The Falklands Intercept Page 5

  Now at last they were about to ‘get off the bus’ the loading ramp at the back of the ship was jammed tightly shut. There was nothing in Clausewitz about “Murphy’s Law”. The more senior officers were starting to shout and swear, never a good sign. Stuff it, he would go up onto the open decks and see what was happening for himself. It had been light for some hours. Lifting the heavy bergan onto his back he started to climb the steep steel stairs.

  ‘I am just going up to check what is going on’, he said to his platoon sergeant – a grizzled and ironic veteran of Aden and more tours of Northern Ireland than he cared to count.

  ‘Very good, sir. Shall I bring the men up on deck now? They could do with a breath of fresh air and we must be about to get off.’ Sergeant Jones grinned hopefully.

  ‘No better stay down here for a few minutes otherwise there might be a scene, I think, with our superiors.’

  The strange alchemy that allowed experienced Welsh soldiers to be led by wet-behind-the-ears English public schoolboys certainly worked between Jacot and Jones. Jacot’s job was to read the map and represent the interests of his men up the chain of command. Whatever the system, and whoever was in charge, Jacot did not like the idea of his men sitting around on a lightly armed, unescorted ship.

  He reached the top of the companionway and squeezed himself through the door onto the deck. There did not seem to be much going on. Leaning over the side he grabbed a big breath of fresh sea air. A large motorised float was taking on board ammunition and supplies. Better get back to his men before he got into trouble.

  Come to think of it he did not even know the name of the ship. They had been on so many in the last few days. Most still had names that would have been familiar to Nelson’s captains. But they had got on this one in a hurry, in the middle of a windy and rough night, and he hadn’t quite caught the name. No one in his platoon had heard it either and he was too embarrassed to ask in case he got shouted at. Turning to go back to his men he saw a large diamond shaped shield in gold. It was beautiful and glistened in the sunlight. At its centre was a portrait, just the face, with a Latin motto underneath, nothing else. A tough looking man in his early forties maybe, not handsome but certainly not hideous. The motto read Pax Quaeritur Bello – Peace is sought through war. Rather appropriate thought Jacot. Beneath it the name of the ship in gold lettering – Royal Fleet Auxiliary Oliver Cromwell. It was an odd name for a fleet auxiliary, ships mainly involved in supply and transportation rather than fighting. Oliver Cromwell would be a better name for a warship but it was hardly one the admiralty would choose. It was odd, thought Jacot, that there was a ship at all in the service of the crown that commemorated this great man. It was odd too that here he was in the middle of a war when just a couple of years before he had been a schoolboy.

  He looked at the face again. There was something about the heraldic design that was unsettling. It wasn’t derived from the famous “warts and all” portrait so the face itself was pleasing enough, but the way the thing had been painted brought to mind the dead Cromwell more than the living – the head looked as though it had been recently severed from the body. As indeed it had been after the Restoration, when Cromwell’s body was disinterred and his head stuck on a spike above Westminster Hall. The head, if Jacot remembered rightly from his recent school history lessons, had fallen down in a storm a few years later eventually ending up, after many adventures, being buried at Cromwell’s old Cambridge college sometime in the 1960s. Jacot shuddered. Suddenly he felt vulnerable and far from home.

  He was sore in need of another cigarette already, and cheering up by Sergeant Jones whose pithy, apposite and obscene commentary on unfolding military events was invariably a refreshing tonic.

  It was Jones’ voice that somehow reached him in the midst of the smoke and the flames. ‘This way. This way lads. I am in the doorway. On me lads. Follow my voice.’ He must have been shouting with all his might but the tone was even – it was a command not an outburst of panic. It was this voice faintly heard through the smoke that brought Jacot back from the brink of hysteria. He had assumed that staying calm in a crisis would come naturally, that he was born to lead. But he had not reckoned with being trapped on a burning ship – indeed he was burning himself. But then the voice was lost in the noise.

  Jacot had to get up and get out. Thick black smoke meant he could see little. He could hear men screaming. Presumably they were cooking too. He tried to push himself up from the deck but something heavy and shaking was on top of him.

  It was leaking blood and shouting, ‘My legs. My f…..g legs. Help me. Help me. For God’s sake help me.’

