DINNER AT THE GRAND LOCHSIDE HOME OF SIR IAIN AND Lady MacLean was not, Bill thought, too shabby. It was served by the white-coated and red-bearded Angus, in a fifty-foot-long dining room with southerly views toward Strachur and the Cowal Hills. Annie had seated them, as a four, on a long, highly polished antique table, she and her husband facing across to Laura and Bill. Behind the American was a magnificent Georgian sideboard where a two-foot-long, perfectly cooked Scottish salmon had been laid out with a dish of new potatoes and another of fresh peas. In the center of the table were two silver dishes filled with mayonnaise.
Bill guessed, correctly, that the admiral had caught the salmon. “Would you like me to serve everyone, sir?” asked Angus.
“Oh yes, a bit of everything for everyone.” Then to Bill he added, “I never bother with a first course with salmon. Everybody would much rather have another bit of fish if they’re still hungry. Landed this one up on the Tay two days ago.”
“That’s a heck of a fish, sir,” said Bill. “My brother was a fisherman, but he never caught anything like this on our local rivers in Kansas.”
The admiral looked up sharply. “You said ‘was’—you mean he’s given up the greatest art of the sportsman?”
“No, Admiral, I thought you knew. My brother Jack was the Group Operations Officer in the Thomas Jefferson.”
“Good Lord, Bill. I am sorry. No one told me, and they should have.”
“How absolutely awful,” said Laura, speaking for the first time. “Is that any connection with why you are here? Conducting some sort of investigation?”
“Well, in a way I am. But it’s nothing to do with Jack. There are hundreds of people in the Navy who had relatives on the carrier, and thousands more outside.”
“I don’t suppose it makes it any easier though,” she said. “Shared grief never lessens it.”
“No, ma’am. It does not.”
Laura looked at the sadness in his face. He really was, she thought, a very captivating man, not obviously married, and with the conspicuously cavalier air, and wayward eye, of so many submariners. Especially one other. Married mother-of-two or not, Laura assessed Lieutenant Commander Baldridge as a potentially dangerous presence in her life. Only once before had she met anyone with such instant allure.
She was surprised when he smiled at her. “I’m beginning to adjust to the tragedy now, after a week. But I’ll never get used to not seeing Jack…not ever. He was one hell of an officer.”
“I suppose it’ll be up to you to carry on the family tradition now.”
“Not really. I’m leaving the Navy after this investigation. Going home to Kansas.”
“Will you miss all the excitement?”
“No. I don’t think so. I’ve gone about as far as I’m going in dark blue. They are not going to give me a full command.”
“Upset one too many old admirals,” she laughed. “That’s a good way to conclude a promising career. At least it is here.”
“You might be right at that.”
“Bill,” said the admiral, “if you would like to ask Laura a few questions, I am afraid we are going to have to confide in her. But don’t worry. She’s spent quite enough of her life in and around the Navy to know what can be repeated and what can’t.”
Bill tried to wheel the conversation out of its corner. He turned to her and smiled. “Now where are these two children I’ve been hearing about?”
“Oh, they’re with Brigitte on their way to bed. They’re very young, three and five. After the long drive over here from Edinburgh I’ve just about had them for the day. I said good night before dinner. Their grandma is going up to see them in a minute—I hope.”
“I guess Brigitte would be the nanny. I never met a proper English nanny.”
“You’re not going to tonight either,” replied Laura. “Brigitte is from Sweden. She’s an au pair.”
Then her face clouded over, and she said suddenly, “It’s Ben, isn’t it? That’s who you’ve come about.”
Bill glanced at the admiral, who skillfully changed the subject. “Now, what would you all like to drink? There’s a bottle of cold Meursault here, and I opened a bottle of claret a while ago…Annie always drinks white wine with fish, so I know what she will have. But I don’t think white wine is mandatory with all fish. Matter of fact I prefer Bordeaux with salmon and that’s what I’m having.”
Bill was really growing to like the admiral. “If it’s Bordeaux for you, it’s Bordeaux for me,” he grinned.
“And me,” chimed in Laura.
“What can I tell you about Ben Adnam?” Laura asked after the wine had been poured.
Her father interrupted. “Laura, if it’s all right with you, I was proposing to leave you here with Bill for half an hour, after dinner, so you can answer his questions, or not, as you wish, in private. I think your mother would prefer not to have old memories…er…rekindled.”
“But, Admiral, there’s something I did want to ask you,” said Bill. “Why does everyone nearly have a heart attack at the mere thought of going through the Bosporus underwater? I don’t get it. It can’t be that dangerous, can it?”
“Yes. Yes, it can,” said the admiral, slowly. “Which is presumably why no one has ever even tried, never mind failed.”
“But why? What’s so dangerous about it? It’s pretty wide, isn’t it? It’s a kind of bay, right?”
The admiral smiled patiently. “In a way you are asking precisely the correct man,” he said. “I have been following various reports of Russians exporting ships to Middle Eastern nations for a couple of years. There’s been nothing but trouble over the submarine sales, especially to Iran, and some months ago I got Droggy to send me his latest chart of the Bosporus. Just to familiarize myself with the sheer difficulty of anyone, ever getting out through there, in a submarine, dived…just an academic exercise for an elderly retired officer with time on his hands.”
“Then I have two critical questions,” said Bill. “First, who the hell’s Droggy? Second, can you tell me about the Bosporus?”
“Certainly I can. Droggy is our jargon for the hydrographer of the Navy. As for the Bosporus, I have been extremely anxious about this for some months…thought no one would ever ask me to drone on about my new favorite subject…do you have a couple of months to spare?”
“Sure I do, but I guess the Pentagon might wanna hear from me before September, Admiral.”
