“Yes, but is she still in touch with Adnam?” Bill persisted.
“I’ve always been afraid she might be,” replied Admiral MacLean. “You can ask her yourself in a minute. She ought to be arriving with the children at about the same time as we do.
“I always wondered whether their affair went on after she was married, long after he returned to Israel. She once left mysteriously for a short vacation, and my wife found an entry to Cairo in an old passport. However, I shall deny I ever said those last sentences. You’ll have to ask her.”
“You wouldn’t mind if I did?”
“Certainly not. If my daughter has a line of communication to perhaps the most ruthless mass murderer in recent history, I will insist she recognizes her duty.”
At this point the car pulled into the drive of a white Georgian house on the outskirts of Inveraray. Bill guessed that the admiral had not purchased it on the proceeds of his Navy salary, any more than he himself could have purchased the Baldridge Ranch out in Pawnee County. He either inherited this, or else Lady MacLean is loaded, was his considered opinion, as he climbed out of the Range Rover.
The admiral seemed to read his thoughts. He loosed the three Labradors who charged around the house toward the loch. He grabbed Bill’s suitcase, and said, “Inherited this. It belonged to my father and my grandfather. Family have lived around here for generations. I retired a couple of years ago — they weren’t going to make me First Sea Lord, but they would have offered me Commander-in-Chief Naval Home Command.
“I considered it…but decided I didn’t much want a desk job in the bloody dockyard in Portsmouth. Preferred to come home really, and spend my declining years playing a bit of golf, fishing, sailing on the loch, and doing a bit of shooting. An admiral’s pension is perfectly adequate for living in Scotland, and Annie and I have a lot of friends up here. When they didn’t offer me the top job, it just seemed the right time to go. So I went.”
They walked through the front door to be greeted by the same three Labradors, who had charged right around the house, and were now skidding over the big Persian rug in the hall, being yelled at by a trim, elegant, blond lady in a tartan skirt, white shirt, and camel-colored sweater.
“I’d be so grateful if you could control these bloody animals,” she said to her husband, as all three began leaping up on the American visitor.
Then turning to Bill, she introduced herself. “Commander Baldridge? Good evening. I’m Annie MacLean. I’m delighted to meet you. Leave your case right there. I’ll get Angus to take it upstairs in a minute.”
She must, thought Bill, have been the perfect admiral’s wife. Very like Grace Dunsmore in manner. Brisk, confident, and friendly. High-ranking Navy officers usually have wives of that type; poised and highly skilled at making people feel at home. It goes with the territory. Years of nursing young officers and their wives through daunting social occasions, knowing they are terrified of one’s husband. Meanwhile Bill leaned down and managed to greet Fergus, Samson, and Muffin all at once, patting them with a practiced, friendly roughness, the way Labradors expect to be treated.
“You a countryman, Bill?” asked the admiral, observing his ease with the boisterous dogs.
“Yessir,” replied the Kansan. “I’m from the Midwest. Family raises cattle out there.”
“They do? Then you’re a real countryman.”
They chatted for a while about the High Plains, and then the admiral said, “Now, why don’t you go upstairs and move into your room, and then meet me in there in fifteen minutes.” He pointed to a white-painted door on the left side of the hall, and added, “I’ll pour you a decent glass of malt whisky. Don’t dress.”
Bill correctly assumed this meant no need for uniform at dinner, so he climbed the stairs hoping the unseen Angus had dealt with his suitcase. He had. Everything had been unpacked and placed in a tall Sheraton tall boy, dirty clothes removed, washing kit laid out in the bathroom.
The bedroom itself overlooked Loch Fyne. And although it was still light, there was a thin beeswax-colored mist laying low across the water. The room was decorated with English chintz, bluish and pink in tone, but the main window was a bay, with a little antique desk and chair. There was no shower in the bathroom, so he tipped half a jar of fragrant blue crystals into the tub, filled it with hot water, and hopped in. When he emerged five minutes later, he dressed in dark gray slacks, white shirt and tie, with a dark blue blazer. Downstairs the admiral had poured the promised malt whisky. “Water?” he asked as Bill came in the door.
