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

by James Philip

  ‘Admiral Clarey and I have agreed to co-operate fully in the rescue and relief operation now getting into full swing across the archipelago. For your information Anglo-American operations in the Eastern Mediterranean will proceed as planned. In the mean time the United States Sixth Fleet’s ships and aircraft have thrown a protective screen around the archipelago. Until the main runway at Luqa is repaired – that will be sometime in the next twelve to eighteen hours – Admiral Clarey’s helicopters will continue to ferry personnel and equipment onto Malta, and to transfer seriously injured servicemen and civilians onto ships off shore, several of which have advanced medical facilities including modern operating theatres. Admiral Clarey has sent all the medically trained officers and men who can be spared ashore, and supplied armed naval details to support British, Commonwealth and local Maltese forces in maintaining order on the streets and facilitating the ongoing rescue operations.’

  Dom Mintoff was genuinely astonished that he was being told this. Any of it. He had been a thorn in the side of the British for years, in the 1950s an advocate of Malta’s ‘integration’ into the Empire and when this had been rebuffed, an equally outspoken advocate of independence at any price. Now he was suddenly being treated as an ally and he honestly did not know how to react.

  Vice Admiral Clarey cleared his throat. He opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted and forestalled by a light knocking at the door.

  An elderly Maltese woman had entered bearing a metal tray and several chipped mugs.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Bonnici,’ Dan French smiled, rising to his feet and helping the old woman place the tray on the maps on his desk. ‘That’s most kind of you,’ he had added in Maltese. ‘Thank you.’

  The woman departed, clucking to herself without saying a word.

  ‘Mrs Bonnici took shelter here when the bombardment began. She’s been making tea and coffee ever since,’ the Acting C-in-C confided to the leader of the Maltese Labour Party.

  The coffee, black and strong, and tasted vile.

  Admiral Clarey cleared his throat again.

  ‘Air Vice-Marshal French is in command here, Mr Mintoff. The Sixth Fleet serves at his command until such time as things have returned to an even keel and the politicians in Oxford and Philadelphia have sorted out the chain of command.’

  Dom Mintoff did not begin to comprehend why the American, who spoke in a clear, confident drawl redolent with authority and certitude, had told him that. What point did he think he was making?

  The Commander of the US Sixth Fleet swept aside all doubt the next moment.

  ‘A lot of people on Malta, maybe some of the people close to you, went bad yesterday, Mr Mintoff. The enemy knew where to find important people, civilians like your political opponents in the Nationalist Party, and senior off duty British personnel. My MPs – military policemen – and my Marines, and all the intelligence gathering facilities of my Fleet have been put at Air Vice-Marshal French’s disposal to hunt down those traitors.’

  Dom Mintoff recoiled at the implied threat behind those words.

  Dan French sipped his coffee, wrinkling his nose.

  ‘I apologise for the coffee, gentlemen. Mrs Bonnici is an absolute darling,’ he observed, ruefully. “Nobody has the heart to tell her that her coffee is poisonous.’ This said he fixed Dom Mintoff in an amiably intense gaze for some seconds. ‘We very nearly lost the war yesterday, Mr Mintoff. Not the war we thought we’d been fighting these last few months but an altogether more,’ he paused, pondered his words, ‘unforgiving one. We won’t make that mistake again. Martial law will be in force across the Maltese Archipelago until further notice. I would rather work with you and whoever emerges to lead the Nationalists in the spirit of men of good will with the best interests of the people of Malta at heart, but,’ his shoulders twitched apologetically, ‘the time for half measures is over, Mr Mintoff. Within the rule of law you are either with us or against us.’

  It had been a curious interview and Mintoff had walked out of it honestly not knowing what to make of it. He felt like he had been read the riot act, except it was not that simple. For all his decency and English expressions of fair play he understood that Air Vice-Marshal French might at any time crack down hard. Behind the politely stated position, his preference for co-operation not coercion, he was the one holding a machine gun in his velvet-gloved hand.

