Right of Reply

by John Harris

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Leggo had his head down as he made a note on his pad and the general couldn’t see the wry look on his face. ‘Any agenda?’

  ‘No.’ Hodges spoke sharply. ‘I just want to put the breeze up ’em a bit. There’s too much sickness and too much crime, and not enough work being done. Too many can’t-be-doners and better-notters among the regimental commands. They’ve got to pull their socks up a bit. We’ll spring a surprise inspection on ’em when I get back. That ought to make ’em jump. Calhoun wants a bit of stiffening and I think Dixon could do with a rocket up the backside. He’s got it in him but he’s too damn lazy by a long chalk. He’s fine on computer stuff but not so hot on the two-legged animal. I didn’t want him anyway. I wanted Tom Southey.’

  ‘What happened to Brigadier Southey, sir?’ Leggo asked.

  ‘He got diverted at the last moment – together with the brigade’s ack-ack guns. Ship’s engines failed. They said it was sabotage and sent me Dixon instead.’

  ‘Been rather a lot of that, sir,’ Leggo observed.

  Hodges grunted. ‘You don’t have to tell me,’ he said. ‘This thing’s been a nightmare. We’re badly armed and under-trained. Dixon’s short of ack-ack and field artillery, and most of Calhoun’s weapon carriers are in Scotland with Tom Southey. Our transport’s largely civilian, scraped up from anywhere we could get it, together with a few lorries we’ve raised in Malala and paid for at enormous cost, and we’ve no maps of Khanzi but a lot of old rubbish supplied by Braka. Where did they come from, anyway?’

  Leggo gave a twisted smile. ‘Bus routes or something, sir, I suspect.’

  Hodges snorted. ‘They got us here too damn quick, Stuart. I’ve never seen such a shambles in my life. War Office might have pulled their fingers out a bit.’

  Leggo’s smile widened. ‘They punctiliously informed you of your promotion to lieutenant-general, sir,’ he pointed out.

  ‘And signally failed to keep me informed of the changes in plan.’

  Hodges’ eyes fell on the file in his hand, and his mind moved restlessly over his problems. ‘Stuart,’ he asked suddenly, ‘how many coloured men have we in Hodgeforce?’

  Leggo looked up, startled by the question. ‘Around ten per cent, sir,’ he said. ‘I can make it more exact, if you wish.’

  Hodges considered the figure. When the first of the coloured recruits had found their way into the Army it had been considered unusual but, more and more, as Englishmen aimed for the high wages offered by industry, the Army had had to fall back on the more willing coloured immigrants; and now, with the return of National Service, British-born Africans and Jamaicans had been swept into the Forces with their white comrades.

  As it happened, they had turned out to be excellent soldiers with a liking for that army ceremonial which was anathema to most white men, but Operation Stabledoor had raised a problem with them that nobody seemed to have considered in Whitehall where they were merely names on a list.

  ‘I wonder if they’re all right,’ Hodges said.

  Leggo lifted his head again. ‘All right, sir?’

  ‘Dammit, Stuart, their fathers and forefathers came from this strip of coast! Even the West Indians! They must have some fellow-feeling for the Khanzians. I wonder if we can rely on ’em.’

  Leggo thrust out his lower lip thoughtfully. ‘I’d say you could rely on them as much as, if not more than, some of their white colleagues, sir,’ he said after a pause.

  ‘Perhaps you’re right at that.’ Hodges seemed to dismiss the thought. ‘Let’s get down to stirring up these battalion commanders. Make the conference the day after tomorrow when these blasted politicians have finished with me. They should have ironed out a few faults at Pepul by then, with the embarkation rehearsal.’

  ‘Very well, sir.’

  ‘You’d better fly up there yourself tonight and have a look at it. I can manage here with Lyall and Fraschetti. See the Senior Naval Officer and the Support Committee and the AOC and find out how it’s gone. You can fly back and report to me here.’

  Leggo, who was none too eager to return to the discomforts of Pepul, just managed to refrain from pulling a face.

