The Burning Time (Timeline 10/27/62 Book 5)

by James Philip

  “We must seize back the whole of Cyprus,” Gorshkov said flatly. “Without Cyprus, Crete will eventually fall and the enemy will have the option to ‘island hop’ north towards our exposed and weakly defended southern flank. If the enemy holds Cyprus the countries of the Levant and perhaps, even those of Arabia will still have hope. Babadzhanian’s tanks can pick off countries one at a time but if he has to worry about his flanks he’ll never get to the Arabian Gulf. So we must take Cyprus and we must hurt the British and the Americans so badly, that they leave us with the spoils of our victory in the east. Even if they leave us undisturbed for a few weeks or months we will amass such strength on the ground that they will never drive us back.”

  Chuikov did not disagree with a word he said but Gorshkov was missing the point. Either they won this war quickly or they were completely fucked. If Babadzhanian’s ‘push to the south’ stalled there were no new tank regiments to throw into the line. Once the cutting edge of mobile front line units in Koshevoi’s western sector were gone, that was it.

  Operation Chastise was the Soviet Union’s last throw of the dice.

  “I will give you your ‘demonstrations’ against the Task Force the enemy is sending to Cyprus,” Gorshkov promised grimly. “But nothing will prevent the loss of our strategic hold over the Anatolian flank of the Trans-Caucasus, and the exposure of the right flank of Colonel-General Babadzhanian’s push to the south other than a direct attack on, the seizure and destruction of the enemy’s one vital strategic outpost in the Central Mediterranean.”

  Koshevoi spluttered with ire.

  Chuikov sniffed, and considering the outrageous, positively Machiavellian logic of the argument rather than the scarcity of the forces at his disposal.

  “Babadzhanian will want your head on a stick if I give you his paratroopers, Comrade Sergei Georgiyevich,” he observed.

  “I also want naval garrison troops from every port in the Black Sea,” Sergei Gorshkov told him. “Moreover, the harassing sorties into the Maltese Air Exclusion Zone must cease with immediate effect. Or if they must continue mount them at such times of day that the alarms sound in the middle of the night or when the first shifts are arriving at the dockyards.”

  Koshevoi lost his temper.

  “We have to gather electronic intelligence!”

  “Why?” Gorshkov snapped. “Don’t you see, Comrade Colonel-General? Everybody talks about Maskirovska but sometimes I don’t think any of you know what it means. We must show the enemy the empty palm of one hand and let them study it with such concentration that they will be completely caught by surprise when we hit them with the clenched fist of the other. As we speak their ships will be leaving Malta to sail to Cyprus. Let them. Leave Malta alone. Remember the open hand, my friends. We force them to watch the open hand and then, when they are transfixed and we have drawn them into a battle in the East; we tear out their guts in the West!”

  Chapter 37

  Wednesday 1st April 1964

  Eton College, Berkshire

  The King of London was wearing an Eton top hat, a threadbare grey pin-stripe suit and waistcoat. He had a black and white striped scarf around his neck and Army boots on his feet. Although he had shaved for the occasion his hair was tousled and he had the same lean, hungry look of the hundreds of his ‘subjects’ who had lined the route into the ancient school.

  A detachment of the Prime Minister’s Royal Marine bodyguard had moved into Eton College the day before. There had been harsh words but no violence, the King and his courtiers understood where the real power lay if it came to a shooting match.

  Eton College had been a compromise meeting place; several locations closer to the centre of London had been mooted by the King’s representative, a red-headed woman in her thirties with a sharp tongue and an even sharper mind. Her name was Miriam Prior, before the war she had been a primary school teacher in Islington and among her own people, she was treated like a latter day saint. The Home Office had wanted to hold this first ‘plenary session’ – as Miriam Prior had styled it – in Oxford but the King of London had, through his red-headed, abrasive mouthpiece rejected this out of hand.

  Two RAF Hawker Hunter jet fighters roared overhead as the Prime Minister’s armoured Rolls-Royce rumbled past the Provost’s Garden into the heart of the College complex.

