by James Philip
“Is that unusual?” The Prime Minister inquired, waving her colleagues to hard chairs around a pitted and warped table of significant antiquity and unknown provenance which had already been in the room when she moved in five weeks ago.
“Yes,” said the hang-dog faced man whom in their short partnership in Government Margaret Thatcher had come to trust implicitly. “And no. But three hours is a long time.”
Sir Henry Tomlinson quietly cleared his throat.
“Routine checks are made every twenty to thirty minutes, Prime Minister, by the Command Communications Post at Cheltenham. If there is a problem Cheltenham notifies the Signals Corps at the Joint Command Centre at Chilmark. Chilmark has not received the mid-day SITREP, er, Situation Report, today. It concerns me that communications appear to have broken down only hours before our troops are scheduled to go ashore on Cyprus.”
The Foreign Secretary did not still think that a ‘technical’ problem trumped his outrage.
“A lot of the communications equipment in the Med has been untrustworthy since Red Dawn set off those damned airbursts a couple of months ago!” Tom Harding-Grayson observed waspishly.
“Actually,” the Defence Secretary objected mildly, “after those attacks Admiral Christopher allocated a very high priority to replacing faulty or damaged equipment and the maintaining of secure, reliable links both within theatre and with the home base, Tom.”
“I’m sure we’ll find out what’s broken soon enough, Willie.” The Foreign Secretary found it impossible to be acerbic with the amiably capable Member of Parliament for Penrith and the Border. The man was a perfect, gentle gentleman and a bastion of restraint and reason in the Angry Widow’s increasingly boisterous Cabinet. “What are we going to do about the bloody Falklands?”
Margaret Thatcher was a little perplexed.
She was picking up completely different signals from her Cabinet Secretary and Willie Whitelaw on the one hand, and the Foreign Secretary on the other. Since she implicitly trusted the judgement of all three men, this was of itself deeply worrying. The other thing that worried her was that, off the top of her head she was not entirely sure she knew where the Falkland Islands were; somewhere in the Atlantic?
“The Falkland Islands, Tom?” She asked.
“The Argentine calls them Las Malvinas. The Argentineans claim they settled the islands in 1831 and we stole them in 1833. Most of the people on the island; who call themselves ‘Kelpers’ are of Welsh and Scottish stock, or the descendents of whalers or of British sailors down the ages.”
“How many people are we talking about?”
“Oh, around a couple of thousand.”
“Oh, I see.” Plainly, the Prime Minister did not see and this infuriated her friend.
“The Argentineans were deeply offended when we used the islands as an oiling stop for many of the ships of the Australasian Operation Manna convoys,” the Foreign Secretary explained. “At the time Mr Heath was rightly somewhat derisive about their objections.”
Margaret Thatcher’s immediate concerns had eased when she realised Tom Harding-Grayson was getting excited about the fate of only two thousand British subjects. She was constantly focused on the wellbeing of tens of millions of British subjects, and besides, she still could not – with any confidence, let alone certitude - place the Falkland Islands on the map.
“Did we know the Argentineans were going to invade?”
“They’ve been making noises,” the Defence Secretary told her. “Overflying the islands and interfering with the South Atlantic Whale Fishery, although that industry is in decline anyway. The, er, guard ship, HMS Protector is currently investigating reports of an unauthorised landing by Argentine Marines from an Argentinean warship on South Georgia at the whaling station at Grytviken. She is currently a day’s steaming away from that place...”
“We simply cannot let this go unchallenged!” Tom Harding-Grayson complained.
“No, of course not,” Margaret Thatcher agreed emolliently. “But first things first, Tom. All available resources must be made available to Admiral Christopher in the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean is the key theatre of operations.” Falkland Islands – Argentina? South Atlantic – whale hunting? That sounded like the opposite end of the World? “We must be pragmatic. After Operation Grantham has achieved all its objectives and we have established the true extent, dependability and durability of our re-found alliance with the United States, we will have plenty of time to look at the desirability and or the practicalities of remedying the situation in the South Atlantic. We’ll talk about it again once things have resolved themselves in the Mediterranean.” She looked to her Defence Secretary. “I can tell that you are worried about this breakdown in communications with Malta, Willie?”
