war-mongering of the fanatics of the End of Days cult. I know that many still harbour recriminations about the failure of that process. Attaching blame is wasting time that we may not have. We must commence anew a meaningful global peace process.”

  “This will be good!” Tom Harding-Grayson muttered sarcastically, clearly with little real expectation.

  “I remain convinced that the United Nations is the best, last, only global forum capable of hosting comprehensive peace talks between the parties and the victims of the Cuban Missiles War.”

  Given the United States’ apparent indifference to the United Nations in the last few days this came as something of a shock to many in City Hall that night.

  However, what came next positively electrified the President’s listeners.

  “Chairman Shelepin has generously issued an invitation to me to visit him in Russia,” Richard Nixon bored on relentlessly, “an invitation that I will be pleased to accept in the coming months. In this connection I am able to inform the Assembly that earlier this evening Secretary of State Cabot Lodge met with, and agreed with his counterpart, Ambassador Kuznetsov, that Chairman Shelepin will be my guests at the White House later this week. It is the hope of both our governments that these meetings, in Washington and later, in Russia, will lead to a general relaxation of tensions between our two great countries and ultimately, to a long-term peaceful rapprochement which will guard against us ever again, stumbling into the nightmare of a new global nuclear war.”