Power Play (38 page)

No one had any doubts that the proposition would appeal to the
taoiseach
on a purely financial basis. But it was a matter of approach, and prime ministers prefer to deal with decision makers who can say yes, no dithering.

Simon Andre had very swiftly outlined the Irish financial situation, which was essentially dire, but there was a gleaming silver lining. Ireland was a sound, exporting nation of only 4.5 million people. There were large fertile pastures for the production of cattle and the exporting of billions of euros’ worth of beef and dairy to the UK.

There was a heavy mining industry—zinc, lead, alumina, gypsum, gold, silver, and barite—with two substantial natural gas fields at Kinsale and Corrib, the latter of which had almost 20 billion cubic meters of proven reserves. There was a steel industry, plus food, brewing, textiles, chemicals, and vehicles. There was an enormous service industry in the high-tech area, not to mention tourist millions pouring into the place every day.

Ireland, with a labor force 2 million strong, had a high value, and they
were doing their level best to get out from under their debt—the best of any European nation. With a heavy injection of American cash within a very short time, Ireland would be back in profit and might prove to be one of the soundest foreign investments the United States ever made.

Simon Andre thought so. The American president agreed, but also understood the need for strict secrecy, since nothing must leak to the Russians about the new base in Donegal. Which once more left them with the same quandary they had always had—who would front the operation in Ireland?

At this point, General Lancaster made a somewhat theatrical move. He stood up from his chair and said, a little casually, “No need to worry about that, gentlemen. I have the man.”

Even the president was slightly startled by that. “You have?” he replied. “Could we ask who?”

“Certainly,” said the general. “Gentlemen, I give you the former head of United States National Security, Admiral Arnold Morgan.”

“ARNIE!”
exclaimed the president. “He’s retired. Has been for five years or more. We can’t send him to Ireland!”

“No need,” said General Lancaster. “He’s already there. Living for several months.”

“What about Kathy?”

“She’s there as well. In fact, she just inherited a house on the coast of West Cork.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I’ve been talking to him.”

“When?”

“About an hour ago.”

“And you think he might step up and head the operation for us? Jesus, how old is he?”

“Arnie? Probably 73. And if you asked him to undertake a major project on behalf of the United States of America, he’d say yes, even if he was 147 years old.”

“You mean the old flame still burns?”

“That flame doesn’t ever go out,” said the general. “Not with men like that.”

“There aren’t any men like that,” mused the president. “Not quite like that. We’re talking one of a kind.”

“No argument from me,” replied Zack Lancaster.

“Is his family from Ireland?” asked the president.

“No, sir. They’re rock-solid Texans from way back. Kathy’s folks were first-generation Irish immigrants. All four of her grandparents came here from County Kerry. She once told me all about it. They were Catholics, left the old country from Tralee during the Irish Civil War in the 1920s. Before the North-South partition.”

All four men reflected for a few moments on the remarkable coincidence that suddenly found Admiral Morgan living, however briefly, in Ireland. There was no question he would be just about the perfect man for the forthcoming mission. He understood the navy through and through, he would swiftly grasp the financial intricacies of building a base on the Irish west coast, and he would certainly be a sufficiently big hitter to deal with the Irish president.

Also, he would not get bogged down in detail. He would conduct the negotiations with charm; he was a rich man, accustomed to grand living, at home with presidents and kings, and able to hand out the most ferocious tongue-lashings to those he suspected might be wasting his time.

Intellectually, he was like Margaret Thatcher in sea boots. He grasped facts, and retained them, within a memory the size of a Trident ICBM. And he never took his eye off the ball. Arnold Morgan, former nuclear submarine commander, would enter this project knowing that the United States wanted that naval base in Donegal to keep them permanently on top of the Russian situation.

He had been a major supporter of the SOSUS project and had made it clear on several occasions that he considered its general demise, during the years beyond the Cold War, a mistake that could only have been perpetrated by an imbecile.

