Contents

About the Book

About the Author

Also by Patrick Robinson

Title Page

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Saladin Two

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Author’s Note

Copyright

About the Book

A volcano. A nuclear missile. An explosive, deadly threat to the West.

The murder of a prominent geophysicist and the eruption of Mount St. Helens are viewed as coincidence by the White House. But Admiral Morgan suspects the involvement of his nemesis, terrorist Major Ray Kerman. Then comes the chilling threat – Kerman has a nuclear device, Scimitar SL-2, which he intends to launch straight into the heart of the volcano Cumbre Vieja, causing a massive tsunami to devastate the East Coast of the United States. Shocked into action, Admiral Morgan returns to the White House to run Operation High Tide – a desperate race to evacuate the East Coast and locate the nuclear submarine before it launches its deadly weapon ...

About the Author

Patrick Robinson is the author of seven international bestsellers, as well as his forthcoming novel, Hunter Killer. He is also the author of several non-fiction bestsellers including True Blue (with Dan Topolski) and Born to Win. He is the co-author with Admiral Sir Sandy Woodward of One Hundred Days.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My long transglobal journey in a Russian-built nuclear submarine was masterminded by Admiral Sir John ‘Sandy’ Woodward, former nuclear boat commander, former Flag Officer Submarines, Royal Navy. The admiral is the last man to fight a full-scale modern naval action at sea – as Task Force Commander, Royal Navy, in the battle for the Falkland Islands, 1982.

He also advised me with endless patience on the complexities of nuclear propulsion, without demonstrating even a glimmer of frustration. Well, not that many. In the decisive naval action of the book it was his decision to strike from the air rather than underwater. He also helped me plan the US Navy’s search-and-kill strategy in the eastern Atlantic. And, as ever, he has my gratitude.

The former Special Forces officers, who tend to be in constant attendance while I write these ‘techno-thrillers’, never wish to be identified for obvious reasons. But I thank them all the same. And they each know how grateful I am.

I consulted on both sides of the Atlantic with three eminent scientists on the cause and effects of tsunamis. On two or three critical issues there was a slight variance of opinion. I thus name none of them, since to do so might cause a certain amount of friction in the geophysical community. Worse yet, I should almost certainly get the blame for tampering, albeit lightly, with sincerely held opinions!

Also by Patrick Robinson

Nimitz Class

Kilo Class

H.M.S. Unseen

Seawolf

The Shark Mutiny

Barracuda 945

Hunter Killer

 

Non-fiction

Classic Lines

Decade of Champions

The Golden Post

Born to Win

True Blue

One Hundred Days

Horsetrader

AUTHOR’S NOTE

January 2005

Scimitar SL-2 – that’s a medium-range guided missile, submerged launch from a submarine, Mark 2 nuclear warhead. Generally speaking, one of these could knock down a town the size of Brighton.

It ended up the title for this novel. But it was not my first choice. That was ‘Tsunami’, which had, at the time, raised a near-unanimous objection from my agent and publishers on both sides of the Atlantic: Japanese word, no one knows what it means.

Well, everyone knows only too well what that word means now. The horrific events of December 26 2004, which have devastated literally millions of lives, brought the word ‘tsunami’ into the world’s vocabulary. Its literal meaning is ‘harbour wave’, but that doesn’t seem an adequate description for what is possibly the greatest geophysical catastrophe which can befall the planet Earth, short of a direct hit by a comet.

And words could barely describe the monstrous events that early morning when a colossal earthquake below the floor of the Indian Ocean caused great waters to rise up and drown, at the time of writing, an estimated 178,000 people on coastlines near and far from the epicentre of the waves’ formation.

My research for Scimitar SL-2 means that for months I had been researching the cause and effect of such mammoth waves.

The causes are relatively simple. You need a mighty splash in the ocean, and essentially there are only three ways to get one big enough: landslide, volcanic eruption or earthquake. A tsunami can develop a speed of up to 400 knots as it rolls across the ocean floor; a blast in the Hawaiian islands started a tsunami which swept huge rocks thousands of miles, to end up in Sydney Harbour. When the volcanic island of Krakatoa blew off its entire summit in the Sunda Strait in 1883 it was one of the biggest blasts ever witnessed, or heard, for thousands of years. But it was not the blast that killed 36,000 people along the coasts of both Java and Sumatra. Most of them drowned beneath the mega-tsunami which engulfed the entire coastal area. This was the direct result of the splash in the ocean.

