Warsaw Concerto, page 40
part #13 of Timeline 10_27_62 Series
Realising that she had trespassed into the military domain she quirked an apologetic grimace, and waved for Michael Carver to take over.
“Thank you, Prime Minister.” The Chief of the Defence Staff affixed his gaze on de Boissieu. “By this time, we had all hoped that our forces would be further to the south, this in turn would have shortened the vulnerable Rhine demarcation line to the east. Unfortunately, we are where we are and although the autumn rains and the recent cold temperatures have effectively put our foes on the defensive, we have not taken advantage of our superior mobility or of our near total tactical command of the air, to inconvenience the mostly irregular elements to our front…”
De Boissieu was fit to burst.
The veins were standing out at his temples and his complexion was turning beetroot ruby.
“There has been no lack of courage by my people! If you had delivered the fuel, equipment, munitions and food demanded by my Staff…”
“For goodness sake, Alain!” Margaret Thatcher yelped angrily. “If we attempted to supply you on the basis of the schedules you insist on drawing up, half of England would have ground to a halt and people would be starving in the street! You don’t seem to realise that if the British people knew that there had been a complete stalemate along the Free French sectors of the Loire Line for the last year, they would demand your head!”
“Enough,” the Supreme Commander of All Allied Forces in France stood up, turned on his heel and took the first step towards the nearest door.
“Mon General!” Maurice Schumann barked at his compatriot’s retreating back, a note of unadulterated outrage in his voice that was directed directly at de Boissieu. “Remember that our friends have shed much blood and treasure to give us back a part of our country!”
Of course, of the two Frenchmen in the bunker Schumann, the career politician had, unlike his countryman, guessed that their hosts had locked all the doors before the meeting began; specifically, to obviate the possibility of proceedings being terminated in exactly this way. It seemed self-evident to him that the Prime Minister and the Chief of the Defence Staff had not travelled down to Dover to be thwarted by a temper tantrum!
Schumann turned to Michael Carver, his arms spread wide appealing for help. The Englishman shook his head.
Alain de Boissieu stood, glowering, his arms folded tightly across his chest.
Margaret Thatcher tried very hard, and failed, not to glare back at the Supreme Command of All Allied Forces in France.
“There are only three options available to my government,” she explained, icily. “One, we withdraw to the coastal margins of the English Channel, abandoning seventy percent of all the territory we have jointly liberated, seeking to protect the freedom of navigation in the narrow seas. Two, we carry on as before, as we are at present, tolerating the stalemate. Three, we do something drastic to alter the military and political calculus. Option one is inherently unsatisfactory for any number of reasons. Not least, because it would be morally repugnant to everybody in this room to abandon so many of our people to their fate. Option two, well, that simply is not working at present and we do not have the resources or frankly, the luxury of accepting tactical stasis for another week let alone another year. That leaves option number three, renewing the attack.”
“It is winter!” Alain de Boissieu protested.
“We are talking about France, not Russia!” Margaret Thatcher re-joined tartly. “And, the majority of your forces have been inactive for many months fattening on the largesse supplied to it by MY GOVERNMENT!”
All the men in the room winced.
For a moment, even the Prime Minister thought she had gone too far. The moment passed.
“Bring in Frank!” She commanded.
“Prime Minister?” Captain Staveley queried respectfully.
The Lady took a long, slow breath.
“Frank carries a gun and if I have to listen to any more excuses about why a quarter-of-a-million well-fed and equipped Free French soldiers cannot get off their backsides and start fighting as hard as MY BOYS are fighting north of the Gironde Estuary, right now, I am going to want to shoot somebody!”
Michael Carver raised an eyebrow.
Otherwise, he was as cool as a cucumber. Normally, he would have cavilled, in the most unambiguous terms, about ‘the cabaret’ suggested by Lord Harding-Grayson, the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary, and the Prime Minister’s husband. Had he had a better idea; he would almost certainly have put his foot down. In the event, relations with the French high command were so dire that he was prepared to considered very nearly any suggestion, however bizarre, which offered even a small chance of repairing matters.
“Where is Frank?” The Lady demanded.
“Just coming, my dear!” The old soldier guffawed, strolling nonchalantly into the room, smiling his infectious, slightly gap-toothed roguish smile. “Just coming!”
Frank Waters winked at de Boissieu who was staring at him wide-eyed.
“This is intolerable,” the Frenchman said stiffly, only now, very belatedly, beginning to wonder if his perfidious English hosts were playing some sort of very unfunny game with him
Maurice Schumann had guessed everything was not quite what it seemed – smelled a very large rat, in fact - when Margaret Thatcher had suddenly summoned her husband.
“Look,” the newcomer apologised, speaking in French, one comrade to another directly to Alain de Boissieu, as if they were the only two men in the room. “Nobody in this country questions your bravery, my friend. Dammit, you’re the fellow who led that bloody cavalry charge against those tanks back in 1940! And as for all your other exploits,” Frank Waters went on, “well, we won’t harp on about that, it would take all day!”
Alain de Boissieu was still very angry, except now he was actually listening.
