Right of Reply

by John Harris

  ‘He’s quite right, of course,’ Carey agreed calmly. ‘Politically, he’s quite right, but ethically and morally, he’s dead wrong. If he’s in any doubt, he should never have started it.’

  ‘You hadn’t made your speech then,’ Greenaway pointed out. ‘You know as well as anyone that there’s a great deal of guesswork to any military operation, and what wasn’t allowed for is the effect that speech of yours has had. The ball’s in your court, Spencer, whether you like it or not.’

  Carey sat down again, motionless for a moment.

  ‘George,’ he said in a harsh voice, ‘I can’t go back on what I said.’

  ‘The Cabinet feels you ought.’

  Carey was on his feet again, moving restlessly about the room. ‘This operation’s come to the ears of other powers,’ he said. ‘They’re angry about it because they feel we’re prepared to go to war over something which more properly ought to have been taken to the International Court or to UNO. He should call it off and use negotiation, as he should have done from the very beginning.’

  Greenaway tried to placate him. ‘He’s aware of all this,’ he said. ‘But it’s too late now. They took a calculated risk on it being settled before anyone could argue about it. And if it had been settled – to our advantage – there’d have been sufficient pleasure in the country for the Government to have survived, no matter what the rest of the world thought. Let’s face it, UNO these days couldn’t have done much, particularly if it had been carried through with small loss of life. There’d have been a lot of protest, of course, but it’d have died out. You know as well as I do that politics, international, national or local, isn’t the prettiest of games.’

  Greenaway paused. ‘But things didn’t work out that way,’ he went on after a while. ‘When they began to get down to it, it was found we weren’t prepared for such a swift operation. Your party are as much to blame as anyone for that, Spencer.’

  Carey frowned. ‘I admit that much.’

  ‘The absence of matériel and men delayed it and allowed everybody else to get wind of it. There are reports now of “volunteers” and Russian equipment, and this doesn’t help General Hodges, especially now that he feels he can’t rely on his own people. He’s signalled to that effect.’

  ‘Good God!’

  ‘Burnaston took up his message and Hodges confirmed what he thought. It was your speech that started it, and it was because of this that the PM felt justified in asking you to withdraw it.’

  The Leader of the Opposition looked haggard. ‘George, I can’t withdraw,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t political word-spinning.’ Carey paused, wondering if he had been, because he’d not only been trying to state the objections of a great mass of protesting people without voices, but he’d also instinctively been trying to talk his party back into office.

  He shook his head. ‘I believe,’ he insisted, ‘that these men do have the right of reply. I know that at Suez, when it was stopped, most of the men in the Forces and, indeed, many people at home thought they’d been let down by the politicians just when they were going to pull the thing off. But this isn’t 1956. Things have changed and I think we should never be prepared to risk a world war for a base that isn’t even as important as Suez was. And that’s what I believe the average man in the Forces and in the street thinks, too.’

  Greenaway sat in silence as Carey pressed on, aware of his disapproval, even disbelief.

  ‘George,’ he said, trying to explain himself but conscious in the face of the older man’s silence of moralising, ‘you know as well as I do that decisions aren’t made by Parliament. That stuff about democracy’s a load of rubbish. The decisions are made by a caucus of half a dozen men – and if those men are wrongly advised or wrongly directed, even if they’re simply wrong, then they should be told so. What the Prime Minister decides these days is only rubber-stamped by Parliament and, in this case, when the decision had to be made quickly, he didn’t even have that problem. It can only be protested afterwards and, by God, George, I’m protesting. That’s what I meant.’

  ‘If this thing went wrong,’ Greenaway said, ‘it could mean the loss of many lives – British lives. It could mean a great deal of humiliation and perhaps even a new period of economic distress.’

  ‘I fully understand that.’

  ‘He insists our allies are still with us.’

