by James Philip
The President swung his legs over the side of the cot, ignoring the spasms of pain that lanced from the base of his spine to his head, toes and fingers. There was the usual concern behind the apparently impassive eyes of Jack Kennedy’s forty-five year old, thickset African-American valet, George Edward Thomas. The big man loomed protectively over his charge, respectfully impervious to the presence of the Attorney General of the United States of America and the other VIPs who’d followed the President’s brother into the second floor bedroom.
“If perhaps the President might have a little privacy while he dresses, sirs,” the black man suggested in a gravelly voice to the room at large. Bobby Kennedy lingered but everybody else, backed out into the corridor.
The Attorney General, realising he was alone, whistled lowly.
“How do you do that, George?” He asked.
The other man remained poker-faced.
“Politely, sir.”
The President would have laughed but it would have hurt too much, so he settled for a grimace.
“What’s going on?” He demanded of his brother.
“That’s the thing, Jack,” Bobby Kennedy confessed, exasperation lighting his eyes and creasing his unnaturally youthful good looks. “I talked to Dean before I came over. He woke me up. He says Bob McNamara’s as angry as a bear with its foot in a trap. He was muttering about LeMay ‘going rogue’ again and...” He threw his arms in the air. “There’s something screwy going on and CIA keep telling me it is nothing to do with them!”
John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s head suddenly cleared. The pain didn’t matter, nor the sickness in his gut or the stabbing needles of guilt that would never go away. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, by a conscious effort of will, of pure mind over unkind matter, put aside the transient pains of his life and became again the thirty-fifth President of the United States of America.
He looked at George Thomas.
“A lounge suit and a Navy tie, I think.”
“Yes, Mister President.”
Chapter 2
Saturday 7th December 1963
Cambridge Barracks, Tigne, Malta
Vice-Admiral Sir Julian Wemyss Christopher listened intently to the measured, grimly matter of fact report of Air Commodore Daniel French, Acting Air-Officer Commanding, RAF Malta. The air was still heavy with dust – mostly pulverised limestone – thrown up by yesterday evening’s attack. The stench of burning wafted into the partially wrecked office each time the wind fluked from west to the south. Nobody had got around to sweeping up the glass or mopping the blood off the floor. Ironically, gazing through the now splintered windows the new Commander-in-Chief of all British and Commonwealth Forces in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations was greeted with a view of a perfect azure afternoon sky. Albeit a vista somewhat spoiled by the smoke which drifted lazily across the idyllic blue waters beyond Dragut Point from the fires still burning in Valletta and in Vittoriosa, Senglea and Cospicua across the other side of the Grand Harbour.
It seemed the damage and the loss of life would have been immeasurably worse but for an outrageous happenstance. But then such was war. In war terrible things happened, things went wrong, no plan survived first contact with the enemy and whatever you did, people died. Not that today found him in any mood to be remotely sanguine about anything in particular, it was simply that in his position he couldn’t afford to be angry; while every human instinct cried out for revenge and retribution he knew with utter, unequivocal conviction that this was the one time in his life that he could not afford to allow his emotions to sway his actions. Now was a time for cool heads to rule raging hearts; to content oneself that one day there would be a reckoning and that revenge, when all was said and done, was a dish best taken cold.
“Your chaps seem to have performed in the highest traditions of the service,” he observed with an affable, manly cordiality that left neither officer in any doubt as to who was in sole command of the situation. “I look forward to meeting all those involved in due course to convey to them my sincere admiration and congratulations, and my thanks, Air Commodore French.”
“The chaps will appreciate that, sir,” the airman retorted cheerfully. “Might I be so bold as to inquire as to your plans for establishing your staff? Forgive my impertinence but the normal ‘venues’ are somewhat knocked about at the moment and the facilities at RAF Luqa, Hamrun and Ta’Qali are virtually undamaged, sir.”
Christopher smiled to himself. He’d never met the other man face to face but his new Flag Lieutenant, an impossibly young-looking protégé of his old friend the First Sea Lord, named Alan Hannay, had provided – completely unprompted, apparently off the cuff – a brief character portrait in the two minute interregnum while the secure telephone connection to the command bunker at RAF Luqa had been established.
