by James Philip
Margaret Thatcher’s tone was unapologetic.
“Like the bloody Yanks leaving us in the lurch!” A man bawled from the benches opposite. “Again!”
There was a massive outburst of agreement, angrily and repeatedly growled, bawled and rumbled from all around the Prime Minister.
She raised her right hand.
“There was never any formal understanding that United States Navy vessels would stand sentinel outside the Grand Harbour while Operation Grantham proceeded!” She thundered at the heckler. “The US Navy undertook to maintain a force in Maltese waters at all time and that is exactly what it did! That it so happened that this force was exercising to the west rather than the east of the Maltese Archipelago at the time of the attack is merely a cruel trick of war. How often in the past have similar misfortunes beset out own fleets?”
There were more derisive cries from the drab men and women flanking the leader of the putative ‘Socialist Labour Party’, Michael Foot. Their leader was oddly silent, seemingly lost in his thoughts.
Margaret Thatcher wondered if her two greatest opponents in the Commons, Enoch Powell and Michael Foot understood that what she was prepared to say publicly about the causes of the catastrophe in the Mediterranean and what she was likely to say to Jack Kennedy’s later that afternoon were two entirely different things?
“Wounded Malta is again a functioning base for operations. RAF Luqa is back in action, the Grand Harbour and the Admiralty Dockyards are open for business. Roads are being cleared and power and telephone services are being restored. Every aircraft which has left this country bound for Malta has carried doctors, nurses and other essential workers and vitally needed supplies of all kinds to the Mediterranean. A reciprocal airlift of badly injured men and women to hospitals in the United Kingdom has now begun. At the same time our American friends and allies,” this she very nearly spat in the face of her detractors, “have instituted an ‘air bridge’ between the USA and Prestwick in Scotland accelerating the inflow of medical and other war supplies. In the Central Mediterranean the United States Sixth Fleet commanded by Vice-Admiral Clarey from his mighty flagship the USS Independence is guarding Malta and American aircraft are now maintaining a two hundred mile air exclusion zone around the archipelago. Air Vice-Marshal French, the acting C-in-C following the death in action of Sir Julian Christopher,” the name caught in her throat for a jarring moment, “pays the highest possible tributes to our American allies for their part in assisting HMS Talavera and HMS Yarmouth and the ongoing selfless help to Malta that the ships of the Sixth Fleet are providing.”
Aware that she had become hectoring Margaret Thatcher stopped talking for a count of five seconds.
“However, I have to tell the House that but for the heroism of the much reduced garrison of Malta, the fortitude of the Maltese people and the extraordinary feats of the men of HMS Talavera and HMS Yarmouth, we might today be debating how best to mount an operation to recover the Maltese Archipelago from enemy hands.” She looked around the hall and over her shoulder to her own supporters on the Government benches. “And in that circumstance I would no longer be your Prime Minister.”
Chapter 79
13:31 Hours
Monday 6th April 1964
RAF Luqa, Malta
Rachel Piotrowska saw the young Maltese woman watching the second Comet 4 rush down the runway and soar into the air and approached her, guessing that right now she probably needed a shoulder to cry on.
Rosa Calleja tried to put on a brave face.
“Hello, Clara,” she said forcing an unconvincing smile.
“Ah,” Rachel sighed, feeling guiltier than ever. “Clara’s not actually my real name.”
This momentarily distracted the younger woman from her melancholy. She frowned.
“I don’t...”
“Peter Christopher was right all along about me. Up until a couple of days ago I was ‘a spook’.”
This utterly baffled Rosa.
Seeing this Rachel took pity on her.
“I’ve been spying for the British since 1948,” she confessed. “But I just retired. I’m here to catch a plane back to England,” she lied. “What about you?”
“I was here to say goodbye to Marija, and...”
Rachel joined up the dots. “And a certain dashing young naval officer?” She hoped her false smile did not betray her. The younger woman’s husband, the traitor Samuel Calleja, was presently being transferred to a cell at the damaged but still functioning Royal Military Prison at Paola less than two miles from where the two women now stood. There he would be held overnight with the other condemned men.
Rosa blushed and looked down at her feet.
“Things are very strange,” she muttered, “but we have an agreement.” Her shoulders sagged and she glanced uncertainly at Rachel. “When he returns to Malta I hope things will be simpler, but...”
“My name is Rachel, by the way.”
“That’s a nice name, it is...”
Rosa stopped speaking and felt foolish.
“Jewish, yes,” the older woman confirmed. “I was born in Poland.”
“Oh, I did not mean...”
“I know you didn’t, my dear. Right now you are missing your ‘dashing young naval officer’ and you have every right to feel sorry for yourself.” Rachel took Rosa’s arm. “What you need is a truly disgusting cup of tea and I know exactly where one can be had,” she nodded towards the queue leading into the NAAFI tents erected on the other side of the ruined control tower. “And then you can to sit down and tell Auntie Rachel all about it!”
