Shirer saw there were fourteen minutes to go, the sea hidden from him beneath the flat gray expanse that seemed to go on forever. The edge of the front had come down from the Bering Sea over the Aleutians even before Shirer had taken off in his F-14 Tomcat, number 203, the second fighter assigned him, the first lost when he was shot down by Sergei Marchenko’s Sukhoi and had to bail out over Adak Island before being picked up and taken to Dutch Harbor.
There he and Lana Brentwood had taken up where they had left off before the war. But just when he was getting used to the idea that he’d probably be with Lana and flying out of Dutch Harbor for the foreseeable future, he was jolted back to the bleak reality of just how unforeseeable any future was when he received the terse instruction from Salt Lake City that he was to deliver his jet back to the carrier.
Shirer glanced at his vector control on “radio silence” approach toward the carrier, his plane on a passive, not active, radar to warn him of any approaching Bandits. Unless the Russians had launched midair refuelers without Aleutian radar picking them up, there shouldn’t be any danger.
By nature, he was an optimist. Lana wasn’t. She had been through the trauma of a failed marriage with Jay La Roche, the boss, or some said “don,” of La Roche Pharmaceuticals, a multinational spread over twenty-three countries, including China. Shirer remembered that China was one of the countries because Lana had told him it had been in Shanghai that the three-year marriage had ended in a violent attack on her by La Roche, who had beaten her so badly that only his money and influence with corrupt Chinese officials had prevented charges being laid. She had long ago learned to suffer the carefully chosen and medically screened stable of call girls and boys La Roche had used on his business trips abroad. But when his anal and oral fixations went beyond all bounds with her to the point at which excreta became inextricably linked in La Roche’s mind with sex, she had drawn the line and La Roche had stepped over it. He couldn’t prevent her from leaving him, from joining the navy’s “whores,” as he jeeringly referred to the Waves. But no way, he told her, would he ever allow her to divorce him, to cause him to lose face. If she tried it, La Roche warned, he’d unleash his chain of tabloids and “throw so much muck around” about her parents that the family would be ruined.
“There’s no muck to throw around,” she’d challenged him bravely. She remembered his sneering, cold reply. “You’re so fucking naive, Lana, I don’t believe it. Doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not. Once it hits the street on page one, it’s game over for the Brentwoods, sweetheart.”
It was little wonder, Shirer realized as they had parted in Dutch Harbor, that she’d learned to roll with life’s punches— their Washington-enforced separation not upsetting her as much as he had expected, or secretly hoped, it might. And yet he knew she loved him. Still, her greatest fear wasn’t of separation but of him simply vanishing somewhere over the vastness of the Pacific, more terrifying to her than anything Jay La Roche might have done.
“I won’t get shot down, honey,” he’d tried to assure her, recognizing the hollowness of it as soon as he spoke.
“You have been already.”
“Then it’s over. Finished. One time is all you’re allowed. If you get out of that — you’re home and—”
A luminescent green dot, the size of a pinhead, was blipping on his radar screen. The carrier.
He had done it hundreds of times before, but during the approach, his stomach still knotted, his G suit warmer as the perspiration increased, his heartbeat, like most pilots’, faster now than when in a dogfight. He still couldn’t see the ship through the gray candy floss cloud flitting below him like a black river. With air brakes full on, he was coming in at over 150 miles an hour. He remembered that during Freeman’s raid on Pyongyang, Salt Lake City had lost more planes on landing than in combat — the slightest thing going wrong could mean curtains. But it hadn’t happened to him yet and — hell, he told himself cavalierly, it wasn’t going to happen now, even if Salt Lake City’s air boss was always claiming a fighter pilot’s worst enemy wasn’t the Russians but a woman who took your mind off “one joystick onto another.”
No way, Shirer told himself, feeling the slight vibration of his oxygen mask, convinced that the thought of making sweet, unhurried love with Lana was the best guarantee in the world that he wouldn’t foul up. His vector was dead on — five minutes to the carrier, the possibility of enemy fighters suddenly appearing and pouncing remoter than ever.
