Алистер Маклин - Santorini

‘When are you going to attach the battery?’

‘As an added precaution – this is my precaution – only immediately before use. These are positive and negative connections. We use spring-loaded crocodile clips. Two seconds to attach the clips. Three seconds to crack the domes and align the switches. One second to press the button. Nothing could be simpler. Only one other trifling requirement, sir – that we have that atom bomb, on its own and a long, long way from anywhere and us at a very prudent distance when we detonate it.’

‘You ask for very little, Jimmy.’ Talbot looked out at the driving rain and the dark and now whitecapped seas. ‘We may have to wait a little – an hour or two as an optimistic guess, all night as a pessimistic one, before we can even begin to move. Anything else?’

‘I repeat, we have not been idle,’ Van Gelder said. ‘We’ve heard from the Heraklion Air Base. There is – or was – a diving vessel in the near vicinity, if you can call the western tip of Crete the near vicinity.’

‘Is – or was?’

‘Was. It was anchored off Souda Bay for a couple of days and apparently took off about one a.m. this morning. As you know, Souda Bay is a very hush-hush Greek naval base, and the area is very protected, very restricted. Foreign vessels, even harmless cruising yachts, are definitely not welcomed. Souda Bay naturally took an interest in this lad. It’s their business to be suspicious, especially at a time when NATO are operating in the area.’

‘What did they find out?’

‘Precious little. It was called the Taormina and registered in Panama.’

‘A Sicilian name? No significance. Panama – a convenience registry, some of the most successful ocean-going crooks in the world are registered there. Anyway, you don’t have to be an artist to change both names in very short order – all you require is a couple of pots of paint and a set of stencils. Where had it come from?’

‘They didn’t know. As it had anchored off-shore it didn’t have to register with either the customs or the port authorities. But they did know that it took off in a roughly north-easterly direction which, just coincidentally, is the course it would have taken if it were heading for Santorini. And as Souda Bay is just under a hundred miles from here, even a slow ship could have been in this area well before the bomber came down. So your hunch could have been right, sir. Only problem is, we’ve seen no sign of him.’

‘Could have been a coincidence. Could have been that the Delos warned him off. Did Heraklion say anything about going to have a look for this ship?’

‘No. Jimmy and I discussed the idea but we didn’t think it important enough to disturb you when you were – ah – resting lightly. And the Admiral.’

‘Probably unimportant. We should have a go. Normally, that is. Where does Heraklion lie from here? About due south?’

‘Near enough.’

‘A couple of planes, one carrying out a sweep to the north, the other to the east, should locate this lad, if he is in the area, in half an hour, probably less. Part of an urgent NATO exercise, you understand. But conditions aren’t normal. A waste of time in near zero visibility. An option we’ll keep in mind for better weather. Anything else?’

‘Yes. We’ve heard from both the Washington bank and the FBI. Mixed results, you might say. Under the initials of KK, the bank says it has a certain Kyriakos Katzanevakis.’

‘Promising. You could hardly get anything more Grecian than that.’

‘Under TT, they have a Thomas Thompson. You can’t have anything more Anglo-Saxon than that. The FBI say there are no high-ranking officers in the Pentagon – by which I take it they mean admirals and Air Force generals or, at the outside, vice-admirals and lieutenant-generals – with those initials.’

‘On the face of it, disappointing, but it may equally well be just another step in the laundering cover-up, another step to distance themselves from their paymaster. The FBI hasn’t been in touch with the bank? Of course not. We didn’t even mention the bank to them. Remiss of us. No, remiss of me. The bank must have addresses for Messrs KK and TT, and although those will almost certainly turn out to be accommodation addresses they may lead to something else. And another omission, again my fault entirely. We didn’t let the FBI have the name and address of this George Skepertzis. We’ll do that now. There’s an outside chance that the FBI may be able to link Skepertzis, KK and TT together. And what was the presidential reaction to the stopping of the tick… tick…?’

‘He appears to be beyond any further reaction.’

Montgomery sipped his drink, gazed gloomily through his cabin window, winced and looked away.

‘The weather has deteriorated in the past half-hour, Commander Talbot.’

‘It couldn’t possibly be any worse than it was half an hour ago.’

‘I’m an expert on such matters.’ Montgomery sighed. ‘Makes me quite homesick for the Mountains of Mourne. We get a lot of rainfall in the Mountains of Mourne. Do you see this lot clearing up in the near future?’

‘Not this side of midnight.’

‘And that would be an optimistic estimate, I’m thinking. By the time we haul this damn bomber back alongside, cut away the hole in the fuselage, hoist it out of the water and extract that bomb, it’ll be dawn. At least. Might possibly be well into the forenoon. You’ll understand if I turn down your kind offer to join you for dinner. An early snack for me, then bed. Might have to get up any time during the night. I’ll have a couple of boys on the poop all night, watching the plane and with orders to wake me as soon as they think the weather has moderated enough for us to start hauling it in.’

Dr Wickram said: ‘How’s that for a brief résumé of the speech I shall so reluctantly make at the table tonight? Not too much, I would have thought, and not too little?’

‘Perfect. Perhaps the tone a thought more doom-laden?’

‘A half octave deeper, you think? Odd, isn’t it, how easily this mendacity comes to one?’

‘Aboard the Ariadne, it’s become positively endemic. Very catching.’

‘I’ve just had a word with Eugenia,’ Denholm said. ‘I thought you ought to know.’

‘That you’ve been neglecting your duty? Not lurking, I mean.’

‘A man gets tired of lurking. I meant what she had to say.’

‘You spoke to her privately, I take it?’

‘Yes, sir. In her cabin. Number One’s cabin, that is to say.’

‘You surprise me, Jimmy.’

‘If I may say so, sir, with some dignity, we had been discussing matters on a purely intellectual level. Very bright girl. Going for a double first at University. Language and literature, Greek ancient and modern.’

‘Ah! Deep calling unto deep.’

‘I wouldn’t call it that, because I spoke only in English. I was under the impression that she was convinced that I didn’t speak a word of Greek.’

‘She’s no longer convinced? A close observer, the young lady? Perhaps you registered a flicker of expression when something was said in Greek when you should have registered nothing. I suspect you were trapped in your innocent youth by some fiendish feminine wile.’

‘How would you react, sir, if you were told that a scorpion was crawling up your shoe?’

Talbot smiled. ‘She spoke in Greek, of course. You immediately carried out a hurried check to locate this loathsome monster. Anybody would have fallen for it. You have not suffered too much chagrin and mortification, I hope?’

‘Not really, sir. She’s too nice. And too worried. Wanted to confide in me.’

‘Alas, the days when lovely young ladies wanted to confide in me appear to be over.’