Santorini

1

An overhead broadcaster on the bridge of the frigate Ariadne crackled into life, a bell rang twice and then O’Rourke’s voice came through, calm, modulated, precise and unmistakably Irish. O’Rourke was commonly referred to as the weatherman, which he wasn’t at all.

‘Just picked up an odd-looking customer. Forty miles out, bearing 222.’

Talbot pressed the reply button. ‘The skies above us, Chief, are hotching with odd-looking customers. At least six airlines criss-cross this patch of the Aegean. NATO planes, as you know better than all of us, are all around us. And those pesky fighter-bombers and fighters from the pesky Sixth Fleet bloweth where the wind listeth. Me, I think they’re lost half the time.’

‘Ah! But this is a very odd odd-looking lad.’ O’Rourke’s voice was unruffled as ever, unmoved by the less than flattering reference to the Sixth Fleet, from which he was on temporary loan. ‘No trans-Aegean airline uses the flight path this plane is on. There are no NATO planes in this particular sector on my display screen. And the Americans would have let us know. A very courteous lot, Captain. The Sixth Fleet, I mean.’

‘True, true.’ The Sixth Fleet, Talbot was aware, would have informed him of the presence of any of their aircraft in his vicinity, not from courtesy but because regulations demanded it, a fact of which O’Rourke was as well aware as he was. O’Rourke was a doughty defender of his home fleet. ‘That all you have on this lad?’

‘No. Two things. This plane is on a due southwest to north-east course. I have no record, no information of any plane that could be following this course. Secondly, I’m pretty sure it’s a big plane. We should see in about four minutes – his course is on a direct intersection with ours.’

‘The size is important, Chief? Lots of big planes around.’

‘Not at 43,000 feet, sir, which is what this one is. Only a Concorde does that and we know there are no Concordes about. Military job, I would guess.’

‘Of unknown origin. A bandit? Could be. Keep an eye on him.’ Talbot looked around and caught the eye of his second-in-command, Lieutenant-Commander Van Gelder. Van Gelder was short, very broad, deeply tanned, flaxen-haired and seemed to find life a source of constant amusement. He was smiling now as he approached the captain.

‘Consider it done, sir. The spy-glass and a photo for your family album?’

‘That’s it. Thank you.’ The Ariadne carried an immense and, to the uninitiated, quite bewildering variety of looking and listening instruments that may well have been unmatched by any naval ship afloat. Among those instruments were what Van Gelder had referred to as the spy-glass. This was a combined telescope and camera, invented and built by the French, of the type used by spy satellites in orbit and which was capable, under ideal atmospheric circumstances, of locating and photographing a white plate from an altitude of 250 miles. The focal length of the telescope was almost infinitely adjustable: in this case Van Gelder would probably use a one in a hundred resolution, which would have the optical effect of bringing the intruder – if intruder it was – to an apparent altitude of four hundred feet. In the cloudless July skies of the Cyclades this presented no problem at all.

Van Gelder had just left the bridge when another loudspeaker came to life, the repeated double buzzer identifying it as the radio-room. The helmsman, Leading Seaman Harrison, leaned forward and made the appropriate switch.

‘I have an SOS. I think – repeat think – vessel’s position is just south of Thera. All I have. Very garbled, certainly not a trained operator. Just keeps repeating “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday”.’ Myers, the radio operator on duty, sounded annoyed: every radio operator, the tone of his voice said, should be as expert and efficient as he was. ‘Wait a minute, though.’ There was a pause, then Myers came on again. ‘Sinking, he says. Four times he said he was sinking.’

Talbot said: ‘That all?’

‘That’s all, sir. He’s gone off the air.’

‘Well, just keep listening on the distress frequency, Harrison, 090 or near enough. Can’t be more than ten, twelve miles away.’ He reached for the engine control and turned it up to full power. The Ariadne, in the modern fashion, had dual engine-room and bridge controls. The engine-room had customarily only one rating, a leading stoker, on watch, and this only because custom dictated it, not because necessity demanded it. The lone watchman might, just possibly, be wandering around with an oil-can in hand but more probably was immersed in one of the lurid magazines with which what was called the engine-room library was so liberally stocked. The Ariadne’s chief engineer, Lieutenant McCafferty, rarely ventured near his own domain. A first-class engineer, McCafferty claimed he was allergic to diesel fumes and treated with a knowing disdain the frequently repeated observation that, because of the engine-room’s highly efficient extractor fans, it was virtually impossible for anyone to detect the smell of diesel. He was to be found that afternoon, as he was most afternoons, seated in a deckchair aft and immersed in his favourite form of relaxation, the reading of detective novels heavily laced with romance of the more dubious kind.

