General Sir Richard Hull’s tone became grim.
“Just before I came into this meeting I received the latest casualty reports. I can now confirm the deaths of the Lord of Home, the infant Prince Andrew, some seven other members of the Royal Household, and seventy-four officers and men of the Black Watch. His Royal Highness Prince Philip has been flown by helicopter to Edinburgh for treatment of his severe leg injuries. Vice-Admiral Christopher was initially assessed as having suffered a life-threatening head injury but it now seems that in the heat of the moment this was a somewhat pessimistic judgement. The extent of his injuries are now confirmed as being a concussion and a collection of nasty but otherwise non-life threatening cracks and abrasions. Excluding walking wounded; some twelve other members of the Royal Household and sixty-one members of the Black Watch were assessed as requiring hospitalisation. Two members of the Royal Household and three men from the Black Watch are still unaccounted for. It is likely their bodies are still buried beneath debris.”
“What of the other members of the Prime Minister’s party?” Peter Thorneycroft asked, venturing uncomfortably into the angry silence.
“Her Majesty the Queen and the Prime Minister were in the one part of Balmoral Castle to escape significant structural damage and mercifully, were completely unharmed. Mrs Thatcher was shaken up but uninjured. It seems Admiral Christopher threw her to the ground and shielded her with his own body just before the bomb that killed the Earl of Home and injured His Royal Highness struck the building. Tom Harding-Grayson and his wife escaped uninjured. Patricia Harding-Grayson was a tower of strength in the aftermath of the attack when it became apparent that the CO of the Black Watch and many of his senior lieutenants had been killed.”
“Is it true,” Peter Thorneycroft followed up, “that Her Majesty took charge of things herself in the first minutes after the attack?”
“Yes, sir. Her Majesty took control of the situation at the castle while the Prime Minister reorganised the survivors of the Black Watch to guard and secure the immediate perimeter against the possibility of a second attack.”
There were grunts of approval and nods of approbation around the table and the mood of the room lifted one chilled degree above absolute zero.
Jim Callaghan cleared his throat.
“Do you have all the resources you need to guarantee Her Majesty’s safety, Sir Richard?”
“Yes, sir,” the soldier retorted with grim certitude. “The head of the Security Services and I will review all arrangements subsequent to this meeting. I believe Sir Roger has already spoken to the Prime Minister.”
Jim Callaghan grimaced. He’d had very little to do with Sir Roger Hollis and in fact, very little use for the man or the rag tag remnants of his so-called Security Service. Ironically, the war had wiped out most of MI5 while leaving the beating heart of its competitor, MI6 — its offshore counterpart the Secret Intelligence Service — relatively intact. The primary reason the UKIEA was based in Cheltenham was that after the Second World War the whole apparatus of Camp X — the Bletchley Park code-breaking operation — had been transferred and expensively relocated in the town in two purpose built centres. Several deep bunkers had been dug into the surrounding Cotswold and Chiltern Hills to accommodate the UKIEA in the event of a nuclear war but ironically, never used. The war was over too soon and there’d been no real warning of it until the firestorm had actually erupted in the skies above London. In the last year the ‘nuclear’ bunkers had been utilised as heavily guarded supply depots of last resort. In any event, Cheltenham was virtually an MI6 company town in which MI5 — the Security Service — was a barely tolerated lodger.
“Is Sir Roger on his way back from Washington yet?” He asked searching for the lugubrious equanimity that was his hallmark in the face of normal adversity. The Americans didn’t like the Director General of MI5. They believed he’d had too many dubious friends in his younger days. Hollis and Sir Dick White, the head of MI6, were responsible for spawning the incoherent and largely ineffectual — in intelligence gathering terms — Internal Security Department whose writ ran wild in the remaining British crown protectorates. Hollis and White had been particularly slow to rein in the excesses of the ISD in Malta and Cyprus, and for reasons best known to them they’d seen fit to allow that pernicious institution to begin operations within the Home Islands. Like ‘security’ institutions throughout history, ISD was more interested in building its own little empires than in actually performing its job. If MI5 couldn’t root out treachery on such a monstrous scale as a conspiracy to bomb Balmoral Castle then what was it good for? MI6 wasn’t much better; the situation in Algeciras Bay and the partial activation of Operation Homeward Bound in Malta and Cyprus had come out of the blue without so much as a by your leave from Dick White’s ‘Special Intelligence Service’. The man himself — the suave poster boy of British Intelligence — had flown out to Malta forty-eight hours ago to personally ‘assess the situation on the ground’. The fact that the nation’s two top spies were out of the country on the day traitors attempted to murder the Queen, the Spanish mined an aircraft carrier in Algeciras Bay and the stunning news that the C-in-C Mediterranean Fleet appeared to be having a brainstorm, seemed to be an odd coincidence. James Callaghan knew he wasn’t the only man around the table who probably felt it was exactly the sort of coincidence that would bear more than a little scrutiny in the days and weeks to come.
“Yes,” General Sir Richard Hull confirmed grimly.
“Sir David,” the Deputy Prime Minister asked, turning to the First Sea Lord, “what’s going on at Gibraltar?”
“HMS Albion was still afloat an hour ago and I instructed my Staff to inform me immediately if she sank, so presumably she’s still afloat. I’m given to believe that most of her marines have been carried ashore, as have a large number of non-essential crewmen. The Spanish are standing off and watching. RAF Gibraltar remains inoperable and threatened by Spanish artillery. All the helicopters Albion managed to fly off are now based at Europa Point. They are safe enough there for the time being but operating them will be problematic. Fuel has to be tankered out to them, and spares, ground crews and so forth are not currently available on the Rock.”
Jim Callaghan sighed. “What are our options?”
“If we lose Gibraltar we lose the Mediterranean, sir.”
“We might lose the Med anyway?”
“Yes, sir. But that’s where we fall over the strategic decision you alluded to earlier.”
The Deputy Prime Minister looked around the table.