by James Philip
The Kingdom had been facing bankruptcy before the Soviet invasion of Iran and Iraq; now it was looking into the abyss and the ruling Royal Family was beginning to ask itself when, not if, it would be swept away in a bloody palace revolt. In such a climate it was hardly surprising that Crown Prince Faisal had sent two of his younger, most ambitious ministers to parley in secret with the emissary of the former Imperial overlords.
Newly promoted Lieutenant-General Sir Michael Carver had risen to his feet, straightened and bowed his head first to thirty-six year old Prince Abdulaziz, the Minister of Defence and Aviation, and then to Ahmed Zaki Yamani, the thirty-three year old Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources.
The British officer was immaculately, elegantly attired in a lightweight grey civilian suit. Not that his non-military garb concealed for a single moment the soldier within. Thomas Barger had recognised in Carver exactly what he guessed his Saudi friends and business partners would instantly see; in the man’s patient, thoughtful presence there was none of the ignorant haughtiness of so many of his fellow countrymen, simply a respect for his surroundings and a lack of suspicion. Perhaps, here was a man that might, in some lights, be a tangible link back to the glory days of the Arab Revolt and the campaigns of Lawrence...
In Carver’s aloofness there was a quiet dignity that was highly respected in this land. His bearing might have been that of a scholar or priest, his measured movements suggestive of a man always deep in his thoughts, an aesthete, the most cerebral of warriors, a man who would not flinch to do what had to be done.
“No Egyptian soldier will step onto the soil of the Kingdom,” Sultan bin Abdulaziz asserted as he shook the Englishman’s hand. “Nasser is bent on a revolutionary course and has purged those sympathetic to the Kingdom’s cause in his own land.”
Thomas Berger translated fluently.
Michael Carver was a tall man at pains not to look down his aquiline, patrician nose at the Saudi Minister for Defence and Aviation. He nodded. Ideally, he would have placed the Egyptian armour ‘promised’ to him opposite the Syrian Desert of Southern Iraq but that had never been more than a staff college exercise, a hypothetical scenario. Only a small proportion of the Egyptian 1st and 3rd Armoured Divisions could be transported by sea from Suez around the Arabian Peninsula by sea in the next thirty days; by the end of June he might have a couple of disorganised, rag tag tank Egyptian regiments ready to move although they were unlikely to be in any sense anywhere near what a British Army tanker would consider ‘combat ready’.
Sir Thomas Harding-Grayson had been very specific about the nature of the game they were playing. Nasser and Sadat were not fools; they understood that their tanks were pieces on the regional chess board, no more or less. One fought wars not with the armies, air forces and navies one wished one had but with the ones one had to hand now. Nasser’s tanks were a statement of intent, once in theatre they ensured that Egypt would be engaged in the long term battle for the control of the Middle East, not a peripheral onlooker preoccupied with its local ambitions in Libya or its renewed ancient feud with Israel.
Most important of all; whatever happened the ‘deal’ ensured that Nasser was surgically removed from the Soviet orbit, forced to declare for the Western-led coalition against the invaders. This was a decision which would ring down the coming years regardless of what happened in the coming war.
Nor had it been lost on Michael Carver that the agreement Sir Thomas had initialled with Nasser had inextricably tied the United Kingdom to supporting, with nuclear weapons if it came to it, the region’s one potential unifying power.
Michael Carver glanced to Ahmed Zaki Yamani before returning his full attention to the Saudi Defence Minister.
“I am here because I am convinced that it is in the best interests of both our countries that, at the appropriate moment,” he waited while Thomas Barger translated before continuing. “That we fight our mutual enemy on Iraqi soil. I further believe that forces of the Royal Saudi Army and Air Force, bolstered by tanks, vehicles and munitions currently held in American ‘War Stores Depots’ within the Kingdom, supported by British armoured units and the RAF are capable of implementing such a strategy.”
Prince bin Abdulaziz’s eyes narrowed.
He was disconcerted by how directly the Englishman had confronted him with the reality of their situation.
