Алистер Маклин - Santorini

‘Yes, sir. But there’s something more immediately urgent. Jenkins is missing.’

Talbot swung his feet to the deck. ‘Jenkins? I won’t say, “Missing?” or “How can he be missing?” If you say he is, he is. You’ve had a search carried out, of course?’

‘Of course. Forty volunteers. You know how popular Jenkins is.’ Talbot knew. Jenkins, their mess steward and a Marine of fifteen years’ standing, a man whose calmness, efficiency and resource were matched only by his sense of humour, was highly regarded by everyone who knew him.

‘Can Brown cast any light on this?’ Marine Sergeant Brown, a man as rock-like and solid as Chief McKenzie, was Jenkins’s closest friend on the ship. Both men were in the habit of having a tipple in the pantry when the day’s work was done, an illicit practice which Talbot tacitly and readily condoned. Their tipple invariably stopped at that, just one: even in the élite Royal Marines it would have been difficult to find two men like them.

‘Nothing, sir. They went down to their mess together. Brown turned in while Jenkins started on a letter to his wife. That was the last Brown saw of him.’

‘Who discovered his absence?’

‘Carter. The Master-at-arms. You know how he likes to prowl around at odd hours of the day and night looking for non-existent crime. He went up to the wardroom and pantry, found nothing, returned to the Marine mess-deck and woke Brown. They carried out a brief search. Again nothing. Then they came to me.’

‘It would be pointless to ask you if you have any ideas?’

‘Pointless. Brown seems convinced he’s no longer aboard the ship. He says that Jenkins never sleep-walked, drank only sparingly and was devoted to his wife and two daughters. He had no problems – Brown is certain of that – and no enemies aboard the ship. Well, among the crew, that is. Brown is further convinced that Jenkins stumbled across something he shouldn’t have or saw something he shouldn’t have seen, although how he could do anything like that while sitting in the mess writing to his wife is difficult to imagine. His suspicions immediately centred on Andropulos and company – I gather he and Jenkins have talked quite a lot about them – and he was all for going down to Andropulos’s cabin and beating the living daylights out of him. I had some difficulty in restraining him, although privately, I must say, I found it rather an appealing prospect.’

‘An understandable reaction on his part.’ Talbot paused, ‘I can’t see how Andropulos or his friends could have any possible connection with this or have any conceivable reason for knocking him off. Do you think there’s a remote chance that he might have gone aboard the Kilcharran ?’

‘No earthly reason why he should have but the thought did occur. I asked Danforth – he’s the Kilcharran ’s chief officer – if he’d have a look around, so he collected some of his crew and carried out a search. There aren’t many places you can hide – or be hidden – on a diving ship. Took them less than ten minutes to be sure he wasn’t anywhere aboard.’

‘Nothing we can do at the moment. I have the uncomfortable feeling that there’s nothing we’re going to be able to do either. Let’s go and see how Captain Montgomery is getting on.’

The wind had dropped to Force 3, the sea was no more than choppy and the rain had eased, but only slightly, from torrential to heavy. Montgomery, clad in streaming oilskins, was at the winch: the plane, still bobbing rather uncomfortably, was slowly but steadily nearing the stern of the diving ship. The oxyacetylene crew, also in oilskins, were standing by the guard-rail, torches at the ready.

Talbot said: ‘Your men are going to be able to maintain their footing?’

‘It won’t be easy. The plane should steady up a bit when we secure it fore and aft and we’ll have ropes on the men, of course. And this confounded rain doesn’t help. I think we should be able to make some progress but it’ll be slow. Point is, this may be as good weather as we’re going to get. No point in your remaining, Commander, you’d be better off in your bunk. I’ll let you know when we’ve cut away the section and are ready to lift.’ He wiped rain away from his eyes. ‘I hear you’ve lost your chief steward. Bloody odd, isn’t it? Do you suspect foul play?’

‘I’m at the stage where I’m about ready to suspect anything or anybody. Van Gelder and I are agreed that it couldn’t have happened accidentally so it must have happened on purpose and not, of course, his purpose. Yes, foul play. As to what kind of foul play and the identity of the person or persons responsible, we don’t have a clue.’

It should have been dawn, but wasn’t, when Van Gelder roused Talbot shortly after six-thirty in the morning. The sky was still heavy and dark, and neither the wind nor the steadily drumming rain had improved in the past four hours.

‘So much for your breathless Aegean dawns,’ Talbot said, ‘I take it that Captain Montgomery has cut away that section of the plane’s fuselage?’

‘Forty minutes ago. He’s got the fuselage more than half way out of the water already.’

‘How are the winch and the derrick taking the strain?’

‘Very little strain, I believe. He’s secured four more flotation bags under the fuselage and wing and is letting compressed air do most of the work. He asks if you’d like to come along. Oh, and we’ve had a communication from Greek Intelligence about Andropulos.’

‘You don’t seem very excited about it.’

‘I’m not. Interesting, but doesn’t really help us. It just confirms that our suspicions about Uncle Adam are far from groundless. They’ve passed on our messages to Interpol. It seems – the message, I must say, is couched in very guarded language – that both Greek Intelligence and Interpol have been taking a considerable interest in Andropulos for several years. Both are certain that our friend is engaged in highly illegal activities but if this was a trial in a Scottish court of law the verdict would be “not proven”. They have no hard evidence. Andropulos acts through intermediaries who operate through other intermediaries and so on until either the trail runs cold or, occasionally, ends up in shell companies in Panama and the Bahamas, where much of his money is stashed away. The banks there consistently refuse to acknowledge letters and cables, in fact they won’t even acknowledge his existence. No cooperation from the Swiss banks, either. They’ll only open up their books if the depositor has been convicted of what is also regarded as a crime in Switzerland. He hasn’t been convicted of anything.’

‘Illegal activities? What illegal activities?’

‘Drugs. Message ends with a request – sounds more like a demand the way they put it – that this information be treated in total secrecy, utter and absolute confidentiality. Words to that effect.’

‘What information? They haven’t given us any information that we didn’t already suspect or have. No mention of the one item of information we’d like to know. Who, either in the government, the civil service or the top echelons in the armed forces, is Andropulos’s powerful protector and friend? Possibly they don’t know, more probably they don’t want us to know. Nothing from Washington?’

‘Not a word. Maybe the FBI don’t work at night.’

‘More likely that other people don’t work at night. It’s eleven-thirty p.m., their time, the banks are shut and all the staffs to hell and gone until tomorrow morning. We may have to wait hours before we hear anything.’

‘We’re nearly there,’ Captain Montgomery said. ‘We’ll stop hoisting – in this case more lifting from below than hoisting – when the water-level drops below the floor of the cabin. That way we won’t get our feet wet when we go inside.’