“I believe that we have reached a latter day ‘Narvik’ moment,” Enoch Powell said. He knew his strength was failing him, as did everybody in the House of Commons. The quietness had settled around the man whom admirers and detractors alike regarded as one of the last of the great, pre-October War parliamentarians. It was as if everybody recognised that now was a time of listening before the failing of the light. “I do not believe, in my heart,” the dying man continued, “that this is a time for grandiloquent rhetorical excess. I think that this is a time for us to look into our hearts and to speak plainly to each other.”
The man’s laboured breath was audible in every corner of the great Hall of King’s College.
“Our armed forces are fighting three wars; in the Mediterranean, in the South Atlantic, and if not already, then soon, in the Persian Gulf. We are strong nowhere; in the Mediterranean we may, or may not be able to rely on the United States for support and succour, and in the Gulf the brave men from distant lands of the Commonwealth. But make no mistake, we are very nearly alone. We are at the limits of our endurance. Now we find ourselves the object of the scorn of the President of the United States of America; forced to go cap in hand to the global bullyboy to ask for charity, crumbs from Jack Kennedy’s table, a beggar’s dole and like Oliver Twist, chastised for asking for ‘more’! Are we not entitled to ask how our great nation has stumbled into this mess?”
Margaret Thatcher was buffeted by a rising groundswell of muttered, rumbling discontent that seemed to swirl around her as if she was in the eye of a vortex of rage pent up too long to be safely defused.
“In the course of the Narvik Debate my late colleague in this House, Leo Amery,” Enoch Powell continued, struggling to be heard, “spoke of Oliver Cromwell’s words to that renowned parliamentarian and roundhead captain John Hampden, of the need to find new men to confound their foes. The fault is not in our people or in our way of life, there is nothing written in our stars that inevitably infers our downfall. As Cromwell said to Hampden, ‘we are fighting to-day for our life, for our liberty, for our all; we cannot go on being led as we are.’
Margaret Thatcher sat rigidly still on the hard front bench pew.
She knew what was coming and there was nothing she could do about it.
“It is with sadness that I must repeat what Cromwell said to the Long Parliament,” Enoch Powell hissed, his ruined voice betraying him, “when he decided that it had outlived its usefulness.”
Margaret Thatcher looked up, braving the gaze of her nemesis.
Enoch Powell returned her gaze; but without triumphalism, only regret.
“You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing, madam.” He sighed hurtfully, swayed unsteadily prompting several members nearby to flinch towards him lest he fell before he straightened, brokenly to deliver the coup de grace. “Depart,” he whispered, exhausted now, “depart I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go…”
Chapter 63
It was as if the air itself was being torn apart. The livid flash of the great explosion lit up the night beyond the port. There was one great explosion and then a roiling, rolling expanding accompaniment of smaller, secondary detonations spreading out across the desert and into the suburbs of the Damman-Dhahran port conurbation stretching along the shore of the Persian Gulf.
Rear Admiral Nicholas Davey had been enjoying a cigarette at the stern rail of his flagship, HMS Tiger as the cruiser prepared to anchor in the shallow waters off Ras Tanura beach. The presence of so many ‘foreigners’ in Damman had been causing friction with the locals and two days ago he had taken every seaworthy vessel under his command to sea. Most of the flotilla was still some way off shore, learning to work as ‘a flotilla’; Tiger had brought him back towards Damman as evening fell.
In the morning the flagship was entertaining dignitaries from the Saudi government onboard and the plan was for the cruiser to sail into port with flags flying, and her decks dressed fit for a Royal Review. However, as he looked landward the Flag Officer ABNZ — Australian, British and New Zealand — Squadron, Persian Gulf, suspected that the plans for tomorrow morning had just been torn up.
His first thought was that it had been a tactical, Hiroshima-scale nuclear strike.
But that was wrong; he would have been blind by now if it had been.
What had happened was that the US War Stores Deport in the dessert east of Damman had blown up; and was continuing the blow up as the flashover of big explosions set in motion a chain reaction in adjacent stores.
Nick Davey threw his half-smoked cigarette over the side as the cruiser’s klaxons blared; ordering the crew to battle stations.
Suddenly men were running everywhere and the ship was alive like a hornet’s nest inadvisably prodded with a stick. Under his feet he felt the screws bite the water and the deck heel one, two, three degrees as Tiger’s rudder went hard over.
Sea room!
Until it was established what was going on the priorities were to find sea room; and clear the main battery ‘A’ arcs so that Tiger’s whole broadside could be brought to bear on a potential threat. Farther out to sea the ship’s radars would be uncluttered with ground returns from the nearby shore; better able to identify and track potential threats and to direct Tiger’s automatic quick firing six-inch and three-inch guns.
By the time Nick Davey climbed up to the bridge most of the windows had been covered with steel shutters; standard drill to prevent nearby nuclear strikes blinding the ship’s command team.
Assuming that the air base at Dhahran remained operational the aircraft kept on permanent QRA ought to be airborne by now. The big explosions might be the result of sloppy munitions handling or storage, sabotage or direct enemy action.
“RAF Dhahran has activated emergency response Alpha-Alpha, sir,” Nick Davey was informed calmly.
That meant a Gloster Meteor night fighter, one of the two Avro Vulcans — each armed with a four hundred kiloton Yellow Sun bomb — and two Hawker Hunter interceptors had been scrambled and the four Bristol Bloodhound long-range surface-to-air missiles sited on the air base had been spooled up ready for launch.
“CIC reports the threat board is clear, sir.”
“The Centaur Battle Group is maintaining Air Defence Condition One, sir.” Forty miles away the bulk of the ABNZ fleet was exercising as a battle, or support group for the aircraft carrier Centaur. Tiger’s heightened state of alert had automatically been passed onto the carrier’s CIC, mandating the upgrading of the whole Battle Group’s state of readiness.
By now the alarms would have sounded in Abadan and in other headquarters in the region from Oman to Aden.
“Tell everybody that the Damman War Stores Depot has blown up. Categorise the event as sabotage-related. Broadcast that now please,” Nick Davey instructed the cruisers communications officer.