Lieutenant Commander Jimmy Ramshawe gunned his beloved Jaguar north up Route 17 without uttering one word for twenty minutes. Jane Peacock would have mentioned his uncharacteristic silence, except she was asleep in the passenger seat. Finally, as they ran through the flat-lands of Essex County, three things happened. Jane awakened. Jimmy spoke, or rather cursed. And a Virginia state trooper pulled him over for speeding.
When he produced his driver’s license, he also handed over his National Security Agency identification. The officer looked at both.
“You going straight through to Fort Meade, sir?”
“Right now I’m headed for the Australian embassy.”
The policeman nodded, handed back the documents. “Trouble?”
“Big.”
“Okay, sir. You need an escort?”
“I guess not. I’ll keep it down on the highway.”
“I’ll track you up to Fredericksburg. No problem, and, hey, thanks for what you do for our country.”
The state trooper, who was in his late twenties, offered his hand and confided, “I tried out for the Navy SEALs a few years back, down at Virginia Beach. Too tough for me. But I still appreciate what all you guys do… So long, Commander.”
Jimmy pulled back onto the road and accelerated once more toward Washington. The police cruiser sped along fifty yards in the rear, its blue lights no longer flashing.
Jane shook her head. “It’s a bloody miracle what those three little words mean in this country,” she said. “National Security Agency. It really matters, doesn’t it? Sometimes I forget how much.”
Her fiancé was pensive. After a few seconds, he said, quietly, “Speaking of miracles, I’ll tell you about another one…”
“You will?”
“Yeah. Because that’s what it will be, if that Brockhurst detective ever finds Carla Martin-you know what? He’s never going to find Carla Martin.”
“How do you know? Half the country’s looking out for her.”
“Half the country’s whistling Dixie. Because Carla Martin no longer exists. She died with Matt Barker.”
“Died!”
“Figuratively, I mean. Carla Martin was a professional agent, almost certainly operating on behalf of an Islamic terrorist group. She came here to Brockhurst to set up a field office, with the express purpose of finding out when Arnold and Kathy were leaving the country.”
“Well, where is she now?”
“Dunno, babe. But if I had to guess, I’d say Syria.”
“What do you mean, Syria? How could she get there?”
“No trouble. Air France to Paris, from either Washington or New York. Then on to Damascus. Same airline.”
“And how, Great Oracle, do you alone come to be in possession of these facts? You alone, out of the entire country?”
Jimmy took his right hand off the wheel and tapped the side of his nose with his forefinger. “Mostly because I alone do not give a rat’s ass about the murder. I’m looking for something else, and I just found it.”
“I don’t know why you have to be so dismissive about the life of Matt Barker.”
“Because he was just a big stupid accident who blundered into the path of a major Islamic terrorist operation. Of course she killed him, but it’s about as important as having a cup of coffee. And I’m the only person right now who is aware of that.”
“Well, the media don’t seem to agree with you. They are possessed by this murder.”
“If his bloody pecker hadn’t been sticking out, none of ’em would have given a damn. It just gave a salacious flavor to a routine country killing. And that’ll do it every time. They wouldn’t recognize the real truth behind the story if it bit ’em right in the ass.”
Jane chuckled. “Christ, Arnold Morgan has had an effect on you,” she said.
“I take that as a compliment,” he replied. “But just ask yourself. This murder has all the hallmarks of an international terrorist operation. And how many times has any newspaper, radio, or television outfit mentioned that obvious truth? I’ll tell you. None. And how often have they mentioned Matt Barker’s pecker? About eight zillion times.”
Again Jane laughed. “I guess his brains ended up in his pecker,” she said. “A darned expensive move-cost him his life.”
“Right. And a very dangerous one for Carla. Just a bit of bad luck. This randy bastard from the garage waits outside the hotel and tries to give her the Big What-Ho. Attacked her in some kind of sexual frenzy. For Carla, there was no alternative but to kill him. Quickly. And efficiently, like all special operators.
“And that meant she had to get the hell out. And now she’s gone, probably abroad, certainly under a different passport. She’ll never be found.”
“How do you know that?”
“For a start, no one knows her name, no one has the remotest idea what country she’s in, and she left, apparently, no trace. No one even knows where she lived.”
“Okay. But the truth may come out in the next few days.”
“I wouldn’t put your life savings on it. Miss Carla was a complete professional. Assume, just for a moment, I’m on the right track, and then look at what she did. Her objective is to find out from Kathy’s mum when Arnold is going on vacation.
“She enters the country almost certainly on an American passport, otherwise the forgery would have been picked up at the immigration desks at the airport. She makes her way to Mrs. Gallagher’s little town and immediately gets a job at the local hotel. She befriends no one, except for one person-Mrs. Gallagher, surprise surprise.
“No one ever sees her arrive at the hotel, and no one ever sees her leave at night. No one has ever seen her car, not even Mrs. Gallagher. You know why?”
“No, ’course I don’t.”
“Because she never had a car.”
“So how did she get to work and home at night?”
“She had a chauffeur, who dropped her off at different places close to the hotel, quiet streets only. And at night he waited for her at an agreed place. She just slipped across the parking lot and ran to where her car was waiting. Until the night when Matt Barker decided to ambush her.”
“Was the chauffeur her boyfriend?”
“Christ, no. More likely a fellow member of Hezbollah or Hamas, or maybe even from a Middle East embassy. Someone right here in the USA gave her that dagger to protect herself if necessary. She’d never have tried to bring it through airport security herself.”
“Well, it all sounds plausible, and I do remember that hotel manager saying she must have removed her documents from the file. And she plainly gave a false address, that Bowling Wharf or whatever it was.”
“Listen, Jane. Sooner or later, someone’s going to report a missing tenant in an apartment block. Remember Emily’s words, apartment, doorman, balcony. And the police are going to trace Carla Martin’s passport, and it will be a dead end, and no one will ever have heard of her.
“And we’ll still be the only people who care about her real purpose. Because Emily told Carla all about the admiral’s trip to London, his hotel, date and time of departure from Washington. And someone is going to be waiting for him. And that someone is going to try to kill him. Arnold’s life is in the gravest possible danger.”
“Is anyone going to believe all this?”
“I doubt it. Certainly not Arnold.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I’d like to stop him from going. Which will be a lot like trying to stop a freight train with your bare hands.”
Detective Joe Segel had more “information” on his plate than he knew what to do with. There had, so far, been more than sixty-five “sightings”-people who claimed to have seen a youngish lady fitting Carla’s description driving toward Brockhurst during daylight hours.