The distant sound of the diesels deepened – the Ariadne was capable of a very respectable 35 knots – and the bridge began to vibrate quite noticeably. Talbot reached for a phone and got through to Van Gelder.

‘We’ve picked up a distress signal. Ten, twelve miles away. Let me know when you locate this bandit and I’ll cut the engines.’ The spy-glass, though splendidly gimballed to deal with the worst vagaries of pitching and rolling, was quite incapable of coping with even the mildest vibration which, more often than not, produced a very fuzzy photograph indeed.

Talbot moved out on to the port wing to join the lieutenant who stood there, a tall, thin young man with fair hair, thick pebbled glasses and a permanently lugubrious expression.

‘Well, Jimmy, how do you fancy this? A maybe bandit and a sinking vessel at the same time. Should relieve the tedium of a long hot summer’s afternoon, don’t you think?’

The lieutenant looked at him without enthusiasm. Lieutenant the Lord James Denholm – Talbot called him ‘Jimmy’ for brevity’s sake – seldom waxed enthusiastic about anything.

‘I don’t fancy it at all, Captain.’ Denholm waved a languid hand. ‘Disturbs the even tenor of my ways.’

Talbot smiled. Denholm was surrounded by an almost palpable aura of aristocratic exhaustion that had disturbed and irritated Talbot in the early stage of their acquaintanceship, a feeling that had lasted for no more than half an hour. Denholm was totally unfitted to be a naval officer of any kind and his highly defective eyesight should have led to his automatic disbarment from any navy in the world. But Denholm was aboard the Ariadne not because of his many connections with the highest echelons of society – heir to an earldom, his blood was indisputably the bluest of the blue – but because, without question, he was the right man in the right place. The holder of three scientific degrees – from Oxford, UCLA and MIT, all summa cum laude – in electrical engineering and electronics, Denholm was as close to being an electronics wizard as any man could ever hope to be. Not that Denholm would have claimed to be anything of what he would have said to be the ridiculous kind. Despite his lineage and academic qualifications, Denholm was modest and retiring to a fault. This reticence extended even to the making of protests which was why, despite his feeble objections – he had been under no compulsion to go – he had been dragooned into the Navy in the first place.

He said to Talbot: ‘This bandit, Captain – if it is a bandit – what do you intend to do about it?’

‘I don’t intend to do anything about it.’

‘But if he is a bandit – well, then, he’s spying, isn’t he?’

‘Of course.’

‘Well, then–’

‘What do you expect me to do, Jimmy? Bring him down? Or are you itching to try out this experimental laser gun you have with you?’

‘Heaven forfend.’ Denholm was genuinely horrified. ‘I’ve never fired a gun in anger in my life. Correction. I’ve never even fired a gun.’

‘If I wanted to bring him down a teeny-weeny heat-seeking missile would do the job very effectively. But we don’t do things like that. We’re civilized. Besides, we don’t provoke international incidents. An unwritten law.’

‘Sounds a very funny law to me.’

‘Not at all. When the United States or NATO play war games, as we are doing now, the Soviets track us very closely indeed, whether on land, sea or air. We don’t complain. We can’t. When they’re playing their game we do exactly the same to them. Can, admittedly, have its awkward moments. Not so long ago, when the US Navy were carrying out exercises in the Sea of Japan an American destroyer banged into, and quite severely damaged, a Russian submarine which was monitoring things a little too closely.’

‘And that didn’t cause what you’ve just called an international incident?’

‘Certainly not. Nobody’s fault. Mutual apologies between the two captains and the Russian was towed to a safe port by another Russian warship. Vladivostok, I believe it was.’ Talbot turned his head. ‘Excuse me. That’s the radio-room call-up.’

‘Myers again,’ the speaker said. ‘Delos. Name of the sinking vessel. Very brief message – explosion, on fire, sinking fast.’

