Warsaw Concerto, page 60
part #13 of Timeline 10_27_62 Series
Kolokoltsev saw René Leguay throw himself at the woman, driving her to the deck; and then he was turning around, the Beretta cold and heavy in his hands.
His first shot took Citizen Daladier in the chest,
The next in the face.
He kept shooting.
A third time, then a fourth…
At which point all Hell broke loose.
Chapter 58
Thursday 26th January 1967
HMS Campbeltown, Strait of Gibraltar
“This is the Captain,” Dermot O’Reilly called into the handset as he stood beside the binnacle peering out into the Stygian darkness of the Mediterranean.
None of the ships of Task Force V1 was showing a light.
This was a war mission and Rear Admiral Henry Conyer Leach, flying his flag in the Victorious, had been unambiguously clear about ‘the mission’.
‘We are going up to the Bay of Lions to give the Front Internationale, Krasnaya Zarya adherents and their stooges, a little taste of Hell on Earth. From the moment we up anchor we are at war and as our American allies would say we will operate ‘weapons free’ and conduct ourselves as if we are in a ‘free fire zone’!’
Captain (D) of the 21st Destroyer Squadron listened to his voice reverberating in the near distance. The Campbeltown was slicing through a relatively long, pacific swell at an effortless seventeen knots approximately a thousand yards off the invisible flagship’s starboard bow quarter, as the Victorious led TFV1 due east, seeking sea room before turning north for the long run to the French coast.
“You will all have been asking yourselves what is going on,” O’Reilly prefaced. In conversations with his officers, with senior rates, often even with green new recruits, he adopted a quiet, paternal delivery, man to man; I may be the Captain but we are all in this together. That did not really work over the ship’s Tannoy; however, he tried his best. “I have already briefed several of the ship’s officers. I apologise for not speaking to the other members of the wardroom and senior rates in advance of this briefing but time did not allow it.”
O’Reilly planned to walk the ship when he was done on the bridge. His people needed to see him at times like this. Despite the recent bombardment operations in the Bay of Biscay, this was still very new to a large proportion of the three hundred and seven men under his command on board the Campbeltown.
“Presently, we are heading out into the Mediterranean. Tomorrow, we will change course and steam north to within striking distance, a few miles of the French coast, where the main strength of the Task Force will operate in a combat box some eighty to a hundred miles square approximately thirty to fifty miles south of the French naval port of Toulon.”
Dermot O’Reilly had taken small pleasure, albeit compensated for by immense professional pride in his Squadron’s contribution to the action against the French coastal enclaves. Pragmatically, if he had to go into battle at all, he would much rather it be against somebody who was defenceless, unable to hit back but at the end of the day that was not a thing one could, or should, celebrate. In any event, Task Force V1’s participation in Operation Mangle was unlikely to be such a one-sided affair and he needed to make absolutely sure that all his people understood that this might easily, without warning, turn into a real shooting war.
“The Task Force is going to be the southern naval element of a major combined assault on the Soviet-backed,” that was a bit of a stretch, certainly over-stating the case, “Front Internationale, the Red Dawn, or Krasnaya Zarya fanatics who presently control the Massif Central, large tracts of central and western France, and their allies, essentially the French Navy faction of the FI, who rule the south coast of France from the Spanish border all the way to Italy. You will recollect that it was this faction’s Corsican wing which mounted the unprovoked attack on HMS Hampshire back in 1964. Soon afterwards, one of our submarines sank the ships responsible for that attack and the RAF flattened their home port of Ajaccio. At that time a submarine blockade of the French Mediterranean coast was instigated. That blockade was lifted over a year ago; presently, it is in the process of being reactivated by boats from the 2nd Submarine Squadron operating out of Malta.”
Although he gave every appearance of speaking off the cuff, O’Reilly was working his way through a carefully planned list of key points. His people had a right to know where they, as individuals and as a ship’s crew fitted into the big picture. That was another thing he had learned from Peter Christopher. Nobody on HMS Talavera had had any doubt that the reason they were charging down the guns of those battleships was that the fate of Malta depended upon it.