  Carey frowned. ‘Alliances are useless under the Bomb,’ he pointed out. ‘De Gaulle spotted that profound truth years ago. While we’re prepared to stand by each other in the case of aggression, no one’s prepared to be dragged into a nuclear war simply because someone’s pride is hurt or because they’re growing greedy. Our allies in Europe would never support us, if it came to the crunch.’

  Greenaway was looking uncomfortable and it seemed to Carey to be time to make a decision.

  He still hesitated, however, because while the decision was easy enough to make, it wasn’t so easy to find the words that would make the decision acceptable to the country at large.

  ‘George,’ he said at last, ‘it would be the easiest thing in the world to turn you down because I saw all this as a stepping stone to putting myself in Downing Street. It would be just as easy to play the saint and to withdraw my opposition so that Starke could get up in the House and praise me for my support.’

  Greenaway looked up. He’d been in politics long enough to know what was coming, and he suddenly felt a little weary of the half-truths and the more-than-truths that made up the system.

  Carey was standing by the fireplace now, erect and distinguished – almost, Greenaway thought cynically, as if that were for the record, too.

  ‘Either of those,’ Carey concluded slowly, ‘would be easy. But I think what is being done is wrong, and whether men die or not, whether it helps me to power or sends me into the political wilderness – and believe me, some of my party want to go through with this, like you do – whatever it does, I’m not withdrawing. I’m standing by what I said.’

  Seven

  The rain had come down steadily all morning in a shining curtain that made the ships grey metallic shapes, until at noon the clouds parted once more and the sun began to drink the moisture from the pools on the deck. It had now held off for some time, but General Hodges was under no delusion that they had left it behind.

  ‘No wonder no one believes us,’ he said slowly. ‘Nobody in his senses would start an exercise at the beginning of the rainy season.’

  He turned at a knock at the door. Leggo looked up from his desk and spoke to the naval officer who arrived with new R5 photographs of King Boffa Port.

  ‘Been waiting for those,’ he said. ‘The gunners are wanting the bombardment task-table. Do we have copies?’

  ‘Processing at the moment,’ the naval man said. ‘These are the first ones for the general and the Support Committee.’

  ‘Fine. Ask the chopper boys to stand by to deliver them round the fleet.’

  Hodges crossed to the table as Leggo spread the photographs out. He was growing increasingly worried now. Stabledoor was drawing nearer its destination with every hour that went by and there had still been no answer to his signal from London. He was still committed to an operation of which he didn’t approve, and in which he had no faith. And, with equipment as short as it was, Stabledoor was poised on a razor-edge of doubt.

  From the early photographs they had of King Boffa Port, it was possible to tell how many floors there were to each building near the harbour installations, and even how many rooms on each floor, and from this they had been able to decide how many men would be required to comb them out in a given time. Everything had been considered and allowed for in greater detail than usual – bearing in mind the importance politically of success – and there was plenty of time to brief the men for battle. Unfortunately, by this time, and in view of the revelations of Leggo and Drucquer, Hodges had begun to entertain grave doubts about the quality of comradeship in his command. While the officers were largely on the side of Stabledoor, it s
eemed that the men were not.

  Leggo was leaning over his charts now, tracing with a slender forefinger the white-ringed points shown in the pictures and glancing at the appreciation that accompanied them.

  ‘New gun position in the old Governor’s Garden, sir,’ he was saying. ‘Another defended area at Sesapont Beach. And what’s this?’ He peered closer. ‘Anti-tank guns by the jetty, and what looks like dug-in tanks near the old Europeans’ Club.’ He turned to Hodges. ‘Those are new, sir.’

  ‘I hope they’re all that are new,’ Hodges said bleakly, running his eye down the appreciation.

  Leggo jerked his hand at the desk and the lists he was preparing.

  ‘Can we organise the task-table now, sir? Support Committee’s getting worried.’