‘Keep listening,’ Talbot said. He looked at the helmsman who already had a pair of binoculars to his eyes. ‘You have it, Harrison?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Harrison handed over the binoculars and twitched the wheel to port. ‘Fire off the port bow.’

Talbot picked it up immediately, a thin black column of smoke rising vertically, unwaveringly, into the blue and windless sky. He was just lowering his glasses when the bell rang twice again. It was O’Rourke, the weatherman, or, more officially, the senior long-range radar operator.

‘Lost him, I’m afraid. The bandit, I mean. I was looking at the vectors on either side of him to see if he had any friends and when I came back he was gone.’

‘Any ideas, Chief?’

‘Well…’ O’Rourke sounded doubtful. ‘He could have exploded but I doubt it.’

‘So do I. We’ve had the spy-glass trained on his approach bearing and they’d have picked up an explosion for sure.’

‘Then he must have gone into a steep dive. A very steep dive. God knows why. I’ll find him.’ The speaker clicked off.

Almost at once a telephone rang again. It was Van Gelder.

‘222, sir. Smoke. Plane. Could be the bandit.’

‘Almost certainly is. The weatherman’s just lost it off the long-range radar screen. Probably a waste of time but try to get that photograph anyway.’

He moved out on to the starboard wing and trained his glasses over the starboard quarter. He picked it up immediately, a heavy dark plume of smoke with, he thought, a glow of red at its centre. It was still quite high, at an altitude of four or five thousand feet. He didn’t pause to check how deeply the plane was diving or whether or not it actually was on fire. He moved quickly back into the bridge and picked up a phone.

‘Sub-Lieutenant Cousteau. Quickly.’ A brief pause. ‘Henri? Captain. Emergency. Have the launch and the lifeboat slung outboard. Crews to stand by to lower. Then report to the bridge.’ He rang down to the engine-room for Slow Ahead then said to Harrison: ‘Hard a-port. Steer north.’

Denholm, who had moved out on to the starboard wing, returned, lowering his binoculars.

‘Well, even I can see that plane. Not a plane, rather a huge streamer of smoke. Could that have been the bandit, sir – if it was a bandit?’

‘Must have been.’

Denholm said, tentatively: ‘I don’t care much for his line of approach, sir.’

‘I don’t care much for it myself, Lieutenant, especially if it’s a military plane and even more especially if it’s carrying bombs of any sort. If you look, you’ll see that we’re getting out of its way.’

‘Ah. Evasive action.’ Denholm hesitated, then said doubtfully: ‘Well, as long as he doesn’t alter course.’

‘Dead men don’t alter courses.’

‘That they don’t.’ Van Gelder had just returned to the bridge. ‘And the man or the men behind the controls of that plane are surely dead. No point in my staying there, sir – Gibson’s better with the spy-glass camera than I am and he’s very busy with it. We’ll have plenty of photographs to show you but I doubt whether we’ll be able to learn very much from them.’

‘As bad as that? You weren’t able to establish anything?’

‘Very little, I’m afraid. I did see the outer engine on the port wing. So it’s a four-engined jet. Civil or military, I’ve no idea.’

‘A moment, please.’ Talbot moved out on the port wing, looked aft, saw that the blazing plane – there was no mistaking the flames now – was due astern, at less than half the height and distance than when he had first seen it, returned to the bridge, told Harrison to steer due north, then turned again to Van Gelder.

‘That was all you could establish?’

‘About. Except that the fire is definitely located in the nose cone, which would rule out any engine explosion. It couldn’t have been hit by a missile because we know there are no missile-carrying planes around – even if there were, a heat-seeking missile, the only type that could nail it at that altitude, would have gone for the engines, not the nose cone. It could only have been an up-front internal explosion.’

Talbot nodded, reached for a phone, asked the exchange for the sick bay and was through immediately.

‘Doctor? Would you detail an SBA – with first-aid kit – to stand by the lifeboat.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Sorry, no time to explain. Come on up to the bridge.’ He looked aft through the starboard wing doorway, turned and took the wheel from the helmsman. ‘Take a look, Harrison. A good look.’

Harrison moved out on the starboard wing, had his good look – it took him only a few seconds – returned and took the wheel again.

‘Awful.’ He shook his head. ‘They’re finished, sir, aren’t they?’

‘So I would have thought.’

