by James Philip
It was unclear whether the understandably nervous invigilator provided by the BBC was cognisant of the bitter undertow of the emotions in play that evening.
The Prime Minister went to him and extended her hand in greeting.
If anybody had told Barry Lankester when he joined the BBC in 1955 as a studio manager that one day he would be refereeing a public fight between two politicians – who in this day and age literally had the power of life and death over everybody in the land – in front of a probably small television audience and a radio one of countless millions, he would have laughed. Hysterically, actually. But then if somebody had told him the World would blow itself to pieces over a few rockets on an island in the Caribbean he would probably have laughed even louder.
It was a funny old World.
He honestly had not realised that the Prime Minister was so young; only a few years older than him. Meeting the lady in person, face to face, for the first time he was struck by how fresh, young – that was the word that kept repeating in his head – vivacious and, this was the really shocking thing, pretty she was. It was not the manufactured beauty of a movie star; it was real and unlike a movie star, whom one could only worship from afar, this woman looked one in the eye and you knew, you just knew, she was listening closely to every word you said to her.
Barry Lankester would later realise that he had been bewitched by Margaret Thatcher that night in Cheltenham and that afterwards, nothing had ever been quite the same again.
“I gather that as a child you were in Coventry in 1940 during the terrible blitz,” Margaret Thatcher said to him. “Mister Heath once spoke to me about the emotions Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem stirred in him. I believe you were lucky enough to introduce the piece at the Coventry Festival in the summer before the recent war?”
The BBC man was stunned.
How on earth did she know that?
“Now,” the Angry Widow counselled the younger man, “you mustn’t worry yourself if Mr Powell and I start knocking lumps out of each other. That, after all, is what normal politics is all about.”
The title of the ‘debate’ was: ‘That the Country has no faith in the Unity Administration of the United Kingdom’.
There were three lecterns in a line at the front of the stage.
Each was topped with several microphones of various types and vintages.
The ‘proposer’ of the motion, the Honourable Member for Wolverhampton South West would speak first. Once he had laid the bare bones of his case before the people of Cheltenham and the supporters he had brought south from the Midlands; Margaret Thatcher would ‘defend’ the UAUK. Thereafter, both parties had agreed – informally – that the debate would proceed by cut and thrust, not overlong or repetitive diatribes.
Iain Macleod was hardly alone in thinking that the thirty-eight year old widowed mother of two teenage children had made a potentially catastrophic error of judgement in accepting Enoch Powell’s challenge.
Enoch Powell possessed the most brilliant, albeit erratic, not to say febrile, intellect in the Party. He had led a life dedicated to scholarship, to ascetic and esoteric learning. The man was a multi-lingual, latter-day polymath whose command of the English language was bettered only by the feral acuity of his mental processes.
Margaret Thatcher’s only defence against overwhelming odds seemed to be in the unsuspected talismanic charisma she had found from within herself after Edward Heath’s tragic assassination in Washington. Somehow she had tapped into a latent mood in the country and ridden that wave in recent weeks. However, she was not a particularly accomplished public speaker and in a heated discussion she often turned dogmatic and hectoring. Unlike her opponent she had no particular talent for deflecting verbal barbs with irony or with a well-timed aside. All the strengths which worked in her favour out on the stomp in the country were as likely, fault lines in the hot-house atmosphere of the old Town Hall. Worse, if she fell on her face in this arena there was nothing her devoted AWP could do to rescue her.
Despite Iain Macleod having expressly advised her not to do it, Margaret Thatcher stepped across to her two most vociferous political adversaries.
Enoch Powell, a punctilious man in such things rose painfully from his chair and shook the Prime Minister’s hand. As much as he detested the woman manners maketh the man. His right eye blazed and he held himself as erect as his mauled and remade frame allowed.
“I trust your journey here today was not too onerous, Mr Powell?”
“Not at all, madam,” the tall, thin, gaunt figure assured her in a parody of the distinctive, piercing, reedy voice which had arrested countless meetings and graced so many sessions of the House of Commons before the October War. “I confess,” he added humourlessly, “I did not think this day would ever come. Or if it did, it would come so soon.”
