ALISTAIR MACLEAN

Sea Thrillers

San Andreas

The Golden Rendevous

Seawitch

Santorini

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

San Andreas

The Golden Rendezvous

Seawitch

Santorini

About the Author

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

ALISTAIR MACLEAN

San Andreas

Dedication

To David and Judy

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Map

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Map

Prologue

There are three distinct but inevitably interlinked elements in this story: the Merchant Navy (officially the Mercantile Marine) and the men who served in it: Liberty Ships: and the units of the German forces, underseas, on the seas and in the air, whose sole mission was to seek out and destroy the vessels and crews of the Merchant Navy.

1 At the outbreak of war in September 1939 the British Merchant Navy was in a parlous state indeed – ’pitiable’ would probably be a more accurate term. Most of the ships were old, a considerable number unseaworthy and some no more than rusting hulks plagued by interminable mechanical breakdowns. Even so, those vessels were in comparatively good shape compared to the appalling living conditions of those whose misfortune it was to serve aboard those ships.

The reason for the savage neglect of both ships and men could be summed up in one word – greed. The fleet owners of yesteryear – and there are more than a few around today – were grasping, avaricious and wholly dedicated to their high priestess – profits at all costs, provided that the cost did not fall on them. Centralization was the watchword of the day, the gathering in of overlapping monopolies into a few rapacious hands. While crews’ wages were cut and living conditions reduced to barely subsistence levels, the owners grew fat, as did some of the less desirable directors of those companies and a considerable number of carefully hand-picked and favoured shareholders.

The dictatorial powers of the owners, discreetly exercised, of course, were little short of absolute. Their fleets were their satrap, their feudal fiefdom, and the crews were their serfs. If a serf chose to revolt against the established order, that was his misfortune. His only recourse was to leave his ship, to exchange it for virtual oblivion, for, apart from the fact that he was automatically blackballed, unemployment was high in the Merchant Navy and the few vacancies available were for willing serfs only. Ashore, unemployment was even higher and even if it had not been so, seamen find it notoriously difficult to adapt to a landlubber’s way of life. The rebel serf had no place left to go. Rebel serfs were very few and far between. The vast majority knew their station in life and kept to it. Official histories tend to gloss over this state of affairs or, more commonly, ignore it altogether, an understandable myopia. The treatment of the merchant seamen between the wars and, indeed, during the Second World War, does not form one of the more glorious chapters in British naval annals.

Successive governments between the wars were perfectly aware of the conditions of life in the Merchant Navy – they would have had to be more than ordinarily stupid not to be so aware – so successive governments, in largely hypocritical face-saving exercises, passed a series of regulations laying down minimum specifications regarding accommodation, food, hygiene and safety. Both governments and owners were perfectly aware – in the case of the ship-owners no doubt cheerfully aware – that regulations are not laws and that a regulation is not legally enforceable. The recommendations – for they amounted to no more than that – were almost wholly ignored. A conscientious captain who tried to enforce them was liable to find himself without a command.

Recorded eyewitness reports of the living conditions aboard Merchant Navy ships in the years immediately prior to the Second World War – there is no reason to question those reports, especially as they are all so depressingly unanimous in tone – describe the crews’ living quarters as being so primitive and atrocious as to beggar description. Medical inspectors stated that in some instances the crews’ living quarters were unfit for animal, far less human, habitation. The quarters were invariably cramped and bereft of any form of comfort. The decks were wet, the men’s clothes were wet and the mattresses and blankets, where such luxuries were available, were usually sodden. Hygiene and toilet facilities ranged from the primitive to the non-existent. Cold was pervasive and heating of any form – except for smoking and evil-smelling coal stoves – was rare, as, indeed was any form of ventilation. And the food, which as one writer said would not have been tolerated in a home for the utterly destitute, was even worse than the living quarters.

The foregoing may strain the bounds of credulity or, at least, seem far-fetched, but respectively, they should not and are not. Charges of imprecision and exaggeration have never been laid at the doors of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine or the Registrar General. The former, in a pre-war report, categorically stated that the mortality rate below the age of fifty-five was twice as high for seamen as it was for the rest of the male population, and statistics issued by the latter showed that the death rate for seamen of all ages was 47% in excess of the national average. The killers were tuberculosis, cerebral hæmorrhage and gastric or duodenal ulcers. The incidence of the first and last of those is all too understandable and there can be little doubt that the combination of those contributed heavily to the abnormal occurrence of strokes.

The prime agent of death was unquestionably tuberculosis. When one looks around Western Europe today, where TB sanatoria are a happily and rapidly vanishing species, it is difficult to imagine just how terrible a scourge tuberculosis was just over a generation ago. It is not that tuberculosis, worldwide, has been eliminated: in many underdeveloped countries it still remains that same terrible scourge and the chief cause of death, and as recently as the early years of this century TB was still the number one killer in Western Europe and North America. Such is no longer the case since scientists came up with the agents to tame and destroy the tubercle bacillus. But in 1939 it was still very much the case: the discovery of the chemotherapeutic agents, rifampin, para-aminosalicylic acid, isoniazid and especially streptomycin, still lay far beyond a distant horizon.

It was upon those tuberculosis-ridden seamen, ill-housed and abominably fed, that Britain depended to bring food, oil, arms and ammunition to its shores and those of its allies. It was the sine qua non conduit, the artery, the lifeline upon which Britain was absolutely dependent: without those ships and men Britain would assuredly have gone under. It is worth noting that those men’s contracts ended when the torpedo, mine or bomb struck. In wartime as in peacetime the owners protected their profits to the bitter end: the seaman’s wages were abruptly terminated when his ship was sunk, no matter where, how, or in what unimaginable circumstances. When an owner’s ship went down he shed no salt tears, for his ships were insured, as often as not grossly over-insured: when a seaman’s ship went down he was fired.

The Government, Admiralty and ship-owners of that time should have been deeply ashamed of themselves: if they were, they manfully concealed their distress: compared to prestige, glory and profits, the conditions of life and the horrors of death of the men of the Merchant Navy were a very secondary consideration indeed.

The people of Britain cannot be condemned. With the exception of the families and friends of the Merchant Navy and the splendid volunteer charitable organizations that were set up to help survivors – such humanitarian trifles were of no concern to owners or Whitehall – very few knew or even suspected what was going on.

2 As a lifeline, a conduit and an artery, the Liberty Ships were on a par with the British Merchant Navy: without them, Britain would have assuredly gone down in defeat. All the food, oil, arms and ammunition which overseas countries – especially the United States – were eager and willing to supply were useless without the ships in which to transport them. After less than two years of war it was bleakly apparent that because of the deadly attrition of the British Merchant fleets there must soon, and inevitably, be no ships left to carry anything and that Britain would, inexorably and not slowly, be starved into surrender. In 1940, even the indomitable Winston Churchill despaired of survival, far less ultimate victory. Typically, the period of despair was brief but heaven only knew that he had cause for it.

In nine hundred years, Britain, of all the countries in the world, had never been invaded, but in the darkest days of the war such invasion seemed not only perilously close but inevitable. Looking back today over a span of forty and more years it seems inconceivable and impossible that the country survived: had the facts been made public, which they weren’t, it almost certainly would not.

British shipping losses were appalling beyond belief and beggar even the most active imagination. In the first eleven months of the war Britain lost 1,500,000 tons of shipping. In some of the early months of 1941, losses averaged close on 500,000 tons. In 1942, the darkest period of the war at sea, 6,250,000 tons of shipping went to the bottom. Even working at full stretch British shipyards could replace only a small fraction of those enormous losses. That, together with the fact that the number of operational U-boats in that same grim year rose from 91 to 212 made it certain that, by the law of diminishing returns, the British Merchant Navy would eventually cease to exist unless a miracle occurred.

The name of the miracle was Liberty Ships. To anyone who can recall those days the term Liberty Ships was automatically and immediately linked with Henry Kaiser. Kaiser – in the circumstances it was ironic that he should bear the same name as the title of the late German Emperor – was an American engineer of unquestioned genius. His career until then had been a remarkably impressive one: he had been a key figure in the construction of the Hoover and Coulee dams and the San Francisco bridge. It is questionable whether Henry Kaiser could have designed a rowing-boat but that was of no matter. He almost certainly had a better understanding of prefabrication based on a standard and repeatable design than any other person in the world at the time and did not hesitate to send out contracts for part-construction to factories in the United States that lay hundreds of miles from the sea. Those sections were transmitted to shipyards for assembly, originally to Richmond, California, where Kaiser directed the Permanente Cement Co., and eventually to other shipyards under Kaiser’s control. Kaiser’s turnover and speed of production stopped just short of the incredible: he did for the production of merchant vessels what Henry Ford’s assembly lines had done for the Model T Ford. Until then, as far as ocean-going vessels were concerned, mass production had been an alien concept.

Mistakenly, but understandably, there existed a widely-held belief that the Liberty Ships originated in the design offices of the Kaiser shipyards. The design and prototypes were, in fact, English and were conceived by the design staff of the shipbuilders J.L. Thompson of North Sands, Sunderland. The first of what was to become a very long line indeed, the Embassage, was completed in 1935 – the prefix ‘Liberty’ did not come into existence for another seven years, and only for some of the Kaiser-built vessels. The Embassage, 9,300 tons, with a raked stem and rounded stern and three triple-expansion coal-burning engines, was a non-starter in the æsthetic stakes, but then J.L. Thompson were not interested in æsthetics: what they had aimed at was a modern, practical and economical cargo vessel and in this they succeeded admirably. Twenty-four more similar vessels were built before the outbreak of war.

Those ships were built in Britain, the United States and Canada, the great preponderance in the Kaiser yards. Hull designs remained identical but the Americans, and only the Americans, introduced two changes which they regarded as refinements. One of those changes, using oil instead of coal as fuel, may well have been: the other, which concerned the accommodation of officers and crew, was not. While the Canadians and British retained the original concept of having the living quarters both fore and aft the Americans elected to have all the crew, officers and men – and the navigating bridge – in a superstructure surrounding the funnel. In retrospect – hindsight and bitter experience make for a splendid conductor to belated wisdom – it was a blunder. The Americans had all their eggs in one basket.

Those vessels were armed – after a fashion. They had four-inch low-angle and twelve-pounder anti-aircraft guns, neither of which was particularly effective, together with Bofors and rapid-firing Oerlikons: the Oerlikons were deadly in trained hands – but there were few trained hands around. They also had weird devices such as rocket-fired parachutes and cables carrying coils of wire and grenades: these were as dangerous to those using them as the aircraft they were supposed to bring down. Some few of these ships had catapult-launched Hurricane fighters – the nearest equivalent to the suicidal Japanese kamikaze planes that Britain ever had. The pilots could not, of course, return to their ships: they had the uncomfortable option of either baling out or ditching. In the Arctic, in winter, their survival rate was not high.

3 From the air, on the sea and under the sea the Germans, often with brilliance, always with tenacity and ruthlessness, used every means in their power to destroy the Merchant Navy convoys.

Basically, they used five main types of aircraft. Their standard or conventional bomber was the Dornier which flew at pre-determined heights and released their bombs in pre-determined patterns: they were useful planes and had their successes but were not particularly effective.

Much more feared, in ascending order, were the Heinkel, the Heinkel III and the Stuka. The Heinkel was a torpedo-bomber, which attacked at wave-top level, its pilot releasing the torpedo at the last possible moment, then using the lightened weight of his aircraft to lift over the ship it was attacking. Those planes had an unusual degree of immunity from destruction: when the anti-aircraft gunners on the merchant ships peered over the sights of their Oerlikons, Bofors or pom-poms – two-pounders – the thought that ‘He gets me or I get him’ didn’t make for the degree of cool detachment which would have been helpful in the circumstances. In the Arctic winter, those torpedo-bombers were not infrequently at a disadvantage, especially for the gallant but unfortunate pilots who flew them: ice could freeze up their torpedo release mechanisms and their burdened aircraft were unable to lift off over their targets. This made little difference to the equally unfortunate crews of the merchant vessels: whether the torpedo was running free or still attached to the aircraft when it crashed into the ship, the results were equally devastating.

