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

by James Philip

  While the Hermes Battle Group was fending off air attacks there had been six V-Bomber strikes by aircraft based in England and Scotland, against targets in the hills around Algeciras Bay and north and east of the Rock of Gibraltar, and against Spanish Air Force bases in Morocco. Shortly after the first of these raids the sporadic artillery barrage on the Rock had ceased. After darkness had fallen destroyers and frigates had shelled Cadiz, Tarifa and Algeciras, engaging and probably, disabling or sinking, two Spanish destroyers sheltering in Cadiz Roads.

  “I was so relieved to hear that your son suffered only minor injuries in the attack on HMS Talavera,” Margaret Thatcher said suddenly. “It must be a great weight off your mind?”

  “Yes,” he replied flatly. “In a funny sort of way coming back to Malta after so many years has reminded me of, shall we say, unfinished business. Not to mention serving to remind one of one’s own mortality.”

  “I’d have thought our recent mutual experience at Balmoral Castle would have been quite sufficient in that respect!”

  Julian Christopher suspected the woman had strayed a very long way off message, that she hadn’t planned to let the conversation become so personal so soon. His suspicion was quickly justified. She caught herself instantly; business first, pleasure later.

  “You will have heard that HMS Dreadnought is missing?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that the United States navy is claiming she was destroyed by two of their anti-submarine aircraft after she had sunk the USS Scorpion?”

  “Nonsense, of course,” he declared.

  “What do you think really happened, Julian?”

  “I don’t know but I’m not about to accept anything the Yanks say until I’ve seen some proof. The onus isn’t on us to prove anything.” Realising the anger was rising like bile in his throat; Julian Christopher paused to regain a more level equilibrium. “I shall be attending funerals for the poor souls murdered by Curtis LeMay’s B-52s for over the next few days.”

  “It is a terrible business,” Margaret Thatcher said simply.

  “The last time I spoke to the First Sea Lord he wouldn’t be drawn on the situation in Washington, Margaret?” Julian Christopher prompted.

  There was a pause in which the line sang with soft static.

  “The Prime Minister went to Washington with the authority of the War Cabinet to do whatever needs to be done to avoid a war.” As if this statement wasn’t sufficiently definitive she reiterated the essence of the matter. “Whatever needed to be done.”

  “Good.”

  They’d finished talking about business.

  Oddly, neither of them really felt confident moving onto the pleasure part of the conversation. He knew that her call had been superfluous, that neither of them had learned anything new, or gained valuable fresh insights into the state of the World. But they’d needed to talk, to build upon the bond they’d somehow formed in their recent brief acquaintance. Such things were infinitely precious in the brave new World in which they lived.

  “Forgive me, Julian,” the Angry Widow prefaced uncomfortably, “I’m not very good at this sort of thing. And things are, well, awkward. My position in the Government, and so forth...”

  The man waited patiently. He asked himself how much it was costing her to open herself up to him this way. To show him her vulnerability.

  “I cannot allow myself to be in any way compromised,” Margaret Thatcher explained in a rush. “Or to become the object of gossip. It would reflect badly on me and inevitably, sooner or later detract from my work, you see...”

  “I agree. If we were to have an affair it would be irresponsible,” he agreed.

  “Oh...”

  Never had a murmur, a gasp communicated so much.

  Julian Christopher was quite taken aback by it.

  Oh, my God!

  “You are right, of course,” the woman said, unable to conceal that she was utterly crestfallen.

  “Margaret!” The man blurted in quiet panic. “That’s not at all what I mean. Of course it would be irresponsible for us to act in a way that was unbecoming to our roles and our responsibilities, especially at a time like this. Of course it would be, but that’s not what I meant.”

  “Oh!” The Angry Widow was a little vexed with him now.

  “I only meant to say that whatever we do must be irreproachably above board, that’s all,” the man retorted, trying not to mirror her vexation and failing dismally. They were both a little angry with each other.

  “Well, it is very difficult to know what one is supposed to think when the other party to the conversation is being so opaque,” the woman complained. Her voice was decidedly unmelodic and peeved in that moment.

  Julian Christopher stifled a chuckle of amusement.

  God, what a woman!

  “Margaret, there is a very simple remedy for our situation.”

  “There is?” Margaret Thatcher asked, clearly not convinced he was being serious and wondering if this was the point at which she hung up.

  Since there was nothing quite like striking while the iron was hot and his blood was well and truly up, the Commander-in-Chief of all British and Commonwealth Forces in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations struck before he thought better of it.

  “Yes, there is! Dammit, Margaret! Just marry me and be done with it!”

  Chapter 44

  Wednesday 11th December 1963

  The Situation Room, The White House, Washington DC

  Jack Kennedy had loved his time in the United States Navy. Or rather, he’d loved most of his time in the Navy. Not the parts when he’d been in excruciating pain, obviously. Just the rest of the time. It was during his service in the Pacific that he’d discovered his own leadership qualities, begun to believe that there was more to life than, well, ‘fooling around’ basically. The Navy had made him the man he was and given him the kind of unimpeachable back story no politician could buy for love or money. Rightly or wrongly, the Navy had made him a hero and after one or two missteps along the way he’d ended up President.

