H.M.S. Unseen

by Patrick Robinson

  Ben Adnam reasoned he had ten times the chance of slipping through the U.S. desk in Shannon, with a return ticket and a new American business visa, than he ever would in an American port of entry, where the CIA might already be watching every incoming passenger from Scotland and England.

  He arranged for and prepaid his Dublin hotel, which he understood was just a short walk from the U.S. Embassy in Ballsbridge. He strolled back to the Balmoral to pick up the Audi, phoned his bank and told them to send his credit cards overnight to the Berkeley Court in Dublin. Then he tipped the doorman, slung his bag on the rear seat, and set off south out of Edinburgh, heading for the long, lonely A7 road that runs down through Galashiels and Hawick, 100 miles to the English border city of Carlisle.

  It took him a couple of hours to get to the grim Scottish wool town of Hawick, trailing a line of three trucks in pouring rain for most of the way. Thankfully, Ben watched them peel off in the middle of the town, and was pleased to hit the open road, south of the great cashmere center.

  It had stopped raining, and Ben was able to drive fast down the almost empty winding highway as it followed the tortuous course of the Teviot River for mile after mile, through spectacular border valleys and hillsides. South of Langholm, the A7 picks up a new river, the Esk, and again follows its twisting course through the stark border mountains, the grazing fields for cattle and sheep, deep green below the level of the road.

  At Longtown the Esk swung away to the west to its long estuary at the head of the Solway Firth. Ben pressed on south for 6 more miles, before joining the fast, wide M6 motorway, which would take him almost 200 miles into the Midlands of England, the backbone of his journey.

  He reached Penrith, the gateway to the Lake District by 1530, the Audi now cruising at 80 mph east of the long rolling hills that guard the high waters of Ullswater, Haweswater, and Lake Windermere. He refueled at the Tebay service station, picked up a sandwich and a cup of coffee, and drove on south.

  From there the M6 skirts the waters of Morecambe Bay opposite Barrow-in-Furness, recent home of HMS Unseen. But the relentless southward progress of the freeway offers no opportunity for sightseeing, and Commander Adnam just kept driving through northwest England, past Lancaster, past Blackpool, Preston, Southport, and Wigan, past Warrington, Manchester, and Liverpool, past Newcastle-under-Lyme, Stoke-on-Trent, and Stafford. All the way to Birmingham, where the M6 splits into the M5, the fast road to Bristol, 90 miles farther south. Ben made it by 2100, crossing the great span of the Severn Road Bridge into Wales twelve minutes later.

  He paid the toll and pulled into the Magor service station where he refueled, parked, and found a quiet table near the window for supper. He glanced at the plates of the other diners, careful to select food that would not fix his presence in the memory of the waitress. Bewildered, as always, by the eating habits of the English public, he ordered fish, chips, fried eggs, and baked beans like just about everyone else.

  With Bill, Laura, and the two girls now well on their way to Chicago, Admiral MacLean and his wife had a peaceful, elegant dinner of grilled river trout, new potatoes and spinach, accompanied by a bottle of Sancerre. They each had a glass of port at the table while they finished the final edges of a full Stilton cheese.

  Lady MacLean retired early, but the admiral was very restless. Finally having moved over to his study to read the newspaper in front of the dying log fire, he stood up and dialed the number for Galashiels Manor, which was answered by the butler.

  “Oh, good evening, Beresford. This is Iain MacLean. I wonder, is either Mr. or Mrs. Anderson still about?”

  “Oh, good evening, sir. I’m very sorry, but they’ve gone to France for a few days. But Mr. Douglas will be in London next Tuesday, I believe.”

  “Oh, that’s a pity. Still it wasn’t important. Just a quick question I wanted to ask him…will he be staying at the club?”

  “I believe so. But I could not be sure.”

  “Very well, Beresford…thank you anyway…good-night to you.”

  There was a very worried frown on the face of the admiral as he made his way to bed.