The Heinkel III used glider bombers. These were highly effective, exposed their pilots to a much lesser degree of risk and the bombs, once released, were virtually impossible to shoot down: fortunately for the Merchant Navy, the Germans did not have too many of these highly specialized planes.

The Stuka, the dihedral – gull-winged Junker 87 dive-bomber – was the most feared of all. It was their customary practice to fly at high altitude in level formation, then peel off successively in near-vertical dives. Forty years later, the seamen and soldiers – the Germans used the Junker 87 in every theatre of war – who survived those attacks and are still alive will never forget the sound of the banshee shrieking as the Stuka pilots switched on their sirens in their plummeting dive. The sound, to say the least, was unnerving and considerably reduced the effectiveness of anti-aircraft gunners. The Royal Navy used searchlights, customarily of the 44-inch variety, in an attempt to blind the Stuka pilots, until it was pointed out to them that the pilots, who were well aware of this tactic, used dark glasses to reduce the blinding glare to mere pinpoints of light which enabled them to home in even more accurately on their targets. From the German point of view the Stukas had only one drawback: they were essentially short-range planes and could operate effectively only against convoys moving to the north of Norway en route to Murmansk and Archangel.

But, oddly enough, the most effective air weapon the Germans had was the essentially non-combative Focke-Wulf Condor 200. True, it could and did carry 250-kilo bombs and had a fairly formidable array of machine-guns, but with bombs removed and extra fuel tanks fitted in their place, it became an invaluable reconnaissance plane. For that comparatively early flying era, in the early Forties, its flying range was quite remarkable. Condors flew almost daily from Trondheim, in German-occupied Norway, round the western coast of the British Isles to German-occupied France: more importantly, they were capable of patrolling the Barents Sea, the Greenland Sea and, most damagingly of all, the justly dreaded Denmark Strait, between Iceland and Greenland, for it was through that strait that the Russian-bound convoys from Canada and the United States passed. For such a convoy, the sight of a Condor was the guarantee of inevitable disaster.

Flying high and safely out of reach of antiaircraft fire, the Condor would literally circle the convoy, its crew noting down the number of ships, the convoy’s speed, course and precise latitude and longitude. This information was radioed to Alta Fjord or Trondheim and then transmitted to Lorient, the French HQ of Admiral Karl Doenitz, almost certainly the best submarine C-in-C of his time or any time. From there the information was re-transmitted to the growing submarine wolfpack or packs, instructing them when and where exactly to position themselves to intercept the convoy.

As far as surface warships were concerned, the Germans were more than adequately prepared at the outbreak of war. By the Anglo-German agreement of 1937 Germany could build 100% of the British equivalent of submarines but only 35% of surface ships. In fact they built twice as many submarines and completely ignored the other 35% restriction. The Deutschland, Admiral Graf Spee and Admiral Scheer were nominally 10,000 ton cruisers: they were, in fact, fast and powerful commerce raiders, in effect pocket battleships of a far greater tonnage than purported. The Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, 26,000 ton battle-cruisers, were completed in 1938 and it was in that year that the Bismarck and Tirpitz were laid down in the Blohm and Voess shipyards in Hamburg. Those were the best and most powerful battleships ever built, a statement that remains true to this day. By treaty limitations they were restricted to 35,000 tons: they were, in fact, 53,000 tons.

The Bismarck had a brief but spectacular career, the Tirpitz no career at all. It spent its war holed up in northern Norway, where it none the less performed the invaluable function of tying up major units of the British Home Fleet which feared that the giant battleship might slip its moorings in Alta Fjord and break out into the Atlantic. It was at those moorings that the Tirpitz was ultimately destroyed by ten-ton bombs from RAF Lancasters.

Although the British had a very considerable advantage in battleships, they were, individually, no match for those of the Germans, as was tragically proved when the Bismarck sank the battle-cruiser Hood, pride and darling of the Royal Navy, with a single salvo.

Underwater, the Germans used mines and submarines. Less than three months after the outbreak of war the Germans had come up with a rather unpleasant device – the magnetic mine. Unlike the standard type, which had to come into physical contact with a vessel before being activated, the magnetic mine was set off by the electrical current generated by the ship’s hull. Those mines could be laid by either ships or aircraft and in the first four days after their introduction no fewer than fifteen ships were sent to the bottom – the fact that they were nearly all neutrals seemed of no great concern to the Germans: magnetic mines are very clever devices but not clever enough to discriminate between a neutral and an enemy. The British managed to retrieve one intact, took it to pieces – not without considerable danger to those engaged in the dismantling – and came up with electronic counter-measures which enabled minesweepers to detonate the magnetic mine at a respectful distance.

Submarines, of course, were the most deadly enemies the Merchant Navy had to face. The toll taken in the first three and a half years of war was savage beyond belief. It wasn’t until the early summer of 1943 that the menace was brought under some form of control, but it wasn’t until the end of 1944 – during the two years 1943–4 480 German submarines were destroyed – that those stealthy pursuers and silent killers ceased to be a factor of consequence.

It was inevitable that the U-boats should be selected as the target for hatred and their crews depicted, both during the war and subsequently, as cunning, treacherous and ice-cold murderers, fanatical Nazis to a man, who hunted down unsuspecting innocents, closed in unheard and unseen, destroyed their victims without mercy or compunction, then moved on again, still unheard and unseen. To a limited extent, this view was valid. The pattern for this belief was set on the very first day of the war when the liner Athenia was torpedoed. In no way could the Athenia have been mistaken for anything other than what it was: a peaceful passenger vessel crammed with civilians – men, women and children. This must have been known to the far from gallant Oberleutnant Fritz-Julius Lemp, commander of the German U-boat that sent the Athenia to the bottom. There is no record that Lemp was ever reprimanded for his action.

The same charge of ruthlessness, of course, could have been levelled against Allied submariners – to a lesser extent, admittedly, it is true, but that was only because they had a much more limited choice of targets.

The overall U-boat picture is false. Ruthless Nazis there may have been among the crews but they were a tiny minority: the men were motivated principally by an intense pride in the traditions of the Imperial German Navy. Certainly there were acts of brutality by individual U-boat commanders but there were also acts of humanity, gallantry and compassion. What was undeniable was the immense personal courage and spirit of self-sacrifice of those men. It has to be remembered that, out of a total of 40,000 U-boat submariners, 30,000 died, the most shocking casualty rate in the history of naval warfare. While the actions of those men are not to be condoned, the men themselves are not to be condemned. Ruthless they were – the nature of their job demanded it – but they were brave beyond belief.

Such then were the conditions in which the men of the Merchant Navy had to live and die: such, too, were their enemies, who sought, implacably, to destroy them. The odds against the health and lives of the merchantmen surviving, respectively, their living conditions and the attentions of the enemy were high indeed: theirs was a classic no-win situation. In the circumstances it was an astonishing and commonplace fact that men who had survived two or three torpedoings and sinkings would immediately, on their return to Britain, seek out another ship to take them to sea again. By definition, those men were non-combatants but their endurance, tenacity and determination – they would have laughed at words like gallantry and courage – matched those of the men who hunted them down.

Chapter One

Silently, undramatically, without any forewarning, as in any abrupt and unexpected power cut in a city, the lights aboard the San Andreas died in the hour before the dawn. Such blackouts were rare but not unknown and gave rise to no particular alarm as far as the handling and navigation of the vessel were concerned. On the bridge, the binnacle light that illuminated the compass, the chart light and the essential telephone line to the engine-room remained unaffected because, operating as they did on a lower voltage, they had their own separate generator. The overhead lights were on the main generator but this was of no consequence as those lights were switched off: the bridge, any bridge, was always darkened at night. The only item on the bridge that did fail was the Kent screen, an inset circular plate of glass directly ahead of the helmsman which spun at high speed and offered a clear view in all conditions. Third Officer Batesman, the officer of the watch, was unworried: to the best of his belief there were neither land nor ships within a hundred miles of him with the exception of the frigate HMS Andover. He had no idea where the frigate was and it didn’t matter: the frigate always knew where he was, for it was equipped with highly sophisticated radar.

In the operating theatre and recovery room it was a case of business as usual. Although the surrounding sea and sky were still dark as midnight, the hour was not early: in those high latitudes and at that time of year daylight, or what passed for daylight, arrived about 10.00 a.m. In those two rooms, the most important in a hospital ship, for that was what the San Andreas was, battery-powered lights came on automatically when the main power failed. Throughout the rest of the ship emergency lighting was provided by hand-hung nickel-cadmium lamps: a twist of the base of such a lamp provided at least a bare minimum of illumination.

What did give rise to concern was the complete failure of the upper deck lights. The hull of the San Andreas was painted white – more correctly, it had been white but time and the sleet, hail, snow and ice spicules of Arctic storms had eroded the original to something between a dingy off-white and an equally dingy light grey. A green band ran all the way around the hull. Very big red crosses had been painted on both her sides, as well as on the fore and after-decks. During night-time those red crosses were illuminated by powerful floodlights: at that time darkness accounted for twenty hours out of the twenty-four.

Opinion as to the value of those lights was fairly evenly divided. According to the Geneva Convention, those red crosses guaranteed immunity against enemy attacks, and as the San Andreas had so far been reassuringly immune those aboard her who had never been subjected to an enemy attack of any kind tended to believe in the validity of the Geneva Convention. But the crew members who had served aboard before her conversion from a Liberty cargo carrier to her present status regarded the Convention with a very leery eye. To sail at night lit up like a Christmas tree went against all the instincts of men who for years had been conditioned to believe, rightly, that to light a cigarette on the upper deck was to attract the attention of a wandering U-boat. They didn’t trust the lights. They didn’t trust the red crosses. Above all, they didn’t trust the U-boats. There was justification for their cynicism: other hospital boats, they knew, had been less fortunate than they had been but whether those attacks had been deliberate or accidental had never been established. There are no courts of law on the high seas and no independent witnesses. Either from reasons of delicacy or because they thought it pointless the crew never discussed the matter with those who lived in what they regarded as a fool’s paradise – the doctors, the sisters, the nurses and the ward orderlies.

The starboard screen door on the bridge opened and a figure, torch in hand, entered. Batesman said: ‘Captain?’

‘Indeed. One of these days I’ll get to finish my breakfast in peace. Some lamps, will you, Third?’

Captain Bowen was of medium height, running to fat – ’well-built’ was his preferred term – with a cheerful white-bearded face and periwinkle-blue eyes. He was also well past retirement age but had never asked to retire and never been asked to: in both ships and men the Merchant Navy had suffered crippling losses and a new ship could be made in a tiny fraction of the time it took to make a new captain: there weren’t too many Captain Bowens left around.

The three emergency lamps didn’t give much more light than a similar number of candles would have done but it was enough to see just how quickly the Captain’s coat had been covered in snow in the brief seconds it had taken him to cover the distance from the saloon. He removed the coat, shook it out through the doorway and hurriedly closed the door.

‘Bloody generator having one of its fits again,’ Bowen said. He didn’t seem particularly upset about it, but then, no one had ever seen the Captain upset about anything. ‘Kent screen on the blink, of course. No odds. Useless anyway. Heavy snow, thirty knot wind and visibility zero.’ There was a certain satisfaction in Bowen’s voice and neither Batesman nor Hudson, the helmsman, had to ask why. All three belonged to the group of thought that had minimal belief in the Geneva Convention: no plane, ship or submarine could hope to locate them in those conditions. ‘Been through to the engine-room?’

