Bizarrely, at one stage back in the 1950s he had actually been seventh in line to the British throne but – much to his relief – the present King of England’s offspring had, of late loyally, dutifully and with no little gusto been producing new royal princes and princesses at a rate which far outstripped the demise of their seniors in the Royal blood line. Inevitably, in the last few years as tensions bubbled just beneath the surface, in Germany the Press took a malicious pleasure in teasing Lothar about his ‘British antecedents’. For example, cartoons of him hob-knobbing with the Royal Family, referring to the King as ‘Bertie’ and the Queen calling him ‘Bissi’, appeared in the papers every time he was accused of being ‘soft on the Brits’.
To his immense mortification he had been sent to the Charlottenburg to deliver a personal message from the Kaiser by acclamation.
Kaiser durch Akklamation.
Lothar von Bismarck had choked on the words.
He could hardly look King George in the eye.
‘It is my Kaiser’s command that I inform you, Your Majesty,’ he intoned, grieving for times now forever past, ‘that you should remove your Royal person from the lands of the German Empire this day. My Kaiser states that he no longer considers himself to be related to the Windsor branch of the Anglo-Germanic blood line. He declares that you and all members of your court and of your government, including the diplomatic service, are hereby deemed persona non grata in the Empire. All diplomatic and governmental relations with the British Empire are henceforth severed. Further, all British Empire assets on German soil are hereby forfeit.’
The German Foreign Minister shook his head.
Despairing now…
‘Further, it is decreed that the airspace above the German Empire is closed to British Empire aircraft. Likewise, German waters are closed to all British vessels upon the seas. Ships of the merchant marine of the German Navy will no longer salute, give respect or right of way to any British or British Empire registered merchant vessel or Royal Navy ship…’
By then George Walpole was staring at his friend, aghast.
It had taken some minutes for the German Foreign Minister to read the full text of the hurriedly prepared Königliches Kommando – Royal Command – and when he finished, shamefaced, for his listeners to take in its dreadful ramifications.
It had been the King who summed up the mood in the basement, while outside, the capital of the Reich was burning.
‘Presumably,’ he had inquired, stiffly, ‘somebody will have the courtesy to let my ministers have this in writing at some stage before we depart Berlin, Count Bismarck?’
Everybody was carefully keeping their distance from the King and Queen as the train began to drag slowly out of the Berlin-Spandau terminus.
The windows of the carriage rattled with the concussion of a series of heavy explosions, mercifully at least a mile from the line.
The King looked to his wife.
“Gott im Himmel,” he murmured distractedly. “I never thought I’d think it, let alone say it,” he remarked, ‘but thank God for Project Poseidon!”
Chapter 23
Thursday 4th May
El Palacio de Los Pinos de Oro, México City
In the weeks since Rodrigo de Monroy y Pizarro Altamirano’s last visit to the Presidential Residence, set among the pines of the Chapultepec Woods which was once the site of a pre-Columbian Aztec Palace, the Army of the Republic had placed a ring of steel about it.
Armoured personnel carriers blocked both the roads into the forest surrounding the palace and combat troopers of the elite Assault Corps patrolled the grounds. Every visitor’s pass was checked at the outer and inner gates, and even senior politicians and uniformed officers were required to submit to body searches before they were permitted to proceed further into the compound. Moreover, nobody was admitted at all unless their visit had been pre-authorised by the Office of Presidential Security.
Fortunately, a female member of President Hernando de Soto’s secretariat was waiting at the door of the Residence to usher Rodrigo and his University of Cuernavaca faculty colleague, Arturo Gutiérrez Ortiz Mena, past the final security checks.
“Hello, Don Rodrigo,” the girl, she was barely twenty and the spitting image of her mother at her age, smiled shyly.
Margarita Medina-Mora Icaza, President de Soto’s niece, had been permitted to take a sabbatical half-way through her second year at Cuernavaca, where she had been studying Modern Languages – English and German – to serve as an intern on the Presidential Staff for the duration of the current emergency. The majority of such student applications were rejected, nothing was so important to the Republic than the education of its children and young people but Hernando de Soto had made an exception for his niece, albeit on the solemn condition that the moment the emergency was passed, she would resume her studies.
The young woman’s long jet black hair was restrained in a very sensible pigtail, she wore no make-up, foregoing the bright nail paints most young women of her class carried like badges of honour, and she was respectably dressed like a matron twice her age, covered up from neck to wrists, all the way down to her mid-calves.
She and Rodrigo hugged briefly, very correctly, much as he and his own offspring did in public.
Margarita’s mother had died in childbirth when she was only seven years old and her father, a diplomat presently in Manilla in the Philippines, not really knowing what to do with her and her two elder brothers, had never re-married. The two boys had been packed off to military colleges, Margarita had been handed from family to family until, just after her tenth birthday she had been all but been adopted by the de Soto’s, who had treated her as the daughter they had never had. In no time at all she and Rodrigo’s twins, Rudolfo and Marija, who were her juniors by only a month or so, had become, and still were, inseparable.
Unfortunately, Rudolfo was still not talking to his father at the moment on account of Rodrigo’s implacable refusal to allow him to volunteer for militia service. The boy still had over a year of his degree course at Cuernavaca to complete and until he was twenty-one, he needed his permission to make a mess of his life!
Needless to say, Margarita’s ‘escape’ to Palacio de Los Pinos de Oro – the Palace of the Gold Pines – had rubbed still more salt into Rodrigo’s son’s wounded pride.
“Marija says that Rudi,” Margarita said hesitantly, speaking lowly as she led her charges deeper into the Residence, “isn’t quite as angry, anymore, Uncle.”
“Ah… That’s good to know, my dear.”
Margarita took the two men into an ante-chamber occupied by an older woman, the President’s Appointment Secretary, a formidable lady whom he had brought with him from the University two years ago.
“Why, Professor Altamirano!” This woman smiled, rising from her chair and coming around her desk to shake Rodrigo’s hand. She turned to the other, younger man and extending her hand again said: “Professor Icaza, it is a great honour to meet you at last.”
This rather disconcerted Arturo Gutiérrez Ortiz Mena, a rather junior member of the faculty of the University of Cuernavaca. He was a stocky, and even today, a little unkempt, seemingly distracted man in his late thirties who rarely socialised, or played ‘the political game’ within the tight-knit academic community. To everybody’s surprise he had married a former student some ten years his junior eighteen months ago, who had already presented him with a baby daughter. His wife, a plump, bubbly presence had not made any attempt to ‘tidy up’ her new husband; presumably, on the grounds that she liked him just the way he was. He had turned up for his meeting with the President of the Republic in a jacket with leather patches over both the elbows.