  Jacot pushed hard and the body rolled off him – shrieking face down on the steel deck. Every instinct, every message from the brain was telling him to get out. Get out. Get out. Get some air. Get off the ship before it blows sky high. But he could not go – not just yet. He turned the body over and reached for a morphine syrette hanging round his neck. If he could get the casualty to be still there would be a chance of carrying him to safety. The body writhed and shuddered. Jacot tried to find a place to inject but as he pulled up the arm of the casualty’s combat jacket a mixture of burned material and cooked skin started to come away in his hands. There hardly seemed to be man there at all just a bundle of smoking rags and wildly staring eyes with no lids. The young man was saying the word ‘Mam’ over and over again. Jacot did not recognise the voice – and there was no face left and no eyelids. Just eyes staring with fear and puzzlement. And blood pumped from the shredded bottoms of combat trousers where the legs had been. Jacot found a patch of unburnt skin just below the neck and injected the morphine. The young guardsman shook and the burned head fell forward. Jacot at the top of his lungs shouted ‘Don’t worry I’ll get you out’. But it was too late. Jacot held the young man’s shoulders and began to recite the Lord’s Prayer. ‘Ein Tad yn y nefoedd, Our Father in Heaven.’ A final shudder and the young guardsman was gone. He had taken the full force of the blast. Jacot pulled off the identity discs – chunks of neck-flesh came away too. Mortar ammunition, British ammunition – over a thousand rounds of it stacked at the other end of the tank deck was ‘cooking off’ – exploding because of the heat. Jacot could hear the angry whizzing and whining of shrapnel doing its deadly work in a confined space – pinging and hissing as it hit the steel superstructure. Time for the rest of the Lord’s Prayer later. He had to get out – fast.

  His hands smarted. The skin on his hands had begun to peel off. The pain was starting. Not just his hands but his face and chest. His legs damp with blood did not feel so bad.

  It all seemed so strange. One minute clear blue South Atlantic sky and the ship at anchor in a calm bay. The only sounds the breeze, the thuds, creaking and sometimes muttered cursing of over-laden soldiers climbing down rope ladders into landing craft. The occasional clang as a rifle hit the side. Invariably followed by the gruff admonishment of a non-commissioned officer. And then Jacot’s radio operator had shouted, ‘It’s Red. It’s Red. Air Raid Warning Red, sir.’

  It was a bit late. They appeared to have escalated from Air Raid extremely unlikely, or whatever the precise definition was, to Air Raid Warning Red meaning an air raid was imminent or under way, without any of the intermediate levels. Such was life. But there were no planes thank God. Maybe it was just a false alarm.

  Still definitely time to get off the Oliver Cromwell. Jacot’s heartbeat began to return to normal. And then it came. The radio operator screamed ‘Handbrake, Handbrake, Handbrake’ – the single word most feared by the Task Force. It was the warning for an Exocet attack. Jesus no, thought Jacot. Then the massive concussion from the blasts threw him off his feet.

  Jacot could not concentrate. His mind was wandering and the pain second by second was becoming unbearable. Above all he wanted to get out. Get into the open air. Live. But he could not think. He was tired. Maybe he was dying. Was this what it was like? An arm grabbed him from nowhere and dragged him through a door pushing him upstairs. ‘Ke
ep going sir. We’re nearly there.’ It was his platoon sergeant. Where was the rest of the platoon? One final push and suddenly they were on the deck. Jacot collapsed. He wanted to cry.

  ‘Don’t worry I’ve got you now sir.’ Sergeant Jones turned Jacot over and injected morphine into his thigh. And the pain began to go away.

  A Chinese crew member walked vacantly by – stunned by what had just happened to his ship.

  ‘Kung Hee Fat Choi’, Jacot called out. It was the only Cantonese he knew, picked up while living in Hong Kong as a teenager with his parents. Happy New Year. They grinned at each other.