  Now he was afraid the Navy had already started World War IV.

  Back in October 1962 CINCLANT had been a NATO command denoting the C-in-C of all Allied Forces in the Atlantic Theatre of Operations, now it simply described the US Navy Admiral in command of the US Atlantic Fleet. Back in October 1962 he’d given the then CINCLANT – Admiral Robert L Dennison - the benefit of the doubt, not least because a narrative that traced a causal link for Armageddon back to a madman in a Soviet submarine had suited the Administration. In fact, if the maniac in the Foxtrot class submarine B-59 hadn’t existed, somebody in Washington would have invented him by now. CINCLANT’s narrative might even have been materially accurate but that was less important than the context it supplied for subsequent events. The Soviets fired the first shot. The Cubans fired the second, third and fourth. Tens of thousands of innocent Americans died before he - John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the thirty-fifth President of the United States of America – had ordered a massive and annihilating first strike against the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies. Nobody had seriously questioned that chronology because most of the people qualified to question it were, sadly but conveniently, dead by the early hours of the morning of Sunday 28th October 1962. This was fine and dandy so far as it went until history threatened to repeat itself. Whatever happened now in this new crisis people would be forced to re-examine the original timeline of the October War and remark upon the obvious similarities and unfortunate coincidences between the choreography of last year’s and this year’s, dance towards disaster.

  Admiral Robert L Dennison’s services had been dispensed with that spring. The World was far too dangerous to risk him dropping the nuclear football a second time. It was self-evident that his replacement hadn’t drawn the appropriate lessons from his predecessor’s sudden fall from grace.

  Inadvertently goading one ‘enemy’ submariner into starting a global nuclear war might be deemed – if not by the survivors,
then by future generations of historians – an unfortunate concatenation of circumstances, an accident. Repeating the exercise a second time a little more than a year later would seem, to an informed observer at best careless, at worst criminal. When the fires of Washington DC had been extinguished and the dust and smoke of recent disasters had settled, Jack Kennedy would find another Commander-in-Chief Atlantic. The one cruel redeeming factor in the whole sorry farrago was that both the Scorpion and the Dreadnought were missing and almost certainly lost with all hands. Had one or the other survived the fallout would have rolled over the Administration like a tsunami and possibly washed the whole Kennedy clan down to toilet pan of history.

  Notwithstanding, no man would have been happier than Jack Kennedy if one or other, ideally, both the Scorpion and the Dreadnought had miraculously survived. Looking into Walter Brenckmann’s eyes he’d glimpsed a window into the soul of a broken man; a broken man who rightly blamed him for the death of his first born on the Scorpion.

  When, eventually Admiral Vincent Lincoln Gray, CINCLANT, took his President’s call it was immediately apparent that he didn’t see what the problem was. From where he sat in his Headquarters at Norfolk, Virginia, everything was hunky dory. Nobody had stormed his command station, there were no vigilantes or terrorists on the streets outside and his boys had just expunged the memory of the ignominious way HMS Dreadnought had run rings around the Enterprise Battle Group for most of the last month.

  “Admiral Gray,” Jack Kennedy drawled wearily, “even by your own account of the incident the only units we know for sure put torpedoes in the water were the two S-2 Trackers off the Enterprise. Again, even from your own account whatever happened to the USS Scorpion, happened to her when she was in close contact – very close contact, it seems – with HMS Dreadnought. There is nothing in your report to me that discounts the possibility that the two submarines might have actually collided.” He almost choked on the next possibility: “Likewise, there is nothing to discount the possibility that the Scorpion was ‘downed’ by the first pair of torpedoes launched by the S-2s.”

  “I don’t think we need to seriously consider that possibility, Mister President,” the other man retorted. The President had only been a jumped up Lieutenant, a PT boat commander, what did he know? The Admiral could barely keep the condescension out of his voice. “We are analysing recordings from several sonar buoys at this time, Mr President,” CINCLANT insisted in a stentorian monotone. “In a few hours we expect to have definitive evidence that our boat was attacked without warning...”

  Jack Kennedy tried not to lose his temper.

  “We don’t have ‘a few hours’, Admiral Gray.” This was uncannily like when that crazy Soviet sub skipper nuked the USS Beale last year. The Navy still hadn’t come clean about all the circumstances leading up to that incident. They’d had carrier and land-based air in the area, three destroyers slowly cruising above the grounded Soviet boat; they could have stood off, waited for the B59 to surface but no, the Navy had bombed the submarine with practice depth charges!

  Admiral Gray had been on the Board of Inquiry that exonerated the flag officer in command of the USS Randolph ‘hunting group’ of any blame for the loss of the Beale. The ‘enemy’s action was not predictable in advance’ and in any case, neither he nor anybody else in the Navy Department, or the Pentagon had known that Soviet submarines were equipped with nuclear-tipped torpedoes.

  “There is a lot of data to be analysed, sir.”

  The President of the United States of America had been driven to nuclear war once by the Navy and it wasn’t going to happen again. Leastways, he hoped it wasn’t going to happen again. Once bitten, twice shy was the maxim that applied.

