by James Philip
One was sometimes moved to ask exactly what went on in the heads of naval architects, Marija reflected. Her father quietly detested the Weapons as ‘war time lash ups’. He said the turbines installed in the whole class were ‘accidents waiting to happen’; the original design of the turbines was so suspect that several years ago a major redesign had resulted in the removal of the steam feed to part of the reversing turbine. While this had reduced the number of major breakdowns it had also drastically cut the power available to retard the forward motion of the ship, guaranteeing that the ships of the class would handle leadenly in normal, everyday situations. In comparison, the bigger Battles handled much more nimble both in the open sea and in harbour.
The next ship to nose cautiously out of Sliema Creek was Scorpion’s sister, HMS Broadsword. Wisely, Captain ‘D’ was moving his clumsy Weapons out of harm’s way before the three Battles, HMS Aisne, HMS Oudenarde, and Peter’s patched up HMS Talavera cast off.
From where Marija stood the bulk of Manoel Island hide HMS Talavera from sight. She had been taking on stores – replenishing, as the Navy called it – moored alongside a big store ship in Lazaretto Creek all night. In the way of these things Talavera would be the last ship to leave port, as befitted her Captain’s tender years and lack of seniority. The Royal Navy tended to be a stickler for these things.
“You ought to be sitting down,” Dr Margo Seiffert complained, shaking out a shawl and draping it around her young friend’s shoulders. “The idea of coming down here at this ungodly hour wasn’t for you to tire yourself out standing up on your hind legs for hours on end!”
“I am perfectly fine, Margo,” Marija insisted.
HMS Aisne eased out of Sliema Creek; the water churned white under her transom as she swung gracefully into the middle of the deep water channel out to the sea. The air shimmered with heat above her single funnel, and the sound of her blowers whispered across the water. On her foredeck and at her stern, seamen stood at one yard intervals, lining the rails. The ship’s pennants fluttered, the big White Ensign cracked now and then as the wind caught it.
Next came her sister, a carbon copy; HMS Oudenarde.
Finally, in the distance HMS Talavera emerged into Marsamxett, straightened down the line of the anchorage and began to pick up speed, following the other four ships of the 7th Destroyer Squadron.
Without her discarded amidships deck houses and with her cut down main mast and comparatively naked stern the Talavera seemed incomplete. Two single twenty-millimetre Oerlikon cannons were now mounted on top of her stern deckhouse and brand new whip aerials had been rigged aft of the funnel. Her great lattice foremast looked different, too. Perhaps, they had fixed the gun director radar?
“Doesn’t she look so fine, Margo!”
Margo Seiffert put her arm around her younger friend’s shoulders.
Slowly HMS Talavera crossed the mouth of Sliema Creek beneath the ramparts of Valletta and drew abreast of Fort Tigne.
As the sun broke through the haze a strange thing happened.
All along the side of the destroyer men suddenly raised their caps.
And on the open bridge men waved.
Margo Seiffert laughed softly.
“My god,” she murmured, “like father like son...”
Marija hardly heard her speak.
She waved back.
Chapter 50
Thursday 6th February 1964
Special Air Mission 26000, 240 miles NNW of Lisbon
“The Enterprise and the Long Beach have passed through the Straits of Gibraltar, Mr President,” General Curtis LeMay reported. “I take it all back. The Navy can get its thumb out of its butt when it wants to!”
Jack Kennedy was wearing a thick cardigan and had a blanket over his shoulders. He could never get comfortable in jetliner seats and often, as today, the pressurized cabin seemed very cold. However, his singular human frailties aside, he was in a relatively sanguine mood.
“How many of their escorts had to stop to refuel in Lisbon and Gibraltar?”
