“Well said, Bill!” Murmured the Foreign Secretary, Sir Thomas ‘Tom’ Harding-Grayson.
Margaret Thatcher looked to the C-in-C Mediterranean.
“Lieutenant Hannay,” the tall man prefaced, suddenly very brisk and businesslike, “has brought the latest U-2 photographs with him for you to scrutinise at your leisure, Prime Minister. I have also received partial reports relating to information coming out of the Aegean and the Greek Islands, mainly from refugees fleeing to Cyprus and Malta.”
“Shall I put up the map, sir,” Julian Christopher’s flag lieutenant asked.
Alan Hannay looked around and picked the nearest wall.
A minute later a large coloured physical map of the Eastern Mediterranean from Malta to Haifa was tacked at eye height next to the table. Everybody gathered around it.
Julian Christopher accepted the slim pointer his flag lieutenant handed him. The young man stood back, outside the circle waiting to be summoned at need.
“A couple of general points before I get to the meat of the matter,” the handsome C-in-C Mediterranean prefaced. He was looking at the two American guests. “My official title includes what has, up until now been an ‘honorific’ element. I am C-in-C of all British and Commonwealth Forces in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations. There have actually been over a hundred Australian and New Zealand officers and men attached to units, mainly in Malta and Cyprus for some months. Such secondments are typical of the way the Army operates. Shortly, these men will be joined by cadres of air force technicians and intelligence analysts from Australasia and Canada, logistics personnel and other non-combatants, doctors, nurses and signals staffers who will be deployed across the theatre of operations as necessary to back up and support the existing British forces. In due course, I expect at least one submarine, and hopefully, a frigate or destroyer to be taken over and wholly manned by Commonwealth personnel. I also believe that South Africa and Southern Rhodesia will shortly be shipping infantry companies into theatre, initially to train beside my forces and eventually, to be integrated into existing front line units. I say this because no matter how it might seem from ‘across the other side of the pond’, as it were, the United Kingdom does not stand alone. While it is true that our present weakness on the ground in the Mediterranean stems from the destruction of a substantial element of our ground forces in Germany in the October War, and the commitments we subsequently made to our Commonwealth friends to guarantee their security, we are not alone and at need, we are confident that our friends will stand by us in the trying days to come.”
William Fulbright’s face creased into a wan smile.
Everything he’d heard about the ‘Fighting Admiral’ was true. We might lose a battle or two; but we will never surrender. America had Curtis LeMay; the Brits had this suave, eloquent Admiral. LeMay and Christopher were utterly different kinds of men; yet in most key respect exactly the same kind of men.
“I hear you, Sir Julian,” the Secretary of State chuckled, looking the other man straight in the eye and holding unblinking eye contact for long seconds.
The naval officer nodded and launched into his planned briefing.
“First, nobody knows what is really going on in the Black Sea, Anatolia, Istanbul, Greece or the Balkans. What we do know is that something is going on and that whatever it is, it doesn’t look peaceful.”
His pointed dropped into the middle of the Black Sea.
“Intelligence on how many Soviet naval units were destroyed at the various Black Sea Fleet bases was scratchy — well, non-existent for some months after the October war — and remains so. Our assumption was that the majority of surface units had probably been destroyed but that some part of the submarine fleet might have survived. However,” the tip of the pointed fell on Istanbul. “We now know that several major surface units must have survived the destruction of Sevastopol. It would be reasonable to assume that given the rising international tensions in the days before the war elements of the Black Sea Fleet might have been dispersed to navigable inlets around Sevastopol, or perhaps, been dispersed out to sea. A recent mission by an RAF Canberra based at Akrotiri overflew the Sea of Marmara and made a single pass over Istanbul. Analysis of the film shot during this pass identified at least four large warships in the Golden Horn anchorage. There may have been other units present but one of the ships was making a lot of smoke and the Canberra’s crew detected sophisticated radar emissions north of the city and aborted their mission.”
“How sophisticated?” Sir David Luce asked. The First Sea Lord’s question wasn’t for his own benefit; he wanted the others around the table to hear the answer.
“The emissions were consistent with a modern Soviet style fighter command and control system. The sort one would only turn on if one had interceptors already in the air. At my personal request a U-2 sortie was subsequently flown over the area from Aviano Air Force Base in Northern Italy. Preliminary analysis of the material arising from that sortie indicates as many as eight destroyer-sized or larger warships in the Golden Horn. Two of the large ships seen on the previous mission were absent. However, over the Sea of Marmara some fifteen miles from the nearest land the U-2 photographed a large vessel in company with at least four small escorts and two medium-sized merchantmen. General cargo ships or small liners, it isn’t possible to tell. The big ship was making a lot of smoke and by then it was early evening and visibility was poor.”
“And these aren’t Turkish ships?” Margaret Thatcher checked, frowning.
“The smaller vessels might be. Well, some of them. The Turkish Navy comprised a handful of surplus war-construction Royal Navy and USN destroyers and frigates, and ten or so Balao class diesel-electric submarines. Again, late World War Two vintage unmodernized vessels.”
“Neither the RAF Canberra or the U-2 were actually attacked?”
“No. The U-2 overflew the region at sixty-eight thousand feet, the Canberra at over fifty thousand.” Julian Christopher moved on. “Crete,” he announced, tapping the long shape of the island with his pointer. “Our intelligence was that that Crete, which had been overlooked in the original Greek military coup d’état had recently been taken over by the Government in Athens. This may not be the case. Refugees talk about an invasion, towns and villages being sacked and massacres having taken place. The whole island seems to be in chaos. All the refugees who have come ashore on Cyprus or been picked up far out at sea talk about soldiers everywhere, atrocities, widespread rape and looting. Aerial reconnaissance from Akrotiri had been inconclusive, other than to tell us that several settlements have been burned to the ground and most of the harbours along the north coast are deserted. However, two days ago a Kirov class cruiser and two smaller escorts were identified anchored in Souda Bay. The same over flight brought back pictures of new major construction work in progress on the airfield at Heraklion where the main runway is being extended. It is now our working assumption that Crete is no longer under the control of the Greek Junta in Athens.”
The silence in the room was palpable, uneasy.
“Greece,” Julian Christopher continued, “has, as you will know opted for a policy of armed neutrality since the military took over a couple of months after the October War. That neutrality initially took the form of non-interventionism, then turned into a sort of paranoid isolationism in which all foreigners were first encouraged to leave, and later forcibly expelled from the country along with dissidents and trouble makers the regime didn’t get around to imprisoning or shooting. There is evidence that life on several of the major Greek Islands went on fairly normally until fairly recently but we now thing that around the time Crete was removed from the control of the regime in Athens — sometime in the last six weeks we now think — the Greek Junta has lost contact with many, perhaps all, the major islands in the southern Aegean. It may be that they have declared independence of the mainland or suffered the same fate as Crete. The simplest explanation for this may simply be that local military garrisons have rebelled against Athens. Obviously, the presence of at least one former Soviet cruiser at Souda Bay, may suggest that something more sinister has befallen the region.”