Nimitz Class (40 page)

“Do you really think he blew up your aircraft carrier?”

“When I was last here I thought he might have. Right now, I know he did.”

“Can I know how?”

“Not in any great detail, I’m afraid,” said the lieutenant commander. “But he was not Israeli. We think he was Iranian. But he could have been Libyan, or Syrian, or an Iraqi. His identity has baffled even the Mossad.”

“Iain thinks he could have been Iranian. Especially after Laura told him about that strange visit they made to the mosque in Cairo.”

Just then the telephone rang. Lady MacLean hurried away to answer it across the room. “Yes…yes…he is here…I’ll get him.” She beckoned to Bill and told him to take the call in the admiral’s study across the hall. “It’s probably top-secret,” she said, smiling. “It’s my husband’s old office.”

Bill found Lieutenant Waites on the line. “Hello, sir. Hold on a moment. I have Captain Greenwood for you.”

“Good afternoon, Bill.” The deep, somber voice of FOSM’s Chief of Staff was unmistakable. “Just a short progress report. First, we’ve been cleared politically. The mission is to proceed immediately. The boss ran Admiral MacLean to ground at some office in Edinburgh and Sir Iain’s coming. That’s all decided.

“The submarine we want,
Unseen
, is in Barrow, in a state of near-readiness for the sale to Brazil. We’ve canceled that for the moment, and the admiral has ordered a crew to be brought in. That will take a week. Then we will have a two-week workup period to familiarize everyone with the SSK. Barring accidents,
Unseen
will
clear Barrow on August 25, and arrive in the area on about September 7. It’s 3,700 miles, and we’ll run at around 12 knots all the way.”

“How about the landowners?” asked Bill, avoiding naming the Turks on the telephone. “Are we spilling the beans?”

“No, we’re not. I believe the admiral is going to talk to their boss tonight in very guarded terms. He has already spoken to Admiral Dunsmore at the Pentagon, and, so far as I can tell, you are the only American on board. Admiral Elliott is naming the captain tomorrow. I expect it to be the former
Upholder
XO, Jeremy Shaw. He and his team have been training the Brazilians, so he’s well up to the job.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Oh yes, two other things. Tomorrow we are sending the chopper over to take you and Sir Iain down to Barrow to get a look at the boat. And will you expect a call in a half hour or so from Admiral Morgan?”

“Okay, sir. I’ll be here, enjoying my little vacation in Scotland.”

“Not for long, I hear. Admiral Morgan said he was sending you to Russia on Thursday. You have to pick up a special visa at the embassy in London before you go.”

“Jesus,” said Bill. “There’s no peace, right?”

“Not if you want to catch your man. No, Bill, there’s not.”

A half hour later the lieutenant commander had just lowered himself into the steaming spare-room bathtub, along with the other half of the jar of blue crystals, when he heard a tap on the door.

“Sir, there’s a call for you. I’ve put it through to the phone by your bed.”

“Thanks, Angus, old buddy,” he said. “Be right there.”

Cursing the exquisite timing of Arnold Morgan, he wrapped himself in a towel, and picked up the telephone, warning immediately, “Admiral, this is not a secure line.”

“Okay, Bill. Gottit. I hear we’re all set. I spoke to Scott Dunsmore this morning and he says the President is definite. The minute he hears you’re through the slot, he’ll authorize a massive search for
the Kilo. Meantime, I want you to get out to Sevastopol and spend a little time with Admiral Rankov.

“He’s as anxious as we are to locate his employees. But he’ll show you around, so you can get a feel for the area, and the families of the crew. Sorry to turn you into some kind of detective, but everyone is anxious not to expand the circle of people who actually know about this. So I guess you’re doing nearly everything.”

“What about my travel arrangements to Russia?”

“Admiral Elliott’s office is taking care of it all. You need to pick up tickets, visa, and cash in London before you go. I thought Thursday or Friday, after you’ve taken a look at the submarine. Anyway call the admiral’s Flag Lieutenant in Northwood. They got it covered.”

“Okay, Admiral. Will I come back to the States after Sevastopol?”

“I guess so. You’ll be through with Rankov by around August 13. You might just want to meet the guys working up the submarine after that. Then there may be something else over there for you.

“If not, you might as well come back, and we’ll go on playing detectives together. Anyway, you’ll be ready to go aboard on September 8, I understand with Admiral MacLean.”

