A Line in the Sand: The Gulf War of 1964 - Part 1 (Timeline 10/27/62)

by James Philip

  Regrettably, the recent ‘security nightmare’ had largely curtailed the husband and wife’s freedom to stroll in and around the old city. They had come to look forward to their early morning or late afternoon ‘walks’, during which they would dip into tiny shops, leisurely peruse the shelves of antiquarian bookshops and generally behave – quite unashamedly – like two ‘hick’ sightseers.

  Today two Secret Servicemen strode ahead of the Ambassador and his wife, others guarded their backs and at points along the planned route rifle-armed British Military Policemen stood sentinel with suspicious eyes.

  What troubled Joanne Brenckmann most was that her husband usually told her everything, well, not really top secret military things – she did not want to hear about those things and she did not expect him to tell her them anyway – but everything else. Late last night he had taken a call from the State Department in Philadelphia. It had been a long call, well over an hour and afterwards Walter had not come to bed until the early hours of the morning. Even when she had snuggled close and wrapped her arms around him he had still not slept.

  ‘Something bad has happened?’ She prompted. Her voice was barely more than a whisper. ‘I mean, something else bad has happened, sweetheart?’

  Her husband’s stride faltered for a half-step.

  When he was silent Joanne probed further; it was the last attempt she planned to make to find out what was eating him up inside. Whether it was about his time in the Navy, a legal matter, or the latest dumb thing the Administration had done back home she had far too much respect for her husband’s discretion to push him too far beyond his self-imposed boundaries.

  ‘I mean something that’s not on the news yet?’

  Walter Brenckmann grunted, shook his head.

  ‘After what happened to the President’s vote in the New Hampshire Primary,’ he explained wearily, ‘I was afraid the Administration would go down the ‘America First’ route; but I never thought it would happen so soon.’

  Jack Kennedy had won the New Hampshire Primary with thirty-one percent of the vote against a field of no-hopers. It was unprecedented! The President of the United States of America had only attracted the support of ‘thirty-one percent’ of Democrat voters in New Hampshire!

  New Hampshire had not torpedoed the re-election campaign but it had given it a nasty jolt. Congress’s now obvious intention to vote to reject the US-UK Mutual Defense Treaty agreed in January – to reject rather than to indefinitely defer ratification as was often the practice in election year – had brought things to a head. No ‘America First’ candidate could claim ideological purity if he stuck his neck out and went into bat for the rejected open-ended treaty with the ‘old country’. Theoretically, the President had the option of ignoring Congress, of issuing a new Executive Order in the interests of ‘national security’; and that was what Walter Brenckmann had tacitly assumed the Administration would opt to do. JFK had won a global nuclear war by placing American vital geopolitical strategic interest first, second, third, et cetera. If he wanted to stand on an ‘America First’ platform nobody had his credentials and Walter had assumed that his President had the moral courage to stand up for, and to account for his actions before the American people. One of the reasons he now felt so bad was that it was clear that he had been suckered in to believing that when his President spoke, his words actually meant something.

  ‘I was sent here to lie to our friends and allies,’ he murmured wearily. ‘That’s what ambassadors do, I suppose. But I thought things would be different. More fool me.’

  Joanne squeezed her husband’s hand.

  Eighteen months ago they had held each other while they waited for a second, killer bomb after the strike on Quincy. Back then in their Cambridge basement, not knowing if the world – their world, leastways – was about to end they had had the comfort of being together, inseparable in life and soon, in death. Nothing that had happened to them since that night had been so simple, or so real.

  Joanne had missed home, Boston, her circle of girlfriends, but she had loved her short time in England. She had met so many new people, so many potential lifelong friends and the idea that her country might let down any of the people around her in Oxford and elsewhere in England was, or rather, had been unthinkable until that moment.

  She stopped herself asking another question, knowing that her husband would explain in his own good time.

  ‘The line in the sand the British want the President to draw is several thousand miles east of the one the Administration has in mind,’ he said eventually.

