Reckless (24 page)

‘Too many speeches!’ said Eugene. ‘Why must they all make speeches? For every speech, two audiences. Your own people, and your enemy. Your people cheers, your enemy fears.’

‘That’s rather good, Eugene.’

‘No more speeches. Our leaders must talk in private. Then we can arrange everything.’

‘I have a friend who knows Mountbatten,’ said Pamela.

Eugene turned to her in astonishment. The change in his manner was gratifying.

‘Who is this friend?’

‘He works for Mountbatten. He’s some kind of adviser.’

‘I must meet him! Can you introduce me?’

Pamela suddenly felt unsure of her ground. After all, Eugene was known to them all as the ‘Russian spy’.

‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to get him into trouble.’

‘There will be no trouble. I hide nothing. I am naval attaché at the Russian Embassy. If he doesn’t want to talk to me, good. I say no more.’

‘Eugene believes dialogue helps,’ said Stephen. ‘So do I.’

‘Well, I suppose it’s all right,’ said Pamela. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

Rupert pulled off his spectacles and wiped them with his pocket handkerchief.

‘Are you really steaming up your glasses?’ said John Grimsdale, amused.

‘Why not?’ said Rupert. ‘I’m excited.’

He was testing his latest thinking on his friend and sparring partner from Intelligence.

‘Why me?’ said Grimsdale. ‘What have I done to deserve this honour?’

‘I know you have no principles of any kind,’ said Rupert. ‘So if what I’m thinking makes sense to you, then maybe I’m on the right track.’

Rupert did not reveal to his friend the extent of his secret ambition. He was only a lowly adviser. But he did have the ear of the Chief of Defence Staff, and it was said that there was nothing so powerful as an idea whose time had come.

‘The heart of the Cold War,’ he explained, ‘is not weapons, but intentions. The fear isn’t generated by the bombs and the missiles. It’s generated by the presumed intention to use them. Manage the intentions and we reduce the fear. Reduce the fear and we reduce the danger.’

John Grimsdale was unimpressed.

‘Manage our enemy’s intentions?’ he said, peering at the writings on Rupert’s walls. ‘I’m all for that. Let’s manage him so he gives up all this Communist nonsense and goes shopping.’

‘Of course I know intentions are complex,’ said Rupert, too eager to pursue his line of thought to respond to his friend’s mockery. ‘In fact, that’s part of my idea. If you take a power like the Soviet Union, you have to deal with three forms of intention. You’ve got its true intention, whatever that is. You’ve got its presented intention, which is what it wants us to believe it’ll do. And you’ve got its perceived intention, which is what we think it’ll do. These can all be different. And that’s where it gets dangerous.’

‘Look, Rupert,’ said Grimsdale. ‘It’s not difficult. We don’t know for sure what the bastards might do, and we’re never going to know. So we plan for the worst possible scenario.’

‘There!’ cried Rupert, banging his hands on his desk. ‘Exactly! You’ve said it!’

‘So I’m right?’

‘No! You’re so wrong!’

‘I rather thought I might be.’

‘Your way of thinking creates a spiral of fear. My way of thinking creates a spiral of trust.’

‘Oh, well. Let’s by all means have a spiral of trust. I think your spectacles are steaming up again.’

‘All I’m saying,’ said Rupert, ‘is that instead of putting all our intelligence effort into counting their missiles we should focus on understanding what’s going on inside their heads.’

‘It’s a whole lot easier to count missiles.’

‘Come on, John. Take me seriously here.’

‘All right,’ said Grimsdale. ‘I’ll take you seriously. Yes, we do need to understand Soviet intentions. And what tools do we have for reading their minds? We have their words, and we have their deeds. We listen to their rhetoric. “Communism will bury
capitalism,” says Khrushchev. They arm our enemies in South East Asia. In the Congo. In Cuba. What are we supposed to think they’re up to?’

‘This is all business as usual. This is standard big power rivalry. We’ve been dealing with this sort of jostling for the last three hundred years. But SIOP? Three thousand two hundred and sixty-seven warheads? That’s the end of the world. Is that really what we want? Do we really believe it’s what they want?’

‘No,’ said Grimsdale. ‘Of course not.’

