H.M.S. Unseen (1999) Page 11

  “Then you’d have to find yourself a new secretary…and then I’d be the one waiting at home like all your other wives, while you run half the world. No thanks, Arnold Morgan, I’ll marry you when you retire. Not one day earlier.”

  “Jesus Christ. It’s like trying to negotiate with the Russian Navy. I’m not ready to retire.”

  “And I’m not ready to stay home waiting. Besides, I like to keep a good eye on you. And I can’t do that if I’m Mrs. Arnold Morgan. I think things are just fine, just the way they are.”

  “I guess I love you, Kathy O’Brien. Don’t ever go away.”

  “No chance of that. Are we going home, or are you going back to the factory?”

  “We’re going home.”

  310500MAR05. 47.02N 08.49W. Course 225. Speed 9.

  HMS Unseen ran steadily southwest, almost 300 miles from Plymouth, 250 miles from the massive air-sea search being conducted, by four nations, on her behalf. The submarine had snorkeled for much of the night, and her battery was well topped-up as she made her way across the western reaches of the Bay of Biscay toward her first refueling point in the Atlantic, 500 miles off the Strait of Gibraltar.

  Right there, in two days, she would locate the Santa Cecilia. And the crew could hardly wait to get there. Not because of a shortage of fuel, but because of the forty-two bodies piled in the torpedo room, zipped up in the bags, but decomposing and unsettling for the new owners of the ship.

  Lieutenant Commander Pakravan was in favor of firing them straight out through the tubes, with the garbage, but that was principally because he had not given the matter serious thought. When he mentioned the subject to Commander Adnam he quickly realized just how little thought.

  “No, Ali. Wouldn’t work. Every time you use a torpedo tube to get rid of loose stuff, like an ill-fitting body bag, something always gets caught up. Then you have to get someone into the tubes to free it all up. It’s more damned trouble than its worth.

  “I worked out our plan of action long before we left Bandar Abbas, because I knew we would have to dispose of at least forty bodies, because that’s how many Brazilians I knew there would be. The problem is they need to be weighted down. Decomposing bodies blow up with gases, and they float to the surface. Someone would plainly find one of them. So I decided we would have to be very thorough.”

  “You mean we have to get them up onto the casing ?”

  “We do.”

  “But they’re heavy as hell.”

  “Yes. I know. We’ll rig up the small-stores davit, with a block and tackle right above the hatch. The blocks need to be 8 feet above it, so that each body can swing out onto the deck. There’ll also be a big canvas bag, the one they use to catch seawater coming down the tower in rough weather on the surface. Looks like a huge spinnaker bag from a sailboat, but it’ll do fine for us. All we need to do is get each body into it, then haul away.”

  “Sir, what about the weights? We don’t have anything like that.”

  “I never thought we would. Which is why the freighter is bringing us a little gift, like 50 cubes of specially cast concrete, each one weighing 80 pounds, with a steel ring, and a long plastic belt to attach it to one of the bags. They’ve been aboard since we first left Bandar Abbas.”

  “I didn’t see them.”

  “They don’t take up much room, just a space 8 feet by 5 feet by 5 feet high. We stored them aft on the middle deck. No problem.”

  “Why do you want to tie them on? Why not just unzip the bags and shove a cube inside each one?”

  “Have you ever smelt a five-day-old body, Ali? I wouldn’t wish that on any of you. Specially times forty.”

  “Nossir.”

  Commander Adnam took her deep at 0600, just as the sky began to brighten over the Bay of Biscay. They would run all day 250 feet below the surface, and then come to periscope depth to snorkel again during the night. The same would apply during the following twenty-four hours, and Ben expected to make his rendezvous with the Santa Cecilia in the small hours of the next day, April 2.

  011200APR05.

  Submarine Staff Office. Royal Navy Dockyard,

  Devonport.

  Lt. Commanders Roger Martin and Doug Roper were absolutely baffled. Not a sight, not a sound, not a fragmented sonar bleep. No wreckage, no buoys, no signals. Nothing. HMS Unseen had simply vanished. Whatever air had remained in the lost diesel-electric boat must have long since run out, and there was no longer any possibility of survivors.

  The situation was officially SUBSUNK. The chilling Royal Navy signal to that effect had been put on the nets the previous day at 0900. This signal is reserved for use only when a submarine is known to have sunk. Consequently, the urgency had gone out of the search, because the ships were no longer involved in a life-or-death race to get the crew off the bottom of the sea.

  Henceforth, it was strictly by the book. But HMS Unseen had to be found. And the area of search was being extensively widened, because it was clear the submarine had gone beyond its quite small exercise area. Three Royal Navy frigates and Captain Mike Fuller’s Exeter were methodically sweeping the bottom with sonars, as were the two minesweepers. Eight times they had sent divers down, plus TV cameras, but there was never even a hopeful sign.

  Meanwhile the press were laying it on the Royal Navy. “Experts” were demanding to know how such a thing could have happened. There were already distant allegations about bad training, poor discipline. “What on earth was the Navy thinking of, allowing a bunch of Brazilian rookies to drive this boat underwater?…when it was known they were behind schedule in their training, and presumably competence… was it not a fact that Lt. Commander Bill Colley was unhappy with their progress…was this not an accident waiting to happen…?”