  They followed the road as it curved around the flank of St Aldate’s Church to their left and Pembroke College to their right. Ahead the thoroughfare of St Aldate’s itself, still bustling with pedestrians and traffic cut north through the city. On the other side of the road were the walls of Christ Church College, where the Foreign Secretary and his wife had rooms.

  ‘And the British don’t know this yet?’

  ‘I don’t know, honey.’

  Walter Brenckmann had thought Christ Church College was a medieval castle of some kind the first time he had been ushered inside its cloistered walls, and walked out into the great grassy quadrangle within. Today he felt like a man offering himself – and his wife – as hostages to fortune; torn between his loyalty to his flag, the oaths he had taken as an officer and later upon assuming the role of ambassador, ties of reason and friendship and the indescribable ache of knowing that some lies were just plain inexcusable between allies.

  Notwithstanding that the fare was always blander and less plentiful than when the Harding-Graysons were guests of the Embassy; the Brenckmann’s were regular dinner guests in the Foreign Secretary’s rooms at Christ Church College. Joanne had sent half-a-crate of various Californian wines ahead, just to oil the wheels of diplomacy, although as the door opened and Pat Harding-Grayson’s smile welcomed the ‘ambassadorial couple’ she was beginning to wonder if the wine might not just be to drown their sorrows.

  The Brenckmann’s and the Harding-Graysons had hit it off from the outset. They were of an age, more or less, and each of the parties liked each other. Moreover, it helped, especially on evenings like this, that they understood how not to let secrets come between friendship.

  “I was hoping to pay a courtesy call on Her Majesty,” Walter Brenckmann remarked over drinks around the customary, guttering fire before dinner. “I gather that she is a little more herself, Tom?”

  The British Foreign Secretary grimaced.

  “Yes, Her Majesty is much more cheerful now that Prince Phillip has joined her at Woodstock. He’s still fairly badly crocked, of course.”

  The American Ambassador could not help but wince.

  One day the true story of the failed plot to murder Queen Elizabeth II and her family at Balmoral last year would emerge. When it did the fingerprints of traitors in the United Kingdom, terrorists in Ireland and God-alone knew how many rogue – or worse, not so rogue – CIA operatives were going to be all over the attempted regicide. Both men knew this; and consequently both men wanted the day of reckoning to be delayed as long as possible.

  “I look forward to meeting His Highness,” Walter Brenckmann avowed solemnly.

  “We both do!” His wife added brightly. Already in the relatively short time they had been in Oxford, Joanne Brenckmann had struck out on her own, determined to have a role other than as ‘the woman on the Ambassador’s arm’. She had visited local schools, hospitals, spoken to Women’s Institute meetings and had reached out to the growing community of ‘Government and Civil Service’ wives who had successfully followed their husbands to Oxford from the former seat of administration in Cheltenham. On occasions when her husband’s schedule had been changed at short notice, she had stood in for him at several charitable and other events. Whereas, few people in the street instantly recognised Walter Brenckmann, Joanne was constantly in the local papers, a familiar face in Oxford and beyond.

  If Tom Harding-Grayson was aware that his gue
sts were a little preoccupied he gave no hint of it.

  “What‘s this I hear about your youngest boy earning himself unwanted notoriety out in California, old man?” He inquired jocularly of the US Ambassador.

  “Oh, that,” Walter Brenckmann chuckled. He winked at his Joanne. “Sam’s his mother’s son. Jo’s been dealing with most of the flak!”

  “We didn’t find out the half of it until a few days ago!” Joanne Brenckmann explained. She and Walter were a well-honed party double act; having discovered long ago that all the tricky things in marriage were best handled together. This was one of those times when Walter would play it straight and Joanne would play it for laughs. She met the Foreign Secretary’s wife’s eye, and smiled resignedly. “Sam’s a musician,” she explained, as if that said it all. “He gets that from my side of the family. The older boys take after Walter. Walter junior is in the Navy and Dan is an attorney, they’re both sensible boys. Well, most of the time. But Sam...”

