by James Philip
Slowly, worry and the first glimmer of real concern began to flicker in the eyes of ‘the legislators’. They had complacently assumed that the Vice-President was one of their own. He had been Senate Majority Leader for six years before he ran for the Democratic Presidential ticket in 1960. If they were dirty, what did that make him?
Lyndon Baines Johnson eyed the men around him like a big cat identifying the weakness member of the herd; his next kill.
“After all this is over – assuming the World hasn’t blown itself up again – I’ll still be here this time next year. Some of you guys will be behind bars. You all need to be thinking about that and letting me know how you’re going to make it up to me.”
This said the Vice-President turned on his heel and walked out.
Chapter 23
Wednesday 29th January 1964
Fort Rinella, Malta
Arkady Pavlovich Rykov wiped the blood off his hands under the cold tap. The mirror in the washroom was cracked so he took great care unhurriedly checking that there was no blood spatter on his clothes. Beating a murderer within an inch of death was one thing, walking about the streets looking like you had just beaten somebody very nearly to death was another. Besides, he did not want to have to explain to Clara what he had been doing the last twenty-four hours. She was better doing what she was doing; sitting by Rosa Calleja’s bedside; his talents, honed by years working for several of the most monstrous men in history, lay in other directions. He had never actually enjoyed beating another human being to death although he had known many men who did, but he had never lost much sleep over, now and then, having to do exactly that. In the past he had not worried overmuch about the justice of it because there was no scope for that sort of thinking within the Soviet internal security apparat. Nowadays, well, he was supposed to be working for men with a more complex understanding of the human condition and the World in which they lived, men whose minds were more attuned to subtlety and nuance and less terrified of the consequences of failure.
The woman he had told Denzil Williams’s people to look for had fled to Gozo where, foolishly, her family had tried to hide her. They had been under the misapprehension the woman was in hiding because of her past involvement with the Women of Malta movement – in which she had been an occasional, somewhat anonymous activist - and her whole village had turned out to attempt to stop the police taking her away.
The two men, brothers, had known there was no escape.
Two soldiers were dead after setting off another tripwire booby trap at the back of the rundown apartment block in Mosta where the last two men from Samuel Calleja’s compromised Red Dawn cell had gone to ground and barricaded themselves into a miniature Alamo.
Once Arkady Rykov had got over his surprise that the unaccounted for final three terrorists had not been eliminated by the Krasnaya Zarya leadership on the archipelago, the two prisoners Denzil William’s people had taken into custody after the sinking of HMS Torquay, had quickly supplied a list of names, places, and contacts. After that it had been relatively straightforward hunting down the final three.
The Mosta ‘Alamo’ had had to be stormed. Neither brother had survived.
He had reported to Admiral Christopher that of the seven members of the terrorist cell Samuel Calleja had been the oldest, the others were all in their mid to late twenties. The only woman in the group had been married to one of the two cell members killed when HMS Torquay had capsized during the Yankee bombing on the 5th December.
The former KGB-man had always been a little squeamish interrogating women; particularly young, petite, attractive women. However, down in the basement – the old dungeons, he guessed – of Fort Rinella there was nobody to hear the woman’s screams.
Arkady Rykov was satisfied that he had now established a narrative that went a long way to limiting the damage. Samuel Calleja’s group was responsible for the deaths of over a hundred people, the majority innocent Maltese civilians who had happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. In the chaotic aftermath of the October War they had assassinated British officers, more than once in the presence of their wives or families, randomly gunned down servicemen, targeted leading Maltese civic and political leaders, and left car bombs and other booby traps in busy public buildings and thoroughfares. Before the bombing of the 5th December and the death of two or their three bomb-makers onboard HMS Torquay, the group had been planning a new terror campaign unsanctioned by its Krasnaya Zarya masters on the archipelago.
The woman’s name was Lela Catana-Perez.
