Chapter 16
Peter Christopher sat in a chair behind the Prime Minister’s right shoulder, one of countless advisors and middle-ranking military officers ringing the giant conference table. President Kennedy sat across the gleaming surface of the table, smiling fixedly at Margaret Thatcher.
The United Kingdom delegation; the Prime Minister, Sir Thomas Harding-Grayson, the Foreign Secretary, Iain Macleod, the UAUK’s Minister of Information, and Lord Franks, the British Ambassador and three aides (Peter included) was hugely outnumbered by the President’s entourage comprising key members of the Administration, the High Command the US Armed Forces, and a host of immaculately suited and uniformed men, and several women.
“I am sorry, Jack,” Margaret Thatcher declaimed, not bothering to cloak her growing exasperation. “Sending one aircraft carrier to the Indian Ocean at some time later this month or early in May does not in any way amount to meaningfully discharging your obligations under the US-UK Mutual Defence Agreement!”
Jack Kennedy deflected this barb with what he probably honestly believed was hard-nosed irresistible charm.
“Margaret,” he explained patiently, “you know how personally committed I am to that treaty. Unfortunately, the fact is that the House of Representatives has thrown it out. Besides, that Treaty does not, and was never intended to cover conflicts falling outside the old NATO sphere…”
“I recollect that a little over two months ago I was the one who talked you out of a retaliatory nuclear strike against the criminals suspected of sinking the USS Long Beach, crippling the USS Enterprise, attacking Cairo and blocking the Suez Canal at Ismailia. The Mediterranean and the Middle East were certainly inside the relevant sphere of influence at that time!”
Captain Sir Peter Christopher, VC, flinched. He honestly did not believe he had just heard a British Prime Minister talk to the President of the United States of America like he was a naughty school boy she had just discovered illicitly smoking a cigarette behind the bike shed!
He was even more astonished when it transpired that the Angry Widow had not so much said what she meant to say, but had only just begun to explain the error of his ways to her host.
“Margaret, I…”
“You have said your piece, Jack,” Margaret Thatcher retorted, her tone increasingly hectoring. “It is abundantly clear that you do not understand what is at stake here.”
Peter Christopher shut his eyes in horror because he knew what was coming next. He had conned Talavera straight down the barrels of the guns of a World War I battlecruiser and a big Soviet cruiser and he had only deliberately shut his eyes once. That had been when he had seen — yes, he had actually seen — a salvo of six hundred and sixty pound rounds fired from the eleven-inch guns of the battlecruiser Yavuz hit the water several hundred yards directly ahead of Talavera; and ricochet off the iron grey Mediterranean seemingly directly at his head. One of those shells had passed only feet above the bridge, torn off the top of the gun director tower and scythed down the destroyer’s towering lattice foremast as if it was a red hot broadsword through butter. That had been the shell which had probably killed his best friend, Miles Weiss…
“You have given me a lecture about how my government should behave towards the Irish Republic. You have assured me that in the event of the loss of Abadan Island and its refineries that the United States would in some way guarantee oil supplies to the United Kingdom. You have assured me that the Sixth Fleet is merely the precursor to a permanent American land, sea and air presence in the whole of the Mediterranean. You have assured me that steps would be undertaken to undo the damage done by predatory American conglomerates to British interests and companies in Africa, South America and the Far East in the immediate aftermath of the Cuban Missiles War. You have promised me that America plans to be, once again, at some point in the future as yet unspecified, the quote ‘Policeman of the World’. You have also informed me that you view the question of the appointment of an American commander-in-chief of ‘all allied forces in Europe’ as a high priority for your Administration. Last but by no means least you have indicated to me that there is no way that you can sell putting American GIs’ boots on the ground in the Middle East to defend ‘the last jewel in Britain’s former Imperial crown’, namely Abadan.”
President Kennedy thought, or rather, he hoped, that she had finished.
Peter Christopher knew that his chief had hardly begun.
The President opened his mouth to speak…
“I think we need to understand each other a little better,” Margaret Thatcher declared stridently. Beside her Iain Macleod looked like he wanted to bury his head in his hands. Lord Franks’s face was a rictus mask. Extraordinarily, the Foreign Secretary seemed to be on the verge of dozing off, completely indifferent to what was going on around him. Across the table several of the American participants were staring at the British Prime Minister with their mouths agape in disbelief.
“The United Kingdom’s policy towards the Irish Republic is none of your damned business, Jack. While Mr Lemass’s government continues to tolerate the transhipment of American weapons to Ulster and to the mainland of the United Kingdom to facilitate indiscriminate murder and mayhem, his government and his people will be subject to appropriate sanctions. For goodness sake,” she exclaimed angrily, “when Castro threatened you,” she snarled, “you obliterated the whole of Cuba!”
Iain Macleod groaned.
“Oh, no…”
Margaret Thatcher paused, scowling at the horrified expressions of her listeners across the other side of the table.
Peter Christopher thought that was the end of the conference.
Hopefully, he would get to see Marija one more time before the bombs started falling. It was not fair; he had not laid eyes on her face to face until ten or eleven weeks ago. They had only been married on 7th March. Notwithstanding his selfish personal feelings it never occurred to him that his leader was in the wrong. She was only saying what any moderately informed man or woman in the street in Britain would say, were they to find themselves face to face with the American President who had deluged so much grief and misery on their heads eighteen months ago.
“Oil supplies,” Margaret Thatcher said contemptuously. “Well, we all know how much our ally’s promises amounted to throughout much of last year, Jack. I also know that tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of my people died last year because of the failure of your Administration to make good on its promises, no, its obligations to help a NATO ally in need.”
She drew breath and launched the next stinging rebuke.
“Yes, the Sixth Fleet is at Malta at this time. Had powerful elements of that fleet been at Malta instead of playing war games when it was supposed to be providing long-range radar cover for the archipelago, some three thousand Maltese civilians and many hundreds of brave British and Commonwealth servicemen would not have died when the Soviet invasion fleet appeared off the coast!” She huffed and puffed like a dragon getting her wind before spewing fresh fire and brimstone. “But for the courage and sacrifice of courageous young men like the officer seated behind me Malta would now be a part of the Soviet Union. No thanks to the Sixth Fleet!”