The general intelligence picture in the north eastern Mediterranean Basin prior to the arrival of the Amphions had been distinctly ‘spotty’. For example, although it was known that there was trade between Corsica, Sardinia and the Balearic Islands to the east, it was not known if this went on with or without the sanction of Franco’s government in Madrid, or whether there was any contact or co-operation between Spanish and former French, or Italian naval units based at ports like Ajaccio on Corsica, or Cagliari on Sardinia.
RAF photo-reconnaissance flights and the activities of the 1st Submarine Squadron were slowly filling in some of the gaps in the picture, establishing that parts of the Mediterranean coast of France had been completely devastated, while others, like St Tropez and Nice in the east and Perpignan in the west were undamaged. The Alderney and the Auriga had recently confirmed that the ports of Marseilles and Toulon, both hard hit during the war were partially navigable, and that several as yet unidentified ‘large’ surface warships were anchored in the inner harbour of the latter.
As always the Senior Service was running to keep up!
Francis Barrington assumed similar ‘watches’ to those which had been instituted in recent weeks by the Amphions in the Eastern Mediterranean would have been urgently commenced on the supposedly devastated Atlantic Brittany and Biscay ports of France, and now and then, high altitude photo and ELINT — electronic intelligence — sorties were being flown over or in the vicinity of other similar previously neglected ‘places of interest’ on the French mainland.
“SUBMERGED CONTACT BEARING ZERO-THREE-FIVE!”
Barrington’s thoughts crystallised in an instant.
“Stop both! Pass the word for silent routine!”
Chapter 59
Airey Neave took the Prime Minister’s arm and leaned close to speak confidentially into her ear the moment he greeted her at the foot of the steps as she disembarked from the RAF Comet 4. His friend looked tired after her overnight flight back to England, and he completely understood how she must be dreading the reception that awaited her in Oxford where the Commons was already gathering to unleash its inchoate anger and scorn upon her head.
“I’m sorry, Margaret,” he whispered, “but I have some very bad news. Normally, I’d have given you a chance to catch your breath but this won’t wait.”
The Prime Minister’s stride faltered.
“Who have we lost?” She asked simply in the manner of one who has already been robbed of too many loved ones, friends and close colleagues by the cruel fates of this brave new post-cataclysm world.
“Iain,” Airey Neave said. “Iain Macleod died last night. We all knew he was unwell. He was at his desk around midnight. They think he had a massive heart attack or perhaps, a stroke. There was nothing anybody could do for him. I’m sorry…”
Momentarily, Margaret Thatcher was afraid she was going to faint. The moment passed, leaving her feeling a little sick and nauseas and oddly…afraid.
Iain Macleod had been the living embodiment of one nation Conservatism before the October War and after it the intellectual wellspring of both Edward Heath’s and her own administrations. With Airey Neave, Iain Macleod had been her rock. He had been Leader of the House of Commons, the Chairman of the Conservative and Unionist Party and the government’s tireless propagandist and apologist as her Secretary of State for Information. It had been Iain Macleod’s behind the scenes manoeuvring that had handed her the premiership, and without his advice, support and patience she would have fallen flat on her face a score of times in the last six months.
How can I carry on…
Instantly, the Prime Minister picked up her pace and hardened her face.
“Poor Evelyn,” she murmured. “Is somebody with her?”
Iain Macleod had met Evelyn Hester Mason, née Blois in September 1939 while he was awaiting his call up when Evelyn had interviewed him for a job as a volunteer ambulance driver. Later, after her first husband had been killed in the war they had married in January 1941. Neither of the Macleod’s children, a son and a daughter, had survived the October War and its immediate aftermath; twenty year old Torquil having disappeared on the night of the war and Diana, having died aged eighteen — probably from cholera — the following February. It was a miracle that in this unkind age Evelyn, who had been afflicted by meningitis and polio at the age of thirty-three in 1952, had survived to outlive her husband.
“Pat Harding-Grayson has been with Evelyn since Iain’s body was discovered.”
“Good. What else has gone wrong since yesterday?”
“The Chiefs of Staff are up in arms over ‘surrendering’ Jericho,” her friend reported grimly. “That’s par for the course, I suppose. I think President Kennedy’s address to the American people announcing that we’d quote ‘backed down over Ireland and invited the US to broker a peace deal in the South Atlantic’, and the inference that JFK had basically wiped the floor with us, well, you specifically, at Hyannis Port came too late for most of the papers, thank God! It goes without saying that we’re being accused of being the greatest traitors since dear old Neville Chamberlain. Enoch Powell and that blighter Michael Foot have already been on the radio this morning talking about Munich, appeasement and ‘peace in our time’. As we anticipated there is an EDM,” in Parliamentary parlance and Early Day Motion, “before the House calling for another Vote of Confidence.” The man groaned out aloud. “It’s much worse than any of us imagined it would be, Margaret. And now poor Iain’s gone…”
Airey Neave had walked on a further two paces before he realised he was alone. He looked around.
“No, Airey,” Margaret Thatcher said with a school mistress like note of censure in her voice, “it is exactly as bad as I knew it was going to be. No, I did not anticipate that we would be at war with the bloody French when I left for America a few days ago, or that we’d lose Iain last night. But I did anticipate that things would be unbelievably bloody this morning. We’re about to fight a war in the Middle East we cannot win. The country is bankrupt. We cannot afford to feed our people next winter and the Red Army is about to turn off our oil supplies. Things simply cannot be allowed to go on the way they have been going ever since the night of the October War. Either we make a break from that past or we are doomed. As we discussed before I went to Cape Cod, if the price of doing the right thing and getting the best possible deal for our children is my head, then that is a price well worth paying!”
Airey Neave stared at his protégé, peripherally aware that the other members of the ‘Hyannis Port’ delegation were disembarking from the Comet and giving both him and the Prime Minister very strange looks.
Margaret Thatcher swept past her friend and he scurried to catch up with her before she got to the first of the two armoured Rolls-Royce’s waiting on the tarmac to carry the senior members of the returning transatlantic mission back to Oxford.