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

by James Philip

  A technician thrust a microphone in Edward Heath’s face.

  To his credit the British Prime Minister didn’t flinch. Any man who’d been the Chief Whip of the Conservative and Unionist Party of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland for the best part of a decade, and thereafter been the man entrusted with negotiating his country’s entry into the European Common Market was of necessity, an adroit and gifted public performer.

  “We completely understand your local difficulties, Mister President,” he replied loudly. “I wish you every success in your ongoing fight against elements clearly antipathetic to the democratic process to which both our Administrations are dedicated to uphold.”

  There was a two to three second signal delay.

  “Thank you, Prime Minister. I am informed that the State Department Agenda for this summit is agreeable to you?”

  Again the delay.

  “Yes, Mister President. However, I am sure we can make a structured discussion of each point in turn redundant in the course of our respective opening remarks.”

  This time the delay was nearer ten than three seconds.

  Jack Kennedy craned his head to one side, listening to an advisor off camera. Whatever had been said to him he waved it away.

  “In the event that this television link is lost during the course of our discussions the Vice-President will speak for the United States of America,” he said soberly. He let this hang in the either for a moment. “There are many people in America who believe that God has forsaken the World,” he continued. “I am not among their number and I am convinced that free men of good will can one day remake a better new World out of the ashes of the old. If I ever needed proof that my country has turned in upon itself in its anguish, events in Washington in the last thirty-six hours, speak more loudly that words ever can. We have all made mistakes since the October War and dark elements within both our nations have taken advantage of those mistakes. Today we are living with the tragic consequences. It is my view that there is no profit in dwelling on past mistakes and it is my hope that you have come to the table in the same spirit.”

  Edward Heath waited for the President to go on.

  Seconds ticked by before he realised it was his turn to speak.

  Again the microphone was brandished in his face.

  “Thank you for those most statesmanlike sentiments, Mister President. If I may I should like to start with a personal aside. I know that you and my late, much-esteemed predecessor, Harold MacMillan, spoke often before the war. I know also that Mr MacMillan held you in high regard and always spoke well of you among his senior colleagues, one of whom I had the honour to be for many years. I say this because your remarks today would have confirmed Mr MacMillan in his opinion.”

  The Prime Minister knew he was embellishing the truth a little and wondered briefly, if he had over-egged his compliment.

  “I greatly miss my old friend’s wise advice, Prime Minister.”

  No, I probably got it about right.

  “As do we all,” Edward Heath agreed solemnly. “If I put the proposition to you that never have two countries been more vexed by a common language than our two countries in the last year,” he continued, “would that find a resonance with you, Mr President?”

  “Possibly...”

  “Then let me speak plainly to you,” Edward Heath promised. “It is my belief that a Soviet-inspired underground movement which goes by the name of ‘Red Dawn’ may be behind the incident at Balmoral Castle in which CIA-sponsored operatives in the Irish Republic have been implicated; in fomenting the bellicose actions of the fascist regimes in Spain and Italy; and in so deeply infiltrating certain parts of the United States military that its agents were able to convince patriotic American service personnel to mount attacks on former allies.”

  There was a long delay.

  Jack Kennedy was oddly hesitant. “We know of ‘Red Dawn’ as one of many KGB projects that never got off the ground. It dated back to the Stalin era and was believed to have withered on the vine after Stalin’s death,” he said, picking his words with great care.

  Edward Heath nodded. “Sir Richard White,” he continued, “the Head of the Secret Intelligence Service is a member of the UKIEA delegation, Mister President. I have authorised him to fully brief CIA Director McCone and any other member of your Administration you might care to nominate on all available intelligence currently in our possession relating to the Red Dawn movement.”

  “That’s very generous of you, Prime Minister.”

