by James Philip
Airey Neave found himself briefly pondering the conundrum of his wife’s true feelings about his friendship with Margaret, as he walked from the lodgings at Magdalene College along the High Street. He had grown so accustomed to the presence of his two armed plain clothed bodyguards that he sometimes forgot they were with him; in the past this had led to inadvertent collisions when he stopped to wave to an acquaintance, or to look in a bookshop window without warning. In another age, time, and place he would have been able to confess that he loved Margaret. He did actually love her in some ways; but it was the strictly platonic fascination of an artist for a work he has been partly responsible for bringing to public attention, not a physical or visceral thing. It was the protective love of a brother for a sister or teacher for a particularly gifted student; except now the apprentice had outgrown and outdone them all. It must have been hard for Diana, he recognised, albeit in retrospect. Although she and Margaret were firm friends he did not know if that had helped, or made things harder.
It was a funny old World...
People told him that Margaret had changed since the death of Julian Christopher. Perhaps, only time would tell. The Battle of Malta was still just two months old and the Prime Minister was not the only one nursing very fresh, very painful scars. Nobody in the government had come out of the near fiasco in the Central Mediterranean looking very good; and but for Jericho falling unexpectedly in their laps, the dog’s breakfast that had had the gall to call itself ‘the security services’ – MI5, MI6, GCHQ and all the other tin pot little army, navy and air force ‘intelligence’ empires – would have had nowhere to hide in the last few weeks. Once things had settled down a little Margaret’s decision to bring everything under the same roof would probably bear dividends. Unfortunately, that ‘settling down’ period was not about to happen overnight and in the meantime, he was very much cast in the role of the poor chump in charge of putting Humpty Dumpty back together again just after he had fallen off that apocryphal wall!
Nevertheless, as long as they had Jericho all the other problems in the new Ministry of National Security seemed relatively insignificant, of an order of magnitude that could be filed under ‘to be sorted out when we have a spare minute’. Despite what had happened off Algiers on Tuesday evening only one theatre of operations really mattered at present; the Middle East. Yes, he would have liked to have had some sense, some feel for what the blasted French were up to; whether for example, the UAUK was dealing with some rogue element, or something more sinister, organised and ordered from and or by, the ‘Provisional Government’ in Clermont-Ferrand. But no, in the big picture they could ‘deal with the French’ later.
The main thing was what was going on in the Persian Gulf, not least because they knew exactly what the Soviets were up to right down to where the leading echelons of 3rd Caucasus Tank Army and 2nd Siberian Mechanised Army stopped each night, their declining combat strengths, wastage rates and the names of many of the senior commanders. Because of Jericho he knew that two Red Air Force general officers had been arrested and replaced with men who understood ‘the urgency of the situation’. The Red Air Force had been ordered by Leonid Brezhnev to ‘prepare the way ahead’ regardless of casualties, fast jets were being moved to forward operating bases around Baghdad and long-range bombers based in the Soviet Union were now engaged on daily ground attack and strategic bombing missions, mainly south of Baghdad, and of course, on Basra. In northern Iraq, II Corps of 2nd Siberian Mechanised Army was closing in on Mosul having already subdued Kirkuk and Erbil. In central Iraq around Baghdad, I Corps of 3rd Caucasus Tank Army had already sent out probing columns south towards Hillah and Karbala and west towards Falluja and Ramadi, testing the ground aggressively and finding relatively ‘feeble’ resistance melting away everywhere.
In Baghdad there had been a number of murderous attacks on Red Army soldiers, a litany of ongoing small isolated incidents of armed insurrection demonstrating that not every man in the defeated Iraqi National Army had thrown down his arms and gone home. There was also mounting evidence of civil disobedience and religiously inspired protests; and as yet the Russians were neither present in sufficient force nor well enough organised to crush such resistance. Nor were they likely to be for some time, if ever, because Marshal of the Soviet Union Hamazasp Khachaturi Babadzhanian – the ‘Butcher of Bucharest’ – did not have the ‘boots on the ground’ to fight his way south to the Persian Gulf, and to pacify the civilian population at the same time. Pacification was going to have to be done by the KGB’s Ministry of the Interior forces because at the moment the invaders’ manpower resources were so badly stretched that the gaps in the ranks could only be filled with drafts from penal battalions.
Airey Neave could not conceive of any circumstance in which padding out under-strength infantry units with criminals, dissidents and troublemakers was a good idea, or in any way remotely conducive to the promotion of increased fighting efficiency.
Notwithstanding that Tom Harding-Grayson constantly reminded him that ‘just because we are reading the enemy’s radio traffic it doesn’t mean we’ve already won the bloody war’, the very fact that they were ‘reading the enemy’s radio traffic’ meant that sooner or later a window of opportunity might open which might enable British and Commonwealth forces in the Middle East to seriously inconvenience the Butcher of Bucharest!
These days a wise man in England was always thankful for small mercies.
Airey Neave marched purposefully across Radcliffe Square into the main entrance to Brasenose College. Brasenose was one of the ‘younger’ Oxford Colleges, having been founded as late as 1509 by Sir Richard Sutton and William Smyth, the Bishop of Lincoln. The College had inherited its name – allegedly – from the bronze knocker that had been mounted on the door of the hall which had stood on the site in earlier times.