In Salt Lake City’s air traffic control with the CIC — combat information center — and in PRIFLY — primary flight control, above flight deck control — computers and status boards showed Tomcat 203 approaching the carrier with fifty-seven thousand pounds gross weight — information conveyed instantaneously to the LSO — landing signal officer — in the flight deck’s trench. The LSO, his Day-Glo orange vest only dimly visible above the deck’s skirting, kept one eye on the video recording 203’s approach, and the SPIN, or speed indicator, that showed the Tomcat’s approach speed. This speed, together with that of the crosswind and carrier, aided the LSO in deciding the correct tension for the four arrestor wires. Too little would fail to stop the fighter within the three hundred feet — too much could snap the cable, with the same result.
“Tomcat two zero three, five seven zero,” came the confirmation from the arresting gear room, whose crew of four set the dials for fifty-seven-thousand pounds. Shirer was looking for the orange ball of light in the big convex mirror mounted on the carrier’s starboard side. If centered, the orange blob of light would be a second visual confirmation of the glide path projected by his computer. There were so many variables: state of sea, humidity, cloud cover, wind sheer…
He saw the orange ball between two horizontal green lights, but it was above the mirror’s midline. He was too high. Quickly he realigned degrees of flap, saw the orange orb go dead center, and called, “Meatball,” which told the LSO he was “on the ball”—locked into the correct glide path, the relief in his voice palpable despite his long experience.
The LSO’s voice blasted Shirer’s earpiece and suddenly, either side of the meatball, he saw two vertical red lines appear. A wave off. “Damn!”
“Try again,” instructed the LSO, Shirer hitting the button for full afterburner, the Tomcat veering hard left, engines screaming in a banshee howl as it climbed, leaving the carrier’s island leaning hard right and slipping downhill. Then the carrier was gone, below cloud.
“Try again two oh three,” repeated the LSO. “Nose wheel not lowered.”
In flight deck control, a man on the “Ouija” board moved the plastic model of 203 to the side while another crewman took up his grease pencil, a backup in case of power failure, and marked 203’s position on the transparent plastic screen, asking, “He a nugget?”
“No,” replied Comdr. Phil Harris, the officer in charge of FDC — flight deck control—”nothing green about him. Been on this tub longer than you have.”
“Two oh three?” said the crewman disbelievingly. “I haven’t heard of a Tomcat of ours with that number.”
“It’s been in Dutch Harbor. Watch him — he’s turning.”
“Got him,” replied the seaman cockily, skidding the plastic model around. Two oh three was already on infrared video, its ghostly outline like an underdeveloped negative, a heat blur around the twin twenty-one-thousand pound Pratt and Whitney exhausts, heat streamers trailing from the fuselage’s shimmering edge.
Shirer pressed the nose wheel release button again, unable to hear whether or not it was coming out of its well because of the noise of the fighter’s engines, the indicator nevertheless showing the wheel was down, his G suit feeling like a sauna as he took another run over the carrier, alert for other incoming aircraft. He was on a vector that would take him fifty feet above the flight deck, giving the LSO and other deck crew plus everyone in PRIFLY a chance to see whether the wheel was in fact down.
“There it is!” said one of the red-jacketed ordnance crew.
“No,” responded a green jacket from electronics maintenance, his arm following the line of the plane, “it’s only half-extended.”
“You sure?”
“Sure I’m sure.”
The LSO saw it swooping directly overhead through the mist. “LSO to two oh three. Your nose wheel is only half-extended. Do you read me?”
“Affirmative. Nose wheel half-extended,” came Shirer’s voice, crackling through static.
“LSO to two oh three. Go to five thousand. Repeat, five thousand. Minimum radius ten miles. Repeat ten miles and hold pattern. I say again, hold pattern.”
“Going to five thousand,” confirmed Shirer, silently cursing the nose wheel. “Will hold pattern.” The carrier couldn’t waste any more time on him at the moment. He would have to hold pattern until Salt Lake City got all its other planes, which included combat patrols approaching “Bingo”—fuel exhausted — status, and only then, when his Tomcat’s fuel was all but gone, reducing the risk of fire, could they try to bring him in.