“Yes,” he replied flatly.
“Have we talked to the Americans?”
“They just think we’re keeping them in the dark, Prime Minister,” Tom Harding-Grayson complained. “I spoke to the Ambassador before I came over. Walter Brenckmann promised to get straight on the hot line to Philadelphia. I think he was as worried as Willie about this break down in communications.”
There was a heavy knock at the door.
A huge Royal Marine stomped into the room and came to attention.
“The American Ambassador is outside, Ma’am!”
Margaret Thatcher rolled her eyes.
How many times do I have to tell the AWPs that I am to be addressed either as ‘Mrs Thatcher’ or as ‘Prime Minister’? I am not a member of the Royal Family!
“Please show Captain Brenckmann in without delay.”
There was more stamping of booted feet.
Loud voices in the corridor.
Captain Walter Brenckmann, USNR, came in. Dapper, greying and trim in his civilian weeds he was calm in that way a policeman is coolly collected when he knocks on a door to deliver very bad news.
He looked around the room, nodding acknowledgements.
He came straight to the point.
“Malta is under attack from the sea and the air.”
Chapter 47
12:34 Hours
Friday 3rd April 1964
HMS Talavera, Off Dragutt Point, Sliema, Malta
It had not taken Commander Peter Christopher very long to work out that if he manoeuvred close enough to the coast, the range-finding radars of the big ships standing several miles out to sea lost Talavera in the background returns from the shore. Or at least that was his theory. His initial instinct had been to get as far out to sea as possible but then he had realised the big ships had not actually been shooting at Talavera during her escape from the Grand Harbour, and once the destroyer was free to manuever in the open sea beyond the imprisoning breakwaters he had had a chance to reassess matters. Things were clearer now that the radar plot had given him his first glimpse of the true ‘tactical situation’, as his instructors at Dartmouth would have described it only a handful of years ago in a very different and infinitely less cruel World.
He had swung Talavera to the north, crossed the entrance to Marsamxett Anchorage and followed the coast, reducing speed to twelve knots and after a few minutes, reversed his course. The enemy had stopped shooting at him – well, if one discounted an occasional two-gun ranging salvo from the battlecruiser’s secondary battery – and he had forced himself to think through his next actions.
Miles Weiss trotted onto the bridge.
“Do I have torpedoes yet, Number One?”
“Ten to fifteen minutes, sir. Mr Calleja is working on the mount with Griffin.”
Peter Christopher blinked at his Executive Officer.
“Joe’s onboard?”
“Yes, sir.” Miles Weiss moved on. “The radio room is a mess but we’re re-running cables to the aerial array which looks undamaged. We’re also putting up a couple of whip aerials. Hopefully, we should be able to raise the Citadel or the Yarmouth fairly soon.”
“Do we have a casualty count?”
“The Master at Arm
s says we lost a couple of men overboard. Otherwise we’ve got three dead and fourteen wounded but only four of them seriously. Quinn and most of the torpedo division were hit when that near miss went off in the water alongside and the poor fellows on the stern deckhouse gun platform caught a packet. Alan Hannay is re-organising the twenty-millimetre gun crews.” Sub-Lieutenant Rory Quinn had only come aboard a week ago. “Otherwise, we got away lightly.” He glanced overhead as the shrapnel-severed wires flapped in the wind high on the great lattice foremast. The four-ton double bedstead aerials of the Type 965 long-range air search radar still rotated but the bridge repeater was dead. “The next job is getting some chaps up the mast to reconnect the ‘bedsteads’,” he grinned.
“God alone knows how the Type 293 is still working,” Peter chuckled. Just because things weren’t looking very good there was no need to get down hearted about it.
