by James Philip
The chair directly opposite Edward Heath was empty, The First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir John ‘David’ Luce having absented himself briefly to acquire any new intelligence received by his staff since the commencement of the War Cabinet meeting some ninety minutes ago. The Chiefs of the Air Staff, and the Army, were at their respective war stations, the former in a bunker in Oxfordshire, the latter deep beneath the nearby Chiltern Hills.
There was a quiet knocking at the closed double doors to the room.
The sprawling mock Tudor mansion which accommodated the UKIEA had belonged to a Fleet Street press baron before the war. Built as recently as the late 1890s it was a building that spoke of Victorian imperial bluster and basically, the profoundly flawed cultural tastes that any student of art history would naturally associate with a less than half-baked mind. Externally the Tudor fascia was more mock Gothic than authentic Elizabethan, within the structure the rooms were heavily wood-panelled and the walls were still hung with portraits and landscapes bought by a man with an undiscriminating eye and a purse far larger than his limited capacity to understand anything about real art.
A female secretary timorously entered the room and handed the Prime Minister a folder note addressed to ‘M. Thatcher’. He passed it to his Home Secretary unread.
She frowned at the note for a moment. It was from Airey Neave.
“Airey thinks we ought to talk to a man called Walter Brenckmann?” She announced, looking up. Clearly, the name meant nothing to her and she was a little baffled.
Tom Harding-Grayson cleared his throat.
“Captain Brenckmann was briefly the US Naval Attaché to the Court of Balmoral, Margaret.” Even before his elevation to the War Cabinet, their mutual travails at Balmoral Castle during the attempted regicide had ensured that Tom Harding-Grayson and Margaret Thatcher would always thereafter be on ‘Tom’ and ‘Margaret’ terms. “He’s a good sort. Not at all like most of the people in Ambassador Westheimer’s inner circle. I fear that when he tried to open his colleagues’ eyes to the dangers of the path they were on,” he shrugged, “the poor fellow was treated like a leper. What pray is Mr Neave up to?”
For all that Airey Neave, the forty-seven year old escapee from Colditz who’d been the man who read the indictments at the trial of the leading Nazis at Nuremburg was that rare thing, a living national treasure, there were times when the man who had become Margaret Thatcher’s unofficial chief of staff, was an infuriating enigma. In the recent Government reshuffle he’d been promoted to Minister of Supply under the umbrella of what was in effect, a new Ministry of the Interior within the existing Home Office apparatus. It appeared that Airey Neave was recklessly stepping on Foreign Office toes.
“I do apologise, Tom,” Margaret Thatcher blinked with irritation as she tried to think what her friend was up to. “I hate to have to admit it but I have no idea what Airey is up to.”
She stood up and passed Airey Neave’s note across to the Foreign Secretary who glanced at it and smiled quizzically at the Home Secretary.
The double doors opened again and Admiral Sir David Luce entered the room. He paused to ask the RAF technicians a question and resumed his chair at the Cabinet table.
“I have several updates and clarifications for the Cabinet, Prime Minister,” he said flatly. “If I might speak to these before we view the film footage from Malta?”
Edward Heath paused until he’d considered whether he ought to intervene to curtail whatever wild goose chase Airey Neave had embarked upon this time. He made a mental note to speak to Margaret Thatcher about the man’s antics. It hadn’t mattered that Airey was a loose cannon in the old days; however, if he wanted to stay in Government he needed to remember he was supposed to be a team player. This decided, he moved on.
“Yes, carry on, First Sea Lord.”
“Western Approaches,” Admiral Sir David Luce prefaced, wasting no time getting on with business. Everything discussed in this room was suddenly very urgent. “The Enterprise Battle Group continues to cruise in a patrol zone which at its closest approach intrudes some seventy miles inside the notified Total Exclusion Zone. I have ordered HMS Dreadnought, tactical practicalities willing, to place herself between the Enterprise Battle Group and the most northerly surface units screening HMS Hermes off Cape Trafalgar.”
