“Sure are…I miss it all sometimes, you know, Iain…that’s not a complaint. Laura and I are very happy running the ranch, and it’ll be great having the girls there for a vacation…but there are times…times when I see an item about the Navy in the newspaper and think about how I would tackle it. There’s not a better life when you’re single, and free, and the issues are international…and you feel you’re helping to run the world.”
“I know, Bill. I miss it, too. I suppose we all do after we leave. But some of us never quite take off the dark blue, eh?”
“Not quite, sir,” said Bill to the senior officer, who this time raised no objection.
By midday, on the other side of Loch Fyne, Ben Adnam had somewhat recovered from his tortured night. He had opened the curtains wide at first light and slept in bright sunlight for most of the morning, missing breakfast altogether. He decided on a quick cup of coffee, which he sipped downstairs in front of the fire. Then he decided to attack his all-time record of fifty-one minutes to St. Catherine’s and back.
This required him to reach the halfway turning point in twenty-four minutes—six minutes per mile—because the second half was always slower. And he set off along the loch, running hard on the flat surface of the A815.
The trouble was, his heart simply was not in it. And he found himself dawdling, looking at the water rather than his watch, and he jogged into St. Catherine’s five minutes late, which in his mind defeated the object of the exercise. So he sat on a stone wall looking across at Inverary, while he caught his breath.
And once more his thoughts returned to the darkest side of his life, to the monstrous acts of destruction he had perpetrated. And again he was haunted by the one question he could no longer answer: “For Whom Did I Do It?” And he was afraid there was no answer, because there was no one to whom he could defer in the matter of his deeply held religious beliefs.
He did not doubt Allah, nor did he doubt the Prophet, nor indeed the Koran. His worry was that he had performed his great tasks without Allah approving what he was doing. He had been taught that the senior clerics of the Muslim faith, the mullahs and the Ayatollahs, were not in direct touch with God, but were merely teachers, learned men who were there to study the Koran and to guide their fellow Muslims in the words of the Prophet Mohammed. He understood thoroughly that all Muslims must find their own faith, because there can be no direct word, through the mullahs or the Ayatollahs.
He could not possibly defer to the President of Iraq, for whom he had operated for most of his life. And, despite feeling very much at home in Iran, the clerics of that country had not hesitated to cut him off from his reward, the minute it suited them.
Who, then, was he? Just a terrorist who would operate for anyone? Was he some kind of an international criminal? A hit man? A mercenary? Because, should that be so, he was uncertain whether he could live with it. Ben Adnam was a man who believed in his own higher calling. And that profoundly held philosophy was in ruins. He did not know what to do, nor where to go. And there was one problem that would not go away: He was, without question, the most wanted man in the world.
He gazed across the flat, dark, shining waters of Loch Fyne. It was almost 2 miles wide at his present location. But it was a very bright, cold, cloudless day, and Ben could see for a long way. Snow still shone on the high peak of the “submariner’s mountain,” The Cobbler, 9 miles to the east, and Ben could see it up across the huge pines of the Argyll Forest. It reminded him, as everything in that place did, of days long past, especially those days when he had returned to the Clyde estuary in a Royal Navy submarine, watching for the mountain to signify that they were almost home.
Now he had no home. And The Cobbler was still there. And so was all the grand and glorious scenery on the other side of the loch, the steep lightly wooded foothills that sloped up to Cruach Mohr, which he could also see, towering over the land behind Inverary Castle.
Directly across the water was the great white mansion of his Teacher, the father of the only girl who had ever loved him. Alone in his desolation, Ben stared at the far bank, trying to see the house where once she had lived, but there were trees to the north of the grounds, he remembered, and it would be hard to catch a glimpse of the building.