  The sounds from the ship began to change. The dying were dead. Their screaming – the sounds of men trapped and burning to death – animal cries of claustrophobic anguish and agony – had stopped. And the wounded were calmer or sedated – many of the burnt faces bearing a single or double M in military crayon on the forehead to show that they had been given morphine. In the background the noisy hum of helicopters as the wounded were evacuated, the rotors biting into the air as the Sea King helicopters hovered over the deck. It was too dangerous to land. At the back of the boat a chopper hovered low over an inflated orange life raft using its powerful downdraft to push the raft and its occupants away from the burning ship. Nearby the shouted instructions of officers and non-commissioned officers and the grunting as men were lifted onto stretchers were oddly re-assuring. The panic and shambles of a few minutes ago was slowly being transformed bit by bit and thanks to deeply ingrained discipline into a military operation. And some protection was at hand. Jacot could hear the thud thud of the British half-inch machine guns in the bay as they put up a curtain of tracer to deter further attacks. They were firing ‘four bit’ – every fourth round was tracer leaving a burning trail in the sky. It allowed the firer to see his fall of shot and deterred enemy pilots. But the Rapier anti-aircraft missiles which really could make a difference moved crazily around in their stands – pointing first at the sky and then straight at the ground – their radars could sense enemy aircraft but their gyroscopes, still not bedded in properly after a month at sea, were confused as to which direction was up and which down. It was too late anyway. The Mirage Super-Etendard bombers would have launched their missiles from many miles away.

  More than the fear and pain Jacot felt humiliated. They had sailed 8,000 miles just to get themselves caught in a stupid military fuck up – without even landing a blow on the Argentines. But worse than the humiliation was the ghastly realisation that flooded Jacot’s consciousness and seemed to surge into every part of his body: his platoon, his men would not have been caught in the inferno on the tank deck if he had listened to Jones’ advice. God knows how many were dead or dying or burnt beyond suffering.

  And then Jacot heard another roar. Faint but growing stronger. Jet aircraft flying low and fast, straining at maximum capacity. He prayed that they were British Harriers…

  Jacot got up from his chair. The fire was burning low. Most of the Calvados was gone.

  VI

  Set C 5, Pilgrims’ Court, St James’ College Cambridge

  – Wednesday, 18th January 2012

  It had been a mainly frustrating day consisting of long talks about police procedure and fairly tedious alibi checking on some peripheral players. The low point had been a difficult telephone conversation with Verney’s deputy, a prickly Air Vice Marshal who wanted minute by minute updates on the investigation. When Jacot declined he made it pretty clear that he ate army colonels for breakfast. In the end Jacot had referred him to Lady Nevinson but it had been a humiliating and bad-tempered exchange. The arrival of Charlotte Pirbright in his rooms just a few minutes after the Air Vice Marshal had hung up on him lifted Jacot’s spirits – helped also by the arrival of the cocktail hour. Jones was right thought Jacot – she was extraordinarily good looking. Every lovesick poet in the book had tried but no one had ever pinned down in words that kind of beauty. Some had come close. Jacot liked Philip Marlowe’s great reaction to being shown a photograph of Mrs. Lewin Lockridge Grayle. “It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.” She was blonde but she wasn’t that at all. The curves were interesting enough and she was well dressed to make the most of her figure but the allure did not come from an in your face sexuality. It was the face itself. It was perfect. And perfect in what seemed to Jacot a perfectly English way. A high forehead descended into a strong nose – not a Barbie doll nose so popular amongst Hollywood actresses. No one would ask her plastic surgeon to reproduce it. Neither would a Jihadist on the brink of detonating his backpack think to find such features in Paradise. The teeth were white. She was wearing a little make-up but the skin appeared near flawless. And the eyes were an intense but pale blue. But what clinched it was a kind of moral quality. The gaze wasn’t innocent but knowing. She seemed happy, content with whatever she was doing. In a slightly crazy world that seemed to prize tension and edginess above all else, this beautiful girl was happy in her own skin

  Jacot felt himself about to gawp so smiled and quickly turned to his drinks tray. ‘Sherry? I have a Manzanilla.’

  ‘Golly, what’s that?’

  ‘It’s a very dry sherry, supposedly with a salty tang because the vineyards are almost on the sea. It’s have to have stuff, I assure you.’

  ‘Thank you. Sounds great.’

  Jacot noticed that she was looking at his hands. Encased tonight in black Thai silk.

  ‘What happened to your hands?’ she asked, her eyes moving from the hands and gazing directly at his.

