The Pillars of Hercules (Timeline 10/27/62 Book 3)

by James Philip

  Her lover had previously told Clara that he’d been ‘turned’ by the CIA and that his KGB masters had finally caught up with him. He’d claimed his former comrades – who’d been torturing him in an Ankara basement – were killed by the first air burst over the Turkish capital shortly after they’d wearied of beating him and gone outside to get a ‘breath of fresh air’. Some hours later he’d freed himself and ended up at the United States Air Force Base Hospital at Incirlik where her flight to Beirut had been diverted when the first bombs went off that night. In reality, Arkady had been on the run from Red Dawn for several weeks before the October War, desperately attempting to contact Dick White so that he could be could ‘come in from the cold’.

  After the October War Red Dawn had literally, come out of the woodwork; risen like an evil Phoenix from the ashes of the wrecked USSR. Since the movement had been ubiquitous wherever the Soviet State had a presence; in embassies, trade legations, the KGB, the army, the air force and the navy, even in sporting and other cultural agencies, all that was missing was a guiding hand in the nightmare aftermath of the war.

  ‘I do not believe that there is a single guiding hand. However, there are ‘guiding hands’, more likely locally in the devastated lands, and nationally in those place less affected by the war. For example, I would predict that in the United States of America - large tracts of which survived the war untouched including Washington DC - Red Dawn has coalesced into a loosely nationalistic underground movement capable of developing complex strategies and carrying out extremely ambitious operations. Red Dawn will have insinuated itself into mainstream political parties, the military-industrial complex, local militias and extremist groups of the right, rather than the left since the FBI indiscriminately targets all left-leaning groups and largely leaves the red-neck, racist, anti-Semitic and other right wing coalitions to their own devices. Red Dawn will have a presence in governmental institutions, trades unions and on University campuses across America. I have no way of knowing how deeply any, or all of these organisations, groups and factions may have been penetrated by Red Dawn, or for that matter, the level of commitment of individual members of the Red Dawn movement to their cause. Some areas of the American state will have been hardly touched by Red Dawn; others, a minority to be sure, will have been deeply compromised. For example, National Guard formations may have been suborned, or parts of critical military command and control infrastructures perverted. It is likely that the widespread civil unrest in many parts of North America is fomented by Red Dawn sympathisers. In the United Kingdom the situation is different because although Red Dawn was probably more deeply embedded in Western Europe than was possible in the United States, the war damage in even the less relatively less heavily damaged countries like the United Kingdom and France was so severe that the movement itself would have been fractured. Martial law was declared in the United Kingdom following the October War and the UKIEA clamped down ruthlessly in the wake of the first wave of assassinations and bombings. The Provision Government of West France reacted with great violence also. Red Dawn’s own internal organisation was splintered by the war and then further fragmented by the actions of the authorities. In the devastated areas of the Mother Country, Red Dawn would exist only in the form of disparate fiefdoms, perhaps unwilling or unable to co-operate one with another. In the Balkans, Turkey and Armenia, it was inevitable that Red Dawn would find an affinity with several of the pre-existing and entrenched – for generations - competing ethnic and religious groupings. In the near future it is in this area, and perhaps in Asia Minor as a whole, that Red Dawn will pose the greatest immediate threat to the existing hegemony. If, as I expect, the surviving resources of the former Turkish State are mobilised by Red Dawn the greater part of the world’s known oil reserves will eventually fall into its hands as what is, in effect, a new Ottoman-type empire expands to engulf the whole Middle East.’

  Clara had listened with horror and fascination.

  ‘It might be that Red Dawn burned itself out in uncoordinated spasms of violence immediately after the October War in the United Kingdom, France, Malta, Cyprus and elsewhere. On Malta, for example, ‘only a few diehards’ remain. In the United Kingdom, the surviving remnants of Red Dawn will most likely, have been subsumed into the widespread criminal sub-culture peculiar to all command economies in which the strict rationing of food, fuel and other essential supplies underpins the existence of every citizen.’ The Russian had concluded: ‘I fear for what might happen in America, but what manner of monster might emerge from Asia Minor in the coming years gives me nightmares.’

  Dick White had prompted the Russian to express a view on the recent events in the Iberian Peninsula, the surprise attack on Malta and the attempted assassination of the British Royal Family.

  Although the details were news to the battered former KGB Colonel; nothing he was told remotely surprised him.

  ‘If you are asking me if I see the hand of Red Dawn in these events,’ he’d shrugged, ‘I’d say they were consistent with the activities of a subversive movement embedded within agencies of the American government hoping to drive a wedge between the two countries which Red Dawn views as being most implacably inimical to its crusade.’

  Clara had thought that ‘crusade’ was an interesting and a rather frightening word to use; and so had Dick White, who’d queried it in a moment.