For over a year, I metaphorically lived tsunamis, trying to work out what would happen if the world’s most dangerous geohazard – the glowering volcano of Cumbre Vieja in the Canary Islands – should erupt and cause the Atlantic mega-tsunami everyone in the trade believes to be a certainty. The one which would wipe out America’s east coast, including Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington.

So when the first person walked up to me on Sunday morning, December 26^th 2004 and said ‘How about that tsunami then?’ I experienced one of those cold shudders you’re supposed to feel when someone’s walking on your grave.

‘The Atlantic?’ I asked, horrified.

‘No, somewhere in the Indian Ocean . . . but a lot of people are feared drowned.’

And as the day drew to a close, and I spoke with friends and family and watched on television the devastating effects of this geophysical disaster on the villages and tourist resorts along the coast of the Indian ocean, devastation that reached as far away as the coast of Somalia, I couldn’t help but think of my novel Scimitar SL-2, and the imaginary tsunami I had unleashed on a different part of the world: the Eastern seaboard of the United States. I am in the fiction business. My imaginary scenario is set several years into the future where a group of high-tech terrorists succeed in exploding a volcano with guided missiles. I hadn’t counted on the natural world providing the scenario for me. Fiction didn’t prepare me for the tragic sight of families torn apart, nor the scenes of destruction of homes and businesses in neighbourhoods that were already poverty stricken. And I watched with horror as the death toll rose exponentially hour upon hour.

Thanks to my extensive research for Scimitar SL-2, I had a good idea about what had happened. Deep in the Indian Ocean the tectonic plates had shifted opening up a giant chasm into which the water had cascaded. When the chasm closed again the water was forced back upwards with stupendous force and caused the massive waves of the mega-tsunami, rolling out in an ever-widening circle.

I went back to my charts of the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal, not used since I wrote The Shark Mutiny in the year 2000, and looked at the surrounding coastlines. I knew from these charts that the initial estimate of 15,000 dead was set to rise. There is land at every point of the circle. The tsunami could not miss every town and village along the shore for hundreds of miles.

Of course, the terrible irony was, I had been trying to cause a fictional tsunami, trying to find out whether a man-made attack on a volcano could blast sufficient rock from a great height into the ocean and trigger the giant waves.

In the years between 2002 and 2010 it is estimated over 200 major eruptions will occur. But not many would cause a tsunami. Mount St. Helens in Washington State keeps letting out a smoky shout of warning, but the rumble that is the most worrying is the one beneath the Cumbre Vieja.

The world’s foremost authority on volcanoes, Bill McGuire, is professor of Geophysical Hazards at University College, London. Bill McGuire is King of All Disasters, the author of hundreds of papers and books, broadcaster and acknowledged world authority on tsunamis and all that they stand for. He has studied Cumbre Vieja extensively and knows the devastation it could unleash should the worst case scenario happen. Professor McGuire finds an endless frustration with the refusal of governments to heed the warnings of him and his team, and all the other worldwide geohazard reports. And I understand that. For he has the inner sadness of a man who has been crying out for early warnings on tsunamis for many years.

I too have a similar sadness, because I have studied thousands of his words. And, from a plainly removed standpoint, I feel his pain at the apparent suddenness of the Asian tsunami, the absolute shock with which it descended into all our television sets and all of our newspapers.

But I have also been moved by the incredible generosity of people around the world who have contributed to the charities that have been set up to help those people directly affected by the tsunami. In a world where headlines are dominated by the escalating conflict in the Middle East it is this sort of generosity which shows the compassion of the human spirit. Yet the people in the region are going to need help not just in the weeks following the disaster, but in the months and years beyond that while they struggle to rebuild their lives.

You can contribute by donating to the Merlin Tsunami Appeal in the following ways:

By calling:	0870 199 6308
By post:	Merlin
	Freepost Lon15423
	London
	EC2B 2BR

 

Please make the cheque payable to ‘Merlin’.