“Thank you, sir,” replied the American.
“I am no longer a serving officer,” Admiral MacLean said. “Please call me Iain. My wife expects you to call her Annie. My daughter, when she shows up in a minute, is Laura.”
Because Bill Baldridge had grown up with a certain amount of deference, as the son of one of the biggest ranchers in central Kansas, and later as a highly respected submarine weapons specialist in the Navy, not to mention his entitlement to be addressed as “Dr. Baldridge”—certainly within the hallowed confines of MIT — he never gave a thought to the sudden intimacy he now enjoyed with this very grand Scottish family.
He was unaware of the rigidity of the British class system, how by some unknown radioactivity, Admiral Sir Iain MacLean and Lady MacLean both knew instinctively that he was, despite the huge distance apart of their worlds, of their class.
But before either the wife or the daughter arrived, there was one question Bill wanted to put to the admiral. He sipped his whiskey, interested in its deep smokey flavor, and said, “Admiral, tell me something. Which nation do
Iain MacLean smiled and said quietly, “I do not like answering a question with a question. But you’ve obviously checked whether all three of the Iranians’ Russian Kilos were still anchored at Bandar Abbas?”
“Yes, we have. There were three of them on the Friday before the hit. But only two on the following Wednesday.”
“Then I make Iran my number-one suspect. It is possible to hide a Kilo. And if they have done so, then I would consider they had made the hit from another source. Maybe a fourth Kilo we do not know about yet. Either way I would consider their behavior suspicious in the extreme.
“Also we should remember the unprecedented activity there has been from the Iranian Navy in recent years. Back in 1993 they conducted thirty-six exercises in the Gulf. They have now conducted more than sixty. They have conducted joint exercises with Pakistan. And they are making closer and closer ties with Oman, with whom they control the Strait of Hormuz.
“They are the only Gulf state to have a known, workable submarine capability. I expect you remember three years ago, when there was a delay in the U.S. Carrier Battle Group arriving on station in the Arabian Sea, the U.S. put eighteen F-16 fighter aircraft on Bahrain as a precautionary measure. Remember also, the Iranian Navy operates under a single command — that of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
“This is only a personal opinion from an old, fairly unimportant submarine driver. But if I were the President, I should consider that now would be a very timely opportunity to frighten the living daylights out of them. And I’d be inclined to do it very, very soon.”
Baldridge, who, since leaving Faslane, was receiving the best lesson in modern warfare history he had ever had, was loving this talk. But he kept his eye firmly on the ball. He smiled and nodded in agreement. Then he said: “Who would be your second choice, sir?”
“Well,” he said, “I’m not sure where Iraq would put a submarine after the mission. No one has seen it, and they plainly have not scuttled it, otherwise someone would have found wreckage. So I would have to say, Israel would be very high on my list. As things stand I imagine the Americans are anxious to get rid of Bandar Abbas as a submarine base, which of course is precisely what the Mossad would love.”
“One more thing, sir. Where do you think the submarine came from — the one which destroyed the
“Well, I am certain it’s not British. So it has to be Russian. I’d say it came from the Black Sea.”
“But how did they get it? Did they buy it? Rent it? And how did they get it out?”
“I’m not sure how they got it. But those naval ports are full of the old Soviet Navy personnel, who rarely get paid. Men from the Middle East bearing gifts, like millions of dollars, would doubtless get a proper welcome in poverty-stricken communities like those.”
“But how did they drive it out?”
“Oh, straight through the Bosporus,” said the admiral crisply. “A deal with the Turks.”
“Admiral Morgan says the Turks say emphatically not.”
“Hmmmmm.”
“Admiral, could they have got it out underwater through the Bosporus?”