The vehicle identifications were more diverse than the geographic locations, ranging from small compact automobiles to huge SUVs. A few callers claimed to know where she lived, and Joe Segel had been moving police cruisers all over the area to check out the possibility of “apartment, doorman, balcony,” as reliably mentioned by Emily Gallagher.
Three had emerged as possibilities, but police checks had revealed no one answering Carla’s description in residence, no one having gone missing, and no female who was out after 10:30 P.M. on Monday night. All three of these expensive apartment blocks employed assiduous doormen who logged in every resident on a computer, every night. None of the buildings was named Chesapeake Heights.
Joe considered all of that added up to a huge disappointment. But the biggest stone wall he ran into was the identification of Carla Martin. Computerized records revealed only three white females of that name born in the USA in May 1982. Joe Segel trusted Jim Caborn on that one.
Further checks revealed that two of them had never applied for passports. The other Carla Martin had been born on May 27, 1982, in Baltimore, Maryland. She was unmarried and now lived in Phoenix, Arizona, where she worked at a high school, teaching physical education. There were approximately 278 students, about 19 teachers, and 67 parents perfectly willing to swear that Miss Martin had been running three soccer games last Monday until seven o’clock in the evening, nine o’clock in Brockhurst. No, she did not have a part-time job moonlighting in a hotel bar 2,350 miles away in Virginia.
The local Phoenix police did interview Miss Martin, but only half-heartedly, since she was plainly innocent of any crime. They thus failed to discover that her first cousin on her mother’s side, Kathy Streeter, was married to Mr. Dori Hussein, a cultural attaché at the Jordanian embassy, in northwest Washington, D.C.
Like his colleague, Ahmed, Mr. Hussein was a field officer for Hezbollah. And a good one. Documents were his specialty, having graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design.
Well, how the hell did the Brockhurst Carla get ahold of the Phoenix Carla’s passport? That was essentially what Joe Segel wanted to know. Although he realized it was a blind alley, because the passport Carla showed to Jim Caborn was blatantly a forgery, and could have been scanned and copied in a dozen different ways. The forgers might even, in a blind coincidence, have invented all the names, dates, and places.
And had Carla used it to enter the United States, IF she was foreign? Who the hell knew? And anyway, that was none of Joe’s business. All he wanted to know, for chrissakes, was who had killed Matt Barker. And the only certainty with which the day had presented him was that a lady who taught sports at an Arizona high school was not guilty.
A blanket check of all ports of entry on the East Coast of the United States had revealed nothing. There was no record of any Carla Martin. And the fact that Joe Segel did not even have a proper name for his prime suspect was really bothering him.
But at ten minutes before noon on that Friday morning, he got one. Fred Mitchell, the ex-Green Beret who manned the door by night at Chesapeake Heights, called in to reveal that he almost certainly knew the barmaid the police were seeking. Better yet, he knew her address and apartment. “Sir,” said Fred, “she lived right here in this building, and I’m afraid she might be dead.”
Detective Segel rounded up two officers, boarded a police cruiser, switched on the warning lights and siren, and sped out to Chesapeake Heights. And there Fred informed them that one of the tenants looked exactly like the photo-kit versions he had seen in the local newspaper last night and on a television news program. What was more, she worked nights, usually arrived home around 11:30 P.M. Yes, all apartments above the tenth floor had balconies. There was an especially large one on the penthouse floor where the lady lived.
“However, sir,” said Fred, “she wasn’t no Carla Martin. Nossir. Her name was Jane Camaro. She had been in residence for only a couple of weeks. On a four-month rental lease she had paid for in advance. Cash, the evening she arrived.”
Detective Segel nodded, unsurprised by any of this. “And why do you think she is dead?” he asked.
“Sir, we had a little trouble last Monday night. Coupla hoods broke into one of the tenants’ cars, brand-new Lincoln out back. It happened just after Jane arrived back, like I said, around 11:30 P.M., maybe a little after that.
“Anyway, I saw her come in, and then I had to go and check out the break-in. I came back in, maybe five minutes later, contacted the tenant whose car windshield had been smashed, and told him to call the police. Then I logged Miss Jane in on the computer, and no one’s seen her since. Brad-he’s the daytime doorman-has not logged her out since then, and I have certainly not logged her in.”
“Can we go take a look at her apartment?”
“Sure we can. I got keys to all the apartments here. But I sure ain’t looking forward to this. Nossir.”
“You think she’s died?”
“Well, I don’t know what else to think. No one can get in or out of this building without one of the doormen seeing ’em go.”
“How about she has a boyfriend in this building and moved in with him for a few days?” offered Joe Segel. “Just gone AWOL. That’s absent without leave.”
Fred grinned. “I know all about that, sir. I did fifteen years in the Green Berets. I wouldn’t say there was any chance of that, sir. Right here, we got mostly married couples.”
“Well, if we don’t find her, my men will have to interview the residents.”
“I understand, sir,” said Fred, as the elevator came to a halt on the twenty-first floor. The four men turned to the left and walked along the corridor, led by the doorman. At the second door, Fred inserted his key and pushed open the door, tentatively. Inside, there was nothing much to see. The apartment had been abandoned in a major hurry.
In the bedroom, the wardrobe and drawers were still wide open and there was nothing left, not even bed linens. The bathroom yielded not so much as a spare toothbrush. The kitchen was bereft, the refrigerator empty, nothing whatsoever in the cupboards. There was one clean plate, one knife, one fork, one glass, two coffee mugs. All in the dishwasher, all thoroughly cleansed in scalding-hot water. There was not one single trace of either Jane Camaro or Carla Martin.
There was not much else to do except to leave. And Fred was relieved that Jane Camaro was not dead. “Wouldn’t look good on the résumé, right?”
But on the way down in the elevator, Detective Segel asked him one specific question: “How do you know that no one left the building while you were away from the desk, for maybe ten minutes?”
Fred beamed. “We got closed-circuit television right here, sir. One small camera right above the door, another at the far end of the foyer. When you gentlemen have left, I rewind the film, right there at the desk, and check out if anyone entered or left. The film displays the correct time.”
“How about someone you cannot identify?” asked Joe Segel.
“Nothing’s perfect, and that’s a flaw. But I sure as hell could identify Miss Jane Camaro. That was one great-looking chick.”
“Did you check the film after the break-in, you know, maybe catch a glimpse of her leaving?”
“No, I didn’t bother. I was only out at the side of the building for three or four minutes, and I’d have known if anyone came in or left. Headlights, car engines, and all.”
“How long would it take to run the film back right now so we could take a look?”
“Maybe coupla hours. There’s a lot of film in that system.”
“Okay. Perhaps you’d do it when you got some time and let me know?”
“No problem, sir.”
“Did Jane have a car?”
