George Washington's Ghost

“There is a film concerning an extremely confidential matter, sir,” he explained. “We are agreed that, as they say, a single picture may convey more than a thousand words. Respectfully, if Your Majesties would indulge us a few minutes? You will have many questions and the answers will, well, make more sense once you have seen the, er, movie, that we have had prepared…”

A frown began to harden on the King’s face.

Soon after he had taken command of HMS Lion – the best part of twenty years ago, now – he had had a dream, a nightmare one night. He was on the bridge of the leviathan, roaring along at nearly thirty knots and suddenly a lookout reported a rock, directly in front of the ship. Instantly, he had ordered the wheel to be put over and… nothing, nothing whatsoever had happened except that the battleship had ploughed ahead even faster…

He studied the faces of the other men.

While both of the politicians were looking a little sheepish; and the CIGS was avoiding his eye, the First Sea Lord, on the other hand, seemed quite cheerful, almost relieved. It was as if the four men were about to confess their sins…

Tea cups clinked in saucers.

Soon, Eleanor had organised the men around her. Bringing up a brood of clever, competitive and frequently quarrelsome children was marvellous preparation for marshalling a group of men of a certain age, notwithstanding that the men in question were among the great men of the Empire.

Everybody took their seats; the King and Queen in the centre flanked by Sir Hector Hamilton and Sir George Walpole to their left, and the two military men to their right.

Troubridge had a small, grey remote-control unit in his hand.

“If I may, sir?” He inquired tersely.

“Carry on.”

The screen flickered to life as the lights in the room dimmed.

There was no commentary on the movie itself.

Instead, the First Sea Lord spoke.

“The first pictures you will see are of a secret base in Newfoundland at the head of Placentia Bay, Your Majesties,” he explained.

On screen there was an aerial view of a port, dockyards and what appeared to be a tanker farm built to the model of such Royal Navy oiling facilities all around the globe.

The aircraft taking the pictures – which were amazingly, pin-point clear and of astonishingly high definition – circled lower, and lower until it became obvious that the ‘tanker farm’ was built on high ground overlooking the empty anchorage.

“The tanker farm hides and underground complex approximately the size of nine or ten football fields,” Lord Troubridge declared.

The camera shot altered, now it was on the deck of a ship offshore, focusing on the hillside next to the small port. In the distance a section of shoreline began to change colour, darkening. It was some moments before the King or the Queen recognised what they were looking at; a huge blast door slowly revolving forward, and sinking beneath the cold, northern waters.

“There are six ‘pens’, each of which can serve as either a maintenance or a construction dock. The steel doors protecting the individual pens are four feet thick and each bunker has twenty-three feet of reinforced concrete above it, and at each longitudinal side, in addition to some thirty feet of earth and rubble on top of them.”

“Most impressive,” the King murmured.

“The complex was designed to be resistant to a conventional armour piercing bomb twice the size of the largest munition of that type ever dropped from an aircraft, and,” the First Sea Lord hesitated, “a ground blast hit within one hundred feet of any part of the facility by an atomic bomb with an explosive yield in the range of mid-tens of kilotons of munitions-grade high explosives…”

The construction of such weapons, and of such bunkers – categorised as ‘defensive infrastructure under the protocols of the Submarine Treaty of 1966 – were explicitly forbidden.

“First Sea Lord,” the King growled, warningly. He would have continued, voicing his growing concerns had not he been suddenly transfixed – there was no other word for it – by the long, low, black shape which had begun to emerge from the shadows of the concealed dock.

There was a moment of shocked silence.

“Is that a,” the King gasped, flabbergasted.

“Yes, sir,” Lord Trowbridge said quietly. “That is HMS Splendid, the first of her class, going to sea after her acceptance trials refit in October 1973.”

No, none of that sunk in for several more seconds.

“Bertie,” Eleanor murmured, touching her husband’s arm, “your mouth is hanging open, darling. If you’re not careful, you’ll swallow a fly.”

The King shut his mouth, knowing that he was not going to be capable of coherent speech for several seconds to come. Leastways, not until his roiling thoughts began to calm a little.