Henry looked at everyone sat around the table.
“Pierre has more honour in a single finger nail then that silly English bitch has in both her little boy breasts.”
Terry Jones felt the President’s eyes upon him but his poker face remained in place. He had received a report from his chief of station in London, qualified by another from Paris that Henry Shaw had been getting about, probably by covert means during his fact finding mission to the embattled continent. Henry had even been present at the London police commissioners’ home when a veritable who’s who of military men and senior police officers, some of whom were retired, who had come calling. Art had cobbled together a hurried surveillance operation and had himself chosen to spend an uncomfortable night in a covert vehicle near the commissioner’s home rather than be present when the SAS arrested the cell responsible for Scott and Constantine’s deaths, which was indication in itself that his London stations chief had a gut feeling that something was amiss.
Terry had not had the chance to fully analyse the possibilities that the report could be indicating. There was every chance that Henry Shaw had been avoiding the time wasting that the meet and greets of announced visits would have entailed, but his presence in England at that gathering, and his apparent previous knowledge of SACEUR’s plans could put a very different spin on it. Had Terry known then what he had just discovered at this briefing then he may have read more into it if he had not also received information of a possible intelligence break through that had taken preference in the order of importance. That particular information was being analysed right now, and he could only give the President a heads up on what may, if it was genuine, be of considerable help to them. However, back in the here and now his President wanted answers.
“Mister Jones, did you know anything about this? Didn’t the Central Intelligence Agency have any hint that NATO armed forces were about to give their elected governments the finger and do their own thing?”
Now was the time he should have produced Art Petrucci’s report, but instead Terry shook his head.
“No Mister President, and to the best of my knowledge neither have the intelligence agencies of the European countries either.”
A very annoyed President looked back to the screen. He would consider what, if anything, he would do about this revelation after the briefings, and after a showdown he planned to have with General Shaw. A single sheet of paper lay inside a folder before him. The President had ordered it typed by a secretary but it was addressed to himself from Henry
“Okay then, let us move on.”
Henry briefly went over the events involving the destruction of the Soviet airborne brigade, chiefly because there was evidence that one of the Russian Premier’s shakers and movers in the starting of this war had been killed in the fighting.
“Serge Alontov was probably their most able airborne and Spetznaz commander; he had also performed a fair amount of intelligence and espionage work as a military attaché in London during the eighties. We also know that he entered the States illegally on at least two occasions in connection with Project October, which was a Cold War plan to cripple America on the outbreak of a war with the USSR, by espionage, sabotage and the assassination of key figures. We know he was a patriot and with his knowledge and experience he would be an obvious choice to carry through their plans. I believe Mister Jones has some related information on this for later in the briefing.”
“I am a little puzzled, General Shaw, as to what this man was doing in combat if he was such a close aide to their Premier?”
“Uriah, Mister President.” It was the first time Ben Dupre had spoken at the briefing. “Look up the Book of Samuel in the Old Testament. King David wanted to get rid of one of his generals without getting his own hands dirty, so he put Uriah in the front rank during a battle. It got him out of the way permanently.”
Looking back at General Shaw a moment, the President lowered his voice.
“Don’t tempt me Benjamin,” he growled before then returning his attention once more to Terry Jones.
“I assume the late Comrade Alontov did not leave a grieving Bathsheba for that bastard to covet though, and this was his way of disposing of future threats to his leadership?”
“Wife and only child, a son aged two years, killed by a drunk driver while he was serving in Afghanistan, sir. He never remarried.” Terry did not have to refer to any notes on Serge’s private life, there was little to tell.
“It would seem the Russian Premier was merely cleaning house, sir.”
The President grunted before gesturing at Henry to move on, and five minutes later having finished the brief that this particular audience were cleared for, he relinquished his spot to a navy officer and returned to his seat.
The President already knew about the PLAN invasion fleet in the Indian Ocean, having been summoned from his bed for a video conference with the Australian PM three hours after its discovery. One of Admiral Gee’s staff, an earnest and slightly bookish looking officer took them through the preparations Australia was making, and the progress of the Nimitz battle group to get underway and intercept it.
“Mister President, at the outbreak of war you may recall that the USS Nimitz was undergoing refit. She left the yards with a great deal of work unfinished and with over a hundred civilian workers still aboard, who have continued that work whilst she was enroute to Australia and it is in fact still on-going whilst she is tied up in Sydney. She also left without her full complement of crew or a complete air wing, so we have had a ways to go to restore her to full combat readiness. Personnel and aircraft have been flown out to Australia where her air wing is dispersed for the moment to bolster the Aussies air defence, but another two, three days at the most should see the Nimitz and Bonhomme Richard putting back to sea.” The briefer was unused to the President’s ways, and columns of facts and figures replaced the view on-screen of the Pacific Theatre of Operations.
“Owing to a shortage in naval airframes, particularly of the latest model of F-14, we have had to refurbish and hurriedly add upgrades to mothballed aircraft from storage at the boneyard, which we are still in the process of flying out to her. However, if I can draw your attention to the graph I am just putting up on the screen…you can see that the speed at which these airframes are being refurbished, is increasing exponentially as the work crews become more proficient with practice, and…”
The President cleared his throat loudly, interrupting the officer in mid flow.
“Commander, er…Donnelly?”
Caught unawares the officer blinked and gaped at the President before fully turning from the screen to face him.
“It’s Donkley, sir.”
“Did Admiral Gee leave you any notes before he left?”
The commander looked confused
“Erm… like his itinerary, sir?”
The President smiled tightly.
“I was thinking more along the lines of a piece of paper with the heading, ‘What pisses the President off most’. It would be a short list, I’m sure. However, somewhere near the top would have been Facts, Figures, Statistics and Graphs…just keep to the good stuff and I’m sure we will get along fine, Commander.”
For a long second the briefer was motionless
“The good stuff?”
“Anything that doesn’t make me feel that I am being forced to watch an Open University math and chemistry programme.”
The briefer didn’t watch British TV, but he got the message anyway and after somewhat regretfully turning over half a dozen pages of notes, the graph was replaced by the Pacific once more.