Nimitz Class am-1

by Patrick Robinson

  Bill shrugged, followed a guard down a short corridor into what he guessed was a private room for senior officers. Around the walls were some excellent marine paintings and on two long tables were scale models, under glass, of Royal Navy submarines. The furniture was comfortable, like a men’s club — leather armchairs, polished side tables, and a leather and brass fender seat around a large fireplace, in which a big, rather garish electric fire glowed falsely at him.

  To the left of the fireplace was another deep leather armchair with a slightly higher back than the others, the kind of stately chair in which one might expect to find Admiral Lord Nelson himself. Instead, there sat the unmistakable figure of Vice Admiral Sir Iain MacLean, wearing a dark gray Savile Row suit, sipping China tea, and reading the Financial Times.

  “Lieutenant Commander Baldridge, sir,” said the guard. The admiral peeped over the top of his half-spectacles, and stood up slowly. He was a tall man, all of six feet two inches, with pale blue eyes, and the kind of lined face which tends to settle upon those who have spent a lifetime at sea. His expression was one of mild amusement, and his handshake rock solid. Bill put him at around sixty. “Good afternoon, Mr. Baldridge,” he said. “I understand you are interested in one of my Perishers.”

  Bill smiled his most disarming Midwestern grin. “Hello, Admiral,” he said. “It’s kind of you to come and meet me.”

  “No question of kindness,” he replied, a bit brusquely. “I was ordered here. On what I suspect was the highest possible authority. Thought I’d done with all that. Now, sit down and let me get you a cup of tea, and I’ll outline what you might describe as my game plan.”

  Bill sat, sipped his tea, and enjoyed the slightly perfumed taste of the Lapsang Suchong. Civilized. Relaxed. He was beginning to admire some aspects of the British way of life.

  “Right,” said Admiral MacLean. “Now it will be inconvenient for me to stay at the base for long. My daughter and her children are coming from Edinburgh for dinner tonight, so I propose that we finish our tea and drive over to my house in Inveraray. As the crow flies it’s only about seventeen miles, but we have to go right round the lochs, which will make it thirty-five miles.

  “It’s not a bad road. We’ll make it in just over an hour. We can go straight up the west bank of Loch Lomond, which you might find interesting. The sun does not set here until about 10 P.M. and it stays light for at least another hour. You can stay at the house for a couple of nights. And I thought we’d pop over to the base tomorrow and I’ll show you around.”

  “Sounds good to me,” said Bill. “In fact that all sounds great.”

  “Good. Well, it’s almost six-thirty. We may as well shove off.”

  The admiral drove a nearly new, dark green Range Rover. In the backseat were a huge bag of golf clubs and three fishing rods. Behind the backseat, a metal grill prevented three large, exuberant, barking Labradors from crashing forward to proclaim their idolization of their master. “Fergus! Samson! Muffin! SHUT UP!” commanded the admiral.

  They swung south, turned left in the middle of Helensburgh, ran for four miles back to the A82, and immediately headed north. Off to their right was the spectacular Loch Lomond, the largest lake in Great Britain, twenty-four miles long from Ardlui in the north to Balloch Castle. The admiral pointed out the big island in the middle of the five-mile-wide southern reach of the loch. “That’s Inch Murrin,” he said. “There’s a big ruined castle right in the middle of it — the Duchess of Albany retired there back in the fifteenth century after King James I slaughtered her entire family. I always thought he was the most frightful shit, you know.”

  Bill Baldridge remarked that Loch Lomond, with its sensational backdrop of rolling mountains — like the coast of Maine off Camden — was just about the most beautiful stretch of water he had ever seen.

  In the south, the giant loch is dotted with picturesque wooded islands, one of them, Inch Cailleach, the site of the ancient burial grounds of the ferocious MacGregor clan, whose most famous son was Rob Roy, the fabled Robin Hood of Scotland. Admiral MacLean kept his guest amused with local history as they headed on up the loch. It was not until they reached the narrow northern waters, within the three-thousand-foot shadow of the great mountain of Ben Lomond, that the Scottish officer broached the subject of his finest Perisher.

