nuclear reactor — that was back in 1981. He got it from the French…it was his most precious possession — Osirak One. It worked in harmony with two other of Saddam’s cherished nuclear plants. Of course he said it was for nuclear power to make electricity, but what he really wanted was the residue from the process, the end product, plutonium, with which he could manufacture nuclear warheads.”
“Didn’t the Israelis attack one of his plants?”
“Attack?” said the admiral. “Six of their fighter-bombers streaked in from the north and blew the entire operation to smithereens. In under five minutes, Osirak One was history. The Mossad takes no chances.”
“Yes…I remember reading about it.”
“The Mossad is full of people who believe that Israel has no friends. Just enemies, and those who are neutral.
“I expect you have read in recent months there have been fears about Iraq beginning a new germ-warfare program. Well, in my view, it would not be beyond the wit of the Israelis to blow up a U.S. carrier, secretly, in the fervent hope Iraq would instantly get the blame, and that America would do their dirty work for them.”
“Yes, but we think Iran is more likely.”
“As I mentioned, it would delight the Mossad if America chose to take out the Iranian submarines at Bandar Abbas. They have long felt Tehran was getting a lot too big and aggressive for its own good, and might even be capable of another major strike at Iraq…and if they pulled that off, it would give the Ayatollahs almost total control of the Gulf. The Israelis would not like that, not one bit.”
“I’m not sure we would be mad about it either.”
“Nor we.”
By now the Range Rover had swung left across the northern end of Loch Long, and was making fast time through the Argyll Forest. Up to the right was the 2,700-foot peak of The Cobbler, the same mountain Bill had seen as he had approached the Faslane base.
“We’re about ten miles out now,” said the admiral. “In a moment we will circle around the narrow end of one of the big sea lochs. It’s called Loch Fyne, runs right past our back door, but causes us to make a huge detour whenever we go anywhere. The lochs and the mountains up here are touchingly beautiful, but they add miles and miles to every journey because you always have to go around them. Down at the base, people used to dread having to drive over and see the Americans at Holy Loch. By sea it’s about seven miles — twenty minutes in a fast boat. By road it’s more than forty miles, right around two lochs, down the side of another, and through a range of mountains.”
“Sir,” said Bill suddenly, “did you develop the Israeli theory just because you knew I was interested in Lieutenant Commander Adnam? Or had you always considered it a real possibility?”
“Bill, when you are as old as I am, you will have learned that when anything really shocking happens in the Middle East, then you must look very carefully at the Israelis. Consider always their motives, how events will affect them, and remember always they are much cleverer, much tougher, and much more efficient than every other nation in the area.
“Also do not close your eyes to the fact that both their government and their Secret Service are crammed full of people with very long memories.
“Inside the government alone, there are women who just over twenty-five years ago stood on the slopes of the Golan Heights, under terrible fire from the Syrian tanks…they struggled through a night of sheer terror, in lines of frightened girl-soldiers passing artillery shells up to the gunners, helping the Israeli 7th Armored Brigade claw back the land, with heartbreaking courage, yard by yard, up those mountains.
“Take Benjamin Netanyahu, the most eloquent of the senior Israeli politicians in recent years. Remember his brother Jonathan was the only Israeli killed when the Israeli commandos went into Entebbe Airport to rescue the hijacked airliner. Benjamin never got over that, that’s why he is such a fierce nationalist.
“There are departmental chiefs in the Mossad who fought shoulder to shoulder with General Avraham Yoffe when they smashed their way through the Mitla Pass, with unbelievable bravery, in the Six-Day War in 1967—six days in which the Israelis destroyed four armies and 370 fighter aircraft belonging to four attacking nations.
“There are men in the Mossad who stood alongside my great friend General Sharon in 1973, men who were wounded as their comrades fought and died in the desert, trying to throw back the armies of Egypt. None of them ever forgot the hand-wringing response of the West after their costly and frightening victory…accused them of bullying — bullying after the Egyptians stormed across the canal with five hundred tanks, just as the entire Israeli nation knelt in prayer, on their most holy day of the year.
“I don’t want to sound like a retired Israeli general, but I am warning you, and your colleagues, to take a damn close look at anything which might involve the Israelis. I believe it is perfectly possible they might have taken out your carrier — just to watch the U.S.A. exact a fierce revenge on either Iraq or Iran, or for that matter, knowing your President, both of them.
“Ask me who drove their submarine? I should say without any hesitation — Benjamin Adnam. There are very few commanders who have the talent for such an operation. But he had it. Did he ever.”
“How good was he, Admiral? What was it about him?” asked Baldridge.
“I think there was a fanaticism about him. There was something that drove him. He did not just want to be the best in his class, he wanted to be the best there had ever been. He had the most phenomenal memory…the first time I ever tested him on the periscope…you know, giving him a thirty-second all-around look at the surface picture, he could recall every single detail. The submarine commander’s greatest asset is his ability to store a photograph of that view in his mind. Ben Adnam could hold that picture better than anyone I ever taught.
“He had an instinct for a submarine, for what it would do, and what it wouldn’t. We have one exercise where we send three frigates away, and then have them turn around and come back toward us.
“The frigates often come straight at the Perishers, so they have to dive to safe depth underneath. They are instructed to do so with exactly one minute to go before collision. Even then, the noise of the frigates’ propellers rumbling overhead is damned nerve-racking. There are always chaps who fail the course right there. You can see them with their eyes shut, praying the overhead warship will not slam into the conning tower.
“Adnam was absolutely fearless. Consciously so. He knew the distance, he could make all the calculations in his head, quickly and effortlessly. It would never have occurred to him that a frigate could hit his ship. He would have made bloody certain it didn’t.
“He had his own private sixth sense. I remember standing with him one lunchtime while the frigates were going away. Suddenly, for no reason, he said, ‘I believe the frigates have turned, sir.’
“Now I knew they had turned. I had discerned the faint change in the Doppler of the sonar. That comes with about twenty years of being a submarine officer and commander. I plainly knew they had turned, but God knows how he knew. Nonetheless, he did. I tested him on it. He was always correct. He was a submarine genius. Of that there is absolutely no doubt.
“He had a sound grasp of all the workings of the ship underwater…hydrosystems, mechanics, electronics, weaponry, missiles, torpedoes, and gunnery. He could navigate as well. I once lectured them on the art of the classic sprint-and-drift submarine attack. At the end of it he came and had a chat with me about the finer points.
“No Perisher in my entire experience ever demonstrated a more thorough grasp of the subject. Even at that comparatively young age — around twenty-eight — he was safe. He was steady. And he could handle his machine as a weapon of war.
“He just had an instinct for underwater warfare, and he was, technically, its master. But there was something more. He had a gift. And I always knew he was ruthless. I can tell you this, if he had been British, and if he had stayed in the submarine service, he would have become FOSM — and if we had ever had to send the Submarine Flotilla to war, Ben Adnam would have been a very good man to command it.”
“Aside from that, I guess he was pretty average all around?” chuckled Bill. “Did he have any weakness at all?”
“Only one.”
“Oh…what was it?”
“He was in love with my daughter.”
The laid-back Kansan manner of Bill Baldridge fell from him in an instant. He turned quickly to the admiral and asked, “Is she still in touch with him?”
“She is now a highly respectable lady, married to a wealthy Edinburgh banker. Two children.”
