Leon Uris (35 page)

Christopher Hubble was spirited back to Camp Bushy to the winks and back slaps of knowing staff officers and a whispered chorus of “Well dones.”

Asquith ordered a lid of secrecy clamped on the area as the cabinet went into emergency session. Brigadier Brodhead stiffened to take the blow. Two days after the landing, a personal message was delivered to Brigadier Brodhead by the Assistant Chief of Operations and signed by the Prime Minister.

Brodhead was ordered to place the King’s Midlanders and all attached units, including the Coleraine Rifles, on twenty-four-hour alert. All leaves were canceled and all personnel restricted to base.

The final act of the Weed-Hubble-Brodhead plot unfolded. Brigadier Llewelyn Brodhead tendered his resignation and summoned Captain Christopher Hubble to his office. Christopher, riding on hero’s wings, affixed his signature below the Brigadier’s. Within an hour every officer in the Coleraine Rifles, except for Subaltern Jeremy Hubble, had likewise resigned.

This was a gigantic relief. Now, at least, if the Brigadier and the Captain faced the firing squad, they’d have company.

By morning every officer in the King’s Midlanders and elsewhere in Camp Bushy had resigned. Jeremy caved in as he had when he abandoned Molly.

For the moment secrecy held, but what the cabinet was looking at was open mutiny!

Caroline’s London office desk was neither slapdash with papers and trinkets nor wholly immaculate but for a single rose. It was cleared for action like a battleship deck, as she focused on a trio of thick reports, her nose balancing her specs in the manner of her father.

Chalmers, her chief financial adviser, and MacGregor, her father’s top engineer, were both iffy about the bold stroke Caroline wanted to put on the boards for the future.

Like many facilities, Weed Ship & Iron was building at capacity and, to handle new bids, was leasing old facilities or patching up derelict ones.

Caroline was opting for an entire new shipyard north of Belfast. The vicinity around Larne would be perfect.

Caroline’s vision was rooted in the fact that there would soon be a war. That war would end. When that war ended, the building of ships and other products of war would come to a screeching halt. While the other industrialists of the British Isles would go into retrenchment, Caroline would streak into the future.

Things grow obsolete during a war, things are destroyed during a war, shortages develop during a war, and war gives birth to all sorts of inventions that could be used in peacetime.

Caroline had a team working on how Weed Ship & Iron could make a swift postwar conversion. The Larne facil
ity, if it were built, would be able to make an instant turnover into civilian product. The autobus would cut deeply into trains as a mode of passenger transportation. Thousands of flatbed rail cars would need replacement. Her product list ran from the smallest to the largest items.

Mostly, Caroline liked the future possibilities of the aircraft. Its growth potential as a means of transporting civilians was mind-boggling, as was the future construction of airdromes. Weed Ship & Iron, if the planning stayed targeted and acute, would have a jump on the entire British Isles.

Larne was the stuff of her old man, all right, but it had its usual Ulsterism negatives. The area was a pure Orange stronghold. At the moment, everyone had a job. If a Larne yard were opened now, it would invite an influx of Catholic job seekers and no doubt cause future friction.

Chalmers and MacGregor argued that the lads returning to Larne from the war would see it overrun with R.C.’s, who had all the jobs.

What galled Caroline was the realization that the loyal population had to be served first. There
had
to be a way to give the Catholics parity, or the cycles of fear and riots would never end. And she
knew
she was dead right about the future of aviation. Other sites were spoken of, but most of them were outside Ulster and that was the most sacred no of them all.

“I want County Down surveyed from end to end. The Newtonards Peninsula may have everything we need, including an absence of industry and a built-in unemployed Catholic population. I want it all laid out for me and ready in a month.”

Chalmers and MacGregor exchanged “Oh Christ” expressions. She was as bad as the old man! As they gathered up their business from the desk, Caroline’s secretary entered and waited at the door. He closed the door behind the two men as they left.

“What is it, Lawrence?” Caroline asked.

“Winston Churchill is here. I took him to the conference room.”

“Fetch him, Larry, and I am not available to anyone for anything.”

“Yes, m’lady.”

Caroline got up from her plushy chair and insisted Churchill take it, while she seated herself at the end of the desk. Winston could play the poker face with the mightiest of them, but the color was gone from his cheeks and the man who seldom showed any tiredness seemed exhausted.

“Are you comfortable here, Winston?” she asked.

“Are we alone?” Caroline nodded. “Do you have a secure telephone line to Belfast to Sir Frederick?”

