The Ambassador had flown off to a conference in, of all places, Dublin. The State Department had started building a compound south of the Irish capital in the summer. Walter Brenckmann assumed the ‘compound’ was probably a CIA project, a combined ‘listening post’ to replace the facilities destroyed in Germany and the Low Countries during the war, and the now wholly British Government Communications HQ at nearby Cheltenham. He’d doubted the new Irish ‘compound’ was solely an eavesdropping asset and the Ambassador’s summons confirmed his suspicions.
The Irish Republic had been neutral during Hitler’s War and played no part in the October War, other than as a helpless, terrified witness to the madness. In recent years the Republic had been developing economic ties with the United Kingdom and relations between the two countries had been if not cordial, then slowly thawing somewhat. Unable or unwilling to offer significant assistant to the partially devastated isles across the Irish Sea and worried by the virtual civil war in Ulster which threatened to spill over onto its soil, the Irish Republic’s economy had crashed in the last year and there were rumours that famine again stalked that beleaguered land. It was hardly surprising that the Irish Government should turn to America for succour, and whereas, aiding the United Kingdom was an expensive and potentially open-ended commitment, materially aiding the Irish — whose population was a tiny fraction of that which survived in the UK — was a relatively cheap option which played well with exactly the constituencies John Fitzgerald Kennedy needed to keep happy if he was going to get re-elected next year. Moreover, if the UK didn’t want to be America’s bridgehead in Europe then Ireland was an acceptable second best. The Irish Republic lacked the ports, road and rail infrastructure and the military would have to bring in all its own logistical support, airfield, docks and new roads would need to be built, but that was all doable. Washington was looking for a new ‘special’ trans-Atlantic relationship in which its ‘special’ client knew its place. It was only a matter of time before American GIs were on the ground ‘keeping the peace’ along the fractious border with the six counties of Ulster?
The phone on Walter Brenckmann’s desk rang jarringly.
“It is the Ambassador for you, Captain,” the woman on the exchange said flatly.
The United States Naval Attaché waited while the caller was put through.
“What the fuck is going on over there?”
Walter Brenckmann wasn’t entirely sure why the Ambassador was asking his Naval Attaché this question when he had a retinue of competent professional State Department first, second and third secretaries at his beck and call twenty-four hours a day.
“In what respect, Ambassador?”
“The fucking coup!”
This genuinely baffled the sailor.
“I’m sorry, Ambassador. There’s been a deal of coming and going around here in the last twenty-four hours but everything seems calm. I know nothing of a coup?”
“The Royal Air Force bombed Balmoral Castle, god-dammit!”
Walter Brenckmann was stunned into silence.
“And that arrogant little prick Franco mined the Straits of Gibraltar and damned nearly sunk a fucking Brit carrier!”
Walter thought it highly unlikely the two events were linked but the timing explained the increase in take offs and landings at RAF Cheltenham and the general non-availability of many of his British contacts since yesterday morning.
“There’s been nothing on the BBC, sir,” he reported lamely.
“The new Foreign Secretary rang me just now and…” Loudon Baines Westheimer II choked on what he wanted to say. He spluttered and hyperventilated for some moments. “The bastard gave me a fucking ultimatum!”
“The new Foreign Secretary, Ambassador?”
“That Douglas-Home guy was killed up at Balmoral. So was one of the Queen’s kids, the youngest one, I can never remember all the kids’ names…”
“Prince Andrew, Ambassador. He was three years old.”
“Yeah, that’s the one…”
Only in America, Walter Brenckmann mused, could a red-neck with a mind like a colander be appointed Ambassador to his nation’s most important — and by any standard only irreplaceable — ally.
“Who is the new British Foreign Secretary?”
“That little shit Harding-Grayson,” came the impatient retort.
The Lord of Home was dead, the British Royal Family, the nation’s most sacred and most inviolable symbol of unity had been desecrated, a British carrier had been mined off Gibraltar, and finally, the man with indisputably the finest mind in Government had been appointed Foreign Secretary. And Loudon Baines Westheimer II, Washington’s man in England, didn’t get it.
“An ultimatum?”
“The Brits think we put Franco up to it and they claim to have intercept and radio signal triangulation evidence that at least one of the fighters that hit Balmoral was in contact with a control station in Ireland. It’s fucking unbelievable. If our guys were involved there’s no way they could be so fucking stupid!”
Walter Brenckmann wanted to put his head in his hands in despair.
Loudon Baines Westheimer II, the American Ambassador to the Court of Balmoral might not get it, but he did. He was getting it so loud and clear it was virtually making his ears bleed.
The Spanish would never have mined the waters around Gibraltar without at least a tacit go ahead from Washington. And if the CIA had had anything to do with the attack on the Royal Family…
The ramifications didn’t bear thinking about.
Loudon Baines Westheimer II was ranting but the rant went over Walter Brenckmann’s head unheard, lost in translation. The Ambassador’s words were just so much white noise. Like the ramblings of some ignorant, uncultured spoilt child baying at the Moon.
“Fools,” the naval officer heard himself say. “Fools. You are all fools and history will dam you for all eternity. Or at least I hope it does.”
Loudon Baines Westheimer II fell silent.
“What, I…” He spluttered eventually.
“I’m through with all of you. I am about to hang up now. When you return to Cheltenham you will find my resignation on your desk. I have taken the liberty of transmitting its contents to the Navy Department. As of midnight this day I cease to be a commissioned officer in the Reserve. Good day to you, Ambassador.”
The last act of Walter Brenckmann’s naval career was to gently replace the receiver on the old-fashioned Bakelite black phone.
Chapter 27
The manoeuvring bell rang twice, the destroyer heeled into the turn and steadied onto an easterly heading more or less parallel with the indistinct low grey blur of the coast of Northern Spain. One thousand yards astern of Talavera, HMS Aisne her sister ship, and the new County Class destroyer Devonshire another thousand yards astern of the Aisne, steered to maintain station on their leader.
“Point Alpha!” Leading Electronic Warfare Rating Jack Griffin reported with an underlying wolfish hunger.
Lieutenant-Commander Peter Christopher eyed the plot and touched the stud of his new throat microphone. He’d ‘requisitioned’ a batch of the new devices from stores in Gosport several months ago. The kit was similar to the intercom equipment the RAF had been using since the 1945 war but as always, the Navy had been unbelievably slow getting its hands on it.