  ‘A certain American general talks about bombing his enemies back into the Stone Age,’ he’d reminded the tall Englishman. ‘I think that gentleman misses his mark. It is not to ‘the Stone Age’ that we have bombed ourselves ‘but back towards a new World order that a mediaeval mind would well understand. A World in which war and warriors are the ruling class; a World in which ‘renaissance’ is a dirty word; a World in which people will be driven again to live in citadels; and in which the champions of Red Dawn see themselves as latter day Templars, or Teutonic Knights. Europe and the Russian parts of the Soviet Union are in ruins. Red Dawn will seek to insinuate itself into and then dominate what will inevitably become a battleground between competing religious, political and militaristic theosophies. The Americans have bombed the World we knew back into a World that has much in common with the World of the European wars of religion of the seventeenth century. Whatever happens, it is almost inevitable that there will be thirty years, perhaps more, of war in Europe, Asia Minor and the Middle East. All that we have seen so far are a few scattered, experimental ‘opening shots’ in the coming war. Red Dawn is merely flexing its muscles...’

  Clara Pullman warmed herself by the stove, gazed out across the peaceful, unsullied vista of the city of Lisbon.

  Dick White had been more sanguine about the future than Arkady.

  ‘If I learned anything from the forty-five war,’ he’d countered, ‘it was that nothing is ever quite as bad as it seems.’

  The spymaster had decided that Arkady and Clara should remain in Portugal for ‘the time being’. Meanwhile, he had to go back to England. ‘I look forward to meeting you both again in due course,’ he’d promised before driving off into the night with ‘Max’.

  Clara went to the big bedroom at the southern end of the villa. Thick drapes were drawn across the tall windows designed to allow the light to flood the room every morning. Without troubling to discard the plain cotton dress she’d discovered in one of the wardrobes she slipped beneath the sheets and cautiously snuggled up against her lover’s back.

  He half-groaned, half-sighed in his sleep.

  Clara’s thoughts wandered out across the stormy seas to where HMS Hermes and her consorts were already fighting the endless ‘future war’ that Arkady had foretold.

  She wondered what would happen to the long list of names ‘Max’ had scribbled; the names of Red Dawn members, activists and ‘sleepers’ – thirty-one names – that Arkady had dictated. Wondered also, what the people behind those names were doing right now.

  Most of all she wondered if, in this brave new World, if she would ever trust another human being ag
ain.

  Chapter 26

  Tuesday 10th December 1963

  The Pembroke Barracks, Malta

  A radio had been set up in the corner of the quadrangle now filled with tents and rows of hospital cots. It seemed that overnight Radio Malta had temporarily relocated – from its antiquated, low-power emergency transmitting station on Gozo - to a shed at RAF Luqa where, utilising one of the base’s redundant World War II era masts, it was broadcasting again at maximum strength. It had been playing music – mostly dance music – with half-hourly news reports. Everybody who heard those reports knew instantly that the censorship regime of the last year had been abandoned.

  “Sir Julian Christopher, the new Commander-in-Chief of British Forces in the Mediterranean, who addressed the Maltese people last night, has promised to extend a hand of friendship to leaders of the Nationalist and Labour Parties. Mr Borg of the Nationalists has welcomed this development but Mr Mintoff has thus far declined to comment...”

  Marija Calleja, pausing in her work sorting dressings in the cabinet Margo Seiffert had had moved – ‘so that it is actually where it needs to be, close to the patients’ – to its present location from the store room at the back of the fort, listened to the purposeful voice of the announcer. There was a note of hopeful optimism in the man’s normally stentorian delivery, as if he’d been set free.

  “News from elsewhere in the world. The two British destroyers damaged by air attacks in the Atlantic are reported to have safely reached Oporto in Portugal. Both ships suffered heavy casualties but no casualty lists have yet been released. In naval engagements in and around the Straits of Gibraltar the British report the loss of two frigates to air attack but continue to blockade the Straits. His Royal Highness Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh’s doctors in Scotland report that he is now out of danger, although there is no news as to whether he might still lose one or both of his legs...”

  Marija sniffed back a tear.

  If there had been any news about Peter Christopher the Admiral would surely have let Margo know; so no news was good news.

  She hoped...

  “There are reports on American radio and television networks of numerous explosions and of heavy gunfire in the capital of the USA, Washington DC. Details are scarce but in one account a hospital spokesman speaks of scores of casualties and of ambulances and fire engines being fired upon by persons unknown. Less than an hour ago the Reuters agent in Valletta told me over the telephone that there may have been some kind of coup attempt in the American capital, although at this time there is no confirmation of this report. It is not known whether the trouble in Washington was connected to President Kennedy’s State of the Union Address, in which he blamed the atrocities against Malta and Her Majesty the Queen on ‘dark elements emerging from the shadows’. In washing his hands of responsibility for the actions of the US Air Force and ‘other agencies beyond the control of the Administration’, President Kennedy has won few friends...”

  Marija smiled a grim private smile. A week ago the radio announcer would have been arrested for so frankly stating ‘the news’.

  Lilting dance music began to emanate from the radio.

  Margo had ordered Marija to go home and stay there for at least twenty-four hours.

  ‘No, no arguments!’ Her friend had declared. ‘You are tired, you are hurting all over and I don’t want you having a fall and doing yourself an injury. We have quite enough real patients as it is!’ Marija was to go home to Sliema and to let her mother ‘fuss over’ her.

