Warsaw Concerto, page 19
part #13 of Timeline 10_27_62 Series
For the present, while Richard Nixon took it for granted that the British would have sensed the mood music changing in DC, they would not want to do anything to rock the boat…
Haldeman leaned over the President’s desk and punched numbers on the blue phone in front of him.
“We’re on broadcast, sir,” he reported. “The call will come through in the next few seconds.”
The other men in the Oval Office craned closer to the speaker phone in anticipation.
“Mrs Thatcher is on the line,” called the duty officer at the White House switchboard.
“Margaret,” the President declared. “I hope you are hearing this loud and clear?”
“Yes, Richard,” the Lady replied cheerfully. “It is good to hear your voice again. I trust Pat and the girls are hale and hearty?”
“Yes, indeed. Thank you. And you and the twins?”
“They’re locked up safe and sound in Oxford. Down here in Kent we are all braced for what the weathermen are calling, rather apocalyptically, I suspect, the ‘storm of the century’. The Navy has closed the Channel to shipping for the next forty-eight hours and all aircraft are going to have to be grounded.”
“I’m sorry to hear that…”
“Never mind. These things are sent to try us!”
The President grimaced at his colleagues.
A lot of things made the Lady angry, very few ever threatened to knock her out of her stride.
“Have you had time to study the latest disgraceful Soviet propaganda yet, Margaret?”
“Yes. Plans had already been afoot to re-double our special forces deployments along the riverine boundaries of the upper and middle Rhine, before this latest provocation. If only to further discourage the crossing of more looting gangs from the East into France and the Low Countries. The Navy has wanted to send a flotilla of gunboats up the Rhine for some little while, I’m still not sure about that. They can’t assure me that the river is actually navigable.”
Richard Nixon was relieved the British Prime Minister sounded, for her, relatively sanguine about the Tempelhof provocation.
Most of the bridges over the Rhine south of the Dutch border were ‘down’ according the US Air Force and British patrols on the ground. Most of the ‘downed’ structures had actually survived the October War only to be destroyed by the French in 1963 and early 1964 in a vain attempt to slow the flood of refugees and armed bands into Alsace, Picardy and through Belgium.
The principle problem navigating the great river was that over the centuries it had been channelled and engineered for most of its length and already, just four years absence of human hands maintaining all those canals, sluices, and river walls which obstructed the old, traditional course of the Rhine meant that by the time the river reached the as far north as Bonn, the surrounding countryside and banks were now subject to unpredictable inundation and erosion. One paper the President had seen suggested that in places the whole course of the river might violently shift without warning. A similar thing was being witnessed, apparently, on a smaller scale, in the ruins of London where ancient, re-directed tributaries of the River Thames, blocked up by rubble had found new courses, transforming reclaimed ground that had last been flooded in medieval times into impassable swamps…
The former British Parliament at Westminster was, it seemed, originally located on Thorney Island, and all the evidence was that the Thames was likely – sometime in the next decade – to take back the land generations of Londoners had fought so hard to drain and settle down the centuries.
“Obviously,” Nixon went on, realising he had allowed his thoughts to wander; that was a bad mistake when the Angry Widow was at the other end of the line, “the object of the exercise was to score propaganda points...”
“And to make us question our conservative assessment of their force levels,” Margaret Thatcher added.
Richard Helms raised a hand.
“Director Helms would like to say something, Margaret,” the President explained.