‘They’re going to miss us by at least a quarter mile. Maybe a half.’ Harrison took another quick look through the doorway. ‘This angle of descent – they should land – rather, hit the sea – a mile, mile and a half ahead. Unless by some fluke they carry on and hit the island. That would be curtains, sir.’

‘It would indeed.’ Talbot looked ahead through the for’ard screens. Thera Island was some four miles distant with Cape Akrotiri lying directly to the north and Mount Elias, the highest point of the island – it was close on 2000 feet – to the north-east. Between them, but about five miles further distant, a tenuous column of bluish smoke, hardly visible against a cloudless sky, hung lazily in the air. This marked the site of Thira Village, the only settlement of any size on the island. ‘But the damage would be limited to the plane. The south-west of the island is barren. I don’t think anyone lives there.’

‘What are we going to do, sir? Stop over the point where it goes down?’

‘Something like that. You can handle it yourself. Or maybe another quarter or half mile further on along the line he was taking. Have to wait and see. Fact is, Harrison, I know no more about it than you do. It may disintegrate on impact or, if it survives that, it may carry on some distance under water. Not for far, I should think – not if its nose has gone. Number One–’ this to Van Gelder ‘–what depths do we have here?’

‘I know the five fathom mark is about half a mile offshore along the south of the island. Beyond that, it shelves pretty steeply. I’ll have to check in the chart-room. At the moment I’d guess we’re in two to three hundred fathoms. A sonar check, sir?’

‘Please.’ Van Gelder left, brushing by Sub-Lieutenant Cousteau as he did. Cousteau, barely in his twenties, was a happy-go-lucky youngster, always eager and willing and a more than competent seaman. Talbot beckoned him out on to the starboard wing.

‘Have you seen it, Henri?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Cousteau’s normal cheerfulness was in marked abeyance. He gazed in unwilling fascination at the blazing, smoking plane, now directly abeam and at an altitude of under a thousand feet. ‘What a damnable, awful thing.’

‘Aye, it’s not nice.’ They had been joined by Surgeon Lieutenant-Commander Andrew Grierson. Grierson was dressed in white shorts and a flowing multi-coloured Hawaiian shirt which he doubtless regarded as the correct dress of the day for the summer Aegean. ‘So this is why you wanted Moss and his first-aid box.’ Moss was the Leading Sick Bay Attendant. ‘I’m thinking maybe I should be going myself.’ Grierson was a West Highland Scot, as was immediately evident from his accent, an accent which he never attempted to conceal for the excellent reason that he saw no earthly reason why he ever should. ‘If there are any survivors, which I consider bloody unlikely, I know something about decompression problems which Moss doesn’t.’

Talbot was conscious of the increased vibration beneath his feet. Harrison had increased speed and was edging a little to the east. Talbot didn’t even give it a second thought: his faith in his senior quartermaster was complete.

‘Sorry, Doctor, but I have more important things for you to do.’ He pointed to the east. ‘Look under the trail of smoke to the plane’s left.’

‘I see it. I should have seen it before. Somebody sinking, for a fiver.’

‘Indeed. Something called the Delos, a private yacht, I should imagine, and, as you say, sinking. Explosion and on fire. Pretty heavily on fire, too, I would think. Burns, injuries.’

‘We live in troubled times,’ Grierson said. Grierson, in fact, lived a singularly carefree and untroubled existence but Talbot thought it was hardly the time to point this out to him.

‘The plane’s silent, sir,’ Cousteau said. ‘The engines have been shut off.’

‘Survivors, you think? I’m afraid not. The explosion may have destroyed the controls in which case, I imagine, the engines shut off automatically.’

‘Disintegrate or dive?’ Grierson said. ‘Daft question. We’ll know all too soon.’

Van Gelder joined them. ‘I make it eighty fathoms here, sir. Sonar says seventy. They’re probably right. Doesn’t matter, it’s shallowing anyway.’

Talbot nodded and said nothing. Nobody said anything, nobody felt like saying anything. The plane, or the source of the dense column of smoke, was now less than a hundred feet above the water. Suddenly, the source of the smoke and flame dipped and then was abruptly extinguished. Even then they failed to catch a glimpse of the plane, it had been immediately engulfed in a fifty-foot-high curtain of water and spray. There was no sound of impact and certainly no disintegration for when the water and the spray cleared away there was only the empty sea and curiously small waves, little more than ripples, radiating outwards from the point of impact.

