Tales of Brave Ulysses (Timeline 10/27/62)

by James Philip

  Why does this man look so familiar?

  The woman had assumed that he was going to make a grab for the Kalashnikov at the moment he dropped the pistol, just not that he would be so clumsy or so inept in his attempt. In the event he telegraphed his intentions so obviously that she was very nearly caught unawares.

  He threw himself at her.

  He actually tried to throw himself at her!

  In her aching weariness she reeled aside.

  It took her an age to regain her balance; if the man had been a professional he would have lunged at her again by then. Instead, he had rolled on the ground to break his fall and only slowly picked himself up. The fool had been worried about hurting himself when he attacked her!

  The wooden stock of her Kalashnikov proscribed a short, vicious arc which connected with the back of the amateur’s neck. He slumped onto the carpet in front of Admiral Christopher’s desk like a sack of potatoes falling off the back of lorry. Just to make sure he was out cold she stamped on his left hand, so hard she heard bones crack.

  She had slung the gun over her back and gone to Julian Christopher by the time the rescue party barrelled through the door.

  As she had guessed the garrison of the Citadel had prevailed, eventually.

  ‘The Admiral has been shot and is bleeding internally,’ she had yelled, cradling the great man’s head to her breast in an attempt to hold his upper body at an attitude likely to stop him bleeding out before help arrived. She knew it was probably useless. The bullet that had hit him had entered in a relatively high, innocuous position close to the inner end of his left clavicle but it had travelled down and exited his back level with his heart, almost certainly nicking an artery on the way.

  Of course, there was no doctor.

  Margo Seiffert might have saved Julian Christopher if she could have got him into an operating theatre but she was dead, and he would never survive the journey to the nearest hospital with sufficiently advanced equipment and skilled surgeons.

  ‘What is your real name, Miss Pullman?’

  A medical orderly had rushed into the office and wanted to pump an ampoule of morphine into the dying man’s arm; she had waved him away. Julian Christopher did not seem to be in great pain, if any, he was too far gone for that.

  ‘“I was born Rachel Angelika Piotrowska in Lodz in nineteen twenty-eight,’ she had confessed. ‘But it has been a long time since I used that name.”

  “Dick White refused to tell me your real name,” he muttered, almost wryly.

  “You know what spies are like, Admiral,” she whispered.

  “Yes...”

  Julian Christopher had coughed feebly.

  “The shelling has stopped...”

  “Yes,” she agreed, the tears flowing freely down her cheeks.

  “The boy,” the man said. It took him several seconds to summon the strength and the will to continue. “The boy and his Talaveras must have settled the bastards’ hash...”

  She had stroked the man’s brow awhile.

  “Tell Peter I am proud of him...”

  It was the last thing the Commander-in-Chief of all British Forces in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations said. Forcing out those words had exhausted his final reserve of strength and he had died in her arms a few minutes later without regaining consciousness.

  Chapter 9

  12:37 Hours (GMT)

  Friday 3rd April 1964

  Balliol College, Oxford

  Home Secretary’s hackles were rising. In the three months that he had been in his current post nothing – absolutely nothing – had so infuriated him as the brainless, bully boy arrogance and stupidity of MI5.

  ‘Dr J.W. Malling, Mr K.H.S. Meredith-Hall, Mr B.T. Terrell and Mr C.H.O. Alexander are being held incommunicado at HMP Gloucester pending the completion of a Security Service review at GCHQ Cheltenham. The four men were arrested on 15th March 1964 on suspicion of gross breaches of Section II of the Official Secrets Act...’

  Forty-three year old Roy Harris Jenkins was the son of a Welsh miner who by dint of sheer intellectual acuity and determination had breezed through his years at Balliol in the late thirties and early years of the 1945 war. In the very halls where the rump Home Office now operated he had enjoyed some of the happiest days of his life. In his earlier time at Balliol he had formed many lifelong friendships, including one with the late Edward Heath; whose sad death in the White House shortly after the Battle of Washington he still deeply lamented. It had been while he was at Balliol that he had become Secretary and Librarian of the Oxford Union Society, the Chairman of the Oxford University Socialist Club and embarked on his life in politics. Albeit a life interrupted after he had achieved a First Class degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics in 1941 by four years spent in the Royal Artillery.