  “It’s Adnam you’re interested in, isn’t it?” he said. “I was not told why, but I was asked by FOSM to give you total cooperation. What do you want to know? And, if it’s not too awkward a question, why?”

  “Well, sir, we think it is just possible that the Thomas Jefferson was taken out by a foreign power.”

  “Yes, that was a thought that had crossed my mind. And you think Adnam may have been responsible?”

  “I think we must assume someone was, since there was no other way to hit the carrier apart from a nuclear-tipped torpedo from a submarine.”

  “Yes. I see that. But why Adnam?”

  “Who are our enemies around the Arabian Gulf? The list is small. Iran. Iraq. Libya. Maybe Syria. A couple of rather shaky factions in Egypt and Pakistan. Not really Russia anymore, nor even China. You would then have to say that Libya and Syria simply would not have had the right skills. Nor would Egypt, nor Pakistan. Which leaves Iran and Iraq.”

  “And what’s that got to do with Adnam?”

  “I was rather hoping you might elaborate on that for us,” said Baldridge.

  “That’s an easy one.”

  “It is?”

  “Yes. You’ve left out one of your prime suspects.”

  “We have? Who?”

  “Israel.”

  “Israel! Christ, we finance ’em, don’t we?”

  “Gratitude, Bill, is like beauty, usually in the eye of the beholder. There is a very strong right-wing faction in that country — its most extreme branch took out the Prime Minister seven years ago. They have never forgiven the Americans for allowing Saddam Hussein to bombard them with those Scud missiles during the Gulf War.

  “America, remember, made a promise to Israel. Bush told them that if they would not retaliate for the Scuds, he would take care of Saddam once and for all. Well, I know that in the end the Americans decided, perhaps wisely, to leave Saddam alone. But there are some very angry people in Israel. People who believe, fervently, that no enemy should be allowed to attack Israel in any way whatsoever without paying the most terrible price.

  “These are people who believe, like Margaret Thatcher, that at the very least, Saddam’s military equipment should have been either confiscated or destroyed, and that his bloody Army should have been made to surrender in complete humiliation. Well, President Bush funked it. Saddam actually claimed victory…no amount of American financial cooperation is ever going to erase those events from a true Israeli’s mind.”

  “Well, I know that, sir. But what possible mileage could there be for them in wiping out a U.S. carrier?”

  “Oh, that’s another easy one. They know Iraq would get the blame, and that America would exact a fierce and predictable military revenge. If not Iraq, Iran would get the blame, and suffer the consequences, which the Israelis would almost like more, because Iran, at present, is rather more dangerous. Better yet, you and I both know that this particular American President would not lose one wink of sleep if he had to hit both of them, just to make certain the right one copped it.”

  “Jesus. That’s pretty devious.”

  “There are many devious regimes, Bill Baldridge. But there are no more devious people on this earth than those who work in the Hadar Dafna Building.”

  “The what?”

  “The Hadar Dafna Building. A big tower block in King Saul Boulevard, central Tel Aviv. The home of the Israeli Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations. Known to us outsiders as the Mossad.”

  “You think those guys would dare to blow up a U.S. carrier with six thousand people on board merely to get Iraq or Iran into the deepest possible trouble?”

  “Oh, without doubt,” said the admira
l. “First of all, you have to understand the deep and abiding hatred there is between Iraq and Israel to get the full picture. Remember Saddam Hussein only once possessed a really serious nuclear reactor — that was back in 1981. He got it from the French…it was his most precious possession — Osirak One. It worked in harmony with two other of Saddam’s cherished nuclear plants. Of course he said it was for nuclear power to make electricity, but what he really wanted was the residue from the process, the end product, plutonium, with which he could manufacture nuclear warheads.”

  “Didn’t the Israelis attack one of his plants?”

  “Attack?” said the admiral. “Six of their fighter-bombers streaked in from the north and blew the entire operation to smithereens. In under five minutes, Osirak One was history. The Mossad takes no chances.”

  “Yes…I remember reading about it.”

  “The Mossad is full of people who believe that Israel has no friends. Just enemies, and those who are neutral.

