by James Philip
“Jim agrees that we stand by the treaty,” Iain Macleod murmured.
The recently signed ‘treaty’ was in fact a memorandum of understanding broadly based on a restating – and a subtle gerrymandering - of the principles of the 1958 US–UK Mutual Defense Agreement, which had essentially been a bilateral concord governing nuclear co-operation between the two powers. Extended to cover ‘conventional ground, air and sea forces and the exploration of ways to explore re-integration of key elements of our intelligence communities’ the document had been grandly titled: Agreement between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland for Cooperation on Mutual Defense Purposes. The critical clause of the agreement was that within twenty-eight days further ‘executive level’ talks would take place with a view to ‘setting in stone’ the ‘long-term alliance’ of the two nations. At that time spheres of influence and matters of practical military assistance would be hammered out, ahead of which there would be a frank exchange of the current military capabilities and readiness states of both sides ‘to facilitate realistic future joint planning.’
However, Ted Heath was now dead and there was the danger of a yawning leadership vacuum at home.
Although James Callaghan, the leader of the junior partner in coalition, the Labour and Co-operative Party, was technically automatically elevated to the premiership he understood that his leadership was a short-term stop gap measure. He simply did not command the support to govern. Moreover, while no government in the post-war United Kingdom could function without the implicit support of the armed forces; James Callaghan had specifically ruled out requesting the backing of the British Chiefs of Staff.
“It is a mess,” Tom Harding-Grayson observed sagely, not attempting to be in any way ironic. His old friend Sir James Sykes, the Ambassador in Washington was missing presumed dead, as was his wife and practically the entire United Kingdom diplomatic mission. The insurgents had targeted foreign embassies, government buildings, bridges, railroad links and even, apparently, the great museums of the Republic. Obscenely, looters had roamed the wrecked and fire-blackened shell of large parts of the Smithsonian for at least twenty-four hours before troops had restored order. It was madness; not even the Bolsheviks had set out to systematically eradicate the glory that had been the Winter Palace at St. Petersburg, or the spires of the Kremlin. The US Capitol had come under sustained attack after the rebels had been driven back by the tanks and the A-4 Skyraiders defending the White House. Insurgents had subsequently melted back into the great national museums around the National Mall where sporadic local fire fights erupted as the house to house, block by block bloody clearance operation continued
It was all too incredible to believe.
There had been vicious close quarter fighting to retake the two wings of the Pentagon occupied before the defenders had established a viable internal perimeter. Nobody would speculate on how many people had been killed and injured across Washington although several military men were already talking about ‘Antietam level head counts’. Personal, Tom Harding-Grayson suspected that even talking in terms of twenty to twenty-five thousand killed, missing and seriously injured was probably wishful thinking. He had spent time in Germany after the 1945 war; and therefore understood exactly how many civilians tended to get caught in the crossfire when a whole city was under attack.
The British Foreign Secretary had been an apolitical senior civil servant until only a few days ago. In one sense this gave his prognostications more weight but he was reluctant to dip his toe in the waters.
“Somebody must step up, Iain,” he offered. “Preferably, as soon as possible.”
Iain Macleod nodded.
“You, for example,” the Foreign Secretary went on. “You are Chairman of the biggest Party in Government and you have a many loyal friends...”
To Tom Harding-Grayson’s surprise the other man sucked his teeth and shook his balding head.
“Whoever takes over,” he retorted gravely, “must be somebody around whom there is some hope of public support coalescing.”
Tom Harding-Grayson had been a career civil servant all his adult life – the Second World War years apart - untroubled by such arcane considerations as ‘public support’ and he did not immediately see the trend of his colleague’s thoughts.
“You are a remarkably accomplished public speaker, you command respect on both sides of Parliament...”
“That’s not the issue, Tom.”
“Oh, what is then?”
“Jim Callaghan, me, all the others,” Iain Macleod struggled to his feet, stretched painfully as he tried and failed to straighten his back. The old 1940 war wound to his thigh which had never properly healed and his chronic ankylosing spondylitis – an inflammatory condition of the axial skeleton – caused him constant pain and meant he often walked mildly bowed over and with an obvious limp. “We are men of the past. We are the old guard. We are of the pre-war cabal whom in years to come our people will rightly hold culpable for all of the ills which have misfallen them. There can be no real ‘unity government’ of the United Kingdom with one of us at its head.”
“I can sympathise with the logic of the argument, Iain,” the Foreign Secretary grimaced, “but who,” his voice dropped away as he belatedly saw where the conversation was going. He shook his head. “Margaret has no experience of leadership. Dammit, Iain,” he added, more rattled than he had been over anything since the night of the October War. “She positively loathes the Americans. If she’d been on the plane over her with us we’d probably be at war by now!”
The Minister of Information gave up trying to stand tall.
He groaned.
