“That’s something,” Westmoreland grumped. The two men stared out to sea for several seconds. “The President can’t give your boss any of the things she wants.”
“That’s all rather above my head, sir.” He sighed. “But for what it’s worth I think you’re mistaken. In part, that is, sir.”
“There’s no way the President can sell a transatlantic ‘free trade zone’ to the American people in election year. As for loans and subsidies, that’s a non-starter.”
Peter did not think Westmoreland would have sought him out in the first place unless his masters had worked out that in an odd way, each man performed similar roles at the ‘symposium’. They were undeclared, unacknowledged ‘honest brokers’.
“The Prime Minister can,” the younger man suggested, “for example, unilaterally lift the sanctions against the Irish Republic at a time of the President’s choosing. Say, to coincide with the Democratic convention next month?”
Westmoreland mulled this for a moment.
The ‘blockade’ on Irish ports imposed after the atrocities at Brize Norton and Cheltenham in early April was like a knife in the side of the Kennedy re-election campaign.
“The Prime Minister is also prepared to give an undertaking that the United Kingdom will refrain from sending Ambassadors to individual states.”
“We could veto that, anyway,” Westmoreland pointed out.
“You could,” the younger man acknowledged. “But that would look like weakness on your part.”
The American grinned; the hero of the Battle of Malta had been well-briefed by his principals.
“We could give the Red Army a free hand in the Middle East and hold the Arabian Peninsula as a British fiefdom,” Peter Christopher went on, playing Devil’s advocate.
“You’re talking about making a separate peace with the Soviets?” Westmoreland checked, not liking the idea one little bit.
“Perhaps, but only after we have fought them first, sir.”
Westmoreland wanted to cut the young Englishman off at the knees, except he could not because he felt…guilty. Once again his country had betrayed its oldest ally; and this time the Brits would never, ever forgive the United States of America.
“And we will fight them, sir,” Peter Christopher promised. “Not at long-range with missiles and bombers but on the ground. With cold steel if it comes to it. On that you may depend.”
Westmoreland nodded.
“Presumably, that’s what you’ll tell the President tomorrow?”
Peter met the older man’s gaze.
Lord Franks and Sir Thomas Harding-Grayson had warned him that ‘things are so bad that both sides will be looking to explore back channels at this symposium’, and patiently walked him through his script.
The United Kingdom and the United States were no longer allies other than in respect of existing military arrangements; such as those currently in place in the Mediterranean under which the US Sixth Fleet ‘co-operated’ in ‘theatre defence’ measures with the British and Commonwealth forces in situ. It was anybody’s guess how long those ‘arrangements’ would persist but in the present rapidly cooling climate none of them were likely to be renewed or redefined in the foreseeable future, and most, therefore would eventually wither on the vine. In the event of a change of US policy in years to come nobody in the United Kingdom took it for granted, or necessarily imagined it to be in any way desirable, that there would be a groundswell of opinion in the old country to restore the former, NATO — North Atlantic Treaty Organisation — defence pact which had failed the country so badly in October 1962, and in the months since.
What was the point of signing a mutual defence treaty when you knew, you absolutely knew from very painful experience, that the other party could not be trusted to fulfil its side of the bargain?
It was better by far to place future relations on a new, firmer footing and to move on.
“If the President asks,” Peter Christopher confirmed. “Yes, sir, that is exactly what I will tell him.”
Chapter 53
The consignment of seven P-15 Termit anti-ship missiles had been flown into the Marseille — Marignane Air Base of the Provisional Government of Southern France five months ago. Initially intended to be just the first batch of a much larger arsenal of former Red Navy and Red Air Force guided munitions recovered by Krasnaya Zarya salvage teams operating in the ‘dead zones’ of the Crimea and the Ukraine, they had been transported in pieces by river and sea and then overland to territories under the control of Red Dawn insurgents before being dispatched, one missile per flight, to the movement’s agents in France.
At first nobody in Marseille had had the first idea what to do with the disassembled missiles. Technicians were due to come from the east in February and March with other, equally lethal modern weapons systems but they never came and later when the Provisional Government learned of the fighting enveloping the Aegean, Cyprus, Turkey, Greece, the Balkans and Rumania they had realised that they were alone. Or rather, they had believed that they were alone for several weeks until commissars from Chelyabinsk had flown into Marseilles-Marignane to formally re-establish fraternal comradeship with their Krasnaya Zarya ‘brothers’. Shortly afterwards a handful of the previously promised missile technicians, and a small detachment of KGB troopers had arrived at Marseille-Marignane, to assume ‘guard duties’ for the Soviet ‘technical delegations’ that were to be established at Marseille and Perpignan on the coast, and to the beleaguered Soviet ‘diplomatic mission’ in Clermont-Auvergne, the capital of the Revolutionary Provisional Government of South France.
Progress was painfully slow; while the French viewed Russian claims that there was a shortage of suitable transport aircraft, it was undeniable that there were very few suitable ‘secure’ air bases in the territory under the direct control of the Provisional Government. That ‘territory’ although large geographically, was far from contiguous and the writ of the Central Committee based in the Auvergne, probably ran in less than half of the country they actually claimed to govern. Moreover, all the parties agreed that if the British or the Americans discovered that there was a Soviet presence on French territory ‘too early’ it would invite pre-emptive bombing raids or other ‘problematic’ consequences likely to spread alarm among ‘the people’. In fact the need to maintain secrecy was so paramount that it justified ‘exceptional measures’.
Smoke and mirrors.
Over three-quarters of the French Mediterranean Fleet had been destroyed in port on the night of the October War, with only a few submarines and ships at sea, and the Ajaccio Squadron based in Corsica having survived the cataclysm.
Nobody in Clermont really trusted the Navy.
In the bitter fighting that had eventually resulted in the formation of the Provisional Government in Clermont-Ferrand in the Auvergne the previous autumn, the Navy had remained aloof. In Brittany, navy men had stiffened the resolve of the North Atlantic ‘communes’ to resist the regime in the Auvergne. Even when the Ajaccio Squadron had accepted overtures from Clermont-Ferrand to return to the ‘patriotic fold’ when it re-established relations with the Army Junta which had seized control of Corsica after the October War; doubts had remained.
Many Navy men had recoiled at serving the zealously Marxist-Leninist regime in Clermont; they had been purged. Those who had sworn loyalty to the new South France-Corsican Axis took comfort from the fact that onboard their ships they were not at the mercy of the regime’s secret police and regiments of ‘citizen spies’. Besides, in a World so obviously devastated by the October War most men ached for the opportunity to belong again to something, anything that resembled France and the majority of the men manning the ships of the Ajaccio Squadron had no real idea of the magnitude of the disaster which had befallen their country.