Series: War Plans

The admi­ral was choos­ing his words very delib­er­ate­ly as he addressed the com­man­ders and cap­tains seat­ed and stand­ing around the room.  The admi­ral’s office was not designed to accom­mo­date so many and they were squeezed in as com­fort­ably as pos­si­ble.  Extra chairs had been gath­ered from oth­er near­by offices to pro­vide seat­ing for the over­flow crowd.

In Washington, on the top floor of a non­de­script four-sto­ry brick build­ing about a quar­ter-mile from the nation’s Capitol build­ing, crypt­an­a­lysts were busy decod­ing incom­ing mes­sages from around the world.  The work of these spe­cial­ists had recent­ly been inten­si­fied due to the amount of mes­sag­ing being inter­cept­ed and work was going on day-round on a

“Walt, just check­ing in to see how your prepa­ra­tions are going.” The admi­ral was speak­ing on the phone with his Army coun­ter­part, a call which had just been con­nect­ed by the admi­ral’s adju­tant, Lieutenant Commander Lowe. “I think every­thing’s as ready as it can be right now, Ed, con­sid­er­ing what we know at this point.  I’ve

The long-range patrol plane was in the process of mak­ing its out­er loop and begin­ning the leg that would take it back to base. 

These patrols were, typ­i­cal­ly, just long and bor­ing, with noth­ing but the vast expanse of ocean to see, and today was no different...

“Well, Commander, it’s about to hit the fan.  What we have to do is to make sure the fan is run­ning and ready to scat­ter the debris.” The admi­ral was speak­ing to his adju­tant, Commander Lowe. “At least I think we’re ready.  Here’s what I want you to do.  Send this mes­sage in the clear. 

Saturdays around mil­i­tary bases are usu­al­ly busy with ser­vice per­son­nel hur­ry­ing away from those bases to find some rest and relax­ation in near­by towns or cities, relieved from their duties for a cou­ple of days, at least those able to get week­end passes.

A huge amount of activ­i­ty had already tak­en place in the hours before noon that Saturday. And now, just before noon, the FBI, backed up by a large cadre of local police as well as numer­ous ser­vice per­son­nel from both the Army and Navy, were force­ful­ly enter­ing the embassy. Power to the embassy had been

FBI agent Howard Silby hat­ed this duty.  Watching over a for­eign embassy was, well, for­eign.  He did­n’t feel that the laws of the U.S. real­ly allowed a fed­er­al agency to keep watch over a for­eign gov­ern­ment on a day-to-day basis by main­tain­ing a con­stant stake­out of their embassies.

Oh, of course he knew that the gov­ern­ment spied on embassies, and read their cod­ed mail when pos­si­ble, but all gov­ern­ments did that.  It was routine.