Nimitz Class (1997) Read online

  He decided to tell her the reason for his visit, and he began carefully. “Laura,” he said, “as you know there was a most terrible accident on one of our aircraft carriers a week ago. We do not, however, think it was quite that simple. We think a Middle Eastern power blew up the carrier. We think the missile which destroyed it was a torpedo, tipped with a nuclear warhead, and fired from a submarine. There are very, very few men who could have accomplished that. I think Commander Benjamin Adnam may have been the driver.”

  “Ben! But he’s an Israeli. His home is in Tel Aviv. America is the great supporter of Israel. Why would anyone wish to attack their own most loyal ally?”

  Bill shook his head. Then he said, “Tell me about him, Laura. What kind of man was he?”

  “Well…he was only five feet nine, more heavily built than you, with jet-black curly hair, trimmed pretty tight. His eyes were dark, almost black. He did not have that swarthy Middle Eastern complexion; his skin was coffee-colored, soft, looked as if he never needed to shave.

  “When I first met Ben I thought he was the best-looking man I had ever seen. I was in love with him, you know. He was my first love…my only love really.”

  Bill sipped his port. “But what about Mr. Anderson?”

  “Mistake. Serious.” Laura spoke with shuddering frankness, perhaps feeling more assured under the warm, age-old spell of the most opulent ruby wine from Portugal. “When Ben left Faslane for Israel after two years, I believed I would never see him again, whatever he said. And I thought I would die of a broken heart. I did not go out for eighteen months. My mother thought I was having a nervous breakdown. She hated Ben for what he had done to her darling daughter. But she was bloody glad when he left, and she would have died if I’d married him. But that was never going to happen, we never even discussed it.

  “Anyway I used to go shooting with Dad from time to time, and I met Douglas up near Jedburgh on the borders. He was the son of a local landowner, and we used to have lunch together. Everyone else was much older. He made few demands on me, I had no interest in seeing anyone else, and after a couple of years I agreed to marry him. Everyone was delighted and my mother arranged a huge wedding.

  “Then it happened. Ben phoned me the night before I was to marry. He told me he still loved me and wanted to see me. Of course I could not agree to that, and I told Ben so. But it nearly broke my heart all over again, and at the time I became Mrs. Douglas Anderson, I could not have cared less if I’d never seen my new husband again. He was very sweet and kind. And rich. But I should never have gone through with the wedding because I felt nothing for him.”

  Laura Anderson did not have the slightest idea why she was pouring out her soul to this near-stranger from Kansas, and she could hardly justify it by telling herself it was probably in the national interest.

  Bill Baldridge shook his head in bewilderment, and turned the subject back to Ben, which was not a great test of ingenuity. “Did you ever see the Israeli again?”

  “Twice. Once I went to meet him in Cairo while Douglas was away at some financial conference. And once about a year ago when Ben came back to Faslane with three other Israeli officers to train on the Upholder Class submarine their Navy had purchased. He was a full commander by this time.

  “It was strange, but the sheer overpowering nature of the deceit…we drove up to a hotel in the Highlands…It had a bad effect on both of us. I was worried stiff that either my mother, my father, or even my husband was going to walk right through the door and catch us.

  “When we parted I had a funny feeling I really would not see him again. And so far I haven’t. He has called me a couple of times. But I don’t think either of us feels the same as we once did. The long, long separation, and the duplicity of the relationship, has proved a bit too much for both of us. He is serving in the Navy, God knows where, and I am left with poor Douglas, a good-looking, highly respected forty-year-old banker who leaves me stone cold. He knows it too, I am afraid. I wouldn’t blame him if he ran off with his secretary!”

  “Do you have an address or phone number for Ben?”

  “No. I have never had that since he left here after the Perisher. He was a bit secretive as a matter of fact. I asked him many times if there was anywhere I could just send him a letter, or even a postcard. But he always said it was a bit too complicated.”

  “Laura, are you sure he was an Israeli?”

  “It’s never occurred to me that he was anything else. He was here as an Israeli Naval Officer. How could he have been anything else?”

  “Dunno,” said Bill. “But the Middle East is a strange place. A few days before the Gulf War began, Saddam Hussein swore to his fellow Arab, near neighbor and apparent friend and ally, President Mubarak of Egypt, that he would not attack Kuwait. The truth is an elusive commodity once you move east of the Greek islands.

  “Was there ever anything, in all the time you knew Ben, that might suggest he could have been originally from another nation?”

  “No. Not really. The only thing I ever wondered about was his sympathetic view of the Arabian nations, even over terrorism. You never would have described him as fanatically anti-Arab—and he was not at all religious.

  “But now I look back, there is something else. I saw him only that one time in Cairo. But there were several other times when we discussed meeting, and he always wanted it to be Cairo. Never anywhere in Israel. Is that a bit odd? I don’t know. But I never thought he might be an Egyptian.”

  “Did he ever tell you anything about his very early life?”

