Ghost Force

But the impending row over the Falklands stayed on his mind, and at the end of the afternoon he made a copy of the articles in the Buenos Aires Herald. Then he posted them off, regular mail, to Admiral Morgan. He just scrawled 'FYI' at the head of the first sheet and left it at that.

Seven days later, however, on Monday, November 9, there were two developments that caught his interest. The first was a memorandum from Ryan Holland, the veteran career diplomat from Mississippi, who was now the United States Ambassador to Argentina. His communique had been sent directly to the State Department, but was then forwarded to the CIA and the NSA.

It read:

Continued Friday and Saturday night disturbances in the Plaza de Mayo. That's the huge square in front of the Presidential Palace in the center of Buenos Aires. The crowd appears to grow in size every night. On Saturday the police estimate there were 12,000 people, all chanting Viva las Malvinas!!

I mention this because there have been no such demonstrations here for many years. I cannot understand this sudden rise in public indignation over those damned islands. Though I did notice a hot editorial in the Herald the other day, claiming the oil recently discovered on the Falkland Islands was in fact the property of Argentina.

The Herald's editor, a nice enough guy with a plainly hysterical streak, was actually recommending the use of military force again. I expect it will all blow over, but those crowds were very substantial, and loud, getting louder. At no time did the President appear on the balcony of the Palace, and there was no indication of any official action being contemplated. Ryan Holland, Ambassador to Argentina.

One hour after Lt. Commander Ramshawe read the communique, his direct telephone line rang. Admiral Morgan on the line.

'Hey, Jimmy, thank you for the cuttings from Buenos Aires. Very interesting. Just remember it's easy to dismiss stuff, easy to say it's not our business. But remember last time, we ended up standing up to our armpits in that mess. The Brits and the Argentinians were really slugging it out, fighter-bombers hitting the Atlantic by the dozen, warships hitting the bottom of the Atlantic. It was a very nasty, bitterly fought war…and the USA was right in the middle of it, helping Ronnie Reagan's best friend Margaret Thatcher to win it…'

'Sir, I was only about four years old at the time.'

'Well, you should have been paying attention.'

'Yessir. But I'm definitely paying attention now. I just read a communique from our Ambassador in Buenos Aires…'

'Ryan Holland, right? Cunning old guy. Doesn't make many mistakes, and more important, doesn't waste a lot of time on rubbish.'

'Nossir. Want me to tell you what he says?'

'Sure. Always listen to Ryan Holland, my boy. He usually knows what he's saying.'

Jimmy read. And at the end of it, Arnold Morgan was very thoughtful. 'Kinda fits with what the Herald was saying, right? Growing indignation about the Brits' claim, not only on the islands, but also on the oil.'

'Well, presumably we supported that claim in 1982, so we're kinda stuck with it now, huh?'

'Yes. We are. That's why these observations in Buenos Aires may well be important.'

'Well, Ryan says he is not seeing anything official.'

'It doesn't need to be official, does it?' said Arnold Morgan. 'Argentina has spent a lot of time being ruled by a military junta. And officers from all three services have enormous influence in that country.

'In 1982, a couple of Admirals were almost entirely responsible for that war. And if there was anything similar going on right now, it would be very difficult to run the plotters to ground. Doesn't mean it isn't happening though, does it?'

'No, it doesn't. Just as the United Nations search team couldn't find Saddam's nuclear program in Iraq, didn't mean he didn't have one, did it?'

'No, Jimmy. It did not.' The Admiral spoke thoughtfully. 'It meant the UN guys could not find it. That's all. Can't find and doesn't exist are not the same. And only a left- wing politician could think they were.'

'Do you think we ought to do anything?'

'Well, not in a big hurry. But I would not be surprised if something was brewing. And it might not hurt to have the CIA check out the military bases along that southern coast of Argentina. Just in case. Just in case they pick anything up.'

'Okay, sir. I'll get right on it, and anything shakes loose I'll keep you informed.'

'Right, and get some reading done on the 1982 war in the South Atlantic. You never know, you might be glad of the knowledge someday. Read Admiral Sandy Woodward's book. It's the most accurate and interesting account.'

'Okay, sir. See you soon.'

For the following few days, Jimmy Ramshawe tried to understand the causes and results of the Argentine decision to make a military landing on the Falkland Islands twenty-eight years ago. It was, he decided, pretty damned obvious they decided to go for it after a slashing British government defense review in 1981 that saw both Royal Navy aircraft carriers Hermes and Invincible sold to India and Australia, respectively.

It was also, he considered, a blinding error of judgment on Argentina's behalf: to misjudge both the dates upon which the carriers would actually leave England and the fact that Margaret Thatcher was a very determined Prime Minister — a lady of whom President Reagan once said, 'She's the best man they've got.'

Anyway, so far as Jimmy could see, it was a total screwup, bound for failure from way back, and a lesson for those determined to pick a fight with someone much tougher than they look.

It was a quiet time, globally and politically, coming up to Christmas, and no one was getting wildly excited about anything, not even the Palestinians. Jimmy's studies were seriously interrupted only twice, both times by Lenny Suchov over at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

The first time was to reveal the Russians never did issue another formal press release about the Siberians who had died in the plane crash in the tundra. At least they did not issue one that named the dead. They only announced the wreckage had not been found, and there were elements of doubt about who was and who was not on board. The military authorities therefore considered it 'inappropriate' to make any formal statement about the disaster.

As Lenny had predicted, no one in the media felt much like braving the arctic weather and conducting their own search in northern Siberia. Especially as the government had cordoned the entire area off, banned private aircraft, and banned private investigations.

'All that,' said Lenny wryly, 'to prevent a search for an aircraft that was not there in the first place. Clever, hah? No one could get caught doing one single wrong thing.'

This left, of course, only the missing, and their distraught families. And three days after his first call, Lenny was back on the line with a report, meticulously put together by the CIA's men in Moscow and Yekaterinburg. It contained the names of nine people who had just vanished.

But the list was distinguished by one fact: none of their families knew of any flight that would have taken their husbands, sons, fathers, or brothers away to the far north. No one knew anything about any conference in Murmansk. And it was most unusual for any of them, apparently, to travel by Russian Air Force jet.

These were extremely distinguished men, all of them occupying positions of the highest order, both corporate and governmental. It was only provincial government, but this particular province was bigger than the USA. These were very important men.

There was Sergei Pobozhiy. Vanished. Went to his office that day, never seen again. There was Jaan Valuev, the OJSC boss. Gone. A billionaire, Chairman of Barcelona FC, and no one knows where he is, or where he had gone that day. There was Boris Nuriyev, the Senior Financial Vice President of LUKOIL, the biggest corporation in Russia. 'Where the hell was he?' demanded Lenny, adding, 'People of that importance cannot just vanish, trust me. Not even in Russia.'

And where was Roman Rekuts, a bigger-than-life guy, who stepped into the snow boots of the murdered