Her family had come to Malta in the 1930s, refugees from the civil war in Spain. Her father had worked in the Naval Dockyards with Peter Calleja, Samuel’s father until his retirement in 1960. The old man had died before the October War. Lela Catana had been active in the Maltese Labour Party before the war and become to all appearances an anonymous housewife in its aftermath.
Lela Catana had not expected him to hit her.
She had honestly believed she could make any accusation she wanted and that there would be no consequences. Even when he had ordered the others out of the interrogation room she had continued to scream at him; presumably thinking somebody would hear her.
‘Traitor!’
‘You betrayed us!’
‘You cowardly bastard...’
She had not believed what was happening to her until he had hit her again and she was lying in a bleeding, sobbing heap on the cold stone floor with her hands cuffed behind her back.
Arkady Rykov had drawn up a chair and patiently watched her shocked brain and shuddering body come to terms with the new reality.
‘I work for the British,’ he had told her. ‘You will tell me everything I want to know,” he had declared. “If you lie to me I will hurt you very badly and you will carry the scars the rest of your life. I should tell you that before I worked for the British, I worked for the Soviets and I learned my business in the torture cells of the Lubyanka. Presumably, you’ve heard of the Lubyanka?’
The woman nodded, spat blood on the floor.
‘Down here I can break your bones, slice flesh off your face, pull out your teeth or your finger, or toe nails with rusty pliers. I suppose if I wanted I could attach electric contacts to your most private parts and make you twitch and dance until you void your bowels and bite off your own tongue. I can make your last hours on Earth a living Hell. I could rape you, of course. But you’re not really my type and even I have some scruples about these things.’ He had thought about this. ‘Perhaps, I’ll have the boys outside rape you instead...’
The stupid bitch had made him hit her more than he had hoped he would have to but eventually she had talked. When she gave the wrong answers he hit her again. After a while she got the idea; in the end she could not stop talking. And pleading, always they pleaded...
Nobody above ground had heard Lela Catana’s screams but the Redcaps and MI6 operatives in the adjoining rooms had heard everything. They did not bother concealing their disgust.
How did these schoolboys ever defeat the might of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics?
“She’ll live,” he had snorted, meeting the hard eyes with his own unblinking stare. Grabbing his jacket off the chair outside the interrogation cell he snapped: “Tidy her up. I may need to interview her again.” He would not have needed to interview her or any of her comrades at all if they had done their jobs properly. Krasnaya Zarya had handed the Calleja cell to the security authorities on a plate. If they had put a full page advert in the Times of Malta they could not have undermined and betrayed Samuel Calleja and his band of bungling zealots more completely, and yet that idiot Denzil Williams had still fucked up! If he had done his job properly Lieutenant James Siddall would not be dead, and HMS Torquay would not be lying wrecked in two pieces on the bottom of the Grand Harbour and he would not have to be wasting his dwindling stock in the eyes of the British cleaning up the mess. When Dick White had turned up in Lisbon last month to debrief him he had known the clock was ti
cking; ff he had not be able to persuade his MI6 handlers to send him back to Malta the preparations formulated and executed with such care and at such a cost over the last year might have come to nothing. And Samuel Calleja and his fucking amateurs would have well and truly burned his cover with the British. “No visitors!”
The afternoon was overcast when he emerged into the daylight.
He blinked, his eyes growing accustomed to the brightness of the light after so many hours in the dimly lit subterranean world of the bowels of Fort Rinella.
“They wouldn’t let me in!” Clara Pullman complained as she clambered out of the Land Rover parked just outside the main security gate.
The former KGB man struggled to look his lover in the eye.
He dug around in his jacket pockets as if he had lost something.
“How did you know I’d be here?” He asked.
“Lieutenant Hannay told me this was where you and the boys had set up shop.”
“Oh. How did you know I would come up for air? You could have been waiting here all day?”
The woman shrugged. She was wearing a fawn cardigan over a thin summer frock. To the Maltese the mild, showery weather was winter and they went about dressed in several layers of clothing; the English and other foreigners were instantly recognisable in their summery civilian garb and tropical uniforms.
