Santorini

by Alistair MacLean

  'It is commonly enough imagined that earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are two faces of the same coin. This is not necessarily so. The venerable Oxford English Dictionary states that an earthquake is specifically a convulsion of the earth's surface caused by volcanic forces. The dictionary is specifically wrong: it should have used the word "rarely" instead. Earthquakes, especially the big ones, are caused when two tectonic plates -- segments of the earth's crust that float freely on the molten magma beneath -- come into contact with one another and one plate bangs into another or rubs alongside it or dives under it. The only two recorded and monitored giant earthquakes in history were of this type -- in Ecuador in 1906 and Japan in 1933. Similarly, but on a lesser scale -- although still very big -- the Californian earthquakes of San Francisco and Owens Valley were due to crustal movement and not to volcanoes.

  'It is true that practically all the world's 500 -- 600 active volcanoes -- someone may have bothered to count them, I haven't -- are located along convergent plate boundaries. It is equally true that they are rarely associated with earthquakes. There have been three large volcanic eruptions along such boundaries in very recent years: Mt St Helens in the state of Washington, El Chichon in Mexico and one just north-west of Bogota in Columbia. The last one -- it happened only last year -- was particularly nasty. A 17,000-foot volcano called Nevada del. Ruiz, which seems to have been slumbering off and on for the past four hundred years, erupted and melted the snow and ice which covered most of its upper reaches, giving rise to an estimated seventy-five million cubic yards' mudslide. The town of Armero stood in its way. 25,000 people died there. The point is that none of those was accompanied by an earthquake. Even volcanoes in areas where there are no established tectonic frontiers are guiltless in this respect: Vesuvius, despite the fact that it buried Pompeii and Herculaneum, Stromboli, Mt Etna and the twin volcanoes of the island of Hawaii have not produced, and do not produce, earthquakes.

  'But the really bad apples in the seismic barrel, and a very sinister lot those are, too, are the so-called thermal hotspots, plumes or upswellings of molten lava that reach up to or through the earth's crust, giving rise to volcanoes or earthquakes or both. We talk a lot about those thermal plumes but we really don't know much about them. We don't know whether they're localized or whether they spread out and lubricate the movements of the tectonic plates. What we do know is that they can have extremely unpleasant effects. One of those was responsible for the biggest earthquake of this century.'

  'You have me confused, Professor,' Hawkins said. 'You've just mentioned the really big ones, the ones in Japan and Ecuador. Ah! But those were monitored and recorded. This one wasn't?'

  'Certainly it was. But countries like Russia and China are rather coy about releasing such details. They have the weird notion that natural disasters reflect upon their political systems.'

  'Is it in order to ask how you know?'

  'Of course. Governments may elect not to talk to governments but we scientists are an incurably gabby lot. This quake happened in Tangshan province in north-east China and is the only one ever known to have occurred in a really densely populated area, in this case involving the major cities of Peking and Tientsin. The primary cause was undoubtedly a thermal plume. There are no known tectonic plate boundaries in the area but a very ancient boundary may be lurking in the area. The date was July 27, 1976.'

  'Yesterday,' Hawkins said. 'Just yesterday. Casualties?'

  'Two-thirds of a million dead, three-quarters of a million injured. Give or take a hundred thousand in each case. If that sounds flippant or heartless, it's not meant to be. After a certain arbitrary figure - a hundred thousand, ten thousand, even a thousand, it all depends upon how much your heart and mind can take - any increase in numbers becomes meaningless. And there's also the factor, of course, that we're referring to faceless unknowns in a far-off land.'

  'I suppose,' Hawkins said, 'that that would be what one might call the grand-daddy of them all?'

