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.’
‘Then may God preserve us.’
The Chiefs of Staff had concluded that the British couldn’t beat the Japanese. Not a chance, not on their own. Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore, all the territories and possessions of the British in the Far East, the jewels of their Empire, were virtually defenceless. Waiting to be plundered.
And the Japanese knew it.
A little later, as Churchill climbed the stairs to bed, he found himself accompanied by an unfamiliar and deeply troubling sensation. Only in the middle of the night, when he was still struggling to sleep, did he finally recognize the ruffian.
It was fear.
Anthony Eden, the Foreign Secretary, was a man of both power and charm; some even said that he would be the next Prime Minister. Yet beneath his suave and immaculately groomed exterior there were occasions when he betrayed the inner tension that left him thin and always anxious.
‘Try hanging it on the other wall, will you?’ he instructed tersely.
The two workmen cast a disdainful eye at the politician. ‘Not the only thing that could do with a little hanging,’ one of them muttered darkly, but out of earshot. ‘This wall, that wall, whichever wall he wants, it’s still only a ruddy painting.’
Eden turned from his examination of the panelling. ‘You have a problem?’
‘Not really.’
‘Speak up, man. Better in than out.’
‘Well, sir, I don’t understand why we have to move the blessed thing at all. Been there long enough. Why do we have to move it just ’cos some Americans are coming?’
‘Because it’s George the Third.’
The explanation was met with a blank stare.
‘He was mad,’ Eden continued.
‘But still a king,’ the workman countered doggedly. ‘Our king.’
‘I take your point. But kings aren’t particularly popular with Americans. Particularly this one.’
The towering portrait of George III with its ornate gilt frame had dominated the meeting room of the Foreign Office since, well, ever since anyone could remember, but now it was to be moved. Eden had instructed that all appropriate arrangements were to be made for welcoming the forthcoming American delegation and had clearly come to the conclusion that a portrait of the mad king who had helped ignite the American Revolution would cast an inappropriate shadow over proceedings. It had to be moved somewhere less prominent.
‘Let’s try it on the other wall,’ he suggested, waving an elegant cuff but without much sign of conviction.
The workman and his partner didn’t move a muscle.
‘What?’
‘Not going to work. Not there. Not anywhere,’ the workman said.
‘Why on earth not?’ Eden enquired, stuffing his thumbs deep into the pockets of his waistcoat.
‘Look at it, sir.’ The workman took a step forward. ‘It’s just too big. Turn his face to the wall and you’re still going to see his ermine slippers sticking out underneath. It’s enormous.’ Then, less loudly: ‘And we should know. Been moving it all morning.’
Eden cast a dark eye at the workman. He had thought him a monarchist, but now he suspected him of being simply a troublemaker. ‘Are you a Communist?’
‘What?’
‘Oh, never mind.’
The Foreign Secretary went back to examining his dilemma while the workman picked at the fragment of his cigarette with a broken orange fingernail. ‘Why the hell we have to be so nice to the bloody Yanks is beyond me,’ he said, turning to his colleague. ‘Late for the last war, they was. Run away from this war. Doing nothing but sitting on their backsides in Wall Street and soaking us dry.’
Suddenly Eden turned, furious. He’d heard. ‘We need them because right now we have no one else.’ He strode up to the man who he was now certain was a Bolshevik. ‘Where else do you think we’ll get the destroyers and other weapons we need to win this war?’
But the workman was not to be cowed. He was no revolutionary, but in his eyes it was Eden and his kind who had got them into this bloody war in the first place. If he was to be asked for his opinion, he was going to give it.
‘I hear we can’t afford it. Can’t afford the Americans as friends.’
Eden snorted in exasperation. That was the difficulty with men such as this who wandered into every corner and crevice of the Foreign Office. They heard too much, yet understood so little.
