by James Philip
Brezhnev stirred like bear from hibernation, his eyes hard.
“What do you make of the reports of civil war in Iraq, Comrade Vasily Ivanovich?” He asked of Chuikov.
“I think the Iraqis are pissing their pants!” The Minister of Defence and the man who was the Red Army retorted with a grumbling chortle of satisfaction.
Babadzhanian shrugged.
“I think that was always going to happen,” he declared. “Whereas, I always assumed that if we attempted to strike south through Iran, sooner or later the British would probably stiffen the Iranian Army’s backbone.”
“What’s to stop the British or the Americans doing the same in Iraq?” The General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union persisted, unconvinced.
“That might still happen,” Babadzhanian agreed. “Or if they think they are going to lose control of the oil fields of the Persian Gulf they might just ‘bomb us back to the stone age’,” he added dryly.
Chuikov grunted but said nothing.
By the time one had one’s back against the wall it was far too late to start worrying about what happened next.
Babadzhanian frowned.
“Operation Nakazyvat”, Operation Chastise, “is not going according to plan, Comrades,” he confessed. “That said it is going better than we had dreamed possible. In approximately one week from now my forces will launch the second and most crucial stage of the operation. If ‘Action North’ succeeds it may convince the Iraqis, the British and the Americans that our real objective is not Abadan Island, and a lodgement on the northern shores of the Persian Gulf threatening future operations again Kuwait and the Arabian Peninsula; but simply the seizure of Mosul, Erbil, Kirkuk and the oilfields of northern, Kurdish Iraq. In this scenario they will assume that our seizure of Sulaymaniyah is no more than a prudent ‘straightening of our defensive line. If you recollect from my original notes on Operation Nakazyvat, I was at pains to emphasise that regardless of what forces the Iranians, the Iraqis, the British, the Yankees and their Arab lackeys managed to scrape together to block our path south, unless some or all of those forces can be drawn forward – that is, to the north – away from likely defensive positions in the marshes of the Southern Iraq or in prepared lines south of Khorramshahr and guarding Abadan Island, we might face the prospect of obtaining all our strategic objectives but be too weak to hang onto them. I can fight one, perhaps two major battles of ‘movement’; I do not have the resources or the logistics train to fight a battle of attrition all the way south and then to assault and over run pre-prepared major defence lines.”
He let this sink in.
“If the enemy swallows the lie that all we want is the oil of Kurdish Iraq they will deploy their forces to block us south of the line Sulaymaniyah-Kirkuk. Once that re-deployment commences I will destroy the enemy, drive south, invest Abadan Island and then,” he sighed, “we shall see what history has in store for us.”
Chapter 5
Monday 13th April 1964
RAF Brize Norton, Oxfordshire, England
Lady Marija Calleja-Christopher had been - now that she had had a little while to think about it – in a state of grieving shock for most of the last week. The fact that it was the first time in her life she had been away from Malta would have been quite sufficient, of itself, to have thoroughly disorientated her; but that was not the half of it.
The United States Air Force C-130 Hercules transport rumbled noisily to a halt on the hardstand some fifty yards away. Nothing happened for about a minute and then the note of the engines altered and fell, and the rear ramp began to descend slowly to the cold tarmac.
Marija briefly reflected on her own journey to England a week ago. It had been her first ever flight, and for her in the comparative luxury of a jetliner rather than the draughty cargo bay of a propeller-driven military workhorse.
She waited for the first passenger to emerge from the cavernous hold of the newly arrived aircraft, trying very hard not to fidget and fret with anxiety in front of the others. Like Peter, her husband of a little over five weeks, she was very aware that she always on show now. Always before she could afford to be Marija Calleja, nurse, midwife and sometime unofficial leader of the Women of Malta protest movement, the dutiful daughter of her dockyard superintendent father and loving Sicilian mother; but now she was a ‘lady’, the wife of a Royal Navy Captain and the hero of the Battle of Malta, and no matter how much they would have preferred to have been an anonymous newlyweds, in public whether together or separately, alone, they were always ‘on parade’. Even their grief was a public thing.
There was a further hiatus while ground crew fussed around the cargo ramp of the US Air Force Hercules.
