Dislocated to Success (14 page)

Anyway, a rather daring plan was arrived at, although I am not very keen on rather daring plans - but Downing Street was rather insistent that her message be personally delivered. We choppered into Palace Square in three Sea Kings, with the other one flying above; two were full of troops and one was myself and some bodyguards. Once the troops had landed and secured the area, I then was allowed to land. We then demanded to speak to the Grand Master by loudhailer whilst flying truce flags. I wore my cloak of St Lazarus over my bullet proof vest, not that anyone seemed to recognise it.

António Manoel de Vilhena was absolutely livid at our intrusion, and to be honest I can't say I blamed him. However, with his hand forced, he did come out to treat. I delivered the Prime Minister's message with as much faux outrage as I could manage - it was not received terribly well. Grandmaster Vilhena pointed out that he had done more for the people of Malta than any other Grandmaster for centuries and was building a new fortified city near Valletta. I did point out that, frankly, doing more for the people of Malta wouldn't take a lot of effort. He had the grace to look a little shamefaced about that.

He pointed out the lack of support for the order of late: that funds were low; that the islands’ navy was very limited; and that the only safety was to pull people back into the fortified cities. He accused us, quite correctly of course, of wanting to take over Malta. I merely stonewalled and gave the Prime Minister's ultimatum.

One of his aides then ranted and raved for a couple of minutes about daring us to bring on the Devil's work - Valletta would never fall. I smiled and pointed out that effectively it already had from the air; we could use helicopters to bring in troops, and we had a number of ways of doing this. The walls of Valletta, poorly-manned as they were, were clearly not able to cover the plazas within it.

Eventually, it was agreed. The United Kingdom could base ships at Marsaxlokk and the details would be worked out with the Embassy; this base would be used to stop corsair intrusions between Malta and Tunis. There would be some payment for the rental of facilities, of course.

Neither side left this terribly happy, but the Co-operation started at the end of 1981; it was only when the idiot de Fonesca became Grandmaster slightly earlier than in our original history that we were eventually forced to take further action in Malta. Not that there weren't further sticky patches - the Muslim slave incident, for instance. But things gradually became better, so that when de Fonesca started his games, not only did we have the backing of the vast majority of the Maltese people, but also of a sizeable and significant minority of the Knights.

There was a further kerfuffle just before our arrival at Leghorn; the Brewster was heading for Ragusa, and there had been a suggestion that we should turn back and visit the place. Luckily, this did not happen, as otherwise we would have missed a fascinating visit to Firenze.

I had been warned by the ambassador about the Tuscan court; I had carefully read my copy of Hale and had been allowed to see the galley proofs of the new edition of Harold Acton's The Last Medici. Harold had, of course, been Dislocated, and Faber and Faber had decided not to reissue the book after all due to a combination of the paper shortage and possible libel actions. Everything in that book, everything that had been claimed as being wicked Anglo-Saxon fabrication, was the truth - in fact, it was a toned down version of the truth.

Sadly, even the most debauched drawing rooms of the more louche areas of London would not have matched the actuality of Gian Gastone's court. It was probably as well that I was there before some people introduced them to various American practises, which led to the demise of the Grand Duke before his previously ordained time. At that time the court had not become the Mineshaft with periwigs it became by 1982; but it was an already an unpleasant and fetid atmosphere.

The reality was that there was nothing for Britain in the Grand Duchy in terms of any meaningful trade deal; Gian Gastone was too drunk to be interested in anything except the next young man whom he could fellate and the next bottle of wine. His chief counsels were only interesting in keeping the Grand Duke supplied with young men whilst extracting as much of the treasury as possible for his own personal use. The only thing he wanted to speak about was the accession of his sister to the Grand Duchy; his father had altered the House Law to allow this, but the Kaiser was not having it and had protested the issue. The reasons for this were complex, but lay in a line of female succession which may have started with Gian's barren and aged sister but would inevitably end with the Spanish Bourbons. Vienna wanted Tuscany to drop into their hands and they had a couple of candidates.

