by James Philip
“I’m not alleging anything, Mister Attorney General. I’m simply telling you what it looks like from over here. If communications are being subverted then we’re not talking about a ‘somebody’, we’re talking about a multi-level conspiracy by several people possibly in senior positions in several departments in Washington and elsewhere.”
The President’s younger brother allowed himself several seconds to process this information and to glimpse the implications.
“You think somebody wants another war, don’t you?” He said, thinking out a loud. “Is that what you are saying, Captain Brenckmann?”
“No,” the other man said patiently, irritated by the Attorney General’s lack of intellectual rigor. While ‘somebody’ might want to start another war, that was a leap in the dark. What seemed more ‘likely’ was that ‘somebody’ was trying to sour relations between the two World military powers who’d survived the October War. Perhaps, ‘somebody’ hoped for another war but if they did then that would be effect, rather than cause and it was the ‘cause’ that was the thing everybody needed to focus upon if they were going to unravel the conundrum. “I honestly don’t know what’s going on. However, I do think that somebody ought to try to find out before it is too late.”
But it was already too late.
Bobby Kennedy had just had an apotheosis; suddenly it was possible that everything that had happened in the last thirteen months wasn’t really his, Jack’s, or anybody in the Administration’s fault. There might have been a conspiracy. Camelot had been undermined and betrayed by dark forces from outside. Now that he thought about it, it seemed so blindingly obvious he couldn’t believe he hadn’t worked it out before. A crushing weight had lifted off his conscience; it was as if he’d confessed his adultery to his priest and he’d been granted unconditional absolution...
Chapter 20
Monday 9th December 1963
Pembroke Barracks, Malta
Captain Nathan Zabriski was still dressed in his flying suit. A nasty-looking gash over his right eye – which was mottled blue, swollen and almost shut - had been sutured, and his right arm was in a sling. When Vice-Admiral Sir Julian Wemyss Christopher, Commander-in-Chief of all British and Commonwealth Forces in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations strode into the room the young United States Air Force navigator staggered hurtfully to his feet, removed his damaged arm from the sling and attempted to form what turned out to be a surprisingly crisp salute.
Julian Christopher returned the salute.
“Sit down, Captain,” the older man directed irritably.
The young American remained on his feet, swaying, struggling to stand to attention.
“Zabriski, Captain Nathan Tobias, service number...”
“Oh, for goodness sake!” Julian Christopher snapped irascibly. “Sit down before you fall down!” There were about a dozen chairs in the guard house mess room of Pembroke Fort, where he’d determined that the American prisoners of war would be quarantined. There was no requirement in international law to treat the eight American and three Italian airmen as POWs. Nobody had declared war on anybody; if he’d wanted to he could have had them lined up against a wall and shot as common criminals. Now he was alone in the room with one of the men who’d wreaked such dreadful havoc and killed and maimed so many innocent people three days ago. “Do you know who I am?”
The young American was aching to jump to his feet and salute again.
“Admiral Christopher, sir!”
“Good.” The older man nodded, tried to ignore the tendrils of exhaustion which twisted in his mind and choked his thoughts. “Good. When this is all over,” he went on, “I want you to remember that despite the fact that you and your comrades are personally responsible for the deaths – confirmed so far - of at least six hundred and seventeen members of the British Armed Forces, and the cold blooded murder of at least three hundred and seventy-eight civilians,” he looked the boy in the eye, “that you and your comrades were treated decently by your British captors.” He breathed a shuddering sigh. “In the absence of a declaration of war between our two countries you are, strictly speaking, a war criminal liable to the contingencies of summary justice. However, by my order you will continue to be accorded all rights mandated by the Geneva and other conventions recognised by the United Kingdom in time of war until such time as you are repatriated.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You are the senior prisoner. Have you and your people received medical treatment for your injuries?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Have you been fed and watered?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Have you been mistreated by British or Commonwealth military personnel or by Maltese civilians?”
“No, sir!”
