Love is Strange (Timeline 10/27/62) Read online

  Love is Strange

  by James Philip

  Copyright © James P. Coldham writing as James Philip 2014. All rights reserved.

  Author’s Note

  Love is Strange is Book 2 of the alternative history series Timeline 10/27/62.

  It picks up the story a year on from the terrifying events in Operation Anadyr, Book 1 of the Timeline 10/27/62 Series.

  * * *

  Why Timeline 10/27/62? Because that date is a very significant date in my life and in the lives of everybody else in the world alive today because on Saturday 27th October 1962 World War III almost started. World War III probably wouldn’t have lasted very long because one side would have been swiftly obliterated in the first 24 hours of a cataclysm that would have left vast tracts of the Northern Hemisphere uninhabited and uninhabitable for decades to come. Perhaps, a quarter of the world’s population would have died in the firestorm or in the starvation and the plagues that would have ensued in the following weeks and months.

  In the October War of 1962 the hammer of the gods would have fallen upon the territories of the Soviet Union, central and Western Europe, and to a lesser extent, upon the extremities of continental North America. In the Soviet Union and in Europe from Paris to Warsaw, from Prague to Berlin, from the Alps to the Baltic, across the Low Countries and parts of the United Kingdom the thermonuclear fire would have burned with a merciless flame. Scandinavia might have escaped relatively untouched, likewise southern France, Italy, Spain and Portugal, Ireland and possibly parts of England, Wales and Scotland.

  The ‘Cuban Missiles’ War would have been a Man made global catastrophe like no other in human history. In the aftermath, the USA, mourning the dead in half-a-dozen wrecked cities would have been the last major industrial and military power left standing. That world could never, ever be the world we know today.

  How close did we actually come to the edge of the abyss? Much closer than most people like to contemplate. On Saturday 27th October 1962, north east of Cuba, the commander of Soviet submarine B-59 had to be talked out of firing a nuclear-tipped torpedo at the American destroyer USS Beale. That’s how close we came to World War III!

  The Captain of the B-59 was a man called Valentin Grigorievitch Savitsky. He was exhausted, the air in his vessel was virtually unbreathable and he was at the end of his tether. He may have believed that war had already broken out between the USSR and America. In any event he gave the order for a nuclear warhead to be fitted to a torpedo.

  Allegedly he said: “We’re going to blast them now! We will die, but we will sink them all! We will not disgrace our Navy!” From which we may infer that he was in earnest.

  In that era Soviet naval doctrine governing the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons onboard a warship at sea required the authorisation of three officers: the captain, the executive officer, and the vessel’s political officer. B-59’s political officer, Ivan Semonovich Maslennikov signed off on starting World War III but fortunately for us all, the submarine’s second-in-command, Captain 2nd Rank Vasili Arkhipov, dissented and Armageddon was narrowly averted.

  Timeline 10/27/62 is an alternative history of the modern world in which nobody ever got to know the name of Vasili Arkhipov because he died in the first act of the most terrible war in history.

  Love is Strange, set a little over a year after the cataclysm, is the first full chapter of the story of what happened after Vasili Arkhipov failed to prevail upon Valentin Grigorievitch Savitsky to see reason.

  Welcome to Timeline 10/27/62 World.

  Books in the Main Series:

  Book 1: Operation Anadyr

  Book 2: Love is Strange

  Book 3: The Pillars of Hercules

  Book 4: Red Dawn (Available 1st May 2015)

  Book 5: The Burning Time (Available 1st July 2015)

  Books in the Timeline 10/27/62 – USA Series:

  Book 1: Aftermath (Available 27th October 2015)

  Book 2: California Dreaming (Available 27th October 2015)

  * * *

  To the reader: firstly, thank you for reading this book; and secondly, please remember that this is a work of fiction. I made it up in my own head. None of the characters described in ‘Love is Strange: Book 2 of the Timeline 10/27/62 Series’ – are based on real people I know of, or have ever met. Nor do the specific events described in ‘Love is Strange: Book 2 of the Timeline 10/27/62 Series’ have, to my knowledge, any basis in real events I know to have taken place. Any resemblance to real life people or events is, therefore, unintended and entirely coincidental. However, ‘Love is Strange: Book 2 of the Timeline 10/27/62 Series’ is an alternative history of the modern world and because of this, real historical characters are referenced and in some cases their words and actions form a significant part of the narrative. I have no way of knowing for sure if these real, historical figures, would have spoken thus, or acted in the ways I depict them acting. Any word I place in the mouth of a real historical figure, and any action which I attribute to them after 27th October 1962 never actually happened. As I always say in my note to my readers, I made it up in my own head.

  Finally, a note on ships and ship names

  HMS Talavera (Yard no. 617) was a later Battle Class destroyer laid down at John Brown and Company’s Yard on the Clyde on 29th August 1944 and launched, on 27th August 1945 to clear the slip. The hull was sold to the West of Scotland Shipbreaking Company Limited of Troon, in South Ayrshire, where it was beached on 26th January 1946. Breaking up commenced on 5th February 1946 and was completed on 27th March 1946.