“Why,” the Angry Widow rejoined, her blue eyes glinting with the light of battle, “do you not think that a lady is a fool to nobody but herself if she keeps a good man waiting too long?”
Chapter 28
Thursday 30th January 1964
Headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief, Mdina, Malta
The acting editor of the Times of Malta, Paul Boffa, felt a little like Daniel must have felt entering the lions’ den as he was shown into the presence of the man he referred to as the ‘Supreme Commander’, or in less sanguine moods, ‘Il Supremo’. His first reaction to his surroundings was one of surprise. He looked around the small, Spartan office. He had expected something grander by far; not a small room filled by a big desk with unprepossessing in and out trays, a big gun metal lockable filing cabinet and hard chairs, one behind the desk, two in front of it. ‘Il Supremo’ was pulling on his uniform jacket as the thirty year old former sports and cultural ‘stringer’ – he had spent much of his time before the October War reporting on football matches, weddings, christenings, funerals and brass band concerts staged by the ‘occupying power’ – shuffled nervously to a halt two steps into the room.
Paul Boffa had not expected the Fighting Admiral to be as tall as he was in his photographs or as he had seemed in the movies visiting the bomb sites after the American sneak attack in December, or later as he worked the crowds like a seasoned politician. The older man was nearly a head-and-a-half taller than the newspaperman.
Vice-Admiral Sir Julian Christopher smiled as he walked around his desk and took his visitor’s hand firmly in his own. His grip was hard and dry and when he spoke he looked Paul Boffa in the eye.
“It was very good of you to come over at such short notice, Mr Boffa,” the older man declared. “I must apologise for my tardiness in not making your acquaintance before now but as you know, things have been a little hectic and we’ve both been a little busy in the last couple of months.”
This was no exaggeration.
Paul Boffa’s boss and most of the senior staff at the Times of Malta had been killed or injured during the 5th December raid. The next day he had found himself head of a small committee – they had laughingly called themselves the Times of Malta Soviet - of survivors struggling to put out a single broadsheet version of the paper in the following days. About ten days after the bombing a representative of the new C-in-C had turned up, unannounced at the paper’s makeshift offices in Valletta and much to everybody’s astonishment asked: ‘Is there anything we can do to help you get back on your feet?’
That was the first time he had met the late Lieutenant James Siddall. The big former Redcap had become the Times of Malta’s unofficial conduit into the heart of the British Administration of the Maltese Archipelago. Jim Siddall had never asked him to slant a story or, in fact, ever mentioned the actual content of the paper. The new policy was that the Maltese press should be ‘free’ and ‘independent’ and if any official or officer under the C-in-C’s command did not understand that, then Jim Siddall wanted to know. The next day the warehouse where sufficient newsprint for twenty days pre-war publication of the Times of Malta - the archipelago’s entire stockpile �
� had been released to the paper for ‘immediate’ use. The stockpile, owned by the British, had been dispensed gratis as a ‘token of good faith’.
Admiral Christopher waved for his visitor to take a seat and the two men settled. The journalist was greedily studying his surroundings for insights into his host. There was no ash tray in the room. No pictures on the wall, just the framed prints on his desk. One might be of the son, the ‘hero of Lampedusa’, he assumed. But what of the other two? He tried hard not to flinch from the great man’s stare.
“We think we’ve got to the bottom of what happened out at Kalkara the other week,” Julian Christopher announced, instantly businesslike. This was a man to man conversation, there would be no dissembling. Or at least, that was what he hoped the younger man would take away from this interview. Sir Richard ‘Dick’ White, the Head of the Secret Intelligence Service – MI6 – had assured him that, whatever else they thought about him, Arkady Rykov had a particular talent for making apparently intractable problems ‘go away’; in this case his talents had been applied to so comprehensively corrupting and fragmenting the evidence trail, that hopefully, in the coming months nobody would even attempt to make sense of recent events. “I know you were friendly with Lieutenant Siddall and you must be as keen to know exactly what happened as anybody.”