Firenze was clearly falling into disrepair: the population was drifting away; the army had declined to virtually nothing; and much of the industry and crafts had gone, moved away to less corrupt and less decayed places. I was glad that I had visited, but I declined any further visits.

Of course, the absolute highlight of this trip for me was meeting His Holiness; it was such a shame that this had to be a very secret meeting, and the meeting was not publicly revealed until the Concordat of 1734/1984. Bruno
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was there to assist me, and a rather dashing Portuguese priest was acting as the Pope's assistant. Obviously, we did not really cover spiritual issues; there was still a considerable debate about the future of the cis-Church and that debate was occurring on both sides.

However, not all issues were entirely temporal. We had a long discussion on possible reforms of the Reichskirche, a subject which we had a surprising amount of agreement. Rome wanted the power to appoint bishops to be brought back to Rome; we wanted the practise of multiple bishoprics to be abandoned. The Pope wasn't against that idea at all; nor was he against the secularisation of Osnabrück, a ridiculous situation which needed resolving. He was, of course, against further secularisation of any other see. I was surprised to hear that the Kaiser wasn't against either idea as he considered the growing power of Bavaria and the Palatinate in such matters. I resolved to check this out with Vienna. There might be a way forward, although given the structures of the Reich and the Reichskirche and the pace of change there, we both might be dead before any change was made.

We then talked about the two major succession problems in Italy; that of Tuscany, and that of Parma.

We talked about Tuscany in general terms; at that point we didn't know what would happen over the next year there, but were generally in agreement that it should not end up in the hands of Spain - not even as a forced apanage. However, we were both concerned about it reverting back to the Reich. However, given the dubiousness of the Ottajano claim, we saw no alternative but for it to pass back to the Reich. We agreed that pressure would be put to give it to a suitable relative rather than pass into the Kaiser’s hands directly.

Parma was more complex; there really wasn't much choice but to allow inheritance through Elizabeth Farnese, everything there was fairly clear. There was a case for a Papal succession, but to do it would affect several other possible successions where the ruling should be the other way. The Holy Father made a very sensible suggestion - he felt that Carlos Bourbon should be skipped and that Felipe Bourbon should inherit, with the Holy Father as regent. It was suggested that if we both suggested this to Spain, it would be agreed; personally I thought the Vatican would have carried it alone.

We had a considerable talk about possible trade deals; an arrangement was made that trade could be commenced between our states via the proxy of the Kingdom of Ireland. Whilst Vatican circles were calming down about the Dislocation, the Holy Father wanted to use a proxy. A very simple list of trade items was agreed, as just about everything else was being looked at by various Vatican committees. This arrangement was to prove quite beneficial at other times to both sides, and to the Kingdom of Ireland's revenues.

Bruno and I also had a very quiet private chat after the meeting; the Holy Father had been examined by a doctor, and it was believed that it might be possible to operate to assist his nearly failed eyesight. However, he would not consider travelling to the UK for it and no doctor would operate in trans-conditions. There were also substantial risks anyway due to his age. I said I would see what I could come up with. We eventually managed to arrange for HMS Illustrious to make a call nearby, and found a surgeon willing to operate from Illustrious; it was a success, although a great deal of subterfuge had be used to disguise a seven day period of bed rest on board.

The visit to Naples, frankly, was a chore; it had been transferred to the Hapsburgs by the Treaty of Rastatt some seventeen years before and had barely been stable since. There was a virtual constant rebellion in Sicily and much of the boot of Italy was generally in an uproar.

The local governor spent most of his time in the immediate Bay of Naples area, mainly because of the threat of kidnapping which was rife in the area. However, despite all this, there was a fairly decent amount of agricultural produce for sale in the area and we intended to try and make the most of it. The problem was that the majority of it was on the black market, so the amount of duties and taxes paid was minimal. With that problem, of course, it was difficult to pay people to look after anything. I reflected on how much some of the wilder members of the FCS might enjoy this libertarian paradise. I suspect they would be running for their mother's skirts in five minutes.

