Worse yet, his seaman’s instinct was telling him the prevailing west wind was no longer on his face. The broken life buoy had been swept onto the windward side of the Rock, which meant it had not come in from the open sea. It had been swept out from one of the fifty-odd miles of fjords that surge around this small part of Kerguelen. In a flash, Freddie now realized that Cuttyhunk had almost certainly gone to the bottom in one of the deep, sinister waterways. He had been saying for so long that no wreckage meant the Cuttyhunk was still floating. But here was wreckage from the ship’s upper deck. He was holding it in his hand for Christ’s sake. Suddenly, he had no more tears to shed. Kate was gone. He was now certain.
It would take him three days to change his mind. The red life buoy was proof that the Cuttyhunk had sunk unless some really fast-thinking member of the ship’s crew had secretly heaved the life buoy over the side during the attack, as a last signal to the outside world. The notion was so remote it took another week to fully germinate and for Freddie to accept it as a potential truth. And it did so, just before Freddie sat down in Hyannis to write the first of an outstanding series of syndicated articles centered around the menacing, frozen island at the end of the world.
2
Vice admiral Arnold Morgan, at age fifty-eight, was wryly amused by the opulence of his new office at the White House. For a man whose background was nuclear submarines, and the functional operations rooms of the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Maryland, the carpeted hush of his well-appointed quarters in the home of the President was a culture shock. Also, people were apt to look a bit startled when he yelled at ’em.
After a lifetime in the US Navy, the burly, five-foot-eight-inch Texan had been extremely circumspect about taking off the dark blue for the last time and accepting the exalted Presidential post of National Security Adviser. But he respected and admired the southwestern Republican President who had appointed him. Where some presidents seek to dissociate themselves politically from the military, this well-educated ex-Harvard law professor from Oklahoma had always embraced the armed forces and had drawn admirals and generals into the heart of his administration.
Arnold Morgan and the President had worked closely together during a particularly disagreeable Black Operation the previous year. Less than three weeks after its conclusion, the President had confessed to some of his closest staff members that he really missed talking regularly to Morgan. “He’s such a cantankerous old bastard,” he said. “Doesn’t trust any foreign country except the UK, and them no further than he can kick ’em; calls people up in the small hours of the morning and is mostly too bad-tempered even to say good-bye on the phone. But a truly impressive mind. And a walking encyclopedia on world naval power.” Robert MacPherson, the Secretary of Defense, was also an admirer of the Admiral, and despite a few misgivings by the rather more refined Harcourt Travis, the Secretary of State, it was agreed that Admiral Morgan should be brought into the White House. Travis had raised no serious objection, stating drolly that he had to admit that Britain’s Neville Chamberlain “would have been considerably better off if he’d taken Admiral Morgan with him to meet Hitler in Munich in 1939.” It took almost a year to disentangle the Admiral from the front line of the US intelligence service, but he was now firmly established in the deeply carpeted inner sanctum of the West Wing.
The Admiral did not, by instinct, trust the Beijing government, and he trusted foreign submarines even less. The fact that the Kilos were being constructed in Russia, a nation he bitterly mistrusted, had the effect of accelerating his irritation with the current situation to the third power.
“Fuck ’em,” he growled. “We’re not having it.”
He stood up and pulled on his new dark gray civilian suit jacket, which had been cut for him by a military tailor. He strode out of his office, his black lace-up shoes gleaming, the brisk, unmistakable gait of a senior Naval officer betraying his past. That and his severely cut gray hair, and his way of staring straight ahead as he went forward. When Admiral Morgan set sail from his White House office he looked as if he were about to head into battle.
“Goddamned Chinese,” he snapped as he passed a new portrait of President Eisenhower, who he considered would probably have understood. And he continued muttering irritably. “Napoleon said it. And he said it right: when the Chinese giant awakens, the world will tremble. I’m not sure who’s going to be doing the trembling, but it’s not going to be the US of A.”
At the West Wing entrance, Morgan’s car and driver awaited him. “Morning, Charlie,” he said. “Pentagon. CNO’s office. Gotta be there at 1030.”
“SIR,” Charlie snapped back, like a cowed midshipman. He had never before driven a senior military man until the Admiral’s arrival, and he had not yet recovered from their very first meeting. Charlie had shown up two minutes late on Morgan’s first day in the office and could hardly believe his ears when Arnold Morgan had growled in menacing tones, “You are adrift, late, AWOL, slack, and useless. If anything like this ever happens again, you are fired. Do you understand me, asshole? My name is Admiral Arnold Morgan, and I have a goddamned lot on my mind, and I will not abide this kind of bullshit from anyone, not even if he works in the fucking White House.” Charlie Patterson nearly died of shock. A month later, he was still afraid of the Admiral. From that first encounter, he was inclined to show up twenty minutes early for all of his assignments with the new National Security Adviser. The story of his confrontation with the tyrant from Fort Meade had whipped around the White House like a prairie fire. Even the President knew about it.
Charlie Patterson gunned the big limousine through the streets of Washington, heading east along the waterfront and picking up 1-395 at the Maine Avenue entrance. They crossed the Potomac and made straight for the United States military headquarters.
Admiral Morgan was well used to the familiar route, but for the past four years he had usually driven himself. A chauffeur was just one aspect of his new life to which he had to become accustomed. The others were the more relaxed office hours and the more regular social obligations. If he missed anything, it was the time he had once spent prowling around in his Fort Meade headquarters, in the small hours of the morning, checking the signals from America’s surveillance posts around the world. He now believed it was entirely possible he might have to locate a new lady to run his life. The years in submarines and then in Naval intelligence had wreaked havoc with both of his marriages. As far as he could tell neither of his two ex-wives, nor even his two grown-up children, were speaking to him at present, the result of years of neglect. With his highly salaried position, he was regarded, alongside the President, as one of the most interesting middle-aged bachelors on the Washington circuit. Dangerous waters for an unarmed former commanding officer, who was having to relearn any vestige of real charm he may once have had as a young lieutenant.