Julian Christopher rose stiffly to his feet and stalked out of the room without saying another word or looking back. He’d spoken of the bald figures for the dead thus far. As many as three hundred souls, mostly British service personnel were still missing in the ruins of Fort St Angelo, Fort St Elmo, HMS Phoenicia and the command bunkers penetrated or collapsed by the big bombs dropped by the B-52s. Over fifteen hundred people had been seriously injured, countless others traumatised. There had been no warning, no chance to take cover. One minute there had been peace, the next minute the bombs were falling.
The walking wounded in their hundreds, uncounted, were trying to go about their daily business. Makeshift dressing stations, field hospitals and surgical operating units had been established to take the pressure off the main hospitals. One such had been set up at the Pembroke Barracks with the assistance of Dr Margo Seiffert and her small army of remarkable auxiliary nurses. Julian Christopher had been astonished to learn – from Lieutenant Alan Hannay, the font of all knowledge – that all the blue-uniformed nurses had been trained by Dottoressa Seiffert at St Catherine’s Hospital for Women in Mdina. The hospital had become Margo’s life’s work in the years since he’d last known her; and the training of young women rejected by the ‘official’ health apparatus of the Archipelago, like Marija Calleja, her personal crusade. That Margo could magic virtually out of thin air a cadre of around twenty professional nurses to run an emergency hospital at, literally, three hours notice very nearly defied belief.
It was dusk by the time Julian Christopher, leaving his staff to snatch a meal in the Officers Mess went in search of the woman who’d eventually rebuffed his advances – but only after wrapping him around her little finger - when he’d last been on Malta. Alan Hannay, his flag lieutenant, tirelessly dogged his every step like a bloodhound that was pathologically incapable of not stalking his quarry.
“They say we’ll be hearing you on the radio tonight?” Margo Seiffert queried, looking up from the cluttered table that had become her entire office at the Pembroke Barracks in the last twelve hours.
“I’m afraid so. Look,” he hesitated, then he lunged on, “this is very irregular but would you do me a favour, Margo?”
The woman ran her hands through her straw grey hair, stifled a yawn.
“That depends what it is,” she countered mischievously.
“A couple of the airmen we’re holding in the fort are a little knocked about. I’m sure my chaps have done what they can for them but, I’d be happier if you took the, general welfare of the, er, POWs, under your wing.”
If the slim, sinewy former US Navy Surgeon Commander guessed her old friend’s concerns were of a more political than overtly humanitarian nature, she didn’t betray it on her tanned, lined face.
“If I was you I’d have had ‘the POWs’ shot by now, Julian,” she declared forthrightly. “In fact I’d have had them shot by now if it was up to me!”
“Well,” the man frowned. “It isn’t,” he shrugged, “and we’re not going to do that. No matter how I or anybody else on Malta feels about it, it is my job to see to it that the POWs are treated humanely. And that’s that.”
The woman pursed her lips apology.
“Sorry. Of course
I’ll ‘look after’ them.”
“Thank you. I appreciate it.”
They’d usually ended up at cross purposes when they’d been trying to have an affair all those years ago; not a lot had changed since. As if they both realised as much at the same time they smiled, shook their heads at their own foolishness.
“We’re getting too old for this, Julian,” Margo Seiffert observed.
“Yes,” he agreed. “I heard that you and Reginald Stephens were a couple for many years.”
Surgeon Captain Reginald Stephens was everything that Julian Christopher had not been in those years after the war. He remembered Stephens as a red-cheeked, rotund man with large ears and laugh that threatened to crack window glass. The man had dedicated the last decade of his career – and it turned out, his life – to the development of military and civilian medical services on the Maltese Archipelago. Marija Calleja and countless other of his patients owed the lives they’d been able to live to Reginald Stephens. After the 1945 war Julian Christopher had set his sights on the top of his profession; Reginald Stephens had devoted himself to the service of his fellow men. Margo had passed him over in favour of the better man.
“We were very happy together,” she said simply. Instantly, she changed the subject. “Is there news about Peter’s ship?”
Julian Christopher shook his head.
“Have you mentioned anything to Marija?” The man asked.
