“Her mother would still recognise her, sir,” Arkady Rykov informed him bleakly. That was a lie but he was making appropriate and proportional allowances for British sensibilities.
The Commander-in-Chief of all British and Commonwealth Forces in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations frowned.
“Like Major Williams?”
“Not so bad as Major Williams,” the Russian assured him. “But I wouldn’t put any of them in a public court room for a couple of weeks. Maybe three.” He viewed the older man quizzically. “Or do you want me to dispose of the bodies, sir?”
Julian Christopher thought about it.
What use was honour and decency in a World gone mad? Samuel Calleja’s associates had murdered and maimed without conscience, another four men had died when the Torquay was sabotaged. Among their victims was the wife of the C-in-C at the time of the October War, thirty-two women and eleven children, the youngest, two years old, consumed in the fireball when car loaded with Jerry cans of petrol had been detonated outside the American School in Valletta.
Besides, there were other considerations than the morality of the new age. There was a ‘bigger picture’; and it was his duty to never allow himself to take his eye off that ‘big picture’.
Not least there was his own position and by implication, that of the ongoing governance of the Archipelago and its defence. Even a military tribunal convened in camera would not remain secret for long. These people — no, not people, terrorists — would relish their day in court, tens, scores of his people would inevitably learn the true story, the true depths of Samuel Calleja’s treachery. Sooner or later some warped version of the truth would escape into the wider World; and Samuel Calleja’s family would be pariahs for ever more on Malta. If his son wasn’t so intimately, inextricably linked to Marija Calleja; or if he’d never met that remarkable young woman would he have simply left the family to its fate?
Possibly, although he liked to think not.
But Peter was linked to Marija Calleja, and he had met her and he had no intention of throwing her, her family, his son’s possible future happiness, and any part of his own reputation to the wolves just to give a bunch of cold-blooded murdering terrorist scum their day in court.
He looked the former KGB man in the eye.
“Yes, that would be better. But if you can please do it cleanly, quickly.” He sighed, knowing in his heart that whatever he told himself, this small additional atrocity would probably be but the first of many he would commit before the coming battle was won. “I want no further unnecessary unpleasantness. Just dispose of them.”
Chapter 24
Captain Walter Brenckmann, the fifty-two year old United States Ambassador to the Court of Balmoral was no closer to being able to read Margaret Thatcher’s underlying mood today than he had been the first time he met her around eight weeks ago. The woman was an enigma, possibly — but only possibly — not quite as steely beneath the surface as she seemed but always likely to spring a surprise.
The Unity Administration’s Secretary of State for Defence, William Whitelaw was chatting to the Premier over cups of tea served in Dalton bone china, when Walter Brenckmann and the Home Secretary, Sir Thomas Harding-Grayson entered the Prime Minister’s rooms.
“Ah, there you are, Tom,” the tireless widow and mother of twins waved cheerfully. “Good evening, Ambassador,” she welcomed the shorter, greyer of the two men. “I gather you two bring more bad news from Philadelphia?”
Walter Brenckmann was fully aware that the question was asked with a polite amiability to disguise the seething exasperation Margaret Thatcher, and her colleagues in the UAUK must be feeling as they watched the House of Representatives kicking the ratification of the new US-UK Military Mutual Assistance Treaty, the confirmation of James William Fulbright in his post as Secretary of State, and the small matter of the President’s inalienable right to mobilize the United States military around the two re-located Houses of Congress and the Senate like a slowly deflating football. Viewed from the other side of the Atlantic it reeked of chaotic disunity at the very time the World’s last remaining superpower’s energies ought to have been focused on consolidating international stability.
“The President has decided to go over the heads of Congressional leaders, Prime Minister,” the United States Ambassador to the Court of Balmoral explained. “I am expecting the text of his State of the Union Address tonight to be on my desk shortly. The President called me twenty minutes ago emphasising that he will welcome any comments you might have on it. I can tell you that his speech will focus mainly on domestic political issues but will unambiguously re-affirm in the strongest terms the Administration’s commitment to the undertakings given in the US-UK Military Mutual Assistance Treaty. Regardless of Congressional or Senatorial filibustering the Administration will meet its obligations under that Treaty. In detail, Prime Minister.”
“As we will our obligations, Mister Ambassador.”
Everybody sat down and the Angry Widow, in her most housewifely, charming and emollient incarnation, insisted on pouring the newcomers’ tea. There was no milk, as usual.
“Willie,” she invited the hangdog-faced Secretary of State for Defence to speak.
William Stephen Ian Whitelaw had been a natural choice for his current post. Although he had only entered Parliament in 1955 as MP for Penrith and the Border — after several unsuccessful attempts to win the East Dumbartonshire seat — he was well thought of in the Party and was the kind of man who commanded respect and attention simply by his manner and bearing. Educated at Winchester and later Trinity College, Cambridge, where he joined the Officer Training Corps, he’d been commissioned into the Scots Guards in 1939. Subsequently, he’d fought through Normandy, France, the Low Countries and Germany with the 6th Guards Tank Brigade, emerging in 1945 with the rank of Major and chest full of campaign medals and miscellaneous well-earned awards for gallantry. Leaving the Army in 1946 to manage the estates he had inherited from his grandfather — his own father had been killed in the Great War — at Gartshore and Woodhall in Lanarkshire, politics had eventually become his calling. In the years immediately before the cataclysm he had entered Harold MacMillan’s Administration as a Lord of the Treasury, a grandiose title for a Government whip in Parliament, in 1961. By October 1962 he was Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Labour. Edward Heath had offered him a senior post last summer before illness intervened; a large man he still looked grey and a little shrunken in his pre-war suit, and there were bags under his eyes which exaggerated his hangdog looks.
“The island of Lampedusa is now in our hands,” he announced sagely. “I am glad to report that casualties were much lighter than first feared although we lost a brace of helicopters and several of our ships were knocked about somewhat. Admiral Christopher reports naval casualties as twenty-three men dead and sixty-one seriously wounded. All vessels with the exception of HMS Puma, which was hit twice in the engine room, were able to proceed to Malta under their own steam. It now seems that the island was in the hands of a group of fanatics who had expelled, or massacred, we aren’t sure which yet, every man, woman and child who had been living on Lampedusa before the late war. It was only after the expenditure of prodigious quantities of naval ordnance that the Royal Marines were able to move in and winkle out the last defenders. A dreadful business; it puts me in mind of some of the fights I was involved in, or came across after the event, in Germany during the Second War. Whole towns levelled and fanatical SS men fighting to the last man. We captured a few badly wounded men, otherwise,” he shrugged. “Senseless really.”