Nimitz Class

by Patrick Robinson

  The admiral finally stopped pacing the room. He sat down behind his desk and told Bill the salient points of his investigation. “Dealing with the rogue submarine first, we have two facts. One, we think we heard him in the strait, two, a Russian submariner went overboard and drowned off the Greek islands. The dates of the two incidents fit, which would make it, almost certainly, the same ship, and the Russians are not denying the dead man was a submariner.

  “However, they are being a bit cagey about one thing. When I contacted them the day after we picked up the acoustic contact in the strait, they admitted they had lost a Kilo Class submarine in the previous three weeks in the Black Sea and were searching for the hull. But when I asked whether the drowned man was a member of that ship’s company, they clammed up real fast, and refused to confirm whether they had found the hull of the Kilo. I’m working on it right now. Talking to Rankov when he gets back Friday.

  “Meanwhile the Turks confirm they received no application from the Russians to bring any submarine through the Bosporus on the surface during the months of March, April, or May. So what’s that goddamned Russian submariner’s body doing on a Greek beach?”

  “Well, he couldn’t have washed right through from the Black Sea, and then the Dardanelles, not all that way,” said Baldridge. “So that’s all very significant for us. How about Israel—will they tell us about Adnam?”

  “Bill, I thought they would, been trying to talk to them since we spoke on the phone, but they are being even more cagey than the Russians. I’m meeting one of their guys tonight, after we finish with Scott Dunsmore.”

  “What’s the latest on Iran?”

  “Hell, that’s just the usual hotbed of intrigue. We think one of their submarines vanished from off its moorings in Bandar Abbas three days before the Jefferson was hit. But it could be in the Iranians’ big floating dock. The water’s very shallow all around the approaches to the main Navy harbor. I can’t see how they could have driven a submarine out of there on the surface without being picked up by the ‘overheads.’

  “If, however, they did, and somehow got back in again, and then parked the submarine in a covered dock, that makes them very clever, very dangerous little guys. Too goddamned clever.”

  “I’ll tell you what Iain MacLean says. He reckons the Iranians are our number-one suspects by a long way. He says if all three of their Kilos are still in Bandar Abbas, then they either got a new one—which is still at large—or they got out of Bandar Abbas, and then got right back in again. Either way he says Iran is the likely culprit.”

  “He’s right. They have the strongest motive, they are at least as careless about human life as the Iraqis. And they have three Russian Kilos which we know about.

  “I’m telling you, Bill. The President is very concerned about them and their goddamned submarine fleet and their increases in Naval exercises in the Gulf. Right now, without a CVBG in the area, we are preparing to put at least twenty-four FA-18’s on the airstrip in Bahrain, like we did before, until the new carrier arrives in October. The Emir of Bahrain is a very good guy, and we are expecting permission this week.

  “I’m not sure how the CNO and the President see it, but right now, it’s gotta be Iran, and Israel, probably not Iraq. Your information about Adnam is obviously critical, but we have to get the Israelis to tell us the truth. If they did do it, they’ll tell us Adnam is gone. If they did not do it, Adnam probably has gone! It’s a matter of getting Israeli Intelligence to tell us the truth. Then we’ll know what to do.”

  The two men talked for another hour before leaving for the Pentagon. Once there, they apprised Admiral Dunsmore of their inquiries, told him about Commander Ben Adnam, and Admiral Morgan promised to be in touch as soon as he had finished with the Israeli general later in the evening. Admiral Dunsmore called General Paul and suggested that he meet with the President as soon as Morgan “has wrung the truth out of the Mossad.”

  Bill Baldridge got a ride with Morgan to the Dunsmore estate in order to retrieve his car. Which would give the Intelligence chief ample time to drive back to Alexandria and prepare for the arrival of General Gavron.

  Before leaving, he asked his office to dig up some background on the man he thought might pinpoint the precise whereabouts of Commander Adnam, and told his staff he would call at around six-thirty in the evening. Thereafter the time sped by rapidly. Admiral Morgan, driving himself as usual, joined the stream of south-running traffic on the western shore of the Potomac, and, with Bill Baldridge’s navigation, swept into the CNO’s residence.