“Well, she never filled out the vehicle identification form for a reserved space in the parking lot. But she must have had a car. Ain’t no other way to get out here in the country. I guess she must have forgot.”
“Is the management strict about these procedures?”
“Hell, no. This parking lot’s half empty most of the time. Ain’t something we take very seriously. But since you mention it, I never saw her behind the wheel of a vehicle. But that don’t mean she didn’t have one.”
Joe thanked Fred for his help and said they’d be in touch, with regard to police interviews with the residents. When he arrived back at the precinct, he picked up the telephone and dialed the personal number of Lieutenant Commander Jimmy Ramshawe at Fort Meade.
The call from Detective Segel, in Jimmy’s mind, caused more questions than answers. How long after “Jane” came home did the break-in occur in the parking lot? Who told Fred it had happened? Precisely what was on that film during the few minutes Fred was out? And what the hell was someone doing smashing the windshield of the Lincoln? No one breaks into a car like that, especially one with an alarm system.
In fact, these days, very few people break into cars at all because the systems are so good. Whoever broke into that Lincoln certainly did not want to steal it and then drive around with no windshield. And through the windshield was no way to get inside the car.
No, pondered Jimmy, that made no sense, unless it was pure vandalism. And who the hell would want to do something that stupid, knowing they might get caught when the alarm went off?
There’s only one person who logically might have broken that windshield, and that was someone who wanted Fred away from his station for a few minutes. Time either to get into, or get away from, Chesapeake Heights.
He picked up the phone and called Fred, who jumped right to attention at the contact from a Navy lieutenant commander at the National Security Agency. He promised to call back in two hours with some answers. And, when they arrived, every one of those answers was precisely what Jimmy guessed they would be.
The break-in occurred eighteen minutes after Jane Camaro returned home. Fred did not hear the alarm because he was watching television. He was alerted by a chauffeur who rushed in through the front door and said he saw a couple of hoodlums running away from a big Lincoln automobile with a smashed windshield and an alarm blaring.
Fred saw the chauffeur fleetingly, and identified him as a guy who could have been Italian or Puerto Rican. And yes, he had studied a rerun of the film and identified a figure leaving the building who could have been Jane. But she had turned away from the camera as she walked through the foyer, covering her face with a magazine. It may not have been Jane, because she was walking kind of funny. But it could have been. Anyway, she was carrying a medium-sized suitcase.
Carla Martin, you are one very professional lady. Jimmy Ramshawe’s admiration was sincere.
Right now, he had about three hundred coincidences. And in Jimmy’s mind, they added up to one large warning light. Someone was most certainly determined to eliminate Admiral Morgan. But he doubted Arnold would believe him.
He was right about that too. “I guess it’s possible,” the great man grunted. “But I’m not running my life around the antics of some goddamned barmaid. I got a lot of security, and it’ll be as good in London as it is here. Jesus Christ, Jimmy, leave it alone. Why don’t you check out that Iranian submarine at the eastern end of the Med? I see it’s only about two hundred miles from a U.S. carrier. That’s too close. Call me.”
The phone went down with a crash. Arnold, of course, never said good-bye to anyone. Not even the president. Jimmy usually chuckled at this gruff eccentricity. But he found nothing amusing today. Absolutely nothing.
The Russian-built Type 877 Kilo-class submarine, owned by the Iranian Navy, slid through clear ocean waters five hundred miles south of Italy ’s Gulf of Taranto. Her captain was Mohammed Abad, who had twelve officers, fifty-three crew, and one guest under his command. The guest, General Ravi Rashood, C-in-C Hamas, had come aboard off the coast of Lebanon, delivered by a Syrian Army helicopter.
These were strange seas for the Iranians, who normally patrolled only the Gulf and the Arabian Sea. But this particular submarine had just emerged from refit conducted in her birthplace, the Admiralty Yards in St. Petersburg, on the shores of the Baltic. It had been commissioned back in November 1996, and it had not been necessary to return to Russia since then. The engineers at Iran’s submarine base, Chah Bahar on the northwest shores of the Gulf of Oman, had been more than competent.
However, Hull Number 901 had experienced some major mechanical difficulties eighteen months previously and had missed an Indian Naval Review. With her propulsion system on the blink, the Kilo had been towed behind a Russian frigate all the way back to the Baltic. Now, restored to pristine fighting condition, she had spent three months at the eastern end of the Med, patrolling the waters off Beirut and generally making the Americans very jumpy.
There were certain admirals in the Pentagon, and one in Chevy Chase, who thought she should have been sunk, forthwith, in deep water. There could, after all, be only one possible reason why the Islamic Republic of Iran should deploy one of her four diesel-electric inshore submarines in the Eastern Med. And that reason was all-purpose-to assist the terrorist organizations Iran had financed and supplied for so long.
According to U.S. Naval Intelligence, that could mean anything from supplying missiles to Hezbollah in Lebanon to opening fire on Israeli warships-the Russian Kilos carried 18 torpedoes-or perhaps even sinking a U.S. warship, since there is often an American fleet patrolling these volatile seas. This latter course of action would almost certainly turn into a suicide mission for the Iranians, but with Allah awaiting the crew in Paradise on the other side of the bridge, and sounding the three trumpets, this is not considered a bad fate for Muslim extremists. At least it’s never deterred them before.
The Type 877 Kilo is a formidable opponent for even the most modern surface ship, because she bristles with state-of-the-art radar surface-search systems. Underwater, she is even more dangerous, equipped with the highly efficient Russian Shark’s Teeth sonar.
She’s silent under five knots and can dive to seven hundred feet. Her range is six thousand miles cruising at seven knots. However, her single shaft and 3,650-hp electronic engine can drive her through the depths of the ocean at greater speeds. If she struck hard, however, underwater against an opposing warship, she would be damn near impossible to find if the CO cut her speed.
The Russians have long gloried in the potential of this export-only submarine. Indeed, they have a big four-color trade advertisement which reads “THE KILO CLASS SUBMARINE-the only soundless creature in the sea.” And when they wrote that ad, they had Hull 901 in mind. The address in St. Petersburg, complete with phone, fax, and E-mail, is that of RUBIN, Russia’s central design bureau for marine engineering.
This is where the design refinements for the 240-foot-long underwater boat were perfected. The RUBIN scientists have worked for years trying to make the Kilo as quiet as the grave, every engine mounting, every working part, every vibration considered, improved, and eventually silenced. Running deep, Hull 901 would make no more noise than a modern computer.
All three thousand tons of her, superbly streamlined, can slip through the depths at six knots, betraying virtually nothing. She cuts her speed below five, she’s vanished. Of all the underwater warriors, the Kilo is one of the most stealthy, partly because, unlike a big nuclear boat, she has no nuclear reactor requiring the support of God knows how many subsystems, all of them noisemakers.