‘He flew a Lancaster tour in the last year of the 1945 war, sir. He was attached to the Valiant V-Bomber Program thereafter and subsequently, he commanded one of the first Vulcan Squadrons. His wife and youngest daughter were, sadly, killed last year but his son, also an RAF pilot – currently based at Waddington – survived. The Air Commodore has been on Malta six months, is well thought of by his own people and maintains excellent relations with both military and civilian authorities with whom he has regular contacts...’
“Thank you for the offer,” Julian Christopher rejoined, “but I shall probably set up shop at the emergency command centre in Mdina. I gather that it is a tad dusty but we can live with that for the time being. How soon can you have copies of your Command after action report and all preliminary documentary and photographic supporting materials flown to England?”
“Assuming there is no follow up strike on my airfields I’ll have everything on the evening shuttle, sir. I’m having the gun camera footage copied in toto as we speak.”
“Good man. I shall let you get on with your work in peace, French.”
Christopher put down the black Bakelite handset and glanced at his hovering Flag Lieutenant. While he’d been talking on the phone the young man who’d remained unreasonably spic and span, unruffled during the tour of the carnage – ‘damage’ didn’t really describe much of what he’d discovered in Valletta, on Manoel Island and along the shore of Sliema Creek - had acquired a clipboard. The boy was brandishing a freshly sharpened pencil as if he’d been reading his Admiral’s mind.
“Most Urgent,” the new Commander-in-Chief of all British and Commonwealth Forces in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations prefaced crisply, straightening his jacket. Most movements sent splinters of, if not needle-like pain, then troublesome discomfort deep into his lean, bruised and battered torso despite the painkillers that Alan Hannay had been doling out to him every two hours ever since they’d landed yesterday afternoon. “Most Urgent,” he repeated, marshalling his thoughts. “For the Attention of the First Sea Lord and the Chiefs of Staff Committee. It is now apparent that the initial low-level air attack by American fighter bomber aircraft bearing the markings of the Regia Aeronautica against units of the Fleet anchored in Sliema Creek, Marsamxett Harbour, and Kalkara, French and Dockyard Creeks; and against radar and communications targets across the Maltese Archipelago were conducted in support of a simultaneous high-level precision bombing assault aimed at destroying key military and civilian command and control facilities.”
The older man paused while the younger man’s pencil scratched frantically to catch up with him. As he waited he looked again through the shattered windows of what had been the office of the base’s Transport Officer. Awnings were stretched from the sandstone cloisters of the one surviving large building. Other awnings were drawn between Bedford lorries, and tents had been erected on the far side of the parade ground As he watched four stretcher bearers gently carried another litter towards the line of tents, a nurse walking alongside holding a transfusion bottle high above her head in the brightening December afternoon sunshine. There was still no reliable estimate of casualties yet but the dead alone would inevitably, run into several hund
reds and the flood of the wounded and injured had overwhelmed the island’s hospitals. Rescue parties were still digging the dead and the maimed out of the ruins of hundreds of buildings. Several times that day he’d walked past lines of bodies draped with blankets and tarpaulins arranged by the roadside. Once again he silently promised himself that one day there would be a reckoning.
“But for the fact that the attack commenced in the middle of a major pre-arranged RAF ‘war game’ involving six Hawker Hunter interceptors based at Ta’Qali, two of the four V-Bombers based at Luqa, and a mixed force of Fleet Air Arm Sea Vixens and Scimitars attached to RAF Malta on an extended training deployment, the raid would have been virtually unopposed and incalculable damage might have resulted.” Christopher tried and failed to completely suppress a predatory half-smile.
