NOW 15

Chapter Fifteen

It started innocently enough, with a demonstration of young worshippers at a Mosque in a small coastal town along the Red Sea. That it was the first day of 1964 was of no consequence and all it did was to make it easier for future historians. The demonstration was carefully orchestrated by men loyal to the priest and were outwardly oriented against the Government's inefficiency and corruption, and that was not that unusual in any of the countries in the region, except maybe in Palestine.

What was unusual was that they directly attacked the King, which was normally a taboo in a monarchy as autocratic as Saudi-Arabia. So within two hours the local police force was out with orders to disperse them.

There were enough genuine protesters in the demonstration to make sure that turning the situation violent would he harder than anticipated, but the Priest's men in the back and the middle of the crowd started hurling stones at the police when a standoff ensued and neither side would be provoked by the other's use of profanities and efforts to provoke. Both were laced with enough of the Priest's men to ensure that the situation rapidly escalated.

Shots were fired with predictable results.

Over the next six days similar incidents took place all over the country and a week after the first incident the simmering discontent under the surface of the country exploded. Chaos reigned.

Years of preparations then began to pay off. Their impatience nearly cost the plotters everything though.

The King was a weak person at heart and when one of the Colonel's associates offhandedly suggested that one might to be forced to rely on the Army.

The King agonized over deciding for more than a week all the while skilful ministrations by the Priest fanned the flames until in the third week of January something happened that broke the straw.

The four BTR-50 Armoured Infantry Carriers and three Sarazen Armoured Cars were going nowhere in particular but the impact of the first PIAT ended that anyway. The second BTR in line exploded, sending bits of men and machines all over the place.

The Brens of this group opened up and cut down the Infantry that was milling about in total chaos without taking cover.

“DEATH TO THE KING!” came through a megaphone at them and then the shooting stopped.

This attack was joined by dozens of others all over the country in the next week and they achieved what they were meant for. The King snapped and ordered the Army to the streets.

The Priest and the Colonel were monitoring the increasingly frantic wireless networks of the Government and the news broadcasts that came out of the TV and Radio stations.

Smiling at the Priest the Colonel said:

“It seems that we can move soon, Brother.”

The Priest nodded. “I leave these matters to you of course, Brother.”

The Colonel grimaced inwardly. The Priest was willing to leave everything to the professionals as long as things went the way he wanted them to go. So far that had always been the case, but now the most risky part of their plan was about to come into operation.

“Brother, I must point out that the Europeans and especially the British will already know that something is happening in our country and if anything happens to their embassies they cannot fail to react.”

The Priest waved this away. “The plan calls for the Foreign Embassies to be left alone at the moment, fear this not. We do need if not the support then at least the non-interference by the accursed British.”

The Colonel nodded. “I know this of course, Brother. But some of the more...spirited of our people on the streets might not see it this way, especially after this afternoon.”

Again, the Priest merely waved this comment away in the excitement of the moment.

“You can of course tell this to your Lieutenants.”

“I will do that.” the Colonel replied. “In any case, I have to leave for the station. Our people should have it secured by now.”

~**---**~

It started in a square in Ryiad not a mile from where the King and his closest advisers began to quietly plot how long it would take to drive an Armoured Car to the nearest airstrip. The man in command of the Guards detachment was a man carefully selected by the Colonel before he had been forced to leave the Army and it was this unit that had some of the best equipment in the Saudi Army. Conspicuously all of it was of British Origin.

For all his faults the Priest had correctly deduced that after his manipulations the populace would see the King as the source of the trouble and deaths in their country on the King. The man doing the 'field work' as it were had made sure that the Royalist Forces were always the most visible when a protest was crushed or a dissident was arrested, this latter part having been started months ago, and now everything was in place.

The Sarazen Armoured Cars and the men on the Landies[1] with the machine guns were not aware that they were pawns in a bigger game as much as the people in the square. As far as they knew they had been given orders by the King to disperse this protest at any cost.