“Guess so, sir.”

“Good. See you, Bill.” The line went dead.

Back in the hot, scented water, Bill Baldridge reviewed the situation. The fact was, the “search-and-destroy” operation was on hold pending the successful transit of the Bosporus. Thereafter the President would be relentless in the pursuit of Adnam. It was curious how certain he was that the Israeli officer had made that journey. Even more curious that Ben’s Teacher was now trying to follow him.

Downstairs he was just walking across the hall when he heard the tires of the Range Rover on the drive. He opened the front door and saw the admiral step out of the car, pursued by the omnipresent Fergus, Muffin, and Samson. God knows what those Labradors had been doing in Edinburgh.

He noticed the spring in the step of the admiral as he walked briskly toward him, smiling in greeting. He noticed too, the gentle wave of the driver through the windshield, as she gathered up her
jacket and bag. “Hello, Bill. Delighted you’re here. Understand we’re going on a little jaunt together?”

Bill shook hands with the admiral, fought off the dogs as they leapt all over him. “Coupla days sailing off Istanbul, paid for by Uncle Sam, shouldn’t be so bad, sir?”

“Certainly not. I’m rather looking forward to it, tell you the truth.”

By now Laura was out of the car and walking over to join them. “My God, she’s beautiful,” thought Bill. And he grinned rakishly as she held out her hand. “Hello,” she said. “I didn’t expect to see my inquisitor so soon.”

Lady MacLean emerged through the front door. “Hello, darling,” she said. “Good journey?”

“Yes, fine, except when Daddy loosed off the dogs in the forest about an hour from here. That ridiculous Fergus wouldn’t come back. Found a rabbit or something. Cost us twenty minutes. I don’t know why we had to take them in the first place. They were sitting outside a lawyer’s office for two hours, and in the car for five, with only two breaks.”

“You know how your father is with those dogs. They go everywhere with him. Except London. And they behave like lunatics most of the time.”

In the distance Bill could see them right now. A boisterous black trio of running, barking, rolling, pushing energy, two of them having already rushed into the loch. “Don’t let those wet Labradors into the house,” Lady MacLean called out to her husband.

Laura took Bill by the arm. “Come on, Inquisitor, let’s have a drink. It’s almost half past seven.”

It was a good start to a long evening. Angus had cooked yet another Tay salmon, and the wines were identical. Admiral MacLean expounded more on the Bosporus and how he intended to guide
Unseen
safely through. Bill thought this was strictly for the benefit of his wife. It was eleven-thirty by the time dinner ended and the group retired to bed. The admiral and Bill were being collected at eight-thirty in the morning.

Strapped by the rigid propriety of their surroundings, the lieutenant
commander and the admiral’s daughter retired to their separate rooms, forty feet and a thousand miles apart on the second floor. Bill himself wondered if he would ever see her again. In two days he would be gone, and he might not return. He could never telephone her here, and he sure as hell was not anxious to call her husband’s house in Edinburgh.

He knew he would have to wait, to find out if she would call him in the States. And where could such a course of action take her? Nowhere, except to Kansas. And he hardly knew her. Christ, he didn’t even know if they had any
au pairs
in Kansas.

The Royal Navy chopper arrived precisely on time. The lieutenant commander and the admiral strapped themselves in for the one-hour ride to the sprawling home of Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering Ltd., the British corporation which had constructed all of the Royal Navy’s nuclear boats, from Polaris to Trident.

Most shipyards in northern Europe were situated in bleak, windswept areas, and this was no exception. The Vickers yard sat on the southernmost peninsula of Cumbria, on the northwest corner of Morecombe Bay, opposite the coast of Lancashire. Technically, it juts out into the Irish Sea, unprotected from the westerly rain and gales except by its own enormous buildings. Across the sound lay the flat, eight-mile-long sand spit of Walney Island, which contributed approximately nothing in the way of a weather lee.