Or online at www.merlin.org.uk

If you would like to increase the value of your gift, please complete a Gift Aid declaration form, available from the website. It will enable Merlin to reclaim 28% of your donation from the taxman at no extra cost to you.

Thank you.

Patrick Robinson

January 2005

CHAPTER ONE

Thursday 8 January 2009

The White House, Washington, DC

THE BRAND NEW Democratic Administration, fresh from a narrow election victory, was moving into the West Wing. With the exception of the President, who knew he was going anyway at the end of his second term, every hour of every day was a trauma for the outgoing Republicans. For the big-hitters of the military and government handing over the reins to what most of them believed to be a bunch of naive, inexperienced, half-assed limousine liberals, led by an idealistic young President from Rhode Island, who would have been pushed to hold down a proper executive job, well, anywhere, was appalling.

And today was probably the worst day of all. Admiral Arnold Morgan, the retiring President’s National Security Adviser, was about to leave the White House for the last time. His big nineteenth-century naval desk had already been cleared and removed, and now there were only a few goodbyes left. The door to his office was wide open, and the admiral, accompanied by his alarmingly beautiful secretary Kathy O’Brien, was ready to go. In attendance was the Secretary of State Harcourt Travis, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Tim Scannell, the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Alan Dickson, the Director of the National Security Agency, Rear Admiral George Morris, and his personal assistant Lt. Commander James Ramshawe, American by birth, Australian parents.

As the great man took his leave, they all stood in a small ‘family’ huddle, veterans in the last half dozen years of some of the most brutal secret operations ever conducted by the United States military. Their devotion to Arnold had grown from the series of great triumphs on the international stage, due, almost entirely, to the strengths of the admiral’s intellect.

Like Caesar, Admiral Morgan was not lovable – except to Kathy – but his grasp of international politics, string pulling, poker playing, threats and counter-threats, Machiavellian propaganda, and the conduct of restricted, classified military operations, was second to none. At all of the above he was a virtuoso, driven by an unbending sense of patriotism. During his reign in the West Wing he had intimidated, cajoled, outwitted and bullied some of the most powerful men on earth. His creed was to fight and fight, and never to lower his blade short of victory. General Douglas MacArthur and General George Patton were his heroes. And now the admiral was departing, leaving his Washington confidants devastated, convinced that another heaven and another earth must surely pass before such a man could be again.

Many of the high-ranking civilians would go themselves within a few short weeks of the incoming Democrats, but none so utterly ignominiously as Admiral Morgan himself. Called on the telephone by a Miss Betty-Ann Jones, a Southern liberal who had never been to Washington before, he was told, ‘President McBride thinks it would be better if y’all resigned raht now, since he dun’t think you and he’s gonna get along real well.’

Arnold Morgan had needed no second bidding. Five minutes later he had dictated his short letter of resignation to Kathy, and ten minutes later they were working on their wedding date, the colossal job of National Security Adviser no longer standing between them.

At Arnold’s farewell dinner, at a favourite Georgetown restaurant, Secretary Travis, always the voice of irony and sly humour, had arrived at the table humming theatrically loudly, the tune of ‘Those Wedding Bells Are Breaking Up That Old Gang Of Mine.’ Shortly he would return to Harvard to take up a professorship.

The military members of Arnold’s inner circle would remain at their posts, more or less, under a new Commander-in-Chief.

And now Admiral Morgan stood at the great oak door to his office. He hesitated briefly, and nodded curtly to the empty room. Then he strode outside to the corridor, where his former colleagues waited. He smiled with some difficulty. ‘I’d be grateful,’ he said, ‘if each one of you would come and take me by the hand.’

And so they said their farewells, each consumed by the private sense of trust they all shared with the National Security Chief. The last handshake was with the youngest of them, Lt. Commander Ramshawe, with whom Admiral Morgan had a near father–son relationship.

‘I’ll miss you, Jimmy,’ he said.

‘And I’ll miss you, sir,’ replied the young officer. ‘I don’t suppose you’ll ever know how much.’

‘Thanks, kid,’ said the admiral informally. And then he turned on his heel, immaculately tailored in a dark grey suit, gleaming black leather lace-up shoes, blue shirt and Naval Academy tie.

