by James Philip
The other possibility, was that the President might think all this would come better from Nicko’s lips than his.
Little was entirely predictable in dealings with Mrs Thatcher these days; not since the tragic death of her second husband, that incorrigible old rogue, Frank Waters.
“Of course, we stand with the United States, Mister President,” Nicko Henderson assured the other man, smoothly, and very diplomatically. “One hundred percent, shoulder to shoulder and all that!”
“You’ll make facilities available to the Seventh Fleet in Hong Kong then?”
“Ah, well, I’m sure we can look into that,” Henderson smiled.
He knew, and the men around the President had to know, that there was not a snowflake’s chance in hell of that happening in the middle of a new regional crisis.
If Richard Nixon had ever been a serious trial lawyer, rather than just a name on a partner list, or a corporate surrogate in his much-interrupted legal career, he might have recognised when a very adroit, polished intellect was trying, gently to communicate to him something very important which he ought to have already worked out for himself, namely: “You must be joking!”
“You can?” The President followed up.
“Well, not me personally. I’ll get my people at the Embassy to talk to Oxford. Off the top of my head, I have no idea if any of the protocols of the Chinese Treaty, say anything about making available ‘facilities’ to a third party. It would be dreadful if the letter of the law tied our hands in this matter.”
Gordon Gray was rolling his eyes.
Richard Nixon’s National Security Advisor would have resigned before now had not his sense of duty, and the ingrained ethic of public service, not compelled him to remain until the end of the President’s first term. An outsider in the White House – he was untainted by any of the earlier scandals - he had emphatically refused to allow himself to be drawn into any of the dirty tricks projects the mid-ranking idiots in the Administration had contrived to mire Haldeman, and most of the surviving ‘old-timers’ who had arrived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in January 1965, in up to their necks.
“Time is pressing,” Nicko Henderson decided, rising to his feet. “I need to talk with Oxford; find out what the lay of the land is. By your leave, I’ll get straight on with that, Mister President.”
Chapter 27
Thursday 23rd May, 1968
USS Enterprise, 6 miles SW of Lesser Orchid Island, Taiwan
Strong hands reached up to grab Lieutenant Commander John McCain’s arms as he stepped, unsteadily down from the US Marine Corps Sikorsky SH-3 Sea King helicopter, onto the windswept deck of the giant nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.
He shook off the supporting hands and straightened to salute the Stars and Stripes flying from the jack staff high on the ship’s futuristic, box-like bridge. He felt like a clown in the over-sized jump suit he had been given when he was brought ashore; and irrationally, badly needed to put on his own uniform and to report for duty to the carrier strike group’s CAG, rather than to do the sensible thing, which was to collapse into a berth in the Big E’s sick bay and sleep for the next thirty-six hours.
He groaned out aloud when he realised there was a flight surgeon, and two nurses waiting to escort him below deck. Heck, I was only in the water a few hours! It was not like I swallowed half the South China Sea! I was one of the lucky ones, I was only in the water five or six hours…
The cold still lingered in his bones, stiffening his joints, burrowing deep into the old wounds he had hoped permanently healed. Well, thinking about pragmatically, scars that ere as patched as neatly as modern medicine could. The chill in his soul apart, nothing quite so exasperated him in that moment as his renewed heroic status.
I John Sidney McCain III do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So, help me God.
That had pretty much covered, and justified those extra – unbriefed or mandated – passes over that special forces’ landing site in Upper Michigan that night just before the end of the war in the Midwest. They had given him a Congressional Medal of Honour for doing his duty that time around; now they were already talking about giving him new – unwarranted and unwanted – awards for doing his duty again!
All he had done was rally a few shocked, frightened kids in the water while they waited to be rescued. Okay, he had had to hold one seaman’s head above the water, and cajole others to stay awake at the end, but what man worth his salt would not have done exactly what he had done after he found himself in the water?