  “I expect you have read in recent months there have been fears about Iraq beginning a new germ-warfare program. Well, in my view, it would not be beyond the wit of the Israelis to blow up a U.S. carrier, secretly, in the fervent hope Iraq would instantly get the blame, and that America would do their dirty work for them.”

  “Yes, but we think Iran is more likely.”

  “As I mentioned, it would delight the Mossad if America chose to take out the Iranian submarines at Bandar Abbas. They have long felt Tehran was getting a lot too big and aggressive for its own good, and might even be capable of another major strike at Iraq…and if they pulled that off, it would give the Ayatollahs almost total control of the Gulf. The Israelis would not like that, not one bit.”

  “I’m not sure we would be mad about it either.”

  “Nor we.”

  By now the Range Rover had swung left across the northern end of Loch Long, and was making fast time through the Argyll Forest. Up to the right was the 2,700-foot peak of The Cobbler, the same mountain Bill had seen as he had approached the Faslane base.

  “We’re about ten miles out now,” said the admiral. “In a moment we will circle around the narrow end of one of the big sea lochs. It’s called Loch Fyne, runs right past our back door, but causes us to make a huge detour whenever we go anywhere. The lochs and the mountains up here are touchingly beautiful, but they add miles and miles to every journey because you always have to go around them. Down at the base, people used to dread having to drive over and see the Americans at Holy Loch. By sea it’s about seven miles — twenty minutes in a fast boat. By road it’s more than forty miles, right around two lochs, down the side of another, and through a range of mountains.”

  “Sir,” said Bill suddenly, “did you develop the Israeli theory just because you knew I was interested in Lieutenant Commander Adnam? Or had you always considered it a real possibility?”

  “Bill, when you are as old as I am, you will have learned that when anything really shocking happens in the Middle East, then you must look very carefully at the Israelis. Consider always their motives, how events will affect them, and remember always they are much cleverer, much tougher, and much more efficient than every other nation in the area.

  “Also do not close your eyes to the fact that both their government and their Secret Service are crammed full of people with very long memories.

  “Inside the government alone, there are women who just over twenty-five years ago stood on the slopes of the Golan Heights, under terrible fire from the Syrian tanks…they struggled through a night of sheer terror, in lines of frightened girl-soldiers passing artillery shells up to the gunners, helping the Israeli 7th Armored Brigade claw back the land, with heartbreaking courage, yard by yard, up those mountains.

  “Take Benjamin Netanyahu, the most eloquent of the senior Israeli politicians in recent years. Remember his brother Jonathan was the only Israeli killed when the Israeli commandos went into Entebbe Airport to rescue the hijacked airliner. Benjamin never got over that, that’s why he is such a fierce nationalist.

  “There are departmental chiefs in the Mossad who fought shoulder to shoulder with General Avraham Yoffe when they smashed their way through the Mitla Pass, with unbelievable bravery, in the Six-Day War in 1967—six days in which the Israelis destroyed four armies and 370 fighter aircraft belonging to four attacking nations.

  “There are men in the Mossad who stood alongside my great friend General Sharon in 1973, men who were wounded as their comrades fought and died in the desert, trying to throw back the armies of Egypt. None of them ever forgot the hand-wringing response of the West after their costly and frightening victory…accused them of bullying — bullying after the Egyptians stormed across the canal with five hundred tanks, just as the entire Israeli nation knelt in prayer, on their most holy day of the year.

  “I don’t want to sound like a retired Israeli general, but I am warning you, and your colleagues, to take a damn close look at anything which might involve the Israelis. I believe it is perfectly possible they might have taken out your carrier — just to watch the U.S.A. exact a fierce revenge on either Iraq or Iran, or for that matter, knowing your President, both of them.

  “Ask me who drove their submarine? I should say without any hesitation — Benjamin Adnam. There are very few commanders who have the talent for such an operation. But he had it. Did he ever.”

  “How good was he, Admiral? What was it about him?” asked Baldridge.