  “I prefer to see that ‘generosity’ as a pragmatic token of our good faith, Mister President. We find ourselves at this present sad pass not because we have been saying the wrong thing to each other, but because since the war we have failed to talk to each other.” He didn’t give Jack Kennedy room to get a word in edgewise. “Further to this, in relation to items one and two on the agenda for this summit prepared by your State Department; the nine US Air Force survivors of the 100th Bomb Group’s attack on Malta, and all former diplomats in the United Kingdom whose accreditation was withdrawn last week will be returned to the United States at the earliest possible time. Ambassador Westheimer travelled to Washington with my party so that he might participate in the organisation of flights to collect his people still in England. The United States Air Force may send a plane to Malta to repatriate your airmen at its convenience. Your service personnel in our custody in Malta have received appropriate medical and other care according to their need and, to ensure their welfare, a former Retired US Navy Surgeon Commander, a Doctor Margo Eve Seiffert, has been tasked by the C-in-C Mediterranean to act in lieu of the Swiss Red Cross on behalf of your people.”

  Jack Kennedy absorbed this unhurriedly.

  In his State of the Union Address he’d dug himself a hole and the British Premier had just thrown him a rope. However, he wasn’t so grateful that he didn’t know there wasn’t going to be a price to be paid.

  “That’s most helpful,” he confessed, deciding this wasn’t the time to play hard to get.

  “I regret,” Edward Heath continued, “that the other items on the ‘agenda’ cannot be discussed other than as part of a broader bi-lateral settlement. The British people will soon be aware that Americans based in the Republic of Ireland are implicated in the attempted assassination of Queen Elizabeth and her family. Likewise, they will realise, if they don’t already, that Operation Manna would not have been necessary if your Administration had kept its word on grain and fuel supplies to its hard-pressed former NATO allies. In time it will become evident that tens of thousands of my people died, and continue to die because Congress has mandated that all antibiotics manufactured in the United States be reserved for Americans. I could go on but I am a guest in your country and you and I have already agreed that we must look to the future, not the past.”

  Lyndon Baines Johnson cleared his throat.

  “Premier Heath,” he prefaced, dourly, “you’re not the only guy in the room who has constituents he needs to keep sweet.”

  “Sweet?” The Englishman retorted flatly. “Sweet, Mister Vice-President? American broken promises and parsimony would have seen millions of my constituents die of starvation and disease this winter if I’d failed to mobilise the military resources at my disposal.”

  The Texan held up his hands.

  “A lot of my people on the Hill reckoned that if the British Empire can afford to keep more ships in the water than the United States Navy you really don’t need our foreign aid.”

  Iain Macleod got to his feet and moved around to speak quietly in Edward Heath’s ear. The Minister of Information was unusually calm and collected. He’d seen the rage building in his old friend’s eyes and, notwithstanding their differences in the last terrible year, he hoped he was still close enough to the urbane, cultured highly intelligent man who’d shouldered the whole weight of carrying his hard-pressed country through its most desperate hours for his counsel of caution to be heard. The Ted Heath he’d known before the war had
been a cheerful, solicitous friend to whom personal loyalty and respect were two-way streets. In fact he’d been that rare animal, a politician who valued his personal integrity above party politics who rarely stepped back from discussing unpalatable or inconvenient facts with either his friends, foes, or with the voters. The Vice-President was seriously misunderstanding his man if he thought Ted Heath was a man who’d bow to the famous ‘LBJ treatment’.

  “I think we probably want to ask for a brief adjournment now, Ted.”

  Across the table the American delegation watched with eyebrows arching.

  Edward Heath sat back from the table.

  “Take that filthy thing out of my face!” He pushed away the fluffy microphone. He ignored the television screen at the end of the table and met the Vice-President’s unblinking, steely stare with a similarly unrelenting scrutiny.

  His chair scrapped loudly on the floor as he stood up.

  Chapter 36

  Tuesday 10th December 1963

  Dockyard Creek, Senglea, Malta

  Samuel Calleja had seen his younger brother walking towards him from the seaward end of the dry dock. Work gangs were crawling over the wreck of HMS Torquay making final preparations to flood the basin. A great steel patch had been welded over the gaping wound in the starboard side of the wrecked frigate; the whole ship had become a scene straight out of Dante’s Inferno with men hammering and welding plates over every hole and crack in the vessel’s thin skin.

