The Afghan

The U.S. president, who would be hosting the first di

Those people on smaller vessels in the river and along the roads round the harbor watched her go and waved. High above them, behind toughened plate glass, the state and government heads of the eight richest nations in the world waved back. The brilliantly illuminated Statue of Liberty slid by, the islands dropped away and the Queen sedately increased her power. Either side, her two escorting missile cruisers of the U.S. Navy’s Atlantic Fleet took up position several cables away and a

There would be no escorting submarine, for this was not a carrier group, and the submarine was absent for two reasons. No nation possessed the kind of submarine that could evade the missile cruiser’s detect-and-sink capacity, and the Queen was so fast that no submarine could keep up with her. As the lights of Long Island dropped away, First Officer Gund-lach increased the power to optimum cruise. The four Mermaid pods, pounding out 157,000 horsepower between them, could push the Queen to thirty knots, if needed. Normal cruising speed is twenty-five knots, and the escorts had to move to maximum cruise to keep up.

Overhead, the aerial escort appeared: one U.S. Navy EC2 Hawk-eye, with radarscopes that could illuminate the surface of the Atlantic for five hundred miles in any direction around the convoy, and an EA-6B Prowler, capable of jamming any offensive weapons system that might dare to lock on to the convoy and destroying it with HARM missiles.

The air cover would be refueled and replaced at end of shift out of the USA until its mission could be relieved by identical cover coming out of the US.-leased base in the Azores. That, in turn, would continue until it could be replaced by cover out of the UK. Nothing had been unforeseen. The di

Following the example of the American president, the more so as the other delegations had long flights behind them, the diners broke early and retired for the night.

The conference met in full plenum the following morning. The Royal Court Theatre had been transformed to accommodate all eight delegations, with, sitting behind the principals, the small army of minions that each seemed to need. The second night was as the first, save that the host was the British prime minister in the two-hundred-seat Queen’s Grill. Those of less eminence spread themselves through the huge Brita

Foremost among these was the ship’s radar, casting its gaze twenty-five miles in all directions. He could see the blips made by the two cruisers either side of him, and, beyond them, those of other vessels going about their business. He also had at his disposal an Automatic Identification System, or AIS, which would read the transponder of any ship for miles around, and a cross-checking computer based on Lloyd’s records that would identify not just who she was but her known route and cargo, and her radio cha

The Countess of Richmond was not quite motionless. Her engines were set to MIDSHIPS, so that her propellers idled in the water. But there was a four-knot current that gave her just enough “way” to keep her nose into the flow, and that meant toward the west.

The inflatable speedboat was in the water, tethered to her port side with a rope ladder ru

The call came from the cruiser, plunging through the sea six cable lengths to the starboard of the Queen. David Gundlach heard it loud and clear, as did all on the night watch. The cha

Do you read me?”

The voice that came back was slightly distorted by less-than-state-of-the-art radio equipment aboard the old freighter. And the voice had the flat vowels of Lancashire, or maybe Yorkshire.

“Oh, aye, Monterey, Countess ere.”

“You appear to be hove to. State your situation.” “Countess o Richmond. Aving a bit of overheating”-click click-“prop shaft”-static-“repairing as fast as we can.”

There was a brief silence from the bridge of the cruiser. Then…

“Say again, Countess of Richmond. I repeat, say again.” The reply came back, and the accent was thicker than ever. On the bridge of the Queen, the first officer had the blip entering his radar screen slightly south of dead ahead and fifty minutes away. Another display gave all the details of the Countess of Richmond, including confirmation her transponder was genuine and the signal from it accurate. He cut into the radio exchange. “ Monterey, this is Queen Mary 2. Let me try.”

David Gundlach was born and raised in the Wirral County of Cheshire, not fifty miles from Liverpool. The voice from the Countess he put at either Yorkshire or Lancashire, next door to his native Cheshire.