He had never trusted the Russians in the past. He did not trust the Russians now. And he had no intention of trusting them in either the near or the distant future. “They can’t tell the goddamned difference between an act of friendship and an act of war” was his view. “They think everyone’s against them. The slightest perceived insult causes them to think they’re in the middle of the Battle of Stalingrad all over again, besieged, hated, and threatened with extinction.”

At a recent naval gathering in the Pentagon, Admiral Morgan had been asked to speak briefly on the subject of Russia’s current stance on
strategic fleet operations. His opening lines were memorable: “On a dumbest-nation scale,” he had said, “the Russians are not yet on the chart. To them, everything is a threat. Right now they’re trying to modernize that junkyard navy of theirs, devoting thousands of hours of research trying to produce quiet submarines instead of those rattletrap old Soviet nuclear boats that used to clank along the ocean floor like goddamned covered wagons.”

The sudden revelation of FOM-2 would affect Admiral Morgan like no other. To those who really knew him, like Zack Lancaster, Arnold was never thoughtless. When this situation was carefully explained to him, his instinct would not be, surprisingly, to nuke the Solovetsky Monastery or Murmansk.

He would hope to smash the whole operation secretly and thoroughly and then sit back and watch Russia squirm in front of the international community. Arnold Morgan loved hanging the Russians out to dry, loved it when they were confused beyond redemption, but would not dare ask,
What just happened?

It was impossible to think of any member of the US government or military who would relish the project of US Naval Base Donegal more thoroughly than Admiral Morgan. He would surely move heaven and earth in Irish political circles to make it happen, and happen fast.

All four men in the Oval Office knew instinctively that General Lancaster had hit upon the critical component in this tangled equation, the one element that would cause everything else to snap into position.

“If Arnie can be raised from his Irish lair,” said the president, “then that would be my wish. Let’s find out real quick whether he will once more take up the burden of high office and carry us over the line . . . ”

“Guns blazing—just like old times,” added Zack Lancaster.

 

Admiral Morgan’s new Irish residence was an impressive white-fronted Georgian house in thirty-five acres of hilly countryside facing southwest, all the way down to the strong tidal waters of Clonakilty Bay. For some
reason the property included a thousand-yard double-bank section of the Argideen River, three miles to the north.

It was all purchased by the Gallagher family in the mid-twentieth century, after selling a desolate three hundred acres of hitherto worthless woodland above Lough Leane near Killarney to a German hotel chain for almost $3 million, an enormous sum of money in 1960.

Thus, the Gallagher family members, who had not migrated to North America, became as prosperous as their US cousins and lived in some style above the bay, raising “store horses” for the Irish steeplechase community with periodic financial success.

However, as the years passed, the Gallaghers proved better breeders of hunter-chasers than people. And by the time old Seamus Gallagher headed for the great unsaddling closure above, there were no direct heirs left for what was remaining of the fortune.

The executors had located a couple of distant cousins in Vancouver and the former Kathy Gallagher in Chevy Chase, Maryland. The mansion in Clonakilty was valued at only $620,000 subsequent to the Irish property crash. This tempted Arnold and Kathy to fly over and inspect the place, and within a week, Arnold made an offer of $200,000 to buy out the two cousins, which they accepted with lightning speed.

Thus did Admiral and Mrs. Arnold Morgan become the owners of a deserted but strangely beautiful Irish property for the knockdown price of $200,000, right above the Celtic Sea, with views across the bay to Dun-worley Head. In the autumn of his years, the admiral liked nothing more than to sit and stare out over the water.

“Keeping an eye out for Russian Oscar Class attack submarines” was Kathy’s sassy opinion, never having quite grasped the thunderous weight of responsibility visited upon the chosen US nuclear submarine commanders, the men who patrol the greatest waters.

They’d owned the property for two years now and completely renovated it, repainted, recarpeted, rebathroomed, rekitchened, added stonework to the outside terracing, and, according to Arnold, installed enough curtain, sofa, and bedspread fabric “to cover the goddamned Pentagon.”