If a thing was too good to be true it probably was too good to be true.
However, knowing this and trusting one’s instincts only took a man so far, so Paul Boffa listened, tingling with anticipation and yet intuitively wary. It was as if he was putting his hand into a box which contained a priceless jewel that was his for the taking; the only problem was that there was a scorpion lurking in the darkness right next to the gem.
“We now believe that Samuel Calleja may have been the innocent dupe of a Soviet-style communist cell. After the murder of Jim Siddall a joint Royal Military Police and Royal Marine Commando operation attempted to apprehend five persons of interest in the inquiry into the explosion at Kalkara and Samuel Calleja’s disappearance. Regrettably, these persons of interest, four men and a woman, whose names I cannot at this time release to you for ongoing security reasons, were heavily armed. When our people went in they opened fire. Two of my officers were killed and several others injured in a booby trap explosion much like the one that killed Lieutenant Siddall. Realising they were cornered the terrorists apparently turned their weapons on each other in some kind of bizarre suicide pact.” Julian Christopher sighed wearily. “I don’t know,” he half-groaned sadly, confidentially, “I saw some bad things in the Second War and I know some bad things were going on in the last days of the Empire, especially while we were pulling out, but sometimes, I just don’t understand what gets into people’s heads.”
Paul Boffa heard this as if at a distance while the forefront of his mind digested the message he was being given.
“Samuel Calleja was not a terrorist?”
The great man shook his head.
“We have no evidence to that effect.”
“So he wasn’t involved in the sinking of HMS Torquay?”
“We think that’s unlikely. That’s not to say that he wasn’t forced to give the terrorists access to the ship before he was murdered, or that he was left to die onboard her when she sank. Obviously, somebody had to have given these people access to the dockyard and to the ship, so that the explosive charges responsible for her loss might be placed. Perhaps, he was tortured to reveal the best places to position the charges? We just don’t know and I rather doubt if we ever will know.”
“I understood that Peter Calleja, his father, and Joseph Calleja, Samuel’s younger brother had been arrested and interrogated by the security police...”
Julian Christopher gently corrected the young man’s terminology.
“We don’t have any security police, Mr Boffa. The Internal Security Department personnel who survived the bombing of their headquarters on Manoel Island in December were reassigned to other units and the Malta ISD formally disbanded at that time. Samuel Calleja’s father and brother were interviewed by officers of the Special Investigations Department of the Royal Military Police, and by intelligence officers attached to my Headquarters Staff.”
“Yes, of course,” Paul Boffa agreed, a little chastened. The ease with which the other man could suddenly dominate the room, and everything and everybody around him was a rude reminder of the political realities of a Maltese Archipelago under – albeit at the moment relatively benign – military occupation. “As I was saying,” he went on doggedly, “Peter and Joe Calleja were detained and interrogated and then placed under house arrest?”
“Lieutenant Siddall died as a result of an explosion on property rented by Samuel Calleja. It was important that this matter was investigated by the appropriate authorities regardless of the known connections of some of those unwittingly implicated with the, er, person, of the current Commander-in-Chief.”
“Ah, I see. Presumably, Marija Calleja has been interviewed?”
Julian Christopher scowled.
“No, of course not!” He made no effort to hide his offence at being asked such a crass and ridiculous question.
Paul Boffa flinched. “But you said...”
“Miss Calleja’s father and surviving brother had access to bomb-making equipment and demolition munitions in their work at the Naval Dockyards. They also had the training and the technical knowledge to use the same, had they been so moved. Whereas, Jim Siddall was Marija Calleja’s friend, dammit!”
“I’m sorry, I...”
The older man raised a hand.
“No, no, I apologise. One tries very hard to be aloof from things, to keep a cool head and so forth but some things make a man’s blood boil. It was a miracle that Samuel Calleja’s poor wife wasn’t killed as well! Sometimes, I just don’t understand people who can cold-bloodedly booby-trap a door like that. There might have been children killed! Honestly, it beggars belief!”
