December Ultimatum

by Michael Nicholson

  And if a sudden breeze should come off the sea, Captain Hanks would hear coming up through the lift shafts the screams of young women, the coughs of consumptive old men and the cries of orphaned babies, and he would leave the bridge suddenly and go to his cabin to escape the ghosts of that miserable human cargo of that miserable American war.

  Captain Hanks had many strange ways. His officers said he had been too long at sea and had survived more than his fair share of it, though it was not something he would admit to himself or hear from others.

  His daily cliché was ‘Workhorses are sent out to graze too early’—a reference, in case any one of his officers should forget, that he was only fifty-five years old, fit and with experience at sea second to none. And yet, despite it, he was being sent ashore before his time. The prospect had been with him all his sea life, yet it had always seemed so distant. Retirement was for old men, and he was not old.

  It was the day he received the signal from Norfolk Virginia, telling him the date of the Okinawa’s scrapping that Captain Hanks suddenly realized it would soon all be over. According to successive medical examinations, he had been told he could expect to live another twenty years at least— and he knew that meant twenty years on land, alone.

  He had never married and he had been an only son, so there were no nephews, no nieces, no grandchildren. Forty- two years in the service and never in one place long enough for a man so introverted to have time enough to make a friend. Not one. Without his ship, Captain Hanks would be on his own. Already he felt retired, and more and more he retreated into the past. He would stand silently on Okinawa’s bridge, and relive Pearl Harbor, and the Japanese KATE’s dive-bombing that early December Sunday morning. Sometimes he would touch the shrapnel scars at the base of his back, tracing the ridges of thick skin of the badly sewn-up wounds, and remember the Yorktown lurching with the shock of the torpedo blasts and seeing his own blood mingling with the ship’s oil as he floundered half-conscious in the water.

  And that glorious morning in June as he had watched Lt Commander McClusky take off from the deck of the carrier Enterprise to attack Yamamoto’s fleet. He remembered it all so fondly, those first days of victory in the Midway and the glory that attached itself to every man who fought there. Captain Hanks wore his service ribbons proudly and in these silent moods of remembrance and depression he would finger them, each one a separate gilt chapter of his long sea life.

  The Okinawa had been anchored for three days off the Island of Bahrain as part of a ‘showing-the-flag’ tour of the Gulf States. The ship had been to Kuwait and was now sailing south-east to move through the narrow Straits of Hormuz into the Gulf of Oman for a two-day stay at the friendly port of Muscat. Captain Hanks would then take the carrier into the Arabian Sea, sailing further south into the India Ocean for a visit to Berbera in Somalia and on to Mombasa on the Kenyan coast. Then he would move into the commercial shipping lanes, past Madagascar, around the tip of South Africa at the Cape of Good Hope and into the Southern Atlantic. Then to the west coast of Africa and the Gulf of Guinea for a stop at Monrovia in Liberia. Finally he would head his ship due west for the final three thousand five hundred miles of Atlantic crossing to Newport, Norfolk Virginia, to the scrapyard of his career.

  He watched the sweeping arm of the radar scanner pick up the small blobs and smear them as it swept on. In the last twenty minutes he had been in the operations room they had not seemed to move, but the radar operator sitting in front of him reported they had travelled one hundred and twenty- five nautical miles since they had first appeared during the night watch.

  ‘Heading three hundred and fifteen degrees.’

  ‘Bastards.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I said bastards, coming this close at this time. Simple provocation.’

  ‘But we’re here, sir.’

  Captain Hanks knew Lieutenant Ginsberg to be a Jew, a liberal and provocative, and he ignored him.

  ‘I mean maybe they’re coming, sir, because we’re here,’ said Ginsberg, but the Captain still did not answer.

  The dots on the screen had become more distinctive now, showing the formation of a triangle, the apex forward, each dot a similar distance from the next.

  ‘Still eighteen knots?’

  ‘Yes, Captain. Bearing and speed constant.’

  ‘Assume they’re making for Hormuz. How soon?’