Talbot touched Cousteau on the arm. ‘Your cue, Henri. How’s the whaler’s radio?’

‘Tested yesterday, sir. Okay.’

‘If you find anything, anybody, let us know. I have a feeling you won’t need that radio. When we stop, lower away then keep circling around. We should be back in half an hour or so.’ Cousteau left and Talbot turned to Van Gelder. ‘When we stop, tell sonar I want the exact depth.’

Five minutes later the whaler was in the water and moving away from the side of the Ariadne, Talbot rang for full power and headed east.

Van Gelder hung up a phone. ‘Thirty fathoms, sonar says. Give or take a fathom.’

‘Thanks. Doctor?’

‘Hundred and eighty feet,’ Grierson said. ‘I don’t even have to rub my chin over that one. The answer is no. Even if anyone could escape from the fuselage – which I think would be impossible in the first place – they’d die soon after surfacing. Diver’s bends. Burst lungs. They wouldn’t know that they’d have to breathe out all the way up. A trained, fit submariner, possibly with breathing apparatus, might do it. There would be no fit, trained submariners aboard that plane. Question’s academic, anyway. I agree with you, Captain. The only men aboard that plane are dead men.’

Talbot nodded and reached for a phone.

‘Myers? Signal to General Carson. Unidentified four-engined plane crashed in sea two miles south of Cape Akrotiri, Thera Island. 1415 hours. Impossible to determine whether military or civilian. First located altitude 43,000 feet. Apparent cause internal explosion. No further details available at present. No NATO planes reported in vicinity. Have you any information? Sylvester. Send Code B.’

‘Wilco, sir. Where do I send it?’

‘Rome. Wherever he is he’ll have it two minutes later.’

Grierson said: ‘Well, yes, if anyone knows he should.’ Carson was the C-in-C Southern European NATO. He lifted his binoculars and looked at the vertical column of smoke, now no more than four miles to the east. ‘A yacht, as you say, and making quite a bonfire. If there’s anyone still aboard, they’re going to be very warm indeed. Are you going alongside, Captain?’

‘Alongside.’ Talbot looked at Denholm. ‘What’s your estimate of the value of the electronic gear we have aboard?’

‘Twenty million. Maybe twenty-five. A lot, anyway.’

‘There’s your answer, Doctor. That thing’s gone bang once already. It can go bang once again. I am not going alongside. You are. In the launch. That’s expendable. The Ariadne’s not.’

‘Well, thank you very much. And what intrepid soul–’

‘I’m sure Number One here will be delighted to ferry you across.’

‘Ah. Number One, have your men wear overalls, gloves and flash-masks. Injuries from burning diesel can be very unpleasant indeed. And you. I go to prepare myself for self-immolation.’

‘And don’t forget your life-belts.’

Grierson didn’t deign to answer.

They had halved the remaining distance to the burning yacht when Talbot got through to the radio-room again.

‘Message dispatched?’

‘Dispatched and acknowledged.’

‘Anything more from the Delos?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Delos,’ Denholm said. ‘That’s about eighty miles north of here. Alas, the Cyclades will never be the same for me again.’ Denholm sighed. Electronics specialist or not, he regarded himself primarily as a classicist and, indeed, he was totally fluent in reading and writing both Latin and Greek. He was deeply immersed in their ancient cultures as the considerable library in his cabin bore testimony. He was also much given to quotations and he quoted now.

‘The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece! Where burning Sappho loved and sung, Where grew the arts of war and peace, Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung, Eternal summer–’

‘Your point is taken, Lieutenant,’ Talbot said. ‘We’ll cry tomorrow. In the meantime, let us address ourselves to the problem of those poor souls on the fo’c’sle. I count five of them.’

‘So do I.’ Denholm lowered his glasses. ‘What’s all the frantic waving for? Surely to God they can’t imagine we haven’t seen them?’

‘They’ve seen us all right. Relief, Lieutenant. Expectation of rescue. But there’s more to it than that. A certain urgency in their waving. A primitive form of semaphoring. What they’re saying is “get us the hell out of here and be quick about it”.’

‘Maybe they’re expecting another explosion?’

‘Could be that. Harrison, I want to come to a stop on their starboard beam. At, you understand, a prudent distance.’

‘A hundred yards, sir?’

