Given that Tom Harding-Grayson had suspected that the original reports some months ago of the very existence of Krasnaya Zarya was no more than MI6 hyperbole he hardly trusted himself to answer.
“Good luck when you explain all that to the Prime Minister, Dick,” he concluded with grim resignation.
Chapter 45
Tents and lean to awnings had been pitched and stretched over every available piece of flat ground and two Ton class minesweepers — HMS Coniston and HMS Repton — had been brought around from Msida Creek where they had escaped yesterday’s bombardment with only relatively minor splinter damage, and moored close inshore at dusk so that their engines and generators could provide electrical power to the rapidly expanding Emergency Command Centre in the old disused seaplane hangar and the adjacent requisitioned dock buildings. The main deck, bridge and crew spaces of the two four hundred ton vessels were now also being used as accommodation and offices for the men and women who were arriving all the time to swell the headquarters staff. Many of the newcomers were walking wounded, others still a little dazed, everybody was dusty and dirty and exhausted.
After her journey through the ruins and the chaos of the streets of Mdina, past the still smouldering wreckage of Ta’Qali airfield, and into the devastation of Floriana, Marija had been a little surprised by the atmosphere of calm at Marsa Creek. Everybody seemed to know what they were doing, nobody was running, rushing and although practically every face was ashen with weariness and shock, there were no raised voices, and everything seemed unnaturally businesslike.
Jack Griffin had done the talking at security barriers.
“PO Griffin, Talavera,” he had proclaimed proudly. “Escorting Commander Christopher’s wife. Order’s of the C-in-C!”
It transpired that Air Vice-Marshal French had left instructions that he was to be informed when ‘Mrs Calleja-Christopher arrives safely at Marsa Creek’. However, the C-in-C had been ‘called away briefly’ and Marija was impatient — actually she was very nearly insensibly distraught with anxiety by then — to throw herself into her husband’s arms.
So it was that Jack Griffin had accompanied her onboard HMS Repton, where Peter Christopher was haltingly dictating — periodically looking to Talavera’s dishevelled Canadian navigator, Lieutenant Dermot O’Reilly to confirm this or that detail — his After Action Report of HMS Talavera’s part in the Battle of Malta to the minesweeper’s chief writer. A fourth man was present in the Repton’s captain’s day cabin, an aging four-ringer who had the look of a librarian rather than a warrior. It transpired that he was Captain Lionel Faulkes, the senior Royal Navy officer attached to Daniel French’s hastily re-organised Malta Command Staff.
Husband and wife — the one discarding any pretence of a British stiff upper lip, the other oblivious to the witnesses — flew into each other’s arms. Marija threw her arms around her husband’s neck; he enveloped her in his embrace and as often seemed to happen, her feet did not touch the ground for many, many seconds thereafter.
“I thought you were going to your death, husband!” Marija gasped breathlessly, still not caring what the others saw or heard. “Rosa, my sister and I, we saw Talavera racing out of the Grand Harbour…”
“Right about then I was worrying about you, my love!”
Marija’s tears came in a new flood; she buried her face in his shoulder as gently the Peter put her down, her feet settling on the deck.
“Margo is dead,” she blurted.
He held her crushingly close.
Husband and wife slowly, slowly became aware that they were alone in the cabin and that the other men who had been present when Marija arrived had quietly shut the hatch on their way out.
Peter Christopher looked into his wife’s moist tawny brown eyes and was suddenly, sickeningly struck by the enormity of what, in yesterday’s madness, he had very nearly lost forever. For the first time he experienced a stabbing pang of doubt.
He had believed he was going to his death.
Had it been really been worth it?
“Things out there,” he muttered, “got to be a bit sticky,” he added, the words not wanting to be spoken. “After we torpedoed the first two big ships the third cruiser coming down from the north had our range and we were, well, dead in the water by then and in a frightful fix. If the Yanks hadn’t turned up when they did, I don’t know what would have happened…”
Actually, they both knew exactly what would have happened; he and all his men would be dead now.
Marija sniffed, broke from his embrace and wiped her face and nose with a dusty sleeve. Nobody in the whole wide world knew — apart from her — how close the man she loved was to breaking down, completely falling to pieces; and she was not about to let it happen. Her expression became defiant, her smile determined even if her eyes remained mirrors of worry.
“You would have done what you had to do, husband,” she informed him simply. For the first time she realised he was wearing an ill-fitting foreign uniform. Even if the uniform had been tailored specifically for him it still would not have suited him. “Yesterday it was you duty to try and get yourself killed. Each time you do something brave and stupid like that I will try very hard to forgive you.”
Peter Christopher blinked into Marija’s almond-eyed gaze, saw the mischief bubbling deep in the limpid pools of her eyes and grinned a very, very sheepish grin.
“But only if I return?”
“Yes!” Marija declared, frowning more severely than she meant. “How would I forgive you if you did not return?”
The man was regaining his senses.
“Will you come with me to England?”
“Of course I will go with you to England! I am your wife!”
Peter Christopher instantly felt guilty to have asked the question in the first place. Marija saw this and took pity on him. She surveyed his bruised face, the newly stitched gash on his left cheek, the hastily cleaned up nicks above his eyebrows and the still oozing clumsily sutured wound to his scalp hidden somewhere in his matted fair hair. In retrospect she realised she must have hurt him more than somewhat with the passion of her recent hug. She guessed her idiotically courageous husband was probably a mass of black and blue under his shirt. She noted also that he seemed to be standing on only one leg.
“I think,” Marija decided, “that today is one of those days when you and I are both as sore and aching as each other, husband?”
“I think you may be right, wife,” the man concurred ruefully.
Marija giggled.
“Have you heard if your parents are okay?” Peter asked.
She shook her head. “No.”
Rachel Piotrowska, the woman he and Marija had known as Clara Pullman had told him how Margo Seiffert had died.
“I know what happened to Margo.”
Marija set her face against the world for a moment; she replied blankly, neutrally with a rhetorical question.
“Do you know what happened to your father?”
Peter nodded. Margo Seiffert’s death, his father’s death, and so much of the misery and grief of the last day would be things they locked away until they were strong enough to face them.
“I spoke to Clara Pullman,” the man explained. “Although it turns out that that’s not her real name. I was right about her being a spook all along,” he hesitated, his weary thoughts drifting. “Anyway, she was with my father when he died. He was shot just after the Soviets stormed the headquarters. Just one bullet,” he touched his chest, “but it must have nicked something important, an artery perhaps. There was nothing anybody could do. He lived long enough to know we’d won the battle.”