by James Philip
“Yes,” Pat Harding-Grayson confessed in a tone which was not such much apologetic as smug. “I crushed up two sleeping pills and found a spoonful of sugar to hide the taste.”
Margaret Thatcher frowned.
“Poisoning a Prime Minister is probably an offence under the Treachery Act,” she observed, albeit without malice.
“You hadn’t slept for two days and you were getting cranky, Margaret.”
“I was getting no such thing!” Except she now realised that she had been getting very ‘cranky’ and worse. This morning notwithstanding that her head ached a little she felt more her old self. The news from Malta – no, the news about Julian Christopher – had been like an unexpected blow to the solar plexus and she had been, well, stunned and for periods of the last two days, lost. She knew that the men around her had been doing whatever could be done, the majority of them were much more attuned to the day to day needs of governance in a time of war than her but for many hours she had ceased to be their leader and that was inexcusable.
The note from Blenheim Palace had arrived after she had gone to bed last night, drugged by her closest friend.
‘Her Majesty cordially requests the presence of her Prime Minister at 10 o’clock. The Prime Minister is invited to take morning tea with her Majesty prior to joining her for the Morning Service in the chapel at Blenheim. The Prime Minister’s children and aides are very welcome to join Her Majesty at said Service.’
The twins, eleven year old Carol and Mark sat obediently in the backwards facing seats within the most heavily armoured section of the Bentley. Both children had grown familiar with being in the proximity of VIPs, and accustomed to being introduced to the ‘great men’ of the day but the prospect of a visit to Blenheim Palace and an encounter with The Queen, and possibly Prince Charles and Princess Ann was another thing altogether. However, while they were in the company of their mother and their governess – neither twin was entirely sure what Lady Patricia Harding-Grayson’s exact title or position was, just that she was a very kind, nice lady and that they absolutely had to do what she told them to do – no harm could possibly befall them. Insofar as they thought about such things at all; both twins had worked out that of all the clever and very important people in their mother’s life the only person with whom she was completely at ease, was ‘Auntie Pat’.
“I really should have kept the Palace better informed of events,” Margaret Thatcher sighed.
“Your private office will have done that anyway, Margaret,” Pat Harding-Grayson reminded her.
“Yes, but...”
“You simply cannot do everything yourself.”
“No. This whole thing has rather knocked me for six,” the younger woman – by the best part of two decades – confessed. “I keep thinking I ought to be angrier, but actually, I am angry. Very angry.” She sighed. “And disappointed. Once again the Americans have let us down. I don’t just mean in the Mediterranean. Admiral Detweiller’s decision to remove his ships from Malta was ill-advised but it would not have mattered but for the sabotage of the archipelago’s radio communications and radar systems. The First Sea Lord tells me that the system was badly damaged in December’s attack, and then again by the attacks in February and knocking out just one or two key electrical switching stations was probably sufficient to bring down the whole network. The Americans have shipped new radar equipment to us but we just don’t have the technical wherewithal to quickly rebuild a complex air defence system. All our best people went off to Cyprus, you see. The assumption was that Admiral Detweiller’s ships would act as sentinels around the Maltese Archipelago.” Margaret Thatcher pursed her lips and sighed. “Sorry, I am rambling.”
“Carry on,” her friend invited her. “You’re not boring me, or anything.”
The Prime Minister smiled.
“What happened on Malta wasn’t entirely the Americans’ fault. Historians will look at the ‘Battle of Malta’ in years to come and write it off to bad luck and sabotage and say that I was far too preoccupied with grand strategy and took my eye off the ball. In a funny sort of way I’m not angry about any of that; what really gets my goat is the American obsession with this stupid story about Sir David Luce having been appointed Supreme Commander in the Mediterranean behind their backs!”
Chapter 55
11:05 Hours
Sunday 5th April 1964
The Verdala Palace, Malta
Because the Verdala Palace was the official – although since December of the previous year largely unused – residence of the Commander-in-Chief of All British and Commonwealth Forces in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations, it was guarded at all times by a platoon of infantrymen. At the time of the Soviet airborne attack a mixed platoon of walking wounded and sick-listed Green Jackets supported by a dozen Ghurkha riflemen had been stationed in the main building, which outwardly resembled a medieval castle. The bodies of the Soviet paratroopers shot to pieces beneath their swinging canopies long before their feet touched the ground were lined up by the roadside outside the walled palace gardens.
Now and then the stench of death, a vilely putrid corruption wafted through the open windows of the strangely unscarred bastion overlooking the brilliant azure blue Mediterranean on the eastern shore of the main island of Malta.
In their first floor state room Marija fussily helped her husband into his brand new, freshly pressed uniform.
Peter Christopher was edgy, anxious to be reunited with the members of his crew who should by now already be on their way to the Verdala Palace. The initial plan to meet the VIPs from England at Luqa air base had been abandoned earlier that morning; nobody had explained why; presumably because the whole ‘shindig’ had been switched to the Verdala Palace.