  “Sam’s a musician,” the long-suffering father sighed.

  “Actually, he’s a very talented one,” the proud mother countered. “He has a contract with Columbia Records and his first ‘single’ is coming out in a week or two. He’s been recording an ‘album’, a long-player apparently. Of course, we wouldn’t know any of this if it wasn’t for the letters Judy, that’s Sam’s wife, sends us!” Joanne knew she was gabbling but did not care. “They met in Bellingham in Washington State on the day of the war and they had all sorts of adventures before they got back to California. Anyway, if it wasn’t for Judy who seems a very practically-minded young woman, we’d be completely in the dark!!

  Joanne was so distracted thinking about her prodigal son, his new wife and her first granddaughter – named for her dead daughter Tabatha – that her voice had grown a little distant and moisture had begun to fill her eyes. The well of loss rose suddenly, her bottom lip trembled before she caught herself.

  Her husband stepped in.

  “The story is a bit confused,” he declared, touching his wife’s arm. “Sam, or his manager, by all accounts an eccentric club owner called Doug Weston seem to have fallen foul of a dirty cop in Los Angeles. A club Sam was performing at, The Troubadour, got fire-bombed back in December and somehow or other, goodness knows how, Sam and Weston, the owner of the club got arrested. It all happened around the time of the unpleasantness in DC and they both got ‘lost’ in the California ‘correctional’ system for several weeks before things were cleared up. Jo and I are under orders not to breathe a word about it, any of it, to any living soul. Not that we’ve got a clue what really happened, anyway!”

  Joanne Brenckmann had recovered her composure.

  “It could only happen to Sam!”

  Over soup – potato with trace elements of leek and onion – Tom Harding-Grayson and Walter Brenckmann started one conversation, while the wives set off on another.

  “In a funny sort of way,” the British Foreign Secretary remarked affably, “now that I’ve had a little time to think about it, the situation developing in Iran may be a blessing in disguise.”

  “Oh, how does that work, Tom?” The US Ambassador knew exactly how ‘it’ worked. His heart sank because in that moment he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that his friend had understood his government better than he had long before he accepted the ambassadorial post in England.

  The Foreign Secretary put down his soup spoon.

  “That night of the shooting in the Oval Office,” he prefaced, with not one scintilla of animosity in his tone, his expression or in his level gaze. “Iain Macleod and I found ourselves in a little room down in the White House bunker discussing what happened next. What of the peace we had just concluded? And more importantly, upon whose head the crown of leadership should now rest back in England? I was very much the junior partner in the negotiations between Iain and Jim Callaghan – then as now the Deputy Prime Minister. Margaret’s name came out of the hat. There were various reasons for that but in retrospect, the two things that recommended the lady to my ‘political’ colleagues was that she was not of the generation responsible for sleepwalking into the October War; and that given her tender years and lack of experience at the top table of government, that she would be ‘controllable’.” He shook his head and chuckled. “The thing none of us realized was that of us all, only Margaret really understood what she was getting herself into and that one day, and that Jack Kennedy would, sooner or later, ‘let us down again’.”

  “Tom, I, er...” But Walter Brenckmann’s heart was not in the fight.

  “An Ambassador, as one wise and very cynical man once said, is an honest man sent abroad to lie for the Commonwealth, my friend,” the British Foreign Secretary comforted him. “I for one have no doubt that you have been an honest man in your dealings with the Unity Administration of the United Kingdom.” He shrugged, picked up his soup spoon, paused. “As I say, it is good to know where we all stand on things.”

  Walter Brenckmann stared at his friend.

  Tom Harding-Grayson smiled sympathetically.

