Before him, in sharp focus, was the major event Admiral Borden had mentioned. Jimmy could see civilian cars parked in the dockyard with the joint Sino-Iranian fleet lit up brightly in the gathering darkness for the public to see. He guessed he would receive new pictures, intermittently, throughout the day, showing more or less what was happening in Iran’s Navy Headquarters.
Still allowing the issue of the Russian mines to burn away at the back of his brain, Lt. Ramshawe searched the decks of the Chinese frigates, under a powerful glass, to see if there was a sign of them. But there was none. Not so the destroyer. All 40 of the mines she carried could now be seen on her rails, though they had plainly been covered during her journey from China.
A new set of pictures arrived midafternoon that actually caught the little fleet on the move. It was very dark in the gulf now, and the photographs were not of the same quality. But this hardly mattered. What did matter was the sight of three Chinese frigates, one destroyer and two Iranian Corvettes heading off on a mission in the middle of the night.
For all he knew, they were off to attack Iraq or Oman, “or some other godforsaken place,” and Jimmy Ramshawe hit the button to the Director’s office, from where he was given his usual short shrift.
“I wouldn’t worry about it, Lieutenant, if I were you…they’re probably going to conduct a night exercise together…not unusual at one of these international junkets between two navies….”
“Yessir. But I can see a full load of mines on the destroyer….”
“I expect they’ll still be there in the morning, Lieutenant. That’s all.”
Jimmy Ramshawe put the phone down slowly. And the same question he had asked himself a thousand times popped into his mind:
He also considered it a slice of blind luck that the Andropov freighter had been spotted taking off from Moscow, and then again at secretive Baykonur. No one ever traced its second refueling stop, and in Lt. Ramshawe’s opinion it was entirely possible there had been a second trans-Asian flight of the giant aircraft. That would have brought the total mines carried to 240, sufficient to fill all four surface ships with their combined quota of 220. He had not given the three Kilos much thought since they had not been seen for a few days. But he could not get those mines out of his mind.
It was all very well Admiral Borden saying it was best to forget the whole thing until something more definite emerged, but, streuth! What if those crazy bastards were out there right now planting a minefield in the middle of the strait? What then?
Lieutenant Ramshawe wandered off in search of a cup of coffee, reasoning to himself that if the satellite pass was made at 0800 over Bandar Abbas, which he knew for certain, then he might see some good pictures of the ships back in harbor sometime after midnight Fort Meade time.
Anyway, he was going nowhere until he had seen those pictures. And he knew this was a state of affairs guaranteed not to thrill his girlfriend, the dark-haired Jane Peacock, daughter of the Australian ambassador to Washington. The Peacocks and the Ramshawes were lifelong friends, and it was widely assumed that Jimmy and Jane would ultimately marry.
Right now he looked forward to telephoning Jane even less than he dreaded calling his boss.
He was right, too. “Jimmy, for crying out loud, why this sudden interest in an Arab Navy?”
“They’re not Arabs,” he corrected her. “They’re Persian. That’s different.”
“
“Janie, listen. I believe this is really important. Like maybe a life-and-death matter.”
“Well, there must be more important people than you to deal with it.”
“There isn’t anyone more important than me who even believes it, never mind wants to deal with it.”
“Well, leave it alone, then, until someone instructs you to do something.”
“I can’t, Janie. I have to stay. But I’ll pick you up early tomorrow and we’ll have breakfast before you go to your class — I’m free till eleven-thirty, same time you have to be in Georgetown.”
“Okay,” she grumbled. “Nine at the embassy…but you’re still a bloody nightmare…. Even your own mother thinks that.”
Jimmy chuckled. He adored his beautiful, clever fiancee, and he hated letting her down. But in his own mind, he alone stood between world order and possible world chaos.
The night passed slowly. And he spent the hours before midnight reading a book about international terrorism, a fundamentally depressing read, citing samples of inordinate stupidity by the Intelligence services of various Western governments.
Jimmy Ramshawe was still young enough to own those ideals. Just. But he would not want to work too long for a conservative cynic like David Borden, whose pension beckoned, and who preferred to pass the buck than start a high-profile scare over nothing.
Midnight came and went. It was a half hour since the morning satellite shots had been taken again, high above the harbor of Bandar Abbas.
Nothing arrived until 0040. And the young Lieutenant shuffled the new photos from the National Reconnaissance Office, searching for a shot of the Chinese destroyer. And here it was…fully laden with its mines, just as it had been before the midnight naval exercises in the gulf. The frigates too were back at their Iranian jetties, the tarpaulins that covered their cargo still in place.
There were also the standard daily shots of Chah Behar, and they showed empty spaces where the three Chinese Kilos had been last Saturday night. “Christ knows where they are,” muttered Jimmy.
And he picked up his jacket and made his way out of the office, walking through the main doors of the building and across to the dimly lit parking lot where two Marine guards saluted him.
He climbed into the driver’s seat and drove to the main gates, showed his pass to the duty guards and gunned his 10-year-old black Jaguar out to the exit road and on down to the Washington-Baltimore Parkway. It was a fast ride at this time of night, and he let the speedometer hover around 75 as he cruised down to the Beltway for the 10-mile run to Exit 33, Connecticut Avenue, which would take him straight into the center of the capital.
He made a right at Dupont Circle, skirted the campus of George Washington University, and ran on down to the Watergate complex where his parents had owned an apartment for the better part of 30 years. Naturally they rarely, if ever, used it, since they lived mostly in New York. Which was excellent news for Jimmy, who thus had a millionaire’s residence for free.
He drove into his underground parking space and turned off the engine. It was almost 2 A.M., and he was almost too tired to get out of the car. But he still wished Jane could have been there waiting for him. And he thought again of how much easier life had been when Admiral George Morris had been in charge at the NSA.
The thing about George was, he was damned confident, and he had the ear of the Big Man in the White House. No one was closer to Arnold Morgan than George, and the two of them always consulted. Admiral Morris was thus a fabulous guy to work for. He always listened. He always weighed all the eventualities, and all the possibilities. Never tried to second-guess his staff. He worked on the theory that if one of his chosen men thought something should be investigated, then that was probably correct. Not like this bloody Boredom character.
Jimmy sat there in the driver’s seat for a moment, pondering his dreary task tomorrow when he had to talk to Admiral Borden and admit the Chinese destroyer was still fully laden with her sea mines, as she had been the previous night.
He could hear the world-weary old bastard right now: “Well, Lieutenant, what a great surprise that must be to you…but don’t say I didn’t warn you….”
“Just as long as he doesn’t tempt me to tell him another unlikely truth,” muttered Jimmy to himself. “That the bloody morning mines might be different ones from those we saw last night. He’ll say that’s bollocks. Probably paranoid bollocks. But it isn’t. Because that’s what I’d do myself if I wanted to lay a minefield in the Strait of Hormuz.”