The First Sea Lord frowned.
“The latest report I have from the C-in-C Ark Royal Battle Group regarding the Talavera and the Devonshire,” he continued. Although the set of his jaw was stern none of the outrage that burned in his eyes touched his voice. “The sea conditions in the area off the north western coast of the Iberian Peninsula are atrocious and likely to worsen again overnight. Devonshire is proceeding under her own steam escorted by HMS Leopard. The ship is in a bad way with over a hundred casualties onboard. As for Talavera; over half her crew were casualties and she’s got an unexploded bomb wedged against the aft bulkhead of her forward magazine. HMS Plymouth is rendering all possible assistance and HMS Daring will be in the area by dawn. However, if it turns out that Oporto is not open to...”
Edward Heath interjected.
“If the Portuguese turn our ships away there will be Hell to pay,” he promised solemnly.
The First Sea Lord nodded. He moved on: “Gibraltar.”
Everybody around the table stiffened, leaned closer.
“Subsequent to air attacks against elements of the Hermes Battle Group and the destroyers and frigates in the gun line in the Straits,” Admiral Sir David Luce announced, “I regret I must now report the total loss of the frigates Hardy and Exmouth. Both vessels were engaged on anti-submarine patrol activities some distance from the main concentration of the Battle Group. It appears that after the Hermes’s Sea Vixens cut a swath through the first wave of attackers, a second wave of bombers ignored the main fleet and concentrated on the two relatively isolated units. Rescue operations are in hand but there are not expected to be a large number of survivors.”
Margaret Thatcher asked a gentle, quiet question.
“Did the Spanish really attack our ships employing their copies of German World War II bombers and fighters, Sir David?”
“Yes. They held back their America supplied F-86 Super Sabres and somewhat older Lockheed F-80 fighters. We don’t know how many of these they have in their inventory or how many are likely to operational. I suspect that they didn’t have the stomach to risk them against Hermes’s Sea Vixens.” The First Sea Lord picked up where he’d been interrupted. “Apart from HMS Hardy and HMS Exmouth, a number of our ships sustained minor damage – from splinters and near misses - but there were very few casualties. One Sea Vixen was lost due to an engine flare out; both crew members were recovered from the sea and are expected to return to duty shortly. About two hours ago ships from the Battle Group moved inshore and bombarded shipping in Algeciras Bay and Cadiz Roads. At this time the Hermes Battle Group remains on station controlling access to the Straits of Gibraltar.”
At this juncture the First Sea Lord hesitated and a flicker of a smile touched his pale lips.
“Malta,” he said portentously. ”There have been no further air attacks this day and Admiral Christopher reports that rescue and recovery work is well in hand. I have no update on casualty figures other than to confirm that the initial estimate of one thousand five hundred dead, one thousand seriously wounded and as many less badly hurt but requiring hospital treatment may unduly optimistic. Since the raid the RAF and the Fleet Air Arm are flying twenty-four hour combat air patrols out to a distance of one hundred miles around the Maltese Archipelago. Admiral Christopher reports an absence of civil unrest and has made it known that henceforth he plans to institute more ‘collegiate’ working relationships with the leaders of Maltese civil society.”
“More collegiate?” Margaret Thatcher queried.
“More normal, Mrs Thatcher,” Sir David Luce replied. “More akin to pre-war arrangements.” He finished his briefing: “Sir Julian has ordered the C-in-C Hermes Battle Group to ‘keep up
the pressure’ on the Spanish around Gibraltar without unduly risking his ships.”
“Keeping up the pressure,” James Callaghan sighed. “What does he have in mind, Sir David? More shore bombardments? Hit and run air attacks?”
The Admiral met his political master’s steady gaze,
“Sir Julian has not confided specifics to me, sir. Likewise, I should imagine he’s deliberately not tied the hands of the C-in-C of the Hermes Battle Group. Hermes’s Sea Vixens will have exhausted most of the available Sidewinder reloads and some of the destroyers and frigates will be low on 4.5 and 4.7 inch shells. Until or unless the Battle Group can be resupplied or relieved by new ships, there is limited scope for sustained offensive action.”