They both laughed, but the admiral was serious. “The trouble with modern submariners like you,” he said, “is that you think the entire world runs on computers, that your search-sensors and electronic technology will give you everything you need. But you, Bill, and your fellow American submariners, these days are essentially big-ship, deep-ocean men. And all of your kit is designed for that.
“Tackling the Bosporus requires inshore skills, which your Navy has largely thrown away. You haven’t trained for them for years, and, if we’re not bloody careful here, we’ll be doing the same.
“Shallow water work involves a complete culture change, because so many things are completely different. For a start, your long-range sensors are useless, so you often receive no warning of approaching danger. As you know, charts and surveys get out of date. You must have the best and the latest, and make full use of them. Because, when you are operating close to shore, you are no longer sweeping like the cavalry across a wide uncluttered plain, you are groping about in the forest, like a bloody infantryman. So you have to know your ground.
“That entails extremely accurate navigation—to five meters vertical, and fifty meters horizontal. Inshore, you’ve got to use your eyes. And remember, above all, you’ve lost the advantage of high speed, particularly to escape, if you’ve been careless. You simply can’t go fast, with the bottom that close.
“And something else you may not know, Bill—you make twenty knots at two hundred feet, and you’ll leave a clear wake on the surface for all to see.
“Only stealth, stealth and cunning, above anything you have ever done before, will keep you safe.”
The American officer had never heard anyone speak like that. The admiral who faced him came from a different culture all right. A different world, and one which might ultimately lead to the master’s finest pupil, perhaps to the man who had found a way to destroy the Thomas Jefferson. Admiral MacLean no doubt told the young Adnam to use his eyes. “But,” thought Baldridge, “he sure as hell must have done a lot of listening.”
Laura sighed gently. Her mother smiled the smile of the deeply tolerant. Unlike the American, they were very familiar with this particular lecture. And the admiral, visibly warming to his theme, pressed on, his focus now on the dark, swirling waters of the Bosporus.
“It’s a nasty little stretch,” he muttered. “Not very wide for much of the way. And not very deep. There are parts which are very, very shallow for a submarine, right on the limits. Also it’s busy, almost all of the time, with deep-draft freighters going each way.
“The channel is divided into two lanes, and of course you keep right. Overtaking is prohibited. And running south it’s often bloody difficult to stop. Imagine a seven-knot current in the narrowest bit.
“Err to starboard, and you’re on the putty. Err to port, and you’re likely to have a head-on collision. In the most dangerous part, it’s too shallow to go deep, under an oncoming freighter. Also there’s a problem with a couple of wrecks, and I have my own doubts about the charting of the bottom. The soundings are a bit far apart for my taste.”
At this point, the senior submariner began adjusting the dessert spoons and forks into a zigzag shape next to a mayonnaise dish.
“Remember,” he said, pointing to the tablecloth with his knife. “You are navigating underwater, in the pitch dark, and there is a big S-bend about one third of the way down from the Black Sea…right here…parts of that are especially narrow. On either side there are shoals less than fifty feet deep.” He tapped the mayonnaise dish sharply with his fish knife. “If you stray out of your channel, which is less than a couple of hundred yards wide, you’ll hit the bank, and find yourself stuck on the surface, hard aground, in full view of everyone. And that would be very moderate news indeed.
“Assuming you get through the S-bend, the south-going channel really closes in, immediately afterward, to its narrowest part, less than two hundred yards across. And that’s obviously where the current is at its worst, as the water surges through the bottleneck.
“Running on down under the second bridge, there’s a damn great sandbank, bang in the middle of the south channel. The bottom comes up to eighty feet, which makes it impossible to duck under anything larger than a motorboat. And, to make it worse, there are already two bloody wrecks on that bank—one of them only forty-five feet down.
“Looking at the chart, I would prefer to pick my moment, to hurry down the deeper north-going lane, if I could time it between the oncoming freighters and tankers. But that’s bloody dangerous, as you know.
“Also the entire exercise is illegal. Under the Montreux Convention, the Turks don’t allow it. For any warships, of any nation. And they have a perfect right to stop any warship of any nation which has not given due notice, weeks in advance, of their intention to transit the Bosporus.
“You still want to know why people have heart attacks at the very notion of going through the Bosporus underwater? Because, it’s not just bloody difficult and bloody dangerous, but if Johnny Turk catches you he’ll be bloody-minded, to say the least.”
“Are you telling me it really is impossible?”
“Not quite, Bill. But you need a master submariner for the job. Of my generation there are probably three, Admiral Elliott, whom you met. Me, just. And possibly Captain Greenwood, who’s apt to get over excited, but he might make it.”
“And how about your best-ever Perisher?”
“Yes, of course.”
“That’s Ben, isn’t it?” asked Laura.
“That’s Ben.”
“But why are you asking about him?”
“Later,” said her father. “Bill will explain to you.”
Laura smiled, plainly not considering that particular prospect akin to a sentence of death. “Very well, then,” she said. “Mrs. Laura Anderson, mother of Flora and Mary, will reserve her answers for private interrogation by the United States Navy sometime after ten o’clock in the admiral’s study.”
“That, by the way, means that my daughter thinks you and she are going to sit by the fire and drink my best vintage port,” said the admiral. “Like the Turks with the Bosporus, I like to keep a firm hand on the stopper.”
“Guess so,” said Bill. “You could get your cattle rustled real quick from what I can see.”
Laura debated giving the American a cozy nudge with her elbow, but decided against it, on the grounds that her watchful mother would regard such an action as flirtatious for a married lady.
The admiral himself moved the subject forward, inquiring whether Bill had time for a day at sea. “This is one of the best submarine training areas in the world, particularly for shallow waters.”