  “Yes. He went to school here in England—a boarding school in Kent, so I suppose his parents must have had some money. But he did not go to university here—he went back to Israel at the age of eighteen, after his A-levels—they’re English exams—and from what I gathered, joined the Navy right away. He told me when he arrived in Faslane it was his first visit to the U.K. since he left school.”

  “Was there anything else, other than being an Israeli, which set him apart from the rest of his Perisher class?”

  “Not really. But he did bring over a nice new car. A small red BMW.”

  “Was he popular, being cleverer than everyone else?”

  “Not really. Ben had no interest in anything which he judged to be trivia. He had no polite small-talk—which my mother detested about him. If there was a birthday party, he would attend, and bring an expensive, thoughtful present. But he seemed always to be on the sidelines. Slightly preoccupied.”

  “Why did you love him so much?”

  “Because to my young eyes he looked like a God. I was only nineteen. He was twenty-seven, the outstanding young commander of his group, rich enough to take me to nice places, the only one with a new car, and a man who could fascinate me with stories of Middle Eastern countries I had never seen. He was charming. What he lacked was vulnerability. To a woman, I suspect that is deeply unattractive. But to a nineteen-year-old girl, just out of a London secretarial college, it was very, very special. I don’t suppose I would react in anything like that way if I met him for the first time now.”

  “Could you imagine him being sufficiently ruthless to blow up an aircraft carrier with six thousand men on board?”

  Laura hesitated. Then she said, “No, Bill. Not when you put it like that. But there was a coolness, an efficiency, a determination. There was a strength about Ben, if he thought it was his duty, to sink an American aircraft carrier…he’d do it.

  “On the other hand, he had a very engaging smile. And he could be witty about things. You might even think he was a relaxed and confident man.

  “But when I really got to know him I noticed his eyes were seldom still. There was a certain wariness there. And sometimes I would catch him casting his eyes around some fancy restaurant. And then he would smile his gleaming smile at me, and make some joke. I never really thought he was interested in other women, it was just that he was so watchful, of everything.

  “I used to call it his Periscope habit, taking an all-round l
ook every few minutes. Even a Naval genius like Ben had to keep practicing, I suppose.”

  “Did he ever mention his parents?”

  “Not really. Just that they lived in the country somewhere in Israel. I think they grew fruit, melons and things…but he sometimes mentioned that he had business with his family’s bank in London. He went there about once a month, usually on the train from Glasgow.”

  “Did he have any other close friends in England, or Scotland?”

  “No one here. He was not that popular. And he never mentioned anyone he even knew, in London or anywhere. I don’t think he ever introduced me to anyone.”

  “When did you last hear from him?”

  “I had one phone call about two months after he left the Upholder Class course. I was away, with Douglas and the girls, just for a weekend. When he got no reply from our house in Edinburgh, he phoned me here. Mummy was absolutely furious, but she said she was polite. Anyway I have not heard one word since—which is a bit unusual…the longest time he has ever been out of touch…Mummy probably told him he was the biggest bastard she had ever met, or something equally subtle. But she says not. I think Ben may finally have vanished from my life.”

  “Will you tell me about Egypt?”

  “That was after I had been married for about four years—about fourteen months before Flora was born. Douglas was going to a bankers’ seminar in Montreal. I had six days to myself. We planned it three months in advance. I flew all the way from Glasgow, changed planes at London Airport for Cairo. Ben arranged for me to pick up the Egypt ticket at the KLM desk.”

  Bill sat listening to her, thinking how much like a schoolgirl she still sounded; thinking about Ben Adnam, the big Mercedes in which he had met her at Cairo Airport, the uniformed driver, the long evening ride out to the plateau of Giza, the suite in the fabled Mena House Hotel, with its balcony view looking out to the mightiest of human achievements, stark against the desert skyline since the dawn of history.

  “I’ll never forget seeing the pyramids for the first time,” Laura said. “I stood there, staring through that balcony window. I was alone, gazing out at five thousand years of the past, hearing in my mind the voice of the desert…Ben had gone downstairs to send a fax or something. It was the most romantic place in the world for an awestruck Scottish girl, and a rather cold, unromantic Navy officer. But I suppose he must have had some romance in him, otherwise he would not have brought me there. Anyway, when you’ve had a sheltered upbringing like mine was, your first lover can’t usually do much wrong, so I suppose I had a wonderful time.”

  “Try to think, Laura. Was there anything that happened in Egypt that you thought was in any way unusual? Anything you can think of?”

  “I don’t think so…except we went one afternoon to a mosque.”

  “You did what?”

  “We went to a mosque. We were sightseeing in Cairo and Ben had his driver take us down to see the Citadel, an amazing castle built originally by Saladin, I think. We then walked up to the Mohammed Ali Mosque—the most beautiful building, one of the great landmarks of Cairo. You can see it for miles because of the twin minarets, so slim they look as if they might break off. They rise high above the huge dome of the mosque itself.”

  Bill kept very quiet. He just said, “Go on.”