A small welcoming party of Naval officers greeted the admiral and his guest, and almost immediately they were driven down to the Buccleuch Dock, home of the unwanted Upholders. The single-shafted
Unseen
was secured alongside. She was a jet-black 2,500-tonner, over 230 feet long, with an 8,000-mile range and a top underwater speed of 20 knots. A big Paxman diesel-engine/ generator combination powered up the giant submarine battery, which in turn powered a 6,500 hp GEC motor. She was scheduled to carry a complement of McDonnell Douglas sub-harpoon guided missiles, and twenty-one torpedoes, Marconi Spearfish.
Unseen
, silent at under five knots, was lethal to any enemy. The crew knew that the British Government was in the process of almost giving
her away. They also knew that the Royal Navy was appalled. Just as appalled as back in 1981 when politicians elected to sell the only two operational aircraft carriers the Navy owned, which actually caused the Falklands War, since the Argentineans then believed Great Britain could not defend the islands against a major attack. They were wrong, but only by six months. The carriers were still in RN service.

Bill Baldridge could feel the resentment in the Royal Navy toward the government as he walked alongside the unused submarine. No one wanted her to be sold and by now all the senior officers knew that her potential savior was this visiting American lieutenant commander. Bill was being treated like a hero.

They boarded
Unseen
, and while Lieutenant Commander Baldridge was given a tour of the weapons area, Admiral MacLean spent two hours in the sonar room reviewing the Thompson Sintra Type systems and the passive ranging Paramax 2041. After lunch they took a tour of the yard, crossing the Michaelson Bridge. The bridge separated the Buccleuch and Devonshire Docks, which could be raised to allow ships to pass between the two. Beyond Devonshire stood the gigantic Trident building sheds. It was a cloudy day now, gray and gloomy along the water. To Iain MacLean it had always been a complete mystery why these stark backwater docks of the defense industry should each have been named after one of Britain’s greatest land owning dukes.

He showed Bill the narrow dredged channel which curved out of the inner basin and then swung right through the otherwise shallow waters of the bay past the twin headlands of Roa and Foulney islands and out into the buffeting chop of the Irish Sea, beyond Hilpsford Point. “Literally hundreds of new submarines have followed that route out to the Atlantic,” he said. “And in World War II, a hell of a lot of them never came back. This shipyard, and the men who work in it, represent the soul of the Royal Navy’s submarine service. Generations of skills, often taken too much for granted by various British governments.”

“I sure liked
Unseen
,” said Bill. “She had a great feel to her, sleek, quiet, and solid. I’m really looking forward to this.”

“So’m I,” replied the admiral. “She’s as quiet as any boat in the world, and she handles extremely well. We’ll be all right.”

At 1600 hours sharp they took off for Inveraray, clattering over the gray, melancholy streets of Barrow, where life for the engineers and ship wrights was so uncertain in these days of canceled orders and abandoned Navy building programs.

Down below, out of the starboard window, Bill Baldridge could see the docks, and he craned to see the submarine that would take him through the Bosporus. But the cloud cover was too low.

On the flight back, the dreary landscape soon slipped away behind them, but there remained a feeling of despondency between the two men as they reflected on the hard lives of people in a shipbuilding town like Barrow. Only the welcoming sight of the former Miss Laura MacLean waving from the lawn as they flew up the loch and turned in to land cast a near-depression from Bill’s shoulders.

“You been waiting long out there?” he asked her.

“No. Just a few minutes. That helicopter always leaves Barrow at four o’clock when Dad’s on board. That means you’ll be home just after five, and that’s what it is. Did you have a good day?”

“We had a great day, and the admiral’s home for tea. Can’t beat that.”

Laura gazed at Bill. She had never seen him in uniform, and he did, she thought, cut a commanding figure. So why had no one landed him?

“Laura?” he asked, “why are you staring like that?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I’ve never seen you in uniform before. I was just getting used to how official you look.”

“Oh, I’m official all right,” he chuckled. “Right here on the business of the U.S. Government. And dressed for the part—stiff collar and battle honors.”

“You have those, too?”

“Nothing won in the field of conflict,” he said. “But I’ve had a few private moments.”

“He’s a rascal,” thought Laura, “but he’s nice.”

They watched the chopper climb away over the loch for its short journey back to Faslane. Lady MacLean called out from the doorway that tea was ready in the drawing room, so would everyone come in. “And Iain…keep those bloody dogs outside, will you?”

The evening, it emerged, was already planned. They were going up to the village pub, the George, in Inveraray for supper. “Sweaters and no ties,” said Lady MacLean. “They’ll give you a good Aberdeen steak, Bill…good even by the standards of an American rancher.”