H.M.S. Unseen

by Patrick Robinson

  “I would have been pretty goddamned suspicious, that’s what, Kathy. I’d have been drawn to the conclusion that someone had knocked Concorde right out of the sky.”

  “Which leaves us where.”

  “Nowhere, basically.”

  “How about Ben?”

  “Well, no submarine in anyone’s navy has ever possessed the capacity to fire a surface-to-air guided missile that high, that fast, and that accurately. Not even us. And Ben Adnam is a known Iraqi, working for that barbarous but kinda primitive regime.

  “I suppose they might have bought and tested a Russian missile that would have done the job. But it would have needed refining. And their submarine would have required major surgery. They don’t even have a submarine that we know of. They don’t even have any water deep enough to float it in. Hell, the Iraqis don’t even know how to service a submarine, never mind turn it into the most advanced underwater weapons system in the world. So I guess I just don’t know. Maybe the facts are incompatible.

  “The trouble is, Kathy, if we accept there is even a possibility that Concorde was hit by a missile, we have to accept that it must have come from a vanishing submarine. Because there was nowhere else it could have come from. Barring outer space.”

  Monday, February 6.

  Office of the Chief of Naval Operations Admiral

  Joseph Mulligan. The Pentagon, Washington.

  “Arnold, as I live and breathe! To what do I owe the pleasure of this unexpected visit? Good to see you.”

  “I just wanted to have a chat with one of the very few entirely sane minds operating in this neck of the woods.”

  “You might have the wrong office. Bear that in mind…three years in here can really test your powers of logical thought.”

  “Not yours, Joe. How ’bout some coffee. You might need it when you hear my latest theory.”

  “Good call, lemme order some…then we’ll talk.”

  Five minutes later the two men settled into more comfortable chairs and began a discussion that might have sounded eccentric among other Naval officers. But not between these two.

  Admiral Morgan cited the two entirely separate circumstances that had seen “the Brits groping around on the bottom of the ocean.” He outlined his view that the apparently deceased Commander Adnam might not be quite so dead as all that. And that, in his opinion, shared by some very influential others, it was possible that the Iraqi commanding officer might right now be at the helm of the lost HMS Unseen.

  He then cited two other circumstances he considered to be absolute impossibilities. The first was that Unseen had somehow been missed by the Royal Navy after an exhaustive ten-month search, and had in fact sunk. ”Not possible, not even likely; she’s out there somewhere. Stolen.”

  Admiral Mulligan nodded gravely. Then he nodded some more after Admiral Morgan explained his theory that Concorde’s disappearance was, if anything, even more mystifying than Unseen’s. The question he wanted to run by the head of the United States Navy was this: “Do you think it’s possible that the fucking Iraqis have somehow converted a submarine into an antiaircraft guided-missile boat that knocked Concorde out of the sky, bang in the middle of the North Atlantic?”

  Admiral Morgan waited for the big ex-Trident commanding officer to laugh. But Joe Mulligan did no such thing. He stood up and walked around the room, a deep frown on his face. Then he said, “If it was any nation other than Iraq—which knows zero about submarines—I’d have to say yes. But, Arnold, they don’t even own one, and they never have owned one. They could not possibly produce a team capable of operating one. Nor could they possibly manage the modifications. Have you considered the possibility they may have had someone do it for them? It’s just a simple missile system. It’s not brain surgery or anything.”

  “Joe, I had, but I came up with no answers.”

  “Well, let’s think of it now. But before we do, let me run this by you. Antiaircraft missiles on a submarine are not entirely unknown, although there’s never been a diesel boat with the kind of firepower you’re talking about. But there was one…back in the seventies.”

  “There was? Who did it?”

  “The Brits.”

  “They did?”

  “Uh-huh. It was kept very low-key. But it was carried out by an old friend of mine, Royal Navy two and a half, Harry Brazier, Lt. Commander H.L. Brazier. Lovely guy, smart as hell…painted his submarine, an old A-Class boat, with white letters SSG 72 on the fin.”

  Admiral Morgan chuckled, slurped his coffee, and said, “Go on.”