There is but one flaw in this masterpiece of Russian design. And that happens when she needs to recharge the huge batteries that power her electric motors. The Kilo is vulnerable when snorkeling, because her generators are merely two big diesel internal-combustion engines, which, like a car, must have air.
And that requirement sends the submarine to periscope depth, where those generators can be heard, the air-intake mast can be picked up on radar, and the ions in the diesel exhaust can be “sniffed.” If she’s not careful, she can even be seen, and there is absolutely nothing she can do about it.
The Kilo-class submarine, moving swiftly, must snorkel and recharge her batteries every two hundred miles. Through the Mediterranean Sea, from one end to the other, she needs to complete this process twelve times before exiting into the Atlantic.
Of course, the U.S. Navy’s detection systems are extremely advanced and the mighty Los Angeles-class nuclear boats are certainly a match for the covert Russian submarine. The chances of a Kilo getting close enough to hit an American ship are remote, just as long as no one takes their eye off the ball.
Nonetheless, the retired American admiral residing in Chevy Chase, Maryland, continued to believe Iran’s Mediterranean submarine should be hit and sunk forthwith. President Bedford was inclined to agree, particularly since it was possible for a big U.S. nuclear boat to get rid of any foreign submarine and never be located.
In subsurface warfare, it has been ever thus. Because, contrary to popular perception, submarines cannot communicate with home base while they are underwater. Their only form of communication is via satellite, and for that they must have a mast, briefly, jutting above the surface.
Thus, all submarines have a daily call time, when they come to periscope depth, usually in the dead of night, and announce their course, speed, and position in a minisecond electronic burst to the satellite circling twenty-two thousand miles above the Earth. They then ask if there are any messages, scoop them up, and return immediately to the ocean depths. If the entire process takes more than fifteen seconds, then someone’s been grotesquely inefficient.
The progression from this myriad of Naval Intelligence leads to one stark truth-if a submarine hits another with a torpedo, no one knows it’s happened. The stricken ship will sink to the floor of the ocean, sometimes without a trace. The first clue to its disappearance will be a missed call home via the satellite. And this might very easily be twenty hours after the hit.
And one missed call is not usually a five-alarmer, because the problem could have been electronic, or maybe even carelessness. Certainly one single missed call-in does not signify the ultimate horror of a submarine lost with all hands. And so to the second missed call, the following night. What does this mean? And what to do?
It might be forty-four hours since the submarine was sunk. And an enemy could very easily have been traveling at twenty knots, speeding away from the scene of the crime. That’s 880 nautical miles! In any direction!
Which leaves some hapless home base with a search area of thousands and thousands of square miles in waters perhaps one or two miles deep. Chances of crew survival: zero. Chances of location: close to zero. Situation: hopeless. What to do: probably nothing.
The victim’s navy will most certainly not admit what might have happened. The perpetrator will, naturally, not know what anyone is talking about. And the entire incident may never be disclosed. By anyone. Has it ever happened? Of course. But the oceans guard their secrets darkly. Who knows how many iron coffins rest in the weird, lost canyons of the seven seas? All it takes is one well-aimed torpedo, with a big warhead, and no one will be any the wiser.
Which was why Admiral Arnold Morgan had, on several occasions, advised President Bedford to hit that Iranian Kilo-class submarine-before the sonofabitch hits us or the Israelis. The submarine to which he referred was, of course, the very one that now carried General Rashood, commander in chief of Hamas, on his mission to assassinate Admiral Morgan himself-a poetic malevolence worthy of the Devil.
At 0400 on this Saturday morning, General Rashood was in the navigation area, talking to the young officer who was plotting the course of Hull No. 901, Lt. Rudi Alaam, a career officer from the eastern Iranian province of Kerman. Both men were leaning over a circular computerized chart that highlighted the central part of the Mediterranean.
It showed the submarine, which was running hard, snorkeling at periscope depth, moving west through the channel north of the island of Malta and its tiny offspring Gozo, both of which lie in the broad waters that separate Sicily and Tunisia. The Med goes shallower through here, and it was the first time the navigation officer had had to attend to the depth of the water.
Almost immediately, running west away from the coast of Lebanon, the Kilo had run into vast ocean depths, nine thousand feet, lonely waters, the Greek island of Rhodes 240 miles off their starboard beam. The GPS read 34.00 North, 22.30 East when they were southwest of Crete.
Right here, 120 miles off the coast of Libya, the ocean floor shelved down even deeper, another three thousand feet. They passed well south of Sicily’s Cape Passero with more than two miles of blue water under the keel. A land soldier rather than a sailor, General Rashood found the whole exercise somewhat creepy.
So far, they had not encountered any U.S. or Royal Navy warships. But headed for the narrow waterway where the tip of Italy’s boot looks likely to kick Sicily straight into Tunis Harbor, the submarine needed to exercise inordinate care. This was an ancient throughway for the Royal Navy. The ocean was much shallower, less than two hundred feet in places, and the carrier battle groups of the U.S. Navy tended to treat the place like Chesapeake Bay.
Detection was something Captain Mohammed Abad wished to avoid, but not at the expense of his speed. If he thought he was being tracked by a U.S. nuclear boat, he would slow and dive. But he doubted the Americans would actually sink him right here in these busy shallows. He knew that once located by the hugely sophisticated U.S. sonars, they could track him with ease and put him on the bottom of the Atlantic as and when they wished, as soon as he ventured into deep ocean water.
But he had as much right to be here as they did, and, like all Iranian politicians and military leaders, he did not think they would dare.
Captain Abad kept going, transmitting as little as possible. He would sneak past the Sicilian port of Marsala, moving more slowly, and then accelerate through this stone-silent ocean, almost on the surface, in the dead of night, moving forward making course nor-nor-west, as swiftly as possible.
Neither he nor General Rashood realized that up ahead of them, a mere two hundred miles, ran the great, jet-black monster Los Angeles-class submarine USS Cheyenne, her captain already alerted to the possible presence of a rogue Iranian Kilo patrolling in the Med, doubtless up to no good.
No submarine in the world escapes the eagle eye of the United States Navy. The American admirals, without fail, know the whereabouts of every seaworthy underwater boat, nuclear or diesel-electric. Their attention is sharpened when a submarine goes missing from its home base, perhaps having ducked out between passes of the overhead U.S. satellites. Thereafter a swift, penetrating search from inner space is conducted, using secret technology that would make the Russians or the Chinese blink in amazement.
