Julian Christopher wiped his face with a dust-caked sleeve.
He looked at the grubby, windblown woman who’d appointed herself his personal nurse and despite the situation, grinned.
“I feel a little better,” he assured her, troubled by her worried expression. He’d been wondering why his right arm felt so strange; belatedly, he discovered his uniform jacket was gone and his shirt hung raggedly off his shoulder. Most of his right arm was swaddled in thick white gauze.
“Pieces from the crashed jet fell across us,” the woman shrugged apologetically as if it was her fault. “I was protected by your body but something hot landed on your arm.”
As if on cue the man’s forearm and elbow had started to sting.
“You saved my life,” Margaret Thatcher declared almost accusingly.
Julian Christopher’s ears were ringing less and the woman’s words sounded as if they were nearer. He stopped himself shaking his head knowing that would only make him retch again.
Several burly soldiers in camouflage battle dress stomped into the hall.
They took position around the bloodied and bandaged Admiral and the woman in the ruined two piece outfit with the blasted-looking hair.
Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, and Defender of the Faith surveyed the battered visage of the man she’d been reliably informed was the ‘the best fighting Admiral in the Navy’ with eyes full of grief and worry and a deadly determination to carry on.
“Your Majesty…”
“Please don’t try to stand up, Admiral Christopher,” commanded the small, grim-faced woman wearing a camouflaged tunic at least ten sizes too large for her petite frame.
The big hard men of her close bodyguard never stopped scanning their surroundings for danger. Each man fingered his Sten Gun secretly praying for somebody to kill.
“You sent a message that you wanted to speak to somebody who knows what is going on.” The woman who’d lost her infant son in an unspeakable atrocity only two hours ago, and whose husband lay terribly injured somewhere nearby, spoke with a plummy clarity. “That would be me, Admiral Christopher. Lieutenant Colonel McPhail, the CO of the Black Watch was killed in the attack, as were several of his senior officers. Everybody in the guard house behind Balmoral was killed or wounded by the bombs. This building was attacked by two jets. A further two aircraft attacked other residences on the estate. The aircraft which crashed here was shot down by small arms fire from the Black Watch. Its partner in crime was shot down by a Bloodhound missile as it attempted to escape. As to the other two jets,” the bereaved mother’s bottom lip quivered for a split second before she regained her iron control, “they may have got away. The RAF is flying something called a ‘combat air patrol’ over the estate and more troops are on their way to us. The fire in the east wing of the castle is now out. The Prime Minister is currently out and about organising the Black Watch against the possibility of what he calls a ‘follow up ground assault’. He’s been a tower of strength. He will be returning shortly. Things are therefore, under control. This being the case I am ordering you to allow the medical staff to minister to you as they see fit until such time as they deem you fit to resume your duties, Admiral.”
Julian Christopher lay down.
He passed out within moments of his head touching the pillow.
He slept fitfully, his mind plagued with vivid, flickering dreams of the kind he’d once experienced when he’d almost died of fever in Singapore that long ago summer before Hitler invaded Poland.
Singapore…
Filling in time on the Staff; nothing to do but check his post in the morning, issue orders and go sailing in the afternoons. Around him the sweltering, stifling tropical heat of the great fortress citadel with ships coming and going, the traffic of the orient, exotic and entrancing, wrapping him in its narcotic-like arms until the reality of the old world became a chimera and he began to forget who and what he was…
Raffles Hotel, the parties under awnings on the aft decks of the big ships…
First there’d been his fling with Oriane. A delicate, pale, bird-like beauty. The wife of a French diplomat engaged in some shady dealings with up country planters. Of course, that might just have been a cover for the sort of routine spying that all the European powers conducted in the East, mostly to keep bored and underemployed diplomats busy and to prevent them from stirring up even more trouble. Oriane had left Singapore after a couple of weeks on a slow boat to Indochina. She’d written to him once from Hanoi but he’d never replied.
He’d been involved with Aysha by then.
Although, ‘involved’ was hardly the right word.
‘Obsessed’, or ‘bewitched’ were better words.
Aysha had consumed him heart and soul, he’d have gladly died for her if she’d asked it of him. She’d been the mistress of one of the richer, more obviously crooked rubber planters; one of the ones who dealt contraband and kept a foot or a hand or a finger in every conceivable pot. People like him didn’t care who was running the show just so long as they got their cut. That was the way of Empire; people like him were the glue that held the whole edifice together. In Singapore nobody asked any questions, so long as the rubber kept flowing to the factories of the English Midlands nobody cared if the underlying fabric of the Imperium was rotten.
He’d never cared.
He’d been too preoccupied with his career and with living the life he’d always loved. He’d bowed to convention and taken a well-connected wife whom he loved as best he could when he was at home in England. But what he lived for was stepping on the deck of the next grey steel warship and the thrill of the next port of call. The whole world seemed to be at his feet when he stood on the bridge of a warship. He’d become distracted between the wars, become obsessed with seizing back the America’s Cup. It hadn’t happened and eventually he’d been welcomed back with open arms by the Service he had always loved.
And then Aysha had driven him past the point of madness…
Afternoons and long sultry, unbearably hot tropical nights entwined in the arms of the olive-skinned temptress of his most fevered imaginings…
It was dark in the room when he awakened, little by little, from the grip of a hallucination in which he’d been on a stretcher with cold rain splashing on his face as armoured vehicles splashed down a nearby muddy track.
He focused on a candle burning low in a bowl beside his bed.
He didn’t know where he was, just that he wasn’t alone.
It was cold in the darkness and he shivered involuntarily.
The Angry Widow was holding his left hand, watching over him.
He blinked stupidly, guiltily at her.
“I dreamed the Queen was giving me a SITREP?” He whispered hoarsely through cracked lips.
“You didn’t dream that. That was shortly before the Prime Minister got back,” the woman reported. She’d changed into clean clothes, washed her face and brushed her hair. She was prim, proper, in control again and yet, different, as if he was viewing her though a filter that softened everything. “He took charge. He insisted that Balmoral Castle be abandoned. There are soldiers everywhere. A cadre from 45 Commando was flown in by helicopter this afternoon to relieve the Black Watch. We’re in a cottage about two miles from Balmoral. Patricia and Tom Harding-Grayson are downstairs. You must be thirsty?”