  ‘One moment, sir.’ The radar operator reached across with his right hand and began typing on the keys of the computer. Almost immediately the answer showed up in red digits on the computer screen for everyone to see. Calculating that speed and bearing remained constant and predicting tide and wind change, the Soviet Seventh Fleet, led by the aircraft carrier Minsk—thirty-eight thousand tons and the pride of the Soviet Navy—accompanied by the thirteen- thousand ton assault ship Ivan Rogov and a flotilla of twenty other warships of various tonnage and capability, would be crossing the Tropic of Cancer and beginning their turn towards the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf in nine hours and ten minutes time.

  Captain Hanks swore. ‘Fucking provocation. With a rebellion going full steam in Saudi Arabia, and sending them in here now. Sheer goddamned fucking provocation.’ Lieutenant Vaduz, Okinawa’s Communications Officer, coughed. ‘The latest satellite surveillance, sir, confirms twenty-two vessels. They’re photo-wiring the pictures at this time, sir.’

  ‘It’s not photographs I need, Mr Vaduz, it’s an order. I know what the mother-fuckers look like. In nine hours I’ll be surrounded by twenty-two Russian warships and I want to know in good time—good time, mind you—what I’m expected to do.’

  ‘We must assume, sir,’ said Lieutenant Ginsberg, ‘that they mean to anchor somewhere in the south of the Gulf. There’s nothing north for them. So to avoid confrontation we need only change course a few degrees south.’

  ‘You assume, Mr Ginsberg?’ said Captain Hanks through his teeth. ‘Only a few degrees south, for Chrissake? I am here on a goodwill visit, a peaceable tour and well advertised as such. I have my signal to exit and I have set my course and I do not intend to change my mind or my bearing, if there were a hundred Soviet ships out there!’

  ‘The Minsk is equipped with torpedoes, and Forger vertical take-offs, sir, and the Ivan Rogov has a battalion strength of Marines aboard with support helos and Sam-2 or Sam-4 missiles.’

  ‘Why do you pick this exact moment to tell me that, Mr Vaduz? You assume I know nothing about two of the best ships in the enemy’s navy?’

  ‘With respect, sir, I simply remind you that this is the largest and best equipped naval task force the Soviets have ever sent to the Persian Gulf.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, sir, according to my logs on all signals received from SATCOM, three days ago the Minsk and the Ivan Rogov were refuelling at Aden, South Yemen.’

  ‘For warm-water exercises in the Gulf of Oman,’ said Captain Hanks. ‘So?’

  ‘Sir, if the computer prediction is correct, they must have been ordered to leave their exercise area fourteen hours ago, which means—’

  ‘Which means,’ interrupted Commander Daniels, Okinawa’s Executive Officer, ‘that the Soviet Seventh Fleet was ordered to the Persian Gulf before the Saudi coup had begun.’

  The Captain’s eyes narrowed as he absorbed the arithmetic and its implications. The arms of the radar sweep on the green screens had made another seven turns before he spoke again, and so slowly and so softly that the officers at his side had to lean forward to hear and wonder later whether they had heard it correctly.

  ‘They’re trying another Cuba,’ he said. ‘On another Kennedy. By Christ they are. And this time they may even make it.’

  CAIRO

  ‘One helluva story’

  It was 87 degrees Fahrenheit and still Egyptian women covered them in blankets and forced hot cups of coffee into their hands. Egyptian immigration officials dema
nded passports from the sick on stretchers, ignoring the shouts from the American medical orderlies to let them be. The tired, the injured, the frightened and the wounded who had arrived in Cairo aboard the USAF Galaxies, sedated and comfortable, were suddenly confused and in pain again. Walking wounded sat down in one place and were asked to move to another only to be moved on again. A stretcher was put down in one corner of the airport arrivals hall and seconds later picked up and put somewhere else. There were a dozen different men in a dozen different uniforms and each was in charge. An American stood on a chair and shouted out names and instructions to American citizens but no one could hear him and the tension and anxiety increased so that women suddenly screamed and sat on the floor and sobbed as their children lost themselves, and scattered across the hall. Men wandered in no particular direction hoping to be stopped and told what to do and where to go, and the sick on the stretchers stared at the ceiling and at nothing as flies settled on the caked blood of their bandages. And all the time the women of the Egyptian Red Cross put their blankets around hot and sweating bodies and held scalding mugs of coffee to broken parched lips.

