and indeed Arnold Morgan knew both Ramshawe’s father and his fiancee Jane Peacock’s father, the Australian ambassador to Washington, really well.
Ramshawe and Morgan shared a kind of wry sense of irony. But for several years now, the ex — National Security Adviser had understood that when the studious young Aussie came on with a theory, it was almost certainly worth listening to.
“Sir, I am trying to piece something together. But I don’t know anyone else I can talk to about this. I have some new information I really want you to think about. If you’ve got time. You know George Morris is in San Diego, I expect.”
“Okay, Jimmy. I’ll tell you what. Is Jane in town?”
“No, she’s with her dad in New York.”
“Do you want to come and have dinner at Le Bec Fin in Georgetown tonight? Kathy and I were going alone, but you can come if you like. About eight o’clock?”
“Sir, that would be terrific. And you’re gonna love this.”
“I am?”
“Well, I think so. But basically I only said that to make sure you didn’t change your mind.”
Arnold Morgan laughed. “End of the second dogwatch, right?” he said, using Naval parlance for 2000 hours.
“Aye, sir,” replied the Lt. Commander. And he sat back again at his desk still consumed with the signal that Corporal Collins had stabbed out of cyberspace on the other side of the world.
“I just wonder what the bloody hell’s going to happen over there,” he said, again to the empty room. “We don’t know. But I’m dead certain someone does. And anyway, who’s his bloody friends in the south?”
He decided to end his twelve-hour shift and make his way home, to smarten up for the Admiral. The traffic was awful, and he was already five minutes late before he parked his car. He stopped outside the restaurant and called to the doorman, “Is Admiral Morgan here yet?”
The doorman nodded and beckoned for Ramshawe to leave the car. “We’ll take care of that, sir,” he said. “Admiral’s orders.”
Ramshawe entered the restaurant and was shown to Morgan’s wide booth. Kathy, who looked wonderful in an emerald green suit with a cream silk shirt, wore her dark red hair long. She was sipping white wine. Morgan was drinking red wine from Bordeaux, and there was a bottle and an extra glass on the table. Morgan filled it for Ramshawe, who glanced appreciatively at the label and noted that the Great Man had selected a 1995 Chateau Lafleur from the left bank of the Gironde River estuary. He sipped it, and, beautifully mannered as he had been brought up, said, “Thank you for this, sir. Thank you very much.”
“Oh, that’s okay, Jimmy. Since you plan to accuse and then guillotine the great Republic of France during dinner, I thought we might as well kiss her good-bye with a decent bottle of her own wine.”
Ramshawe laughed, and said, “Dead bloody right. Those Frogs might be a bit treacherous, but they know a thing or two about the grape, eh?”
Kathy smiled at Ramshawe. His rough-edged Aussie slant on life sat very well on a young officer. Much like the abrasive hard-edged humor of the Admiral sat so marvelously well on a man of Morgan’s learning. She thought then, as she often did, how much alike they were — like a couple of college professors who thought like Al Capone or, in young Jimmy’s case, Ned Kelly. She also thought this was going to be a very private, very interesting evening. As did her husband.
The menus came almost immediately. The Admiral was brusque. “Okay, Jimmy,” he said. “Let’s get the ordering done fast, then you can regale me with your sievelike theories on France’s wrong-doing…”
“Steady, sir. I told you I had a one percent certainty level. This isn’t just a shot in the dark. I’m on the case.”
“Well, if that’s true, I’ll prepare myself with a bowl of turtle soup, laced with a glass of dry sherry, and I’ll soothe my nerves with a couple of lamb chops. If you haven’t tried ’em, they’re as good as any in the city. Except at our house.”
“Okay, sir. I’ll try a small dish of those mussels to start and then I’ll go with the chops, medium rare.”
“Excellent,” said Morgan. “Kathy will want to treat this long menu as if she were reading
Kathy punched the Admiral playfully on the arm, and assured Ramshawe that her husband did not have the slightest idea what she was going to order.
“Righto, sir,” he said, grinning.
“And for Christ’s sake stop calling me sir,” said the Admiral.
“I’m a retired private citizen who was in the Navy a long time ago. I’ve known your father for years, and your future father-in-law even longer. I think it’s time for you to call me ‘Arnie,’ like everyone else.”
“Yessir,” said Ramshawe, which caused Kathy to giggle, as she always did, sometimes secretly, when anyone had the temerity to defy the great Arnold Morgan.
“Sorry, Arnie,” Ramshawe added. “But here I go: As you know, we heard last November that one of the European nations was suddenly, and for no reason, buying up a whole slew of oil futures on the world market. We were told it might very well be France, and over the past couple of months it has apparently emerged as definitely France.
“I found out today that the French purchased more than six hundred million barrels for delivery over the next year. Some from Abu Dhabi, some from Bahrain, and some from Qatar, with an extra supply from Kazakhstan. But,
“I ask, why? Anyone needs extra oil, you go to Saudi Arabia. They’ve got more than everyone else, and with a big national government contract, it’s cheaper. But no, France goes everywhere else. And today, someone destroys the entire Saudi oil industry, and there’s only one nation in the industrial world that doesn’t give a damn: France. Because she has her supply well covered from elsewhere. In my view, France
Arnold Morgan nodded. Said nothing. Hit the Chateau Lafleur with renewed zest.
“And then,” said Jimmy, “what else do we hear? The most wanted Middle Eastern terrorist in the world, the Commander in Chief of Hamas himself, Major Ray Kerman, is picked up by the Mossad at some kind of a secret meeting in Marseille, shipped in by the French government via Taverny, the headquarters of their Special Forces operation.
“He is also secretly smuggled out. Plainly with the cooperation of the French Secret Service, who proceed to tell a pack of lies the size of a grown wallaby. All about the happenings of that night, the deaths at the restaurant… in Marseille…France,” he put heavy emphasis on the last word. “What’s the great Middle Eastern hit man fundamentalist doing in bloody France anyway? He MUST have had their protection. Forget that, sir. He DID have their protection.
“Which brings me to my last point. Sometime today, the GCHQ listening station in Cyprus picks up this message. It’s plainly military, as you will see when I show you in a minute. And it was transmitted by a bloody Frenchman from a spot in the desert nineteen miles north of Riyadh. It was also answered by a Frenchman.
“Now how about that? And what I want to know is this:
“And, anyway, does that not suggest to you that France is somehow mixed up in this Saudi oil bullshit — right up to the armpits?”
Arnold Morgan again sipped his wine thoughtfully. Kathy ordered Parma ham and melon followed by Dover sole, and all three of them fell about laughing.
But the Admiral was taking this seriously; the French connection, that is, not the Dover sole. “Jimmy, I have not heard one sentence from anyone that suggests the attacks on the Saudi oil fields were conducted by anyone other than Arabs, probably al-Qaeda but most definitely by Saudis.”
“They could not have done it, Arnie. I’ve been studying the bloody semantics all day. They could not. Unless the whole country was in revolution, including the Army, the National Guard, the Navy, and the Air Force. Otherwise it could not have happened.”
