Elizabethan Renaissance

A Romantic Political Thriller

Peter G. Bailey

Copyright © 2013 by Peter G. Bailey.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2013912819

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4836-6931-1

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4836-6930-4

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4836-6932-8

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

The moral right of Peter G. Bailey has been asserted.

First published in Great Britain by PG Publishing.

All characters in this book are fictitious and bear no relationship to any person known to the author, alive or dead.

Rev. date: 07/23/2013

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Contents

Chapter One       The Barbarossa Imperative

Chapter Two       The Task

Chapter Three       The First Steps

Chapter Four       The Parliament Falls

Chapter Five       The Oil-Driven Money Machine

Chapter Six       Frustrations And Revelations

Chapter Seven       The Seeds Are Sown

Chapter Eight       The Invitation To Tea

Chapter Nine       The Empire Looks East

Chapter Ten       Doors Open

Chapter Eleven       Promises And Debts

Chapter Twelve       A Woman Scorned

Chapter Thirteen       The Scorned Lady Bites

Chapter Fourteen       The First Cracks

Chapter Fifteen       Giaconda Strikes

DEDICATION

With leaden feet time creeps slowly while Joy is away.

DISCLAIMER

Many historical events covered in this book actually took place in the politically turbulent 1950s but not necessarily in the order written, nor with the actual historical results. Many characters that played a part in historical incidents are mentioned as background pegs, and their historical contribution might have been exaggerated or minimised but never derided or denigrated. The author acknowledges the liberty taken and apologises profusely should anyone feel aggrieved or misrepresented. Nothing derogatory is intended. The story is fictional in every sense, as are most of the emotionally involved characters. Anyone carrying the same name or occupation can rest assured that they were not role models and were completely unknown to the author at the time of writing. Some liberties have also been taken with place names and locations to fit the storyline should anyone be puzzled by the true geographical facts.

CHAPTER ONE

The Barbarossa Imperative

Scotland 1952

Whatever historical glories the Royal Palace of Holyroodhouse once enjoyed were not evident to Captain Vivian Burnside RN as he arrived for a briefing on his next appointment. Seven years after the end of the Second World War and barely six months into the present owner’s reign, some much-needed restoration and decoration to the dilapidated buildings and grounds was finally taking place.

The choice of a royal palace for a routine naval appointment interview intrigued him even in a confused age when the government of Great Britain still conducted its administrative affairs from an assortment of requisitioned offices and buildings scattered around the country and few, apart from cheap weather-beaten signs, indicating the use being made of them. Burnside had never heard of anyone attending an appointment interview at Holyroodhouse.

Sitting in the back of a black Humber Hawk staff car driven by a young Wren chauffeuse, both provided courtesy of the flag officer, Rosyth Dockyard, Burnside supposed the favour could only mean the flag officer would be his next employer. No problem with that, but why meet in a dormant royal palace outside Edinburgh when the dockyards were not all that far away, twenty miles if he left the car and took the ferry at South Queensferry or a lot longer if he took the road route through Grangemouth and Kincardine.

The driver, a Wren Petty Officer Coxswain, could add nothing to his scant knowledge despite a gentle verbal probing on the short drive from Waverley Street railway station where she met him off the afternoon London train, nor was the meeting a subject he could press too deeply. It would not look well for a man in his august position to be asking a Wren motor pool driver about his future in the navy.

In his own mind the fate he desired for himself was clear enough. He wanted a sea command, and the bigger the fighting vessel the better, but he knew from bitter experience that the Admiralty took sadistic delight in confounding the most modest of expectations in its officers and men. Knowing that quirk it was better to approach each reappointment ordeal with a bland smile and a totally blank mind. That way, disappointment would be moderated if the wish remained unfulfilled and the joy ecstatic if satisfied. Either way, the venting of suppressed feelings was better executed later in a soundproofed cabin and against a solid wall.

After two years spent as executive officer of the aircraft carrier HMS Implacable, the main capital ship of the 15th Carrier Air Group, Burnside felt he fully justified his recent four-stripe promotion. He left the carrier a fortnight earlier in Portsmouth with glowing reports from his captain and from the flag officer aircraft carriers; now, with those priceless accolades filed in his record, along with many others picked up on the way, he wanted his own ship, a big one—a cruiser, battleship, carrier, anything large, prestigious, and testing.

Such a worthwhile command would establish his reputation as the youngest captain to be awarded a command in peacetime conditions. The navy appointed many younger officers to command small ships during the war but never a newly promoted four-ringed captain to a capital vessel. The tantalising thought appealed to him as he tried to remember which ships lay in the hands of Rosyth Dockyard, ready to be commissioned, but as the staff car approached the grey stone palace under the brooding ramparts of Arthur’s Seat, he felt the dream crumbling under the weight of the known facts. The navy did not appoint newly promoted captains to command seagoing ships on the grounds that service time was needed to tarnish the glint of the new gold rings on their sleeves and dull the scrambled egg on their caps. Undoubtedly, his next job would be chained to an office desk, probably in Rosyth Dockyard as an expensive messenger boy for the rear admiral. Still, if fated for that position, he would accept it with good grace. The job would only be for two years; then he would get what he wanted. Time and youth were on his side; he could wait.

As the car pulled to a stop at the main entrance between the two corner towers of the small but imposing royal palace, three uniformed figures hurried from inside the scaffold-enshrouded building as though demonstrating how efficiently they performed their tasks far from the beady eyes of their superiors; also, it made sense to complete the job quickly to get out of the biting easterly wind. One opened the rear car door to allow Burnside to alight with the dignity due his rank; a second positioned himself at the boot ready to unload whatever baggage it contained; and the third member of the stately trio, a grave time-serving civil servant, stood back and only approached with the slightest of formal bows when he had the passenger’s full attention.