  'In terms of lives lost, it probably is. We can't be sure. What we can be sure of is that Tangshan rates as no more than third in the cataclysmic league. Just over a century ago the island of Krakatoa in Indonesia blew itself out of existence. That was quite a bang, literally -- the sound of the explosion was heard thousands of miles away. So much volcanic material was blasted into the stratosphere that the world was still being treated to a series of spectacular sunsets more than three years afterwards. No one knows the height of the tsunami caused by this eruption. What we do know is that much of the three great islands bordering the Java Sea -- Sumatra, Java and Borneo - and nearly all of the smaller islands inside the sea itself lie below an altitude of 200 feet. No tally of the dead has ever been made. It is better, perhaps, that we don't know.'

  'And perhaps it's also better that we don't know what you're going to say next,' Talbot said. 'I don't much care for the road you're leading us along.'

  'I don't much care for it myself.' Benson sighed and sipped some more gin. 'Anyone ever heard of the word "kalliste'

  'Certainly,' Denholm said. 'Means most beautiful. Very ancient. Goes back to Homeric times.'

  'My goodness.' Benson peered at him through his pipe smoke. 'I thought you were the electronics officer?'

  'Lieutenant Denholm is primarily a classicist,' Talbot said. 'Electronics is one of his hobbies.'

  'Ah!' Benson gestured with his thumb. 'Kalliste was the name given to this little lady before it became either Thera or Santorini, and a more singularly inapt name I cannot imagine. It was this beautiful lady that blew her top in 1450 BC with four times the explosively destructive power of

  Krakatoa. What had been the cone of a volcano became a circular depression -- we call it a caldera -- some thirty square miles in area into which the sea poured. Stirring times, gentlemen, stirring times.

  'Unfortunately those stirring times are still with us. Santorini has had, and continues to have, a very turbulent seismic history. Incidentally, mythology has it that there was an even bigger eruption about 1500 BC. However it hasn't done too badly since 1450 BC. In 2.36 BC another eruption separated Therasia from north-west Thera. Forty years later the islet of old Jaimeni appeared. There have been bangs and explosions, the appearances and disappearances of islands and volcanoes ever since. In the late sixteenth century the south coast of Thera, together with the port of Eleusis, vanished under the sea and stayed there. Even as late as 1956 a considerable earthquake destroyed half the buildings on the west coast of the island. Santorini, one fears, rests on very shaky foundations.'

  Talbot said: 'What happened in 1450 BC?'

  'Regrettably, our ancestors of some thirty-five centuries back don't seem to have given too much thought to posterity, by which I mean they left no records to satisfy their descendants' intellectual curiosity. One can hardly blame them, they had too many urgent and pressing matters on hand at the time to worry about such things. According to one account, the explosion caused a tidal wave 165 feet high. I don't know who worked this out. I don't believe it. It is true that water levels on the Alaskan coast, caused by tsunami, earthquake-related tidal waves, have risen over three hundred feet but this only happens when the sea-bed shallows close inshore: in the deep sea, although the tsunami can travel tremendously fast, two, perhaps three, hundred miles an hour, it's rarely more than a ripple on the surface of the water.

  'The experts -- an expert may be loosely defined as any person who claims he knows what he's talking about - are deeply divided as to what happened. Loggerheads would be too mild a term. It's an archaeological minefield. The explosion may have destroyed the Cyclades. It may have wiped out the Minoan civilization in Crete. It may have swamped the Aegean isles and the coastal lowlands of Greece and Turkey. It may have inundated lower Egypt, flooded the Nile and swept back the Red Sea waters to permit the escape of the Israelites fleeing from the Pharaoh. That's one view. In 19503 scientist by the name of Immanuel Velikovsky caused a considerable furore in the historical, religious and astronomical wor
lds by stating unequivocally that the flooding was caused by Venus which had been wrenched free from Jupiter and made an uncomfortably close encounter with earth. A very scholarly and erudite work, widely acclaimed at the time but since much maligned. Professional jealousy? Upsetting the scientific apple-cart? A charlatan? Unlikely -man was a friend and colleague of Albert Einstein. Then, of course, there was Edmund Halley, he of comet fame -- he was equally certain that the flooding had been caused by a passing comet.

