Abe’s left shoulder pulsed with pain and every time he moved, needles of fire lanced down his arm. He nearly fainted more than once as he went down to the water and tried to clean the wound. Eventually, he simply immersed himself in the shallow water and allowed the brine to soak the through and through holes, miraculously just above the level of his clavicle. Half-an-inch lower and the bullet would have shattered his collar bone, which would not have been good news…
He lay in the water until the cold started to get into his bones, staggered ashore, stood awhile dripping.
Suddenly, he was desperately tired.
He just wanted to lay down and sleep…
No…
Where did I put that gun?
There were two forms in the gathering darkness close to the wreck of the Sea Fox, and nearer still to where Ted lay.
‘What the…”
Then the moment of panic passed.
One of the dark shapes shook its head and… brayed.
I did see donkeys just before the crash!
EPILOGUE
Chapter 41
17:45 (London Time)
Sunday 10th April
Cabinet Room, Downing Street, London
Emily Hamilton fussed around her husband, fending off the pestering make-up girl and basically, enforcing what amounted to a six to ten feet wide cordon sanitaire around the poor man. The camera crew had completed their ‘set-up’, everything was ready and the Prime Minister◦– whom she knew to be anything but the staid, grey man, or the cold fish so many people who ought to know better painted him to be◦– needed a little bit of space while he composed himself to make his career-defining, and likely, career-ending speech to the Empire in the next five minutes.
She patted his shoulder and on impulse, bent and kissed the top of his balding pate. Her husband looked up and quirked a forced grimace of undiluted affection.
This was undoubtedly the worst day of his life.
In due course His Majesty the King would address the Empire but today somebody had to take responsibility for the political and diplomatic failures of the last twenty years which had brought them all to this sad pass.
The Prime Minister and his wife had breakfasted with the King and Queen at St James’s Palace that morning: it had been a sombre meal while the old friends discussed the feasibility of the various damage limitation plans◦– most of which were wish lists rather than plausible schemes◦– which had been discussed in Cabinet in recent days, not to mention during the course of long, exhausting nights.
The King had read the speech Hector Hamilton had drafted and without comment, initialled it.
His Prime Minister had warned his Monarch that there were calls from his back-benchers, and mutterings from members of his government demanding the removal of the incumbent in Government House in Philadelphia, Philip De L’Isle.
‘Over my dead body,’ the King had retorted tersely.
‘Mine too!’ Queen Eleanor had added with a frown. ‘Goodness, at a time like this, Philip and Diana must be frantic with worry over Henrietta!’
If the crisis escaped from the confines of the Gulf of Spain and the Caribbean, for over a century a crucible of Catholic fundamentalism and nascent nationalistic agendas in the Americas the consequences would be incalculable. The last thing anybody in their right mind ought to be contemplating was dismissing the one man who had single-handedly kept the lid on the situation after the outrageous Spanish-inspired Empire Day ‘provocations’ of two years’ ago.
The Prime Minister began to read his speech.
One last time before the BBC’s Imperial Cable Network links went ‘live’.
Yesterday, His Majesty’s Consul-Generals in Mexico City, Havana, Port-au-Prince and Porto Rico handed the Spanish Imperial Governors of those crown colonies of the Empire of New Spain final notes stating that unless we heard from them by eleven o'clock this morning, Greenwich Mean Time, that they were prepared at once to cease naval operations in the Gulf of Spain and the whole Caribbean region and to withdraw their troops from Jamaica, where fighting is in progress as I speak, a state of war would exist between us and those crown colonies of the Empire of Spain.
He sighed regretfully.
I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is now at war with Nuevo Granada, the Kingdom of Havana and the Catholic Protectorate of Santo Domingo, also known as Hispaniola, the Colony of Porto Rico and its neighbouring concession, Anguilla.
He planned to pause to allow each paragraph to speak for itself before he proceeded to the next. It was like hammering one nail after another into the coffin of the post-Great War World order.
Peace died by another breath every time the hammer fell.
You can imagine what a bitter blow it is to me that all my long struggle to maintain the peace has failed. Yet I cannot believe that there is anything more or anything different that I could have done or that would have been more successful.
Even after the abomination of the Empire Day outrages which we now know to have been perpetrated under the oversight of and facilitated by elements within the Intelligence Service of the Spanish Empire, I still hoped that reason would prevail. I regret with all my heart that our best efforts have come to nought.
It is my firm conviction that up to the very last it would have been possible to have arranged a peaceful and an honourable settlement with the Emperor Ferdinand and those parties in the Americas bent on abandoning the norms and accepted standards of international conduct. Unfortunately, the King-Emperor, although still nominally on the ancient royal throne of the Spanish is now the puppet of the unholy cabal of Colonels and Cardinals who have seized power in Madrid and who are at this time methodically spreading their web of terror across the whole of that part of the Iberian Peninsula under their control.
Behind the scenes strenuous efforts were made to seek honourable settlements to the border question between New England and New Granada, to address the questions of freedom of navigation and issues such as the equitable distribution of mineral rights across the Caribbean but in the end our entreaties were rejected. Rejected not in quiet rooms where reason might prevail but by dint of the aggression of the so-called Triple Alliance of New Granada, Cuba and Santo Domingo, who have elected to settle their territorial, trade and other disputes with New England and this country by resorting to violence. We put forward reasonable proposals to peacefully settle all the outstanding issues; the Spanish authorities in the region rejected our proposals.
Regrettably, the actions of the members of the Triple Alliance, possibly acting as proxies for other parties…
The Kaiser and his ministers could interpret that back-handed ‘swipe’ any way they wanted!
…Now leaves us no option but to honour our imperial commitments to the colonies, dominions and protectorates who look to us for succour and their defence, and in the final resort, to meet force with force. Sadly, tyranny, we learned long ago can only be stopped by force.
Last Wednesday German warships re-flagged to serve in the Armada de las Americas, the Navy of New Granada, mounted a series of unprovoked, aggressive◦– frankly, murderous◦– operations against Jamaica and Royal Navy units in the Caribbean. During these actions two of our cruisers, the Cassandra and the Achilles and several smaller vessels engaged and were defeated, by a force of at least five modern German cruisers and eight fleet destroyers.