  Illness had prevented Ted Heath recruiting him into his United Kingdom Interim Emergency Administration shortly after the October War and he had been genuinely taken aback when his old friend’s successor, Margaret Thatcher, had approached him and asked him to join her Cabinet.

  ‘In the current emergency I see the job of Home Secretary to be more that of an Interior Minister along the lines of the American or the traditional Western European model, Mr Jenkins,’ she had declared. ‘You will be the man who ties together and ensures that all the other home ministries talk to each other. I know that Mr Heath was driven to despair sometimes by the fact that often the left and right hands of government seemed not to know what the other was doing!’

  He had hesitated before accepting a post in Margaret Thatcher’s Unity Administration of the United Kingdom; not so much because he knew little or nothing of the lady or her likely policies in government, but because in the year since the recent war he had been near death more than once and wondered how his impaired constitution would stand up to the rigors of eighteen hour working days, and the intolerable mental and spiritual stresses and strains of life at the heart of Government. He had never actually previously held high office and like any reasonable man, he had seriously wondered if he was physically and mentally up to the challenge.

  ‘Mr Heath thought very highly of you, Mr Jenkins,’ the lady had assured him in that brisk, no nonsense way that so endeared her to her countless doting admirers throughout the country. ‘That is quite sufficient for me!’

  The Cabinet posts in the Unity Administration had been split between the Conservative and Labour Parties and the Liberals approximately in proportion to their respective shares of the popular vote at the last General Election in 1959, or would have been had the leader of the Liberal Party – which had received just under six percent of the vote in 1959 – accepted the offer of the post of Secretary of State for Scotland. Roy Jenkins’s own party, Labour, had since split into several bitterly warring factions; and the fault lines between parts of the Prime Minister’s own party had, to a lesser extent begun to widen alarmingly but the UAUK retained a solid cross-bench majority in the newly reconvened House of Commons and had seemed in recent weeks to be finally coming to grips with things.

  Later that day Roy Jenkins had been looking forward to bringing together Lieutenant Colonel Timothy Gregson-Phelps, the Royal Engineer officer nominated as the Greater London Survey Officer, representatives of survivor groups who had already re-colonised areas of the bomb-ravaged capital and the newly constituted Home Office Reconstruction Planning Executive in what he hoped would be a weekend-long ‘meeting of minds’. The Home Secretary was a convinced believer in the principle that if only right-minded men and women could be brought together and persuaded to talk with each other, there was nothing that could not be achieved.

  The previous evening he and his wife Jennifer had dined with Miriam Prior, the red-headed, combative and very, very shrewd former primary school teacher from Islington around whom, with ‘King Harold’ – Harold Strettle a former London Underground worker - a band of several thousand survivors had coalesced in the bomb-ravaged capital. King Harold’s loosely articulated transient fiefdom
perambulated between the northern and western suburbs and the heart of the wrecked city; from the north bank of the River Thames at Westminster all the way out to Windsor and Eton twenty-five miles to the west and Watford over twenty miles north west. Fascinatingly, Miriam Prior had intimated that on previous encounters with ‘the forces of reaction’, that is, the Government and the Armed Forces, she and King Harold had made a point of ‘consistently understating’ the numbers of people who had already moved back into the margins of the ruined metropolis.

  Colonel Gregson-Phelps, the most senior of the team of ‘survey officers’ reporting back to Roy Jenkins had promised to update him on the latest ‘refugee debriefings’ of the increasingly large number of people making the perilous journey across the English Channel from Northern France, and in some cases from Holland and Belgium. While it was known that in the low countries and parts of Denmark, Belgium and northern France disparate ad hoc regional communes, collectives and military protectorates ‘seemed to have been set up’ very little had been known about the real situation on the ground until recently. Likewise, it had not been appreciated until about six weeks ago that there was an established functioning governing regime in Southern France.

