pressed on south for 6 more miles, before joining the fast, wide M6 motorway, which would take him almost 200 miles into the Midlands of England, the backbone of his journey.
He reached Penrith, the gateway to the Lake District by 1530, the Audi now cruising at 80 mph east of the long rolling hills that guard the high waters of Ullswater, Haweswater, and Lake Windermere. He refueled at the Tebay service station, picked up a sandwich and a cup of coffee, and drove on south.
From there the M6 skirts the waters of Morecambe Bay opposite Barrow-in-Furness, recent home of HMS
He paid the toll and pulled into the Magor service station where he refueled, parked, and found a quiet table near the window for supper. He glanced at the plates of the other diners, careful to select food that would not fix his presence in the memory of the waitress. Bewildered, as always, by the eating habits of the English public, he ordered fish, chips, fried eggs, and baked beans like just about everyone else.
With Bill, Laura, and the two girls now well on their way to Chicago, Admiral MacLean and his wife had a peaceful, elegant dinner of grilled river trout, new potatoes and spinach, accompanied by a bottle of Sancerre. They each had a glass of port at the table while they finished the final edges of a full Stilton cheese.
Lady MacLean retired early, but the admiral was very restless. Finally having moved over to his study to read the newspaper in front of the dying log fire, he stood up and dialed the number for Galashiels Manor, which was answered by the butler.
“Oh, good evening, Beresford. This is Iain MacLean. I wonder, is either Mr. or Mrs. Anderson still about?”
“Oh, good evening, sir. I’m very sorry, but they’ve gone to France for a few days. But Mr. Douglas will be in London next Tuesday, I believe.”
“Oh, that’s a pity. Still it wasn’t important. Just a quick question I wanted to ask him…will he be staying at the club?”
“I believe so. But I could not be sure.”
“Very well, Beresford…thank you anyway…good-night to you.”
There was a very worried frown on the face of the admiral as he made his way to bed.
Ben Adnam checked his watch. It was almost 2230 as he pulled onto the slip road from the service station and entered the M4, which runs almost the entire length of the South Wales coastline, way beyond Swansea and into West Wales. It was pitch-dark, and beginning to rain again. The motorway was busy, and the Iraqi found the Welsh-language road signs highly confusing. It was a language that made Arabic look simple, and he stuck to the middle traffic lane, not going too fast, watching the big white lettering that signified he was passing Newport, then Cardiff, then Pontypridd, then Bridgend, Maesteg, Port Talbot, Neath, and Swansea. This was the old industrial heartland of Wales, the southern end of the steep valleys, from which they once mined the finest shipping coal in the world, Welsh anthracite.
Ben Adnam had learned much about rugby football while studying in Scotland, and he recognized the names of those towns and mining villages, almost every one of them with a place in the folklore of world rugby. Beyond Swansea he watched for the signs for Llanelli, the West Wales mining town reputed to have produced more world- class stand-off-halves than all the rest of the British Isles put together.
Ben had watched the Royal Navy play rugby several times and remembered meeting three of the massive tight forwards, all of them submariners, all of them from Wales. Irrationally he wondered if they might be living near there, and whether their lives were less lonely than his. He would have given anything for a conversation, with anyone, even with Able Seaman Berwyn James, the big, cheerful 1988 Navy forward from Neath, whose neck measured 24 inches, whose forehead was nonexistent, and whose IQ was only a shade higher than plant life. Ben remembered Berwyn well.
The M4 ended to the northeast of Llanelli, and he sped down toward Carmarthen, slashing through the rain at 75 mph He’d have liked to cruise at 90 mph plus, which the car would have managed with ease, but this he did not do. Leaving an inevitable trail, which must be uncovered within a month, maximum, was one thing; getting arrested by the police for speeding on that night would have been crass.
The roads were deserted down there in West Wales, and now the signposts were beginning to pinpoint the port of Fishguard. Ben raced past St. Clears at midnight, still heading due west. At 0030 he turned north at Haverfordwest, for the last 15 miles of the 560-mile journey. Cardigan Bay and the ferry port lay due north before him. The fish and chips lay heavily upon the stomach of a weary Commander Adnam.
The traffic, even in the small hours of the morning, grew much heavier, and Ben found himself in a convoy of trucks all trundling up the narrow, winding road between fields of unseen sheep, to the ferry. Those last 15 miles took him forty-five minutes, and the rain and spray made it impossible even to contemplate overtaking. The line of traffic meandered through ghostly quiet Welsh villages like Tangiers, Treffgarne, Wolf’s Castle, Letterstone, Newbridge, and Scleddau before the trucks turned left along the country road that bypasses Fishguard and leads down to the port.
Ben decided to go straight into the middle of Fishguard and look for a gas station, and at 0115 he drove into the desolate town square and began to follow the signs to the ferry. He was surprised at the height of the town, which seemed to be perched on a giant headland above the cold waters of the Irish Sea. He could see the harbor lights, way below, down a steep, curving road, and out to the west of the harbor wall he could see the huge lighted bulk of Stena Line’s massive car ferry, the
There was one gas station open along the wharf, and he filled up the Audi to ensure that when he arrived in early-morning Ireland he had a full tank for his journey. Then he made his way to the ferry, showing his ticket at the kiosk and collecting his boarding pass. The route took him through the customs shed, and a police officer stepped from the shadows and beckoned him to stop. Ben did so and wound down the window.
“British passport, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Straight ahead.” The officer did not ask to see it.
Outside the ferry-port shop a line of half a dozen early arrivals waited in their cars. But Ben got out and went inside to buy a cup of coffee. But he did not linger. He tipped in a couple of small packets of sugar, stirred, and returned to the car, where he sat and sipped, and contemplated the world that lay ahead of him.
At 0210 they called the drivers forward, and, in a long, snaking line, they made their way a half mile along the dock, with the harbor waters to their right and the streetlights of Fishguard high above to the east. Seamen ordered each of the 27 cars into a designated place, deep in the hold, balancing the weight on the port and starboard sides of the nine-deck-high ferry.
The trucks boarded ten minutes later, by which time Commander Adnam had made his way, following the signs, to the executive lounge up on deck eight. It was warm, deserted, and comfortably furnished. He sank into an armchair and drifted off to sleep before he even had time to remove his coat. He did not stir until the ship was under way, reversing out of its berth, then moving forward, to the north, around the long harbor wall into the easterly waters of the Irish Sea. Subconsciously Ben could tell they were just leaving. He could easily pick up the changing beats of the engines, as the
He sensed that the rain had stopped, and he walked out onto the windswept upper deck, staring over the rail at the strange moonlit coast of Wales, feeling again the old familiar rise of the ocean beneath the keel. He had already studied the route on a map he bought in Scotland, and he leaned forward on the rail, peering into the darkness for the lights of perhaps another ship.
But that part of the Irish Sea was deserted. And he waited alone, watching for the flashing light of the lighthouse on Strumble Head, which he knew was the end of the land, the point where the giant ferry would enter the rough open waters of St. George’s Channel, where the great Atlantic swells roll in from the southwest.
He felt the waters before he saw the light, felt the angle of the ship increase just slightly as she pitched slowly forward, then rose with the wave, hesitating, then angling down, the foam white spray slashing out wide