  So when the Leader of the Maltese Labour Party looked at the fitfully dozing young naval officer; who by his courageous deeds had yesterday proven to be every inch his dead father’s son Dom Mintoff could not help but wonder with whom the future lay.

  While the war continued Malta would never be independent.

  The islands of the archipelago would forever be weighed down by the dead hand of British – and now American – imperial might; and yet, to even contemplate fighting that colonial yoke was a counsel of despair.

  Peter Christopher and his men had been prepared to die for the honour of their Queen and to save the lives of countless Maltese people. His people. Yesterday’s titanic battle would one day be a thing of legend. A legend attached to the powerful mythology of Malta’s very own little princess, Marija Calleja-Christopher. Assuming, that was, she too had survived. The possibilities were deeply worrying to a man to whom politics was life, and life was politics.

  Fate had decreed that the hero of the Battle of Malta was the husband of the young woman who had come to encapsulate the soul of the archipelago; the woman who somehow represented the best that Malta and the Maltese could be. A month ago the wedding of the Fighting Admiral’s son and the Little Princess had captured the imagination of practically every man, woman and child on Malta; it was as if the Maltese had suddenly inherited a Royal Family, a family about whom everybody might gladly unite.

  Dom Mintoff was nothing if not the shrewdest of political operators. He made mistakes, everybody made mistakes. But unlike his foes he always looked several steps ahead, like a driver focused not on the vehicle directly in front of him but the movements of the traffic in the far distance. Where one stood at present was incidental, the important thing was to understand where one wanted to go in the future. Politics was about ends and means; and understanding who was a serious player and who was not.

  The young naval officer sleeping on that chair would awake a Knight of the Realm, inheriting the Fighting Admiral’s baronetcy. In the next few days the British would shower him with medals and accolades because that was what the British always did when they had suffered a crippling, humiliating defeat. It was a formula all British governments had slavishly followed since the Crimean War when an aristocratic imbecile had led the Light Brigade to immortal brave destruction down the wrong valley, to attack the wrong guns at the battle of Balaklava. And once they had proclaimed their new hero they would discover, to their ecstatic delight that their newly crowned Odysseus had already married his princess...

  Dom Mintoff ought to have despised the young man sleeping in the chair in the derelict old seaplane hangar; despised him and his angelic wife but in a funny sort of way he was tempted to feel just a little bit sorry for them. Whatever life they had imagined they would live, all that was history. Sooner or later they would belong to their adoring public, and after that, they would live forever in the spotlight of their former glories.

  He suspected it would be an intolerable burden for the man sleeping in the chair; were it not for his little Princess of Malta...

  Chapter 32

  12:25 Hours

  Saturday 4th April 1964

  Emergency Command Centre of the Military Governor of Malta, Marsa Creek

  Peter Christopher awakened with a start that was quickly calmed by the woman’s sympathetic smile. On his arrival at the old seaplane base abandoned and forgotten in the 1950s he had been mightily peeved to discover that the ‘C-in-C was in conference’, and that he would have to wait for his interview with his father’s successor. He had dropped off to sleep almost immediately he settled on the bench outside the old flight of
fice of the disused hangar. Notwithstanding the quiet hubbub all around him as people came and went, falling into small huddles then breaking up, the jarring of chairs, tables and the background static and unnaturally metallic squawking of the hastily installed public address system, his exhaustion was such that he had slept, albeit fitfully until a gentle hand had rocked his shoulder.

  He squinted at the woman who was holding out a mug of what smelled a little like hot chocolate towards him. He accepted the mug, nodding his thanks as he gathered his wits.

  “You and I really must stop meeting this way, Miss Pullman,” he observed dryly.

  The woman’s smile was sad.

  The younger man recollected his first meeting with the attractive, charming blond in a harbour front taverna in Lisbon in what seemed like another lifetime. And later meeting her again in the inner courtyard of the St Catherine’s Hospital for Women in Mdina when he had discovered the woman, whom he had taken for a spy in Lisbon, was already on friendly terms with Marija.