  Hodges nodded. ‘We’d better,’ he said. ‘We can’t delay any longer. The gunners’ll have to know the targets and Downes’ people will want them for positioning their ships. If we get any amendments they’ll have to be passed out later and marked in by individual officers.’ He turned away, then paused, and swung back to Leggo. ‘And, Stuart, ask the gunners to try to make a better job of those co-ordinates than they did on the dummy run back to Pepul. Some of their targets then were out at sea.’

  Leggo managed a twisted smile which Hodges didn’t return. Filling his pipe, he went out on deck, feeling the need to be alone and think a little.

  The air was like the inside of a velvet bag, hot, stuffy and stifling, with the constant mutter of thunder over the horizon; and the long grey swells from the north-west swept in endless succession beneath the convoy. As each one arrived the ships bowed their obeisance to it – sterns up, bows down, sterns down, bows up – so that they looked like a lot of rocking horses on a fairground roundabout, and he remembered then that another Malalan launch had pulled out of the convoy during the night and had followed its predecessor and the British corvette Duck back to Pepul. He wasn’t really surprised. They hadn’t anticipated the most expert support from the Malalan forces, and mechanical failure had been anticipated. He’d inspected the Malalan ships in Pepul harbour, escorted by General Aswana and a whole string of high-ranking black officers, and while everything was done in the fashion of the Royal Navy, where most of the Malalans had been trained, he had even then detected the subtle shortcomings of a nation whose Europeanisation had been too swift.

  Immediately ahead of them and to the flanks were Liverpool and the escort screen. Deliberately, the planners had insisted that all nuclear submarines should be withdrawn to home bases, and they were now all moored at Holy Loch, their presence well reported in the newspapers in a trumped-up story of a need for modifications, because Westminster was anxious that the world, whatever else it might think, should not for a moment imagine they were trying to start a nuclear war.

  Hodges was still staring at the ships, sucking at his unlit pipe, his eyes following the albatross that was still accompanying the convoy, sweeping low over the swells, its wings never moving, graceful, dignified and curiously menacing, when a voice in his ear made him turn.

  ‘Makes you think of the Chorniye Kazach, doesn’t it?’

  It was Downes, more hawk-like than ever with the lines of strain beginning to show on his face.

  ‘Is she still there?’ Hodges asked.

  ‘She’s still there,’ Downes said. ‘Still on the same course as us. The submarines are there, too, also still on the same course.’

  ‘Does anybody else know?’ Hodges asked.

  ‘Officially, no. But every ship’s got radar and they’ll all be wondering what those blips are. They’ll be making guesses.’

  Hodges thought for a moment. ‘I’ve always hated trooping,’ he said slowly. ‘There’s always far too much time for the men to sit and wonder what’s happening.’

  ‘And get up to all sorts of bloody nonsense like cheering,’ Downes added.

  Hodges nodded. The cheering had gone unexplained, though he had immediately set off enquiries into it. The officers had been met only by blank faces, however, and the suggestion that it was nothing but an indication of the high morale of the men involved.

  The explanation hadn’t carried much weight because Hodges knew that morale was about as low as it could be, and curiously there had been little explanation from the non-commissioned officers whom he might have expected to know what was going on. He suspected unhappily that the petty officers and sergeants knew perfectly well what had prompted the unexpected bursts of cheering which had passed from ship’s crew to ship’s crew but that they secretly sympathised with the men’s complaints and preferred to stand aside, taking neither the men’s part nor the officers’. Most of them were long-serving sailors and soldiers with a lot to lose, and their position was a tricky one, viewed either upwards from the messdecks or downwards from the wardroom.

  ‘I’d have liked to have found out what it was all about,’ Hodges said, his voice stubborn as he spoke over his shoulder to Downes.

  ‘So would I.’

  ‘I’m not pretending that because it’s stopped whatever was behind it’s stopped too. There are too many men in close proximity to each other.’

