Samuel Edwards - Neptune

A heavily wooded island, its shores and heights completely covered by tall pines, stood directly ahead, a mile or two from the shore of Long Island, and the cutter reduced its speed. Porter noted that Adrienne needed no one to awaken her; she was endowed with the sixth sense of a veteran agent, and was ready to debark long before the cutter nosed through a narrow channel into an inner, hidden bay.

Suddenly the view was different. A three-storey house of limestone stood on a hill at the inner end of the U-shaped harbour, and beyond it were scattered several smaller buildings. An all-white, ninety-foot yacht rode at anchor off shore, and between the sandy beach and the house were terraced flower gardens, with two swimming pools standing side by side behind them. The very rich, Porter thought, really knew how to live.

As the cutter eased up to a stone dock a group of security men strolled towards it. All were in shirtsleeves, and made no attempt to conceal the .45 automatics they wore in shoulder holsters. Trust someone like Franklin Richards to have his own private army.

Porter jumped on to the wharf, then handed up Adrienne. ‘We’re expected,’ he told the man who appeared to be in charge.

The security officer studied a pair of photographs, then looked intently at the pair before he nodded. ‘Welcome,’ he said, and directed an assistant to take their baggage.

No one spoke as they followed him up the hill, and finally Porter broke the silence. ‘Why two swimming pools?’

‘Mr Richards likes salt water. Mrs Richards prefers fresh.’

A faint gleam in Adrienne’s eyes indicated her amusement.

A stunning redhead was poised on a diving board, and as the visitors approached she did a double backflip, then swam to the shallow end and climbed out of the pool.

‘How do you do, Miss Howard?’ Marie Richards had only a trace of a French accent. ‘Mr Porter, we’re so happy you could come.’

Her charm was considerable, and her nearness in a string bikini was disturbing. Porter was proud of his ability to remain unflustered, but this was one time when his poise almost deserted him.

‘Join me for a swim after you’ve been shown to your rooms, why don’t you?’ she asked, treating them as social guests. ‘Frank will be along for an aperitif before lunch.’

Porter followed a butler to a guest bedroom. ‘I’m afraid I didn’t bring a bathing suit,’ he said.

‘You’ll find whatever you need in your dressing-room, sir,’ the man said as he bowed himself out.

Porter searched through a pile of togs before he found a pair of trunks and a terrycloth robe that were his size, and after changing he dropped his Lilliput into the pocket of his robe. Not that he needed it on this closely guarded, private island, but there was a first time for everything, and he’d hate to be embarrassed. Poor Bob Williams had lost his life in a Helsinki sauna because he had been unarmed.

Adrienne had already gone to the pool, and Porter remained in the shadows for a time, watching the two women before he joined them. He rarely read society and gossip columns, so he had been as unprepared for Marie Richards’ charm as he was overwhelmed by her beauty. She was also a superb swimmer, traversing several lengths of the Olympic-sized pool under water and seemingly not out of breath when she emerged.

He had to admit that Adrienne was the best-looking Corporation field operative he had ever encountered. The KGB frequently employed women agents, as did the French, but the Anglo-Saxons were more conservative, and British MI-5, like the Corporation, ordinarily used them only as lures. Adrienne, somewhat taller than their hostess, did not appear muscular, but she was an exceptionally powerful swimmer, and her crawl stroke sent her effortlessly up and down the pool.

At last Porter went to the water’s edge and shed his robe, which he arranged pocket-side up. ‘I’m no competition for you mermaids,’ he said, and splashed as he jumped into the pool, then struggled slightly as he swam without grace.

Someone landed in the water beside him, vanished beneath the surface and headed towards the far end. Before Porter quite realized what was happening the newcomer and Marie Richards were playing a game of underwater tag, and they stayed below so long that his lungs ached.

Suddenly a tanned, dark-haired man, his boyish face belying his age, popped up beside him. ‘Frank Richards,’ he said, shaking hands. ‘We’re going to see a great deal of each other. We’re leaving for the West Coast in a few minutes, so we’ll have lunch and talk during the flight.’ He was gone again, pursuing his wife under water.

It was difficult to believe that this playful figure was one of the wealthiest, most powerful men on earth, hut Porter could see why he and his wife qualified as Beautiful People. He could only hope they weren’t as frivolous as they seemed.

The fringe of trees concealed the landing strip, but it was more than long enough for the take-off of the DC-9, which climbed rapidly as it headed west. The four passengers sat amidships in a handsomely furnished cabin that resembled a living-room, and Adrienne joined her host and hostess in an aperitif.

Porter demurred, ‘Beer,’ he told the stewardess.

Franklin Richards wasted no time. ‘What do you know about undersea salvage?’

‘Virtually nothing,’ Porter said.

‘I’m guilty, too,’ Adrienne added.

‘I’ll spare you the early history of the diving bell, which was first mentioned by Aristotle and was used in a primitive form as early as the seventeenth century. We can also skip the gaseous embolism of the decompression sickness that attacks virtually all divers as they rise to the surface. Let’s just say that John Scott Haldane, a British scientist, discovered that nitrogen bubbles form stoppages in the joints, lungs, spinal cord, and brain. He worked out a set of tables that establish the speed at which a diver can resurface. These tables, modified, are used in every diving vessel today – excluding the submarine, where surface pressures are maintained. But they’re even used in the bathyscaphe. You follow me so far?’

His guests nodded, and Porter rolled a cigarette.

‘May I try one?’ Marie Richards openly and unabashedly flirted with him.

He handed her one, then struck a match on the sole of his shoe.

‘I like it!’ she said. ‘It reminds me of French cigarettes.’

Porter gave her a bag of tobacco and a packet of papers.

‘You must show me how to make them,’ she said.

‘Later.’ Her husband smiled indulgently. ‘A quick word about the bathysphere, which President Theodore Roosevelt first suggested to the zoologist, William Beebe, at the beginning of the present century. In its original form it was a steel ball, attached to a cable, and oxygen was pumped into it. The bathysphere was the direct ancestor of the modern bathyscaphe.’ He paused, then asked abruptly, ‘I assume you know gasoline is lighter than water?’

Adrienne smiled.

‘Of course,’ Porter said. ‘Petrol floats on water.’

‘Precisely.’ Richards drew a rough sketch of a cigar-shaped cabin, with a round container beneath it. ‘This bottom section is known as a float. For the simple reason that it contains gasoline. The deeper a bathyscaphe submerges, the stronger and more rapidly the gasoline inside this sphere compresses. This provides the bathyscaphe with its own power. To check the speed of descent or cause the bathyscaphe to ascend again, the pilot releases iron ballast held in place by electromagnets. I’d like to stress that the bathyscaphe is capable of performing remarkable feats. It’s a matter of public record that the Trieste, which was made by Auguste Piccard and his son, Jacques, and was acquired by the US Navy, descended to a depth of thirty-five thousand eight hundred feet in i960, in the Pacific. In the so-called Mariana Trench, to be exact.’