‘Oh, my God…’
He remembered Commander Fritz Ward uttering that.
Then the ship had lurched under his feet and the first of the big explosions had thrown everybody to the deck.
Suddenly, there was thick, choking smoke filling the bridge.
Men were moaning, one was screaming.
It was a blur.
Then he had been in the water, seen other men plummet down around him, one or two so desperate to escape the fires that they jumped still wearing their flak jackets…and never came up again.
The Enterprise’s CAG shook the returning hero’s hand, and with a scowl at the gang of Seventh Fleet, and civilian press photographers embedded with the task group, gave him a very hard look and ordered him to report to the sick bay.
“That’s enough pictures for now!”
It seemed he had objected to McCain’s hurried return to the Big E and been over-ruled by Fleet Command; public relations trumped the welfare of his pilots, it seemed. By rights, McCain ought to be in a hospital ashore for a week under observation and be allowed another couple of weeks to fully recover from his experience on land, ahead of being rigorously assessed before any consideration was given to his resumption of duties at sea.
McCain himself was getting angry now.
If he was not going to be allowed back into the flight room there was no purpose in the Navy’s ungodly rush to get him back on board. He might as well be properly laid up ashore where, hopefully, he would be able to put through international calls to Australia, assuring his parents and a certain young lady that he was fine; just a little beat up, otherwise, he was as good as new as he was ever going to get.
He had no illusions that the Navy was going to extend those privileges to him at sea.
Oh, no, not when he was informed that the Navy wanted him back on the Big E so he could take the President’s call in the Admiral’s stateroom!
Task Force 136’s chief of staff, Captain Kranz, a veteran of the island-hopping campaigns of the Second War who had started his career as an ensign on the old Arizona in the late 1920s, soon turned up in the Sick Bay.
He scowled at the saline IV that had just been put into McCain’s left arm. Now that the excitement of returning to the carrier was subsiding, the younger man was starting to feel very, very weary. A voice in his head told him it was probably delayed shock setting in, nothing that several hours shut-eye in his bunk would not cure…
“The Commander-in-Chief’s call is scheduled for ninety minutes time,” Kranz observed unhappily.
“Mister McCain needs to rest, sir,” the nurse, a lieutenant (jg) in her mid-twenties reported neutrally as she checked the flow from the drip.
There were over a dozen women aboard the Big E, all in the Surgeon’s Department, nurses and junior doctors.
John McCain was not one of those stick-in-the-muds who regarded women at sea as Jonahs, bad luck. He got it that a lot of the old-timers thought members of the fairer sex were likely to get underfoot in emergencies but reckoned, counter-intuitively, that the presence of women at sea would actually be less distracting the more of them who were permitted to serve.
He took it for g
ranted that the Navy had started re-writing the history of what had been going on off the coast of Fujian province of the People’s Republic of China, as soon as the first survivors were brought aboard the USS Little Rock.
‘The Berkeley and the Goodrich were proceeding north on the Taiwan side of the Strait…’
No, the two destroyers had been ‘tasting’ the Communists’ electronic activity around twenty miles offshore, around eighty miles from the nearest friendly coast and at least thirty miles the wrong side of the ‘middle way’.
In the recent past, US warships had regularly violated the twelve-mile international limit off Fujian Province and elsewhere along the Chinese coast. In that sense, the Berkeley and the Goodrich had been conducting an entirely routine provocation; which was why nobody had panicked when those MiGs threatened an overflight, in retrospect as a diversion to distract the two destroyers’ radar systems until it was too late.
The Berkeley, a mile closer inshore had detected the incoming STYX ship-killers at a range of less than four miles out. It was unlikely the Goodrich’s sensor suite got any kind of fix on the near supersonic flying bombs approaching at an altitude of between fifty and a hundred feet before the first one smashed into the Berkeley at over six hundred knots, and exploded as it exited the ship’s fantail. Given that the destroyer’s Tartar missile magazine had detonated instantaneously it was not beyond the bounds of possibility the STYX had crashed straight through it.
