The death of best-selling author Tom Clancy on Tuesday came as a very unsettling surprise to Doug Littlejohns, the former British Royal Navy nuclear attack submarine captain Clancy hired in 1996 to help launch and then command Red Storm Entertainment in Cary.

“I am shocked by the loss of a very good friend of whom I will treasure memories ranging from escorting him around HMS Victory to sharing a tank with him at the National Training Center to counting his many golf shots to being his best man in 1999 and setting up Red Storm with him and a bunch of really good people,” Littlejohns told WRALTechWire.

Littlejohns lived in Cary for several years after moving to the U.S. from the U.K. After Red Storm was sold to Ubisoft, he returned to his homeland. However, Littlejohns and his wife, Debs, often return to the U.S. and maintain a second home in Pinehurst. Littlejohns recently met up with many of his former Red Storm colleagues in the Triangle to remember and celebrate a company that rose quickly to international prominence.

In a series of detailed interviews several years ago for Metro Magazine in Raleigh, Littlejohns recounted how he and Clancy first came to know each other then became fast friends and business colleagues. They became so close, in fact, that Clancy asked Littlejohns to be his best man at his second marriage. 

A decorated Royal Navy officer in the Cold War who once took Clancy aboard Lord Nelson’s flagship HMS Victory, Littlejohns was – like most everyone else – introduced to Clancy through Clancy’s first of many memorable books, “The Hunt for the Red October.” 

In an interview in 1996, Clancy told me that he hired Littlejohns to run Red Storm based on the relationship they had developed over the years and his respect for Littlejohns as a leader. he was the only man for the job, in Clancy’s view. Clancy made a similar comment to Forbes three years later.

Here’s an excerpt from that Metro interview recounting how the two men met: 

“My Good Friend”

When Clancy remarried … he asked Littlejohns to serve as best man. Littlejohns was surprised and humbled by the request, but standing at Clancy’s side symbolizes the depth and breadth of their relationship. He calls Clancy “Tom” and refers to him warmly as “my good friend.”

The budding friendship that led to Clancy’s choice of Littlejohns to run Red Storm dates back to 1984 and the height of the Cold War. Littlejohns had recently ended his tenure as captain of the HMS Sceptre when Clancy’s blockbuster first book, Hunt for Red October, hit the shelves. Like millions of others around the globe, Littlejohns was up all night reading the book, fascinated by the stunning insider’s detail and plot put together by a then-insurance salesman who wanted to join the military but had been turned down because of poor eye sight.

Littlejohns was stunned, saying Clancy disclosed information “that if I had talked about would have put me in the Tower of London.” He couldn’t wait to meet “this chap” and got the chance over dinner with other officers and Clancy in Virginia. But the captain didn’t just kiss Clancy’s hand when they met; he was candid enough to point out some errors Clancy had made. And when Clancy offered up some ideas about his second book (Red Storm Rising, from which the company gets its name) Littlejohns offered up a “No!” to his request.

Clancy reacted well to the criticism, however, and soon asked Littlejohns for some advice. He later created “Doug Little” as a character in Red Storm and the two struck up a relationship which deepened over the years. While

Clancy went on to write best-seller after best-seller, Littlejohns went back to sea and served out the Cold War in numerous posts. But the two always stayed in touch and became struggling golf partners.

“Tom and I are quick decision makers. We decided we liked each other, and we worked at staying in touch,” Littlejohns explained. “It was a genuine friendship growth rather than a ‘Right, see you every three years’ sort of thing.”

By 1995, after Littlejohns retired from the Royal Navy, Clancy was working with a friend in Raleigh (David Smith, founder of VIRTUS Corporation) to create a submarine warfare game for PCs called SSN. The acronym stands for nuclear attack submarine, and who better to help Clancy and Smith design the game than Littlejohns?

The game and an accompanying book by Clancy were smash hits in 1996. But before those hit the market, Clancy already was thinking about creating a game company of his own. Littlejohns, then a rapidly rising executive with a London-based company, was his choice to run it.

“Doug is a leader, not a manager,” Clancy told Forbes ASAP in 1999. “He was my only real choice.”

To Littlejohns, the decision to end his budding business career, steady salary, and stock options was hard enough. To move away from his two daughters and son and leave his homeland was not an easy choice for the Commodore.

“It took a long time,” Littlejohns recalled. “I suggested to Tom that if he wanted to get serious about games he needed a separate games company. In January of ’96, he rang me up, said he was taking my advice, was spinning off a games company and wanted me to run it. This was a bolt out of the blue. I didn’t even play computer games.”

(The interview story can be read online.)