THE L. MENDEL RIVERS WENT AS DEEP AS SHE DARED through the dark waters above the undulating, sandy seabed of the Strait of Hormuz. She ran at around eighty feet below the surface, making twenty knots toward the vast depths of the Gulf of Arabia. Nine exhausted Navy SEALS slept, as the big U.S. submarine headed south, away from the chaos they had caused in the Iranian Naval base.
Lieutenant Bennett sat in a small office with Commander Banford, working on the preliminary report of the operation in the port of Bandar Abbas. The commander sent his first half-page coded signal on the satellite direct to COMSUBPAC just before dawn.
“030530AUG02. 56.9E, 26.5N. Course one-three-five. Vengeance Bravo. Objectives achieved. No Blue casualties or damage. SEAL Leader reports Kilo in dry dock well into major overhaul, unlikely to have been operational during month of July.”
The signal traveled quickly to Pearl Harbor, then via CINCPAC to SPECWARCOM in Coronado, finally to the office of the CNO in the Pentagon where it was 1945 the previous evening, Friday, August 2. Lieutenant Commander Jay Bamberg was at his desk awaiting the message, wishing he were starting the weekend at home with his young family.
When a duty officer brought the communication in, Jay punched the air with a grim feeling of joy. The departing junior lieutenant grinned. “Way to go! Right, sir?”
“Way to go, Lieutenant.”
Jay Bamberg called the CNO at home, and then Arnold Morgan in his office in Fort Meade. His first call had brought something approaching glee to Admiral Dunsmore, but Admiral Morgan had just snapped, “Yeah, thanks, Jay. I already gottit.”
Lieutenant Commander Bamberg found this sufficiently puzzling to ask, “How so fast, sir?”
“Heard from the Mossad in Tel Aviv thirty minutes ago something had exploded in Bandar Abbas Navy Base, and what did I know about it? Told ’em I hadn’t left my desk since lunchtime, heh, heh, heh!”
“Did they know much, sir?”
“Nah, very little. ’Cept the Iranians probably had a weaker Navy now than they had before midnight. I guessed the rest. But thanks for calling, Jay, I’m glad they’re all safe.”
“Yessir. Good night, sir.” But the admiral was long gone, as usual.
By the time Lieutenant Commander Bamberg had replaced the receiver on the secure line to Fort Meade, Admiral Morgan was on his way to his car. He had a supper date at the Israeli embassy with General Gavron, a meeting to which he looked forward with great anticipation. When the Israeli officer had called asking if the American admiral would care to join him, he had insinuated he had an interesting conversation in store.
Morgan had resolved to hang around until 2000 awaiting official confirmation of the SEALS’ activities, then he would split for the embassy. The call thirty minutes previously had told him two things. One, he need not hang around beyond 2000, and two, the goddamned Mossad was about four times quicker off the mark than anyone else, on almost any incident, anywhere in the world. Jesus, it was 0230 in the morning for them.
He hit the highway at his usual high speed, and his mind was racing over that signal Bamberg had read out…the last sentence…the bit about the Kilo in the floating dock being in the middle of a major overhaul: “…unlikely to have been operational during month of July.”
The words kept turning over in his mind. That meant he and Baldridge had been right all along. The Iranians had not used an inventory submarine from Bandar Abbas to hit the Jefferson. They must have used a fourth submarine. Worse yet, that fourth submarine must be still out there. Waiting. Watching. Perhaps to strike again.
The more Arnold Morgan pondered the issue, the more certain he became that the underwater boat he sought was the lost Kilo from the Black Sea. The one from which the drowned Russian sailor had fallen, the one his own guys had heard in the Gibraltar Strait in the early morning of May 5, the one Lieutenant Joe Farrell had seen heading north up the Arabian Sea on June 28.
The one where all of the dates fit.
The one which that nitwit Rankov would not discuss.
Arnold Morgan, his adrenaline rising, glanced at the speedometer, which was hovering at around 104 mph. “Fuck it,” he said, slowing down to 85. “If David Gavron has found this Benjamin Adnam, a lot of questions are going to get answered real fast. If he hasn’t found him, we’re going to have to twist the arm of the President of Russia. Hard.”
Guards waved him through the gates of the Israeli embassy and directed him to a parking place. They then escorted him into the embassy, and up to a small dining room on the second floor where General Gavron was waiting. The two men exchanged greetings and the host offered the American admiral a glass of Israeli wine from the southern town of Richon-le-Zion, where Baron Edmond de Rothschild established the great vineyards at the end of the nineteenth century.
Since he was there for at least a couple of hours, Admiral Morgan did not rush into an interrogation with quite the anxiety he felt. Instead he chatted amiably about Israel and her ambitions and the question of where the Palestinians were ultimately going to live. They dined like true Sabras, beginning with Israeli eggplant salad made with tahini and then progressing to shashlik of spiced lamb with crispy, fried mallawah bread.
Arnold Morgan found himself feeling increasingly cheerful at this sudden break in his traditional working diet of coffee and roast beef sandwiches. He was enjoying a plate of baklava when he broached the subject he was here to discuss…Benjamin Adnam. He took a deep sip of wine—poured by the general from their second bottle, a sweet white wine the Israelis use principally for ceremonial occasions. Then the admiral said, very softly for him, “Well, David, did you find him?”
The Israeli general smiled and tilted his head to one side. “Not quite yet, Admiral, but we are a lot wiser than we were last time we met. Would you like me to tell you what my Intelligence officers have been doing?”
Morgan grinned. “David,” he said, “I’m going to sit right here, with this great glass of wine, and let you entertain me.”
“Very well. On the day I contacted them to relay your message about your government’s anxiety, our agents confirmed they had gone through Commander Adnam’s apartment and personal property. To their surprise, he had taken nothing. All of his documents, passport, Navy papers, educational records, etc., were still in his desk. Which made them think again, he had either been murdered or run off.
“The following day, after my call, they launched a huge search throughout the country. Found nothing. We then sent half a dozen agents to the village where his parents had lived. Found nothing there either. But nearby, we did discover a friend of the family, who had no recollection of the family having a son born in around 1960.
“They had known the Adnams quite well, and were apparently very upset when the family disappeared after the village was bombed during the 1973 war. But they knew nothing of any Ben Adnam being away at school in England between 1976 and 1978, when he was apparently between sixteen and eighteen.