Rocky times were no stranger to Brasenose. It had remained a stronghold of Catholicism in the sixteenth century, a Royalist redoubt during the Civil War period and in more peaceful eras fallen behind many of the neighbouring colleges in its scholastic achievements and rigor, failings belatedly rectified in the latter nineteenth century. Nevertheless, over the centuries the college had expanded slowly, surely, adding a library and a new chapel in the mid-seventeenth century and three quadrangles, the latest and largest ‘New Quad’ being completed just before the First World War. Brasenose’s sprawling undergraduate annexe, Frewin Hall on St Michael’s Street, a recent development completed in the 1940s had been taken over by the Security Service (MI5) and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) in recent weeks.
A courier had brought the Secretary of State for National Security the latest cables while he was still breakfasting that morning. Airey Neave insisted on that. There was nothing worse than walking into one’s office of a morning only to be greeted with a new disaster. It was better by far to have some warning of whatever debacle awaited one at the earliest possible moment.
HMS Hampshire was limping towards Gibraltar with a US Navy destroyer, the USS Berkeley – of Battle of Malta renown – keeping her company. The Berkeley was homeward bound for a refit and had been some eighty miles to the east of the Hampshire when the County class destroyer was attacked. Hearing the Hampshire’s distress signal she had raced to her aid at flank speed, catching up with the crippled ship in less than three hours.
Meanwhile, HMS Alliance had been ordered to ‘loiter’ in Corsican waters off Ajaccio. Another submarine, HMS Grampus, a more modern vessel working to full combat efficiency after an overhaul in preparation for a possible deployment to the South Atlantic, had been ordered to patrol fifty miles west of the Sardinia. Both submarines had been authorised to attack any French T-47 class destroyers they encountered ‘on sight’. A Canberra from Malta and a Shackleton from Gibraltar were currently searching the sea between Sardinia and the Balearic Islands for the ships which had attacked the Hampshire.
If at all possible, revenge would be swift and final!
The Prime Minister had alrea
dy personally approved an RAF plan to bomb the French Squadron in Ajaccio if the ‘culprits were not sunk at sea first’. This had prompted a heated debate about the specifics of this prospective ‘raid’; one camp wanted to involve Tallboy-carrying Victors from Cyprus, another wanted Vulcans from Malta to drop a very large number of thousand-pound general purpose munitions to sink everything in the harbour and to reduce most of the port area to rubble.
Nobody had attempted to talk Margaret out of hitting back at the earliest possible opportunity. Such an attempt would have been futile.
“Sir Richard is waiting for you in your office, Minister,” Airey Neave was informed by his private secretary.
Sir Richard Goldsmith ‘Dick’ White, the Director General of the Security Services, was standing in the window looking down into the New Quad of Brasenose College. He turned and smiled a tight-lipped very grim smile.
“I’ve got some bad news, Airey.”
The two men had known each other since the 1940s and trusted each other too well to beat about the bush.
“The Soviets have discontinued the use of two of the four Jericho ciphers we captured after the Battle of Malta,” Dick White explained. “The naval code which is probably neither here nor there,” he sighed, “and unfortunately, the Command Jericho.”
“When?” Airey Neave demanded quietly.
“About thirty hours ago. We’re still managing to decrypt traffic despatched before twenty-four hundred hours Chelyabinsk local time on Tuesday.”
The Minister of National Security cut directly to the chase.
“We’re still reading the Routine Jericho?” In this context ‘routine’ referred to the coding used by units below Divisional Command level. Command Jericho was the cipher employed by Divisional Command all the way up to Army Group Command.
“Yes. We’ve also still got our hooks into the Diplomatic Jericho. Hopefully, that will stay up long enough for us to find out what the French are up to.”
Airey Neave did not think they were going to get that lucky.
The rule was: change one code – change the lot!
The UAUK’s brief window into the mind, the thinking and the minutiae of their Soviet enemy’s campaigning, and an invaluable insight into the tensions within the Soviet regime behind the front, was about to be slammed shut.
They might have just lost the war in the Gulf before it had even begun.
The two old friends looked at each other resignedly.
Airey Neave groaned softly.
“Bugger!”
Chapter 57
Thursday 4th June 1964
Kennedy Family Compound, Hyannis Port, Barnstable, Massachusetts
The two leaders sat alone on the porch in two old rocking chairs shaded by the overhanging first floor balcony. There was nobody within earshot; the nearest Royal Marine bodyguard – dressed in mufti – and Secret Service Man patrolled twenty to thirty feet away and the leaders were speaking in low tones. The President was at ease in his chair, Margaret Thatcher less so; he let the chair ‘rock’ she sat forward, balancing it steadily. Their respective postures might have been metaphors for their underlying, contrasting personalities. The man had once upon a time been content within his skin; the woman would never be that.
Jack Kennedy’s green-grey eyes viewed the woman thoughtfully. While their ministers and officials were scattered around the compound conducting ‘bi-lateral’ and other ad hoc meetings, that morning the British Prime Minister and he had both been receiving briefings and having long conversations on the phone.