  “Well, it wasn’t much really. I did want to go in. But Ben said he thought that might not be appropriate, for two infidels to enter a holy place of Muslim prayer. There was a little bookshop there, and I said I was going to see if I could find something to buy, to remind me of this place when I was back in Scotland.

  “He said ‘okay,’ he’d meet me back by the entrance, because he wanted to see a view across the city. Well, I went to the bookshop, and spent about twenty minutes there, talking to the old man who ran it…I remember he told me he had been in the Egyptian Air Force during the Six-Day War with Israel.

  “Anyway I was just walking across the courtyard to meet Ben, when I saw him slip out of a side door to the mosque, I thought a bit furtively. I stopped dead and watched him put his shoes on again. I’ve never thought much about it really, but I suppose you don’t get many Israelis at prayer in an Arab mosque.”

  “Nope, I don’t guess you do,” said Bill Baldridge. “Did he say anything…make an excuse maybe?”

  “Yes. He just said he thought he saw someone he knew, but turned out to be mistaken.”

  “I suppose he might have been telling the truth, but it doesn’t really add up—an Israeli officer in a mosque, even seeing someone he knew in the mosque, all seems a bit unlikely. And also, a brief holiday in the Mena House—that’s pretty rich living for the son of a melon grower, especially one who is apparently living on the famously low salary of an Israeli serviceman.”

  “Yes, it was a very lavish hotel—and Ben seemed very at home there, as if he knew some of the staff. At the time I thought he had just been there a couple of days before I arrived, but there was one night when we had a drink in the garden with the manager, who seemed awfully important.”

  “Laura, it seems with hindsight such a bizarre place for an Israeli to be—in the heart of the Cairo establishment…Christ, that was where Jimmy Carter met President Anwar Sadat. Kissinger met the Egyptians there. I was reading a magazine article the other day about Nixon’s Middle East policy. He stayed at the Mena House, and it mentioned that it was President Roosevelt’s favorite hotel. God knows how many foreign kings have stayed there. It’s an Arab institution. What’s Benjamin Adnam doing there, unless he was really an Arab?”

  “I can’t answer that. But you have reminded me of a strange conversation we once had at the Mena House. I can’t remember any of the exact words, but I do remember him saying something like, ‘My masters probably would not approve of my being here so publicly with an English admiral’s daughter. They might think it a bit indiscreet.’

  “I asked him why, and he just went rather thoughtful, and very steely. He said something like, ‘But my masters can be replaced anytime. I, on the other hand, cannot be replaced.’

  “It was not the arrogance that surprised me. Ben always had a touch of arrogance, even bravado, just under the surface. I’m a bit ashamed to say how attractive I found it at the time. But it was the use of the word ‘masters’ that should have given me just a touch of suspicion. I’ve just never heard any Naval officer use those words before, not in that context. I’ve always remembered Ben saying it.”

  “Funny that, Laura. I’ve never heard a U.S. Naval officer use it either. I continue to wonder precisely who Ben really was.”

  “You really do think he was not what he said he was?”

  “I do. Not least because your father thinks there are less than half a dozen men on earth who could have blown up our aircraft carrier. And he thinks Ben might have been one of them. And an Arab is a much better bet than an Israeli.”

  “Just after I was married Ben phoned and asked me to meet him but I couldn’t. He said Cairo that time as well.”

  “Strange. I wonder where the hell he is now.”

  “Can’t help much with that one. It’s been several months since I last heard. I might not hear again. And I never had an address.”

  “Would you agree to let me know if you ever did hear from him?”

  “Yes. Yes, I would. I am the daughter of a senior Navy officer, and I do understand about this, and how serious it is. I will contact you if I hear.”

  Laura stood up wearily and passed a hand through her hair. “Would you like to listen to some music?” she asked. Crossing the room, she flicked on the CD player and placed a disc on the sliding tray. The massed violins of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra playing the rhapsodic overture to one of Giuseppe Verdi’s most memorable operas filled the room.

  “Rigoletto,” said Bill.

  They sat in silence for a long while, listening to the divine, heart-rending arias being sung by Ileana Cotrubas as Gilda, and Placido Domingo as the Duke of Mantua.

  When the soprano sang “Caro n
ome” Laura was surprised to hear the American Naval officer mutter, “It’s almost unbearably beautiful, don’t you think?”

  She turned the sound down a shade, and asked him, “You really like opera, don’t you?”

  “I do at times like this,” he said somberly. “My mother’s brother was on the Board of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. He used to throw her a few tickets now and then. She took me a few times when I was at Annapolis, paid for me to fly up from Washington, let me hear the great maestros at work.

  “I never got much further than the easier ones, like Bohème, Figaro, Rigoletto, Madame Butterfly…Carmen, Aida, and The Pearl Fishers…but I’ve always loved the music—it’s like havin’ someone cast a spell on you. I’d rather go to an opera than a rodeo. That’s the truth.”

  He glanced at his watch. “Hey, it’s midnight, and I haven’t slept in a bed since I left Kansas on Sunday morning. I have to meet your dad real early. I’d better turn in, before I collapse on the rug.”