The Prime Minister seemed lost in his thoughts.
“The Yanks know that my Captains are authorised to use force if their ships are threatened, or any vessel under their protection is threatened by any action by any third party. The USN is also aware that my Captains are authorised to take pre-emptive action if they believe that any third party is preparing to take any action which may endanger any vessel of aircraft in the Fleet.”
Iain Macleod cleared his throat.
“That sounds like an invitation for somebody to start another bloody shooting war?”
Julian Christopher broke eye contact with Margaret Thatcher with what might, in other circumstances, have been reluctance and mild irritation. He set his sights on the Chairman of the Conservative and Unionist Party of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland.
“With respect, sir,” he observed coolly, “we are still in the shooting war that commenced in October 1962. It’s just that a lot of people who ought to know better don’t recognise the fact.”
The remark whipped across the table like the crack of a rifle.
The scowling Minister without Portfolio winced, recoiled and opened his mouth to deliver an outraged rebuttal that died on his lips as he met the unyielding stone cold eyes of his assailant.
“The Americans are not our friends, sir,” Julian Christopher said in a voice that had the calculating, razor-sharp edge of a scalpel. “They like to tell themselves that they are but they’re no more our friends than the Romans were two thousand years ago, or the Normans were nine hundred years ago. History is written by the victors, sir. If we are not very, very careful, we here in these islands will be remembered as a footnote in the history of the glorious Pax Americana.”
“That would never do!” Declared Margaret Thatcher with a clipped soprano vehemence that briefly fixed the attention of the room upon her. She seemed to be sitting a little apart from all the others. Her hands were clasped before her on the table, she sat unmoving with not so much as a single hair out of place. Her blue jacket and cream blouse were bright, new in ways that the dowdiness of her male colleagues and the careworn uniforms of the military men emphasised. She was at once the youngest person in the room — she was three years younger than James Callaghan, and nine years younger than the Prime Minister the next two most youthful members of the gathering — and indisputably the most vibrant, determined, and confident of them all.
Edward Heath had recognised the magnetism. He’d known Margaret Thatcher for many years. They’d never been close and would never be friends but in these strange times unlikely alliances formed. He’d been unsympathetic to her attempts to find a safe constituency when he’d been Chief Whip. Frankly, he’d found her pushy and irritating, exactly the sort of rolling stone the Party didn’t need post-Suez. Nevertheless, whenever he’d managed to set aside the woman’s stridency and her potential for spreading chaos in the soporific ranks of the Parliamentary Party, she’d stood out like a sore thumb on the grey, complacent back benches. He’d been Chief Whip for four years before being appointed as Minister for Labour in October 1959, and then Lord Privy Seal the following year. The Chief Whip’s job in Harold MacMillan’s Government wasn’t to bully the rank and file into line; it was to know the mind of the Party and to know everything about its disparate constituent parts. So even when he’d been cold-shouldering Margaret Thatcher’s best endeavours to find a safe seat in the House of Commons, he’d been careful to learn everything he could learn about the woman. By the time she’d won the Finchley seat in 1959 a few days short of her thirty-fourth birthday she was already a trained chemist and a qualified barrister. At some stage she’d found time to marry a millionaire businessman and give birth to twins, all the while doggedly trying to get into Parliament. And now she was the undoubted rising star — the only one, there weren’t any others — of his ramshackle, hard-pressed and most likely, within weeks or at most months, doomed administration.
“Exactly,” he rumbled, deliberately breaking the strangle hold the Angry Widow and the Fighting Admiral had begun to exert on his War Cabinet. “That would never do!”
Margaret Thatcher nodded her satisfied concurrence and after bathing Vice-Admiral Julian Wemyss Christopher in the warmth of one last dazzling smile she graciously surrendered the floor.
The Prime Minister nodded.
“Is it your view,” he posed to the three Chiefs of Staff sitting opposite him, “that Operation Manna has reached a point where we can confidently expect it to proceed to a successful conclusion, gentlemen?”
Admiral Sir John David Luce, First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff, cleared his throat and looked Edward Heath in the eye.
“Yes, sir,” he said. He was not a man to whom prevarication came naturally. He’d been pencilled in for the role he currently held before his predecessor and his handful of superiors in the Senior Service had been blown away in the cataclysm.
When the Prime Minister raised an eyebrow, Luce quirked a fleeting smile and elaborated.
“The Americans knew what we were up to months ago but I don’t think they believed what they were seeing. Besides, they were so preoccupied with what they perceived as Julian’s, forgive me, Vice-Admiral Christopher’s, high-handedness and lack of co-operation with the United States Navy in the Pacific and the Indian Oceans, that they weakened their forces in the North Atlantic by sending a second carrier battle group to the Pacific. That ill-advised strategic rebalancing and the fact they’ve put so many units into mothballs — to take advantage of some kind of bizarre ‘peace dividend’, it seems — implies that, even if they ever seriously considered it, they are in no position to interdict Operation Manna. Short of war, that is, sir.”
“Yes, well,” interjected Air Marshall Sir Samuel Charles Elworthy, Chief of the Air Staff, “if we’d co-ordinated Operation Manna with the US Navy we’d probably have had a lot less bother assembling the necessary merchant shipping.” He held up a hand, partly in apology. “Not my place to meddle, I know, David. It just seems to me that we’ve burned an awful lot of bridges over this thing.”
The First Sea Lord nodded thoughtfully.
Edward Heath waited and then when the Chiefs of Staff remained silent he stepped back into the fray.
“I would go to war tomorrow if the choice was between going to war and watching our people to starve this winter.”
The Chief of the Air Staff gave the Prime Minister a hard look.
“As would I, sir,” he retorted with immense dignity.
“We are all patriots around this table,” Edward Heath said brusquely. “We all serve at Her Majesty’s pleasure. We are all the custodians of the world’s oldest surviving democracy. Among ourselves,” he let the thought hang, suspended in the ether, “we have a duty to speak freely, one to another, for the good of our country. What happened in October last year would not have happened, could not have happened, if honest men,” he glanced to Margaret Thatcher, pursed his lips in self-deprecation, “and women, had tried harder to understand each other better. We shall not repeat that mistake. Around this table we shall speak our minds. One’s personal views may not carry the day, but those views will always be listened to and respected by me while I hold the Premiership.” He nodded to the Chief of the Air Staff.