“Something needs to be done about the situation south of the Loire,” the Prime Minister’s husband said. “We both know that. Please don’t think we do not understand that commanding the forces at your disposal is not like trying to herd cats but,” he shrugged in a deliberately Gallic way, “the Soviets are up to something on the other side of the Rhine and we must do act to break the impasse south of the Loire before they, or their Red Dawn proxies, fellow travellers or fifth columnists in both our countries, attempt to throw a spanner, or if you like, a sabot into the works!”
“Yes, but…”
Frank Water looked to the Chief of the Defence Staff.
“Carry on, Frank,” the other man commanded. “I think it is high time we took the covers off Operation Mangle, don’t you?”
Alain de Boissieu blinked in confusion.
Frank Waters patted his arm, one old comrade to another.
“Absolutely.” The Prime Minister’s husband grinned broadly. “Alain, old man, what we are going to do is turn the screw on those Krasnaya Zarya bastards in the Auvergne. We’re going to start putting those bastards well and truly through the mangle! First off, the Royal Navy is going to be making the coastal enclaves north of the Gironde offers they really, really do not want to refuse. Edwin Bramall’s boys will carry on making a nuisance of themselves, we’ll be putting Royal Marine raiding parties ashore, the RAF will be making their presence felt all down the Biscay coast. You get the general idea. No rest for the wicked, et cetera.” He smiled in toothy anticipation: “And down in the Bay of Lions and along the Cote d’Azur we plan to see if we can separate the Navy faction of the Front Internationale from those maniacs on the Massif Central!”
For once in his life Alain de Boissieu was struck dumb.
“The ships detailed to reinforce the Mediterranean Fleet will be receiving their sailing orders in the coming days,” Michael Carver explained. “Further, when the Prime Minister travels to Washington ahead of the re-dedication of the United Nations, she will brief President Nixon on the forthcoming major offensive operations in France planned to commence no later than the beginning of February.”
Margaret Thatcher nodded: “I plan to stay in the United States until the re-inauguration of the United Nations. I will speak at the opening plenary session and then return home,” she explained. “By then, as Frank is wont to say, the game will be afoot in France. Hopefully,” she added, flashing a rare, beguiling smile at Alain de Boissieu, “simultaneously with a general advance all along the Free French line.”
She raised a hand to forestall anything the man might say.
“You and I have not always got on very well, General de Boissieu. We cannot afford further discord in our own ranks.”
The Frenchman’s face sank.
At that juncture he clearly thought he was about to be sacked, or worse, thrown into one of Dover Castle’s dungeons.
The Prime Minister let him think that for a few seconds, then she put him out of his misery.
“Given that while I will be out of the country, Frank,” she smiled tight-lipped at her husband, “will be at a loose end, he has suggested to me that a solution to our ongoing ‘communication’ difficulties might be alleviated if, on a purely temporary basis, you understood, he acted in the role of the Chief of the Defence Staff’s personnel ‘Liaison Officer’ to the Supreme Commander of All Allied Forces in the French Theatre of Operations.”
Alain de Boissieu’s mouth flapped open, and shut, like a fish out of water.
Frank Waters chortled.
“Always assuming that this arrangement is convivial to you, old boy?” He put to his friend.
Michael Carver coughed, clearing his throat.
“Obviously, to reflect the importance of the role we are asking Frank to undertake and in respect to your own rank, Alain, I plan to brevet Frank up to major general for the duration of his appointment to your Staff.”
Frank Waters rubbed his hands together.
He was literally grinning from ear to ear.
“What do you say, Mon Amie?” He put to his friend.
“Why, that is…most acceptable,” a stunned Alain de Boissieu murmured.
Chapter 35
Tuesday 10th January 1967
Main State Building, 2201 C Street, Washington DC
Anatoly Fyodorovich Dobrynin, the Soviet Ambassador, had demanded, and to his surprise and consternation, overnight – within just days of his ‘demand’ - received his first comprehensive briefing on the resources devoted to, the aims of and the progress to date, of WARSAW CONCERTO, straight from the mouth of Vasili Vasilyevich Kuznetsov, the man who had briefly replaced the late Alexei Kosygin as the USSR’s Foreign Minister in 1964.
Sixty-five-year-old Kuznetsov had been in a state of near collapse when he had arrived, after a circuitous, forty-eight-hour journey by air via interminable re-fuelling stops in the Ukraine and in the south of France, on board a converted, long-range Antonov AN-12 Red Air Force transport with an un-pressurized, poorly heated passenger cabin.
Gamely, the old man had wanted to get down to business as he walked – well, was practically carried – through the doors of the recently rebuilt Embassy at 1125 16th Street Northwest, Washington, D.C.
Dobrynin had called the embassy doctor and had had Kuznetsov put to bed, cognisant that a garbled, incomplete, incoherent briefing would be worse than simply having to bluff and bluster, as he was usually forced to do, the next time he was summoned to Foggy Bottom, the oddly apt metonym for the Main State Building and its denizens.
Fortunately, the next day, his visitor had been much restored. It took a lot to keep an old Bolshevik down!