  Ben Adnam checked his watch. It was almost 2230 as he pulled onto the slip road from the service station and entered the M4, which runs almost the entire length of the South Wales coastline, way beyond Swansea and into West Wales. It was pitch-dark, and beginning to rain again. The motorway was busy, and the Iraqi found the Welsh-language road signs highly confusing. It was a language that made Arabic look simple, and he stuck to the middle traffic lane, not going too fast, watching the big white lettering that signified he was passing Newport, then Cardiff, then Pontypridd, then Bridgend, Maesteg, Port Talbot, Neath, and Swansea. This was the old industrial heartland of Wales, the southern end of the steep valleys, from which they once mined the finest shipping coal in the world, Welsh anthracite.

  Ben Adnam had learned much about rugby football while studying in Scotland, and he recognized the names of those towns and mining villages, almost every one of them with a place in the folklore of world rugby. Beyond Swansea he watched for the signs for Llanelli, the West Wales mining town reputed to have produced more world-class stand-off-halves than all the rest of the British Isles put together.

  Ben had watched the Royal Navy play rugby several times and remembered meeting three of the massive tight forwards, all of them submariners, all of them from Wales. Irrationally he wondered if they might be living near there, and whether their lives were less lonely than his. He would have given anything for a conversation, with anyone, even with Able Seaman Berwyn James, the big, cheerful 1988 Navy forward from Neath, whose neck measured 24 inches, whose forehead was nonexistent, and whose IQ was only a shade higher than plant life. Ben remembered Berwyn well.

  The M4 ended to the northeast of Llanelli, and he sped down toward Carmarthen, slashing through the rain at 75 mph He’d have liked to cruise at 90 mph plus, which the car would have managed with ease, but this he did not do. Leaving an inevitable trail, which must be uncovered within a month, maximum, was one thing; getting arrested by the police for speeding on that night would have been crass.

  The roads were deserted down there in West Wales, and now the signposts were beginning to pinpoint the port of Fishguard. Ben raced past St. Clears at midnight, still heading due west. At 0030 he turned north at Haverfordwest, for the last 15 miles of the 560-mile journey. Cardigan Bay and the ferry port lay due north before him. The fish and chips lay heavily upon the stomach of a weary Commander Adnam.

  The traffic, even in the small hours of the morning, grew much heavier, and Ben found himself in a convoy of trucks all trundling up the narrow, winding road between fields of unseen sheep, to the ferry. Those last 15 miles took him forty-five minutes, and the rain and spray made it impossible even to contemplate overtaking. The line of traffic meandered through ghostly quiet Welsh villages like Tangiers, Treffgarne, Wolf’s Castle, Letterstone, Newbridge, and Scleddau before the trucks turned left along the country road that bypasses Fishguard and leads down to the port.

  Ben decided to go straight into the middle of Fishguard and look for a gas station, and at 0115 he drove into the desolate town square and began to follow the signs to the ferry. He was surprised at the height of the town, which seemed to be perched on a giant headland above the cold waters of the Irish Sea. He could see the harbor lights, way below, down a steep, curving road, and out to the west of the harbor wall he could see the huge lighted bulk of Stena Line’s massive car ferry, the Beatrix Königin.

  There was one gas station open along the wharf, and he filled up the Audi to ensure that when he arrived in early-morning Ireland he had a full tank for his journey. Then he made his way to the ferry, showing his ticket at the kiosk and collecting his boarding pass. The route took him through the customs shed, and a police officer stepped from the shadows and beckoned him to stop. Ben did so and wound down the window.

  “British passport, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  “Straight ahead.” The
officer did not ask to see it.

  Outside the ferry-port shop a line of half a dozen early arrivals waited in their cars. But Ben got out and went inside to buy a cup of coffee. But he did not linger. He tipped in a couple of small packets of sugar, stirred, and returned to the car, where he sat and sipped, and contemplated the world that lay ahead of him.

  At 0210 they called the drivers forward, and, in a long, snaking line, they made their way a half mile along the dock, with the harbor waters to their right and the streetlights of Fishguard high above to the east. Seamen ordered each of the 27 cars into a designated place, deep in the hold, balancing the weight on the port and starboard sides of the nine-deck-high ferry.