  Every day the Navy was besieged by these simplistic questions, about a wildly complicated problem. The Public Relations department was on duty twenty-four hours a day. And Captain Charles Moss knew that his days in the Royal Navy were probably numbered. Someone was going to be blamed for this, and there was no one else really. He could imagine what the admirals would say. Captain Moss should have initiated SUBMISS earlier when it was perfectly clear there was no communication of any kind from Unseen. And the question of the Brazilians’ competence must come into the matter. Did he or did he not know that Lieutenant Commander Colley was concerned? If not, why not? Captain Moss, aged forty-seven, was already considering his future career opportunities out of uniform.

  020230APR05. 35.22N 14.46W. Course 180. Speed 9.

  240 miles due west of the Rock of Gibraltar.

  Unseen continued south, in the dark, snorkeling. Commander Adnam took a sweeping all-around look for the lights of the Santa Cecilia. They still had ample fuel, but the CO was as anxious as anyone to get rid of the bodies in the torpedo room.

  At 0240 they spotted her navigation lights, out on the southern horizon, returning from the North African port where she had refilled her massive converted diesel-fuel tanks, just in case Unseen was getting low. Thirty minutes later, Ben ordered the two ships together on the surface of a calm, moonlit sea.

  The commanding officer explained that they did not currently require fuel, but that he would like to make a new rendezvous eighteen days hence, down in the doldrums, the hot windless seas around the equator. For now, they would just like food and water, and the concrete weights lifted over. Ben had no intention of telling anyone on the freighter what he wanted the weights for, and no one asked. There was something about Benjamin Adnam. He was not a man for idle chatter. If he wanted you to know something, he would tell you.

  Ben stood up on the casing, watching as the hydraulic lifting arm on the Santa Cecilia hoisted and lowered the concrete cubes in a heavy-duty tarpaulin, ten at a time. His crew stacked them neatly on the unlit deck, and within a half hour the freighter captain waved them good-bye and turned back to the south.

  At that point Ben’s crew went to work. The davit was unbolted from its stowage in the casing, slotted into its sleeve in the de
ck, the block and tackle rigged ready. Down below they were dragging the sealed bodies from the torpedo room to the point where the big sail bag rested on the lower deck. Six men worked on the relocation and positioning of each body inside the hoist-bag. Two more hauled it up and out of the hatch. Then three men lashed the concrete weight to it with three turns of the plastic belt and heaved it into the water.

  First to take the long 10,000-foot drop to the floor of the Atlantic were Lieutenant Commander Colley and his men, the last ones to die, and the first four out of the torpedo room. The average time taken per body worked out to six minutes, and the entire exercise took a little over four hours. But the bodies would never be seen again, and there was a thin, self-satisfied smile on the face of Commander Adnam as he, too, turned south, and took Unseen deep once more, just as the sun began to rise above the eastern horizon.

  031100APR05.

  Office of the National Security Advisor.

  The White House.

  “Hi, George. Anything happened?”

  “Nothing in Plymouth. But we just got a new set of pictures from Bandar Abbas. I can reveal that damned great building is definitely not a football stadium. They just flooded it. It’s a dry dock for sure…here, take a look…right here…see where they moved that beach in front. The water just flows straight in now.”

  “So it does. And we can’t see in from either of the Big Birds, can we?”

  “Nossir. The angle’s not good, and they keep the door shut. We can’t photograph inside. Also, sir, we don’t know much about the other building, the one constructed hard against it. I suppose it might be just a big storage area. But there must be something in it. Beats me.”

  “Hmmmmm. Guess so. What are they saying in Plymouth?

  “Not much. There are a few reports, just detailing what the submarine’s program was for the day. Funny, they were scheduled to work on emergency maneuvers…you know, system failures, mechanical, electrical, hydro, fire drills, flooding drills. Also they were out for thirty-six hours, practicing night snorkeling.”

  “I’ll tell you something, George. She’d have been a hell of a submarine to steal, if the guy doing the stealing was familiar with the Brits’ workup routine…knew how to read the signals off the Squadron Orders.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, if he sent in his signals on time at twelve hours, then twenty-four…then missed when his Diving time expired, Christ…he’da been about 300 miles away before he was missed. In another twenty-four hours, while the Brits groped around his ops area, he’da been another 200 miles farther on.”

  “Sir, are you sure you’re not letting your imagination run riot?”

  “No, George, I’m not sure. But what I just said is possible. Sherlock Holmes would not have dismissed it. Neither should we, however remote it might be.”

  “Arnold, they did have the signals in.”

  “I know. But signals do not announce where they began. Either by radio or satellite, you can send in a signal to the operating authority, and the Brits wouldn’t have the first idea whether it came from Plymouth Sound or Plymouth Rock. Signals are signals. No one would bother to check, because they all know where the goddamned submarine is…in its ops area, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Wrong. I do not believe the sonofabitch was in its ops area, because the goddamned British have been combing it for five fucking days with half the Home Fleet, and found nothing. The chances are it’s not there. So where the fuck is it?”

