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The Automedon was a small ship, little more than seven thousand tons, yet in time her loss was to change the course of the war. Indeed, in time, it would change the world.
None of this was known to the Churchills when, around midnight, they gathered in the Long Gallery, a room filled with the smell of smoke and old books that stretched along the north front of Chequers to form its library. That night, behind its blackout curtains, it had been transformed into a makeshift cinema.
‘You shall sit beside me, Pamela,’ Churchill said to his daughter-in-law, patting the seat next to him on the sofa while the others searched around to find themselves comfortable perches, all except for Clemmie, a most reluctant participant in any of her husband’s late-night frolics, who had long since bidden them farewell and departed for her bed.
‘A special treat for Christmas,’ Churchill told Pamela, as Sawyers erected the screen and fussed over the projector. ‘There is a friend of mine, Mr Alexander Korda, a Hungarian who makes very fine films. He and I are much alike. He loves cigars. He is often broke. And he is always impeccably dressed.’
Pamela wanted to giggle. She doubted if Mr Korda had gravy stains running down the lapels of his jacket.
‘He has sent me his most recent work,’ her fatherin-law continued. ‘It’s not yet been released to the public. It’s about Horatio Nelson. I’ve even given Mr Korda some advice on the matter—oh, just a few words here and there to place in the admiral’s mouth.’ He waved his brandy glass in a simulation of modesty, and began to address her as though she were a public audience. ‘You know, at the opening of the last century when Napoleon’s armies dominated the continent, the people in these islands of ours fought on alone for many years. At times it seemed impossible that they should prevail, until Nelson rallied them to the cause. Now it seems that history wishes to repeat its great cycle, and once more we search for our Nelson.’
‘Some of us think we’ve already found him,’ she replied, smiling and taking his soft hand.
His eyes began to mist. ‘You know, my dear, you are a most unusual pearl. I shall never know how Randolph found you, let alone persuaded you to marry him.’
Perhaps it was better that the old man never knew. The truth was that Randolph had picked Pamela up on a blind date and proposed to her the following night. Married six weeks later, just as war had broken out. It was only afterwards that she discovered she was the eighth woman he’d pursued with the prospect of marriage in less than a month. Oh, it was one of those things that happened in wartime. For young soldiers such as Randolph, war had a brutal simplicity. They expected to die, so every long night, every available woman, was taken as their last. They didn’t so much embrace the moment as grab it in both hands, and in the rush the common standards and decencies were often thrown to one side. But the British were ridiculously inept at the soldierly traditions of rape and pillage, so instead they hurried to churches and register offices, hoping to find in their marriage beds something that was worth fighting and dying for.
But Randolph hadn’t died. He was there in an armchair, picking his nose and demanding another drink from the ubiquitous Sawyers. Yet for all his shortcomings he had introduced her to a new world that took her breath away. Eighteen months ago Pamela had been an unsophisticated teenager from rural Dorset with nothing more on her mind than flower arranging and the occasional midnight fumble with a taxi tiger; now she found herself at the epicentre of a war. When she had first met Randolph, his father had been an outsider, distrusted by his colleagues and despised by many, yet now he was the Prime Minister, and that made everyone in the family a target. He’d warned them all. If the Germans invaded, he had told them, they should fight to the very end. ‘With bullets, with bayonets,’ he had declared.
‘But, Papa,’ she had said, ‘I don’t know how to use a gun.’
‘Then go to the kitchen and find a carving knife! You know how to use a carving knife, don’t you, woman?’
He could be such a little boy at times. Perhaps that was why they got on so well. They could both still enjoy the enthusiasms of being children, she because she hadn’t yet grown up, and he because in some ways he never would.
‘Enough time-wasting, Sawyers,’ he now told the valet. ‘Out with the bottle and on with the show!’
‘It’s on table beside yer.’
‘What is?’
‘Yer brandy.’
‘Ah, what a charming coincidence. Then what are you waiting for?’