At his shoulder Yamani coughed politely.
“Our forces are equipped with M-48, so-called ‘Patton’ tanks, General Carver,” he said in English. Thomas Barger effortlessly stepped in and translated, in low confidential terms in flowing Arabic for Yamani’s colleague, the Minister for Defence and Aviation. “These machines are no match for the modern Red Army tanks. Likewise, we have few modern jet fighter aircraft.”
Carver thought about this.
He looked to the senior minister, Prince Abdulaziz.
“Well handled the M-48’s ninety-millimetre gun is capable of doing great harm to the Soviet T-62. I am confident that your tanks, well-handled,” he emphasised, “fighting alongside my Centurions are perfectly capable of greatly inconveniencing our foes.”
Michael Carver was not a man who liked to deal in unequivocal predictions. On this occasion he saw no profit in hedging around his thinking with superfluous caveats and clauses. He had the forces to hand to allow him to blunt and possible stall the Soviets at the Kuwaiti border and if absolutely unavoidable, with which to embroil the Red Army in an attritional bloodbath on Abadan Island; but those forces alone even with the ANZAC reinforcements presently coming ashore at Damman were too weak to attempt to repel the enemy. To go onto the offensive he needed ‘mass’, more of everything and even then there were no certainties to be had. Somehow the Egyptians or the Saudis, hopefully the Syrians, and Iranian Army units fast evaporating through desertions and lack of leadership had to be drawn together into some kind of united fighting force to resist the invaders. There was no point worrying about all the things that could go wrong. It was the worst kept secret in the Middle East that the Israelis had been planning their next war against their neighbours ever since the Suez Fiasco; likewise, that Nasser wanted a finger in every political pie and had been actively seeking to undermine practically every other regime in the region. Saudi isolationism, the Shah’s ego-centric rule in Iran, the constant threat of civil war in Iraq, and to a lesser degree, in Syria and the escalating tensions created by the huge reserves of oil recently discovered in the Emirates along the southern shore of the Persian Gulf made for an explosively volatile mix. Ongoing low-level civil wars in Yemen and Oman, and finally, the withdrawal of the permanent presence of American troops, aircraft and warships from bases in Saudi Arabia had turned the Middle East into a powder keg in which the continuing British footholds at Abadan, Aden, Kuwait and a dozen other under strength garrisons had merely complicated, rather than simplified the ungodly, horribly messy strategic picture.
Until that was, the Red Army had intervened.
Now there was a short window of opportunity; a heaven sent common enemy against whom it was in everybody’s interest to unite.
“Frankly, Your Highness,” Michael Carver said, addressing the Defence Minister in the tone of a weary cleric confronting some esoteric or arcane doctrinal matter. “While it might not be wholly in your interests to fight the Soviets with us; it is certainly not in your interests to fight the Soviets alone, or to shrink back from fighting at all. I am a Christian and I like to think I come from a country which is still essentially Christian. In this region Islam lights the way of its peoples. You and I, Your Highness, are ‘people of the book’, bound to respect each other’s beliefs and cultures.” He half-turned and pointed to the north. “Driving down from the mountains of Iran and Iraq is a godless horde that respects neither Islam nor Christianity and is set upon condemning us all to the spiritual darkness of the atheistic Marxist-Leninism creed.”
There was a delay as Thomas Barger translated every time Michael Carver halted. Both Saudi ministers listened r
espectfully.
“We shall fight,” the Englishman said. “Alone if necessary but we shall fight. Together, we the ‘people of the book’ may, with God’s grace, turn back the Soviet monster from the Persian Gulf and some greater part of the lands to our north.”
It was Yamani who spoke first.
“You speak well, General Carver. But what becomes of us after the battle?”
Michael Carver allowed himself a deathly smile.
“Ah. Surely that is a thing that is in God’s hands.”