  “Well, the Royal Navy converted that boat, HMS Aeneas she was called. They somehow fitted an old Blowpipe system to the front of the fin. Harry told me all about it. They called it SLAM—submerged launch air missile. The captain aimed it through the search periscope…they had to come to just above PD…fired it from a mounting, a kind of big, bulbous tower which came above the height of the fin. I remember he once showed me a photo…told me they had to remove the gun on the forecasing because of the top-weight.

  “There were four missiles inside that tower, pressurized to keep out the water. It was only a modification to the land, handheld Blowpipe. And it didn’t pack that much of a wallop. The missile only went about 3,000 yards, but they thought it might knock a helicopter out of the sky. Harry told me it was dead easy to do. The only difficulty was making it seatight. But the Vickers engineers did it, and it worked. That boat could come up, slam a helo out of the sky, and vanish without trace. You were essentially left with a guided missile that had been fired from nowhere.”

  “Do you think the Iraqis could have stolen Unseen and made such a conversion in some other place?”

  “I very much doubt it. A missile system that would launch a weapon 10 miles into the air and still keep going, maybe for a total of 40 or 50 miles, would need a pretty good-sized launcher, and a very sophisticated fire-control system. To fit it, you’d need some serious engineering, and deep skills. You’d need high-tech workshops, heavy-lifting gear. All the trimmings. But if you had the system, on board a big supply ship, and a place to work, I don’t think it would be impossible. If you could find a way to engineer it into place in secret.”

  “As I recall, Joe, the Iraqis still have that Stromboli-Class replenishment ship they bought new from the Italians. I forget her name, but she displaced nearly 9,000 tons loaded…she was pretty useful. I suppose a rendezvous between the Stromboli and the submarine is not out of the question…it’s just a matter of where they could have got the conversion done.”

  “Guess so, Arnie. But it’s still a hell of a long shot. I assume you’ve checked the Stromboli’s whereabouts and activities.

  “Yes. She’s out. And I know it’s a long shot. But there ain’t no short shots…right now I’m into long shots. Maybe they got ahold of another ship.”

  The CNO laughed, but he was still very serious. He was about to speak again when the President’s national security advisor stood up, and said swiftly, “Joe I don’t wanna waste your time. But let me ask you one final question, bearing in mind that I think we have just outlined the mere possibility that Ben Adnam might be out in the Atlantic with the most lethal submarine ever built…the world’s first terminally deadly antiaircraft submarine.”

  “Well, you have, Arnie. Go on.”

  “What’s the worst thing that could ever happen, this week?”

  “Dunno.”

  “Come on, Joe. Think. Right now let’s assume Commander Adnam is moving east across the North Atlantic, where he’s been hiding. And now he’s on the move, heading for the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, right out by 30 West. He’s running slowly, 500 feet below the surface. What’s the worst thing he could do?”

  “You mean start knocking passenger airliners out of the sky?”

  “No, Joe. Not any old passenger airliner.”

  The big man hesitated for a few moments…then he said, quietly, “Jesus Christ. Starstriker…”

  “Yes, Joe. Starstriker.”

  “My God,
Arnie. That’s a big ole bone to chew on. You think it’s possible?”

  “Not really. I’m still hung up on the sheer unlikelihood of Iraq being able to make that missile conversion. Besides, there’s not a damn thing we could do about it. The Royal Navy’s Upholder is like the Russian’s Kilo, you can’t hear it at all, unless it’s careless. What could we do? Send out the Atlantic Fleet to hunt it down? They might try for a year and still not find it. No, Joe, I’m afraid it’s too way-out…no facts…just supposition. And you and I can’t operate like that…not on blind guesswork involving a thousand-to-one shot.”

  “Guess not. But it sure as hell was an interesting discussion…You leaving now?”

  “Yup. See you Thursday, Chief…bright and early…and by the way, it might not be that bad an idea to fire up SOSUS to keep a wary eye out for the lost British Upholder. You never know…they’re pretty good up there in those waters.”