  'There's no doubt there was a huge natural disaster all those millennia ago. As to its cause, take your pick -- your guess is as good as mine. Reverting to the situation we find j ourselves in at this moment, there are four facts that can be regarded as certainties or near-certainties. Santorini is about I as stable as the proverbial blancmange. It's sitting on top of I a thermal plume. Thirdly, the chances are high that it is sitting atop an ancient tectonic boundary that runs east-west under the Mediterranean -- this is where the African and Eurasian plates are in contention. Lastly, and indisputably, we are sitting atop the equivalent of roughly 2.00 million tons of TNT. If that goes up I would say it is highly probable -- in fact think I should use the word inevitable - that both the thermal plume and the temporarily quiescent earthquake zone along the tectonic fault would be reactivated. I leave the rest

  deeply divided as to what happened. Loggerheads would be too mild a term. It's an archaeological minefield. The explosion may have destroyed the Cyclades. It may have wiped out the Minoan civilization in Crete. It may have swamped the Aegean isles and the coastal lowlands of Greece and Turkey. It may have inundated lower Egypt, flooded the Nile and swept back the Red Sea waters to permit the escape of the Israelites fleeing from the Pharaoh. That's one view. In 1950 a scientist by the name of Immanuel Velikovsky caused a considerable furore in the historical, religious and astronomical worlds by stating unequivocally that the flooding was caused by Venus which had been wrenched free from Jupiter and made an uncomfortably close encounter with earth. A very scholarly and erudite work, widely acclaimed at the time but since much maligned. Professional jealousy? Upsetting the scientific apple-cart? A charlatan? Unlikely the man was a friend and colleague of Albert Einstein. Then, of course, there was Edmund Halley, he of comet fame -- he was equally certain that the flooding had been caused by a passing comet.

  'There's no doubt there was a huge natural disaster all those millennia ago. As to its cause, take your pick -- your guess is as good as mine. Reverting to the situation we find j ourselves in at this moment, there are four facts that can be regarded as certainties or near-certainties. Santorini is about I as stable as the proverbial blancmange. It's sitting on top of a thermal plume. Thirdly, the chances are high that it is sitting atop an ancient tectonic boundary that runs east-west under the Mediterranean -- this is where the African and Eurasian plates are in contention. Lastly, and indisputably, we are sitting atop the equivalent of roughly 2.00 million tons of TNT. If that goes up I would say it is highly probable -- in fact think I should use the word inevitable - that both the thermal plume and the temporarily quiescent earthquake zone along the tectonic fault would be reactivated. I leave the rest to your imagination.' Benson drained his glass and looked around hopefully. Talbot pressed a bell. Hawkins said: 'I don't have that kind of imagination.' 'None of us has. Fortunately. We're talking about the combined and simultaneous effect of a massive thermonuclear detonation, a volcanic eruption and an earthquake. This lies outwith the experience of mankind so we can't visualize those things except to guess, and it's a safe guess, that the reality will be worse than any nightmare. The only consolation, of course, is that we wouldn't be around to experience anything, nightmare or reality. 'The extent of potential annihilation beggars belief. By annihilation I mean the total extinction of life, except possibly some subterranean or aquatic forms. What lava, volcanic cinders, dust and ashes don't get, the blast, air percussion waves, fire and tsunami will. If there are any 'survivors -- and this could be in an area of thousands of square miles - the massive radio-active fall-out will attend to them. It hardly seems necessary to talk about such things as nuclear winters and being fried by ultra-violet radiation.

  'So you can see, Commander Talbot, what we mean when we talk about the greatest good of the greatest number. What does it matter if we have two ships or ten out here, two hundred men or two thousand? Every extra man, every extra ship may, just may, be of a tiny percentage more help in neutralizing this damn thing on the sea-floor. What's even two thousand compared to the unimaginable numbers who might perish if that device does detonate sooner or later - almost certainly sooner -- if we don't do something about It?'

  'You put things very nicely, Professor, and you make things very clear. Not that the Ariadne had any intention of going anywhere but it's nice to have a solid reason to stay put.'

