“I apologise for disturbing you, sir,” the visitor said with uncomplicated sincerity. “I’m Walter Brenckmann. Until a few hours ago I was the Naval Attaché at the Embassy. May I come in and have a few minutes of your time, sir?”
Tom Harding-Grayson ushered the American in and shut the door.
“Captain Brenckmann, isn’t it?” Henry Tomlinson checked as hands were shaken and the newcomer unbuttoned his greatcoat.
“Yes, sir.” If the newcomer was surprised to find the Head of the British Home Civil Service sipping whiskey in the parlour he hid it superbly.
The Foreign Secretary introduced his wife. She appraised the American officer with veiled suspicion.
Everybody had got to their feet and nobody sat down.
“The Ambassador doesn’t know that I’m here, sir,” Walter Brenckmann said brusquely.
Tom Harding-Grayson groaned inwardly. Today had been just the latest of several very long and enervating days and he was very tired.
“Oh, I see.”
“My Government has taken its eye off the ball, sir. The people in Washington are preoccupied with domestic issues and with the consolidation of its post-war sphere of influence in the Pacific and Latin America. European questions have been neglected. In my opinion this is a national disgrace but that doesn’t change the fact that my country’s policy towards Europe, the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern theatres has been left in the hands of a bunch of people I personally wouldn’t trust to find their own arses in a darkened room.” Walter Brenckmann quirked an apologetic grimace towards Patricia Harding-Grayson. “Begging your pardon, ma’am.”
Henry Tomlinson eyed the visitor gravely.
“What are you saying, Captain?”
“I want you to know that whatever is going on in Spain, the presence of a powerful US Navy Battle Group off your coast and the CIA forward base outside Dublin are not all part of some great White House initiated plot to undermine the United Kingdom. Frankly, sir, I don’t want out countries to get into a shooting war because we’ve finally become separated by our common language.”
Tom Harding-Grayson almost smiled.
“Very pithy, Captain Brenckmann.” He realised the American was attempting to play the role of honest broker without knowing all of the facts of the matter. “Tell me, if British Intelligence had set up a clandestine base in Newfoundland and vectored American aircraft with turncoat pilots on bombing runs targeting the White House while the President and Congressional leaders were in conference in the Oval Office,” he put to his visitor, “how would you expect the United States Government to react?”
Walter Brenckmann felt the blood draining from his face. Simultaneously icy fingers clutched his soul.
The British Foreign Secretary viewed him with a strange sympathy.
“I am aware that your Government does not speak with one voice. In fact it is my professional opinion that it is pathologically incapable of speaking with a single voice. Allies of the United States have long been aware that a promise made by one person in authority in Washington can be unpromised at any time, without warning, by a member of another faction on Capitol Hill. We could live with that before the October War because, on balance, it was in our interests to so do despite the constant sniping at, and undermining of the United Kingdom’s ongoing administration of its colonies. But that was then and this is now, Captain.”
Walter Brenckmann knew that the other man was going to tell him something he didn’t know. Something his own people had kept from him.
“We suspected some months ago that American aid and technical support which would otherwise have been available to alleviate the worst of the United Kingdom’s privations was being freely traded to buy — albeit on the cheap — the, shall we say, coalescence of the Governments of the Irish Republic, Spain and Portugal. Presumably, the object of this military, economic and intelligence penetration of these new client states along the Atlantic seaboard of Europe was designed to undermine British interests and eventually to render untenable, our position in the Mediterranean. The UKIEA wasn’t happy about these developments but our preoccupation with Operation Manna — unlike your people in North America our people will starve this winter if Operation Manna fails — dissuaded us from confronting the White House. “
Walter Brenckmann knew he was wasting his time.
“We are not fools,” Henry Tomlinson said lowly. “Your countrymen delight in castigating us Brits for our colonial excesses and mores. How strange it is to contrast our post-1945 de-colonization with the ongoing imperial machinations of the ‘Land of the Free’?”
“I’m not sure that’s fair, sir.”
“No? Spain, Portugal, Eire? The first two are military dictatorships. Their governments no better than the Nazis. As for the Republic of Ireland,” Henry Tomlinson shrugged, “an agrarian backwater dominated by the dead hand of the Catholic Church. The country has no industry to speak of, no natural resources and no national purpose other than to wrest back the six counties of Ulster from perfidious Albion. Are these fine bastions of democracy and reason fit partners in the new world order for the ‘Land of the Free’?”
Walter Brenckmann was silent.
“I don’t think we’re telling you anything you haven’t already worked out for yourself, Captain,” Tom Harding-Grayson said, placing a comforting hand on the naval officer’s elbow. “Because of their nature the regimes in those three countries were understandably receptive to your overtures. Their territories are relatively untouched and uncontaminated by the October War, notwithstanding that we all now breathe the same fission-enriched air. How the mighty are fallen, what? Twenty years ago you fellows were our partners in the great crusade against Fascism; now here you are propping it up in Spain and Portugal, as in fact you’ve been doing in Latin America ever since that war.”
“What will happen next?” The American asked dully.
“God only knows, Captain.”
Chapter 32
Lieutenant-Commander Peter Christopher clung to the rail as the spray lashed back from the bow across the open flying bridge. HMS Talavera and the big, cruiser-sized newly commissioned HMS Devonshire had been racing west at twenty-seven knots for the last eight hours. They’d received the order to detach from the Ark Royal’s air defence screen while running north to rejoin the flagship. HMS Aisne, her fuel bunkers two-thirds empty had signalled ‘GOOD HUNTING’ and reluctantly parted company with the other ships shortly before noon.
“Devonshire is signalling, sir!”
Peter Christopher swung around to focus on the long, elegant grey ship just discernible in the fading light effortlessly pacing her smaller Leader slightly abaft and to starboard at a range of about two thousand yards.
The signal lamp on the Country Class destroyer blinked frenetically.
Peter didn’t wait for the speaker to call out the message.
“NO MAJOR MECHANICAL DEFECTS STOP NO AIR OR SURFACE CONTACTS ON MY PLOT MESSAGE ENDS”
“Acknowledge signal,” he called. Behind him he listened to Talavera’s lamp clattering.
The destroyer carved deep into a green grey wall of water and surged forward.
Running at high speed in a wild sea was like no other roller coaster ride on earth. To be on the bridge of a three thousand ton ship charging into the teeth of an Atlantic gale was what every red-blooded sailor lived for and longed to experience. And to be the officer of the watch and in command of that ship was the culmination of a dream.