His eyes refocused on his helmet display, which remained steady, despite the motion of the fighter. Shirer could see he had fifty-seven minutes of fuel remaining. Meantime he’d try the wheel again. He thought he felt it give a little — hoped that it might only be a bird jamming the lower gear. A bird’s body, most likely a gull, would compress on retraction — unless it was one of the big wandering albatross with a wingspan up to seven feet, but he’d felt no impact.
He tried the release again and it seemed to give, but only a fraction. Trouble was, it was so damn hard to be certain, given all the noise. Simultaneously the indicator panel’s constant flickering demanded close attention if he was to avoid midair collision.
With the ferry almost at the dock and the yellow Honda rolling slowly up behind theirs, Rosemary looked about anxiously for Robert. She saw him walk out from the bracken behind the Prices, coming up to them on the driver’s side, rapping on the window. Rosemary saw Price start, winding down the window, looking flustered.
“Going to Mallaig?” Robert asked Price, his tone convivial.
“Ah, yes—” Price turned to his wife. “Joan said we’d probably meet up with you.”
“Small world,” said Robert, still smiling. “Rosemary’ll be glad to see you.” He indicated the ferry at the dock. “Better be getting back to the car. See you on board.”
“Ah, yes.”
By the time Robert reached the car, the ferry attendant was waiting for him to drive on down the ramp. There obviously wasn’t any hurry about it — not until the Christmas rush in a few days time would the lonely road see a line of cars and trucks backed impatiently waiting to cross the loch.
“Well?” asked Rosemary. “What did they say?”
“Not much,” answered Robert. “Seemed surprised.” He pulled his seat belt strap across, looking at Rosemary. “Better buckle up. More accidents happen leaving port.”
“Except we’re not on your submarine,” she replied affably, “and we’re not leaving port exactly.”
“Buckle up. Accidents happen when you least expect them.”
As they approached the ferry and he was watching the Prices in the rearview, Rosemary saw that on the other side of the loch, mist had crept right down to the bank, and she pointed out patches of old snow discolored by pink algae visible among the heather. In a few more seconds the mist was replaced by heavy fog, tongues of it tumbling like dry ice over the embankment, spreading quickly, turning what had been the cobalt blue of the loch into a monotonous gray sheet. “I don’t fancy being ahead of them in that,” she said, indicating the fog on the far side of the loch.
“Neither do I.”
“How can we avoid it?” said Rosemary, almost as if she were asking him to turn back, her suspicion of the Prices now complete. “Not like the big ferry, is it? I mean, we’ll be first on and first off.” They went over the bump of the ramp, the metal drop plate reverberating under them, followed by a quieter sound as the tires “burred” on the grooved steel decking.
“It’ll be all right,” Robert told her.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’ll think of something.”
“What did she say — Mrs. Price?”
“Nothing. All smiles. Didn’t seem surprised at all. Very cool.”
“Perhaps she doesn’t know?”
Robert looked across at Rosemary. It was the kind of glance she used to give a student when he didn’t know what came after Hamlet’s “To be or…”
“All right then,” she conceded. “So she would have to know — if she’s with him all the time. I mean if she is his wife? Was she wearing a ring?”
“What — oh, I don’t know. Never noticed.”
“Men never do.”
“Ring wouldn’t prove anything. Not these days-” He saw the hood of the Prices’ Honda dip toward the deck as it pulled up behind them. “Keep the doors locked,” he told Rosemary. “I won’t be—”
“Stay here? Locked in?” she said, adopting a cockney accent to convey the apprehension an upper-middle-class upbringing wanted to subdue. “Not ruddy likely. I’m coming with you.” As Robert walked around to the left side of the car and opened her door, the wind buffeting his tweed jacket, he felt the bulk of the gun against his chest. If there was any comfort in it, it was also a reminder that he hadn’t practiced with the service-issued sidearm for at least three years — at Norfolk, Virginia, when he’d first taken command of Roosevelt. Opening her door, he gave her his hand and flashed a honeymoon smile. “Get Mrs. Price — if that’s who she is— off to one side. Get her talking. I want to jaw with her old man.”