  “Margaret will never forgive Jack Kennedy,” he declared wearily. “Margaret can be very pragmatic about some things, but others well, she can be infuriatingly moral about the big things. Even if President Kennedy gets re-elected in November, granted, that’s not very likely, but even if he does he’ll be gone from the scene in fairly short order I imagine. Margaret could be Prime Minister for the next twenty years, and, as I say, she won’t ever forgive the United States for letting us down a second time.”

  Walter Brenckmann groaned out aloud.

  “I’ve been considering my position,” he confessed.

  Pat Harding-Grayson was frowning hard.

  “Oh! For goodness sake, Walter!” She cried in exasperation, and looked to Joanne Brenckmann for support. “Joanne, you’re not going to let him be an officer and a gentleman over this nonsense, surely?”

  Before the wife of the US Ambassador could reply, Pat Harding-Grayson turned on her husband.

  “Really, Walter, if you insist on doing the right thing we’ll be in a fine old situation! So far as Margaret’s concerned you are ‘the last honest American in Oxford’. If you go Fulbright will probably send us another ignorant, bigoted dolt like your predecessor and we’ll be at each other’s throats again in no time flat!”

  Walter Brenckmann opened his mouth, planning to defend his Secretary of State. While he could not envisage any circumstances under which J. William Fulbright would ever endorse an ambassadorial candidate who was a ‘dolt’; in the present climate whoever replaced him in Oxford was hardly likely to be another anglophile.

  “I don’t like being anybody’s patsy,” he admitted.

  Tom Harding-Grayson sipped his soup.

  “That’s understandable,” he agreed between sips. “Try looking at it another way.” Sip, sip, sip. “Our countries are about to have a major falling out. Again. Something of an undignified contretemps, I daresay. Regrettable but inevitable, and so forth.” Sip, sip. “The one redeeming aspect of the whole affair will be, assuming that you don’t go all honourable on us, is that you will still be around to carry on apologising for the behaviour of your government,” sip, sip, “and that you happen to be the one American in Christendom that Margaret will probably actually carry on listening to, Walter.”

  Joanne Brenckmann realised that she was still very new to the game of being a diplomat’s wife. She had thought she was a fast learner and had been making quite a good fist of things up until then.

  Did I really hear Tom say what he just said?

  She looked to Pat Grayson-Harding, to the Foreign Secretary who was finishing his soup as if everything was normal, and finally to her husband who was deep in thought behind lawyerly inscrutable eyes.

  Her country was going to betray all the people she had been shaking hands with, the futures of all the babies she had cooed over and rocked in her arms, and each and every one of the men, women and children she had met on the streets of O
xford. Her President was going to betray them and he had meant to do it all along.

  And there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.

  Chapter 11

  Wednesday 15th April 1964

  Mahabad, West Azerbaijan, Iran

  Marshal of the Soviet Union Hamazasp Khachaturi Babadzhanian’s helicopter put down in a storm of dust on the eastern bank of the Mahabad River.

  The river was rising, soon the valley below the city would flood and the annual cycle of inundation would begin again. On another day Babadzhanian would have been curious and watched with more attention as his Mil Mi6 had raced low across the delta of the Simineh River where it fed into Lake Urmia on the trip from to Qoshachay, where the aircraft had put down to drop off several men, pick up others and to have its tanks topped off. Now that the winter had released its grip on the land the low ground was green with verdant new growth; the broad valley of the Zarriné and the Simineh Rivers was turning into a Garden of Eden high in the mountains of Iran.

  Mahabad was an ancient city nestling in a bowl-like valley in the mountains. Its population was mainly Kurdish rather than Azeri like the cities to the north and the west. Founded in the mists of time in the era of the Safavid dynasty its original name was Savoujbolagh, a Turkish word meaning ‘cold spring’. Mahabad was one of those mystical places in Asia Minor that had history in its veins, and the blood of countless generations running in its gutters. It had been ruled by the Hasanwâyhids in the tenth century, sacked by descendents of Tamerlane, and after centuries of tribal conflict fallen under the Mukri Kurds – major players in the wars between the Safavid and Ottoman Empires - until the first half of the twentieth century.