“Christ!
“Christ! Ben, we sliding backward to the bottom!”
The following morning, Bill Baldridge and the admiral left while the great house on the loch was still asleep, speeding through the forest and turning south before the main road down the side of Loch Lomond. They took a shorter route which hugged the winding eastern shores, running on down to Faslane from the opposite direction.
“Do you think it would be easy for anyone to penetrate the Israeli Armed Forces, and work on the inside for many years?” Bill asked.
“I gave it some thought overnight, and curiously, Bill, I do. It is a country of such interracial change. When Israel first came into being, there were so many strangers arriving in the vast exodus from underprivileged European countries, I am surprised they ever sorted anything out. But somehow they created a nationality, from Jews who had journeyed from Russia, Poland, Germany, from all over East and West Europe, even from the USA. What followed was that thousands of newly settled Jewish people could pass at any time for Muscovites, Londoners, New Yorkers, Berliners.
“The entry into Israel from Arab countries was no less — they came from Egypt, Libya, Syria, Algeria, the Yemen, and of course Iraq, and Iran. No one has ever known for sure about the absolute loyalty to Israel of these families — indeed some of them have since left. But Israel has always found it dead easy to recruit very successful spies to operate in almost any Middle Eastern or European country, because they had so many original foreign nationals to select from.
“It follows that the reverse would also be true…that in the great human influx into Israel between 1948 and, say, 1968, there were also people who had other interests, for other governments, which might find it extremely convenient having people already ‘inserted’ into the Armed Forces of a new nation, which may one day become an enemy.
“Or do you find that altogether too far-fetched?”
“Admiral, I don’t find that far-fetched at all. Makes sense to me.”
“So while I do think Commander Ben Adnam was probably an Israeli, I also recognize the possibility that he may not have been, especially as he went to school in England — a strong, eighteen-year-old, well-educated boy from a good English school, with apparently Israeli parents…very easy to place in almost any walk of life in the Holy Land. I’m not saying he was an Iranian, or an Iraqi…but it’s not by any means impossible.”
“No…” said Bill slowly. “I guess the most I can do at this moment is to keep my mind open. To be aware of the man who could have done it, and to be aware that he may not have been Israeli, and that he could have been working for someone else.”
“That’s it. I believe modern theorists would describe that as lateral thinking. I normally call it logical research and a bit of common sense.”
By this time Bill could see across the water to the point of land where the Argyll Forest peters out between the two great fiords of Loch Goil and Loch Long. They swung away from the water and over the top of the hill, plunging straight down into the little town of Garelochhead. “Faslane dead ahead,” said the admiral, and again Bill Baldridge found himself looking at the cold, black waters of the Scottish loch.
The formality of the armed guards was no less than chillingly normal, even for the entry of the greatest submariner the Royal Navy had ever known. Passes were scrutinized, and they were handed over to a lieutenant commander with a submarine badge on his left shoulder.
He showed them where to park the Range Rover, and asked Admiral MacLean whether he and his guest were ready to board. “Yes, please,” replied Sir Iain, and then to Bill, “I thought I’d show you a few of the places where I taught your man to drive one of these things. By good fortune there’s a Perisher boat going out this morning, actually for about a month, but they’ll fly us off, down near the Isle of Arran. Back by about four o’clock.”
They walked down to the quayside where a three-hundred-foot-long, five-thousand-ton hunter-killer submarine, HMS
The old boy had taught Ben that part pretty well, no doubt about that. As Bill had explained to the President, a nuclear-tipped torpedo does not have to smash into the hull of its target, but it still has to run fast, straight, and accurate. Peaceful modern oceans do not provide much opportunity for hands-on practice sessions.
To Bill’s surprise, they piped him aboard with traditional Navy ceremony, but not the admiral. Salutes were crisply exchanged, and the captain led the way down through the hatch into the claustrophobic, Formica-paneled companionways, to the wardroom where the six Perishers were waiting to start their first day at sea. It was strange how the name “Perisher” had stuck, even though the old “Periscope Course” was now the Commanding Officers Qualifying Course. Folklore has decreed that trainee submarine commanders will be, forever, “Perishers.”
Commander Rob Garside, the 2002 Teacher, wished the admiral “good morning, sir,” extending a proper courtesy to the man who had taught him thirteen years previously.
“Hello, Rob — I’d like you to meet an American officer who is going to be our guest today, Lieutenant Commander Bill Baldridge from Kansas via the Pentagon, I believe. Commander Rob Garside.”
