Everything had hit him at once.
He was to remain as captain of HMS Talavera; there were no plans to post a new man to replace him pro tem, nor would there be until the current ‘emergency’ was over. Without most of her former sensor suite, no meaningful anti-aircraft or anti-submarine capability and consequently a crew reduced in number by some forty-four men, Talavera was suffering the indignity — albeit technical — of being designated a ‘general purpose escort’ rather than a fully fledged ‘fleet destroyer’. Whether she was a fit command for a Lieutenant-Commander or a full three-ringer was moot; but in the current emergency it was entirely reasonable and consistent with ‘wartime practice’ to leave the ship in the hands of a two-and-a-half ringer who had already shown ‘exceptional command ability in combat’.
‘If you weren’t up to the job, Peter,’ his father had told him brusquely, ‘I wouldn’t leave Talavera in your hands for a minute.’
It was the first time his father had looked him in the eye and taken him seriously as a fellow naval officer. In fact, it had been the first time they had ever had anything like a man to man conversation about anything. It was all very disconcerting.
Talavera was to complete her hurried repairs as soon as possible and he was to report to Captain ‘D’, 7th Destroyer Squadron onboard HMS Scorpion as to the combat readiness of his command not later than noon tomorrow.
Miles Weiss was to stand-in as his Executive officer, in the interim maintaining his substantive rank of Lieutenant. In action Miles would remain the ship’s Gunnery Officer. The allocation of damage control functions in the event of action would be reviewed by the Captain ‘D’, 7th Destroyer Squadron.
It seemed Peter Christopher’s career in the Royal Navy was blossoming, despite his numerous self-confessed shortcomings. Why didn’t anybody else notice those painfully obvious shortcomings? However, if his career was blossoming, the rest of his life seemed to be a mess, a hopeless muddle of emotions and miscalculations. He’d thought his father was his worst enemy; now he couldn’t even remember why. And Marija? He’d been at Malta several days without so much as laying eye on her. It wasn’t clear if she even wanted to see him. This business with her brother might, he had no idea how, have fractured and doomed the one relationship which had carried him through the last fifteen months without losing his mind.
Was Marija in the building in front of him?
Possibly, watching him now?
“Hello, sir,” said a friendly voice by his shoulder.
Lieutenant Alan Hannay smiled wanly, flicking a glance towards the upper windows of St Catherine’s Hospital for Women. The Commander-in-Chief’s flag lieutenant was ridiculously young-looking, boyish until one noted the perspicacity in his green grey eyes. He’d come to the Royal Navy late after achieving a double first in medieval history and theology at Balliol, Oxford. The youngest son of a suffragan bishop who had perished in the October War, he’d navigated his way through Charterhouse and Oxford with effortless ease, rather like an eel negotiating its way up a muddy stream. The Royal Navy hadn’t appealed to him overly but eventually, the time came when it was a question of following his father into the Church of England — tricky, he was an atheist — or pursuing a career in teaching. Neither had really appealed to him. Fortuitously, it transpired that his father had long been acquainted with Sir David Luce, at that time C-in-C Far East Fleet. Letters of recommendation had been exchanged and Alan Quartermain Hannay had found himself in the Navy. That was in another age, a few short weeks before the World blew itself up. As always, he’d fallen on his feet and found himself as a supernumerary on the staff of the man unexpectedly catapulted a year or so earlier than planned into the post of First Sea Lord. Whence, Alan Quartermain Hannay had made himself indispensible first to one great man, and then for the last two months to a second.
Vice-Admiral Sir Julian Christopher’s son seemed a decent sort, a bit of a chip off the old block with an uncanny knack of being close to the action. Peter Christopher’s summons to a cordial ‘chat’ with his illustrious father had triggered thought processes that had been working in the C-in-C’s flag lieutenant’s brain these last few weeks. Although he hadn’t surreptitiously engineered this ‘chance’ encounter; he didn’t plan to waste the opportunity.
The tall Lieutenant-Commander blinked distractedly at the newcomer.
“Oh, hello, Hannay. Sorry I was miles away.”
Alan Hannay could guess where his mind had been focused; decided that it was not a fruitful area of discussion.
“Forgive my impertinence, sir,” he apologised. “I’ve got an errand to run in Sliema and I understand you’ve got a car waiting for you outside the Citadel?”
Peter Christopher pulled himself together.
“Er, yes. You’re welcome to cadge a lift.”
“That’s awfully decent of you, sir.”
Peter Christopher thought he caught a curtain twitching on the first floor out of the corner of his eye, and the ghost of a silhouette behind it for a moment. He might have been imagining things. He pulled himself together. The thing was to concentrate on getting his ship ready for sea. He had less than twenty-four hours to get Talavera ship shape before he reported to his new commanding officer. When he presented himself to the Captain ‘D’ of the 7th Destroyer Squadron, HMS Talavera and her crew would be ready for sea in every way.
“Don’t mention it.” He turned on his heel and the shorter, youthful looking flag lieutenant barely eighteen months his junior fell into step with him. “So, what’s it like working for my father, Lieutenant Hannay?”
It wasn’t asked with any edge. From what Alan Hannay had heard about the Admiral’s son the man was exactly what he gave every appearance of being, a decent, straight down the line sort of fellow. He had a reputation of being something of a technical wizard, too, except without the bookishness of some of the new ‘scientific officers’.
“Very tiring sometimes, sir,” he replied diplomatically.
“Can I ask you an odd question?”
“By all means ask, sir.”
Peter Christopher hesitated, almost thought better of it, and then asked the question anyway.
“What’s the real story about Sam Calleja?”
The directness of it knocked the wind out of the younger man’s sails. His step faltered and he had to scramble to catch up with HMS Talavera’s commanding officer.
“I’m not with you, sir?”
“No? HMS Torquay is sabotaged after being floated out of a dock where Samuel Calleja worked as a senior yard foreman the day after the man goes missing, a Redcap working for the Admiral gets blown up trying to get into Samuel Calleja’s workshop, there’s some kind of island-wide manhunt and five terrorists are cornered and killed, or commit suicide, I don’t know which. In the meantime I get the oddest visit from Dr Seiffert; and my father goes out of his way to tell me it is all a devilish plot that ‘incidentally’ implicated the Calleja family in the activities of this bloody Red Dawn movement, whatever that is, and Marija Calleja,” he realised he was beginning rant and his voice was getting loud as they marched down the narrow streets back to the gate to the Citadel. “And Marija, whom I’d hoped to be the first person I saw when I finally came ashore in Malta, suddenly seems to be avoiding me like I’ve got leprosy!”
Alan Hannay understood that there was no right way to respond.
“I don’t know the truth of the Samuel Calleja imbroglio, sir,” he admitted. “Other, that is, that I am sure whatever was going on had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the rest of his family. The man’s wife, Rosa, poor woman, was very nearly killed in the blast that did for Jim Siddall.”