The former Naval Attaché to the Court of Balmoral thought it ought to have been obvious to the Attorney General. However, in his experience as a litigator very few people actually had any real understanding of what, to a real lawyer, often seemed patently obvious.
“Because somebody has to talk to Premier Heath face to face and give him everything, and I do mean everything he wants. Trust me; you’ll be surprised how little he wants. Grain and fuel will do for now, medical supplies and a hot line to the President will seal the deal.”
“And this will come better from Bobby?” The President queried.
“Yes.” Again, Walter Brenckmann really didn’t know why he was having to tell them this. “I mean no disrespect, Mister President,” he explained flatly, “but the Attorney General is the Kennedy brother the Brits don’t hold personally responsible for the death of millions of their countrymen, sir.”
Chapter 38
Giles Gerard was a florid, plump man of indeterminate middle-years with a twinkle in his eye and a winning smile. He was exactly the sort of man one would expect to bump into — probably tipsy — below the grandstand of a race course like Goodwood or Ascot checking out the form of the horses in the parade ring. He was wearing a tweed jacket and plus fours and brandishing a bottle of twelve year old Royal Lochnagar whiskey.
Lieutenant-Commander Peter Christopher had followed his ‘personal steward’, Leading Electrical Artificer Jack Griffin down to the unpopulated lounge of the hotel privately questioning the wisdom of agreeing to meet the ‘War Correspondent of the London Times’. The Times, like the other historic Fleet Street staples, the Daily Mail, Express and the Evening Standard had, with the assistance of the UKIEA re-established themselves in Manchester and in the last few months begun again to publish daily national editions.
Now that he’d set yes on Giles Gerard the young naval officer’s doubts crystallised. Apart from the fact he was dog tired and likely to say something he ought not to say, his father’s notoriety — long before his recent exploits in command of Operation Manna — had bred in the son an instinctive mistrust of everything he read about the Royal Navy in the popular press. The problem was that the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir David Luce — the man whose word was law in the Royal Navy — had ordered him to talk to the bloody man.
The journalist pumped his right hand enthusiastically.
“I expected you to look more weather-beaten, Commander,” the older man guffawed cheerfully. “The Ministry of Information flew me out here especially to do a piece on the ‘Electronic Warfare Whizz son of the Fighting Admiral’,” he explained apologetically. He held up the whiskey. “I brought this to soften the blow. You’re not one of these post-war born again bloody teetotallers are you?”
Peter Christopher shook his head.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jack Griffin sliding away.
“Stay, Jack,” he said softly. He’d only ever used the other man’s Christian name half-a-dozen times in the sixteen months of their acquaintance. Every previous occasion had been when he’d pulled the man aside and berated him for some — now forgotten — infraction of Queen’s Regulations or on account of the consequences of one of his famously misfiring pranks. “We’re off duty,” he looked to the smoke discoloured ceiling, “inside, and we seem to be the only representatives of the Senior Service in residence. After what we’ve been through in the last few days you deserve a stiff drink as much as I do.”
Giles Gerard raised an eyebrow.
“You said the Ministry of Information sent you out here?” Peter asked as the three men settled in threadbare armchairs. An old man in the faded red and gold livery of the Armada de Tagus Hotel materialised to clank glasses on the table around which the chairs had gathered and departed without a word.
The man from The Times nodded as he poured a couple of fingers of amber malt whiskey into each of the three glasses and placed the bottle in the middle of the table.
“The fate of HMS Talavera and HMS Devonshire was the first item on the radio news and front page fodder for all the papers for over two days,” Giles Gerard said. “Stirring stuff. And when the news from Malta started to emerge, well…”
Peter Christopher picked up his glass; as did Jack Griffin, the latter with an odd, uncomfortable hesitancy.
“Malta?”
“Oh, I assumed you’d have been briefed?”
“No, nobody’s told us anything.”
“Oh, I see.” The journalist redrew his previously prepared remarks, began anew. “At about the same time you came under attack in the Atlantic enemy forces were converging on Gibraltar and Malta. The former raid was discouraged by HMS Hermes’s Sea Vixens…”
“What happened at Malta?”
“The Regia Aeronautica attacked ships and dockyard installations and, apparently, they claim, inadvertently, civilian areas at low-level, while,” Giles Gerard flashed a disbelieving smile, “four B-52s dropped big, and I mean very big, bombs on practically all our major headquarters and bases in and around Valletta…”
Peter Christopher suspected that Jack Griffin was staring at the journalist with exactly the same incredulity that he was; for a moment he was convinced the man from The Times was playing some ill-conceived ludicrously cruel practical joke on him. A moment later icy fingers clutched his heart.
Marija!
“But for the fact that the RAF and the Fleet Air Arm happened to be in the middle of a big war game and had nearly twenty kites in the air over Malta,” Giles Gerard went on, “the bastards would probably have got away with it without a scratch.”
Marija…
The two Navy men listened with mounting outrage to the tale.
They nodded grimly at the news that RAF Hawker Hunters had gunned down four B-52s; listened in horror at the bald numbers of the casualty lists. Between one and two thousand dead, as many people injured; most of the major headquarters buildings on Malta demolished, HMS Agincourt sunk at her moorings in Sliema Creek, HMS Torquay capsized in dry dock, HMS Sheffield — the same ship that had taken part in the hunt for the Bismarck in May 1941 — grounded in shallow water in Lazaretto Creek…
“Are we at war with America?” Peter asked, interrupting the journalist’s flow.
“Not yet.” The older man shrugged. “So far as I know, anyway.”
“My father is uninjured?”
A brusque nod. “Yes. He landed on the island about an hour before the raid started. He’s spent most of the time since touring the bombed areas and shaking hands.” Giles Gerard decided he’d overstated the glad-handing propensities of the ‘Fighting Admiral’. “Sorry, that’s not really true. He’s C-in-C of everything between Gibraltar and the Levant now. Between the Hermes Battle Group standing out to sea off Cape Trafalgar — a nice touch that — and periodic precision strikes by V-Bombers hopefully the Spanish seem to have abandoned bellicosity in favour of licking their wounds and hiding in bomb shelters. As for the situation on Malta, well, my colleagues on the spot say Sir Julian has been stoking up the old wartime spirit. There are reports that he’s clapped and cheered everywhere he goes. Perhaps, the man actually has the ‘Nelson touch’ after all?”