  ‘Very good, sir. Anything else?’

  ‘No, Stuart. And Stuart…’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Do me a favour and take that supercilious look off your face for a change.’ Leggo’s face set at once in an expression of smart attention. ‘It probably doesn’t worry you half as much as it does me, but I don’t like what I see. I was at Suez, and I don’t fancy being humiliated twice in a lifetime.’

  Three

  The speech that Ginger Bowen and Sergeant O’Mara and General Hodges had listened to had put a stop to all television viewing back in England and, for that matter, in the half-dozen other countries to which it had been relayed by Telstar and the numerous other satellites which had gone up in the late Sixties and early Seventies.

  The intense activity which the crisis had stirred up at the United Nations Headquarters in New York halted while the delegates listened, huddled round their radio and television sets in their hotel suites and common rooms, and for the first time the Chinese intervention in North Korea, where Chinese troops had rushed to the aid of a tottering government, had been pushed off the front pages. Suddenly no one wanted to hear how many people had been killed in the fighting there. For once the number of casualties and the names of burned villages held little interest.

  In London, the Prime Minister’s speech had been considered important enough to break into the evening’s viewing at the peak hour, and on ITV had even elbowed aside the everlasting Coronation Street, which seemed to most people to have been running since the beginning of time. There had been an abrupt silence in most homes and in the pub saloons where it had been heard, as the Prime Minister’s plump avuncular face had faded out, before the uneasy chattering had started again. Ex-soldiers, remembering the Nazi War and Korea and Vietnam and a dozen other minor bush fires, began to see all the hopes of world peace which they had so precariously entertained during all the bitter years since 1945 disappearing at last in a puff of smoke.

  ‘We just dodged the bomb last time,’ was the general feeling. ‘We’ll be lucky to dodge it again.’

  There was a feeling of uneasiness running through the whole country. Nobody liked seeing one of Britain’s last remaining bases being taken over by what seemed to be a gang of undisciplined Africans but, since 1945, the British people on the whole had got used to the idea and were able to accept it, if not with equanimity, at least without rancour. They had always managed to establish new bases somewhere before, with the use of money, promises, persuasion and a little American help; and the idea of departing from that method now came as a shock, because most people were aware that, thinly veiled beneath the Prime Minister’s words and deftly hidden by all his high-sounding wishes to preserve the status quo and the sanctity of treaties, there was a definite threat to go to war against the Khanzians. He could call it ‘a divergence of opinion’ or ‘a provocation’ or ‘a security operation only’ until he was black in the face, it still stuck out a mile that bombs were likely to fall and that the world might be heading for self-immolation.

  Opposition to what was taking place in Africa had built up swiftly in the high flat cube of the United Nations edifice in New York, and faced with a situation that could easily explode into a global nuclear conflict, the mood was sombre and laden with anxiety and expectancy.

  Russia, at last aware of the danger of China and aligned with the West, had already warned that she was prepared to take sides against Colonial-type action, and the United States had said quite bluntly that she wasn’t going to be a party to any aggression, no matter what the excuse. She’d had enough after Vietnam of other people’s wars.

  ‘Let it be known,’ the American delegate had said quite firmly only the previous week, ‘that my country regards with grave disquiet any action that might let dangerous elements loose in Africa. That continent has a right to work out
its own future without interference from the white races, and the slightest interference with their sovereign rights will make them turn their eyes to where they might expect to find sympathy.’

  Everyone knew he meant China. Everyone seemed to mean China these days when they talked of people finding sympathy. While ever there was the slightest excuse for the Chinese or Russian Communists to fish in troubled waters, world bitterness and resentment would continue to flourish.

  The Prime Minister himself was well aware of this and, travelling back in his car to Downing Street from his office in the House of Commons, where, with a few of his Ministers, he had listened to his speech, his mind kept drifting back to the reports he’d received from embassies and consulates all over the world, and to the hostility to his action which seemed to have arisen almost overnight in places where he’d confidently expected to find friends. It had taken him by surprise and he was bewildered and dismayed by the way the delegates to the United Nations had begun to discuss Operation Stabledoor even before it had taken place. Hodgeforce, which he had hoped to throw in quickly enough to present world opinion with a fait accompli, had become only fait without being accompli.