In the case of Iranian Hull No. 901, the Americans tracked her all the way to St. Petersburg as a matter of pure routine. Six months later, they observed her leaving the Russian shipyards, and tracked her easily through the Gulf of Finland, headed east around the coast of Estonia and through the Baltic. She went deep right there, and the U.S. observers merely switched their sights on the narrow Copenhagen Channel through which the Kilo must pass in order to make the open sea.
Captain Abad brought her through right on time, and the Americans watched her run past Norway’s mountainous southern coast, and then into the North Sea opposite the Scottish city of Aberdeen.
It would have been a lot quicker to head down the North Sea and exit the Royal Navy’s home turf through the English Channel. But the Americans knew the Kilo would never do that, and they saw her go deep and make a northern swing around Scotland, finally heading for the open Atlantic, running swiftly past the coast of Northern Ireland and out toward the granite ocean rise of Rockall.
The planners of the U.S. Navy’s Atlantic Command guessed the Kilo would run through the Strait of Gibraltar into the Med and head directly for the northern entrance of the Suez Canal, the shortest route to the Gulf of Oman. They were correct. Almost. But the Kilo made a sudden swerve north, and the next time the Americans picked her up, she was directly off the coast of Lebanon, ten miles west of Beirut.
They had kept a weather eye on her ever since and watched with interest as the Syrian helicopter deposited a passenger on her casing on Tuesday afternoon, July 3. Captain Abad was already running west, and the Americans had, essentially, no goddamned idea where the hell that submarine was going, and certainly no clues about the intentions of her commanding officer.
They picked her up snorkeling, around midnight on Wednesday, July 4, and kept a loose fix on her all the way to Marsala. The ops room of the Cheyenne knew where Captain Abad was on the GPS, accurate to about thirty feet.
On this Saturday evening, the U.S. submarine was around fifty miles south of the Sardinian port of Cagliari. Her task was to locate the Kilo and then track her to the gateway to the Mediterranean, the Gibraltar Strait, and then let her head out into the Atlantic where another U.S. nuclear boat would follow her into really deep water.
It had not been definitely decided to sink the Kilo, but opinion in both the White House and the Pentagon was certainly swaying in that direction. There were a couple of firebrands among the Navy top brass who were perfectly happy to take her out in the deepest waters of the Med, but there was something irresistibly local about that area.
Ships from North Africa, Spain, France, Italy, and Great Britain, warships, freighters, tankers, and cruise liners ply their trade through here. And in general terms, the American Navy brass were more comfortable opening fire in the vast, bottomless anonymity of the Atlantic, where no prying eyes would ever catch a telltale sign of a submarine split asunder by a Mark 48 torpedo.
Captain Abad was oblivious of the mindset of his enemies, unaware that anyone even knew he had left Beirut, and he was certainly not contemplating the possibility of instant death and the destruction of his newly refurbished submarine.
The Iranian would be well past Marsala before he even found out that the Cheyenne was patrolling these waters. The Kilo would be at periscope depth, with its air intake above the surface, when Commander Hank Redford’s sonars gained POSIDENT, and the Cheyenne could begin to move in closer.
Shakira Rashood waited in St. Stephen’s Square for her hired chauffeur to arrive. She had been in the Shelbourne Hotel for three and a half days, which she considered to be quite long enough even for a girl as unobtrusive as Maureen Carson of Michigan, who had died several years previously in Bay City up on the shores of Lake Huron.
Shakira had been furnished with this information when she was given her second forged U.S. passport. God alone knew how the forgers had laid hands on the data, but somehow they had. And so far as the Shelbourne Hotel was concerned, Maureen Carson had just checked out, having scarcely left the premises during her entire stay.
Mrs. Rashood had made her own car-rental arrangements with the Iranian embassy, which had offices on Mount Merrion Avenue at Black-rock, on the south side of Dublin. The embassy overlooked the Irish Sea, beyond which lay the shores of England.
She had liked the Shelbourne, and indeed had dined there each night, once falling into conversation with a very cheerful sixtyish Irishman at the next table who told her he was in town for the Irish Derby, the million-dollar classic run each year in early July.
Shakira had wanted to know where, in a busy city like Dublin, did they have room to run a major horse race. The Irishman, whose name was Michael O’Donnell, explained it was run on the Curragh, a few miles outside the city, in County Kildare, Ireland’s most historic racecourse being set on a massive swath of grazing land that dates back to Roman times.
“And how far did you come to see this horse race?”
“More than a hundred miles,” said Michael. “I’m up from County Tipperary. I breed a few thoroughbreds down there.”
“And is one of them running in the Irish Derby?”
“Not exactly. But a colt named Easter Rebel is. And I bred him. I still own the mare, Mighty Mary, and she has a filly foal at foot. I’ll get a big price for her if the Rebel goes well.”
Shakira, unsurprisingly, did not understand one single word of that. But she was one of those people who cannot bear just to say, “How interesting,” and move on. Shakira Rashood had to know precisely what was happening.
Of course, she was so endearingly beautiful that she was, generally speaking, indulged, especially by men, and particularly by important men, from terrorist commanders to Irish stud farm owners. Women blessed with great beauty live by an entirely different set of rules.
“You mean a mare named Mighty Mary is the mother of Easter Rebel?”
“Precisely. I sold him as a yearling, but he won four races when he was two, and two more this past spring, one of them a group race over a mile and a quarter in England.”
“Does that mean they all run together-a group race?”
And so on, until Shakira thoroughly understood that Mr. O’Donnell’s broodmare Mighty Mary would be very valuable if Easter Rebel should win the Irish Derby, and that her foal, the filly, could go on to be an excellent racer if she could run half as fast as her brother.
“She’s what’s known as a full sister,” said Mr. O’Donnell. “Same father, same mother.”
“I assumed they all had the same father and same mother,” said Shakira. “Is this like a marriage with horses?”
Michael O’Donnell laughed. “Hell, no!” he said. “We switch ’em around all the time, breeding the mares to any stallion who takes our fancy.”
“What if she doesn’t like him?”
“Oh, we tether ’em good and well so they can’t escape, and then bring the stallion in at precisely the right moment in her cycle.”
Shakira looked shocked. “But that’s terrible,” she said. “What if Mighty Mary hates every moment of it? That’s rape.”
“Ah, jaysus, Maureen,” said Michael. “We’re trying to breed winners, not run a dating agency. Tipperary is one of the most famous horse-breeding places in the entire world.”
“Well, I’m not sure I like your attitude,” she replied, “forcing those horrible stallions on the mares.”
“I’ll tell you one thing,” said Michael. “The sire of Easter Rebel and the filly foal is not horrible. He’s one of the best-looking stallions you’ll ever see.”
“Hmmmm,” said Shakira. “What’s his name?”