  The trucks boarded ten minutes later, by which time Commander Adnam had made his way, following the signs, to the executive lounge up on deck eight. It was warm, deserted, and comfortably furnished. He sank into an armchair and drifted off to sleep before he even had time to remove his coat. He did not stir until the ship was under way, reversing out of its berth, then moving forward, to the north, around the long harbor wall into the easterly waters of the Irish Sea. Subconsciously Ben could tell they were just leaving. He could easily pick up the changing beats of the engines, as the Beatrix settled onto her westerly course, running through the sheltered waters, with the rugged, towering cliffs of the wave-washed coast of Pembrokeshire a mile off their port beam.

  He sensed that the rain had stopped, and he walked out onto the windswept upper deck, staring over the rail at the strange moonlit coast of Wales, feeling again the old familiar rise of the ocean beneath the keel. He had already studied the route on a map he bought in Scotland, and he leaned forward on the rail, peering into the darkness for the lights of perhaps another ship.

  But that part of the Irish Sea was deserted. And he waited alone, watching for the flashing light of the lighthouse on Strumble Head, which he knew was the end of the land, the point where the giant ferry would enter the rough open waters of St. George’s Channel, where the great Atlantic swells roll in from the southwest.

  He felt the waters before he saw the light, felt the angle of the ship increase just slightly as she pitched slowly forward, then rose with the wave, hesitating, then angling down, the foam white spray slashing out wide from a great curl of water off her bow, as she drove her way westward.

  Now he could see the light on Strumble Head. Four short flashes, then a seven-second gap, and four more.

  The commander walked back inside, feeling, curiously less tense than he had all day. The feeling of the open sea, where he was used to being the acknowledged master, had a calming effect. It was, he understood, home. The only home he had ever had. And, possibly, the only home he ever would have.

  He sank back into the armchair and closed his eyes. Sleep engulfed him immediately and when he next awakened it was a little after 0530. Along the wide companionway at the end of his lounge was a big right-angled ship’s bar that served alcohol, soft drinks, coffee, and biscuits. A few passengers were scattered, mostly sleeping, at various tables. No one was speaking.

  Ben strolled along and sat at one of the high barstools, and ordered black coffee and a small package of shortbread, which had a Scottish tartan emblem on the wrapper. He remembered them from Faslane, and he munched them slowly, thinking again of his days training with the young British submarine officers at Commanding Officers’ Qualifying, all of them under the all-seeing but fair eye of the young Commander MacLean, the Teacher. He smiled despite himself, despite everything.

  Five more minutes went by before his daydreams were interrupted. An unshaven young man, no more than nineteen, dressed in a cheap, black-leather jacket, jeans, and running shoes, came and sat one stool away and ordered a pint of Guinness. Except that he just said, “stout,” pronouncing it “stoht,” but the barmen knew what he meant, and, slowly allowing the creamy head to settle, placed the glass of jet-black Irish nectar before the young man.

  “Good lock,” he said, then, turning to Ben, added, “Will you have a jar?”

  It was not until that moment that Ben realized the young man was extremely drunk, and would be a bit lucky to make it to the car deck, never mind the road out of Rosslare. “No, I won’t thank you,” he said. “It’s a bit early for me.”

  “Early? Jaysus, I t’ought it was a bit late.”

  Ben smiled. The Irishman was a handsome kid, with black hair and a narrow, serious face. He smoked deeply, taking inward breaths that pulled the tobacco fumes deep into his lungs. Ben judged him to be a man with a lot on his mind, despite his youth.

  “Now what might you be doing on this terrible bloody ship at this time of the night?” he asked with that disarming frankness of the Irish.

  “I missed the earlier ferry, and had to hang around Fishguard,” replied Ben. “How about yourself?”

  “I’ve been attending to a bit of business. Late finish. Had to get down from London on the train. Takes for bloody ever. You change at Swansea.”

  “Should have got a plane,” said Ben.

  “Not worth it. Costs a fortune. And I live in the south. Waterford. When I’m there, like. Someone’ll pick me up at Rosslare.”

  Ben had not had a harmless chat like this for literally years. It was against everything he knew. Idle chatter. Loose thoughts. Leaving an impression upon another person. Matters that are forbidden to men who work undercover. He had to stop himself spilling out any salient facts, and he told himself to tell only lies. That way he would be more or less immune to indiscretion.