Lights were switched off until there was nothing but the glow of the wood-stoked fire and the flickering of the film. Soon they were immersed in the tale of Nelson and his mistress, Emma Hamilton, a dancer and woman of questionable virtue who came to captivate the warrior’s heart. The actress was Vivien Leigh.
‘She is extraordinarily beautiful,’ Churchill whispered in Pamela’s ear. ‘So very much like you.’
Beside her on the sofa, Pamela felt the old man melt as England was shown friendless, alone, its armed forces denied supplies, with nothing to eat, a country fighting for its survival and little other than one man’s determination to keep it from succumbing. Yet, as Emma pointed out, England seemed so insignificant, ‘just a tiny little bit’ on the globe compared with the might of the enemy that had spread so far across the map of Europe. Her eyes lit up with wonder as she was told in reply: ‘…there are always men who, for the sake of their insane ambition, want to destroy what other people have built. And therefore this “tiny little bit” has to send out its ships again and again to fight those who want to dictate their will to others.’
Pamela felt her hand being squeezed with almost painful force as the words showered from the screen upon Churchill. She knew they were the words that he had written.
So the images flickered and the ships went out once more to confront the European tyrant, willing to be blown to bits in the hope that the enemy would be pulverized to even smaller pieces. England expected it of them. Then Nelson, mortally wounded at the moment of his supreme triumph, paid the price that freedom so often demands.
‘Thank God I have done my duty,’ he gasped, his words melting into the strains of ‘Rule Britannia’ and shouts of victory from those Englishmen who had survived.
In the glow of the firelight, Pamela could see tears streaming down the old man’s face. They were still there when the last foot of film had passed through the gate and was clattering around its reel.
‘That is how I should like to die,’ Churchill whispered. ‘Such a fine ending.’
She knew he was being completely sincere.
He disappeared into the folds of a huge silk handkerchief. Pamela decided it would be ungracious to point out that he’d noticed only the Boy’s-Own bits of the film and that the final moments had concerned themselves not with the glories of Nelson’s death but with the demise many years later of Emma as an ageing alcoholic sprawled piteously on the wet cobbles of some foreign port. It wasn’t just the men who paid a price in war.
The clocks had long since chimed two. Sawyers damped down the fire. The filmgoers were stretching their legs and preparing to depart for bed when, from somewhere in the distance, the sound of a motor-car engine carried on the frozen night air. Churchill suddenly grew still. A change came over him, like a dog sensing danger that he couldn’t yet identify. But a motor car meant a new message, and on this day and at this time of night, the message could mean only one thing.
Disaster.
‘Couldn’t it wait?’ the old man enquired, his voice beginning to rasp with fatigue and anxiety. But he already knew the answer. Sir Stewart Menzies, known simply as ‘C’ in the corridors of power, was the head of Churchill’s Secret Intelligence Service. It made him one of the most powerful men in the country; he hadn’t dropped by at two in the morning simply for the large whisky and cold grate that greeted him in the Hawtrey Room.
‘I’m sorry, Prime Minister.’ Churchill’s spymaster unlocked a briefcase and extracted a slim manila folder, which he placed on the table and smoothed open. ‘You won’t have heard of the Automedon, I suspect. No reason why you should. But it’s been sunk by the Nazis.’
Churchill glared defiantly, waiting for the bullet to strike him.
‘It happened last month, on her way to Singapore. Small cargo of car bits, cigarettes, whisky, that sort of thing.’
‘I suspect the distilleries will be able to resupply them,’ Churchill responded slowly, hoping words might quell the sense of unease that was rising up his gullet.
‘She was boarded before she was sunk, several of her crew killed, including the captain, and the rest captured and taken to the Japanese port of Kobe. They were disembarked in Kobe while waiting to be loaded onto another German ship. That’s when one of our agents managed to speak briefly to members of the crew. We’ve been able to confirm their identity and…’—he paused, steadying himself—‘we have no reason to disbelieve their story.’
‘Which is?’
‘While the German boarding party was on board the Automedon, they discovered the ship’s safe in the strong room. They blew it open. Got everything inside it. Decoding tables, maps of harbour defences, minefields, intelligence reports, the lot.’