‘Captain Burnside?’ he asked. The voice sounded English although the owner looked as though he would be happier using his native lowland Scottish burr instead of pandering to his heathen paymasters in their southern tongue. People from south of the border spoke nicely and wore good suits but were barely civilised. When Burnside nodded his confirmation, he went on, ‘Sir Harvey Javett will see you in the morning room when you are ready, sir.’

The name was not familiar to Burnside.

‘Is he seeing anyone else apart from me?’ he asked. He would find out for himself in a few minutes, but the introduction of a shadowy titled figure made the purpose of the visit all the more intriguing. The Rosyth Dockyard desk began to recede from his reckoning while another less-welcome possibility rose in its place.

‘Yes, sir! He’s seeing Colonel Alexander, Group Captain Balcombe, and Deputy Chief Commissioner Roach at the same time.’ Then as if to forestall the next question, he continued, ‘Just you four uniformed officers, so to speak. There are three civvies as well. All high-priced bureaucrats, if you ask me, although I don’t know what they do.’

Burnside had not asked but was nonetheless grateful for the information; not that it meant much to him. He recognised none of the names, even those reputed to be wearing Her Majesty’s uniforms like himself. He glanced behind him to ensure that his briefcase and raincoat were unloaded from the Humber before taking them and following his guide. He puzzled over the composition of the group, one from each service: joint operations with civilian overtones?

Inside the unheated building, a strong smell of a decorator’s paint and turpentine hung pervasively in the still air. Everywhere evidence of extensive renovation and redecorating could be seen, but no work was taking place at the moment. Paint-spotted dust sheets covered piled furniture heaped well away from accidental spillage and damage. Ladders, scaffold planks, and numerous pots of coloured paint lay haphazardly where the artists left them at the end of their day’s shift. Had they been naval ratings, Burnside might have had a few tart words to say on the subject of their lack of tidiness.

‘I apologise for the state of the place,’ his guide threw over his shoulder as though reading the critical thoughts. He waved a dismissive hand over the chaotic scene. ‘We’re preparing to open to the public for the first time since before the war. The place is being electrified as well as plumbed for central heating. It gets a mite chilly here during the winter without plenty of fires going. We can’t get enough coal allocated despite it being a government building. The logs and firewood from the Royal Estates go elsewhere these days.’

Although cold inside and outside the building, Burnside hardly noticed. It had been a lot colder in the Arctic where he had just come from, nor did he particularly notice the chaotic state of the place. He was used to seeing similar scenes in every working dockyard visited throughout the world; besides, the pristine state of royal palaces was not his concern, or was it? A horrifying thought struck him. Please, God, not royal household duties! Surely the Admiralty would not do that to one of its rising stars? Before asking any of the questions that flooded his mind, the guide entered a part of the building where the decorators had completed their work and had moved on. In their wake, the paintwork gleamed and sparkled with brilliance unlikely to have been exceeded at any time in the building’s history. Here and there, restored pictures and tapestries were being rehung in their original positions after being cleaned and returned from their secure wartime storage. Much of what he could see was worthy of awed comment, but the guide strode on oblivious to all around him. He was not in the business of offering guided tours. He stopped outside an unmarked door and after knocking lightly, he entered a renovated morning room.

Unlike the rest of the palace, this elegant chamber was completely refurbished and redecorated; although sparsely furnished. No more than a dozen low-backed gold-upholstered chairs and one long polished rosewood table graced a room that demanded more.

Burnside took in the decor and furnishings with one sweeping glance before his gaze came to rest on the room’s occupants. A meeting was already in progress and Burnside was obviously a late arrival. Seven men sat around the table, and one of them rose to greet him, hand outstretched in smiling welcome.

‘That will be all, McAlpine!’

The abrupt dismissal was addressed to the guide; a more cordial welcome greeted the captain.

The two men shook hands. They were about the same height and build, although the resident greeter was older and greyer with the responsibilities of untold years of high office.

‘Captain Vivian Burnside?’ he asked in a cultured voice, modulated and refined by the best of education and breeding and honed to a tone of excellence by his professional calling. ‘Nice of you to come. I’m Harvey Javett, private secretary to Her Majesty the Queen.’

He paused just long enough to let that item of momentous news sink into the new arrival’s bemused mind and depress his spirits as Burnside felt his heart sink into his polished half boots. His next appointment was to be with the royal household after all. It had to be or why was he about to be interviewed by the queen’s personal secretary?

As the door closed on the retreating guide, Javett took his guest by the elbow and steered him to the long table where the seated occupants, all dressed in civilian clothes, rose as one to greet him with cheerful smiles and nods of welcome.

‘I want to introduce you to these people,’ he said, halting a few feet from the table. ‘Names first, professions and backgrounds, if you don’t already know, later.’ He introduced each person by name and, in the case of the military, by rank and service. At each introduction, the men shook hands and exchanged ritual greetings. Every name and face was unfamiliar to the new arrival as he supposed his was to them, but then he had spent a large part of his naval service afloat or abroad on foreign tours. In retrospect, that seemed a recurring feature of those present. They had all spent a long time out of the country, even the civilians. Roach, deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, a man most people would expect to have spent his entire police career on the streets of urban Britain, was in fact a one-time member of the Rhodesian Mounted Police having being transferred to Britain during the war and stayed on when it ended.

The uniformed men Burnside could now put faces and names to even if they were strangers to him. The three civilians were complete unknowns. Emsley Butler claimed to be a political analyst; Javett informed Burnside with the slightest inflection of distaste in his cultured voice. With feet planted in the royal household, anything to do with politics and politicians was anathema to him. The species were an evil he barely tolerated on behalf of his patron, and in doing that, he was being more gracious than their bastard professions deserved.