  “My name is not Pullman,” the woman stated mildly. “It is a long story. It will wait for another time. Hopefully, there will be another time.”

  The man was noticing the dried blood in her hair from a stitched wound that still oozed, the puffy discolouration around her right eye and the blood and filth on her creased and torn pale blue nursing auxiliary’s smock. She saw his concern and sought to allay it.

  “My scalp and my black eye apart the blood isn’t mine,” she explained.

  Fully awakened now the man was struggling to work out which part of him hurt the most. His right leg was stiff and fire lanced up and down it from toe to knee, his rib cage felt as if somebody had been jumping up and down on it and every time he attempted to manuever a facial muscle another part of his face burned in protest. He was pleasantly surprised to discover his hot chocolate had been heavily laced with rum.

  “I know my father is dead,” he said simply, his face a mask of indifference. “Who else?”

  The woman hesitated.

  “Margo Seiffert.”

  Peter Christopher’s heart sank.

  “Oh no...”

  “She was shot going to help a Soviet trooper,” the woman explained coldly. “There were a lot of casualties among your father’s senior staff officers. The Soviets practically over-ran his Headquarters at one stage. The bastards killed everybody who got in their way. Men, women, children. That was what they did everywhere they landed.”

  “Marija and Rosa Calleja were safe and well at Bighi last night,” Peter returned, trading information.

  The woman signed a visible sigh of relief.

  “Thank goodness.” She rubbed the threat tears from her eyes. “Marija’s family in Sliema should have been all right assuming they got to the shelters before the bombardment switched to the area. From what people on the Acting C-in-C’s staff say the Welsh Guards based at the Cambridge Barracks dispersed into Sliema and Gzira and made short work of the parachutists who came down in that area...”

  “It is a mess,” he agreed. “Marija’s brother Joe was on Talavera during the action.”

  Her eyes widened, so he explained.

  “We left harbour yesterday in such a hurry he got caught onboard. He’s at Bighi now. A little worse for wear but he’ll be okay.”

  The woman told him he real name.

  “Rachel Angelika? Sounds Polish?” He queried.

  She nodded.

  “So you were a spook after all?”

  “Yes.”

  Peter Christopher’s mind was not working at anywhere near full speed. He needed a few seconds to re-arrange his thoughts.

  “Our side or theirs?” He asked quietly.

  “Our side, I think but sometimes it is hard to tell.” Having agonised over how she was going to tell him what she had wanted to tell him for several hours, she blurted: “Your father knew you’d sunk those big ships before he died. His last words were ‘The boy and his Talaveras must have settled those bastards hash’ and that I was to tell you how proud he was of you...”

  It was a long time since Rachel had cried real tears; now the tears trickled and then poured down her cheeks and, pausing only to place his half-drunk mug of heavily rum-laced chocolate on the floor, Peter Christopher cautiously staggered to his feet and cautiously wrapped the woman in his arms not knowing how much the embrace was likely to hurt either of them.

  “Miss Piotrowska asked to speak to you before she went off with the security people,” Air-Vice Marshal Daniel French, the Acting Commander-in-Chief of all British and Commonwealth Forces on the Maltese Archipelago explained when HMS Talavera’s former commanding officer was eventually ushered into his drab, grubby room at the end of the decrepit old seaplane hangar.

  Dan French was not alone.

  A balding middle aged man in a spotlessly crisp US Navy uniform stepped forward to shake the newcomer’s hand.

  “Commander Christopher,” the Englishman announced, making the introductions, “this is Vice-Admiral Clarey, C-in-C United States Sixth Fleet.”

  Fifty-one year old Iowan-born Bernard Ambrose Clarey had been COMSUBPAC – Commander Submarine Force, US Pacific Fleet – at Pearl Harbour at the time of the October War. Two decades before he had won a Navy Cross for heroism serving on submarines in the war against the Japanese and after a career of steady, predictable progression been plucked from the highest echelons of the Submarine Service to take command of the Independence Task Force at Gibraltar a little over a month ago, charged with permanently re-establishing the Sixth Fleet in the Central Mediterranean.

