“Very well, I will take that to this morning’s War Cabinet.”
Julian Christopher put down the phone.
“Your son is here, sir,” Alan Hannay reminded him after a judicious thirty-second delay.
“Send him in please. We’ll go out on the ramparts. Be a good chap and organise hot drinks. Peter and I will probably benefit from a calming cup of tea.”
The father looked his son up and down as he marched into his office.
“You look well, Peter.”
“Thank you, sir. Keeping busy stops one’s mind from worrying about things one can do nothing about.”
Father and son shook hands.
“Come outside and have a look at the view,” Julian Christopher said, leading the way through the outer reception rooms onto the long, airy balcony Mess area atop the eastern ramparts of the old Citadel of medieval Mdina. He gestured for his son to take a seat at a table at the sheltered end of the terrace as there was a stiff, south-easterly breeze gusting at the immovable bastion beneath their feet.
Father and son had had no real opportunity to speak privately on the evening HMS Talavera had limped into Sliema Creek. They had both been aware of the countless watching eyes and it had been a breathless, oddly bloodless occasion which in retrospect had taken virtually all the sting out of this personal and private second meeting.
“I met Marija’s father yesterday,” the younger man announced ruefully. “He seems a decent sort. Sad, obviously.”
“The whole family has had a rough old time of it.”
Peter Christopher felt as if he ought to entertain more animosity towards his father. If this reunion had happened before the war then things would have been different. Perfectly bloody, in fact; but everybody had lost so much it was hard to keep the fires of old hurts and resentments burning hot.
“There are rumours about Samuel Calleja’s part in,” he hesitated, “things?” He asked lamely.
“Unfounded,” his father retorted bluntly. “The whole family had to be thoroughly investigated after the explosion in Kalkara. Due process and all that. The security people have gone into everything and established that Samuel was an innocent dupe in the loss of HMS Torquay. He was used shamelessly by the,” a quirked half smile, “terrorists. They were clearly attempting to smear the whole Calleja family. I personally briefed the Times of Malta in an attempt to put an end to the more fanciful stories that were circulating.”
Peter was at once relieved and assailed by further questions, none of which his father was likely to entertain.
“You’ve been busy, Peter?” The Commander-in-Chief chuckled.
“Ah, I probably overstepped the mark arresting all those local men.”
His father guffawed anew. “You let them out as soon as you’d calmed down.”
“Yes, but…”
“I don’t think any lasting harm has been done. Talavera,” the father declared, changing the subject. “What’s her state of readiness?”
“Miles Weiss and I spent most of last night supervising re-patching the cabling to the Type Two-Nine-Three aerial on the foremast. Miles, sorry, Guns, was testing the system when I left to come here. It looks like we’ve got full director control for the main battery again. I never realised how important that was until those shore batteries opened up on us at Lampedusa. Miles, I mean, Lieutenant Weiss has worked a miracle getting the main battery shipshape. Otherwise, we’re planning to weld a couple of single 20-millimere Oerlikon mounts onto the aft deck house roof. We’ve already welded over most of the shrapnel holes in the ship. Fortunately, below the waterline the old girl is as good as new.”
Cups of tea arrived, served by two stewards.
Peter Christopher gazed out across the island, taking in its mottled faded greens and browns contrasted against the grey of the sky and the dull blue of the ocean.
“I didn’t realise Malta was such a military camp, sir,” he commented.
“Things,” his father said lowly, “are looking a bit sticky. I’m sure we shall pull through but we’re stretched at present.”
“So Red Dawn is real?”
The father nodded. Both men were struck by how ‘adult’ this interview had been and by how little animus hung in the air between them.
“Nobody knew if Red Dawn was a terroristic hangover from the October War or something more significant until the last few weeks. Frankly, we’ve been caught on the hop. I don’t think it occurred to anybody until recently that the destruction in so many places might not have been as total as we first thought. It is now apparent that the only thing in Eastern Europe that was totally destroyed by the heaviest bombing was pre-war political and military cohesion. What appears to have happened around the Black Sea and in Turkey is that Red Dawn has moved in and filled the vacuum. Latterly, it seems likely that they have invested Crete. Across the region Red Dawn has collected up all the viable war fighting assets it can lay its hands on and dragooned large numbers of followers into marching beneath its banner. We’re still piecing together the intelligence but we think we are likely to be opposed by powerful naval forces based in the Sea of Marmara and the Aegean, a potentially very large numbers of troops and possibly, a number of former Soviet jets and helicopters.”
Peter Christopher didn’t believe what he was hearing.
“Without Crete what happens to Cyprus?”
The older man raised an eyebrow, impressed with speed with which his son had drilled down to the nub of the matter. Cyprus was already lost, untenable.
“What indeed,” the father murmured. It was time to change the subject. “Have you gone to see Marija, yet?”
The son’s face flushed hot.
“No!” He said, trying to back into his shell; that well-developed protective mental carapace he’s so lovingly, carefully sculpted over the years since his mother’s death. “No. I’ve been so busy and with this thing about HMS Torquay and that poor fellow getting blown up in Kalkara, I didn’t like to be, well, pushy…”
His father viewed him thoughtfully.
“Marija is a most remarkable young woman, Peter.”
“Funny, isn’t it? You’ve met her and I haven’t?”
Julian Christopher smiled.
“Yes, it is a funny old World, isn’t it?”
Chapter 41
Lieutenant-Commander Peter Christopher was in a daze as he wandered out of the Headquarters, literally stumbling onto the narrow cobbled street in the shadow of St Paul’s Cathedral. It was while he was in that befuddled state, not really looking where he was going that he found himself standing in the piazza outside the Cathedral, staring numbly at the sign over the door of the nearest building.
It was a solid double door — painted freshly Navy blue — much broader than any other in the surrounding houses. The brickwork around it suggested this was a relatively recent modification; somewhat out of keeping with the antiquity of every other entrance onto Cathedral Square.
St Catherine’s Hospital for Women.
There was an adjacent brass plaque, brightly polished: Director — M.A. Seiffert, MD.
He stared at the sign over the door and the plaque.
This is where Marija works…
He took off his cap and stood in the weak sunshine which now and then, burned small holes in the overcast. In England he would have been shivering, here it was mildly warm and he didn’t feel remotely over dressed in his recently acquired white tropical rig.