The ‘war game’ that Air Commodore French had mounted ‘to keep the chaps on their toes’, was specifically designed to counter the mood of despondency and, although Christopher hated to admit it, guilt that his predecessor Vice-Admiral Hugh Staveley-Pope had inexcusably allowed to permeate his whole command. This knowledge caused him pain of a kind much more profound than his cracked ribs, the superficial burns to his arm and the lingering ache of the severe concussion he’d sustained in the attack on Balmoral Castle only a few days ago. Hugh Staveley-Pope had been his closest friend at Dartmouth Royal Naval College; they’d served together on the battleship Warspite in 1918 – when the great ship still bore proud scars of her pounding at Jutland two years before – and stood together on the lee rail at her stern beneath the barrels of her fifteen-inch guns to witness, awed and humbled, the entire German High Seas Fleet steam meekly into captivity at Scapa Flow. Memories of that day remained crystal clear, he could still see the rust-stained, dirty battle line of the Kaiser’s beaten navy slowly steaming past the guns of the Grand Fleet, from which it had fled that day in 1916 when Warspite had fallen under the guns of a dozen German dreadnoughts and somehow, survived. Grosser Kurfurst, Derfflinger, Seydlitz and the Markgraf and a procession of other massive battleships and battlecruisers slowly, ignominiously churned into history whenever he thought of those days. Now poor Hugh Staveley-Pope’s body was lying incinerated and crushed somewhere under the ruins of his Headquarters, HMS Phoenicia, several hundred yards away across Sliema Creek on Manoel Island. The letter that Her Majesty the Queen had written to Christopher’s old friend was still in his pocket, undelivered; the letter commending his predecessor for his service to his Queen and his country, and confirming his immediate removal from command in Malta.
“Sir?” Alan Hannay asked, less anxiously than he felt.
The older man realised he’d been wool-gathering.
That would never do!
Air Commodore French’s ‘war game’ had mimicked many of the characteristics of the actual attack on the Maltese Archipelago. Things so often went awry in war that even an old salt like Julian Christopher sometimes forgot that luck was a coin with two sides. Yesterday, by pure chance over half the operational modern jet interceptors currently based at Malta had been in the air – and more importantly, already at a ‘fighting’ altitude – several minutes before the first Douglas A-4 Skyhawks attacked the Battle class destroyer HMS Agincourt in Sliema Creek, and the old cruiser, HMS Sheffield, which had just completed oiling in Marsamxett below the Floriana bastion. Alerted to the presence of incoming ‘unknowns’ some minutes previously, the ‘war game’ had been abandoned, the two V-Bombers, a Valiant and a Vulcan had made themselves scarce in the southern skies towards Tunis, leaving the fighters - some thirteen aircraft – to deploy to meet the interlopers. Most of the fighters had had at least twenty minutes fuel onboard as they manoeuvred into position. The Hunters had climbed to meet the four ‘targets’ approaching at thirty-four thousand feet from the north-east; the Sea Vixens and Scimitars had raced to intercept the dozen aircraft coming in skimming the wave tops from the east. The RAF Hawker Hunters hadn’t been carrying air-to-air missiles but as it turned out that hadn’t mattered; their 30-millimetre ADEN cannons had been locked, fully loaded and primed for action. The Royal Fleet Air Arm De Havilland Sea Vixens and Supermarine Scimitars, equipped only with short-range Firestreak, and early variants of the American Sidewinder heat-seeking air-to-air missiles had only succeeded in shooting down five of the low-level attackers. However, their presence had by and large, broken up the attack within minutes. A short, savage dog-fighting melee had broken out in the skies over the Maltese Archipelago.
In Sliema Creek the Battle class destroyer HMS Agincourt had been hit twice and despite desperate attempts to ground her in shallower water she lay half-sunk at her moorings. HMS Sheffield, hit three times had eventually been towed into Lazaretto Creek, where, listing and fire blackened, the old warhorse which had taken part in the hunt for the Bismarck in 1941, remained for the moment, afloat. Elsewhere, the Skyhawks had liberally sprinkled five hundred pound iron bombs in and around the Grand Harbour, Dockyard Creek – where the modern anti-submarine frigate HMS Torquay had capsized in a flooded dry dock - and across Vittoriosa, Cospicua and Kalkara Creek, where one bomb had exploded within the grounds of the Royal Naval Hospital blowing in scores of windows and temporarily rendering two wards unusable.
“In the event, RAF and Fleet Air Arm fighters disrupted and after a few minutes drove off the low-level raid at a cost of one Scimitar lost. I am happy to report that the pilot of this aircraft successfully ejected and suffered only minor injuries. As many as five enemy aircraft were shot down.”
