by Tom Black
“Honestly, Harold, I really am pleased that you have decided to see sense on this whole issue.”
18 Frognal Gardens was shut fast against the cold, but a draught had managed to find its way in regardless, snapping at the Leader of the Labour Party’s trouser leg. He shivered slightly, turning the gas fire up a notch and settling back into the cracked leather armchair.
“I appreciate that, Hugh. Besides, you are quite right, it hardly serves us to make things difficult for ourselves when Mac the Knife is already flailing around trying to patch things up below the waterline.”
Hugh Gaitskell smiled broadly, as he was so prone to doing in private, downing his whisky in the process.
“Could you get us another one?” he asked, “I don’t like sending you off in the cold like this without a decent amount of warmth in your belly.”
The Shadow Chancellor gathered the tumblers and headed over to the drinks Cabinet. As he poured out two generous measures of Bruichladdich, he looked out over to the black rise of Hampstead Heath, which rose forebodingly out of the inky blackness, just visible against the illumination provided by the bourgeois homes and villas. He desperately tried to avoid thinking about it as he dropped in the tablet. If he didn’t think about it, there was always a remote chance it wouldn’t actually happen.
He grimaced as Hugh gratefully took the Scotch and held it to his eye.
“Well Harold, here is to a Labour victory!”
The Shadow Chancellor, feigning sincerity, brought his glass to Hugh’s and set a chime ringing out through the room…
Harold’s glass met Jacob’s and a familiar chime brought him back to reality.
“Cheers,” he murmured, hoping the drink would calm his nerves.
“Not to disagree with you, Prime Minister,” Airey Neave said, disagreeing with her, “but I must admit that the General Secretary seemed to be hiding something.”
It had been ten minutes since Thatcher and Brezhnev had ended their conversion on fairly acrimonious grounds. For all that Brezhnev claimed to be keeping an eye out to detain the former Prime Minister, it seemed curious that two incompetent Soviet agents could be lying in a Norfolk morgue without anyone in the Kremlin knowing why they had been sent there. The inner circle had left the Private Office and gone back into the Cabinet Room. With most of the new Ministers still moving into their new offices, only the Foreign Secretary and Lord Chancellor had remained.
Airey Neave sat back, expecting another roasting from her. To his surprise, a far less savage putdown emerged from the other end of the table.
“That said,” Reginald Maudling piped up, “there’s quite a lot to be said for this being a program that someone within the Kremlin is doing without the knowledge of the majority of the Politburo.”
Thatcher and Neave turned at him, both having almost forgotten that the Prime Minister had ended up appointing Maudling to the FCO after all.
“What do you mean by that, Reggie?” Thatcher asked.
Maudling paused for a moment, finishing his Lagavulin in the process.
“Well, Prime Minister, consider the facts,” he said, standing up and walking over to a bust of the Duke of Wellington, “one thing that is obviously true is that Mr Wilson would have been recruited well before the current generation of leadership assumed power. That’s obvious enough. The whole Stonehouse case demonstrated that once you assume any position of authority, the Intelligence Services are able to pick up on any moves you make towards Moscow.”
Thatcher gave a slow nod.
“Further,” Maudling continued, “there is also the matter of infighting and jockeying for position within the Kremlin. I know that this is a little bit too technical for most of you, but there’s the obvious truth that enough people in the Kremlin don’t really like Mr Brezhnev and may therefore want to keep information concealed from him.”
Maudling looked around impassively, noting the cracks that were starting to form in the Prime Minister’s make-up.
“I mean, just imagine, this is the greatest propaganda coup since Sputnik and Brezhnev didn’t even allow himself a little cackle?”
Maudling returned to his seat, smugly aware of the silence that his monologue had left.
“Of course,” he concluded, “those are just my initial thoughts.”
Sir John diplomatically cleared his throat.
“So, Prime Minister,” the civil servant said, “what progress would you like to make from here?”
Before she had time to respond, Neave found his voice again.
“Regardless of what Reggie thinks about who was keeping secrets in Moscow from whom,” he began, “there’s the obvious point to be made about us needing to show our strength.”
Sir John and Maudling shared a worried glance as Airey went on.
“Our international reputation is going to be in the gutter after this. Suez will be seen as a minor blip. Frankly, we’ll be lucky to keep our seat at the Security Council, let alone Polaris.”
“At this time, Airey,” Maudling replied, “that hardly seems the most pressing concern.”
“Not a concern, Reggie?” Neave mocked, “It will be when you’ll only be allowed to talk to the Yugoslavs and other non-entities at international conferences. Or, to put it in terms closer to your heart, I don’t think that North Yemen do especially good gala lunches.”
Once again, Sir John almost had to break up a fight.
“Gentlemen, please,” Thatcher began, “we must decide on a course of action as soon as possible. Lord Mountbatten is due to address the country in less than half an hour, we need to have something to tell them beyond explaining why the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs has gained a black eye.”
Neave leaned back, remembering how tired he was.
“Well Margaret,” he said, “regardless of what Reggie thinks, we need to ensure that Polaris has not been compromised.”
