Алистер Маклин - Santorini

‘Routine,’ Montgomery said to Hawkins. If he was experiencing any feelings of relief and satisfaction, and he would have been less than human not to have done, he showed no signs of them. ‘Nothing should have gone wrong and nothing did go wrong. All we need now is a tiny puff of wind, the lugger’s on her way and all our troubles are over.’

‘Maybe all our troubles are just beginning,’ Van Gelder said.

Hawkins looked at him suspiciously. ‘And what, may we ask, are we expected to gather from that cryptic remark?’

‘There is a tiny puff of wind, sir.’ Van Gelder wetted a forefinger and held it upwards. ‘Unfortunately, it’s not from the north-west, it’s from the south-east. The beginning, I’m afraid, of what is called the Euros.’ Van Gelder had assumed a conversational tone. ‘Reading about it last night. Rare in the summer months but not unknown. I’m sure Professor Wotherspoon will confirm this.’ Wotherspoon’s unsmiling nod did indeed confirm it. ‘Can turn very nasty, very stormy. Gusting up to Force 7 or 8. I can only assume that the radio operators on the Kilcharran and the Ariadne have – what shall I say? – relaxed their vigilance a bit. Understandable, after what they’ve been through. Must have been something about it in the weather forecasts. And if this wind increases, and according to the book there is no doubt it will, any attempt to sail or row the Angelina anywhere will end up in her banging not against the rocks of Santorini, as I suggested, but against those of Síphinos or Folégandros, which I believe are rather sparsely populated. But if the Euros backs more to the east, which I understand it occasionally does, then it would bang into Mílos. Five thousand people on Mílos. So it says in the book.’

‘I speak with restraint, Van Gelder,’ Hawkins said. ‘I don’t exactly see myself in the role of an ancient Roman Emperor but you do know what happened to messengers who brought bad news to them?’

‘They got their head chopped off. “Twas ever thus, sir. A prophet hath no honour in his own country.”’

Bearers of bad news were having a hard time of it on both sides of the Atlantic that morning.

The President of the United States was no longer a young man and at half past five on that morning in the Oval Office he was showing every year of his age. The lines of care and concern were deeply entrenched in his face and the skin, beneath the permanent tan, had a greyish tinge to it. But he was alert enough and his eyes were as clear as could be expected of an elderly man who had had no sleep whatsoever that night.

‘I am beginning, gentlemen, to feel almost as sorry for myself and ourselves as I am for those unfortunates in Santorini.’ The ‘gentlemen’ he was addressing were the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Richard Hollison of the FBI, John Heiman, the Defense Secretary, and Sir John Travers, the British Ambassador. ‘I suppose I should, in all decency, apologize for bringing you all together at this unearthly hour of the morning, but, frankly, I have no decency left in me. I’m right at the undisputed top of my self-pity list.’ He rifled some papers on his desk. ‘Admiral Hawkins and his men are sitting on top of a ticking timebomb and it seems that nature and circumstances are conspiring to thwart their every attempt to rid themselves of this canker in their midst. With his latest report I had thought that I had reached the ultimate nadir. Inevitably, I was wrong.’ He looked sorrowfully at the deputy head of the FBI. ‘You had no right to do this to me, Richard.’

‘I am sorry about that, Mr President.’ Hollison may well have meant what he said but the sorrow was completely masked by the expression and tone of bitter anger. ‘It’s not just bad news or damnably bad news, it’s shattering news. Shattering for you, shattering for me, most of all shattering for the General. I still can hardly bring myself to believe it.’

‘I might be prepared to believe it,’ Sir John Travers said, ‘and might well be prepared to be shattered along with the rest of you. If, that is, I had the slightest idea what you are talking about.’

‘And I am sorry about that,’ the President said. ‘We have not really been remiss, there just hasn’t been time yet. Richard, the Ambassador has not yet read the relevant documents. Could you put him in the picture, please?’

‘That shouldn’t take too long. It’s a most damnably ugly picture, Sir John, because it reflects badly – just how badly it’s only now beginning to dawn on me – on both Americans in general and the Pentagon in particular.

‘The central figure in the scenario, of whom you have of course heard, is a certain Adamantios Spyros Andropulos who is rapidly emerging as an international criminal of staggering proportions. As you know, he is at present being held aboard the frigate Ariadne. He is an exceptionally wealthy man – I’m talking merely of hundreds of millions of dollars, it could be billions for all I so far know – and he has money, laundered money under false names, hidden away in various deposit accounts all over the world. Marcos of the Philippines and Duvalier of Haiti are, or were, rather good at this sort of thing, but they’re being found out, they should have employed a real expert like Andropulos.’

‘He can’t be all that expert, Richard,’ Sir John said. ‘You’ve found out about him.’

‘A chance in a million, a break that comes to a law agency once in a lifetime. In any but the most exceptional and extraordinary circumstances he would have taken the secret to the grave with him. And I didn’t find out about him – there is no possible way I ever could have done – and no credit whatsoever attaches to us. That he was found out is due entirely to two things – an extraordinary stroke of luck and an extraordinary degree of astuteness by those aboard the Ariadne. I have, incidentally, have had cause to revise my earlier – and I must admit prejudiced and biased opinion of Admiral Hawkins. He insists that none of the credit belongs to him but to the captain and two of his officers aboard the Ariadne. It takes quite a man to insist on that sort of thing.

‘Among his apparently countless worldwide deposits Andropulos had tucked away eighteen million dollars in a Washington bank through an intermediary or nominee by the name of George Skepertzis. This nominee had transferred over a million dollars apiece to the accounts of two men registered in the bank as Thomas Thompson and Kyriakos Katzanevakis. The names, inevitably, are fictitious – no such people exist. The only bank clerk who could identify all three men, inasmuch as he was the person who had handled all three accounts, had left the bank. We tracked him down – he was understandably a bit upset about being dragged out of his bed at midnight – and showed him a group of photographs. Two of them he recognized immediately but none of the photographs remotely resembled the man going by the name of George Skepertzis.

‘But he was able to give us some additional – and very valuable – information about Skepertzis, who seemed to have taken him into some limited degree of confidence. No reason why he shouldn’t, of course – Skepertzis has – had – every reason to believe that his tracks were completely covered. This was approximately two months ago. He wanted to know about the banking facilities in certain specified towns in the United States and Mexico. The bank clerk – his name is Bradshaw – gave him what information he could. It took Bradshaw about a week to find out the details Skepertzis wanted. I should imagine that he was well rewarded for his labours although, of course, Bradshaw didn’t say so. There were no criminal charges that we could have laid against him for that – not that we would, even if we could have.