Marija’s thoughts replayed her – her and Peter’s – traumatic arrival in England a week ago today.
No sooner had their Comet jetliner rolled to a stop in the dark and the drizzle at Cheltenham than she and Peter had been whisked away by machine gun hefting stone-faced Royal Marines to a grand old house in the country near the airfield where they had been kept, under guard until the next morning. Neither she or her husband had slept that night; thinking about the burning wreckage on the ground near the end of the runway, the armoured cars and fire engines rushing by in the opposite direction as they and the other VIPs on their flight were ushered through the airfield buildings – the old racecourse grandstand, still with signs pointing, bizarrely to the parade ring and to the winner’s enclosure – to waiting cars. Had it not been for the comforting circle her husband’s protective arms that night she would have been utterly lost.
Iain Macleod, Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for Information, with whom Marija had chatted for pleasantly for well over two hours during the flight back from Malta while Peter, bless him, had slept like a baby, had hastily bade the young couple ‘adieu’ at the airport and disappeared with his minders. Nobody had really known what was going on, just that there had been a crash.
Which they could all see with their own eyes!
It was only the next day that the dreadful truth had emerged.
In fact all through that awful next day one dreadful thing after another had been ‘made known’ to the shell-shocked couple.
Lady Patricia Harding-Grayson, a kind, softly-spoken elegantly maternal lady, had arrived in Cheltenham to ‘brief’ them at around eleven o’clock last Tuesday morning.
Before she commenced her ‘briefing’ she had handed Marija a ‘Priority Cable’ from ‘The Office of the Military Governor of Malta’.
This is to confirm that Mr P. Calleja and Mrs M. Calleja of Tower Street, Sliema, are unhurt and their family home only lightly damaged. The aforementioned couple have been informed of your safe arrival and that of Mr J. Calleja, in England with your husband.
The telegram had been transmitted to Oxford over the name of Air Vice-Marshall D.B. French, DSO, DFC, Officer Commanding, Malta.
However, the confirmation of her parents’ safety had been the last good news brought to them by Lady Patricia Harding-Grayson.
Marija had not immediately registered the fact that their visitor was none other than the wife of the British Foreign Secretary, or that her somewhat drawn, tired initial appearance was on account of her friend, the Prime Minister, for whose children she acted as an unofficial governess, having spent the night in Hospital in Oxford because she had been injured in the same unspeakable ‘atrocity’ in which Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth had suffered what had initially been feared to be ‘life threatening’ injuries.
In any event there had been a lot of ‘Lady Patricia’ this, and ‘Sir Peter’ that, and superfluous ‘Lady Marija-ing’ before Peter had put his foot down and said: ‘Look, I’m Peter, my wife is Marija.’
‘Oh, thank goodness for that,’ their grey-haired, willow-thin greying visitor had groaned with relief. ‘I am Pat,’ she had smiled momentarily. ‘Especially, to my friends and now that I’ve met you both I think that’s exactly what we’ll all be when we get
to know each other a little bit better.’
It had not taken very long for the Foreign Secretary’s wife to become worryingly serious.
‘Let’s all sit down. I’m afraid I have some very bad news.’
The aircraft which had crashed at RAF Cheltenham was one of the aircraft returning from Malta ahead of Peter and Marija’s flight. Onboard had been the First Sea Lord, Sir David Luce and a number of badly wounded service men and civilians, a flight crew of six, and several nurses. There had been no survivors.
A little earlier on Monday afternoon an American Air Force jet carrying senior officers to take up posts in England and the Mediterranean had crashed, like the De Havilland Comet at Cheltenham, while making its final landing approach to RAF Brize Norton. However, whereas the Cheltenham crash had happened short of the airfield, at Brize Norton, upon crashing the aircraft had disintegrated and ploughed into the middle of the awaiting reception committee. Mrs Thatcher, the Prime Minister, had sustained a dislocated shoulder, numerous minor abrasions and bruises and a twisted spine; Her Majesty the Queen had been severely concussed, broken her left ankle and upper left arm somewhere between being picked up by her bodyguards, her literally being thrown into the protection of her armoured Rolls-Royce, and that vehicle being violently overturned after being struck by a large piece of wreckage.