  Apparently based in the Auvergne around Clermont this administration’s writ might reach half-way north to Paris and all the way from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. However, other than that the ‘South France Government’ was secretive, possibly socialist or Marxist and almost certainly militaristic, little was known of it. For example, it was not known if this regime controlled seaworthy former vessels of the French Navy, or airworthy military or civilian aircraft, whether it had contacts with the junta in power on Corsica, or contacts with Franco’s Spain or the Tuscan League Fascists of the Italian Peninsula. Jeremiads worried whether Southern France had become a ‘safe haven’ for Red Dawn sympathisers, or might one day have ambitions of its own in the Mediterranean, or aspirations to command the Bay of Biscay. Wiser heads counselled that lack of contact was not evidence, of itself, of ill-will or hostility and that the only wise course of action was to wait and see.

  Tom Harding-Grayson’s skeleton ‘French Section’ at the Foreign Office had flagged the uncommunicativeness of the putative ‘South France Enclave’ as problematic but not necessarily worrying; although privately, the Foreign Secretary was not so sanguine. In this troubled age sane men looked for friends wherever they might be found and silence was if not dangerous, then almost always troubling.

  The last thing Her Majesty’s Government needed right now was a new armed neutral, or worse, a potential new enemy threatening its Atlantic flank and menacing the western Mediterranean. Roy Jenkins was keenly interested to learn what news Colonel Gregson-Phelps had gleaned since their last meeting a fortnight ago.

  It vexed him more than somewhat that MI5 had stayed aloof from involving itself in the business of investigating or in any way ‘vetting’ the refugees coming ashore in increasing numbers on the southern shores of England. Not that MI6 had been any better. What was going on in France was as big a mystery to the Secret Intelligence Service as it was the Security Service! MI5 claimed its focus was on the ‘Irish Problem’; MI6 had lost all its continental networks in the October war and was a shadow of its former glory. Both organisations claimed chronic shortages of ‘qualified staff’ and that erratically shifting Government policy had made it impossible to rebuild ‘on a firm footing for the future’.

  ‘The attached letter, bearing the signatures of the four suspended directors, is obviously injurious to the interests of home and overseas security and represents a prima facie case which must be prosecuted against the men involved...’

  Roy Jenkins groaned out aloud.

  In the last six months the United Kingdom had very nearly blundered into a disastrous war with the United States of America because of faulty, misleading and in critical areas, non-existent intelligence. Aircraft from Spanish bases had been able to launch devastating attacks on British ships without warning. Malta had been attacked in December without warning. The whole sorry saga of Red Dawn – Krasnaya Zarya – had fallen upon British Arms in the Mediterranean and over-run Anatolia, Turkey, Crete, the Aegean and parts of the Greece and the Balkans before anybody in England had had any real inkling of what was going on. There had been no warning of Red Dawn’s use of nuclear weapons against Royal Navy targets. There had been no warning of Red Dawn’s nuclear strikes against targets in south-eastern Europe, Egypt and on Malta. Self-evidently, the Government Communications headquarters (GCHQ) had comprehensively failed the nation.

  And now Roy Jenkins was discovering that MI5 was wasting time mercilessly prosecuting four senior men who had had the temerity to go over the heads of their chiefs to appeal to the Prime Minister in an attempt to remedy this disgraceful state of affairs!

  “I take it the Prime Minister has not had sight of this letter?” The Home Secretary asked his Private Secretary, a young man snatched from his post-doctoral studies in economics and politics at Worcester College in January.

  “No, Minister. It is my information that MI5 intercepted it and this is the first time it has seen the light of day since then.”

  For all that Roy Jenkins sometimes gave the appearance of a mild-mannered, bumbling country solicitor with a minor speech impediment there were occasions when a volcanic fury fulminated just beneath his calm, unruffled mask.

  “Where pray is the Director General of the Security Service?”

  “I believe he is in Belfast, Minister.”

  The Home Secretary was tempted to observe that if Sir Roger Hollis, whom he had come to regard as a hollow place man, was in Ulster then he was probably in the one place in the kingdom where he could not possibly make the existing situation worse! However, he refrained from voicing his innermost thoughts out aloud.

