by James Philip
The table was rectangular, ten feet by about seven but of such antiquity that its dimensions had probably been fixed by eye rather than by rule. The CDS had been sitting at one end, Whitelaw at the other with Sir Varyl Begg and the Chief of the Air Staff each sitting alone on the long sides. A chair scraped and the newcomer sat down beside the First Sea Lord.
Carver opened his brief case and pulled out several folded maps.
Then he sat back and waited to be called to account.
“What do you have to tell us, General Carver?” Willie Whitelaw asked, raising his tea cup to his lips.
The drink tasted so foul he wondered if the disgruntled Merton College porter was actually a closet Red Dawn sympathiser intent on poisoning the men at the apex of the faltering British war machine.
Chapter 14
Thursday 16th April 1964
The White House, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Captain Sir Peter Christopher, VC, had been surprised and less than ecstatic to receive the summons to meet the Prime Minister’s flight at Brize Norton at less than twelve hours notice yesterday morning. Marija had been typically stoical about their unexpected separation; whereas he had felt desperately guilty abandoning her in a strange and for the time of year unseasonably cold and rather miserable land.
‘Rosa will be here to keep me cheerful,’ Marija had comforted him in that serenely accepting, happy way with which she greeted practically every setback. ‘You will only be away for three days. It is not as if you are going away on a long voyage, or anything. And besides, if you are going to be with the Prime Minister I know you won’t have an opportunity to be stupidly brave or to get yourself killed, husband!’
Privately, Peter guessed that Rosa – the widow of Marija’s executed elder brother Samuel – would be hanging on Lieutenant-Commander Alan Hannay’s arm every minute that HMS Talavera’s former Supply Officer was off duty.
Every man who had survived Talavera and Yarmouth’s unequal battle with the Soviet invasion fleet had been raised – substantively – one grade or rank. Consequently, Peter’s ‘personal steward’, formerly acting or probationary Petty Officer Jack Griffin was now much to his horror, a full-blown Chief Petty Officer. In comparison Alan Hannay had received the news of his promotion with no little sangfroid.
Alan had subsequently been given the onerous task of co-ordinating with the other interested parties – the Royal Household, the Army, the Air Force, the Mayor of Oxford, the Prime Minister’s Private Office, and the Chief Constable of Oxfordshire among others – the arrangements for the ‘Battle of Malta Parade and Investiture’. This event was now scheduled to take place on the afternoon of Tuesday 21st April; the parade being ‘through Oxford’ and the investiture, mainly the awarding of medals for bravery and suchlike, at Kings College. Some doubt remained over the practicability of the 21st April since it was not known if Her Majesty the Queen would be sufficiently recovered to take the salute on the steps of Oxford Town Hall, or to officiate at the investiture by that time.
Peter Christopher was not looking forward to the ‘big party’, as Alan Hannay kept referring to it. Nor were his emotions yet settled on the question of how he viewed inheriting of his father’s baronetcy, or the somewhat premature addition of the letters ‘VC’ to his name wherever he went, and to whomsoever he was introduced by a third party.
There was not much he could do about the ‘Sir Peter; but he had not yet actually had the Victoria Cross, cast from the metal of a Russian gun captured at the Sevastopol in the Crimean War, pinned on his chest.
‘Detail, old man,’ Alan Hannay had informed him. ‘The bally thing has been gazetted and that’s that!’
Peter’s had been one of four Victoria Crosses awarded in respect of the naval part of the Battle of Malta. Commander John Pope, in command of HMS Yarmouth had been promoted Captain and awarded his VC posthumously; and his widow was being brought to Oxford to receive his medal. Petty Officer Stanley George who had, in effect, taken command of the by then wrecked Yarmouth, organised other survivors to restart the emergency pumps, and from the auxiliary steering position near the stern of the burning frigate, somehow threaded a course through the reefs and run the ship aground in the shallows of St Paul’s Bay, saving tens of lives, was Yarmouth’s second VC. Talavera’s second VC was to be pinned on the narrow chest of one of the smallest big men in the Royal Navy, Warrant Officer – formerly Chief Petty Officer – Nevil ‘Spider’ McCann, the destroyer’s Master at Arms who had been everywhere during the height of the battle, directing the damage control teams that had kept the ship afloat long enough to for her to launch torpedoes that ‘won’ the aforementioned battle.
Alan Hannay was one of several men awarded the Distinguished Service Order, most likely because somebody in the Admiralty had said ‘we can’t give everybody a bloody VC!’ In the closing stages of the battle the dapper, amiable, impeccably courteous and modest son of a Suffragan Bishop had stood alone on the gun platform on top of the shot-riddled after deckhouse engaging a twenty-three thousand ton battleship at point blank range with a twenty-millimetre calibre Oerlikon anti-aircraft cannon! After the battle Spider McCann had found him, covered in blood, literally standing ankle-deep among the body parts of the other gun crews.
Jack Griffin was another man who ought to have won a VC; but he was perfectly happy with his Distinguished Service Cross. Like every surviving Talavera he took the greatest pleasure of all in the George Cross the Queen was due to pin on Joseph Calleja’s broad chest next Tuesday.