The Prime Minister, the Queen and some thirty other casualties from Brize Norton had been taken – many by helicopter – to the Churchill Hospital in Oxford. At that time although it was not known how many people had died in the crash, either onboard the US Air Force DC-8 jetliner or on the ground, or at Cheltenham, the assumption was that the death toll would eventually approach around two hundred.
‘You’ll be pleased to learn that Her Majesty was sitting up and taking nourishment this morning,’ Pat Harding-Grayson had reassured the younger couple.
‘Two aircraft don’t just crash?’ Marija’s husband had queried.
‘No, the RAF and the Security Service, MI5, think that both aircraft were shot down by Irish Republican Army terrorists armed with modern American-made shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles.’
The older woman had hesitated before moving on to news that – even in comparison to news of the atrocities at Brize Norton and Cheltenham - was so bad that at the first telling it hardly sank in. Both Marija and her husband had stared at the Foreign Secretary’s wife as if she was mad.
Pat Harding-Grayson, having anticipated the young couple’s entirely understandable incredulity had patiently reiterated what she had just said; breaking the news that in some small part of her conscious mind Marija had always suspected - ever since the rumours first circulated about her missing elder brother Samuel after the sabotaging of HMS Torquay - might contain more than a germ of truth.
By then Sam had become distant, estranged from everybody in the family except perhaps, her father. Lately, she had got to know Sam’s wife, her sister Rosa well, they had talked endlessly and the unhappiness of Rosa’s cold married life to her brother had become evident, adding substance to Marija’s fears. In retrospect they had all known that something was wrong; just not what was wrong with Sam. And now she knew; now they all knew what had been so unspeakably wrong these last few years with Sam.
And it was too...incredible.
She refused to believe it at first.
‘I’m sorry. There is no doubt about any of this.’ Pat Harding-Grayson had warned the young couple. She had viewed Marija maternally, wanting to hug her and to make the evil go away. ‘I wish there was an easy way to say this. But there isn’t. I am sorry. I am so sorry.’ She had quirked her lips apologetically and dropped the mind-numbing, shattering bombshell. ‘Your elder brother, Samuel, was arrested at the Citadel in Mdina on the afternoon of the assault on Malta. At the time of his arrest he was in the company of a Soviet spy – whom you knew as Arkady Pavlovich Rykov – he was wearing a Soviet paratrooper’s fatigues and carrying a Red Army hand gun, which at that time he was holding to Admiral Sir Julian Christopher’s head. My information is that Sir Julian had already sustained a fatal injury by that time. Your brother was apprehended by a woman you know as Sarah Pullman; a woman who is in fact a long-time, trusted agent of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6. Subsequently, when he was interviewed your brother confessed to have been in the employ of the Soviet intelligence services - the KGB - for many years. Furthermore, during this interview he admitted complicity in numerous terroristic attacks and assassinations in the Maltese Archipelago and to have been a trusted associate of the Soviet agent Rykov for many years. Since Malta is currently under a state of Martial Law the C-in-C, Air Vice-Marshall French, has summary powers over the treatment and disposal of enemy spies and persons against whom there are prima facie grounds to suspect of involvement in gross acts of treachery, or in the commission of war crimes against the civilian population. Air-Vice Marshall French, having reviewed Samuel’s Security Service file and his freely given confession, found your brother guilty of participation in war crimes against the civil population and of treachery on grounds of his activities aiding and abetting an enemy spy.’
Tears had been welling in the Foreign Secretary’s wife’s eyes.
‘Yesterday,’ she went on, ‘at dawn, Samuel was executed by firing squad in the exercise yard of Paola Royal Military Prison.’
Marija had cried all the way from Cheltenham to Oxford, she had been inconsolable. At some stage after their arrival in the city somebody had tried to call Peter away; he had told whoever it was to: ‘Go to hell!’ In a tone of voice she had never heard him use, nor ever imagined him capable of. It was this which had slowly, hurtfully broken her out of the first circle of her grief.
Did her Mama and Papa know yet?
Had anybody told her little brother Joe?