“After that, of course, we already know he returned from Sutton Valence school in Kent, and immediately joined the Navy. Never went home, because there was neither home nor parents to go to. And that’s where he stayed. In the Navy.”
“You mean no one really knows where he came from, nor, now, where the hell he’s gone?”
“You have just stated the case perfectly, Arnold.”
“Hmmm. I guess he just filled in his details on the forms, probably while he was in England, and the Israeli Navy was happy to accept this well-educated Sabra from well-to-do farming parents, recommended personally by an eminent English headmaster….”
“And by a very senior military attaché from the Israeli embassy in London…who we now discover also had a boy at Sutton Valence school at the time.”
“Christ! You can see how these things happen, eh?”
“All too well, Admiral. To make matters worse there are no death certificates whatsoever regarding the Adnam family. The village was bombed. They may have been killed. Or they may have just left, returning, as you say, to wherever they came from.
“Anyway both they and their ‘son’ have vanished, without trace…and we are keenly aware that all three may have been spies, the parents ‘in place’ on behalf of another nation. The young Adnam, perhaps an eighteen-year-old Fundamentalist fanatic, being seconded to their care on a deep, long-term basis. The kind of thing to which my own organization is somewhat partial. Which brings me to part two.”
“What happened to Commander Adnam? I hope,” said Arnold Morgan.
“Well, Admiral, once we found his documents it was pretty obvious he had left Israel in possession of a completely different identity. We practically ransacked our own airport records for two days. Nothing. So how did he leave? Well, our agents felt he had made his way by bus or taxi from East Jerusalem, as far as the Allenby Bridge. That’s the only one which crosses the river into Jordan. Then it becomes the King Hussein Bridge. Right there, at the bridge, he had to get out of his taxi, or bus, in order to pick up Jordanian transportation, we think one of those JETT mini-buses.
“Now, I expect you know, there are all kinds of restrictions at the bridge. So he must have had a Jordanian passport. But he also had a visa and a permit to cross the bridge. Remember, you cannot get Arab documents in Israel, nor indeed at the bridge. So someone was looking after him extremely well.
“However, we do conduct a very stringent search at the bridge of anyone leaving Israel and traveling into Jordan. For instance, it’s illegal to carry a camera with any film in it whatsoever, and once you have left, you may not return. No one can obtain an Israeli visa in any Arab country, except Egypt.
“And here, right at the Allenby Bridge, our luck turned. Certain people are pulled aside by our customs agents and searched very carefully. And in that area we do have a surveillance camera. So we commandeered all of that film for the three days following Commander Adnam’s disappearing trick. We took it to Haifa and called in every Navy officer we could find who knew him in any way. We actually flew men in from the fleet exercise in the Med—where he should have been.
“We got him on the first reel of film from the first morning, November 25, the time frame up in the corner said 0924. He was in Arab dress, and our camera caught him answering questions in the customs office. Four different men picked him out. Separately. Three of them were submarine officers. No doubt. Commander Adnam left Israel as an Arab. I brought you a picture of him, not very good quality. But here he is….”
General Gavron leaned forward and passed a sheet of fax paper over to the American. They had blown up the photograph and then faxed it. Details were smudgy. But, wearing the Arab headdress, Commander Adnam looked more like a trader in some local Casbah than an Israeli submarine commander. Nonetheless, Benjamin Adnam it was. And the picture showed a dark, rather elegant and refined face with hard, deep-set eyes. Admiral Morgan thought he could have been Iranian, Iraqi, Jordanian, Syrian, even Egyptian. The question now changed slightly…who the hell was this guy?
Morgan’s mind whirred. He better get that photograph copied and faxed to Admiral MacLean for a 100 percent identification. He tried not to sound anxious. And he said with exaggerated calm, “What happened then, David? Did the trail go cold?”
“Certainly not. We have several very good agents in Jordan and four days ago they traced him. That first morning, very, very quickly he found his way to the Queen Alia Airport, and almost immediately boarded a Royal Jordanian Airlines flight to Cairo. Paid for his ticket in Jordanian dinars. God knows where he got cash.
“He was traveling on a Jordanian passport when he left, and he used it to clear customs in Cairo. Our agents did pull that record up. Then, because we do not think he is Egyptian, we checked out every major hotel in the area. But found nothing. He was not registered anywhere.”
“Did you try the Mena House, out by the Pyramids?”
“Of course. And they actually knew him. But said they had not seen him for two years. One of our agents talked to the manager, who was uncertain where he came from. He had certainly been there under his own name.
“Our agents then searched through every record the Egyptian authorities would provide. In the end they decided he never left Cairo International Airport, stayed there and flew on. That night, we came up with only one ‘Adnam’ who had left Egypt on an international flight. He paid in cash, Egyptian currency, and bought a ticket to Istanbul. I regret to say he was a Russian. Old Soviet passport. Visa for frequent entry into Turkey. Not much help, eh?”
Arnold Morgan could not believe his ears. “Do the Egyptians have a surveillance camera which may have photographed the passengers for that flight?”
“They say they do, but it wasn’t working. Anyway our agents considered the trail cold. They do not think the Russian was Commander Adnam.”
“Well, if he didn’t leave the airport, where the hell did he go? Your guys think he got a job as a customs officer?”
General Gavron laughed. “No, we think he just picked up a new passport and documents from his masters, and took off. Could be under any name, and now in any country.”
“Well, why not the Russian?”
“Our guys just don’t think it feasible. We do not think Ben was Russian. Nor do we think he was Turkish. We think he was an Arab, and we’ve done a lot of research. Why do you think he might have been Russian?”
“David, I don’t think he was Russian either. But I do think he might have been going there. And since he seems able to conjure up documents and currency anyplace he travels, why not this guy on the Soviet passport?”
David Gavron ignored the question. And came back with one of his own. “Why do you think he may have been going to Russia?”
“Because, David, we think the submarine that hit the Jefferson was a Soviet-built Kilo, a diesel electric-powered patrol boat, which Adnam and his masters either bought, rented, or stole, right out of the moribund Black Sea Fleet. I say the Black Sea Fleet because there’s no place else they could have gotten one. Also I’ve checked where every working diesel submarine in the world was on that night. They’re all accounted for—even yours! Except for one, and that’s Russian.”