“Yes. Everything you’ve told me.” Seeing that her former suitor didn’t approve Margo Seiffert prickled with angst. “Lying to people you care about isn’t ‘helping them’, Julian. She didn’t deserve to find out about Peter’s ship from a stranger. Marija’s had a lot of bad things happen to her in her life; she keeps busy.”
Julian Christopher flashed an angry glare at the woman.
“Admiral, we need to be moving on,” Lieutenant Alan Hannay apologised.
In the car rattling and jolting along the potholed roads between the coast and Mosta, where the Signals Corps had positioned a transmitter, Julian Christopher seized a few moments for private reflection. He could have requisitioned Radio Malta’s surviving broadcast facility on Gozo but that would have cut against the grain of practically everything he was planning to do on the Archipelago; and besides, unexpectedly relieved of all censorship thirty-six hours ago Radio Malta was already threatening to become ‘a voice’ of and for the people who’d been, by and large, unheard by his predecessor’s regime. The last thing he wanted to do was silence that voice again, even if it was only for a few minutes.
I have to get some sleep tonight.
Although he’d known that in accepting the command of the Mediterranean Theatre he was accepting a poisoned chalice; nobody had anticipated the chaos of the last seventy-two hours. Thus far he’d issued three General Orders: one, the Hermes Battle Group was to block the Straits of Gibraltar to all shipping and support the besieged garrison of the Rock; two, all land forces in the theatre of operations would stand firm and hold the ground currently under British sovereign control; and three, all Royal Navy ships and submarines on general patrol duties or not specifically tasked to reinforce the Hermes Battle Group were to return to Malta to refuel and replenish, pending further deployment. Since arriving on Malta he’d received a series of terse communications from England; sufficient to inform him that all available naval and air war-fighting ‘assets’ were being brought to readiness and positioned ahead of hostilities. If war came it was likely that the Hermes and Ark Royal Battle Groups would operate together in the Western Approaches. In that event the UKIEA would explicitly and in the most categorical and unambiguous terms warn the Spanish that further aggressive actions against Gibraltar would literally ‘bring down the fires of Hades’ upon them. He’d lived through some grim times during Hitler’s war; he was starting to ask himself if this wasn’t much, much worse.
It was dark when Julian Christopher followed Alan Hannay up the steps into the ramshackle hall where the Signal Corps technicians had set up a makeshift studio. In a few days the broadcasting facilities in Valletta would be fully restored, until then this was the best alternative. Outside, Royal Marine Commandos manned roadblocks and stood at every door. After Friday evening’s raid practically everybody had expected civil disorder, perhaps, terrorist outrages. Against expectations the population had united in the ongoing rescue and recovery operation. There had been no repeat of the shootings and bombings which followed so closely on the heels of the October War. If anything, there was a renewed sense of everybody ‘being in it together’ again; as if the surprise attack and its dreadful toll of death, pain and destruction had rekindled something of the spirit of the siege years of the Second World War.
“My name is Julian Christopher,” the Commander-in-Chief of all British and Commonwealth Forces in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations said clearly, confidently into the single big microphone. He’d been advised to speak from about ten inches away and asked, very politely, not to move backwards and forwards as he spoke. The Signals Corps technicians had visibly relaxed when he’d greeted their entreaties with a broad smile and thanked them for their ‘excellent advice’ which ‘I intend to heed’.
“Three nights ago the peace of these islands was shattered by a cowardly and unprovoked attack that has left over a thousand British and Maltese dead and missing, and over one thousand five hundred people seriously injured. You will have heard many stories and a great deal of uninformed gossip about the events of last Friday night. I would like to put the record straight.”
Julian Christopher spoke in a clear, unfaltering voice without notes for nearly twenty minutes. His enunciation was patient, speaking to an underlying outrage that the majority of his audience would almost certainly share and empathise with regardless of their political leanings.