“Mr Younger is being briefed by my colleagues at the MOD,” interjected Sir John, “but I can report that the codes were changed as soon as we realised Mr Wilson had gone.”
“That’s not the point I wish to make,” Neave snapped, “we need to prove to the rest of the world that the United Kingdom wishes to defend her honour. Margaret, you need to get a direct line to NATO as soon as you’ve dealt with President Ford, and insist that the nuclear deterrent be placed on maximum alert.”
Margaret Thatcher, suddenly the smallest person in the room, stayed mute. Fortunately for international geo-politics, the Minister for Information gave a small cough, alerting the inner circle to the fact he had been standing in the doorway for the last few minutes.
“Lord Mountbatten,” said Margaret in surprise, “please, join us.”
“Thank you, Prime Minister. If I may make an interjection?”
“Please.”
“Mr Neave,” Mountbatten said, drawing on all his experience of keeping over-zealous military cadets in check, “whilst I can respect your anger and frustration, I don’t think that sabre-rattling when we are all operating on about three hours’ sleep is the best way of ensuring rational thought.”
Now it was Airey Neave’s turn to feel humbled.
“I agree with the Minister for Information,” Margaret said, “your anger is understandable, Airey, but the United Kingdom looks foolish enough as it is without taking the world to the brink of nuclear war.”
“I...”
“...was only putting the country first,” Thatcher said smoothly, “Yes, it is one of your finest qualities. Now, I am sure you didn’t mean to offend Reggie, and that we can all go on from here. What is in the national interest is to patch things up with the Americans, protect national law and order and to make sure that we capture the greatest traitor this country has had since Benedict Arnold.”
No one felt it wise to correct the Prime Minister as she made her way back to the Private Office. Airey shot Mountbatten a sideways glance, while Sir John looked at the Admiral with no small degree of admiration.
When he had woken that morning, Chris Mullin had expected a slow news day drafting the week’s schedule, perhaps interrupted by lunch. He now found himself in the cramped offices of World in Action deciding how best to inform the public about a constitutional coup by the Security Services, the Conservative Party and the Royal Family.
When Caroline Benn had turned up just after 3pm, the demonstrators had already started gathering at Trafalgar Square. When Bill Birtles arrived fifteen minutes later, the first missiles had already been thrown.
“Chris, I’m surprised that Obergruppenführer Mountbatten hasn’t shut you down already.” Birtles was saying, taking a gulp of tea. “The New Order can’t have any of this ‘democracy’ lark going on if they want to shut down the Labour Party, can they?”
“I have to admit that it is going a little bit ‘Night of the Long Knives’ out there,” Mullin conceded, “although I don’t think that Mrs Thatcher is much cop at being Hitler.”
“She isn’t much cop at being fucking Macmillan either!”
Mullin winced.
“I suppose that this leaves us with a number of options in terms of how we pursue the matter within the press,” Caroline said, changing the subject as diplomatically as she could manage, “Jimmy assumes that whatever shape the new government takes, they are going to be quick to establish some sort of censorship regulations, especially with Mountbatten’s resurrection of the Ministry of Information.”
“I wouldn’t mind that if they’d censored Lady Haw-Haw’s statement this morning,” Birtles muttered, “I have seen car crashes that were more reassuring.”
“Be that as it may,” Caroline said, “I have two questions and one pretty much begets the other.”
The erstwhile Viscountess Stansgate walked to the other end of Mullin’s cramped office, taking the latest – and by now – entirely irrelevant October 1974 edition of The Times Guide to the House of Commons. She returned to the desk, noting that the trickle of protesters heading towards Whitehall had become a stream in the space of fifteen minutes. Somewhere nearby, she heard a window break.
“Bill,” she said to the barrister, “Does the Crown actually have the authority to detain an entire party en masse and if not, how do we go about making some noise on their behalfs?”
“Without any emergency legislation being brought in,” Birtles responded immediately, “it would have to go through an Order in Council. To the best of my knowledge, anyone can be charged with ‘seditious conspiracy’, but that’s been basically moribund for the past few years. Besides, you’d have to charge people with that individually and unless the Stasi have been working around the clock or,” he chuckled darkly, “had prepared them in advance, they won’t have had the time to.”
“Weren’t Mosley and the rest of the BUF locked up during the war?” Mullin asked.
“They were, Chris, but like I said, that was only done under one of the Defence Regulations. Frankly, I think that we’ve just been witness to a sudden, entirely unconstitutional coup and the government’s going to have to play catch up, charge people retroactively and hope that no one notices.”
“That has to be an hour’s worth of television right there, Chris,” Caroline replied.
Mullin leant back in his chair, half-hoping that Ian Gilmour was going to get shot by someone from the Freedom Association to take the heat off Labour for a few hours. Much to his relief, Radio 4 crackled back into life, ending the Hubert Parry marathon and forcing the three anti-conspirators to hush their conversation as Peter Donaldson returned to the air.
“The Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, has announced that Parliament is to be recalled for an extraordinary sitting tomorrow morning. This is the first time that the House has sat on a weekend since the Suez Crisis. Mrs Thatcher announced the change to Parliamentary business twenty minutes ago, shortly after speaking to the Soviet Premier, Mr Brezhnev and also to President Ford. Downing Street did not comment on the precise details of the conversation, although it is understood that the Soviet Union have denied any knowledge of aiding or abetting the actions of the former Prime Minister, Mr Wilson, who remains at large.”
