over to La Palma — an elderly ATR-72 turboprop that was only slightly more silent and restful than a train crash. They took off from little Reina Sofia airport, only five miles from their hotel, and shuddered, shook, and rumbled their way up the west coast of Tenerife, past the main resort areas, and along the spectacular coastline. Before the northwest headland of Point Teno they veered out to sea, crossing Atlantic waters almost two miles deep. They touched down at the little airport four miles south of Santa Cruz de La Palma at 9:25 in the morning.
A car and chauffeur awaited them. Actually two cars and one chauffeur. The agents who had accompanied them would follow in the second automobile. A condition of Admiral Morgan’s original appointment to the White House had been that he would be provided with round-the-clock protection for a minimum of five years, effective immediately upon his retirement. In the U.S. he had a detail of four agents, working shifts, twenty-four hours a day. Two of them had been designated to accompany the former NSA on his honeymoon.
The Admiral was now a wealthy man. His full Vice Admiral’s pension had been accruing since he left the Navy, almost ten years previously. He had no children to educate, no alimony to pay, no mortgage. He had sold his house in Maryland and moved into Kathy’s much grander home in Chevy Chase. This too carried no mortgage. Kathy had a liberal trust fund provided by a rich but unfaithful first husband, and she too had been able to bank most of her salary over the last six years while Admiral Morgan took care of regular expenses. Together, Arnold and Kathy had a net worth of several million dollars. Sufficient for the Admiral to have tossed straight into the bin two $5 million offers from New York publishing houses for his memoirs. Neither received even the courtesy of a reply.
Stepping down onto the runway, dressed in a dark blue polo shirt, smartly pressed stone-collared shorts, no socks, tan Gucci loafers, and a white Panama hat, the Admiral was unable to avoid looking precisely what he was — ex-Government, ex-Navy, a powerful man, not to be trifled with. No bullshit.
“The car’s over here, sir,” said Harry, Arnold’s longtime secret service agent. “The front one of those three black Mercedes parked outside the building.”
They walked across the already-warm runway under a cloudless blue sky. Harry held open the rear door. The Admiral jumped in first and slid across the backseat. Harry continued to hold the door for Kathy, nodded his head curtly, and said, “Mrs. Morgan.”
Ten years earlier, Agent Harry had once asked the svelte, newly divorced Kathy O’Brien if she’d care to go out to dinner with him. She had politely declined, and now the memory of that innocent but toe-curling piece of misjudgment actually gave Harry acute chills on the rare occasions he allowed himself to recall the incident.
With Mrs. Morgan safely on board, the chauffeur moved slowly out of the airport, while Harry, now at the wheel of the second Mercedes, fell in behind him, line astern, as the Admiral insisted on putting it. They drove south towards the very tip of La Palma, all along the coastal highway for around 10 miles, before arriving at the little town of Los Canarios de Fuencaliente, which used to be a small spa town, dotted by hot springs. The most recent eruption in 1971 had buried them, turning them into great lakes deep in the underground caverns of cooled-off lava.
Now the whitewashed outpost of Fuencaliente served as a kind of volcano mission-control area, with signposts everywhere pointing the way up to the great line of craters and mountains that patiently guarded the future of the planet earth.
The big white board, which proclaimed Volcan San Antonio above a black painted arrow, instantly caught the Admiral’s eye. “Straight up there, Pedro,” he told the chauffeur, checking his stern arcs through the rear window to ensure Harry was still in strict convoy.
Kathy, who was fiddling with the digital camera Arnold had just bought her — complete with all bells and whistles, even a telephoto lens — said distractedly, “How d’you know he’s called Pedro?”
“Well, I’m not dead certain. But many people in Spain are called Pedro or Miguel, like Peter or Michael in the States.”
“God help me,” said Kathy. “Darling, you can’t go around making up names for people. It’s rude. Like me suddenly calling you Fred.”
“Oh, I agree you couldn’t do it with Americans. But the odds are stacked in your favor in Spain. Or anywhere in Arabia. Mohammed, Mustapha, or Abdul. Can’t miss.”
“Still, it’s rude. Just like you shouldn’t go around calling every dark-skinned man a towelhead.” Admiral Morgan muttered something and, despite herself, Kathy laughed. And she tapped the chauffeur on the shoulder. “Excuse me,” she said. “Could you tell me your name?”
“Oh, sure,
“How did you know?” she demanded, smelling a rat, and turning back to Arnold.
“Harry told me,” replied the Admiral.
Kathy rolled her eyes heavenwards.
Which was more or less where they were headed. The Mercedes was now revving its way up a very steep escarpment, through the pines, towards the yawning chasm at the peak of the great black cone on the top of the mountain.
Recent rumblings inside this forty-year dormant volcano had caused officials to cordon off the rim of the crater to all visitors. But Harry was already out, talking to the guard and explaining the precise identity of the man in the Panama hat.
The guard waved Admiral Morgan and his wife through and they wandered companionably up to the very edge of the crater, staring down into the abyss. Up ahead of them, they could see another group of four people, all men, taking photographs of the area, and obviously heading north, along the tourist paths, up the great ridge of the mountains. Two large golf carts were parked nearby.
“Can we get a couple of those?” asked the Admiral.
“Lemme check with the guard,” said Harry, who returned three minutes later with the good news that one big cart, a four-seater, was on its way up from the Visitors’ Center.
“Beautiful,” said Arnold. “That way we can ride right up to Cumbre Vieja and then I’d like to take the car down to the coast road to see the cliffs above the ocean.”
The excursion in the cart revealed spectacular scenery. All along the lava fields, the Ruta de Los Volcanes, across the rugged range of mountains sometimes redolent with thick light green Canary pines, sometimes just a stone wilderness, the golf cart bumped and lurched across terrain that had been molten rock less than forty years ago. In many places on top of the ridge it was possible to see the Atlantic both to the east and to the west. But they were not sure the battery on the electric-powered golf cart would make it all the way down to the west coast, and they elected to turn back, pick up the car, and drive on down in comfort. Ninety minutes later they found themselves parked at the top of a gigantic cliff of black basalt rock, towering over a strange black sandy beach hundreds of feet below, beaten by the seemingly endless breakers of the Atlantic.
They were parked in a rough, flat clearing and there was only one other car, another black Mercedes, just beyond them. Photographing the cliff were the same four people they had seen on the rim of Volcan San Antonio. They were all swarthy in appearance, with short, curly black hair, but somehow not Spanish. And despite their phalanx of cameras draped around their necks, they were not Japanese either. Arabian, from the looks of them.
“What the hell?” muttered Arnold. “What are they doing up here photographing the landscape and getting in our way?”
“I can’t really help you there, my darling,” said Kathy. “They never even bothered to leave a copy of their tour plan in the car—”
“Goddamned towelh—” growled the Admiral, but in a gesture of deference to his wife, he checked himself, swallowing the rest of his exclamation.
Two minutes later, the other Mercedes took off, driving swiftly south. And when Pedro finally began to head back south himself, they spotted the other Mercedes up ahead, parked again, its occupants still photographing fiercely, both with cinecameras and stills.
“Pull over, Pedro,” said the Admiral. “Let’s take another look at the view. Park as close to the other car as you can without crowding ’em.”
Sure enough, the photographers had found another prime spot. There was a slight crescent shape to the bay, winding away towards the north, and it offered a spectacular vista from one of the highest points on the western coast.
Arnold didn’t really think much of it. It was simply that his job was so deeply engrained in his personality and mind. By sea, the Admiral was paranoid about submarines and on land, since 9/11, he was unable to look at an
