Scimitar SL-2 (2004) Read online

  PROFESSOR PAUL LANDON MISSING

  World’s Top Volcano Expert Vanishes after Royal

  Geographical Lecture

  There followed a detailed story of Professor Landon and his achievements, followed by a police report on his failure to return home to Buckinghamshire after addressing the Royal Geographical Society on the evening of May 8.

  There were quotes from the Royal Geographical Society’s General Secretary, and from colleagues at University College, and of course from his wife. But no one had the slightest idea what had happened to him.

  Three days later Lieutenant Commander Ramshawe found out for himself. The front-page headline over all eight columns on Thursday, May 15, read:

  PROFESSOR PAUL LANDON FOUND MURDERED

  Washed Up on Thames Island—Two Bullets to the Brain

  In the opinion of the police pathologist, Paul Landon had been shot twice in an “execution-style” killing, and then dumped in the river. The coxswain of a London Rowing Club eight had spotted the body washed by the flood tide onto Chiswick Eyot, a small island landmark for racing shells, halfway along the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race course between Putney and Mortlake.

  There were, as yet, no suspects, but there was no doubt in the minds of the Metropolitan Police. This was a cold-blooded murder, though why anyone should want to kill an apparently harmless academic remained a total mystery.

  Lieutenant Commander Ramshawe liked mysteries. And for the next hour, he scrolled to and from various editions of the Telegraph, spanning the early summer to the fall. He found the inquest, the funeral, a feature on Professor Landon’s area of expertise. But he never found a single clue as to why the hell anyone should want to kill him.

  He switched to the London Daily Mail, a more adventurous downmarket tabloid, which might have come up with a different, more original idea. No such luck. For the week after the professor’s disappearance, the Mail was totally preoccupied with two murdered London policemen and their dog…

  GALLANT ROGER KILLED IN ACTION

  —BESIDE HIS MASTERS

  Police Slaying Baffles Scotland Yard

  It beat the hell out of Jimmy Ramshawe too. But the only paragraph that did interest him was one that began: The Metropolitan Police are believed to have called in the Special Branch, owing to the manner of death of one of the officers, but last night this could not be confirmed.

  So far as Jimmy knew, this probably meant MI5, or even MI6, England’s version of the CIA. And although the murder of London cops was not his business and neither, of course, was the killing of a London University professor, he nonetheless logged a full notation about the strange and mysterious death of Paul Landon.

  He found it hard to dismiss the incident from his mind. And at the end of the day, he was still puzzling over it on the way to the Australian Embassy in Washington, D.C., where he was dining with his fiancée, Jane Peacock, daughter of the ambassador. It was almost eight o’clock before he arrived, and he gratefully accepted a tall glass of cold Fosters lager from Miss Peacock before joining her parents in the dining room. Jimmy had always gotten along very well with Ambassador John Peacock. Their families had been friends for many years, and indeed, Jimmy’s parents, who lived in New York, were due to stay at the embassy two weeks from now.

  He waited until they were well into the main course, a superb rib of beef, cooked to perfection and accompanied by a particularly elegant Australian red wine, Clonakilla Shiraz, made up in the Canberra District in the temperate foothills, a couple of hundred miles south of Sydney. John Peacock was a lifelong collector of good wine, and owned an excellent cellar at his home overlooking the harbor in Sydney. As Australian ambassador to the U.S.A., he was expected to serve vintages from his own country, and he rose to the occasion every time.

  Jimmy waited until they were all smoothly into a second glass before broaching the subject that had been on his mind for the past six hours.

  “You ever read anything about a volcano professor in London who managed to get murdered last May, John?”

  “Maybe. What was his name?”

  “Professor Paul Landon.”

  “Now wait a minute. I did notice something about that, because he was coming to speak at two or three universities in Australia—and one of ’em was Monash, in Melbourne, where I went. I think that’s the same guy. I remember it because the Sydney newspaper ran quite a story on his death. Why d’you ask?”