Despite Javett’s abhorrence, Butler felt he needed to explain the nobility and purity of his calling. In performing his duties, he later explained more fully, he scrutinised the views, pronouncements, and opinions of practicing politicians to assess exactly what message their weasel words and fluffy rhetoric intended to convey. In his opinion, political articulation and reality rarely coincided. The ambiguous and truth-distorting words used by a growing number of politicians meant that he dealt with a language not totally understood by normal people in the streets and highways of Great Britain. He acted as an interpreter with the ability to speak the tongues of both sides—the governed and their political masters.

Colonel Charlton Alexander was a man once met it was difficult to forget even after the most cursory of introductions. He looked film-star handsome both in uniform and in plain clothes, an unsought vanity that served him well in his military career. When looking for an example of the idealised soldier to represent the excellence of military life, the army needed to look no further than the elegant colonel. His picture graced recruiting posters everywhere, and he found himself being introduced to dignitaries normal service would not pass his way. This tangible asset, allied to a streak of ruthless efficiency and total dedication to the army, allowed him to move effortlessly through the wartime ranks, although acknowledging a famous wartime field marshal as a close relative proved to be no handicap. Senior officers still respected the great man’s memory and treated the offspring with a deference that might not have been granted had he been an ordinary line officer.

Even without the undoubted advantages a kindly nature bestowed on him Alexander would have gone far in any career. In everything, he worked hard and obeyed the rules. He was a man who went for the gonads with relentless determination, knowing everything—vanities, conceit, ambitions, arrogance, and pride, was centred there. Strip an enemy of those deceits and the battle was half won, he declared to anyone who would listen to his philosophy on ruthless army tactics. Nothing deflected him from an ambition or a target. He revelled in the thought of war and in the stimulus engendered by fighting imaginary battles. If honours went to those who yearned for action, he would have finished the Second World War festooned in medals and honours of which the Victoria Cross and several bars should have been on prominent display. Instead, he had a poorly rewarded war. After service in Africa, Italy, Germany, and in the Far East, he ended up with nothing more than a list of glowing testimonials, numerous mentions in dispatches, and a chestful of campaign medals but nothing for valour and gallantry. His had been a support function—dedicated and ready for action but never called.

His regiment, the Royal Artillery, although a battle decider was not often called to fight heroic hand-to-hand battles with a fierce enemy contesting the possession of every scrap of land. When those contests were taking place, Alexander found himself miles from the fighting, lobbing high-calibre shells over the heads of his forward lines to soften the enemy’s defences so others could finish what he started. The glory and medals went to the infantry and not to the artillerymen. Although countless members of his regiment ended the war with high military honours and decorations, he did not, nor did his wartime temporary promotion to brigadier help much in the accumulation of medals and battle honours. Each promotion, although merited by performance and ability, took him further from the clash and thunder of the battles he longed to be fighting. He regretted that sacrifice far more than his reduction to his substantive rank of major at the end of hostilities.

The cessation of fighting left him unfulfilled and frustrated. Given the vast stage of a world war, it had not lived up to his expectations, and now with international aggression finished, he could see only a diminishing role for himself in the smaller peacetime army of Great Britain. His promotion, through the intervening years to full colonel, only partly satisfied his ambitions for high command, but a return to his wartime rank of brigadier seemed far from achievable in an age of enforced army reductions caused by a hard-pressed national economy. Good men were being forced out of the services even as he sat in Holyroodhouse. Any day, his name could appear on a discharge list that meant he had to say goodbye to the war machine he loved. From there, he would join the civilians he once barely recognised as inhabitants of the earth’s surface. They only got in the way of his falling shells and created targeting problems for his gunners.

Still youthful and ambitious, Alexander had a point to make in life, and he retained a burning will to achieve it. He was not a good man to have as an enemy but could make a good friend, unless you stood in the way of his ambitions. Burnside instinctively felt that dedication as they shook hands and guardedly smiled at each other.

Conrad Fox-Henley was more to Javett’s noetic taste. Not only did he possess an expensive name and an impeccable county pedigree, he was an authority on English constitutional law, a subject Javett fancied he had more than a passing familiarity with himself. Fox-Henley, in his early forties, began adult life as a constitutional barrister but gave up that eristic practise in favour of a lucrative private practice. The change brought many foreign governments and blue-chip international trading companies as clients as well as half the recorded entrants of Burke’s peerage. Javett and Fox-Henley had a collaborator’s mutual interest in ensuring each other’s well-being and survival.

Colin Roach, tall, alert, and observant, possessed the reserved air of a distrustful professional policeman. He took no one at face value and trusted no one. Even in a roomful of supposedly irreproachable and patently honest people, he harboured suspicions and doubts about the integrity of his fellow man. To him, criminality was a question of opportunity and value, nothing more. Everyone had susceptibility for mischief, and everyone had a price. In his experience, they could all be tempted. In holding that unfortunate philosophy, outward appearances of respectability and professional rectitude proved no defence. To him, everyone was guilty of something until proved innocent; doubtless St Peter had him marked down in a future support role at the Pearly Gates.

High-minded scepticism lay behind dark restless eyes—habitually narrowed and sharply focused—as they assessed the merit of prejudices fed his dubious brain. Such penetrating character analysis was disconcerting even to those who knew him well and thought they had nothing to fear from his introspective appraisal. They would be wrong. He had no close friends or relations in Great Britain, and his enemies even accused him of shopping his family for a small crime back in Rhodesia, although there was less evidence of that than there was of him persecuting colleagues for momentary lapses in propriety in Great Britain, and there was plenty of documentary evidence of that. People believed the worst of him, not only because he was a policeman and therefor against humanity, but also because of his contrived foreboding appearance.

