Santorini

by Alistair MacLean

  Van Gelder applied the stilson to one of the nuts, adjusted the grip and heaved. The nut was big and tightly jammed in position but a stilson wrench affords great leverage: the nut turned easily.

  'Simple,' Van Gelder said.

  'Indeed.' Talbot looked at the length of the retaining arms, which projected at ninety degrees from each other, then aged the width of the hole that had been cut overhead, that's not so simple is getting the bomb up through the With those arms in position there's just not enough clearance for it to go through. We'll have to widen the hole. You can do that, Captain?'

  'No bother. Just means that we'll have to lower the fuselage down to its previous position. I'm coming around to Van elder's view about taking zero chances. I want as much water as possible in this compartment to dissipate the heat : the torches. It'll take a couple of hours, maybe longer, to complete the job, but better two or three hours late down here than twenty years early you-know-where.'

  Van Gelder said: 'Do I undo those nuts now?' 'No. We're stable enough at the moment. But if the fuselage returns to its previous position of being almost submerged and then the weather blows up - well, I don't think it would be a very clever idea to have an armed atomic mine rolling about all over the shop.' 'I don't think so, either.'

  Talbot and Van Gelder were back aboard the Ariadne and having coffee in the deserted wardroom when a seaman from the radio-room entered and handed Talbot a message. Talbot read it and handed it to Van Gelder, who read it twice, then looked at his captain with a certain thoughtful surprise.

  'Looks as if I have been casting unjust aspersions on the FBI, sir. It further looks as if they do work at night.'

  'Even better, it seems as if they have no compunction about waking others, such as bank managers, in the middle of the night and making them work also. One gathers from the message that Andropulos's mysterious friend George Skepertzis, does know the even more mysterious Kyriakos Katzanevakis and Thomas Thompson.'

  'If GS deposits one million dollars each in the accounts o: KK and TT and has given them smaller sums on previous occasions one gathers that they are more than passing acquaintances. Unfortunately, it seems that the one person who could identify them, the bank clerk who handled the accounts of all three men, had been transferred elsewhere. They say that they are pursuing enquiries, whatever that means.'

  'It means, I'm certain, that the FBI are going to drag this unfortunate bank clerk from his bed and have him conduct an identity parade.'

  'I find it hard, somehow,'to visualize generals and admirals voluntarily consenting to line up for inspection.'

  'They won't have to. The FBI or the Pentagon itself is bound to have pictures of them.' Talbot looked out of the window. 'Dawn is definitely in the sky and the rain has eased off to no more than a drizzle -- I suggest we contact Heraklion Air Base and ask them if they'll kindly go and have a look for the diving ship Taormina.'

  Together with the Admiral and the two scientists, Talbot and Van Gelder were just finishing breakfast when a messenger arrived from the Kilcharran. Captain Montgomery, he in-formed them, had just finished enlarging the opening on the sop of the bomber's fuselage, was now about to raise the plane again. Would they care to come across? He had made especial mention of Lieutenant-Commander Van Gelder.

  'It's not me he wants,' Van Gelder said. 'It's my trusty stilson wrench. As if he doesn't have a dozen aboard.'

  'I wouldn't miss this,' Hawkins said. He looked at Benson and Wickram. 'I'm sure you gentlemen wouldn't want to miss this either. It will, after all, be a historic moment when, for the first time in history, they drop a live atomic mine on the deck of a ship.'

  'You have a problem, Captain Montgomery?' the Admiral asked. Montgomery, winch stopped, was leaning over the guard-rail and looking down at the fuselage which had been raised to its previous position with its cargo deck just above die level of the sea. 'You look a mite despondent.'

  'I am not looking despondent, Admiral. I am looking thoughtful. The next step is to hoist the bomb from the plane. After that, we have to load it aboard the Angelina. And then the Angelina sails away. Correct?' Hawkins nodded and Montgomery wet his forefinger and held it up. 'To sail away you require wind. Unfortunately and most inconveniently, the Mekemi has died completely.'

  'It has, hasn't it?' Hawkins said. 'Most inconsiderate, I must say. Well, if we manage to get the bomb aboard the Angelina without blowing ourselves to smithereens we'll just tow it away.'

  'How will we do that, sir?' Van Gelder said.

  'The Ariadne's whaler. Not the engine, of course. We row.'

  'How do we know that the cunning little brain of this explosive device can differentiate between the repeated creaking of oars and the pulse of an engine? After all, sir, it is primarily an acoustic device.'

  'Then we'll go back to the naval days of yore. Muffled oars.'