  “Oh, I just ran into some stuff on the Internet today. Seemed such a strange murder, no rhyme or reason. No one has ever discovered why he was killed. And no one’s ever been charged with anything connected to it.”

  “No. I remember that. He wasn’t just an expert on volcanoes. He was into the whole range of earthly disasters—you know, earthquakes, tidal waves, asteroid collisions, and Christ knows what. As I recall, he was coming particularly to lecture on the effect of a major tidal wave, it’s got some bloody Chinese name…Let me think…chop-sooey, or something. Anyway, it’s a lot of water.”

  Jimmy chuckled. He really liked his future father-in-law, who’d insisted on being called John since Jimmy was a kid at college. “The word we’re groping for is tsunami,” he said. “Japanese. I’ve been a bit of an expert since about quarter past two this afternoon.”

  “Yes. that’s it,” replied the Ambassador. “It’s when a bloody great hunk of rock falls off a mountain and crashes into the sea causing a fantastic upsurge as it rolls along the ocean floor? Right? Expert?”

  “Yes, I think that’s a fair and thoughtful summation,” said Jimmy, frowning, and putting on what he thought might be a learned voice. “Very well put. I think in future, I’ll address you as Splash Peacock, tsunami authority.”

  Everyone laughed at that. But the Ambassador was not finished. “I’ll tell you something else I remember about that article. The prof was coming to Australia to talk in particular about these bloody great waves that have happened on Pacific islands north of us. That’s the danger spot, right? Your professor, Jimmy, knew a whole lot about one of ’em on New Britain Island off Papua New Guinea. It fell into the ocean and the ole thing developed and drowned about three thousand people on neighboring islands.”

  “For a bloke who can’t say it, you know a whole hell of a lot about tsunamis!” replied Jimmy.

  “Gimme a coupla weeks, I’ll master the word as well,” chuckled John Peacock.

  “So why do you think someone murdered the professor?”

  “Who knows? Could have been just mistaken identity, I suppose.”

  “Maybe,” replied Jimmy. “But the police think it looked like an execution.”

  Friday, January 9

  The Pentagon, Washington.

  The first memorandums were beginning to arrive from the incoming Administration. Clearly, the new President was planning to impose savage defense cuts, particularly on the Navy. He considered the expenditure of billions of dollars on surface warships and submarines to be a lunatic waste of money. And he reasoned, not without just cause, that he had been elected to do precisely that. People did not want to raise armies and battle fleets. They wanted better health care and a better start in life for their kids. The recent election had demonstrated that thoroughly. McBride had not routed the Republicans. In fact he had only narrowly won the White House, and both Houses of Congress were still held by the GOP.

  But the people had spoken. They had heard his message of hope and the chance of a better life for their families. They had listened to him rail against their own country, in which people can be bankrupted, their life’s savings extinguished, just for being ill. They had listened to Charles McBride swear to God he was going to change all that. Yes, the people had spoken, no doubt about that.

  It all struck home, especially in the headquarters of the veteran Chairman of the Joint Chiefs up on the Pentagon’s second floor. Gen. Tim Scannell, in the big office directly below that of the outgoing Secretary of Defense, Robert MacPherson, was not a happy man.

  “I don’t know how lo
ng he’s likely to last. Hopefully only four years. But this bastard is probably going to inflict more damage on the U.S. fleet than Yamamoto.”

  Among those sitting opposite the Chairman was Adm. Alan Dickson, and the Chief of Naval Operations was not smiling.

  “I’ve been in the middle of these things before,” he said. “And it’s not just the big issues. You guys know as well as I do that severe defense cuts have an effect on everything, because all over the place there are people trying to cut costs. And they usually go a step too far—no one quite gets the reality. Until it’s too late.