“Remains uncharged!” Birtles yelled, before being shushed by the other two. Mullin almost ripped the rotary dial off the phone. To his surprise, the call connected almost at once.
“Cabinet Office,” he barked, “now!”
An ocean away, the President of the United States was growing similarly annoyed by the vagaries of British law.
“Hank, can you explain to me again exactly what is going on?” he found himself asking the Secretary of State, nursing a headache that the Thatcher woman’s voice had only served to exacerbate.
The Oval Office was the busiest it had been since the mid-terms. Not for the first time, Ford cursed his predecessor for hanging him out to dry. He moaned to himself as Kissinger started again.
“It is hard to get a clear picture, Mr President,” the Secretary of State began, “I have spoken to both Andrei and Brezhnev and – to be perfectly frank – both of them seem as surprised by this as we do.”
That was not the response I wanted to have to deal with, Ford thought to himself.
“That said, it is impossible to think that this spy ring was established without someone in the Kremlin knowing about it, I therefore rather think that there are power plays at work within the Soviet hierarchy to discredit both men. I have spoken to Walter, he is seeing if the hardliners have been making any noise recently. It may also be worthwhile to consider if Zhou or Hua had anything to gain...”
Kissinger stopped, noticing that the President was eying him wearily.
“Hank, I swear to god that every time you tell me something new, it pushes something old out of the other end of my brain.”
“My apologies, Mr President,” Kissinger smiled humourlessly, “but the situation is not one that I had any forewarning of.”
“I kind of realised that,” said the third man at the table, giving an oily grin.
“What do you mean, Don?” the President said to his Chief of Staff.
“What I mean, Jerry, is that the Brits can’t be trusted any more. I have all respect for Dr Kissinger here,” he lied, “but there’s clearly such a nefarious nest of Communists in the highest level of London’s government that I am surprised that neither of you have suggested taking control of our nuclear submarines before whichever commissar is in charge of Britain at the moment sails them up the Baltic.”
Ford was merely surprised at the outburst, an emotion that was not shared by his Secretary of State.
“May I remind you, Mr Rumsfeld,” Kissinger icily responded, placing distinct emphasis on the Chief of Staff’s title, “that the British remain one of our closest allies?”
“Didn’t look like that when they went all bleeding heart on us over Vietnam did they?” Rumsfeld retorted back, “nah. They went off the ‘Special Alliance’ years ago Hank, even before they put a Leninist in Downing House.”
“What do you suggest we do then?” Ford asked, as Kissinger looked on in horror.
“Get in touch with whoever is supposed to be in charge at the moment, tell them to recall every ship that has so much as seen a uranium atom and if they don’t comply, start shadowing them with the Sixth.”
Kissinger, already on the verge of a heart attack, rallied.
“Mr President, at the current state of alert that could prompt serious ramifications for our dealings with the new administration.”
“New administration?” Rumsfeld replied, “How are we to know that the Soviets haven’t infiltrated them as well? If we have learned one thing from today, Mr President, it’s that nobody at the State Department has any idea who’s running the United Kingdom.”
“That is an entirely improper allegation!” shouted Kissinger, red with rage.
Ford wished that there was a constitutional way for him to become House Minority Leader again.
Chapter eight
Saturday 1st November 1975 – 6:45pm
&nbs
p; Although he had been spared the usually inevitable queue at Passport Control, it was turning into an uncomfortable transfer for Roy Jenkins. As soon as he had felt the cold metal of the handcuffs encase his wrists, he had given a silent prayer for the first time in many years. Although the – presumably fake – police officers had not had an Irish accent between them, there was something a little Quebec about the whole development.
“There’s no need for alarm, Mr Jenkins, we are just taking you somewhere for your own safety.”
‘Somewhere’ was probably a ditch outside Virginia Water, the former Home Secretary thought to himself.
During times of personal strife, Jenkins found himself possessed of quite extraordinary calm. There had been a few similar occasions, although none that had carried quite the same risk of physical death. The closest, he pondered whilst taking a few deep breaths to ward off hyperventilation, had been that ghastly moment when the trade figures had sunk their electoral chances back in ’70.
He found himself repeating all his political failures as the van rumbled to a halt. Typical. He was going to have a Beretta blow his head open as his last memory was that look of hatred that Tony gave him as he walked into the ‘Aye’ lobby during the second reading of the European Communities Bill.
Without warning, the van doors opened, briefly blinding him. He thought it odd that his designated place of execution looked so similar to the one of the Foreign Office courtyards.
As he was pulled out, he noticed that it was one of the Foreign Office courtyards. There was little time to appreciate it for the final time, as a coat was immediately thrown over his head.
Mentally, he traced his steps. Up the side-steps, he thought, then along past that dreadful portrait of Palmerston, then thirty-eight – no – thirty-nine steps to the mezzanine, then along the corridor by the Locarno suite, then by the Under-Secretary’s Office.