Nimitz Class

going to get answered real fast. If he hasn’t found him, we’re going to have to twist the arm of the President of Russia. Hard.”

Guards waved him through the gates of the Israeli embassy and directed him to a parking place. They then escorted him into the embassy, and up to a small dining room on the second floor where General Gavron was waiting. The two men exchanged greetings and the host offered the American admiral a glass of Israeli wine from the southern town of Richon-le-Zion, where Baron Edmond de Rothschild established the great vineyards at the end of the nineteenth century.

Since he was there for at least a couple of hours, Admiral Morgan did not rush into an interrogation with quite the anxiety he felt. Instead he chatted amiably about Israel and her ambitions and the question of where the Palestinians were ultimately going to live. They dined like true Sabras, beginning with Israeli eggplant salad made with tahini and then progressing to shashlik of spiced lamb with crispy, fried mallawah bread.

Arnold Morgan found himself feeling increasingly cheerful at this sudden break in his traditional working diet of coffee and roast beef sandwiches. He was enjoying a plate of baklava when he broached the subject he was here to discuss…Benjamin Adnam. He took a deep sip of wine — poured by the general from their second bottle, a sweet white wine the Israelis use principally for ceremonial occasions. Then the admiral said, very softly for him, “Well, David, did you find him?”

The Israeli general smiled and tilted his head to one side. “Not quite yet, Admiral, but we are a lot wiser than we were last time we met. Would you like me to tell you what my Intelligence officers have been doing?”

Morgan grinned. “David,” he said, “I’m going to sit right here, with this great glass of wine, and let you entertain me.”

“Very well. On the day I contacted them to relay your message about your government’s anxiety, our agents confirmed they had gone through Commander Adnam’s apartment and personal property. To their surprise, he had taken nothing. All of his documents, passport, Navy papers, educational records, etc., were still in his desk. Which made them think again, he had either been murdered or run off.

“The following day, after my call, they launched a huge search throughout the country. Found nothing. We then sent half a dozen agents to the village where his parents had lived. Found nothing there either. But nearby, we did discover a friend of the family, who had no recollection of the family having a son born in around 1960.

“They had known the Adnams quite well, and were apparently very upset when the family disappeared after the village was bombed during the 1973 war. But they knew nothing of any Ben Adnam being away at school in England between 1976 and 1978, when he was apparently between sixteen and eighteen.

“After that, of course, we already know he returned from Sutton Valence school in Kent, and immediately joined the Navy. Never went home, because there was neither home nor parents to go to. And that’s where he stayed. In the Navy.”

“You mean no one really knows where he came from, nor, now, where the hell he’s gone?”

“You have just stated the case perfectly, Arnold.”

“Hmmm. I guess he just filled in his details on the forms, probably while he was in England, and the Israeli Navy was happy to accept this well-educated Sabra from well-to-do farming parents, recommended personally by an eminent English headmaster….”

“And by a very senior military attache from the Israeli embassy in London…who we now discover also had a boy at Sutton Valence school at the time.”

“Christ! You can see how these things happen, eh?”

“All too well, Admiral. To make matters worse there are no death certificates whatsoever regarding the Adnam family. The village was bombed. They may have been killed. Or they may have just left, returning, as you say, to wherever they came from.

“Anyway both they and their ‘son’ have vanished, without trace…and we are keenly aware that all three may have been spies, the parents ‘in place’ on behalf of another nation. The young Adnam, perhaps an eighteen-year-old Fundamentalist fanatic, being seconded to their care on a deep, long-term basis. The kind of thing to which my own organization is somewhat partial. Which brings me to part two.”

“What happened to Commander Adnam? I hope,” said Arnold Morgan.

“Well, Admiral, once we found his documents it was pretty obvious he had left Israel in possession of a completely different identity. We practically ransacked our own airport records for two days. Nothing. So how did he leave? Well, our agents felt he had made his way by bus or taxi from East Jerusalem, as far as the Allenby Bridge. That’s the only one which crosses the river into Jordan. Then it becomes the King Hussein Bridge. Right there, at the bridge, he had to get out of his taxi, or bus, in order to pick up Jordanian transportation, we think one of those JETT mini-buses.

“Now, I expect you know, there are all kinds of restrictions at the bridge. So he must have had a Jordanian passport. But he also had a visa and a permit to cross the bridge. Remember, you cannot get Arab documents in Israel, nor indeed at the bridge. So someone was looking after him extremely well.

“However, we do conduct a very stringent search at the bridge of anyone leaving Israel and traveling into Jordan. For instance, it’s illegal to carry a camera with any film in it whatsoever, and once you have left, you may not return. No one can obtain an Israeli visa in any Arab country, except Egypt.

“And here, right at the Allenby Bridge, our luck turned. Certain people are pulled aside by our customs agents and searched very carefully. And in that area we do have a surveillance camera. So we commandeered all of that film for the three days following Commander Adnam’s disappearing trick. We took it to Haifa and called in every Navy officer we could find who knew him in any way. We actually flew men in from the fleet exercise in the Med — where he should have been.

“We got him on the first reel of film from the first morning, November 25, the time frame up in the corner said 0924. He was in Arab dress, and our camera caught him answering questions in the customs office. Four different men picked him out. Separately. Three of them were submarine officers. No doubt. Commander Adnam left Israel as an Arab. I brought you a picture of him, not very good quality. But here he is….”

General Gavron leaned forward and passed a sheet of fax paper over to the American. They had blown up the photograph and then faxed it. Details were smudgy. But, wearing the Arab headdress, Commander Adnam looked more like a trader in some local Casbah than an Israeli submarine commander. Nonetheless, Benjamin Adnam it was. And the picture showed a dark, rather elegant and refined face with hard, deep-set eyes. Admiral Morgan thought he could have been Iranian, Iraqi, Jordanian, Syrian, even Egyptian. The question now changed slightly… who the hell was this guy?

Morgan’s mind whirred. He better get that photograph copied and faxed to Admiral MacLean for a 100 percent identification. He tried not to sound anxious. And he said with exaggerated calm, “What happened then, David? Did the trail go cold?”

“Certainly not. We have several very good agents in Jordan and four days ago they traced him. That first morning, very, very quickly he found his way to the Queen Alia Airport, and almost immediately boarded a Royal Jordanian Airlines flight to Cairo. Paid for his ticket in Jordanian dinars. God knows where he got cash.

“He was traveling on a Jordanian passport when he left, and he used it to clear customs in Cairo. Our agents did pull that record up. Then, because we do not think he is Egyptian, we checked out every major hotel in the area. But found nothing. He was not registered anywhere.”

“Did you try the Mena House, out by the Pyramids?”

“Of course. And they actually knew him. But said they had not seen him for two years. One of our agents talked to the manager, who was uncertain where he came from. He had certainly been there under his own name.

“Our agents then searched through every record the Egyptian authorities would provide. In the end they decided he never left Cairo International Airport, stayed there and flew on. That night, we came up with only one ‘Adnam’ who had left Egypt on an international flight. He paid in cash, Egyptian currency, and bought a ticket to Istanbul. I regret to say he was a Russian. Old Soviet passport. Visa for frequent entry into Turkey. Not much help, eh?”

Arnold Morgan could not believe his ears. “Do the Egyptians have a surveillance camera which may have photographed the passengers for that flight?”

“They say they do, but it wasn’t working. Anyway our agents considered the trail cold. They do not think the