“Yes,” Rosemary said hesitantly. “All right. You know—”
“He was very defensive about not having joined up. When old McRae, remember, challenged him about being a lecturer at LSE.”
“Hello!” Mrs. Price called out jovially. “A bit nippy, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Rosemary. “Still, expect it won’t do us any harm.”
“Do us the world of good, I should think,” said Mrs. Price. “Fresh air. James smokes a pipe.”
They were drawing level with a yellow school bus from some girls’ school, a few giggling as Robert walked by, one of them calling out, “I say there, tall, dark, and—” There was more laughing.
Robert nodded at Mrs. Price, but kept walking toward her husband at the stern, addressing him with a questioning air. “I’ve never seen snow like that before. Have you?”
“Oh—” said Price, looking up, “the pink stuff? Yes — it’s quite common up here.” Both men were close to the rail, spray catching their face, Robert, despite his preoccupation about the Prices, automatically wondering what the fresh-to-salt-water ratio was in the loch. For a sub diving, it would be critical information, altering the density and therefore the sub’s buoyancy. If you didn’t react fast enough to a sudden change, you’d be dead.
“You’re familiar with these parts then?” he said to Price while leaning eagerly into the wind against the rail without looking at Price but remembering that at the bed-and-breakfast place, Price had said it was his first trip to Scotland.
“Ah — yes,” Price conceded, adding hastily, “well, you know — I’ve read a lot about Scotland. Before I came.”
Robert said nothing for a second or two, his gaze fixed on the fog cascading down the bank they had just left, encircling them. “I heard an interesting story the other day.”
“Oh — yes?” said Price politely.
Brentwood was still watching the shore. “Yeah. It was about this guy — kept following a sergeant and his wife. They were taking a trip through the Sierras — back in California. Wherever they went, he went. Well, after a couple of days, this sergeant pulled the guy over and told him that if he didn’t bug off, he’d get his head blown off.”
There was a long silence, and all Brentwood could hear was the ferry’s wake boiling furiously into the calm loch.
“Rather silly of the sergeant,” said Price. “I mean, to threaten people like that. I would have thought all he needed to do was call up the local constabulary. You know, the police. Register a complaint.”
Robert turned to look at Price, noticing the man’s hairline was receding — something he hadn’t been aware of at the McRaes’. There Price had looked well groomed, hair combed down over the front in a stylishly casual forelock. He wondered how much else he hadn’t noticed about Price.
“Funny you mentioned that,” said Brentwood, “about calling the police. The sergeant did look for a phone. It was high in the mountains, you see. Not many people around. When he did find one, it had been trashed. Line cut.”
Price shook his head, tut-tutting. “Vandals everywhere.”
The change in Price’s tone from his off-balance surprise in the car to his present air of confidence told Brentwood his bluff wasn’t working. He should have asked the Englishman point-blank. Instead he’d given the man time to think, regain his balance.
“Anyway,” continued Price, “what do you think the police could have done — to help the sergeant? The sergeant could have been delusional.”
“I don’t think he was,” said Brentwood, his eyes fixing Price.
“Look, old chap,” said Price. “You’re making me a bit nervous with that bulge in your jacket. I’ve made a bit of a cock-up with all this, but — well, I suppose this won’t assuage you very much, but I’m not who you think I am. Nor is Joan.”
Robert Brentwood said nothing, waiting.
“Point is,” continued Price, pushing the disobedient lock of hair back, “Special Branch didn’t see much point in unduly alarming you — certainly not on your honeymoon. And especially given what you sub chaps’ve done for us re the convoys. We’re all terribly grateful.”
Brentwood let the flattery go by him like the spray. “What Special Branch?”
“Scotland Yard. Joan and I have been tailing you ever since you left Surrey. Your wedding.”
“What the hell—”
“Peter Zeldman,” Price cut in, “your executive officer, was best man. Georgina Spence — your wife’s sister — was bridesmaid. Young William Spence was killed in the Atlantic— looked after by Lana Brentwood — your sister. It’s through her looking after him that you met Rosemary, correct? I mean, you took young Spence’s personal effects to his parents during one of your shore leaves from the Roosevelt. How am I doing?”