“I do.”

“Can you reach him quickly?”

“We spoke this morning. He should be at Rathweed Hall all afternoon.”

“Can he make a binding decision on Ulster Militia matters in which Lord Hubble, Lord Greystone, Sir Martin Bickford, and Henry Wallaby are also involved?”

“I’m rather certain he can, but I can’t give you a hundred percent assurance.”

“Instruct your man to have Sir Frederick on standby. He might try to reach the others in the interim, so have them stay put someplace he can get to them.”

“Shouldn’t Edward Carson be party to whatever you are about to dump on me?”

“No, Carson was deliberately left out of the entire operation in order to protect him. We’ll never link Carson to this thing.”

“Good Lord, what’s going on, Winston?”

“A diabolical conspiracy is unfolding. A thousand-ton German vessel carrying heavy German weapons, artillery, shells, etcetera, etcetera, has made its way directly to Ulster. Our destroyer
Battersea
tailed as a decoy ship. We believe the commander of the
Battersea
is involved in the plot. At any rate, the ship holding the weaponry entered
Lough Foyle flying an Ulster Militia flag and unloaded at your husband’s dock in Londonderry. The weapons were transferred to a waiting line of freight cars and flatbeds, then moved into Lettershambo Castle in broad daylight.”

Caroline rolled her eyes and blew a long breath. Oh, why did she love her daddy so fiercely? “Sounds like Roger and Freddie, all right. Bickford, Wallaby, Greystone, all charter members of the old boys’ club. Yes, they could chunk in that kind of money. What the hell, Winston, they would not have done something this blatant unless they were dead certain they could get away with it. The way they’ve gotten the English people up in arms in the past three months and made no move to stop them, something like this was bound to happen.”

Churchill drummed his finger elegantly on her desk top and looked down. “It is not totally clear yet, Caroline, but it seems that your son, Captain Christopher Hubble, ran the ship in.”

After the first flash of terror came another wave and yet another. She sprung from her chair and muttered to unhearing gods. Once she got the thunder of it calmed, an off-scale tone poem of confusion and fear jumbled together.

“Is he under arrest?” she finally brought herself to ask.

“Well, certainly the boy’s father and grandfather were going to see that he was covered…if indeed it was Christopher. The gunrunning was only one phase of the scheme.”

Caroline realized it was going to be a very hard hour. She did what was necessary to gather her faculties and beckoned him to go on. Winston asked permission to light a cigar and she smiled.

“The object of this exercise is to put the Liberals into a trap. At my insistence, Asquith had an order issued that the forces at Camp Bushy, mainly the Midlanders and the Coleraines, go on standby to occupy vital facilities and declare Ulster under martial law.”

“They’re playing awfully rough,” she said.

“Oh, yes. Brigadier Brodhead was obviously in on the whole thing from its inception.”

“That follows. Roger and Freddie have made him wealthy on tips, to say nothing of the fact that he is pre-Neanderthal when it comes to empire.”

“To go on,” Churchill continued, “Brodhead not only refused to obey the order, but he tendered his resignation and obtained the resignations of all one hundred and fifty-some officers at Camp Bushy.”

“That’s an out-and-out mutiny.”

“We have a little time to sort things out. Bushy is sealed off and thus far, no news of the resignations.”

“And these are my people, the men of my life. They are not normal when it comes to Ulsterism. If you and I held this conversation at the end of this century, they would still be marching around the same parade ground, thumping the same Lembeg drums and kissing the same Union Jack. You know your
King Lear,
Winston. Ulster is possessed. It has been too long on the path for them to ever turn back. They must keep going until victory or destruction. Even if both of my sons are involved, you have to put that entire bunch under arrest and court-martial them. Excuse my language, Winston, but that is the only fucking thing they’ll ever understand.”

They sat in silence for a time. Caroline’s sense of outrage heightened. God, they’d even bring the empire down to save their filthy little province.

“Our reaction also was to throw them in jail, but nothing is quite that simple. Caroline, I have fought my entire political life to cut down on obscene military spending. Till now, the most difficult moment of my life was, as you know, when I became convinced there would be a war and I accepted the Admiralty post. But the War Office and the Admiralty have long memories and they loathe the Liberal Party for stopping the arms race and for trying to bring programs of social justice to the people to replace their imperial avarice.”

His voice now quivered low. “Fact is, m’lady, probably most of the top generals and admirals are quietly applauding Brodhead. Using our best and most reliable sources, including the Staines group, between one-fourth and one-third of our entire officer corps will likely resign in protest if we arrest the Bushy crowd. How’s that for blackmail on the eve of a war?”