  “Your taxi awaits you, ma’am,” a tired but smiling Lieutenant Jim Siddall, lately of the Royal Military Police, now a ‘political intelligence officer’ on the staff of the new Commander-in-Chief of all British and Commonwealth Forces in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations, announced wanly as he looked into the small office.

  Marija was a little disorientated.

  “I don’t understand...”

  “Doctor Seiffert has ordered me to drive you back to Sliema.”

  “Margo can’t order you about,” Marija objected.

  “When my boss, Admiral Christopher, refers to somebody by their rank,” he explained, patiently, “and that rank is Commander in the Navy, that person outranks me so, yes, Doctor Seiffert can ‘order me about’, actually.”

  “Margo is retired from the Navy. She wasn’t in our Navy,” she corrected herself, “your Navy, I mean. Or at least that’s what I think I mean. I’m so tired I don’t know what I mean...”

  “It is on my way,” the big man assured her. “I have a meeting in Valletta with Mr Mintoff’s people.”

  Marija didn’t think he’d enjoy that encounter.

  As the spokesperson and public face of the Women of Malta protests – protesting against the detention without trial of so many Maltese men – she’d met Duminku, or as the British knew him ‘Dom’ - a diminutive of his Anglicized name - Dominic Mintoff a number of times. The forty-seven year former Rhodes Scholar at Hertford College, Oxford, and leader of the Maltese Labour party had been briefly placed under house arrest several times in the last year. By profession an architect and journalist, Dom Mintoff was the kind of man who was not going to forget that ignominy any time soon. He’d actually been Prime Minister of the colony for three years in the 1950s, and until the October War had been itching to be the first Premier of an independent Maltese Archipelago. Unlike many Maltese politicians Dom Mintoff was never, ever going to be cowed by or in any way supplicant to the colonial power.

  Marija looked in on Margo Seiffert to wave goodbye.

  “I don’t want to see you again until Thursday!” The older woman informed her. “Promise me that you’ll try to rest?”

  Marija had nodded, they’d exchanged pecking kisses and she and Jim Siddall had walked the short distance to where the man had parked his vehicle, a Land Rover in desert livery. She let him hold the door and didn’t object when he steadied her elbow as she stepped into the cab,

  “Have they found any more survivors at HMS Phoenicia?” Marija asked after a minute of jolting along the pot-holed coast road to the south through the coastal village of St Julian’s. Her driver had been based on Manoel Island opposite Sliema for his whole tour on Malta; he must have made a lot of friends among the base personnel who’d been killed on Friday.

  “No,” he retorted flatly. “They won’t, either. A bomb like the one they dropped on the fort kills everything and everybody in its way. They say the blast collapsed both bomb shelters. Some of the outer walls of the fort are still standing, but inside...”

  “I’m sorry.” Marija understood herself well enough – bearing in mind the fact she’d never had a boyfriend, not one that was real, flesh and blood and next to her rather than thousands miles away, and that she really knew nothing about men – to know that a man like Jim Siddall would be good for her, and to her. But knowing it was not wanting or wishing it to be so, and she felt a little guilty even to be entertaining such thoughts while she waited to hear news of Peter.

  The big man at the wheel of the Land Rover chuckled ruefully, guessing she wasn’t just thinking about the people whose lives had been blown away by that final fuel-air abomination dropped by one of the doomed B-52s of the 100th Bomb Group.

  “If my wife’s still alive in England I’m still married,” he confessed because that’s what you did when you glimpsed the end of the World. If there was another war the end would come quickly, fierily and there wouldn’t be time to confess one sins; so now was as good a time as any. “My boy Jack would be nearly seven now, if he survived last winter. Doris couldn’t hack the military life and I wasn’t going to buy myself out of the Service. One day I came home and Doris and Jack were gone. Back to her people in Wolverhampton, that’s in the English Midlands, almost as far from the sea as you can go in the old country.”

  “I didn’t know. I’m sorry, that’s so sad...”

  They fell into quietness for the rest of the ten minute journey.

  The soldier helped her d
own from the cab, didn’t linger.

  Marija watched the Land Rover drive off down Tower Street towards the waterfront. She’d expected the normally crystal clear blue waters of Sliema Creek to be fouled with HMS Agincourt’s leaking bunker oil and was surprised to find the December sun glinting off an oddly idyllic calm sea. Across the anchorage Fort Phoenicia looked strangely normal until a more careful inspection found no silhouettes of buildings protruding above the indestructible bastion walls. The spire of the church was gone, as were the angled limestone roofs of the barrack and office blocks.

  The door opened and her younger brother, Joe grinned at her.

  They hugged each other, stood back.

  “Ouch! You look sore,” her twenty-three year sibling decided, frowning with concern.

  “I’m all right. I’m just a little tired. Margo sent me home to rest. Well, it was an order, really. She’s got quite bossy the last day or so, I suppose it must be because we’re surrounded by all those military people at the Pembroke Barracks.”

  He younger brother was grinning, relieved and reassured by his sister’s chattiness.

  “Apparently,” Marija explained, “because Admiral Christopher had Margo’s old Navy rank included on the written authorisation set up the hospital at the barracks she outranks practically everybody. All the soldiers tiptoe around her, it is funny really.”