“Admiral, I’d really appreciate that. It’s funny how insular our profession can be…we all share the same goals…but we get so far apart.”
“Fine. I fixed it yesterday. We’ll need an early start. Get on board by nine.”
The remainder of dinner passed quickly. The Kansan glanced at his watch and saw that it was after ten, and Laura caught him doing so. “I think the U.S. Navy may be tiring,” she said, pushing her chair back. “I’ll just help Mum for a few minutes, then I’ll be in to face my cross-examination. There’s a decanter on the drinks trolley, pour a couple of glasses of that port, before Daddy confiscates it.”
Bill Baldridge did as he was told. He thanked the admiral for a delicious dinner, and wished his hosts a good night. They arranged to meet for breakfast at 0715 the following morning.
Inside the book-lined study, Bill found the port, poured two glasses, and sat by the fire. Laura arrived after ten minutes, her hair freshly combed, and wearing fresh lipstick. She sat elegantly in the opposite armchair, crossed her slender legs and said, a bit too softly, “Okay, Lieutenant Commander, I’m all yours.”
Bill found himself wishing, profoundly, that this was indeed so. But before him sat the lady who might help him find the man who might have vaporized the Thomas Jefferson. Laura might be, he knew, the only line of communication they would ever have to the world’s most lethal terrorist.
He decided to tell her the reason for his visit, and he began carefully. “Laura,” he said, “as you know there was a most terrible accident on one of our aircraft carriers a week ago. We do not, however, think it was quite that simple. We think a Middle Eastern power blew up the carrier. We think the missile which destroyed it was a torpedo, tipped with a nuclear warhead, and fired from a submarine. There are very, very few men who could have accomplished that. I think Commander Benjamin Adnam may have been the driver.”
“Ben! But he’s an Israeli. His home is in Tel Aviv. America is the great supporter of Israel. Why would anyone wish to attack their own most loyal ally?”
Bill shook his head. Then he said, “Tell me about him, Laura. What kind of man was he?”
“Well…he was only five feet nine, more heavily built than you, with jet-black curly hair, trimmed pretty tight. His eyes were dark, almost black. He did not have that swarthy Middle Eastern complexion; his skin was coffee-colored, soft, looked as if he never needed to shave.
“When I first met Ben I thought he was the best-looking man I had ever seen. I was in love with him, you know. He was my first love…my only love really.”
Bill sipped his port. “But what about Mr. Anderson?”
“Mistake. Serious.” Laura spoke with shuddering frankness, perhaps feeling more assured under the warm, age-old spell of the most opulent ruby wine from Portugal. “When Ben left Faslane for Israel after two years, I believed I would never see him again, whatever he said. And I thought I would die of a broken heart. I did not go out for eighteen months. My mother thought I was having a nervous breakdown. She hated Ben for what he had done to her darling daughter. But she was bloody glad when he left, and she would have died if I’d married him. But that was never going to happen, we never even discussed it.
“Anyway I used to go shooting with Dad from time to time, and I met Douglas up near Jedburgh on the borders. He was the son of a local landowner, and we used to have lunch together. Everyone else was much older. He made few demands on me, I had no interest in seeing anyone else, and after a couple of years I agreed to marry him. Everyone was delighted and my mother arranged a huge wedding.
“Then it happened. Ben phoned me the night before I was to marry. He told me he still loved me and wanted to see me. Of course I could not agree to that, and I told Ben so. But it nearly broke my heart all over again, and at the time I became Mrs. Douglas Anderson, I could not have cared less if I’d never seen my new husband again. He was very sweet and kind. And rich. But I should never have gone through with the wedding because I felt nothing for him.”
Laura Anderson did not have the slightest idea why she was pouring out her soul to this near-stranger from Kansas, and she could hardly justify it by telling herself it was probably in the national interest.
Bill Baldridge shook his head in bewilderment, and turned the subject back to Ben, which was not a great test of ingenuity. “Did you ever see the Israeli again?”
“Twice. Once I went to meet him in Cairo while Douglas was away at some financial conference. And once about a year ago when Ben came back to Faslane with three other Israeli officers to train on the Upholder Class submarine their Navy had purchased. He was a full commander by this time.
“It was strange, but the sheer overpowering nature of the deceit…we drove up to a hotel in the Highlands…It had a bad effect on both of us. I was worried stiff that either my mother, my father, or even my husband was going to walk right through the door and catch us.
“When we parted I had a funny feeling I really would not see him again. And so far I haven’t. He has called me a couple of times. But I don’t think either of us feels the same as we once did. The long, long separation, and the duplicity of the relationship, has proved a bit too much for both of us. He is serving in the Navy, God knows where, and I am left with poor Douglas, a good-looking, highly respected forty-year-old banker who leaves me stone cold. He knows it too, I am afraid. I wouldn’t blame him if he ran off with his secretary!”
“Do you have an address or phone number for Ben?”
“No. I have never had that since he left here after the Perisher. He was a bit secretive as a matter of fact. I asked him many times if there was anywhere I could just send him a letter, or even a postcard. But he always said it was a bit too complicated.”
“Laura, are you sure he was an Israeli?”
“It’s never occurred to me that he was anything else. He was here as an Israeli Naval Officer. How could he have been anything else?”
“Dunno,” said Bill. “But the Middle East is a strange place. A few days before the Gulf War began, Saddam Hussein swore to his fellow Arab, near neighbor and apparent friend and ally, President Mubarak of Egypt, that he would not attack Kuwait. The truth is an elusive commodity once you move east of the Greek islands.
“Was there ever anything, in all the time you knew Ben, that might suggest he could have been originally from another nation?”
