Redemption - Leon Uris [155]
The final act of the Weed-Hubble-Brodhead plot unfolded. Brigadier Llewelyn Brodhead tendered his resignation and summoned Captain Christopher Hubble to his office. Christopher, riding on hero’s wings, affixed his signature below the Brigadier’s. Within an hour every officer in the Coleraine Rifles, except for Subaltern Jeremy Hubble, had likewise resigned.
This was a gigantic relief. Now, at least, if the Brigadier and the Captain faced the firing squad, they’d have company.
By morning every officer in the King’s Midlanders and elsewhere in Camp Bushy had resigned. Jeremy caved in as he had when he abandoned Molly.
For the moment secrecy held, but what the cabinet was looking at was open mutiny!
52
Caroline’s London office desk was neither slapdash with papers and trinkets nor wholly immaculate but for a single rose. It was cleared for action like a battleship deck, as she focused on a trio of thick reports, her nose balancing her specs in the manner of her father.
Chalmers, her chief financial adviser, and MacGregor, her father’s top engineer, were both iffy about the bold stroke Caroline wanted to put on the boards for the future.
Like many facilities, Weed Ship & Iron was building at capacity and, to handle new bids, was leasing old facilities or patching up derelict ones.
Caroline was opting for an entire new shipyard north of Belfast. The vicinity around Larne would be perfect.
Caroline’s vision was rooted in the fact that there would soon be a war. That war would end. When that war ended, the building of ships and other products of war would come to a screeching halt. While the other industrialists of the British Isles would go into retrenchment, Caroline would streak into the future.
Things grow obsolete during a war, things are destroyed during a war, shortages develop during a war, and war gives birth to all sorts of inventions that could be used in peacetime.
Caroline had a team working on how Weed Ship & Iron could make a swift postwar conversion. The Larne facility, if it were built, would be able to make an instant turnover into civilian product. The autobus would cut deeply into trains as a mode of passenger transportation. Thousands of flatbed rail cars would need replacement. Her product list ran from the smallest to the largest items.
Mostly, Caroline liked the future possibilities of the aircraft. Its growth potential as a means of transporting civilians was mind-boggling, as was the future construction of airdromes. Weed Ship & Iron, if the planning stayed targeted and acute, would have a jump on the entire British Isles.
Larne was the stuff of her old man, all right, but it had its usual Ulsterism negatives. The area was a pure Orange stronghold. At the moment, everyone had a job. If a Larne yard were opened now, it would invite an influx of Catholic job seekers and no doubt cause future friction.
Chalmers and MacGregor argued that the lads returning to Larne from the war would see it overrun with R.C.’s, who had all the jobs.
What galled Caroline was the realization that the loyal population had to be served first. There had to be a way to give the Catholics parity, or the cycles of fear and riots would never end. And she knew she was dead right about the future of aviation. Other sites were spoken of, but most of them were outside Ulster and that was the most sacred no of them all.
“I want County Down surveyed from end to end. The Newtonards Peninsula may have everything we need, including an absence of industry and a built-in unemployed Catholic population. I want it all laid out for me and ready in a month.”
Chalmers and MacGregor exchanged “Oh Christ” expressions. She was as bad as the old man! As they gathered up their business from the desk, Caroline’s secretary entered and waited at the door. He closed the door behind the two men as they left.
“What is it, Lawrence?” Caroline asked.
“Winston Churchill is here. I took him to the conference room.”
“Fetch him, Larry, and I am not available to anyone for anything.”
“Yes, m’lady.”
Caroline got up from her plushy chair