  “We’ve done all that, and we got the Brits to hand over her signatures. Hey, before you go…there’s just one thing else I recall about Aeneas. That Blowpipe program was not done for the Royal Navy…it was done for the navy of another nation who paid for the whole development in cash. Harry said the Royal Navy merely borrowed the submarine for the missile-firing trials and took the money.”

  “You don’t happen to remember which nation it was, do you? Maybe they lent the plans to someone recently.”

  “No, Arnie. Harry was never told that. But he always thought it might be Israel.”

  0700. Thursday, February 9.

  Dulles International Airport, Washington, D.C.

  Marie Colton, the svelte, dark-haired forty-five-year-old deputy head of Boeing’s Public Relations Department, had been in action since 0500, overseeing the transformation of the biggest room in the airport. The deadly-serious, inwardly driven California divorcée, must have walked about 300 miles throughout the first-class area before her boss, the tall, laid-back Midwesterner, Jay Herbert, arrived on the scene at 0705.

  At that point, Marie was ordering a group of flower arrangers around as if she were in an armored Panzer division, moving forward on Leningrad. You could not see the carpet for blooms, petals, leaves, and cut stalks. In the background, a six-strong team of long-haired electrical madmen was wiring up an interplanetary sound system to a couple of speakers the size of the Lincoln Memorial.

  “Jesus Christ!” said Jay, protecting his ears from a high-pitched shriek that threatened to render everyone deaf from one end of Fairfax County to the other. And then to Marie, he added, “Everything under control?”

  He intended the question to have an edge of irony to it. But Marie had never been terribly into irony. She possessed the quintessential literal mind. Jay had a policy never to waste a good joke on the female Obergruppenführer of the PR department; but occasionally, in the face of chaos too great to bear, he caved in and let one slip.

  She turned to face him, with a quick deep red smile designed to betray the put-upon hurt of early-morning martyrdom. “Perfectly,” she replied. “I wish you had been here a little earlier.”

  “Oh really?” he replied, caving in to his own sense of humor yet again. “I’m sorry, Marie. I had no idea you’d be so occupied.”

  Thus began the busiest, most important day in the entire history of the Boeing PR department. “Sometimes I think you say things just to upset me,” said Marie. “Which is very unfair when you know how difficult this has all been. And how pressed we are for time.”

  “Ah, but I have inordinate faith in you,” said Jay. “And I know we’re going to see order spring from this chaos inside the next thirty minutes. Either that, or we’re all fired.”

  Marie turned, exasperated, back to the flower arrangers. Jay moved toward his technical director, who was testing the television satellite hookup that would relay live from the cockpit the entire flight of Starstriker 001. “We in good shape, Charlie?” he asked.

  “Yessir. Looking good…here watch this, see that picture there, looking out at the maintenance area of the airport? That’s being filmed right through the cockpit windshield of Starstriker. We got a ship out there off Long Island recording the sonic boom from below…we got the black box wired up to the satellite link. Everyone in this room’s gonna hear every word, while they’re watching the big screens…these guys are gonna think they’re in Starstriker, not just listening and watching.”

  “Looks terrific, Charlie. Sound effects okay?”

  “Yessir. We got the full Dolby wraparound digital system installed. When that baby blasts off the runway, this room is going into a gut-rumbling shudder…just like in a movie…the earth will move.

  “When she breaks the sound barrier that sonic boom is going to rattle the cutlery in here. Then we’re switching right back to the main cabin, where there will be total silence. The pilot is going to mention the boom right before it happens…then he’ll explain how it slips away and how no one inside the aircraft can hear a thing.”

  “Perfect. No glitches, Charlie, for Christ’s sake…we got the President in here and God knows who else. Right now the future of the entire corporation is in your capable hands.”

  “Yessir. Don’t worry. We’re not going to have a problem. Everything is very routine. And we’re well organized. Just sit back, eat your breakfast, and enjoy.”

  “You do good work, Charlie. Keep going.”