Edward Heath brought matters to a head.
“Thank you, First Sea Lord. Let’s have the lights down so we can watch the film footage the ‘Fighting Admiral’ has sent us.”
Even though everybody sitting around the table knew exactly what they were about to see the actual gun camera footage of the 30-millimetre ADEN cannons of RAF Hawker Hunter jets methodically blasting four Boeing B-52 bombers out of the air, brought home to the War Cabinet like nothing else could possibly have brought it home to them that the World had finally, and incontrovertibly gone stark staring mad.
Chapter 8
Sunday 8th December 1963
HMS Hermes, 107 miles WSW of Cape Trafalgar
The first survivors from HMS Exmouth had arrived on HMS Hermes around dusk the previous evening. They were cold and battered; they’d been in the water several hours and they’d watched most of their comrades and friends, and all the more seriously injured men die long before the handful of search helicopters from the Hermes and her escorts fished them out of the frigid North Atlantic. During the day a trickle of injured and wounded men from the ships of the Battle Group had been carried, or walked into the flagship’s sick bay and hospital compartments far below the armoured flight deck three decks above.
Clara Pullman had no real idea what her status on board HMS Hermes was; passenger, refugee, or suspected spy? The men who’d greeted the Westland Wessex on the flight deck two days ago had taken one look at her partner, former KGB Colonel Arkady Pavlovich Rykov’s state of near total physical collapse and rushed him down to the sick bay where until a few hours ago he and she had remained. When the first serious casualties arrived Arkady had insisted on freeing his cot for ‘a man who needs it more than I’, but she’d remained. She’d trained as a nurse a long time ago and although she couldn’t do much more than smile and hold hands and utter reassuring words, in between the endless fetching mugs of steaming rum-laced cocoa from the nearby Petty Officers’ Mess, she’d felt like she was making herself useful and Surgeon Commander McKitterick, the ship’s doctor hadn’t objected to her ongoing presence in his domain. Quite the contrary, in fact.
“I think you have made another conquest,” Arkady Pavlovich Rykov observed when at around two in the morning Clara joined him in the claustrophobic two bunk cabin he’d been allocated after he left the sick bay. They’d both expected to be confined to cells on their arrival on the Hermes. Perhaps, to be interrogated, again and again before being dispatched, like parcels to England to confront whatever fate awaited them. Yet ever since they’d set foot on the aircraft carrier they’d been treated with unfailing, good-humoured courtesy and offered every conceivable convenience available on a man of war about to go into battle. It was all very confusing.
“Do you think the people on this ship have any idea who we are?” Clara asked, ignoring the man’s teasing remark about the twinkle in Commander McKitterick’s grey eyes every time she was in the vicinity.
“I’m sure they know who we are,” Arkady Pavlovich Rykov retorted ironically. “Whether or not they care what we are at the moment; well, that’s another thing.”
Clara looked at the man with whom she’d shared the adventure of a lifetime – several probably – in the last thirteen months, and whose real name she’d only discovered in a fetid rock cell in Gibraltar days ago. The man she’d believed to be a British naval officer had turned out to be a senior KGB man who’d been trying to defect to the West. He said he’d been working for the Americans for years; she didn’t know what to believe. Or care. She loved him and one day she might even forgive him; but not yet.
She looked at his smashed face.
They’d very nearly beaten him to death at Gibraltar.
He’d been in the lower bunk reading when she’d come looking for him. ‘They said we could have this compartment,’ he’d explained, ‘for as long as we are onboard the ship.’
“What are you reading?” She asked.
He held the dog-eared Penguin paperback up for her inspection.
The Road to Wigan Pier.
“I found it in the locker under the bunk.”
Clara Pullman had carefully positioned herself, sitting as near the foot of the bunk as she could manage, mindful not to knock her head against the upper bunk. She’d been surprised by how much a ship as big as the Hermes pitched and rolled, especially when she changed course. As if on cue the manoeuvring bell clanged and a few seconds later the carrier heeled into a turn to starboard.