‘I have not.’ Batesman spoke with some feeling and Bowen smiled. Chief Engineer Patterson, a north-easterner from the Newcastle area, had a high pride in his undoubted skill, a temper with a notoriously short fuse and a rooted aversion to being questioned about his activities by anyone as lowly as a third officer. ‘I’ll get the Chief, sir.’

He got the Chief. Bowen took the phone and said: ‘Ah, John. Not having much luck this trip, are we? Overload coil? Brushes? Fuse? Ah! The standby, then – I do hope we’re not out of fuel again.’ Captain Bowen spoke in tones of grave concern and Batesman smiled: every member of the crew, down even to the pantry-boy, knew that Chief Patterson was totally devoid of any sense of humour. Bowen’s reference to fuel referred to the occasion when, with Chief Patterson off duty, the main generator had failed and the young engineer in charge had forgotten to turn the cock on the fuel line to the auxiliary. Patterson’s comments were predictable. With a pained expression on his face, Bowen held the phone a foot from his ear until the crackling in the earpiece had ceased, spoke briefly again, then hung up and said diplomatically: ‘I think Chief Patterson is having rather more trouble than usual in locating electrical faults. Ten minutes, he says.’

Only two minutes later the phone rang.

‘Bad news, for a fiver.’ Bowen lifted the phone, listened briefly, then said: ‘You want a word with me, John? But you are having a word with me … Ah. I see. Very well.’ He hung up. ‘The Chief wants to show me something.’

Bowen did not, as Batesman might have assumed, go to the engine-room. He went, instead, to his cabin where he was joined within a minute by the Chief Engineer. A tall, lean man, with an unremarkable face and a permanent five o’clock shadow, he was, like a number of men who are humourless and unaware of it, given to smiling at frequent intervals and usually at inappropriate moments. He was not, however, smiling at that particular moment. He produced three pieces of what appeared to be black carbon and arranged them on the Captain’s table until they formed an oblong shape.

‘What do you make of that, then?’

‘You know me, John, just a simple seaman. An armature brush for a dynamo or generator or whatever?’

‘Exactly.’ Patterson was much better at being grim than he was at smiling.

‘Hence the power failure?’

‘Nothing to do with the power failure. Overload coil thrown. Short somewhere. Jamieson’s taken a bridge-megger and gone off to locate it. Shouldn’t take him long to locate it.’

This Bowen was prepared to believe. Jamieson, the Second Engineer, was a very bright young man with the unusual distinction of being an A.M.I.E.E. – an Associate Member of the Institute of Electrical Engineers. He said: ‘So this brush comes from the auxiliary generator; it’s broken, you seem unhappy about it, so I take it this is unusual.’

‘Unusual? It’s unknown. At least, I’ve never known of it. The brush is under constant spring-loaded pressure against the face of the armature. There is no way it could have broken in this particular fashion.’

‘Well, it did happen. First time for everything.’ Bowen touched the broken pieces with his finger. ‘A one-off job? Flaw in manufacture?’

Patterson didn’t answer. He dug into an overall pocket, brought out a small metal box, removed the lid and placed the box on the table beside the broken brush. The two brushes inside were identical in shape and size to the one that Patterson had reassembled. Bowen looked at them, pursed his lips, then looked at Patterson.

‘Spares?’ Patterson nodded. Bowen picked one up but only one half came away in his hand: the other half remained in the bottom of the box.

‘Our only two spares,’ Patterson said.

‘No point in examining the other?’

‘None. Both generators were examined and in good shape when we were in Halifax – and we’ve used the auxiliary twice since leaving there.’

‘One broken brush could be an extraordinary fluke. Three broken ones don’t even make for a ludicrous coincidence. Doesn’t even call for thoughtful chin-rubbing, John. We have an ill-intentioned crank in our midst.’

‘Crank! Saboteur, you mean.’

‘Well, yes, I suppose. At least, someone who is ill-disposed to us. Or towards the San Andreas. But saboteur? I wonder. Saboteurs go in for varied forms of wholesale destruction. Breaking three generator brushes can hardly be classified as wholesale destruction. And unless the character responsible is deranged he’s not going to send the San Andreas to the bottom – not with him inside it. Why, John, why?’

They were still sitting there, darkly pondering why, when a knock came at the door and Jamieson entered. Young, red-headed and with an ebullient and carefree attitude to life, he was being anything but ebullient and carefree at that moment: he had about him an air of gravity and anxiety, both quite alien to his nature.

‘Engine-room told me I’d find you here. I thought I should come at once.’

‘As the bearer of bad news,’ Captain Bowen said. ‘You have discovered two things: the location of the short and evidence of, shall we say, sabotage?’

‘How the hell – I’m sorry, sir, but how could you possibly –’

‘Tell him, John,’ Bowen said.

‘I don’t have to. Those broken brushes are enough. What did you find, Peter?’

‘For’ard. Carpenter’s shop. Lead cable passing through a bulkhead. Clips on either side seemed to have worked loose where it passed through the hole in the bulkhead.’

Bowen said: ‘Normal ship’s vibration, weather movement – doesn’t take much to chafe through soft lead.’

‘Lead’s tougher than you think, sir. In this case a pair of hands helped the normal chafing along. Not that that matters. Inside the lead sheathing the rubber round the power cable has been scorched away.’

‘Which one would expect in a short?’

‘Yes, sir. Only, I know the smell of electrically burnt rubber and it doesn’t smell like sulphur. Some bright lad had used an igniting match-head or heads to do the trick. I’ve left Ellis on the repair job. It’s simple and he should be about through now.’

‘Well, well. So it’s as easy as that to knock out a ship’s electrical power.’

‘Almost, sir. He’d one other little job to do. There’s a fuse-box just outside the carpenter’s shop and he removed the appropriate fuse before starting work. Then he returned to the fuse-box and shorted out the line – insulated pliers, ditto screwdriver, almost anything would do – then replaced the fuse. If he’d replaced the fuse before shorting out the line it would have blown, leaving the rest of the electrical system intact. Theoretically, that is – on very rare occasions the fuse is not so obliging and doesn’t go.’ Jamieson smiled faintly. ‘Fact of the matter is, if I’d had a cold in the nose he might have got away with it.’

The phone rang. Captain Bowen lifted it and handed it over to Patterson who listened, said: ‘Sure. Now,’ and handed the phone back. ‘Engine-room. Power coming on.’

Perhaps half a minute passed, then Captain Bowen said mildly: ‘You know, I don’t think the power is coming on.’

Jamieson rose and Bowen said: ‘Where are you going?’

‘I don’t know, sir. Well, first of all to the engine-room to pick up Ellis and the bridge-megger and then I don’t know. It would seem that old Flannelfoot has more than one string to his bow.’

The phone rang again and Bowen, without answering, handed it over to Patterson, who listened briefly, said: ‘Thank you. Mr Jamieson is coming down,’ and handed the phone back. ‘Same again. I wonder how many places our friend has jinxed and is just waiting for the opportunity to activate them.’

Jamieson hesitated at the door. ‘Do we keep this to ourselves?’

‘We do not.’ Bowen was positive. ‘We broadcast it far and wide. Granted, Flannelfoot, as you call him, will be forewarned and forearmed, but the knowledge that a saboteur is at large will make everyone look at his neighbour and wonder what a saboteur looks like. If nothing else, it will make this lad a great deal more circumspect and, with any luck, may restrict his activities quite a bit.’ Jamieson nodded and left.

Bowen said: ‘I think, John, you might double the watch in the engine-room or at least bring two or three extra men – not, you understand, for engine-room duties.’

‘I understand. You think, perhaps –’

‘If you wanted to sabotage, incapacitate a ship, where would you go?’

Patterson rose, went to the door and, as Jamieson had done, stopped there and turned. ‘Why?’ he said. ‘Why, why, why?’

‘I don’t know why. But I have an unpleasant feeling about the where and the when. Here or hereabouts and sooner than we think, quicker than we want. Somebody,’ Captain Bowen said as if by way of explanation, ‘has just walked over my grave.’ Patterson gave him a long look and closed the door quietly behind him.

Bowen picked up the phone, dialled a single number and said: ‘Archie, my cabin.’ He had no sooner replaced the receiver when it rang again. It was the bridge. Batesman didn’t sound too happy.

‘Snowstorm’s blowing itself out, sir. Andover can see us now. Wants to know why we’re not showing any lights. I told them we had a power failure, then another message just now, why the hell are we taking so long to fix it?’

‘Sabotage.’

‘I beg your pardon, sir.’

‘Sabotage. S for Sally, A for Arthur, B for Bobby, O for –’

‘Good God! Whatever – I mean, why –’

‘I do not know why.’ Captain Bowen spoke with a certain restraint. ‘Tell them that. I’ll tell you what I know – which is practically nothing – when I come up to the bridge. Five minutes. Maybe ten.’

Archie McKinnon, the Bo’sun, came in. Captain Bowen regarded the Bo’sun – as indeed many other captains regarded their bo’suns – as the most important crew member aboard. He was a Shetlander, about six feet two in height and built accordingly, perhaps forty years of age, with a brick-coloured complexion, blue-grey eyes and flaxen hair – the last two almost certainly inheritances from Viking ancestors who had passed by – or through – his native island a millennium previously.

‘Sit down, sit down,’ Bowen said. He sighed. ‘Archie, we have a saboteur aboard.’

‘Have we now.’ He raised eyebrows, no startled oaths from the Bo’sun, not ever. ‘And what has he been up to, Captain?’

Bowen told him what he had been up to and said: ‘Can you make any more of it than I can, which is zero?’

‘If you can’t, Captain, I can’t.’ The regard in which the Captain held the Bo’sun was wholly reciprocated. ‘He doesn’t want to sink the ship, not with him aboard and the water temperature below freezing. He doesn’t want to stop the ship – there’s half a dozen ways a clever man could do that. I’m thinking myself that all he wanted to do is to douse the lights which – at night-time, anyway – identify us as a hospital ship.’

‘And why would he want to do that, Archie?’ It was part of their unspoken understanding that the Captain always called him ‘Bo’sun’ except when they were alone.

‘Well.’ The Bo’sun pondered. ‘You know I’m not a Highlander or a Western Islander so I can’t claim to be fey or have the second sight.’ There was just the faintest suggestion of an amalgam of disapproval and superiority in the Bo’sun’s voice but the Captain refrained from smiling: essentially, he knew, Shetlanders did not regard themselves as Scots and restricted their primary allegiance to the Shetlands. ‘But like yourself, Captain, I have a nose for trouble and I can’t say I’m very much liking what I can smell. Half an hour – well, maybe forty minutes – anybody will be able to see that we are a hospital ship.’ He paused and looked at the Captain with what might possibly have been a hint of surprise which was the nearest the Bo’sun ever came to registering emotion. ‘I can’t imagine why but I have the feeling that someone is going to have a go at us before dawn. At dawn, most likely.’

‘I can’t imagine why either, Archie, but I have the same feeling myself. Alert the crew, will you? Ready for emergency stations. Spread the word that there’s an illegal electrician in our midst.’

The Bo’sun smiled. ‘So that they can keep an eye on each other. I don’t think, Captain, that we’ll find the man among the crew. They’ve been with us for a long time now.’

‘I hope not and I think not. That’s to say, I’d like to think not. But it was someone who knew his way around. Their wages are not exactly on a princely scale. You’d be surprised what a bag of gold can do to a man’s loyalty.’

‘After twenty-five years at sea, there isn’t a great deal that can surprise me. Those survivors we took off that tanker last night – well, I wouldn’t care to call any of them my blood-brother.’