“Galileo.”
“Could he run fast?”
“Maureen, there are three major twelve-furlong races run in England and Ireland in the high summer of the year-June and July. In 2001, Galileo won them all. And that does not happen very often.”
“Is one of them the Irish Derby?”
“Sure it is.”
“Then I hope Easter Rebel wins it, like his father.”
“I hope he wins it for his little sister.”
“Why is that important?”
“Well, today she is a very nice foal and may command £50,000 in the sale ring. If the Rebel wins this weekend, she’ll be known as a full sister to an Irish Derby winner and may be worth £400,000.”
“Who would pay that for a horse?”
“Probably the Arab sheiks, but in this case more likely the owners of the Coolmore Stud in Tipperary. She was born there, and they’d probably like her to come home eventually.”
“Is it a beautiful place?”
“The best. Full of perfectly mown paddocks, horsemen who have looked after thoroughbreds for generations, and many of the finest stallions in the world. All of it right down there in the heart of Tipperary, so many foals and yearlings. That’s the place, Maureen. Where the dreams begin.”
“And sometimes end?” said Shakira.
“Ah, no, my girl,” said the Irishman, somewhat mysteriously. “Nature never closes the book.”
And with that, Michael O’Donnell took his leave, heading out of the dining room to meet his wife and daughter. As he went, he called, “There’ll be some kind of a hooley at home on Sunday night if we win.”
Her reply “What’s a hooley?” was lost in the busy Shelbourne dining room.
And that, in a sense, was why Shakira was standing on the sidewalk in St. Stephen’s Green, her forged passport in her bag, awaiting her driver. She had decided, pending the arrival of her husband in a few days, to visit Tipperary, somewhere near this Coolmore Stud, 110 miles south of Dublin.
Detective Joe Segel was becoming an expert on brick walls, dead ends, and roads leading nowhere. In the past five days, he had experienced all of them-in his fruitless search for the vanishing barmaid. In his own mind, he was as certain as an experienced detective ever could be that Miss Carla Martin had indeed stabbed Matt Barker to death. It also seemed certain that the big garage proprietor had launched some kind of sexual attack on her and paid for it with his life.
The only other certainty about Carla was that she had most definitely disappeared off the face of the earth. Just about every radio and television news station in the United States had carried the story. Not just the media in the local Virginia/Washington, D.C. area; the tantalizing mystery of the Barker Pecker had transported the murder story far and wide.
If Carla had been anywhere in the USA, and indeed been innocent of the crime, she would surely have called in to the 800 number at Joe Segel’s police station to clear her name. But she had not done so, which meant one of two things: she had fled the country, possibly before the body was found, or she was hiding out somewhere in the States until the murder hunt died down.
It was now obvious that her passport was a forgery. The two establishments in London that she had submitted as references had never heard of her. Her apartment yielded absolutely nothing, and the film on the closed-circuit system at Chesapeake Heights was so indistinct and the exiting figure so awkwardly presented, not even Fred Mitchell could swear to God it was Jane Camaro.
The lady had covered her tracks with astounding efficiency. The fact was, Joe Segel did not even know her name. He did not even know her nationality. And he sure as hell did not know where she was. He’d even had the FBI and the CIA launch an international search looking for a port-of-entry clue in every major nation in the Middle East, not to mention London, Paris, Rome, Madrid, Amsterdam, Brussels, Geneva, Berlin, and Milan. Nothing.
Joe did not even have a car description or a license-plate number. There was nothing to go on. This particular murder hunt was headed for the “unsolved” file with near-record speed. There was only one suspect. And that suspect seemed not to exist.
Like Fred Mitchell five days ago, Detective Joe feared for his résumé.
Lt. Commander Ramshawe had to be at the Australian embassy for lunch. His time was thus limited, and he moved fast to make sure he caught Admiral Morgan before he went out.
And again he spelled out his fears to the great man, to no avail, even though he stressed the danger that must be prevalent since it was entirely possible that Emily Gallagher had revealed too much detail to the girl now wanted for murder.
“Arnie, is it not possible for you simply to change the dates?”
“Out of the question. After London, we’re going up to Scotland to stay a couple of nights with Admiral Sir Iain MacLean, then we’re all going to Edinburgh for the Festival and the Military Tattoo.”
“I’ve been to that with Dad,” said Jimmy. “It goes on for about a month. Can’t you just go on a different night?”
“Jimmy, I’m taking the salute on a very carefully planned evening. The dates were only finalized on Friday. I have to go when I said I’d go. Anyway, it’s a pretty big honor. A lot of very big-deal military men have taken the salute at Edinburgh Castle. Churchill did it. The prime minister of England is doing it the night after me. I wouldn’t miss it.”
“Hmmmmm,” said Jimmy, reverting to his rich Aussie accent, as he normally did when under stress. “Basically, I’m wasting my time, right? Just trying to save your bloody life.”
“Which is of course threatened by a barmaid. C’mon, kid. Let’s stay real. I got plenty of protection, not to mention half the British Army.”
“I’m not worried about the goddamned barmaid. I’m worried about her employers. That’s all. You know there’s some hotshot special operators in those jihadist groups. I’m just trying to keep you out of the crosshairs.”
“Don’t worry about me, kid. I’m fireproof. Gotta go.”
Crash. Down phone.
“Stubborn old prick,” muttered Jimmy.
The Kilo-class submarine that bore General Rashood to his destination still ran fast at periscope depth, still snorkeling. Captain Abad was conning her through nine thousand feet of ocean depth, 150 miles south of Majorca in the Spanish Balearic Isles. That put her around fifty miles northwest of Algiers, 37.30 North, 02.30 East.
She ran just below the surface, making twelve knots. In this snorkeling mode, she was, by modern submarine standards, quite extraordinarily noisy, and she was picked up instantly by the sophisticated sonar carried by USS Cheyenne.
Right now, Commander Hank Redford had the big LA-class submarine patrolling slowly, approximately a hundred miles south of the island of Formentera, around 110 miles northwest of the oncoming Iranians. The American sonar operators were scanning the wide deep seas to the east, their long electronic towed array strung out astern of the ship like a giant black snake, catching and processing any electronic movement in the ocean. The sonar team, to a man, was watching, waiting for the distinctive engine lines of the Russian-built Kilo with its trademark five-bladed prop.
The bells of the watch came and went. The day finally gave way to night, and by now the Kilo was sixty-five miles closer. In waters this deep, there is no appreciable advantage to any ship, because it is not possible to “back up” against a “noisy” landmass and force your quarry to aim its sonars into the most confusing area. Out here, where the ocean is vast and empty, bereft of any land, all’s fair. The hunter must stay quiet, and the hunted is supposed to stay even quieter, though in the case of Captain Abad this was impossible.