  “I’m not sure, sir.”

  “I know you’re not fucking sure, George. Now let me ask you this. If you had to stake $10,000 of your hard-earned personal money on a bet, would you bet, yes, it’s in its ops area, but the stupid Brits can’t find the bastard? Or would you bet, no, it’s not in its ops area. It’s somewhere else, either by accident or design?”

  Admiral George Morris thought carefully and then he replied, “My $10,000 says it’s somewhere else, beyond the ops area.”

  “Exactly. So does mine.”

  4

  April 2005.

  COMMANDER ADNAM DROVE UNSEEN DOWN THE coast of North Africa, running southwest for 1,600 miles, past the long, hot coastline of Mauritania, where the shifting sands of the Sahara Desert finally slope down to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. Right there, just north of the Cape Verde Islands on latitude 17.10N, longitude 22.40W, he changed course to the south, still running at nine knots at PD, all the way down to the Sierra Leone Basin.

  He made his final course change there, before the refueling stop, then headed southeast for another 800 miles. Unseen crossed the equator at 1500 on April 20, moving silently through the lonely blue waters of the Guinea Basin toward their rendezvous point at 04.00S, 10.00W. There was 17,000 feet of ocean beneath the keel.

  The Santa Cecilia showed up right on time at 0300 on the morning of April 22. They were 3,600 miles and eighteen days from their previous meeting point west of Gibraltar, and the submarine was low on diesel.

  It was a stifling-hot night, and there was no wind whatsoever, and no waves. But the swells were deep, and the great, flat, moonlit waters of the doldrums rose and fell in those long glassy seas that lie between the north-flowing Benguela Current surging up the coast of Africa, and the south-flowing Guinea Current.

  The fuel transfer was not easy and took four hours. The good-byes were brief, and the two ships turned south once more, arranging to meet again, thirty-two days hence, east of the island of Madagascar.

  May 10.

  Admiral Arnold Morgan was breaking the habit of a lifetime. He was going on vacation tomorrow. And, as a further break with tradition, he was taking his secretary with him. This, incidentally, caused no consternation in the White House, where secretaries normally remain in the office to cover for vacationing bosses.

  Everyone knew about Admiral Morgan and Kathy O’Brien. Everyone had known for the past six months. Ever since the national security advisor had decided no longer to keep their secret. He had even touched base with the President, and informed him of the relationship, on the basis that the Chief Executive ought rightly to be the first to know who the third Mrs. Arnold Morgan might be.

  The President was delighted for them both, but accepted that Mrs. Morgan would, for reasons of propriety and professionalism, leave the White House once they were married. He also made one strict condition, that he would be invited to the wedding.

  Since then every young stud on the Presidential staff had refrained from asking Mrs. O’Brien out for dinner, which was as well, since she always said no anyway. But the subject of her discreet romance became unaccountably off-limits. No one ever mentioned it, and certainly no one risked a joke about it, possibly because there was the unseen threat that anyone who really pissed off the severe and autocratic ex–nuclear submarine commanding officer might find himself on the wrong side of one hundred lashes. Admiral Morgan had a way of exuding authority.

  Two weeks previously, he’d talked to the President about the vacation first, told him he would like to take Kathy to the Western Isles of Scotland. There were a couple of people he wanted to talk a little business with in the UK, for reasons he would be happy to reveal to the President. But he would prefer to wait until after he returned.

  “Arnold,” said the great man, “however you want to play it is almost certainly the right way. However, for security reasons I would prefer you to travel in a U.S. military aircraft, and I hope you can make it back for my birthday on May 24.”

  “No trouble, sir. I’ll be gone ten days max. Leaving on the eleventh. But I might have a little interesting stuff when I get here.”

  “Okay, Admiral. Stay cool. We’ll talk soon.”

  He was finally ready to leave, and two White House secretaries were detailed to stand guard over Kathy’s executive domain while she was gone. The admiral and his distant bride-to-be would fly in a U.S.A.F. modified KC 135 jet, the military equivalent of a DC10, manufactured by McDonnell Douglas and fitted with a secure, ultramodern
communications system in case the President should wish to speak to the admiral in-flight.

  They took off from Andrews Air Force Base at 0700 sharp, and came in to land at the Royal Air Force’s Lyneham base in Wiltshire at 1800 local time. A U.S. Navy staff car met them and drove them 50 fast miles to a beautiful, private, hotel-restaurant, the Beetle and Wedge, on the banks of the River Thames at Moulsford, Oxfordshire.

  The car that followed them contained two Secret Servicemen, plus the high-security communications system that would patch the admiral directly to the Oval Office. The hotel owner had previously worked in 10 Downing Street

  and understood the intricacies of such matters. Though her ex-boss, the pedantically polite and careful former Prime Minister, Edward Heath, might have found little in common with the irascible right-wing American national security advisor.

  Arnold Morgan and Kathy checked into separate but adjoining rooms. ”Just in case those assholes from the London tabloids have planted some ugly little bastard with a camera up the goddamned chimney.”