‘Then what on earth is going on?’

Grimsdale looked at his watch. He’d lingered too long.

‘All right, Rupert. I take your point. But it’s not me you need to convince. What does Dickie say to all this?’

‘I haven’t tried it on him yet. And anyway, I know what he’d say. He’d say, “Tell the Americans. Don’t talk to the monkey, talk to the organ-grinder.”’

Grimsdale chuckled at that.

‘Nobody does national humiliation quite as well as we do,’ he said, and headed off down the corridor.

*

The other problem with Mountbatten, Rupert reflected, was that he had difficulty with ideas. He was a practical man above all, a details man. At the monthly meeting of the Defence Ministry chiefs, which was attended by the Cabinet Secretary, all he could talk about was retaliation procedures.

‘Who has the sole authority to launch a nuclear retaliation, should we be attacked? The prime minister, advised by myself, as Chief of Defence Staff. What arrangements are there for contacts to be established with the prime minister or myself at the critical period, when every minute will count? None! In the event of a bolt out of the blue attack I’m told we will receive four minutes’ warning, and that only when Fylingdales becomes operational sometime next year. This is madness!’

Norman Brook did his best to calm him down.

‘The JIC takes the view that an unprovoked strike by the Soviets is highly unlikely. And since as you say, Dickie, we’d have no warning of a missile strike at all, not until the early warning system is up and running – well, really there’s not a lot of point worrying about it, is there?’

‘Please, Norman,’ said Mountbatten, gripping the Cabinet Secretary by the arm, ‘let’s not be too relaxed about this. In the event of a strike taking out the PM and myself, there must be an agreed procedure for the authorisation, or not, of our retaliation.’

‘But it’s not really there to be used. It’s there to deter.’

‘Suppose Harold’s dead. Suppose I’m dead. Can anyone else push the button?’

‘Well, there has to be a chain of command. You know that.’

‘It’s Bomber Command, isn’t it? It’s bloody Bing Cross.’

‘These are very extreme hypotheses,’ said Brook.

‘In my extreme hypothesis,’ said Mountbatten, ‘a Soviet attack on London causes a military officer, an unelected leader, to retaliate against Russia, and so trigger a global nuclear holocaust. That is simply not acceptable.’

Norman Brook turned to Frank Mottershead, the Deputy Secretary concerned with such matters at the Ministry of Defence.

‘Frank?’

‘I’m inclined to think there is a cause for concern here,’ said Mottershead. ‘As matters stand, C-in-C Bomber Command does have the delegated authority, under exceptional circumstances, to use his own judgement.’

‘And what counts as exceptional circumstances?’ said Mountbatten.

‘If the PM can’t be reached. If an attack is understood to have been launched.’

‘If the PM can’t be reached! So if Harold takes a nap, Bing Cross can scramble the V-force!’

‘I wouldn’t go that far, sir.’

‘What arrangements do we currently have for communicating with the PM when he’s out of his office?’

‘Well, by phone, sir.’

‘And when he’s in his car?’

‘The PM’s car has a radio which can receive messages via the AA’s radio network.’

‘Scrambled messages?’

‘No, sir.’

‘So anyone can hear them?’

‘The radio message would be no more than an alert to the driver to proceed at once to the nearest phone box.’

‘And put four pennies in the slot, and press Button A?’

Mottershead looked at his hands.

‘I suppose so, sir.’

‘Ronnie. Make a note. All the PM’s drivers are to be issued with four pennies forthwith.’

‘For heaven’s sake!’ exclaimed Norman Brook impatiently. ‘The driver can reverse the charges! You dial one hundred, and the operator asks the person at the other end to accept payment.’

‘Excellent!’ cried Mountbatten. ‘After all, he does have a whole
four minutes
before the bombs go off!’

A silence fell.

‘All right, Dickie,’ said Norman Brook at last. ‘You’ve made your point. We’ll look into it.’

After the meeting, alone with Ronnie and Rupert, Mountbatten said, ‘I’m not just being an old woman, am I?’

‘No, sir,’ said Rupert. ‘I remain convinced that the greatest threat of nuclear holocaust lies in human error.’

‘By God, yes! Have you read
The Guns of August
?’

