by James Philip
“It sounds like something from the Stalin era,” Admiral Sir David Luce, remarked stoically through the buzzing, clicking static on the scrambled long-distance line. “Except much worse, perhaps?”
“I authorised Dreadnought to take up to twenty people, women and children and a few old men onboard. Captain Collingwood had no option but to leave the rest to their fate. As it is the extra bodies will no doubt seriously impinge upon the smooth operation of the boat. Still, Collingwood seems to know what he’s about and he’s sending through reports as they become available.”
“A curious little action south of Rhodes?” The First Sea Lord mused, not actually asking a question.
“Dreadnought was very well handled, David,” the Commander-in-Chief of all British and Commonwealth Forces in the Mediterranean Theatre stated unequivocally.
“Oh, absolutely. Collingwood is a very sound man.”
When two admirals talked about one of their captains as ‘a sound man’ or noted that a man had handled his ship ‘well’ in action, there was no more ringing endorsement of a man’s conduct in the performance of his duty and his obvious suitability for future high command.
Julian Christopher had read the rest of the latest report from HMS Dreadnought now. Captain Collingwood’s previous reports had made chilling reading.
“These refugees are reporting the signs of a forthcoming major invasion of Cyprus,” he decided. “Landing craft and small boats of all descriptions are being seized, likewise gunboats and small escort type vessels of every size. There are reports of villages being strafed by helicopter gunships and MiGs.”
“That’s not good news.”
It seemed that Red Dawn had been obsessed with keeping its build up, and particularly its air force hidden. The implications of this were deeply worrying to both men.
“What does Dan French think about this?”
Air Vice-Marshall Daniel French was Julian Christopher’s deputy on Malta; a most able man who had flown a tour on Avro Lancaster bombers in World War II and had commanded one of the first V-Bomber squadrons in the 1950s.
“He thinks Red Dawn’s main problem won’t have been collecting ‘airframes and engines’ or necessarily ‘pilots’ because they would have been to hand all over the Soviet Union after the October War. The big problem will have been maintenance, securing runways, base facilities and things like how you get the right sorts of aviation fuel to the right places to enable continuous operations. He says that if he was in charge of Red Dawn’s air force he would have taken over Incirlik air base and Ankara airport. The Anatolian part of Turkey wasn’t exactly a first World country before the war. Most of the modern military infrastructure was put in by NATO in the fifties, mainly by the Americans, and the road system is best around Ankara and Adana right next to Incirlik.”
“Presumably, Dan being an RAF man wants to bomb both locales to smithereens?”
“Yes.”
“What do you think?”
“I think the shooting has already started. We are at war and should act accordingly. All things being equal my recommendation is to conduct Arc Light strikes on both air bases and to carry out pre-emptive conventional strikes against the main ports of Southern Turkey opposite Cyprus. I’d want to co-ordinate these actions with strikes on the main pre-war airfield on Crete, at Heraklion. In an ideal World I’d kick off the ‘home run’ phase of Operation Reclaim at the same time.”
The First Sea Lord absorbed this. His old friend and he were thinking along similar lines but it was still good to hear it from the horse’s mouth.
“So that would be your recommendation to the Prime Minister, Julian?”
“Yes, David.”
“What if Arc Light isn’t on the table?”
Julian Christopher sighed, the verbal equivalent of a Gallic shrug down the telephone line.
“If we adopt a self-denying ordinance when it comes to the tactical use of nuclear weapons, realistically, we will have to modify our strategic objectives.”
The First Sea Lord bypassed his old friend’s dryly enunciated sophistry.
“You mean we have to get used to the idea that we’ll probably lose Cyprus and find ourselves driven out of the Eastern Mediterranean?”
“Possibly, yes.”
Admiral Sir David Luce knew his old friend too well to be gulled into any sense of false optimism. When a man like Julian Christopher said ‘possibly’, what he meant was ‘probably’. If the C-in-C Mediterranean had honestly believed that, with the forces he had to hand, he could hold Cyprus and continue to prop up the United Kingdom’s tenuous presence in the Eastern seas he would have said so.
