James Philip
The Pillars of Hercules
Author’s Note
‘The Pillars of Hercules’ is Book 3 of the alternative history series Timeline 10/27/62.
It is December 1963 in a world in which the ‘swinging sixties’ never happened. Soviet brinkmanship in basing missiles on Cuba led to a nuclear war at the end of October 1962 and the survivors are still coming to terms with the new reality of the post cataclysm epoch.
The Ancient Greeks called the Straits of Gibraltar the ‘Pillars of Hercules’. The Rock of Gibraltar was the northern pillar; with Monte Hacho in Ceuta its probable southern analogue. To the ancients the Pillars of Hercules delineated the western end of the known Mediterranean World. Beyond lay the limitless, impassable vastness of the Atlantic; wherein lay monsters…
When does paranoia become justifiable suspicion? When the CIA is implicated in the attempted assassination of the British Royal Family? When United States aircraft attack two British destroyers off the coast of Northern Spain and take part in a devastating surprise raid on the Maltese Archipelago? Taken together with the belligerence of General Franco’s government over Gibraltar and the sabre-rattling of the new fascist regime in Italy, recent events suddenly assume the proportions of a Machiavellian American plot to hammer the final nail into the coffin of the British Empire.
In England the hard-pressed United Kingdom Interim Emergency Administration is struggling to feed and house its survivors; and every time it tries to talk to the Kennedy Administration nobody is available to take its call.
On Malta hundreds are dead and thousands injured. Bunker-busting bombs have destroyed practically every key headquarters building; sunken British warships lie in the oil-fouled waters of the Grand Harbour and Sliema Creek, and the medical facilities of the island have been overwhelmed.
Off the Straits of Gibraltar a Royal Navy carrier battle group is fending off mass attacks by the antiquated aircraft of the Spanish Air Force and harrying Franco’s army and navy as they press around the beleaguered Rock, while far out at sea the Royal Navy’s one nuclear powered attack submarine, HMS Dreadnought, is playing a deadly game of cat and mouse with two US Navy submarines.
Britain and the United States of America are a heartbeat away from war. Never have two nations been so grievously separated by their common language. It is as if every word the former allies say to each other is being passed through a filter that translates ‘peace’ into ‘war’.
The Timeline 10/27/62 — Main Series is:
Book 1: Operation Anadyr
Book 2: Love is Strange
Book 3: The Pillars of Hercules
Book 4: Red Dawn (Available 1st May 2015)
Book 5: The Burning Time (Available 1st July 2015)
Later in 2015 the first two books in the Timeline 10/27/62 — USA Series will be published:
Book 1: Aftermath (Available 27th October 2015)
Book 2: California Dreaming (Available 27th October 2015)
Personal notes to my readers: firstly, thank you for reading this book; and secondly, please remember that this is a work of fiction. I made it up in my own head. None of the characters in ‘The Pillars of Hercules — Book 3 of the ‘Timeline 10/27/62 Series’ — are based on real people I know of, or have ever met. Nor do the specific events described in ‘The Pillars of Hercules — Book 3 of the ‘Timeline 10/27/62 Series’ — have, to my knowledge, any basis in real events I know to have taken place. Any resemblance to real life people or events is, therefore, unintended and entirely coincidental.
The ‘Timeline 10/27/62 Series’ is an alternative history of the modern world and because of this real historical characters are referenced and in some cases their words and actions form significant parts of the narrative. I have no way of knowing for sure if these real, historical figures would have spoken thus, or acted in the ways I depict them acting. Any word I place in the mouth of a real historical figure, and any action which I attribute to them after 27th October 1962 never actually happened. As I always say in my Author’s Notes to my readers, I made it up in my own head.
As with real historical characters, real historical ships and other military units are treated in a documentary — where they were and as they were deployed — fashion up to and including 27th October 1962. Thereafter, all bets are off because in this post cataclysm timeline, everything changes.
The books of the Timeline 10/27/62 series are written as episodes; they are instalments in a contiguous narrative arc. The individual ‘episodes’ each explore a number of plot branches, and develop themes continuously from book to book. Inevitably, in any series some exposition and extemporization is unavoidable but I try — honestly, I do — to keep this to a minimum as it tends to slow down the flow of the stories I am telling.
In writing each successive addition to the Timeline 10/27/62 ‘verse’ it is my implicit assumption that my readers will have read the previous books in the series in sequence, and that my readers do not want their reading experience to be overly impacted by excessive re-hashing of the events in previous books.
Humbly, I suggest that if you are ‘hooked’ by the Timeline 10/27/62 series that reading the books in sequence will — most likely — enhance your enjoyment of the experience.
Chapter 1
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the thirty-fifth President of the Unites States of America, peered blearily into his younger brother’s face. He heard the words, and saw his lips moving but for a long time nothing registered. The crippling stomach cramps, weariness and the cloying lassitude had hit him almost as soon as he’d got back from Texas where he’d gone to make the ‘Moon Speech’. He’d had a bad feeling about going back to Rice University, and an even worse feeling all that day — Friday 22nd November — before he’d stepped up to the lectern. It was almost as if somebody had been walking on his grave. At the time he’d put his misgivings down to the cocktail of drugs his doctors had fed him to keep him on his feet. He’d been depressed and troubled that first time he’d met Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna in June 1961. The Soviet leader must have thought he was dealing with a sulky kid who’d rather have been somewhere else. Was it any wonder that the Soviets hadn’t known when to stop pushing over Cuba?
“Jack, we’ve got a problem…”
The most powerful man in the world didn’t want to hear that. He’d ordered the immolation of untold scores of millions last year. Ever since then his flawed body and his broken soul had been tortured by an insidious inner voice that reminded him — every waking moment of his cursed life — that he’d failed…everybody. When he’d unleashed the fiery hounds of Hell on America’s enemies he’d believed that soon he, and everything that was dear to him would be swept away. He’d thought his death was inevitable; that he’d made the least possible worst choice. He’d reconciled himself to the dreadful truth that if he was to save some small part of America, and preserve something of what was great about America, war was unavoidable. Knowing that he wouldn’t live to walk in the ruins of the World that was about to burn had been oddly comforting that late evening in October 1962. He’d have liked to have sat with Jackie and the kids one last time but they’d been on their way to Hyannis Port by then; he’d have liked to have received the last rites but as he waited with other Cabinet members in the White House Situation Room that night it wouldn’t have been appropriate, or seemly. He among all men, as the Commander-in-Chief, had owed it to the others to deny his own mortality. If he was without hope then why should any man follow him into the jaws of death?