'Yes. He says - and he's convinced of this - that the two young men were heroin peddlers.'
'Well, well. Ties in all too well with what we have been increasingly suspecting. There are times, Jimmy, when I regard the CIA as being a much maligned lot.'
The atmosphere at the dinner table that night was noticeably, but not markedly, less relaxed than it had been at lunch-time. Conversation flowed rather less freely than it had then, and three men in particular, Hawkins, Talbot and Van Gelder, seemed more given than usual to brief and introspective silences, occasionally gazing at some object or objects that lay beyond a distant horizon. There was nothing that one could put a finger on and the insensitive would quite have failed to recognize that there was anything amiss. Andropulos proved that he was not one of those.
'I do not wish to pry, gentlemen, and I may be quite wrong, I frequently am, but do I not detect a certain aura of uneasiness, even of tension at the table tonight?' His smile was as open and ingenuous as his words had been frank and candid. 'Or is it my imagination? You are surprised, perhaps, Commander Talbot?'
'No, not really.' The only thing that surprised Talbot was that Andropulos had taken so long in getting around to it.
'You are very perceptive, Mr Andropulos. I'm rather disappointed, I must say. I thought -- or hoped -- that our concern was better concealed than that.' "Concern, Captain?'
To a slight degree only. No real anxiety yet. No reason in world why you shouldn't know as much as we do.' As Wickram had said, Talbot reflected, mendacity required s practice to become second nature: there was every reason the world why Andropulos should not know as much as he did. 'You know, of course, that the bad weather has forced us to suspend operations on the bomber?'
'I have seen that it is riding several hundred metres astern of us. Operations? What operations, Captain. You are trying to recover those wicked weapons?'
'Just one of them. An atom bomb.'
'Why only one?'
'Dr Wickram? Would you kindly explain?'
'Certainly. Well, as far as I can. What we have here is a situation of considerable complexity and doubt, because we are dealing largely with the unknown. You will be aware that a nuclear explosion occurs when a critical mass of uranium plutonium is reached. Now, there's no way to prevent a slow but continuous degree of radioactive emanations from a hydrogen bomb, and there are fifteen of them aboard that pane. This radioactivity builds up inside the atom bomb, which is of an entirely different construction, until the critical mass of the atom bomb is reached. Then the atom bomb goes poof! Unfortunately, because of something we call sympathetic detonation, the hydrogen bombs also go poof! I will not dwell on what will happen to us.
"Normally, because of this well-known danger, hydrogen bombs and atom bombs are never stored together, not, at east, for any period of time. Twenty-four hours is regarded as a safe period and a plane, as in this instance, can easily make a long-distance flight with them together, at the end of which, of course, they would immediately be stored separately. What happens after twenty-four hours, we simply don't know although some of us - I am one - believe that the situation deteriorates very rapidly thereafter.
'Incidentally, that's why I have asked the Captain to stop all engines and generators. It is an established fact that acoustical vibrations hasten the onset of the critical period.'
Wickram's deep, solemn and authoritative voice carried absolute conviction. Had he not known, Talbot thought, that Dr Wickram was talking scientific malarkey he, for one, would have believed every word he said.
'So you will readily appreciate that it is of the utmost urgency that we remove that atom bomb from the plane as soon as possible and then take it away -- by sail, of course, that's why the Angelina is alongside, the critical mass will decay only very slowly - to some distant spot. Some very distant spot. There we will deposit it gently on the ocean floor.'
'How will you do that?' Andropulos said. 'Deposit it gently, I mean. The ocean could be thousands of feet deep at the spot. Wouldn't the bomb accelerate all the way down?'
Wickram smiled tolerantly. 'I have discussed the matter with Captain Montgomery of the Kilcharran.' He had not, in fact, discussed the matter with anybody. 'We attach a flotation bag to the bomb, inflate it until it achieves a very slight negative buoyancy and then it will float down like a feather to the ocean floor.'
'And then?'
'And then nothing.' If Wickram were having visions of a passenger cruise liner passing over an armed atomic mine, he kept his visions to himself. 'It will decay and corrode slowly over the years, perhaps even over the centuries- May give rise to a few digestive upsets for some passing fish. I don't know. What I do know is that if we don't get rid of that damned beast with all dispatch we're going to suffer more than a few digestive problems. Better that some of us - those concerned with the recovery of the bomb -- have a sleepless night than that we all sleep forever.'
Chapter 8
Talbot stirred, half sat up in his bunk and blinked at the overhead light that had suddenly come on in his day cabin. Van Gelder was standing in the doorway.
'Two-thirty. An unChristian hour, Vincent. Something is afoot. Weather moderated and Captain Montgomery hauling in the plane?'