“If I put up my hand I will be the next Prime Minister,” he said. “For all I know I might yet be Prime Minister one day. But I am not the man for this particular moment.” He shrugged. “Margaret Thatcher, our very own little ‘angry widow’ may not be everything that a British Prime Minister might, in an ideal world, be but she is definitely not of the old guard. She is therefore free of blame for what has happened. Moreover, from my acquaintance with the lady in the last year she is not to be underestimated. With my Party Chairman hat on I will also put to you an argument which will be persuasive within the Party, namely that if she falls on her face then the rest of us will have clean hands. In any event, Margaret will need our advice, the benefit of our experience. Better she leads us now while she is still in our thrall than later when she has seen that despite our appearance of finery and grandeur, we are all naked.”
Tom Harding-Grayson frowned.
He took Iain Macleod’s apparent cynicism with a large pinch of salt but it still rankled to hear the case for the elevation of Margaret Thatcher to the premiership outlined in such coldly pragmatic terms.
“Surely it is not that simple?” He asked.
“Nothing in politics is ever that simple, Tom,” Iain Macleod confirmed dryly. “Can I leave it to you to deal with the matter of the treaty? I’m sure our hosts will be getting nervous by now so I’ll leave you to assuage their anxiety. In the meantime I will speak to Jim Callaghan again. If he raises no objections I will speak directly to Margaret.”
“And if she balks at the jump?”
Iain Macleod sucked his teeth.
How little the man who had been the wisest and most ferocious intellect in what survived of the Home Civil Service until a few days ago, understood of the mind of the political animal.
“Margaret will be horrified to hear the news about Ted Heath. She will be eager to carry her banner to whichever member of the old guard she thinks best is qualified, or more importantly, most likely to succeed him. In fact she will probably offer me her support. She will be surprised when I propose that her name goes forward to the Queen. Surprised and possibly, daunted.”
Iain Macleod sighed resignedly.
“However, once she has thought about it for a few minutes she will know her duty in this matter and that w
ill be an end of it.”
Chapter 15
Thursday 12th December 1963
Harbour Drive, San Diego, California
Former Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Dwight Christie had parked up and walked to the quayside. He had not shaved for three days and he felt uncomfortable in jeans and a ‘cowboy shirt’; he had always been at his ease in the staid uniform of the Bureau in much the same way he had enjoyed wearing the uniform of the country to whose downfall he was committed, during his war service between 1942 and 1946.
He sat down on a bench and smoked a cigarette. It was a warm day with a cool breeze blowing down from the north. Had he not been so tired and had his head not ached so badly he might have relaxed a little, allowed some or all of the tension to drain out of his still fleshy frame. One thing was for sure; the days of easy living were over.
Dwight Christie no longer existed.
He had died back in that safe house in Berkeley.
There had been no revolution on Monday night; no great sympathetic uprising from coast to coast or anywhere, in fact. The streets of Washington DC had run with blood but the uprising was over and most people, insofar as they cared, had subsequently breathed a long heartfelt sigh of relief.
Things were so bad that his handlers had gone to ground; either that or they had been swept up by the indiscriminate Federal dragnet trawling across the continent sweeping up anybody who had ever, at any time, aroused the tiniest scintilla of interest in any ‘security’ file held by any organ of the government.
That was what happened after a failed coup d’état’, so he had driven south. If things got too hot he could be across the border in Tijuana in an hour.
He smoked his cigarette and wondered if his wife had heard he was dead yet?
He and Kathleen had been separated three years and out of love long before that but Kathleen was too Catholic to have ever considered asking for a divorce. She would probably shed a tear for him when she heard the news; good people like Kitty did not deserve to be married to men like him. She had imagined she could sooth his inner rage, make of him a better man but in truth he had been too far gone by the time they met. He had needed to be married to bolster his ‘respectability’ within the Bureau; Kitty was the sister of a fellow agent and the FBI liked to keep things ‘in the family’.
Professionally, it was a perfect match.
Christie took a long, hard drag on his cigarette and exhaled raggedly. He had tried giving up smoking several times in recent years but always come back to the weed. A man was a fool to himself if he aspired to absolute ideological or physical purity.
Soon after he and Kitty were married he had very nearly confessed his sins, told her everything. She was so trusting, open, honest and well, cute, and he had almost but not quite betrayed himself. Sometimes he caught her looking at him in that unnerving way as if at some unspoken, perhaps subconscious level she knew that he was not and never had been what he seemed to be.
Hell, now and then he caught himself looking at himself in the mirror in exactly that way!
He had been a bright kid bored and unchallenged at high school and then the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbour. Aged a month short of his twentieth birthday he had pulled out of college one term into his law degree and breezed through the Army’s officer candidate selection board in February 1942, confidently expected to be sent overseas. Instead, he had spent his time in uniform stateside. Hitler’s war had poured untold treasure into the pockets of American industrialists and he had been one of the guys trying to limit the damage. The Army did not really care what it paid for the guns and bullets, vehicles, bases and depots it needed to fight the enemy; but it had to be seen to be dealing ‘honestly and prudently’ if and when anybody ever got around to looking at the books after the war. That was what Christie – and a small army of accountants, investigators and military policemen responsible for auditing procurement – had spent their war doing.
