back to the government.
“They never mention that a big hunk of the cash goes to U.S. Steel, the electronic companies right here in the U.S.A., the missile systems, shipbuilders in Maine, Connecticut, and Virginia — they’re all paying corporate taxes. Some of the money goes to U.S. Navy personnel, who pay their taxes back to the government, just like the people at U.S. Steel. The whole thing is just a roundabout. The goddamned aircraft carrier is not expensive, it’s
“Any clues yet about our cuts?” Rear Admiral Curran asked gravely.
“No one’s been specific. But we’ve been put on a kind of unofficial high alert to start cutting back. I’d say the conversions on those four Ohio Class SSBNs will go on hold.”
Admiral Dickson referred to the program to remove the Trident missiles from the old 16,600-ton strategic missile boats, and turn them into guided missile platforms, each carrying 154 Tomahawks. All four submarines were to be upgraded with Acoustic Rapid COTS insertion sonar.
“I wouldn’t be sure we’ll keep the green light for two more Nimitz Class carriers either. CVN 77 and 78 will probably get canceled.”
“Jesus,” said the Commander of the Atlantic Fleet, Vice Adm. Brian Ingram. “That would be bad. Some of the big guys are just about getting to the end of their tether. We need new, and we need it now — how about the Arleigh Burke destroyer program?”
“Well, as you know, we’re supposed to get thirty-six and we only have twenty-four. I’m just not sure about the final twelve.”
“Jeez. I’d just hate to see us run short of missile ships…And I’d sure feel better about everything if the Big Man was still in the White House.”
By anyone’s standards, this was a very worried group of U.S. Navy Execs and the Pentagon boss. Not worried for themselves, but for the future ability of United States warships to continue safeguarding the world’s oceans. Whenever necessary.
And the Big Man was far away.
Mrs. Arnold Morgan had spent the last hour of her honeymoon on her own. Relaxed on a lounge by the lower pool at the imperious Gran Hotel Bahia del Duque, way down on the southern tip of the island, she was reading quietly.
Behind her, a detail of two security agents was playing cards, and at infrequent intervals a waiter appeared to inquire if she needed more orange juice or coffee. About 100 feet above stood her new husband. Ensconced in an observatory at the top of a tower, he was staring out to sea through a telescope many times more powerful than most people will ever have used.
The Canaries, with their pure Atlantic skies, attracted astronomers from all over the world, and giant telescopes have been built in observatories on every one of the seven islands. The instrument at Gran Hotel Bahia del Duque was constructed mostly with astronomers in mind, and it was generally focused on the heavens. Today, however, it looked out to the surface of the deep blue waters to the south of the Costa Adeje, where the seabed swiftly shelves down to depths of almost a mile.
Kathy wished he’d come make his way back down and talk to her. Isolation did not suit the former goddess of the West Wing. She slipped back into her book, occasionally gazing at the magnificent surroundings of the five-star Gran Hotel, a sprawling waterside complex, half-Venetian, half-Victorian in design, set in a semitropical botanical garden. Her new husband adored such grandeur and he had sweetly instructed her, with his usual old world charm, to locate a place and book them in for two weeks—“
He was, of course, utterly beyond redemption and Kathy forgave him only because he treated everyone like that. As his secretary for six years in the White House, she had seen diplomats from the world’s most powerful countries quake before his onslaught. ’Specially the Chinese and, almost as often, the Russians.
The whole idea of this tiny cluster of Spanish Islands, set in the sparkling Atlantic off the coast of Africa, had been hers. She had lived in Europe when she was much younger and her sister-in-law, Gayle, who lived in southern Spain, had suggested the Canaries because of the January weather, which was warm, much warmer than mainland Spain, a thousand miles to the northeast. But the most significant reason for Tenerife was that Kathy had wanted to arrange a Catholic Blessing for their marriage, which had thus far been only legally formalized by a U.S. Justice of the Peace in Washington.
Gayle had located the perfect little church on the neighboring island of Gran Canaria, the Iglesia de San Antonio Abad down near the waterfront at Las Palmas, the island’s main city. She had arranged for the English- speaking priest to meet Arnold and Kathy on Friday morning and conduct a short private service.
Only after their arrival did Kathy plan to tell her husband that San Antonio, unprepossessing, painted white, and Romanesque in design, was the very church where Christopher Columbus had prayed for divine help before sailing for the Americas.
The Great Modern American Patriot and the Great European Adventurer. Two Naval Commanding Officers somehow united at the same altar, separated by the centuries, but not in spirit. Yes, Kathy thought, Arnold would like that. He’d like that very much, the secret romantic that he ultimately was.
So it was settled. A honeymoon in the Canaries. And even the globally sophisticated Arnold had been taken aback by the sheer opulence of the place, the terra-cotta exteriors, five swimming pools, the perfect alfresco dining area on the terraces looking down to the soft sandy beaches.
“And here he is, up the stupid tower, for the fourth day in a row,” thought Kathy. “With the telescope, presumably looking for the enemy.”
Just at that moment, the former National Security Adviser to the President of the United States made a timely poolside appearance. “Oh hello, my darling,” said Kathy. “I was just thinking this is like being on a honeymoon with Lord Nelson, you up there with that ridiculous telescope.”
“It’s better, I assure you,” grunted Arnold. “Admiral Nelson lost an arm in the battle of Santa Cruz about 40 miles north of here. Right now you’d be sitting in intensive care, waiting to see if he lived or died.”
Kathy could not help laughing at his mercurial mind, and encyclopedic knowledge.
“Anyway,” added Arnold, “Lord Nelson was not big on honeymoons. Never married Lady Hamilton, did he? Probably trying to avoid a hard time when he was caught using his telescope.”
Kathy shook her head. She knew that Arnold Morgan was impossible to joust with because he always won, impossible to reason with because he always had more knowledge, impossible to be angry with because he could find a joke, a shaft of irony, or even slapstick from any set of circumstances. She had been in love with him from the day he had first thundered into her life, instructing her to call the head of the Russian Navy and tell him he was a lying bastard.
Of course he was impossible. Everyone knew that. But he was also more exciting, fun, and challenging than any man she had ever met. He was over twenty years older then she, an inch shorter, and the most confident person in the White House. He cared nothing for rank, only for truth. The former President had plainly been afraid of him, afraid of his absolute devotion to the flag, the country, and its safety.
To the former Kathy O’Brien, when Arnold Morgan pulled himself up to his full five feet, eight and a half inches, he seemed not one inch short of ten feet. In her mind, and in the mind of many others, she had married the world’s shortest giant.
It seemed incredible that he was gone from the West Wing. Kathy, a veteran of the White House secretarial staff, simply could not imagine what it would be like without the caged lion in the office of the President’s National Security Adviser, taking the flack, taking the strain, and laying down the law about “what’s right for this goddamned country.”
Whoever the new President decided to appoint in the Admiral’s place, he’d need some kind of a hybrid
