H.M.S. Unseen

ensure the Irish understand that it was our Vice President who died, our two senators who were lost, that the aircraft was U.S. military, and that the entire matter is regarded as classified by both ourselves and the UK.

“I think we should also prevail on the Brits to shut up that merchant ship captain. That may take a threat, but Whitehall is very expert at that. I believe we have the black-box recording from Concorde under tight control, so if we are careful, we might be more successful than Arnold believes at shutting this story down.”

“Christ, I hope so, Scott,” replied Morgan. “Also I have instructed George Morris to beef up our satellite surveillance on that part of the Atlantic, and SOSUS is already fully in the picture. Trouble is, Unseen is undetectable if she stays slow and deep. Even when she snorkels she’s a whole lot quieter than a Kilo. And if she’s being driven by Adnam, there’re gonna be no mistakes. He won’t even snorkel in good SOSUS water if he can help it.”

“What are your instructions to our commanding officers, Joe?”

“Uncompromising and closely controlled, sir. If they locate a diesel-electric boat showing an unequivocal Upholder-Class signature, anywhere near the area, sink it.”

“Christ, what if they sink the wrong one? The owners will be seriously pissed off.”

Admiral Mulligan chuckled. “Sir, the Royal Navy have no diesel-electrics at sea. They only owned four of these boats. They sold one to Israel, and we know that’s in Haifa. Two are out of commission in Barrow-in-Furness. The last of the four is Unseen. I’ve already spoken to the First Sea Lord. The Royal Navy has its own frigates out there as well. If they trip over a diesel-electric with a U-Class signature, they’ll sink it.”

Arnold Morgan interjected, “Sir, it would be better to hunt the boat to exhaustion, then capture it on the surface. That way we could catch Adnam and his crew and hang the fucking Iraqis out to dry. That way no one would object to whatever reprisals we may wish to take. But we may prefer not to risk that with this bastard, sir. He’s too slippery. We just might lose him.”

“Yes, Arnold. I do see that. By the way, what precisely do you mean by ‘hunt to exhaustion’? I’m not familiar with that.”

“It’s a submariners phrase, sir. It means setting out a kind of dragnet on the surface, using a mass of radar, and keeping the target submarine submerged, with his battery getting lower and lower. Every time he comes to periscope depth, he picks up a surface ship or aircraft ready to detect his snorkel mast. He has no option but to go deep and hope that the coast will be clear when he comes up later. But his battery will eventually get very low, and he’ll have to come up again. He may get lucky, maybe snorkel for twenty minutes, until he is caught again. But it’s not enough…he can’t submerge for long enough to get away…someone’ll catch him on radar. Then the real hunt is on. You bring in a surface ship, real close, something that can knock off his snorkel mast, cut off the air supply to the engines.

“Right then, he’s nearly finished. He has to surface. And that’s when we bang a couple of shells through his sail, as a gesture of our interest. Then we’d accept her surrender, board the submarine, and interrogate the crew.”

“Well, if I was driving the submarine, gentlemen, I’d sink the surface ship with a torpedo,” said the President.

“Sir,” said Admiral Mulligan, “we have many ways of avoiding torpedoes if we have good prior warning. Especially if we know precisely where our enemy is located. In such a case, if our commanding officer believed there was a real danger from the submarine, we would simply attack first. Those are the orders my men have at this moment. And to me they make military sense.

“However, Arnold has political obligations. He wants to find out who the hell they are. And he’s right. I’ll change the orders to my COs. Delete ‘sink on sight.’ Substitute, ‘hunt to exhaustion.’”

At that moment the President’s private line rang and confirmed he would broadcast briefly to the nation at 2100. Giant television-monitoring screens were being erected all through the parkland to the south and southwest of the White House, where there were now an estimated half million people gathered in tribute to the dead Vice President and his staff.

Dick Stafford, the press secretary, was waiting outside the Oval Office, preparing to go over the speech with the Chief Executive. Clearances were being requested for the forthcoming memorial service for Martin Beckman, which would be held in the massive greystone edifice of Washington’s National Cathedral, 3 miles to the northwest of the White House. The great bells of the Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul would toll for Martin Beckman throughout the night.

The President called his meeting with his advisors to a close, thanked everyone for their efforts, and approved their recommendations. He went on to say he wished he was leaving with them to work on the plan to eliminate, finally, the specter of Commander Adnam.

But that was impossible. As the President phrased it, “Guess I have to stay right here and mind the store.” And as Bob MacPherson added, lingering behind for a few moments, “Minding the store might be a lot better than helping these guys. They’ve got an uphill struggle…and if they fail to catch him, and he hits again, heads are gonna roll.”

Meanwhile the three admirals were all headed in different directions…Morgan to Fort Meade, Mulligan to COMSUBLANT in the Norfolk yards, and Dunsmore to his house along the Potomac. Arnold Morgan would spend the entire evening with Admiral George Morris, watching the satellite reports, praying for a breakthrough, just a sighting of the missing British diesel. They would also watch the Presidential broadcast, and then, sometime after midnight, the national security advisor would call his old sparring partner in the Kremlin, Admiral Vitaly Rankov, chief of the Main Staff, the third most powerful man in the Russian Navy. It was a call to which he was not looking forward.

The evening passed swiftly. Arnold Morgan and George Morris pored over charts, studied photographs, tried to get into the mind of Ben Adnam. Which way would he go? Or was he still lurking five hundred feet below the surface, right above the Atlantic Ridge where SOSUS might not be quite so efficient? Every two hours satellite reports came into Fort Meade. At 2035, shortly before the President’s broadcast, a picture from Big Bird confirmed that Chinese submarine 093 was cruising east through the Shanghai Roads. Neither of the American admirals was surprised.

The Presidential broadcast highlighted the television coverage, which was relaying routine messages of condolence from heads of state all over the world. They were all sympathetic, all complimentary, all despondent about the future of world harmony without Martin Beckman. But none of them contained the pure cry from the soul that was echoed in the words of the President of the United States.

No one would ever forget his unscripted concluding passage. “I never once briefed Martin on any issue that involved the poor and the underprivileged…there are no words to convey to such a man the depth of the despair of the Third World. He needed no words, no paper, no files, no parchment, no rules to play by…because his rules were written on his heart…and I don’t quite know what we’ll do without him.”

On the following day, no fewer than eight major East Coast city tabloids printed their front page edged in black. The tone of the media, was for once, pure shock, as if none would dare to offend one single citizen, with a smart-ass, tasteless headline. The New York Times led the way with two massive lines, straight across the top of page one, which read:

MARTIN BECKMAN, OUR MAN OF PEACE, DIES IN MYSTERIOUS CRASH OF AIR FORCE THREE

The New York Post stated simply:

DEATH OF THE PRINCE OF PEACE

Almost all of the broadsheets divided the front pages into two stories, one dealing with the actual demise of the aircraft, the evidence, the height, position, and speed, whatever quotes there were. The second, much bigger story, was devoted to Martin Beckman, and how a huge, dangerous shadow hung over the world because of his death.

Arnold Morgan had to wait until 0800(EST) to reach Admiral Vitaly Rankov in Moscow. He made the call from