When the crowd refused to obey orders to disperse ant leave every gun on the vehicles was turned on them. They hesitated for a second and then came on. The men pulled their triggers with the obvious results.

A few blocks away Her Majesty's Embassy to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia could clearly hear the automatic fire. The military attaché, a Indian Major and graduate of the Bombay War College turned on his heels at the door of his Office and ran up to the Ambassador's Office.

“Sir, something is happening and it's not good.”

The Ambassador had heard the gunfire and while he was one of the old school who was not convinced that the New Empire was something he liked he knew that the Officer wearing the Cap badge of the Peshawar Lancers was competent.

“We might want to put the guard force onto alert.” the Ambassador said and picked up the telephone. The Guard Force at the British Embassy wasn't made up of professional military men like their American counterparts but they were armed. The attaché nodded and collected his Navy and Air Force colleagues and together the soldiers ran up the staircase to the flat roof of the complex.

The sight that greeted them was horrifying. Fleeing crowds filed past the embassy, many clearly being wounded either by the trampling feet of their panicking neighbours or bullets and the gunfire at what had to be the square two blocks up the road as still continuing.

“What the blazes are these idiots doing?” the Major yelled. He was a Late Entry Officer and as a Warrant Officer had served in the chaos that was the northern Border area of the Republic of China where he had been part of the guard of a British diplomatic delegation that had tried and failed to sort things out without violence like this.

“Bloody hell.” the Air Force Flight Lieutenant said and pointed to the eastern edge of the city. “These madmen have mobilized the airbase!”

Two brand new Russian made Mi-8s with rocket and gun pods under their proto-wings and Machine Gunners in their open doors made their way to the square.

They had seen enough. As they made their way down the Major shook his head. China had been bad and he was glad to be rid of it, even though it had earned him a Queen's Commission in 1952 but this was bound to be even worse. In China at least in the end the threat of the British leaving the RoCs to their fate had made the Army back off and confine itself to things that were more within it's normal area of expertise[2]

“Do we report this in?” the Flight Lieutenant asked.

“Are you joking?” the Major replied and went off to the comms room where he was sure he would find the Ambassador. He was sure that all the embassies along the street, starting with the Polish one right next to this building to the German one down the road would today burn up the airwaves with communications. Saudi Arabia was at the brink.

+-+-+-+-

Comments, questions, rotten Tomatoes?

I started this story and thought up this plotline before the political turmoil in the arab world, so any similarities are coincidental.

[1] Shortening of Land Rover and TTL's equivalent of 'Jeep'.

[2] If you think of the mid-60s Republic of China think Taiwan before Chiang died with a slightly more powerful parliament.

NOW 14

Chapter Fourteen

The early December morning in Gloucestershire was usual for this time of year and the place but the Chief had no eye for the weather, stared out over the English countryside without seeing it. The Chief hated the weather, but there was little he could do about that, but it still gave him depressive thoughts.

Luckily the head of Five was walking up the private staircase that led from the parking space directly to the executive level, through a door disguised as a wall panel that held one of the numbers of this part of the parking lot. Inside Five would have cleared the sentry there by now and be walking up the stairs and would knock on the door....

knock knock knock

Right now.

“Sir.”

A nod and a grunt was all that the Chief got in reply but such were things between two men who had been working together for years.

Five sat and went straight to the point.

“Four days ago the Joint Field Office at Aden was approached by a man who was badly wounded. Before he died he identified himself as a member of the Saudi-Arabian Counter-Intelligence arm of their Home Office.”

That explained how MI-5 had come to be involved. The Joint Field Office was the base of British Intelligence Operations in the Red Sea and along the southern edge of Arabia, hence the presence of MI-6, but since Aden was a British Crown Territory[1] MI-5 had the final say.