“Good day, Prime Minister,” the other man prefaced urbanely. “Coincidentally, there was an Air Force U-2 mission over Saxony a few days before the Tempelhof ‘parade’. We’re still processing the images and the ELINT data the mission brought back but two themes are emerging. Both support the thesis that the whole exercise was a ‘demonstration’. We have no evidence of the sort of electronic footprint or signals traffic we would expect from a significant operational presence anywhere north of Berlin. And thus far, we have identified no significant concentrations of war-fighting assets inside that zone. Therefore, the Soviets either repainted wrecked tanks and towed them onto Tempelhof aerodrome, or they drove them in and then, straight back out of the city again to wherever they had been hiding them. Likewise, as for the air show we see on the movies they’ve sent us, those MiGs could have been flown in from anywhere within a two-hundred-mile radius. The Soviets have no air defence radar grid in the Berlin area, if they had we would have registered, at a bare minimum, the signatures of surface-to-air missile tracking and targeting radars, and such-like. I do not doubt that the Soviets have had ground forces in the city for some time – they may never have left – but as for any idea that Berlin is a bridgehead of some kind, well, that’s for the birds…”
“For the time being, at least,” he was corrected, much in the fashion of a pedantic teacher admonishing a lazy student. Margaret Thatcher did not give Helms an opportunity to reply. “It has also been put to me that the Russians did this mostly for home consumption. That I seriously doubt. They do not have to persuade their people of anything. Anybody who fails to toe the line simply gets shot or transported to Siberia. If they were sending a signal it was to us, and to our local NATO allies. Perhaps, they want to take the gloss off the conclusion of hostilities in the Midwest? Or to distract the eyes of the World from the forthcoming re-dedication of the United Nations in California? Possibly, they hope it will make us transfer scarce resources from the Loire Front in France to beef up the watch on the Rhine? Or it may just be more of that smoke and mirrors nonsense they seem to indulge in at a drop of the hat?”
The men in the Oval Office belatedly realised that she had said all that she meant to say about the ‘propaganda’ movie. Nobody in the Oval Office believed for a moment that she was anywhere near as sanguine about the Tempelhof and Checkpoint Charlie provocations as she sounded.
“Margaret,” the President decided, deciding the time for shadow boxing was over. “You will be aware that the Pentagon has been reviewing the options available to us to counter Soviet mischief-making and threats in the European theatre.”
“Yes,” the British Prime Minister confirmed.
“Specifically, I have instructed the Joint Chiefs to present plans to me in respect of bolstering the territorial security of our Scandinavian allies, and to support Royal Navy operations in the Mediterranean. However, I am sure that you will be most concerned with the general situation in France and in the former Federal Republic of West Germany. I have informed the Joint Chiefs that I believe that only a significant US ground contribution will make a long-term impact. This means that when we meet next it would be a good idea if our military people got together…”
“Mister President,” Margaret Thatcher purred, “once again you and I are uncannily of a like mind!”
The men in the Oval Office exchanged rueful looks.
Okay, the Brits knew everything that was going on in the Pentagon minutes afterwards, and sometimes hours and days before, the news filtered through to the White House.
Richard Nixon guffawed, a little unhappily: “That’s exactly the way I want it to be, Margaret.”
The President’s closest advisors resisted the temptation to roll their eyes; at least the woman was on their side – well, most of the time – these days. Any expectation that the British Prime Minister would press for more details of the brief the President had given his military chiefs, was immediately quashed.
“Now, about the inaugural United Nations get together,” she announced, magisterially. “I have taken soundings with other member of the Commonwealth and the concept of conducting proceedings on board the USS United States, finds broad favour with all parties.”
The President smiled uncomfortably.
“Well, that settles it then. I’ll order the Navy to organise it.”
Chapter 17
Sunday 11th December 1966
CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia
Director of Central Intelligence, Richard Helms thought there ought to be bunting and fireworks, and bells rung loudly to commemorate the occasion. However, he was far too well-mannered to betray so much as a scintilla of his quiet inner mirth about the unlikely, delicious happenstance of J. Edgar Hoover and his best boy, and long-time sidekick Clyde Tolson, deigning to travel across DC from whichever office they were currently haunting, to meet him at his ‘earliest convenience’.
