The third, and most beautiful, Mrs. Arnold Morgan leaned over again and kissed him.
Christ, he thought. How the hell did I ever get this lucky?
“Tsunami,” he said again. “Do you know what a tsunami is?”
“Not offhand. What is it?”
“It’s the biggest tidal wave in the world. A wall of water that comes rolling in from the ocean, and doesn’t break in the shallows like a normal wave — just keeps coming, holding its shape, straight across any damn thing that gets in its way. They can be 50 feet high.”
“You mean if one of ’em hit Rehobeth Beach or somewhere near our flat Maryland shore, it would just roll straight over the streets and houses?”
“That’s what I mean,” he said, pausing. “But there is something worse. It’s called a mega-tsunami. And that’s what can end life as we know it. Because according to that book up by the telescope, those waves can be 150 feet high. A mega-tsunami could wipe out the entire East Coast of the U.S.A.”
Kathy was thoughtful. “How ’bout that?” she said quietly, feeling somewhat guilty about the lightly frivolous way she had treated Arnold’s brand-new knowledge. “I still don’t see how a volcano could cause such an uproar — aren’t they just big, slow old things with a lot of very slow molten rock running down the slopes?”
“Aha. That’s where La Palma comes in…Cumbre Vieja last erupted about forty years ago, and the scientists later discerned a massive slippage on the western, seaward flank. Maybe twelve feet downwards.”
“That’s not much.”
“It is, if the rock face is eight miles long, and the whole lot is slipping, at a great height above sea level, sending a billion tons of rock at terrific speed, straight down to the ocean floor. That will be the biggest tsunami the world has ever seen—”
“Are they sure about that?”
“Dead sure. There’s a couple of universities in America and I think Germany with entire departments experimenting with the possible outcomes of a mega-tsunami developing in the Canary Islands.”
“Did one of them publish the stuff in the book you read?”
“No. That was done by a couple of English Professors at London University. Both of ’em very big deals, by the sound of it. One of ’em’s called Day, the other one Sarandon, I think. They sounded like guys who knew what they were saying.”
At the insistence of his two armed agents, the Admiral and his wife chartered a private plane to take them over to La Palma — an elderly ATR-72 turboprop that was only slightly more silent and restful than a train crash. They took off from little Reina Sofia airport, only five miles from their hotel, and shuddered, shook, and rumbled their way up the west coast of Tenerife, past the main resort areas, and along the spectacular coastline. Before the northwest headland of Point Teno they veered out to sea, crossing Atlantic waters almost two miles deep. They touched down at the little airport four miles south of Santa Cruz de La Palma at 9:25 in the morning.
A car and chauffeur awaited them. Actually two cars and one chauffeur. The agents who had accompanied them would follow in the second automobile. A condition of Admiral Morgan’s original appointment to the White House had been that he would be provided with round-the-clock protection for a minimum of five years, effective immediately upon his retirement. In the U.S. he had a detail of four agents, working shifts, twenty-four hours a day. Two of them had been designated to accompany the former NSA on his honeymoon.
The Admiral was now a wealthy man. His full Vice Admiral’s pension had been accruing since he left the Navy, almost ten years previously. He had no children to educate, no alimony to pay, no mortgage. He had sold his house in Maryland and moved into Kathy’s much grander home in Chevy Chase. This too carried no mortgage. Kathy had a liberal trust fund provided by a rich but unfaithful first husband, and she too had been able to bank most of her salary over the last six years while Admiral Morgan took care of regular expenses. Together, Arnold and Kathy had a net worth of several million dollars. Sufficient for the Admiral to have tossed straight into the bin two $5 million offers from New York publishing houses for his memoirs. Neither received even the courtesy of a reply.
Stepping down onto the runway, dressed in a dark blue polo shirt, smartly pressed stone-collared shorts, no socks, tan Gucci loafers, and a white Panama hat, the Admiral was unable to avoid looking precisely what he was — ex-Government, ex-Navy, a powerful man, not to be trifled with. No bullshit.
“The car’s over here, sir,” said Harry, Arnold’s longtime secret service agent. “The front one of those three black Mercedes parked outside the building.”
They walked across the already-warm runway under a cloudless blue sky. Harry held open the rear door. The Admiral jumped in first and slid across the backseat. Harry continued to hold the door for Kathy, nodded his head curtly, and said, “Mrs. Morgan.”
Ten years earlier, Agent Harry had once asked the svelte, newly divorced Kathy O’Brien if she’d care to go out to dinner with him. She had politely declined, and now the memory of that innocent but toe-curling piece of misjudgment actually gave Harry acute chills on the rare occasions he allowed himself to recall the incident.
With Mrs. Morgan safely on board, the chauffeur moved slowly out of the airport, while Harry, now at the wheel of the second Mercedes, fell in behind him, line astern, as the Admiral insisted on putting it. They drove south towards the very tip of La Palma, all along the coastal highway for around 10 miles, before arriving at the little town of Los Canarios de Fuencaliente, which used to be a small spa town, dotted by hot springs. The most recent eruption in 1971 had buried them, turning them into great lakes deep in the underground caverns of cooled-off lava.
Now the whitewashed outpost of Fuencaliente served as a kind of volcano mission-control area, with signposts everywhere pointing the way up to the great line of craters and mountains that patiently guarded the future of the planet earth.
The big white board, which proclaimed Volcan San Antonio above a black painted arrow, instantly caught the Admiral’s eye. “Straight up there, Pedro,” he told the chauffeur, checking his stern arcs through the rear window to ensure Harry was still in strict convoy.
Kathy, who was fiddling with the digital camera Arnold had just bought her — complete with all bells and whistles, even a telephoto lens — said distractedly, “How d’you know he’s called Pedro?”
“Well, I’m not dead certain. But many people in Spain are called Pedro or Miguel, like Peter or Michael in the States.”
“God help me,” said Kathy. “Darling, you can’t go around making up names for people. It’s rude. Like me suddenly calling you Fred.”
“Oh, I agree you couldn’t do it with Americans. But the odds are stacked in your favor in Spain. Or anywhere in Arabia. Mohammed, Mustapha, or Abdul. Can’t miss.”
“Still, it’s rude. Just like you shouldn’t go around calling every dark-skinned man a towelhead.” Admiral Morgan muttered something and, despite herself, Kathy laughed. And she tapped the chauffeur on the shoulder. “Excuse me,” she said. “Could you tell me your name?”
“Oh, sure, señora. It’s Pedro.”
“How did you know?” she demanded, smelling a rat, and turning back to Arnold.
“Harry told me,” replied the Admiral.
Kathy rolled her eyes heavenwards.
Which was more or less where they were headed. The Mercedes was now revving its way up a very steep escarpment, through the pines, towards the yawning chasm at the peak of the great black cone on the top of the mountain.
Recent rumblings inside this forty-year dormant volcano had caused officials to cordon off the rim of the crater to all visitors. But Harry was already out, talking to the guard and explaining the precise identity of the man in the Panama hat.