“When we searched him he was having two sets of papers with him, one in Arabic which turned out to be a dispersal list for some sort of Shipment, the other was a message paper that turned out to be written in the Board of Trade Cypher.

Now that got the Chief's attention. The Board of Trade Cypher was hardly the most secure or most important one, in fact it was based on a version of the old Enigma Machine that had been broken when both the men in the room had been young men back at Bletchley, but it was still a matter that demanded immediate attention. Whatever the cause and reason it might mean that one part of the intricate system that guaranteed Imperial Communications was compromised.

“Do we have anything more?”

Five shook his head.

“Nothing. Now, what I want you to do is to prepare to switch the BoT Cypher immediately, but not do it yet. I'm having a meeting with C and Six tomorrow and we decide what to do then.”

That made sense. If this was handled carefully it was quite possible that you might smoke out the leak both on station and on British Territory. And that was something the GCHQ didn't concern itself with. Their mission was to ensure the safety of the Cyphers and codes.

Tonight a lot of people would work overtime.

Five went on.

“In any case, the Field Office wasn't able to decode the message and they instead sent it back with the bag.”

With that Five handed the Chief the envelope that contained the message even as the Chief pressed the button on his desk that summoned the in-house messenger. He handed the envelope over with orders to have it de-crypted yesterday.

It was most likely nothing more than the next complaint by the trade attaché at the Embassy about how the Saudis were hampering his duties with whatever new law they had enacted, something that if the BoT and the Foreign Office deigned it worthy of their attention would be resolved in different rooms of the halls of power in the British Empire.

Even so, Government Communications mustn't be compromised and the Chief was certain that those who would put their heads together tomorrow would try to decide what to do and if they did then GCHQ would oblige.

“Well, we should have that decoded within half an hour, Sir.”

“Good.” Five replied and nodded.

“Now,” he went on, “do we have anything on that American Spy near Galway?”

Five was referring to an American Spy near the western-most base in Ireland which mostly hosted several Squadrons of Irish and Allied (but no British) maritime patrol aircraft. The Irish Air Force[2] had detected unauthorized transmissions. They had bounced that to military Intelligence who had in turn contacted Five through his opposite number in Dublin in case the Brits had anything on that. They hadn't and thus a small Anglo-Irish work group was taking advantage of the better facilities in the basement that was connected via landline to stations all along the West Coast.

~**---**~

' RAF Veritas, British-Sudan

23^rd December 1963

Dear Mother,

I know you probably won't read this until well after New Years but I could not not write a letter on this day. Tomorrow both the Germans and the Brits will have their very own Christmas party and as the only Canadian present I can hardly not attend, even though in this weather it is decidedly odd to hear men rehearsing Christmas Carols in six different languages and have them hanging decorations on whatever local tree is available. Not all are partaking, but such is life. The Germans are actually fitting in better here than I expected.

It's almost endearing how eager they seem to be and if I didn't know better I'd be actually worried, but what I also have to admit to myself is that these aren't the people I thought they would be. I still have my reservations but there is no point in making this Squadron any more my enemy than it already is.

As you know I did put the foot into my mouth more than once since I joined them but this is...'

Charette brushed the sweat on his forehead away with a quick move of his left hand. He decided to finish this letter after dinner. When he had arrived here he had found that it was not the collections of tents and low huts he had expected but rather more a full-fledged Air Base with most of the amities that any Air Base in Canada or Britain had. No TV, but he didn't have the time to do much anyway. The course they were due to begin on the 1^st was as new for him as it was for them and he pitied the mechanics who had arrived yesterday in several old Yorks belonging to the Egyptian Air Force.

Now they were hounded around by two dozen of their British counterparts who used a mixture of English, Indian and Arabic cursewords in a way that was particular to NCOs since the Roman Legions and that no Officer had yet really for just as long.

Even Late Entry Officers kept these secrets to themselves.

