The Secretary of Defense was impassive.
“We’re still waiting on developments in the Mediterranean, Bobby. Sixth Fleet has been ordered to adopt a ‘passive’ stance unless fired upon by British and Commonwealth forces.”
Bobby Kennedy had never really followed military matters. He had briefly been in the Navy in the Second War, but not seen any active service, and largely avoided contact with martial affairs ever since. Now his lawyerly mind began to zero in on the pressing dilemma facing the commander of the powerful Mediterranean Fleet.
“It’s Bernard Clarey in charge in Malta, isn’t it?” He checked, thinking aloud.
Clarey was the man who had ‘cleaned house’ after the attempt to suborn the chain of command of the US Navy’s Polaris Missile Submarine Fleet. He had done what he had to do quickly, efficiently and without once allowing the ‘problem’ to break out into the public domain. His reward had been his appointment to fly his flag on the USS Independence, after the Kitty Hawk the Navy’s biggest and most modern operational super carrier…
Curtis LeMay had stopped pacing.
“Yes.”
“What do we think the British will do in the Mediterranean, General LeMay?”
“Clarey thinks they will intern our ships. The whole goddam fleet!”
“Can they do that?”
“They just sank the Kitty Hawk!” LeMay thundered. “What do you think?”
Chapter 51
Rachel Piotrowska had been watching the protesters pressing against the relatively thin blue line of the Philadelphia PD’s riot squad. National Guardsmen and State Troopers stood in groups behind the policemen wielding pump action shotguns and long night sticks, waiting anxiously for their moment around the three M113 armored personnel carriers which had moved into the park overnight.
“Would you attend the Ambassador and the Chargé d'affaire please, Rachel?” Lady Franks asked, gently tapping on her office door and looking inside.
The younger woman broke from her thoughts.
“Of course,” she smiled.
Barbara, Lady Franks, had refused to go to Canada with the other wives after the bombing of the Embassy Compound in June. She and her husband had been married over thirty years and she was not about to be separated at the very moment when ‘Oliver needs me most’.
After the ‘Maltese Navy Wives’, Marija Christopher and Rosa Hannay had departed Philadelphia with their husbands bound for California via Huntsville, Alabama, Barbara Franks had gone out of her way to befriend Rachel, perhaps sensing that with the departure of Marija and Rosa, she had felt a little bereft, almost as if she had lost two little sisters.
The older woman joined the Embassy’s chief spy at the window.
“Why do they hate us so?” She asked sadly.
“I don’t think it is hate,” Rachel offered distractedly. “I think it is fear, and that is much more dangerous.”
The two women walked across the first floor of the building, Lady Franks bidding her companion farewell outside the Ambassador’s room as she returned to her private apartments.
Both the Ambassador and his deputy, Sir Patrick Dean rose from their chairs when Rachel entered the room.
“Thank you for coming over so promptly,” Lord Franks smiled grimly.
“Is there more news from the Persian Gulf?” She asked.
“We’ve just learned that the C-in-C Mediterranean, Air Marshall French has been ordered to ‘intern’ all Sixth Fleet ships at Malta and Gibraltar and has been authorized to ‘arrest’ American naval and commercial vessels at sea.”
“When?” Rachel inquired, feeling empty inside.
“Within the next hour or so.”
The RAF had dropped nuclear weapons on the US Navy in the Persian Gulf and — probably — sunk the USS Kitty Hawk and several other big American ships. Now British and Commonwealth forces throughout the Mediterranean were about to seize, by force if necessary, what remained of the US Navy’s once globe-dominating blue water fleet.
“Is there any other news from Iran and Iraq, Ambassador?”
Lord Franks shook his head.
“Other than that heavy fighting continues in the Abadan sector and around Umm Qasr, no, I’m afraid not. I think the fog of war is descending on the whole region. We may have already received the last reliable reports.”
Sir Patrick Dean nodded sagely.
“Perhaps, the time has come to begin destroying sensitive papers, Oliver.”
“Yes,” his friend agreed, looking to Rachel. “Perhaps, your people should start on that as soon as possible?”
“Yes, of course. With your permission I will arm my staff, sir.”
Lord Franks nodded.
Members of the Security Services and Armed Forces were permitted to carry hand guns within the compound whether on or off duty. Royal Marines assigned to the Embassy security detail were armed with Sten Guns and L1A1 SLRs. In normal times nobody carried weapons within the walls of the Embassy building and all guns were locked away.
The Ambassador met Rachel’s stare.
“Under no circumstances is there is to be gun play if the US authorities attempt to enter the Embassy compound. In that event I will surrender myself and expect every other member of the legation to do likewise without fuss, or bother.”
“I understand, sir,” she acknowledged, quirking an apologetic half-smile. “I will make your orders known to all my people.”
Lord Franks held her gaze a while longer.
The woman he knew as Rachel Piotrowska would no more meekly surrender herself to the Americans than the Soviets.
Every time she had left the protection of the Embassy since the Hyannis Port debacle he had wondered if he would see her again. If the CIA or any of the other murky ‘intelligence’ agencies operating beneath the skin of the Land of the Free had had the gumption, the nerve or the capacity to secretly ‘disappear her’ into one or other of its secret dungeons they would surely have seized the opportunity.
Sending her to America had been a huge gamble but then her chief, Dick White, Lord Franks and his inner circle in Philadelphia had needed somebody who could reach, and speak to the people he and Sir Patrick Dean could not be seen to be doing business with.
The Kennedy Administration had been disintegrating since the spring and that disintegration had accelerated at an alarming rate in recent weeks. Now more than ever Rachel could not, would not permit herself to fall into the wrong hands.
She would kill herself first.
Chapter 52
Jagged tridents of lightning stabbed down into the city as dusk fell across the Delaware River and a great, twenty mile wide thunder storm exploded over Philadelphia. When it struck the downpour was of tropical Monsoon proportions; within a few minutes gutters and drains were overflowing, the runoff from tall buildings was like a thousand mini-Niagaras, cars began to stall in two to three foot deep surface flash flooding in the dips in the streets, and sections of the metropolis’s telephone network and electrical grid began to fail. Transformers suddenly surrounded by surging flood water exploded, the police, fire brigade, ambulance service, everything was suddenly overwhelmed. For over forty minutes the temporary capital of the United States of America was assailed by the elements, and then the rain eased, ceased entirely as the storm rumbled west, its ferocity slowly waning the farther it moved inland.
The Navy Headquarters had lost power for nearly seven minutes at the height of the storm before eventually, emergency diesel generators had kicked in. Lights had glowed gloomily, the air conditioning of the lower levels had gone off line and the communications desk had gone dead.