“I see. We will continue to do everything we can to assist you. As a nation we do not like sneak attacks, and my people are extremely upset about the aircraft carrier. Even more upset that you even considered blaming us.”
“David, in our position you have to suspect everyone.”
General Gavron looked thoughtful as Morgan sipped his silky-sweet wine. The silence between the two men grew, until, finally, General Gavron broke it. “We have an accurate date,” he said. “If that Russian in Cairo airport was Commander Adnam, then he arrived in Istanbul late at night on November 25. If he was using his real name when he left Cairo, I would think he was still using it when he left Istanbul. We should run some checks on the passenger lists—airlines, maybe even ships, out of the city, the following morning.
“We have three or four good men in place in Istanbul. I suggest my organization gets a search started…then if we get nowhere in, say, three days…maybe your government could persuade the Turks to cooperate.”
“Good call, David. Right now we don’t want to be seen stirring up anything more than we must.”
“Very restrained, Admiral…for a man who has, in the last few hours, destroyed the underwater Navy of the Ayatollah of Iran.”
“Now, hang on, General. I told your colleagues I never left my desk. Anyway, how do you guys know what we did or didn’t do?”
“I know that only three or four nations could have done it so smoothly. Not us, we’d have caused an international uproar and bombed the place to bits. The British could have. Possibly the Russians. But you have the capacity to achieve that kind of excellence any time you want. The issue is motive. Who wanted to damage Iran? Not us, particularly. Not the British. Not the Russians. Nice job, Admiral. As a nation, we are delighted.”
Arnold Morgan just smiled at the suave Israeli officer. And he guessed, privately, as he had done a couple of times before, that he was indeed looking at the next head of the Mossad.
The following morning, August 3, twenty-six days after the disaster, the Saturday papers were still blazing with the story of the lost aircraft carrier but neither the Washington Post nor the New York Times carried even a paragraph about an accident in the Iranian Naval base at Bandar Abbas.
Admiral Morgan, Admiral Schnider, Lieutenant Commander Bill Baldridge, and Admiral Dunsmore were gathered in the office of General Josh Paul in readiness for a meeting with the President in the White House at 1100. Admiral Morgan briefed them fully on his dealings with General Gavron. But the subject was now more finely focused.
Scott Dunsmore believed the President would broadcast to the nation this evening at 2100, announcing unprecedented compensation for the families of the men who died in the carrier. Saturday night was most unusual for this kind of activity, but the CNO believed the White House press office had approved it for maximum impact.
The two Service Chiefs were afraid the President would assume that with the bombing of the Iranian Navy base American revenge was complete and that no further action should be taken, pending the arrival of hard evidence. However, Admiral Morgan’s now rigid belief that the rogue submarine was still out there was uppermost in all of their minds.
General Paul detailed his CNO to deal with it, to persuade the President that the United States hunt for the nation which had sunk the Jefferson must continue at all costs. “If necessary,” he said, “get Arnold to read him a modest riot act about the implications of the same thing happening to another of our warships.”
They left the Pentagon in two staff cars and met the President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the President’s security adviser, and his press officer in the Situation Room, one floor below the Oval Office.
The President greeted them warmly. “I’ll say one thing,” he said. “You guys sure know how to take an instruction literally. Dare I ask what happened in Bandar Abbas, beyond this Navy signal which Bob here gave me this morning?”
“Sir,” said Admiral Dunsmore, “you did say you did not really want to know the details of the plan. I guess we took that literally as well.”
“How large a force went in, Scott?”
“Nine swimmers, sir, plus the driver in the ASDS.”
“Is that all? Many casualties?”
“None for us, sir. We have no idea how many Iranian crew were aboard the floating submarines. But one armed guard was marginalized in the floating dock.”
“Marginalized?”
“Yessir. Removed from our area of operation.”
“Shot? Killed?”
“Precisely so, sir.”
“Delicately stated, Admiral,” said the President. “Considering you run the world’s roughest hit squad.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The President shook his head in wonder at the professionalism with which he was surrounded. He then slipped quickly into his own agenda, and, as expected, said he would make a rare Saturday night broadcast to the nation, announcing his plans for special pension funds for the widows and children of the men who died in the carrier.
“I already know there will be objections from some branches of the Armed Services,” he said. “But no congressman will object, not if he wants to continue working in the Capitol. The newspapers will be forced to applaud us, the public will approve. Also I’m counting on the fact that I’m too good a friend to the military for any of you to upset me!”
General Paul ventured to say that there would be objections to special pensions from people who had lost fathers and husbands in other conflicts but were not being given special treatment. That was why the military routinely opposed such schemes, and had done so throughout the twentieth century.
“The worst thing,” the President interrupted, “the very worst thing that could happen to you guys would be for me to be driven from this office in the aftermath of this disaster. You would get a Democratic President, a Democratic Congress, and possibly a Democratic Senate. And they would have a great time dismantling the Navy, banning nuclear weapons, cutting out our shipbuilding programs, and above all ending the building of aircraft carriers for the foreseeable future. They would then take all of that money and do what they always do—give it away to the poor, the weak, the sick, the incompetent, the stupid, and the idle, and worse, the dishonest.
“The four billion dollars we spend on building an aircraft carrier each year keeps top engineers, shipbuilders, scientists, and steel corporations in real-time profitable work, honing skills, keeping this country out there in front…with an end product, which, all on its own, helps to keep every American safe.
“When you build an aircraft carrier you are making this country happen. And you get at least half of it back in taxes.
“Hey, I’m sorry, guys, you all know my views, and I hope you share them. But you have to help keep me in office. And I know that a special consideration from this government to those Jefferson widows is going to touch a real chord with the public. Besides, I want to do something for them.
“Now let’s run over the situation regarding the unknown culprit who hit our ship. Do we still think it’s Iran, and have we punished them sufficiently? Josh? Scott?”
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs nodded, and Admiral Dunsmore stepped up to the plate. “Sir,” he said, “we do think Iran was the culprit, but we do not believe they carried out the hit on the Jefferson with one of their inventory submarines in Bandar Abbas. We think they got their hands on a fourth Kilo from Russia.”
