by James Philip
The British Ambassador suspected that the attitude of senior American commanders, the Pentagon and many members of the Kennedy Administration was not dissimilar. Its recent track record in taking into account – forget ‘respecting’ – its allies interests and opinions was less than stellar. The Americans had gone to war without consulting their oldest, supposedly most respected Ally – whose armed forces, it had always been assumed would play a key role in any war scenario in which the Soviet Union was involved – so once the Pentagon had planted foot in the door to the Irish Republic it was hardly like to have grown new spots in the last seventeen months.
“The long and the short of it, Sir Ian,” Lieutenant General John McKeown said, biting the bullet, “is that our most recent intelligence assessments indicate that significant quantities of mainly American-made light armaments and munitions have been stockpiled by the IRA and other Nationalist and Republican insurgent groups.”
“What sort of ‘light armaments’ are we talking about General?”
“Infantry weapons, sir. Machine guns, modern assault rifles such as M-16s, pistols, various types of hand grenades and a significant quantity of military grade plastic explosive, along with detonators and time delay fuses.”
Sir Ian MacLennan looked to Sean Lemass.
“Her Majesty’s Government was given assurances earlier this year that the Irish Government was taking steps to,” he paused, ‘counter this threat, Taoiseach?”
More importantly, in January the President of the United States of America had personally promised Margaret Thatcher that his people would crack down hard on ‘any leakage of weapons from US sources’ to dissident factions within the Irish Republic.
“The American authorities mounted a crack down about two months ago but since then the situation has got worse rather than better,” Frank Aiken growled. “Your Government accuses us of trading food and medical aid donations from the Irish in America for arms! That’s pure blarney! We spend every penny we get trying to feed and clothe our people and trying to keep our hospitals running! Most of the money that comes into this country from the Americas goes straight into the hands of self appointed ‘Irish Aid’ committees and most of those are either fronts for the IRA or for organised crime gangs.”
The British Ambassador had heard this narrative before; unlike his compatriots in Ulster and the rest of the United Kingdom he actually had a deal of sympathy with it. Ireland was an impoverished country attempting to cling onto its self-respect. It did not have a large army or police force and given the choice of alienating the United States or the United Kingdom it was permanently pinned on the horns of an intractable dilemma.
“From what you’ve said, General McKeown,” he suggested, knowing that he had not yet heard the really bad news, “the IRA is gearing up for a renewed offensive along the border with, and presumably, in Londonderry and Belfast this summer?”
“Probably sooner than that, sir.”
That was hardly news; Northern Ireland Command had been preparing for just such an upsurge in violence for several weeks. He had already warned – informally and very confidentially all three Irishmen in the room that such an offensive, if in any way supported by or encouraged by the Irish Government, or by members or organs of that Government, would regrettably have potential consequences equally violent if not more so, south of the border.
However, it was evident that this was not what was worrying the Taoiseach, his Minister for External Affairs or the Chief of Staff of the Irish Armed Forces.
Sir Ian MacLennan’s throat had gone dry.
He focused on the Irish Prime Minister and to his credit Sean Lemass did not flinch.
“What else has the IRA managed to acquire from its American ‘friends’ on the black market, Taoiseach?”
Chapter 7
13:36 Hours
Friday 3rd April 1964
HMS Talavera, 10 miles west of Sliema Point
Dockyard electrician Joseph Calleja recovered consciousness in a miasma of pain in which he was struggling to catch his breath. He did not know where he was wounded; he just hurt everywhere.
I was on the quay below Corradino heights?
But he was somewhere else now.
It was like a dream. The panic, the alarm, the water suddenly churning under HMS Talavera’s stern; crew men wrestling with the destroyer’s mooring ropes. Something had made him step – consciously, deliberately - from the dock onto the deck of the ship while all his fellow dockyard hands were desperately attempting to get off it. In no time at all the destroyer had been charging towards the opening in the Grand Harbour breakwaters at a rate of knots that would have got her captain cashiered on any other day...
Just before the Talavera reached the breakwaters she had been bracketed by a salvo of big shells. One had landed in the water so close that the whole ship had seemed to lurch sideways for a moment before she charged on out to sea.
His ears had been ringing; everything had been in slow motion for a while after that. He had picked himself up, ripped off his jacket and without thinking balled it up and pressed it into the horrific wound in the young Torpedo Officer’s thigh to try to stop the bleeding. There had been a lot of blood, and everywhere around him on the deck other bodies had lain torn and twitching. He had been totally focussed on the ashen boy lying in a spreading pool of his own life blood until a burly Royal Marine had got a tourniquet in place and the wounded officer had been carted below...
Did that really happen?
He was staring at grey, sooty smoke drifting across a perfect azure blue spring sky, aware, but only in passing, that there were other men prostrate on the deck around him. It took several more seconds to work out what he was doing lying on the unforgiving steel deck.
And then the memories came back with a rush.
He was fairly confident that they had got the fourth and last torpedo away before most of the ship around the torpedo tube mounting had fallen on top of him. He remembered the thump of the impellor charge, the soft whoosh of the fish and a big splash as it went into the water...
Or at least he thought he remembered that.