He walked resolutely, shoulders back, upright, full of dignity, with his bride-to-be, Kathy, at his side. He walked among the portraits of Presidents past, nodding sharply to General Eisenhower, as he always did. He walked like a man not departing, but like a young officer recently summoned to the colours. In his mind a lifetime of thoughts, a lifetime of service to his country. The different people he had been . . . the commanding officer of a surface ship and then of a nuclear submarine out of Norfolk, Virginia . . . the Intelligence tsar, head of the National Security Agency in Maryland . . . and finally the right hand of a faltering Republican President who ended up knowing neither loyalty nor patriotism. That never mattered. Arnold had enough for both of them.

Walking along the familiar corridors, the admiral heard once more the swish of the waves on a ship’s hull heading out of a threatened harbour into the great rolling swells of the ocean, the metallic scream of the anchor chain, the terse instructions of the COB, and, in the deepest recesses of his mind, the shouts and commands of long-lost US Navy SEALs whom he had never seen, never met. Obeying his orders. Always obeying. As he himself obeyed his. Mostly.

He heard again the bells of the watch, tolling off the hours. And the smooth slide of his submarine’s periscope. Once outside, he knew he would inevitably glance upwards in the chill December breeze, and he would see it, snapping so damn proudly, right above him. The flag, always the flag.

He wore no overcoat, though Kathy was cosily engulfed in a light brown full-length shearling number. And just before they turned left towards the main doors and out onto the West Wing veranda, she stretched out her right hand to take his, confirming once more he would not be alone as he left his quarterdeck for the last time and steered their ship into the long years of retirement. Admiral Morgan was sixty-four.

No one who was there would ever forget the departure of Arnold Morgan. Each and every man in the lower corridor felt a sense of control slipping away, as if a giant warship had somehow lost its helm. There had already been reports of civilians replacing the Marine guards at the White House. Patient young men in their early thirties were shaking their heads and talking sadly about the primitive ways of the US military under a Republican Administration. The new young ideologues came from a different world, the world of the future, where education of the Third World was paramount. Where no one was evil, just ignorant. Where death and destruction were to be replaced by more and more financial aid, where tyrants must be taught the ways of the West, not murdered. And where the poor and the helpless had to be given succour, and trained Americans had to work on their lack of self-esteem. And where absolutely no one could ever be harmed in the interests of revenge, conquest or the destruction of a rogue regime.

Massive naval and military cuts were on the horizon. President Charles McBride was a globalist, certain in his own mind that reason, reason and mercy, would always prevail, however misguided a foe may appear. But like President Clinton, and Carter before him, McBride was a vacillator, a career politician accustomed to compromises, always looking for the middle ground. He was a man of none but political conviction, the way forward for the lifelong lightweight. And he was chronically inexperienced in the harsher reaches of international diplomacy. President-elect McBride would not have recognised a scheming, self-interested statesman at six paces.

The one thing Charles McBride did know, however, was the futility of spending zillions of dollars on defence, if you weren’t planning to fight. No one had yet told him the age-old mantra of the wise – you want peace, you better prepare for war. And if you don’t, you’ll end up paying for it in blood, sorrow and tears. Or, as Chairman Mao would say, real power comes from the barrel of a gun.

Most of the men still standing in the corridor had a distant idea of the truth of that creed. And most of them believed it was probably true. And that everything would be fine, so long as the USA held the biggest gun of all. But if ever there was a US President who could have used Arnold Morgan in the next office, it was surely the forty-seven-year-old Charles McBride.

And as Arnold’s footsteps disappeared from the building, General Scannell muttered, ‘Jesus. I don’t know what’s gonna happen now.’

And Harcourt Travis added, ‘Neither, General, do I.’

A few hours later, Admiral Morris and Lt. Commander Ramshawe sat disconsolately in the rear seat of the Navy staff car driving back to the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Maryland.

‘Hard to believe he’s gone, Jimmy,’ grunted the Agency’s Director.

‘I just can’t seem to accept it.’

‘Nor I.’

‘It’s not gonna be the same any more, is it?’

‘Nothing is. It’s gonna be worse. Because right here we got an incoming President who does not understand what kind of threats this country might face. He thinks we’re all crazy.’

‘I know he does – can you imagine, sir? Getting some secretary to call up and tell Admiral Morgan he’s fired. Bloody oath.’

‘God knows who he’ll replace him with.’

