Ian Slater - World in Flames

Price’s jaw was throbbing and badly swollen on the left side. “Could you hand me one of those towelettes from the glove compartment?” he mumbled. “Or are they in the boot?”

Joan opened her purse, took out the Beretta nine-millimeter, and rummaged through the contents. “Here’s one!” she pronounced triumphantly, tearing it open and passing the towelette to him. Dabbing it gently on his chin, he relished the temporary cold that took the edge off the pain. “By God, he can pack a wallop. Hope he isn’t like that on his submarine. A man like that in charge of — how many is it — forty-eight nuclear warheads? Gives me the willies, I can tell you. Thought they were supposed to be the silent type. Not bloody rowdies.”

“You were talking about his sister. How did you know all that about her anyway?”

“Because,” he replied, “I do my homework. That’s why.”

The thing Robert Brentwood found unforgivable in himself was that, try as he might to push the image of Lana performing oral sex on young Spence from his mind, the more he fantasized about whether Rosemary would do it for him. The moment he thought he had evicted the scene from his mind as unworthy of him, the more pervasive it became until he had such an erection, he thought Rosemary would be sure to notice. At least he hoped she would. The image of her moist, red lips encasing him, her tongue darting with abandon, sucking him dry, made him doubt whether they could make Mallaig without him having to pull over. Returning again and again to what Price had said about Lana, he remembered Price also saying something about how grateful the Admiralty was for the protection afforded by the Sea Wolfs, “especially now.” But surely the subs had always been important to Admiralty. Why “especially now”? He mentioned it to Rosemary.

“Perhaps something’s happened,” she proffered, “that we haven’t heard yet on the news?”

Robert switched on the radio, but Highlands static crackled like a log fire. Anyway, it was a violation of their pledge not to listen to any newscasts while on their honeymoon, not to let anything intrude on their all-too-brief time together. But now he wondered whether their pact had been a good idea after all. He hated not knowing what was going on. He looked in the rearview again but couldn’t see Price’s car, not even the yellow eyes of fog lights. He was unsure as to whether he should pull over and wait or keep going.

When the army chief of staff, General Grey, arrived from the Pentagon and was ushered into the Oval Office by press aide Trainor, he wasn’t sure whether the president had heard him and so coughed politely to announce his presence.

The chief executive of the United States was reclining in the black leather chair behind the dark oak desk from HMS Resolute —given to the much earlier President Hayes by Queen Victoria in 1878, the great seal of the United States carved on its front adding to the quiet dignity of the office that General Grey found distinctly gloomy in the fading evening light. Outside, the darkening magnolia bushes and stark brambles of the rose garden added to the heavy, oppressive atmosphere that had descended about the White House since the news had come in from the big aerial arrays at Fort Meade in Maryland.

The ELINT — electronic intelligence — experts had picked up FORCOMPS — forward command post signals — between the U.S. and South Korean armies under the command of Gen. B. W. Anderson, supreme commander of all Allied forces in Southeast Asia. On top of this, Mayne was in the throes of a migraine attack — it being no consolation to him, as Trainor well knew, that other presidents, too, had been victims of disease while in office, that Ulysses S. Grant had suffered one of his worst migraine attacks the night before Lee’s surrender.

“Take a seat, General,” said Mayne, waving him in the gloom to the red-and-yellow-striped cushioned chair to the left of the president’s desk and directly in front of the presidential flag. As the general’s eyes adjusted to the dim light, he could see the president wasn’t looking directly at him but was deep in thought in the island of soft, peach-colored light casting its glow on the portrait of George Washington, in full uniform, above the mantel.

“I was told…” began the president, his voice quiet, measured. “Your intelligence boys told me Beijing couldn’t do— what they’ve now done?” Mayne’s right arm came into view indicating the map of the “big prick,” as the Pentagon called the Korean Peninsula, set up to the right of him. Already, in the first twenty-four hours of heavy fighting between the enemy and U.S.-ROK forces, there were over eleven thousand American casualties. The Chinese-North Korean breakthrough was threatening to be an even bigger rout of the U.S.-ROK forces than that suffered by them at the beginning of the war around the Pusan-Masan perimeter in the far south.

The president turned to the general. “How many Chinese have crossed already?”

Grey rose and reluctantly took up the retractable pointer, its tip sliding from southwest along the line of the Yalu to the northeastern end of the eight-hundred-mile-long river that had been the border between the Korean Peninsula and Manchuria for a thousand years. “They moved down from up here, Mr. President, in Shenyang — China’s most northeasterly province. The Thirty-ninth Army out of Anshan, the Fortieth from Shenyang City itself, and the Sixty-fourth from Fushun. Possibly they’ve moved the Twenty-fourth up from Yangshan — but that would have to be seconded from Beijing command.”

“How many troops altogether?” asked Mayne.

“Ah — a hundred and twenty thousand, thereabouts, Mr. President.” Grey paused for a second or two to collect his spittle. “Give or take a division.”

“How in Jesus’ name,” began Mayne, turning on the general, “can a one-hundred-and-twenty-thousand-man army and their equipment move—” looking back at the map, he eye-balled the distance south from Shenyang to the Yalu “—a hundred and fifty miles over mountainous terrain — in the dead of winter — cross a goddamn river, and take us by surprise?”

“The river’s frozen over, sir.”

“All right then — a hundred and twenty thousand of them crossing a frozen river and taking us by surprise. And our intelligence units didn’t see any of them until I get this ELINT report — until it’s too late? Come on, General.” Mayne’s voice was rising. “Where are all those super-duper movement sensors and infrared nighttime scopes we used in Vietnam? And for which I had to fight Congress?”

The general didn’t think it appropriate to remind the president of the United States that sensors hadn’t stopped General Giap in Vietnam either. Though Grey had to concede the president had a point, he nevertheless felt obliged on behalf of the U.S. Army to explain. “The difference here, Mr. President, is that under the terms of your — our — agreement with Beijing, any overflights by us to drop those sensors on the Yalu’s northern bank would have violated Chinese air space.”

“All right, Jimmy. But what’s wrong with your men’s eyes?” He gave the Yalu the back of his hand, the map stand shaking from the impact. “How the hell do a hundred and twenty thousand Chinese regulars, give or take a division, General — that’d be another thirteen thousand, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How do a hundred and thirty-three thousand men move up and down mountains and get across the Yalu without us seeing a goddamned one of them?”

“Sir — it’s an old Chinese maneuver. They used it on Doug MacArthur. They travel only at night. Hide by day. Anyone moves — they execute them — by bayonet — on the spot. Saves a bullet and there’s not even the noise of a shot we can pick up.”