“They are to be treated well,” Ceaușescu forced out.
“Of course!”
The seaman in traction translated for Eleni’s benefit after the Yavuz’s Surgeon had departed.
For the first time the woman smiled; her whole face, handsome and overly lined for a woman of her age, seemed to light up and to Nicolae Ceaușescu’s astonishment, she sniffed back a tear and leaned over him, planting not one, but two kisses on his brow. Thereafter, she took his left hand in her hands, and resumed her watching brief.
The sick bay lights were on when Ceaușescu next slowly awakened.
Second-Captain Kolokoltsev and the Ship’s Surgeon flanked a distinguished, dapper man in a uniform that was so heavily laden with gold braid and other adornments that it threatened to drag him to the deck. This latter man had hard eyes and lips that quirked with impatience.
He said something in Turkish.
Kolokoltsev translated: “Orders have been received that you and your party are to remain on the Yavuz until such time as you are fit to travel home, Comrade General Nikolai Vasilyevich.”
The old battlecruiser’s commanding officer spoke again.
Again Kolokoltsev translated.
“The Comrade Surgeon Commander says you will not be well enough to be transferred at sea for possibly many days, or perhaps, several weeks. The Captain apologises but it will be necessary for you and your party to stay onboard for your own safety, until this ship’s mission in forthcoming operations against the British has been discharged.”
“I must talk to my superiors,” Ceaușescu protested. The last thing he actually wanted to do was talk to anybody who might expose him but if he did not make the right noises sooner or later Kolokoltsev would start asking questions he could not answer.
Kolokoltsev spoke to the Yavuz’s captain, who angrily shook his head.
“This may not be possible, Comrade General Nikolai Vasilyevich,” the Political Officer apologised, wringing his hands, “The Yavuz will be operating under conditions of radio silence. For security reasons…”
It was all Nicolae Ceaușescu could do not to burst out laughing at his outrageous good fortune.
Chapter 33
Rear-Admiral Simon Collingwood stood on the dock and stared thoughtfully along the length of the three-quarters completed pressure hull of the United Kingdom’s second nuclear-power hunter killer submarine. Beyond HMS Valiant on the adjoining slipway, the skeleton of her sister boat, HMS Warspite was taking shape. In the near distance men were constructing a third slipway for the construction of another, as yet unnamed vessel.
The Vickers’s Shipbuilding Yard was much as he recollected it from his last visit, approximately eleven months ago. At that time he had been taking HMS Dreadnought out to sea to conduct her proving trials and HMS Valiant had been little further advanced that Warspite was now. The surface ships on the slipways and in the fitting out basin at the time of the October War had departed, either scrapped on the slips, commissioned or towed to other facilities to be broken up or completed, according to need.
Unlike Dreadnought which had been equipped with a Westinghouse S5W water-cooled reactor and an American machinery set and layout; Valiant, Warspite would be British submarines. Discussions were at an early stage to utilise the latest US nuclear technology in later designs but for the moment, the Government had determined that the United Kingdom would go it alone. Expertise hard-won with the Dreadnought, including a wealth of priceless recent operational experience acquired in actual combat had convinced the Admiralty that building and operating nuclear submarines was one area in which the country might be self-sufficient. Given that there were precious few other defence-critical areas in which that could be said, it actually made a lot of sense. If Great Britain was to remain great at anything it needed to be selective; very, very selective in what it attempted to be great at. HMS Dreadnought’s first two operational patrols — the second of which was the first pre-planned war cruise by a nuclear-powered submarine — had provided ample evidence that building and fighting such boats was something the United Kingdom could still be great at. Of course, wanting to do a thing was not the same as doing it. In between entertaining the lofty ambition of going it alone in such a desperately complex and expensive game as building a nuclear undersea fleet and actually getting that fleet to sea, lay a mountainous challenge.
“I didn’t realise Valiant was so far advanced, sir,” Simon Collingwood remarked, turning to the older man at his elbow. Both he and the First Sea Lord, Sir David Luce were dressed in mufti. The Furness Peninsula was a secure zone guarded by a company of the Lancashire Fusiliers but beyond the high fences and the roadblocks, the surrounding countryside was notoriously lawless. The Morecombe Bay airburst on the night of the October War had wrecked the towns along the coast. Farther south the ruins along the south bank of the Mersey had spawned a world of warring gangs and prevented the re-opening of the Liverpool docks. A new road had been driven around the city and Manchester had become the administrative capital of the North-West; but outside of the Vickers’s Yards it was unwise to walk around in uniform without bodyguards, and most supplies and personnel reached the fortified Furness Peninsula via sea or by air. Something drastic would have to be done about the regional security situation but that was for another day. The two men had arrived by helicopter an hour ago to begin their inspection of the new Director of the Bureau of Submarine Construction’s fiefdom.
“If the local security situation wasn’t so difficult at the moment we’d be even further ahead,” the First Sea Lord replied flatly.
“When I talked with the Prime Minister,” Simon Collingwood said, “she indicated that the Program here was to be the Navy’s number one priority. What does that actually mean, sir?”
David Luce guffawed. There was something implacable in the younger man’s quiet, respectfully voiced question. He was not the sort of man to stamp his foot or to stand on his rights, or to use the Angry Widow’s name in vain but he had been given a job to do and he was going to do it come what may!
“The Royal Navy has only two priorities, Rear-Admiral,” he retorted amiably, “to prepare for war, and to fight wars. The SSN program is an integral part of both.”
Although he did not care for the ambiguous sophistry of this reply, Simon Collingwood said nothing while he continued to survey the yards.
Margaret Thatcher had been a revelation.
She had talked to him about how pleased she had been to finally get out to Malta; and about how she admired the ‘spirit of the islanders’. And then she had got down to business. In low tones — they were cocooned in the forward part of the passenger cabin of the British Overseas Airways Corporation Boeing 707 within feet of a dozen flapping ears — she had started to tell him ‘what needed to be done’ for Britain to be ‘great again’. In no time at all he had wanted to wave a Union Jack!
The funny thing was she had made a huge point of telling him that she had obtained the permission of the C-in-C Mediterranean, Flag Officer Submarines, the First Sea Lord and of the Secretary of State for Defence, William Whitelaw, to ‘speak privately and confidentially to you about the future of the Royal Navy’. It seemed she had a horror of politicians going over the heads of her senior military advisors; possibly because without the support of those same men no government could function in the current ‘situation’.