The Secretary of State took a deep breath.
“Forgive my intemperance, Captain. These are troubled times.”
“Yes, they are, sir. I repeat my earlier question; are you personally in receipt of any of the reports I sent you in the last month?”
“I wouldn’t necessarily be on the circulation list for reports from a Naval Attaché, Captain Brenckmann…”
“These reports were of a nature where the recipient lower down the food chain would automatically pass them to his or her boss, and so on until they reached the desk of at least an Assistant Secretary of State, sir. I suggest you urgently look into who has been sitting on, or variously misdirecting or diverting diplomatic traffic between the Cheltenham Embassy and your Department. The first thing I heard when I began meeting my British counterparts, and later when I joined the Embassy Staff within the United Kingdom Interim Emergency Administration compound at Cheltenham, was that communication with the State and Navy Departments seemed to be unduly ‘spotty’, and that important cables often ‘got lost’. Moreover, I was surprised to discover that there seemed to be no meaningful contacts between the British intelligence agencies and the CIA. Granted, at my pay grade I don’t see the ‘big picture’ as well as you gentlemen in DC, but frankly, sirs,” Walter Brenckmann concluded, quietly scathing, “the whole situation stank to me. If our great country had had a professional diplomat in post as Ambassador rather than a disinterested political place man, somebody in Washington might have noticed we had a problem in England.”
The President’s brother leaned forward, his face creased with undirected anger.
“This is Bobby Kennedy, Captain Brenckmann,” he declared, realising how hostile he sounded only after the event. “What are you alleging; that somebody is intercepting diplomatic mail?”
“I’m not alleging anything, Mister Attorney General. I’m simply telling you what it looks like from over here. If communications are being subverted then we’re not talking about a ‘somebody’, we’re talking about a multi-level conspiracy by several people possibly in senior positions in several departments in Washington and elsewhere.”
The President’s younger brother allowed himself several seconds to process this information and to glimpse the implications.
“You think somebody wants another war, don’t you?” He said, thinking out a loud. “Is that what you are saying, Captain Brenckmann?”
“No,” the other man said patiently, irritated by the Attorney General’s lack of intellectual rigor. While ‘somebody’ might want to start another war, that was a leap in the dark. What seemed more ‘likely’ was that ‘somebody’ was trying to sour relations between the two World military powers who’d survived the October War. Perhaps, ‘somebody’ hoped for another war but if they did then that would be effect, rather than cause and it was the ‘cause’ that was the thing everybody needed to focus upon if they were going to unravel the conundrum. “I honestly don’t know what’s going on. However, I do think that somebody ought to try to find out before it is too late.”
But it was already too late.
Bobby Kennedy had just had an apotheosis; suddenly it was possible that everything that had happened in the last thirteen months wasn’t really his, Jack’s, or anybody in the Administration’s fault. There might have been a conspiracy. Camelot had been undermined and betrayed by dark forces from outside. Now that he thought about it, it seemed so blindingly obvious he couldn’t believe he hadn’t worked it out before. A crushing weight had lifted off his conscience; it was as if he’d confessed his adultery to his priest and he’d been granted unconditional absolution…
Chapter 20
Captain Nathan Zabriski was still dressed in his flying suit. A nasty-looking gash over his right eye — which was mottled blue, swollen and almost shut — had been sutured, and his right arm was in a sling. When Vice-Admiral Sir Julian Wemyss Christopher, Commander-in-Chief of all British and Commonwealth Forces in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations strode into the room the young United States Air Force navigator staggered hurtfully to his feet, removed his damaged arm from the sling and attempted to form what turned out to be a surprisingly crisp salute.
Julian Christopher returned the salute.
“Sit down, Captain,” the older man directed irritably.
The young American remained on his feet, swaying, struggling to stand to attention.
“Zabriski, Captain Nathan Tobias, service number…”
“Oh, for goodness sake!” Julian Christopher snapped irascibly. “Sit down before you fall down!” There were about a dozen chairs in the guard house mess room of Pembroke Fort, where he’d determined that the American prisoners of war would be quarantined. There was no requirement in international law to treat the eight American and three Italian airmen as POWs. Nobody had declared war on anybody; if he’d wanted to he could have had them lined up against a wall and shot as common criminals. Now he was alone in the room with one of the men who’d wreaked such dreadful havoc and killed and maimed so many innocent people three days ago. “Do you know who I am?”
The young American was aching to jump to his feet and salute again.
“Admiral Christopher, sir!”
“Good.” The older man nodded, tried to ignore the tendrils of exhaustion which twisted in his mind and choked his thoughts. “Good. When this is all over,” he went on, “I want you to remember that despite the fact that you and your comrades are personally responsible for the deaths — confirmed so far — of at least six hundred and seventeen members of the British Armed Forces, and the cold blooded murder of at least three hundred and seventy-eight civilians,” he looked the boy in the eye, “that you and your comrades were treated decently by your British captors.” He breathed a shuddering sigh. “In the absence of a declaration of war between our two countries you are, strictly speaking, a war criminal liable to the contingencies of summary justice. However, by my order you will continue to be accorded all rights mandated by the Geneva and other conventions recognised by the United Kingdom in time of war until such time as you are repatriated.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You are the senior prisoner. Have you and your people received medical treatment for your injuries?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Have you been fed and watered?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Have you been mistreated by British or Commonwealth military personnel or by Maltese civilians?”
“No, sir!”
Julian Christopher rose stiffly to his feet and stalked out of the room without saying another word or looking back. He’d spoken of the bald figures for the dead thus far. As many as three hundred souls, mostly British service personnel were still missing in the ruins of Fort St Angelo, Fort St Elmo, HMS Phoenicia and the command bunkers penetrated or collapsed by the big bombs dropped by the B-52s. Over fifteen hundred people had been seriously injured, countless others traumatised. There had been no warning, no chance to take cover. One minute there had been peace, the next minute the bombs were falling.
The walking wounded in their hundreds, uncounted, were trying to go about their daily business. Makeshift dressing stations, field hospitals and surgical operating units had been established to take the pressure off the main hospitals. One such had been set up at the Pembroke Barracks with the assistance of Dr Margo Seiffert and her small army of remarkable auxiliary nurses. Julian Christopher had been astonished to learn — from Lieutenant Alan Hannay, the font of all knowledge — that all the blue-uniformed nurses had been trained by Dottoressa Seiffert at St Catherine’s Hospital for Women in Mdina. The hospital had become Margo’s life’s work in the years since he’d last known her; and the training of young women rejected by the ‘official’ health apparatus of the Archipelago, like Marija Calleja, her personal crusade. That Margo could magic virtually out of thin air a cadre of around twenty professional nurses to run an emergency hospital at, literally, three hours notice very nearly defied belief.