“Stop fidgeting, husband,” Marija demanded with her face pinched with fond vexation. She and Peter had been transported across the island while it was still dark, and in the privacy of one of the state room she had ordered her ‘hero’ to lie down on the big bed so that she could properly examine his injuries. As she had suspected his torso was a mass of deep, horribly discoloured bruises. Sending for a first aid kit she had excised two small pieces of shrapnel from below his left shoulder blade; it had troubled her that her husband had hardly flinched because she understood it could only mean that he hurt practically everywhere. Studying his chest she concluded that at least one, or perhaps two of his ribs on the middle of his right torso, were cracked. She had begun to relax a little when she determined that his messy head wounds were all of the superficial variety. She had painstakingly, lovingly tidied him up.
“You look like you’ve been in a street brawl in Valletta,” she had assured her husband when he eventually claimed that ‘I’m all right, really’. Her look had silenced his complaint. “People will be taking our pictures,” she reminded him. “It is important that we look our best.”
Her husband’s right ankle and right knee were swollen and his whole leg had stiffened overnight. No amount of liniment application or bandaging was going to remedy the twisted knee and sprained ankle; time alone would heal those sorely tried joints.
“You will have to walk with a stick and for once,” she had smiled, “lean on me,” Marija decided feeding him aspirins for his numerous aches and pains.
Even though the Verdala Palace had been largely unoccupied during Sir Julian Christopher’s tenure in command on Malta, the domestic and administrative staff of the palace had been retained to ensure the building was immediately available for use as an emergency hospital or a command centre.
“Your father’s uniforms very nearly fit you perfectly, husband,” Marija observed, pausing to admire the tailoring of the dark cloth as she brushed a speck of dust off one shoulder. Sir Julian had kept several spare uniforms in store at the Verdala Palace, each bereft of gold braid, cuff rings of rank or medal ribbons, for such fripperies were to be sewn on at need. A resident seamstress on the palace’s staff had already sewn a commander’s three rings onto the brand new uniform jacket.
Peter Christopher swallowed hard, tried to blink back his tears.
Marija rested her head on his chest and ever so carefully, wrapped her arms around the man she loved.
He kissed the top of her head.
“Now that I look the part,” he said with mock bravura to hide his distress, “you must try on those dresses.”
The women who had brought in the uniforms had also laid three very expensive-looking dresses on the big double bed at the heart of the state room. The ‘fancy frocks’ as Margo Seiffert would have described them had belonged to Lady Marian Staveley-Pope, the wife of Sir Julian Christopher’s predecessor on Malta. Hugh Staveley Pope had been second-in-command of the Mediterranean Fleet at the time of the October War and had been advanced to Vice-Admiral and to overall Theatre Command after his own chief’s assassination. His wife, Lady Marian, had been holidaying with friends on the French Riviera on the night of the war and never been seen or heard of again. Lady Marian had been Admiral Staveley-Pope’s second wife, some quarter of a century his junior and by coincidence possessed of a similarly trim figure as Marija.
“These are far too grand,” Marija objected. The dresses bore Parisienne labels and were made of a fabric that felt so fine beneath her fingers that she was half-afraid to handle, let alone wear, creations so opulent.
“My love,” her husband grinned, his bruises making the expression oddly lopsided, “to me you would be the most beautiful woman in the world if you were dressed in a potato sack,” he shrugged, painfully because the gesture tweaked something that did not want to be tweaked deep in his rib cage, “but in these weeds,” he chuckled softly, “you will be Rita Hayworth, Elizabeth Taylor and Sophia Loren all rolled into one!”
Marija instantly stared at her feet, afraid that she was blushing so violently in her pleasure and embarrassment that the top of her head would explode. In her disorientation she inadvertently slapped her husband’s shoulder just above his right clavicle with the flat of her very, very distracted left hand.
“Ouch...”
This sobered her in a moment.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry...”
But the man was laughing and the next thing she knew, so was she.
Chapter 56
10:05 Hours (GMT)
Sunday 5th April 1964
Corpus Christi College, Oxford
Walter Brenckmann had anticipated an entirely different reaction to the news he had just delivered to the Foreign Secretary. The Ambassador of the United States of America to the Court of Blenheim Palace had hurried over from the temporary Embassy compound at Trinity College with the telegram straight off the Cipher Room teleprinter.
Sir Thomas Harding-Grayson shook his head, grimaced in apology.
“I’m sorry, Walter,” he grunted, waving at the papers on his desk in the former don’s study on the first floor of the medieval pile which now accommodated the Foreign Secretary’s private office. “We had a few setbacks on Cyprus overnight and the casualty toll from Malta just seems to go up and up.” He hesitated. “And I can’t shake this nagging feeling that something else is going on.” Again, he shook his head and forced a smile.
“Sometimes it is only when things are darkest that you discover who your real friends are, Tom,” the dapper former United States Navy destroyer captain replied wryly.