A second missile had hit the Berkeley amidships six or seven seconds later but she was already mortally wounded by then, her stern half blown off, wrecked, shredded and the rear half of the ship open to the seas.
Goodrich had hardly been any luckier.
A missile had struck her aft, engulfing the stern of the ship in flames; another may have hit the sea short of her and ‘skipped’ over her, exploding almost directly above her amidships deckhouse, killing every man in her CIC.
Scuttlebutt said the Chinese had loosed off a salvo of at least six missiles…
“The Communists have gone too far this time,” Captain Kranz was telling the hero in the sick bay cot.
McCain sighed.
Heck I thought we were defending democracy and the American way of life? I could just about live with my government propping up Chiang Kai-shek and his gang. But now we are on the cusp of getting into a shooting war with the Communists on the mainland and honestly and truly, I have not got a clue why the high command even begins to think that is a good idea.
“Okay, okay,” Kranz was saying, walking through a change of plan. “You rest easy, McCain. We’ll get the comms boys to set up the call down here.”
McCain felt the older man pat his shoulder.
“I’ll brief Admiral Zumwalt.”
It was funny how the airman had never felt used when he was very nearly getting himself killed over Upper Michigan, or when he was in the water bullying and slapping those boys to stay awake, to keep their heads up; yet right now, in the safety of the Big E’s sick bay, he was starting to feel like a country girl who had just gotten taken advantage of on prom night.
In the next couple of hours, he was going to have to make small talk with the Commander-in-Chief and his face was going to be beamed around the world. It was election year and those bastards in DC had wanted a war to boost their flagging poll ratings. Nixon had been on the slide before the war in the Midwest and now the same thing was happening again; there was nothing like a war, a fight against a common enemy, to rally the people behind a crooked President!
And like it or not; I am a tool in this…
He contemplated not playing ball.
Literally, feigning unconsciousness.
But that was not the McCain way.
He had sworn that oath, the President was the Commander-in-Chief and in the service a man saluted the rank, not the man. The chain of command was what it was, without that they were nothing. Disobeying orders was not an option.
However, that did not mean a man had to be happy about it!
The Strike Force Commander, Rear Admiral Elmo Zumwalt arrived some minutes in advance of the charade.
McCain had been dozing.
Zumwalt was not the sort of flag officer who attracted great affection from his men; there was no suggestion of ‘the common touch’, just a straightforward, self-evident very no-nonsense competency about the man. While he was not quite a straight time and motion guy, corporate executive in uniform type, he was close to it, a man who actually enjoyed the politicking, and fighting the good fight in the Navy Department. His one redeeming virtue was that nobody doubted he was also absolutely on top of his job.
Part of which, was keeping the President of the United States sweet on the Navy.
When eventually all the connections were established, checked for resilience and signed off, Zumwalt spoke briefly to the Commander-in-Chief.
‘We’re honoured to have the hero of the Berkeley back with us on board the Big E, Mister President. He’s sitting up in his cot looking forward to taking your call, sir. I’ll put you through to Commander John McCain.”
Lieutenant Commander John McCain bit back the temptation to put his superior officer right.
“It’s good to talk to you, John,” Richard Nixon said in that particular way of his which, no matter how sincere he might be, sounded like very cheesy, very fake bonhomie.
“Likewise, I’m honoured to hear your voice, sir.”
McCain felt Elmo Zumwalt’s gaze bore into him as he waited for the man in the White House to reply. There was a slight delay, no more than a second or so on the connection which was, the younger man assumed, bouncing between several of the newly launched communications satellites – a program quietly prioritised over the now moribund Project Apollo Moon landing project – orbiting the planet.
“How are they treating you, John?”
“The Navy always looks after its own, sir.”
“I bet your father and mother are proud of the way you’ve added yet another proud chapter to the story of the ‘fighting’ McCains?”
