Nobody had attempted to talk Margaret out of hitting back at the earliest possible opportunity. Such an attempt would have been futile.
“Sir Richard is waiting for you in your office, Minister,” Airey Neave was informed by his private secretary.
Sir Richard Goldsmith ‘Dick’ White, the Director General of the Security Services, was standing in the window looking down into the New Quad of Brasenose College. He turned and smiled a tight-lipped very grim smile.
“I’ve got some bad news, Airey.”
The two men had known each other since the 1940s and trusted each other too well to beat about the bush.
“The Soviets have discontinued the use of two of the four Jericho ciphers we captured after the Battle of Malta,” Dick White explained. “The naval code which is probably neither here nor there,” he sighed, “and unfortunately, the Command Jericho.”
“When?” Airey Neave demanded quietly.
“About thirty hours ago. We’re still managing to decrypt traffic despatched before twenty-four hundred hours Chelyabinsk local time on Tuesday.”
The Minister of National Security cut directly to the chase.
“We’re still reading the Routine Jericho?” In this context ‘routine’ referred to the coding used by units below Divisional Command level. Command Jericho was the cipher employed by Divisional Command all the way up to Army Group Command.
“Yes. We’ve also still got our hooks into the Diplomatic Jericho. Hopefully, that will stay up long enough for us to find out what the French are up to.”
Airey Neave did not think they were going to get that lucky.
The rule was: change one code — change the lot!
The UAUK’s brief window into the mind, the thinking and the minutiae of their Soviet enemy’s campaigning, and an invaluable insight into the tensions within the Soviet regime behind the front, was about to be slammed shut.
They might have just lost the war in the Gulf before it had even begun.
The two old friends looked at each other resignedly.
Airey Neave groaned softly.
“Bugger!”
Chapter 57
The two leaders sat alone on the porch in two old rocking chairs shaded by the overhanging first floor balcony. There was nobody within earshot; the nearest Royal Marine bodyguard — dressed in mufti — and Secret Service Man patrolled twenty to thirty feet away and the leaders were speaking in low tones. The President was at ease in his chair, Margaret Thatcher less so; he let the chair ‘rock’ she sat forward, balancing it steadily. Their respective postures might have been metaphors for their underlying, contrasting personalities. The man had once upon a time been content within his skin; the woman would never be that.
Jack Kennedy’s green-grey eyes viewed the woman thoughtfully. While their ministers and officials were scattered around the compound conducting ‘bi-lateral’ and other ad hoc meetings, that morning the British Prime Minister and he had both been receiving briefings and having long conversations on the phone.
He had spent over an hour talking with the Vice-President. Lyndon Johnson had already talked to the Secretary of State and other members of the Administration; but nevertheless they had talked for over an hour. It was good to replay other conversations, to check that one had actually heard what one thought one had heard.
The President realised that Margaret Thatcher’s ‘conversations’ would have been of a different nature. Although the National Security Agency had not known what Jericho was until a few days ago, they had not needed to know because they had guessed. The way things had been lately he did not blame the British for keeping it to themselves; but now that the walls of Jericho had come tumbling down there was no reason not to share the secret. If the British shared the CIA, the NSA and every branch of the US intelligence community would be all over it; the possibility of breaking several months of previously incomprehensible traffic was a prize of incalculable value. Who knew what impossible nuggets of intelligence lay buried in the tens of thousands of intercepts logged just in the last few weeks?
“You came here with a shopping list,” the man said. “I was prepared to step out of the election race for two or three days because you had, and still have, something I want. Now,” he half-smiled that beguiling smile of old, “that Jericho is devalued, perhaps we can do business.”
Margaret Thatcher’s blue eyes widened for a moment even though she had hoped that they would reach this point sooner or later.
“I would have given you Jericho for nothing if Congress had ratified the US-UK Mutual Defense Treaty that you and I signed in January, Jack,” she informed him primly. “I will give you Jericho now if you join us in fighting the war that must soon be fought for control of the Persian Gulf and Arabia.”
Jack Kennedy shook his head.
“I can’t do that, Margaret. I’m shooting myself in the foot leaving the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. Especially with this French thing going on, whatever it is. You know that. Things are what they are. Either I get re-elected any way I can or come January next year you’ll be trying to do business with George Wallace or some other ‘America First’, isolationist bigot or Wall Street’s man, or maybe some guy who suddenly emerges from nowhere. Between now and the election in November I’ve got to keep the South quiet, honour my pledge to stand beside Dr King one month from now on the steps of City Hall in Philadelphia, somehow buy off the secessionist movements in half-a-dozen states in the south and the west, and not get this country involved in any kind of foreign war. I know as well as you do that if Arabian oil isn’t on tap in five years time that this country will grind to a standstill. But that doesn’t matter — what matters is for America to get through the next five weeks, then the next five months and then, and only then, the next five years and still be the United States at the end of it. You tell me about Middle East, I tell you about Chicago and the West Coast States. We’ve both got problems we can’t make go away. That’s the way it is.” He vented a long, weary breath. “There is no special relationship between the old country and the United States. There might have been years ago, and now and then since the Second War but October twenty-seven put an end to all that. You and I know that. Maybe we can trust each other enough in the future to avoid a shooting war. Maybe we ought to settle for that and build other bridges. I figured that you understood that. Isn’t that why you wanted this conference?”
Margaret Thatcher nodded, remained silent.
“You say I owe you something,” the President announced. “But that’s not how this works. I think you understand that, too. What does that leave us? What it leaves us, is what do we have to trade because you and I badly need to sell whatever we do next to our own people?”
The woman got to her feet, crossed her arms across her chest and stood staring out to sea. Jack Kennedy joined her and the two leaders ruminated awhile.
“I stopped being really angry some months ago, Jack,” Margaret Thatcher told her host. “The way things are there are far too many things to be angry about, and if one spent all one’s time being angry one would never get anything important done.” She hesitated. “Walter Brenckmann tells me that the Warren Commission is unlikely to ‘get its act together’ before the autumn?”