“Okay,” said the President. “Just remind me why we do not think it was one of the submarines from Bandar Abbas.”
“Because the two floating Kilos have not moved for several weeks. And the leader of our special forces saw the third Kilo in what he firmly believes to be a major overhaul. He says there was a large section of the hull missing and a major piece of machinery removed from inside. He thinks it impossible that the submarine could have been operational during the month of July.”
“Yes, I did read that. Do we believe him?”
“Very definitely, sir. Lieutenant Bennett has been in the Navy since he first went to Annapolis. His father is a fisherman on the coast of Maine. He’s been with boats all of his life, and the disruption he saw to that Kilo left no doubt in his mind. Personally I think the engineers were repairing that submarine for a few weeks in June, before she went into the floating dock on July 2, for completion of the work below the waterline.”
“Admiral Morgan,” said the President, formally, “do you have a view on this?”
The Texas Intelligence chief was thoughtful. “Well, sir, in my experience, when a seasoned officer in the United States Navy makes a judgment of a technical matter, he’s normally correct. I accept what the SEALS lieutenant observed.
“What concerns me more is that I am now very sure the submarine that hit the carrier is still out there. We have not found it, neither has anyone else. None of our overheads nor our surveillance people have seen it.
“And I am extremely worried that it may strike again. That Kilo probably had two nuclear-tipped torpedoes on board, and no one’s told me he fired any more than one of ’em.”
“Are you telling me it was definitely a Russian-built submarine?”
“There is no longer any doubt about that, sir. The only submarine in all of this world which was missing on the night of July 8 was the Kilo they thought had sunk in the Black Sea. Well, they were wrong, which they now admit. That Kilo got out of the Black Sea. I believe it torpedoed the Jefferson…and I believe it’s still out there, possibly just hiding, but possibly awaiting another opportunity.
“Mr. President, we have to find and destroy that submarine.”
“Yes, Admiral. I see that. But how did it get out? Every expert I talk to says it is impossible to transit the Bosporus underwater. No one has ever done it. And you tell me the Turks say no Russian diesel boat has exited the Black Sea on the surface for five months.”
“All true, sir. But it did get out. We have to assume that. Someone got it out. Some submarine genius drove it out under the surface, through the Bosporus. We are on the trail of the man we think did it. But we must assume he first achieved the impossible and took a submarine where no submariner ever took one before.”
“That’s a tall order for me, Admiral. And before I commit additional resources to another military reprisal, I am going to propose something to you. I want you to prove to me that it could have happened. I want you to select a couple of the best submariners we have, and arrange for them to make an underwater transit through the Bosporus from the Black Sea in a diesel-electric boat. If they make it, I will agree to put into operation a worldwide hunt for the missing Kilo, until we find and sink it, whatever the expense may be.
“If, however, they fail to make that transit for any reason, or get caught by the Turks, I will deem that the destruction of the Jefferson was a pure accident, and there the matter will rest.”
Arnold Morgan gulped. “Sir, we don’t actually own a small diesel-electric any more. We’d have to borrow one from the Royal Navy.”
“Excellent. Go do it.”
“Sir, may we use your authority to put this operation into action?”
“Of course.”
“Sir, if they are forced to surface, and end up in a Turkish jail, may I assume you will use your best efforts to get the submarine back, and get the men out…both British and American?”
“Admiral, you may assume I will get them out. And I’ll get the submarine back. But I don’t want the Turks to know this is happening, and then to turn a blind eye. Otherwise it won’t count, will it? I want our submarine to face the precise hazards your Commander Adnam faced. No bullshit.”
“Very well, sir,” said Admiral Dunsmore. “We will proceed on those precise lines. If our best men cannot do it, assisted by the best in the Royal Navy, then we will deem the entire thing to have been impossible all along. The sinking of the Thomas Jefferson will become an official United States Navy accident.”
“Correct, Admiral…and unless anyone has anything else to mention, I would like to get back to my office and work on my speech for tonight. Thank you all…and by the way, I think that goddamned submarine is still out there, and I want our Bosporus mission to succeed, so let’s get it done.”
By mid-afternoon, Admiral Morgan and Bill Baldridge were back in Fort Meade, plotting and planning for the ride through the Bosporus. Baldridge would go as the official observer on behalf of the Pentagon. And he would reopen his talks with Admiral Elliott, and probably Admiral MacLean. Arnold Morgan had him booked out of Washington on a Sunday night flight to Heath row. He put in a call to the duty officer at Northwood Navy headquarters to ensure the British Submarine Flag Officer was ready to receive him. They confirmed the arrangements in twelve minutes.
“Okay, Bill, you happy with all this?”
“Yessir. But I’ll tell you one thing, I’d be happier running through the Bosporus with Admiral MacLean somewhere below the periscope.”
“Well, have a chat with Admiral Elliott on Monday morning. I know the CNO is going to talk to the First Sea Lord in London tomorrow, and the Royal Navy will do everything they can. I just hope they’ve got one of those Upholder Class boats of theirs in some sort of shape so we can borrow it.”
Bill Baldridge left the Fort Meade office in the early part of the evening, but Admiral Morgan settled in for what he described as “a long night.” He would listen to the President speak at 2100, but his real business would take place in his office at 0200 in the morning.
In separate rooms, in separate places, the Navy’s investigative spearhead, Admiral Scott Dunsmore, Admiral Arnold Morgan, and Lieutenant Commander Bill Baldridge, sat and listened to the President of the United States speak on television. They watched him walk to the podium in the White House briefing room, and they saw him take a sip of water, before beginning:
My fellow Americans, tonight I stand before you to share with you my thoughts and prayers for the families of the men who died on Thomas Jefferson last month.
I expect that many of you are already aware that it has been the policy of generations of American governments not to single out certain special cases for those of our naval and military men who die in the service of their country.
The official viewpoint has always been that even in the military, a life is a life, and none is more precious than another in the eyes of God. Therefore no President and no United States Congress has ever awarded financial benefits to those families left behind in what are always the cruelest of circumstances.
Tonight I intend to break with that tradition. I intend to break with it after days and days of soul-searching with my Chiefs of Staff, and knowing that veterans’ organizations all over the country will support me.