  “Oh dear,” Roy Jenkins, the Home Secretary murmured. “All the windows seem to have gone from the Chapel.” He sighed. “And the roof appears to be open to the elements in places. I was hoping that this far out there might be a little less,” he shrugged, “damage.”

  “Windsor Castle is still pretty much intact,” Sir Richard Amyatt Hull pronounced cheerfully from his backwards facing seat. The Army Chief gave every impression of enjoying his outing. “My staff was astonished these people hadn’t colonised the castle.”

  “Eton College is one of their outer ‘contact’ settlements, General,” the Home Secretary told him. “They’ve experienced a lot of trouble from people in the nearby areas that escaped the worst of the bombing. Windsor Castle is currently garrisoned by a company of the Middlesex Regiment and ‘King Harold’ and his people keep well away from the place. I think they’ve learned to be self-sufficient and to be wary of people they don’t know.”

  The troops ‘holding’ Windsor Castle were one of a number of small ‘forward units’ ringing the capital. Its brief was to observe and occasionally send out patrols but otherwise, simply to maintain ‘a presence’ in the no man’s land on the outer edges of the devastated lands. Similar ‘presences’ had been routinely deployed around other bombed areas; although thus far their role had been almost entirely passive. The Castle had survived the October War with only superficial damage, the town in its shadow had fared less well and remained uninhabited sixteen months after the cataclysm. After the war the survivors of the outlying regions of the bombed zones had bled into the surrounding countryside, clogging the main roads. It had been some months before a systematic attempt was made to bury the dead who had fallen along the roadsides around London...

  “My people tell me that the people just up the road from here still regard these people,” General Hull waved at the crowds outside the car curiously looking in, “as unclean. Scavengers, troublemakers, disease carriers, that sort of thing. It puts me in mind of some of the things I saw after the war in Europe ended in forty-five.”

  Margaret Thatcher had spoken little on the drive south from Oxford. One of the reasons she had invited the Chief of the General Staff of the Army to join the small delegation was to hear a detailed update on the deteriorating situation in Northern Ireland. Over a hundred soldiers had been killed in the last seven days, so had a score of IRA – Irish Republican Army – men and at least fifty civilians, mostly caught in the crossfire or bombings. There had also been an incident in which British troops had inadvertently – Sir Richard was fairly certain it was ‘inadvertently’ – crossed into the territory of the Irish Republic and shots had been fired at Irish troops before anybody realised what had happened. Weapons manufactured in American factories, some bearing US Army stamps and registration codes, including M-16 assault rifles and World War II ‘pineapple’ type hand grenades, had been discovered in a series of raids in Belfast and Londonderry.

  “You were in Italy and then Germany in 1945, General?”

  “OC 1st Armoured Division in Italy in forty-four, then 5th Division in Germany. I suppose the thing I took from those days is that no matter how smashed a society is, and the Germans were in a pretty dreadful state at the end of the war and it was probably even worse in the Russian sector, sooner or later civilised people pull themselves together and start to rebuild. These people out here,” another wave at the crowd, “whatever they look like they’ve obviously got themselves organised and made a start getting on with things. They’re probably ten times more motivated to start the rebuilding process than the people five miles up the road who got away more or less scot free on the night of the war, Prime Minister.”

&nb
sp; “You may be right, General.”

  Harold Strettle, the King of London stepped forward from a throng of hard-faced men and women.

  It was then that Margaret Thatcher realised that she had seen no small children. Moreover, very few among the crowd which pressed against the cordon of heavily armed Royal Marines were older than forty, most were young adults and teenagers.

  The Prime Minister sized up her host.

  “Forgive me if I’m a little bit stuffy about it, Mister Strettle,” she said, quirking a smile. “But I recognise only one Monarch in this land.”

  Miriam Prior had positioned herself by the right shoulder of King Harold. She was a riot of colour, her jacket a quilt of different fabrics. She seemed to be wearing purple mascara!