“No. Not really. The only thing I ever wondered about was his sympathetic view of the Arabian nations, even over terrorism. You never would have described him as fanatically anti-Arab—and he was not at all religious.
“But now I look back, there is something else. I saw him only that one time in Cairo. But there were several other times when we discussed meeting, and he always wanted it to be Cairo. Never anywhere in Israel. Is that a bit odd? I don’t know. But I never thought he might be an Egyptian.”
“Did he ever tell you anything about his very early life?”
“Yes. He went to school here in England—a boarding school in Kent, so I suppose his parents must have had some money. But he did not go to university here—he went back to Israel at the age of eighteen, after his A-levels—they’re English exams—and from what I gathered, joined the Navy right away. He told me when he arrived in Faslane it was his first visit to the U.K. since he left school.”
“Was there anything else, other than being an Israeli, which set him apart from the rest of his Perisher class?”
“Not really. But he did bring over a nice new car. A small red BMW.”
“Was he popular, being cleverer than everyone else?”
“Not really. Ben had no interest in anything which he judged to be trivia. He had no polite small-talk—which my mother detested about him. If there was a birthday party, he would attend, and bring an expensive, thoughtful present. But he seemed always to be on the sidelines. Slightly preoccupied.”
“Why did you love him so much?”
“Because to my young eyes he looked like a God. I was only nineteen. He was twenty-seven, the outstanding young commander of his group, rich enough to take me to nice places, the only one with a new car, and a man who could fascinate me with stories of Middle Eastern countries I had never seen. He was charming. What he lacked was vulnerability. To a woman, I suspect that is deeply unattractive. But to a nineteen-year-old girl, just out of a London secretarial college, it was very, very special. I don’t suppose I would react in anything like that way if I met him for the first time now.”
“Could you imagine him being sufficiently ruthless to blow up an aircraft carrier with six thousand men on board?”
Laura hesitated. Then she said, “No, Bill. Not when you put it like that. But there was a coolness, an efficiency, a determination. There was a strength about Ben, if he thought it was his duty, to sink an American aircraft carrier…he’d do it.
“On the other hand, he had a very engaging smile. And he could be witty about things. You might even think he was a relaxed and confident man.
“But when I really got to know him I noticed his eyes were seldom still. There was a certain wariness there. And sometimes I would catch him casting his eyes around some fancy restaurant. And then he would smile his gleaming smile at me, and make some joke. I never really thought he was interested in other women, it was just that he was so watchful, of everything.
“I used to call it his Periscope habit, taking an all-round look every few minutes. Even a Naval genius like Ben had to keep practicing, I suppose.”
“Did he ever mention his parents?”
“Not really. Just that they lived in the country somewhere in Israel. I think they grew fruit, melons and things…but he sometimes mentioned that he had business with his family’s bank in London. He went there about once a month, usually on the train from Glasgow.”
“Did he have any other close friends in England, or Scotland?”
“No one here. He was not that popular. And he never mentioned anyone he even knew, in London or anywhere. I don’t think he ever introduced me to anyone.”
“When did you last hear from him?”
“I had one phone call about two months after he left the Upholder Class course. I was away, with Douglas and the girls, just for a weekend. When he got no reply from our house in Edinburgh, he phoned me here. Mummy was absolutely furious, but she said she was polite. Anyway I have not heard one word since—which is a bit unusual…the longest time he has ever been out of touch…Mummy probably told him he was the biggest bastard she had ever met, or something equally subtle. But she says not. I think Ben may finally have vanished from my life.”
“Will you tell me about Egypt?”
“That was after I had been married for about four years—about fourteen months before Flora was born. Douglas was going to a bankers’ seminar in Montreal. I had six days to myself. We planned it three months in advance. I flew all the way from Glasgow, changed planes at London Airport for Cairo. Ben arranged for me to pick up the Egypt ticket at the KLM desk.”
Bill sat listening to her, thinking how much like a schoolgirl she still sounded; thinking about Ben Adnam, the big Mercedes in which he had met her at Cairo Airport, the uniformed driver, the long evening ride out to the plateau of Giza, the suite in the fabled Mena House Hotel, with its balcony view looking out to the mightiest of human achievements, stark against the desert skyline since the dawn of history.
“I’ll never forget seeing the pyramids for the first time,” Laura said. “I stood there, staring through that balcony window. I was alone, gazing out at five thousand years of the past, hearing in my mind the voice of the desert…Ben had gone downstairs to send a fax or something. It was the most romantic place in the world for an awestruck Scottish girl, and a rather cold, unromantic Navy officer. But I suppose he must have had some romance in him, otherwise he would not have brought me there. Anyway, when you’ve had a sheltered upbringing like mine was, your first lover can’t usually do much wrong, so I suppose I had a wonderful time.”
“Try to think, Laura. Was there anything that happened in Egypt that you thought was in any way unusual? Anything you can think of?”
“I don’t think so…except we went one afternoon to a mosque.”
“You did what?”
“We went to a mosque. We were sightseeing in Cairo and Ben had his driver take us down to see the Citadel, an amazing castle built originally by Saladin, I think. We then walked up to the Mohammed Ali Mosque—the most beautiful building, one of the great landmarks of Cairo. You can see it for miles because of the twin minarets, so slim they look as if they might break off. They rise high above the huge dome of the mosque itself.”
Bill kept very quiet. He just said, “Go on.”
“Well, it wasn’t much really. I did want to go in. But Ben said he thought that might not be appropriate, for two infidels to enter a holy place of Muslim prayer. There was a little bookshop there, and I said I was going to see if I could find something to buy, to remind me of this place when I was back in Scotland.
