by Tom Black
Now, he thought as he sat back down at the rear of the boat, he was effectively a stateless person. He was a traitor. While he might well stand by the actions he had taken – and he certainly did – they had earned him nothing, and cost him everything. He leant over the side again and stared into the abyss.
“It stares into you,” he muttered. Go on, he thought, end it all. There’s no reason to stick around now. They might not even ever find him. Did he want to freeze to death out here? A quick plunge, a sharp inhalation – some pain, so they said – but then nothingness.
He stood up and steadied himself against the edge of the boat.
“I wish someone were around to hear this,” he said, bracing his weight against his arms and readying himself.
“To those who think I wronged them, I cannot apologise,” he said to no-one, buttoning up his greatcoat, “to those who call me a traitor, I cannot refute your claim. But treachery against nations is an irrelevance in the pursuit of world revolution.”
The wind was picking up again. The boat rocked, and Harold braced himself again.
“There are only a handful of people to whom I wish to apologise,” he continued, closing his eyes and only now noticing that tears were streaming down his cheeks, “Mary, Robin and Giles – I lied to you as no husband and father should. I am sorry. And I am sorry that your lives will doubtless be changed for the worse by all this.”
He opened his eyes and stared down again.
“Now,” he said, “enough talk.”
He pushed against his arms with all his weight and screwed his eyes shut. He leaned forward, and willed himself to let go.
Nothing happened.
He looked down, incredulous. His hands were clasping the edge of the boat, his knuckles white. No, he wanted to let go. He wanted to topple over the side and disappear. He wanted that. He wanted this.
But he didn’t. Not really. As his tears began to fall thick and fast, Harold Wilson realised he just didn’t have it in him. It didn’t matter what awaited him at Her Majesty’s Pleasure. He simply couldn’t do it.
With a sniff and an attempt at a dignified slump back onto the helmsman’s seat, Harold sat down and awaited whatever fate was going to throw at him next.
Paddy Ashdown’s knuckles were white as he gripped the open door of the helicopter. No longer remotely frightened by the spinning blades a few feet above his head, he stared with renewed focus at the boat he had spotted when operating the spotlight a minute earlier.
“Lower a rope!” he commanded the crew, who were doing so already. The figure in the boat was very still, and Paddy couldn’t get a good look at his face. But there could be no doubt now, surely?
The figure stirred, lazily at first, but by the time Paddy had rappelled down to just above the boat, he could see that the most wanted man in the Western world was looking him straight in the eye. With a silent cry of triumph, Paddy jumped into the boat. It was less dignified a landing than he had hoped – he frantically steadied himself and came damn close to falling over the side. Harold Wilson got shakily to his feet.
“Good morning,” he began, “I suppose—”
“Shut up, Mr Wilson,” said Paddy curtly, and punched him in the face.
In Downing Street, no one was saying a word. When, half an hour ago, the entire Cabinet had been summoned, even the most unflappable of the Ministers present had looked at their spouses with an expression of finality. Even Lord Hailsham had broken the habits of a lifetime and kissed his wife on the forehead before walking out of the front door.
The Cabinet Room had been without a chair for all of three minutes before Lord Mountbatten had walked in, given his audience a curt nod, and immediately walked through into the antechamber. Reginald Maudling had thought it a very muted beginning to a nuclear war, whilst Jeremy Thorpe was ideally wondering if his constituency office was remote enough to avoid the worst of the fallout.
Only Lord Home, Ted Heath and Sir John Hunt had been allowed access into the First Lord of the Treasury’s Office. Mountbatten sat so still, with his hands clasped so tightly against the receiver, that the Cabinet Secretary was half-wondering if he had simply died in his chair. Given the stresses of the past week, it would have hardly been a surprise if that had been the case.
“I see,” Lord Mountbatten said, suddenly, “thank you, Chief Constable.”
The First Lord of the Treasury was a master of voiced ambiguity. Lord Home, no stranger to the habit himself, sat and wondered if “I see,” was a sign to reach for the champagne or the keys to the bomb shelter.
“Indeed,” Mountbatten continued, “probably for the best.”
The receiver was placed back onto the stand. The three men sat opposite said nothing, waiting for the man facing them to break the silence.
“Gentlemen,” Mountbatten said after an age, “I think that we have him.”
Chapter nineteen
Sunday 16th November 1975 – 11:00am
As a great bell rang out eleven times, and a man with a trumpet played a haunting tune, a pigeon perched on a branch. It shook its head slightly as it settled on the tall tree. Around its base, a great many people were stood in absolute silence. The pigeon did not know why – it is debatable whether it really knew what ‘people’ actually were. But, whether by coincidence or some grand cosmic design, the pigeon too remained quiet. It did not coo, it did not noisily flap its wings, and it did not cause an outburst of noise from one of the gentlemen standing very still below it by defecating on their uniforms.
The gentlemen and ladies standing so still were doing so around a tall, grey plinth. To them, it represented the sacrifices of a great many other gentlemen and ladies. To the pigeon, it was another place to sit. Again, however, this time the pigeon declined to move from its branch to the top of the grey object. Today, it had a great many red things around it. A number of gentlemen were in red, too, as well as some in blue, some in green and many in black.