  ‘Oh, I was burned in the Falklands War. An Argentine missile attack.’

  ‘Oh dear. Were you on that ship the Oliver whatshisname?’

  ‘Alas, yes. The silk gloves soothe them a little.’

  ‘It’s strange seeing a man indoors wearing black gloves. They’re usually for thieves and assassins.’

  ‘Well white would make me look like a waiter or a magician. So I settled on black many years ago. Occasionally, I branch out into more jazzy colours.’

  She sipped her ice-cold Manzanilla. ‘Sherry still seems to be traditional in Cambridge. And I have to say I rather like it.’

  She sat down in an armchair by the fire. Jacot took up position on the red leather club fender that surrounded the fireplace. The rooms had a faint smell of wood-smoke. Jacot noticed that Mr. Jones had laid a single layer of coals beneath the apple wood that was used only in the fellows’ rooms – it made the fire roar and crackle.

  ‘You knew General Verney.’

  ‘Yes, very well. I met him in the Antarctic. I was at the American base at McMurdo on Cape Evans for a couple of months gathering data for my PhD. In the summer it gets quite busy with over a thousand living and working there – people not penguins. I became a sort of unofficial guide to Scott’s hut, about fifteen miles from the base. The one from his first expedition is within walking distance but you need transport to reach the hut he built for his second and fatal expedition, the one everyone knows from the photographs. I was the person organizing the tours. Most people heading for the Pole pass through. One day this British general turned up and I showed him round. It was fate really. Captain Scott has always been my passion – an unfashionable one of late to be honest. And then suddenly out of nowhere and in the middle of nowhere there was another aficionado. We kept in touch. It turned out that Verney was privately wealthy and he helped fund some of my research, supplementing my meagre fellow’s stipend. We were both working on various aspects of Captain Scott’s last expedition. Verney provided the inspiration and I provided what you might call the academic muscle. I completed my PhD a few years ago and I know my way round the Scott-Wilson Austral Studies Institute, SWASI we call it, here in Cambridge. You know, the modern world underestimates Scott and his achievements. Curiously, he doesn’t play well in the United States whereas Shackleton has been adopted as a magnificent example by various American leadership gurus. But General Verney and I had no doubt whose side we were on.’
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br />   Jacot like many men of his generation was awkward asking personal questions. His analytical training had overcome this to some extent but he didn’t like it at all. So he forced himself to ask, ‘Were you having an affair?’

  She laughed. ‘Good Lord, no. He wasn’t at all attractive and to be honest I didn’t really like him that much.’

  ‘Why work with him then?’

  ‘Well. It’s funny. I enjoyed working with him to be fair. We were both obsessed with “Captain S” as we called him. We both felt he had had a hard time historically. We both felt that he was a great man. Also, and I shouldn’t really say this as an academic, we both despised most of Scott’s detractors – as chippy a crew as you could wish to meet. And we both had a sneaking suspicion that despite the lionization of Shackleton in recent years there was something not quite right with him. Scott, of course, felt this too. His diary entry for the day they get further south than Shackleton had done some years before talks about being ‘beyond the record of Shackleton’s walk’. Funny way to put it and I have always detected a double entendre in his use of the word ‘record’. It was as if he didn’t believe Shackleton’s account.’

  ‘But that’s unfair’, interjected Jacot. ‘Shackleton was a leader there is no dispute about that. His epic journey from Elephant Island to South Georgia in an open boat puts him up there with the greats, surely. During the Falklands war we trans-shipped from the QE2 to the Canberra off South Georgia in the teeth of the Austral winter and I can tell you it was dodgy enough in a 50,000-ton liner let alone a small lifeboat.’

  ‘Of course, Colonel. Shackleton had and has his admirers and I think Scott’s rivalry with him was one of the motors for his own competitive instinct. It may not have been his fault but part of my preference for Scott it is that Shackleton became the kind of leader lionized on Wall Street. Imagine all sorts of extremely dodgy bankers flocking to leadership seminars as their balance sheets went down the tubes. They would not have dreamed of going to a lecture about good old-fashioned Scott. Anyway, the next paragraph in Scott’s diary is even more interesting – it was one of the things that got old Verney and me going.’