Chapter 80
16:12 Hours
Monday 6th April 1964
RAF Brize Norton, Oxfordshire
A saluting stand had been erected adjacent to the hardstand allocated to SAM 26000, the flagship of the Presidential fleet of jetliners. Unseasonal winds over the Atlantic and then several extra take offs and landing due to the ‘air bridges’ the RAF was attempting the build between England and both Malta and Cyprus had delayed the landing of the President of the United States of America.
Queen Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas Queen, and Defender of the Faith, had used the interregnum to pick her Prime Minister’s brain to ensure that she was appraised of the most up to date information. Her First Minister’s private office was most punctilious, as befitted an institution supervised by the eminence grise of the Home Civil Service, Sir Henry Tomlinson, but in the Sovereign’s experience of these things, there was no substitute for talking to the man, or in this case, the woman in charge. Moreover, in her relatively short acquaintance with Margaret Thatcher there had never been any doubt who was in charge of the United Administration of the United Kingdom.
“We believe that there might have been as many as two thousand paratroopers dropped over the Maltese Archipelago,” her Prime Minister explained. “After the Soviet ships had stopped shelling the main island and concentrated their fire on HMS Talavera and HMS Yarmouth,” Margaret Thatcher continued with something akin to relish, “a large number of the parachutists were killed before they got anywhere near the ground. You see as soon as the bombardment ceased all our troops came out of their shelters and counter-attacked. Including members of the Malta Local Defence Volunteer force the garrison numbered about four thousand men. Obviously, many of our people were lines of communications troops but everybody had a gun. And then there were the Welsh Guards based in and around Sliema and men from the various HQ companies and so forth.”
Margaret Thatcher eyed the leaden skies and hoped the rain would hold off until the President’s long-range Boeing 707 had landed.
“We have no reliable count for the Soviet dead. We, well, mostly the Americans picked up about forty survivors from the Turkish ship, and about a hundred bodies, too. We haven’t picked up any survivors from the Soviet cruiser the Admiral Kutuzov. The First Sea Lord thinks the survivors must have been carried out to sea b
y the currents. Sir David thinks there might have been as many as three thousand men on the two ships. On land we’ve taken about three hundred and fifty prisoners, many of them injured, of course.”
In the distance the roar of jets engines came down to earth like a whisper of thunder.
Margaret Thatcher understood that to concentrate over much on what had been lost was a mistake, yet how could she not dwell upon the cost?
On and around a small archipelago that in total area was smaller than the Isle of Wight; nearly five thousand people had been killed or seriously injured and at least thirty percent of the population had been bombed out of their homes.
Around the parade stand the Royal Marine Commandos and the Scots Guards of the combined Royal and Prime Ministerial bodyguard dressed their lines and adopted the familiar implacable ‘they shall not pass’ expressions and postures that had become their hallmark.
The first big four-engine jet emerged from the clouds in the east after having circled twice around Brize Norton to allow other traffic to clear the airspace around the base.
At a distance the aircraft was no more than a black silhouette against a grey, gloomy backdrop in which the horizon merged with the land only a handful of miles away.
The roar of the engines approached; the aircraft sank towards the runway.
When it happened nobody quite believed it at first.
From somewhere beyond the north-western boundary of RAF Brize Norton, arching over the cluster of houses of the village which had pre-existed the airfield for centuries a brilliant blue-white flame trailed across the sky like a shooting star. However, unlike a real shooting star this incendiary object seemed to veer, this way and that, as if searching, searching...
The Royal Marines of Margaret Thatcher’s self-styled AWP – Angry Widow’s Praetorians – reacted first but only by a fraction of a second. Monarch and Prime Minister found themselves swept off the reviewing stand with their feet quite literally not touching the ground and carried by a posse of big men sprinting towards their respective armoured Bentley and Rolls-Royce.
A screamed warning and both gangs of bodyguards veered for the nearer Prime Ministerial Rolls-Royce.
The doors slammed shut.
The Queen and Margaret Thatcher looked at each other from six inches away, both crushed breathless and stunned beneath the bodies of several of their bodyguards.
Then there was a huge explosion.
A dreadful crunching, rending of metal.
And a wall of fire swept over the Rolls-Royce.
The car lurched onto its left hand side and started to roll across the unforgiving, burning tarmac.
Chapter 81
17:32 Hours
Monday 6th April 1964
Royal Military Prison, Paola, Malta
Rosa Calleja was not in any kind of daze; it was a hundred times worse than that. The fragile walls of her new life had just collapsed around her and she just wanted to scream. Except no sound would come from her lips because no words could get past her rage, shame and despair.
Sam was alive!
The man who had betrayed her, his people and everything she and all those she loved held dear was alive!
‘Samuel was captured at the Citadel in Mdina. When he was arrested he was holding a gun to Admiral Christopher’s head and in the company of a senior KGB officer,’ Rachel – the woman Rosa had known as Clara Pullman – had explained very, very gently.
It had not sunk in for a long time.
Rachel had led the younger woman to a corner where they could speak without being overheard or approached unseen.
‘Sam was a Red Dawn – a Krasnaya Zarya – agent all along. He claims never to have actually been the man who pulled the trigger but he confessed to being implicated in several terrorist outrages and assassinations.’
