by James Philip
Tom Harding-Grayson’s disgust was readily transparent.
“So when the Prime Minister asks me what the SIS knew about the Malta fiasco,” he snarled. “What do I tell her? That MI6 could have pulled the trigger and eradicated Red Dawn at any time but didn’t act until Malta was burning?”
Dick White was impassive.
“What you tell the Prime Minister is your affair, Tom. What I have just told you is that the Malta ‘fiasco’ provided my organisation, and MI5 in England, the opportunity to roll up legacy KGB networks left behind after the October War and several post-war Red Dawn-type networks inimical to our cause. The attempt by those networks to co-ordinate, in the main apparently impromptu, terroristic attacks and assassinations in the United Kingdom, Gibraltar and Malta brought them out into the open where my people could deal with them. Yes, I could have had Rykov eliminated at any time in the last few months but what would that have achieved? Yes, there were suggestions, indications that Red Dawn, Krasnaya Zarya might attempt in some way to disrupt our operations in the Mediterranean. No, I did not know that Malta was to be the subject of a major naval bombardment and an attempted airborne invasion any more than Rykov or my control on the archipelago knew that it was going to happen. And frankly, even if I had had some prior warning of that attack, would you or your colleagues in Government have taken me seriously?”
Given that Tom Harding-Grayson had suspected that the original reports some months ago of the very existence of Krasnaya Zarya was no more than MI6 hyperbole he hardly trusted himself to answer.
“Good luck when you explain all that to the Prime Minister, Dick,” he concluded with grim resignation.
Chapter 45
23:05 Hours
Saturday 4th April 1964
Emergency Command Centre, Marsa Creek, Malta.
Tents and lean to awnings had been pitched and stretched over every available piece of flat ground and two Ton class minesweepers – HMS Coniston and HMS Repton – had been brought around from Msida Creek where they had escaped yesterday’s bombardment with only relatively minor splinter damage, and moored close inshore at dusk so that their engines and generators could provide electrical power to the rapidly expanding Emergency Command Centre in the old disused seaplane hangar and the adjacent requisitioned dock buildings. The main deck, bridge and crew spaces of the two four hundred ton vessels were now also being used as accommodation and offices for the men and women who were arriving all the time to swell the headquarters staff. Many of the newcomers were walking wounded, others still a little dazed, everybody was dusty and dirty and exhausted.
After her journey through the ruins and the chaos of the streets of Mdina, past the still smouldering wreckage of Ta’Qali airfield, and into the devastation of Floriana, Marija had been a little surprised by the atmosphere of calm at Marsa Creek. Everybody seemed to know what they were doing, nobody was running, rushing and although practically every face was ashen with weariness and shock, there were no raised voices, and everything seemed unnaturally businesslike.
Jack Griffin had done the talking at security barriers.
“PO Griffin, Talavera,” he had proclaimed proudly. “Escorting Commander Christopher’s wife. Order’s of the C-in-C!”
It transpired that Air Vice-Marshal French had left instructions that he was to be informed when ‘Mrs Calleja-Christopher arrives safely at Marsa Creek’. However, the C-in-C had been ‘called away briefly’ and Marija was impatient – actually she was very nearly insensibly distraught with anxiety by then – to throw herself into her husband’s arms.
So it was that Jack Griffin had accompanied her onboard HMS Repton, where Peter Christopher was haltingly dictating – periodically looking to Talavera’s dishevelled Canadian navigator, Lieutenant Dermot O’Reilly to confirm this or that detail - his After Action Report of HMS Talavera’s part in the Battle of Malta to the minesweeper’s chief writer. A fourth man was present in the Repton’s captain’s day cabin, an aging four-ringer who had the look of a librarian rather than a warrior. It transpired that he was Captain Lionel Faulkes, the senior Royal Navy officer attached to Daniel French’s hastily re-organised Malta Command Staff.