  Margaret Thatcher guessed the man’s age to be mid-forties; it was hard to know these days.

  “I didn’t vote for you Mrs Thatcher,” Harold Strettle declared. “I voted Labour. Pity a few more people didn’t. Maybe we wouldn’t be in such a mess if we’d had good old Hugh Gaitskell in Number Ten eighteen months ago. Not that Hugh was the real thing. Still, we can’t change the past, can we?”

  Harold Strettle was about the Prime Minister’s height. His green eyes met her stare unblinking. The moment was pregnant with possibilities and Margaret Thatcher recognised the prickling, electric hostility in the air as a physical, malevolent thing until by a simple gesture, the self-styled King of London stuck out his right hand in welcome and comprehensively punctured the expanding balloon of mistrust with a broad welcoming grin.

  Shifting her handbag – a grey, somewhat battered specimen today – to the crook of her left arm she shook the man’s hand. His grip was firm but in no way testing. His palm was dry, rough, calloused.

  It was sunny morning. The spring time of the year would soon be upon them. There had been no real summer last year, perhaps this year would be more normal.

  Margaret Thatcher looked around.

  “I plan to rebuild this country, Mr Strettle,” she declaimed, loudly. “Will you join me in this great endeavour?”

  To her surprise the King of London shrugged.

  “Show me your plan and I’ll show you mine.”

  Roy Jenkins, the Home Secretary got the joke and so did the Chief of the General Staff; all of King Harold’s men and women also got the joke. Margaret Thatcher did not, her mind was too literal a strength and a flaw as yet unexplored in her short but eventful premiership.

  The Home Secretary quickly stepped forward.

  Sometimes in moments of stress he pronounced a ‘w’ in the wrong place, not quite a lisp or a speech impediment, more a mannerism.

  “Pewhaps,” he suggested anxiously, “we should carwy on this conversation in pwivate...”

  This time everybody laughed, even the Prime Minister.

  The Royal Marines struggled to stop the crowd pressing through the doors after the King and his visitors, to no avail because soon people were clambering into College Hall through open windows. Chairs were arranged haphazardly around a roughly oval area free of furniture in the approximate centre of the floor.

  “You should sit over there,” Miriam Prior pointed to the least rickety of the chairs on the brighter side of College Hall.

  Margaret Thatcher was pleasantly surprised to discover that the glass in the windows was intact and that the gloominess was because curtains or blinds had been drawn closed. In a moment bright lights switched on.

  “We have generators,” the red-headed woman said employing the tone of somebody who was making a very important point.

  While the Angry Widow’s Royal Marines packed the rows at her back and edged in around the sides of the Prime Minister’s small delegation, the room filled with ragged, but surprisingly fit and healthy people. Some of the newcomers were cleaner than others but practically everybody stank of sweat, mud and dampness. Margaret Thatcher stared more than she knew she ought at the numerous members of ‘the King’s’ following who might have been dressed for the occasion by a theatrical costumier. Most of the women wore trousers or leggings under dresses and skirts that seemed otherwise rather too short, well above the knee and in some cases, mid-thigh. Several men had long shoulder length hair, moustaches, but not all had beards. Others wore coats with golden epaulettes, or military badges or rings on their cuffs. As her eyes grew accustomed to the light she saw that there was a large CND – Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament – banner nailed up on the end wall of the hall. King Harold’s followers looked like a band of gypsies!

  She would ask Pat Harding-Grayson to check her hair for unwanted passengers tonight. Although she doubted these people were any more or less lousy than the other crowds with which she mingled; one had to be constantly aware of one’s personal hygiene to stay fit and free of parasites. The worst problem was the availability of safe drinking water if one was away from civilization, she knew several colleagues who had had worms. Things that one had taken for granted before the cataclysm could so easily lead to debilitating, often fatal infections and illnesses.

  “I’m sorry, Prime Minister,” Roy Jenkins muttered. “I had no idea things would develop in this fashion.”