“Yes, quite. It is marvellous news that the President is coming to England,” the Foreign Secretary declared – and it was marvellous news – but in the light of the other news that MI5’s apparently comprehensive ‘swoop’ on ‘Irish and other insurgent elements’ had conspicuously failed to ‘sweep up’ any of the Redeye surface-to air missiles that Chiefs of Staff and everybody else who ‘needed to know’ in Oxford was presently so exercised about, the President’s timing was not wholly propitious. And then there was the news of the similarly spontaneous intention of the Irish Government to send ‘cabinet level plenipotentiaries to England to defuse’ the ‘tensions’ between ‘our countries’. Nobody in the UAUK thought it was a remotely good idea for senior members of the avowedly anti-partition Fianna Fáil Dublin Government to be on British soil, let alone to meet and confer – possibly - with the Irish-American President of the United States of America while he was in Oxford. Emotions were running high about the ‘Irish problem’, feelings could hardly be more tender and the bloody IRA had smuggled state of the art American anti-aircraft missiles into the country! “However, the visit of the ‘Irish delegation’ might create difficulties.”
Walter Brenckmann had emphasised that although junior members of the ‘President’s Party’ might hold informal bi-lateral conversations with members of the Irish delegation the President had no plans to speak to any member of that party. While the President could not be seen to be openly cold-shouldering the Irish ‘peace delegation’ - that would look bad back home especially while the ‘Supreme Commander’ furore raged – he was sensitive to and respectful of the British government’s position.
“The President is coming to the United Kingdom to reinforce our alliance,” he said. “And of course, to publicly lay this Supreme Commander business to bed once and for all.”
Tom Harding-Grayson sighed.
This, of course, was the other fly in the ointment.
Other than that General Harold Keith Johnson was the Chief of Staff of the US Army, the Foreign Secretary personally knew nothing about the man and there would be little opportunity to sound out the opinions of the British Chiefs of Staff prior to the Supreme-Commander designate of All Allied Forces in Europe stepping off the plane with Jack Kennedy sometime late tomorrow afternoon at Brize Norton.
Tom Harding-Grayson cleared his throat.
“I take it that President is aware that our security people have not yet intercepted the IRA active service responsible, we believe, for smuggling three prototype General Dynamic Redeye shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles into the United Kingdom?”
“Yes. The President has been advised that these missiles pose only a very slight risk to aircraft in flight. Which is why the US Army specified a two year program of evaluation trials before considering the Redeye system suitable for general deployment.”
The Foreign Secretary was not so sanguine.
“In my experience what military men think will or won’t work often bears very little relationship to reality, Walter.”
“As I understand it a Redeye has to be launched from virtually point blank range at the tail pipes of a jet to have any chance of hitting it. Besides, I hardly think that even the IRA would fire a rocket at the President’s plane!”
Chapter 57
10:05 Hours
Sunday 5th April 1964
Redditch, Worcestershire
Seamus McCormick had kept the plan simple because he knew there was no way he could sell a complicated plan to the two IRA killers who had viewed him with sullen, mistrustful eyes as he spoke.
He would assemble all three Redeyes.
Frank Reynolds and Sean O’Flynn would steal a vehicle and drive south with one missile and an M171 launcher. They would find a ‘firing point’ somewhere in the Cotswolds to the north or north east of Brize Norton; they had no chance of getting anywhere near optimum range so there was no point bothering. Their job was – some time during the middle of tomorrow, any time from mid-day to about four o’clock in the afternoon would be fine – to shoot their single Redeye in the direction of RAF Brize Norton.
That was all they had to do.
If they elected to remain in England that was their business; likewise it was up to them if they tried to make a ‘home run’ return to Ireland.
He would take the other two Redeyes and the Bedford lorry and head down to Cheltenham.
“What’s your plan when you get to Cheltenham, friend?” Sean O’Flynn asked menacingly.
“You don’t need to know that.”
“We do,” Frank Reynolds snarled.
“No, you don’t.”
Brize Norton, Cheltenham and Pres
twick in Scotland were the three busiest civilian airports in the United Kingdom and all three were also emergency bases for the RAF’s surviving V-Bomber Force. V-Bombers were routinely dispersed to each location. Unlike Prestwick, both Cheltenham and Brize Norton were protected by batteries of long-range Bristol Aeroplane Company Bloodhound surface-to-air missiles and locally by emplaced guns of every imaginable calibre from twenty-millimetre all the way up to 3.7 inch barrels. Moreover, both of these southern ‘civil hubs’ sat within five to ten mile deep defence exclusion zones.
Seamus McCormick planned to penetrate the Cheltenham DEZ by masquerading as a missile technician delivering spares for the Bloodhounds positioned in the hills overlooking the eastern end of the two-and-a-half mile long runway of the air base which had been laid across the footprint of the old race course. He rated his chances as about sixty-forty, against. With the two IRA men in tow he had no chance of getting inside the DEZ.
More importantly, there was no point breaking into the Cheltenham DEZ if when he got there he did not have anything to shoot down. If an emergency or a scare could be engineered at Brize Norton then all 'high priority' landings would automatically be switched to Cheltenham for several hours guaranteeing a plethora of possible targets. Two IRA men randomly shooting off a Redeye in controlled Brize Norton airspace – or even getting caught inside the DEZ before they got a chance to shoot their missile - was hardly a sure fire way to engineer an ‘emergency’; but it was the best thing he could think of in the circumstances.