Chapter 39
Tuesday 26th May 1964
Camp David, Catoctin Mountains, Maryland
Captain Sir Peter Christopher, VC, ignored the pack of photographers and the long lenses of the television cameras. Having exited the United States Navy Sikorsky SH-3 Sea King ahead of ‘the girls’, as he and his friend Alan Hannay referred to their Maltese wives, he turned and reached up to grab Marija before she tried to be brave and negotiate the steps down to the grassy landing field unassisted. It had been a long day and she had been on her feet constantly until they had boarded the helicopter for the one hundred and twenty mile, ninety minute ‘hop’ from Philadelphia to the Catoctin Mountains. Marija was weary, her bones were aching and she was – albeit as yet lightly – with child; so Peter gently seized his wife under her arms and lifted down to terra firma.
“I’m not ill,” she muttered, her face still turned to his chest and therefore out of sight of the watchers. “I’m just...”
“Pregnant,” he whispered, smiling.
“Yes, husband,” she retorted, mildly accusative for the briefest of instants as behind the couple Alan Hannay helped Rosa out into the late afternoon sunshine.
Both wives were wearing new ‘party frocks’ ordered from Bloomingdales in New York – items from a trousseau specially procured by the agency of, and at the expense of Lady Patricia Harding-Grayson - for the ‘at home’ with the President and the First Lady. The husbands were in ceremonial uniforms, minus the customary swords, which was an immense relief to Peter Christopher because every time he had been out in public lately with that clanking, infernally awkward weapon hanging off his waistband he had been terrified he was going to trip over it, drop it, step on it, inadvertently stab somebody or otherwise disgrace himself with it at any moment.
For Peter Christopher this was to be his third encounter with the President of the United States of America; a month ago there had been that fraught meeting at the White House when the Prime Minister had torn the poor fellow off a frightful strip in front of his whole entourage, and another, less angst-ridden formal introduction at a somewhat ill-starred ‘diner’ hosted by the House of Representatives the following evening.
President Kennedy looked old before his time but tanned, altogether healthier than a month ago as he stepped forward to greet his guests. The First Lady looked, well, like a movie star. The Marine Corps honour guard in their old-fashioned uniforms snapped impressively to attention, presenting arms immaculately. Behind them the band which had struck up ‘Hail to the Chief’ fell silent. At the edge of the landing field, a level square of grass trimmed like the green baize of a billiard table, surrounded by trees which concealed the chalets, barracks and bunkers glimpsed through the windows of the helicopter as it had swooped down to land, more soldiers and military policemen kept watch from the shadows.
Camp David was a heavily armed military camp. Such, it seemed, was the price of maintaining the sanctity of this Shangri La in the Catoctin Mountains, and keeping the First Family’s guests safe in the modern age.
Lady Marija Christopher smiled and looked around at her surroundings, unconsciously smoothing down the folds of her expensive calf-length dress. She still felt a little uncomfortable accepting Pat Harding-Grayson’s ‘charity’. This even though her friend, and since the moment she arrived in England, her mentor, had assured her that ‘I made a ridiculously large amount of money from my books in America before the war and if I tried to bring all those dollars home they would be horribly taxed, and besides, you and Rosa are the very best of causes!’ Marija and her sister had been measured up almost as soon as they arrived in Philadelphia; but the frocks and blouses and stockings and lingerie had been delivered the day after ‘the shooting’, and what with one thing and another neither woman had been in any mood to properly investigate their bounty until yesterday. Ever since ‘the shooting’ they had been far too busy trying to stop their respective husbands braining every American who crossed his path!
Men were so stupid sometimes!
Peter and Alan had been the guests of the US Navy that morning; shown around a big cruiser that was being, or had been – Marija could not remember which – converted to carry an array of space age guided missile systems. She and Rosa had toured a local school. Actually, although she had enjoyed the school visit and the attention of the children – aged between five and ten - Marija would much rather have gone to the navy yard with ‘the boys’, then she could have written home to her Papa and her brother Joe, who had flown back to Malta from England a fortnight ago, about all sorts of ‘Navy things’ that they would have been really interested to hear. Never mind. Peter would tell her the ‘interesting’ stuff sooner or later. He still had not wholly got used to the fact that she was interested, very interested, in every aspect of his professional world. She had after all grown up in a dockyard family and considered herself to be a font of knowledge on the subject of post-1945 British naval architecture, radar and electronic suites, engineering and weaponry. Peter, bless him, ought to have worked that out by now after all these years. Still, men were men!