“Most of them, sir,” grunted the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. What had happened in Cyprus – what was till happening in Cyprus – was an object lesson in the predictable consequences of a failure to manage the peace. After the October War, which he respectfully believed to have been the biggest geopolitical FUBAR in human history; the subsequent US decision to pull out of Europe and attempt to exact an immediate ‘peace dividend’ had now resulted in a potentially even more catastrophic FUBAR. Fucked Up Beyond All Repair did not begin to describe the current race to disaster. They were throwing irreplaceable military assets into the fire knowing it might already be too late. The Brits had lost a cruiser, several destroyers and frigates and hundreds, maybe thousands of people they could not afford to lose trying to get out of Cyprus. Red Dawn – for all he knew the was still fighting the Soviet fucking Union – or whatever these bastards called themselves, were throwing unarmed militia ashore on Cyprus in their tens of thousands, driven forward by a hard core of heavily armed ‘real soldiers’. The British were holed up in the mountains and forests in the middle and west of the island and around the Akrotiri – Limassol area. “The Brits are sending out everything they’ve got to meet our boys before they reach the narrows between Sicily and Tunisia.”
“What’s the latest on the British carrier?”
“She’s still afloat, Mister President.” But only just. Initial analysis suggested that a submarine had put a nuclear-tipped fish into one of HMS Victorious’s close escorts. The thirty thousand ton fleet carrier had very nearly gone over on her beam ends, caught fire and was now drifting half-way between Alexandria and the south coast of Cyprus.
“That’s four nukes that we know about?”
The Greek garrison of Thessalonica had been resisting the invaders, blocking Red Dawn’s complete domination of the northern Aegean, so the enemy had nuked it. Details were scarce but every indication was that a big bomb, perhaps, in the megaton yield range had been detonated above the city. The fall out cloud had almost certainly drifted back over a large concentration of Red Dawn’s own besieging forces but when you were dealing with lunatics that sort of thing was par for the course. Athens had surrendered within hours and now Red Dawn’s conquering horde was sweeping across the rest of the Hellenic World like a great, burning braid.
Yugoslavia, that enigmatic closed kingdom of fractured and divided ethnic and religious enclaves united only by Tito’s iron grip, might conceivably halt the immediate westward advance of the tide from the east. However, if the preliminary reports about nuclear strikes on the suburbs of Belgrade turned out to be true, all bets were off.
After the forthcoming Anglo-US-Portuguese conference in Lisbon SAM 26000’s next port of call was Cairo; which would have been unthinkable until recent days. Israel had talked about collective defence and the links between her people and the peoples of the civilized, democratic World but the only man in the region who actually wanted to discuss real war-fighting co-operation – possibly involving boots on the ground and war planes - with both the British and the Unites States Governments was the forty-six year old President of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein. So, once Jack Kennedy, Margaret Thatcher and the dictator of Portugal, António de Oliveira Salazar, had concluded their business – the ceremonial initialling of a draft interim tri-partied mutual support and defence pact - the US delegation was flying on to Cairo.
Yes, the President of the United States of America knew it was insanely foolhardy. Yes, he was flying into a war zone, and yes, if anything happened to him it was possible that in the leadership vacuum fresh disasters might befall civilization. Jack Kennedy and his closest advisors understood they were playing poker for the highest stakes; winner takes all. There had been a trans-Atlantic telephone conversation between the President and the British Premier during which the pros and cons of them both going to Cairo had been seriously discussed; eventually they had decided that really was courting fate. Besides, British relat
ions with the Nasser regime had never recovered from the Suez debacle, the Anglo-French invasion with Israeli connivance to invade and seize the canal six years before the October War. Jack Kennedy’s predecessor, Dwight Eisenhower, had ordered the invaders to withdraw on pain of potentially disastrous financial sanctions. Faced with an economic meltdown the British and the French had backed down and the Israelis had withdrawn their troops. The then British Prime Minister, Sir Anthony Eden had had to resign in the aftermath and his successor, Harold MacMillan, had spent the whole of his Administration patching up the ‘special relationship’ and the Egyptians had not forgotten their humiliating mauling at the hands of the two former colonial powers. Although Anglo-Egyptian relations had thawed sufficiently – in the light of the rapidly changing strategic situation in the Eastern Mediterranean – to allow for the opening of Alexandria to Royal Navy warships, it had been agreed that any suggestion of a formalisation of military ties and obligations was probably a thing best heard from the lips of an American President rather than a British Prime Minister.