It was strange how he was suddenly drawn back to the memory of Laura MacLean, just when he was not only the most wanted, but also the most unwanted, man in the world. They say that men about to face a firing squad, or the noose, or the electric chair, often cry out “Mummy” as they go to meet their Maker. And Ben wondered if that might not be the reason he so yearned for Laura. Was it just a helpless, despairing cry for unconditional kindness. Although he was not sure she could deliver that anymore. The brutal truth was, there was no one else.
And he sat on the wall, in the sharp chill of the early Highland spring, knowing that she was far away with Douglas Anderson, but unable to tear himself away from the sight of the place where once she had lived. He felt like a jilted lover, the kind who cherish a masochistic desire to stand secretly and watch the home of their former wife, or girlfriend. Just for a glimpse, just for even a thought-flash of remembered joy, and passion. In the desperate million-to-one hope of a chance meeting, and instant reconciliation, the ungrasped straw of the terminally hopeless.
Wearily, Ben picked himself up and turned back down the loch, running hard, trying to drive the demon of Laura from his soul, as if he ever could. But he had to get back to the inn. He had ordered lunch for 1345, homemade soup and a grilled Dover sole, and he needed fuel. In the afternoon, before dark, he would attack his St. Catherine’s record again. And then he would concentrate. If he could.
The bar was fairly empty, but the fire was crackling, and the landlady was unfailingly cheerful. They talked for a while about his work in the South African mining business. And he explained why he was here after a lifetime in the perfect climate of Pietermaritzburg. “My grandfather was a Highlander,” he told her. “And my wife died recently. I just wanted to come here for a month and feel my roots, visit a few little villages in the area. Someone told me how beautiful Loch Fyne was, and someone else told me about this place. Here I am, for another few days…rested and fit. And I’ve enjoyed every moment of it.”
He liked the people who owned Creggans. They were never intrusive, and allowed him all the space he wanted. They worked on the old Scottish theory that if a man wants company, he’ll ask for it. There’s never a need to intrude. To some visitors this private, standoffish view of the world is precisely what leads to Scotsmen being describe as dour. But to Ben Adnam it was a godsend. And in a few days he would vanish from this place forever, remembered, he hoped, by very, very few people.
He decided to cancel the afternoon run and instead to take the car and drive the 28 miles up to the northern point of Loch Awe, the thin, 23-mile long serpent of Highland water, at the head of which stood the fifteenth-century castle of Kilchurn, and the great brooding mountain of Ben Cruachan. It stood 3,700 feet above the loch, and Ben was resolved to walk to its peak someday, to claim what was widely regarded as the best view in Scotland. Ben climbs Ben, as it were. But probably not that day; and he put his binoculars in the car in case he just wanted to look down at the magical waters of the heavily wooded, deepwater fisherman’s paradise. In the back of his mind he also thought he might have a further use for the binoculars on the way back. But it was a thought he refused to recognize.
There was little traffic, and the Audi made short work of the journey. Ben gazed at the towering bulk of the mountain and decided to walk quietly around the castle instead. He climbed the stairs to the huge turrets and tried to imagine the force of the gale that had destroyed one of them, on that terrible night after Christmas in 1879, when the Tay Rail Bridge in Dundee was also demolished. He inspected the old turret, and then he walked to see the view from atop the castle, right down the long, straight waters of the loch. It was, as the guidebook said, truly spectacular.
Finally, he returned to the car, to drive, he kn
ew, to the east bank of Loch Fyne, to look across the water to the house where Laura used to live.
It was growing dark by the time he arrived at his observation post on the edge of the road. A soft tallow mist was already gathering in the central channel of the loch, and it would obscure his view of the grandiose MacLean mansion. But it was still pretty good. The high-powered glasses magnified the far bank many times, and Ben could see the lawn running down the water. He and Laura had walked along that bank before dinner on the one night he was invited.
Ben focused, and he could see the lawn clearly. He could also see two or maybe three figures moving toward the loch. But it was too far. He could not make them out, and he guessed it was his old Teacher, Commander MacLean, perhaps with his wife and an early-arriving weekend guest. He remembered the family did a lot of private entertaining. But what Ben really wanted to know was the whereabouts of Laura. And he had no way to overcome the obdu-rate stupidity of that thought. His mind ranged over a succession of ludicrous options associated with such a reunion.