  Downes smiled. ‘How about letting us try the guns?’ he suggested. ‘It’s rather a good show and it might take their minds off things a bit. It makes a bit of noise and I always did say there was nothing worse for the nerves than the tension of waiting without the culmination of the kill for relief. It used to be hell during the war when you were after a submarine.’ He shrugged. ‘It won’t do the gun crews any harm to have a bit of practice either,’ he ended grimly. ‘I’ll make a signal round the fleet and have everybody make an announcement. Otherwise your chaps’ll all think we’re being attacked.’

  Hodges’ unease was reflected in the mind of Colonel Drucquer aboard the destroyer, Banff, out on the port wing of the convoy under the broad lifting stern of Liverpool. He was standing in the shadows with Captain White while Lieutenant Jinkinson spoke to his section of the 17th/105th. Now that they were approaching King Boffa Port, the men had been informed of their destination, and each troop, squadron and company had commandeered its own portion of deck and gone into a close huddle round its officers while the news was given.

  Unseen by the men, Drucquer was free to watch their faces as they listened to what was being said. They didn’t seem surprised and there were none of the expectant smiles Drucquer had seen before on similar occasions. Well-trained confident soldiers, as he well knew, never jibbed at an operation and rarely questioned it, and normally even expressed a certain amount of pleasure at what they were about to do, but this time Drucquer was not surprised to see resentment in the faces of the men before him. Most of them were National Servicemen, and most of them were young enough to have been affected by the wave of pacifism which had swept the world since Vietnam. In another age and under different circumstances, they would have been spoiling for a fight and, like good housewives objecting to being done out of what they felt they deserved, would have been delighted to set about the Khanzians to take back what they considered belonged to them. Not this time, however. They were far from being wholeheartedly behind the politicians who claimed that King Boffa Port was the property of the British man in the street and that they were in duty bound to recover it.

  Jinkinson’s briefing was not a success. There were no questions, no queries as to how things should be done. There weren’t even any protests – only complete indifference and a strange sort of expectancy that worried Drucquer.

  As Jinkinson put away his notebook, Drucquer saw he had a puzzled frown on his face and, turning away, he saw the same look on Captain White’s face.

  ‘Watch the concert last night?’ he asked abruptly, the question coming unexpectedly across White’s thoughts on the way the briefing had gone.

  He looked startled. ‘Yes, Colonel,’ he said. ‘I did.’

  Drucquer nodded thoughtfully. The ship had been blacked out and overpoweringly hot and the men had listlessly amused themselves with impromptu
turns at the stern of the ship, the stage a single layer of ammunition boxes, the audience sitting cross-legged on the deck or clinging to the gun mountings.

  The opening number had been a close-harmony group of Marines with a guitar, but their song had been one of the protest numbers made popular by the folk singers of the Sixties. The other turns had been of a lower standard, some of them descending not unexpectedly into smut, and the inevitable act of two privates who had aped their officers in exaggerated accents had for once not been funny. It had seemed to have a more sinister import, and instead of laughter there had been jeers.

  ‘What did you think of it?’ Drucquer asked.

  White glanced at him, wondering what was in his mind. ‘Usual low standard, sir,’ he said. ‘In every sense of the word.’

  ‘It didn’t seem like the usual concert to me,’ Drucquer commented. ‘Not very spontaneous. Not very funny.’

  ‘They never are, Colonel.’

  ‘No. But everybody always laughs. They didn’t last night.’

  White kept his eyes averted and Drucquer knew he was deliberately refraining from meeting his gaze.

  ‘Much seasickness?’ the Colonel went on mildly, as though he were enquiring after the health of the battalion.

  White smiled. ‘Just the usuals, who’d be sick on the Serpentine.’

  ‘Have they got anything for it?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Avomine.’

  Drucquer gave a bark of laughter. ‘They give that for early morning sickness in pregnancy, don’t they?’ he said.

  He paused for a moment, then he turned again to White, speaking quietly, his mildness gone, his eyes sharp and his manner alert.

  ‘What’s going on, Dick?’ he asked.

  White deliberately avoided looking at him, and fell back on Sergeant Frensham’s habit of repeating the question until he could sort out the answer. ‘What’s going on, sir?’