Husband and wife – the one discarding any pretence of a British stiff upper lip, the other oblivious to the witnesses – flew into each other’s arms. Marija threw her arms around her husband’s neck; he enveloped her in his embrace and as often seemed to happen, her feet did not touch the ground for many, many seconds thereafter.
“I thought you were going to your death, husband!” Marija gasped breathlessly, still not caring what the others saw or heard. “Rosa, my sister and I, we saw Talavera racing out of the Grand Harbour...”
“Right about then I was worrying about you, my love!”
Marija’s tears came in a new flood; she buried her face in his shoulder as gently the Peter put her down, her feet settling on the deck.
“Margo is dead,” she blurted.
He held her crushingly close.
Husband and wife slowly, slowly became aware that they were alone in the cabin and that the other men who had been present when Marija arrived had quietly shut the hatch on their way out.
Peter Christopher looked into his wife’s moist tawny brown eyes and was suddenly, sickeningly struck by the enormity of what, in yesterday’s madness, he had very nearly lost forever. For the first time he experienced a stabbing pang of doubt.
He had believed he was going to his death.
Had it been really been worth it?
“Things out there,” he muttered, “got to be a bit sticky,” he added, the words not wanting to be spoken. “After we torpedoed the first two big ships the third cruiser coming down from the north had our range and we were, well, dead in the water by then and in a frightful fix. If the Yanks hadn’t turned up when they did, I don’t know what would have happened...”
Actually, they both knew exactly what would have happened; he and all his men would be dead now.
Marija sniffed, broke from his embrace and wiped her face and nose with a dusty sleeve. Nobody in the whole wide world knew – apart from her - how close the man she loved was to breaking down, completely falling to pieces; and she was not about to let it happen. Her expression became defiant, her smile determined even if her eyes remained mirrors of worry.
“You would have done what you had to do, husband,” she informed him simply. For the first time she realised he was wearing an ill-fitting foreign uniform. Even if the uniform had been tailored specifically for him it still would not have suited him. “Yesterday it was you duty to try and get yourself killed. Each time you do something brave and stupid like that I will try very hard to forgive you.”
Peter Christopher blinked into Marija’s almond-eyed gaze, saw the mischief bubbling deep in the limpid pools of her eyes and grinned a very, very sheepish grin.
“But only if I return?”
“Yes!” Marija declared, frowning more severely than she meant. “How would I forgive you if you did not return?”
The man was regaining his senses.
“Will you come with me to England?”
“Of course I will go with you to England! I am your wife!”
Peter Christopher instantly felt guilty to have asked the question in the first place. Marija saw this and took pity on him. She surveyed his bruised face, the newly stitched gash on his left cheek, the hastily cleaned up nicks above his eyebrows and the still oozing clumsily sutured wound to his scalp hidden somewhere in his matted fair hair. In retrospect she realised she must have hurt him more than somewhat with the passion of her recent hug. She guessed her idiotically courageous husband was probably a mass of black and blue under his shirt. She noted also that he seemed to be standing on only one leg.
“I think,” Marija decided, “that today is one of those days when you and I are both as sore and aching as each other, husband?”
“I think you may be right, wife,” the man concurred ruefully.
Marija giggled.
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“Have you heard if your parents are okay?” Peter asked.
She shook her head. “No.”
Rachel Piotrowska, the woman he and Marija had known as Clara Pullman had told him how Margo Seiffert had died.
“I know what happened to Margo.”
Marija set her face against the world for a moment; she replied blankly, neutrally with a rhetorical question.
“Do you know what happened to your father?”
Peter nodded. Margo Seiffert’s death, his father’s death, and so much of the misery and grief of the last day would be things they locked away until they were strong enough to face them.
“I spoke to Clara Pullman,” the man explained. “Although it turns out that that’s not her real name. I was right about her being a spook all along,” he hesitated, his weary thoughts drifting. “Anyway, she was with my father when he died. He was shot just after the Soviets stormed the headquarters. Just one bullet,” he touched his chest, “but it must have nicked something important, an artery perhaps. There was nothing anybody could do. He lived long enough to know we’d won the battle.”
