“No, no. What can I do for you?” She waved for Marija to stay but her friend was already half-way out of the door.
“I must be with Rosa,” she whispered and disappeared, closing the door softly at her back.
“Would you have a few minutes to spare for a meeting with Admiral Christopher?”
“When did your boss have in mind, Lieutenant Hannay?”
“Er, now, actually.”
It was over an hour later as the Cathedral bell was chiming eight o’clock that Margo — with the light of battle glistening in her eyes — was ushered into the modestly appointed office of the Commander-in-Chief.
The Fighting Admiral looked up from his papers.
He grimaced and rose to his feet, coming around his desk to greet his visitor.
“Thank you for coming, Margo,” he half-smiled, extending his hand.
Hands were shaken. The woman said nothing.
“Would you bring that bottle I we brought back from England and a couple of glasses please, Alan?” The great man asked his flag lieutenant. In a moment a bottle of twelve year old Royal Lochnagar Scotch Whisky was being opened and generous measures poured into two crystal tumblers. Alan Hannay, his duty performed, made himself scarce, leaving his elders in private.
Julian Christopher held out a glass for the woman who’d almost but not quite been his mistress a dozen years ago during his last stint in Malta. He’d commanded a cruiser squadron in those days. The German Wars seemed over, the Cold War was a long way away on sunny Malta and he’d reverted to type, carefree and womanising. And Margo had rejected him. At the time it had come as a rude shock, a sign that the years were catching up with him. However, he’d soon got over his rejection, moved on from one cold-hearted affair to the next until his wife had died. Peter had never forgiven him for not being there when she died; for not having been there for her at all in fact, during her final illness. Atonement was an odd thing, he reflected.
“Peter’s ship will be anchoring in Sliema Creek sometime tomorrow afternoon,” he announced, raising his glass. “HMS Talavera distinguished herself again the other day. Her commanding officer was incapacitated by a direct hit and Peter took command of Talavera’s squadron.” Julian Christopher was on the verge of exploding with paternal and professional pride. “When HMS Puma was damaged by two direct hits which left her dead in the water,” he went on, “it seems that Peter conned Talavera into shoaling waters between Puma and the guns on land so that a tow line could be passed onboard!”
Margo tried not to think of the horrible conversation she had had with Marija earlier that evening.
“A chip off the old block, Julian!”
“I’ll say!”
“Will you toast the officers and men of Her Majesty’s Ship Talavera with me,” the man chuckled.
“Yes, of course I will.”
“Talavera!” They both drank deep; and stood looking at each other.
Presently, Margo looked into her glass.
“This is the real thing!”
“A present from an admirer in England.”
Margo’s eyes narrowed. He hadn’t said it triumphantly, but fondly and with a self-deprecation that would have been alien to his character in those long ago days when he was attempting to seduce her.
“My lips are sealed,” the man confessed wryly.
“It must be serious then?”
“Oh, yes.” He waved to the chairs in front of his desk. They sat down, each stiffly and suddenly worn by the exertions of another very long day. “I was slated for retirement last autumn,” Julian Christopher guffawed.
Margo waited for him to get around to the real — or perhaps, in the circumstances the other reason — he had asked her to join him at such short notice.
“This is a hateful business with Marija’s brother,” he said presently, soberly sipping his whiskey.
“Yes,” she agreed.
“How is Marija?”
“She thinks this thing has ruined her life but because she is the person she is,” Margo shook her head, “bless her, she has resigned herself to it.”
“Oh, god,” the man groaned. “What does that mean? Is she off to a nunnery or something?”
“Her brother has disgraced his family and in this part of the World that really matters, Julian!”
“Sorry, I didn’t put that very well. I understand that she must be upset about what happened to Lieutenant Siddall, of course.”
“Aren’t you?”
The Commander-in-Chief of all British and Commonwealth Forces in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations pursed his lips.
“Yes. But I can’t allow things like this to become personal, Margo.”
“Why not?”
“According to the people we have in custody, Samuel Calleja’s workshop was booby-trapped to destroy the evidence of what had been going on in it and to kill the first person who came looking for him. Standard operating procedure, apparently. It now seems likely that he remained on board HMS Torquay when she was refloated so that he could personally set off two demolition charges positioned in the engine room bilges adjacent to the ship’s keel. Think about what manner of man can do a thing like that! Think about it, Margo! Is it any wonder his own family, his own wife, for goodness sake, didn’t understand that they were living hand in glove with a monster?”
“Marija blames herself.”
“The man’s wife didn’t know he was making bombs and storing stolen demolition charges in that bloody workshop,” the man grunted.
“Demolition charges?”
“The Naval Clearance team who have been examining the site of the explosion and searching every address or shed or hole in the ground that these people,” he clearly didn’t included these people as fellow members of the human race, “have lived at, worked in or hidden in, think that the detonation of at least two connected five pound charges was involved at Kalkara. Other charges were daisy-chained to the booby trap but failed to go off. Half the neighbourhood would have gone up in smoke if all the explosives in that hut had gone off!”
“Madness,” Margo breathed angrily, finishing her whiskey. Marija had given her a more or less verbatim account of her meeting with the man and the woman who had visited Rosa in hospital at Bighi. “The Russian and his,” she paused, not knowing how to describe the blond woman Marija had spoken of, “partner? They talked to Marija about something called Krasnaya Zarya?”
The Fighting Admiral bared his teeth in a predatory smile.
“Mr Rykov and Miss Pullman both work for me,” he confirmed. “The World is in more of a mess than we thought it was. If that’s possible? We destroyed one enemy,” he went on brusquely, “in the October War and spawned something that might, in the long term, be even more dangerous. At least we could talk to the Soviets. I don’t think it is even worth trying to talk to Red Dawn.”
Chapter 22
Lyndon Baines Johnson no calmer now than he had been nine hours ago. In some ways he was actually angrier now than he had been when he’d seen the numbers the tellers had handed him late last night.
A few minutes before midnight the previous evening, the second full day that the House of Representatives had sat since the Battle of Washington, both Houses of Congress had narrowly voted to suspend the ‘Emergency War Mobilization Authority’ issued by the President on the 2nd January, instructing the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to reactivate reserves, commission ships and order Air Force units to forward bases.
The ‘Authority’ had green-lighted the orderly restoration, over the course of the next twelve to eighteen months of the military striking power of the armed forces to its pre-peace dividend cuts status; giving immediate priority to the mobilization of units which could be made ready for foreign deployment within ninety to one hundred and eighty days.