The plain truth is, I don’t happen to believe in a lot of the policies we have sometimes used to shortchange the families of those who died in the service of this great nation.
I happen to believe that those who die bravely and honorably wearing the uniform of the United States Marines or Navy or Army or Air Force represent the very best of our men, and their sacrifice is the highest one of all. But I do not have the power to turn back the clock.
I intend to be guided by my own conscience. And I will not tolerate hardship for those who held together the very fabric of our society, while husbands and fathers set sail in their great warship to police this world on behalf of the United States of America.
It takes a while to fully understand what we owe to those men…for their devotion to duty…for their skill…for their courage…for their downright patriotism. And right here I’m talking about men who come screaming out of the sky in big seventy-thousand-pound fighter attack bombers, slamming them down at high speed into the heaving decks of aircraft carriers, risking their lives day after day.
I’m talking about the skilled technicians who talk ’em down, about the navigators, the engineers, the flight deck crews out there in the wind and rain, working in constant danger, to make sure the rest of us live our lives in peace.
My fellow Americans, I am talking about humanity, kindness, and decency. Most things are not fair. Over six thousand men died in that Carrier Battle Group, through no fault of their own, through no weakness of their own, through no circumstance which any one of them could have foreseen or prevented.
And behind them, they have left devoted spouses, and children who need the finest education we can provide for them, because most of them will grow up to be Americans as fine and as honorable and as accomplished as their fathers.
My fellow Americans, there are many times when I too am heartbroken…heartbroken at the injustices I see around me. And often, like most Presidents, I can do too little about it. But in this instance, I can. And yes, I will.
I am placing before Congress a special bill that will provide Jefferson serviceman with children a twenty-thousand dollar-a-year additional pension, until the children have completed college. It applies to four thousand families and will result in payments of approximately $800 million…substantially less than the cost of just one aircraft carrier…about $3.25 cents for every American, spread over one decade. Is there any one person sitting out there who would dare to suggest this was too high a price for us to pay?
In addition there will be increased military pensions for everyone involved. I am afraid I do not have the power to make that forthcoming law retroactive to benefit other families, bereaved through other wars. But I can do it for those who suffered innocently from the terrible accident which occurred on the Thomas Jefferson.
Once more I would like to state again that my prayers, and those of my family, remain with you, and will do so for all of my days in this place…. Good night to you, and God bless you.
Admiral Morgan found himself standing up, his clenched fist held high. He watched Dick Stafford step forward onto the podium to announce that the President would take no questions. And he saw the great man walk away, alone.
Admiral Morgan shook his head. “That President of ours,” he muttered. “Ain’t he something? He just slaughtered ’em. Made a pure ball-buster of a speech, blew $800 million, rode roughshod over 150 years of military tradition, told Congress to get into line or else, and there’s not a journalist or a politician in this country who would dare to utter one word of criticism about what he just said. Jesus. Sure glad he’s on our side.”
He picked up the phone and requested someone bring him his regular late supper. He then retired to his computer and pulled up a chart of the Bosporus, which he studied carefully for a half hour. “Shit,” he said. “I’d rather Baldridge made that journey than I. That little stretch of water is really dangerous, and I hope to hell someone can persuade Iain MacLean to make the voyage.” And he added, to the empty room, “If he can’t make it, no one can.”
He did not realize he was echoing the words of MacLean himself, speaking about Ben Adnam.
Meantime he tried to find a baseball game on television, and settled down to wait until 0200 on the Sunday morning. He called the operator, told him to wake him at that time, and send in coffee, then to connect him to a number in Russia, out on the Crimean Peninsula, a Naval base to which he intended, like the British in 1854, to lay siege.
The Black Sea Fleet’s headquarters in Sevastopol was the admiral’s target, and he barked the number to the operator…“011-7-692-366204…don’t speak to anyone. Get me on that line before they answer.”
“Yessir. 0200 it is.”
Admiral Morgan was tired. He ate his roast beef sandwich supper and fell asleep, leaning back in his big leather swivel chair. It seemed to him like moments before the phone on his desk rang. He picked it up instantly, heard a number ringing seven thousand miles away on the main Russian Navy Black Sea switchboard. He knew it would be a very quiet, almost deserted building this Sunday morning at 0900 local time. He knew also that Vice Admiral Vitaly Rankov was in residence this weekend, and he knew too that the Russian Intelligence officer made a habit of working Sunday mornings.
He heard the phone pickup announce the Sevastopol Fleet Headquarters. Admiral Morgan barked crisply in English, hoping to intimidate the operator: “Connect me to Admiral Rankov right now…he is expecting my call…and I’m calling from the United States of America. Hurry up!”
There was a single click, and the deep, calm voice of the exSoviet battle cruiser commander rumbled down the line in Russian: “Rankov speaking, and this better be important. I’m very busy.”
“Vitaly, you bastard, you’ve been avoiding me,” said Admiral Morgan, chuckling as he heard Rankov groan. “Jesus to God, Arnold, is there no peace left in all of the world?”
But he laughed. The two Naval Intelligence men shared many secrets. “You know I thought this was the one time I would be safe from you—what is it? Two o’clock in the morning in Washington?” Rankov asked. “Where the hell are you, and why can’t you sleep like normal people?”
“Duty, Vitaly, a devotion to duty. These are busy days for me.”
“I guess so. Did you just blow up half the Iranian Navy, by the way?”
“Who, me?” said Morgan, practiced now in responding to this accusation. “Certainly not. I’ve hardly left my desk.”
“What I meant,” the Russian continued patiently, “was this: Did your special forces just take out the Ayatollah’s submarines in Bandar Abbas?”
“No one has mentioned it to me,” lied Admiral Morgan effortlessly. “Why, has something happened?”
The innocence in his voice was a betrayal to a fellow member of his profession. “You tell me a huge whopper, Arnold, when you know as soon as I do when something big breaks. You are an American bastard. Iranian Holy Man take out fatwah on you if you’re not very fucking careful. Then you won’t bother me no more. Those tribesmen slice your balls off.”
“They better be a lot more careful I don’t slice theirs off,” growled Morgan.
“You’re a terrible man, Arnold Morgan. What do you want, as if I don’t know. The Kilo, hah?”
“Will you tell me about it, Vitaly?” said Morgan, his voice softening. “As a friend. I have to know.”