Marija went up on tiptoes and planted a wet kiss on her husband’s lips.
“When do we go to England?”
“Tomorrow or the day after. The plan keeps changing.” He waved at the typewriter on the small desk behind them. “AVM French’s people are in a funk to get Talavera’s After Action Report cobbled together before the first VIPs fly in tomorrow afternoon or evening. I keep remembering things which ought to be included. Fellows who ought to be mentioned in despatches, that sort of thing. I thought they’d be more interested than they are in my recommendations for gongs. Did you know that it was your little brother, Joe, who was the chap who actually fired the torpedoes that hit those two big ships?”
“Petty Officer Griffin talks of little else, husband,” Marija confirmed, her tone soothing. She had recovered her composure and recognised that it was too early to expect the man she loved to be fully himself. After what he had been through it might take weeks or months, he might never again be exactly the man she had known before the battle.
Marija would have whispered comfort and sympathy, clung to him but there was a quiet knock at the door and she knew the Royal Navy wanted Peter – her Peter - back. She was torn by the helpless look that flickered in his face.
She laid and hand on his chest over his heart.
“I will be here waiting for you when you have finished your work, husband.”
Chapter 46
23:30 Hours (GMT)
Saturday 4th April 1964
Prime Minister’s Rooms, Corpus Christi College, Oxford
Sir Thomas Harding-Grayson was as shocked as his wife had warned him he would be when he set eyes on the Prime Minister. She had not slept for forty-eight hours, her eyes were red-rimmed, her pallor grey and her normally perfectly coiffured hair was – by her own exacting standards – distinctly careworn. But that was not the most worrying thing; all the fight seemed to have gone out of her.
The Defence Secretary, William Whitelaw rose from his chair as the Foreign Secretary entered the room, nodding a weary greeting to his friend.
“Willie has been filling me in on the latest news from the Mediterranean, Tom,” Margaret Thatcher explained, her tone just minutely diffident. “And explaining a little more about his plan to blockade the Falkland Islands with submarines.”
The man in question gave the newcomer a somewhat wan look.
“I had a trans-Atlantic chat with Bob McNamara,” he reported. “I’ve done my best to quash this nonsense about the First Sea Lord being despatched to the Mediterranean to become the Supreme Allied Commander,” Willie – only his enemies called him ‘William’ – Whitelaw went on. “The Americans are still livid about it.” He shook his head. “Sorry, I don’t need to tell you that. You’re the poor fellow who has had to mend the fences.”
Notwithstanding she was two decades his junior Margaret Thatcher was viewing her Foreign Secretary with maternally concerned eyes.
“You look all in, Tom. You must sit down. We’ll see if somebody can rustle up a nice mug of chocolate, or perhaps, Horlicks for you.”
Tom Harding-Grayson was glad to take the weight off his tired and aching frame. He had been trying to decide whether he ought to recommend the summary dismissal of Sir Dick White to the Prime Minister when Walter Brenckmann had called to update him on the latest news from Philadelphia.
Somebody at the US State Department – of all places – had put out a press release confirming that quote ‘following the breakdown of the chain of command in the Mediterranean the Unity Administration of the United Kingdom has demanded the appointment of Admiral Sir David Luce as Allied Supreme Commander in Europe and the Middle East’.
“You’ve reassured our American friends that there is no substance to the reports about Sir David’s mission to Malta?” The Prime Minister asked.
“Bill Fulbright knows the stories are nonsense, but...”
Where there ought to have been anger and a steely glint in the Angry Widow’s eyes there was mild, housewifely forbearance.
“Willie thinks I should speak to President Kennedy?”
“I agree. We have to do something to clear the air, Margaret.”