  Four of Talavera’s sisters - Agincourt, Aisne, Barossa and Corunna – were actually converted to Fast Air Detection Escorts and all served, at one time or another, with the Mediterranean Fleet and were once based at Malta. Their conversions were interim, stop gap measures which were almost immediately overtaken by events. First, Harold Wilson’s Labour Government cancelled the new big fleet carriers they were supposed to be escorting, and secondly, new technology and new ships soon rendered them obsolete. All four Fast Air Detection Battles were decommissioned before the end of the 1960s in a universe in which HMS Talavera never steamed.

  HMS Dreadnought was the United Kingdom’s first nuclear powered hunter killer submarine. On 27th October 1962, Dreadnought was fitting out at Barrow-in-Furness.

  As with real historical characters, real historical ships are treated in a documentary –where they were and as they were deployed – fashion up to and including 27th October 1962. Thereafter, all bets are off because in this post cataclysm timeline, everything changes.

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Author’s Endnote

  Other Books by James Philip

  Love is Strange

  [Book 2 of Timeline 10/27
/62]

  Chapter 1

  17:31 Hours Zulu

  Friday 22nd November 1963

  HMS Talavera, Fareham Creek, Portsmouth

  “My fellow Americans,” the familiar voice began. It was a relaxed, purposeful voice. It was a voice that reached out into homes and resonated about hearths. It was a voice that spoke to the hopes and fears of all generations. It was a voice that divided and yet retained the power to beguile, momentarily, even his most virulent detractors. It was also the most familiar voice in the world. It was the voice of the man who honestly believed that he, truly and rightfully spoke for the world. What was left of it. “My fellow Americans,” the voice said again, “and to this great nation’s friends, wherever they may be, near and far,” the voice was stilled for an instant, for dramatic effect, “may God be with you in this time of trial.”

  Lieutenant Peter Christopher waved for the steward to bring him another beer. It was warm, stuffy, and a little humid in the wardroom of HMS Talavera with the ship closed up at ABC Condition One. There was an east wind again tonight and nobody knew how hot the rain beating on the upper decks of the destroyer might be. They’d take readings in the morning if the storm had blown over in the night, otherwise, they’d be stuck between decks trusting the fans and the filters kept out the worst of the muck for another day. Peter suspected the now very occasional ABC lock downs were simply to keep the crews of the ships stuck in harbour on their toes. Every report he’d read on background radiation levels showed a continuing fall towards background readings between two and three times higher than before the war. Levels were lower in some places, higher in others but there’d been no reported cases of suspected radiation sickness in the Fleet for several months.

  The wardroom stank of damp serge, recycled air and stale cigarette smoke. The smoking lamp had been out for the last two hours and the enforced abstinence wasn’t improving anybody’s spirits.

  “We have lived through the fire,” the hated voice declaimed. There was a persistent, low-level background buzz over the ship’s public address system. Nobody knew if it was radiation degrading the circuitry or just a bad component somewhere in the system. They couldn’t do anything about the radiation levels, and spare parts were worth their weight in gold even if you could get your hands on them. “We have emerged from the valley of the shadow of death...”

  The bloody man sounded more like a whiskey preacher every day!

  “Already we are rebuilding our cities in memory of our immortal dead. Already our factories are running again at full capacity. Already our brave soldiers and sailors and airmen are carrying aid and succour to our loyal allies.” The pitch of the voice fell and became almost musical as if he was reading a Shakespearean sonnet. “I know there are people in this great American continent who say that ‘we have problems of our own’. They say ‘we are as yet too damaged to be able to spare our scarce food, our scarce fuels, our precious manufactured goods, and that we should not risk our irreplaceable soldiers and sailors and airmen in harm’s way’. And I hear you. I hear you all. But I say to you that we cannot stand by and do nothing because that is not the American way. Would you stand by idly while your neighbour’s house burned to the ground? Would you do nothing to prevent his child starving to death? Would you have your local sheriff do nothing while outlaws loot and rape at will? I tell you that it is our Christian duty to carry American values, American good sense, and American charity into the lands of our so sorely injured friends and allies.”

  And presumably, further fire and pestilence into the lands of our foes?

  Peter Christopher knew he wasn’t alone in thinking that; not content with obliterating most of the old world the new Romans seemed hell bent on remaking the new one in their own smug, self-satisfied image. He flicked a glance across the wardroom table at the Executive Officer’s stony face. Lieutenant-Commander Hugo Montgommery was seething in silence.

  The wardroom steward delivered Peter Christopher’s beer and he signed the chit. He’d stopped listening to that preaching, hypnotic voice. The capacity to tune out the background noise was a thing they’d all learned quite early. Instead of listening, he viewed the pinched, grim expression of the stranger in their midst.

