“The people we’ve got here were nothing to do with Arkady Pavlovich Rykov,” Rachel explained slowly, wondering as she spoke if she ought to be pronouncing each syllable of each word slowly and separately because from the look on the Secret Intelligence Service’s Head of Station on Malta English was obviously not his first language. “After he was forced to roll up his only network on the island he was too busy trying not to give himself away to do anybody any harm. He was trapped on Malta. Sooner or later he would have betrayed himself. When those big ships started shelling the island and the paratroopers started dropping out of the sky he must have thought all his birthdays and Christmases had come at once!”
Denzil Williams was staring at her as if she was mad.
“Don’t you understand?” She asked plaintively. “Arkady Pavlovich had failed and his handlers had cut him adrift. His only surviving friend on the archipelago was Samuel Calleja, a man who didn’t even know how to remove the safety on the Makarov pistol he was holding to Admiral Christopher’s head at the time I broke into the headquarters building in Mdina!”
Chapter 54
“You must have put something in my hot chocolate before I went to bed last night,” Margaret Thatcher remarked to her friend, Lady Patricia Harding-Grayson as the car, a newly delivered armoured Bentley slowed briefly before being waved through the heavily guarded checkpoint on the Oxford Road east of the picturesque village of Woodstock. There were few people about, it was Sunday morning after all and the leaden overcast threatened spring showers sooner rather than later. Old thatched cottages and houses swept past as the two women studiously looked out of their respective windows, left and right.
At first glance the October War had left Woodstock untouched but the roads hereabouts were empty of all but official traffic because of the chronic petrol shortages, and coal smoke lingered in the air from hearths that were the only source of heating in dwellings which could rely on only two to four hours electricity per day. In Woodstock as in most places the United Kingdom was a drab, cold place much like both women recollected it had been in the darkest days of the Second World War.
A helicopter gunship usually shadowed the Prime Ministerial convoy when Margaret Thatcher travelled by road; today, no helicopters were available. In lieu of aerial firepower the Prime Minister’s Royal Marine bodyguards — whose members proudly called themselves the AWP, the ‘Angry Widow’s Praetorians’ had mounted recently acquired American 50-calibre heavy machine guns on the Land Rovers topping and tailing the convoy rushing through the Oxfordshire countryside.
“Yes,” Pat Harding-Grayson confessed in a tone which was not such much apologetic as smug. “I crushed up two sleeping pills and found a spoonful of sugar to hide the taste.”
Margaret Thatcher frowned.
“Poisoning a Prime Minister is probably an offence under the Treachery Act,” she observed, albeit without malice.
“You hadn’t slept for two days and you were getting cranky, Margaret.”
“I was getting no such thing!” Except she now realised that she had been getting very ‘cranky’ and worse. This morning notwithstanding that her head ached a little she felt more her old self. The news from Malta — no, the news about Julian Christopher — had been like an unexpected blow to the solar plexus and she had been, well, stunned and for periods of the last two days, lost. She knew that the men around her had been doing whatever could be done, the majority of them were much more attuned to the day to day needs of governance in a time of war than her but for many hours she had ceased to be their leader and that was inexcusable.
The note from Blenheim Palace had arrived after she had gone to bed last night, drugged by her closest friend.
‘Her Majesty cordially requests the presence of her Prime Minister at 10 o’clock. The Prime Minister is invited to take morning tea with her Majesty prior to joining her for the Morning Service in the chapel at Blenheim. The Prime Minister’s children and aides are very welcome to join Her Majesty at said Service.’
The twins, eleven year old Carol and Mark sat obediently in the backwards facing seats within the most heavily armoured section of the Bentley. Both children had grown familiar with being in the proximity of VIPs, and accustomed to being introduced to the ‘great men’ of the day but the prospect of a visit to Blenheim Palace and an encounter with The Queen, and possibly Prince Charles and Princess Ann was another thing altogether. However, while they were in the company of their mother and their governess — neither twin was entirely sure what Lady Patricia Harding-Grayson’s exact title or position was, just that she was a very kind, nice lady and that they absolutely had to do what she told them to do — no harm could possibly befall them. Insofar as they thought about such things at all; both twins had worked out that of all the clever and very important people in their mother’s life the only person with whom she was completely at ease, was ‘Auntie Pat’.
“I really should have kept the Palace better informed of events,” Margaret Thatcher sighed.
“Your private office will have done that anyway, Margaret,” Pat Harding-Grayson reminded her.
“Yes, but…”
“You simply cannot do everything yourself.”
“No. This whole thing has rather knocked me for six,” the younger woman — by the best part of two decades — confessed. “I keep thinking I ought to be angrier, but actually, I am angry. Very angry.” She sighed. “And disappointed. Once again the Americans have let us down. I don’t just mean in the Mediterranean. Admiral Detweiller’s decision to remove his ships from Malta was ill-advised but it would not have mattered but for the sabotage of the archipelago’s radio communications and radar systems. The First Sea Lord tells me that the system was badly damaged in December’s attack, and then again by the attacks in February and knocking out just one or two key electrical switching stations was probably sufficient to bring down the whole network. The Americans have shipped new radar equipment to us but we just don’t have the technical wherewithal to quickly rebuild a complex air defence system. All our best people went off to Cyprus, you see. The assumption was that Admiral Detweiller’s ships would act as sentinels around the Maltese Archipelago.” Margaret Thatcher pursed her lips and sighed. “Sorry, I am rambling.”
“Carry on,” her friend invited her. “You’re not boring me, or anything.”
The Prime Minister smiled.
“What happened on Malta wasn’t entirely the Americans’ fault. Historians will look at the ‘Battle of Malta’ in years to come and write it off to bad luck and sabotage and say that I was far too preoccupied with grand strategy and took my eye off the ball. In a funny sort of way I’m not angry about any of that; what really gets my goat is the American obsession with this stupid story about Sir David Luce having been appointed Supreme Commander in the Mediterranean behind their backs!”
Chapter 55
Because the Verdala Palace was the official — although since December of the previous year largely unused — residence of the Commander-in-Chief of All British and Commonwealth Forces in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations, it was guarded at all times by a platoon of infantrymen. At the time of the Soviet airborne attack a mixed platoon of walking wounded and sick-listed Green Jackets supported by a dozen Ghurkha riflemen had been stationed in the main building, which outwardly resembled a medieval castle. The bodies of the Soviet paratroopers shot to pieces beneath their swinging canopies long before their feet touched the ground were lined up by the roadside outside the walled palace gardens.