‘Come, come, Bo’sun, a little of the spirit of Christian charity, if you please. It was a Greek tanker – Greece is supposed to be an ally, if you remember – and the crew would be Greek. Well, Greek, Cypriot, Lebanese, Hottentot if you like. Can’t expect them all to look like Shetlanders. I didn’t see any of them carrying a pot of gold.’

‘No. But some of them – the uninjured ones, I mean – were carrying suitcases.’

‘And some of them were carrying overcoats and at least three of them were wearing ties. And why not? The Argos spent six hours there wallowing around after being mined: time and enough for anyone to pack his worldly possessions or such few possessions as Greek seamen appear to have. It would be a bit much I think, Archie, to expect a crippled Greek tanker in the Barents Sea to have aboard a crewman with a bag of gold who just happened to be a trained saboteur.’

‘Aye, it’s not a combination that one would expect to find every day. Do we alert the hospital?’

‘Yes. What’s the latest down there?’ The Bo’sun invariably knew the state of everything aboard the San Andreas whether it concerned his department or not.

‘Dr Singh and Dr Sinclair have just finished operating. One man with a broken pelvis, the other with extensive burns. They’re in the recovery room now and should be okay. Nurse Magnusson is with them.’

‘My word, Archie, you do appear to be singularly well-informed.’

‘Nurse Magnusson is a Shetlander,’ the Bo’sun said, as if that explained everything. ‘Seven patients in Ward A, not fit to be moved. Worst is the Chief Officer of the Argos, but not in danger, Janet says.’

‘Janet?’

‘Nurse Magnusson.’ The Bo’sun was a difficult man to put off his stride. ‘Ten in recuperating Ward B. The Argos survivors are in the bunks on the port side.’

‘I’ll go down there now. Go and alert the crew. When you’ve finished, come along to the sick-bay – and bring a couple of your men with you.’

‘Sick-bay?’ The Bo’sun regarded the deckhead. ‘You’d better not let Sister Morrison hear you call it that.’

Bowen smiled. ‘Ah, the formidable Sister Morrison. All right, hospital. Twenty sick men down there. Not to mention sisters, nurses and ward orderlies who –’

‘And doctors.’

‘And doctors who have never heard a shot fired in their lives. A close eye, Archie.’

‘You are expecting the worst, Captain?’

‘I am not,’ Bowen said heavily, ‘expecting the best.’

The hospital area of the San Andreas was remarkably airy and roomy, remarkably but not surprisingly, for the San Andreas was primarily a hospital and not a ship and well over half of the lower deck space had been given over to its medical facilities. The breaching of watertight bulkheads – a hospital ship, theoretically, did not require watertight bulkheads – increased both the sense and the actuality of the spaciousness. The area was taken up by two wards, an operating theatre, recovery room, medical store, dispensary, galley – quite separate from and independent of the crew’s galley – cabins for the medical staff, two messes – one for the staff, the other for recuperating patients – and a small lounge. It was towards the last of these that Captain Bowen now made his way.

He found three people there, having tea: Dr Singh, Dr Sinclair and Sister Morrison. Dr Singh was an amiable man of ‘Pakistan’ descent, middle-aged and wearing a pince-nez – he was one of the few people who looked perfectly at home with such glasses. He was a qualified and competent surgeon who disliked being called ‘Mister’. Dr Sinclair, sandy-haired and every bit as amiable as his colleague, was twenty-six years old and had quit in his second year as an intern in a big teaching hospital to volunteer for service in the Merchant Navy. Nobody could ever have accused Sister Morrison of being amiable: about the same age as Sinclair, she had auburn hair, big brown eyes and a generous mouth, all three of which accorded ill with her habitually prim expression, the steel-rimmed glasses which she occasionally affected and a faint but unmistakable aura of aristocratic hauteur. Captain Bowen wondered what she looked like when she smiled: he wondered if she ever smiled.

He explained, briefly, why he had come. Their reactions were predictable. Sister Morrison pursed her lips, Dr Sinclair raised his eyebrows and Dr Singh, half-smiling, said: ‘Dear me, dear me. Saboteur or saboteurs, spy or spies aboard a British vessel. Quite unthinkable.’ He meditated briefly. ‘But then, not everybody aboard is strictly British. I’m not, for one.’

‘Your passport says you are.’ Bowen smiled. ‘As you were operating in the theatre at the time that our saboteur was operating elsewhere that automatically removes you from the list of potential suspects. Unfortunately, we don’t have a list of suspects, potential or otherwise. We do indeed, Dr Singh, have a fair number of people who were not born in Britain. We have two Indians – lascars – two Goanese, two Singhalese, two Poles, a Puerto Rican, a Southern Irishman and, for some odd reason, an Italian who, as an official enemy, ought to be a prisoner-of-war or in an internment camp somewhere. And, of course, the survivors of the Argos are non-British to a man.’

‘And don’t forget me,’ Sister Morrison said coldly. ‘I’m half German.’

‘You are? With a name like Margaret Morrison?’

She pursed her lips, an exercise which seemed to come naturally to her. ‘How do you know that my name is Margaret?’

‘A captain holds the crew lists. Like it or not, you are a member of the crew. Not that any of this matters. Spies, saboteurs, can be of any nationality and the more unlikely they are – in this case being British – the more efficiently they can operate. As I say, that’s at the moment irrelevant. What is relevant is that the Bo’sun and two of his men will be here very shortly. Should an emergency arise he will assume complete charge except, of course, for the handling of the very ill. I assume you all know the Bo’sun?’

‘An admirable man,’ Dr Singh said. ‘Very reassuring, very competent, couldn’t imagine anyone I’d rather have around in times of need.’

‘We all know him.’ Sister Morrison was as good with her cold tones as she was with her pursed lips. ‘Heaven knows he’s here often enough.’

‘Visiting the sick?’

‘Visiting the sick! I don’t like the idea of an ordinary seaman pestering one of my nurses.’

‘Mr McKinnon is not an ordinary seaman. He’s an extraordinary seaman and he’s never pestered anyone in his life. Let’s have Janet along here to see if she bears out your preposterous allegations.’

‘You – you know her name.’

‘Of course I know her name.’ Bowen sounded weary. It was not the moment, he thought, to mention the fact that until five minutes ago he had never heard of anyone called Janet. ‘They come from the same island and have much to talk about. It would help, Miss Morrison, if you took as much interest in your staff as I do in mine.’

It was a good exit line, Bowen thought, but he wasn’t particularly proud of himself. In spite of the way she spoke he rather liked the girl because he suspected that the image she projected was not the real one and that there might be some very good reason for this: but she was not Archie McKinnon.

The Chief Officer, one Geraint Kennet, an unusual name but one that he maintained came from an ancient aristocratic lineage, was awaiting Bowen’s arrival on the bridge. Kennet was a Welshman, lean of figure and of countenance, very dark and very irreverent.

‘You are lost, Mr Kennet?’ Bowen said. Bowen had long ago abandoned the old habit of addressing a Chief Officer as ‘Mister’.

‘When the hour strikes, sir, Kennet is there. I hear of alarms and excursions from young Jamie here.’ ‘Young Jamie’ was Third Officer Batesman. ‘Something sinister afoot, I gather.’

‘You gather rightly. Just how sinister I don’t know.’ He described what little had happened. ‘So, two electrical breakdowns, if you could call them that, and a third in the process of being investigated.’

‘And it would be naïve to think that the third is not connected with the other two?’

‘Very naïve.’

‘This presages something ominous.’

‘Don’t they teach you English in those Welsh schools.’

‘No, sir. I mean, yes, sir. You have reached a conclusion, not, perhaps, a very nice one?’

The phone rang. Batesman took it and handed the phone to Bowen who listened briefly, thanked the caller and hung up.

‘Jamieson. In the cold room, this time. How could anyone get into the cold room? Cook’s got the only key.’

‘Easily,’ Kennet said. ‘If a man was a saboteur, trained in his art – if that’s the word I want – one would expect him to be an expert picklock or at least to carry a set of skeleton keys around with him. With respect, sir, I hardly think that’s the point. When will this villain strike again?’

‘When indeed. Flannelfoot – that’s Jamieson’s term for him – seems to be a villain of some resource and foresight. It is more than likely that he has some further surprises. Jamieson is of the same mind. If there’s another power failure when they switch on again he says he’s going to go over every inch of wiring with his bridge-megger, whatever that is.’

‘Some sort of instrument for detecting voltage leaks – you know, breaks in a circuit. It’s occurred to me –’

Chief Radio Officer Spenser appeared at the hatchway of his wireless office, paper in hand. ‘Message from the Andover, sir.’

Bowen read out: ‘Continued absence of lights very serious. Essential expedite matters. Has saboteur been apprehended?’

Kennet said: ‘Cue, I think for angry spluttering.’

‘Man’s a fool,’ Bowen said. ‘Commander Warrington, I mean, captain of the frigate. Spenser, send: “If you have any members of the Special Branch or CID with you they are welcome aboard. If not, kindly refrain from sending pointless signals. What the hell do you think we’re trying to do?” ’

Kennet said: ‘In the circumstances, sir, a very restrained signal. As I was about to say –’

The phone rang again. Batesman took the call, listened, acknowledged, hung up and turned to the Captain.

‘Engine-room, sir. Another malfunction. Both Jamieson and Third Engineer Ralson are on their way up with meggers.’

Bowen brought out his pipe and said nothing. He gave the impression of a man temporarily bereft of words. Kennet wasn’t, but then, Kennet never was.

‘Man never gets to finish a sentence on this bridge. Have you arrived at any conclusion, sir, however unpleasant?’

‘Conclusion, no. Hunch, suspicion, yes. Unpleasant, yes. I would take odds that by or at dawn someone is going to have a go at us.’

‘Fortunately,’ Kennet said, ‘I am not a betting man. In any event I wouldn’t bet against my own convictions. Which are the same as yours, sir.’

‘We’re a hospital ship, sir,’ Batesman said. He didn’t even sound hopeful.

Bowen favoured him with a morose glance. ‘If you are immune to the sufferings of the sick and dying and care to exercise a certain cold-blooded and twisted logic, then we are a man-of-war even though we are completely defenceless. For what do we do? We take our sick and wounded home, fix them up and send them off again to the front or to the sea to fight the Germans once more. If you were to stretch your conscience far enough you could make a good case out of maintaining that to allow a hospital ship to reach its homeland is tantamount to aiding and abetting the enemy. Oberleutnant Lemp would have torpedoed us without a second thought.’

‘Oberleutnant who?’

‘Lemp. Chap who sent the Athenia to the bottom – and Lemp knew that the Athenia carried only civilians as passengers, men, women and children who – he knew this well – would never be used to fight against the Germans. The Athenia was a case much more deserving of compassion than we are, don’t you think, Third?’

‘I wish you wouldn’t talk like that, sir.’ Batesman was now not only as morose as the Captain had been, but positively mournful. ‘How do we know that this fellow Lemp is not lurking out there, just over the horizon?’

‘Fear not,’ Kennet said. ‘Oberleutnant Lemp has long since been gathered to his ancestors, for whom one can feel only a certain degree of sympathy. However, he may have a twin brother or some kindred souls out there. As the Captain so rightly infers, we live in troubled and uncertain times.’

Batesman looked at Bowen. ‘Is it permitted, Captain, to ask the Chief Officer to shut up?’

Kennet smiled broadly, then stopped smiling as the phone rang again. Batesman reached for the phone but Bowen forestalled him. ‘Master’s privilege, Third. The news may be too heavy for a young man like you to bear.’ He listened, cursed by way of acknowledgment and hung up. When he turned round he looked – and sounded – disgusted.

‘Bloody officers’ toilet!’

Kennet said, ‘Flannelfoot?’

‘Who do you think it was? Santa Claus?’

