This said the Prime Minister went back to his seat hoping against hope to compose his thoughts before Speedbird 712 reached its destination. It was a forlorn hope.
“May I speak with you, sir,” Dick White asked, his tone indicating that he might have been reading Edward Heath’s mind.
“Of course. Take a pew, Dick.”
“Thank you,” the tall spymaster murmured, sitting down in the seat across the aisle from the Prime Minister. He’d had very few dealings with Edward Heath prior to the October War. The Head of MI6 didn’t usually have much reason to socialise with the Government’s Chief Whip, or the Lord Privy Seal in peace time. The Premier had spent most of the year before the war travelling around Europe attempting to negotiate the United Kingdom’s entry into the European Common Market, the child of the European Coal and Steel Community masterminded after the 1945 war by Jon Paul Monet to ensure that France and Germany would henceforth be too economically inter-dependent to ever got to war against each other again. The Prime Minister had been a passionate believer in a European pipe dream; the ultimate antidote to quell all fears of future continental wars like the 1914-18 and the 1939-45 bloodlettings. The October War had destroyed his dreams of a better, safer World, stolen from him most of the things he loved and yet he persevered, and he still believed in decency and justice in international affairs. He was in many ways far too moral a man to be entrusted with power in a World that had taken a step back into the dark ages. “I thought you ought to know that the situation in Washington is,” he shrugged, “increasingly opaque.”
Edward Heath smiled wanly.
“Opaque, Dick?”
“The people at Langley believe that ‘mopping up operations’ are in progress but other reports indicate virtual anarchy. I strongly suggest we divert to a safer location until such time as we have a better feel for what is going on…”
The Prime Minister shook his head.
“Our respective navies are shadow boxing in the Western Approaches. We have no idea what the Spanish will do next. Who knows what other atrocities might be committed against our territories in the Mediterranean. I don’t know if I care for this Red Dawn nonsense but it gives us a plausible pretext to engage again with our former friends in Washington — those who survive, that is — and I intend to clasp it with both hands very much in the manner that a drowning man will cling to anything that comes within his reach. I cannot do that if we land at New York or Quebec, or Boston. If we get shot down over Washington, Jim Callaghan and Margaret Thatcher will have to carry on.” He ran a hand through his hair. “And that is my final word on the subject.”
The spymaster accepted this without further comment.
“Red Dawn,” he said, leaning across the aisle so that he didn’t broadcast his meaning beyond the hearing of the two men. The airliner was less than half-full. Other than the Prime Minister and his ten man delegation, the only other passengers were sixteen Royal Marines in full combat kit and armed to the teeth, and seven plain clothes Police Special Branch officers responsible for Edward Heath’s personal security. Dick White and his master sat in a small oasis in the mid-section of the aircraft with nobody nearby. “Red Dawn,” he repeated, “may be a chimera but if it exists in anything like the manifestation I have had described to me, then it offers not only an explanation of some of the more troubling and inflammatory recent events,” he hesitated, took an intuitive leap, “it offers a subtext that our American ‘friends’ might embrace. Red Dawn may well be our only common ground with the Kennedy Administration.”
Edward Heath contemplated this stark realisation.
A little over a year ago he’d been looking forward to the day when Europe would be united in a community of nations sworn to live in peace for all time. A European Union that would banish the spectre of war from the continent for future generations and possibly, lead to a new golden age…
“A part of me,” he confided, sharing a confidence he would never have shared before the cataclysm, “cries for retribution. Even now I wonder if I’m doing the right thing. If our people ever discover what really happened last year will they ever forgive me if I succeed in making a peace?”
If the spymaster was discommoded by this shocking outburst of frankness he hid it superbly.
“The great thing,” he replied, “is to be able to see both sides of the picture,” he decided. “Because it enables us to understand the true nature of our own best interests, sir.”
Chapter 31
By the time Marija Calleja stepped off the bus outside the gates the sun was threatening to break through the early morning overcast and for December it was pleasantly mild. Her mother had wrapped her thickest woollen shawl around her daughter’s shoulders before she left the house in Sliema, her protestations growing ever fiercer as Marija moved closer to the door.
‘Dottoressa Seiffert said for you to stay at home until tomorrow!’
“I am perfectly well, Mama!” Which wasn’t really true, or untrue. After twelve hours of uninterrupted, deep sleep in her own bed, Marija felt much restored if not ‘perfectly well. Most of her aches and pains were gone — the worst ones, anyway — and from experience she knew she was, once again, capable of being of service at Pembroke Barracks. Or rather, she would be after Margo had told her off and assigned her to light duties. ‘I know I can be useful at the Pembroke Barracks and if I stay at home all day I’ll only start worrying about things I can’t do anything about.’
For example, she would brood over Peter Christopher.
There’d still been no news and it was gnawing at her, an insidious canker that was liable to reduce her to a hollow shell of her real self if she allowed it to fester. No, it was better to be busy. If and when bad news arrived, she’d deal with it then. Deep down her mother understood this. Like all mothers she was torn several ways, desperate to protect her little princess. Mother and daughter had hugged for long moments on the doorstep before Marija trudged slowly to the top of Tower Street to await the next bus heading north to St Julian’s and the Pembroke Barracks.
On her arrival Margo Seiffert didn’t actually chastise her Marija for ignoring her orders. The women embraced briefly.
“A lot of the beds are empty now,” the older woman explained, leading her friend out into the tented quadrangle. Other nurses waved, smiled at the newcomer. “Admiral Christopher has opened up every military hospital and infirmary on the Archipelago to the civilian authorities, and families are being encouraged to come into the wards to care for their loved ones.” She sounded a little unsettled by the idea; it smacked of clinical anarchy and she had no intention of allowing stray civilians to wander unsupervised around her hospital. “Anyway, as you can see from the empty beds it has taken the pressure off us.”
Marija was ‘to keep an eye’ on the ‘prisoners’.
She didn’t know if she liked being a pseudo ‘Red Cross Visitor’. Moreover, she had mixed feelings about fraternising with men whom she regarded as ‘the enemy’ and who had, not to put too fine a point on it, tried very hard to kill her and her family last Friday night.