Peter Christopher wanted to curl up and become invisible. His face burned impossibly hot, he grimaced feebly as every eye momentarily fell upon him seated faithfully at his mistress’s right shoulder.
“Implicit in our discussions in Washington DC in January was an understanding that the jackals of Wall Street would be forced to recompense British and Commonwealth shareholders in concerns illegally appropriated by American companies,” Margaret Thatcher protested.
Oh! No!
She was actually wagging a finger at the President of the United States of America!
“There has been no movement on this issue, Jack. This is hardly surprising because the Administration has taken absolutely no action on it since January.” She shook her head sadly. “As for rearming and becoming the ‘Policeman of the World’? Well, that’s a joke. Your proxies in Argentina have just invaded sovereign British territory. The Falkland Islands are not the Malvinas and the people on the islands are not bloody Argentines! They are British citizens!”
Everybody really, really imagined she was finished at that point.
She was not. Not quite yet.
“Policeman of the World!” She said scathingly.
There was a horrible silence.
It was J. William Fulbright who eventually broke the unquiet quietness. He coughed and sat forward, resting his arms on the table. He sought out and held eye contact with Margaret Thatcher.
“Just for the record the Argentine government is not at this time any kind of ‘client’ of this Administration, Prime Minister. President Francesconi’s government is completely beholden to the supposedly ‘moderate’ Blue faction of the Argentine military. The country is actually run by the Head of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, General Juan Carlos Onganía and by the Internal Affairs Minister, General Osiris Villegas. We have no control over these people and they do not listen to anything we have to say to them. There has been an embargo on military sales to the regime since the last coup back in the fall.” He spread his hands. “Speaking personally, I have a degree of sympathy with the, er, thrust of many of your observations. However, nobody has betrayed anybody here.”
John Fitzgerald Kennedy had fallen silent.
He rested his chin on his left hand.
On that long ago inauguration day in January 1961 he had dreamed of what might be achieved in the next four years. He was a different man then, a young man still but not now. He had had the power to destroy the world but not to make all Americans equally free. He had had no power to stop madmen attempting to murder Martin Luther King on a public stage in Atlanta in February; no power to persuade an increasingly bucolic ‘America First’ Congress that there was a world beyond the boundaries of its debating chamber. Ultimately, he had had no power to extend the aid and succour that he yearned to offer to the infuriating, unique woman who had probably not yet finished berating him for his many and egregious transgressions. The reality was that even had he wanted to send US troops to the Middle East he had none to spare; the US Army was fully occupied holding the line in Chicago, rooting out insurgents in the Cascades and the length of the Rockies, attempting to keep the lid on the powder keg cities of Birmingham, Jackson, Atlanta and a score of other places. The news from Iran had been like the match that lit the proverbial blue touch paper, the whole of the South seemed to be on fire and worse, he was running for re-election.
The way things where shaping up if the ‘America First’ front runners got their act together he was going to be the first President ever to lose every single state of the Union in a General Election in November.
Whatever happened, he could not let those people win.
In the cruel calculus of these things if the price of keeping the barbarians from the gates of the city was drawing down the final curtain on the British Empire that was a price worth paying.
Pragmatically, if what it took to hold back the darkness was for John Fitzgerald Kennedy to become the cheerleader of the ‘America First Movement’, so be it.
“Margaret,” he drawled, raising his face. “For all our failings I honestly believe that the future of freedom, democracy and reason in the World depends upon the survival of the Unites States of America. Ultimately, civilization rests in our hands. You may think this no more than hubris. You may think me bad, perhaps mad. It may just be that you and I won’t ever see things the same way. None of that changes the reality of the situation.”
Margaret Thatcher visibly bit her tongue.
The President’s green eyes were resigned.
“The Sixth Fleet will render what assistance it may in the Eastern Mediterranean. Secretary of State Fulbright will facilitate what alliances and material aid can be secured from other parties in the Middle East. The USS Kitty Hawk will sail to the Indian Ocean, officially to assist in the evacuation of the dependents of US citizens and in other non-specific emergency relief work.” He pursed his lips, let this sink in. “But that is all.”
“I see,” the Prime Minister acknowledged sulkily.
“Publicly, I will continue to take your government to task over its ‘Irish policy’. What aid can be sent to the United Kingdom will continue to be sent, but if Congress blocks all routes then that will be that. America has turned its back on internationalism. The mantra is now America First and I must follow that drum or this time next year, well, who knows?”
Oddly, now that the man had confessed his sins Margaret Thatcher’s excoriating hostility cooled. The man had the dead of the October War on his conscience and now he was about to prostitute himself before the American people. In politics, she reflected, there were no right or good decisions; and sometimes the only realistic choices were between the lesser of two unthinkable evils.
“I came here to demand that we, together, draw a line in the sand,” she said quietly, her tone that of a woman spurned, “I had in mind drawing that line in the deserts of Iraq or Iran. It never occurred to me, not for a single minute, that what you had in mind was drawing that line in the sand on the beach at Hyannis Port, Jack.”
Chapter 17
Lieutenant-Colonel Francis Harold St John Waters, VC, of the 22nd Special Air Service Regiment felt that he ought to be more surprised by the observational skills — or as witnessed by his experience of the last few days, the marked absence of the same — of the average Red Army soldier, whether he was an officer or a blank-faced private soldier. Honestly and truly, if he had been given the run around for two days and two nights in Urmia, not once setting eyes on one’s enemy and had consequently had a large number of his chums blown to bits and picked off by snipers, he would certainly have been paying a little bit more attention to their surroundings than these chaps!
Merging into the background in this country was a doddle!