“He said ‘okay,’ he’d meet me back by the entrance, because he wanted to see a view across the city. Well, I went to the bookshop, and spent about twenty minutes there, talking to the old man who ran it…I remember he told me he had been in the Egyptian Air Force during the Six-Day War with Israel.
“Anyway I was just walking across the courtyard to meet Ben, when I saw him slip out of a side door to the mosque, I thought a bit furtively. I stopped dead and watched him put his shoes on again. I’ve never thought much about it really, but I suppose you don’t get many Israelis at prayer in an Arab mosque.”
“Nope, I don’t guess you do,” said Bill Baldridge. “Did he say anything…make an excuse maybe?”
“Yes. He just said he thought he saw someone he knew, but turned out to be mistaken.”
“I suppose he might have been telling the truth, but it doesn’t really add up—an Israeli officer in a mosque, even seeing someone he knew in the mosque, all seems a bit unlikely. And also, a brief holiday in the Mena House—that’s pretty rich living for the son of a melon grower, especially one who is apparently living on the famously low salary of an Israeli serviceman.”
“Yes, it was a very lavish hotel—and Ben seemed very at home there, as if he knew some of the staff. At the time I thought he had just been there a couple of days before I arrived, but there was one night when we had a drink in the garden with the manager, who seemed awfully important.”
“Laura, it seems with hindsight such a bizarre place for an Israeli to be—in the heart of the Cairo establishment…Christ, that was where Jimmy Carter met President Anwar Sadat. Kissinger met the Egyptians there. I was reading a magazine article the other day about Nixon’s Middle East policy. He stayed at the Mena House, and it mentioned that it was President Roosevelt’s favorite hotel. God knows how many foreign kings have stayed there. It’s an Arab institution. What’s Benjamin Adnam doing there, unless he was really an Arab?”
“I can’t answer that. But you have reminded me of a strange conversation we once had at the Mena House. I can’t remember any of the exact words, but I do remember him saying something like, ‘My masters probably would not approve of my being here so publicly with an English admiral’s daughter. They might think it a bit indiscreet.’
“I asked him why, and he just went rather thoughtful, and very steely. He said something like, ‘But my masters can be replaced anytime. I, on the other hand, cannot be replaced.’
“It was not the arrogance that surprised me. Ben always had a touch of arrogance, even bravado, just under the surface. I’m a bit ashamed to say how attractive I found it at the time. But it was the use of the word ‘masters’ that should have given me just a touch of suspicion. I’ve just never heard any Naval officer use those words before, not in that context. I’ve always remembered Ben saying it.”
“Funny that, Laura. I’ve never heard a U.S. Naval officer use it either. I continue to wonder precisely who Ben really was.”
“You really do think he was not what he said he was?”
“I do. Not least because your father thinks there are less than half a dozen men on earth who could have blown up our aircraft carrier. And he thinks Ben might have been one of them. And an Arab is a much better bet than an Israeli.”
“Just after I was married Ben phoned and asked me to meet him but I couldn’t. He said Cairo that time as well.”
“Strange. I wonder where the hell he is now.”
“Can’t help much with that one. It’s been several months since I last heard. I might not hear again. And I never had an address.”
“Would you agree to let me know if you ever did hear from him?”
“Yes. Yes, I would. I am the daughter of a senior Navy officer, and I do understand about this, and how serious it is. I will contact you if I hear.”
Laura stood up wearily and passed a hand through her hair. “Would you like to listen to some music?” she asked. Crossing the room, she flicked on the CD player and placed a disc on the sliding tray. The massed violins of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra playing the rhapsodic overture to one of Giuseppe Verdi’s most memorable operas filled the room.
“Rigoletto,” said Bill.
They sat in silence for a long while, listening to the divine, heart-rending arias being sung by Ileana Cotrubas as Gilda, and Placido Domingo as the Duke of Mantua.
When the soprano sang “Caro nome” Laura was surprised to hear the American Naval officer mutter, “It’s almost unbearably beautiful, don’t you think?”
She turned the sound down a shade, and asked him, “You really like opera, don’t you?”
“I do at times like this,” he said somberly. “My mother’s brother was on the Board of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. He used to throw her a few tickets now and then. She took me a few times when I was at Annapolis, paid for me to fly up from Washington, let me hear the great maestros at work.
“I never got much further than the easier ones, like Bohème, Figaro, Rigoletto, Madame Butterfly…Carmen, Aida, and The Pearl Fishers…but I’ve always loved the music—it’s like havin’ someone cast a spell on you. I’d rather go to an opera than a rodeo. That’s the truth.”
He glanced at his watch. “Hey, it’s midnight, and I haven’t slept in a bed since I left Kansas on Sunday morning. I have to meet your dad real early. I’d better turn in, before I collapse on the rug.”
“All right. I’ll just clear these glasses and fix the fire screen. Good night, Bill. I hope I’ve helped.”
“Yes, ma’am. I appreciate it.” He debated the propriety of giving her a quick kiss on the cheek, but decided against it. Mrs. Laura Anderson considered the omission a lot more peevishly than she ought to have done.
Bill climbed the stairs and slept like a rock. He knew his second day at Inveraray was not strictly necessary but he wanted to tour this submariner’s mecca with Admiral MacLean. And he wanted to ask him a few more questions about Israel and its Navy. He justified his time with the certain knowledge that this British admiral was without doubt the most learned submariner he had ever met. He was also the man who had personally taught Commander Ben Adnam, whatever grave implications that might now have.
“Okay, Georgy. We’re closer to the shipping lanes than I’d like, but let’s get up to the surface, and get the main shaft locked ASAP. And tell him to fix that hull gland permanently. Right here. While we’re dead-stopped. It’s been a worry on and off for a week.”