To add to those liabilities, Roach possessed a cool incisive brain that retained and handled information with the relentless tenacity of a computer and with the same faultless recall. His progress through war-depleted police ranks had been nothing short of meteoric remembering that he had no patrons and only raw talent and instinctive ability to guide him.

When introduced by Javett, Roach gave Burnside his usual close inspection before favouring him with a neutral smile. Someone spending so much time at sea could hardly find the time to establish any worthwhile criminal police records ashore was not an evaluation reflected in his dark eyes, rather what could the man have been up to out of sight of land and police scrutiny for so long. Smuggling items through customs passed through his fertile mind as he tried to assess the value of the gold cufflinks and the Rolex watch Burnside wore. They might be subjects worth exploring, but not just now.

Group Captain Alan Teasdale Balcombe, Burnside was told, was a much-decorated RAF fighter pilot who joined the service as a direct entrant from the Oxford University Air Squadron where he took a keen interest in flying while reading chemistry. Taken into the RAF at the outbreak of the Second World War, he rose quickly through the ranks to command a Spitfire squadron stationed at Hawkinge in Sussex at the start of the Battle of Britain. In that capacity, he shot down five-enemy aircraft and lost five of his own, miraculously escaping from each with only slight injuries to his pride. For his valiant wartime efforts, he accumulated an impressive chestful of medals and numerous citations for bravery. By the end of the hostilities, he attained the rank of air vice-marshal but reverted, when he decided to stay on in the peacetime service, to a substantive rank of wing commander. He had been in his present group captain’s rank for three years, but like the other military men, he entertained grave doubts about his future in the contracting service. Would the RAF want an ageing air ace in a peacetime force without a canvas for him to paint his heroics on?

Burnside shook his RAF contemporary’s hand warmly. He got on well with the junior service whenever they met socially, and that was not as often as he would have liked. They were generally less stuffy and unpretentious than the tradition-bound army or even his own protocol-riddled service come to that.

The last person to be introduced, not because he was the least important but because he was furthest away, caused Burnside some surprise and curiosity—another civilian, Kenneth Ainsley. Ainsley, a career diplomat, had held high positions in all the prestige embassies throughout the world, including Berlin before the outbreak of hostilities.

Youthful in appearance and vain to a point where it was almost an obsession, he pleased by sheer technical brilliance. A university graduate, he achieved personal effulgence by becoming indispensable to those above him and by ensuring that he became a proficient polyglot in his many appointments. In that useful ability, he was aided by the diplomatic service’s insistence on teaching its recruits the basics of the language of the country to which they were posted. Taking advantage of that opportunity, he went further. Once resident, he took pains to make himself fluent, not only in the language of the country, but also in the main dialects. To improve his linguistic skills, he hired native speakers and no matter how far removed from his native English base he contrived to master it. At his last count, he could converse fluently in twenty languages as diverse as Pashtu and Mandarin Chinese. Hand in hand with attaining linguistic skills, he also took a keen interest in the history and politics of the countries where he found himself accredited. Unlike the less dedicated consular staff, who treated each posting as no more than an irksome chore to be borne with the least inconvenience to themselves, he reasoned that every diplomat worth his salt should know what drove the political thinking in the country and what influenced the nuances and undercurrents flowing restlessly across the world’s political and social stages.

Armed with his linguistic skills and an immense knowledge of local politics and characters worth knowing, Ainsley was never at a loss to explain the most insoluble of international political problems; better still, if asked, he could offer solutions. He had everything a man could desire: good looks, a brilliant mind, a polished cultured bearing, good speech delivery, good physique, and unimpeachable social graces. He was in demand for his dancing and sparking conversation as much as he was for his diplomatic abilities. To his way of thinking, all talents and personal attributes anyone possessed should be attuned to one-end success in the job.

With his physical attraction and mental dexterity, it would not be surprising to find, like Alexander, that he strongly appealed to the female sex, and with good reason. He possessed everything they might find laudable and desirable in a mate. Ainsley, however, spurned their attention and ignored their appealing sighs. He was a practicing homosexual, a predilection not immediately apparent to those who did not know him; or even to some who did. He looked every inch an alpha male, and the thought that he might be a deviant never crossed Burnside’s mind as the two men shook hands with an acceptable degree of masculine firmness. To him, Ainsley was just another face to fit into the jigsaw that was beginning to display more holes than pieces to fit into them.

With the lengthy introductions complete, Javett glanced at his watch as though noting what time his last guest had arrived so that he could begin the main business of the meeting. He motioned Burnside to an empty chair along one side of the table while he returned to his place at its head.

In the silence that descended on the room as Javett settled comfortable, Burnside looked around the table at the unlikely gathering and wondered why they had been assembled to be addressed by such a man as Sir Harvey Javett, a man he had never seen or heard of. The lack of such knowledge did not surprise him. He was not an avid follower of court circulars, even when in England, and he rarely took note of any function attended by the royals, unless their movements affected him, as they had on more than one occasion.

For most of the time the royal family was no more accessible to him than the depleted national gold deposits held in the vaults of the Bank of England. He toasted the queen’s health on board ships belonging to her navy, and that was his only connection, apart from royal visits to ships he served on. As his gaze travelled the full circle, he guessed the others seated around the polished table might have had the same limited experience, except Ainsley perhaps. As a senior diplomat, that man had spent his career acting out the fiction that he represented the monarch in foreign parts, and he must have found himself hosting dinners when royalty visited countries where he was the resident ambassador. Of all those present, except Javett, he would be the one with the most royal exposure.

Javett, a figure standing behind the throne, rarely appeared in the public eye. His contributions to steering the path of royalty smoothly through the vicissitudes of constitutional and political life were not well known. If they were, he would not be doing his job.