“What would I say to him, Tom? Now look here, Jack. Your boys were supposed to be patrolling the waters around Malta but Admiral Detweiller decided to play war games two hundred miles to the west and left his allies in the lurch?”
Forty-eight hours ago Margaret Thatcher would have said it with venom and excoriating sarcasm; tonight she spoke with tired resignation.
“Yes, I’d recommend you to say exactly that to President Kennedy.”
William Whitelaw gave the Foreign Secretary a quizzical look.
Tom Harding-Grayson shrugged.
Neither the disaster in the Mediterranean nor the humiliation in the South Atlantic had done such irreparable damage to Anglo-American relations as the ongoing campaign of misinformation being waged over the ‘Supreme Commander Question’. Make no mistake; a well-orchestrated ‘campaign’ was being waged in the pages of American newspapers, across continental television and radio networks and from the back rooms of the House of Representatives. As many as a score of Senators and Congressmen, mostly but not exclusively Republican, were out on the stomp in Philadelphia and their voices were drowning out the relatively feeble cries of ‘foul’ coming from the British Embassy and a State Department Press Office that literally, to J. William Fulbright’s incandescent rage, did not seem to know if it was coming or going. What made the situation worse was that the President had yet to utter a single word on the subject and would not until he ‘returned to Philly’ sometime in the next few hours.
The whole thing was a dreadful comedy of errors compounded on the UAUK side by an exhausted middle ranking official in Iain Macleod’s Ministry of Information. Responding to the American furore a briefing note had been issued to the British press concerning the proposed visit to Malta by Sir David Luce on a morale boosting inspection and fact-finding mission. However, the note had been badly worded and this, in combination with several uncorrected typographical errors and omissions had failed to unambiguously deny that the First Sea Lord was being send to Malta to take command of All Allied Forces. The American East Coast media circus had fallen on the Ministry of Information’s ‘note’ like a colony of vultures and had been picking over the entrails of the unfortunate document ever since.
In Philadelphia the damage was done.
It made no difference that the United States Ambassador to the Court of Blenheim Palace, Walter Brenckmann, fully understood what had happened and that there had never been any underhand British plot to install ‘one of their own’ in command of ‘American GIs’.
In Philadelphia the Anglophobes who had never wanted the Washington rapprochement of last December were on the war path; there was already talk in Congressional circles of re-applying some of the sanctions and prohibition
s to cut off the recently restored food, fuel, drugs and munitions lifelines across the North Atlantic. It seemed Britain’s enemies in America had been patiently awaiting their moment, keeping their powder dry for just such an opportunity to turn the screw.
It was a doomsday scenario that Tom Harding-Grayson had not foreseen. He could conceive of nothing that would be so injurious to the long-term interests of his country than a new split with the United States. Once driven back into its former isolation America might wallow in its own troubles for a generation.
“I can’t say any of that to Jack Kennedy, Tom,” Margaret Thatcher objected. “Not right now, anyway. Perhaps, tomorrow when I have had a little rest?”
What terrified Tom Harding-Grayson was that she did not sound as if she cared one way or the other. It was as if she had divorced herself from things, lost interest.
“Yes, you should rest, Margaret,” Willie Whitelaw agreed, rising to his feet and gesturing for the Foreign Secretary to leave ahead of him.
The Prime Minister made no sign of noticing their departure.
Chapter 47
01:50 Hours
Sunday 5th April 1964
Married Quarters, Kalkara, Malta
Marija and Peter had turned the downstairs living, or as it was more usually called in Malta, the ‘family’ room of the small house into a bedroom when Rosa had been discharged from hospital in Mdina. There was a second small bed room upstairs but the stairs would have been a problem for her at that time because she was still in plaster. A single wood-framed cot had been acquired and squeezed into the space beneath the window and in the weeks since she had moved back to Kalkara, Rosa had begun to make the room her own. By some miracle the window had not blown in, or out, and the room had survived the bombardment completely untouched.