“Get him back for me, Arnold. Please promise me you will…since his mother died…he’s…he’s all I’ve got…”
“We’ll get him back, sir. I promise you that.” But as he marched out to join Admiral Mulligan, Arnold Morgan had no idea how he would ever keep that promise.
The moment was not made easier by the fact that Arnold Morgan knew so much about the President’s close relationship with his son. Naturally the entire nation, indeed most of the world, knew about the awful riding accident that had killed the First Lady out on the Oklahoma ranch after only a year in the White House.
But only the senior Navy personnel understood the full depth of the President’s loss. He had pleaded for Linus to be airlifted from the submarine he was serving on, and the Navy had been happy to comply, to bring Linus home on compassionate leave to support his heartbroken father.
For six months, Linus had lived between the White House and the ranch. And those close to the Oval Office were in no doubt that the President could not have continued without his naval officer son at his side.
The result was excellent future relations between the Executive Branch and the U.S. Navy. But it caused the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces to form a slightly unnatural dependency on the young and inexperienced Linus Clarke, sufficient to concern several service chiefs. And it explained much about the unmistakable arrogance in Linus’s personality.
This was no ordinary parental devotion. This bordered on an obsessive paternal love, perhaps a substitute for the wife he had lost. It was common knowledge that the hugely eligible President Clarke had never so much as looked at another woman since his beloved Betsy had died.
No trauma would ever devastate any father more than that with which President Clarke was now trying to cope. And his words reflected his anguish.
5
The men selected to attend this highly classified meeting, in President Reagan’s old Situation Room in the West Wing basement, were all there before the Chief Executive made his entry. Each of them was standing around the table in the center of the room awaiting seating instructions. At the end of the room, a four-foot-wide computer screen was showing a navigational chart of a section of the South China Sea, homing in on the forbidden waters of the Canton Roads.
“Gentlemen, good morning.” The tall southwestern Republican President was all business today. His usual smile was missing, and there was no light banter in his greetings to colleagues. Immediately, he laid out his game plan for the meeting.
“I have already decided that we will form a small select committee here, and that my National Security Adviser, Admiral Morgan here, is to take overall charge of the entire operation. I have cleared that with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Chief of Naval Operations.
“My reasons are obvious. The situation in which we find ourselves has such inordinately strong political overtones that it ceases to be an entirely military matter. Therefore Admiral Morgan is the natural choice, being the acknowledged expert on the subject, and having a foot firmly in both camps.
“I know Arnie commands the respect of us all; certainly he has mine. And as my National Security Adviser, I have decided he will replace me in the Chair at this and all future meetings that deal with the China situation. I shall sit here, to his right, because, as you all know, I have a strong emotional involvement, and I would not wish to prejudice the intentions and actions of this committee. Decisions made here must be cold-blooded in nature, and I cannot risk placing others in danger because of my determination to save my own son. I thus will accept the plan of action recommended by this Committee. But I do stress the word action. The remainder of the seating will be decided by the Chairman.”
Admiral Morgan moved briskly to the big chair at the head in which the President usually sat. He spoke sharply. “Lemme have Admiral Mulligan to my left. Next to him I would like the Secretary of State…”
Harcourt Travis, a tall, steel-haired ex-Harvard professor, like the President, moved forward into his allotted place.
“I think the Defense Secretary should come next…yup, Bob MacPherson…right there next to Harcourt…that way I have two political heavies opposite the President, and then I can place the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Tim Scannell, to the President’s right. Then, still on that side, lemme have the silken pen of Dick Stafford…then the head of Navy Intelligence, Admiral Schnider. Opposite them I want to place the White House Chief of Staff, Louis Fallon, with any CIA men at the same end, in company with the COMSUBLANT if he can get here in time.
“Okay, now let me call this meeting to order, and in so doing I am assuming you have all read the military brief…just outlining the whereabouts of the submarine and how the hell it got there. Thus far, we do know the crew has been taken off and imprisoned, and we know approximately one hundred of them are in a civilian jail in Canton. We do not know yet what has happened to the senior command of the ship, but we’re on the case. And as you all know, President Clarke’s son, Linus, is among that team. The Chinese naturally do not know who he is, and plainly we intend to keep it that way.”
The President nodded and then asked Admiral Morgan to report on his half-hour meeting with the Chinese ambassador, which had concluded only 15 minutes previously, with the Beijing-born diplomat very nearly being sent out of the White House on the wrong end of Arnold Morgan’s shiny black right shoe.
“That’s easy, sir. He said he hadn’t been briefed, was not in a position to discuss the matter, had total faith in the integrity of the People’s Liberation Army/Navy. He promised to get back to us in the next two days. And I told the lying little sonofabitch that would be precisely two days too late. And he was to be back inside three hours with some real answers about Chinese intentions.
“Otherwise, I told him, we may consider a preemptive strike against Chinese naval hardware, in retaliation. I concluded the meeting by warning him that he could find himself personally with a very special place in the modern history of Who Flung Dung or whatever’s the name of that asshole who writes their political memoirs.”
The admiral glared around the table. “Damned difficult to deal with an out-and-out liar, right? The little bastard knows every last move being made in Canton right now. They have to keep him right up to speed because they know we’ll keep wheeling him in here. Of course he knows what’s happening. But he’s just going to keep stalling.
“And that, gentlemen, is what I believe lies at the heart of the entire Chinese strategy…keeping us at arm’s length with a succession of hollow promises while they wring out the crew and then copy the ship, every electronic system, every computer, every valve, every missile. In my view, we do not have that much time.”
“Arnie,” interjected the President. “Are you about to recommend we consider such a course of action — I mean, a strike against the warships of the People’s Republic?”
“Sir, my answer has to be no. Because to be very frank, I haven’t the first idea what we ought to do. Though I do not think we should risk starting World War Three. I said what I said to the ambassador because I was trying to frighten him into telling his political masters that we really mean business, and they should think carefully about keeping the submarine. It’s no use being soft with ’em. They’ll just construe that as weakness.”