Mrs. Kathy Morgan came through in precisely the way Admiral Morris had hoped, and invited them both for dinner at their house in Chevy Chase. And both men looked forward to it, since neither of them had seen the Big Man for several months.
They arrived at eight o’clock sharp in the Morgans’ somewhat grand Maryland residence, which had been a part of Kathy’s divorce settlement. The Admiral came to the front door and greeted them with great warmth, hustling them inside and announcing he was personally cooking dinner outside on the barbecue.
He’d fix drinks and then they could lay the bombshell on him that Admiral Morris had promised earlier in the afternoon. All three of them went for a long Scotch and soda on the rocks, and stepped out into the warm early summer night for the first highlight of the evening.
“Okay, Arnie,” said Admiral Morris. “Prepare for a shock. The guy on the right-hand side of your photograph, the one Harry never snapped face-on, is Maj. Ray Kerman, late of the British Army’s SAS. How about that?”
“Are you kidding me?” said Arnold. “That little bastard, standing not 30 feet from me on top of the goddamned cliff. Hell, if I’d known that, I’d have killed him with my bare hands!”
“If he’d known who you were, he’d probably have killed you first,” said Jimmy, laughing, with no idea how close to home his words were. Then he explained to Morgan how they’d confirmed the identification of the most wanted terrorist in the world.
“Now that, George, is really something,” said Admiral Morgan. “But, more important, what the hell’s he doing on the top of the volcano with the Arabs?”
“Well, I guess that’s the question,” said George. “And it’s very tricky, because there’s no evidence anywhere that these men are actually Islamic Fundamentalists…they’re academics whose life study is volcanoes.”
“If you ask me,” said Jimmy, “the question is, why La Palma? Of all the volcanoes in the world, why is the most vicious terrorist leader in the world having a fucking powwow with a couple of scientists on the slopes of the most potentially dangerous volcano on earth.”
Arnold Morgan grinned wryly. “How do you know it is?” he said.
“Oh, I just became a world volcano expert around five o’clock this afternoon…checked out the old Cumbre Vieja on the Net…on the University of California Web site. That’s the school out in Santa Cruz, where those Iranian professors went for post-grad courses.”
“Goddamned Internet,” said Arnie. “I had to travel halfway around the world at vast expense to get my knowledge of the La Palma range. You get the same thing in about five minutes at a cost of about five bucks—”
“Five cents,” replied Jimmy. “Not including the print-out paper.”
Just then Kathy came out of the house with a large serving plate containing four New York sirloin steaks — one-pounders, aged and primed.
“Hello, George,” she said, handing the platter to her husband. “Jimmy — will these do?”
“Oh, g’day, Mrs. Morgan,” replied the Lt. Commander. “I’d say they’ll do just great.”
Kathy, as always, looked nothing short of striking. Her red hair was loose, cut shoulder length, her makeup consisted of lipstick and little else. She wore a ruby-red silk blouse with white matador pants. Around her neck hung a pendant — two golden dolphins, stylized as though from Greek mythology, but nonetheless an adapted emblem of the United States Navy’s submarine service.
Arnold pronged the steaks with a long fork and placed them on the grill, eliciting four loud, encouraging sizzles — the national anthem of his home state of Texas.
“Git along, little doggies,” muttered the old submarine trail boss, maneuvering the steaks into position — bow, stern, port, and starboard. He declined to close the lid, keeping the gas heat on the grill high. “Way to cook ’em, boy,” he said to Jimmy. “Just like my daddy taught me. Big heat, keen eye, and fast reactions. That’s what you need with barbecued steak.”
“And life,” replied Jimmy, grinning. “Turn your back and you’ll probably get burned.”
“Hopefully not by a goddamned volcano,” said Arnold. “I just wonder what those bastards are up to.”
“Maybe nothing,” said George Morris. “Maybe this Kerman character just has an interest in the subject. Maybe he just went on a field trip with the two professors. Maybe he’s on a world volcano tour.”
“I don’t think so,” said Arnold, somewhat predictably. “Guys like that don’t have hobbies. They’re fanatics, consumed every waking hour of every day with their own agenda. I just don’t trust those bastards…especially this Kerman character…I mean, if he’s done half of what we think he’s done, he’s getting up there with Attila the Hun, and he’s a lot worse than Colonel Gadhafi.”
“I was looking at the Cumbre Vieja problem this afternoon,” said Jimmy. “There’s no explosion in this world big enough to blow a four-cubic-kilometer hunk of mountain into the ocean.”
“I know that, Jimmy,” said the Admiral. “But it’s not the eruption of the volcano that’s the catalyst. It’s the rush of molten lava to the surface, heating the underground lakes and causing a massive steam explosion.”
“I’ve seen an old picture of a locomotive boiler blowing up,” said Jimmy. “It knocked down the entire station, and it was a big railroad terminus. But it would surely have to be an unbelievable force to set off that kind of chain reaction,” mused Jimmy. “One professor said, thankfully, the entire scenario would have to be an act of God, and the Almighty hasn’t bothered with anything that big for centuries.”
“Hope he’s right,” gritted Arnold, flipping the steaks deftly. “Just don’t trust any Arabs on the goddamned mountain, that’s all. They’re up to no good. They always fucking well are.”
They sipped their drinks amiably. But there was a tension in the air that summer night. George Morris knew that Arnold was not happy about the arch-terrorist Ray Kerman consorting with the volcano men. And Arnold’s roaming mind was scanning the problem, wondering what to do and what might lie in store for the future.
The man was out of the White House, essentially a civilian. The cares and worries of high office should have been behind him. He and his new wife ought to have been planning vacations, world trips, visiting friends. And indeed they were. But Arnold Morgan had always treated the problems of the United States as if they were his own, and it was an old habit that was hard to break.
Kathy was quiet too. She hated it when her husband acted as if he were still the President’s National Security Adviser. But she knew that nothing she could say or do was going to make much of a difference. So she just hoped the mood would pass. She tried to distract him instead, asking solicitously if he felt the wine they were serving was sufficiently close to room temperature.
It was a question that almost always did the trick. The Admiral hurried inside to taste the rich 1998 Pomerol, Château de Valois, and a few moments later he seemed to have forgotten about Major Kerman, briefing his guests instead on the superb red Bordeaux they were about to drink.
“Right bank for the 1998s, eh, Jimmy?” said Arnold.
“What’s that?” said Jimmy.
“Nineteen ninety-eight was an excellent year for Bordeaux, but was only reliable on one side of the Gironde Estuary.”
“Where’s that?”
“Oh, where the Gironde and Dordogne Rivers flow out into the Bay of Biscay in western France — and on the left-hand side of that estuary are most of the great French châteaux. On the other side you have the other great Bordeaux vineyards, Saint-Emilion and Pomerol. And in 1998, there was a lot of rain, just before the harvest — swept down off the Pyrenees, up the left-hand shores of the estuary and soaked the Medoc. But somehow it missed Saint-Emilion and Pomerol, which had a wonderful harvest. I’ve opened a couple of bottles for tonight. After George called, I asked your future father-in-law to join us, but I believe the whole family’s out of town?”