Power Play (51 page)

And Ireland was neutral. That nation never took sides in two world wars. She would assist no one in the grim art of international warfare. Except for her cousins in North America. Because, in the end, the Emerald Isle, with a million blood ties, would refuse the United States nothing.

 

Admiral Rankov could contain himself no longer. He picked up the telephone and asked to be put through to his opposite number in the Pentagon.

Admiral Mark Bradfield came on the line immediately, not with the old informality of Admiral Morgan and the tirade of insults that usually accompanied such calls, but with a polite, “Good afternoon, Admiral. What a nice surprise.”

Vitaly would almost have preferred an Arnold Morgan beration for Russia’s “junkyard navy” than listen to this obvious American smoothy. But he pressed ahead anyway. “Admiral, a week ago we lost a freighter in the middle of the North Atlantic. I wondered if any of your patrol ships may have seen anything of her. She was a five-thousand-ton vessel, dark-blue roll-on, roll-off, vanished without a trace.”

“Can’t say I’ve heard anything,” replied Bradfield. “But I don’t think we had much in the North Atlantic this month. Certainly not surface ships.”

Rankov recognized this as one of the two or three biggest lies ever told. The US Navy
never
dropped its guard.

“Perhaps you could check for us?” he replied. “We think the accident happened on the fifty-fifth parallel, around 14 West.”

“Certainly,” said Mark Bradfield. “Be glad to. Hold on for one minute. I’ll be right back.”

Admiral Rankov waited.

When the US Navy’s CNO finally returned, his answer was as predicted. “As I thought, Admiral,” he said, “we had nothing in the North Atlantic that week.”

“Not even a submarine?” asked Vitaly.

“Not really. Only the USS
Cheyenne,
and she was a couple of thousand miles north, close to the ice cap, on a scientific exploration.”

Vitaly inwardly shuddered. They had not fed him just a pack of lies. They’d laced it with a truth they did not have to reveal, confirming the complete honesty and goodwill of Uncle Sam.

“Thank you, Admiral,” said Rankov, putting down the telephone. His polished jackboots clicked on the marble floor of his grandiose office as he walked out muttering, “I just hope they understand, I know what they did. I absolutely know. And I shouldn’t be surprised if that bastard Morgan was involved, retirement or no fucking retirement.”

 

The financial arrangement between Ireland and the United States worked out extremely well for both countries. The US Navy was more than happy with the new base on Donegal Bay, for what it believed was a reasonable cost, and the place thrived as soon as it was completed.

American commanding officers came in regularly and regarded the advent of a home port on the eastern side of the Atlantic as pure luxury, instead of the thirty-five-hundred-mile slog back to Norfolk, Virginia, often in rough weather.

The removal of 50 percent of Ireland’s national debt was an enormous boost to the economy. Almost immediately, Ireland’s fortunes improved, as American industry and finance kicked in, bringing prosperity to many places, especially Donegal.

The gross national product improved. Debts were paid. Ireland voted overwhelmingly to adopt the US dollar instead of the euro. The government, under the shrewd and affable Neil McGrath, ensured that all of Irish industry and agriculture took advantage of the opportunities on the far side of the Atlantic, now that trading tariffs into the United States were zero.

The proposition that Admiral Morgan had suggested to the PM nearly three years ago in Phoenix Park had proved tempting in the extreme, month after month, as the US connection seemed always to open the doors to the sunny side of the street.

Neil McGrath’s personal popularity was a key ingredient. He was from a wealthy family, substantial in his own right, universally admired for not being in politics for personal gain, a state of grace not always adhered to by politicians of any nation.

He took his government with him on almost any major issue. And his view was well known, that Ireland was so much safer and wealthier by remaining firmly in the American camp, rather than with struggling European economies with massive welfare programs and very few resources.

Today, a spring afternoon more than two years after the unspoken events of April 10, 2019, Admiral Morgan and Prime Minister McGrath had lunched at the Shelbourne Hotel, and were strolling companionably back along Kildare Street toward Leinster House, home of the Irish National Parliament.

Arnold still loved his home in Clonakilty, and Neil McGrath and his wife were regular visitors. It was an easy and warm relationship between an Irish politician and a US Naval commander, both of whom wished only the best for their respective countries.

McGrath loved America’s willing generosity to Ireland. And Arnold Morgan was gratified to see American financiers hauling the Emerald Isle ever closer to a debt-free economy, like Switzerland.

The place was running at a profit, not least because the iron-souled austerity measures of earlier years had been obeyed and carried out stoically, by a people to whom relentless hardship was an ever-present memory.

Ireland was surely at the dawn of a new era. She was in close partnership with her oldest and truest ally, the bighearted powerhouse across the water, which, not so long ago, had stepped up and offered the hand of friendship . . . a safe and welcoming haven, and rescue, for this tearful, dying nation from the cruelest of famines.

As they turned into the great Dublin mansion of Leinster House, the American admiral glanced up, as he always did these past few weeks. He sharply saluted the joyous sight of Old Glory, fluttering boldly above the Irish Parliament . . . the Stars and Stripes, for the fifty-first state.

Copyright © 2012 by Patrick Robinson

 

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