First he described the peaceful scene on the Gzira - Sliema waterfront, the night shift at the Senglea docks swarming all over HMS Torquay as she was positioned, exactly above the grounding blocks hidden beneath her hull in the dark water of Number One dock; and the roar of the motors winding up to start pumping. There were families enjoying a stroll along the Msida sea wall opposite Manoel Island, the officers at Fort Phoenicia were filing into the Mess for dinner; and out in Marsamxett Harbour the old cruiser HMS Sheffield was manoeuvring alongside the oiling jetty. In Sliema Creek a lone destroyer, HMS Agincourt rocked gently at her moorings, her guns trained fore and aft, her GWS 21 Sea Cat quadruple missile launcher locked down beneath a tarpaulin and with half her crew out on the town on a typical Friday evening run ashore...
The first wave of marauders had approached at over four hundred miles an hour hugging the tops of the waves, soaring high over the rocky coast and falling like plummeting hawks upon the unsuspecting ships moored in the harbours and creeks. There had been no warning, no air raid sirens had wailed like banshees across the Archipelago. A bomb had wrecked HMS Agincourt’s bow and started a fire that would have ignited her forward magazine had her crew not let her sink where she lay in Sliema Creek. A bomb had sliced through the armour of HMS Sheffield’s aft triple six-inch turret and exploded against the breech of one of the big guns. Another bomb had landed in the water some distance away and ‘skipped’ across the surface to detonate against the lightly armoured trunk of her forward port twin three-inch secondary armament mount. Another bomb had exploded in the water directly alongside her bridge, smashing a ten feet wide rent in her side beneath her armour belt. It was a miracle the old cruiser had been eventually towed into shallow water. Across the other side of Valletta, HMS Torquay had been defenceless as she lay in Number One dock. Perhaps, four or five bombs fell around her, mostly in French Creek before the fateful impact of the bomb in the dock opened her side like a great tin can opener and she capsized within seconds. In attacking the warships bombs fell with apparent randomness into closely packed streets, tearing trails of ruin through whole districts. Three bombs killed scores of people on the Strand in Gzira and Sliema. More civilians, including many w
orkers at the main hospital on the Archipelago died when a string of small bombs bracketed houses along Msida Creek. A bus at the roundabout at the end of Pieta Creek had received a direct hit.
The aircraft in the first wave of the attack were piloted by Italians and wore the livery of the reincarnated Regia Aeronautica, the air force of the new Fascist Republic of Italy and Sicily. All the aircraft in this attack were of American manufacture but, so far as could be ascertained from the testimony of the three captured Italian airmen, they were flown by native Italian pilots.
Had it not been for the ‘valiant endeavours of the Royal Air Force and the Fleet Air Arm,’ the first wave would undoubtedly have caused even greater damage and caused significantly greater loss of life.
However, while the Regia Aeronautica Skyhawks were being hunted by Royal Navy Sea Vixen and Scimitars big bombs suddenly started to fall from seven miles high in the darkening Mediterranean skies.
The second – high-level – attack had commenced some three minutes after the attack by the low-level first wave had turned into a dog-fighting melee that rapidly spread across the skies of the whole Maltese Archipelago. At the conclusion of this low-level battle five of the attackers and one of the Fleet Air Arm fighters had been shot down.
“The pilot of the Scimitar that was lost survived with only minor injuries,” Julian Christopher told his audience with grim satisfaction.
As the last of the surviving Regia Aeronautica A-4 Skyhawks fled into the darkening north-eastern skies a rain of M118 general purpose – classified by the United States Air Force as ‘demolition’ munitions – arrowed down with unerring precision on Royal Navy and Army headquarters, and major public buildings and bomb shelters used by the civilian authorities across Valletta, Birgu, Kalkara, Cospicua and Floriana from the bomb bays the four Boeing B-52 Stratofortresses of the 2nd Bomb Wing of the 100th Bomb Group of the United States Air Force that were subsequently engaged by RAF Hawker Hunter fighters between six and seven miles high above the Maltese Archipelago. HMS Phoenicia, the Headquarters of the British Military Administration was struck by several large ‘demolition’ munitions and at least one very large ‘fuel-air’ device which exploded in the middle of the old fort with the force of a small nuclear detonation.