“This had better be good news, Comrade Vasily Ivanovich,” Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev grouched like a moody, half-asleep bear. If Alexei Nikolayevich Kosygin was the real brains of the Troika, Brezhnev was its tempered steel backbone and the man who, at the end of the day, held the casting vote on every important decision. It was Brezhnev who had ordered the destruction of Bucharest, authorised the diversion of forces from the preparations for Babadzhanian’s ‘drive to the south’ to mercilessly crush Krasnaya Zarya’s unauthorised insurgency in the Balkans and Greece, and who had come down on the side of Admiral Sergey Georgiyevich Gorshkov’s breathtakingly ambitious plan to ‘demonstrate’ against the British and the Americans in the central Mediterranean to mask the launching of Operation Nakazyvat. Gorshkov had thrown away what was left of his Navy — the surface fleet, leastways — in the failed attempt to briefly seize and hold Malta. Thousands of men had been sacrificed and yet; here in Iran Army Group South was on the rampage, its progress undisturbed by British and American bombers, Tehran had been destroyed and still, the West had not yet stirred…
“We are winning the war, Comrade Leonid Ilyich,” Chuikov chortled. Having allowed himself his fun he turned deadly serious. “Is Alexei Nikolayevich on the line?”
“Da!” Kosygin confirmed, sounding wide awake. “It is always good to speak to you Comrade Marshal. Even in the middle of the night!”
“We have decisions to make,” the old soldier informed his comrades. “We’d expected much stiffer resistance but our forward observation units are reporting the enemy falling back or melting away into the mountains ahead of us. 3rd Caucasus Tank Army is already half-way to Tabriz, the way it is looking here in Ardabil 2nd Siberian Mechanized Army may be allowed to motor west unopposed. Shit,” he grunted, allowing himself a rare moment of reflection, “after what the Air Force did to Tehran the Iranian Army might not even exist anymore. If things go on like this our spearheads might be investing Sulaymaniyah in days not weeks!”
The two ‘old commissars’ of the Troika had emphasised from the outset of the planning for Operation Nakazyvat that the object of the exercise was not simple military conquest. While Chuikov and Babadzhanian would be given a free hand to conduct their business at specific ‘way points’ in the ‘drive south’ it was recognised that ‘political opportunities’ might arise. In that event military operations would be subservient to the ‘political necessities of the moment’.
The two ‘old commissars’ were silent as they absorbed Chuikov’s meanings.
It was Kosygin who spoke first.
“What is your recommendation, Vasily Ivanovich?” He asked.
“Hit Baghdad now. Take it out before the British or the Americans know what’s hit them!”
Chapter 69
Air Vice-Marshal Dan French indicated for the woman to go before him into the darkness of the walled garden. She had requested a ‘short private meeting’ but there was nowhere ‘private’ within the Verdala Palace tonight. Most of the ground floor and two thirds of the first floor had been transformed into a hospital, the reception hall was a dormitory of the men of HMS Talavera and the off duty soldiers from the palace guard, the two upper floors accommodated members of the C-in-C’s own staff, the staffs of the visiting VIPs and several hastily set up offices and communication rooms. The old castle hummed and murmured with movement and voices even at this hour of the morning.
“You wanted to talk to me confidentially, Miss Piotrowska?”
There were armed guards everywhere in the darkness,
Rachel ignored them, kept her voice low.
“There’s something you need to know,” she said, whispering. Orders had been issued to bring Nicolae Ceaușescu and the woman, Eleni, to the Verdala Palace. The two politicians, Iain Macleod and Airey Neave wanted to talk to Ceaușescu before ‘wild rumours’ were transmitted to Oxford under ‘the flag of hard intelligence’.
Dan French suppressed a groan. Something in the woman’s tone broadcast that he was not going to like what she was about to tell him.
“That sounds ominous,” he remarked.
“Samuel Calleja has made a full confession.”
Later that day, or perhaps the day after, the heroes of the Battle of Malta would be flying back to England to be feted and acclaimed. Within forty-eight hours the Queen would be pinning medals on those heroes’ chests, shaking hands and no doubt exchanging the small talk for which such investitures were famous with the wife of the man whose face would shortly be plastered across the front pages of every newspaper in the civilised World, the unrivalled star of every television news cast and Pathe report.
By the hero’s side would be his beautiful young wife, Lady Marija Calleja-Christopher smiling seraphically. They would be instantly the most famous married couple in Christendom.
Moreover, in many of the pictures there would be the battered, stocky, sheepishly grinning presence of Joseph Calleja, the communist trades union agitator and troublemaker sacked by the Admiralty Dockyards of Malta days before he rode into battle astride the torpedo tubes of HMS Talavera; and on an open, shot-torn deck launched the salvo of torpedoes that had won the Battle of Malta.
Marija and Joe; the siblings of the traitor Samuel Calleja.
Dan French held his peace a little longer as their steps carried him and his companion deeper into the darkness of the garden.
“Damnedest thing!” He muttered, exasperated in his weariness.
Rachel sensed that he was not talking about Samuel Calleja’s treachery.
“Yes,” she concurred.
“This business over Samuel Calleja, too,” the man added ruefully. He had known the ‘Samuel Calleja’ situation was going to be a fly in the ointment the moment Rachel had told him who had been in the room with Julian Christopher at the end of the fight for the Headquarters complex in Mdina. He had had a lot of other things on his mind at the time and in the intervening hours but he had not put the ‘issue’ to one side, let alone filed it away for further action at some unspecified future time and place. Keeping an impossibly large number of balls in the air at one time was what had kept him alive flying Lancaster bombers over Germany, and more than once saved his bacon flying the first operation V-Bombers. Thus it was that he had already decided what he was going to do about the Samuel Calleja problem several hours ago.
The fact that the man had belatedly made a clean breast of his crimes was irrelevant. There had never been any real doubt that he was a traitor; an enemy agent who had betrayed the Crown in time of war.