by James Philip
The Hannay’s son, twenty-month-old Julian, was crawling around the living room floor, gurgling cheerfully as he haltingly explored the family’s new home. His sister, Sophia Elisabetta, barely thirteen weeks old, was fast asleep in a nest of blankets in a big, wicker basket on the parlour table.
Rosa was fascinated, and a little taken aback when Rachel leaned over her baby daughter and gazed, lost in her thoughts at the sleeping baby’s cherubic face.
“I don’t know how you manage all this travelling around, all the new places with two such small children,” Rachel sighed.
“Neither do we, to be honest,” Alan grinned, looking fondly to his wife.
“I hope we’re not putting you out, turning up like this?” Dan French inquired, his concern anything but feigned.
“No, it is lovely to see friends from home,” Rosa assured him. “Although, sometimes it is hard to know where home is, don’t you think?”
“Yes, indeed.”
Rachel had drifted over to the window, eying the Air Force bodyguards, both smoking cigarettes by their car.
Rosa invited everybody to sit down while she went to help Ramona with the ‘tea things.’
The furniture was comfortably basic, unfussy by American standards – plush and a little too showy in comparison to what the Hannays had been accustomed to before the war – and still had that leathery, just unpacked feel and smell.
It was Rachel who decided to address the metaphorical eight-hundred-pound brooding silverback gorilla in the room.
“There has been nothing official from Oxford yet,” she said with rueful self-deprecation, glancing down at the polished boards at her feet, “but I think I have successfully ruined Dan’s career. We will probably be recalled to England.” She shrugged. “Always assuming the Americans don’t arrest me first. As you know, I have no diplomatic immunity and the people who run the big aircraft companies Dan has been working with, well, they spend a lot of money lobbying on Capitol Hill, many of them would probably prefer a more compliant man at the, er…”
“Control column,” her husband offered cheerfully.
“At the control column at Boscombe Down,” Rachel went on. “They were already pressing for that as a condition of Lockheed and Grumman prioritising the production of the Kestrel.”
Rosa, standing in the kitchen door, was a little baffled by all this.
“The Kestrel is the jet fighter that can take off and land vertically, my love,” Alan reminded his wife, whose expression suddenly shouted: “Am I supposed to be hearing this!”
Ramona, who had walked in with a second tray, one bearing small tea plates, homemade cookies and slices of a lemony sponge cake, hesitated.
“None of this is really secret,” Dan French laughed, surreally relaxed.
“Dan doesn’t care,” Rachel explained in a small voice. She seemed smaller, diminished to her friends. “For what it is worth, I have promised him that I am…retired.”
Alan Hannay was, meanwhile, swiftly parsing and re-parsing the politics of Dan French’s situation. Ultimately, irrespective of what the Americans thought about it, the Prime Minister would be the one who decided his fate.
As he understood it, the US Air Force was still fully invested in the transatlantic aerospace partnership, in exactly the same way parts of the US Navy, notwithstanding its reservations, was committed to patching over its scars, embracing the military-industrial, not to mention the strategic advantages inherent in the creation of the Joint Nuclear Strike Force and enjoying its renewed free access to all British home and Commonwealth overseas bases. Moreover, despite what the McDonnell Douglas, Grumman, Northrup and other US aviation industry moguls thought about Dan French, the people at the Pentagon, including US Air Force Chief of Staff John Anderson had always liked Dan French, precisely because he could be relied upon to stand up to the Boeings, Lockheeds and all the other big aerospace players! Besides, Alan had it on good authority that the people at NASA were also big fans of the beleaguered Air Marshal, whose good offices offered the National Aerospace and Space Agency, potential access to launch and test sites, not to mention technical resources and expertise which otherwise, would be closely scrutinised and their costings inflated by pork barrel politics in Congress, throughout the New Commonwealth.
“I’m not convinced about that, Rachel,” Alan remarked, thoughtfully, as Ramona helped Rosa pour the drinks. “The Russian thing is playing well for the Administration right now. Your, er, mishap the other day came at just the right time for the White House. To put it crudely, the fact of the matter is that last week the story was Operation Maelstrom; and this week it…isn’t.”