‘How many of you wondered about the deep-level positive vetting you’ve been subjected to over the last two years?’ he began as he leaned forward on his elbows and asked the question tentatively as though not expecting an encouraging answer, nor did he give anyone a chance to respond. ‘Although you might have missed its significance, there was a purpose that has to do with a monumental and confidential task you will be asked to undertake. Please understand that the strictest rules of state confidentiality apply to this meeting. Nothing of what you hear today must be discussed outside this room and no notes taken.’

An uneasy movement flowed around the table as his listeners settled into defensive postures which have nothing to do with being inattentive. The meeting, the secretive nature of the venue, and the high-status person conducting the meeting all bore the unmistakable hallmarks of their being offered something they might be well advised to refuse; if they could. The shooting war was over, and the cold war so remote from the United Kingdom it hardly affected anyone present, so the proposition on offer could not be any death or glory stunt that might appeal to Colonel Alexander. The Second World War with its overtones of clandestine operations had recently submerged into the background of the passive national conscience, but one memory remained fresh and appropriate: the old armed service adage of ‘never volunteer for anything’. For the moment, the men were prepared to listen and, in Burnside’s case, with a predisposition to refuse anything that might frustrate, or delay, his chances of accepting a command.

The obvious defence reflex told the astute Javett that the seated men would not necessarily want to become part of what he was about to offer them, but he needed an answer.

‘Do any of you remember any recent conversations with strangers in pubs and clubs?’ he persisted. One or two heads nodded doubtfully. ‘I know each of you has been approached, not once but several times and in different places.’ He looked down at a ribbon-wrapped folder lying on the carpet by his chair, but he did not touch it. ‘I can refresh your memory of the exact time and place for each of you if that’s needed.’ He smiled disarmingly as he saw the group exchange puzzled looks amongst themselves. Meeting people and talking to them was the reason many of them went to pubs and clubs. It was the reason for their existence. ‘And judging from the responses we received, you each hold fairly robust views on the subjects you were invited to comment on.’

‘I can recall many discussions with strangers over the last few months,’ Ainsley interposed doubtfully. ‘But I’m not sure that my views on railway cutbacks or the question of cinema morality has any relevance to the way I do my job. I don’t, therefore, understand your need to conduct such investigations if as you say, all of us have been confidentially vetted.’

All heads turned to glance at Roach as if the reference to undercover investigations was the reason for his presence at the meeting. He blinked and looked as bemused as everyone else around the table. Plainly, he was not party to any such investigations; although, he might now be interested in the legality of an operation that purported to intrude into the lives of private citizens, including him.

Javett chuckled good-humouredly before adopting a more serious mien. ‘I expect your opinions on those particular subjects have been noted, Kenneth, but they are not specific to the reasons for calling this meeting, while your republican views are.’

There was a subdued murmur as eyebrows shot up in surprise.

‘Republican?’ Roach asked as though seeking confirmation that he had heard correctly. ‘That’s not a subject that takes up much of my working day.’

‘Nor mine,’ Balcombe agreed. He cast a look in the direction of his two brothers in arms, but they were looking at Javett.

‘There’s always been an incipient republican movement in this country,’ Fox-Henley informed the meeting gratuitously. ‘It reached the heights of its popularity during the reigns of Hanovian Georges when they fell out of favour because of the laissez faire American colonial policy they adopted. Since those days, the movement has tended to vary with the popularity of the occupant of the throne. Since the abdication, republican sentiment has been in retreat, and since the coronation, they’ve become almost non-existent.’ He regarded Javett mockingly. ‘Surely you don’t suspect any of us of holding republican views?’

‘Far from it,’ Javett agreed hastily. ‘That’s what I concluded from reading the reports of my investigators. In fact, you all came over as people who would be prepared to defend the institution of the monarchy with more than just words, and for the purpose of this meeting, that’s exactly what I wanted to hear.’ He looked along the table slowly, trying to read the inner thoughts of his listeners from the confused expressions on their faces and the dubious looks in their eyes. ‘Sometime in the near future, you might well be asked to do just that; not necessarily from external attack, as in the recent war, but from a far more insidious assault and one a lot harder to resist—political dissidence from inside the country.’

Balcombe moved uncomfortably. ‘That’s a bit extreme, isn’t it?’ he protested. ‘I know the socialists rant on about abolishing the House of Lords, but that’s hot-headed rhetoric for like-minded political consumption. Socialists are not always republicans, and they say nothing about abolishing the monarchy at the same time as they want to be rid of the House of Lords.’ He paused as a thought struck him. ‘Unless you know something we don’t, Sir Harvey, or perhaps Colin here has some information he’d like to share with us?’ He nodded across the table at the listening Roach.

Javett pursed his lips in a way he thought looked resolute and purposeful, but in reality, the expression made him look like an offended schoolmistress.

‘In war and peace,’ he interposed unctuously before Roach could add another confusing contribution. ‘Success goes to those who are best prepared. I would consider that I’d failed in my duties if plans were not in place to defeat any challenge to the monarchy and, by implication, to the House of Lords since that august body is the foundation upon which the whole social structure of this country is based. Abolishing the House of Lords is but one step nearer to republicanism and the eventual abolition of the Crown. Without a sound base, no structure can survive, and we must defend both with vigour and determination.’

Javett spoke with the conviction of one who would suffer should the fate he prophesied come about. He saw himself in the heroic role as the last bastion in the defence of the realm and felt empowered to defend his cause to the end, whatever that might be. The fact that he also wanted to protect his own prosperity might not have occurred to him in quite those terms, but the thought crossed Burnside’s sceptical mind as he listened. He had not expected a lecture on the need for the monarchy to be defended against a minor opinion that scarcely ruffled the pages of any of the more popular Fleet Street newspapers; even on quiet news days. He glanced at his watch; the meeting had only been going for a few minutes. There must be more to it than a lecture on the security of the throne. The stability and safety of the Crown from a home grown menace had never been doubted in wartime, why worry about it in peacetime?