  Remembering only too well the way the Rhodesian crisis had been allowed to drag on until Britain had seemed in the end completely to have lost control, remembering the way Nasser had got away with it in 1956 because action hadn’t been taken at once, remembering even the way they’d dithered in the late Thirties and allowed Hitler to build up his forces when decisive action would have put paid to him once and for all, he had dispatched Hodgeforce as soon as the crisis had blown up, and it had very quickly been in camp within a short ocean voyage of where he intended it to go. Unfortunately, it had had to leave without a great deal of its transport, because it had been found difficult to raise sufficient from the depleted depots, and the men weren’t of the highest quality. But there were several parachute and Marine companies and four companies of the Guards, and what mattered most, they were in a position in Pepul to exert some influence on world decisions, though the Prime Minister wasn’t entirely happy about the way the Ministry of Defence had admitted that the additions to the force were all going out in dribs and drabs as long-forgotten equipment was dug out.

  He was unable any longer to keep up his pretence of satisfaction. Though the Chinese had no right to quibble about what he was proposing to do when they were still engaged in putting down anti-Communist opposition in North Korea, the same attitude could hardly apply to the unconfirmed reports he’d had that Russian submarines were grouping in the sea area between Malala and Khanzi. Their presence might well be embarrassing if they decided to place themselves obstinately in the path Hodgeforce had chosen to take if it were directed at King Boffa Port.

  He put his uneasy thoughts behind him, but immediately doubt assailed him again at the reaction to Operation Stabledoor that had sprung up even in England. Demonstrations had taken place in London, and students from the University and the Schools of Medicine, Art and Economics had turned up unexpectedly at Westminster with banners, so that the police had had to be hastily called out to remove sit-down strikers from Trafalgar Square and a flag from the War Memorial in Whitehall. He didn’t worry overmuch about these manifestations of disapproval, however – youngsters these days seemed obsessed in their opposition to strife and someone occasionally had to have the courage to make unpopular decisions – but he was concerned with the trend of more mature opinion.

  His next day’s engagements, he knew, included an appearance at Rudkin and Hale where the by-election wasn’t going as well as they’d expected. He had a feeling that the visit wasn’t likely to be any too pleasant, because reports from the local agent indicated that there’d been a great deal more heckling than for years. It wasn’t that the candidate was unpopular. It was simply that he found himself standing for a party whose foreign policy had suddenly become anathema to the constituents.

  The Prime Minister sighed. He’d rather hoped he might dodge Rudkin and Hale, but he’d given his word and he had to put in an appearance because it seemed there was some danger of the seat being lost without him.

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ he’d been told, ‘if only you can go there and see them.’

  It was going to be a long day, because there was also a lunch of the Oxford Chamber of Commerce, where they would inevitably expect him to comment on events, and a dinner in the evening of the Honourable Coopers’ Company of London, where his speech was expected to be a major statement of policy. Although both the Chamber of Commerce and the Coopers’ Company were likely to be smoother rides than the meeting at Rudkin and Hale, because his audiences would have many investments in Malala and Khanzi and would be anxious to see them protected, there would still be some with investments in America, where the reaction to Stabledoor had been most hostile, who would expect him to give them some comfort, too.

  As the car turned out of Westminister into Whitehall, he shifted restlessly in his seat, aware of a feeling of having too much to do. He was far from being a lethargic man but somehow, just lately, he had often felt that his age was catching up on him.

  The uproar in the Opposition press to Stabledoor troubled him more than he felt it ought, because, with politics centred on two parties only, he hadn’t a great deal to worry about with a majority of seventy-nine. A report from his Party Chief Whip only that morning, however, had indicated that the National Opinion Poll had unearthed the fact that his Government’s popularity had dropped by around fifty per cent. Reflected in votes, this might have meant at a General Election that he was hanging on to power only by the skin of his teeth.