“Very well, I will take that to this morning’s War Cabinet.”
Julian Christopher put down the phone.
“Your son is here, sir,” Alan Hannay reminded him after a judicious thirty-second delay.
“Send him in please. We’ll go out on the ramparts. Be a good chap and organise hot drinks. Peter and I will probably benefit from a calming cup of tea.”
The father looked his son up and down as he marched into his office.
“You look well, Peter.”
“Thank you, sir. Keeping busy stops one’s mind from worrying about things one can do nothing about.”
Father and son shook hands.
“Come outside and have a look at the view,” Julian Christopher said, leading the way through the outer reception rooms onto the long, airy balcony Mess area atop the eastern ramparts of the old Citadel of medieval Mdina. He gestured for his son to take a seat at a table at the sheltered end of the terrace as there was a stiff, south-easterly breeze gusting at the immovable bastion beneath their feet.
Father and son had had no real opportunity to speak privately on the evening HMS Talavera had limped into Sliema Creek. They had both been aware of the countless watching eyes and it had been a breathless, oddly bloodless occasion which in retrospect had taken virtually all the sting out of this personal and private second meeting.
“I met Marija’s father yesterday,” the younger man announced ruefully. “He seems a decent sort. Sad, obviously.”
“The whole family has had a rough old time of it.”
Peter Christopher felt as if he ought to entertain more animosity towards his father. If this reunion had happened before the war then things would have been different. Perfectly bloody, in fact; but everybody had lost so much it was hard to keep the fires of old hurts and resentments burning hot.
“There are rumours about Samuel Calleja’s part in,” he hesitated, “things?” He asked lamely.
“Unfounded,” his father retorted bluntly. “The whole family had to be thoroughly investigated after the explosion in Kalkara. Due process and all that. The security people have gone into everything with a fine toothcomb and established that Samuel was an innocent dupe in the loss of HMS Torquay. He was used shamelessly by the,” a quirked half smile, “terrorists. They were clearly attempting to smear the whole Calleja family. I personally briefed the Times of Malta in an attempt to put an end to the more fanciful stories that were circulating.”
Peter was at once relieved and assailed by further questions, none of which his father was likely to entertain.
“You’ve been busy, Peter?” The Commander-in-Chief chuckled.
“Ah, I probably overstepped the mark arresting all those local men.”
His father guffawed anew. “You let them out as soon as you’d calmed down.”
“Yes, but...”
“I don’t think any lasting harm has been done. Talavera,” the father declared, changing the subject. “What’s her state of readiness?”
“Miles Weiss and I spent most of last night supervising re-patching the cabling to the Type Two-Nine-Three aerial on the foremast. Miles, sorry, Guns, was testing the system when I left to come here. It looks like we’ve got full director control for the main battery again. I never realised how important that was until those shore batteries opened up on us at Lampedusa. Miles, I mean, Lie
utenant Weiss has worked a miracle getting the main battery shipshape. Otherwise, we’re planning to weld a couple of single 20-millimetre Oerlikon mounts onto the aft deck house roof. We’ve already welded over most of the shrapnel holes in the ship. Fortunately, below the waterline the old girl seems as good as new.”
Cups of tea arrived, served by two stewards.
Peter Christopher gazed out across the island, taking in its mottled faded greens and browns contrasted against the grey of the sky and the dull blue of the ocean.
“I didn’t realise Malta was such a military camp, sir,” he commented.
“Things,” his father said lowly, “are looking a bit sticky. I’m sure we shall pull through but we’re stretched at present.”
“So Red Dawn is real?”
The father nodded. Both men were struck by how ‘adult’ this interview had been and by how little animus hung in the air between them.