‘Fine.’

The Delos was – or had been – a rather splendid yacht. A streamlined eighty-footer, it was obvious that it had been, until very, very recently, a dazzling white. Now, because of a combination of smoke and diesel oil, it was mainly black. A rather elaborate superstructure consisted of a bridge, saloon, a dining-room and what may or may not have been a galley. The still dense smoke and flames rising six feet above the poop deck indicated the source of the fire – almost certainly the engine-room. Just aft of the fire a small motorboat was still secured to its davits: it wasn’t difficult to guess that either the explosion or the fire had rendered it inoperable.

Talbot said: ‘Rather odd, don’t you think, Lieutenant?’

‘Odd?’ Denholm said carefully.

‘Yes. You can see that the flames are dying away. One would have thought that would reduce the danger of further explosion.’ Talbot moved out on the port wing. ‘And you will have observed that the water level is almost up to the deck.’

‘I can see she’s sinking.’

‘Indeed. If you were aboard a vessel that was either going to go up or drag you down when it sank, what would your natural reaction be?’

‘To be elsewhere, sir. But I can see that their motorboat has been damaged.’

‘Agreed. But a craft that size would carry alternative life-saving equipment. If not a Carley float, then certainly an inflatable rubber dinghy. And any prudent owner would carry a sufficiency of life-belts and life-jackets for the passengers and crew. I can even see two life-belts in front of the bridge. But they haven’t done the obvious thing and abandoned ship. I wonder why.’

‘I’ve no idea, sir. But it is damned odd.’

‘When we’ve rescued those distressed mariners and brought them aboard, you, Jimmy, will have forgotten how to speak Greek.’

‘But I will not have forgotten how to listen in Greek?’

‘Precisely.’

‘Commander Talbot, you have a devious and suspicious mind.’

‘It goes with the job, Jimmy. It goes with the job.’

Harrison brought the Ariadne to a stop off the starboard beam of the Delos at the agreed hundred yards distance. Van Gelder was away at once and was very quickly alongside the fo’c’sle of the Delos. Two boat-hooks around the guard-rail stanchions held them in position. As the launch and the bows of the sinking yacht were now almost level it took only a few seconds to transfer the six survivors – another had joined the group of five that Talbot had seen – aboard the launch. They were, indeed, a sorry and sadly bedraggled lot, so covered in diesel and smoke that it was quite impossible to discriminate among them on the basis of age, sex or nationality.

Van Gelder said: ‘Any of you here speak English?’

‘We all do.’ The speaker was short and stocky and that was all that could be said of him in the way of description. ‘Some of us just a little. But enough.’ The voice was heavily accented but readily understood. Van Gelder looked at Grierson.

‘Any of you injured, any of you burnt?’ Grierson said. All shook their heads or mumbled a negative. ‘Nothing here for me, Number One. Hot showers, detergents, soap. Not to mention a change of clothing.’

‘Who’s in charge here?’ Van Gelder asked.

‘I am.’ It was the same man.

‘Anybody left aboard?’

‘Three men, I’m afraid. They won’t be coming with us.’

‘You mean they’re dead?’ The man nodded. ‘I’ll check.’

‘No, no!’ His oil-soaked hand gripped Van Gelder’s arm. ‘It is too dangerous, far too dangerous. I forbid it.’

‘You forbid me nothing.’ When Van Gelder wasn’t smiling, which wasn’t often, he could assume a very discouraging expression indeed. The man withdrew his hand. ‘Where are those men?’

‘In the passageway between the engine-room and the stateroom aft. We got them out after the explosion but before the fire began.’

‘Riley.’ This to a Leading Seaman. ‘Come aboard with me. If you think the yacht’s going, give me a call.’ He picked up a torch and was about to board the Delos when a hand holding a pair of goggles reached out and stopped him. Van Gelder smiled. ‘Thank you, Doctor. I hadn’t thought of that.’

Once aboard he made his way aft and descended the after companionway. There was smoke down there but not too much and with the aid of his torch he had no difficulty in locating the three missing men, all huddled shapelessly in a corner. To his right was the engine-room door, slightly buckled from the force of the explosion. Not without some difficulty, he forced the door open and at once began coughing as the foulsmelling smoke caught his throat and eyes. He pulled on the goggles but still there was nothing to see except for the red embers of a dying fire emanating from some unknown source. He pulled the door to behind him – he was reasonably certain there was nothing for him to see in the engine-room anyway – and stooped to examine the three dead men. They were far from being a pretty sight but he forced himself to carry out as thorough an investigation as he could. He spent some quite considerable time bent over the third man – in the circumstances thirty seconds was a long time – and when he straightened he looked both puzzled and thoughtful.

