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aircraft carrier is not expensive, it’s free . It’s not the government’s damned money anyway. They are only moving it around.”
    “Any clues yet about our cuts?” Rear Admiral Curran asked gravely.
    “No one’s been specific. But we’ve been put on a kind of unofficial high alert to start cutting back. I’d say the conversions on those four Ohio Class SSBNs will go on hold.”
    Admiral Dickson referred to the program to remove the Trident missiles from the old 16,600-ton strategic missile boats, and turn them into guided missile platforms, each carrying 154 Tomahawks. All four submarines were to be upgraded with Acoustic Rapid COTS insertion sonar.
    “I wouldn’t be sure we’ll keep the green light for two more Nimitz Class carriers either. CVN 77 and 78 will probably get canceled.”
    “Jesus,” said the Commander of the Atlantic Fleet, Vice Adm. Brian Ingram. “That would be bad. Some of the big guys are just about getting to the end of their tether. We need new, and we need it now—how about the Arleigh Burke destroyer program?”
    “Well, as you know, we’re supposed to get thirty-six and we only have twenty-four. I’m just not sure about the final twelve.”
    “Jeez. I’d just hate to see us run short of missile ships…And I’d sure feel better about everything if the Big Man was still in the White House.”
    By anyone’s standards, this was a very worried group of U.S. Navy Execs and the Pentagon boss. Not worried for themselves, but for the future ability of United States warships to continue safeguarding the world’s oceans. Whenever necessary.
    And the Big Man was far away.
     
    11.30 A.M., Tuesday, January 27
    Tenerife, Canary Islands.
     
    Mrs. Arnold Morgan had spent the last hour of her honeymoon on her own. Relaxed on a lounge by the lower pool at the imperious Gran Hotel Bahia del Duque, way down on the southern tip of the island, she was reading quietly.
    Behind her, a detail of two security agents was playing cards, and at infrequent intervals a waiter appeared to inquire if she needed more orange juice or coffee. About 100 feet above stood her new husband. Ensconced in an observatory at the top of a tower, he was staring out to sea through a telescope many times more powerful than most people will ever have used.
    The Canaries, with their pure Atlantic skies, attracted astronomers from all over the world, and giant telescopes have been built in observatories on every one of the seven islands. The instrument at Gran Hotel Bahia del Duque was constructed mostly with astronomers in mind, and it was generally focused on the heavens. Today, however, it looked out to the surface of the deep blue waters to the south of the Costa Adeje, where the seabed swiftly shelves down to depths of almost a mile.
    Kathy wished he’d come make his way back down and talk to her. Isolation did not suit the former goddess of the West Wing. She slipped back into her book, occasionally gazing at the magnificent surroundings of the five-star Gran Hotel, a sprawling waterside complex, half-Venetian, half-Victorian in design, set in a semitropical botanical garden. Her new husband adored such grandeur and he had sweetly instructed her, with his usual old world charm, to locate a place and book them in for two weeks—“ Listen, Kathy, just try to stop boring me sideways with goddamned hotel literature, and get us into some goddamned place, Casa Luxurious. And hasta la vista ,” he added, handing her a credit card. “That’s Spanish for on the double.”
    He was, of course, utterly beyond redemption and Kathy forgave him only because he treated everyone like that. As his secretary for six years in the White House, she had seen diplomats from the world’s most powerful countries quake before his onslaught. ’Specially the Chinese and, almost as often, the Russians.

    THE CANARY ISLANDS, SEVEN VOLCANIC RISES OFF THE COAST OF NORTH AFRICA
    The whole idea of this tiny cluster of Spanish Islands, set in the