  Bill knew Grace Dunsmore was out, and anyway he was anxious to get home to Maryland, in his own car. He thanked Admiral Morgan for the ride, and arranged to speak to him either later that night or first thing in the morning.

  Admiral Arnold Morgan turned north once more and made for the quaint little seaport of Alexandria. There was however nothing quaint about his business this evening. The Israeli would be very tough, and very uncooperative at first. The admiral considered it highly likely that he might have to impart a few home truths to this particular opponent.

  He reached the bar, chatted for a few moments with the landlord, and asked him to put a pot of coffee in his usual booth. Then he disappeared through a door, into the proprietor’s private quarters, and called Fort Meade where his lieutenant was waiting. The time was 1830.

  General Gavron’s details were sketchy but interesting. He was a pure Israeli of the blood, a true Sabra, born and bred in the fertile Jezreel Valley, southwest of the Sea of Galilee, between Nazareth and Megiddo. Like his old colleague General Moshe Dayan, he had been brought up by his parents to grow fruit and vegetables but ended up spending most of his adult life in the military. His family was from Germany, and had emigrated to help plant forests in the northern half of the country and thereby increase Israel’s rainfall. The Gavrons were devoted to enabling the young country to feed itself. Their eldest son, David, born six months after their arrival in 1947, elected to adopt another critical course for a Sabra, to help establish and defend Israel’s boundaries.

  He was called up as a conscript, like every Israeli, when he was just eighteen. By 1973 he was a promising young captain in an armored brigade. The Yom Kippur War of that year established him as an officer of much potential. He fought in the front rank of General Abraham “Bren” Adan’s hastily assembled tank division as they drove out to face the army of Egypt, still swarming in across the canal, on that terrible early morning of October 8.

  Face to face across the desert, heavily outnumbered, not quite prepared, still amazed by the suddenness of the surprise attack, Bren Adan drove his men into battle with reckless courage. The Egyptian Second Army, dug in and backed up by hundreds of tanks, almost lost their nerve at the ferocity of the Israeli onslaught. But after four hours, they forced the Israelis back.

  At that point the entire country was in the hands of the largely teenage Army in the front line, whose task it was to hold the Egyptians at bay for forty-eight hours, until the reserves arrived. The death toll among Israel’s youth in those two days was staggering. Even Adan’s more experienced tank men died by the hundreds in the sands of the northern Sinai. David Gavron, fighting within twenty yards of the general, was shot in his left arm trying to drag a wounded man clear of a burning tank. Then the blast of an exploding shell flung him twenty feet forward into the sand.

  But Gavron got up, and a field surgeon patched his arm, stitched his face, and, unhappily for Egypt, the same thing happened to the bloodstained Army of Israel. And when finally Bren Adan’s armored division regrouped, and again rolled forward eight days later, Captain Gavron, arm bandaged, his face deeply cut and seared from sand-burn, was in one of the leading Israeli tanks, directing fire coolly, to devastating effect.

  He actually heard General Adan roar the motto of his beleaguered Army—“After me!”—as the Israeli guns opened fire once more. David Gavron never forgot that, never forgot the sheer nobility of the man, standing in the turret of his tank, right fist
clenched, while he led the battered division forward, shelling their way into the heart of the Egyptian Second Army, which cracked and then gave way in panic.

  At midnight on October 17, Bren Adan and his remaining officers reached the Suez Canal and established a bridgehead. At 0500 on October 18 they crossed the canal into Egypt, driving south to the Gulf of Suez, playing hell with the Arab defenses wherever they fought, and isolating Anwar Sadat’s Third Army in the desert.

  The Israelis were never going to let David Gavron go back to growing fruit after that. He was decorated for gallantry, promoted to become one of the youngest colonels in the history of the Israeli Armed Forces. He became a valued friend of both Bren Adan and Arik Sharon for all of their days. And his move to the secretive, sensitive military area of the Intelligence Service meant he had been singled out for the highest calling Israel can bestow upon a battlefield officer. David Gavron was one day going to head the Mossad.

