The Chairman of the Conservative and Unionist Party looked at the acting leader of the Labour Party with open-eyed astonishment.
“We’re all in this together, Jim.”
“Some of us more than others, it would seem.”
“How dare you question my loyalty!”
The Minister of Defence closed his eyes. If the Tories kept their word — which he didn’t think they would unless Edward Heath, against the odds was still Prime Minister in the spring — there would be an election in the New Year. Dates in May had been mentioned. The survivors had a right to be heard, to pass judgement on the ones they blamed for the cataclysm. Already, people like the two men in his office this morning were talking about delaying the election. They wanted to wait until things were ‘on a more even keel’, or for some mythical future date when ‘everybody had had an opportunity to draw breath’. They’d both claimed it would be ‘unfair to stage elections as early as next year because their constituencies had been in the parts of the country hardest hit by the war’. Neither of them were overly receptive or in any way sympathetic to the concept that elections were for the living, not the dead, and that if their argument for delay rested on the premise that proportionately more of their natural supporters were dead than survivors who were likely to vote for Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, then by what conceivable right did they think they had any reason to continue to rule over the majority that remained alive?
The phone on the big desk rang twice.
“I have an appointment with the First Sea Lord, gentlemen.”
“I want to be present,” Iain Macleod declared heatedly.
Jim Callaghan picked up his desk phone.
“Would you ask the First Sea Lord to take a seat please.” He replaced the receiver. He gave the Chairman of the Conservative and Unionist Party a ruminative look. “Our business is concluded, Iain. I wish to have a private confidential conversation with my senior naval advisor. I’m sure Peter,” he flicked a glance at the imperturbable Peter Thorneycroft, “will let you know if anything relevant to your portfolio is mentioned.”
Iain Macleod frowned at his party colleague who shrugged imperceptibly as if to say ‘the blaggard is within his rights’. Without another word or a backward glance he stomped out of the office and slammed the big, heavy oaken door at his back.
Jim Callaghan watched him depart.
“The time will come, Peter,” he observed, lowly, “when that man becomes a liability to your camp. At that time I will remember whom among your number called him friend.”
Peter Thorneycroft half-smiled.
“That almost sounds like a threat, Minister?”
“No, not a threat,” Jim Callaghan assured him, “a prediction.” He picked up his desk phone. “Please ask Admiral Luce to come in now.”
Admiral Sir John David Luce looked like he hadn’t slept for forty-eight hours. The former submariner who’d taken part in the bloody fiasco of the Dieppe Raid in 1942, been a senior member of the staff that planned and executed the Normandy Landings in June 1944, commanded a cruiser during the Korean conflict, who’d been the Director of the Royal Naval Staff College and later Naval Aide de Camp to the Queen was a lean, forthright yet invariably charming man to whom an understanding of the nuances of the political niceties associated with High Command had always come easily. However, today he looked older than his fifty-six years.
The Minister of Defence shook the newcomer’s hand, as did Peter Thorneycroft. The First Sea Lord placed his heavily braided cap on the corner of Jim Callaghan’s desk and the three men took chairs within in the pool of weak wintery daylight that fell into the office through the high leaded windows.
“Presumably Mr Macleod thinks he smells a rate, Minister?” The weary Admiral sighed.
“The Chairman of my Party always thinks he’s detected the scent of a rattus rattus,” Peter Thorneycroft remarked, attempting to lighten the mood in the room. “That is his job after all.”
“I don’t like this infernal intrigue,” the First Sea Lord retorted mildly.
“What about the other Service Chiefs, David?” Jim Callaghan inquired softly. He’d come to personally like and admire the professional head of the Royal Navy and to rely on his advice in a way he could never bring himself to trust that of the two other Service Chiefs.
“None of us care for this manner of conducting business, Jim,” David Luce confessed as he ran a hand over his thinning dark hair. “Charles is very,” he hesitated, “uncomfortable with the whole thing.”
Air Marshall Sir Samuel Charles Elworthy, the New Zealand born Chief of the Air Staff was threatening to become loose cannon. Distrustful of the growing Anglo-American rift he’d argued that the surviving V-Bomber Force — around fifty operational aircraft — ought to be reintegrated back into a new trans-Atlantic military alliance as the first step in rebuilding old friendships. The Prime Minister had vetoed the suggestion after the briefest of very brief discussions and the Chief of the Air Staff hadn’t been the same since.
“Should I speak to him personally?” Jim Callaghan asked.
“No, that won’t be necessary. In any event Richard understands that we can’t go on this way.”
The opinion of Sir Richard Amyatt Hull, Chief of the General Staff of the Army was, in the final analysis the one that carried most sway. He spoke for the Army and without the Army civil order and the semblance of a common Governmental writ across most of the country would cease to exist in the blink of an eye.
“Charles, Richard and I are all agreed, Jim,” David Luce went on. “Assuming, that is, that Her Majesty does not see fit to intervene. Regardless of the provisions of the War Emergency Act I owe my personal allegiance to Her Majesty, as do my fellow Service Chiefs.”
“As do we all,” Jim Callaghan said with the resignation of a man who knows that all the balls were now in the air and only the great juggler himself, God, had any idea how or where they might fall.
Edward Heath had flown to Scotland that morning, ostensibly for the Prime Minister’s routine monthly audience with the Queen. Her Majesty had been closeted away at Balmoral since the summer where she could be protected by the Black Watch. There had been two attempts on her life in chaos following the October War and only outrageous good fortune had saved her from serious injury on both occasions. She, of course, resented what she described as ‘a suffocating’ blanket of security and having to live in what was in effect, an armed camp.
This month there was absolutely nothing ‘routine’ about the Prime Minister’s visit to Scotland. ‘Routinely’ the Premier flew north with a junior principal grade secretary from the Cabinet Secretariat a small team of bodyguards and several boxes of official papers to peruse. This time he’d flown to RAF Dyce near Aberdeen with the Foreign Secretary, Alec Douglas Home and his Permanent Secretary, Tom Harding-Grayson, Vice-Admiral Julian Christopher, and the Angry Widow.
Alec Douglas Home’s absence from Cheltenham could be easily explained away. The Foreign Secretary was a notorious absentee landlord from his Department and everybody knew Tom Harding-Grayson was the éminence grise behind that particular throne. The latter’s absence was much more likely to attract attention which was why his wife, Patricia, had also flown to Scotland. If necessary a rumour would be circulated to the effect that the pressure had got to poor old Tom, he was drinking again and he’d gone off complex with his wife to dry out for a few days. Nobody would believe it but it was the best anybody could think of at such short notice. It had been announced — with no little fanfare — that Julian Christopher’s presence at Balmoral had been specifically requested by the Duke of Edinburgh, himself a former Naval Officer. The Admiral had been a protégé of the Price Philip’s uncle, the late Lord Mountbatten, and he wanted to hear all about the exploits of the British Pacific Fleet straight from the horse’s mouth. It had been hoped that this news would distract overly inquisitive eyes off the ball and that nobody would notice that Margaret Thatcher had disappeared from Cheltenham at the same time as the others.