‘Not yet,’ said Rupert.

‘It should be required reading. The First World War wouldn’t have happened but for the mobilisation plans. One side began to mobilise, the other side had to follow suit. The fear of attack mounted to the point where the momentum was unstoppable. Once that machine started rolling, there was nothing anyone could do. Apparently the Kaiser had tears in his eyes. He begged his General Staff. But they told him it was too late. That’s what I dread. Kenneth Cross launches his bombers because if he leaves them on the ground they’re vulnerable. So off they go, each with their target in the Soviet Union. Who calls them back?’

‘You have to be at the MoD by five, sir,’ said Ronnie.

‘Oh, damn! What’s that about?’

‘The CENTO meeting in Karachi.’

Mountbatten sighed.

‘What can I do about Pakistan? They’re convinced we’re in the pockets of the Indians. Then India goes and buys fighter jets from Russia.’

He started gathering up his papers.

‘That memo of yours, sir,’ said Rupert. ‘“Aim for the West”. I’ve been doing some thinking.’

‘Thought you would. Rather up your street, I should say.’

‘I think it’s important, actually.’

‘Then you’re about the only person who does.’

‘I’ve become convinced the solution is ideological, not military.’

‘That’s very interesting, Rupert. I want to have this discussion properly. Have you written your thoughts down?’

‘I’m doing so, sir.’

‘You know who’d understand this? Edwina.’

Edwina Mountbatten had died two years earlier.

‘I remember her well,’ said Rupert. ‘You’re right. She saw things clearly.’

‘She made me the man I am. I miss her terribly.’ He sighed. ‘I shall have to be off.’

‘I’ll finish my paper.’

‘You know what they’ll say, of course? Too abstract. Too emotional and humanitarian. Too many airy-fairy ideas.’

‘It’s ideas that will destroy the world,’ said Rupert.

‘By God, you’re right there.’

He paused, frowning, considering a new thought.

‘When am I in Ireland, Ronnie?’

‘Last week of September, sir.’

‘I have a house in Ireland,’ Mountbatten said to Rupert. ‘Miles from anywhere, right on the coast. Most glorious scenery you ever saw. It’s the only place I can get away to think. I have this bloody paper to write on the reorganisation of defence, which, let me tell you, is proving a great deal tougher than fighting a world war. Why don’t you join me? Then we can really talk.’

‘Thank you, sir. I’d be glad to.’

‘Put Rupert on the list for Classiebawn, Ronnie.’ He picked up his worn briefcase. ‘Yes, I’m on my way.’ And to Rupert as he left the room, ‘I’m glad you knew Edwina.’

That evening Rupert sat in the armchair in his living room, writing in longhand on a lined pad. The little room was filled with music, flowing from the record player by the side of the empty fireplace. Music was one of Rupert’s great loves. Tonight he was playing a recording of
Tristan und Isolde
. As Wagner’s themes wove their patterns in the air around him, he filled his pad with the ever-evolving chain of ideas that in his secret heart, in his wildest dreams, he believed might just save the world.

The flat in Tachbrook Street consisted of this front room with its window onto the street, an even smaller bedroom at the back that looked out on the backs of other houses, a galley kitchen, and a bathroom across the stairs. He rented it for £4 a week from the building’s owner, a solicitor who lived in Surrey. The furnishings belonged to Rupert. He was responsible for the utilities and the rates. The reward for this modest style of living was that he owed no money to anyone, and had been able to save on his income for many years. He invested his savings prudently, for his old age. He expected to live alone until his death.

At times like this, when his brain was racing, he felt his solitude as a source of power. He felt that he was on the brink of a major achievement, of the kind that only came after prolonged unbroken concentration.

The phone rang. After eight on a Thursday evening: an unusual occurrence. Irritated, he laid down his pad, lifted the needle from the record, and picked up the receiver.

It was Hugo.

‘Sorry to bother you at this hour. It’s just that something’s come up with Mary. We don’t quite know what to do.’

‘What is it?’

‘It looks like there’s been a theft.’

*

Hugo let Rupert in to the house in Brook Green, and took him through to the drawing room, where Harriet was sitting.

‘So good of you to come, Rupert.’