Caroline laughed, compelled to see the humor in it. “What better time to blackmail you? What are our options?” she asked, casting her lot with his.

“If,” he began, “we turn a blind eye and allow the Militia to become a private army, and if we allow ourselves to yield to blackmail by our own officer corps, then we are no longer fit to rule the country.”

“That’s exactly what the Conservatives are playing for,” she said.

“It’s even more dangerous than that, Caroline. Once the military knows they can bully the Commons and get away with anything, including mutiny and treason, we will witness a ravenous new colonialism after the war that will endanger our democracy. Once the generals have the notion we can be owned, we’ll end up looking like a Latin American republic.”

“The bloody Conservatives would like that, I fear.”

“Let’s ‘if’ some more,” he said. “If we haul the mutineers in, take the deep cuts in our officer corps on the eve of war, we will lose the confidence of our allies. Those nations sitting on the fence, particularly the Italians, will surely go to the German side. When the German high command hears about this mutiny, they are going to go into an orgy of Valhallan ecstasy.”

Caroline tilted her head back, closed her eyes, and tried to absorb the enormity of what was unfolding. Freddie’s crowd had to be dancing on the clouds to be so heady, so brazen, so demonic.

“What do we do, Winston?”

“I have just met with the Conservatives. They are now
considering our position, namely we will not be blown out of power by this trick, nor will we turn Britain over to a military junta. We Liberals intend, I advised them, that we shall remain in power and lead this nation when it goes to war.”

Winston grunted the smallest of laughs as he recalled the meeting. “It was with Bonar, Law, and Balfour. I made it completely clear that their wild plot would blow up right in their faces. The Liberal Party has been voted into power by a majority of good, solid Englishmen. What could the Conservatives do? Blame over half the country for the loss of their officer corps? Indeed, I was quite willing to let the people decide who the villains in this play were. In the end. I resolutely believe they would have to take the blame for debilitating our military.”

“That’s carrying brinkmanship to a fine art.”

“It can only be done if you believe in yourself. They chose to listen to a reasonable plan which will save their face and quiet the entire matter.”

“And now you need the agreement of Freddie and his cronies.”

“That’s right.”

“Do go on.”

“We accept that the weapons in Lettershambo belong to the Militia and that the Militia will have some clear legal status. We will rescind the order for the Midlanders and Coleraines to occupy Ulster and there will be further action taken on the resignations.”

Caroline jotted notes, wondering if it was not a total capitulation by some other name. No, it was only Winston spitting out the seeds of compromise’s bitter fruit.

“To continue,” he said, “we will remove the principal source of Unionist irritation, the Home Rule Bill. Redmond and the Irish Party have agreed to table the legislation during the crisis and, in the eventuality of war, to keep it tabled until such war is completed.”

“What is John Redmond going to say to the Irish people?”

“Well, we’ll throw him a bone. We will allow the Irish in the south to form a Home Army similar in legal structure to the Militia. Everyone in Ulster knows that the Irish could never muster a fiftieth of the strength of the Militia. It should not be a problem with your father.”

“But isn’t that the end of Redmond, giving up home rule for a few guardsmen?”

“I say, does it really matter, Caroline? Those hooligans from Sinn Fein are ready to rush in and fill any vacuum left by a defunct Irish Party. What matters for us is to postpone the entire Irish issue, get it off our backs, and allow us to conduct the war without a squabble in our kitchen…to use Irish troops…Ulster troops for our own battle purposes. We’ll deal with the Irish after the war. That’s what Redmond can assure us now.”

Caroline took up the phone to call her father at Rathweed Hall, going over Churchill’s points with care.

Weed digested it carefully. The only negative seemed to be the formation of a home army, but that was a fly speck. Bringing down the Liberals had been evaded and avoided.

“I don’t think I can sell it,” Freddie said. “It’s Churchill’s move, Caroline.”

“Hold on, Father.”

As Caroline laid out Freddie’s ultimatum, Churchill smiled. He took a single-page order from his jacket and laid it on the desk before Caroline. As Caroline read it to her father she realized that the Liberals were not only going to quit but, furthermore, the Conservatives and Unionists would now have to share responsibility for the consequences. The Liberals were willing to risk the calamity, but it was one hour past brinkmanship and the Conservative Party would have to explain the loss of their officer corps to the people as well. Did they have the stomach for it? Or…was Churchill playing a dummy card?