  “Especially the Navy. You start decommissioning carriers, mothballing amphibious ships, laying up destroyers and frigates, you’re punching a major hole in the U.S. Navy’s requirements for really top guys. And when they think you don’t need ’em, they don’t show up at Annapolis.”

  “Left-wing politicians never understand it,” answered Adm. Dick Greening, Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet. “All those goddamned cities which survive on defense contracts. You stop building warships, you’re not just seeing cities going broke, you’re watching the unique skills of an area start to vanish. Pretty soon you end up like some Third World harbor, buying technology from abroad.”

  The room went silent. “Do you guys know what it is that really brasses me off about governments?” said Admiral Dickson. “The stuff no one explains to the people.”

  No one spoke.

  “The fact is that governments don’t have any money of their own,” continued Admiral Dickson. “Only what they take from the American people and from American corporations. So when they tell the people an aircraft carrier is too expensive, they are talking absolute horseshit. They do not spend, in the accepted sense of the word. They only distribute. They take it from whatever source they can get it, without causing outright civil war, and then redistribute it into the economy. They don’t spend. They only push everyone else’s money around.”

  The Navy Chief paused. Then said, “Half of the money in labor costs goes to the guys building the ships—paychecks to people who immediately give a third of it back to the government. They don’t tell ’em the rest gets spent in the community, providing other people with jobs, who also hand a third of it back to the government.

  “They never mention that a big hunk of the cash goes to U.S. Steel, the electronic companies right here in the U.S.A., the missile systems, shipbuilders in Maine, Connecticut, and Virginia—they’re all paying corporate taxes. Some of the money goes to U.S. Navy personnel, who pay their taxes back to the government, just like the people at U.S. Steel. The whole thing is just a roundabout. The goddamned aircraft carrier is not expensive, it’s free. It’s not the government’s damned money anyway. They are only moving it around.”

  “Any clues yet about our cuts?” Rear Admiral Curran asked gravely.

  “No one’s been specific. But we’ve been put on a kind of unofficial high alert to start cutting back. I’d say the conversions on those four Ohio Class SSBNs will go on hold.”

  Admiral Dickson referred to the program to remove the Trident missiles from the old 16,600-ton strategic missile boats, and turn them into guided missile platforms, each carrying 154 Tomahawks. All four submarines were to be upgraded with Acoustic Rapid COTS insertion sonar.

  “I wouldn’t be sure we’ll keep the green light for two more Nimitz Class carriers either. CVN 77 and 78 will probably get canceled.”

  “Jesus,” said the Commander of the Atlantic Fleet, Vice Adm. Brian Ingram. “That would be bad. Some of the big guys are just about getting to the end of their tether. We need new, and we need it now—how about the Arleigh Burke destroyer program?”

  “Well, as you know, we’re supposed to get thirty-six and we only have twenty-four. I’m just not sure about the final twelve.”

  “Jeez. I’d just hate to see us run short of missile ships…And I’d sure feel better about everything if the Big Man was still in the White House.”

  By anyone’s standards, this was a very worried group of U.S. Navy Execs and the Pentagon boss. Not worried for themselves, but for the future ability of United States warships to continue safeguarding the world’s oceans. Whenever necessary.

  And the Big Man was far away.

  11.30 A.M., Tuesday, January 27

  Tenerife, Canary Islands.

  Mrs. Arnold Morgan had spent the last hour of her honeymoon on her own. Relaxed on a lounge by the lower pool at the imperious Gran Hotel Bahia del Duque, way down on the southern tip of the island, she was reading quietly.

  Behind her, a detail of two security agents was playing cards, and at infrequent intervals a waiter appeared to inquire if she needed more orange juice or coffee. About 100 feet above stood her new husband. Ensconced in an observatory at the top of a tower, he was staring out to sea through a telescope many times more powerful than most people will ever have used.