“Watch Officer to captain, Watch Officer to captain…that racket on the ESM mast thirty minutes ago…I’d say she’s a big merchantman from the southwest. Fifteen miles, three-five-zero, twenty knots. Danger level in five minutes.
“Captain to Watch Officer, how far will he miss us?”
“Bearing steady for forty minutes.”
“Christ!The shaft’s locked. Ben! Ben! We could get run right over and we can’t maneuver!”
“Steady, Georgy, you’re going to make a ‘stopped dive.’”
“Jesus Christ! I never done one before.”
“Well, I’ve done dozens of them. We have no options. We must dive. I do not want to be seen by anyone. And I certainly do not want to be in a collision. I did think this could happen. That’s why I wanted you to catch a ‘stopped trim’ before we surfaced.
“Now, do precisely as I say… open main vents and kingstons. Watch the angles…We’re stern down ten right now, but that’s okay. It’s always a bit uneven…What are we? Thirty meters?”
“Christ! Ben, we sliding backward to the bottom!”
“Shut up, Georgy old boy, will you? Keep those vents open, it’s just air bubbles. We’ve got tons of compressed air. Pull yourself together, for god’s sake. I know the angle’s bad…what are we? Sixty meters? Okay.”
“The stern is down forty degrees, Ben. Crew will panic if any more.”
“Well, tell them not to panic, will you? Shut five main vents…blow five main ballast…okay, stop blowing. Georgy, we’re heavy aft. Get ten men up to for’ard. Tell ’em to climb uphill.
“Okay, Georgy…the angle’s coming off…open five main vents…That’s good…better…shut five main vents…where are we? Eighty meters?
“Let’s catch trim on the layer at one hundred meters…open five main vents…shut five main vents…that’s good.”
“One hundred meters, sir.”
“There you are, Georgy. We’re just floating here quietly, a hundred meters below. She’ll come over the top in the next ten minutes, none the wiser. And when she’s gone, we’ll just float very quietly back to the surface in the dark and finish our repair. No problem. Oh, Georgy, sorry about the angles, it’s always a bit like that on a ‘stopped dive.’”
“You give me humiliation. If I ever get out of here I kill your fucking Teacher, Ben. But thank you.”
The following morning, Bill Baldridge and the admiral left while the great house on the loch was still asleep, speeding through the forest and turning south before the main road down the side of Loch Lomond. They took a shorter route which hugged the winding eastern shores, running on down to Faslane from the opposite direction.
“Do you think it would be easy for anyone to penetrate the Israeli Armed Forces, and work on the inside for many years?” Bill asked.
“I gave it some thought overnight, and curiously, Bill, I do. It is a country of such interracial change. When Israel first came into being, there were so many strangers arriving in the vast exodus from underprivileged European countries, I am surprised they ever sorted anything out. But somehow they created a nationality, from Jews who had journeyed from Russia, Poland, Germany, from all over East and West Europe, even from the USA. What followed was that thousands of newly settled Jewish people could pass at any time for Muscovites, Londoners, New Yorkers, Berliners.
“The entry into Israel from Arab countries was no less—they came from Egypt, Libya, Syria, Algeria, the Yemen, and of course Iraq, and Iran. No one has ever known for sure about the absolute loyalty to Israel of these families—indeed some of them have since left. But Israel has always found it dead easy to recruit very successful spies to operate in almost any Middle Eastern or European country, because they had so many original foreign nationals to select from.
“It follows that the reverse would also be true…that in the great human influx into Israel between 1948 and, say, 1968, there were also people who had other interests, for other governments, which might find it extremely convenient having people already ‘inserted’ into the Armed Forces of a new nation, which may one day become an enemy.
“Or do you find that altogether too far-fetched?”
“Admiral, I don’t find that far-fetched at all. Makes sense to me.”
“So while I do think Commander Ben Adnam was probably an Israeli, I also recognize the possibility that he may not have been, especially as he went to school in England—a strong, eighteen-year-old, well-educated boy from a good English school, with apparently Israeli parents…very easy to place in almost any walk of life in the Holy Land. I’m not saying he was an Iranian, or an Iraqi…but it’s not by any means impossible.”
“No…” said Bill slowly. “I guess the most I can do at this moment is to keep my mind open. To be aware of the man who could have done it, and to be aware that he may not have been Israeli, and that he could have been working for someone else.”
“That’s it. I believe modern theorists would describe that as lateral thinking. I normally call it logical research and a bit of common sense.”
By this time Bill could see across the water to the point of land where the Argyll Forest peters out between the two great fiords of Loch Goil and Loch Long. They swung away from the water and over the top of the hill, plunging straight down into the little town of Garelochhead. “Faslane dead ahead,” said the admiral, and again Bill Baldridge found himself looking at the cold, black waters of the Scottish loch.
The formality of the armed guards was no less than chillingly normal, even for the entry of the greatest submariner the Royal Navy had ever known. Passes were scrutinized, and they were handed over to a lieutenant commander with a submarine badge on his left shoulder.
He showed them where to park the Range Rover, and asked Admiral MacLean whether he and his guest were ready to board. “Yes, please,” replied Sir Iain, and then to Bill, “I thought I’d show you a few of the places where I taught your man to drive one of these things. By good fortune there’s a Perisher boat going out this morning, actually for about a month, but they’ll fly us off, down near the Isle of Arran. Back by about four o’clock.”