The hero of the Battle of Malta had been taken to the local hospital in Cheltenham for observation overnight. He had almost had to be poured out of the aircraft the previous evening, a little delirious.
Before the disasters of Monday afternoon the arrangements for a big, victory-type parade through Oxford had been well advanced. Wednesday had been the day originally nominated for the event, at the conclusion of which there would be an investiture at Christ Church College.
Peter was to be awarded the Victoria Cross.
Joe was to be awarded the George Cross.
But all that had been delayed, put on hold.
Marija had offered her services as a nurse at the Churchill Hospital; and initially, been turned down. Nobody in Oxford took her ‘Maltese’ nursing certification seriously. She had asked to speak to her ‘new friend’ Iain Macleod, explained the situation and the next day started work – as a ‘volunteer nursing assistant’ - on one of the children’s wards at the hospital.
It had been a mercy to be busy, to be in some small way herself again for a few hours last Wednesday, Thursday and Friday mornings. Albeit as a glorified ‘nanny’ rather than as a ‘proper’ nurse.
She had been worried the hospital would object to the journalists and photographers that followed her around on Wednesday, her first day. Her over-sized uniform had been stiff and starchy and the cold and wet of the alleged spring day had made her bones feel old. However, once the interlopers had departed she had instantly felt at home and all the other nurses had been very friendly, except for Matron and everybody understood that no Matron was ever supposed to be friendly in any hospital Marija had ever been in.
Her husband, meanwhile, had been ‘the most wanted’ man in Oxford.
Well, Peter, along with Alan Hannay, Joe – still under ‘wraps’ in hospital in Cheltenham - and all the other heroes of HMS Talavera’s final desperate action had been ‘wanted men’. Marija had learned that the BBC was hurriedly making a documentary film about the battle. It seemed that at the very moment she and her sister Rosa had watched HMS Talavera with horrified, baited breath as Peter’s ship raced out of the Grand Harbour amidst a forest of giant shell splashes, that a BBC film crew had captur
ed the whole thing in glorious, dramatic Technicolor. She shivered to think of that moment; knowing then as now what it had portended. Peter’s father had told him to ‘cut your lines and get out to sea’, well knowing that whatever he had said to his son that Peter would surely steam at full speed towards the sound of guns.
To her astonishment the newspaper people and the BBC had wanted to talk to her also.
On Saturday she and Peter had sat down in a room at Merton College and been ‘interviewed’ by a man called Barry Lankester. He was a nice man, very polite and a lot more nervous about the whole thing than either she or her husband. It had been Barry Lankester’s film crew, set up to shoot a few scenic ‘filler’ and ‘background’ shots of the Grand Harbour from the lower Barraka Gardens, opposite Kalkara Creek and Royal Naval Hospital Bighi, from where Rosa and Marija had watched HMS Talavera’s break for the open sea and her destiny, which had caught everything on camera.
After a while Marija had relaxed a little.
She had told her personal story; her long recovery from her childhood injuries suffered in the German bombing in 1942, how much she owed to Surgeon Captain Reginald Stephens and to Margo Seiffert, her friend and mentor who had been murdered by a Red Army parachutist during the assault on the Citadel at Mdina. She almost started sobbing uncontrollably more than once; Peter had squeezed her hand and taken his cue to explain how he and Marija had been pen friends half their lives and but for the October War might never have met, face to face.
‘Yes, I know it all sounds a little like a modern fairy tale. But the war changed everything, of course,’ he had observed, in that marvellously winning self-effacing way of his. ‘If nothing else good came out of it that night when the balloon went up the whole dreadful thing made me realise what a prize clot I had been all those years. After that, well, I just wanted to get to Malta. Even when I was standing on the bridge of the Talavera in a North Atlantic winter storm the morning after we got hit off Cape Finisterre, and the ship was wallowing around like a drunken matelot on his way back to his berth after a run ashore, trying to sink under our feet, all I thought about was how I was going to get from there,’ he had smiled and shaken his head ruefully, ‘to Malta. It’s a funny thing,’ he had added, ‘I never really thought I was a terribly brave fellow. I still don’t think I am, by the way. It’s just that when I’m in a tight spot I think of Marija and everything becomes, well, clear, simple.’
