Nimitz Class am-1

by Patrick Robinson

  “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.”

  “But you don’t know what his standards are, Mum,” said Laura.

  “Neither,” said Mum, “do you.”

  There was something knowing in that remark. Bill picked it up, and so did Laura. They did not look at each other. But their thoughts were intertwined. And they both knew that, too, without looking anywhere.

  The admiral sipped his tea, read his paper, grunted but once. “Damn U.S. stock market. Goes up fifty or sixty points one day, then falls back fifty or sixty points the next. Been doing it for two weeks. Needn’t have opened at all. Save everyone a lot of trouble.”

  They left for the George at seven o’clock, Laura driving the Range Rover up to the village and past the church. Admiral MacLean ordered a minor detour, and pointed out the town jetty, showing Bill where his old submarine mooring had been. “We used to stop out there overnight, and then come into the pub for a few drinks when we were exercising in the loch,” he said. “This is a very strange little village for a submariner, because the first thing you see is a rowing boat containing His Grace the Duke of Argyll and his ghillie. He calls on visiting submarines in his capacity as Admiral of the Western Isles.

  “It used to be quite a ceremony. We’d pipe the duke aboard and give him a dram of whisky, and he’d tell us what was happening locally. He once told me his wife was the constable of Scotland. I suppose that might apply to any wife of any duke of Argyll. It’d be rather amusing if one of ’em married a chorus girl, don’t you think?”

  The George itself had a beamed low ceiling and was almost empty. The steaks were excellent, and a couple of bottles of red wine were perfectly good. Bill insisted on paying, and said the President of the United States would be furious if he encroached upon the MacLean hospitality for one more evening. His last evening. Tomorrow he must begin his journey to Russia.

  Back at Inveraray Court, Lady MacLean took charge. “I’m taking my husband to bed immediately,” she said, laughing. “Barrow today, Edinburgh yesterday, eight here for dinner on Sunday night. Fishing all day on the Tay on Saturday. Golf at Turnberry last Friday. He’ll be too tired for the Bosporus. Night, you two. I expect you’ll find a way to amuse yourselves for another hour.”

  “And don’t drink all of that expensive port,” muttered the admiral as he clumped up the stairs. “See you tomorrow. Early, Bill. I’m driving you over to the base. They’ve got a man to take you on to the airport.”

  Bill and Laura retired to the study, where the American put a couple of logs on the remains of the fire, and Laura slipped La Bohème onto the CD player. “Nothing too advanced for you, Inquisitor,” she teased. “Don’t they call this the beginner’s opera?”

  “They do. And it is still probably my favorite, although I know I’m supposed to grow out of it.”

  Laura said, “Mine too,” as she poured two glasses of Taylor’s ’47, and handed one to her guest. With Herbert von Karajan’s Berlin Philharmonic in the background, they sat quietly in the big chairs on either side of the fireplace, and sipped the admiral’s vintage port. Pavarotti’s Rodolfo and Mirella Freni’s Mimi completed the musical spell, woven almost a hundred years ago in northern Italy by Giacomo Puccini.

  The time slipped by very quickly. They talked of music, and of Kansas, and of Ben Adnam. Laura shook her head despondently. The Israeli officer she had once loved was now the most wanted man on earth.

  Absentmindedly, she remarked, “And now the two men in this house are planning to go off on some suicidal mission in Turkey…all because of bloody Ben. I don’t want you two to die. And I don’t really want you to go to Russia tomorrow either.”

  “But, Laura,” Bill said, “you have to go back to Edinburgh. And I have to catch Ben’s submarine.”

  Laura stared at him hard for the second time that day. Her green eyes were open wide, and she said again, very firmly, “I still don’t want you to go to Russia tomorrow.”

  Bill Baldridge was silent for a few moments, as the implications slowly sank in. Then he asked her, “Would it make any difference if I told you I’d rather be going to Russia with you, than without you?”

  “Yes,” she said, “it would make a difference. It would turn a situation I already find difficult into one which I would find almost impossible.”

  “Laura, I recognize real danger when I see it. I have taken a few risks in my career, and sitting here discussing the immediate possibility of absconding with the married daughter of a senior British admiral, while I am on official U.S. Navy duty for the President of the United States, is not only beyond all my known limits…it’s way beyond yours as well.”

  They sat and stared together, and while Rodolfo and Mimi made their respective confessions of love just beyond the horizon, Lieutenant Commander Baldridge heard himself saying the words he suspected would have a major bearing on his life. “Laura,�
�� he told her, “I’m leaving the Navy when this mission is completed. At which time I’ll be back in Kansas, a free man answering to no one. Would you like to stay in touch with me until that time, as best we can?”

  “Yes, I would.”

  Laura stood up and brought over the decanter of port, and poured a little into each of their glasses. As she did so, she bent to kiss him for the first time. It was a swift and electrifying moment. Laura stood up and looked down at him. She caught her breath, pushed her hair off her face, and said, “You are a very beautiful man, but for the moment, anyway, I’m staying up here on the moral high ground.”

  They finished their port almost in silence, smiling gently at each other. The iron link which bound them was made. Laura sent Bill to his room while she took the glasses to the kitchen. She retired fifteen minutes later, and all through a largely restless night, she refrained from considering the perilous journey through the mine field of the creaky passage outside her parents’ room, to that of the American Naval officer.

  The following morning the admiral drove Bill away, before Laura was awake. The two men supposed they would meet in Istanbul on September 6. Meanwhile Bill would stay in touch via the Northwood office, to which he was now headed.

  Collection of visas, tickets, and cash took him a few hours to complete during the morning in London. Admiral Elliott had provided a car and driver at the airport, and during the afternoon had proved a fountain of information.

  He had spoken to the Turkish admiral, and informed him that he would like to run an Upholder Class submarine through the Bosporus on the surface for a goodwill visit to a couple of Russian ports.

  No problem there. But the Turk had nearly done a double take when FOSM ventured that the British submarine might like to make the return journey underwater. But he saw no real harm in it for the Turkish nation. Perhaps a collision, for which they would be amply compensated. But not much else to worry him. There would be no nuclear weapons on board, and he would be firming up friendships with both the U.S. and the Royal Navy. Also, he would be glad of whatever information there was, after the mission was completed.