Overlooking the whole scene, on the steps of a great grey building, stood a number of other people wearing black. Almost all of them were men, though one, at the centre, was very definitely not. On one side of her stood a man in a black uniform and a white hat. On the other side, another man (who looked facially similar to the first) was dressed in the same way. The pigeon remained still, but moved its head about to see if there was anything else that was interesting to note.
There was not, the pigeon determined. A few very old men were sat down while everyone else stood, but it looked like they would have had difficulty standing up. Its curiosity satisfied, the pigeon took off and flew elsewhere, the beating of its wings echoing briefly around the silent street. Perhaps there would be more interesting things to see at the feet of the man on the giant pole.
Remembrance Sunday presented mixed emotions to Enoch Powell. Like most veterans, he found that it was obviously a time for reflecting on fallen colleagues, but he also had a sense of regret. He had been a damn good Intelligence Officer, but he had seen so many men, many of whom that he had known well, give their lives up at El Alamein whilst he had been stuck at his desk in Cairo. There had been many other occasions when he had felt the same way; North Africa, India, Singapore.
Oh, there was no doubt that he had been useful in the War – Mountbatten had told him as much when he had been Secretary to South East Asian Command – but he always felt somewhat of a fraud at events such as this, especially when he looked around at all the scarred, wheelchair-bound figures who formed the vanguard of the veteran’s Parade.
The opening bars of Beethoven’s Funeral March shook Powell from his introspection, and he cast an eye over the initial wreath bearers.
An informal Kremlinology had developed over the past week or so. In the absence of any formal Cabinet system, the relative influence, or lack of, for Ministers had usually been settled by whoever was sitting nearest to Mountbatten when he made his daily sermon from the Despatch Box. For a while, it had seemed as if Howe and Whitelaw had been on the ascendency, but th
e former was apparently being groomed for the Foreign Office, while Whitelaw had apparently been pushed forwards to keep the seat warm for the leadership election.
To the surprise of everyone – including Powell – it was Ted Heath who had been able to mount the greatest political comeback since Churchill. At the moment, Heath was standing twenty meters away from Powell, just behind Her Majesty. As the Home Secretary walked towards the Cenotaph, Powell shook his head; it was as if Lazarus had been appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Jenkins – detestable as ever – was next. For the first time since becoming Leader of the Labour Party, he seemed happy to be associated with the colour red, saying nothing as he placed his wreath beside Heath’s. The Labour Party had enjoyed a fractious few days as the uneasy truce between centre- and far-left had bedded in, but he knew that the potential for a terminal split was still great. Jenkins’ assumption of power had apparently scuppered the leadership ambitions of both Cato and Callaghan, but neither man seemed to mind too much. Michael had already confessed that he was looking forwards to finally getting around to writing his history of the English Constitution. Powell already knew that he was going enjoy writing a review explaining how everything Foot said was wrong.
Thorpe looked as if he was on his way out. The Lord President of the Council, lips pursed, ambled towards the wreath as if he was strolling to Church. There was no longer any energy to the Member for North Devon, who clearly had enjoyed opposition a damned sight more than his notional position as Minister for Constitutional Reform. Mountbatten had held some sympathy for vandalism, but it did not seem as if it was going to go anywhere.
That said, if Thorpe was out of sorts, the Liberal Party was worse. The mass resignation of the entire Young Liberal committee had shown, first hand, the difficulties of balancing expectation with reality. Powell had not bothered to learn the names of most of the post-election in-take, but he had heard a hurried snippet of conversation in the tea room between the Member for Probably Land’s End South and the one for Fifteen Scottish Rocks Where Nobody Lives about an ‘existential crisis’ for them all – which Powell had, for the first time in months, enjoyed a genuine laugh over.
The rest of the ceremony drudged on as best as expected. The Commonwealth representatives provided an unlikely source of entertainment when the Australian High Commission made a pointed attempt to ignore the presence of The Queen. Scars from the Double Dismissal, as it had become known, clearly had yet to heal.
Enoch Powell mulled this point over and over again until he realised that the parade had come and gone. Instead of dispersing in dignified silence, however, the participants on Whitehall were slowly, collectively, looking up towards the balcony of the Foreign Office. Enoch grumbled under his breath. Mountbatten may have swapped the Naval Uniform for Saville Row in daily life, but today, as was his right (resigned commission or not), Lord Louis was dressed as an Admiral of the Fleet – like his nephew. The image of an admiral giving a speech to the assembled masses was only a palm tree and a carnival away from being Latin American. Fending off the urge to flounce away in disgust, Powell – for once, just part of the crowd – listened.
First Lord of the Treasury Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas Mountbatten, Earl Mountbatten of Burma, was breaking tradition again. It was something of which he had not intended to make a habit. For the Prime Minister (in all but name) to make an announcement at the cenotaph was unthinkable. But there was no better time to do this – the public had a right to know as soon as possible, and to overshadow the memorial would be inappropriate. Right after the parade of veterans was the perfect moment, not least because the country and the world’s media would be present.