“The view is nice from here.” She inclined her head to one side. “I hate it when you shut me out of things, you know that.”
“I explained before,” he retorted, “there are things I must do alone. Things that you cannot be involved with...”
“I’m not your little woman...”
“No,” he agreed sulkily. “I need a drink. Let’s go somewhere. I have to report to Admiral Christopher later this afternoon.” Belatedly, he realised that was how the woman had actually known where to find him. The Commander-in-Chief had sent her to bring him back to Mdina.
“Perhaps,” she suggested, “you should have that drink later.”
The road rose and plunged along the rocky heights above the southern creeks of the Grand Harbour, and bumped along potholed roads between close-packed limestone houses. Away from the docks and the military camps and depots Malta had about it a tired, dusty feel even at this time of year when the rain often fell in torrential showers and the temperature never scorched. Presently, they drove into the heart of the island.
“Did you persuade the woman to talk?” Clara asked quietly, her voice almost lost in the clanking and revving of the engine and the loud rumbling of the tyres on the poorly maintained road.
“Yes,” he confirmed.
Arkady Rykov was glad to bid a brief farewell to his partner outside the Citadel of Mdina.
At the Headquarters of the C-in-C Mediterranean he was swiftly ushered into Admiral Christopher’s presence. The Fighting Admiral had none of the dismissive superiority in his manner he had encountered in other senior British officers.
“Do we have a problem, Colonel?” He inquired, looking up from his desk and indicating the newcomer to take a seat.
“I think it is probable that the Calleja cell was operating independently, sir,” the Russian replied. A big lie was always better than a small one. “Other than a contact with a woman operative whose name he would not divulge when I met him last November, Samuel Calleja had had no contact with Red Dawn since the October War. We now have a full list of the ‘actions’ carried out by this cell. What I don’t know, and what I can have no view on, is whether there is another cell active on the Archipelago.”
“But surely you have an opinion of the subject, Colonel?”
“I believe it is likely that given there was one, apparently well-resourced and highly motivated Red Dawn cell on the islands, that there may be others.”
“What state is the woman,” Julian Christopher had authorised the use of ‘extraordinary measures’ to ‘break’ the two men captured by Major Denzil Williams’s men, and later the woman, “Lela Catana in?”
“Her mother would still recognise her, sir,” Arkady Rykov informed him bleakly. That was a lie but he was making appropriate and proportional allowances for British sensibilities.
The Commander-in-Chief of all British and Commonwealth Forces in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations frowned.
“Like Major Williams?”
“Not so bad as Major Williams,” the Russian assured him. “But I wouldn’t put any of them in a public court room for a couple of weeks. Maybe three.” He viewed the older man quizzically. “Or do you want me to dispose of the bodies, sir?”
Julian Christopher thought about it.
What use was honour and decency in a World gone mad? Samuel Calleja’s associates had murdered and maimed without conscience, another four men had died when the Torquay was sabotaged. Among their victims was the wife of the C-in-C at the time of the October War, thirty-two women and eleven children, the youngest, two years old, consumed in the fireball when car loaded with Jerry cans of petrol had been detonated outside the American School in Valletta.
Besides, there were other considerations than the morality of the new age. There was a ‘bigger picture’; and it was his duty to never allow himself to take his eye off that ‘big picture’.
Not least there was his own position and by implication, that of the ongoing governance of the Archipelago and its defence. Even a military tribunal convened in camera would not remain secret for long. These people – no, not people, terrorists - would relish their day in court, tens, scores of his people would inevitably learn the true story, the true depths of Samuel Calleja’s treachery. Sooner or later some warped version of the truth would escape into the wider World; and Samuel Calleja’s family would be pariahs for ever more on Malta. If his son was not so intimately, inextricably linked to Marija Calleja; or if he had never met that remarkable young woman would he have simply left the family to its fate?
Possibly, although he liked to think not.
But Peter was linked to Marija Calleja; he had met her and he had no intention of throwing her, her family, his son’s possible future happiness, and any part of his own reputation to the wolves just to give a bunch of cold-blooded murdering terrorist scum their day in court.