The result was there wasn't a lot we could do; there would be some minor trading, and quite a lot of unofficial trading done via Minorca or Malta, but until some form of better order occurred in the Kingdom of Naples it was unlikely that any great deal of progress would be made. The only thing I managed to arrange was access to Pompeii and Herculaneum; at least the excavations would be done properly this time.

Part of the problem was, of course, that it was really ruled from Vienna. I had suggested that troublesome places might do better by direct rule from the local capital, but the Hapsburgs had no legitimate cadet branches in the male line and Hapsburg princesses tended to be married off within the extended family. But until there were some changes, the Kingdom of Naples was likely to remain one of the poorest states in the Med - and one of the most rebellion-torn.

Chapter 14

After returning from my very pleasant Grand Tour, I settled in to work on the final preparations for the Royal Wedding. Protocol would be incredibly important, and I spent hours checking arrangements and details with the people from the Palace; people could take offence quite easily. However, as this was occurring the question of surveillance came up again. We had obviously lost all our overseas intelligence services during the Dislocation and it was part of my remit to try and rebuild that; it actually proved to be surprisingly easy - in the golden days before nationalism, there were a lot of people who would betray their country for buttons.

There was also domestic surveillance of overseas figures, which actually reported to Willie in the main but was supposed to cross-report to me. What I hadn’t quite realised was the extent of it and how much it infringed on people; it had been extensive because of the cold war, and the creativity and might we had once applied to Warsaw Pact diplomats who knew how the game was played was now being used on completely hapless and unknowing Princes of the Empire. This went as far as collecting information on the bedroom antics of various princes, potentates and powers; it was all somewhat sordid. This was proved as a case in point over the summer before the Royal Wedding. The arrows of Cupid placed an important foreign guest in a passionate love affair with a British subject; a relationship that would be disapproved of in the UK at the time, and a death sentence where he came from. They were, needless to say, a charming couple, and the relationship endured for over a decade and still continues in a platonic manner .

This was presented to me as a great triumph for the Security Services, that we would have this person over the wheel to do our bidding, etc. etc. To be perfectly honest, I had severe doubts about this; the guest was about as pro-British as you can expect a trans-person to be and I didn’t really think that this leverage was needed. In addition, the guest was a very strong-minded and highly intelligent person and likely to take severe umbrage at the idea of being used like this. I questioned this with Willie and the PM and we decided to look again at the surveillance of foreign figures, what use it was put to and why we were doing it. The end result was a considerable relaxation of the regime; we tended to only collect the most basic of data and only really look at persons who were known to be anti-ethical to the United Kingdom more closely.

The Royal Wedding itself went off extremely well. There were some small protocol problems; it was difficult to determine - especially within the Holy Roman Empire - how far you went down the protocol list for invites. We’d set a general lower limit of Grafschaft, but there had been one or two important people who needed to be invited as well. Luckily, we had the assistance of a couple of people here for medical treatment who were walking copies of the Almanach de Gotha and were very helpful at sorting things out for us about who was actually who, which saved a certain amount of egg on face when it came to multiple holdings and - even more annoyingly - people who held different titles with different names.

To start with we didn’t have a lot of RSVPs from Catholics, but when it became known that the Kings of France, Portugal and Poland would be there and the the Emperor would also attend, the RSVP’s started flooding back. What was interesting was some of the people who declined; very few were for malicious reasons, in many cases it was just regarded as “too far”, in other cases they were “too unwell” and in a handful of cases they were “too broke”. We assisted where we could with some of these, depending on where they were in the pecking order; transport could be arranged, medical treatment could be sorted and in a couple of cases a small stipend could be provided. A couple of thousand pounds spent on the FO NHS account often bought more goodwill than anything else. We were also happy to accept people who were in line rather than the ruler themselves; in fact, one of our lessons learned from the Royal Wedding was that in many cases the Thronfolgers were far more amenable to a bit of British hospitality than their parents.