The late afternoon had turned grey and cold. RAF Kindrick looked dull and functional. Well, RAF airfields were not made to look thrilling. Silk decided to spend the night at The Grange. No point in being married to a five-star heiress unless you drank her claret from time to time. He changed into his best uniform, and as he walked to the Citroën he met the rear crew. All three.
“Hullo!” Hallett said. “No cello?”
“I met a Polish vicar who tried to blackmail me for gross moral turpitude,” Silk said, “and a passing spy brained him with the cello.” He kept walking.
“So don’t tell us,” Dando called. “See if we care.”
He drove through the Lincolnshire countryside, now starting to lose its leaves. Skull’s profanity stuck in his mind. He’d have given long odds against that ever happening. Maybe the poor sod was losing his grip.
Stevens came out to meet him.
“Don’t say anything,” Silk said. “The queen is in the parlour, eating bread and honey.”
“Her ladyship is in the gazebo, sir, for which there is no rhyme in the English lexicon.”
“I bet there’s no rhyme for ‘lexicon’, either.”
“Try ‘Mexican’, sir.”
Silk headed off, then stopped and came back. “Talking of Mexicans,” he said, “what happened to the Pole?”
“He’s in limbo, sir.”
“I see. Dead or alive?”
“Does it matter?”
Silk set off again, in no hurry, wondering what he would do if Zoë punched him in the eye or, worse yet, started crying. It was a woman’s secret weapon, sobbing and weeping. He had no defence against sobbing and weeping. A double DFC was no bloody use against sobbing and weeping. He ran up the gazebo steps in order to get it over with quickly, and she smiled, gave him a hug and a good kiss. “I should have knocked,” he said. “You might have been up to no good with the American piano-player.”
“Not impossible. He’s great fun.” She had been writing. She scooped up the pages.
“Sounds ominous. Don’t tell me –”
“Tell you? I shan’t tell you, Silko.” She slid the pages into a briefcase. “If I decide to have a fling with someone, I certainly shan’t consult you first.” He felt as if a large stone was settling in his gut. “You didn’t ask my permission,” she said. “That would have been a very peculiar conversation, wouldn’t it?”
“I didn’t know it was going to happen. Anyway, you told me to have a hobby.” He looked at the bed. After a long, hard day defending the realm, surely he deserved a reward.
“Listen here,” Zoë said. “You must understand that you matter more to me than anyone. I hate mountains. They frighten me. I would climb any mountain to save you. You alone. We had some lovely years when we were in love, and young, and lust conquered all. We’re not in love now. I’m very fond of you, but given the choice between a day in politics and a day with Silko, I’ll take politics every time. Now beat it. I’ve got a load of letters to answer and a train to catch.” She kissed him, very thoroughly, and pointed to the door.
After that, he didn’t want her claret. He drove to Tess Monk’s farmhouse instead.
A man was washing the windows, a thin chap with not much hair. He didn’t look around when the car stopped. Silk sat and watched; there was nowhere else he wanted to go.
After a while Tess came out. He wound his window down. “Please buzz off,” she said.
“He’s making a rotten job of it,” Silk said. “I can see the streaks from here.”
“I’ll set the dog on you.”
“Dog’s asleep. I can hear him drooling. Or have you left a tap running? Who is this bloke, anyway? He’s obviously not a window cleaner.”
She ran a finger along the line of his jaw. “Clean-cut. It’s the only clean thing about you, Silko. Everything else is corkscrew. Well, this is straightforward. He’s my husband. Just out of prison.”
“You said he was dead.”
“Did I? Must have got that wrong.”
“Drunk, drove too fast, crashed, you told me.”
“You looked as if you wanted to know.”
“Prison… What was he in for?”
“Fornication on Sundays.”
“That’s not a crime.”
“Then don’t tell him. You’ll break his heart.” She reached in and turned the ignition key, and tweaked his ear and walked away.
Now Silk had nowhere to go, nothing to do, nobody to do it with. He drove back to the airfield, too fast. For once, speed did not dissolve anger. His life seemed to be one battle after another: with Tucker over the bookie, with Stevens over who’s boss, with Freddy over… he wasn’t sure what. And in one quick day he’d lost his girlfriend or mistress or something, and then his bloody wife wouldn’t even let him fight about it. What was wrong with Zoë?
He went into the mess. Hardly anyone there, and the only face he knew was the adjutant, who took his pipe out of his mouth and said. “You look like a pig in an abattoir, old boy.” He put his pipe back and got on with the crossword. Silk walked out and got in his car and drove back to The Grange. Stevens opened the front door.
“Wing Commander Skelton telephoned,” he said. “You should watch the BBC news.”
They both watched it. President Kennedy told the American people that Soviet SS-4 Medium Range Ballistic Missiles had been secretly installed in Cuba, that Washington DC and other cities were within their range, and that a naval blockade of the island would begin in 48 hours.
“What the hell’s going on?” Silk asked.
“I couldn’t possibly say, sir,” Stevens said.
A HICCUP AWAY FROM WAR
The Cuban Missile Crisis was a bombshell with a very long fuse behind it.
The gangster, racketeer and dictator Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba in December 1958. Castro and Ché Guevara led their revolutionary forces into Havana and formed a new government. Washington quickly recognised it, and 1959 passed off fairly smoothly. Castro reduced rents, took over the US-owned Telephone Company, redistributed land. He wasn’t a Communist, he was a reformist. He made some angry anti-American speeches, but the US still bought a lot of Cuban sugar. President Eisenhower said he was ‘perplexed’ by Castro’s statements and he reaffirmed the commitment of the US to ‘the policy of non-intervention in the domestic affairs of other countries, including Cuba’. Officially, Washington had no big difficulties with Castro – except on one point: it blocked arms sales to Cuba.
Well, the island must be able to defend itself. Castro said he would buy wherever he could. That had to mean the USSR or its allies. Now the fuse began to burn.
For all Eisenhower’s public declarations, his administration had already begun to think that Castro must go. On the island, hundreds of Batista’s men had been tried for atrocities, and many were executed. Large numbers of Batistianos fled to Miami, where they plotted to reverse the revolution. In March 1960 Eisenhower ordered the CIA to train Cuban exiles ‘against a possible future day when they might return to their homeland’: the first hint of military force. Eventually, four training bases were set up in Florida, plus others in Puerto Rico, Panama, Nicaragua and Guatemala. The CIA was working on plans to assassinate Castro. And Washington was thinking blockade.
Cuba had to import oil. Soon, under pressure from Washington, the big US oil companies cut their supplies. Inevitably, Castro turned to Russia. Texaco, Esso and Shell operated refineries in Cuba but they refused to process Russian oil. In June 1960 Castro nationalised them. A week later, Eisenhower cancelled the Cuban sugar quota. Russia stepped in, agreed to buy Cuban sugar for five years and to provide $100 million in credit. By the summer, arms were reaching Cuba from the Eastern Bloc and Castro was nationalising US-owned businesses – 26 in August, all American banks in September, a further 166 US firms in October. Washington banned almost all trade with Cuba. That left Castro with no friend but Russia. Early in 1961 he declared himself (and Cuba) for socialism.