  'But the Angelina displaces between eighty and a hundred tons, sir. Even with the best will and the strongest backs in the world it wouldn't be possible to make as much as one nautical mile in an hour. And that's with men continuously pulling with all their strength. Even the strongest, fittest and most highly trained racing crews -- Oxford, Cambridge, Thames Tideway - approach complete exhaustion after twenty minutes. Not being Oxbridge Blues, our limit would probably be nearer ten minutes. Half a nautical mile, if we're lucky. And then, of course, the periods between successive onsets of exhaustion would become progressively shorter. Cumulative effects, if you follow me, sir. A quarter of a mile an hour. It's close on a hundred miles to the Kasos Strait. Even assuming they can row night and day, which they can't, and discounting the possibility of heart attacks, it's going to take them at least a fortnight to get to the Kasos Strait.'

  'When it comes to comfort and encouragement,' Hawkins said, 'I couldn't ask for a better man to have around. Bubbling over with optimism. Professor Wotherspoon, you live and sail in these parts. What's your opinion?'

  'It's been an unusual night, but this is a perfectly normal morning. Zero wind. The Etesian wind -- the Meltemi as they

  it in these parts -- starts up around about noon. Comes from the north or north-west.'

  'What if the wind comes from the south or south-west Brad?' Van Gelder said. 'It would be impossible for the rowers to make any headway against it. The reverse, rather. Can't you just picture it, the Angelina being driven on to the rocks of Santorini?'

  'Job's comforter,' Hawkins said. 'Would it be too much to ask you kindly to cease and desist?'

  'Not Job, sir, nor his comforter. I see myself more in the role of Cassandra.'

  'Why Cassandra?'

  'Beautiful daughter of Priam, King of Troy,' Denholm said. 'The prophecies of the princess, though always correct, were decreed by Apollo never to be believed.'

  'I'm not much of a one for Greek mythology,' Montgomery said. 'Had it been a leprechaun or a brownie, now, I might have listened. As it is, we have work to do. Mr Danforth -- ' to his chief officer ' -- detail half-a-dozen men, a dozen, haul the Angelina round to our port quarter. Once the bomb has been removed we can pull the fuselage for'ard and Angelina can then move for'ard in her turn to take its place.'

  Under Montgomery's instructions, the derrick hook was detached from the lifting ring and the derrick itself angled slightly aft until the hook dangled squarely over the centre of rectangular opening that had been cut in the fuselage. Montgomery, Van Gelder and Carrington descended the companionway to the top of the fuselage, Van Gelder with his stilson, Carrington with two adjustable rope grommets to which were attached two slender lengths of line, one eight feet length, the other perhaps four times as long. Van Gelder Carrington lowered themselves into the cargo bay and lipped and secured the grommets over the tapered ends of the mine while Montgomery remained above guiding the winch driver until the lifting fork was located precisely over the centre of the mine. The hook was lowered until it was four feet above the mine.

  None of the eight securing clamp nuts offered more than a token resistance to Van Gelder's
stilson and as each clamp came free Carrington tightened or loosened the pressure on the two shorter ropes which had been attached to the hook. Within three minutes the atomic mine was free of all restraints that had attached it to the bulkhead and floor of the cargo bay and in less than half that time it had been winched upwards, slowly and with painstaking care, until it was clear of the plane's fuselage. The two longer ropes attached to the grommets were thrown up on to the deck of the Kilcharran, where they were firmly held to ensure that the mine was kept in a position precisely parallel to the hull of the ship.

  Montgomery climbed aboard and took over the winch. The mine was hoisted until it was almost level with the ship's deck and then, by elevating the angle of the derrick, carefully brought alongside until it was resting against the rubber-cushioned sides of the Kilcharran, a manoeuvre that was necessary to ensure that the mine did not snag against the port stays of the foremast of the Angelina when that vessel was brought alongside.

  It took what seemed like an unconscionably long time -- in fact, it took just over half an hour - to bring the Angelina alongside. Hauling the plane's fuselage forward to leave space for the lugger had been a quick and simple task, but then, because of the supporting air bags the fuselage was in a state of neutral buoyancy and one man could have accomplished the task with ease. But the Angelina displaced upwards of eighty tons and even the dozen men assigned to the task of towing it found it a laborious task just to get it under way, a difficulty that amply confirmed Van Gelder's assertion that towing it any distance at all by a whaler propelled only by oars was a virtual impossibility. But eventually, brought alongside it was, the mine gently lowered into its prepared cradle and clamped into position.

  'Routine,' Montgomery said to Hawkins. If he was experiencing racing any feelings of relief and satisfaction, and he would I 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 I 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 Siphinos or Folegandros, 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 Milos. Five thousand people on Milos. 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 Defence 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 time-bomb 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 / 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