He looked the former KGB man in the eye.
“Yes, that would be better. But if you can please do it cleanly, quickly.” He sighed, knowing in his heart that whatever he told himself, this small additional atrocity would probably be but the first of many he would commit before the coming war was won. “I want no further unnecessary unpleasantness. Just dispose of them.”
Chapter 24
Wednesday 29th January 1964
Government House, Cheltenham, England
Captain Walter Brenckmann, the fifty-four year old United States Ambassador to the Court of Balmoral was no closer to being able to read Margaret Thatcher’s underlying mood today than he had been the first time he met her around eight weeks ago. The woman was an enigma, possibly – but only possibly – not quite as steely beneath the surface as she seemed but always likely to spring a surprise.
The Unity Administration’s Secretary of State for Defence, William Whitelaw was chatting to the Premier over cups of tea served in Dalton bone china, when Walter Brenckmann and the Home Secretary, Sir Thomas Harding-Grayson entered the Prime Minister’s rooms.
“Ah, there you are, Tom,” the tireless widow and mother of twins waved cheerfully. “Good evening, Ambassador,” she welcomed the shorter, greyer of the two men. “I gather you two bring more bad news from Philadelphia?”
Walter Brenckmann was fully aware that the question was asked with a polite amiability to disguise the seething exasperation Margaret Thatcher, and her colleagues in the UAUK must be feeling as they watched the House of Representatives kicking the ratification of the new US-UK Military Mutual Assistance Treaty, the confirmation of James William Fulbright in his post as Secretary of State, and the small matter of the President’s inalienable right to mobilize the United States military a
round the two re-located Houses of Congress and the Senate like a slowly deflating football. Viewed from the other side of the Atlantic it reeked of chaotic disunity at the very time the World’s last remaining superpower’s energies ought to have been focused on consolidating international stability.
“The President has decided to go over the heads of Congressional leaders, Prime Minister,” the United States Ambassador to the Court of Balmoral explained. “I am expecting the text of his State of the Union Address tonight to be on my desk shortly. The President called me twenty minutes ago emphasising that he will welcome any comments you might have on it. I can tell you that his speech will focus mainly on domestic political issues but will unambiguously re-affirm in the strongest terms the Administration’s commitment to the undertakings given in the US-UK Military Mutual Assistance Treaty. Regardless of Congressional or Senatorial filibustering the Administration will meet its obligations under that Treaty. In detail, Prime Minister.”
“As we will our obligations, Mister Ambassador.”
Everybody sat down and the Angry Widow, in her most housewifely, charming and emollient incarnation, insisted on pouring the newcomers’ tea. There was no milk, as usual.
“Willie,” she invited the hangdog-faced Secretary of State for Defence to speak.
William Stephen Ian Whitelaw had been a natural choice for his current post. Although he had only entered Parliament in 1955 as MP for Penrith and the Border - after several unsuccessful attempts to win the East Dumbartonshire seat - he was well thought of in the Party and was the kind of man who commanded respect and attention simply by dint of his manner and bearing. Educated at Winchester and later Trinity College, Cambridge, where he joined the Officer Training Corps, he had been commissioned into the Scots Guards in 1939. Subsequently, he had fought through Normandy, France, the Low Countries and Germany with the 6th Guards Tank Brigade, emerging in 1945 with the rank of Major and chest full of campaign medals and miscellaneous well-earned awards for gallantry. Leaving the Army in 1946 to manage the estates he had inherited from his grandfather – his own father had been killed in the Great War – at Gartshore and Woodhall in Lanarkshire, politics had eventually become his calling. In the years immediately before the cataclysm he had entered Harold MacMillan’s Administration as a Lord of the Treasury, a grandiose title for a Government whip in Parliament, in 1961. By October 1962 he was Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Labour. Edward Heath had offered him a senior post last summer before illness intervened; a large man he still looked grey and a little shrunken in his pre-war suit, and there were bags under his eyes which exaggerated his hangdog looks.