After touching down at a rainy Lisbon Portela Airport the President, his Secretary of State, William Fulbright and General Curtis LeMay were whisked across the tarmac to a waiting Sikorsky SH-3 Sea King, one of two flown ashore by the USS Enterprise for the President’s use. Minutes later the two helicopters were racing low across the Portuguese capital to the Palácio de São Bento, the home of the national Parliament.
Margaret Thatcher and her small retinue - Sir Thomas Harding-Grayson, the Foreign Secretary; William Whitelaw, her Defence Minister; and Admiral Sir David Luce, the First Sea Lord representing the British Chiefs of Staff – were waiting in the ornately gilded and high-ceilinged reception room prepared for the hastily arranged ‘summit’.
It was the Angry Widow who set the tone for the potentially thorny discussions they were about to embark upon by smiling, stepping up to Jack Kennedy and pecking his cheek. The platoon of waiting pressmen and photographer’s were so surprised that, for good measure, she paused a moment and planted a peck on the American President’s other profile.
António de Oliveira Salazar, the professorial seventy-four year old Dictator of Portugal, watched the kisses and the subsequent friendly, almost jocular hand-shaking and back-slapping between the male members of the respective delegations with diffident unease. For all that he was of that generation of European dictators – he had been born eight days after Adolf Hitler, whom he had detested long before any of Europe’s allegedly ‘democratic’ leaders – his had been a relatively benign three decades in power. He preferred to ridicule, occasional harass and dispossess, sometimes imprison real trouble makers, but otherwise to steer clear of the majority of odious things his fellow pre-war dictators had got up to in their vainglorious pomp. He believed the two crowning triumphs of his life were staying out of the Second World War and saving his country from a civil war like the one which had tormented neighbouring Spain. He also believed that in the disastrously altered landscape of the post-apocalypse World it was vital that he sealed a pact with the last two countries on Earth capable of guaranteeing the independence of Portugal.
Against the dark tide of events in the Eastern Mediterranean Spain was no bulwark; it was isolationist, fascistic and beneath the surface bitterly divided by its civil war and the years of vicious bloodletting since. Moreover, the antiquity of the equipment and the incompetence of the Spanish military had been ruthlessly exposed by a handful of British ships and modern jet aircraft. Besides there could never be a rapprochement with Francisco Franco Bahamonde for no man could sup with such a venomous viper and confidently expect to survive.
Only one thing utterly baffled António de Oliveira Salazar, and that was the force of nature that was Margaret Hilda Thatcher. Meeting her that morning for the first time he had been a little swept off his feet in much the same way a man on the street would react to meeting a movie star. He had read the English newspapers which described her as a ‘blond bombshell’ and the ‘new Boadicea’; reserved judgement until he had actually met her. The woman was a marvel. All she had to do was walk into a room and the result was to stiffen the resolve of every man therein. It made no difference that at this moment the naval power upon which her country’s future depended was being eroded, destroyed piecemeal by a remorseless enemy. She remained optimistic, implacable as if success was a foregone conclusion rather than a distant, illusory chimera.
Unlike many ‘summits’ or international ‘meetings’ or ‘conferences that António de Oliveira Salazar had attended over the decades, this one dived straight into the meat of the matter.
“How long can your forces hold out on Cyprus, Margaret?” Jack Kennedy asked, wondering how the use of the Angry Widow’s Christian name would be received.
“Well, Mister President,” she retorted, “I think Sir David is better qualified than I to answer that question.”
The First Sea Lord was rheumy-eyed.
“We have already lost the battle for Cyprus,” he said bluntly. “Presently, the issue is whether we can do anything to save the fellows we’ve left behind. In the short-term our units are well dug in. However, even minimal air re-supply may not be practical.”