“What else did you find in the cabin?” She asked, knowing the man would have searched every inch of the compartment before he attempted to make himself comfortable in the bunk. The fact that he could hardly walk two steps unaided wouldn’t have stopped him crawling into every corner, running his fingers along every surface, and poking into every gap.
“A copy of Murder on the Orient Express and a couple of slim volumes of rather narcissistic poetry.”
“There were hardly any survivors from those two ships that were sunk this afternoon,” she said, blankly as if she was making polite conversation.
The man put down his book and reached out for her hand.
She wanted him to fold her in his arms except she was afraid he was too badly beaten, too broken to contemplate attempting anything more physically demanding than quietly holding her hand.
“Such is the pity of war,” he murmured, betraying a trace of the accent of his Russian mother tongue.
Clara didn’t know if he was trying to be funny or just humouring her. While she thought about it the alarm bells they’d grown so familiar with in their short time onboard the carrier began clanging insistently.
“All hands to Air Defence Condition One Stations!”
Beneath their feet they felt the quickening of the engines, the screws biting deeper and faster into the water. The bells kept ringing as the ship heeled into a violent turn to the left. There were running feet in the corridor outside the open door of the cabin. A bearded man with Petty Officer’s stripes on his arm stuck his head into view.
“When I shut this hatch dog it behind me!” Then he was gone before the metal door had clanged noisily against its steel frame.
“He wants us to clip the door so it can’t blow open if there is a nearby explosion,” the man in the lower bunk explained gently.
“Oh...”
Clara jumped up and dropped the clips on the door.
“Won’t we be trapped?” She asked.
“If something bad happens?” Arkady Pavlovich Rykov shrugged painfully. “Probably,” he conceded philosophically. “But at least we will be together, my love.”
The whole ship was beginning to tremble as more and more power was fed to her engines and her propellers thrashed her forward into the long North Atlantic swells. One moment the carrier was pitching over the crests of the seas, the next falling into the troughs; and then she was driving straight into the waves, her bows thumping, cleaving aside the freezing dark waters, each new impact sending a shuddering shock wave down the whole length of the twenty-five thousand ton vessel.
Clara edged closer to the man.
“I haven’t heard the catapults,” she observed. Every time the carrier had worked up to top speed before, it had been to launch or recover its aircraft. Typically, each of the stea
m catapults would hiss and thud, sending a concussion through the fabric of the vessel ever few minutes. Sometimes, when a big jet fighter landed it sounded like a crash, the aircraft not so much landing as hitting the rear half of the flight deck.
The manoeuvring bell clanged.
HMS Hermes heeled into what seemed like an impossibly tight turn to port, as she came abreast of the seas she rolled five, ten then more degrees before righting herself with a slow, stately reverse roll that went almost as far in the opposite direction before a swell half-lifted, half fell upon her tall starboard profile. Clara heard heavy objects tumbling onto decks hundreds of feet away. She was convinced that she heard the whole ship groan in a great outpouring of protest to be so misused.
Clare found herself awkwardly circled in the man’s arms.
She leaned against him, afraid he’d flinch with agony.
He simply let her meld herself against him, his cracked lips nuzzling her hair. All the troubles, the lies, the perils were as nothing in that instant because they both understood that no ship manoeuvred like this unless it was under attack.
They felt the underwater explosion before they heard it.
The shockwave punched the charging carrier’s flank; the dull, faraway boom of the detonation was a thing almost imagined. Something sensed through intimate contact with the very fabric of the ship.
Then there was another big explosion, closer than the first.
And a silence of a loud kind as they strained to catch the next detonation.
When it came it was not alone
Whump! Whump! Whump!
Three detonations at a great depth, like the steps of a giant walking towards them. And again there was a peculiar silence in which only the roaring of the carrier’s great engines and the noise of her battering ram progress through the water filled the quietness.