“Anyone could have learned all that stuff,” said Brentwood, “reading a paper down in Surrey.”
“Do be reasonable, old sport!” said Price, flashing a Special Branch card.
“You’ve got American Express, too, and you’re a blood donor. Right?” Robert challenged him. “Anyone can get cards printed up, sport! Many as they like.”
Price slipped the card away, glanced behind them, squinting in the sun-infused fog, seeing Rosemary and Joan Price ambling from the ferry’s bow back toward the cars. Another few minutes and the ferry’d be across the loch. “Look,” said Price, “I don’t want to be indelicate, old boy, but d’you know your sister Lana was transferred to the Aleutians?”
“Sure I know,” responded Robert Brentwood. “She wrote me. Her ex is a string-puller. Congressmen in his pocket. What’s indelicate about that?”
“I mean the real reason she was transferred?”
Robert Brentwood shrugged. “I told you La Roche is the original sleaze-ball. Besides, Aleutians is a combat zone.” He paused, looking hard at Price. “The Russians are trying to get through the back door. There’s a navy hospital at Dutch Harbor. So?”
“Well, I’m not saying La Roche had nothing to do with it, but he ‘lucked out,’ as you Americans put it. The navy already had a good reason to banish her up there.” He paused, still looking at the far shore. “Your sister was transferred to the Aleutian theater, old boy, because her care of young William Spence, shall we say, exceeded the requirements of duty.” He paused to let it sink in. “Not to put too fine a point on it, Captain, she performed certain — shall we say—’favors.’ “
“What the hell d’you mean?”
“I think you Americans call it a blow job.”
Rosemary heard a crack — Price’s watch smashing against the ferry’s bulkhead as Robert Brentwood felled him with one blow. “You son of a bitch!” Price stayed down, only daring to raise himself slightly on one arm, the other held up in submission.
Rosemary made to run toward them, but Joan Price grabbed her arm. “No. Stay here!”
“Get up, you son of a bitch!” yelled Robert Brentwood, his voice all but inaudible to the women, his face red, tweed jacket ballooning in the wind. “Get up or I’ll—”
“I’m not making—” began Price, fearing the blow to his chin had fractured his jaw, his voice breathless. “I’m not making a moral judgment. The Spence boy was dying. Perhaps it was an act of — look, I’m sorry, but if you don’t believe I’m from Special Branch, I had to convince—” Price paused, his face grimacing in pain. “We haven’t been following you— well, we have, but it’s the other two newlyweds that we were really shadowing. You’re in-between as it were.”
Brentwood looked blank.
“Your innocent young GI,” Price continued, easing himself back so he could rest against the bulkhead. “You know, the young couple at the B and B — confetti still in their hair. And his lovely wife. Real charmer, she is — been to bed with two of your sub captains already. Found them — should say what was left of ‘em — down by Loch Lomond. We had to change everything — including their sub’s ETD from Holy Loch — just in case our bonny pair got anything out of them. He paused, feeling his jaw, wishing he hadn’t. “We’re your minders,” he told Brentwood. “We caught up with them just before you reached the B and B. They were your late arrivals. You were bloody lucky you didn’t make it to Burns’s cottage. The sweet young thing was carrying a Beretta and two shrapnel grenades. Very nice.”
By now, Price felt safe enough to get up. “I’m afraid we’re on duty till we see you safely back at Holy Loch. Sorry to dampen your nuptial bliss, but we can’t afford to lose a Sea Wolf skipper. Especially now.”
Robert Brentwood gave a grunt. “Sorry — I—such a fool… didn’t realize…”
“Not to worry,” Price assured him, dusting himself down, the wind from the loch playing havoc with his hairpiece. “National Health’ll take care of the teeth. I hope.” He tried a grin, but his jaw hurt too much.
“I feel like a goddamned idiot,” said Robert, his face still red from wind chill and embarrassment. “Here they are protecting us and we think—”
“Well,” responded Rosemary, chagrined by her own embarrassment but her tone more defensive. “They should have told us.”