As he stepped out of his quarters and onto the base he was almost thrown down to the ground when four Swifts raced overhead and the sonic boom made every window pane on the base rattle. The planes still wore the standard Luftwaffe camouflage which made them look oddly out of place but they were shaping up well.

Since RAF Veritas was a permanent training base the Officers Mess was a very good one. Still it took time to get used to the local cuisine and so he considered himself lucky that today fresh beef was at hand.

He was sitting alone at a table while on the other side the German pilots were welcoming their comrades who were still wearing their flight suits and Charette was not surprised to notice that Commodore Marseille was among the pilots. However far he might rise in the Luftwaffe, the man would always be a Fighter Pilot at heart.

He watched as the men loaded food onto their trays and joined their countrymen and for the first time in weeks Charette wondered if he was doing those men a disservice. Even in spite of his attempts to rile them up and his cold professionalism he had never been met with anything but hospitality, the inevitable flat jokes and references to The War not withstanding.

He shrugged and decided that whatever one thought about the Germans, at least he did get to fly low and fast and that was something that any fast jet pilot liked very much, and as an added benefit it was rather warm.

+-+-+-+-+-

Comments, questions, rotten Tomatoes?

[1] In effect the OTL Overseas Territory, but that term doesn't really work ITTL.

[2] The Irish are rather enthusiastic members of the Allied Pact. They found they liked it when the Brits suddenly started treating them as equals. Also, and this is rather hush-hush, they get special price whenever they buy British kit.

NOW 13

Chapter Thirteen

They called it the bagel. It was the usual monstrosity of concrete and steel and for generations to come the building that housed the GCHQ outside Cheltenham was known as the prototype of ugly government architecture.

However the Chief not at all concerned with how the building looked and more with what went on inside. He had started at the old Cypher Station at Bletchley Park and spend his youth deciphering German and Soviet intercepts together with the great Alan Turing.[1]

As every morning he was looking through the reports marked “immediate” the top-most one a report about a supposed GRU cell made up of 1930s smoking room communists from Camebridge. Clearly a completely ridiculous idea in this day and age[2], but since the arrest of the last such cell even before the war was still a secret.

But alas, since this report was coming in via the Polish Secret Service through the British Embassy in Warsaw in a semi-official contact between two closely allied services it had to be followed up on as it just [I]might[/I] be true after all. Oh well, something for Five to stick their noses in. He signed the line that showed that the message had gone through the hands of GCHQ and placed it back in the envelope which was resealed and sent of with the daily bag to MI5.

What was of much more significance were the rumours that the Foreign Office Diplomatic cypher was compromised. This was somewhat more plausible, as those that were ULTRA cleared knew just how deeply British codes had been penetrated at times.

The Red telephone that connected him directly to the headquarters of Five rang.

“Chief?” came the voice of Five's administrative head the phone. Although technically the head of Five was higher ranked in the bureaucracy of the British Civil Service whoever was running the Government Communications Headquarters was 'the Chief'' due to some long-forgotten incident during The War.

“Sir, what can I do for you?”

“Have you looked at the daily middle-East intake yet?”

“Not yet, Sir.” the Chief said and wondered what on earth Five was on about. But instead of asking he merely picked up the bag that was standing on his desk. As it was not marked as immediate he hadn't touched it yet.

Even as he broke the seal he asked: “Anything special I am looking for, Sir?”

“I will come over this afternoon.”

With that the connection was severed. The fact that he hadn't been told anything at all told the Chief more than a long conversation would have.

But why would Five be interested in any of Sixes Middle Eastern Stations? Even if they were penetrated or burnt Five was Counter-Intelligence, and the nearest MI5 Field Office to what was generally regarded as the Middle East was at Aden after all. Still, there were lots of things that Five did that had connections to the Middle East and any one of them could tangent the GCHQ.

If he were still working at Six, he'd forward this to the head of the Middle-East Department but he had no such thing.

He shrugged and resigned himself to wait for his superior to arrive. He called for a cup of tea and once it was in his hands he turned back to his reports.