The door to the after stateroom opened easily. There was some smoke there but not so much that he required to use his goggles. The cabin was luxuriously furnished and immaculately tidy, a condition which Van Gelder very rapidly altered. He pulled a sheet from one of the beds, spread it on the floor, opened up wardrobes and drawers, scooped up armfuls of clothes – there was no time to make any kind of selection and even if there had been he would have been unable to pick and choose, they were all women’s clothing – dumped them on the sheet, tied up the four corners, lugged the bundle up the companionway and handed it over to Riley.

‘Put this in the launch. I’m going to have a quick look at the for’ard cabins. I think the steps will be at the for’ard end of the saloon under the bridge.’

‘I think you should hurry, sir.’

Van Gelder didn’t answer. He didn’t have to be told why he should hurry – the sea was already beginning to trickle over on to the upper deck. He passed into the saloon, found the companionway at once and descended to a central passage.

He switched on his torch – there was, of course, no electrical power left. There were doors on both sides and one at the end. The first door to port opened up into a food store, the corresponding door to starboard was locked. Van Gelder didn’t bother with it: the Delos didn’t look like the kind of craft that would lack a commodious liquor store. Behind the other doors lay four cabins and two bathrooms. All were empty. As he had done before, Van Gelder spread out a sheet – in the passageway, this time – threw some more armfuls of clothes on to it, secured the corners and hurried up on deck.

The launch was no more than thirty yards away when the Delos, still on even keel, slid gently under the surface of the sea. There was nothing dramatic to mark its going – just a stream of air bubbles that became gradually smaller and ceased altogether after about twenty seconds.

Talbot was on deck when the launch brought back the six survivors. He looked in concern at the woebegone and bedraggled figures before him.

‘My goodness, what a state you people are in. This the lot, Number One?’

‘Those that survived, sir. Three died. Impossible to get their bodies out in time.’ He indicated the figure nearest him. ‘This is the owner.’

‘Andropulos,’ the man said. ‘Spyros Andropulos. You are the officer in charge?’

‘Commander Talbot. My commiserations, Mr Andropulos.’

‘And my thanks, Commander. We are very deeply grateful–’

‘With respect, sir, that can wait. First things first, and the very first thing is to get yourselves cleaned up immediately. Ah. And changed. A problem. Clothes. We’ll find some.’

‘Clothing we have,’ Van Gelder said. He pointed at the two sheet-wrapped packages. ‘Ladies. Gentlemen.’

‘A mention in dispatches for that, Number One. You said “ladies”?’

‘Two, Commander,’ Andropulos said. He looked at the two people standing by him. ‘My niece and her friend.’

‘Ah. Well, should apologize, I suppose, but difficult to tell in the circumstances.’

‘My name is Charial.’ The voice was unmistakably feminine. ‘Irene Charial. This is my friend Eugenia.’

‘We could have met under happier circumstances. Lieutenant Denholm here will take you to my cabin. The bathroom is small but adequate. By the time you bring them back, Lieutenant, I trust they are recognizable for what they are.’ He turned to a burly, dark-haired figure who, like most of the crew, wore no insignia of rank. ‘Chief Petty Officer McKenzie.’ McKenzie was the senior NCO on the Ariadne. ‘The four gentlemen here, Chief. You know what to do.’

‘Right away, sir. If you will come with me, gentlemen.’

Grierson also left and Van Gelder and Talbot were left alone. ‘We can find this place again?’ Van Gelder asked.

‘No trouble.’ Talbot looked at him speculatively and pointed towards the north-west. ‘I’ve taken a bearing on the monastery and radar station on Mount Elias there. Sonar says that we’re in eighteen fathoms. Just to make sure, we’ll drop a marker buoy.’

General Carson laid down the slip of paper he had been studying and looked at the colonel seated across the table from him.

‘What do you make of this, Charles?’

‘Could be nothing. Could be important. Sorry, that doesn’t help. I have a feeling I don’t like it. It would help a bit if we had a sailor around.’

