Loudon Baines Westheimer II viewed the cool-eyed grey haired naval officer standing before him with his cap under his arm holding a loosely approximate stance of attention with suspicion. His aides said the man had gone native and in hindsight he ought to have objected more strongly when the Navy nominated him to replace Rear Admiral Armstrong, his predecessor when he was invalided back to the States. Apart from any other consideration the Brits would be insulted when they discovered the new US Naval Attaché was a four-ring reservist. He had objected to that. Washington had informed him that since the ‘Brits weren’t talking to any of our military people about anything important these days’ it hardly made any difference. And besides, Walter Brenckmann was already ‘in country’. Apparently one of Brenckmann’s oldest buddies was close to the Director at Langley. Not that it would do any good. The CIA talked to American diplomats even less than the Brits.
“What do you think of Cheltenham, Captain Brenckmann?” The United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland asked, lighting another Luck Strike.
“At least it is safe to walk the streets at night hereabouts, sir,” the naval officer replied with the clipped, New England accent that set many Texans, like Loudon Baines Westheimer II’s teeth on edge. He didn’t get on with any of Kennedy’s people; he’d backed his friend Lyndon Baines Johnson for the presidential nomination. LBJ and he shared a couple of common ancestors — two or three generations ago — and they’d always been natural co-conspirators in the internecine southern machinations of the Democratic Party. LBJ wasn’t anywhere near as one-eyed as JFK about the new world order, thank God! John Fitzgerald Kennedy and that meddling, womanising, preaching little brother of his might think that sooner or later, what little remained of Christendom was going to come to its senses and give him a huge fucking medal for what he did last year, but LBJ didn’t believe it for a minute and neither did Loudon Baines Westheimer II.
“Inside the compound maybe,” the Ambassador grunted. This was the second interview he’d had with the new Naval Attaché since his arrival in Cheltenham four days ago. The first interview had been to grill Brenckmann about how he’d managed to get himself locked up by the Brits in some old fort on Portland Bill. The local militia had accused him of spying and Westheimer hadn’t got to the bottom of exactly what Brenckmann thought he was going to achieve ‘spying’ on a more or less empty anchorage.
‘Gathering military intelligence is as much about establishing how a thing is being conducted as it is about what is actually happening,’ the grey-haired naval officer had informed him.
‘And what did you learn?’
‘Very little, sir. However, I was able to gain further corroboration of what I already knew.’
‘Which would be?’
‘That the Brits are operating on a war footing at a unit tactical level, sir.’
‘Like we aren’t?’’
‘No, sir. We aren’t. We won the war. The Brits didn’t.’
Loudon Baines Westheimer II had given up debating what he considered to be ephemeral philosophical issues with Brenckmann at that juncture. He’d met a lot of Navy types like the Attaché. At sea they were gung ho patriots, on land they had too much time to think and like too many people who had too much spare time on their hands they turned into air-headed crypto-liberals of the worst kind; the sort JFK had bussed into the White House before he learned the lesson of his folly. The Ambassador forced himself to focus on the present.
“What are you hearing about the incident with the two Skyhawks off the Enterprise?”
“Our guys behaved like absolute beginners, sir.”
“Is that what you’ve told the Brits?”
“No, sir.”
“Operation fucking Manna!”
“Sir?” Walter Brenckmann inquired solicitously.
“One minute the Brits are whining about the non delivery of ‘emergency supplies’, whatever that means, the next they’re running these huge fucking convoys past one of our carrier battle groups! Why the fuck would they think we’d empty our grain silos for them when we’ve known all along that they’d already secured their own source of supply?”
Walter Brenckmann wondered if the Ambassador really wanted to know. Westheimer was from a family of robber baron ranchers and oil men. He’d found his niche with the Democrats more because of his social and financial interests than out of any political or ideological sympathies with the Party. A big, broad man who dwarfed many of those with whom he met in his official duties in Cheltenham he felt imprisoned within the secure Government compound which had become his whole world. If ever he ventured out into the real world beyond it was always with a dozen heavily armed bodyguards. Westheimer was completely the wrong man for the job but Kennedy’s people had had to pay off a lot of highly energized detractors after the October War and given that most of the plumb diplomatic assignments had been erased from the map, they’d struggled to find a posting with a profile high enough to impress a man with the Ambassador’s extremely high opinion of his own importance. The man had been too stupid to turn down the appointment.
“It is because they don’t trust us, sir.”
“What choice have they got?”
Walter groaned inwardly. He said nothing.
“Well?” Demanded the big man chain smoking from the comfort of the imported leather chair behind the broad uncluttered desk.
“I apologise, sir. I thought your question was rhetorical.”
Loudon Baines Westheimer II almost bit off the filter of his Lucky Strike.
“What choice have the Brits got?” He asked again.
The naval officer thought about this for another moment.
“Forgive me, sir. I don’t think we’ve got off on a very good footing. Consequently, I have no feel for whether you actually want me to answer a question,” he shrugged, “like that frankly, or to be diplomatic.”
The Ambassador stubbed out his cigarette and reached for another.
“Don’t give me that Harvard crap, Brenckmann.”
“Yale, sir. I took my law degree at Yale.”
“Whatever. You fucking Ivy League guys are all the same. I never went to any of those fancy colleges and I did all right!”
“Yes, sir,” Walter Brenckmann agreed. The Ambassador’s father had been one of the richest men in Texas, of course. Red neck Democrats like the Ambassador brought out the worst in him and he knew it. “Premier Heath’s administration took the view that no American government would ever, under any circumstances, empty its grain silos to help anybody. No matter what assurances they’d received from State Department.”
“The President gave Premier Heath his word.”
JFK’s word didn’t count for much these days.
“The Brits only proceeded with Operation Manna after it became apparent that supplies of grain and fuel would not be shipped to the United Kingdom from American ports in time to make any difference.”
Loudon Baines Westheimer II spread his arms.
“You know they wanted everything covered by some kind of new Marshall Plan?”
“That was hardly unreasonable, sir.”
“Try running that by the American people during the mid-term elections, son!” The big man rocked back in his chair which creaked in protest. “More Americans died in the war than in all the wars in our entire fucking history up until last October! We have our own problems back home! Don’t these idiots over here get that?”
“Sir,” the naval officer said evenly, suppressing a groan of despair, “I don’t think the Brits are idiots but you need to know, and I think that Washington needs to know that they’re done fighting our wars.”