‘From long experience, the military knows that making plans are nothing,’ Javett went on, ‘if they are not backed by ability and a determination to put them into effect, and that is where you come in. The military and the civil police are professional and disciplined organisations, and in that capacity, they are uniquely placed to defend the monarchy and the realm from any form of attack. That is why they exist, and that is why they train. They each have abilities and expertise we can tap into during times of stress. However, the monarchy needs to know how it might defend itself and its subjects in the event of an internal coup, or in the event of legislation being passed through parliament that is clearly against the monarch’s interests.’

‘When you say, we must defend,’ Roach interposed, ‘who exactly are you referring to?’

‘With respect to your professional position, Sir Harvey,’ Fox-Henley interjected before Javett could respond, ‘there’s nothing the monarchy can realistically do to oppose a lawful Act of Parliament. The monarchy can refuse to sign a law into being of course, but parliament is sovereign in matters of the legislation it passes.’

‘The RAF could provide transport to fly the royal family to a place of safety if the worst happens,’ Balcombe offered. He grimaced wryly at his brothers in arms to indicate that the offer was not to be taken too seriously.

‘I was thinking of something rather more fundamental than both those worthy comments,’ Javett cut in with a trace of peevishness.

‘Just now you spoke as though the republican problem was yours alone to solve,’ Burnside reminded Javett before he could continue. ‘You changed that to embrace all the uniformed services. Might we know the identity of the malcontents if they are not the elected government?’ He glanced across the table at the civilian representatives. ‘I just can’t see an occasion when the armed forces of this country would move against a properly elected government if they had it in mind to remove the monarchy without good reason.’

‘I remind you that a move of that nature has already been tried,’ Butler cut in pedantically. ‘And parliament won.’

‘Quite so,’ Javett agreed. ‘To deal with Captain Burnside’s points. The syntax I used was not as imprecise as it sounded. There is absolutely no suggestion that the armed forces would ever be asked to intervene on behalf of the monarchy without a very good cause. I merely put it to you that such a situation could arise in an uncertain political climate, and the possibility of such an event occurring in the future should be studied with care if we are not to be taken by surprise.’

‘Could you elaborate on that?’ Butler asked.

Javett paused as though considering the need to weigh his words with rather more care than he usually afforded them, and he was a polished diplomat.

‘Suppose,’ he went on, ‘a socialist government gained power at a general election after offering a benign populist manifesto to the electorate only for the trusting public to find that the party had been heavily infiltrated by communists and republican agents with their own agendas. This is not a bizarre scenario, nor an unreasonable one,’ he added as he saw his listeners exchanging doubtful glances. ‘Throughout its short history, the Labour Party has shown itself remarkably tolerant to the insidious dilution of its membership by the entryism of members holding radical political views, and this is true today. The extreme left of the socialist movement has proved, on too many occasions, that it has no sympathy for socialism, yet they are welcome to take up positions of power and influence in the socialist movement, even though it’s well known that they want nothing less than the blood-red communism of the sort practised in Russia and China to be imposed on Great Britain. To achieve that, they are using the good offices of the Labour Party as a stalking horse to infiltrate parliament. Under their own colours, they have no chance of being elected, but should these Trojan horses gain positions of influence, the country might well find itself with a government it did not elect and which it would find extremely difficult to depose. We’ve already heard their front men state that if it gained power, their government would consider voting themselves into office indefinitely to rid the country of its conservative heritage and convictions. In other words, they want to indoctrinate and make Her Majesty’s subjects cower over generations rather than the relative short span the constitution allows. Under those circumstances, would the armed services stand aside and watch the whole fabric of the society they’ve sworn to defend, be dismantled and, incidentally, see their own jobs go to sympathetic cadre members wearing jackboots?’ Javett asked. He leaned back in his chair and watched the effect of his words on his listeners. ‘And what would be the military reaction to an order to spearhead the rounding up of the enemies of the state, namely anyone opposed to their ideology, and that might well include you. The Russian communists showed military leaders of her armies few favours when they took power. Most senior officers ended up in Siberian Gulags or were summarily shot just for being officers.’

Javett wanted to gauge the reaction to his portrayal of the danger facing the country should his dire forecast prove accurate. The same nightmare had exercised the three servicemen when they faced the same hypothetical scenario at many war games played during promotion staff courses. Then, they rarely came to any conclusion other than to establish that the services were the paid servants of the government and their primary duty was to their government paymasters. It was true that loyalty oaths were sworn in the sovereign’s name rather than to parliament but that formality was only pertinent while parliament allowed the monarchy to act as its nominal head of state. For their part, the services took a realistic line while remembering that an elected government, of any political persuasion, could quickly call any recalcitrant service into line by the simple expedient of cutting its supplies; a move that would be cripplingly effective within days, if not immediately. No staff officer wanted to look into that abyss. Thus, while the knotty question of the elected government dissolving the monarchy had been hypothetically discussed by the services, the solution to the problem was left acceptably vague with any conclusions dependent on the circumstances at the time, and that meant taking account of the public sufferings and injustices perpetrated by both sides of any supremacy struggle. There were just too many imponderables involved for attitudes to be set in advance.

Without the chance to confer, the three servicemen wondered if Javett was about to give them the official view of their responsibilities as seen from the throne and then tell them they had the responsibility of selling the message to their respective services. The thought was not allowed to develop as Javett turned to Butler.

‘Some people maintain that parliament was wrong in taking illegal action against the Stuarts in the seventeenth century,’ he began. ‘Even today, the suspicion remains that more power was taken from the monarchy than was justified by the comparatively minor dispute over who should raise taxes and regulate the religious freedom of the country. Some would argue that the balance should now be restored in favour of the monarchy, and soon.’