‘But,’ Rosa had protested in a small, terrified voice, ‘Admiral Christopher said he had been killed by those people?’
Rachel had tried to take hold of the other woman’s hand; she had shaken off her attempt and turned her back.
‘He believed Sam was probably dead. He saw no point in heaping unnecessary pain on you, or on Sam’s family. He was trying to promote a sense of unity on Malta at the time. If the Calleja family had a bad apple in its midst, what family on Malta could claim it was loyal?’
‘What will happen to Sam?’
Iron doors clanged noisily shut behind the two women as they were escorted deep inside the prison.
“If you would wait here,” a Redcap grunted, gesturing at two chairs placed in the gloomy corridor.
Rosa settled anxiously beside Rachel Piotrowska, whom she now knew to be her guardian. The woman whom many of the surviving Soviet paratroopers now call the ‘black widow of Mdina’ had been appointed by the C-in-C Malta to ‘keep her safe’ until the ‘storm blew over’. Rosa’s preferences in this matter were, it seemed, incidental and of no importance.
‘Can I see him?’ Rosa had asked.
Now that they were here at the prison Rosa was having second thoughts. What could she possibly say to the man who had humiliated her, who had destroyed her? And what, if anything, could he possibly say to her?
“You don’t have to put yourself through this?” Rachel murmured, touching Rosa’s arm.
“Does Marija know?” She asked, sniffing back fresh tears.
“Not yet. There will be no public announcement for some days. Perhaps, not for several weeks. First Sea Lord Admiral Sir David Luce has undertaken to break the news to Peter and Marija after the sentence has been carried out.”
The women lapsed into silence for several minutes.
“This way!” They were summoned.
Chapter 82
16:34 Hours
Monday 6th April 1964
Flight 617, 21,000 feet above Westbury, Wiltshire
Peter Christopher blinked awake. The last thing he remembered was the Secretary of State for Information talking animatedly to him. For a few moments he had no idea what had awakened him.
The bell sounded and Marija pressed his left hand, still – as before he fell asleep – clasped possessively on her lap.
“This is Squadron Leader Guy French again. I’m dreadfully sorry that we are going round and round like this. There has been some kind of ‘local difficulty’ at Brize Norton so we will be diverting to RAF Cheltenham.” The Comet 4’s pilot guffawed insouciantly. “There’s not quite such a long runway at Cheltenham so don’t worry if it seems as if we are breaking a little bit harder than normal when I put the old girl down on terra firma. Oh, yes, I almost forgot; if you care to look out of the windows Fighter Command has sent up a couple of little friends to escort us the rest of the way. It’s quite exciting really!”
Peter Christopher chuckled.
“What is so funny husband?” His wife demanded. Marija was looking very pale and biting her bottom lip.
The man suddenly felt guilty, ashamed of his thoughtlessness. His wife was afraid of flying and he had fallen asleep when he ought to have been comforting her. Gently freeing his left hand he leaned towards her and put his arm around her shoulders. Marija wasted no time moving as close as her seat would allow and doing her best to meld against him.
Her husband planted a kiss in her hair.
“I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I must have been more tired than I thought.”
“It’s okay,” she murmured lowly, “I talked a lot with Iain, he is a very interesting man.”
Chapter 83
17:59 Hours
Monday 6th April 1964
Royal Military Prison, Paola, Malta
There were two civilian prison guards flanking the chair in which the handcuffed man sat. The prisoner looked ashen but seemed, oddly, pacific and unconcerned by his surroundings or the prospect of this final encounter. There was no table in the room but the Redcaps brought in and positioned the two chairs which had been in the corridor about five feet in front of the prisoner.
Rachel went in
to the room first, holding Rosa’s trembling hand.
Strangely, once she was in the room and had got used to the idea that the man handcuffed in the chair in the middle of the cell was in fact her missing, presumed dead husband; the younger woman found new strength. Detaching herself from her minder she stepped up behind one of the vacant chairs, and stared at her husband until he flicked an upward glance towards her.
“I don’t want to sit down,” Rosa said, breathlessly. “It was a mistake coming here.”
Samuel Calleja looked to her coldly, his lip curling in contempt.
“Aren’t you even going to ask me why, wife?”
Rachel winced, stung by the cruelty of this scene. Air-Vice Marshal French had said Rosa had the right to confront, or to at least see her husband before his execution but she had never thought this encounter was a good idea. Now her worst fears seemed to be justified.
“I am not your wife, Samuel Calleja!” Rosa blurted angrily. “You never treated me like your wife and I never felt like I was your wife. You expect me to ask you why? Why you will break your poor Papa’s heart? Why your Mama will cry forever for your cowardly traitorous soul? You understand nothing! You are nothing! Marija and Joe are the best of these islands; you are the worst! What else is there to know?”
Rachel had not imagined the demure young Maltese housewife capable of such viperously focused coldly delivered hyperbole. It was more than the angst of a woman scorned; it was as if Rosa was channelling the rage of the Maltese people.
The man opened his mouth to defend himself.