Not that Kuznetsov was a typical old-stager. He had been an engineer by profession before he was drawn into the diplomatic game, one of the privileged few who were allowed to come to the United States in the 1930s to study, in his case, metallurgy and metal processing at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Having survived the post-coup 1964 purges he had remained, titularly at least, Foreign Minister until in early 1965, thereafter he had been one of several Second Secretaries reporting directly to the Supreme Soviet, Alexander Shelepin, responsible in the main for the running of the Sverdlovsk Bureau of the Soviet Institute for Foreign Affairs. Latterly, he had written a lot of dusty policy papers, drafted routine reports, monitoring in particular the increasing disdain of the Lin Biao regime in Chongqing for the terms of its previous agreements and ‘understandings’ with the Kremlin.
Dobrynin and Kuznetsov had retired to the Embassy’s ‘quiet room’, so designated because the KGB had examined, cleared it and then, with typical paranoia, mandated it be walled with sound-proof tiles. The US State Department had footed the bill for the entire reconstruction of the building, a Beaux-Arts grand house built in 1910, taken on by the Tsarists in 1913 and later by the USSR, after the sixteen-year of post-Revolution non-recognition by a succession of US Administrations, was finally ended by Roosevelt in late 1933.
The KGB technicians had been astonished when no bugging, or spying devices of any kind were discovered anywhere in the mansion: nevertheless, a ‘quiet’ room insulated from all outside eavesdropping was still configured, as far as was possible within the building, from its 16th Street Northwest frontage.
Large areas of surrounding Downtown still bore the scars of the heavy fighting which had spilled across it at the height of the Battle of Washington in December 1963. Every time Dobrynin left the Embassy to drive to a meeting on, or around the Capitol he was quietly astonished by the scale of the ongoing rebuilding works; a thing which had continued unabated during the recent war in the Midwest, as if that conflagration – which by rights ought to have torn the heart out the country – was merely a fleabite upon the hide of the Republic. He had tried to communicate to his principals back in Sverdlovsk what they were up against, that this country, no matter how badly rocked it had been by the Cuban Missiles War, or any of its troubles, abroad and at home since, remained the great industrial powerhouse of the World.
Back in the surviving cities and enclaves beyond the Urals the Troika and the Party simply did not get it. Direct confrontation was a waste of time; the United States would simply out-produce and out-mobilise anything the Mother country could hope to match, probably without even drawing sweat!
What was going on in the District of Columbia was not some singular project, the same thing was going on in the war-wrecked southern suburbs of Boston, where Quincy was starting to emerge from the ashes, the blackened circle of devastation around the stump of the Empire State Building was already being cleared, repairs to the Rockefeller Centre and other damaged Manhattan landmarks were already in hand. Less than six months after the end of the war in the Midwest the Federal Government had put aside billions of dollars in grants and interest free long-term loans to start restoring the infrastructure and to encourage developers and ordinary citizens to move back into the wasted landscapes of Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana. Michigan, Missouri and Minnesota, each severely damaged by the war were sucking in new industries and immigrants from neighbouring states with massive ‘start-up’, agricultural and settlement subsidies. The US Stock Market was booming, threatening to surpass pre-October 1962 levels and both private firms and the US government were beginning to worry about, of all things, labour shortages; in which connection the Nixon Administration had literally thrown open the Canadian and Mexican borders to workers and their families.
If California or Ohio or Pennsylvania were countries, they would all be among the top ten wealthiest in the World, each by far dwarfing the Mother country. With the eradication of the emergent new post-Second War economies of Europe, the United States and its refound global ally-partner, Great Britain, controlled perhaps two-thirds of the planet’s industrial capacity. Set against that, the new USSR was an economic pigmy, an impoverished, starving poor relation unable to even feed its war-ravaged population.
WARSAW CONCERTO was…insane.
There was no other word for it.
Dobrynin understood that sometimes hard decisions had to be made and that when possible, one needed to prepare the ground for future initiatives but Warsaw Concerto – while probably harmless enough as a domestic initiative to rally the home front – seemed to take no cognisance, none whatsoever, of the way Western leaders, President Nixon and that terrifying Thatcher woman, saw the USSR and its current leadership cadre.
This was not tweaking the Tiger’s tail it was pouring petrol on the beast, lighting a match and jumping on the angry apex predator’s back!
Whoever was responsible for turning a badly designed propaganda exercise only ever really intended for domestic consumption – a belated heart and minds project to prop up the Party in the Motherland – into an international cause celebre ought to be put up against a wall and shot!
As for kicking this particular ticking time bomb into the mix only weeks before the United Nations re-dedication in California, at which Dobrynin confidently expected all the major players to be united – the People’s Republic of China included – against the USSR, well, it was…insane.
There really was no other word!
Reading between the lines the Chinese had already walked away from those idiotically vague ‘undertakings’ made at Bersk over a year ago. What did those idiots in Sverdlovsk think the Chongqing regime was going to do when Lin Biao and Zhou Enlai realised – if they had not done so from the beginning – that the Troika, Gorshkov and almost certainly the Supreme Soviet himself, Alexander Shelepin, had never actually been committed to those protocols in the first place?