‘Oh, he’ll probably come up with some nice little social worker, team leader in the Peace Corps or something . . . Jesus, I can’t believe this is happening.’

Jimmy Ramshawe shook his head.

‘The trouble with Intelligence,’ said Admiral Morris, ‘is that you need someone in government who starts off believing you are not some kind of a dumb ass and who will listen knowing that we speak from the kind of experience he simply doesn’t have. Otherwise there’s no point having a vast Intelligence network, which costs billions to run. Not if its top operatives are wasting half their time trying to prove the unprovable, to guys who are supposed to be on our side.’

‘I know, sir. That was the best thing about Admiral Morgan. He never dismissed what we said, always took it into consideration, at least. He was some kind of a bloke, right? The best I ever met.’

‘And the best you ever will meet, young James.’

The two men rode in companionable but sombre silence to the northwestern suburbs of Washington and then out into the country to Fort Meade. Once there, the Director headed to his office, while Lt. Commander Ramshawe retreated to the chaos of his own paper-strewn lair for one of his favourite parts of the week.

Thursday afternoons. For thirty-year-old Ramshawe it represented a couple of hours of pleasurable study. It was the day his personal newspapers arrived: the Daily Mail and the Telegraph from London, the Age from Melbourne, the Morning Herald from Sydney and the Toronto Globe.

All of them were full of snippets of news, diplomatic, military, government, society, finance – stuff you would not necessarily find in the Washington Post or even the Wall Street Journal.

Curiously, there was one page Jimmy loved above all others. It was the Court and Society page of the London Daily Telegraph, a somewhat glorious mishmash of esoteric events, starting with the daily routine of the Queen and the various members of her family who were paid by the British Government’s Civil List.

Her appointments were listed, as were those of Prince Philip and Prince Charles. There was reported all manner of obscure educational events and appointments, at England’s great public schools, and the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and London. There were lists of mourners at important memorial services, lists of medals, awards and appointments for the Navy, Army and Air Force, including Commonwealth Services.

There were records of service reunions, announcements of important engagements, weddings and funerals. An In Memoriam column in which service families annually remembered officers who had fallen in action, often as long as sixty years ago.

Jimmy regularly devoured this page, making notes which he would later transfer to his private computer file. For a new Flag Officer Submarines, Royal Navy, for example, he would fill in the new man’s name and career highlights, just in case Fort Meade needed him in the future. Quick cross-reference. Instant knowledge. Lt. Commander Ramshawe was the consummate Intelligence professional.

In the Telegraph of Monday, 5 January, there were a few items which amused him and a few that caused him to scribble hurriedly, but there was one word, in particular which almost caused him to spill his coffee.

‘Murdered’ it said. Right there in the dreariest of Universities sections. A small down-column paragraph announcing the appointment of a new Senior Lecturer at the Benfield Greig Geohazard Research Centre at University College, London. Dr Hillary Betts, a volcanologist, replacing Professor Paul Landon, who was discovered murdered in west London last May.

‘Murdered! Streuth,’ said James. ‘Never saw that bloody word on this page before. Like seeing a stripper illustrating a prayer book.’

Instinctively, he went on line, looked up the London Telegraph and keyed in a search for Professor Paul Landon. To his surprise a sizeable front-page headline in the edition of Monday,12 May appeared.

PROFESSOR PAUL LANDON MISSING

World’s Top Volcano Expert Vanishes after Royal Geographical Lecture

There followed a detailed account of Professor Landon and his achievements, followed by a police report on his failure to return home to Buckinghamshire after addressing the Royal Geographical Society on the evening of 8 May.

There were quotes from the Royal Geographical Society’s General Secretary, and from colleagues at University College, and of course from his wife. But no one had the slightest idea what had happened to him.

Lt. Commander Ramshawe soon found out for himself. The front-page headline over all eight columns on Thursday 15 May read:

PROFESSOR PAUL LANDON FOUND MURDERED

Washed Up on Thames Island – Two Bullets to the Brain

In the opinion of the police pathologist, Paul Landon had been shot twice in an ‘execution-style’ killing, and then dumped in the river. The coxswain of a London rowing club eight had spotted the body washed by the flood tide onto Chiswick Eyot, a small island landmark for racing shells, halfway along the Oxford–Cambridge Boat Race course between Putney and Mortlake.