Marija blinked, and tried very hard to concentrate on the here and the now.
However, this was much easier said than done when one was standing in front of the most powerful man in the World.
“I am delighted to meet you at last Lady Marija!”
The President of the United States of America’s face was deeply lined and his eyes were faded green tired and faded. Not so his smile and the warmth behind his words of welcome.
“I am honoured, Mister President.”
Marija looked into the man’s eyes and was briefly transfixed; she blinked again, told herself that she was shaking the hand of a mere mortal, a man with the weight of history crushing down upon his shoulders and felt...sad for him.
It was the oddest moment of her life.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s smile stalled, rekindled in an instant fired by the flicker of sympathy in the young Maltese woman’s gaze. There was no awe in Marija’s stare, just an absence of condemnation. She was not judging him; she was looking to him as if he was just another human being and that was so strange as to be...comforting.
Her hand was small in his.
And then he was greeting Rosa Hannay.
Rosa was so excited and embarrassed and out of her depth that Jack Kennedy was a little afraid she was going to swoon. That sort of thing had happened a lot before he blew up the World but lately, hardly at all.
The President’s men had told him that Alan Hannay had been Admiral Sir Julian Christopher’s flag lieutenant on Malta before he joined HMS Talavera. They had also informed him that he had won his Distinguished Service Order engaging ‘a battleship with an anti-aircraft cannon’ at ‘point blank range’ after everybody around him on the destroyer’s aft deckhouse gun deck had been killed. Hannay just looked like an ordinary guy to Jack Kennedy; most real heroes did in his experience. There was respect and measured deference in the younger man’s face but none of the awe which had rendered his wife incapable of speech moments ago.
The President and the First Lady formed up for the photo call with the Christopher’s to the President’s right and the Hannays to the First Lady’s left. From behind a tautly held Marine Corps rope line the pressmen’s cameras clicked and flashed. And then the party was walking into the woods, the British Naval officers flanking the President, their wives the First Lady.
Presently, alone at last in their allotted chale
t Marija thankfully sat down on the corner of one of the two single beds, unashamedly sighing to be able to relax for a few minutes. Her husband carefully arranged his jacket over the back of chair and came to join her on the bed.
She leaned against him.
Shortly before leaving the British Embassy they had been informed that the Prime Minister’s planned visit to Philadelphia had been delayed ‘for several days’. There was also a suggestion that Philadelphia would not be the venue for the scheduled ‘summit’; although no alternative location had yet been promulgated. Their brief ‘house call’ at Camp David, where President Kennedy was recuperating after a ‘minor operation’, had therefore been extended some days, apparently at the suggestion of the First Lady. The message was that the President was taking a short break from the campaign trail to aid his recovery and he wanted ‘to hear everything there was to hear’ about the Battle of Malta’ and ‘Sir Peter’s other adventures’.
“I think,” Marija observed philosophically, “that if things carry on like this for a few more months we will both go mad, husband.”
Peter opened his mouth to speak.
“No,” his wife assured him immediately, “I am not unhappy. I am not complaining. This is, well, strange and very exciting and everybody else in the World would love to be living this life,” she insisted, “it is just that I don’t know what people expect of us. At home on Malta I was just Marija, here you and I, we are something that we are not.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, this is not a thing to be sorry about,” Marija shot back, brooking no dissent. “This is what our life together is. We are together. If you had your own ship we would be apart but I know you miss your Talaveras dreadfully. But this,” she made a wiping away gesture with her right arm, “is not a thing we expected.” She sighed, a little frustrated that she was not saying what she felt in a way that made sense of those feelings. “Oh, I don’t know what I mean. Ignore what I say!”