Duty is as heavy as a mountain; death as light as a feather…
“You may be aware that a substantial part of the French Mediterranean Fleet survived the October War. Its principle units have been moored at Villefranche-sur-Mer ever since. However, recent intelligence indicates that these ships – previously thought to have been de-activated – have been preparing for action.”
Well, the battleship Jean Bart had been photographed in dry dock at Toulon and other ships had been seen making smoke. There was also evidence that several vessels had switched moorings in recent weeks. Most problematic, loose radio chatter by fishermen who seemed to make their living supplying the Villefranche fleet, gave rise to suspicions that the fleet carrier Clemenceau was still carrying her combat air group, and that like the Jean Bart, she might also soon be bound for a refit at Toulon. In other words, far from the ships at Villefranche being a ‘ghost fleet’, it might soon constitute a carrier battle group with comparable firepower to TFV1. Given the known Soviet involvement in the Massif Central, and the Red Navy’s previous history of taking over foreign vessels which fell into its hands – like for example, the battlecruiser Yavuz which had killed so many people on Malta before Talavera put a torpedo into her stern – the last thing the Royal Navy wanted was to find itself confronted by a new, hostile fleet theoretically capable of meeting it on something like equal terms in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Potentially, a battle group based around the Clemenceau and the mighty Jean Bart might threaten the supply routes to Malta and beyond, potentially turning half the Mediterranean into a no-go area. Then all the old questions about the security of Malta would re-surface. Spain might again rediscover its belligerence, threaten Gibraltar; the Egyptians would inevitably question their alliance with the United Kingdom; and the Soviet client regimes in the Anatolian littoral would inevitably cast covetous eyes upon isolated, distant Cyprus…
History does repeat…sometimes.
Back in July 1940, faced with the dreadful possibility that the powerful French Mediterranean Fleet – practically a match for the Royal Navy even before the Italian Navy was taken into account - based in North African ports might throw in their lot with the then all-conquering Nazis, Winston Churchill had acted with a ruthlessness which had shocked many in England, and friends and potential adversaries all around the globe.
Task Force V1 was operating under orders no less uncompromising. In fact, Henry Leach’s remit was positively brutal.
“In a little over three-and-a-half days from now, the Task Force will be within striking distance of Villefranche-sur-Mer,” he told his crew. “Once on station Rear Admiral Leach’s instructions are to issue an ultimatum to the commander of the French ships in that anchorage.”
In July 1940 the French at Mers-al-Kebir and Dakar had been given five options:
One: Disable your ships (remove the breech blocks from your guns, disable your gun directors and remove critical boiler and turbine parts from your propulsive machinery).
Two: Scuttle your ships.
Three: Sail your ships to French colonial ports and disable them for the duration of hostilities.
Four: Sail your ships to a British harbour (there to be interned for the duration of hostilities).
Five: Join us in the fight against Hitler.
Henry Leach had not been granted the same leeway his Second War predecessors had enjoyed: the French could either scuttle their ships at Villefranche or they could surrender to Task Force V1. Otherwise, he was ordered to sink every single ship employing every means at his disposal.
The latest intelligence summaries suggested the French had several operational diesel-electric submarines. Leach was not, therefore, in a position to ‘hang around’ off the Cote d’Azur waiting for the French in Villefranche to make up their minds. This thing needed to be done quickly, and if necessary, concluded with the utmost savagery so that the Task Force could move onto its next mission.
“If the people on those ships in Villefranche blink,” Dermot O’Reilly promised his crew, “it will be the last thing they ever do. We will demand that they scuttle their ships at their mooring – most of them are anchored in over thirty or forty metres of water – or surrender to us. In this latter event it is likely we will evacuate the ships and sink them with scuttling charges or torpedoes.”
He let this sink in.