Hoover had never moved his FBI headquarters staff back into the reconstructed Department of Justice Building because all the smart money, was on the Nixon Administration green-lighting the Agency’s plan for a $60 million massive new-build complex – presently, the Bureau had a score of offices spread all over DC – at the so-called Watergate development site in the Foggy Bottom District of the Capital.
Helms had heard that the White House was on the verge of backing the ‘Watergate Project’ even though everybody knew the FBI’s price tag was probably $30 to $40 million shy of reality. But then a few tens of millions of dollars were a mere bagatelle in a city in which both the Administration and the Agency were increasingly, the joint accused standing together in the dock of public opinion. The Washington Post was hardly alone in linking Director Hoover’s continuing tenure, with the White House’s crying need to carry on covering up ‘what had really happened at the Warwick Hotel!’
Thus far, Helms had assiduously kept all that nonsense at arm’s length. Officially, the CIA was not involved, never had been and like everybody else in this town it was waiting to hear the latest revelations.
However, there was always the possibility that the FBI might find a way of implicating former, or – the nightmare scenario – current CIA operatives, or even, somehow, associating a low or mid-ranking worker at Langley itself, with the Warwick Hotel imbroglio. Putting innocent men and women ‘in the frame’ had become the Bureau’s stock in trade in the forties and fifties, and from the available evidence, nobody seriously believed Hoover had moved on past the glory days of denouncements and kangaroo courts fostered by the ‘un-American activity’ circus. Therefore, the one consideration raining – as yet, hardly drizzling - on Richard Helms’s parade that day was that Hoover and Tolson’s willingness to respond to his invitation that afternoon, might be because they had found a way to drag the Company into their self-constructed bottomless midden.
Nevertheless, Helms courteously welcomed his visitors into his spacious, ultra-modern office and made small talk – insofar as it was possible with Hoover – until everybody had coffee and was seated in comfortable chairs.
The Director of Central Intelligence was intrigued to discover just how discomforted his guests were that Helms had not asked his secretary, a trim, middle-aged woman in the uniform of a Lieutenant in the US Marine Corps, to leave the room.
I would be a darned fool not to have at least part of this meeting minuted for posterity!
“Miss Trautman will take notes of the meeting, gentlemen,” he decided urbanely, his tone unyielding.
J. Edgar Hoover, these days looking older than ever, a little shrunken and even more ridiculous in his 1950s morning suit and 1930s collar, could not stop himself glaring at the Director of Central Intelligence. Tolson, on the other hand, seemed very tired; although, unlike his chief, he was relatively sanguine.
“I have received a report from Quantico,” Hoover announced, firing words like rounds from a Thompson submachine gun. “Concerning a former, now presumed rogue, ‘contractor’ employed by the CIA in covert operations in Latin America prior to the Cuban Missiles War.”
Richard Helms did not react.
‘Former’ was a lot better than ‘current’ or even ‘recent’, and ‘contractor’ sounded so much less threatening than ‘employee’ or ‘agent’. Therefore, Hoover’s veiled threat was inherently diminished; it had an element of fundamental deniability about it, an implicit ‘distance’ from Helms regime at Langley.
His indifference clearly vexed Hoover.
“He was one of your contract killers, Director.”
“Sir,” Lieutenant Trautman murmured, halting note-taking for a moment.
“It’s all right. Carry on, Lieutenant.” Richard Helms was confident that his fingerprints were no more on those dirty operations in South America than they had been on the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Everybody knew there had been a lot of unpleasantness in ‘the Americas’, both South and Central, before the October War.
Why waste energy trying to cover it up?
“One of the Company’s contractors, you say?” He put back to Hoover, who hurled a look at Tolson in response.
“This is going back a bit, Director,” the Deputy Director of the FBI explained levelly. “It was in that period when ‘everything went’. We all know some of the operations you were involved in personally, in West Berlin, for example, came to be frowned upon before the end of the Eisenhower years. But before that, well, it was a different world, I suppose. Anyway, a person of interest we all thought was dead has – we have reason to believe – re-surfaced. In Philadelphia, a few days ago. We have a single, we believe, reliable, source who has tentatively identified the operative in question as Kurt Michael Mikkelsen…”
For a moment – a very unpleasant moment - Richard Helms had the oddest sensation somebody had just stabbed him in the neck with a pin.