Rachel French viewed the absurdly youthful-looking, handsome man sitting beside his wife on the sofa the other side of the low glass coffee table at the centre of the room, with thoughtfully limpid eyes. It was a stretch to remember that only three years ago, Alan Hannay had been just Julian Christopher’s trusted flag lieutenant, and later one of the heroes of the Battle of Malta, since then he had been a senior British diplomat and a fast-promoted naval representative operating in the hotbed of US politicking, never once putting a foot wrong.
Belatedly, the Navy was rewarding him by sending him here, to Caltech, Pasadena, to start preparing him for what was likely to be a meteoric career in the service. Peter Christopher might have been the United Kingdom’s man in America; but Alan Hannay had been his friend’s eyes and ears, his go-between and never-say-die gentlemanly fixer, the man who really had his pulse on the mood of Philadelphia, Washington DC and now…America itself.
“You don’t think the Prime Minister will throw my dear, faithful husband to the wolves?” She asked, not worried about how brutally the question was phrased.
Alan smiled.
“No. For what it is worth, I don’t. People in the Navy have been trying to torpedo Sir Simon Collingwood from the day he got home from the Dreadnought’s second war patrol. I know he’s only just been promoted Vice Admiral but the First Sea Lord apart, he is the Royal Navy to the Prime Minister, quite apart from being,” he grimaced apologetically to his wife, “if you’ll forgive my turn of phrase, my love, God in the Nuclear Undersea Fleet Project up in Rosyth. Granted, I don’t know it for a fact, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Sir Daniel’s position in the RAF is somewhat analogous to Admiral Collingwood’s in the Navy.”
Dan French was laughing.
“See,” he turned to his wife, “didn’t I say that Alan and Rosa would cheer us up?”
“You did,” Rachel confessed, leaning gently against her husband.
Sofia Elisabetta began to gribble, a prelude to a bawling demand for attention. Rosa stood up and swept her daughter up into her arms, soothing her instantly.
She sighed.
“My first husband was a Krasnaya Zarya traitor,” she reminded her friends, managing to coo at her daughter at the same time. “You never know what is going to happen. Things haven’t turned out so badly for Alan and I,” she beamed, “and our beautiful bambinos.”
Chapter 79
Tuesday 21st February 1967
Government House, Yarralumla, Australian Capital Territories
Lady Marija Christopher entered her husband’s big, airy office without knocking, squeezing the door shut at her back. Instantly, she knew that something was terribly wrong.
Fifty-three-year-old Sir Murray Tyrell, Secretary to the Governor-General of Australia, and her husband rose to their feet from their chairs in front of the great gleaming table beneath the windows overlooking the lush grounds beyond.
The last few days had been a whirl of engagements, luncheons, dinners, galas, visits to the theatre and the opera, state functions hosted by Government House, and exhausting. Of course, the Prime Minister had taken it all, effortlessly, in her stride and found time to spend many blissful hours with Marija and her godchildren, far away from the trials and strife of the outside world.
Marija had decided that she was never going to get used to the seasons being the wrong w
ay around in the Southern Hemisphere; it felt like it ought to be spring but it was still summer ‘down under’. The other thing she was reconciled to was that even though they had been in Australia over eight months – eight months in which, mercifully, nobody had tried to kill them – she was never going to be as settled here, as she had been back in the United States. Which was a little bizarre really, thinking of everything they had been through…
“What has happened?” She asked, despite her spiking anxiety remembering to walk carefully, placing one foot in front of the other, knowing that if she attempted to rush, she was just going to fall flat on her face – like she always did - and that was not going to help anybody. Suddenly, the look on her husband’s face froze her soul.
“Sit down, my love,” Sir Peter Christopher suggested.