‘A sound choice,’ Kennet said judiciously. ‘Very sound. Where else could a man work in such peace, privacy and for an undetermined period of time, blissfully immune, one might say, from any fear of interruption? Might even have time to read a chapter of his favourite thriller, as is the habit of one young officer aboard this ship, who shall remain nameless.’

‘The Third Officer has the right of it,’ Bowen said. ‘Will you kindly shut up?’

‘Yes, sir. Was that Jamieson?’

‘Yes.’

‘We should be hearing from Ralson any time now.’

‘Jamieson has already heard from him. Seamen’s toilet this time, port side.’

For once, Kennet had no observation to make and for almost a minute there was silence on the bridge for the sufficient reason that there didn’t seem to be any comment worth making. When the silence was broken it was, inevitably, by Kennet.

‘A few more minutes and our worthy engineers might as well cease and desist. Or am I the only person who has noticed that the dawn is in the sky?’

The dawn, indeed, was in the sky. Already, to the south-east, off the port beam, the sky had changed from black, or as black as it ever becomes in northern waters, to a dark grey and was steadily lightening. The snow had completely stopped now, the wind had dropped to twenty knots and the San Andreas was pitching, not heavily, in the head seas coming up from the northwest.

Kennet said, ‘Shall I post a couple of extra lookouts, sir? One on either wing?’

‘And what can those look-outs do? Make faces at the enemy?’

‘They can’t do a great deal more, and that’s a fact. But if anyone is going to have a go at us, it’s going to be now. A high-flying Condor, for instance, you can almost see the bombs leaving the bay and there’s an even chance in evasive action.’ Kennet didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic or convinced.

‘And if it’s a submarine, dive-bomber, glider-bomber or torpedo-bomber?’

‘They can still give us warning and time for a prayer. Mind you, probably a very short prayer, but still a prayer.’

‘As you wish, Mr Kennet.’

Kennet made a call and within three minutes his look-outs arrived on the bridge, duffel-coated and scarfed to the eyebrows as Kennet had instructed. McGuigan and Jones, a Southern Irishman and a Welshman, they were boys only, neither of them a day over eighteen. Kennet issued them with binoculars and posted them on the bridge wings, Jones to port, McGuigan to starboard. Seconds only after closing the port door, Jones opened it again.

‘Ship, sir! Port quarter.’ His voice was excited, urgent. ‘Warship, I think.’

‘Relax,’ Kennet said. ‘I doubt whether it’s the Tirpitz.’ Less than half a dozen people aboard knew that the Andover had accompanied them during the night. He stepped out on to the wing and returned almost immediately. ‘The good shepherd,’ he said. ‘Three miles.’

‘It’s almost half-light now,’ Captain Bowen said. ‘We could be wrong, Mr Kennet.’

The radio room hatchway panel banged open and Spenser’s face appeared.

‘Andover, sir. Bandit, bandit, one bandit … 045 … ten miles … five thousand.’

‘There now,’ Kennet said. ‘I knew we weren’t wrong. Full power, sir?’ Bowen nodded and Kennet gave the necessary instructions to the engine-room.

‘Evasive action?’ Bowen was half-smiling; knowledge, however unwelcome that knowledge, always comes as a relief after uncertainty. ‘A Condor, you would guess?’

‘No guess, sir. In those waters, only the Condor flies alone.’ Kennet slid back the port wing door and gazed skywards. ‘Cloud cover’s pretty thin now. We should be able to see our friend coming up – he should be practically dead astern. Shall we go out on the wing, sir?’

‘In a minute, Mr Kennet. Two minutes. Gather flowers while we may – or, at least, keep warm as long as possible. If fate has abandoned us we shall be freezing to death all too soon. Tell me, Mr Kennet, has any profound thought occurred to you?’

‘A lot of thoughts have occurred to me but I wouldn’t say any of them are profound.’

‘How on earth do you think that Condor located us?’

‘Submarine? It could have surfaced and radioed Alta Fjord.’

‘No submarine. The Andover’s sonar would have picked him up. No plane, no surface ships, that’s a certainty.’

Kennet frowned for a few seconds, then smiled. ‘Flannel-foot,’ he said with certainty. ‘A radio.’

‘Not necessarily even that. A small electrical device, probably powered by our own mains system, that transmits a continuous homing signal.’

‘So if we survive this lot it’s out with the fine-tooth comb?’

‘Indeed. It’s out with –’

‘Andover, sir.’ It was Spenser again. ‘Four bandits, repeat four bandits … 310 … eight miles … three thousand.’

‘I wonder what we’ve done to deserve this?’ Kennet sounded almost mournful. ‘We were even more right than we thought, sir. Torpedo-bombers or glider-bombers, that’s for sure, attacking out of the darkness to the north-west and us silhouetted against the dawn.’

The two men moved out on the port wing. The Andover was still on the port quarter but had closed in until it was less than two miles distant. A low bank of cloud, at about the same distance, obscured the view aft.

‘Hear anything, Mr Kennet? See anything?’

‘Nothing, nothing. Damn that cloud. Yes, I do. I hear it. It’s a Condor.’

‘It’s a Condor.’ Once heard, the desynchronized clamour of a Focke-Wulf 200’s engine is not readily forgotten. ‘And I’m afraid, Mr Kennet, that you’ll have to postpone your evasive action practice for another time. This lad sounds as if he is coming in very low.’

‘Yes, he’s coming in low. And I know why.’ Most unusually for Kennet, he sounded very bitter. ‘He intends to do some pinpoint precision bombing. He’s under orders to stop us or cripple us but not sink us. I’ll bet that bastard Flannelfoot feels as safe as houses.’

‘You have it to rights, Mr Kennet. He could stop us by bombing the engine-room, but doing that is a practical guarantee that we go to the bottom. There he comes, now.’ The Focke-Wulf Condor had broken through the cloud and was heading directly for the stern of the San Andreas. Every gun on the Andover that could be brought to bear had opened up as soon as the Focke-Wulf had cleared the cloud-bank and within seconds the starboard side of the Andover was wreathed in smoke. For a frigate, its anti-aircraft fire-power was formidable: low-angle main armament, pom-poms, Oerlikons and the equally deadly Boulton-Paul Defiant turrets which loosed off a devastating 960 rounds a minute. The Focke-Wulf must have been hit many times but the big Condor’s capacity to absorb punishment was legendary. Still it came on, now no more than two hundred feet above the waves. The sound of the engines had risen from the clamorous to the thunderous.

‘This is no place for a couple of honest seamen to be, Mr Kennet.’ Captain Bowen had to shout to make himself heard. ‘But I think it’s too late now.’

‘I rather think it is, sir.’

Two bombs, just two, arced lazily down from the now smoking Condor.

Chapter Two

Had the Americans retained the original British design concept for accommodation aboard the Liberty Ships, the tragedy, while still remaining such, would at least have been minimized. The original Sunderland plans had the accommodation both fore and aft: Henry Kaiser’s designers, in their wisdom – blind folly as it turned out – had all their accommodation, for both officers and men, including also the navigating bridge, grouped in a single superstructure surrounding the funnel.

The Bo’sun, Dr Sinclair by his side, had reached the upper deck before the Condor reached the San Andreas; they were almost immediately joined by Patterson for whom the Andover’s barrage had sounded like a series of heavy metallic blows on the side of his engine-room.

‘Down!’ the Bo’sun shouted. Two powerful arms around their shoulders bore them to the deck, for the Focke-Wulf had reached the San Andreas before the bombs did and the Bo’sun was well aware that the Focke-Wulf carried a fairly lethal array of machine guns which it did not hesitate to use when the occasion demanded. On this occasion, however, the guns remained silent, possibly because the gunners were under instructions not to fire, more probably because the gunners were already dead, for it was plain that the Condor, trailing a huge plume of black smoke, whether from fuselage or engines it was impossible to say, and veering sharply to starboard, was itself about to die.

The two bombs, contact and not armour-piercing, struck fore and aft of the funnel, exploded simultaneously and just immediately after passing through the unprotected deck-heads of the living quarters, blowing the shattered bulkheads outwards and filling the air with screaming shards of metal and broken glass, none of which reached the three prone men. The Bo’sun cautiously lifted his head and stared in disbelief as the funnel, seemingly intact but sheared off at its base toppled slowly over the port side and into the sea. Any sound of a splash that there may have been was drowned out by the swelling roar of more aero engines.

‘Stay down, stay down!’ Flat on the deck, the Bo’sun twisted his head to the right. There were four of them in line abreast formation, Heinkel torpedo-bombers, half a mile away, no more than twenty feet above the water and headed directly for the starboard side of the San Andreas. Ten seconds, he thought, twelve at the most and the dead men in the charnel house of that shattered superstructure would have company and to spare. Why had the guns of the Andover fallen silent? He twisted his head to the left to look at the frigate and immediately realized why. It was impossible that the gunners on the Andover could not hear the sound of the approaching Heinkels but it was equally impossible that they could see them. The San Andreas was directly in line between the frigate and the approaching bombers which were flying below the height of their upper deck.

He twisted his head to the right again and to his momentary astonishment saw that this was no longer the case. The Heinkels were lifting clear of the water with the intention of flying over the San Andreas, which they did seconds later, not much more than ten feet above the deck, two on each side of the twisted superstructure. The San Andreas had not been the target, only the shield for the Heinkels: the frigate was the target and the bombers were half way between the San Andreas and the frigate before the bemused defenders aboard the Andover understood what was happening.

When they did understand their reaction was sharp and violent. The main armament was virtually useless. It takes time to train and elevate a gun of any size and against a close-in and fast-moving target there just isn’t time. The anti-aircraft guns, the two-pounders, the Oerlikons and the Defiants did indeed mount a heavy barrage but torpedo-bombers were notoriously difficult targets, not least because the gunners were acutely aware that death was only seconds away, a realization that made for less than a controlled degree of accuracy.

The bombers were less than three hundred yards away when the plane on the left-hand side of the formation pulled up and banked to its left to clear the stern of the Andover: almost certainly neither the plane nor the pilot had been damaged: as was not unknown, the torpedo release mechanism had iced up, freezing the torpedo in place. At about the same instant the plane on the right descended in a shallow dive until it touched the water – almost certainly the pilot had been shot. A victory but a Pyrrhic one. The other two Heinkels released their torpedoes and lifted clear of the Andover.

Three torpedoes hit the Andover almost simultaneously, the two that had been cleanly released and the one that was still attached to the plane that had crashed into the water. All three torpedoes detonated but there was little enough in the way of thunderclaps of sound or shock waves: water always has this same muffling effect on an underwater explosion. What they did produce, however, was a great sheet of water and spray which rose to two hundred feet into the sky and then slowly subsided. When it finally disappeared the Andover was on its beam ends and deep in the water. Within twenty seconds, with only a faint hissing as the water flooded the engine-room and with curiously little in the way of bubbles, the Andover slid beneath the surface of the sea.

‘My God, my God, my God!’ Dr Sinclair, swaying slightly, was on his feet. As a doctor, he was acquainted with death, but not in this shocking form: he was still dazed, not quite aware of what was going on around him. ‘Good God, that big plane is coming back again!’

The big plane, the Condor, was indeed coming back again, but it offered no threat to them. Dense smoke pouring from all four engines, it completed a half circle and was approaching the San Andreas. Less than half a mile away it touched the surface of the sea, momentarily dipped beneath it, then came into sight again. There was no more smoke.

‘God rest them,’ Patterson said. He was almost abnormally calm. ‘Damage control party first, see if we’re making water, although I shouldn’t have thought so.’

‘Yes, sir.’ The Bo’sun looked at what was left of the superstructure. ‘Perhaps a fire-control party. Lots of blankets, mattresses, clothes, papers in there – God only knows what’s smouldering away already.’

‘Do you think there will be any survivors in there?’