  “What line of country are you in?” asked the Irishman, but before Ben could answer, he leaned over, quite suddenly, thrust out his hand, and added, “Paul, Paul O’Rourke. You don’t live in Ireland, do you?”

  Ben shook his hand, and said, “Ben Arnold. I’m from South Africa. Mining’s my trade.”

  “Oh, roight. I’m in politics meself.” And he drew deeply on his Guinness.

  There was silence between the two for almost a minute, then: “Now then. You, sir, I can see, are a man of the world, so you’ll not mind my mentioning this. But there’s been a lot of trouble in your country over the years…you know, the poor native blacks striving to get some of their lands back from the whites who took it away. What do you think about that? About a people who were savagely dispossessed, and are trying to assert themselves, to get a dacent loife?”

  “Well,” said Ben, “we don’t quite look at it like that. You see there were almost no indigenous blacks in South Africa when the whites settled it. They have arrived from the north over the years, trying to get work in a country built from scratch by Europeans, Dutch, and English.”

  “Jaysus. I t’ought the buggers had always been there.”

  “Paul. You thought wrong. South Africa was always white.”

  “Is that why it’s so bloody rich, unlike the rest of Africa?”

  “I suppose so. All its industry was built by the whites. My own corporation employs thousands of black workers…but I’m not saying we didn’t make mistakes. We did. We should have provided more opportunity, years ago, to bring the best of the blacks onside, into white society. Apartheid was never right. And it turned out to be very damaging.”

  “I read a lot about it in college,” said Paul. “Before I dropped out. I was doing a degree in world politics at UCD. But I missed the part about the blacks being itinerant workers, visitors to the white state.”

  “Well, that’s what they were. And that’s how most of ’em got there in the beginning. Streaming over the borders from places like Nyasaland. And, of course, many more immigrants came over from India.”

  Again there was silence. Then Ben asked quietly, “And what was it, Paul, that was so pressing in your life, you decided to abandon your university degree?”

  “Oh, not much really. I just got caught up in politics.”

  “What kind of politics? You thinking of running for office sometime?”

  “Perhaps sometime I might. But I got into the more practical end of t’ings.”
<
br />   Ben sensed that Paul O’Rourke was about to say more than he should. He watched the boy, smoking nervously, gulping great swallows of Guinness, his hand trembling slightly.

  “My people are Republicans,” he said. “We’ve always believed in a united Ireland. My dad was an activist, so was his dad, and his.”

  “What kind of activists?”

  “Well my great-grandda came to Dublin with Michael Collins from Cork in 1916. He died in the fighting at the post office; the English gunned him down. My great-uncle was wounded, but he got away. He was with the group that retreated to Bolands Bakery. I t’ink about it every time I go to Dublin…they never had a chance against the English artillery…but Jaysus, the lads were brave on that day…”

  Ben nodded, said nothing. “My whole family is Sinn Fein,” said Paul. “It just means in Gaelic, ‘Ourselves Alone.’ We want Ireland to be one country, with no English here at all…that’s why there’s the IRA…that’s our military wing.”

  “I know,” said Ben. “Are you a member?”

  Paul was silent. Shook his head, then said, “Let’s just say I’m sympathetic.”

  He gulped some more Guinness. “I don’t think you’d understand, Mr. Arnold,” he said. “We’re from different sides of the tracks. You belong to the rich ruling class. I belong to an organization struggling to break free from a cruel and wicked oppressor.”

  “You think the English are cruel and wicked?”

  “We’ve nothing to thank them for. They raped and pillaged this country for centuries. And by whose right? The right of their bloody guns, that was their only right. But you’ll find that England’s first colony is destined to be her last. And it may be our guns that finally put an end to it.”

  “When did you first get interested?”

  “I t’ink I must have been about thirteen. There was a little party at my granddad’s house down in Schull on the Cork coast, and some English people were invited back from the pub. I remember they were all singing songs, each person taking turns…and when it came time for the Englishmen to sing, they did ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.’