1) Take out Douglas Anderson, and maybe she would come with me, to where?
2) Try to charm her, persuade her to see me. No possibility. We both knew it was over the last time we met.
3) Kidnap her, and beg for a second chance.
Forget it, Ben. It cannot happen…but if I could just see her…
He stared across the water, at the green of the MacLean lawn, and wondered again where she was. Never had he known himself so acutely irrational. But he had nothing else to do, and he had no idea where to go.
The end of the afternoon on the other side of the loch saw the admiral, Bill, and Laura, dressed warmly, strolling back across the lawn after a long walk down the shore. Both of the visitors had found the conversation riveting, because Iain MacLean was telling them in a perfectly matter-of-fact way, that he and Arnold Morgan both believed that Ben Adnam was still alive. At that point in the talk, Bill Baldridge almost fell into the loch.
“Alive?” he said. “How could that be? The Mossad took him out in Cairo, didn’t they? Jesus, I’ve got his badge, Admiral Morgan’s seen the documents, so’ve the Israelis. They’ve got his passport. They have his personal Navy record, the one he owned, with his entire career on it.”
“All true,” replied Admiral MacLean. “The trouble is none of them have seen the body. You’ll remember that Ben was, apparently, assassinated by two people who’d never laid eyes on him. They left with the dead man’s papers, but the Egyptian police took the body, and it was cremated. As Admiral Morgan is rather fond of saying, the Mossad have no idea whether they took out Ben Adnam or Genghis Khan.”
Bill laughed. But he was thoughtful. “And what gave rise to this sudden desire to exhume the Israeli commander?”
“Ah, that’s another story,” replied the admiral. “I’ll tell you at dinner. Come on, let’s go in and have some tea…we’ve walked far enough for one day.”
“Do you really think he’s still alive, Daddy?”
“Quite frankly, yes I do.”
“Try to remember, darling,” said Bill soothingly. “Should he call, don’t forget to let us know.”
Dinner that night was a re-creation of the feast Bill had enjoyed when first he had come to visit the admiral back in 2002, the time when he had first met Mrs. Laura Anderson. There was a magnificent poached salmon, with mayonnaise, potatoes, and peas. A bottle of elegant white Burgundy from Mersault and a superb bottle of Lynch Bages 1990 were set in the middle of the table. Bill remembered two things about his first dinner at the MacLeans—one that the admiral never served a first course with salmon, because he believed everyone would much rather have “another bit of fish if they were still hungry.” Two, the admiral preferred to drink Bordeaux with salmon, as did Laura, which left Lady MacLean to deal with the Mersault.
Of the many other differences between the previous time and this one, the most striking was the lack of a view. In that hot July when his heart raced at the very sight of Laura, he had been able to see right down the loch while they dined, and he recalled Sir Iain pointing out through the window the little village of Strachur over on the Cowal Peninsula,
On this occasion it was just as charming but different. There was a glowing log fire in the 50-foot-long dining room, and the big patterned brocade curtains were drawn. Lights were switched on above the six paintings that hung from the high walls, three ancestors, one nineteenth-century racehorse, a stag, probably at bay, and a pack of hounds in full flight. Otherwise, the only light in the room came from the eight lighted candles, set in obviously Georgian silver holders, which Bill thought probably came with the house.
As before, he sat next to Laura, facing Annie MacLean, the two girls having had an early supper in order to watch television in Laura’s old nursery.
The salmon was as good as the last time, when it was the best Bill had ever tasted. The Lynch Bages was perfect, and the admiral was amusing, recounting tall stories about Arnold Morgan’s visit several months ago.
“What precisely did he come here for?” asked Bill.