He’d not slept since he’d been informed. His speech was largely his own work, for once – if this was to be his swansong, he wanted to leave his mark on it. For a swansong is what it was likely to be – the last page of his speech outlined his plans to retire by Christmas and set things in motion for a General Election at the earliest opportunity. As he spoke now, he could see the words ‘a duty I hope I have carried out as best I can’ poking out from under the rest of the pages. His apology for the perceived inappropriateness of his speech done, he had continued with a brief attempt to issue a non-apology for the ‘misunderstanding’ during yesterday’s ‘broadly successful’ parade. Now, he got to the heart of the matter.
“...for the reason I am speaking to you now is to inform the people of this country, and indeed the world, of a piece of news which I believe signals a change in the fortunes of this country. It is a piece of news which will bring happiness to many and peace to everyone. It is a piece of news that means, to quote a leader for whom I have the utmost respect, that our long national nightmare is over. Our lives may at last return to normal.”
He paused for effect, then spoke slowly and without a hint of ambiguity.
“The former Prime Minister, Mr James Harold Wilson, has been arrested and is now in custody. I say again: Harold Wilson is in custody.”
The total silence that followed this final statement was entirely unlike the two minutes of silence that had occurred half an hour earlier. It was a silence of awe, or perhaps disbelief. Mountbatten waited a moment before deciding to continue, looking down at his notes.
Then somebody shouted ‘hooray!’.
A hundred heads turned towards the loudmouth, and for a moment it looked as though he might be strung from the Cenotaph. A second later, however, there came a cry of ‘hurrah!’ from the other side of the crowd. A man in a wheelchair, impeccably dressed in the dress uniform of an infantryman and medals from the Somme on his chest, raised a fist into the air and repeated his celebratory cry.
This was all the crowd needed. Within seconds, sporadic and inappropriate cheers had become acceptable cries of jubilation. A moment of national ecstasy shared, as history books would later record, by families sitting around television screens around the country. Some would declare the moment was an insult to the Glorious Dead. Others, that it was a typical British celebration of the jingoistic warrior class. But in that moment, Mountbatten had to wipe a tear from his eye as he saw unbridled joy on the faces of hundreds of people stood in front of him. There had been so much suffering, so much hatred. So much bad blood. Now, it seemed, there was a chance to get things back to normal. His instincts had been correct. After waiting for the cheering to subside somewhat, he raised a hand. A hush fell almost immediately.
“With this in mind,” he continued at last, “I would like to offer the utmost thanks of myself and this government to the men and women of the security services, the police and the armed forces. All of them have played a vital role in bringing Britain’s most notorious fugitive to justice.”
Not too far away, he caught Tony Benn’s eye and hoped he didn’t give away that he was starting to enjoy himself.
“For justice will now be served. Treason is a crime, and while the evidence against Mr Wilson is wide-ranging and compelling, he is entitled to a fair trial. He shall have one. This country is, despite his alleged efforts, a democracy.”
There was another round of cheering. Mountbatten could feel the Queen’s eyes staring at his back in admiration. It would be a shame to leave the stage right this instant, just at the point where the job of governing might become at all normal...
He stopped himself. That path was a dangerous one, and better men than him had found themselves unable to get off it once they chose that fork in the road. No, now was the best time to leave office – he would remain in place so an orderly transition could occur, but with Wilson in custody and the Americans and Soviets no longer hyperventilating, a general election was a reasonable prospect. Ted would likely win the Tory leadership, and then the election – but that would be no bad thing. A compassionate moderate was what the country needed.
Before he got too carried away, Mountbatten raised a hand to calm the cheering once more. His eyes moved to the bottom of his penultimate page of notes.
“Many of you will know t
hat the task of leading this nation is one I accepted with great reluctance. Indeed, I—”
The sound of the explosion tore through the rapt silence. The screams provided a horrifying echo of the cheers they followed.
A policeman, appearing from nowhere, took Mountbatten by the shoulder and began to direct him down the steps. The Queen was already nowhere to be seen. Mountbatten craned his neck to see what was going on, and could make out a pillar of black smoke coming from the far end of Whitehall.
“What’s happened?” he demanded. The officer said nothing but indicated Mountbatten ought to get into his car as quickly as possible.
As he clambered into the P5, Mountbatten was momentarily surprised to see the Home Secretary already in the other back seat.
“Ted, what the hell is going on?”
“It seems a car exploded, First Lord.”
“What do we know?” Mountbatten replied, already back into military mode.
“I have just been handed this – apparently Charing Cross Police Station received a telephone call six minutes ago. The police didn’t determine that it was a serious threat until – well, until it was too late. I haven’t had the chance to read it myself.”
Mountbatten snatched the paper and scanned it. Heath continued.
“They tell me it was phrased as a warning. It seems the perpetrators’ timing was slightly off.”
“This was no warning,” Mountbatten snarled, “if I hadn’t given my speech – and nobody knew I was going to do it – people would have begun to disperse. Hundreds of people would have been filing past that car when it exploded.”