Things were a bit confused and he was not sure if he was remembering them in the right order.
Had he and that red-headed idiot Jack Griffin really been jumping up and down on top of the mounting?
Yes, they had!
Everybody around the quadruple 21-inch torpedo mount had been pointing at the fish, yelling encouragement as if they were in the grandstand at a horse race. One of the fish had porpoised and disappeared, he remembered that. But the other three seemed to have run true. Suddenly the bow of the big Russian cruiser had sagged down brokenly and the big ship had come to a dead halt. And then there was a big explosion at the stern of the old Turkish battleship...
Yes, after that he and Jack Griffin had been jumping up and down on top of the torpedo mounting. They had been laughing like madmen, hugging each other like they were long lost brothers.
And then there had been a huge explosion and now...
And now he was lying on the deck.
And he hurt everywhere...
“Jesus wept!” Complained the man spread-eagled on top of the stocky Maltese electrician. He coughed asthmatically, and rolled off the smaller man. “Jesus,” he whistled dazedly, “I think we just sunk half the whole fucking Russian Navy!”
This said Petty Officer Jack Griffin lay for some seconds on his back, ignoring the discomfort of the miscellany of sharp shards of debris sticking into his torso and legs.
“We did?” Joe gasped. His ribs felt like they had just been released from the squeezing clasp of a giant vise, his face was wet and his right arm felt wrong but for the moment he did not care about that as he sucked in huge gouts of air and contemplated how pleased he was to still be alive.
“Too fucking right we did!” Groaned the other man, trying to sit up. His movements were like those of a drunk who has fallen over one too many times trying to get back to his ship after a run
ashore. His first couple of attempts to raise himself from the deck failed dismally. However, he accomplished his mission on the third attempt. He looked around at the burning scrapheap which less than an hour ago had been the finest ship in the whole Royal Navy; and was both relieved and pleasantly surprised to discover that nobody seemed to be shooting at HMS Talavera. The quadruple 21-inch torpedo tube launcher mount on which he and his unlikely Maltese comrade in arms had been so exuberantly cavorting shortly before seemed to have gone. It had completely disappeared, in fact. Where it ought to have been – welded to the deck abaft the destroyer’s single funnel – lay the mangled remains of what might once have been the port amidships twin 40-millimetre Bofors cannon tub. Mashed body parts of the Bofors’s gunners were liberally distributed across the deck and hooked obscenely on jagged outcrops of what little survived of the torpedo director. “Shit,” he muttered, realising for the first time that he and Joe Calleja looked as if they had been rolling around on the floor in an abattoir.
Joe Calleja moaned loudly when the other man shook his shoulder.
“Good!” Jack Griffin chuckled. “If it hurts you must still be alive!”
“Obviously!” Joe complained, his voice slurred.
“Cheer up; nobody’s shooting at us anymore!”
Joe Calleja took very little comfort from this.
“At the moment!” He gasped.
“Oh, well. That’s the Navy for you!” As his wits slowly unscrambled Jack Griffin’s mind was turning to practicalities. His first rational thought was to search for the Captain. No, if the skipper was still alive he would have people around him already. Today, he would have to settle for saving the Old Man’s brother-in-law’s life. Today was one of those days when it was easy to be a hero. Besides, the successive waves of nausea probably meant he had either lost a lot of blood or taken a bad knock on the head; he was not about to go climbing ladders up to the bridge until he got his balance back again. “Can you move?” He asked his companion.
“Maybe. My arm’s bad...”
Jack Griffin eased the younger man into a sitting position, all the better to view the last minutes of their lives. Men were struggling up from below and steam was escaping, hissing insanely as it vented through the big steel sieve that had previously been the destroyer’s perfectly proportioned funnel.
“I thought I was already dead,” Joe Calleja declared philosophically as he tried to cradle his broken right arm with his left. Most of the pain had subsided but he felt so terribly, helplessly tired, old and cold.
Shadows fell across both men.
Unwounded men had come to help them.
“Naw!” Jack Griffin shouted, angrily fighting off helping hands. “Leave the civilian to me! Help those boys over by the 40-millimetre! We’ll be fine!”
It was the self-evident absurdity of this latter declaration which finally snapped Joe Calleja back to reality.
“We’ll be fine?” He demanded incredulously.
Jack Griffin lurched to his feet, swayed briefly before he established his balance and looked down at the shorter man with vaguely pitying eyes.
Civilians!
“Aw, stop belly-aching!” Behind the harsh sentiments and the apparent reprimand there was a peculiar respect. Moreover, when he went on there was a hint of a twinkle in the Navy man’s eyes. “There are boys with real wounds over there! Not a couple of little scratches and a sprained wrist like you!”
Joe found himself being hauled unsteadily to his feet.
The other man flung his arms around him to stop him immediately crumpling back onto the deck. Joe cried with pain as his damaged arm was crushed in the protective embrace.
“Sorry,” the other man grunted.
Jack Griffin sniffed the smoky air, looked around.
“See? Nothing at all wrong with you!”