They walked down to the quayside where a three-hundred-foot-long, five-thousand-ton hunter-killer submarine, HMS Thermopylae, awaited. Stored deep within this menacing instrument of underwater warfare was a battery of brand-new Tomahawk land-attack missiles with a lethal range of 2,500 miles. The balance of her weapon load, stored adjacent to the bow tubes, was made up of Marconi Spearfish wire-guided torpedoes, each of which could travel seventeen miles through the water at almost fifty knots before blasting the backbone of an enemy warship in half.
The old boy had taught Ben that part pretty well, no doubt about that. As Bill had explained to the President, a nuclear-tipped torpedo does not have to smash into the hull of its target, but it still has to run fast, straight, and accurate. Peaceful modern oceans do not provide much opportunity for hands-on practice sessions.
To Bill’s surprise, they piped him aboard with traditional Navy ceremony, but not the admiral. Salutes were crisply exchanged, and the captain led the way down through the hatch into the claustrophobic, Formica-paneled companionways, to the wardroom where the six Perishers were waiting to start their first day at sea. It was strange how the name “Perisher” had stuck, even though the old “Periscope Course” was now the Commanding Officers Qualifying Course. Folklore has decreed that trainee submarine commanders will be, forever, “Perishers.”
Commander Rob Garside, the 2002 Teacher, wished the admiral “good morning, sir,” extending a proper courtesy to the man who had taught him thirteen years previously.
“Hello, Rob—I’d like you to meet an American officer who is going to be our guest today, Lieutenant Commander Bill Baldridge from Kansas via the Pentagon, I believe. Commander Rob Garside.”
“A privilege to have you both aboard,” smiled the Teacher, and, looking at Bill, said, “You will find I am not quite such an ogre as your host was back in the eighties.”
“He’s just being modest. Rob’s one of my very best Perishers.”
Admiral MacLean smiled, patted his old pupil on the shoulder, and said, “What about some coffee while they’re getting this steamer to sea?”
“No time, really, sir. Not if you want to be on the bridge going down the Gareloch.”
“Right. Come on, Bill. I’ll show you the way.”
“Permission for the admiral and his guest on the bridge, sir?”
“Yes, please.”
“Okay, Bill, up we go.”
Two minutes later the hunter-killer was under way. From the top of the fin, the views of the loch and surrounding landscape were so striking that Baldridge hardly spoke for several minutes. Running south before the backdrop of the great mountain, with mists still hugging the shoreline on both sides, and the long heathery hillsides of Glen Fruin up to the left, made it very easy to forget the true purpose of this mission.
It was a typical July morning; no rays of sun had yet lit up the eastern slopes of The Cobbler, as HMS Thermopylae slipped silently down the middle of the loch at around eight knots toward the Rhu Narrows. The sky was overcast. It looked like rain.
“Is it deep enough to run down here at periscope depth?” asked Bill.
“Yes, it is,” replied the admiral. “But we don’t do it these days, and certainly not in a nuclear boat. It’s considered an unnecessary risk…I mean, if something went wrong, no one would thank us for dumping a nuclear reactor on the floor of a Scottish loch in which it would remain active for probably a hundred years.”
“No. I guess not. Has anything ever gone wrong in this loch?”
“Not for a long time. Not seriously since World War I when someone managed to leave a funnel-hatch open by mistake in one of the old K-Class submarines. The water filled the boiler room and she plunged to the bottom of the loch, drowned thirty-two men. They are all buried up in Faslane cemetery.”
“That’s one of the big troubles with these damn things…one mistake and you may never get a second chance,” said Bill quietly. “I guess that’s why we all think that a submarine CO is superior to any other.”
“What d’ya mean, think?” said Commander Garside. “We know it.”
Everyone laughed at the boss’s joke. But the seriousness of this mission had put all of them on edge. They were going out for a month, into great waters, west of the British Isles. They would take this submarine into the depths of the Atlantic, working as much as one thousand feet down, in water which was two miles deep, out beyond the Rockall Rise, five hundred miles offshore, well off the continental shelf.
This is the area known in the trade as the GIUK Gap, the deep-water patrolling ground of the most powerful nuclear submarines in the Western world. It is the “choke point” formed by the coastlines of Greenland, Iceland, and the U.K., through which all Russian submarines must pass from their principal northern bases on the Murman Coast, which forms the southern shore of the Barents Sea. This was the old Soviet submarine way to the transatlantic trade routes, should it come to war.
In those days there was no way they could navigate through the GIUK Gap without the Americans or the Brits knowing precisely who they were, how many there were, and the direction in which they were headed. From that point on, no Soviet submarine was ever alone for long.
It was the strategic importance of these deep waters which made the submarine bases in the Scottish lochs so important, and so efficient. It was easy to bottle up the Russians in the Black Sea, because the Turks were in charge of the only way out, through the Bosporus. And, beyond there, the Strait of Gibraltar offered another “choke point.”
The difficult area was the GIUK Gap, and to that potential theater of submarine warfare both the Pentagon and the Royal Navy historically sent their best men and their best equipment.
Admiral MacLean chatted to Bill about the forthcoming program the Perishers must face as Thermopylae threaded through Rhu Narrows and on south past the Tail of the Bank. For fifteen miles they ran on the surface, and then, three miles south of the Cumbraes, the captain took the submarine to periscope depth.
The admiral kept Bill apprised of the activities, as they continued southwesterly toward the southern coast of the Isle of Arran, which stands in the eastern lee of the Mull of Kintyre.
Once past Arran, they surfaced again, and the admiral again took Bill to the bridge for a perfect ride across the unusually sunlit fifteen-mile channel to Campbeltown, where a Navy helicopter would pick them up and fly them back to Faslane.
All the way to Kintyre, Bill found himself wondering about the Perishers down below, working away at their notes and diagrams, listening to the sonars, consulting with the surface picture compiler, talking to the AWO, conferring with the weapons officer, discussing the systems which governed the missiles and torpedoes.
