For several seconds no man stirred.
“Excuse me, sir,” Colin Dempsey growled. His recent experiences dealing with senior officers had deadened his instinctive deference to rank. Notwithstanding that he held the officers in the room in high respect; he was less impressed with the standard of the political direction under which they had been operating in his time in Washington DC. From what he had seen the Administration badly needed to get a grip, and Congressmen and Senators alike were behaving like there had never been a Cuban Missiles War and as if the bloody battles in the streets of the capital city had been some kind of minor local difficulty hardly worthy of their consideration.
Nor did he like the conditionality of the ‘guarantees’ the Administration had given to the British; they sounded like accidents waiting to happen and seemed to ignore vital long-term US strategic interests. Like for example, the safeguarding of Arabian oil supplies; the ongoing communist insurgencies in half-a-dozen sub-Saharan countries — among them Namibia, Mozambique, Somalia, the former Belgian Congo — and in North Africa. The Secretary of State had not even mentioned Korea, which troubled him more than somewhat.
As for the comments about gain access for American corporations to win ‘salvage contracts’ in the war damaged lands; did he honestly believe that the British were going to allow ‘foreigners’ on their, or any of the destroyed lands of their former allies, on what Wall Street was already touting as ‘treasure hunts’. He viewed Fulbright’s assertions about re-construction contracts and woolly asides about ‘lend lease’ type deals to facilitate the same as unadulterated wishful thinking that bordered on being pure hogwash. Basically, the sort of thing a career politician who had never held down a proper job in his entire life said because basically, he did not know any better. If the US Treasury actually had serious money to spare after it had reversed the ‘peace dividend’ cuts, it ought to be spent in America!
“Carry on General Dempsey,” Fulbright invited, perhaps sensing that he had over-tested the old soldier’s credulity.
The Washingtonian determined to restrict his ‘questions’ to those pertinent to his own profession.
“The last time I was called back to do my yearly thirty days ‘reserve time’ I was sent over to Bremerton to moderate a war game based on the premise that the Soviets, or their regional surrogates, were threatening the Saudi Arabian oilfields and the British refineries on Abadan Island.”
The Secretary of State nodded, reminded of the conversations he had recently had with the US Ambassador in Riyadh — who had been, he judged, somewhat complacent — and the exchange of telegrams he had subsequently had with Thomas Barger, the Chief Executive Officer of the Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco), who had been anything but sanguine about what he described as ‘America’s hugely weakened post-war and post Battle of Washington’ position in the region. At his request Barger had flown back to New York where the two men had spent an evening discussing the oilman’s concerns. Basically, the Saudi Arabians — their economic development already severely curtailed by the post-war fall in the price of oil and the massive global reduction in demand for that oil — had been badly shaken by what had happened in Washington in December. Those events had suddenly brought into brutally sharp focus the absence of American GIs, aircraft and warships in the Middle East. Who was to keep the peace between the Shah to the Kingdom’s north across the waters of the Persian Gulf, and between Egypt, awash with modern Soviet weapons fired up with Islamic fervour, Egypt’s some time ally Syria and the well-armed, pugnacious loose cannon of the young Israeli State? What was America’s policy? Did America have a policy and after the insurrection at the heart of her government and what weight should the Kingdom place on its word?
These were all very good and very pressing questions!
Nevertheless, the Administration had decided to draw in its horns. There were British forces in the Middle East, albeit not strong forces, they ought to be sufficient to hold the line, or at least provide a ‘trip wire’. All the belligerents knew the British had nuclear weapons and a sizable navy.
As for Dempsey’s elliptical question about what would happen if ‘the Soviets’ invaded Iran and or Iraq; well, that was so fanciful as to be ridiculous. There was no ‘Soviet threat’, and any attempt to conflate the chaos and terroristic confusion in Turkey and elsewhere in Asia Minor with a credible ‘threat’ to the oilfields of the region was laughable.
“That’s an old scenario,” General ‘Johnny’ Johnson observed, clearly keen to quash this nonsense so that the meeting could move on to more important business. “Our best intelligence discounts the intervention of a third party. The British are currently dealing with what appears to be a widespread terroristic insurgency in the Mediterranean. As for ‘the Soviets’, they don’t exist anymore!”
Dempsey frowned.
Presently, he became aware that Curtis LeMay was studying his face, and drew comfort from the knowledge that there was at least one other person in the room who was prepared to think the unthinkable, no matter how unpalatable it might be.
The old soldier sighed.
“Before the rebellion in DC our best intelligence was that there was no warning of what was about to happen, sir,” he said quietly.
Chapter 55
It was a disaster! Worse, it was a disaster that Miranda Sullivan ought to have seen coming for days. It was not as if she had not been warned. Vincent Meredith, Sam Brenckmann and Sabrina Henschal’s dead-eyed private investigator cum attorney had cautioned her, told her in no uncertain terms that the only thing to do was to lie low until the press pack moved onto its next victim. But oh, no, she had known better and been far too mulishly proud to listen and now what ought to have been a quiet, poorly attended press call about the dates and venues for the first formal sessions of the California Civil Rights Forum, had turned into a three-ring circus!
And not just any three-ring circus!
This was bedlam, Barnum and Bailey on Benzedrine!
Nobody wanted to talk about civil rights; all the bastards wanted to talk about was Sam Brenckmann, Johnny Seiffert, the fire at The Troubadour, the corrupt cop Reggie O’Connell and a man called Doug Weston whom she had never met. Moreover, they did not just want to know about the aforementioned; they wanted to know which ones of them she had slept with, taken drugs with, and or committed any federally indictable offences with!