  He slapped the file before him shut.

  “I intend to show this to the Prime Minister at the earliest opportunity.” Thereafter, he strongly suspected that Sir Roger Hollis would be seeking alternative employment. It beggared belief that MI5 had, in effect, been conspiring to suppress bad news coming out of GCHQ!

  Chapter 10

  13:38 Hours

  Friday 3rd April 1964

  HMS Talavera, 10 miles west of Sliema Point

  Commander Peter Christopher had realised what the captain of the USS Berkeley was planning to do and had hopped falteringly to the port bridge rail, a less than straightforward business since the bridge was a barely recognisable tangle of twisted and blackened metal and his right knee and ankle collapsed agonisingly every time he tried to put any weight on that wing. He was as bloodied, battered, bruised and scorched as any man and had absolutely no idea how he or anybody else on the bridge had survived. Leaning over the rail he had cupped his hands to his mouth.

  ‘STAND OFF, SIR!’

  His voice had cracked with strain.

  ‘STAND OFF, SIR!’

  The immaculate superstructure of the modern American guided missile destroyer had ranged alongside and the gap between the two ships had rapidly narrowed; already Talavera’s bow-heavy wallowing motion previously threatening an imminent capsize had moderated, sheltered as she was in the lee of the bigger US Navy vessel.

  On the bridge wing opposite Peter Christopher a man in a helmet wearing a bulky life preserver raised a megaphone to his lips.

  ‘NEGATIVE TO THAT, SIR! PREPARE TO RECEIVE BOARDERS, SIR!’

  Despite everything Peter Christopher had half-smiled and had shaken his head. This latter was a bad idea because he almost passed out. Had his hand not involuntarily tightened its grip on the bridge wing and somebody behind him not steadied him he would surely have taken a fall.

  ‘TOO DANGEROUS, SIR!’ He had protested, cursing his failing voice. ‘TALAVERA MAY CAPSIZE OR BLOW UP ANY MINUTE!’

  ‘DAM THE TORPEDOES, SIR!’ Boomed the uncompromising reply of the commanding officer of the USS Berkeley.

  Peter Christopher would have argued the point further but
his seaman’s eye recognised that the two ships were about to come together regardless of any action he or his American counterpart took in the next few seconds. He also knew that because of the American captain’s courage and willingness to put his own ship directly in harm’s way that potentially, many of his men – and most of his seriously wounded - who would surely have died in the water, would now live.

  Besides, he was in no position to argue. His counterpart on the USS Berkeley had a megaphone and he only had his broken voice.

  ‘All hands to assist with the evacuation of the wounded to the USS Berkeley!’ He ordered, knowing that it was not an order he actually needed to give. He was very nearly beyond reason by then.

  Despite the warmth of the afternoon he shivered.

  ‘Sir?’ An anxious voice inquired.

  ‘I’m okay,’ he had retorted instantly, harshly. ‘I’m fine, I’m fine, thanks,’ he had added, more gently.

  The USS Berkeley had ground against the sinking destroyer with a loud squeal of metal on metal, and a veritable flood of men had leapt down onto Talavera’s decks. Peter Christopher had watched as a helpless spectator, humbled and thankful that so many of his men who would otherwise have died in the seasonal cold of the waters off Malta would now live.

  “We should go down to the fo’c’sle, sir?”

  “Yes,” he agreed, watching the first of his most badly wounded being hauled onto the deck of the Berkeley. “Clear the bridge!”

  But the Captain of HMS Talavera himself made no move to follow.

  While a single man remained alive on his ship he would remain aboard.

  He had led his men into the jaws of death; what honourable man could conceive of saving himself before he knew that all those brave fellows who might be saved had been saved?

  A hand touched his left elbow.

  “Wasn’t that a thing?” Miles Weiss, HMS Talavera’s Executive officer and Peter Christopher’s oldest surviving friend in the service observed rhetorically. He blinked and squeezed his eyes shut, unable to focus on anything in particular as blood trickled from his left ear. Remarkably, he had survived the destruction of the gun director – by a direct hit from a large shell which had failed to explode – with hardly a scratch.