All of which was incidental to current ongoing operations in the South Atlantic. As a result of his conversations with the Republic’s Prime Minister, Hendrik Verwoerd, and several of his senior ministers, the South African Navy had taken responsibility for the protection of an oiler and a submarine support ship strategically positioned in mid-South Atlantic; a floating depot for the submarines on station thousands of miles from the nearest friendly port.
Nick Davey had left Pretoria with mixed emotions. Having been forewarned that but for the October War Hendrik Verwoerd would gladly have severed all military ties with the United Kingdom, he had been surprised by the pragmatism of his mainly Afrikaner hosts. That said, their ‘Apartheid’ system of segregation had the look and the feel of a very dirty business. The Ambassador, John Maud, an old Etonian former Master of Birkbeck College, had warned him to steer well clear of ‘local racial politics’, and to forget anything he had heard about the Nationalist government having had Nazi sympathies ‘during the forty-five war’. Not for the first time in his life Davey was glad he had never paid that much attention to politics. Politics was a filthy business at the best of times.
The South African contribution to Operation Sturdee meant that within the next few days three of the four larger Royal Navy ships based at Simons Town — the destroyer Cavendish, and the anti-submarine frigates Eskimo and Blackpool — would be steaming around the Cape to join Davey’s squadron.
A man naturally given to optimism and good cheer he preferred not to dwell on the fact that the USS Kitty Hawk possessed several times the offensive punch of his entire rag tag Persian Gulf flotilla. The Americans were taking a backseat on this one; so be it. He would work with the tools he had been given by the Admiralty. Ideally, he would have liked a couple of big carriers — Ark Royal and Eagle would fit the bill nicely, thank you — and not one but both of the ‘big cats’ and lots of air defence destroyers like the modified ‘Battles’, not to mention a proper fleet train to keep his ships continuously at sea for weeks on end. But he did not have any of that. Thankfully, what he did have was a squadron made up of men and ships with plenty of recent combat experience who understood, as only men who have been in the heat of battle can understand, that the coming campaign was probably going to be a very close run thing.
Nick Davey escorted the First Sea Lord down through the chaos of the stern to his day cabin where, without delay he called to his flag lieutenant to organise a ‘brace of pink gins’.
Presently, the two men were alone, having dismissed their secretaries and flag lieutenants. They sat in chairs, eyed their surrounding for some moments as they cradled their glasses in steady hands. HMS Tiger was a wartime hull that had lain idle many years before she was completed with modern gunnery and electronics. Much of her below decks layout was old-fashioned, albeit that there was more space for her crew because she mounted only two rather than the traditional World War II three or four main battery turrets. The day cabin was relatively spacious by contemporary standards for what was essentially, only a medium-sized cruiser. Light streamed in through several open scuttles and the ship had about her a hard driven but still new feel and smell.
“You and I have not always seen eye to eye, Nick,” the First Sea Lord said. “That was a dreadful business on Malta,” he added. “Julian was a damned fine officer and nothing that happened at Malta was in any way his fault. He was let down. We were all let down. I’d like to be able to say that we’re better off without the Americans, except you and I both know that’s not true.”
Nick Davey said nothing. Varyl Begg had always been a man who looked for closer and better relations with the US Navy, for the greatest possible transfer of technology and ever more intimately compatible systems. He had been a missiles advocate who did not believe that the Navy needed or could afford more big carriers; but that had been in an age when every First Sea Lord had been able to count on the Royal Navy being in league with the United States Navy, operating in a tactical environment in which its ships always operated beneath the impenetrable shield of overwhelming of American naval airpower. Nick Davey suspected that Begg, like so many sinners who genuinely repent of their former ways, was still a little uncomfortable with his former views. Recanting was one thing, atonement another.
“Julian Christopher and I had our differences,” Begg admitted gruffly. “But that was all before the war. We exchanged friendly notes after his appointment to the Med, buried the hatchet, as it were. For the record I entirely endorsed your posting to the Persian Gulf Squadron. I think you are just the fellow for the job.”
“That’s jolly decent of you to say so, sir.”
The men sipped their gins.
The First Sea Lord looked up.
“For your ears only at this stage Operation Cold Harbour has been authorised at the highest level.” He paused briefly. “Execution date and hour to be confirmed in due course, pending the finalisation of planning for Operation Lightfoot. Whatever happens in the coming weeks we will give the Soviets one heck of a bloody nose. You are the man on the spot. You have a completely free hand to liaise with C-in-C Middle East as to the implementation of Operation Cold Harbour. The objective will be to inflict the maximum possible casualties on the enemy and to support Allied land forces to the absolute limit of your power.”
Nick Davey contemplated his gin.
“Do you have any questions?” The Firs Sea Lord inquired quietly.
“No, sir.”
“You should be ready to launch Operation Cold Harbour no later than the first week of July. The latest intelligence is that the Red Army will be in Baghdad by the weekend.”
Nick Davey nodded, a rueful smile forming on his lips.
He raised his glass to the First Sea Lord.
“Confusion to our enemies!” He proposed.
“Damnation to our enemies!” The other man countered grimly.
Chapter 44
“Comrade Alexander Nikolayevich,” Lieutenant Colonel Francis Harold St John Waters, VC, translated, “maintains that we have to fight a war to justify our seats at the peace table, Prime Minister.”
Margaret Thatcher raised a disdainful eyebrow, as did the Soviet delegation’s female interpreter, a hard-faced, barrel-shaped woman of indeterminate middle years with piggy eyes and a fixed sneer on her lips.
This woman, dressed in a green uniform with KGB flashes on her jacket lapels rasped her own simultaneous translation of what the somewhat battered and hungry looking SAS man had just said.
The Russians sat one side of a trestle table; Alexei Nikolayevich Kosygin flanked by Academician Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov on his left and by First Secretary of the KGB, Alexander Nikolayevich Shelepin to his right. Opposite sat Margaret Thatcher, with Deputy Prime Minister James Callaghan to her right, and the Chief of the Defence Staff, Field Marshall Sir Richard Hull to her left. Frank Waters sat at Sir Richard’s elbow, and the Soviet Delegation’s female interpreter at Shelepin’s side.
There was nobody else in the draughty, cold hangar on the edge of the air base. Every few minutes the conversation ceased, drowned out by an aircraft landing or taking off.
The strained ‘pleasantries’ and introductions had gone on interminably before Margaret Thatcher had cut to the heart of the matter and asked directly: ‘have you flown to England with a peace proposal?’
To say that this had perturbed the members of the Soviet delegation was an understatement on a par with a suggesting that the Cuban Missiles War had been an ‘unfortunate misunderstanding’.