led the way into the reception area and told the duty guard he was in possession of Lieutenant Commander Baldridge from America, who was here to see Admiral Sir Iain MacLean. He then told Bill that it had been nice meeting him, and he would leave his suitcase with the guard as he understood he would not be required further.
Bill shrugged, followed a guard down a short corridor into what he guessed was a private room for senior officers. Around the walls were some excellent marine paintings and on two long tables were scale models, under glass, of Royal Navy submarines. The furniture was comfortable, like a men’s club — leather armchairs, polished side tables, and a leather and brass fender seat around a large fireplace, in which a big, rather garish electric fire glowed falsely at him.
To the left of the fireplace was another deep leather armchair with a slightly higher back than the others, the kind of stately chair in which one might expect to find Admiral Lord Nelson himself. Instead, there sat the unmistakable figure of Vice Admiral Sir Iain MacLean, wearing a dark gray Savile Row suit, sipping China tea, and reading the
“Lieutenant Commander Baldridge, sir,” said the guard. The admiral peeped over the top of his half- spectacles, and stood up slowly. He was a tall man, all of six feet two inches, with pale blue eyes, and the kind of lined face which tends to settle upon those who have spent a lifetime at sea. His expression was one of mild amusement, and his handshake rock solid. Bill put him at around sixty. “Good afternoon, Mr. Baldridge,” he said. “I understand you are interested in one of my Perishers.”
Bill smiled his most disarming Midwestern grin. “Hello, Admiral,” he said. “It’s kind of you to come and meet me.”
“No question of kindness,” he replied, a bit brusquely. “I was ordered here. On what I suspect was the highest possible authority. Thought I’d done with all that. Now, sit down and let me get you a cup of tea, and I’ll outline what you might describe as my game plan.”
Bill sat, sipped his tea, and enjoyed the slightly perfumed taste of the Lapsang Suchong. Civilized. Relaxed. He was beginning to admire some aspects of the British way of life.
“Right,” said Admiral MacLean. “Now it will be inconvenient for me to stay at the base for long. My daughter and her children are coming from Edinburgh for dinner tonight, so I propose that we finish our tea and drive over to my house in Inveraray. As the crow flies it’s only about seventeen miles, but we have to go right round the lochs, which will make it thirty-five miles.
“It’s not a bad road. We’ll make it in just over an hour. We can go straight up the west bank of Loch Lomond, which you might find interesting. The sun does not set here until about 10 P.M. and it stays light for at least another hour. You can stay at the house for a couple of nights. And I thought we’d pop over to the base tomorrow and I’ll show you around.”
“Sounds good to me,” said Bill. “In fact that all sounds great.”
“Good. Well, it’s almost six-thirty. We may as well shove off.”
The admiral drove a nearly new, dark green Range Rover. In the backseat were a huge bag of golf clubs and three fishing rods. Behind the backseat, a metal grill prevented three large, exuberant, barking Labradors from crashing forward to proclaim their idolization of their master. “Fergus! Samson! Muffin! SHUT UP!” commanded the admiral.
They swung south, turned left in the middle of Helensburgh, ran for four miles back to the A82, and immediately headed north. Off to their right was the spectacular Loch Lomond, the largest lake in Great Britain, twenty-four miles long from Ardlui in the north to Balloch Castle. The admiral pointed out the big island in the middle of the five-mile-wide southern reach of the loch. “That’s Inch Murrin,” he said. “There’s a big ruined castle right in the middle of it — the Duchess of Albany retired there back in the fifteenth century after King James I slaughtered her entire family. I always thought he was the most frightful shit, you know.”
Bill Baldridge remarked that Loch Lomond, with its sensational backdrop of rolling mountains — like the coast of Maine off Camden — was just about the most beautiful stretch of water he had ever seen.
In the south, the giant loch is dotted with picturesque wooded islands, one of them, Inch Cailleach, the site of the ancient burial grounds of the ferocious MacGregor clan, whose most famous son was Rob Roy, the fabled Robin Hood of Scotland. Admiral MacLean kept his guest amused with local history as they headed on up the loch. It was not until they reached the narrow northern waters, within the three-thousand-foot shadow of the great mountain of Ben Lomond, that the Scottish officer broached the subject of his finest Perisher.
“It’s Adnam you’re interested in, isn’t it?” he said. “I was not told why, but I was asked by FOSM to give you total cooperation. What do you want to know? And, if it’s not too awkward a question, why?”
“Well, sir, we think it is just possible that the
“Yes, that was a thought that had crossed my mind. And you think Adnam may have been responsible?”
“I think we must assume someone was, since there was no other way to hit the carrier apart from a nuclear-tipped torpedo from a submarine.”
“Yes. I see that. But why Adnam?”
“Who are our enemies around the Arabian Gulf? The list is small. Iran. Iraq. Libya. Maybe Syria. A couple of rather shaky factions in Egypt and Pakistan. Not really Russia anymore, nor even China. You would then have to say that Libya and Syria simply would not have had the right skills. Nor would Egypt, nor Pakistan. Which leaves Iran and Iraq.”
“And what’s that got to do with Adnam?”
“I was rather hoping you might elaborate on that for us,” said Baldridge.
“That’s an easy one.”
“It is?”
“Yes. You’ve left out one of your prime suspects.”
“We have? Who?”
“Israel.”
“
“Gratitude, Bill, is like beauty, usually in the eye of the beholder. There is a very strong right-wing faction in that country — its most extreme branch took out the Prime Minister seven years ago. They have never forgiven the Americans for allowing Saddam Hussein to bombard them with those Scud missiles during the Gulf War.
“America, remember, made a promise to Israel. Bush told them that if they would not retaliate for the Scuds, he would take care of Saddam once and for all. Well, I know that in the end the Americans decided, perhaps wisely, to leave Saddam alone. But there are some very angry people in Israel. People who believe, fervently, that no enemy should be allowed to attack Israel in any way whatsoever without paying the most terrible price.
“These are people who believe, like Margaret Thatcher, that at the very least, Saddam’s military equipment should have been either confiscated or destroyed,
“Well, I know that, sir. But what possible mileage could there be for them in wiping out a U.S. carrier?”
“Oh, that’s another easy one. They know Iraq would get the blame, and that America would exact a fierce and predictable military revenge. If not Iraq, Iran would get the blame, and suffer the consequences, which the Israelis would almost like more, because Iran, at present, is rather more dangerous. Better yet, you and I both know that this particular American President would not lose one wink of sleep if he had to hit both of them, just to make certain the right one copped it.”
“Jesus. That’s pretty devious.”
“There are many devious regimes, Bill Baldridge. But there are no more devious people on this earth than those who work in the Hadar Dafna Building.”
“The what?”
“The Hadar Dafna Building. A big tower block in King Saul Boulevard, central Tel Aviv. The home of the Israeli Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations. Known to us outsiders as the Mossad.”
“You think those guys would dare to blow up a U.S. carrier with six thousand people on board merely to get Iraq or Iran into the deepest possible trouble?”
“Oh, without doubt,” said the admiral. “First of all, you have to understand the deep and abiding hatred there is between Iraq and Israel to get the full picture. Remember Saddam Hussein only once possessed a really serious