It had been in this very area where Commander Ben Adnam had learned the specialized techniques of modern submarine warfare. But there was no longer one shred of doubt in Bill’s mind—for any potential terrorist, this was the place to learn the tricks of the trade. He guessed, too, that if he nailed Adnam, the Royal Navy would never again train a Middle Eastern submariner.
But now they could hear the distant clatter of the Navy chopper, flying down Kilbrennan Sound between Kintyre and Arran. For a few moments it hovered twenty feet above the fore-casing, while the winchman pulled Baldridge and the admiral unceremoniously into the cabin, before it swept away for Faslane.
On landing, there was an urgent message for Bill. “Call Admiral Arnold Morgan on his private line in Fort Meade.” A waiting lieutenant escorted him to a small private office, which had a private phone line, bypassing the main switchboard. “Just dial straight out, sir, 001, then the U.S. area code, then the number.”
Bill dialed, private line to private line. Within seconds he heard the permanently irritated growl of Admiral Morgan come down the line. “Morgan…speak.”
Bill chuckled. “Lieutenant Commander Baldridge. Ready to speak.”
He heard the admiral laugh. “Hey Bill, good to hear you. What’s hot?”
“Howd’ya find me?”
“Old buddy. Admiral Elliott. New buddy for you, right?”
“Yessir. A real good guy. Paved my way.”
“I hear you may be onto something.”
“I sure am, sir. About as near to certain as I ever could be—if someone hit our carrier, I got the guy who did it.”
“Give it to me.”
“Israeli officer. Commander Benjamin Adnam. A-D-N-A-M. The best trainee commanding officer they ever taught up here. I’ve just spent a day with his Teacher, Admiral Sir Iain MacLean. He reckons there’s about five people on this earth who could get out underwater through the Bosporus. Him and Elliott…a couple of other possibles…and Adnam.”
“Shit! Is that right? Where is this sonofabitch?”
“Not sure. But I suppose either at the Israeli Navy Base in Haifa, or in one of their submarines. He was up here less than a year ago, working up an Upholder Class submarine his Navy had just bought.”
“No chance he might be an Arab, eh?”
“Yessir. I think there is such a chance. Several quite suspicious aspects of his life. I’ve been talking to a close friend of his…he’s been completely out of touch for months and months, which is apparently unusual.”
“You got all you need?”
“Yessir. I was planning to come back either overnight or first thing tomorrow. I’ve a ton of things to tell you.”
“Lemme know when you’re arriving in Washington. I’ll have someone meet you. Then come straight on down to Fort Meade. Between you and me, the President is getting trigger-happy. He is determined to smack someone’s Navy right in the mouth, ASAP. Hurry home.” The line went dead, a disconcerting habit of the admiral’s. He just didn’t bother with good-byes. Didn’t have time. Scott Dunsmore said old Morgan did it to the President once. Not this President, the one before.
Bill glanced at his watch. It was five forty-five in the afternoon. What he needed was the Concorde flight to Washington, first thing in the morning. That meant he must leave for London this evening. He left the office, explained his situation to the admiral, who picked up a telephone and spoke to someone in Northwood. Then he spoke to someone on the base, and finally said, “Okay, that’s it, Bill. We’ll drive home right away. The chopper will pick you up at eight o’clock at my house and whip you into Glasgow in time for the nine-thirty flight to London. Your ticket’s at the British Airways desk. If I were you I’d find a bit of supper in the airport, and catch some sleep in the Concorde lounge. It’s pretty civilized and that new Washington flight boards at 0700.”
The journey back around the loch to Inveraray passed quickly. Back at the house, Bill rushed upstairs, packed his bag, jumped in the bath, shaved, changed out of uniform into a civilian coat and tie, and headed downstairs. The admiral was on the phone, Lady MacLean was out with the children, and Laura was awaiting him in the hall.
“So soon,” she said, quietly. “I would have enjoyed another dinner and chat.”
“Duty calls,” Bill replied awkwardly.
“If I hear from Ben, how do I find you?”
Bill handed her a piece of paper. On it was written the number of his apartment in Suitland, Maryland, with its answering service, and his number at the Navy Intelligence office. For good measure he also included the number of the ranch in Kansas. Ray’s number, not his mother’s, in the interests of security. He also included both his personal addresses. “I was kinda hop in’ you wouldn’t lose track of me,” he said.
Laura laughed at the pile of information, handwritten on the “Inveraray Court” writing paper. And as she did so, they could hear the roar of the Royal Navy helicopter thundering down onto the lawn outside. Both of them knew they had about five seconds before the admiral emerged from his phone call.
“I wish you weren’t going,” said Laura, helplessly.
“So do I,” said Bill. “But I must. Can I speak to you, somehow, somewhere?”
Laura pressed a piece of paper into his hand. It contained a phone number and several time frames.
Admiral MacLean came out of his study. “Okay, Bill, I hope we meet again. Come on…”
The roar of the chopper’s engines drowned out all further conversation. Laura followed them out, and Bill instinctively ducked his head as he headed for the helicopter’s door. The loadmaster was already out, and helped him aboard, strapping him into his seat. Bill latched the door shut, gave a thumbs-up to the pilot, who took off instantly, as if conducting an evacuation from a battle zone.
Bill looked out of the window at the two figures standing on the lawn, waving. He thought of the admiral’s amazing kindness, and quite remarkable grasp of the situation. And he felt he had not thanked him nearly enough. And then he smiled, waved back from about four hundred feet, above the gleaming waters of the loch now. But he felt a twinge of guilt that he was not really waving at Admiral Sir Iain MacLean.