  He guessed that Captain Walter Brenckmann, USN (Reserve) was squirming inside. He’d been a Boston lawyer, a ‘corporate litigator’ – whatever that was – the day the world went mad. Subsequently he’d been swept back into the Navy and posted to the very edge of the still civilised, habitable world. Or so it must seem to an educated, liberal minded man who’d thought the military was finished with him after Korea. Brenckmann was CINCLANT’s personal representative on the staff of the Admiral Commanding the Channel Fleet. He’d arrived two months ago and seemed to have spent most of the time since getting to know people. It was well known that C-in-C Fleet didn’t have much time for the USN, so the poor fellow had been shuffled from pillar to post, shunned by the Admiral’s staff. Brenckmann had visited Talavera several times. He got on well with the Captain and following the old man’s example, the wardroom had extended an open invitation to the grey-haired, rather forlorn lost soul. The fallout alert had trapped the American on one of his frequent visits.

  “Today, I speak to you from Houston,” the whiskey preacher preached, evidently with a tear in his eye, “from the great wounded state of Texas...”

  There was a break while his audience – or perhaps, his technicians – filled the airways with rapturous applause.

  “I speak to you today from the great wounded state of Texas. Yesterday, I walked down streets seared by the terrible flame of a war that this nation neither sought nor would have fought but for the monstrous actions of our enemies. Let it never be forgotten that this great, peace loving American nation desiring only to co-exist in peace with its neighbours and the peoples of the world was attacked not once, but twice. First at sea, then, without warning on land. Our ships going about their lawful business in international waters were the victims of a cowardly, dishonourable act of unprovoked aggression. Hours later the illegal, barbaric, puppet regime in Havana - almost certainly at the prompting of the Kremlin – launched a pre-meditated, cold-blooded, dastardly first strike at cities in the continental United States. Two unprovoked attacks. Two attacks without warning. What great nation in the history of the world has ever turned its cheek once, let alone twice before accepting that war cannot be averted. Even then we stayed out hand. Knowing that we faced unimaginable risks we stayed our hand several more hours. Hoping, praying that our enemies would repent, recant their evil ways and step back from the brink.” The preacher’s voice was slowly rising towards an inevitable crescendo. “We asked only that they stand down their offensive weapons. We asked only that they agree, in principle, to withdraw all their forces from Cuba.” The voice was pleading, demanding. It was not the voice of one of God’s lesser children, but of a man who sat at His right hand. “We only asked that they return to the status quo before the revolution in that sad island. That they hand over Castro and his henchmen. Hand him over to us so that he might face justice for his heinous war crimes against the American people...”

  The applause overwhelmed the microphones.

  Thirty seconds ticked by.

  “What did our enemies do?” The voice asked, sadly, as if he was both disappointed and a little bemused. “What did they do? I’ll tell you what they did, my fellow Americans! They readied their engines of war! They scrambled their bombers! They moved their missiles onto their launching pads! And they said nothing to us! Nothing, my friends!”

  Peter Christopher was intimately familiar with the narrative.

  We had no choice. It was us or them. What were we supposed to do? And anyway, the bastards attacked us first! For all he knew, it was true. Every word of it. Except, if it was all true why were the Americans constantly protesting their innocence? What were they so guilty about?

  “They said nothing to us and ordered their nuclear forces to attack the United States of America and its
European allies on the evening of Saturday 27th October 1962. I prayed that night. For our souls, for all of our souls. I prayed for the souls of friends and foes alike for we are all alike in God’s sight. And then I knew what I must do. My fellow Americans, that was the darkest night of my life because I knew that for all our sakes, I could do no other than to uncover the sword of everything that was right and just in the world in your defence. In your defence and in the defence of the free world. In defence of the inalienable values passed down to us by our founding fathers...”

  Lieutenant-Commander Hugo Montgommery cleared his throat.

  “Steward, would you turn that noise off please,” he glanced around the wardroom. He paused briefly to check that he was speaking for all the officers present. He was.

  The silence that ensued was blessed.

  “My apologies, Captain Brenckmann,” HMS Talavera’s executive officer shrugged to the American visitor. “We’ve been through a lot in the last year,” he opened his hands, palms outward, “but one draws the line at some things.”

  The American shrugged, smiled wanly.

  “That’s okay. Next time I plan to vote Republican.”

  Chapter 2

  Friday 22nd November 1963

  Glebe Cottage, Government Buildings, Cheltenham

  Tom Harding-Grayson nursed the last few drops of Brandy in his glass and decided not to meet the eye of his guest. Patricia, his wife, whom he’d remarried within days of discovering she’d survived the war, had excused herself and gone back to reading her book in the kitchen. Like so many people, when she read it was invariably something insubstantial, romantic or comedic, or from some distant past of which none of them retained any memory. The contemporary world was a grim enough place without reliving the grimness through somebody else’s eyes. The kitchen had another advantage. With the kitchen door firmly shut she couldn’t hear that hated voice bleating from the small transistor radio in the parlour.