‘I wouldn’t even guess, sir. If there are, thank heavens we’re a hospital ship.’

Patterson turned to Dr Sinclair and shook him gently. ‘Doctor, we need your help.’ He nodded towards the superstructure. ‘You and Dr Singh – and the ward orderlies. I’ll send some men with sledges and crowbars.’

‘An oxy-acetylene torch?’ said the Bo’sun.

‘Of course.’

‘We’ve got enough medical equipment and stores aboard to equip a small town hospital,’ Sinclair said. ‘If there are any survivors all we’ll require is a few hypodermic syringes.’ He seemed back on balance again. ‘We don’t take in the nurses?’

‘Good God, no.’ Patterson shook his head vehemently. ‘I tell you, I wouldn’t like to go in there. If there are any survivors they’ll have their share of horrors later.’

McKinnon said: ‘Permission to take away the lifeboat, sir?’

‘Whatever for?’

‘There could be survivors from the Andover.’

‘Survivors! She went down in thirty seconds.’

‘The Hood blew apart in one second. There were three survivors.’

‘Of course, of course. I’m not a seaman, Bo’sun. You don’t need permission from me.’

‘Yes, I do, sir.’ The Bo’sun gestured towards the superstructure. ‘All the deck officers are there. You’re in command.’

‘Good God!’ The thought, the realization had never struck Patterson. ‘What a way to assume command!’

‘And speaking of command, sir, the San Andreas is no longer under command. She’s slewing rapidly to port. Steering mechanism on the bridge must have been wrecked.’

‘Steering can wait. I’ll stop the engines.’

Three minutes later the Bo’sun eased the throttle and edged the lifeboat towards an inflatable life raft which was roller-coasting heavily near the spot where the now vanished Condor had been. There were only two men in the raft – the rest of the aircrew, the Bo’sun assumed, had gone to the bottom with the Focke-Wulf. They had probably been dead anyway. One of the men, no more than a youngster, very seasick and looking highly apprehensive – he had every right, the Bo’sun thought, to be apprehensive – was sitting upright and clinging to a lifeline. The other lay on his back in the bottom of the raft: in the regions of his left upper chest, left upper arm and right thigh his flying overalls were saturated with blood. His eyes were closed.

‘Jesus’ sake!’ Able Seaman Ferguson, who had a powerful Liverpool accent and whose scarred face spoke eloquently of battles lost and won, mainly in bar-rooms, looked at the Bo’sun with a mixture of disbelief and outrage. ‘Jesus, Bo’sun, you’re not going to pick those bastards up? They just tried to send us to the bottom. Us! A hospital ship!’

‘Wouldn’t you like to know why they bombed a hospital ship?’

‘There’s that, there’s that.’ Ferguson reached out with a boathook and brought the raft alongside.

‘Either of you speak English?’

The wounded man opened his eyes: they, too, seemed to be filled with blood. ‘I do.’

‘You look badly hurt. I want to know where before we try to bring you aboard.’

‘Left arm, left shoulder, I think, right thigh. And I believe there’s something wrong with my right foot.’ His English was completely fluent and if there was any accent at all it was a hint of southern standard English, not German.

‘You’re the Condor Captain, of course.’

‘Yes. Still want to bring me aboard?’

The Bo’sun nodded to Ferguson and the two other seamen he had along with him. The three men brought the injured pilot aboard as carefully as they could but with both lifeboat and raft rolling heavily in the beam seas it was impossible to be too careful. They laid him in the thwarts close to where the Bo’sun was sitting by the controls. The other survivor huddled miserably amidships. The Bo’sun opened the throttle and headed for the position where he estimated the Andover had gone down.

Ferguson looked down at the injured man who was lying motionless on his back, arms spread-eagled. The red stains were spreading. It could have been that he was still bleeding quite heavily: but it could have been the effect of sea-water.

‘Reckon he’s a goner, Bo’sun?’

McKinnon reached down and touched the side of the pilot’s neck and after a few seconds he located the pulse, fast, faint and erratic, but still a pulse.

‘Unconscious. Fainted. Couldn’t have been an easy passage for him.’

Ferguson regarded the pilot with a certain grudging respect. ‘He may be a bloody murderer, but he’s a bloody tough bloody murderer. Must have been in agony, but never a squawk. Shouldn’t we take him back to the ship first? Give him a chance, like?’

‘I thought of it. No. There just may be survivors from the Andover and if there are they won’t last long. Sea temperature is about freezing or just below it. A man’s usually dead inside a minute. If there’s anyone at all, a minute’s delay may be a minute too late. We owe them that chance. Besides it’s going to be a very quick trip back to the ship.’

The San Andreas, slewing to port, had come around in a full half-circle and, under reverse thrust, was slowing to a stop. Patterson had almost certainly done this so as to manoeuvre the temporarily rudderless ship as near as possible to the spot where the Andover had been torpedoed.

Only a pathetic scattering of flotsam and jetsam showed where the frigate had gone down, baulks of timber, a few drums, carley floats, lifebuoys and life jackets, all empty – and four men. Three of the men were together. One of them, a man with what appeared to be a grey stocking hat, was keeping the head of another man, either unconscious or dead, out of the water: with his other hand he waved at the approaching lifeboat. All three men were wearing life jackets and, much more importantly, all three were wearing wet suits, which was the only reason they were still alive after fifteen minutes in the ice-cold waters of an Arctic winter.

All three were hauled inboard. The young, bareheaded man who had been supported by the man with the grey stocking hat was unconscious, not dead. He had every reason, the Bo’sun thought, to be unconscious: there was a great swelling bruise still oozing blood just above the right temple. The third man – it seemed most incongruous in the circumstances – wore the peaked braided cap of a naval commander. The cap was completely saturated. The Bo’sun made to remove it, then changed his mind when he saw the blood at the back of the cap: the cap was probably stuck to his head. The commander was quite conscious, he had courteously thanked the Bo’sun for being pulled out of the sea: but his eyes were vacant, glazed and sightless. McKinnon passed a hand before his eyes, but there was no reaction: for the moment, at any rate, the commander was quite blind.

Although he knew he was wasting his time, the Bo’sun headed towards the fourth man in the water but he backed off when he was still five yards away. Although his face was deep in the water he hadn’t died from drowning but from freezing: he wasn’t wearing a wet suit. The Bo’sun turned the lifeboat back to the San Andreas and touched the commander gently on the shoulder.

‘How do you feel, Commander Warrington?’

‘What? How do I feel? How do you know I’m Commander Warrington?’

‘You’re still wearing your cap, sir.’ The Commander made as if to touch the peak of his cap but the Bo’sun restrained him. ‘Leave it, sir. You’ve cut your head and your hat’s sticking to it. We’ll have you in hospital inside fifteen minutes. Plenty of doctors and nurses there for that sort of thing, sir.’

‘Hospital.’ Warrington shook his head as if trying to clear it. ‘Ah, of course. The San Andreas. You must be from her.’

‘Yes, sir. I’m the Bo’sun.’

‘What happened, Bo’sun? The Andover, I mean.’ Warrington touched the side of his head. ‘I’m a bit foggy up here.’

‘No bloody wonder. Three torpedoes, sir, almost simultaneously. You must have been blown off the bridge, or fell off it, or most likely been washed off it when your ship went down. She was on her beam ends then, sir, and it took only just over twenty seconds.’

‘How many of us – well, how many have you found?’

‘Just three, sir. I’m sorry.’

‘God above. Just three. Are you sure, Bo’sun?’

‘I’m afraid I’m quite sure, sir.’

‘My yeoman of signals –’

‘I’m here, sir.’

‘Ah. Hedges. Thank heavens for that. Who’s the third?’

‘Navigating officer, sir. He’s taken a pretty nasty clout on the head.’

‘And the First Lieutenant?’ Hedges didn’t answer, he had his head buried in his hands and was shaking it from side to side.

‘I’m afraid Hedges is a bit upset, Commander. Was the First Lieutenant wearing a red kapok jacket?’ Warrington nodded. ‘Then we found him, sir. I’m afraid he just froze to death.’

‘He would, wouldn’t he? Freeze to death, I mean.’ Warrington smiled faintly. ‘Always used to laugh at us and our wet suits. Carried a rabbit’s foot around with him and used to say that was all the wet suit he’d ever need.’

Dr Singh was the first man to meet the Bo’sun when he stepped out of the lifeboat. Patterson was with him, as were two orderlies and two stokers. The Bo’sun looked at the stokers and wondered briefly what they were doing on deck, but only very briefly: they were almost certainly doing a seaman’s job because there were very few seamen left to do it. Ferguson and his two fellow seamen had been in the for’ard fire-control party and might well be the only three left: all the other seamen had been in the superstructure at the time of the attack.

‘Five,’ Dr Singh said. ‘Just five. From the frigate and the plane, just five.’

‘Yes, Doctor. And even they had the devil’s own luck. Three of them are pretty wobbly. Commander looks all right but I think he’s in the worst condition. He seems to have gone blind and the back of his head has been damaged. There’s a connection, isn’t there, Doctor?’

‘Oh dear. Yes, there’s a connection. We’ll do what we can.’

Patterson said: ‘A moment, Bo’sun, if you will.’ He walked to one side and McKinnon followed him. They were half way towards the twisted superstructure when Patterson stopped.

‘As bad as that is it, sir?’ the Bo’sun said. ‘No eavesdroppers. I mean, we have to trust someone.’

‘I suppose.’ Patterson looked and sounded tired. ‘But damned few. Not after what I’ve seen inside that superstructure. Not after one or two things I’ve found out. First things first. The hull is still structurally sound. No leaks. I didn’t think there would be. We’re fixing up a temporary rudder control in the engine-room: we’ll probably be able to reconnect to the bridge which is the least damaged part of the superstructure. There was a small fire in the crew’s mess, but we got that under control.’ He nodded to the sadly twisted mass of metal ahead of them. ‘Let’s pray for calm weather to come. Jamieson says the structural supports are so weakened that the whole lot is liable to go over the side if we hit heavy seas. Would you like to go inside?’

‘Like? Not like. But I have to.’ The Bo’sun hesitated, reluctant to hear the answer to the question he had to ask. ‘What’s the score so far, sir?’

‘Up to now we’ve come across thirteen dead.’ He grimaced. ‘And bits and pieces. I’ve decided to leave them where they were meantime. There may be more people left alive.’

‘More? You have found some?’

‘Five. They’re in a pretty bad way, some of them. They’re in the hospital.’ He led the way inside the twisted entrance at the after end of the superstructure. ‘There are two oxy-acetylene teams in there. It’s slow work. No fallen beams, no wreckage as such, just twisted and buckled doors. Some of them, of course – the doors, I mean – were just blown off. Like this one here.’

‘The cold room. Well, at least there would have been nobody in there. But there were three weeks’ supply of beef, all kinds of meat, fish and other perishables in there: in a couple of days’ time we’ll have to start heaving them over the side.’ They moved slowly along the passageway. ‘Cool room intact, sir, although I don’t suppose a steady diet of fruit and veg. will have much appeal. Oh God!’

The Bo’sun stared into the galley which lay across the passage from the cool room. The surfaces of the cooking stoves were at a peculiar angle, but all the cupboards and the two work tables were intact. But what had caught the Bo’sun’s horrified attention was not the furniture but the two men who lay spreadeagled on the floor. They seemed unharmed except for a little trickle of blood from the ears and noses.

‘Netley and Spicer,’ the Bo’sun whispered. ‘They don’t seem – they’re dead?’

‘Concussion. Instantaneous,’ Patterson said.

The Bo’sun shook his head and moved on.

‘Tinned food store,’ he said. ‘Intact. It would be. And the liquor store here, not a can dented or a bottle broken.’ He paused. ‘With your permission, sir, I think this is a very good time to breach the liquor store. A hefty tot of rum all round – or at least for the men working in here. Pretty grim work and it’s the custom in the Royal Navy when there’s grim work to be done.’

