Tom Harding-Grayson spoke first.
He was angry, very angry which was not at all like him.
“The bloody Argentine has invaded the bloody Falkland Islands, Margaret!” He blurted the instant normal civilities had been completed.
“It is a bad show,” William Whitelaw concurred. His own outrage was somewhat muted by another, apparently inconsequential coincidental note which had been flashed to his chief of staff as he was getting ready to join the Foreign Secretary for the short walk to their leader’s lair. “A very bad show, but there’s something else.”
“Oh, that!” Tom Harding-Grayson sighed.
“It is probably nothing,” the Defence Secretary went on, unconvincingly. “But we haven’t been able to make contact with Malta for over three hours.”
“Is that unusual?” The Prime Minister inquired, waving her colleagues to hard chairs around a pitted and warped table of significant antiquity and unknown provenance which had already been in the room when she moved in five weeks ago.
“Yes,” said the hang-dog faced man whom in their short partnership in Government Margaret Thatcher had come to trust implicitly. “And no. But three hours is a long time.”
Sir Henry Tomlinson quietly cleared his throat.
“Routine checks are made every twenty to thirty minutes, Prime Minister, by the Command Communications Post at Cheltenham. If there is a problem Cheltenham notifies the Signals Corps at the Joint Command Centre at Chilmark. Chilmark has not received the mid-day SITREP, er, Situation Report, today. It concerns me that communications appear to have broken down only hours before our troops are scheduled to go ashore on Cyprus.”
The Foreign Secretary did not still think that a ‘technical’ problem trumped his outrage.
“A lot of the communications equipment in the Med has been untrustworthy since Red Dawn set off those damned airbursts a couple of months ago!” Tom Harding-Grayson observed waspishly.
“Actually,” the Defence Secretary objected mildly, “after those attacks Admiral Christopher allocated a very high priority to replacing faulty or damaged equipment and the maintaining of secure, reliable links both within theatre and with the home base, Tom.”
“I’m sure we’ll find out what’s broken soon enough, Willie.” The Foreign Secretary found it impossible to be acerbic with the amiably capable Member of Parliament for Penrith and the Border. The man was a perfect, gentle gentleman and a bastion of restraint and reason in the Angry Widow’s increasingly boisterous Cabinet. “What are we going to do about the bloody Falklands?”
Margaret Thatcher was a little perplexed.
She was picking up completely different signals from her Cabinet Secretary and Willie Whitelaw on the one hand, and the Foreign Secretary on the other. Since she implicitly trusted the judgement of all three men, this was of itself deeply worrying. The other thing that worried her was that, off the top of her head she was not entirely sure she knew where the Falkland Islands were; somewhere in the Atlantic?
“The Falkland Islands, Tom?” She asked.
“The Argentine calls them Las Malvinas. The Argentineans claim they settled the islands in 1831 and we stole them in 1833. Most of the people on the island; who call themselves ‘Kelpers’ are of Welsh and Scottish stock, or the descendents of whalers or of British sailors down the ages.”
“How many people are we talking about?”
“Oh, around a couple of thousand.”
“Oh, I see.” Plainly, the Prime Minister did not see and this infuriated her friend.
“The Argentineans were deeply offended when we used the islands as an oiling stop for many of the ships of the Australasian Operation Manna convoys,” the Foreign Secretary explained. “At the time Mr Heath was rightly somewhat derisive about their objections.”
Margaret Thatcher’s immediate concerns had eased when she realised Tom Harding-Grayson was getting excited about the fate of only two thousand British subjects. She was constantly focused on the wellbeing of tens of millions of British subjects, and besides, she still could not — with any confidence, let alone certitude — place the Falkland Islands on the map.
“Did we know the Argentineans were going to invade?”
“They’ve been making noises,” the Defence Secretary told her. “Overflying the islands and interfering with the South Atlantic Whale Fishery, although that industry is in decline anyway. The, er, guard ship, HMS Protector is currently investigating reports of an unauthorised landing by Argentine Marines from an Argentinean warship on South Georgia at the whaling station at Grytviken. She is currently a day’s steaming away from that place…”
“We simply cannot let this go unchallenged!” Tom Harding-Grayson complained.
“No, of course not,” Margaret Thatcher agreed emolliently. “But first things first, Tom. All available resources must be made available to Admiral Christopher in the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean is the key theatre of operations.” Falkland Islands — Argentina? South Atlantic — whale hunting? That sounded like the opposite end of the World? “We must be pragmatic. After Operation Grantham has achieved all its objectives and we have established the true extent, dependability and durability of our re-found alliance with the United States, we will have plenty of time to look at the desirability and or the practicalities of remedying the situation in the South Atlantic. We’ll talk about it again once things have resolved themselves in the Mediterranean.” She looked to her Defence Secretary. “I can tell that you are worried about this breakdown in communications with Malta, Willie?”
“Yes,” he replied flatly.
“Have we talked to the Americans?”
“They just think we’re keeping them in the dark, Prime Minister,” Tom Harding-Grayson complained. “I spoke to the Ambassador before I came over. Walter Brenckmann promised to get straight on the hot line to Philadelphia. I think he was as worried as Willie about this break down in communications.”
There was a heavy knock at the door.
A huge Royal Marine stomped into the room and came to attention.
“The American Ambassador is outside, Ma’am!”
Margaret Thatcher rolled her eyes.
How many times do I have to tell the AWPs that I am to be addressed either as ‘Mrs Thatcher’ or as ‘Prime Minister’? I am not a member of the Royal Family!
“Please show Captain Brenckmann in without delay.”
There was more stamping of booted feet.
Loud voices in the corridor.
Captain Walter Brenckmann, USNR, came in. Dapper, greying and trim in his civilian weeds he was calm in that way a policeman is coolly collected when he knocks on a door to deliver very bad news.
He looked around the room, nodding acknowledgements.
He came straight to the point.
“Malta is under attack from the sea and the air.”
Chapter 47
It had not taken Commander Peter Christopher very long to work out that if he manoeuvred close enough to the coast, the range-finding radars of the big ships standing several miles out to sea lost Talavera in the background returns from the shore. Or at least that was his theory. His initial instinct had been to get as far out to sea as possible but then he had realised the big ships had not actually been shooting at Talavera during her escape from the Grand Harbour, and once the destroyer was free to manuever in the open sea beyond the imprisoning breakwaters he had had a chance to reassess matters. Things were clearer now that the radar plot had given him his first glimpse of the true ‘tactical situation’, as his instructors at Dartmouth would have described it only a handful of years ago in a very different and infinitely less cruel World.