He knew that sometime this afternoon an unmarked car would cross the perimeter of the facility and he would find out then at the latest.

~**---**~

The de Havilland VC10[3] of the British Overseas Airways Corporation was being serviced before flying the daily flight from London to Brasilia via Lisbon. Crew and Passengers alike were annoyed that they were half an hour late taking off but the delayed arrival of the pre-packaged meals that passengers had to endure these days had made it inevitable.

The General knew flying BOAC instead of Crab Air was a personal extravagance but technically he was still on leave and a day's worth of layover at Lisbon would give him a chance of visiting a few old friends. The coming assignment was to be his last before retirement anyway, nigh on forty years in the Army were enough. When he had been a young subaltern in the Cavalry back when a few British Regiments still had been mounted in the oldest sense of the word, and now Cavalry meant fast-moving Mechanized Infantry with organic tank and light Air support. In this time of Nuclear Weapons and jet bombers it was time to retire.

After all, he had already come to an arrangement with one of his oldest friends from the war, but since it was not as if...

His revere was broken when the Captain announced imminent departure and the four engines at the back of the plane spun up, and within two minutes the plane was in the air and left London behind.

The General was still missing his cigars which were a habit that he had given up by force in the depths of the Ukraine and somehow never picked up again. He missed the act of smoking more than whatever else had made the things so enjoyable, but he was never one to go back on his convictions.

So when the no-smoking sings came off he did not light up like so many other first-class passengers and instead watched the early-evening England glide by outside the window.

“Can I bring you something to drink or eat, Sir?”

It was a Stewardess with a menu in her hands.

The General nodded. “A cup of Tea, if you please.”

“Very well, Sir.”

To those watching him it was clear that he was current or formerly Army, an Officer of the type that was seen as stereotypical of the pre-World War Two British Army. If he was aware of that he didn't show it, even though it was at least partially true. He was a true product of the Old British Empire, born in a time and place when Indian Republicans had been more than a fringe movement, in the waning days of the old colonial system, when the Hornblower Novel he was reading[4] had been first written.

He had drunk his tea and was asleep when the plane crossed the British coast and circled wide over the Western Approaches to go around Brittany.

He was only awoken when for the umpteenth time he was awoken by the nightmare of his very own encounter with the Valley of Death as he called it, only that he had been charging a group of Soviet SU-85 Tank Destroyers. At this point the General decided that it was proper to get something to eat after all. He dinged for the stewardess and was pleased to find out that BOAC's reputation for better than average airline fare was holding up and decided on the steak. Eating heartily he barely noticed that a different Stewardess was walking around with a small cart full of magazines and readables. It made sense, most of the passengers would remain with the flight until they landed in Brasilia.

The General ended up with the most recent copy of the Radio Times. He had not yet read it but the blue box in the front was the talk of the land, at least among the people the age of his little grand-daughter who was, according to his son, hiding behind the couch every Saturday evening since this show ran. The General was unsure if this concept would hold, but somehow he believed it would.

He put it away and decided to sleep again. He had the distinct feeling he'd need it.

The Aircraft made it's way towards Portugal and on board Major General Sir Albert Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart KCB, MC, DSC was sleeping the sleep of the just while in other parts of the world things were afoot that would change things forever.

+-+-+-+-

Yes, it is short, but real live intervened and I had to chop things to get it done at all in a decent timeframe.

[1] His..orientations were officially overlooked as he was/is far to valuable to loose.

[2] :P The Camebridge Five were arrested by the Naval Intelligence Division in the person of James Bond's author. I took great delight in writing the scene where Ian Fleming arrested Kim Philby with the help of his trusty Mk.VI.

[3] Vickers withdrew from the aviation market completely after the war. DeHavilland picked up a lot of things, the VC.10 project included.

[4] And which I am listening to, thanks to an unabridged audio-book version.