‘The dissenters might well be historically correct,’ Fox-Henley interposed before Butler could respond. ‘But the rules governing a free democracy are organic. They are not set in stone, nor should they be. Note is taken of changes in attitudes of the electorate and legislation is altered accordingly. Would, for instance, the present monarch, or even her predecessors had they been given the chance, wish to take on all the burdens of modern statehood assumed by parliament, or would they find the task too onerous? Life was simpler in bygone days, remember? Just the odd religious dispute with the pope and his hooligan supporters to contend with.’ He grinned mirthlessly. ‘From my reading of modern history, all later monarchs have been only too glad to accept a quiet life that did not involve them in too much social administration. That is not what monarchs are for. What good would the repossession of archaic prerogatives do for a monarch reluctant to take on the modern burdens of statehood? And who would shoulder the responsibility if they were poorly equipped to do so? Could our present monarch sensibly declare war on another country without the approval of parliament? I think not. Now, as then, the monarchy could not afford the financial or social cost.’

‘Thank you for that, Conrad, but you might be wrong in at least one of your assumptions,’ Javett suggested kindly as he favoured the speaker with a faint smile to show he did not wholly disapprove of the unhelpful interruption. ‘I happen to know that the loss of their inherited rights has been a seething bone of contention for many monarchs who have sat on the throne of England. If you read their personal diaries and private papers, you’ll see, in great detail, a continuing record of their disenchantment and frustration at the shackles imposed on them. Few have been unaware of the casual tyranny heaped on their subjects by uncaring governments, even socialist ones. Most of all, monarchs grieve for the loss of Great Britain’s prestige and position in the world and for the loss of their people’s personal esteem. When the monarchy was strong, Britain was strong. It’s a historical fact that Great Britain’s power began to wane when weak-willed parliaments began eroding our birthright and squandering the advantages our enterprise and the adventuring spirit gained for us. For our present monarch, the wheel of history has turned half a circle. It has moved from the impressive achievements and gallantry of the first Elizabethans to what we have become today, a beaten nation supported only by our ex-colonies at the exorbitant price they demand for their loyalty. We, as a nation, are bankrupt in wealth, spirit, and enterprise, exhausted by our burdens, and depleted by losses incurred fighting two world wars. The causes we fought for in the recent past have been worthwhile, as were those of the first Elizabeth in her day, but unlike her victories and successes, we ended our wars having laid hundreds of thousands of our brave citizens to rest, and for what?’ He looked challengingly at his listeners. ‘To save Poland from Germanic tyranny only for them to fall under the heel of a far-worse oppressor, Communist Russia? A communist face has replaced the fascist enemy that offers little comfort to anyone except harsh rulers who know nothing of tolerance or temperance. At home, what have we to show for our wartime efforts? A burgeoning communist movement that dare not speak its name yet infiltrates anywhere it can gain influence: local politics, the teaching professions, town halls, and, most of all, the trade unions. These infiltrators know no master other than the corrupting siren voice of Moscow. We have parasites seeking to undermine our way of life, our traditions, and, most of all, our monarchy. Communist activists know well that the British nation rallies to the throne in times of trouble. Bring that down, and the nation is rudderless, ripe for a Stalinist takeover.’

‘You speak for the monarch then,’ Roach interrupted, unsatisfied by Javett’s response to the question of attrition. ‘Or have I missed the point?’

‘I speak in the name of the monarchy which is a mere tenant waiting to pass its burden on to the next generation. It must be the wish of every monarch that they leave the throne a stronger and wealthier structure for the new holder to face the future with confidence.’

‘If you’ll excuse my scepticism, Sir Harvey,’ Fox-Henley cut in with a theatrical sigh, ‘I cannot see how the monarch can alter what they inherit and will swear to uphold at their coronation. Unlike the situation in the earlier times of which you speak so eloquently, the monarchy has no strong yeoman base in this country to rely on, nor is there a powerful nobility with vast armies of vassal retainers to rise in their support, even if they wanted to.’

‘I cannot fault your incisive observation, Conrad,’ Javett agreed. ‘You make a valid point. Things have undoubtedly changed since earlier times, and while they may not have changed for the better, we must make use of what we have.’ He grinned wryly. ‘We must play by the rules parliament grants us. We owe that to our subjects and to ourselves.’ He paused to glance at his watch. ‘Now, with your permission, I will invite a guest speaker to say a few words. I’m sure you’ll recognise her, but please suspend all social courtesies. We have little time, and she has asked for the meeting to be informal as well as discreet.’

As he spoke, Javett stood up and carefully pulled his chair from the table by a precise amount before turning and walking to the closed door. While he spoke of the need for informality, his own manner had become stately and stiffly deferential.

At the table, the seated men looked at each other with a mixture of bemusement and curiosity. No one knew what to expect or what conclusions they should draw from the history lesson Javett just bestowed on them. Whatever he did now and whoever he introduced as his guest speaker, nothing could be added to the bizarre comments already made. His words might make sense to minds fevered by suspicions of republican and communist plots against the throne, but they made little sense to people who did not share those rabid concerns. His words meant nothing to Burnside, for instance. To him, talk of rampant republicanism stalking the land seemed arrant nonsense. It did not exist in his experience, although a communist coup sounded plausible, especially after a long build-up of strikes, civil unrest, and heightened expectations, all of which were happening even as they sat around the rosewood table in a royal palace. Roach might know more about any republican activities than the military, civil unrest being a police matter for which they had prime responsibility.

Reaching the door, Javett looked behind him checking if all was in order before opening it and standing to one side with a deep bow.

‘Her Majesty!’ he announced in a booming voice too loud for the size of the room as the small figure of a woman entered as though she had been standing outside for just such a dramatic entrance call.