I do not believe this…
He had hardly known his grandfather.
Four-star Admiral John S. ‘Slew’ McCain had commanded Bill Halsey’s Third Fleet’s Fast Carrier Force in the last year of the Pacific War, but died four days after it ended in September 1945.
His father, Jack Junior, had last met his father on board his flagship in Tokyo Bay; there was a famous family snapshot of the two of them, the famous carrier commander and the brilliant submarine skipper, talking together that day. No history of the US Navy at war and in peace time in the twentieth century was complete without chapters about both great men. Not that the youngest John McCain had ever seen himself cast in that ‘great man’, or ‘hero’ role; he was no reincarnation of one of the greatest carrier admirals in history, or of his father, the steely, wily, fearless submariner; they were unique one-offs. He was perfectly content just to be son and grandson of those legends, wishing only to make his own life, career, and destiny.
Maybe, politics is not meant for me?
Ma always said I’ve got too many godammed scruples!
“I’m sure that the Admiral and my mother, and at least one other very important person in my life, will be relieved to hear that I am sitting up and taking nourishment, sir.”
That was when Elmo Zumwalt had thrown a stiletto look at him.
Yes, I have at least one other very important person in my life…
He had only said that because he guessed that the President would pick up on it like he was a drowning man being thrown a rope.
How the heck did you get to be President when you were such a schmuck at small talk?
Zumwalt would want the President, and McCain, to talk about the Big E and the fleet he commanded.
“A very important person in your life?” The President asked, predictably.
“Yes, sir. A young lady with whom I have the honour to correspond regularly.”
Junior members of Zumw
alt’s staff were cringing.
The insubordinate SOB was playing games with the President!
In fact, McCain had no intention of attempting to make the President look dumb, or as tongue-tied as he was liable to get in these supposedly spontaneous talks.
Everything he had seen, and what little he knew about Richard Nixon told him the man did not need any help looking awkward, or really dumb in public.
“Yes, sir. When I have the opportunity to write to her,” he explained, his expression deadly serious contrasting with the barely masked mischief running through his words, “I will be proud to confirm that the men of the Berkeley performed their duty with immense courage in the best traditions of the service under the worst possible conditions. At the time of the unprovoked attack we were steaming in international waters with no expectation of immediate hostile action. To my knowledge the Berkeley was attacked without warning. There was no time to bring any of our weapons to bear on the enemy. That any man survived the sinking of the Berkeley is a testament to the memory of her late commanding officer, Commander Fritz Ward and his officers in ensuring she was at such a high state of readiness to face whatever the enemy had to throw at her.
The connection hissed.
“Non sibi sed patriae,” John McCain said solemnly.
The President, if he recognised the motto, gave no sign that he had any idea what he was talking about.
So, the younger man translated.
“Not self but country,” he said, and after a barely perceptible hesitation, “sir!”
The Army, the US Marine Corps, even the US Coastguard had a motto but officially, the Navy had none, other than the unofficial words he had just uttered.
Chapter 28
Saturday 1st June, 1968
St Helena, Napa Valley, California
Forty-seven-year-old George Stanley McGovern, the junior Senator for South Dakota was a veteran of numerous against-the-odds political arm wrestles. To have been ahead, and to have led the Democrat primary race by such a large margin in the spring had been an unusual, vaguely unsettling experience. While he had anticipated his opponents would whittle away at his advantage, not wither on the vine like the Kennedy challenge, he had never really been worried about George Wallace, even before the Governor of Alabama and his sidekick, Curtis LeMay, a man decidedly less intimidating in a civilian suit, had thrown in the towel and declared themselves to be ‘Independents’. It was not as if McGovern had had a snowflake’s chance in Hell of carrying any of the Deep South states either in the primaries, or in a subsequent general election. Similarly, he had felt unthreatened in California until the last few weeks, and events thousands of miles away had begun to cast a baleful light over the entire campaign.