'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 that even in the elite 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 s further convinced that Jenkins stumbled across some-tiling 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, J 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
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br /> 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 though 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 co-operation 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.'
Talbot looked over the side to where a man, torch in his hand pointing downwards, sat with his legs dangling through the rectangular hole that had been cut in the fuselage.
'We're going to get a lot more than our feet wet before we get there. We've got to pass first through the compartment under the flight deck and that will still have a great deal of water in it.'
'I don't understand,' Montgomery said. 'I mean we don't have to. We just drop down through the hole we've made in the fuselage.'
'That's fine, if all we want to do is to confine ourselves to the cargo hold. But you can't get into the flight deck from there. There's a heavy steel door in the bulkhead and the clamps are secured on the for'ard side. So if we want to get
at those clamps you have to do it from the flight-deck side, and to do that you must pass through the flooded compartment first.'
'Why should we want to open that door at all?'
'Because the clamps holding the atom bomb in place have padlocks. Where is one of the first places you'd look if you were searching for a key to the padlocks?'
'Ah! Of course. The pockets of the dead men.'
'Enough, Captain,' the man on the fuselage called out. 'Deck's clear.'
Montgomery centred the winch and applied the brake, then checked the fore and aft securing ropes. When he had them adjusted to his satisfaction he said: 'Won't be long, gentleman, just going to have a first-hand look.'
'Van Gelder and I are coming with you. We've brought our suits.' Talbot checked the level of the top of the jagged hole in the nose cone relative to the surface of the sea. 'I don't think we'll be needing our helmets.'
They did not, as it proved, require their helmets, the compartment under the flight-deck was no more than two-thirds full. They moved along to the opened hatch and hauled themselves up into the space behind the pilots' seats. Montgomery looked at the two dead men and screwed his ryes momentarily shut.
'What a bloody awful mess. And to think that the fiend responsible is still walking around free as air.'
'I don't think he will be for much longer.'
'But you've said yourself you don't have the evidence to convict him.'
'Andropulos will never come to trial. Vincent, would you bang open that door and show Captain Montgomery where our friend is.'
'No banging. Maybe our friend doesn't like banging.' Van Gelder produced a large stilson wrench. 'Persuasion. Aren't you coming, sir?'
'In a moment.' They left and Talbot addressed himself to the highly distasteful task of searching through the dead men's pockets. He found nothing. He searched through every shelf, locker and compartment in the cockpit. Again, nothing. He moved aft and joined Montgomery and Van Gelder.
'Nothing, sir?'
'Nothing. And nothing I can find anywhere in the flight-deck.'
Montgomery grimaced. 'You were, of course, looking through the pockets of the dead men. Sooner you than me. This is a very big plane, the key -- if there ever was a key -- could have been tucked away anywhere. I don't give much for our chances of recovering it. So, other methods. Your Number One suggests a corrosive to cut through those clamps. Wouldn't it be easier just to use an old-fashioned hacksaw?'
'I wouldn't recommend it, sir,' Van Gelder said. 'If you were to try I'd rather be a couple of hundred miles away at the time. I don't know how intelligent this armed listening device is, but I would question whether it's clever enough to tell the difference between the rhythmic rasping of a hacksaw
and the pulse of an engine.'
'I agree with Vincent,' Talbot said. 'Even if it were only a one in ten thousand chance -- and for all we know it might be a one in one chance -- the risk still isn't worth taking. Lady Luck has been riding with us so far but she might take a poor view of our pushing her too far.'
'So corrosives, you think? I have my doubts.' Montgomery stopped to examine the clamps more closely. 'I should have carried out some preliminary test aboard, I suppose, but I never thought those clamps would be so thick nor made, as I suspect they are, of hardened steel. The only corrosive I have aboard is sulphuric acid. Neat sulphuric, H2SO4 at specific gravity 1800 -- vitriol, if you like -- is a highly corrosive agent when applied to most substances, which is why it is usually carried in glass carboys which are immune to the corrosive action of acids. But I think it would find this a very meal to digest. Patience and diligence, of course, and i sure it would do the trick, but it might take hours.' Talbot said: 'What do you think, Vincent?' 'I'm no expert. I should imagine Captain Montgomery is quite correct. So, no corrosives, no hacksaws, no oxyacetylene ches.' Van Gelder hoisted the big stilson in his hand. 'This.' Talbot looked at the clamps and their mountings, then added. 'Of course. That. We're not very bright, are we? At least I'm not.' He looked at the way the clamps were secured to the side of the fuselage and the floor: each of the bases of four retaining arms of the clamps was fitted over two ts and were held in place by heavy inch-and-a-half nuts, 'We leave the clamps in situ and free the bases instead. See how stiff those nuts are, will you?'
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