  The American had fixed the tall young destroyer captain with a steely gaze and been immediately struck by the presence of the son of the famous Fighting Admiral. Although he had never quite understood the concept of the British stiff upper lip; he suspected that the demeanour of the younger man was an object lesson in it. The kid had bottled up his emotions tight as a drum.

  Peter Christopher began to straighten to his full height to attempt a passable imitation of a salute but the American stepped forward and stuck out a hand, which he shook in lieu of saluting.

  At Dan French’s suggestion the three men took seats.

  “Presently,” he said by way of bringing the meeting to order, “every available man is either filling in the holes in the runway at Luqa or laying down tarmac over the holes that have already been filled in. The moment the runway opens everybody and their dog Spot is going to want to come to Malta to begin the inquest, or more likely an inquisition into what went wrong.”

  The airman halted, thinking that the battered younger man sandwiched between the two most senior surviving allied officers in the Mediterranean might need a moment to get his bearings and come to terms with the implications of what he had just said.

  He need not have worried.

  “I don’t know what happened, sir,” Peter admitted. “Obviously, it would not have been possible for us to be as surprised by the arrival of the enemy fleet, as in fact we were, if something hadn’t gone badly wrong with out early warning systems. I know that the whole system was comprehensively wrecked by the EMPs from those big air bursts back in February. That was why I thought we’d had two or three radar pickets patrolling fifty miles out to sea around the archipelago for most of the last couple of months. While Talavera was in dockyard hands I sent my radar men ashore to help the RAF and Army people trying to put the air defence net back together again. From their reports I gathered the whole thing was a bit like all the King’s men trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together after he’d fallen of that wall of his.” Nobody interrupted him so he went on, his voice ringing dull with tiredness. “A lot of our best technical people sailed to Cyprus with the Operation Grantham task force; presumably in their absence the enemy somehow sabotaged our radar and communications net, sir. I honestly can’t imagine there will be much profit in conducting an ‘inquest’ into that? After the December bombing and the February near misses the whole air early warning system was held together by pi
eces of string.” He shrugged. “If you’ll pardon my saying it.”

  Vice-Admiral Clarey chuckled and shook his head.

  “A lot of mud is going to get thrown around in the next few days,” he observed sagely, wondering as he spoke if the kid understood that nothing could now stop his face being splashed across every TV screen, Pathe movie reel and newspaper front page in the World. “A lot of people will be queuing up to hear what you’ve got to say about this, son.”

  The heat was slowly rising in Peter Christopher’s bruised cheeks.

  “You mean that the British and American governments will do their best to make my father the scapegoat for yesterday’s,” he caught himself before he said the first word that came into his head, contenting himself with, “tragedy.”

  The Commander of the United States Sixth Fleet was impressed by the fact that the young tyro had not phrased his words as any kind of question. He had simply stated the obvious.

  “Commander,” Dan French said grimly, “if that ever happens it will be over my dead body. We find ourselves in an invidious position in which our political masters have neglected to agree among themselves a chain of command in this theatre of operations. Your father, my friend, made the best of a bad deal and if somebody has to fall on his sword rest assured that it will be me.” He glanced at Admiral Clarey. “However, in the meantime what we cannot afford at this time is a new rift between our people and Admiral Clarey’s people. For all we know yesterday’s attack was only the first of many. We must be prepared for whatever is to come.”

  Peter Christopher looked from the airman to the American admiral.

  He was his father’s son and he knew his duty; and because he was his father’s son he understood that nothing in his life would ever be so simple again. A few hours ago he had stood on the bridge of his ship and made a decision which, at the time, he had tacitly if not implicitly, expected would be the death of his ship and most, probably all, of his men. That decision had been straightforward, uncluttered with nuances, and utterly apolitical in every way.