“I can have two wings of B-52s flying out of England within seven days,” Curtis LeMay declared. Give me air bases in the Mediterranean and I can have C-130s dropping supplies day and night in ten days time. CINCLANT tells me he’ll have three SSNs east of Malta inside a week. Can your boys hold out that long. Five to ten days?”
“We have approximately four thousand effectives and as many dependents, civilian workers, auxiliaries and so forth inside our lines. At present the enemy has no artillery and his air strikes are poorly co-ordinated and badly directed. The terrain is in our favour but our people are vastly outnumbered. Given the nature of our foes I don’t think ‘giving up’ or surrendering is an option. Holding on is the only thing our people can do in the circumstances.”
Margaret Thatcher was grim.
“Red Dawn is raping that island.”
General Curtis LeMay was not going to move on without mentioning the Elephant – the bellowing, foot stomping, enraged bull Elephant - in the room. “What if Red Dawn nukes your defensive concentrations in the middle of the island, Prime Minister?”
Margaret Thatcher looked the burly air force general in the eye.
“Who exactly would we bomb, General LeMay?”
“Troop concentrations, transportation hubs, enemy units at sea.”
“If we can locate and identify those targets we can bomb them with conventional weapons, General,” she said waspishly. “With a minimum of civilian, non-combatant casualties. How many more nuclear bombs do we need to let off to poison the whole planet?”
“Red Dawn don’t care about that, ma’am.”
“Well, I jolly well do care!”
Chapter 51
Thursday 6th February 1964
HMS Dreadnought, 178 miles NNE of Alexandria
Captain Simon Collingwood rotated the periscope mast through three hundred and sixty degrees a second time. In the south the pillar of smoke from HMS Victorious’s fires climbed high into the atmosphere, slowly drifting north-west on the wind. The wind had veered around in the last twelve hours, piling up the short, grey waves of the dying storm.
The Soviet Foxtrot class submarine had surfaced twenty minutes ago; and ever since then she had rolled and pitched sickeningly as the short, steep waves buffeted her.
“She’s still just sitting there,” he reported to the control room at large.
“Do you think she knows we’re here, Skipper?” Max Forton, Dreadnought’s Executive Officer inquired idly.
“After the last few days nothing would surprise me, Number One!”
“She could be an Egyptian boat?”
“Down periscope!” Simon Collingwood joined his friend at the plotting table, staring ruminatively at the symbols. There were no Royal Navy ships within seventy miles of Cyprus, precious few ships anywher
e east of the Libyan Sea. The Big Cats – the cruisers Lion and Tiger – were now in company with HMS Hermes east of Malta, operating in a patrol area approximately between 19 and 20 degrees East on more or less the same latitude as the Archipelago. The picket line of 2nd Submarine Squadron ‘A’ class diesel-electric boats had pulled back to 21 degrees East. Apart from Dreadnought and the Victorious’s surviving escorts, the Royal Navy had been bombed, torpedoed and ‘nuked’ out of the Eastern Mediterranean.
“Bandit One is venting her tanks!”
“Is she getting under way?”
“Negative, sir.”
Simon Collingwood and his Executive Officer swapped raised eyebrows; they had been doing that a lot the last fortnight. Their new foes did a lot of surprising and a lot of very stupid things. Other than when they attempted to set cruel traps and exploded a nuclear warhead in a civilian harbour, there was very little evidence of careful, professional consideration in their antics.
“Bandit One is just sinking, sir!”
And that was what the Foxtrot class submarine continued to do. Sink. She sank for several minutes and then, when she passed through the seven hundred feet mark, she imploded with a dull, tearing ‘whumph’ that even over two thousand yards away and five hundred feet higher in the water column made Dreadnought momentarily shudder.
HMS Dreadnought’s commanding officer was beginning to ask himself what sort of madmen he was fighting.
Mission accomplished. Boat damaged, dead in the water. Never mind, flood the ballast tanks and wait for the boat to reach her crush depth. All over, no need to write an after action report...