H.M.S. Unseen

Every day the Navy was besieged by these simplistic questions, about a wildly complicated problem. The Public Relations department was on duty twenty-four hours a day. And Captain Charles Moss knew that his days in the Royal Navy were probably numbered. Someone was going to be blamed for this, and there was no one else really. He could imagine what the admirals would say. Captain Moss should have initiated SUBMISS earlier when it was perfectly clear there was no communication of any kind from Unseen. And the question of the Brazilians’ competence must come into the matter. Did he or did he not know that Lieutenant Commander Colley was concerned? If not, why not? Captain Moss, aged forty-seven, was already considering his future career opportunities out of uniform.

020230APR05. 35.22N 14.46W. Course 180. Speed 9.

240 miles due west of the Rock of Gibraltar.

Unseen continued south, in the dark, snorkeling. Commander Adnam took a sweeping all-around look for the lights of the Santa Cecilia. They still had ample fuel, but the CO was as anxious as anyone to get rid of the bodies in the torpedo room.

At 0240 they spotted her navigation lights, out on the southern horizon, returning from the North African port where she had refilled her massive converted diesel-fuel tanks, just in case Unseen was getting low. Thirty minutes later, Ben ordered the two ships together on the surface of a calm, moonlit sea.

The commanding officer explained that they did not currently require fuel, but that he would like to make a new rendezvous eighteen days hence, down in the doldrums, the hot windless seas around the equator. For now, they would just like food and water, and the concrete weights lifted over. Ben had no intention of telling anyone on the freighter what he wanted the weights for, and no one asked. There was something about Benjamin Adnam. He was not a man for idle chatter. If he wanted you to know something, he would tell you.

Ben stood up on the casing, watching as the hydraulic lifting arm on the Santa Cecilia hoisted and lowered the concrete cubes in a heavy-duty tarpaulin, ten at a time. His crew stacked them neatly on the unlit deck, and within a half hour the freighter captain waved them good-bye and turned back to the south.

At that point Ben’s crew went to work. The davit was unbolted from its stowage in the casing, slotted into its sleeve in the deck, the block and tackle rigged ready. Down below they were dragging the sealed bodies from the torpedo room to the point where the big sail bag rested on the lower deck. Six men worked on the relocation and positioning of each body inside the hoist-bag. Two more hauled it up and out of the hatch. Then three men lashed the concrete weight to it with three turns of the plastic belt and heaved it into the water.

First to take the long 10,000-foot drop to the floor of the Atlantic were Lieutenant Commander Colley and his men, the last ones to die, and the first four out of the torpedo room. The average time taken per body worked out to six minutes, and the entire exercise took a little over four hours. But the bodies would never be seen again, and there was a thin, self-satisfied smile on the face of Commander Adnam as he, too, turned south, and took Unseen deep once more, just as the sun began to rise above the eastern horizon.

031100APR05.

Office of the National Security Advisor.

The White House.

“Hi, George. Anything happened?”

“Nothing in Plymouth. But we just got a new set of pictures from Bandar Abbas. I can reveal that damned great building is definitely not a football stadium. They just flooded it. It’s a dry dock for sure…here, take a look… right here…see where they moved that beach in front. The water just flows straight in now.”

“So it does. And we can’t see in from either of the Big Birds, can we?”

“Nossir. The angle’s not good, and they keep the door shut. We can’t photograph inside. Also, sir, we don’t know much about the other building, the one constructed hard against it. I suppose it might be just a big storage area. But there must be something in it. Beats me.”

“Hmmmmm. Guess so. What are they saying in Plymouth?

“Not much. There are a few reports, just detailing what the submarine’s program was for the day. Funny, they were scheduled to work on emergency maneuvers…you know, system failures, mechanical, electrical, hydro, fire drills, flooding drills. Also they were out for thirty-six hours, practicing night snorkeling.”

“I’ll tell you something, George. She’d have been a hell of a submarine to steal, if the guy doing the stealing was familiar with the Brits’ workup routine…knew how to read the signals off the Squadron Orders.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, if he sent in his signals on time at twelve hours, then twenty-four…then missed when his Diving time expired, Christ…he’da been about 300 miles away before he was missed. In another twenty-four hours, while the Brits groped around his ops area, he’da been another 200 miles farther on.”

“Sir, are you sure you’re not letting your imagination run riot?”

“No, George, I’m not sure. But what I just said is possible. Sherlock Holmes would not have dismissed it. Neither should we, however remote it might be.”

“Arnold, they did have the signals in.”

“I know. But signals do not announce where they began. Either by radio or satellite, you can send in a signal to the operating authority, and the Brits wouldn’t have the first idea whether it came from Plymouth Sound or Plymouth Rock. Signals are signals. No one would bother to check, because they all know where the goddamned submarine is…in its ops area, right?”

“Right.”

“Wrong. I do not believe the sonofabitch was in its ops area, because the goddamned British have been combing it for five fucking days with half the Home Fleet, and found nothing. The chances are it’s not there. So where the fuck is it?”

“I’m not sure, sir.”

“I know you’re not fucking sure, George. Now let me ask you this. If you had to stake $10,000 of your hard- earned personal money on a bet, would you bet, yes, it’s in its ops area, but the stupid Brits can’t find the bastard? Or would you bet, no, it’s not in its ops area. It’s somewhere else, either by accident or design?”

Admiral George Morris thought carefully and then he replied, “My $10,000 says it’s somewhere else, beyond the ops area.”

“Exactly. So does mine.”

4

April 2005.

Commander Adnam drove Unseen down the coast of North Africa, running southwest for 1,600 miles, past the long, hot coastline of Mauritania, where the shifting sands of the Sahara Desert finally slope down to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. Right there, just north of the Cape Verde Islands on latitude 17.10N, longitude 22.40W, he changed course to the south, still running at nine knots at PD, all the way down to the Sierra Leone Basin.

He made his final course change there, before the refueling stop, then headed southeast for another 800 miles. Unseen crossed the equator at 1500 on April 20, moving silently through the lonely blue waters of the Guinea Basin toward their rendezvous point at 04.00S, 10.00W. There was 17,000 feet of ocean beneath the keel.

The Santa Cecilia showed up right on time at 0300 on the morning of April 22. They were 3,600 miles and eighteen days from their previous meeting point west of Gibraltar, and the submarine was low on diesel.

It was a stifling-hot night, and there was no wind whatsoever, and no waves. But the swells were deep, and the great, flat, moonlit waters of the doldrums rose and fell in those long glassy seas that lie between the north- flowing Benguela Current surging up the coast of Africa, and the south-flowing Guinea Current.

The fuel transfer was not easy and took four hours. The good-byes were brief, and the two ships turned south once more, arranging to meet again, thirty-two days hence, east of the island of Madagascar.

May 10.