Christie had never been an all American sort of kid traduced by some kind of ‘dream’. That baloney had only ever seemed real in the movies. However, neither had he grown up as any kind of socialist or rebel. It was only when he had witnessed firsthand the way American industry routinely – gratuitously, in fact – systematically fleeced and gouged the American taxpayer, and thus the American people, and the way in which so many obscene fortunes where shamelessly built upon the foundations of the bodies of tens of thousands of dead GIs, that his personal worm had slowly turned.
His internal conversion was a very gradual, insidious thing and ultimately, the more profound for it. There was no Damascene moment, no sudden conversion on a par with St Paul’s on the road to Damascus, simply the continual daily drip, drip, drip of the unequivocal evidence before his eyes. In time of war the moneylenders, the steel men, the shipbuilders, the Fords and the General Motors and the Boeings, the Rockefellers and yes, the Kennedys got richer while American GIs died on the beaches of Iwo Jima and Normandy, and in the jungles of the Philippines, the mountains of Italy and the Ardennes forest of Luxembourg and Belgium. The army of fat cat war profiteers and their political place men salted away their millions while young American soldiers, sailors and airmen bled to death thousands of miles from home; and the American system, the great god of the market economy, the religion of capitalism blessed the thieves and charlatans for whom the war could not go on long enough!
Once he had started to ask himself who actually profited from the war. Wall Street? The bankers? The grasping politicians who filled Congress and the Senate? The men who had ordered more ships and tanks and aircraft for the Navy, the Army and the Air Force than there were men of military age in America to man? The men who filled depots all over America and with so much spare, surplus hardware that at the end of the war mothballing had become a new national sport?
It was not just the graft and the corruption which underpinned the whole system, it was the collective attitude of the ruling elite who saw no problem with the waste and the idiocy of that system. After the Second World War America had scuttled enough ships at sea, dumped enough munitions into the oceans, bulldozed enough equipment into landfills and down abandoned mineshafts weaponry and technology had been scuttled at sea, thrown down mine shafts, and broken up, or given away aircraft, tanks and ships - for which the US taxpayer had paid top dollar - to any third rate piss pot little country who was prepared to let US conglomerates operate like latter day Barbary Pirates in their lands.
Ask not what your country can do for you!
Yeah, sure...
Christie’s older brother, Frank, a lieutenant in the Marines, had been killed at Iwo Jima. His kid brother, Vernon, a corporal in the 101st Airborne had died of wounds sustained in Normandy in June 1944. Frank and Vernon’s deaths had destroyed his mother and father; they had both died young in their fifties, broken and inconsolable.
Ask what you can do for your country!
When the Soviets – the NKVD in those days – had recruited him around Christmas 1946 he had been a soft touch. Just out of uniform, guilty to have ‘hidden’ at home while his brothers had died for the greater good on foreign fields, and drinking himself into a hole ahead of going back to college under the auspices of the GI Bill, he had no longer believed in anything in particular any more.
Over about a year his handlers had channelled his rage and given him a new purpose.
He had applied to join the Federal Bureau of Investigation in California, completed his college education, become a G-man and the rest, as they say, was history...
If his handlers ever re-surfaced; which he did not think was very likely they would be as mad as Hell about his decision to remove Darlene Lefebure from the firing line. Not that he cared, he had never signed up to the cold-blooded murder of young women for no better reason than to tie up an inconvenient ‘loose end’. Besides, if his handlers wanted to make contact with him they were going to have to find him first!
The more he thought about what had happened in the last few d
ays the more he became convinced that the leadership of the resistance had had a collective brainstorm. In attempting to stage a coup in Washington all they had achieved was to stab a sleeping tiger in the butt with a penknife. What did they think was going to happen if they did the one thing, the only thing, likely to temporarily reunite the country – well, a significant part of it - behind the Federal Government? When you awakened a sleeping tiger you were supposed to hang onto its tail; the way things looked from where he sat - as far away from the District of Columbia as a man could get and still be within the contiguous borders of the in the continental United States - all the uprising had succeeded in doing was to bring down the full crushing majesty of the power of the wounded beast upon the resistance’s heads!
One thing was clear if nothing else.
For the foreseeable future he was on his own and lying low was the only option. In a week or so he would begin to pick up the traces, assess whether it was viable to attempt to reconnect with whatever survived of his north California network. As of now he had no idea how many of his people had been swept up in the madness in the East or had fallen into the authorities hands in the course of conducting the stupid, pointless uncoordinated ‘sabotage and assassination actions’ mandated by the same fools who had sanctioned the Washington insurrection.