Practically every member of Talavera’s torpedo crew had been killed or wounded early in the battle. If Joe Calleja had not known how to operate the quadruple 21-inch tubes; and more important, had had the gumption and the raw courage to operate them under murderously heavy fire, Talavera and Yarmouth’s dead would have died for nothing...
Margaret Thatcher’s blue eyes had fixed Peter Christopher.
He got the oddest sensation that she was reading his thoughts.
‘I am advised that you are still somewhat incommoded by your wounds, Captain?’ She had asked yesterday, anxiously hustling him towards a waiting chair at the pre-set coffee table in her private rooms at Corpus Christi College.
He had been touched, and a little embarrassed by her concern since she herself was obviously moving with stiff, careful deliberation as a result of the injuries she had sustained only nine days before at Brize Norton.
‘I was,’ the woman had started, before choking on the words she had meant to say. ‘Terribly, terribly affected by the news of your father’s death.’
Peter had been shocked to see the tears welling in the Prime Minister’s blue eyes, and by how close she was to completely breaking down.
She had forced a tight-lipped smile.
‘He and I were very close,’ Margaret Thatcher had said, recovering her poise in a moment with a monumental effort of will. ‘When I was in Malta at the happy time of your wedding your father proposed marriage to me; and I accepted that offer.’
‘I’m sorry, I had no idea...’
The woman had shaken her head.
‘Contrary to Service rumours your father had no ambitions to succeed Sir David Luce as First Sea Lord. At the end of his tenure at Malta he planned to retire. At that time we would have married.’ She sniffed, looked away for a second or so. ‘But it was not to be. Everything your father told me about you and everything I have learned about you, Captain Christopher, indicates to me that you are not a man who lives in the past, or dwells upon things that we cannot change.’
Peter had not known what to say and judged it best not to risk making a fool of himself by saying something just for the sake of saying something.
‘I apologise for tearing you away from your lovely wife,’ Margaret Thatcher had continued, suddenly all business. ‘I am travelling to Philadelphia tomorrow morning, just myself, the Foreign Secretary, Iain Macleod and a few people from our private offices. The mission is essentially political but I have for some time bee
n worried that I have nobody on my personal staff capable of giving me up to date military advice based on recent, that is, post-October War experience in battle. I have spoken to the First Sea Lord and he assured me that he has no professional objections or reservations if I ask you to become, on a temporary basis, for this mission only at this stage, my Naval Aide-de-Camp.’
Peter recollected that he had behaved like an idiot.
‘Oh, I, well... That’s...’
To his astonishment the Prime Minister had smiled one of those smiles that instantly dazzled a man.
‘Sir Varyl told me that you would want to go back to sea as soon as possible. He said that despite everything you had been through you would be aching to get back into the fight.’
‘Well, yes, actually...’
‘The First Sea Lord also told me that he had no intention of giving you the opportunity to get yourself killed again so soon.’
Peter had confessed he had no idea what the duties of a Prime Ministerial Aide-de-Camp amounted to.
The lady had smiled and he had been, well...under her spell.
That was then and this was now.
Somebody on the BOAC Boeing 707 on the long flight across the North Atlantic had mentioned that the Philadelphia White House ‘used to be a bank of some sort’. And that it was modelled on ‘the Pantheon’ in Rome. Peter had though that sounded a little crass and had therefore, been completely unprepared for the scale and the grandeur of the building into which he, spic-and-span in his best brand new expertly tailored dress uniform with the fourth –Post Captain’s ring – on its cuffs, had followed the Prime Minister.
He tried not to stare, mouth agape, at the reception committee awaiting the small British party.
The men standing in line all looked incredibly familiar and yet, completely different in the flesh and the one woman, small and elegant like a movie star. It was utterly bizarre.
The man at the head of the line looked just like the President of the United States of America, next to him stood a woman who looked exactly like Jackie, the President’s wife, and there was an older more grizzled man who could have been Lyndon Johnson. It got stranger and stranger. Who was the big man in a US Air Force uniform covered in medals? Or the broad, dignified, commanding figure at the Vice-President’s shoulder; or the man in steel-rimmed spectacles who looked like an accountant...
“Mister President,” Margaret Thatcher announced proudly. “Allow me the honour of presenting you my Aide-de-Camp, Captain Sir Peter Christopher, VC, lately of Her Majesty’s Ship Talavera.”
Peter Christopher blinked dazedly into the green eyes of the most powerful man in the World.
He heard a stranger’s voice say: “I’m honoured to meet you, sir.”
“And I you, Sir Peter. Once Prime Minister Thatcher and I have hammered out our differences, you and I old Navy salts ought to exchange notes over a medicinal drink!”
“I look forward to that, sir.”
And then the First Lady was smiling up at him. He had not realised she was so short – barely Marija’s height - until that moment.
Lyndon Baines Johnson’s grip was hard and dry.
Peter thought General Curtis LeMay was going to crush his right hand. When the older man released it he was sorely tempted to check if anything was broken.