Of course, if the French wanted to make a fight of it Victorious’s Buccaneer S-2s would have the first shot at the big ships in Villefranche. Henry Leach was not going to let the flagship go anywhere remotely within range of the Jean Bart’s main battery. After that the gun line would deal with any ship that poked its nose out of the anchorage. The whole business had the potential to be both inordinately messy, and very bloody…
“Once we have dealt with the fleet at Villefranche the Task Force will enforce a total exclusion zone one hundred miles deep south of the French coast. We will stop and if necessary, sink, any vessel or aircraft we encounter within that TEZ. Ships assigned to the gunline will, as off Royan and La Rochelle, go inshore and bombard targets and locations of interest, and support amphibious raiding operations mounted by Commandos based on the Fearless. In addition to enforcing the aerial side of the Total Exclusion Zone, fighters and strike aircraft from the Victorious will conduct strikes against Front Internationale and military objectives up to fifty miles inland. We in the 21st Destroyer Squadron can expect to be tasked for bombardment missions to support raiding, target enemy strong points and to interdict airfields, such as the ones at Nice, Marseilles and Toulon, both in daylight and at night. Needless to say, we will be operating well within the effective operational envelope of shore-based air. Once we reach the TEZ we will therefore, be at a continuous high state of readiness.”
The seven Fletcher-class ships of the 21st Destroyer Squadron could expect to be worked hard: escorting the big gun cruisers Kent and Belfast, riding heard on the Fearless when she went inshore, participating in regular nightly sorties to cut the coast road, providing an anti-submarine screen around the flagship, a destroyer captain’s life was never dull…
“So,” he concluded, allowing a wry overtone, “if anybody was wondering why we have twenty to thirty HE extra reloads for each of our five-inch rifles, neatly stacked in passageways adjacent to Campbeltown’s shell rooms: well, now you know why!”
Actually, his destroyers were going to be over-loaded, floating munitions dumps until they started emptying their magazines. Every ready locker was stuffed full, cannon and machine gun ammunition were stowed in crew spaces and makeshift racks on bulkhead walls…
It hardly bore thinking about.
‘Stuff your ships full of ordnance,’ Henry Leach had demanded. ‘If and when we decide the TEZ is safe for auxiliaries then we’ll call up a fleet oiler and an ammunition tender,’ he had quirked a half-smile, ‘but that might not be for a while so, in the meantime, cram as many bullets on board as possible.’
Dermot O’Reilly liked to keep these speeches short and sweet.
“In a few minutes the bell will sound for cruising stations. However, from now on all watertight doors beneath the main deck level will be dogged shut. The ship will come to Air Defence Condition One at three-zero minutes before dawn as per normal sailing instructions.”
He paused.
“I know that in the coming days you will all do your duty. Thank you, gentlemen. That is all. Captain out.”
He passed the handset back to the ship’s talker.
Chapter 59
Friday 27th January 1967
FBI Field Office, Phillip Burton Federal Building, San Francisco
Dwight Christie was standing with his back to the door, gazing out through the sparsely-furnished thirteenth floor window in the direction of City Hall when he heard the catch click at his back. He had scanned the vista before him, framed by the Bay Bridge to his extreme right and somewhere in the mist, the distant Golden Gate over to his left, and the foggy bay in between where he could just make out the hump of Alcatraz, beckoning to him…
Everything seemed to have speeded up a gear or two in the last twenty-four hours although nobody was telling him anything. That was okay. He was a scumbag traitor whose well-connected attorney had somehow, apparently to everybody’s astonishment – surprise was far too bland a word to use in this connection – cut a deal with Nicholas Katzenbach, at the time, US Attorney General. That was so long ago, that no sane incumbent in the Oval Office would have even contemplated replacing a real player like Katzenbach with a crooked bond lawyer like John Mitchell, especially as the latter came to the Department of Justice with an infamous redneck crazy woman wife in tow.
The last week or so, his minders had shared their newspapers with him allowed him to listen to the radio, watch TV news shows; heck, he thought he must have died and not noticed, it was as if he was living in a whole new country!