“No,” said Brentwood. He glanced in the rearview and gave a friendly wave. Price honked in reply. “If we’d known they were following us, it wouldn’t have been much of a honeymoon. Would’ve seemed like someone was watching us through the keyhole all the time.” Rosemary didn’t like it, but she had to agree. The thought of her and Robert trying to make love with two people staking the place out from across the hallway of the B and B would certainly have put her right off. “Oh no!” she said. “They must have heard everything.” Her face was between her fingers, looking at Robert. “Tell me, was I—”
“Screaming with joy!” he said. “All the time!”
She slid down into her seat as they drove off.
Five miles on, both cars disappearing into fog, Rosemary gasped in fright, turning to Robert. “My God — he mightn’t be from Special Branch at all. I mean, he could be just saying that to—”
“No,” Robert interjected. “He told me some stuff that only someone in the know could have a handle on. They couldn’t have found it out in Surrey.”
“Found out what? What kind of things?”
“About my family,” Robert answered, gearing down on a hill, the fog so thick, he could barely see the front of the hood. “I don’t want to talk about it. Damn it! I wish this goddamned demister would work.”
The car slowed, Robert unconsciously taking his foot off the gas pedal, not because of the fog or his preoccupation with the windshield misting, but because he realized a Russian agent could as easily have had contacts in North America and the Aleutians as in Surrey — that the information about Lana — if it was true—
“What’s assuage mean?” he asked Rosemary, a little embarrassed.
“To allay,” she explained eagerly, without a trace of surprise. “Why?” she pressed. “Did Price use it?”
“Yes, he said he hoped he’d assuaged my suspicions.”
“Has he?”
Robert pushed himself backward from the steering wheel, his back hard against the seat, arms still, as if bracing himself for a crash. It was one of the isometric exercises he often used during the long watches aboard the sub and which he would be doing in several days time when, if, he returned safely to Holy Loch. “I don’t know, hon,” he told Rosemary. “He could have got all the stuff about my family from some — I don’t know — some intelligence network in the States.”
Price’s jaw was throbbing and badly swollen on the left side. “Could you hand me one of those towelettes from the glove compartment?” he mumbled. “Or are they in the boot?”
Joan opened her purse, took out the Beretta nine-millimeter, and rummaged through the contents. “Here’s one!” she pronounced triumphantly, tearing it open and passing the towelette to him. Dabbing it gently on his chin, he relished the temporary cold that took the edge off the pain. “By God, he can pack a wallop. Hope he isn’t like that on his submarine. A man like that in charge of — how many is it — forty-eight nuclear warheads? Gives me the willies, I can tell you. Thought they were supposed to be the silent type. Not bloody rowdies.”
“You were talking about his sister. How did you know all that about her anyway?”
“Because,” he replied, “I do my homework. That’s why.”
The thing Robert Brentwood found unforgivable in himself was that, try as he might to push the image of Lana performing oral sex on young Spence from his mind, the more he fantasized about whether Rosemary would do it for him. The moment he thought he had evicted the scene from his mind as unworthy of him, the more pervasive it became until he had such an erection, he thought Rosemary would be sure to notice. At least he hoped she would. The image of her moist, red lips encasing him, her tongue darting with abandon, sucking him dry, made him doubt whether they could make Mallaig without him having to pull over. Returning again and again to what Price had said about Lana, he remembered Price also saying something about how grateful the Admiralty was for the protection afforded by the Sea Wolfs, “especially now.” But surely the subs had always been important to Admiralty. Why “especially now”? He mentioned it to Rosemary.
“Perhaps something’s happened,” she proffered, “that we haven’t heard yet on the news?”
Robert switched on the radio, but Highlands static crackled like a log fire. Anyway, it was a violation of their pledge not to listen to any newscasts while on their honeymoon, not to let anything intrude on their all-too-brief time together. But now he wondered whether their pact had been a good idea after all. He hated not knowing what was going on. He looked in the rearview again but couldn’t see Price’s car, not even the yellow eyes of fog lights. He was unsure as to whether he should pull over and wait or keep going.