The Secretary of State, J. William Fulbright was the first person to assign Peter the consideration appropriate to him in this elevated company. He was after all the most junior captain in the Royal Navy. He simply nodded acquaintance and passed him on down the line.
Robert McNamara, the US Secretary of Defense smiled apologetically, and like Fulbright passed him swiftly down the line again.
General William Childs Westmoreland grabbed his hand and clung to it, slowing his progress and delaying his escape.
“Good to meet you, Captain,” he grinned, a twinkle in his eyes. “Welcome to the major leagues.”
Chapter 15
Thursday 16th April 1964
Merton College, Oxford, England
Major General Michael Carver rested his hands on the folded maps he had retrieved from his attaché case. His long, almost delicate fingers drummed briefly, involuntarily on the table top while he took several seconds to collect and order his thoughts. Even had it been in his nature to dive into his report without pausing for breath he was mindful that this was the most important, probably momentous, briefing he was ever likely to deliver, and this gave even a man as cerebral as Michael Carver, very good reason to take his own sweet time.
“I had the opportunity to read and to consider the transcript of the preliminary debriefing of the ‘special source’ who came into our hands shortly after the Battle of Malta.” He was curious to know the identity of the ‘special source’, and ideally he wanted to talk to him, or her, face to face as soon as possible. However, that would have to wait. “My first reaction to this new intelligence is that it is entirely consistent with the general schema that, having spent the last few days on the ground in the Gulf, I would adopt if I were in the shoes of the Soviet High Command and I had determined to park my tanks on Abadan Island; thus threaten the entire Middle East with further adventures at a time of my choosing.”
Carver looked around the table, his gaze thoughtfully inscrutable.
“My GSO5,” he went on – he was currently Officer Commanding 2nd Division based in Winchester and had taken several members of his Divisional Staff with him to the Middle East, including his chief ‘planner’ – “is currently working up a document detailing the assumptions and the reasoning behind this summary briefing. With your permission I will address the matters at hand in the Gulf under three broad headings.”
General Sir Richard Hull, Chief of the Defence Staff nodded.
“One,” Carver began, “the enemy and his intentions. Two, the balance of forces in the region. Three, the military options open to us.”
Nobody objected so he continued.
“One. The enemy and his intentions. If our ‘special source’ is correct two Red Army mechanised armies are currently strung out across the mountains of north western Iran. At this time this ‘force’, probably comprising around two thousand tanks and perhaps five to ten thousand other vehicles and as many as three hundred thousand men is extremely vulnerable to air attack. This is especially the case because thus far there have been few reports of significant Red Air Force operations. This may be because there are no airfields capable of handling fast jets available to the enemy in that part of Iran and that therefore, support operations must be mounted from relatively long ranges from bases inside Soviet territory to the north; or simply that the Red Air Force does not have many operational aircraft. It is self-evident that the objective of the Soviet offensive is to invade Northern Iraq via the passes at Piranshahr and Sardasht. I say ‘self-evident’ advisedly because from jumping off points in the Iranian Province of Western Azerbaijan around Miandoab-Qoshachay and Mahabad, the Soviets might as easily advance in a south-south-easterly direction down the eastern flank of the Zagros Mountains to directly threaten Abadan.”
The Secretary of State for Defence stirred.
“Surely that would be the most direct route to Abadan, the key strategic objective in the region, General Carver?”
“Yes, sir. However, but that would be to see things from our perspective, rather than that of the enemy.” This the soldier said didactically but instantly quirked a fleeting smile. “Abadan Island is one of the enemy’s objectives, sir. By driving south directly along the line of the foothills of the Zagros Mountains the Soviets would be putting all their eggs in one basket, so to speak, and would risk sacrificing their freedom of manuever in the event of a sustained counter-attack by the relatively powerful, albeit somewhat fragmented, Iranian forces present in the south. I believe it would be a huge mistake to form our plans on the assumption that the Soviets’ main objective is Abadan.”
“If not Abadan, then what?” Willie Whitelaw inquired.
Michael Car
ver had hoped not to be drawn into general, less specific and quantifiable areas, so soon. With a sigh he bit the bullet.
“I think it is reasonable to assume that the Soviets have thrown everything they’ve got into Operation Chastise.” A Russian speaking member of his staff had complained that ‘chastise’ was only a vague translation of ‘nakazyvat’ but Carver thought it was good enough, if only because it almost certainly spoke accurately to the mindset of the enemy. “The kitchen sink and everything,” he grimaced, ‘in the larder, too.”
“And your point?” The politician prompted quietly.
“They wouldn’t have done that if all they wanted to do was wipe out the Pahlavi Dynasty, Tehran and to conquer Iran as a way of exacting revenge on just one of their Imperialist foes, sir. I think what we have here is a gambler’s last throw of the dice. A calculated, well-planned and up until the last moment brilliantly concealed last throw, but a last throw of the dice nonetheless. That is why although I consider it likely that the enemy’s initial object is to conquer Iraqi territory north of the line Kirkuk-Sulaymaniyah, I suspect he will only pause briefly in the north before striking south with everything he has got.