Since returning from the Australian Parliament, accompanying the Prime Minister that afternoon, he had discarded his stiflingly hot ceremonial garb, showered and donned slacks, a cotton shirt, a Royal Australian Navy Association tie, and a lightweight pale sports jacket. Marija meanwhile, was still wearing the long, off-white calf-length dress she had worn for the afternoon’s engagement, and her hair was still unnaturally, albeit marvellously coiffured, rather than falling in its customary nutmeg-dark tangle about her shoulders. Normally, within a few minutes of getting back to Government House one of the bambinos could normally be relied upon to finger, pull or variously destroy the best her ‘hair do’.
Although, not yet today.
“We received an urgent communication from Lord Carington a few minutes ago, Lady Marija,” Murray Tyrell reported, troubled and uncharacteristically downcast.
The latest occupants of Government House had unashamedly relied on, and pretty much put themselves in the hands of, truth be known, the Victorian-born Secretary to every Governor-General of Australia from 1947 onwards in their time in Canberra.
“We have just consulted with Sir Oliver…”
Sir Oliver Lease was the United Kingdom’s High Commissioner – Ambassador by any other name – to Australia, a wise and greatly respected former general officer who had played a distinguished part in the Second War, to whom, like Murray Tyrell, the couple had had no qualms looking to for advice.
In fact, had it not been for the advice, counsel and moral support of Murray Tyrell, Sir Oliver Leese and Admiral John McCain – a man Marija’s husband regarded as one of his personal heroes – the United States Ambassador, they would have been in quite a pickle tiptoeing through the sensibilities of the Australasian social and political minefield.
Marija tried not to jump to conclusions.
If her husband had not spoken to John McCain then whatever had gone wrong did not involve a new crisis with Washington. That had to be good news…
Didn’t it?
Marija rested on the arm of the chair her husband had risen from. He handed her a single sheet of paper.
“We chopped off most of the header, coding instructions, all that guff,” he explained, distractedly.
FROM: FIRST SECRETARY OF STATE/CARINGTON.
PERSONAL AND MOST SECRET/GOVERNOR GENERAL AND HIGH COMMISSIONER’S EYES ONLY
CONTENTS TO BE NOTIFIED TO THE PRIME MINISTER SOONEST.
DEAR MARGARET, I AM SO SORRY TO BE THE BRINGER OF SUCH SAD NEWS. I REGRET TO REPORT THAT THE CHIEF OF THE DEFENCE STAFF HAS REPORTED TO ME THAT AT ABOUT TWENTY-ONE FORTY-FIVE HOURS LOCAL TIME, MAJOR GENERAL FRANCIS ST JOHN WATERS, VC, WAS A PASSENGER IN A VEHICLE WHICH WAS TARGETTED BY A LARGE ROADSIDE BOMB ON THE ROAD BETWEEN THE VILLAGES OF GUDMONT-VILLIERS AND DOULAINCOURT-SAUCOURT IN THE HAUTE-MARNE DEPARTMENT OF FRANCE. IT IS MY SAD DUTY TO REPORT TO YOU THAT ALL THREE OCCUPANTS OF THE VEHICLE, A LAND ROVER, WERE KILLED INSTANTLY. ALL OUR SYMPATHIES AT HOME AND IN DUE COURSE, I AM SURE, THROUGHOUT THE COMMONWEALTH, ARE WITH YOU AT THIS TERRIBLE TIME. I AM GIVEN TO BELIEVE THAT HER MAJESTY IS SENDING A SEPARATE MESSAGE COMMUNICATING HER DEEPEST SENSE OF LOSS AND SYMPATHY TO YOU AT THIS TIME.
SIGNED: CARINGTON.
Marija’s vision was a blur and as her husband wrapped her in his arms she realised, as if looking down upon herself from above, that she was sobbing uncontrollably, her chest heaving with agonising despair.
Presently, the worst of it passed.
Marija sniffed, tried to wipe her eyes, knowing her face would be red and blotchy, and her hair, was now almost certainly, a mess.
And that there was now a fourth person in the room.
