The delegation led by Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Unity Administration had signed up to a bilateral treaty headed An Agreement between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland for Cooperation on the uses of Atomic Energy for Mutual Defense Purposes. The treaty was a barely amended rehashing of the 1958 US-UK Mutual Defense Agreement with a single additional clause ‘guaranteeing’ that neither side would deploy nuclear weapons without ‘meaningful consultation’ with the other.
“The Navy is still kicking up Hell over the Scorpion?” Katzenbach remarked.
“The Chief of Naval Operations says the Scorpion was torpedoed by one of the Enterprise’s S-2 Trackers,” the Attorney General retorted scornfully. “People at the Navy Department are leaking the story that the British sub, the Dreadnought had been stalking the Enterprise Battle Group and that some idiot onboard the carrier briefed the crews of the Trackers to assume an ‘aggressive operational posture’, whatever that means!”
Nick Katzenbach had heard several versions of the story.
The Chief of Naval Operations at the time of the October War, and later at the time of the ‘Scorpion Incident’, Admiral George Whelan Anderson had resigned at the end of December and been replaced by his deputy, fifty-seven year old David Lamar McDonald. Georgia-born McDonald was a breath of fresh air after the haughty, distant Anderson who had spent much of 1963 defending the US Navy from the accusation that its conduct in harrying a Soviet submarine in international waters in the hours before the October War had been what had lit the blue touch paper. McDonald was approachable, did not think that all politicians came from a different planet and had little or no time for the ‘idiots at Norfolk’ — specifically, the much purged high command of the US Atlantic Fleet — who had very nearly provoked a shooting war with the Royal Navy in the days before the Battle of Washington.
McDonald had told the President that the Scorpion had been ‘downed’ by ‘friendly fire’ in circumstances that would be investigated in full when the Board of Inquiry into the loss of the Scorpion had sat. The Chief of Naval Operations anticipated several courts-martial would follow the outcome of that ‘Board’. Unfortunately, in between now and those courts-martial proceedings the full panoply of Navy Department infighting was going to have to play out around the Board of Inquiry; to attempt to short-circuit US Navy ‘due process’ would, in the CNO’s opinion, be damagingly divisive within the service. For the good of the service the ‘fools at Atlantic Fleet’ who were responsible for the sinking of the Scorpion had to have their day before the Board of Inquiry, justice had to be seen to be done even though shooting them down in flames would be the work of but two or three — painful — days if they persisted in their lies and obfuscations in front of the ‘Board’.
The Scorpion was already a cause celebre; there was nothing anybody could do about that. Congress wanted to kick it around the floor of the new House in Philadelphia before the Navy got its turn to run with it. This being the case the Vice-President planned to kick it into the long grass, hoping that in a few months time the affair would have lost much of its ‘sting’.
‘The Navy,’ the CNO had confided to Katzenbach a couple of days ago, ‘is still full of men who honestly believe the Atlantic Fleet people at Norfolk have been scapegoated by the Administration. We’re talking about the same clique who still feel tender about accusations that they provoked the Beale incident; frankly, they’re terrified that they’re going to be the fall guys when Chief Justice Warren starts his hearings in the ‘Causes’ of the October War. This nonsense about the Scorpion is a smokescreen.’
McDonald had been disgusted by the notion that fellow officers could dishonour the dead of the Scorpion in such a disgraceful fashion.
The ‘Scorpion Disaster’ was a problem for another day.
Bobby Kennedy’s thoughts were elsewhere.
“What do we do with that crazy Zabriski woman, Nick?”
Edna Maria Zabriski had confessed — among other things — to attempting to murder the President of the United States of America. She had succeeded in murdering the British Prime Minister, Edward Heath, and injuring the US Attorney General — as testified to by the ongoing painful tweaking of his leg — and winged a Secret Service man.
“The President was worried that the Brits would want her executed,” Katzenbach shrugged. “Apparently, Mrs Thatcher told him it was none of their, the Brits’, that is, business. American justice must take its course. Fulbright spoke to the new Ambassador, Lord Franks. He said the same thing. The trouble is that the shrinks at Langley can’t agree between themselves if she’s crazy.”
Both men groaned as they thought ahead to the prospect of Edna Zabriski having her day in court. A judge was going to have to decide if she was fit to stand trial. The media circus that would surround that event was a nightmare.
“The guy I feel sorry for is Edna Zabriski’s son,” Katzenbach continued. “He survives the October War and then he gets ordered to bomb the Brits at Malta. He honestly believes the Brits have already nuked American cities; then he gets shot down and most of his buddies get killed and finds out he was a patsy. How bad is that?”
“What’s the Air Force doing with the guys the British pulled out of the sea?”
Nick Katzenbach half-smiled.
“LeMay promoted him major and posted him to the staff at SAC Headquarters in Nebraska.”
Bobby Kennedy’s eyes widened.
“Old Iron Pants always stands by ‘his boys’, Bobby,” he was informed ruefully.
The President’s brother recollected that Katzenbach had been a navigator in the Army Air Force during Hitler’s war. His B-25 Mitchell medium bomber had been shot down over the Mediterranean in February 1943 and he had spent the rest of that war in German prison camps; he was hugely better qualified to judge what Nathan Zabriski had been through. Bobby Kennedy had served in the US Navy Reserve in the last year of that war as a Seaman Apprentice but seen no action, a thing that he had always regretted especially after he learned of the death of his eldest brother Joe. He still envied men like Nick Katzenbach who had participated in the preparations for the ‘great escape’ from Stalag Luft III, and his brother Jack, an all-American PT-boat hero of the Pacific War.
“Did I mention I bumped into Walter Brenckmann,” Bobby confided to his friend. “Senior, that is, and his wife at Camp David the other week?”
Katzenbach had only met the man designated to be the new US Ambassador to the United Kingdom a couple of times in passing.
“He’s a shrewd cookie. I’m not sure I’d like to meet him across a court room. His boy Sam,” the Attorney General hesitated, knowing his deputy was a stickler for protocol and might slap him down, “is in some kind of trouble out on the West Coast. I took the liberty of mentioning it to Director Hoover. My thinking was that so long as the old monster is on his best behaviour we might as well take advantage of it. It won’t last, obviously. Anyway, between you and me I suggest you keep well away from it. In fact I suggest you stay out of the loop. Period. There might be ‘complications’, so I’m apologising in advance. I’m not about to tell you your job, Nick but I think you need to be able to deny ever having anything to do with this. If there is any come back about the Ambassador’s son it is all down to me, okay.”