  Jay Herbert held down one of the biggest PR jobs in the United States because he never wasted his time on details. His responsibilities were too diverse for that. He delegated carefully, picked his people well, and edited the minutiae out of his life on a daily basis. He did not much like her, but he had hired the Obergruppenführer because he sensed that real detail, feverish pursuit of the apparently unimportant, was her forte. She never forgot anything, her desk was a symphony of lists, and she walked around with a clipboard of the key ones, checking off, adding to, adjusting, arranging, adjudicating.

  “Marie Colton,” Jay would whisper conspiratorially to senior colleagues, “lets nothing through the cracks, and I mean that financially, socially, academically, and probably sexually.” It always got an inexpensive laugh, which was after all a part of the corporate PR head’s job.

  There was just one area of his duties that caused Jay Herbert to become marginally bogged down, and that was copywriting. An ex–Chicago newspaperman, the forty-eight-year-old Jay had been out of journalism for almost twenty years, but he still had the editor’s dire compulsion to cut, change, and rethink other people’s words. He always said it had to do with the natural literary rhythm that ran through his soul, and he found it impossible to deal with any writer who did not march to the beat of that precise same drum.

  As such he drove a succession of advertising-agency executives almost crazy with his insistence on passing, personally, on every sentence of every Boeing brochure, every headline, every cross-head, every descriptive word. He would pore over submitted copy, cutting, editing, improving, forcing advertising men to wonder why the hell he had hired them in the first place, since he plainly wanted to write the stuff himself.

  That day’s brochure, printed and designed in the most expensive color it was possible to use, had taken six months to put together. Jay regarded it as his masterpiece, and it probably was.

  He walked outside into the corridor, to where the big boxes were being opened. Four female assistants were in the process of placing one brochure at each table setting. Another pile was being placed at the entrance table, where each guest would receive a metal Starstriker badge engraved with his or her name.

  Jay could see the front cover of the brochure, glossy white with the legend: STARSTRIKER—STAIRWAY TO THE FUTURE. It was illustrated with a thin line of shooting stars that swept away to a rendition of Old Glory fluttering in the heavens. The PR chief thought it was a knockout.

  It was almost 0730, and Marie Colton had the flowers under control. The horticultural mess had vanished, and the room was spectacular. The miles of electrical wires that had trav
ersed the floor a few minutes earlier had also vanished. The two big cinema-sized screens were in place diagonally across two corners of the great room, ensuring that everyone could see everything.

  Jay had a quick conference with the catering boss to make certain absolutely anything anyone could desire for breakfast was available. The top table was laid with a milk white tablecloth, on which were placed jugs of orange juice and bowls of fruit. Baskets for toast, hot rolls, and Danish pastries were everywhere. All of the waitresses were dressed as international airline stewardesses, the waiters as pilots.

  The sixteen guests at the top table would be the President of the United States, John Mulcahy, Senator Kennedy and their wives, plus Admiral Arnold Morgan and Robert Macpherson. Then, interspersed, would be seated Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Scott Dunsmore, plus the three separate service chiefs, including, of course, Admiral Mulligan, all with wives. An Air Force band was tuning up in a corner of the room. A 25-foot-long model of the new supersonic aircraft was suspended from the ceiling.

  The two other main tables, each of which seated forty-eight people, were placed at right angles to the VIP group, and everyone was seated democratically, senators, congressmen, business leaders, potential customers, and show-business personalities. Behind these was a long narrow press table on which were seated, facing the screens, twenty-four media heavy hitters: a half dozen top columnists, six stars of television news, six editors, and six proprietors, all handpicked by Jay Herbert.

  Outside, beyond the doors of the great room, was another whole press area with its own screens and tables, buffet refreshments, and a zillion telephones and computer terminals. The press and public launch of Starstriker would bang a hole in a million dollars. The place was already crawling with Secret Servicemen.

  Shortly after 0735 the guests began to arrive. And, as they did so the cinema screens came to life, the one on the left showing the scene outside the door with a detailed announcement of who each person was. “Ladies and gentlemen we are pleased to welcome now Sir John Fredickson, Chairman and Chief Executive of British Airways, and Lady Fredickson, both of whom arrived last night from London…”