Patterson smiled slightly, a smile that did not touch the eyes. ‘I didn’t know you were in the Royal Navy, Bo’sun.’

‘Twelve years. For my sins.’

‘An excellent idea,’ Patterson said. ‘I’ll be your first customer.’ They made their way up a twisted but still serviceable companionway to the next deck, the Bo’sun with a bottle of rum and half a dozen mugs strung on a wire in the other. This was the crew accommodation deck and it was not a pretty sight. The passageway had a distinct S-bend to it, the deck was warped so that it formed a series of undulations. At the for’ard end of the passageway, two oxy-acetylene teams were at work, each attacking a buckled door. In the short space between the head of the companionway and where the men were working were eight doors, four of them hanging drunkenly on their hinges, four that had been cut open by torches: seven of those had been occupied, and the occupants were still there, twelve of them in all. In the eighth cabin they found Dr Sinclair, stooping over and administering a morphine injection to a prone but fully conscious patient, a consciousness that was testified to by the fact that he was addressing nobody in particular in an unprintable monologue.

The Bo’sun said: ‘How do you feel, Chips?’ Chips was Rafferty, the ship’s carpenter.

‘I’m dying.’ He caught sight of the rum bottle in the Bo’sun’s hand and his stricken expression vanished. ‘But I could make a rapid recovery –’

‘This man is not dying,’ Dr Sinclair said. ‘He has a simple fracture of the tibia, that’s all. No rum – morphine and alcohol make for bad bedfellows. Later.’ He straightened and tried to smile. ‘But I could do with a tot, if you would, Bo’sun – a generous one. I feel in need of it.’ With his strained face and pale complexion he unquestionably looked in need of it: nothing in Dr Sinclair’s brief medical experience had even remotely begun to prepare him for the experience he was undergoing. The Bo’sun poured him the requisite generous measure, did the same for Patterson and himself, then passed the bottle and mugs to the men with the torches and the two ward orderlies who were standing unhappily by, strapped stretcher at the ready: they looked in no better case than Dr Sinclair but cheered up noticeably at the sight of the rum.

The deck above held the officers’ accommodation. It too, had been heavily damaged, but not so devastatingly so as the deck below. Patterson stopped at the first cabin they came to: its door had been blown inwards and the contents of the cabin looked as if a maniac had been let loose there with a sledgehammer. The Bo’sun knew it was Chief Patterson’s cabin.

The Bo’sun said, ‘I don’t much care for being in an engine-room, sir, but there are times when it has its advantages.’ He looked at the empty and almost as badly damaged Second Engineer’s cabin opposite. ‘At least Ralson is not here. Where is he, sir?’

‘He’s dead.’

‘He’s dead,’ the Bo’sun repeated slowly.

‘When the bombs struck he was still in the seamen’s toilet fixing that short-circuit.’

‘I’m most damnably sorry, sir.’ He knew that Ralson had been Patterson’s only close friend aboard the ship.

‘Yes,’ Patterson said vaguely. ‘He had a young wife and two kids – babies, really.’

The Bo’sun shook his head and looked into the next cabin, that belonging to the Second Officer. ‘At least Mr Rawlings is not here.’

‘No. He’s not here. He’s up on the bridge.’ The Bo’sun looked at him, then turned away and went into the Captain’s cabin which was directly opposite and which, oddly enough, seemed almost undamaged. The Bo’sun went directly to a small wooden cupboard on the bulkhead, produced his knife, opened up the marlinspike and inserted its point just below the cupboard lock.

‘Breaking and entering, Bo’sun?’ The Chief Engineer’s voice held puzzlement but no reproof: he knew McKinnon well enough to know that the Bo’sun never did anything without a sound reason.

‘Breaking and entering is for locked doors and windows, sir. Just call this vandalism.’ The door sprang open and the Bo’sun reached inside, bringing out two guns. ‘Navy Colt 45s. You know about guns, sir?’

‘I’ve never held a gun in my hand in my life. You know about guns – as well as rum?’

‘I know about guns. This little switch here – you press it so. Then the safety-catch is off. That’s really all you require to know about guns.’ He looked at the broken cupboard and then the guns and shook his head again. ‘I don’t think Captain Bowen would have minded.’

‘Won’t. Not wouldn’t. Won’t.’

The Bo’sun carefully laid the guns on the Captain’s table. ‘You’re telling me that the Captain is not dead?’

‘He’s not dead. Neither is the Chief Officer.’

The Bo’sun smiled for the first time that morning, then looked accusingly at the Chief Engineer. ‘You might have told me this, sir.’

‘I suppose. I might have told you a dozen things. You would agree, Bo’sun, that we both have a great deal on our minds. They’re both in the sick bay, both pretty savagely burnt about the face but not in any danger, not, at least, according to Dr Singh. It was being far out on the port wing of the bridge that saved them – they were away from the direct effects of the blast.’

‘How come they got so badly burnt, sir?’

‘I don’t know. They can hardly speak, their faces are completely wrapped in bandages, they look more like Egyptian mummies than anything else. I asked the Captain and he kept mumbling something like Essex, or Wessex or something like that.’

The Bo’sun nodded. ‘Wessex, sir. Rockets. Distress flares. Two lots kept on the bridge. The shock must have triggered some firing mechanism and it went off prematurely. Damnable ill luck.’

‘Damnably lucky, if you ask me, Bo’sun. Compared to practically everybody else in the superstructure.’

‘Does he – does he know yet?’

‘It hardly seemed the time to tell him. Another thing he kept repeating, as if it was urgent. “Home signal, home signal,” something like that. Over and over again. Maybe his mind was wandering, maybe I couldn’t make him out. Their mouths are the only part of their faces that aren’t covered with bandages but even their lips are pretty badly burnt. And, of course, they’re loaded with morphine. “Home signal.” Mean anything to you?’

‘At the moment, no.’

A young and rather diminutive stoker appeared in the doorway. McCrimmon, in his middle twenties, was a less than lovable person, his primary and permanent characteristics being the interminable mastication of chewing gum, truculence, a fixed scowl and a filthy tongue: at that moment, the first three were in abeyance.

‘Bloody awful, so it is, down there. Just like a bloody cemetery.’

‘Morgue, McCrimmon, morgue,’ Patterson said. ‘What do you want?’

‘Me. Nothing, sir. Jamieson sent me. He said something about the phones no’ working and you would be wanting a runner, maybe.’

‘Second Engineer to you, McCrimmon.’ Patterson looked at the Bo’sun. ‘Very thoughtful of the Second Engineer. Nothing we require in the engine-room – except to get that jury rudder fixed. Deck-side, Bo’sun?’

‘Two look-outs, although God knows what they’ll be looking out for. Two of your men, sir, the two ward orderlies below, Able Seaman Ferguson and Curran. Curran is – used to be – a sailmaker. Don’t envy him his job but I’ll give him a hand. Curran will know what to bring. I suggest, sir, we have the crew’s mess-deck cleared.’

‘Our mortuary?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You heard, McCrimmon? How many men?’

‘Eight, sir.’

‘Eight. Two look-outs. The two seamen to bring up the canvas and whatever required. The other four to clear the crew’s mess. Don’t you try to tell them, they’d probably throw you overboard. Tell the Second Engineer and he’ll tell them. When they’ve finished have them report to me, here or on the bridge. You too. Off you go.’ McCrimmon left.

The Bo’sun indicated the two Colts lying on the table. ‘I wonder what McCrimmon thought of those.’

‘Probably old hat to him. Jamieson picked the right man – McCrimmon’s tough and hasn’t much in the way of finer feelings. Irish-Scots from some Glasgow slum. Been in prison. In fact, if it wasn’t for the war that’s probably where he’d be now.’

The Bo’sun nodded and opened another small wall locker – this one had a key to it. It was a small liquor cupboard and from a padded velvet retainer McKinnon removed a rum bottle and laid it on the Captain’s bunk.

‘I don’t suppose the Captain will mind that either,’ Patterson said. ‘For the stretcher-bearers?’

‘Yes, sir.’ The Bo’sun started opening drawers in the Captain’s table and found what he was looking for in the third drawer, two leather-bound folders which he handed to Patterson. ‘Prayer book and burial service, sir. But I should think the burial service would be enough. Somebody’s got to read it.’

‘Good God. I’m not a preacher, Bo’sun.’

‘No, sir. But you’re the officer commanding.’

‘Good God,’ Patterson repeated. He placed the folders reverently on the Captain’s table. ‘I’ll look at those later.’

‘“Home signal”,’ the Bo’sun said slowly. ‘That’s what the Captain said, wasn’t it? “Home signal”.’

‘Yes.’

‘“Homing signal” is what he was trying to say. “Homing signal”. Should have thought of it before – but I suppose that’s why Captain Bowen is a captain and I’m not. How do you think the Condor managed to locate us in the darkness? All right, it was half dawn when he attacked but he must have been on the course when it was still night. How did he know where we were?’

‘U-boat?’

‘No U-boat. The Andover’s sonar would have picked him up.’ The Bo’sun was repeating the words that Captain Bowen had used.

‘Ah.’ Patterson nodded. ‘Homing signal. Our saboteur friend.’

‘Flannelfoot, as Mr Jamieson calls him. Not only was he busy fiddling around with our electrical circuits, he was transmitting a continuous signal. A directional signal. The Condor knew where we were to the inch. I don’t know whether the Condor was equipped to receive such signals, I know nothing about planes, but it wouldn’t have mattered, some place like Alta Fjord could have picked up the signal and transmitted our bearing to the Condor.’

‘You have it, of course, Bo’sun, you have it to rights.’ Patterson looked at the two guns. ‘One for me and one for you.’

‘If you say so, sir.’

‘Don’t be daft, who else would have it?’ Patterson picked up a gun. ‘I’ve never even held one of these things in my hand, far less fired one. But you know, Bo’sun, I don’t really think I would mind firing a shot once. Just one.’

‘Neither would I, sir.’

Second Officer Rawlings was lying beside the wheel and there was no mystery as to how he had died: what must have been a flying shard of metal had all but decapitated him.

‘Where’s the helmsman?’ the Bo’sun asked. ‘Was he a survivor, then?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know who was on. Maybe Rawlings had sent him to get something. But there were two survivors up here, apart from the Captain and Chief Officer – McGuigan and Jones.’

‘McGuigan and Jones? What were they doing up here?’

‘It seems Mr Kennet had called them up and posted them as look-outs, one on either wing. I suppose that’s why they survived, just as Captain Bowen and Mr Kennet survived. They’re in the hospital, too.’

‘Badly hurt?’

‘Unharmed, I believe. Shock, that’s all.’

The Bo’sun moved out to the port wing and Patterson followed. The wing was wholly undamaged, no signs of metal buckling anywhere. The Bo’sun indicated a once grey but now badly scorched metal box which was attached just below the wind-breaker: its top and one side had been blown off.

‘That’s where they kept the Wessex rockets,’ the Bo’sun said.

They went back inside and the Bo’sun moved towards the wireless office hatchway: the sliding wooden door was no longer there.

‘I wouldn’t look, if I were you,’ Patterson said.

‘The men have got to, haven’t they?’

Chief Radio Officer Spenser was lying on the deck but he was no longer recognizable as such. He was just an amorphous mass of bone and flesh and torn, blood-saturated clothing: had it not been for the clothing it could have been the shattered remnants of any animal lying there. When McKinnon looked away Patterson could see that some colour had drained from the deeply-tanned face.

‘The first bomb must have gone off directly beneath him,’ the Bo’sun said. ‘God, I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ll attend to him myself. Third Officer Batesman. I know he was the officer of the watch. Any idea where he is, sir?’