He had spent over an hour talking with the Vice-President. Lyndon Johnson had already talked to the Secretary of State and other members of the Administration; but nevertheless they had talked for over an hour. It was good to replay other conversations, to check that one had actually heard what one thought one had heard.
The President realised that Margaret Thatcher’s ‘conversations’ would have been of a different nature. Although the National Security Agency had not known what Jericho was until a few days ago, they had not needed to know because they had guessed. The way things had been lately he did not blame the British for keeping it to themselves; but now that the walls of Jericho had come tumbling down there was no reason not to share the secret. If the British shared the CIA, the NSA and every branch of the US intelligence community would be all over it; the possibility of breaking several months of previously incomprehensible traffic was a prize of incalculable value. Who knew what impossible nuggets of intelligence lay buried in the tens of thousands of intercepts logged just in the last few weeks?
“You came here with a shopping list,” the man said. “I was prepared to step out of the election race for two or three days because you had, and still have, something I want. Now,” he half-smiled that beguiling smile of old, “that Jericho is devalued, perhaps we can do business.”
Margaret Thatcher’s blue eyes widened for a moment even though she had hoped that they would reach this point sooner or later.
“I would have given you Jericho for nothing if Congress had ratified the US-UK Mutual Defense Treaty that you and I signed in January, Jack,” she informed him primly. “I will give you Jericho now if you join us in fighting the war that must soon be fought for control of the Persian Gulf and Arabia.”
Jack Kennedy shook his head.
“I can’t do that, Margaret. I’m shooting myself in the foot leaving the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. Especially with this French thing going on, whatever it is. You know that. Things are what they are. Either I get re-elected any way I can or come January next year you’ll be trying to do business with George Wallace or some other ‘America First’, isolationist bigot or Wall Street’s man, or maybe some guy who suddenly emerges from nowhere. Between now and the election in November I’ve got to keep the South quiet, honour my pledge to stand beside Dr King one month from now on the steps of City Hall in Philadelphia, somehow buy off the secessionist movements in half-a-dozen states in the south and the west, and not get this country involved in any kind of foreign war. I know as well as you do that if Arabian oil isn’t on tap in five years time that this country will grind to a standstill. But that doesn’t matter – what matters is for America to get through the next five weeks, then the next five months and then, and only then, the next five years and still be the United States at the end of it. You tell me about Middle East, I tell you about Chicago and the West Coast States. We’ve both got problems we can’t make go away. That’s the way it is.” He vented a long, weary breath. “There is no special relationship between the old country and the United States. There might have been years ago, and now and then since the Second War but October twenty-seven put an end to all that. You and I know that. Maybe we can trust each other enough in the future to avoid a shooting war. Maybe we ought to settle for that and build other bridges. I figured that you understood that. Isn’t that why you wanted this conference?”
Margaret Thatcher nodded, remained silent.
“You say I owe you something,” the President announced. “But that’s not how this works. I think you understand that, too. What does that leave us? What it leaves us, is what do we have to trade because you and I badly need to sell whatever we do next to our own people?”
The woman got to her feet, crossed her arms across her chest and stood staring out to sea. Jack Kennedy joined her and the two leaders ruminated awhile.
“I stopped being really angry some months ago, Jack,” Margaret Thatcher told her host. “The way things are there are far too many things to be angry about, and if one spent all one’s time being angry one would never get anything important done.” She hesitated. “Walter Brenckmann tells me that the Warren Commission is unlikely to ‘get its act together’ before the autumn?”
Jack Kennedy was not caught in any way unprepared by the woman’s oblique question.
“Congress and the Senate are still wrangling over its terms of reference,” the man said a little sourly.
“I’m reliably in
formed that Chief Justice Warren will be obliged to attempt to call witnesses from the United Kingdom? In the interests of balance?”
“You are well informed, Margaret.”
The man and the woman gazed south to where the USS Southerland was slowly turning onto an easterly leg of its patrol. Onshore it remained balmy, out at sea white horses danced across the iron grey waters.
“My team,” she continued, “and your people have been talking, in the main, about the economic and fiscal realities of the post-October War World. The United States, the United Kingdom and the wider Commonwealth are natural trading partners and the re-establishment of ‘normal’ commercial and industrial relations between us all as soon as possible is in everybody’s best interests. However, the global financial system remains at death’s door; American banks are virtually bankrupt, the American economy is in the process of falling off the edge of a cliff and the lack of liquidity – of any liquidity – which means nobody can possibly get back to business as normal. Even the most diehard ‘America Firster’ understands that it is in his or her best interest to sell things to the greater part of humanity; including that part of humanity that resides outside the continental borders of the United States. Our treasury people have been talking about how that might be achieved. Our foreign affairs people have been talking about the framework of World diplomacy in the years to come in the absence of re-constituting the United Nations. Our transportation people have been talking about re-connecting the World. But none of that happens without a second Marshall Plan, hard cash and lots of it to enable me to begin the reconstruction work at home.”
Jack Kennedy nodded, looked to the woman with smiling eyes.