  By the time the Israeli general walked into the waterfront bar in Alexandria, Admiral Arnold Morgan knew he was awaiting a man who was a towering hero in his own country, where senior military figures are held in enormous esteem. He was not disappointed.

  General Gavron, at the age of fifty-five, was a tall, lean Army officer, with hair shaved even more closely than the admiral’s. He had deep-set blue eyes, a hawkish nose, and a wide, thin, even mouth. A jagged scar on the left side of his face bore testimony to a distant tank battle in the Sinai. He was tanned, but fair-skinned with freckles around the nose and eyes. He wore no tie, and a gray, lightweight civilian suit, which could disguise neither the military walk nor the officer’s bearing. He looked coiled, as if he could break your neck with a single blow, and he stood smiling while Arnold Morgan climbed to his feet.

  Then he offered his hand, and said softly, “Admiral Morgan? I’m David Gavron…Shalom.” The solemn greeting of peace, from the land where Abraham forged his covenant with God.

  “Good evening, General,” replied Admiral Morgan. “It was good of you to come. Just a very simple inquiry.”

  Both men laughed and shook hands. The admiral poured coffee for them both—knowing the Israeli would never dream of touching alcohol. But he wasted not one second of time. “My question may not be simple, but I think it’s at least an easy one,” he said, grinning. “Can you tell me the whereabouts of one of your best submarine commanders, Mr. Benjamin Adnam?”

  General Gavron was ready. “Well, we are conducting some exercises in the Med at present. I suppose he could be out there. I believe they are working with the new Upholder Class submarine we bought from the Royal Navy. As I recall, Commander Adnam was scheduled to take her out into the Atlantic.”

  “I have no doubt about that,” replied Morgan. “But I do not really need to know what he was scheduled to do. I need to know absolutely, is he, or is he not, on that submarine, right now, as we sit here? No bullshit.”

  The Israeli was slightly taken aback by the directness of the admiral’s assault. “Well…I expect you know that for security reasons, we never tell anyone anything about our unit commanders, or their seniors, in any of the branches of our services. We have many enemies, some obvious, and some unseen. It would be more than my career is worth to inform anyone of such detail.”

  “David,” replied Admiral Morgan, in a more conciliatory tone, “I am asking for your help. And I appreciate the constraints upon you, although I doubt that your government would be keen to lose the services of such a distinguished officer as yourself.

  “But if you feel unable to tell me where he is working right now, could you tell me this—is Commander Benjamin Adnam still a serving officer in the Israeli Navy, as we know he was ten months ago?”

  “Well, I assume he is. I am not in the Navy myself, but I know his reputation. I would have to make a few inquiries, which would take a while. It’s 0230 there now, tomorrow.”

  “General Gavron, you came to meet me tonight, fully aware of what my question is. There are several people at the Navy base in Haifa who know what my question is; there are several others in the Shin Bet Intelligence office in Tel Aviv who also know what my question is. That means the Mossad knows what my question is. I must now assume that you have been sent here to stall me. And if that is so, it may be necessary for my government to make one or two things clear to your government.”

  “Your government, Admiral, is very good at that,” replied the general, smiling.

  “Yours ain’t so bad at it either,” replied the admiral.

  And so they sat, two ex–military men, both unused to compromise, both brought up to treat the problems of their respective countries as if they were their own. Deadlocked in this Virginia bar, they sipped their coffee, the American uncertain how tough to get, the Israeli uncertain how much to give away, not sure when to pose the question he knew he must ask.

  “General,” the admiral persisted, “I have to find out about Commander Adnam, and it may be in both of our interests for you to tell me.”

  “Admiral, I cannot tell you. No one has told me. Deliberately, I suppose. But I too have a question which I would like to ask you. Why do you want to know about Commander Adnam?”

  Admiral Morgan had hoped it would not be necessary to deal with this. But he was ready. He sat in silence for thirty seconds, and then he said: “General Gavron, we are considering the possibility—and it is only a possibility—that the accident in the Thomas Jefferson may not have been an accident.”