  The Canaries, with their pure Atlantic skies, attracted astronomers from all over the world, and giant telescopes have been built in observatories on every one of the seven islands. The instrument at Gran Hotel Bahia del Duque was constructed mostly with astronomers in mind, and it was generally focused on the heavens. Today, however, it looked out to the surface of the deep blue waters to the south of the Costa Adeje, where the seabed swiftly shelves down to depths of almost a mile.

  Kathy wished he’d come make his way back down and talk to her. Isolation did not suit the former goddess of the West Wing. She slipped back into her book, occasionally gazing at the magnificent surroundings of the five-star Gran Hotel, a sprawling waterside complex, half-Venetian, half-Victorian in design, set in a semitropical botanical garden. Her new husband adored such grandeur and he had sweetly instructed her, with his usual old world charm, to locate a place and book them in for two weeks—“Listen, Kathy, just try to stop boring me sideways with goddamned hotel literature, and get us into some goddamned place, Casa Luxurious. And hasta la vista,” he added, handing her a credit card. “That’s Spanish for on the double.”

  He was, of course, utterly beyond redemption and Kathy forgave him only because he treated everyone like that. As his secretary for six years in the White House, she had seen diplomats from the world’s most powerful countries quake before his onslaught. ’Specially the Chinese and, almost as often, the Russians.

  The whole idea of this tiny cluster of Spanish Islands, set in the sparkling Atlantic off the coast of Africa, had been hers. She had lived in Europe when she was much younger and her sister-in-law, Gayle, who lived in southern Spain, had suggested the Canaries because of the January weather, which was warm, much warmer than mainland Spain, a thousand miles to the northeast. But the most significant reason for Tenerife was that Kathy had wanted to arrange a Catholic Blessing for their marriage, which had thus far been only legally formalized by a U.S. Justice of the Peace in Washington.

  Gayle had located the perfect little church on the neighboring island of Gran Canaria, the Iglesia de San Antonio Abad down near the waterfront at Las Palmas, the island’s main city. She had arranged for the English-speaking priest to meet Arnold and Kathy on Friday morning and conduct a short private service.

  Only after their arrival did Kathy plan to tell her husband that San Antonio, unprepossessing, painted white, and Romanesque in design, was the very church where Christopher Columbus had prayed for divine help before sailing for the Americas.

  The Great Modern American Patriot and the Great European Adventurer. Two Naval Commanding Officers somehow united at the same altar, separated by the centuries, but not in spirit. Yes, Kathy thought, Arnold would like that. He’d like that very much, the secret romantic that he ultimately was.

  So it was settled. A honeymoon in the Canaries. And even the globally sophisticated Arnold had been taken aback by the sheer opulence of the place, the terra-cotta exteriors, five swimming pools, the perfect alfresco dining area on the terraces looking down to the soft sandy beaches.

  “And here he is, up the stupid tower, for the fourth
day in a row,” thought Kathy. “With the telescope, presumably looking for the enemy.”

  Just at that moment, the former National Security Adviser to the President of the United States made a timely poolside appearance. “Oh hello, my darling,” said Kathy. “I was just thinking this is like being on a honeymoon with Lord Nelson, you up there with that ridiculous telescope.”

  “It’s better, I assure you,” grunted Arnold. “Admiral Nelson lost an arm in the battle of Santa Cruz about 40 miles north of here. Right now you’d be sitting in intensive care, waiting to see if he lived or died.”

  Kathy could not help laughing at his mercurial mind, and encyclopedic knowledge.

  “Anyway,” added Arnold, “Lord Nelson was not big on honeymoons. Never married Lady Hamilton, did he? Probably trying to avoid a hard time when he was caught using his telescope.”

  Kathy shook her head. She knew that Arnold Morgan was impossible to joust with because he always won, impossible to reason with because he always had more knowledge, impossible to be angry with because he could find a joke, a shaft of irony, or even slapstick from any set of circumstances. She had been in love with him from the day he had first thundered into her life, instructing her to call the head of the Russian Navy and tell him he was a lying bastard.