Joe Calleja was staring past the other man’s shoulder at the futuristic, long grey silhouette of the big ship close alongside the water-logged, wallowing hulk of HMS Talavera. He felt almost close enough to shake hands with the American sailors poised at the other ship’s rail to leap across fast the narrowing gap between the warships.
“Now ain’t that a sight for sore eyes?” Jack Griffin exclaimed grudgingly, less than ecstatic to be in such a hopeless situation that he had to be rescued by a bunch of Yanks.
Joe’s head lolled against the other man’s chest.
“What did I say?” Jack Griffin chuckled. “Didn’t I say this was the most fun you’ve ever hand in your whole fucking life?”
“Yes, I recall you said something like that...”
Chapter 8
13:37 Hours
Friday 3rd April 1964
The Citadel, Mdina, Malta
Over half-an-hour after the event she wondered if she had glimpsed the ghost of a smile forming on Arkady Pavlovich Rykov’s face in the split second before her finger closed on the trigger of her AK-47 Kalashnikov. However, by the time she had emptied approximately half a magazine of hollow point rounds into her former lover’s torso and his broken body had jerked obscenely backwards until it met the wall and slowly, slowly slid down to the floor leaving a broad track of gore on the floor and the plaster, his amusement had been well and truly terminated.
She had known that there was nothing she could do to save Admiral Sir Julian Christopher’s life. She was in a small room with two KGB assassins and by the time she had executed the first one the other would have had ample opportunity to despatch her. That was why she did not try anything clever. She held down the trigger until she had all but destroyed Arkady Rykov. It was Arkady who had re-taught her that one always had to decide what was most important; who to kill first. Killing him had seemed the most important thing in the World at the time she pulled the trigger.
The silence was dangerous and threatening.
The atmosphere stank of burnt cordite and blood.
Fresh blood, she had discovered long ago had an iron, slaughterhouse stench that lingered in one’s nostrils and face for days. Especially, when it had been explosively sprayed upon one and upon everything around one.
She had waited for the bullet.
Perhaps, I am already dead?
No, that was crazier than all the other possibilities!
Without lowering the muzzle of the AK-47 in her coldly steady hands she had turned.
Julian Christopher was slumped in his chair, deathly ashen, hardly able to keep his eyelids open; standing behind him the second KGB man, dressed in airborne forces camouflage battle dress was pressing the muzzle of his 9-millimetre Makarov pistol to the seated man’s head.
The shooting elsewhere in the Headquarters complex had suddenly ceased.
‘Admiral Christopher will die if he does not get urgent medical attention,’ the man with the KGB flashes on his collar observed in heavily accented Moskva Russian. Moskva Russian that was so heavily accented it struck her as being almost theatrical.
She had not imagined the scene playing out like this. Not that she had had much of an idea about how anything in particular was going to play out at any time since she had been sent on her mission to find Arkady Rykov in the months before the October War. An hour ago she had been waiting to see what happened next; and but for the murder of Margo Seiffert by that brainless – probably panicking and scared shitless - paratrooper who had got his chute hung up on the chimneys of the St Catherine’s Hospital for Women she might simply have kept her head down, contented herself with protecting the nurses and patients in the basement of the hospital. That was the trouble with life, something always came along and threw all the cards into the air, and afterwards nobody could ever predict which way up they would fall.
Russians were a strange and fascinating people.
That much at least she had learned in her years as a spy.
Russians were strange, fascinating and fundamentally unpredictable. Therefore, she was not quite as surprised as she ought to have been when the KGB man holding a gun to the head of the Commander-in-C
hief of all British and Commonwealth Forces in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations indicated to her that he wanted to cut a deal. Of course, the man holding the Makarov pistol had not actually said that; but they both knew that was exactly what he meant because he had not yet put a bullet in Admiral Christopher’s brain.
The man could have killed her while she was dealing with Arkady Rykov if he had wanted but where was the profit in that?
The KGB man had decided that the British had fought off the assault on the building and that if she was between him and the first angry, vengeful soldiers who burst through the door his chances of staying alive were exponentially improved. When those soldiers came through that door their blood would be up and if the first thing they saw was a woman – albeit one spattered with blood and wielding a Kalashnikov – they were much less likely to roll a couple of grenades in front of them or to start blazing away with automatic rifles.
‘Kill him, Miss Pullman,’ Julian Christopher muttered with a voice that was so deeply exhausted his words were barely audible.
There were boots stomping and trampling through the building.
She was sorely tempted to kill the KGB man.
Very tempted but the killing was over.
‘Drop the gun on the floor and come around to this side of the desk!’ She barked at the KGB man. ‘Now, or I will kill you!’
The Russian was in his thirties, swarthy but dapper in an apparently military way. However, now that she had properly appraised him the woman could tell from the fit and the neatness of the man’s battledress that it lacked the feel of a lived in, fought in uniform. The man knew how to act like a real soldier but he was a fraud.
The man had slowly taken the gun away from Julian Christopher’s head and, with the muzzle pointed at the floor drawn it away to the side before dropping it. She had not seen the man flick on the safety before he discarded the weapon. It thudded onto the stone floor with a ringing metallic sound that had so alarmed the woman that she almost pulled the trigger of the AK-47.