The result was a marvelously comfortable house, with a willing gardener-chauffeur-housekeeper couple from the nearby village of Milltown to take care of the place fifty-two weeks a year. And now they expected guests,
General Zack Lancaster and his wife, Virginia, friends of the admiral’s for almost forty years. West Pointer Zack and former midshipman Arnold always watched the Army-Navy game together whenever they were both in the Washington area.

“What do you actually plan to do with Zack during the next four days?” asked Kathy. “Virginia and I will almost certainly spend some time shopping in Kinsale. And you’ll be stuck out here gazing at the ocean.”

“I’ll probably take him fishing,” said Arnold decisively.

“But you don’t know anything about fishing,” replied Kathy. “You’ve never been fishing since I first met you.”

“I’ll catch up,” harrumphed Arnold.

“But you haven’t even got a fishing rod,” she persisted.

“I’m having three or four delivered later today,” he replied. “From the fishing store in Kinsale. All the gear—hooks, flies, line, and waders.”

“But you don’t even know how to tie a fly, or even cast,” said Kathy. “Why do you always assume expertise in any subject?”

“I just happen to be a quick study,” said Arnold. “I get it the first time—flick the old rod and line, and whip that baby straight into the stream. When it comes up, it’ll have a big rainbow trout on the end . . . ”

“Some people fish a salmon river for four days without catching one single fish,” she countered. “I can just imagine how much you’d love that.”

“That’s because they don’t have my expertise,” said Arnold. “And because they don’t have an expert with them.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve hired a teacher or someone to go with you?”

“Certainly not. I’ll have my own private expert with me. Zack promised to teach me.”

“You never even told me Zack was a fisherman,” laughed Kathy, marching off to the newly renovated kitchen.

“Military secrets,” said Arnold. “No gossiping about the head man in the Pentagon. But he does happen to be a very fine fly fisherman . . . Once landed four sharks in thirty minutes from the bank of the Hudson River when he was at West Point.”

“Four
what!
”

“Tiger sharks.”

“They don’t even have tiger sharks in the Hudson River,” she retorted.

“Just kidding,” chortled Arnie, returning to the
Irish Times.

Age had not wearied him. Admiral Morgan was precisely the same
sharp, droll, and frequently irritating personality he had always been. He was not to everyone’s taste, but he had a wide and loyal group of friends and followers.

In Ireland, he was rapidly becoming a countryman for the first time in his life. Like Captain Mack Bedford, he had purchased a heavy Aran Islands sweater and wore it with corduroy pants. The truth was he loved the pace of life here, the way people had time to stop for a chat, the easy way people slipped into conversation in bars and restaurants.

He loved the music, and the landscape, and the careless brand of “craig” the whole nation seemed to enjoy, along with the capacity to put a lot of things off until tomorrow. In terms of time, Arnold thought the Irish had a lot more in common with the Spanish than they ever did with the English.

And, perhaps surprisingly, the Irish loved the admiral, this straight-shooting, highly intelligent former US Naval officer, with his penchant for profound sarcasm, caustic wit, and quick, sharp jokes about almost everything. For the first time in his life, Arnold Morgan had found a place where nothing was expected of him except good humor, time for a glass of something, and friendship.

 

Zack and Virginia Lancaster showed up that morning, by US Embassy helicopter, landing right on the lawn roughly forty-five minutes after Air Force Two had touched down at Shannon Airport, eighty-two miles to the northwest of Clonakilty.

The visit unfolded predictably. Kathy and Virginia went breezily off to Kinsale, that legendary Irish seaport of narrow, winding streets, tiny houses, and boutique restaurants that have caused it to be labeled the “gourmet capital of Ireland.”

Arnold and Zack, with a box of delicious wild Irish smoked salmon sandwiches and a few cans of Guinness, gathered up the newly arrived fly rods and headed for the Argideen River, driven by the admiral’s devoted man, Finbar Murphy.