Carson smiled and pressed a button. ‘Do you know if Vice-Admiral Hawkins is in the building?’

‘He is, sir.’ A girl’s voice. ‘Do you wish to speak to him or see him?’

‘See him, Jean. Ask him if he would be kind enough to stop by.’

Vice-Admiral Hawkins was very young for one of his rank. He was short, a little overweight, more than a little rubicund as to his features and exuded an aura of cheerful bonhomie. He didn’t look very bright, which he was. He was widely regarded as having one of the most brilliant minds in the Royal Navy. He took the seat to which Carson had gestured him and glanced at the message slip.

‘I see, I see.’ He laid the message down. ‘But you didn’t ask me here to comment on a perfectly straightforward signal. The Sylvester is one of the code names for the frigate HMS Ariadne. One of the vessels under your command, sir.’

‘Don’t rub it in, David. I know it, of course – more accurately I know of it. Don’t forget I’m just a simple landlubber. Odd name, isn’t it? Royal Naval ship with a Greek name.’

‘Courtesy gesture to the Greeks, sir. We’re carrying out a joint hydrographic survey with them.’

‘Is that so?’ General Carson ran a hand through his grizzled hair. ‘I was not aware that I was in the hydrographic business, David.’

‘You’re not, sir, although I have no doubt it could carry out such a survey if it were called for. The Ariadne has a radio system that can transmit to, and receive transmissions from, any quarter of the globe. It has telescopes and optical instruments that can pick out the salient features of, say, any passing satellite, even those in geosynchronous orbit – and that’s 22,000 miles up. It carries long-range and surface radar that is as advanced as any in the world. And it has a sonar location and detection system that can pick up a sunken object at the bottom of the ocean just as easily as it can pinpoint a lurking submarine. The Ariadne, sir, is the eyes and the ears and the voice of your fleet.’

‘That’s nice to know, I must say. Very reassuring. The ability of the commanding officer of the Ariadne is – ah – commensurate with this extraordinary array of devices he controls?’

‘Indeed, sir. For an exceptionally complex task an exceptionally qualified man. Commander Talbot is an outstanding officer. Hand-picked for the job.’

‘Who picked him?’

‘I did.’

‘I see. That terminates this line of conversation very abruptly.’ Carson pondered briefly. ‘I think, Colonel, that we should ask General Simpson about this one.’ Simpson, the over-all commander of NATO, was the only man who outranked Carson in Europe.

‘Don’t see what else we can do, sir.’

‘You would agree, David?’

‘No, General. I think you’d be wasting your time. If you don’t know anything about this, then I’m damned sure General Simpson doesn’t know anything either. This is not an educated guess, call it a completely uneducated guess, but I have an odd feeling that this is one of your planes, sir – an American plane. A bomber, almost certainly, perhaps not yet off the secret lists – it was, after all, flying at an uncommon height.’

‘The Ariadne could have been in error.’

‘The Ariadne does not make mistakes. My job and my life on it.’ The flat, unemotional voice carried complete conviction. ‘Commander Talbot is not the only uniquely qualified man aboard. There are at least thirty others in the same category. We have, for example, an electronics officer so unbelievably advanced in his speciality that none of your much-vaunted high-technology whizzkids in Silicon Valley would even begin to know what he’s talking about.’

Carson raised a hand. ‘Point taken, David, point taken. So an American bomber. A very special bomber because it must be carrying a very special cargo. What would you guess that to be?’

Hawkins smiled faintly. ‘I am not yet in the ESP business, sir. People or goods. Very secret, very important goods or very secret and very important people. There’s only one source that can give you the answer and it might be pointed out that their refusal to divulge this information might put the whole future of NATO at risk and that the individual ultimately responsible for the negative decision would be answerable directly to the president of the United States. One does not imagine that the individual concerned would remain in a position of responsibility for very much longer.’

Carson sighed. ‘If I may speak in a spirit of complaint, David, I might point out that it’s easy for you to talk and even easier to talk tough. You’re a British officer. I’m an American.’

‘I appreciate that, sir.’

Carson looked at the colonel, who remained silent for a couple of moments, then nodded, slowly, twice. Carson reached for the button on his desk.

‘Jean?’

‘Sir?’

‘Get me the Pentagon. Immediately.’