Dear Rick,
Just a short note to congratulate you on your promotion. Well deserved, I’m sure, even in that crazy outfit that employs you. All those years ago, when we set off together for Annapolis, I always thought we’d both end up commanding U.S. warships — rather than just me (I hope!), while you roll around in the mud with a dagger between your teeth and a pocketful of explosives.
Anyway I’m here in Diego Garcia waiting to take up my new position as XO on USS Shark. My last, I’m told, before they make me up to Commander. Sometime in the next 24 hours we’re due to sail north, to guess where? Anyway, by the time you read this the Kentucky Derby will be over. Hey, what a blast if White Rajah wins it. I guess your dad will forever regret selling him as a yearling, and my dad will forever keep reminding him that he told him not to! Still, victory would be sweet, since Bart still owns the dam, and two full sisters. That would be a real lock on a major American classic family — make you guys even richer.
Funny, isn’t it, to look back at that wicked old bastard Red Rajah, and think he might be the grandsire of a Derby winner, rather than an automatic selection for a lead role in Natural Born Killers. Jeez, every time I think about him, my arm hurts!
I have to go now, meet my new crew, hope to catch a glimpse of you, certainly at Christmas, if not before.
Best always and love to Bart,
Danny
He folded the letter and sealed the envelope. Then he walked out to the front desk and asked the security guard to mail it. It was only a short walk over to the submarine jetties where the Shark awaited him.
“Yushu, you are very disappointed. I can see that.”
“Well, Jicai, you would have thought the Western press would have been much more alert to the consequences of two shattered oil tankers within a few miles of each other in the middle of the Strait of Hormuz.”
“Yes, I agree. But the time difference made it awkward.”
“How?”
“Well, the Washington Post ran a piece on Saturday morning covering the big fire in the liquid-gas tanker. So did several other American newspapers, but no pictures. I suppose the cameras were just too far away. But when the second tanker was damaged, it was too late for their editions. And it was a much smaller story…just an oil spill in the gulf.”
“You’ve studied the media more than I, Jicai. Has anyone made a connection?”
“Only the Sunday edition of the Dallas Morning News in Texas. They have an interview with the owner of the Global Bronco, and right underneath it, they run a story about the oil spill. But they’re not making a major point about the closeness of the two ‘accidents.’”
“Then, my Jicai, we will quickly have to persuade them otherwise.”
“Oh, I don’t think that will prove too much of a problem…we are extremely well organized.”
Arnold Morgan had just issued a severe roasting to the Acting Director of the National Security Agency. And Admiral David Borden, frankly afraid now for his future, had gone straight to the office of Lt. Ramshawe, full of quasi-indignation that he had not been kept up to speed on the Hormuz investigation.
Jimmy Ramshawe debated the possibility of telling his boss to knock before he barged in, but decided against it. Nonetheless he detected that the Acting Director had been on the wrong end of the Big Man’s wrath, and that was not a great place to be.
“It is essential you keep me up to date,” he told the Lieutenant. “I am the person who must answer to Admiral Morgan, and it is most inconvenient when he knows more than I do.”
Again Lt. Ramshawe exercised discretion, resisting the overpowering temptation to tell Borden that everyone knew more than he did.
Instead he said simply, “Sir, I was under the impression that you wanted the whole subject ignored until there was hard evidence. That’s what you told me.”
“Correct. But when the second tanker was damaged, surely you knew I must be informed of your investigation, the fact that the ships were so close.”
“Sir, I wrote up my report and handed it to your duty officer on Saturday morning. I came in especially.”
“Well, it did not reach me. Which put me at a tremendous disadvantage, because Arnold Morgan had worked it out precisely as you did.”
The Ramshawe discretion vanished. “Sir, it is beyond my imagination that anyone could work it out any other way. The bloody towelheads and the Chinks have mined the bloody strait. I’ve been telling you that for a month. We even know where the bastards got the mines. I’ve also been telling you that for weeks. And if you still want my advice, I’m also telling you there’s more to come on this.”
Admiral Borden retreated, saying as he left, “Just make sure I’m kept up to speed on this. It is essential that I’m on precisely the same knowledge level as Admiral Morgan.”
David Borden shut the door noisily, missing Jimmy Ramshawe’s “That’ll be the bloody day.”
More importantly he had forgotten to ask what further developments there were, even though he could see the pile of satellite photographs on the young surveillance officer’s desk.
Big mistake. Jimmy Ramshawe had pictures of four tankers, three Iranian, one Chinese, making passage out of the gulf on the Iran side of Hormuz. They had all crossed the line of the minefield, exiting through an area less than three miles wide, four and a half miles offshore at the nearest point.
“That’s it,” he murmured. “They’re still transporting Iranian crude, and Chinese refined oil from Kazakhstan, right through that gap, while the rest of the world sits and waits for clearance from the Omanis to continue on. And they’re not going to get it. The strait is going to become a giant tanker park, while the Ayatollahs and the Chinese get rich.”
He picked up the secure telephone and dialed the main White House switchboard, from where he was put straight through to Admiral Morgan, as instructed. “It’s between fifty-six-fifty-six and fifty-six-fifty-nine-east, sir,” he said. “Four ships so far, three Iran, one China.”
“Thanks, Jimmy. Go tell your boss, while I tell mine.”
The afternoon newspapers came up, and still no one was making any kind of speculation that something was drastically wrong in the Strait of Hormuz. Arnold Morgan paced his office, wracking his brains, waiting for the inevitable. Jimmy Ramshawe stayed at his desk long after his shift was over, staring at the satellite photographs, occasionally talking to the CIA’s Middle Eastern desk at Langley. But there was nothing. Just the shattering coincidence of two ships damaged in the same stretch of water in the strait.
The President had listened to Admiral Morgan’s suspicions with equanimity. The relationship between the two men was at a very low point. Eight months previously Arnold Morgan had threatened to quit, and to take the President with him. Everyone knew he could have done so. The grotesque scandal and cover-up over the incident last year in the South China Sea were like a loaded revolver at the Chief Executive’s head. John Clarke would sit out his final months in the Oval Office, courtesy of his National Security Adviser.
And he was not a man to relish this. Thus he treated any warning from his supposed right-hand man with suspicion and a negative turn of mind. He had been receptive to the idea of moving heavy Naval muscle up into the strait, because he recognized the lethal consequences of being wrong. He stated curtly that such matters were what the Admiral was paid to do, and to proceed as he thought fit.