  The plan to right, float and tow the hulk around to Marsa Creek where all removable equipment would be salvaged ‘in due course’ was madness. Attempting to right the ship as the dock was being flooded was insane. He’d protested to his British overseers, who shrugged off his vehement objections and politely explained that the dock needed to be ‘made available’ and ‘this way is quicker than breaking up the ship in situ’. The pumps were already blowing compressed air into the compartments sealed by the welding teams.

  “Papa said it was a bit of mess,” Joseph Calleja whistled, approaching his older brother, “I thought he was exaggerating. You can’t really see that much from the Valletta side.” He stared at the unreal sight of a two-and-a-half thousand ton, nearly four hundred foot long warship lying on her starboard side. But for her superstructure coming to rest against the side of the dock and the blocks preventing her lying directly on the bottom of the dock, she was literally ‘on her beam ends’. Their father had shown him black and white photographs of HMS Kingston wrecked in this very dock during the 1945 war; he’d never honestly believed he’d ever see the like in his life time. “Can we really right her with the cranes we’ve got?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Nobody’s ever tried doing a thing like this before.”

  “We ought to check that the Times of Malta sends a photographer,” Joe Calleja suggested unhelpfully.

  “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”

  “No, I promised the British I’d be a good boy for the duration.”

  “So no union meetings?”

  “I’m still a member of the Workers’ Council, big brother,” the younger Calleja reminded the older sibling. “Just because of the latest panic it doesn’t mean our people don’t have a right to have their voice heard.”

  “Our people! You should hear yourself speak, Joe!”

  As they sparred the two brothers had begun to study the elegant lines of HMS Tiger, moored alongside Parlatorio Wharf on the other side of Dockyard Creek with the Daring class destroyer HMS Decoy moored along her port flank.

  “What’s the rush to get the dock open again?” Joe asked idly, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at the broken frigate.

  “If I knew that I probably wouldn’t be allowed to tell you,” Sam Calleja retorted. “Not that it’s hard to guess. The Fleet is expecting reinforcements now that there’s a new man in charge. One, perhaps, two big carriers and their escorts.” He sniffed the cool air. The dusk was almost gone, replaced with the night. In the near distance oxy-acetylene torches burned dazzlingly in the gloom and sparks flew in glittering showers. Across the glassy waters of Dockyard Creek the arc lights burned over HMS Tiger, the lead ship of the last class of big gun cruisers that would ever be built for the Royal Navy. “Tiger is off-loading armour-piercing main battery rounds and taking on anti-aircraft reloads, HE shells with the latest time delay and proximity fuses. The rumour is that she’s off to Cyprus as soon as she and her escorts have rebalanced their magazines with AA munitions.”

  Joe Calleja sobered a little.

  “It doesn’t sound so good in Cyprus?”

  “No, not since Crete declared independence a couple of months back. Some sort of leftist coup.”

  The younger man didn’t ask his brother how he was so well informed. Sam had always been obsessed with what was going on in the outside World and their mother lived in terror of being told one day that Sam was leaving Malta. Joe’s frustration that Sam had never converted any of his curiosity about faraway places into politics and activism at home was the primary source of the friction between the siblings. Marija was almost as bad, of course, but at least she’d finally, reluctantly ‘got involved’ when she’d led the Women of Malta protests.

  “Does it matter if the Greeks don’t run Crete anymore?” He asked, realising the moment he asked it that it was a stupid question.

  “That depends who the new overlords are, doesn’t it?” Sam Calleja sneered dismissively. “And how they feel about the British sailing in their waters?”