“Mikkelsen? He’s dead,” he said, with a calm belying his sudden angst. His eyes narrowed, unwilling to rule out the possibility that Hoover was playing one of his cruel, mendacious games.
Billy the Kid was dead.
The man had disappeared a year before the October War.
Hoover was right about him going rogue. The story was that he had killed a British agent in Beirut in 1961, and that the Head of MI6 had sent Mikkelsen’s old partner, Rachel Piotrowska to Lebanon to ‘end’ him.
Nobody else could have got close to him.
“He’s alive,” J. Edgar Hoover snarled. “He’s alive and he was in Philadelphia six days ago!”
Helms was unconvinced.
“Why on earth would he come back to the States if he’s been playing dead for over five years?”
“We don’t know,” Clyde Tolson confessed.
“Yet,” the Director of the FBI added tersely. “That’s why we have to have full access to your files on the man.”
Richard Helms sighed.
He toyed with the notion of denying any such files existed.
He reconsidered. If the FBI did not know what Mikkelsen looked like, he seriously doubted a ten-year-old picture of the man would help them find him. Billy the Kid was like a chameleon, anonymous in his ordinariness.
“I can’t hand over the files. Mikkelsen was involved in several operations that will be classified until the next century.”
In fact, legally, he could not hand over anything not directly related to a lawfully constituted inquiry on US soil and he was loath to establish any kind of precedent with this particular pair of geriatric shysters.
“What evidence do you have that Mikkelsen plans to commit any offence on US soil,” he shrugged, rowed back a stage, “assuming he has risen from the dead, that is?”
“Why else would a man like him re-appear?” Hoover retorted, his rat-a-tat delivery jarring.
“Even contractors like Billy the Kid have to retire someday,” Helms retorted mildly. He was tempted to allude to the apparent retirement of Mikkelsen’s one-time partner, and probable nemesis, Rachel Piotrowska, who was now living openly in England, as the wife of a senior British Royal Air Force officer.
No, bad example, a case of exceptions proving the rule.
Clyde Tolson was viewing Helms as if he was a suspect.
“We could have gone to the White House first on this one, Mister Director,” he intoned.
Richard Helms was in no mood to take any of the normal crap from Hoover or his best boy.
“What would you say to the President, Mister Tolson?” Helms inquired civilly. “That you let a man on your secret most wanted list slip through your hands? How sure are you about this?”
“We need a picture of the man.”
The Director of Central Intelligence nodded.
“I’m sure that can be arranged as an inter-agency courtesy. According to the best information, certainly that I am cognisant of, the man is dead, after all, so, no cases are pending, all inquiries are closed. In a spirit of co-operation, anything that helps you close your files will be made available to you. Informally, you understand.”
This drew reluctant nods of assent.
“Good. I’ll get a picture organised.”
Richard Helms turned to his secretary.
“That will be all for now, Lieutenant. If you could put a transcript of this meeting on my desk later, top and bottom copies please. I’ll look after filing the document. Thank you.”
He waited until the three men were alone.
Helms sighed, attempting and failing to shrug off a sudden premonition of bad things to come.
“Okay,” he murmured. “We’re off the record now, gentlemen. What do you need to know about Mikkelsen?”
Chapter 18
Sunday 11th December 1966
Villefranche-sur-Mer, France
Although Villefranche had been the base of the United States Sixth Fleet at the time of the October War it – unlike nearby Nice, the western districts of which had been badly knocked about by a big airburst somewhere over the Var Valley – had escaped damage, other than from fallout, and for most of the last four years it had been the main anchorage of the surviving units of the French Mediterranean Fleet.