“What’s the plan, sir?” Miles Weiss asked. The two friends had no need to beat about the bush with each other.
“Number Two boiler is lit,” his commanding officer told him. “We’ll have sixty to seventy percent steam on that in ten to fifteen minutes. Assuming we’ve got torpedoes we can fire by then we’ll do this thing the old-fashioned way.”
It was not as if there were that many ‘tactical options’ available to them. Basically, they could run and hide; or they could fight. Running and hiding was the sort of thing other navies did, and if they were going to fight then there was absolutely no point mucking about.
“We’ve got two big ships slowly steaming up and down the coast at about eight or nine knots approximately nine-miles east of Fort St Elmo,” Peter explained. The big ships have three or four smaller units in company but presently they’re two or three miles farther out to sea, presumably screening the gun line from submarine attack. An additional fly in the ointment is that there appears to be another group of ships coming down from the north-east. One big contact and at least three smaller ones. Another cruiser, I shouldn’t wonder. That group is making about twenty knots. I’ve got no idea what they’re up to, but it doesn’t really matter. We’ll worry about them when we’ve done something about those blighters lobbing shells onto the island.”
Miles Weiss’s grin broadened.
“Full speed ahead, all guns blazing and a sharp turn for a broadside torpedo salvo it is then, sir!” He guffawed as if the two young men were discussing sporting tactics. “I’ll tell Jack Griffin and your brother-in-law to shoot a few hundred feet in front of the target!”
“That’s the ticket.” Peter Christopher’s grin became a positively wolfish smile.
“Do I have your permission to resume my post as Gunnery Officer for the duration of the attack run, sir?”
“Granted. Request Mr McCann to stand to the auxiliary steering post in your absence, Miles.”
The two friends knew that there was much to be done and little time.
The met each other’s eye, sobered a little.
They both knew they would probably not live through this day.
“We’re being signalled!”
Both men turned.
“FOXTROT-ONE-OH-ONE!”
The signal lamp winked through the haze.
“Yarmouth!”
“Acknowledge by pendent number.”
In a moment the yeoman standing at the Aldis Lamp on the destroyer’s port bridge rail was clattering Talavera’s own number.
“On acknowledgement send the following signal in the clear,” Peter Christopher ordered, in that moment his voice becoming a hard-edged weapon. The Yarmouth was a post World War II ship not built for this sort of fight, her two 4.5-inch quick firing Mark VI naval rifles were no more capable of scratching the antique ex-German battlecruiser currently raining death on Malta than Talavera’s Mark Vs. However, unlike the rebuilt Talavera, Yarmouth had no torpedo tubes. The two ships’ 4.5-inch shells might inconvenience the Yavuz’s consorts but that was not the primary object of the exercise. Putting as many of Talavera’s 21-inch torpedoes as possible into the side of the Yavuz was.
The twenty-seven year old commanding officer of HMS Talavera did not hesitate. This was like that night off Lampedusa all over again except this time he was a little older, wiser and he understood that what he was about to do could only end badly.
“IN ONE FIVE MINUTES I WILL MAKE A TORPEDO RUN AT ENEMY HEAVIES STOP REQUEST YOU APPROACH ENEMY AT SPEED AND DIVIDE HIS FIRE MESSAGE ENDS”
It did not need to be any more complicated than that.
Although, to the best of his recollection Peter had never met the Captain of HMS Yarmouth; his brother officer would know his duty.
No captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy...
Chapter 48
12:35 Hours
Friday 3rd April 1964
St Catherine’s Hospital for Women, Mdina
Clara Pullman stared into the gloom of the cellar in a shocked daze. The events of the last few minutes had registered on the surface of her mind yet seemed strangely disconnected from her actual experience. Replaying the violence of those last few minutes was like watching a movie, almost as if she had stolen somebody else’s memories except that every time she re-ran the movie she was the one left holding the smoking Kalashnikov.
She saw the paratrooper lying crumpled and broken on the flagstones of the inner courtyard. The silken cords and the flapping grey canvass of his parachute torn and shredded in the branches of the tree high above.
