heads of state or government were due to arrive. Like the diplomats in London, he was admiring of the simplicity of chartering the biggest and most luxurious liner in the world to host the biggest and most prestigious conference in the world; and to do so during a five-day crossing of the Atlantic from New York to Southampton.
The ruse confounded all the forces that habitually sought to bring chaos to the G8 conference every year. Better than a mountain, better than an island, with accommodation for forty-two hundred souls, the Queen Mary 2 was untouchable. Gundlach would stand beside his captain as the typhoon hooters sounded their deep bass A note to bid farewell to New York. He would give the required power settings from her four “Mermaid pod” motors, and the captain, using only a tiny joystick on the control console, would ease her out into the East River and turn her toward the waiting Atlantic. So delicate were her controls, and so versatile her two aft pods that swivel through 360 degrees, that she needed no tugs to bring her out of the terminal.
Far TO the east, the Countess of Richmond was passing the Canary Islands, to her starboard. The holiday islands, where so many Europeans sought to leave the snow and sleet of their winter homes to find December sunshine off the African coast, were out of view. But the tip of Mount Tiede could be seen on the horizon with binoculars.
She had two days before her rendezvous with history. The Indonesian navigator had instructed his compatriot in the engine room to cut power to SLOW AHEAD, and she was moving at a walking pace through the gentle swell of the April evening. The tip of Mount Tiede dropped out of sight, and the helmsman eased her a few more degrees to port where, sixteen hundred miles away, lay the American coast. From high in space, she was spotted yet again; and again, when consulted, the computers read her transponder, checked the records, noted her harmless position so far out at sea and repeated her clearance: “Legitimate trader, no danger.”
The first government party to arrive was the prime minister of Japan and his entourage. As agreed, they had flown into Kennedy direct from Tokyo. Staying air side, out of sight and sound of the demonstrators, the party had transferred to the passenger cabins of a small fleet of helicopters, which lifted them straight out of Jamaica Bay and brought them to Brooklyn. The landing zone was inside the perimeter of the great halls and sheds that made up the new terminal. From the Japanese passengers’ point of view, the protesters beyond the barriers, mouthing silently whatever point it was they wished to make, simply dropped out of sight. As the rotor blades slowed to a gentle twirl, the delegation was greeted by ship’s officers, and conducted along the covered tunnel to the entrance in the side of the hull, and from there to one of the Royal Suites.
The helicopters left for Kennedy to collect the Canadians, who had just arrived. David Gundlach remained on the bridge, fifty yards from side to side, with huge panoramic windows looking forward out over the sea. Even though the bridge was two hundred feet in the air, the wipers in front of each window revealed that when the bow of the Queen hit the sixty-foot midwinter Atlantic waves, spray would still drench the bridge.
But this crossing, so went the forecasts, would be gentle, with a slow swell and light winds. The liner would be taking the southern great circle route, always more popular with guests because of its milder weather and calmer sea. This would bring her in an arc sweeping across the Atlantic at its shortest point, and, at its southernmost, just north of the Azores. The Russians, French, Germans and Italians succeeded each other in smooth sequence, and dusk fell as the British, owners of the Queen Mary 2, took the last flights of the helicopter shuttle.
The U.S. president, who would be hosting the first dinner just after eight p.m., came in his customary dark blue White House helicopter at six on the dot. A Marine band on the dock struck up “Hail to the Chief” as he strode into the hull and the steel doors closed, shutting out the outside world. At six-thirty, the last mooring ropes were cast off, and the Qween, dressed overall and lit like a floating city, eased out into the East River.
Those people on smaller vessels in the river and along the roads round the harbor watched her go and waved. High above them, behind toughened plate glass, the state and government heads of the eight richest nations in the world waved back. The brilliantly illuminated Statue of Liberty slid by, the islands dropped away and the Queen sedately increased her power. Either side, her two escorting missile cruisers of the U.S. Navy’s Atlantic Fleet took up position several cables away and announced themselves to the captain. To port was the USS Leyte Gulf and to starboard the USS Monterey. In accordance with the courtesies of the sea, he acknowledged their presence and thanked them. Then he left the bridge to change for dinner. David Gundlach had the helm and the command.
There would be no escorting submarine, for this was not a carrier group, and the submarine was absent for two reasons. No nation possessed the kind of submarine that could evade the missile cruiser’s detect-and-sink capacity, and the Queen was so fast that no submarine could keep up with her. As the lights of Long Island dropped away, First Officer Gund-lach increased the power to optimum cruise. The four Mermaid pods, pounding out 157,000 horsepower between them, could push the Queen to thirty knots, if needed. Normal cruising speed is twenty-five knots, and the escorts had to move to maximum cruise to keep up.
Overhead, the aerial escort appeared: one U.S. Navy EC2 Hawk-eye, with radarscopes that could illuminate the surface of the Atlantic for five hundred miles in any direction around the convoy, and an EA-6B Prowler, capable of jamming any offensive weapons system that might dare to lock on to the convoy and destroying it with HARM missiles.
The air cover would be refueled and replaced at end of shift out of the USA until its mission could be relieved by identical cover coming out of the US.-leased base in the Azores. That, in turn, would continue until it could be replaced by cover out of the UK. Nothing had been unforeseen. The dinner was a triumphant success. The statesmen beamed, the wives sparkled, the cuisine, it was agreed, was superb and the crystal glittered as it was filled with vintage wines.
Following the example of the American president, the more so as the other delegations had long flights behind them, the diners broke early and retired for the night.
The conference met in full plenum the following morning. The Royal Court Theatre had been transformed to accommodate all eight delegations, with, sitting behind the principals, the small army of minions that each seemed to need. The second night was as the first, save that the host was the British prime minister in the two-hundred- seat Queen’s Grill. Those of less eminence spread themselves through the huge Britannia Restaurant or the various pubs and bars that also serve food. The younger element, freed from their diplomatic labors, favored the Ballroom after dinner, or the G32 Nightclub. High above them, all the lights were dimmed on the sweeping bridge where David Gundlach presided through the night hours. Spread out in front of him, just beneath the forward windows, was the array of plasma screens that described every system in the ship.
Foremost among these was the ship’s radar, casting its gaze twenty-five miles in all directions. He could see the blips made by the two cruisers either side of him, and, beyond them, those of other vessels going about their business. He also had at his disposal an Automatic Identification System, or AIS, which would read the transponder of any ship for miles around, and a cross-checking computer based on Lloyd’s records that would identify not just who she was but her known route and cargo, and her radio channel. Either side of the Queen, also on darkened bridges, the radar men of the two cruisers pored over their screens with the same task. Their duty was to ensure nothing remotely threatening got near the huge monster thundering between them. Even for a harmless and checked-out freighter, the closeness limit was three kilometers. On the second night, there was nothing nearer than ten. The picture created by the E2C Hawkeye was inevitably bigger because of its altitude. The image was like an immense circular torch beam moving across the Atlantic from west to east. But the great majority of what it saw was miles away and nowhere near the convoy. What it could do was create a ten-mile- wide corridor thrusting forward of the moving ships, and tell the cruisers what lay ahead of them. For the purpose of realism, it chose a limit on this projection as well. The limit was twenty-five miles, or one hour’s cruising. Just before eleven on the third night, the Hawkeye posted a low-level warning. “There is a small freighter twenty-five miles ahead, two miles south of intended track. It seems to be motionless in the water.”