  ‘If they can only find out things as unpleasant as that,’ he had retorted, ‘then they’d better not find out anything at all.’

  This fact, together with Rudkin and Hale and the knowledge that a small group of discontents under George Gordon-Grey, the Member for Upham and Harthill, were not prepared to go along with the Party line was of far more concern than the behaviour of a mob of students. He’d put the hostile movement among his back-benchers down at first as one of the minorities that were always emerging in the House, a ginger group that would just as rapidly disappear when the crisis had passed, but instead of disappearing it persisted in growing and even seemed to be attracting the attention of Lord Edbury, an elder of the House who, as a Minister in a previous Government, carried a surprising amount of weight despite his age, and was the sort of man dissatisfied back-benchers liked to put up as a figurehead.

  The Prime Minister frowned, conscious of a vague feeling of contempt for his critics. Even allowing for a few dissident back-benchers, he felt quite certain that the vote of censure which the Opposition was clearly determined to bring would never be carried, but he sat up abruptly, nevertheless, his mind made up. Perhaps something ought to be done about the disaffection, he decided, before it became too powerful.

  As it happened, however, a far more dangerous reaction was building up round the person of the Leader of the Opposition, the Right Honourable Spencer Carey.

  In his office at his Party Headquarters, Carey had listened to the Prime Minister’s speech with growing indignation – not so much because he felt it was wrong to stand up for what belonged to his country, but because of the hypocrisy implicit in the speech.

  ‘If you have anything unpleasant to say,’ he always main-tained, ‘say it unpleasantly.’ And, like Sergeant O’Mara and General Hodges three thousand miles away in Malala, he regarded the oblique references to upholding the status quo and the preservation of treaties as just a lot of political eyewash.

  ‘Trust him to talk of peace,’ he said bitterly to his Shadow Chancellor, Derek Moffat. ‘Whichever way you look at it, this is nothing more than an ultimatum. They’ve given Scepwe a limited period to get out, or we’re going to throw him out.’

  He moved to the window and stared out. He was a tall man, lean and good-looking in spite of the heavy-framed spectacles he wore. He had recently been elected over the heads of seve
ral longer-serving opponents to the control of his party, and though it had not held office since his election, after many years in opposition it was now beginning to flex its muscles for what it considered was the period of crisis when it might well reach power. Only the stubbornness of Arthur Starke and the large majority he could command in the House stood in its way.

  Carey stared through the window, startled to find he could feel so bitter, and surprised that London, spread below him, could remain so normal with things as they were.

  The weather was typical of an English spring – grey with a cold bite in the air – and the view over St James was blurred by the damp. The lake was a flat sheet of glass below the towers and turrets of Westminster and the raw evening showed a suspicion of mist through the glow of the street lights, while the air was so still the smell of burning rubbish from the afternoon’s sweeping seemed to infiltrate into the room from the park, heavy and acrid and reminiscent of quiet days away from London.

  Carey studied the view for a second or two, only half hearing the muted roar of the traffic and noticing how much this area of London remained the same in spite of all the rebuilding, then he swung round again into the room and, picking up a pencil, jabbed at the air with it.

  ‘We haven’t the slightest excuse for sending this force,’ he said. ‘We haven’t even Eden’s laboured explanation on Suez that he was holding the Egyptians and the Israelis apart. It’s sheer aggression and nothing else.’

  There was no love lost between Carey and the Prime Minister, none of the respect that normally existed between the holders of two high offices, or of a man for a hard-hitting opponent. No one had ever seen the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition walk out of the Chamber chatting together after a bitter debate.

  ‘I’ve never heard anything quite so transparently dishonest,’ Carey continued. ‘What’s worrying him is having to answer for another lost base at the next election. This is the third we’ve lost in the lifetime of this Parliament, and he’s simply being forced into trying to hang on to this one. And, good God, the Chinese have already said that they’ll help the Khanzians, and the Khanzians have said they’ll accept help wherever it comes from.’