‘Such material is the currency of war. This surely amounts to little more than loose change.’
But Menzies was shaking his head. ‘That’s not it, I’m afraid. While they were making their tour of the ship, they also found the body of an Admiralty courier. Beside him was one of our security bags. It seems he was in the process of throwing it overboard when…Well, he didn’t make it. Neither did the bag.’
Churchill knew of these bags. Green canvas, with brass eyelets to allow the water in and lead weights sewn inside to ensure that the bag and its contents sank quickly to the bottom of the ocean. The couriers were instructed to defend these bags with their lives. The courier on the Automedon appeared to have done precisely that.
‘It seems,’ Menzies said slowly, as if every word had suddenly become a burden, ‘that inside the pouch was a letter addressed to Brooke-Popham.’ The name needed no elaboration. Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham was the British Commander-in-Chief, Far East, based in Singapore. His was one of the most sensitive and difficult commands anywhere in the Empire.
‘Usual routine for top secret material,’ Menzies continued. ‘Instructions that it be opened by no other hand et cetera et cetera.’ He sipped at his whisky, but appeared to find no enjoyment in it. His lips were tightly pursed. ‘When the German ship reached Japan, the letter apparently found its way to the German Ambassador in Tokyo—we have that from intercepts—and he in turn handed it on to Kondo.’
‘Kondo?’
‘The Vice Chairman of the Japanese Imperial Naval General Staff.’
Churchill stared into the cold, empty hearth. ‘And what did the letter contain?’
‘It was…dear God, I think you’ll remember it, Prime Minister.’ Menzies sighed, his shoulders falling in discouragement. ‘A copy of the analysis drawn up by our Chiefs of Staff on our ability to defend ourselves in the Far East in the event that the Japanese declare war on us.’
Churchill froze. He did not stir for many moments, but the glass in his hand tilted as his fingers seemed to lose all sensation. The only sound in the room was the slow dripping of whisky onto the carpet.
Eventually a tremor came to his lips. ‘What on earth was it doing on a tramp steamer like the Automedon?’
‘It’s a tangled little tale,’ Menzies said, finding comfort now that he would be able to offload the burden—and, with it, much of the blame—onto other shoulders. ‘Apparently the War Office didn’t want the paper to get to Singapore too quickly—not in the middle of the difficult negotiations with the Australians—you know what’s been happening. They’ve been pestering us with demands for more and more British reinforcements to be sent to the Far East, while we’ve been insisting that there is no real need. So apparently it was felt that the paper would only…How can I put it?’
‘Complicate the situation.’
‘Precisely.’
‘They decided to cover their arses,’ Churchill growled. ‘They would send it, but so slowly that by the time it arrived it might be buried in obsolescence. Of no use to—and no blame upon—anyone.’
‘I think that’s a reasonably accurate summary, yes. They also wanted to get it to Singapore in a manner that would arouse no suspicion. So they…’
‘Put it on a rust bucket.’
‘That seems to be about the measure of it, Prime Minister. I’m so very sorry.’
But Churchill was no longer listening. His face was flushed with both anger and anguish as his mind cast back to the contents of the paper that he himself had commissioned. It ran to seventy-eight closely argued paragraphs and came to one damning conclusion—a conclusion so devastating that he had refused to allow it to be discussed even by his War Cabinet.
Churchill leant forward, as though wanting to spring at the other man, fixing him in the eye. ‘The Japanese have it? You are sure?’
His stare was returned.
‘On the basis of what we know, it seems all but certain.’
‘Then may God preserve us.’
The Chiefs of Staff had concluded that the British couldn’t beat the Japanese. Not a chance, not on their own. Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore, all the territories and possessions of the British in the Far East, the jewels of their Empire, were virtually defenceless. Waiting to be plundered.
And the Japanese knew it.
A little later, as Churchill climbed the stairs to bed, he found himself accompanied by an unfamiliar and deeply troubling sensation. Only in the middle of the night, when he was still struggling to sleep, did he finally recognize the ruffian.
It was fear.
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