  “Hmmm. You mean someone may have taken her out?”

  “Yes, someone may have. With a torpedo fired from a small, silent submarine.”

  “Nuclear-tipped?”

  “Probably.”

  “And why should you think it was driven by Commander Adnam?”

  “What should concern you a great deal more, General, is that we may think the submarine was Israeli.”

  “Israeli! Us? Blow up a United States aircraft carrier. No. No. No. Not us. We are friends.”

  Admiral Morgan was amused to see this cool Army officer from the Holy Land in temporary disarray. But he recognized genuine incredulity when he saw it. “General, we know there are people in your government who have never forgiven us for letting Saddam Hussein bombard Israel with Scud missiles, then leave him still in power.

  “We have our enemies in Tel Aviv, as we have them in most places in the Middle East. And the Israeli Government would know, that if they did commit such an atrocity as obliterating a U.S. carrier, we would instantly blame Iran or Iraq. And so you see, General, your nation is very much under suspicion by us.”

  “And where, Admiral, does Adnam fit in?”

  “Well, would anyone be foolish enough to open fire on the USA with a submarine that was in their known inventory? So we think they may have acquired one from Russia, and driven it out through the Bosporus. We keep a list of all high-flying submarine commanders in the world—real experts, the best of their profession. Every one of them is accounted for. Except Adnam. And you guys are being very, very cagey. It is just possible we may decide, in the next twenty-four hours, that you are deliberately lying to us, and then we might get very, very ugly.

  “I hope you have enjoyed having a Navy for the past few years.”

  Morgan knew he had shaken the Israeli. David Gavron betrayed no fear. But neither did he reply. He took a sip of coffee, and ruminated upon the fact that unless his government cooperated with Admiral Arnold Morgan there was likely to be big trouble, on a scale no one could cope with.

  “Admiral,” he said. “I must confer with my superiors. I am sorry our meeting has been so brief. Can you let me have a number, or numbers, where I can speak to you later tonight?”

  The admiral handed him a card with his office phone and fax, and his home number scrawled on the back.

  “I’ll be waiting,” he said.

  General Gavron headed back to his embassy. Admiral Morgan drove directly to Fort Meade. He ordered a roast beef sandwich, more coffee—the latter loudly…“Black with buckshot!�
�� his own word for the tiny white sweeteners he used. He called Admiral Dunsmore in the Pentagon, and advised him to put any meeting at the White House on hold until the morning. Then he retired to his computer, conducting yet another search, for any submarine in all of the world which could, conceivably, have crept up on the Thomas Jefferson. Two hours later, he arrived at the same conclusion he had arrived at earlier. The only submarine not accounted for was the Russian Kilo reported sunk in the Black Sea.

  He ran the CIA program of leading submarine commanders from all over the world for the sixth time in two days. There was no one on that list who was anywhere near the Black Sea at the appropriate time. The arrival of Bill Baldridge had presented him with the only real suspect—the Israeli, Adnam.

  Admiral Morgan knew they had no real record of the man’s obvious brilliance. Everything about Adnam was shaded. To Morgan’s deeply skeptical mind, Adnam did not add up. And there had been an instant conspiracy by the Israelis to shield their man from investigation. Morgan believed General Gavron might not know Adnam’s whereabouts, but he believed there were some people in Tel Aviv who did.

  The digital clock on his wall approached midnight. He sat in his armchair and turned on the television, picked up a West Coast baseball game, checked CNN occasionally. By 0100 he was asleep.

  At 0210 the phone rang, and he reached for it like a striking cobra, wide awake in an instant.

  “Admiral, this is David Gavron.”

  “Shalom, David,” said Arnold Morgan.

  “It took my superiors a while to gather the information you need. I am sorry to call you so late. It is just after 0900 in Israel.”

  “To tell the truth, David, I don’t have anything much more pressing to do,” replied the admiral.

  “No. I suppose not. Anyway I am instructed to inform you that the man you seek left the service of the Israeli Navy in November of 2001, eight months ago. We have no record of his present whereabouts.”