“Will you tell me why?”
“I will. This is on the record, and I expect you to convey it to your superiors.” He continued in a flat monotone. “Vitaly, we think someone got ahold of your Kilo, ran it out of the Black Sea, and sank the Thomas Jefferson with a nuclear-headed torpedo.”
Admiral Morgan heard the Russian’s sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line. Admiral Rankov’s shock was unmistakable. “Jesus Christ!” said the voice from Sevastopol. “Are you kidding me?”
“No, old buddy, I’m not. And you’ve got about five minutes to convince me that a United States carrier with six thousand men on board was not vaporized for no reason at all by your fucking Navy. And if we happen to believe that is what took place, you won’t need to think of reducing your Black Sea Fleet any more. We’ll carry that little job out for you, real quick. You guys wanna buy some cheap crash helmets?”
“Arnold, please. Don’t be ridiculous. Of course we did no such thing. You must believe that. Why would we? We’re friends, aren’t we? You have to believe what I say. Look at our history…we’ve never been that stupid. We are not under the control of fanatics.”
“Matter of fact, Vitaly, I do not believe you guys had anything to do with it. Mainly because I never thought you had anyone that clever! I want you to help me, and I want you to tell me the whole truth about that Kilo, right now.
“After that, I probably want you to do a few other things. You say you are our friends, as we are yours. Right now I need you to prove it. My country will not forget your response, either way.”
“Very well, Arnold. I will tell you what I know and you may judge for yourself. Our search for the Kilo revealed nothing. We worked below the surface for three weeks, used every electronic device we have to sweep the bottom of the sea. Nothing. We now believe it is not there, and never was. The drowned crewman on the Greek island was a member of the ship’s company of Kilo 630.
“His name was very clearly on the next-of-kin list. But there we have a problem. When the Kilo left, it did not relay its next-of-kin signal. Therefore the whole list is now suspect. As you know, there are always three or four changes, men going out as replacements for two or three other men who are not going. So I could not swear the man was in the crew, though the odds are he was.
“We believe the submarine escaped, and absconded with a crew of about fifty. We have heard nothing since she left port. There’s been much financial hardship in the Black Sea Fleet, and we guessed these guys decided to make a break, probably took their wives and made it to some island in the South Pacific or South America. The fact is, Kilo 630 has vanished without trace. And I’m sure you can understand why I was too embarrassed to call you back.”
“Yes, I can. Not many navies as big as yours lose submarines. That kind of thing only happens in Third World countries, eh?”
“Yes, Arnold, like Iran.”
The American ignored that one. And then he said, “You don’t think another country could have bought the submarine, do you? From some Naval agency in the Ukraine?”
“Hell no. We might be short of cash. But not that short. We’ll fulfill genuine export orders for submarines for almost anyone, the Arabs, China, the Warsaw Pact nations. But we would not just flog off a diesel-electric submarine with a fully operational crew to some guy dressed in a sheet and carrying a sackful of cash. Give us some credit. We have to live in the international community, like everyone else.”
“Well, Vitaly, if you guys are innocent, and Kilo 630 just went missing, there are but two alternatives. Somebody rented it. Or somebody hijacked it.”
“I know you think we are very inefficient compared to the mighty USA, Arnold. But our investigations here in Sevastopol indicate nothing unusual occurred in the three days preceding her departure. Preparations were normal. The captain filed the correct documents for an exercise in the Black Sea, following a refit. Members of the crew made the usual phone calls to wives, three substitute crew members did not leave their homes until the morning of departure. Our security around the submarine jetties is always very high, and no one saw anything to suggest the captain was coerced, or that he left with a gang of armed terrorists on board.
“The first thing to arouse suspicion was the absence of the next-of-kin signal. And of course no one reported that for three days. We just assumed the submarine comms had forgotten. It was another twelve hours before we became concerned there had been no communication whatsoever from Kilo 630. Then we found the bits of wreckage, which we now believe were planted.”
“So where does that leave us, old buddy? I agree with you, theft is out of the question. Your submarine was not hijacked. There would be some clues if Kilo 630 had left Sevastopol at gun point. And they would surely have got a SATCOM signal away. No, I think your submarine may have been rented.”
“From whom? The President?”
“No, Vitaly. From the captain.”
“Admiral, he only drives it. He doesn’t own it.”
“But what might he say if someone approached him, and asked him to undertake a mission? To bring his submarine, and fool his crew into taking part? In return for which he would be given ten million American dollars?”
“But he would know he could never come home, not if he stole a Russian submarine.”
“Home? To what? A run-down apartment in a dockyard town on the Black Sea where everyone’s broke? Bullshit, Vitaly, I could buy a Russian submarine captain. So could anyone with a vast amount of money. And that money would also buy you the crew and the boat.”
“But, Arnold, these men have wives and children. We have checked them all. No one knows anything. They just believe their men are dead. We have not made public our suspicions that this may not be so.”
“Let me ask you one thing, what kind of torpedoes was this Kilo equipped for?”
“Her basic inventory was for the SAET-60’s—you know, 533 millimeters, 7.8 meters long. They run at around forty knots, with a fifteen-kilometer range. Regular stuff, antisurface vessel. She was fairly new, a Granay Class, Type 877M. She was fully loaded with about twenty of them, with a couple of tubes specially for wire-guidance.”
“How big’s the regular warhead?”
“Four hundred kilograms.”
“Can they take a nuclear variant?”
“Yes.”
“Did this one have any on board with that variant?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“Two.”
“How do you know?”
“Because everyone involved in our internal inquiry knows every fucking thing there is to know about Kilo 630.”
“May I now assume you will do what you can to help us?”
“Arnold, you can count on us to help find her, and to share information. Any information. I assume you also will share with us if you find her before we do?”
“We will find her first.”
“How do you know that?”
“There’s an old saying in the States—because we want it more.”
“You’re a terrible man, Admiral Morgan.”
“I’ll tell you what I do want. I want you to keep a clear eye on the families of the crew of Kilo 630. See if anything might be going on…you know, anyone spending a lot of money, or anything.”
“You mean you think someone paid every member of the crew to go and blow up the carrier?”