  Franklin sat by the air conditioning unit. The cuts in his head and face had been cleaned again with new dressings but the after-effects of the painkillers given him aboard the evacuation plane had made him dizzy and every now and then he could feel his gorge rise. He had to stand up and walk some yards then sit again as his legs began to shake. He watched Egyptian immigration officers stand on the seats shouting out passport numbers and names.

  ‘Franklin?’

  The man went down on one knee close to him and held out the slim green American passport. A second man stood behind him.

  ‘You Franklin?

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘New York Times?’

  ‘That’s me.’

  ‘I have a letter for you. It’s a kinda introduction.’

  ‘From New York?’

  ‘From Washington.’

  Franklin looked up. The man was dressed in a lightweight wash’n’wear tan suit. His face was the same colour. The man behind him could have been his brother. Franklin took the envelope, held it up to the light to see the shadow outline of the letter inside and tore open the end. He pulled out a single sheet of paper, headed United States Cairo Embassy. It was from the State Director of the Washington Bureau.

  ‘Glad you are out. Good rovers never die, they say. The Mid East has gone sour and our advice too lately accepted. It’s now spreading and need immediate conversation with you so call me from Embassy soonest. Cheaney will explain. Regards, Heinzerling.’

  Franklin held out his hand and the man helped him up. ‘You Cheaney?’ And the man nodded.

  ‘You’ve something to tell me?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Cheaney. ‘We have a car for you. Let’s talk on the way to the Embassy. This is Joe.’

  ‘They always are.’

  Joe smiled back.

  ‘Can I get a shower?’

  ‘Sure. Just about everything here my friend, except tail, but I reckon we could manage that at a push. D’you know Joe here tells me he can even get pretzels nowadays. Can you imagine pretzels in Cairo? They’ll be selling baskets of fruit for Yomtov next.’ He grinned. He had a fat shiny face as if it had been regularly polished and small bullet eyes deep set and green. His paunch fell over his trousers. Joe ate pretzels. Cheaney looked as if he was fond of Budweisers.

  ‘I’d be happy,’ said Franklin, ‘with a shower and a change of clothes. And perhaps a quick call home.’

  ‘You betcha,’ said Cheaney. ‘Joe here will look after everything. Leave it to him.’ Joe smiled again, the same broad grin on the same fat, polished face.

  Joe manoeuvred the black Embassy Chevrolet through the mass of bodies in the road outside the arrivals hall. Passengers hauled luggage away from porters, taxi drivers hawked their girlfriends, tin-chinking beggars masqueraded as totally blind and terribly crippled. He swung the car through a gate marked in English ‘SECURITY AREA. NO ENTRY’ then through another with the same sign, halting only for a moment as the red and white painted barrier was raised by a saluting security guard. Then on to the tarmac of the apron, within fifty yards of the refuelling Galaxies, past the cargo shed and a sudden right turn on to the main Cairo road. Joe knew the airport, and the airport security men knew the Chevrolet.

  ‘You know the President’s going to make a speech?’ Cheaney asked. He lit a Camel cigarette and handed it to Franklin.

  Franklin inhaled and then filled the car with heavy purplish smoke.

  ‘Yes?’ he said, inhaling once more. ‘Be one helluva lot of bullshit.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Cheaney.

  ‘Five months in office and already playing the odds.’ ‘Finding his feet, perhaps,’ said Cheaney.

  ‘He reckons the Saudis are going to be frightened off? Who’s advising him?’

  ‘Who’s advising the Saudis?’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Somebody is. This Rahbar guy is not doing this on his own.’

  There was a pause before either man spoke again.

  ‘How much does the Agency know?’ Franklin turned in his seat to face Cheaney.

  ‘We’re still struggling, but it’s piecing together. One helluva jig-saw, though.’

  ‘How much d’you know?’ Franklin asked again.