  “Please don’t concern yourself, Mr Jenkins.” In so saying Margaret Thatcher placed her handbag on the floor by her chair, stood up and brushed down her skirt. “To whom should I address my remarks, Miss Prior?” She asked.

  “To us all.”

  “Neither you or Mr Strettle speak for your, er, group?”

  “That’s not the way it works.”

  “Enlighten me, how does it work?”

  Harold Strettle put a hand on Miriam Prior’s shoulder. He had taken off his Eton top hat and dropped it on a chair, now he wiped the thinning hair across his balding pate.

  “You wouldn’t be talking to me, to any of us, if you didn’t want something. We’ve got radios and people passing through tell us things. One way and another we know what’s happening out there,” he waved dismissively at thin air. “Half the Navy got sunk in the Mediterranean last month and Malta got bombed before Christmas. Blimey, the Russians tried to kill the Queen! First off the Yanks were our best friends, and then they were our enemies, now they may be our friends again. As for what’s going on the other side of the Irish Sea!” The man spoke with a sanguine voice that belied the trouble in his eyes. “So, I’m guessing you want us to help you clear the main roads to the docks so big ships can come straight up the Thames. What with Liverpool getting hit in the war, not having a big port like London is a problem? Right?”

  “It is,” she agreed. If the man did not look so ridiculous she would have had much more respect for him.

  Is that his fault or mine?

  The King of London shrugged as if he did not know the answer to her silent question.

  “Once you’ve got roads cleared,” he went on, “you can send in the Army to dig up all the bank vaults. The way I see it, once you’ve done that you’ll forget all about us.”

  Roy Jenkins was on his feet.

  “That is not our intention!”

  “Forgive me, sir,” Margaret Thatcher enunciated with chilling clarity, “what do you take us for?”

  Harold Strettle returned her glare with dull eyes.

  “The last time I trusted politicians and people like him” he nodded at General Sir Richard Hull, I ended up spending most of the next four years in a Japanese prison camp. After what happened a year or so back I don’t reckon an awful lot has changed since 1942.”

  It was not lost on Margaret Thatcher that Miriam Prior had extended her arm around the man’s waist as he spoke.

  “Singapore?” The Chief of the General Staff inquired flatly.

  Harold Strettle nodded.

  “Bad business,” Sir Richard Hull agreed. “The people in charge ought to have been shot. For what it is worth, Mr Strettle,” he added, dryly, “that sort of thing would never have happened if Mrs Thatcher had been in charge in those days!”

  The Prime Minister let this compliment –
she was fairly certain it was a compliment – pass unremarked. She decided to try a different approach.

  “Mr Strettle,” she began, softening a little, “it is true that my Government has a vested interested in re-opening the Greater London area and restoring it as a national transportation and telecommunications hub. One look at the map tells one that all roads in the United Kingdom go to London. Less well known is that the national telephone system used to radiate out from Farringdon which lies in the centre of the devastated area. Yes, it is our objective to clear the roads and open up the docks. And yes, at some point we intend to discover what remains of the telecommunications infrastructure beneath the streets of the capital. Yes, our plans will involve clearing key road routes and if possible, re-establishing railways and other communications, like a working telephone system if not in the capital, then passing through it. It is also true that it is in the national interest to ‘mine’, as you say, the vaults of banks and the basements of other public and commercial buildings for valuables, materials and documentary archives which may have survived the October War. However, the reason I am here today is to seek your co-operation in the first step of national reconstruction.”

  I am hectoring the man!

  Stop it!

  She shut her eyes for a moment.

  “Today, my primary purpose is simply to meet with you to learn what I can about your people and to ascertain what assistance we may be able to offer you in the immediate future. Honestly and truly, if it was the Government’s policy to brazenly reassert its control over the bombed areas of the England we would have just sent in Sir Richard’s boys and had done with it!”

  That had broken the ice and a slow, tentative thaw had ensued.

  They had sat down and the Prime Minister had listened intently to everything King Harold and his ‘Queen’, Miriam, had had to say. It had been a chastening experience for all concerned.