The Editor of the Times of Malta dug deep and found new resolve.
This was the story of the year, certainly the story of his career.
But it was far too good to be true.
“People are bound to say this is all very convenient, Sir Julian?”
“Oh. How so?”
“One minute the Calleja family is disgraced; the next they are exonerated, the innocent victims of a cruel and heartless conspiracy?”
The Fighting Admiral shrugged, holding his peace.
“And then there are the rumours of the involvement of Marija Calleja with your son...”
“I’d no more discuss personal tittle-tattle about a member of my family with a journalist than you would, Mr Boffa.” Julian Christopher had not imagined the younger man would swallow the story hook line and sinker. As Dick White had observed, rather pithily, he thought; ‘the thing is to get a fellow hooked, then, sooner or later he will reel himself in.’ It was for this reason that one never disclosed everything even when one actually wanted everybody to know everything. In a situation in which the truth needed to be buried by a veritable bodyguard of lies, the trick was to provide just enough information to allow Paul Boffa, his readers and anybody else who sniffed around later, to give the official account the benefit of the doubt. “Miss Calleja and my son have been ‘pen friends’ for many years. To the best of my knowledge Miss Calleja and my son have never actually met each other. I have no idea if Miss Calleja and my son have any plans to meet each other in person at this time. Presently, my son is fully engaged making good battle damage to his ship. I should imagine that Miss Calleja is supporting her family in the way any good daughter would in these sad times.”
The Editor of the Times of Malta was more than a little out of his depth. He was floundering, drowning. It was because of this that he allowed his focus to shift from the immediate story, to one that was at best ephemeral, and at worst, black propaganda.
“There is a great deal of talk about something called Red Dawn on American radio stations and on the news wire
s coming from Reuters, Sir Julian?” He took a big gulp of air. “Is Red Dawn the real reason for the sudden naval build up?”
The Commander-in-Chief of all British and Commonwealth Forces in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations viewed the editor thoughtfully with eyes that were instantly flinty, unforgiving.
“You and I don’t know each other very well, Mr Boffa,” he said after what seemed to the younger man, an interminable pause. “In England politicians and senior officers can sometimes rely on gentlemen of the press to unconditionally respect a confidence, usually in advance of some major public announcement or event. Are you familiar with ‘Chatham House Rules’, or ‘Lobby terms’?”
Paul Boffa nodded, but he checked he understood the proposition correctly.
“Under those ‘terms’ it would be understood that whatever I am told is either unattributable or embargoed until a future agreed date by mutual consent, Sir Julian.”
“Quite.” The great man smiled faintly. “It is a question of trust. On your part you must be confident that I am not using you for nefarious purposes relating to perfidious Imperial policy; on my part I must know that you won’t print something you have been told in confidence at an inopportune time.”
“I am an honourable man, Sir Julian.”
“As were the poor fellows in those B-52s the RAF shot down last month,” the Commander-in-Chief retorted mildly.” He hesitated. “Perhaps, you and I should begin our journey with small steps, Mr Boffa?”
“As you wish, Sir Julian.”
“Red Dawn,” the older man murmured. “Krasnaya Zarya,” he continued ruefully, “we now believe was the Soviet response to the situation they found themselves in after the end of the Second War. The Americans had the atomic bomb and they didn’t. Therefore, the Soviets, specifically, Josef Stalin, believed that the USSR would lose the next war. Seventeen years later they were right; but by then Red Dawn was so deeply embedded in every facet of the Soviet system that it infected everywhere in the World touched by the Soviet State. It was by then ubiquitous. So, when the war came and blew away the old Soviet Union what was left was Red Dawn. We now suspect that the terrorists who duped,” he liked that word too much and therefore forbade its use again in this conversation, “Samuel Calleja were responsible for the worst atrocities committed on Malta in the weeks after the October War, including the assassination of one of my predecessors, were almost certainly affiliated to the Red Dawn movement.”