When Curtis Lemay heard about the unplanned State of the Union Address he’d almost certainly think his plan was about to come to fruition.
He might even think he’d already won.
Chapter 15
Samuel Calleja blinked into the violent dazzle of the arc lights illuminating the wreckage in Dock № 1. He placed his hands on his hips, gagged on a yawn and shook his head. HMS Torquay lay on her side in the now drained dock. Pumping had only just started when the bomb, either a five hundred or a thousand-pounder had exploded between the wall and the frigate’s starboard side next to her engine room spaces inflicting catastrophic structural damage. Detonating so close alongside the dock wall the destructive power of the bomb had been multiplied several times by exactly the same kind of hydro-dynamic compressive forces that Barnes Wallis had exploited to design a bomb to knock down the great dams of the Ruhr Valley in 1943. Except, in this instance, those effects had been at play on the thin side plating of an unarmoured hull, not several hundred thousand tons of solid brick and concrete. The blast had blown in a twenty foot long section of hull from the level of the main deck to the vessel’s keel and probably broken HMS Torquay’s back. The ship had capsized within seconds and over fifty men — some thirty naval personnel and over twenty mostly native Maltese dockyard workers had been trapped in the wreck. Thus far only eleven bodies had been cut out of the hulk although now that the dock had been drained — a second bomb which had exploded in French Creek had killed two men in the pump house and severed most of the power cables to the electric motors working the pumps — they’d belatedly been able to start a compartment by compartment search. Realistically, it was a search for more bodies; over forty-eight hours after the disaster there was no realistic hope of finding anybody else alive.
“I thought I’d find you here, son,” said the familiar voice as a hand patted his back.
Sam Calleja half-turned and gave his father a wintery smile.
“This would never have happened if the British had left us in peace after the war,” he said sourly.
“Which war?” The older man inquired wryly. There was no member of his family who’d been more pro-British before the October War than Sam. He attributed the remark to tiredness. “The Crimean War, the Great War…”
His eldest son shook his head as his lips became a thin white line across his grim-smeared face.
“Joe and your sister have gone back to Mdina now,” his father told him. “The British have asked Dottoressa Seiffert to set up an emergency hospital at Fort Pembroke. Marija went back to Mdina to collect a few things.”
The nightmare of the attack was slowly fading now.
The bombs had exploded in and around HMS Agincourt moored in Sliema Creek less than three hundred yards away from where Peter Calleja, his wife and daughter had been drinking coffee and enjoying the mild dusk. Dozens of people had been walking on the sea front. He’d heard the approaching scream of jet engines, seen the flash of the first detonation and bundled his wife and daughter to the ground, desperately attempted to shelter them from the bullet and shrapnel-filled air. He’d been the most surprised and the most relieved man on Earth when afterwards he’d realised that none of them had received so much as a scratch. Nearby, men and women, and a child, a girl of perhaps four or five, lay or sat on the pavement, bleeding, too shocked or too badly injured to move. Marija had been a revelation. She’d gone first to the girl child, established she was splashed with blood and traumatised but otherwise unharmed. Peter’s wife had comforted the child while her daughter went among the dead and the wounded, calling for help, directing dazed passersby to staunch wounds and to help her move casualties under cover. And then the big bombs had landed within the ancient ramparts of Fort Manoel with ear-splitting concussions and smoke, dust and the screams of the dead and the dying had seemed to drift across the oil-fouled waters of Sliema Creek like a malignant miasma. It had been nearly two hours before an Army doctor with a small team of orderlies arrived on the waterfront. Peter Calleja had no idea how many lives his daughter had saved by then. Yesterday morning his wife had burned Marija’s blood-stained dress; partly because the garment was ruined forever, but mostly to try and expunge the horrible memories of the sights and sounds they’d witnessed the previous evening.
Peter Calleja had good reason to be proud of his children. He was a lucky man and every morning he reminded himself of the fact. He remembered the day Samuel; his first born had followed him into the dockyards as if it was yesterday. Until Friday evening when Marija had woven her magical spell and created a pool of order out of a scene of utter chaos and stupefying suffering he’d honestly believed nothing could, or would equal his pride of that day. Now Sam was an under-manager; in ten years he’d be doing his job as Dockyard Supervisor. Like father like son, the one following the other into the family business. Not that the old Naval Dockyards straggling around the creeks of the Grand Harbour were anybody’s family business. In 1959 the Royal Navy had leased them to a firm registered in Monmouthshire, South Wales called Bailey (Malta) Limited, which in the period leading up the October War had managed the docks like feudal absentee landlords. In those days the British had been stepping aside, gently winding down towards granting Malta independence and the Royal Navy had seemed happy to allow the old Admiralty yards to slowly descend into a kind of benevolent anarchy ahead of Maltese independence, scheduled for sometime in 1964. Everything had changed in the last year and the docks had been re-nationalised under direct Admiralty control. There had been talk of prosecuting several of the former directors of Bailey (Malta) Limited for financial irregularities discovered by Royal Navy auditors but nothing had yet come of those rumours. Peter Calleja had had mixed feelings about little Malta trying to go it alone in the World; the chaos in the dockyards had seemed to him like an ill portent of what was likely to follow in the first years of independence and he hadn’t looked forward to the prospect. He yawned, ran a hand through his thinning dark hair.
Peter Calleja looked at his thirty-one year old son, barely able to contain his paternal pride. Sam had been a troubled, solitary child with nightmares about the 1945 war but he’d grown into a fine man. Sam was the spitting image of him when he was the same age, sparsely built and tall, dedicated to his career and his family although his mother would only be happy when Sam and his wife, Rosa, a beautiful girl from an old Maltese family finally produced their first child. Peter and his wife were beginning to despair of ever holding their first grandchild in their arms. Especially, since Joe didn’t seem to be the marrying kind, or at least if he was he wasn’t in any hurry, and Marija, well, Marija might never bear at child… That thought deeply pained her parents; although not a day passed when they didn’t thank merciful God for the miracle of her life. They’d so nearly lost her all those years ago and later having to watch her imprisoned in a hospital cot, unable to walk had been the cruellest of tortures. To see Marija now, so young and beautiful, so full of vitality and living her life to the full was answer enough for their years of prayer. To witness Sam becoming a man to be reckoned with in the dockyards, well respected, made the trials of recent times bearable. He just wished Sam and Marija hadn’t fallen out. What did it matter if Sam’s new wife had airs and graces? Why did Marija have to flaunt her political activities in front of her brother when she knew, full well, that Sam had never shown the remotest interest in any of that stuff?