and their dog…
GALLANT ROGER KILLED IN ACTION — BESIDE HIS MASTERS
Police Slaying Baffles Scotland Yard
It beat the hell out of Jimmy Ramshawe too. But the only paragraph that did interest him was one that began:
So far as Jimmy knew, this probably meant MI5, or even MI6, England’s version of the CIA. And although the murder of London cops was not his business and neither, of course, was the killing of a London University professor, he nonetheless logged a full notation about the strange and mysterious death of Paul Landon.
He found it hard to dismiss the incident from his mind. And at the end of the day, he was still puzzling over it on the way to the Australian Embassy in Washington, D.C., where he was dining with his fiancee, Jane Peacock, daughter of the ambassador. It was almost eight o’clock before he arrived, and he gratefully accepted a tall glass of cold Fosters lager from Miss Peacock before joining her parents in the dining room. Jimmy had always gotten along very well with Ambassador John Peacock. Their families had been friends for many years, and indeed, Jimmy’s parents, who lived in New York, were due to stay at the embassy two weeks from now.
He waited until they were well into the main course, a superb rib of beef, cooked to perfection and accompanied by a particularly elegant Australian red wine, Clonakilla Shiraz, made up in the Canberra District in the temperate foothills, a couple of hundred miles south of Sydney. John Peacock was a lifelong collector of good wine, and owned an excellent cellar at his home overlooking the harbor in Sydney. As Australian ambassador to the U.S.A., he was expected to serve vintages from his own country, and he rose to the occasion every time.
Jimmy waited until they were all smoothly into a second glass before broaching the subject that had been on his mind for the past six hours.
“You ever read anything about a volcano professor in London who managed to get murdered last May, John?”
“Maybe. What was his name?”
“Professor Paul Landon.”
“Now wait a minute. I did notice something about that, because he was coming to speak at two or three universities in Australia — and one of ’em was Monash, in Melbourne, where I went. I think that’s the same guy. I remember it because the Sydney newspaper ran quite a story on his death. Why d’you ask?”
“Oh, I just ran into some stuff on the Internet today. Seemed such a strange murder, no rhyme or reason. No one has ever discovered why he was killed. And no one’s ever been charged with anything connected to it.”
“No. I remember that. He wasn’t just an expert on volcanoes. He was into the whole range of earthly disasters — you know, earthquakes, tidal waves, asteroid collisions, and Christ knows what. As I recall, he was coming particularly to lecture on the effect of a major tidal wave, it’s got some bloody Chinese name…Let me think…chop-sooey, or something. Anyway, it’s a lot of water.”
Jimmy chuckled. He really liked his future father-in-law, who’d insisted on being called John since Jimmy was a kid at college. “The word we’re groping for is
“Yes. that’s it,” replied the Ambassador. “It’s when a bloody great hunk of rock falls off a mountain and crashes into the sea causing a fantastic upsurge as it rolls along the ocean floor? Right? Expert?”
“Yes, I think that’s a fair and thoughtful summation,” said Jimmy, frowning, and putting on what he thought might be a learned voice. “Very well put. I think in future, I’ll address you as Splash Peacock, tsunami authority.”
Everyone laughed at that. But the Ambassador was not finished. “I’ll tell you something else I remember about that article. The prof was coming to Australia to talk in particular about these bloody great waves that have happened on Pacific islands north of us. That’s the danger spot, right? Your professor, Jimmy, knew a whole lot about one of ’em on New Britain Island off Papua New Guinea. It fell into the ocean and the ole thing developed and drowned about three thousand people on neighboring islands.”
“For a bloke who can’t say it, you know a whole hell of a lot about tsunamis!” replied Jimmy.
“Gimme a coupla weeks, I’ll master the word as well,” chuckled John Peacock.
“So why do you think someone murdered the professor?”
“Who knows? Could have been just mistaken identity, I suppose.”
“Maybe,” replied Jimmy. “But the police think it looked like an execution.”
The first memorandums were beginning to arrive from the incoming Administration. Clearly, the new President was planning to impose savage defense cuts, particularly on the Navy. He considered the expenditure of billions of dollars on surface warships and submarines to be a lunatic waste of money. And he reasoned, not without just cause, that he had been elected to do precisely that. People did not want to raise armies and battle fleets. They wanted better health care and a better start in life for their kids. The recent election had demonstrated that thoroughly. McBride had not routed the Republicans. In fact he had only narrowly won the White House, and both Houses of Congress were still held by the GOP.
But the people had spoken. They had heard his message of hope and the chance of a better life for their families. They had listened to him rail against their own country, in which people can be bankrupted, their life’s savings extinguished, just for being ill. They had listened to Charles McBride swear to God he was going to change all that. Yes, the people had spoken, no doubt about that.
It all struck home, especially in the headquarters of the veteran Chairman of the Joint Chiefs up on the Pentagon’s second floor. Gen. Tim Scannell, in the big office directly below that of the outgoing Secretary of Defense, Robert MacPherson, was not a happy man.
“I don’t know how long he’s likely to last. Hopefully only four years. But this bastard is probably going to inflict more damage on the U.S. fleet than Yamamoto.”
Among those sitting opposite the Chairman was Adm. Alan Dickson, and the Chief of Naval Operations was not smiling.
“I’ve been in the middle of these things before,” he said. “And it’s not just the big issues. You guys know as well as I do that severe defense cuts have an effect on everything, because all over the place there are people trying to cut costs. And they usually go a step too far — no one
“Especially the Navy. You start decommissioning carriers, mothballing amphibious ships, laying up destroyers and frigates, you’re punching a major hole in the U.S. Navy’s requirements for really top guys. And when they think you don’t need ’em, they don’t show up at Annapolis.”
“Left-wing politicians never understand it,” answered Adm. Dick Greening, Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet. “All those goddamned cities which survive on defense contracts. You stop building warships, you’re not just seeing cities going broke, you’re watching the unique skills of an area start to vanish. Pretty soon you end up like some Third World harbor, buying technology from abroad.”
The room went silent. “Do you guys know what it is that really brasses me off about governments?” said Admiral Dickson. “The stuff no one explains to the people.”
No one spoke.
“The fact is that governments don’t have any money of their own,” continued Admiral Dickson. “Only what they take from the American people and from American corporations. So when they tell the people an aircraft carrier is too expensive, they are talking absolute horseshit. They do not
The Navy Chief paused. Then said, “Half of the money in labor costs goes to the guys building the ships — paychecks to people who