“Nobody knew if Red Dawn was a terroristic hangover from the October War or something more significant until the last few weeks. Frankly, we’ve been caught on the hop. I don’t think it occurred to anybody until recently that the destruction in so many places might not have been as total as we first thought. It is now apparent that the only thing in Eastern Europe that was totally destroyed by the heaviest bombing was pre-war political and military cohesion. What appears to have happened around the Black Sea and in Turkey is that Red Dawn has moved in and filled the vacuum. Latterly, it seems likely that they have invested Crete. Across the region Red Dawn has collected up all the viable war fighting assets it can lay its hands on and dragooned large numbers of followers into marching beneath its banner. We’re still piecing together the intelligence but we think we are likely to be opposed by powerful naval forces based in the Sea of Marmara and the Aegean, a potentially very large numbers of troops and possibly, a number of former Soviet jets and helicopters.”
Peter Christopher did not believe what he was hearing.
“Without Crete what happens to Cyprus?”
The older man raised an eyebrow, impressed with speed with which his son had drilled down to the nub of the matter. Cyprus was already lost, untenable.
“What indeed,” the father murmured. It was time to change the subject. “Have you gone to see Marija, yet?”
The son’s face flushed hot.
“No!” He said, trying to back into his shell; that well-developed protective mental carapace he had so lovingly, carefully sculpted over the years since his mother’s death. “No. I’ve been so busy and with this thing about HMS Torquay and that poor fellow getting blown up in Kalkara, I didn’t like to be, well, pushy...”
His father viewed him thoughtfully.
“Marija is a most remarkable young woman, Peter.”
“Funny, isn’t it? You’ve met her and I haven’t?”
Julian Christopher smiled.
“Yes, it is a funny old World, isn’t it?”
Chapter 41
Monday 3rd February 1964
St Paul’s Cathedral Square, Mdina
Lieutenant-Commander Peter Christopher was in a daze as he wandered out of the Headquarters, literally stumbling onto the narrow cobbled street in the shadow of St Paul’s Cathedral. It was while he was in that befuddled state, not really looking where he was going that he found himself standing in the piazza outside the Cathedral, staring numbly at the sign over the door of the nearest building.
It was a solid double door – painted freshly Navy blue - much broader than any other in the surrounding houses. The brickwork around it suggested this was a relatively recent modification; somewhat out of keeping with the antiquity of every other entrance onto Cathedral Square.
St Catherine’s Hospital for Women.
There was an adjacent brass plaque, brightly polished: Director – M.A. Seiffert, MD.
He stared at the sign over the door and the plaque.
This is where Marija works...
He took off his cap and stood in the weak sunshine which now and then, burned small holes in the overcast. In England he would have been shivering, here it was mildly warm and he did not feel remotely over dressed in his recently acquired white tropical rig.
Everything had hit him at once.
He was to remain as captain of HMS Talavera; there were no plans to post a new man to replace him pro tem, nor would there be until the current ‘emergency’ was over. Without most of her former sensor suite, no meaningful anti-aircraft or anti-submarine capability and consequently a crew reduced in number by some forty-four men, Talavera was suffering the indignity – albeit technical – of being designated a ‘general purpose escort’ rather than a fully fledged ‘fleet destroyer’. Whether she was a fit command for a Lieutenant-Commander or a full three-ringer was moot; but in the current emergency it was entirely reasonable and consistent with ‘wartime practice’ to leave the ship in the hands of a two-and-a-half ringer who had already shown ‘exceptional command ability in combat’.
‘If you weren’t up to the job, Peter,’ his father had told him brusquely, ‘I wouldn’t leave Talavera in your hands for a minute.’
It was the first time his father had looked him in the eye and taken him seriously as a fellow naval officer. In fact, it had been the first time they had ever had anything like a man to man conversation about anything. It was all very disconcerting.
Talavera was to complete her hurried repairs as soon as possible and he was to report to Captain ‘D’, 7th Destroyer Squadron onboard HMS Scorpion as to the combat readiness of his command not later than noon tomorrow.