  ‘We know who started the coup. We know that Gaddafi did the footwork and we think we’ve got most of the names who met at that hotel in Baghdad. What we don’t know is which one of them is working for Moscow. Do you?’ Franklin drew on the cigarette again and Cheaney’s fat face, wet and shining now with sweat, was hidden for a moment in the smoke.

  ‘Yesterday, Cheaney, I had an audience with the King. The Agency had given the Saudis my cover, so he called me in. He was a very worried man.’

  ‘That OPEC planned Rahbar’s coup?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But that it really wasn’t OPEC? That somebody else was behind it?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Karim, Iraq’s defence minister. He’s been with the KGB since 1962. It’s been Moscow’s idea for a long time. Suddenly they found a way using Gaddafi. They had a man in Lagos who’s been pushing the Nigerians. Same in Caracas. It’s a big operation, Cheaney. They’ve been working on this for years. They knew Afghanistan was as near as the limit of their confrontation. From then on in it had to be done underground. Iran, Oman, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, working from the inside out. But the Royals had Saudi Arabia all tied up and Moscow couldn’t find a way in, until the Crown Prince became an Islamic freak.’ Franklin then repeated what Fahd had told him.

  Twenty minutes later Cheaney said, ‘You got all this from Fahd?’

  ‘A couple of hours before the start. The first rockets hit the place about midday.’

  ‘How did he get it so wrong?’

  ‘Wrong?’

  ‘So late. How come he knew all this but didn’t splash it sooner? Expose them?’

  ‘Very simple, Cheaney. So simple it breaks your heart. He got his timing wrong. His family had been in charge for so long they reckoned they controlled time. His service reports were coming in, intelligence was being slowly put together, the fingers were being pointed. Fahd thought he would choose the time when he would come down on them and wipe them out. He got it wrong. He was behind time, not in charge of it.’

  Cheaney lit another cigarette, took the half-smoked one from Franklin and gave him a fresh one.

  ‘You always so agreeable, Cheaney?’ But Cheaney didn’t answer. For a minute or more he looked ahead, over Joe’s shoulder, his chubby face lit up by oncoming car headlamps. Then he turned in his seat and faced Franklin.

  ‘You heard of Schneider? Anna Birgit Schneider?’

  ‘Sure. West German. Red Army.’

  ‘Ever
seen her?’

  ‘No.’

  Cheaney touched his arm. ‘She’s on her way to kill Fahd.’ Franklin drew on the cigarette. It was too strong and was beginning to make him feel sick again. Some miles ahead he could see Cairo, the city’s lights reflected in the pollution haze, hanging over it like a low yellow cloud.

  ‘Is Schneider on her own?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ said Cheaney. ‘If we did we’d be halfway there already.’

  ‘And where are you exactly?’

  ‘Nowhere, Franklin. Shit scared and nowhere.’

  ‘Where is Fahd?’

  ‘England. Somewhere north called the Lake District.’

  ‘So why the Agency? It’s a British problem.’

  ‘Wrong, Matt. It’s everybody’s problem, but most especially it’s an American problem. Director Johns wants Fahd back in Saudi Arabia and he wants him back there quickly.

  ‘Johns is mad. If he understood anything about that country he wouldn’t bother. The King’s gone, like the Shah, like King Farouk, like King George out of Boston. There’s been a special revolution with some very special backers and Johns mustn’t imagine we can pull the strings any more. Rahbar is not Thieu or Lon Nol or anyone of the Agency’s puppets. Fahd has lost. So have we. It’s history. Rahbar and his Revolutionary Council have taken over and there’s nothing Johns or the President of the United States can do about it.’ ‘Wrong again, Matt. There’s a lot the President can do, you can bet on it. And there’s a lot he will do. None of us know exactly what, but we’re guessing and the prospects are bright. What we do know for sure is that getting Fahd back on his throne is vital to whatever the President has in mind. You wait for his speech.’

  ‘I said it’d be bullshit.’

  Cheaney leant forward in his seat, rested his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands so that the tips of his fingers touched his nose. For a moment Franklin thought he might be praying.