“No. I don’t think you would need to. You just have to present the captain with a cash fortune. Let him con the crew into believing they are on some secret mission on behalf of the Russian Navy. What would the crew do? Take a huge payoff, possibly a half million dollars apiece, and run, if they have any sense. Make a new life somewhere. Just watch the widows and orphans for me, willya?”
“Sure I will. What else?”
“Not much. Except I would like to send one of my men over to Sevastopol when you are in town, maybe a coupla weeks. You could show him around, give him the updates, and he will tell you personally what’s happening in our own investigation.”
“Okay. Let’s try to find Kilo 630, shall we?”
Admiral Morgan tossed his old coffee cups and paper sandwich plate into the wastepaper basket, pulled on his coat, and checked the time, 0256. He was about to switch off the lights and his computer, when the phone unexpectedly rang.
“Morgan, speak.”
The voice on the end of the line was foreign and struggled for English words. “Admiral Morgan. I am Israeli Intelligence. Ask to speak you by General Gavron. I am in Istanbul, and I find your man. He leave here on Black Sea ship, November 26. Bought ticket for cash, Turkish lira to Odessa. His name, Adnam, on passenger list. Ship docked November 27, 1300. He no jump overboard, he get there too. General Gavron hand over to colleague in Odessa now. Don’t think your man come back here. Bye, Admiral, I go now.”
The line from Turkey clicked dead. For a change Admiral Morgan was still holding the phone. “No, he didn’t go back there. He went straight past—right through the harbor, at periscope depth,” he said to the empty room.
He walked to his sprawling maps and charts on the big sloping desk. He switched on the light, pulled out the one of the Black Sea coastlines, and went to work with his dividers, muttering as he considered the maps. “Istanbul to Odessa…375 miles…at fifteen to twenty knots he’s in the next day.”
The admiral then measured the distance from Odessa, across the water to Sevastopol. “Two hundred miles to the southern headland of the Crimean Peninsula. Did Benjamin Adnam make that journey…to meet the captain of Kilo 630?” he asked aloud.
He returned to his desk, thinking deeply. “Let me stand in his shoes. I’m in Sevastopol, the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. I intend either to keep an appointment, or find the captain of a Russian diesel-electric submarine. What do I need? I need cash, a ton of it, that’s what I need. And I can’t get it in Odessa or any other Russian city, not without attracting a great amount of attention to myself. Same with Cairo. But I could have gotten it in Istanbul.”
Admiral Morgan picked up the phone and told the operator to connect him to the CIA immediately. The admiral asked to be put through to the senior duty officer, and told him to get Major Ted Lynch on a secure line to the Director of the National Security Agency.
He slammed down the phone before anyone was tempted to remind him what time it was. He sat back in his chair and waited. The CIA major was on the line inside five minutes. “Admiral, hi, Ted Lynch.”
“Hey, sorry to wake you, but I have a lead you might be able to help with. I think our man may have picked up a very large bundle of cash, probably American dollars, more than 5 million, maybe up to 10 million, in Istanbul on November 26 last year. Any way of getting close to that?”
“Istanbul is a very cosmopolitan place, but they value United States business. They’ll probably cooperate. We’re almost certainly looking for someone in Buyukdere Street, the place is full of international banks—Bankapital, Iktisat Bankasi, Garanti Bank. They are fairly secretive, but we have connections there. And they mostly have branches in New York.
“I doubt if they’ll give us names or anything—but if we ask for an unusual amount of U.S. dollars being picked up that day in cash, like a suitcase full, they’ll probably give us a straight yes or no. We’ll decide where to go from there. I’ll get moving 0200 tomorrow, that’s Monday, right?”
“Hey, thanks, Ted. Good luck, I’ll wait to hear from you, early tomorrow morning. I’m in 0600. G’night, pal.”
“Hey, Arnold, one thing.” The voice of the CIA man rose, trying to stop the admiral from putting down the phone. “I gotta question…you still there?”
“I’m here.”
“Admiral, if I am going to pay a Russian submarine captain a huge bundle of cash to take his submarine out of the Black Sea in early to mid-April, I sure as hell am not going to give it to him in late November.”
“Beautiful call, Ted. You sure as hell are not. You’re probably going to give him twenty grand, earnest money, in November. And then arrange to give him the big payment…maybe five million for himself, which would travel on the submarine with him, and another five million to take care of the crew, which would also be carried on board.”
“Sounds much more like it, Admiral. But there’s no way I could get a trace on a small sum like twenty grand on November 26. What we’re really after is maybe 10 million U.S. dollars, say between April 7 and 13. There’s got to be a record of that somewhere.”
“That’s it, Ted. Second week in April is much more likely. Do what you can. I’m grateful.”
The admiral replaced the receiver, picked it up again, and dialed the Maryland number of Bill Baldridge. The clock on the wall now said 0338. But the Kansas scientist answered swiftly in a reflex action honed by years of coming on watch in the smallest hours of the morning. If he was not alone, he sounded alone. “Yessir, that’s me. Hi, what’s hot?”
“Bill, we are making progress. The Russians recognize their Kilo was probably hired by an operative from an Arab state. They are on our side and you are going to visit a buddy of mine who heads up the office of Naval Intelligence, Vice Admiral Vitaly Rankov. Not till after your stuff in London and Scotland. Then I’m sending you down to the Black Sea, so pack plenty of things. You may be gone for several weeks.
“Meantime the Mossad are seriously on the trail of Adnam. They have traced him to Odessa. He went by sea from Istanbul on a Russian passport. He also had a stamped Turkish visa. I’ll say one thing, that guy has no trouble with documents. Right now it looks like he went on to Sevastopol with a moderate bundle of cash and paid a Russian captain to prepare a mission with his submarine and crew.”
“Steady, Admiral. You can’t just turn up and start bribing Russian Naval officers to pinch a submarine and bamboozle their crew into doing something diabolical that is going to make them the most hunted men in the world.”
“Yes you can, Bill. Find me a Russian captain with little money, and I could offer him enough cash to do anything. Just get in the boat, tell his crew they were going on a secret Navy exercise, and then depart. My terms would be simple…carry out the job, here’s half the money. The rest is in a bank in South America, from where you cannot be extradited. Nor, with a bit of luck, even found.”
“How much are you paying?”
“How about half a million dollars?”
