Michael Dobbs - Churchill’s Hour

Pamela felt her hand being squeezed with almost painful force as the words showered from the screen upon Churchill. She knew they were the words that he had written.

So the images flickered and the ships went out once more to confront the European tyrant, willing to be blown to bits in the hope that the enemy would be pulverized to even smaller pieces. England expected it of them. Then Nelson, mortally wounded at the moment of his supreme triumph, paid the price that freedom so often demands.

‘Thank God I have done my duty,’ he gasped, his words melting into the strains of ‘Rule Britannia’ and shouts of victory from those Englishmen who had survived.

In the glow of the firelight, Pamela could see tears streaming down the old man’s face. They were still there when the last foot of film had passed through the gate and was clattering around its reel.

‘That is how I should like to die,’ Churchill whispered. ‘Such a fine ending.’

She knew he was being completely sincere.

He disappeared into the folds of a huge silk handkerchief. Pamela decided it would be ungracious to point out that he’d noticed only the Boy’s-Own bits of the film and that the final moments had concerned themselves not with the glories of Nelson’s death but with the demise many years later of Emma as an ageing alcoholic sprawled piteously on the wet cobbles of some foreign port. It wasn’t just the men who paid a price in war.

The clocks had long since chimed two. Sawyers damped down the fire. The filmgoers were stretching their legs and preparing to depart for bed when, from somewhere in the distance, the sound of a motor-car engine carried on the frozen night air. Churchill suddenly grew still. A change came over him, like a dog sensing danger that he couldn’t yet identify. But a motor car meant a new message, and on this day and at this time of night, the message could mean only one thing.

Disaster.

‘Couldn’t it wait?’ the old man enquired, his voice beginning to rasp with fatigue and anxiety. But he already knew the answer. Sir Stewart Menzies, known simply as ‘C’ in the corridors of power, was the head of Churchill’s Secret Intelligence Service. It made him one of the most powerful men in the country; he hadn’t dropped by at two in the morning simply for the large whisky and cold grate that greeted him in the Hawtrey Room.

‘I’m sorry, Prime Minister.’ Churchill’s spymaster unlocked a briefcase and extracted a slim manila folder, which he placed on the table and smoothed open. ‘You won’t have heard of the Automedon , I suspect. No reason why you should. But it’s been sunk by the Nazis.’

Churchill glared defiantly, waiting for the bullet to strike him.

‘It happened last month, on her way to Singapore. Small cargo of car bits, cigarettes, whisky, that sort of thing.’

‘I suspect the distilleries will be able to resupply them,’ Churchill responded slowly, hoping words might quell the sense of unease that was rising up his gullet.

‘She was boarded before she was sunk, several of her crew killed, including the captain, and the rest captured and taken to the Japanese port of Kobe. They were disembarked in Kobe while waiting to be loaded onto another German ship. That’s when one of our agents managed to speak briefly to members of the crew. We’ve been able to confirm their identity and…’—he paused, steadying himself—‘we have no reason to disbelieve their story.’

‘Which is?’

‘While the German boarding party was on board the Automedon , they discovered the ship’s safe in the strong room. They blew it open. Got everything inside it. Decoding tables, maps of harbour defences, minefields, intelligence reports, the lot.’

‘Such material is the currency of war. This surely amounts to little more than loose change.’

But Menzies was shaking his head. ‘That’s not it, I’m afraid. While they were making their tour of the ship, they also found the body of an Admiralty courier. Beside him was one of our security bags. It seems he was in the process of throwing it overboard when…Well, he didn’t make it. Neither did the bag.’

Churchill knew of these bags. Green canvas, with brass eyelets to allow the water in and lead weights sewn inside to ensure that the bag and its contents sank quickly to the bottom of the ocean. The couriers were instructed to defend these bags with their lives. The courier on the Automedon appeared to have done precisely that.

‘It seems,’ Menzies said slowly, as if every word had suddenly become a burden, ‘that inside the pouch was a letter addressed to Brooke-Popham.’ The name needed no elaboration. Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham was the British Commander-in-Chief, Far East, based in Singapore. His was one of the most sensitive and difficult commands anywhere in the Empire.

‘Usual routine for top secret material,’ Menzies continued. ‘Instructions that it be opened by no other hand et cetera et cetera.’ He sipped at his whisky, but appeared to find no enjoyment in it. His lips were tightly pursed. ‘When the German ship reached Japan, the letter apparently found its way to the German Ambassador in Tokyo—we have that from intercepts—and he in turn handed it on to Kondo.’

‘Kondo?’

‘The Vice Chairman of the Japanese Imperial Naval General Staff.’

Churchill stared into the cold, empty hearth. ‘And what did the letter contain?’

‘It was…dear God, I think you’ll remember it, Prime Minister.’ Menzies sighed, his shoulders falling in discouragement. ‘A copy of the analysis drawn up by our Chiefs of Staff on our ability to defend ourselves in the Far East in the event that the Japanese declare war on us.’

Churchill froze. He did not stir for many moments, but the glass in his hand tilted as his fingers seemed to lose all sensation. The only sound in the room was the slow dripping of whisky onto the carpet.

Eventually a tremor came to his lips. ‘What on earth was it doing on a tramp steamer like the Automedon ?’

‘It’s a tangled little tale,’ Menzies said, finding comfort now that he would be able to offload the burden—and, with it, much of the blame—onto other shoulders. ‘Apparently the War Office didn’t want the paper to get to Singapore too quickly—not in the middle of the difficult negotiations with the Australians—you know what’s been happening. They’ve been pestering us with demands for more and more British reinforcements to be sent to the Far East, while we’ve been insisting that there is no real need. So apparently it was felt that the paper would only…How can I put it?’

‘Complicate the situation.’

‘Precisely.’

‘They decided to cover their arses,’ Churchill growled. ‘They would send it, but so slowly that by the time it arrived it might be buried in obsolescence. Of no use to—and no blame upon—anyone.’

‘I think that’s a reasonably accurate summary, yes. They also wanted to get it to Singapore in a manner that would arouse no suspicion. So they…’

‘Put it on a rust bucket.’

‘That seems to be about the measure of it, Prime Minister. I’m so very sorry.’

But Churchill was no longer listening. His face was flushed with both anger and anguish as his mind cast back to the contents of the paper that he himself had commissioned. It ran to seventy-eight closely argued paragraphs and came to one damning conclusion—a conclusion so devastating that he had refused to allow it to be discussed even by his War Cabinet.

Churchill leant forward, as though wanting to spring at the other man, fixing him in the eye. ‘The Japanese have it? You are sure?’

His stare was returned.

‘On the basis of what we know, it seems all but certain.’