Generally speaking, a U.S. Navy underwater boat has it all over any perceived opponent, but the Kilo was only weeks out of refit, and in recent years the Russians had done a great deal of catching up.
Cheyenne, with that towed array, would certainly locate the Kilo first, but there was an excellent chance the Kilo would pick up the Americans in the end. Thereafter, it was a matter of Captain Abad holding his nerve and hoping to hell the U.S. commanding officer did not feel especially trigger-happy.
A bookmaker would almost certainly have made the Americans favorite to do anything they liked. And that would be logical, if it was just any old Kilo sliding through the water. But this particular Kilo was state-of-the-art, and there was a chance that some U.S. advantage might have been eliminated in the secretive laboratories of St. Petersburg ’s Admiralty Yards.
The watch changed at midnight. But no one left the sonar room. Everyone knew the Kilo must be approaching. Her course was plainly direct to the Gibraltar Strait, and, so far as the American navigators were concerned, she was already late.
The satellite pictures had recorded her leaving the coast of Lebanon, and she’d been snorkeling all the way at a steady twelve knots. In the hot still of this Mediterranean night, the Kilo kept going, oblivious of the presence of USS Cheyenne. Captain Abad was confident out here in the dark, in deep lonely waters, but he was instinctively concerned about the sea-scape further west in the busy shipping lanes which lead into, and out of, the Atlantic Ocean.
At 0034, still at periscope depth, with the air-intake mast up and the big diesel generators, deep within the submarine, running smoothly, the Kilo was picked up by the Cheyenne twenty miles away.
Chief Petty Officer Skip Gowans said quietly, “I might have something right here, just a faint rise in the level. It could be a rain shower, swishing on the surface-but I thought it was something… arrived kinda sudden… give me a few minutes.”
Commander Redford was standing right at his shoulder. No one spoke, and the chief did not say anything more for at least four minutes. Then he said, “I have a definite rise in the level. I don’t think it’s weather-I’m getting something.”
Again there was silence. Chief Gowans was a study in concentration. The entire operations center was hanging on his decision, and at 0044 he gave it: “Captain-sonar… I have faint engine lines coming up on the array. Relative eight-nine. Lines fit the sample, sir.”
Commander Redford moved nearer to the “waterfall” screen, which now showed definite engine lines. The computer had already compared them with the Kilo engine sample built into the system.
Chief Gowans muttered, “They fit, sir. No doubt.”
Hank Redford snapped, “Gimme the range.”
“Not close, sir. I’m thinking first convergence. And the bearing hasn’t moved. I’d say she’s coming dead toward us. In my opinion, she’s snorkeling right now. Those Russian Kilos are usually very quiet, but this guy’s making one hell of a racket.”
“We don’t have orders to sink her,” said the CO. “So long as she’s coming straight at us, we’ll hold this course and remain below ten knots.”
“Sir,” said Chief Gowans, “the solution looks good, she’s still out to the east, maybe twenty miles, and still coming our way. She’s not cavitating, which means she’s making under nine knots.”
Back in the Kilo, Captain Abad’s team did not pick up the Cheyenne. He was now running close to the coast of Algiers, and he told himself for the umpteenth time on this journey that the stealth of the Kilo was always his ally. And he could, if necessary, vanish long before he was cornered. They kept running west-sou’west until dawn, making fifteen knots at periscope depth.
In Cheyenne ’s ops room, the engine lines of the Kilo never vanished from the screens. But as her speed increased and the two boats closed to within ten miles of each other, the Americans altered course to one-nine-zero, steering almost due south to gain close contact. This was the most one-sided game of cat-and-mouse. Neither CO had orders to shoot, but the Americans essentially had the Kilo on toast.
Shakira Rashood made a leisurely journey across Ireland, driving out of Dublin and heading south across County Kildare and then on down through County Loais. She brought with her an ordnance map that marked the Coolmore Stud close to the little village of Fethard. So far as she could see, the nearest sizable town was Cashel.
She was not planning to buy a racehorse, but like many Arabs she had an inbuilt affinity with the thoroughbred, and she knew that most of the world’s high-mettled racers traced their ancestry back to the desert sands of her forefathers. There was only one famous Arab horse of whom she had heard, and that was the Darley Arabian. And she wondered whether any of his descendants had ended up at Coolmore, which Michael O’Donnell had pronounced the greatest stud farm on earth.
She was not of course to know that every single flat-racing stallion on the Coolmore roster traced back to the Darley Arabian, through his direct descendant Eclipse. And she wished her husband had been with her, because he, somewhat surprisingly for a wanted terrorist hitman, was quite knowledgeable on the subject. General Rashood’s own father, Iranian-born but London-domiciled, was a horse breeder of some note, having very nearly won the Ascot Gold Cup a few years back.
Shakira and Ravi often walked through Damascus to pick up the English newspapers, and she was accustomed to seeing him turn to the racing pages for the results, cards, and reports. He frequently said he missed going racing in England with his father, and that one day, if he could ever return, he would like to own a couple of decent runners. They both knew this was a distinctly unlikely possibility, mass murderers being generally discouraged from attending British and Irish racecourses.
Shakira had, of course, never even seen a thoroughbred in action, but it was a curious piece of unfulfilled ambition. She liked racehorses, liked being told about them, although it had been impossible for her to display anything but the most profound ignorance in the presence of Michael O’Donnell.
And now she was in the heartland of the thoroughbred, County Tipperary, where the great ones had either been born, been trained, or ended their days as stallions and broodmares. She stopped at the newspaper shop in Cashel and bought a small local history of the thoroughbred industry in and around the town.
The names were strange to her, the Derby winners, Nijinsky, Sir Ivor, Roberto, The Minstrel, Galileo, the world-famous sires, Sadlers Wells, Caerleon, Be My Guest, Danehill, Giant’s Causeway. But the names rang with poetry, seeming to echo through the Golden Vale of Tipperary where she now stood.
Shakira signaled for her driver to park the car in a long drive in front of the hotel where her guidebook had suggested she stay. It was a grand pink-bricked eighteenth-century building, now converted into the Cashel Palace Hotel, a mecca for visiting horsemen from all over the world. There had been a mass exodus north from the town for Irish Derby weekend, and it was no trouble booking a single room for a few days. She just checked in, using a hitherto unused American Express card, issued to a British citizen, Margaret Adams. No one even asked to see her passport.
She took her suitcase up to her room, declining assistance from the doorman. She unpacked carefully, hung a few things in the gigantic old polished wardrobe, and stuffed her essentials into her regular leather handbag: forged passports, credit cards, wallet, several thousand euros in cash, her forged British driver’s license with Margaret’s address in Warwickshire, and her driving gloves.