“Well, I think he wanted to get away for a week or so with that extremely attractive lady he plans to marry.”
“Kathy? Yes, she is very beautiful, isn’t she?”
“Absolutely,” said Sir Iain. “I told him she was probably a bit too good for him really. And he took it very well, for him.”
“But what else, Iain? Tell me more.”
“Well, Bill, I suppose you, if anyone, is entitled to know this. And so indeed is your wife. I have been wondering whether to break this to you gently or just to come straight out with it. And I’ve decided on the latter course. Arnold Morgan and I think that Ben Adnam has stolen, and now commands, the missing Royal Navy submarine HMS Unseen, and that he has been sitting in the middle of the Atlantic, underwater, banging out jet airliners, including Concorde, Starstriker, and Air Force Three.”
As showstoppers go, that one went. Laura choked on her Lynch Bages, and Bill dropped his fork on the table with a clatter.
But he recovered, quickly. “Oh, nothing serious,” he said. “I was thinking it might be something important.”
“Oh, no,” said the admiral, “very routine. Just the sort of thing he might do, don’t you think?”
“Well, assuming he managed to jump off that Egyptian funeral pyre, I’d say most definitely. Right up his alley. Any evidence, or are you and Arnold going in for thriller writing?”
“Actually, there isn’t much evidence, except circumstantial. But there’s a lot of it, and, very curiously, Arnold and I stacked it up quite separately, on different sides of the Atlantic, and arrived at precisely the same conclusion.”
“Might I ask when Arnold arrived here?”
“Yes. Last May. A few weeks after Unseen went missing. He came here with a real bee in his bonnet about it. And his reasons, as you would expect, were pretty good. He considered first that the submarine had not been found by the Royal Navy, despite the use of God knows how many ships, all the most modern sonar, and underwater diving equipment in a relatively narrow, shallow section of the English Channel. It was obviously not there. He thus reasoned that it had left its exercise area, and that it had been deliberately driven out of that area by someone else. Not, he decided, by the British lieutenant commander who was in charge.
“Therefore, he considered the ship had been either hijacked or stolen, and he went for the second option. Unseen sent all the right signals back, as soon as she left Plymouth; therefore, her CO knew what they were and he knew how to send them. Ben Adnam? I taught him all that; I even taught him how to drive an Upholder-Class boat, which Unseen is.”
“Hmmmm,” said Bill. “And then…?”
“Well, she vanishes and is never heard from again. But then the Concorde falls out of the sky, for no reason whatsoever. The most brilliantly maintained aircraft on the North Atlantic suddenly vanishes without a word. Then, a matter of days later, Starstriker falls out of the sky on her maiden voyage. A bran
d-new, tried and tested prototype that Boeing swear by, an aircraft that’s been under guard for weeks, no passengers, just crew, falls straight into the Atlantic without a word. Same place, 30 West, right on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the very best place in all the ocean to hide a submarine.
“And then Air Force Three. Virtually new. Flown by one of the best pilots in the United States Air Force. Vanishes, and I hear on the grapevine, there were smoke trails spotted, of the kind that might fit a missile.”
“One major point, Iain. Unseen has no weapon that would fire such a missile. Neither does any other submarine in the world. Such a system would have to be custom-made and fitted…I think.”
“Well, Bill, I think Arnold believes the Iraqis found a way, and did fit such a system. I intended to ask you what you thought might be feasible.”
“I suppose one of those advanced Russian SAMs might do it…maybe the Grumble Rif. It’d have to be radar-guided. Heat-seeking wouldn’t do it, because the supersonics would be going too fast. Come to think of it, you could probably adapt the submarine’s regular radar just to a part of the system, the launcher and the missiles. Then you could catch the aircraft coming in…just in the normal way. Then send the bird away right off the casing, to the correct altitude, and let the missile’s own radar in the nose cone do the rest. Couldn’t miss if it was done right.”
H.M.S. Unseen (1999) Page 32