At the time of Sam’s disappearance and the surfacing of the unspeakable lies implicating him in the sabotage of HMS Torquay it had been Marija — not a member of her own birth family — who had rushed to her bedside and implacably defended her from all comers when she had been badly injured in the explosion that had killed her good friend Lieutenant Jim Siddall. Jim Siddall had been Marija’s guardian angel but Marija had never blamed Rosa for his death. Marija had been Rosa’s strength, her true sister.
Rosa and her sister had left the married quarters in such a hurry the previous day that they had left all the windows open; this was what had probably prevented them being blown in. Farther down the road there was a small crater where a shell had scattered shrapnel for fifty yards in every direction and smashed countless windows.
“When the bombardment started,” Rosa explained, clinging to Alan Hannay’s hand like her life depended upon it as they stood surveying the house from the road, “we hid under the kitchen table. The big guns were shooting over Kalkara. At Luqa, at first. Marija and I, we were both little when the Germans and the Italians bombed the islands during the siege so we knew what to do. As soon as we realised the big ships were not shooting at Kalkara we left the house and went up to the old shelters on the ridge above the village.”
They went inside the house.
It was dusty everywhere but only one of the downstairs windows was damaged, its glass cracked diagonally. Upstairs two panes had blown out in the small, empty, second — child’s — bedroom. Otherwise, the house was as Rosa had left it; breakfast plates and cutlery on the table, the sink full of cutlery to be cleaned, the beds unmade.
“I thought it would be much worse,” Rosa admitted.
Alan Hannay felt light-headed.
The woman wrapped her arms around him and he groaned in apologetic discomfort.
“I’m sorry. I feel a tad faint, I think I ought to lie down,” he muttered feebly.
Chapter 35
The War Cabinet had adjourned for thirty minutes for tempers to cool, and for the participants to hurriedly acquaint themselves with the latest briefing documents, to distractedly munch rubbery, tasteless SPAM sandwiches and to consume sourly restorative cups of tea before the Prime Minister tetchily reconvened proceedings.
“Do we know when Ambassador Brenckmann plans to return?” Margaret Thatcher inquired of Sir Henry Tomlinson, her Cabinet Secretary.
“No, Prime Minister. He gave me to understand that he was seeking intelligence updates and guidance from his Secretary of State.”
Tom Harding-Grayson, the Foreign Secretary, coughed and every eye flicked towards him.
“We should not lose sight of the fact that we are not alone in our discomfort over matters in the Central Mediterranean and elsewhere,” he observed. “It would be, in my humble opinion, a bad mistake to view the setbacks of the last twenty-four hours through a one-dimensional lens…”
Iain Macleod, Minister of Information, Leader of the House of Commons and Chairman of the Conservative and Unionist Party of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland — and incidentally, should Margaret Thatcher elect to stand down or fall victim to some untoward circumstance, like getting shot by a madman at a public meeting as had very nearly happened earlier that year in Cheltenham Town Hall — the man most likely to succeed to the leadership of the Party, snorted loudly.
“I still think we gave far too much credence to all that nonsense about a global Red Dawn conspiracy. Damn it, Tom. I don’t doubt Krasnaya Zarya exists and is malignant in every conceivable way towards our cause, but really, what’s the connection between the Falklands, the Battle for Malta, Operation Grantham — which so far as we know is going forward like a well-oiled machine with negligible casualties on our side — and a hotchpotch of unsubstantiated and probably unverifiable reports about a coup in Tehran and alleged troop concentrations in the Caucasus?”
Airey Neave was unusually reflective when he spoke, mildly objecting to his friend’s scepticism. Although he rarely made any play of it he had formed connections with the intelligence services in the latter part of the 1945 war and never really ceased to dip his toe into those murky ‘waters’ in the years since. Having acquired a reputation as being something of a loose cannon within the Party, of being not entirely ‘reliable’ had been an excellent cover for all those confidential contacts he had made over the years and since the October War, shamelessly employed to ward off what evil could be deflected from his protégé, Margaret Thatcher.
Airey Neave could not recollect the exact moment in those dreadful days just after the October War when he had fallen under the Angry Widow’s thrall; but he had never doubted that throwing in his lot with her had been the only thing to do. Having lost his wife in the war there were probably those who imagined there was more to his attachment to Margaret than friendship and political pragmatism. There was nothing of that sort, of course although he had been somewhat knocked back when he realised that his friend was so wrapped up in her ‘fighting admiral’. After she had returned from her brief tryst on Malta the previous month to attend the marriage of the old sea dog’s son and his little Maltese princess; Margaret had been walking on air and his every suspicion had been confirmed. He had been pleased and in an odd way, a little relieved. Every time he looked around the Cabinet table he wondered how many of the apparently tractable, loyal and obedient men surrounding his protégé really believed in her. How many of them would shrink away if the going got too tough? He would die for her; but what of the others? With Julian Christopher at her side Margaret might have been invincible. Now, who knew what the future held or even if the lady still had the heart to carry on?
“I’d like to hear what Tom has to say before I jump to any conclusions, Iain,” indicated the man who had escaped from Colditz over twenty years ago. On this occasion he made no attempt to hide the fact that he was more in tune with the thoughts of the majority of the men around the table than his brilliant, sometimes irascible friend.
“By all means,” Iain Macleod guffawed impatiently. Nobody could tell if his outbursts of pique and sharpness of tongue were on account of the thigh wound — never really healed — he had sustained in France in 1940 or straightforward bad temper. Like many intellectuals he had never troubled to learn the subtle art of treating fools gladly, nor seen the wisdom in avoiding systematically alienating practically every fool he encountered. His friends put this down to the pain from his old war wound and that he was known to suffer from ankylosing spondylitis, a spinal condition which exacerbated his limp and meant he was rarely free of pain. “Like the Prime Minister I think the first thing on the agenda ought to be communicating an ultimatum about resolving the issues with the chain of command…”
“There are no issues with the chain of command,” William Whitelaw, the Secretary of Defence, interjected amiably. “That at least is my American counterpart’s view. The Kennedy Administration has been adamant in its stance that American forces will remain under American command and control. They regard this as an article of faith. We can beat about the bush as long as we want but frankly, we just need to accept it and get on with things. The whole of Philadelphia is up in arms on account of a single piece of malicious disinformation about our alleged attitude to this question. We should simply invite President Kennedy to nominate an American Supreme Commander and get on with the business of fighting the war in the Mediterranean.”