She had one stop to make at the fishing tackle shop she had noticed in the main street. Shakira felt very vulnerable when she was unarmed, as she had been for several days, ever since she had left her principal weapon jutting out of Matt Barker’s chest.
And now she went into the store and spent a few minutes looking at the fishermen’s knife selection. Finally she chose one with a long straight blade with a serrated edge and leather-gripped handle. She asked the assistant to gift-wrap it, as it was a present for her younger brother.
Shakira did not for one moment expect to use the knife in any form of combat, but neither had she anticipated using her Syrian dagger. She very definitely felt a lot better for having the knife, and she ripped the paper off as soon as she exited the shop, tossed it in a trashcan, and placed the knife in her bag.
Thus rearmed, she climbed back into the car and asked her driver to take her out along the road to Fethard. She had no plans to visit any particular place. She just wanted to see the land where these amazing horses were raised. So far, the cool green landscape of southern Ireland had not reminded her even remotely of her desert homeland, where the Darley Arabian had once lived.
They drove east along the country road amid the endless green of the Irish pastures on either side of the road. In the distance, she could see mares and foals in lush paddocks, but none of them were close to the road.
She remembered that Michael O’Donnell had mentioned an enormous sum of money for his filly foal from Easter Rebel’s dam, and imagined the security on these baby racehorses must be intensive. It did not seem possible that she could ever get close to them, and before long she suggested they turn around and return to the Cashel Palace.
When they arrived, Shakira said good-bye to her driver, who was returning to Dublin and promised he would have a local man at the hotel in the morning to transport her around the southwest of Ireland. No, he did not require payment. She could settle next week when he again came south to bring her back to Dublin.
This was not the first time she had really liked the Irish, and once more she made a mental note to forbid Ravi from killing any of them. So far as she was concerned, the Great Satan’s European cohorts ended in England. The Irish were not to be included in any future attacks. They just weren’t the kind of people to have anything to do with terrorists.
Back in her room, Shakira drew back the curtains on the tall windows for the first time, and she was utterly amazed at the sight that awaited her: high on a hill, directly above her room, were the stark ruins of the ancient Irish cathedral high on the Rock of Cashel, for seven centuries the seat of the Irish kings, St. Patrick’s Rock. Great limestone walls, built in the twelfth century, were still standing. There were windows and a historic round tower. A Celtic high cross jutted into the evening sky, and all around the land fell away.
“The view must be breathtaking,” she thought, flicking the pages of her local guidebook. “Tomorrow I will go and stand up there.”
Shakira dined alone in her room, and later, restless for someone to talk to, she made her way down the wide staircase and asked the front desk if there was a coffee shop in the hotel. “No, we’ve no such thing,” replied the desk clerk. “But if you go down those stone steps over there, you’ll find the nicest bar you ever saw. Tell Dennis I said he’s to make you an Irish coffee.”
Shakira did exactly as she was told, and Dennis the barman delivered her an Irish coffee, its tall head of double cream obscuring a mighty measure of Jameson’s finest whiskey. The bar was quite busy, and the former Carla Martin chose a corner seat with a small table and an empty chair next to hers.
She had no idea that she was sipping such a strong alcoholic drink, but it tasted so good, she never gave it a thought. After twenty minutes, she noticed a heavyset, rustic-looking local, aged around fifty, come down the stairs and order a pint of Guinness. Slightly to her surprise, he came and sat beside her, and she did not notice the look of concern on the barman’s face.
The newcomer turned to her and said, “Good evenin’ to yer, ma’am. I’m Pat Slater.”
And almost before Shakira had nodded a greeting, Dennis came over and said quietly, “Now Patrick, this lady is staying in the hotel. And don’t you be boring her to death with yer tales of bygone days.”
Mr. Slater smiled and said he had no intention of boring anyone, and besides, he’d only come in for the one. He had a mare due to foal that night, and he wouldn’t be far away from the barn now, would he?
Dennis retreated, and over the next ten minutes Pat Slater just asked politely what Shakira was doing in Ireland and how long was she staying. But, unknowingly being bombarded with a pack of lies, he was good to his word and got up to leave. Just before he climbed the old familiar stairs, he leaned over and muttered to Shakira, “I wasn’t always just a stockman. I used to have a very important career.”
And with that he was gone. It was almost 9:30 P.M. now, and the bar was emptying out as residents left and went into the dining room. The place would get a “second wind” at around eleven o’clock, but in the meantime Shakira was almost alone.
She finished her Irish coffee and walked up to the bar to speak to Dennis. “That man told me he used to have an important career,” she said, as always unable to resist getting right to the bottom of any unclear information.
And Dennis raised his eyebrows and said, “Miss Carson, that man is, secretly, a former freedom fighter with the Irish Republican Army, the fellers who shot and bombed the English into submission over Northern Ireland.
“Trouble is, he never got over it. Spends his entire life yearning for the good old days when he and a few others were out there causing mayhem. Most of ’em found it very hard to fall back into peaceful civilian life after those years when they were on the run, plotting and planning and killing. That kind of life was like a drug to some of ’em, and Pat Slater is one.”
Shakira looked bemused. “Were these Irish Republican men terrorists, or did they fight like a national armed force?”
“No, they were never like that. They attacked the British along the borders, blew up train stations, and sometimes streets. They wore the badge of terrorists proudly, and said they were fighting a war to drive the British out of Ireland forever.”
“And did they succeed?”
“As far as anyone could ever succeed in Northern Ireland, I suppose. But up there, the majority of the population wants to keep their British ties.”
“But did the bombing and killing get results?” Shakira persisted.
“Oh, yes. No doubt about that. In the end, the Brits were really fed up with it, but so were the people of Northern Ireland. Everyone just grew tired of an endless conflict.”
“Was it like the Muslim Jihad?”
“In some ways it was, but not on so large a scale. The IRA was a much smaller force, even though they had a few pretty ambitious targets. There was nothing like the Twin Towers in New York.”
“Do you think their attacks proved that a great and worthwhile cause can be achieved by a sustained campaign of terror?”
“In a way, they did. The British government would never have given in so quickly if they hadn’t been afraid of more bombs in London.”
“Then it was good news for all terrorists,” laughed Shakira.
“It wasn’t that good,” said Dennis. “Did you ever see a man so gloomy as Pat Slater? He’s like all the rest. The glory for them was in the chase, not the objective… how about another Irish coffee? I’ll have one with you before the late rush hour starts.”
Shakira nodded cheerfully, and said, “I used to work behind a bar once, back in the USA.”