  Talbot thought briefly. 'Solves one little problem, anyway. I have six survivors from the yacht Delos aboard and had thought to put three of the innocent parties among them ashore but that seems a little pointless now.'

  'Alas, yes. Whether they are aboard here or on Santorini it will be all one to them when they join us in what Lieutenant Denholm is pleased to call vaporized orbit.'

  Talbot lifted a phone, asked for a number, listened briefly and hung up.

  'The sonar room. Still tick .. . tick . . . tick.'

  'Ah,' Benson said. Tick .. . tick . . . tick.'

  Chapter 4

  'You had an enjoyable tete-a-tete with Mr Andropulos, sir?' Vice-Admiral Hawkins, together with his two scientist friends, had just come to the bridge in response to Talbot's invitation that they join him.

  'Enjoyable? Ha! Thank you, incidentally, for rescuing us. Enjoyable? Depends what you mean, John.'

  'I mean were you suitably impressed.'

  'I was suitably unimpressed. Interested, mind you, but deeply unimpressed. Man's character, I mean, not his quite extraordinary affinity for strong spirits. He comes across as whiter than the driven snow. A man of such transparent honesty has to have something to hide.'

  'And he got his slurring wrong, too,' Benson said.

  'Slurring, sir?'

  'Just that, Commander. Thickened his voice in the wrong places to try and convince us that he was under the influence. Maybe he could have got away with it in his native Greek but not in English. Cold sober, I believe. And clever. Anyway he's clever enough to hoodwink those two charming young ladies he has with him. I think they're being hoodwinked.'

  'And his bosom friend, Alexander,' Hawkins said. 'He's not so clever. He comes over as what he might well be -- a paid-up member, if not a capo, in the Mafia. He was quite unmoved when I sympathized with them about the loss of the three members of their crew. Andropulos said he was desolated by the deaths of his treasured friends. Van Gelder

  had already told us that. Maybe he was overcome by grief, maybe not. In view of the fact that, like you, I regard him as a fluent liar and consummate actor, I think not. Maybe he is conscience-stricken at having arranged their deaths. Again, I think not. By that I don't mean he couldn't have been responsible for their deaths, I just mean that I don't think he's on speaking terms with his conscience. Only information I gathered from him is that he abandoned his yacht because he thought his spare fuel tank was going to blow up. A man of mystery, your new-found friend.'

  'He's all that. Very mysterious. He's a multi-millionaire. Maybe a multi-multi-millionaire. Not in the usual Greek line of tankers -- bottom's fallen out of that market anyway. He's an international businessman with contacts in many countries.'

  Hawkins said: 'Van Gelder told me nothing of this.'

  'Of course he didn't. He didn't know. Your name attached to a message, Admiral, is a guarantee of remarkably quick service. Reply received to our query to the Greek Defence Ministry received twenty-five minutes ago.'

  'A businessman. What kind of business?'

  'They didn't say. I knew that would be your question so I immediately radioed a request for that information.'

 
; 'Signed by me, of course.'

  'Naturally, sir. Had it been a different matter I would of course have asked your permission. But this was the same matter. The reply came in a few minutes ago listing ten different countries with which he does business.'

  'Again, what kind of business?'

  'Again, they didn't say.'

  'Extraordinarily odd. What do you make of it?'

  'The Foreign Minister must have authorized this reply. Maybe censored it a little. He is, of course, a member of the government. I would assume that the mysterious Mr Andropulos has friends in the government.'

  'The mysterious Mr Andropulos gets more mysterious by the moment.'

  'Maybe, sir. Maybe not -- not when you consider the list of ten foreign trading partners he has. Four of them are in cities of what you might regard as being of particular interest -- Tripoli, Beirut, Damascus and Baghdad.'

  'Indeed.' Hawkins thought briefly. 'Gun-running?'

  'But of course, sir. Nothing illegal about being gun-runners -- Britain and America are hotching with them. But all governments are holier-than-thou in this respect and never publicly associate themselves with them. Never do to be classified as a merchant of death. Could well explain why the Greek government is being so cagey.'