Less than a minute after the first bombs fell on warships in Sliema Creek and Marsamxett harbour two large, probably guided missiles had fallen on Valletta. The first had penetrated forty feet of rock and exploded in the Army War Room beneath the Grand Harbour Saluting Battery. The second weapon had penetrated the reinforced concrete cupola of Fort St Elmo – which housed the Central Staff of the British Military Administration of Malta – at the seaward tip of the Valletta peninsula. Moments later more huge ‘ground penetrating’ or ‘earthquake’ bombs began falling on other key installations. Two struck and virtually demolished the Royal Navy Headquarters at Fort St Angelo overlooking the Grand Harbour opposite Valletta. On Manoel Island HMS Phoenicia was effectively demolished by three large bombs, one of which was probably an example of the new ‘fuel air’ munitions he’d known to be in development before the October War. Within less than three minutes the raid had paralysed the British military and civilian administration of the Archipelago.
“Significant damage was, however,” Julian Christopher dictated, his voice becoming colder, his spirit railing against the temperance he knew that he must exhibit at this time when all he really wanted to do was send Air Commodore French’s V-Bombers to wreak revenge on the fascist maniacs who now ruled most of the Italian mainland. “Sustained to many key installations. An unknown number of key personnel will have been killed and seriously injured in these attacks. At this time the only major viable land-based command and control facilities which remain intact are those at RAF Luqa, and the Emergency Command Centre at Rabat-Mdina which was last activated some ten years ago and has not been modernised since 1954. This said we will make the best of things. At this time I recommend against the urgent despatch of additional UK-based personnel and resources to this theatre of operations.”
Christopher stepped across to the window.
He noted the two women walking across the parade ground in his direction. A smile creased his pale lips for a moment as he recognised the one, and guessed the identity of the other, much younger woman.
“You will be in receipt of the RAF’s preliminary after action report by air courier later this evening. Please be aware that this report will confirm all – repeat all – prior indications of direct American involvement in yesterday’s attack on Sovereign British Territory. Included in the AAR will be incontrovertible evidence to this effect; namely, gun camera footage from three of the RAF Hunter fighters which engaged and shot down all four of the heavy bombers par
ticipating in the high-level element of the attack. I can further report that preliminary investigation of the crash site on the island of Gozo of one of the aircraft shot down is consistent with the gun camera evidence.”
The new Commander-in-Chief of all British and Commonwealth Forces in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations hesitated, before adding one last clause to the – of necessity – somewhat terse and inevitably cryptic communication he was sending back to England.
“This morning at zero—three hundred hours local I issued the following directive to all units under my command: Malta attacked by American and Italian aircraft. Within the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations all American and American-allied forces are to be treated as hostile and may be fired upon without warning.”
Chapter 3
Saturday 7th December 1963
The Oval Office, The White House, Washington DC
Jack Kennedy walked stiffly into the room that had once seemed to him to be the nexus of his new Camelot. He and his knights – the best and the brightest America had to offer – were going to change the World.
Well, they’d sure done that, hadn’t they?
The thirty-fifth President of the United States hoped his hands weren’t shaking so visibly that everybody in the room would notice. Apart from his brother, none of the men who’d risen to their feet from the semi-circle of comfortable chairs and sofas arranged around the great woven representation of an American Eagle, had known - although they might have suspected - that their leader had been virtually incapacitated ever since his return to DC after delivering the ‘Moon Speech’ in Texas a fortnight ago. They’d all tacitly assumed somebody was at the wheel of the ship of state; that somebody had noticed the big iceberg on the horizon as it got bigger and bigger as the vessel went faster and faster. If Dean Rusk, or Bob McNamara, or John McCone had noticed the boat was rudderless; none of them had made a grab for the wheel and now, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was afraid it might be too late. The Administration had ceased to be ‘a team’ as long ago as the spring. He was the one who was responsible for the untold millions of dead, for the obscene blunder - if that was what it was; only history would tell – of fighting a nuclear war. He was the man at the top, technically the buck stopped with him. Of course, nothing was that simple and every man in the room felt ‘responsible’ in his own way. Or rather, as Lyndon Baines Johnson put it, ‘is working overtime trying to figure out why the other guys at the table didn’t say something sooner’. Whatever, the senior members of the Administration hadn’t been singing from the same hymn book for a long time and now it looked like the American people were going to have to pay the price.