“What’s wrong?” Mary Griffin, Marija’s constant companion, intimate and Appointments Secretary asked anxiously, obviously sensing that whatever was going on that this was a situation where they would, in the past, have summoned her husband – if only for moral support - whom, problematically, was presently at sea on board HMS Anzac as the brand-new frigate ran acceptance trials off the coast north of Sydney.
“The Prime Minister’s husband has been killed in a bombing in France,” Peter told her, very quietly.
“Oh, God…” Mary gasped, shocked as if she had been physically struck.
Marija pulled herself together, and staggered to her feet.
Her husband steadied her.
They looked one to the other.
“Tom and Pat are probably travelling, and out of contact,” Marija sniffed, her thoughts turning to practicalities.
The Foreign Secretary and his wife, Pat, the Prime Minister’s closest friend and confidante, were visiting old friends in Melbourne.
The news was bound to leak out, sooner rather than later.
They could not wait for Lord Harding Grayson and his wife to return to Canberra.
This had to be done now.
Sir Peter Christopher nodded unspoken agreement to his wife.
He turned to his Secretary, Sir Murray Tyrell.
“Murray,” he said sombrely, taking charge. He swallowed hard. “We’ll collect Ian Gow on the way. Marija and I will speak to the Prime Minister without delay.”
[The End]
Author’s End Note
‘Eight Miles High’ is Book 14 of the alternative history series Timeline 10/27/62. I hope you enjoyed it - or if you did not, sorry - but either way, thank you for reading and helping to keep the printed word alive. Remember, civilization depends on people like you.
Coming next: Book 15: Won’t Get Fooled Again which picks up the story one year hence.
NEXT YEAR I plan to go back to April and October releases for Timeline Main Series offerings.
Book 15: Won’t Get Fooled Again is pretty much a standalone piece, will come out in April 2020 (all being well) and Book 16: Armadas, the first book of another two-parter in October 2020.
Thereafter: the plan is to write the series at least up to Book 20, set around the tenth anniversary of the October War in 1972; publishing at the rate of at least 2 books per year as below.
Book 17: Smoke on the Water (2021)
Book 18: Cassandra’s Song (2021)
Book 19: The Changing of the Guard (2022)
Book 20: Independence Day (2022)
Other Books by James Philip
Other Series and Novels
New England Series
Book 1: Empire Day
Book 2: Two Hundred Lost Years
Book 3: Travels Through the Wind
Book 4: Remember Brave Achilles
Coming in 2020
Book 5: George Washington’s Ghost
Book 6: The Imperial Crisis
The River Hall Chronicles
Book 1: Things Can Only Get Better
Book 2: Consenting Adults
Book 3: All Swing Together
Coming in 2020
Book 4: The Honourable Member
The Guy Winter Mysteries
Prologue: Winter’s Pearl
Book 1: Winter’s War
Book 2: Winter’s Revenge
Book 3: Winter’s Exile
Book 4: Winter’s Return
Book 5: Winter’s Spy
Book 6: Winter’s Nemesis
The Bo
mber War Series
Book 1: Until the Night
Book 2: The Painter
Book 3: The Cloud Walkers
Until the Night Series
Part 1: Main Force Country – September 1943
Part 2: The Road to Berlin – October 1943
Part 3: The Big City – November 1943
Part 4: When Winter Comes – December 1943
Part 5: After Midnight – January 1944
The Harry Waters Series
Book 1: Islands of No Return
Book 2: Heroes
Book 3: Brothers in Arms
The Frankie Ransom Series
Book 1: A Ransom for Two Roses
Book 2: The Plains of Waterloo
Book 3: The Nantucket Sleighride
The Strangers Bureau Series
Book 1: Interlopers
Book 2: Pictures of Lily
James Philip’s Cricket Books
F.S. Jackson
Lord Hawke
Audio Books of the following Titles
are available (or are in production) now
Aftermath
After Midnight
A Ransom for Two Roses
Brothers in Arms
California Dreaming
Empire Day
Heroes
Islands of No Return
Love is Strange
Main Force Country
Operation Anadyr
Red Dawn
The Big City