  “I think there was a fanaticism about him. There was something that drove him. He did not just want to be the best in his class, he wanted to be the best there had ever been. He had the most phenomenal memory…the first time I ever tested him on the periscope…you know, giving him a thirty-second all-around look at the surface picture, he could recall every single detail. The submarine commander’s greatest asset is his ability to store a photograph of that view in his mind. Ben Adnam could hold that picture better than anyone I ever taught.

  “He had an instinct for a submarine, for what it would do, and what it wouldn’t. We have one exercise where we send three frigates away, and then have them turn around and come back toward us.

  “The frigates often come straight at the Perishers, so they have to dive to safe depth underneath. They are instructed to do so with exactly one minute to go before collision. Even then, the noise of the frigates’ propellers rumbling overhead is damned nerve-racking. There are always chaps who fail the course right there. You can see them with their eyes shut, praying the overhead warship will not slam into the conning tower.

  “Adnam was absolutely fearless. Consciously so. He knew the distance, he could make all the calculations in his head, quickly and effortlessly. It would never have occurred to him that a frigate could hit his ship. He would have made bloody certain it didn’t.

  “He had his own private sixth sense. I remember standing with him one lunchtime while the frigates were going away. Suddenly, for no reason, he said, ‘I believe the frigates have turned, sir.’

  “Now I knew they had turned. I had discerned the faint change in the Doppler of the sonar. That comes with about twenty years of being a submarine officer and commander. I plainly knew they had turned, but God knows how he knew. Nonetheless, he did. I tested him on it. He was always correct. He was a submarine genius. Of that there is absolutely no doubt.

  “He had a sound grasp of all the workings of the ship underwater…hydrosystems, mechanics, electronics, weaponry, missiles, torpedoes, and gunnery. He could navigate as well. I once lectured them on the art of the classic sprint-and-drift submarine attack. At the end of it he came and had a chat with me about the finer points.

  “No Perisher in my entire experience ever demonstrated a more thorough grasp of the subject. Even at that comparatively young age — around twenty-eight — he was safe. He was steady. And he could handle his machine as a weapon of war.

  “He just had an instinct for underwater warfare, and he was, technically, its master. But there was something more. He
had a gift. And I always knew he was ruthless. I can tell you this, if he had been British, and if he had stayed in the submarine service, he would have become FOSM — and if we had ever had to send the Submarine Flotilla to war, Ben Adnam would have been a very good man to command it.”

  “Aside from that, I guess he was pretty average all around?” chuckled Bill. “Did he have any weakness at all?”

  “Only one.”

  “Oh…what was it?”

  “He was in love with my daughter.”

  The laid-back Kansan manner of Bill Baldridge fell from him in an instant. He turned quickly to the admiral and asked, “Is she still in touch with him?”

  “She is now a highly respectable lady, married to a wealthy Edinburgh banker. Two children.”

  “Yes, but is she still in touch with Adnam?” Bill persisted.

  “I’ve always been afraid she might be,” replied Admiral MacLean. “You can ask her yourself in a minute. She ought to be arriving with the children at about the same time as we do.

  “I always wondered whether their affair went on after she was married, long after he returned to Israel. She once left mysteriously for a short vacation, and my wife found an entry to Cairo in an old passport. However, I shall deny I ever said those last sentences. You’ll have to ask her.”

  “You wouldn’t mind if I did?”

  “Certainly not. If my daughter has a line of communication to perhaps the most ruthless mass murderer in recent history, I will insist she recognizes her duty.”

  At this point the car pulled into the drive of a white Georgian house on the outskirts of Inveraray. Bill guessed that the admiral had not purchased it on the proceeds of his Navy salary, any more than he himself could have purchased the Baldridge Ranch out in Pawnee County. He either inherited this, or else Lady MacLean is loaded, was his considered opinion, as he climbed out of the Range Rover.

  The admiral seemed to read his thoughts. He loosed the three Labradors who charged around the house toward the loch. He grabbed Bill’s suitcase, and said, “Inherited this. It belonged to my father and my grandfather. Family have lived around here for generations. I retired a couple of years ago — they weren’t going to make me First Sea Lord, but they would have offered me Commander-in-Chief Naval Home Command.