Nicolae Ceaușescu had glossed over exactly how the information about Operation Chastise — in Russian Operation Nakazyvat — had been extracted from Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov, the member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR whom he believed to be the master of Krasnaya Zarya. His audience had listened, largely in deeply thoughtful silence, as the tortured husk of a man had slowly, surely recounted the details of the storm which, even as they listened, must already be falling on the Near East. The Great Game was afoot; two Soviet tank armies, supported by hundreds of aircraft driving south to the Persian Gulf like an unstoppable steel wave at the very moment the Anglo-American axis was in a state of near total crisis and disarray.
Sir David Luce sighed.
“Back in England they plan to make a huge song and dance about Friday’s battle. Medals galore in fact! They plan to promote Peter Christopher to Captain and award him and John Pope of the Yarmouth Victoria Crosses. John Pope’s posthumously, obviously,” the First Sea Lord explained. “Peter’s far too damned young to have his fourth ring but,” he shrugged and raised his tea cup to his lips. “Julian would have been tickled to bits to think his boy was the youngest post captain in the Royal Navy!”
“They ought to give Joe Calleja the freedom of Malta,” Dan French suggested. “Or of any place he cares to name,” he added, “after what he did!”
“And the George Cross,” Sir David Luce guffawed. “That was what my two tame politicos were talking about earlier.”
Dan French’s eyes went glassy as he recollected his earlier conversation with Rachel Piotrowska.
“Yes,” he sighed, “that sounds about right.” He bit the bullet and with a bitter taste in his mouth he declared: “Look, there’s a matter that I must broach with you, sir.”
“Oh,” the First Sea Lord did not like the sound of that. “You had better spit it out.”
Knowing that there was no way to sugar the pill Dan French paused momentarily to order his thoughts.
“Lady Marija and Jo Calleja’s older brother, Samuel,” he explained sombrely, “who had previously been missing presumed dead was captured in a Soviet uniform at the Citadel on Friday. He had since been interrogated by the security people and made a full confession of his treachery…”
Chapter 73
Commander Sir Peter Christopher looked at his surviving Talaveras. Two buses had collected the rest of his walking wounded from Kalkara that morning and there were fifty-six men on parade on gritty tarmac. The burned out wreck of the control tower and the shattered hangars behind it framed the pictures and movies that the crowd of pressmen continued to snap and record as he had inspected his men.
He nodded to Lieutenant Dermot O’Reilly, his senior surviving officer.
The Canadian bawled an order and the parade stood easy. About half the men on parade clasped a mimeographed sheet in one hand; the words of the Navy Hymn passed around in the minutes before this short ceremony commenced by Ministry of Information civil servants who knew little and understood less about Royal Navy and its traditions.
“Before I joined you this morning,” Peter announced, his voice steady above the clamour of the bulldozers and the repair teams still labouring on the distant taxi-ways. “I was called away to receive bad news from RNH Bighi.”
He paused, unable to prevent his eyes flicking a glance sidelong to where Marija and Rosa stood with Captain Lionel Faulkes protectively circled around the battered wheelchair bound figure of the ‘civilian hero’ of the Battle of Malta, Joe Calleja. Other women, several in RAF blue had gathered behind them, listening sombrely.
“Leading Seaman Morris ‘Mo’ Akers died of his wounds overnight,” Peter said, his jaw assuming a grimmer set. “As did Lieutenant-Commander Miles Weiss. I regret that I did not know Leading Seaman Akers as well as I would have liked. He joined Talavera after the action at Lampedusa and he distinguished himself in the fight to save the USS Enterprise. As did you all.” He stopped to compose himself. “Miles Weiss had been my friend since before the October War.”
Miles Weiss had been his best friend in the Navy. No, his best friend… He had seemed battered and bloody after he staggered out of the Talavera’s wrecked gun director mount after that big shell had ripped off the top of it and hacked down the destroyer’s great lattice foremast like it was made of balsa wood. Onboard the USS Berkeley he had complained of a headache and been diagnosed with a bad concussion. At Bighi he had repeatedly put himself to the back of the queue; only when he had collapsed a second time and begun to retch and vomit uncontrollably had he been prioritised by the impossibly hard-pressed medical staff at the hospital. By the time he was wheeled into an operating theatre he was unconscious, fitting spasmodically. It seemed he had had a massive cerebral haemorrhage, probably the consequence of proximity to the passage of the large, high velocity projectile which had destroyed the gun director. In the way of these things his fate had probably been sealed in that moment and afterwards there was nothing anybody could have done to help him.
But Peter still felt he had let his friend down.
Talavera had left fourteen of her two hundred and fifty-two man compliment on shore when she cut her lines and raced out to sea, in the confusion five civilian workers had been trapped onboard including Joe Calleja; whom at least two men claimed to have seen deliberately ‘stepping onboard’ the destroyer while his fellow dockyard workers were scampering, and in some cases hurling themselves ashore. Of the two hundred and forty-three men who had steamed into the Battle of Malta the fifty-six men, plus Joe Calleja constituted the unwounded and walking wounded contingent of survivors. A further thirty-eight men remained in hospital, or had been otherwise designated as unfit to attend this parade. As the initial impenetrable fog of war slowly cleared it was now apparent that one hundred and fifty-one men — including four civilian dockyard workers — had died during the Battle of Malta, or were listed as missing in action presumed dead or had subsequently died of their injuries. Included in that number were eight of Talavera’s ten divisional officers holding the rank of lieutenant or above. Several other men — as many as six — who had suffered severe flash burns or swallowed oil while they were in the water when Talavera had suddenly broken her back and sunk while still alongside the USS Berkeley, were not anticipated to survive.
Marija and Rosa were crying.
Peter Christopher would not allow himself to cry.
He swallowed hard.
“Many of Talavera’s dead have no other resting place than the sea. Now it seems likely that the exigencies of the Service will prevent us attending the funerals of our comrades who died on land, or whose bodies were recovered from the sea by the brave, selfless acts of our American friends and allies.” As many as a dozen of the USS Berkeley’s crewmen had leapt into the iron grey waters ten miles off Sliema to save the dying, the drowning and to recover the bodies of dead Talaveras. Several US Navy men had gone overboard without safety lines in their anxiety to help their British allies and two young Americans had died when Talavera had finally given up the fight and broken. “At this sad time we should also remember Midshipman Alois Karl Rendorp, and Seaman Casey O’Leary of the USS Berkeley who sacrificed their lives onboard Talavera courageously fighting to save the lives of our friends and shipmates.”