Margo Seiffert had instinctively rushed to the aide of the man on the ground, stepping over his discarded gun.
When the other soldier had opened fire Margo’s slight, bird-like frame had been dashed headlong to the flagstones.
Clara’s mind replayed the nightmare again and again, faster and faster.
Most of the bullets went straight through Margo, sparking on the instantly bloody stones onto which, a moment later, she sprawled. The Medical Director of the St Catherine’s Hospital for Women was virtually cut in half by the magazine-emptying burst of fire, her atomised life blood hanging in suspension in a fine mist for several seconds over her lifeless body after she fell.
Clara had screamed a dreadful, keening scream.
She had been so traumatised in that instant that she had not known who was screaming as she stumbled out into the courtyard and with dull, unknowing eyes looked up at the man who just butchered the most remarkable woman she had ever known.
The man’s parachute had snagged on the ridge tiles of the house next to the hospital, he had slung his gun around his neck and he was half-climbing up the cords of his parachute, half-kicking away the remaining glass in the first floor window of the room below him. He was trapped between the urge to climb up or to attempt to break into the building, all the while he was terrified that his parachute might suddenly tear free above him and hurl him to the ground. His discarded back pack and webbing thumped heavily down onto the granite stones close to where Clara stood.
In that instant a murderous coldness had fallen on her. She had been prepared to hide with the others, defend them if it came to it but hide, fade into the background if she could. She had maintained her cover for nearly a year-and-a-half; and she had actually begun to like the person she had lately become. She and Clara Pullman had come to an accommodation; Clara was a good person and something deep within in her did not want to let that woman die.
Everything had slowed down.
Beyond the courtyard there was gunfire, shouting, the ear-hurting bark of grenades bursting, windows shattering, men and women screaming, bedlam.
In the courtyard and inside Clara’s head there had been only quietness.
Margo was dead.
The trooper who had fallen through the branches of the tree was dead.
Unhurriedly, Clara had bent down and picked up the dead Russian’s AK-47 Kalashnikov. Her left hand hefted the wooden barrel grip, her right hand closed around the trigger guard.
Very slowly, she looked up at Margo
Seiffert’s executioner.
‘Niet! Niet!’ The man had pleaded, struggling desperately to free himself from his parachute harness.
Words came unbidden from her lips.
‘Vy ubiystve ublyudok!’
‘Niet! Niet!’
She had emptied the magazine into the twisting, twitching, convulsing body of the murdering bastard; and afterwards, she had gone back to the dead soldier on the ground next to Margo, retrieved a fresh magazine from his webbing, clicked it home and stood up, pausing to survey the carnage. Just in case there was somebody else she needed to kill.
Arkady Pavlovich Rykov had taught her well.
The body of the trooper she had executed fell – his parachute belatedly coming free of the unseen snags somewhere on the roof. She slung her Kalashnikov over her shoulder and took the killer’s AK-47 from around his neck. She found another fresh magazine, snapped it home.
She had given the second gun to the first woman to fearfully poke her head around the door.
‘Margo is dead. The bastards murdered her,’ Clara had explained flatly, her voice the voice of a stranger. ‘Keep your hands away from the trigger unless you need to shoot somebody. Get back to the cellar.’
That seemed like an hour ago, it was probably only a minute or two.
The sound of explosions and small arms fire was muted beneath ground.
All the other nurses and patients were looking at her with wide, frightened eyes and it was this which finally broke her trance. She suspected the numbness would take longer to go. A part of her had died out in the courtyard and for the first time she understood what had made Arkady Rykov, the man she still loved and could not stop loving, a monster.
Clara refreshed her hold of the Kalashnikov.
“Everybody stay here. Whatever happens, everybody must stay here. When I go upstairs lock and bolt the door behind me.”
There were protests.
Clara was already on her feet and suddenly, the others were noticing how comfortably she hefted the assault rifle in her hands.