“There’s no shaving mirror.” Terry finished the story for him.
Henry laughed. “Oh, I see you stayed there too?”
Terry was smiling back, but the smile did not reach his eyes.
“No, I was never in the service and I think our lives have taken us on pretty different courses General, and that doesn’t make for too much common ground, shared experiences or mutual friends.” His look was steely, and the crocodile smile remained.
Henry seated himself opposite, to all intents unaware that the CIA Directors remark was anything but a casual observation.
“There was Scott, I liked that young man.”
Terry Jones did not reply immediately, his eyes remained unblinkingly on Henry.
“Yes, indeed.” He eventually allowed. “There was Scott Tafler.”
“So what is occurring now that could not wait until the Presidents next briefing?” Henry asked.
Terry at last looked away and used a remote to switch on the plasma screen at the foot of the long table.
There was a segment of a cable news programme regarding Argentina’s claims to have responded to an attack on one of their maritime patrols by sinking a pair of surfaced submarines.
Henry didn’t dog the news channels, despite them often bearing bad tidings well before the intelligence services got wind that there was even a problem.
Scraps of uniform and a short length of hose had been recovered from the surface of the ocean and were displayed for the cameras. The hose bore stencilled Cyrillic lettering and the uniform items had been identified as being of Russian and Chinese manufacture.
“This footage is from the Argentinian aircrafts cameras.” Said Terry as the item drew to a close.
It was a very grainy view, made worse by the weather conditions and low altitude; two hundred feet below the cameras minimum focus height.
Terry pressed ‘Freeze Frame’, capturing the blurry shapes of the Tuan and the Admiral Potemkin in the harsh magnesium glare of the aircrafts dropped flares. The Chinese Kilo was dwarfed by the bulk of the Russian submarine.
Terry opened a folder and passed over a clutch of still captures from the footage, digitally enhanced and showing the STREAM rig clearly joining the vessels in a replenishment at sea operation.
“Well I’ll be…” Henry shook his head incredulously. “Ingenious little fuckers, aren’t they?”
Terry flipped across a fourth enhanced still and Henry was silent for several minutes as he studied it.
“If you’d just shown me the first three I would have said it was a long range hunting party, but what is this submersible doing here…do they have a sub down somewhere down that way?”
Henry then looked up and glanced around as if realising for the first time that the two of them were alone. He turned the photograph over and saw its point of origin was Naval Intelligence, not the CIA.
He looked up at Terry, noting the stare and that cold half smile had returned.
The CIA was briefing the military on something the military were already aware of, and furthermore it would be aired by the navy in a few hours’ time for the President with Henry present.
“You want to tell me what this is all about? Why am I really here Mr Jones?”
“Well, that is indeed the sixty four thousand dollar question isn’t it?” Terry said. “What are you doing here, General?”
Henry stood, looking across the table at Terry.
“Well I’m not playing mind games with a spook when I could be sleeping, that’s for sure and certain, Jones.”
He crossed the room to the door but before he could turn the handle Terry Jones spoke again.
“I liked Scott too, and if I had been in London last week I sure as hell would have been present when his killers were picked up…so I have to ask you Henry, what was it that you were doing that night which was so all fired important that you stayed away, huh?”
General Henry Shaw paused momentarily, looking at the CIA Director and returning his stare before turning the handle and departing.
General Shaw had a small bunk all to himself with a locking door to add a little security for sensitive papers. It wasn’t as if sneak thieves were likely to be a problem in such a facility though.
A standard metal lined documents case held what papers Henry kept, and that sat below the single metal framed bed.
On arriving back at the bunk Henry reach beneath the bed and drew out the case, lifting it and checking that its locks were still secure. Satisfied, he crouched to slide it back in its place and that is when he paused, seeing the faded beer mat that was no longer with its five brothers inside an internal compartment, laying where it had fallen unnoticed during an otherwise professional search.
Well before dawn the 43rd Motor Rifle Regiment had oriented towards the south west in hastily prepared positions, guarding against a possible counter attack by NATO. They were now three miles inland and five from the bridgehead, out of earshot of the roaring of engines as tanks, APCs, self-propelled guns and all the hardware of armoured warfare crossing the ribbon bridges to the western bank of the Elbe.
At the bridgehead a tenth bridge had just been completed. By the time dawn arrived a further five would also be carrying the weight of the Sixth Shock and Tenth Tank Armies fighting and support units as they moved forward into the offensive.
As yet no work had begun on the autobahn bridge; the combat engineers were still clearing the booby traps left by NATO, a dangerous task at the best of times but doubly so now in the dark. The platoon of engineers tasked to perform the clearance had already lost three men, one dead and two wounded, but had no option but to continue. The schedule called for prefabricated bridging sections to be laid between the spans starting at first light, and to that end a detachment of field police were ensuring that the engineers did not waver from their explosive ordnance clearance duties.
In order to fulfil the role the planners of this campaign envisaged, Colonel Lužar’s regiment had been re-equipped with whatever equipment had been left over after the two, mainly Russian, armies spearheading the drive to the channel had been refitted. His battalions consisted of a mixed bag of MBTs and APCs of differing types and marks. The latest types to be added to the regiment’s inventory were not new; indeed his own command tank wore the tell-tale signs of previously having been knocked out. A crudely patched area on the outside of the turret had its twin on the inside, an area of scorched metal and blistered paint
His battalions’ main battle tank companies now consisted of T-62, T-72, T-80Bs and T-80Us, plus the inferior T-90s. As for his APC companies, well they were also a mixture of BDRMs, BMP1s, 2s and 3s with ancient BTR-60s in evidence here and there. It was hardly a first class unit anymore but he had been assured that NATO units were in a worse state, and any moves made against him would be half-hearted efforts.
Only one company of his faithful PT-76 amphibious tanks remained of the battalion he had first attempted to force the Elbe with. The survivors had been reformed into one large company the next day. So many of his men had fallen that night without knowing that they were merely a diversionary attack, a side show to divert reserves from being able to repel the Red Army’s main effort, which itself had proved a long drawn out affair and an eventual failure.
For Colonel Lužar the shooting of the other unit commanders after that night had been monstrous, they had not been expected to succeed and yet they died for failing.