That a dinosaur from a previous age should have been able to steam so close to the archipelago undetected boggled belief and spoke to a monstrous treason and betrayal.
Maskirovska.
Smoke and mirrors; dym i zerkala.
None of this added up: the convoy the USS Permit, HMS Artful and every available strike aircraft had gone to attack represented fifty to sixty percent of all the enemy — well, former Soviet — naval assets detected in the theatre and therefore, probably in the whole World. Those assets were being fed into a meat grinder and once they were gone, they were gone forever and the Allied forces massed in the Eastern Mediterranean would be free to dominate those seas. What sane commander sacrificed the bulk of his navy just to sneak two obsolete big gun ships into a position where they could bombard Malta? It only made sense if the naval assets the Allies had identified were either, only a small part of the enemy’s strength, or, the enemy did not care about losing those ships because that was the critical element of his deception…
Oh God…
What if? No, that wasn’t impossible! That was insane!
What if Cyprus was no more than the low fruit hanging invitingly in the distance that the enemy had known the Allies could not resist plucking? What if the target all along had been Malta? No, without real naval power nobody could hold Malta overlong but perhaps, that wasn’t the objective either…
But seize Malta — even for a few days or hours — and the whole Allied war effort must inevitably shift a thousand miles west from Cyprus. Seize Malta and the Allies would have no choice but to abandon the Eastern Mediterranean, indefinitely at first, but perhaps for years thereafter.
He still did not understand what was wrong about that line of thinking.
And then he had a nightmare insight into the mind of his enemy: he had been so carried away with the enemy’s application of the principles of Maskirovska that he had accepted the overarching strategic assumption of the recent months; that Red Dawn was everything, and all that remained of the Soviet State. What if Red Dawn itself that was nothing more than smoke and mirrors? What if what he was actually dealing with was the nascent Soviet State, or at least that segment of its military-industrial complex which had survived the cataclysm?
If that was the case what possible strategic imperative did attacking, let alone seizing Malta — which he was now convinced was the logical corollary to the naval bombardment — serve the greater good of whatever remained of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics?
None! None whatsoever!
His mind turned back to his original analysis.
His mindset was wrong.
If Malta was being attacked to force the abandonment of Operation Grantham; the real question was why did Cyprus matter so much to the enemy?
The sudden stark clarity of his thoughts gave him no satisfaction.
His was the generation of leaders who had sleep-walked towards Armageddon in October 1962. It was apparent that he had learned nothing from the tragedy of recent history. He had been obsessed with the idea he was confronting zealots and maniacs, berserkers; when in fact all along he had been opposed by patient men to whom revenge was a dish savoured ice cold, cold like the wintery steppes of the Mother Country. Those same men had nearly succeeded in fomenting war between America and the United Kingdom, men to whom the sacrifice of thousands, or millions was grist to the mill if it facilitated the onward march of their perverted Marxist-Leninist ambitions.
The next salvo of four six hundred and sixty-six pound 11-inch high explosive shells fired from the antique battlecruiser Yavuz screamed down in a two hundred yard long line diagonally across Ta’Qali airfield.
Julian Christopher rested his hands on the parapet high on the sheer walls of the Citadel and tried very hard to think of a good reason why he should not throw himself over the precipice.
“Sir!”
The Commander-in-Chief heard the voice from afar.
Committing suicide was not the act of an honourable man; not at the height of a crisis. He would revisit the option later, if he was still alive later.
“Yes, what is it?” He inquired with a crisp businesslike authority that belied the black despair gripping his soul. A man only showed his true mettle in his darkest hour.
“HMS Yarmouth is reporting sixty plus bandits approaching the archipelago from the north-west, sir.”
“Do we have voice communications with Yarmouth?”
“Sporadically, sir. There’s pretty fierce jamming…”
Julian Christopher determined that he had brooded long enough for one day. He swept off the ramparts like a leopard with his eyes fixed on his next meal. It did not matter how the Soviets had done it, he would leave that discussion to the historians who would pore over his blunders in the years to come. What was important was that very soon now hundreds, possibly thousands of Soviet paratroopers were going to be spilling from the bellies of the incoming ‘bandits’.
Chapter 42
Nobody on the Maltese Archipelago with memories of the siege of the islands in the Second World War hesitated when they heard the shriek of the battlecruiser’s opening broadside rend the heavens.
Marija Christopher and her sister-in-law Rosa Calleja had been in the small kitchen of the married quarters above Kalkara Creek when they recognised the dreadful harbinger. They had been gossiping, giggling. One moment Rosa had been gently teasing her sister about how much she very, very obviously loved married life, the next moment they were huddling together under the table. Their minds worked quickly with a pragmatism that would have been familiar to a survivor of the London Blitz, but utterly inexplicable to somebody with no experience or family memory of having been under sustained bombardment.
Firstly, hearing the sound of falling bombs or of shellfire — initially it does not matter who is shooting or dropping the bombs — one finds the nearest cover.
Secondly, once under cover — any cover will do — one asks how close the bombs or shells are falling? And: Do I have time to get to a proper bomb shelter?
Thirdly, one gets to the nearest shelter.
Marija and Rosa clung to each other under the kitchen table.
“They must be attacking the docks or Luqa?” Rosa speculated. It did not matter who ‘they’ were; less still why it was happening.
“Yes, over that way,” Marija agreed.
The young women were afraid but calm, their thoughts turning hurriedly as they worked through the possibilities and decided what to do next.
“The nearest shelter is just around the corner but it was locked up years ago,” Rosa explained. Her local knowledge of these things was ten times better than her sister’s. Marija had been brought up in Sliema; Rosa had lived in Kalkara for over two years.
“Aren’t their caves on the ridge where the old anti-aircraft guns used to be?” Marija suggested, wondering if her memory was playing tricks on her.
“Yes.” Rosa hesitated. “We’d have to go past the sheds where…”
The first big explosions were followed by a gap of at least two minutes.
And then the insane runaway express train screeching rushed overhead again and there was an avalanche of distant detonations. Down on the floor the women felt the earth flinch with the impacts. Crockery rattled faintly in the cupboards.