  Joe Calleja had once, not so long ago, believed that the World was a fairly simple place. If you didn’t like something you protested, fought against it, bloodlessly if at all possible. Then around a year ago he’d been arrested in the middle of the night, dragged off to the Empire Stadium at Gzira and over the course of two nights been beaten very nearly to death by goons taking orders from two men with American accents. He’d have died in that place if a squad of British Redcaps, Royal Military Policemen, under the command of Staff Sergeant Jim Siddall hadn’t interrupted the work of the torturers. Later he been told that the big Redcap who’d since become terminally sweet on Marija had taken one look at what was going on in the Empire Stadium and ordered his men to ‘beat the crap’ out of the Internal Security thugs running the ‘reception depot’. Marija said the big Redcap had just been promoted and was working for Admiral Christopher. His sister had also said that many years ago when the Admiral had last been in Malta he’d carried a flame for Dottoressa Seiffert. Life was full of surprises.

  “Did you hear the new Admiral on the radio?” He asked his elder brother.

  Sam Calleja shook his head. His wife had spoken of little else than the rousing, reassuring bluster of the new ‘Grand Master’ of the Maltese Archipelago. She honestly believed the islands had been sent a new protector, a new guardian angel. Rosa didn’t understand that all the coming of the famous ‘Fighting Admiral’ signified was a tightening of their chains. In the next few weeks and months the creeks and harbours of the Archipelago would fill with great grey warships; and Malta’s bondage would be complete again for another generation. The British were never going to take their foot off the throat of the Maltese. He’d dreamed that one day they’d pack up and depart. He knew now that this was wanderlust. The latest interlopers in the footsteps of the Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem Knights of Malta would only leave when they were driven out.

  Joe didn’t pay much heed to his brother’s apparent distraction.

  “Anyway,” he decided, sensing that any further attempt to make small talk with Sam was going to be like walking through treacle, “the main office sent me down here in case we burn out any of the servos on the hawser pulleys, or the crane motors. I’m a fully qualified yard electrician, remember?”

  This brought the older brother out of his introspection.

  “Whatever you do stay behind something solid tonight,” he directed sternly, as if he was addressing a small and somewhat recalcitrant child. “Even if this ‘operation’ goes perfect
ly cables will inevitably fail sooner or later. I’ve already lost a lot of good men. I don’t intend to lose any more just to ‘tidy up’ the dock for the British!”

  Sam Calleja watched as his little brother ambled off into the gloom, stepping in and out of the back light of the arcs pouring harsh white illumination onto the carcass of the broken frigate in the dry dock. He checked his watch. He’d done everything he could to make sure none of his men got hurt tonight; in an hour or so the British would probably find out they should have listened to him in the first place. He hated the waiting.

  He gazed across the creek to HMS Tiger.

  He’d worked on the ship when she’d come to Malta to complete her maiden cruise; been onboard when her ‘inclining trials’ were conducted in the calm of the Grand Harbour opposite the neck of Dockyard Creek. Tiger was a very modern, beautiful ship but for all her state of the art electronics and gunnery control radars she was already obsolete. Like what remained of the British Empire her proud distinguished facade hid the anachronistic fabric beneath the surface. Although Tiger’s keel had been laid down on Clydebank in October 1941 her uncompleted hulk had only been launched four years later after the end of the Second War to clear the slip. For much of the next decade Tiger and her two sisters, Lion and Blake, had been laid up on the Clyde, rusting, before in the mid-1950s it had finally been decided to complete them as light cruisers carrying the latest automatic quick-firing 6-inch and 3-inch guns. Tiger’s four 6-inch guns mounted in twin turrets fore and aft could each theoretically fire at least twenty rounds a minute; her six 3-inch high-angle anti-aircraft battery – each barrel capable of firing over thirty rounds a minute - was dispersed in three turrets, one to port, one to starboard amidships and one in her after superstructure. If her turrets didn’t malfunction – which they did, frequently – Tiger could easily ‘shoot herself dry’ in less than twenty minutes. This wasn’t a problem because by then the theory was that she’d have deluged any potential enemy with such a weight of horribly accurate, radar-controlled gunfire that the battle would have long been over. Unfortunately, the main battery usually jammed after a minute or so of continuous firing and there weren’t enough 3-inch, high-angle anti-aircraft mounts to put up a broad enough curtain of fire to deter incoming fast jets. Tiger was a brilliantly envisaged, poorly and very expensively executed attempt to build a cruiser to refight the Battle of the River Plate.