There were as yet no suspects, but there was no doubt in the minds of the Metropolitan Police. This was a cold-blooded murder, though why anyone should want to kill an apparently harmless academic remained a total mystery.

Lt. Commander Ramshawe liked mysteries, and for the next hour he scrolled to and from various editions of the Telegraph spanning the early summer to the autumn. He found the inquest, the funeral, a feature on Professor Landon’s area of expertise. But he never found a single clue as to why the hell anyone should want to kill him.

He switched to the London Daily Mail, a more adventurous downmarket tabloid, which might have come up with a different, more original idea. No such luck. For the week after the professor’s disappearance the Mail was totally preoccupied with two murdered London policemen 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 which did interest him was one which began: The Metropolitan Police are believed to have called in the Special Branch, owing to the manner of death of one of the officers, but last night this could not be confirmed.

So far as Jimmy knew, this probably meant MI5, or even MI6, Britain’s equivalent of the CIA. And although the murder of London cops was not his business and neither, of course, was the killing of a UCL 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, where he was dining with his fiancée Jane Peacock, daughter of the Ambassador. It was almost 8 p.m. before he arrived and he gratefully accepted a tall glass of cold Foster’s lager from Miss Peacock before joining her parents in the dining room. Jimmy had always got 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 harbour in Sydney. As Australian Ambassador to the USA, 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 which 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 suey, 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 tsunami,’ he said. ‘Japanese. I’ve been a bit of an expert since about quarter past two this afternoon.’

‘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, which 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 3,000 people on neighbouring islands.’

‘For a bloke who can’t say it, you know a 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.’

Friday 9 January 2009

The Pentagon, Washington, DC

The first memorandums were beginning to arrive from the incoming Administration. Clearly, the new President was planning to impose savage defence 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 could 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. General 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 US fleet than Yamamoto.’

Among those sitting opposite the Chairman was Admiral 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 defence 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 quite gets the reality. Until it’s too late.

‘Especially the Navy. You start decommissioning carriers, mothballing amphibious ships, laying up destroyers and frigates, you’re punching a major hole in the US 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 Admiral Dick Greening, Commander-in-Chief Pacific Fleet. ‘All those goddamned cities which survive on defence 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 harbour, 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 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 spend, in the accepted sense of the word. They only distribute. They take it from whatever source they can get it, without causing outright civil war, and then redistribute it into the economy. They don’t spend. They only push everyone else’s money around.

The Navy Chief paused. Then said, ‘Half of the money in labour costs goes to the guys building the ships – paychecks to people who immediately give a third of it back to the government. They don’t tell ’em the rest gets spent in the community, providing other people with jobs, who also hand a third of it back to the government.

‘They never mention that a big hunk of the cash goes to US Steel, the electronics companies right here in the USA, the missile systems, shipbuilders in Maine, Connecticut and Virginia – they’re all paying corporate taxes. Some of the money goes to US Navy personnel, who pay their taxes back to the government, just like the people at US Steel. The whole thing is just a roundabout. The goddamned aircraft carrier is not expensive, it’s free. It’s not the government’s damned money anyway. They are only moving it around.’

‘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 programme 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 cancelled.’

‘Jesus,’ said the Commander of the Atlantic Fleet, Vice Admiral 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 programme?’

‘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 US 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.

11.30 a.m. Tuesday 27 January 2009

Tenerife, Canary Islands

Mrs Arnold Morgan had spent the last hour of her honeymoon on her own. Relaxed on a lounger 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 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 semi-tropical botanical garden. Her new husband adored such grandeur and he had sweetly instructed her, with his usual olde worlde charm, to locate a place and book them in for two weeks – Listen, Kathy, just try to stop boring me sideways with goddamned hotel literature, and get us into some goddamned place, Casa Luxurious. And hasta la vista, he had added, handing her a credit card. That’s Spanish for on the double.

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. Especially 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 formalised by a US Justice of the Peace in Washington.

Gayle had located the perfect little church, in the neighbouring island of Gran Canaria, the Iglesia de San Antonio Abad, down near the waterfront at Las Palmas, the island’s main town. 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 al fresco 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 appearance poolside.