Miles Weiss was to stand-in as his Executive officer, in the interim maintaining his substantive rank of Lieutenant. In action Miles would remain the ship’s Gunnery Officer. The allocation of damage control functions in the event of action would be reviewed by the Captain ‘D’, 7th Destroyer Squadron.
It seemed Peter Christopher’s career in the Royal Navy was blossoming, despite his numerous self-confessed shortcomings. Why didn’t anybody else notice those painfully obvious shortcomings? However, if his career was blossoming, the rest of his life seemed to be a mess, a hopeless muddle of emotions and miscalculations. He had thought his father was his worst enemy; now he could not even remember why. And Marija? He had been at Malta several days without so much as laying an eye on her. It was not clear if she even wanted to see him. This business with her brother might, he had no idea how, have fractured and doomed the one relationship which had carried him through the last fifteen months without losing his mind.
Was Marija in the building in front of him?
Possibly, watching him now?
“Hello, sir,” said a friendly voice by his shoulder.
Lieutenant Alan Hannay smiled wanly, flicking a glance towards the upper windows of St Catherine’s Hospital for Women. The Commander-in-Chief’s flag lieutenant was ridiculously young-looking, boyish until one noted the perspicacity in his green grey eyes. He had come to the Royal Navy late after achieving a double first in medieval history and theology at Balliol, Oxford. The youngest son of a suffragan bishop who had perished in the October War, he had navigated his way through Charterhouse and Oxford with effortless ease, rather like an eel negotiating its way up a muddy stream. The Royal Navy had not appealed to him overly but eventually, the time came when it was a question of following his father into the Church of England – tricky, he was an atheist – or pursuing a career in teaching. Neither had really appealed to him. Fortuitously, it transpired that his father had long been acquainted with Sir David Luce, at that time C-in-C Far East Fleet. Letters of recommendation had been exchanged and Alan Quartermain Hannay had found himself in the Navy. That was in another age, a few short weeks before the World blew itself up. As always, he had fallen on his feet and found himself as a supernumerary on the staff of the man unexpectedly catapulted a year or so earlier than planned into the post of First Sea Lord. Whence, Alan Quartermain Hannay had made himself indispensible first to one great man, and then for the last two months to
a second.
Vice-Admiral Sir Julian Christopher’s son seemed a decent sort, a bit of a chip off the old block with an uncanny knack of being close to the action. Peter Christopher’s summons to a cordial ‘chat’ with his illustrious father had triggered thought processes that had been working in the C-in-C’s flag lieutenant’s brain these last few weeks. Although he had not surreptitiously engineered this ‘chance’ encounter; it presented an opportunity that he did not plan to waste.
The tall Lieutenant-Commander blinked distractedly at the newcomer.
“Oh, hello, Hannay. Sorry I was miles away.”
Alan Hannay could guess where his mind had been focused; decided that it was not a fruitful area of discussion.
“Forgive my impertinence, sir,” he apologised. “I’ve got an errand to run in Sliema and I understand you’ve got a car waiting for you outside the Citadel?”
Peter Christopher pulled himself together.
“Er, yes. You’re welcome to cadge a lift.”
“That’s awfully decent of you, sir.”
Peter Christopher thought he caught a curtain twitching on the first floor out of the corner of his eye, and the ghost of a silhouette behind it for a moment. He might have been imagining things. He pulled himself together. The thing was to concentrate on getting his ship ready for sea. He had less than twenty-four hours to get Talavera ship shape before he reported to his new commanding officer. When he presented himself to the Captain ‘D’ of the 7th Destroyer Squadron, HMS Talavera and her crew would be ready for sea in every way.
“Don’t mention it.” He turned on his heel and the shorter, youthful looking flag lieutenant barely eighteen months his junior fell into step with him. “So, what’s it like working for my father, Lieutenant Hannay?”