If anyone noticed the increased volume, the observation was lost in a frantic scramble for everyone to rise to their feet, face the door, and bow self-consciously in the deferential way they had been asked not to adopt.

Javett could have warned them of the high status of the new arrival, but judging by the mischievous glint in his eyes and the suppressed grin on his face he privately enjoyed the unbecoming spectacle of seven eminent men behaving in total confusion.

Burnside, in particular, was taken aback by the arrival of his monarch and then depressed by the sight. Was he to be offered the job of naval equerry to the queen herself or to some other member of her family? He felt his blood run cold as he watched the small, trim, blue-gowned figure, followed attentively by her personal secretary, walk the short distance to the chair Javett vacated a few seconds earlier.

‘Your Majesty,’ they intoned respectfully in obsequious greeting. According to the court circulars, she should have been at her palace in Windsor, Burnside remembered. He knew that from radio and TV news items, not from personal enquiries. For a few moments after he straightened himself, and while she settled, with Javett’s help, into the gold chair, Burnside looked her over speculatively. Was Javett fooling them? Was he playing a bizarre joke at their expense? If so, what was the reason? It was surely rather an elaborate hoax to pull on several strangers in a secretly arranged meeting, far from those who might appreciate that kind of asinine humour.

It was the queen right enough he decided as he watched her settle. He had met her formally three times, twice at the crowded Buckingham Palace garden parties and once when she visited HMS Implacable at Portsmouth Dockyard not all that long ago. On that occasion, he had been with her a long time as he escorted her around the aircraft carrier explaining the technical workings of the ship before dining with her in the wardroom. She had been interested and asked many questions, some unexpected. This was definitely the same person.

The distinctive voice with its strange tonal inflections cut into his thoughts.

‘Good afternoon, gentlemen,’ the new arrival began after casting a calculating look over the men standing rigidly to attention before her. ‘Please be seated.’ She paused while the men resumed their seats, this time rather more rigidly and attentively. They sat stiff-backed with soft clenched hands resting lightly in their laps to leave the table clear. Javett was riveting, but the queen was compelling both in the office she held and in her personal dignity and magnetism. ‘I think I know you all well enough not to need reminding who you are but let me see?’ She rested her finger tips lightly on the edge of the table and looked at each of the men slowly, placing their faces in her memory and recalling details from a source only she, and possibly Javett, knew.

‘Let me see?’ she repeated. ‘Ambassador Ainsley I know very well.’ She acknowledged him with a slight dipping motion of her head.

Ainsley flushed with pleasure at being so notably selected before his peers, half-rose, and bowed a second time, a clumsy manoeuvre no one tried to repeat.

‘Colonel Alexander?’ she went on giving the colonel a warm smile.

Her gaze next settled on the constitutional expert. ‘Conrad Fox-Henley,’ she hazarded correctly. ‘I wish I knew your subject as well as you,’ she confided with modest humility. ‘I confess I found it tedious and exceedingly boring subject when I had to study it at my lessons. Now, for obvious reasons, I wish I’d paid more attention.’ She smiled wistfully, but Fox-Henley knew she was being modest. She knew the subject of constitutional law as well as most practitioners. In previous quiet conversations with him, she astounded him with the depth and range of her knowledge. He had been impressed and remained so.

Her attention swung to Emsley Butler and then to the slim group captain, both of whom she named unerringly. ‘And Captain Vivian Burnside, my Sir Francis Drake,’ she smiled. Burnside nodded at the mention of his name but was unable to connect the reference to the old Devon sea dog to himself even when he thought about it later nor did he live in the West Country ‘And Commissioner Colin Roach,’ she concluded.

Roach, she knew him from the many royal functions where he supervised security. He was the reassuring figure, never far from her side: a calm authoritative police officer directing events with a nod of his intimidating head or with an imperative, almost casual, wave of his hand. Such orchestrations ensured that the royal passage through the streets of her capital were always unimpeded and trouble-free. Yes, she knew Roach.

‘I invited you here for a purpose,’ she began when satisfied with her head count. ‘First, I must apologise for dragging you all the way to Scotland when this meeting might more conveniently have been held in London.’ Now she spoke to them as a group she sat upright looking a picture of tranquillity, although no one could judge the state of her mind as she approached the subject she called the men together to hear. ‘My motive for selecting this place has more to do with the advice of my security staff than in travel practicalities and in my own self-indulgence. I wanted to meet you without arousing speculation in the press and without raising unhealthy interest in government circles about the reasons for my being here so far from where my standard flies.’

‘Sir Harvey?’ she turned to look at enquiringly at Javett who had taken up a silent position slightly behind her chair, alert and ready to intervene and support.

‘Nothing, Your Majesty,’ he said anticipating a question she did not pose. ‘A few details, no more,’ he added enigmatically.

He lapsed into silence as though not wholly approving of the exercise she was about to embark on nor understanding the need for it. What she had to say could easily have been said by himself, or less attributively, by an aide. Her presence added a risk of dramatic and damning disclosure. No one would be interested in the news that a minor court official had addressed a small gathering of officers and civilians in the morning room of a half-refurbished royal house in Scotland, but the entire world would want to know why the queen was doing the same thing. It was a matter of perspective and proportion. Plainly, Javett had been overruled.

‘In that case, let me start at the beginning,’ she decided, turning to face the table, her youthful face set and determined to press on with what she started. ‘Many years ago,’ she began. ‘After being reproved by our nanny for some minor misdemeanor, my sister asked what I’d do if ever I became queen. It was a harmless game we played as often as most children do, I suppose. At the time, I think, she was motivated solely by a desire to see nanny condemned to the Bloody Tower and dispatched in an appropriately painful and satisfying way. The simple question struck a chord then and still does all these years later. What would I do? At the time, I probably said something superficially glib, but I really I wanted to tell her that I’d like to follow