“No chance. He’s gotta live on it for the rest of his life, and his family’s.”
“Okay, three million.”
“Not enough to wreck a big Navy career and leave your homeland forever.”
“Five?”
“Possible.”
“Ten million dollars.”
“Sounds pretty good to me.”
“I’ll make it twenty million, if you like. But I’ll get him. Because my government’s oil money is nothing to me, but it’s everything to him. And to his family. I think we’ve got the answer, Bill. This is how they did it. And I’ll tell you something else. Those new Kilos in the Black Sea have a full complement of torpedoes on board already. Probably twenty. And two of them are nuclear-tipped.”
“Jesus Christ! How do you know?”
“Rankov told me.”
“You mean when that Kilo set sail, Ben Adnam was on board and the killer missiles were already in place.”
“No. I think they picked Ben up somewhere in Turkish waters. He would not have risked security checks inside the Russian Navy base. But the captain knew that Ben had access to a colossal amount of cash. And he knew that the cash was his for the asking. With another half to come when the mission was completed. Payable in some foreign country. The torpedoes were ready though. The Russian captain saw to that. Part of the deal, right?”
“Are the Russians sure the Kilo went through the Bosporus underwater?”
“No. They just know it’s missing, and they know something very fishy is going on. But they realize it may well have gone through the Bosporus because of the drowned sailor on the Greek island. He was a member of the ship’s company of Kilo 630.”
“Rankov confirmed that?”
“He did.”
“Will I see you tomorrow before I leave for London?”
“Yes. Come to the office. Early afternoon. We’ll get a final briefing from CNO. Then you can leave straight-away for the airport. Also I would like you to pick up a portable phone scrambler. Do you know how to work it?”
“Yessir, but we’d better run over the operating procedures. Can I hook it up to you from abroad?”
“It’ll work from anywhere. And it’s damned important. We cannot risk anyone listening in.”
“Okay, sir.”
But Admiral Morgan was already off the line. He was hunched over a chart at his sloping desk with the big light. This time he was poring over a larger-scale map detailing the northern coastline of Turkey, which stretched from the Bulgarian border one hundred miles west of the Bosporus along the seven-hundred-mile coastline which runs east of the Bosporus, out to the old Soviet border at the Georgian city of Batumi.
He was asking himself the question he always asked himself. “What would I do?”
The clock ticked on past 0400. Washington slept. Arnold Morgan did not sleep. He lit up a cigar, opened his door, and demanded a cup of coffee.
Time had no meaning for the admiral, who like many ex-submariners was accustomed to the cocoon of the great underwater ships, which did not distinguish between day and night. Only the watch changes marked the passing of the hours.
Morgan brandished his cigar theatrically. “Let me start that again,” he said to the deserted room. “I have just arrived in Sevastopol. I am carrying two big suitcases stuffed with U.S. dollars. I have already given one of them to the captain. The other one will be given to him when I step on board. Now when do I do that?”
Admiral Arnold Morgan begged the empty walls to bear with him while he gathered his thoughts. Then he said loudly, “Right. Now hold it. What would I not do? What would I not dream of doing, if I was about to illegally board a Russian submarine and steal it? Answer: I’d pick up my second suitcase full of cash, and I’d get the hell out of Russia, and board the sub someplace else.”
The admiral looked pleased with his inescapable logic. He studied the map, mentally ruling out the seaports down the western coast—those near the mouth of the Danube in Rumania, and others down on the Bulgarian coast which sprawled to the Turkish border. “And I’d stay the hell out of there, too,” he added. “Countries too long under the Soviet fist. Too much suspicion, too many spooks.”
He looked at the ocean off the northeast coast of Turkey, on the European side. “No good there, either. The real deep water’s too far out. You’d have to run out to meet the submarine, maybe sixty miles off shore. Too far. Too much risk of being stopped by a patrol boat. That’s Turkish water. They might find you, with all that cash, and probably a gun. They might even spot the Russian submarine, way off course, and on the surface. Very bad news.”
He switched his survey to the other side of the Bosporus, to the east. And he trawled his magnifying glass along the shoreline, stopping suddenly at a seaport on a peninsula. Sinop. The admiral skimmed through his big suite of chart drawers. Pulling one out, he stabbed it with his dividers, took a reading on his steel ruler, and saw with some satisfaction that the peninsula jutted out into very deep water. It was, by miles, the closest point on the entire coast to a possible submarine waiting area. A gentle twenty-five-minute journey to deep water.
He checked again, then he pulled out a guidebook which told him that Sinop was a shipbuilding and fishing port with fine beaches, a secluded harbor, and many inexpensive hotels. Sinop was accessible by bus, three-hundred-odd miles from Istanbul. It was the birthplace of Diogenes, the cynic philosopher. That settled it. Admiral Morgan was at home among cynics.
“That’s what I’d do,” he announced solemnly. “I’d make my deal with the Russian captain, drive south down the coast to Georgia, and go by sea to Trabzon. From there I’d take the bus to Sinop. I’d park myself in one of those little hotels with a radio pack, and I’d wait for a signal from my Russian captain.
“Then I’d slip down to the harbor, and get aboard the deserted thirty-foot yacht I had scoped out, and sail quietly beyond the harbor wall on a little journey about fourteen miles out, using my little GPS to put me at 35.3E, 42.1N. As an experienced submariner I’d get alongside the waiting sub, bang a hole in the yacht’s bilge, grab my suitcase, and board the Kilo real quick. Then I’d take effective command of the Russian submarine through her C.O. as agreed previously with him.”
Admiral Morgan realized he might not be right, but he liked having a starting point. To his keen eye the little seaport of Sinop had stuck out “like the balls on a Texas longhorn.” That was what he liked, a strong start-point. For the moment, he would assume Sinop was where Commander Ben Adnam had holed up.
Admiral Morgan would never know how close he was to the truth. And what concerned him, as he marched out of the building toward his car, was the destiny of the submarine after its secret pickup.
Did it creep back west, running deep in a thousand fathoms, to the yawning northern entrance of the Bosporus? And did Commander Adnam then calmly order his Russian captain to steer left rudder, course two-one-zero, into pitch-black, unknown depths, through the great gap in the underwater cliffs, where no submarine had ever ventured?