Whatever a guy had thought about JFK and LBJ, neither of them was careless enough to surround themselves with two-bit shysters and college frat buddies who honestly believed that anything went! Sure, LBJ had been a shrewd operator: back in his Senate days he had used his influence to corner the FM radio, and then the local TV broadcasting market down in Texas, becoming a millionaire in the process. But none of that had been flaunted in anybody’s face. As for JFK, he was already so rich he never had to ask how much a thing cost.
If what The Washington Post was saying out aloud and most of the other papers were implying was even half-true, the White House and the FBI had really screwed the pooch over that Warwick Hotel deal!
When Walter Kronkite had interviewed Vice President Rockefeller, every other answer the former Governor of New York gave had caused Uncle Walt to raise one, or sometimes both, his eyebrows.
If that did not mean you were in trouble, Dwight Christie for one, did not know what, if anything, was ever going to bring it home to those dummies in the White House!
That mornings Washington Post carried an editorial about the stories that Martha Mitchell, the loud-mouthed wife of the Attorney General – Jeez, that woman had some funny ideas about the World! – had been kidnapped and held ‘incommunicado’ for several days earlier in the month by ‘friends of the President’ in the GOP.
‘Perhaps, the woman had good cause to be upset by the way the White House is distancing itself from a former key associate of the President,’ Ben Bradlee had suggested in his editorial offering, before rehashing anew, some of the other ‘crazy talk’ which had so incensed ‘Administration insiders’.
With a sigh Dwight Christie turned around.
“Rachel?” He blurted like an idiot. “What the…”
The woman was attired in a practical grey-blue skirt the hem of which danced about her nylon-clad mid-calves, an off the peg jacket available at any branch of Macy’s, a pale, magnolia blouse buttoned very nearly to her throat, wearing flat-heeled shoes, with a new, stylish handbag dangling from the crook of her left arm. Her hair fell almost to her shoulders, straw-blond, her eyes diamond hard and missing nothing.
Apart from the eyes she might have been a librarian.
“Yes,” she murmured, enigmatically.
The man realised, belatedly, that he had no idea how he was supposed to react to this bizarre reunion.
Rachel was better equipped for this moment, if only because she had had several hours’ forewarning, and an exhaustive briefing on the investigation to date.
Or rather, the stunningly – given the resources the FBI had thrown at it nationwide - abject failure of that investigation.
“I met Hoover when I was in DC,” she said, stepping across to the window to take in the view. “Gretchen was right, he does look like a frog in a morning suit.”
Mention of Dwight Christie’s one-time attorney brought a transient smile to the former Special Agent’s lips.
“I never got to thank you for talking to the Feds,” the man said uncomfortably.
“Don’t thank me. I did what I did for the Embassy’s sake. It was too good an opportunity to miss to get an ‘in’ with the Betancourt family. And I knew Mary Drinkwater would never have forgiven herself if she didn’t do absolutely everything possible to save your,” she shrugged, “miserable neck.”
It was said matter-of-factly, without malice.
“What did you tell them about the Embassy siege?” She asked.
“Everything. But I don’t think they believed much of it.”
In that room at the Wister Park Embassy complex he had seen the woman rise, seemingly from the dead hours after being subjected to a brutal gang rape, kill a man who was about to take Christie’s eye out with a scalping knife, and then two other men in the blink of an eye with such merciless, effortless grace and precision that he had not psychologically assimilated what he was seeing for a long, long time afterwards. And that, of course, had only been the beginning of her killing spree…
“What about Kurt Mikkelsen?”
The man was rocked back by the directness of it.
“I, er…”
“You never mentioned his name. Not in two years of captivity at Quantico. Why was that Mister Christie?”
“I never met the guy. I didn’t even know if he existed. He was just a legend…”
“You told them plenty of things about me,” Rachel retorted, turning her back to the window to face him. “You knew things about me from when I was in the States before the October War; who I’d talked to, and who I’d been seen with in DC; by the way, that embarrassed people you really, really didn’t want to piss off at Langley,” she concluded.