  “Admiral Gray, please listen very carefully,” Jack Kennedy said slowly. As he said it he looked up at the circle of men gathered around the table in the Situation Room. Curtis LeMay, Robert McNamara and his younger brother, Bobby’s expressions were stony. LeMay wanted to have CINCLANT arrested, the Secretary of Defence was, yet again, appalled by the imbecilic machismo of the Navy at a time of impossibly high international tension, and the Attorney General didn’t actually believe this, any of this was happening. Outside the city was burning, the nation’s heart was bleeding and the fucking Navy had decided to start World War IV early! “General LeMay, Acting Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, the Secretary for Defence, and the Attorney General are witnesses to this call and the orders I am about to give you which are to be executed without delay...”

  Admiral Gray began to say something.

  “I’m still talking, Admiral Gray,” Jack Kennedy snapped. “You will kindly do your Commander-in-Chief the courtesy of listening to him. You will immediately order, and personally ensure, that the following officers are placed under close confinement. These officers may not be interrogated by, or have any personal unrecorded interactions with any officer of an equivalent or senior rank without the direct written authorization of the Attorney General, and or, General LeMay or Mr McNamara. Please repeat what I have just mandated, Admiral.”

  CINCLANT hadn’t been listening that closely so there was a delay while his staffers primed him to call back a vaguely verbatim version of his Commander-in-Chief’s peremptory edict.

  “You will immediately relieve from duty and confine the following officers,” Jack Kennedy went on, consulting the scrawled list on his desk before him, “the Officer commanding the Enterprise Task Force, his Operations Officer and his Senior Intelligence Officer, the Enterprise’s CAG and his deputy, and the pilots and crew of both S-2 Trackers involved in the Scorpion incident. All records pertaining to that incident are to be impounded by the Captain of the Enterprise who will take command of the Task Force and withdraw it at its best speed from the area of the Atlantic Ocean designated as a ‘Total Exclusion Zone’ by the United Kingdom Interim Emergency Administration...”

  “That may not be possible to expedite immediately, Mister President...”

  “Furthermore, as previously ordered you will ensure that all air, surface and undersea assets under your command immediately disengage from contact with any Royal Navy aircraft or vessel. If necessary, they will communicate that intention to the British prior to disengagement just to make sure that there is no scope for misunderstanding by either party.”

  “That won’t be easy...”

  “Admiral Gray,” Jack Kennedy rasped, “if you are unable to immediately execute my orders I will find somebody who will. If there is any delay in executing my orders by you or by anybody else at Norfolk I will deploy elements of the 101st Airborne Division to expedite matters. Do I make myself clear, Admiral?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Thank you. General LeMay’s people are already in transit to your headquarters to report to me on the completeness with which my orders have been executed, Admiral.”

  Jack Kennedy put down the handset.

  He looked at Curtis Lemay.

  “I want the 101st Airborne on the ground in Virginia ASAP,” he said with deadly intent. “If that arsehole Gray doesn’t call off his boys I want his arse on stick.”

  The Acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff nodded grimly.

  “Yes, Mister President.”

  Chapter 45

  Wednesday 11th December 1963

  HMS Dreadnought, 402 miles WNW of Cape Trafalgar

  “Surface! Surface! Surface!”

  The submarine trembled and juddered as her ballast tanks were explosively emptied with blasting compressed air. In the thick, slowly fouling air of the control room exhausted men felt the boat rising, faster and faster.

  “Sea duty men to harbour stations!”

  Men began to clamber up towards the hatch, each man shrouded in cold weather gear and waterproofs.

  “One-six-zero feet!”

  The depths reeled off hurriedly as HMS Dreadnought rushed to the surface like a three-and-a-half thousand ton cork.

  “One-three-zero!”

  “One hundred...”
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  All depths were keel depths so sixty-five feet equalled periscope – just barely submerged - depth.

  “Seven-zero!

  “Five-zero! Breaching!”

  The boat porpoised like a giant whale and settled leadenly for a moment in the trough of a long Atlantic swell. Dreadnought rolled, pitched into the next wave catching men not clinging onto something solid by surprise.

  “Break the control room hatch!”

  Men were scampering up the ladder.”

  Commander Simon Collingwood held his breath for the first report from the cockpit at the top of Dreadnought’s tall fin-like sail. He’d been conning the boat blind ever since the attack. The first of the homing torpedoes had reached the end of its run and detonated about three hundred yards astern of the boat. The second had gone off practically alongside the port stern planes. Running at maximum revolutions the packing around the propeller drive shaft had started letting in water, worse – by far – the shock of the nearby explosion had cracked machinery mounts, caused short circuits across the whole vessel and completely disabled Dreadnought’s sonar suite. Several men had sustained minor injuries stopping the flooding, from being thrown around and from being too close to electrical motors and boards when they shorted out. With no way of knowing if the hunters were still in the vicinity he had opted to stay as deep as possible and to creep, very slowly away to the north west. Half-an-hour ago he’d reluctantly accepted that he’d have to surface. So many systems were failing or just broken that surfacing was a thing best done while the boat was, nominally, still under control.