‘In the chart room. I don’t advise you to go there either.’

Batesman was recognizable but only just. He was still on his. chair, half-leaning, half-lying on the table, what was left of his head pillowed on a blood-stained chart. McKinnon returned to the bridge.

‘I don’t suppose it will be any comfort to their relatives to know that they died without knowing. I’ll fix him up myself, too. I couldn’t ask the men.’ He looked ahead through the totally shattered windscreens. At least, he thought, they wouldn’t be needing a Kent clear-view screen any more. ‘Wind’s backing to the east,’ he said absently. ‘Bound to bring more snow. At least it might help to hide us from the wolves – if there are any wolves around.’

‘You think, perhaps, they might come back to finish us off?’ The Chief was shivering violently but that was only because he was accustomed to the warmth of the engine-room: the temperature on the bridge was about 6°F – twenty-six degrees of frost – and the wind held steady at twenty knots.

‘Who can be sure, sir? But I really don’t think so. Even one of those Heinkel torpedo-bombers could have finished us off if they had had a mind to. Come to that, the Condor could have done the same thing.’

‘It did pretty well as it was, if you ask me.’

‘Not nearly as well as it could have done. I know that a Condor normally carries 250-kilo bombs – that’s about 550 lbs. A stick of those bombs – say three or four – would have sent us to the bottom. Even two might have been enough – they’d have certainly blown the superstructure out of existence, not just crippled it.’

‘The Royal Navy again, is that it, Bo’sun?’

‘I know explosives, sir. Those bombs couldn’t have been any more than fifty kilos each. Don’t you think, sir, that we might have some interesting questions to ask that Condor captain when he regains consciousness?’

‘In the hope of getting some interesting answers, is that it? Including the answer to the question why he bombed a hospital ship in the first place.’

‘Well, yes, perhaps.’

‘What do you mean – perhaps?’

‘There’s just a chance – a faint one, I admit – that he didn’t know he was bombing a hospital ship.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Bo’sun. Of course he knew he was attacking a hospital ship. How big does a red cross have to be before you see it?’

‘I’m not trying to make any excuses for him, sir.’ There was a touch of asperity in McKinnon’s voice and Patterson frowned, not at the Bo’sun but because it was most unlike the Bo’sun to adopt such a tone without reason. ‘It was still only half-dawn, sir. Looking down, things look much darker than they do at sea level. You’ve only got to go up to a crow’s nest to appreciate that.’ As Patterson had never been in a crow’s nest in his life he probably fell ill-equipped to comment on the Bo’sun’s observation. ‘As he was approaching from dead astern he couldn’t possibly have seen the markings on the ship’s sides and as he was flying very low he couldn’t have seen the red cross on the foredeck – the superstructure would have blocked off his view.’

‘That still leaves the red cross on the afterdeck. Even though it might have been only half light, he must have seen that.’

‘Not with the amount of smoke you were putting up under full power.’

‘There’s that. There is a possibility.’ He was unconvinced and watched with some impatience as the Bo’sun spun the now useless wheel and examined the binnacle compass and the standby compass, now smashed beyond any hope of repair.

‘Do we have to remain up here?’ Patterson said. ‘There’s nothing we can do here at the moment and I’m freezing to death. I suggest the Captain’s cabin.’

‘I was about to suggest the same, sir.’

The temperature in the cabin was no more than freezing point, but that was considerably warmer than it had been on the bridge and, more importantly, there was no wind there. Patterson went straight to the liquor cabinet and extracted a bottle of Scotch.

‘If you can do it I can do it. We’ll explain to the Captain later. I don’t really like rum and I need it.’

‘A specific against pneumonia?’

‘Something like that. You will join me?’

‘Yes, sir. The cold doesn’t worry me but I think I’m going to need it in the next hour or so. Do you think the steering can be fixed, sir?’

‘It’s possible. Have to be a jury job. I’ll get Jamieson on to it.’

‘It’s not terribly important. I know all the phones are out but it shouldn’t take too long to reconnect them and you’re fixing up a temporary rudder control in the engine-room. Same with the electrics – it won’t take long to run a few rubber cables here and there. But we can’t start on any of those things until we get this area – well, cleared.’

Patterson lowered the contents of his glass by half. ‘You can’t run the San Andreas from the bridge. Two minutes up there was enough for me. Fifteen minutes and anyone would be frozen to death.’

‘You can’t run it from any other place. Cold is the problem, I agree. So we’ll board it up. Plenty of plywood in the carpenter’s shop.’

‘You can’t see through plywood.’

‘Could always pop our heads through the wing doors from time to time, but that won’t be necessary. We’ll let some windows into the plywood.’

‘Fine, fine,’ Patterson said. The Scotch had apparently restored his circulation. ‘All we need is a glazier and some windows and we haven’t got either.’

‘A glazier we don’t need. We don’t need to have cut glass or fitted windows. You must have rolls and rolls of insulating tape in your electrical department.’

‘I’ve got a hundred miles of it and I still don’t have any windows.’

‘Windows we won’t need. Glass, that’s all. I know where the best glass is – and plate glass at that. The tops of all those lovely trolleys and trays in the hospital.’

‘Ah! I do believe you have it, Bo’sun.’

‘Yes, sir. I suppose Sister Morrison will let you have them.’

Patterson smiled one of his rare smiles. ‘I believe I’m the officer commanding, however temporary.’

‘Indeed, sir. Just don’t let me be around when you put her into irons. Those are all small things. There are three matters that give a bit more concern. First, the radio is just a heap of scrap metal. We can’t contact anyone and no one can contact us. Secondly, the compasses are useless. I know you had a gyro installed, but it never worked, did it? But worst of all is the problem of navigation.’

‘Navigation? Navigation! How can that be a problem?’

‘If you want to get from A to B, it’s the biggest problem of all. We have – we had – four navigating officers aboard this ship. Two of those are dead and the other two are swathed in bandages – in your own words, like Egyptian mummies. Commander Warrington could have navigated, I know, but he’s blind and from the look in Dr Singh’s eyes I should think the blindness is permanent.’ The Bo’sun paused for a moment, then shook his head. ‘And just to make our cup overflowing, sir, we have the Andover’s navigating officer aboard and he’s either concussed or in some sort of coma, we’ll have to ask Dr Singh. If a poker-player got dealt this kind of hand of cards, he’d shoot himself. Four navigating officers who can’t see and if you can’t see you can’t navigate. That’s why the loss of the radio is so damned unfortunate. There must be a British warship within a hundred or two miles which could have lent us a navigating officer. Can you navigate, sir?’

‘Me? Navigate?’ Patterson seemed positively affronted. ‘I’m an engineer officer. But you, McKinnon: you’re a seaman – and twelve years in the Royal Navy.’

‘It doesn’t matter if I had been a hundred years in the Royal Navy, sir. I still can’t navigate. I was a Torpedo Petty Officer. If you want to fire a torpedo, drop a depth charge, blow up a mine or do some elementary electrics, I’m your man. But I’d barely recognize a sextant if I saw one. Such things as sunsights, moonsights – if there is such a thing – and starsights are just words to me. I’ve also heard of words like deviation and variation and declination and I know more about Greek than I do about those.

‘We do have a little hand-held compass aboard the motor lifeboat, the one I took out today, but that’s useless. It’s a magnetic compass, of course, and that’s useless because I do know the magnetic north pole is nowhere near the geographical north pole: I believe it’s about a thousand miles away from it. Canada, Baffin Island or some such place. Anyway, in the latitudes we’re in now the magnetic pole is more west than north.’ The Bo’sun sipped some Scotch and looked at Patterson over the rim of his glass. ‘Chief Patterson, we’re lost.’

‘Job’s comforter.’ Patterson stared moodily at his glass, then said without much hope: ‘Wouldn’t it be possible to get the sun at noon? That way we’d know where the south was.’

‘The way the weather is shaping up we won’t be able to see the sun at noon. Anyway, what’s noon, sun-time – it’s certainly not twelve o’clock on our watches? Supposing we were in the middle of the Atlantic, where we might as well be, and knew where south was, would that help us find Aberdeen, which is where I believe we are going? The chronometer, incidentally, is kaput, which doesn’t matter at all – I still wouldn’t be able to relate the chronometer to longitude. And even if we did get a bearing on due south, it’s dark up here twenty hours out of the twenty-four and the auto-pilot is as wrecked as everything else on the bridge. We wouldn’t, of course, be going around in circles, the hand compass would stop us from doing that, but we still wouldn’t know in what direction we were heading.’

‘If I want to find some optimism, Bo’sun, I’ll know where not to look. Would it help at all if we knew approximately where we were?’

‘It would help, but all we know, approximately, is that we’re somewhere north or north-west of Norway. Anywhere, say, in twenty thousand square miles of sea. There are only two possibilities, sir. The Captain and Chief Officer must have known where we were. If they’re able to tell us, I’m sure they will.’

‘Good God, of course! Not very bright, are we? At least, I’m not. What do you mean – “if”? Captain Bowen was able to talk about twenty minutes ago.’

‘That was twenty minutes ago. You know how painful burns can be. Dr Singh is sure to have given them painkillers and sometimes the only way they can work is by knocking you out.’

‘And the other possibility?’

‘The chart house. Mr Batesman was working on a chart – he still had a pencil in his hand. I’ll go.’

Patterson grimaced. ‘Sooner you than me.’

‘Don’t forget Flannelfoot, sir.’ Patterson touched his overalls where he had concealed his gun. ‘Or the burial service.’

Patterson looked at the leather-covered folder in distaste. ‘And where am I supposed to leave that? On the operating table?’

‘There are four empty cabins in the hospital, sir. For recuperating VIPs. We don’t have any at the moment.’

‘Ah. Ten minutes, then.’

The Bo’sun was back in five minutes, the Chief Engineer in fifteen. An air of almost palpable gloom hung over Patterson.

‘No luck, sir?’

‘No, dammit. You guessed right. They’re under heavy sedation, may be hours before they come to. And if they do start coming to, Dr Singh says, he’s going to sedate them again. Apparently, they were trying to tear the bandages off their faces. He’s got their hands swathed in bandages – even an unconscious man, the doctor says, will try to scratch away at whatever irritates him. Anyway, their hands were burnt – not badly, but enough to justify the bandages.’

‘They’ve got straps for tying wrists to the bed-frames.’

‘Dr Singh did mention that. He said he didn’t think Captain Bowen would take too kindly to waking up and finding himself virtually in irons on his own ship. By the way, the missing helmsman was Hudson. Broken ribs and one pierced his lung. Doctor says he’s very ill. What luck did you have?’

‘Same as you, sir. Zero. There was a pair of parallel rules lying beside Mr Batesman so I assume he must have been pencilling out a course.’

‘You couldn’t gather anything from the chart?’

‘It wasn’t a chart any more. It was just a bloodstained rag.’

Chapter Three

It was snowing heavily and a bitter wind blew from the east as they buried their dead in the near-Stygian darkness of the early afternoon. A form of illumination they did have, for the saboteur, probably more than satisfied with the results of his morning’s activities, was now resting on his laurels and the deck floodlights were working again, but in that swirling blizzard the light given off was weak, fitful and almost ineffectual, serving only to intensify the ghoulish effect of the burial party hastening about their macabre task and the ghostlike appearance of the bare dozen of snow-covered mourners. Flashlight in hand, Chief Engineer Patterson read out the burial service, but he might as well have been quoting the latest prices on the stock exchange for not a word could be heard: one by one the dead, in their weighted canvas shrouds, slipped down the tilted plank, out from under the Union flag and vanished, silently, into the freezing water of the Barents Sea. No bugle calls, no Last Post for the Merchant Navy, not ever: the only requiem was the lost and lonely keening of the wind through the frozen rigging and the jagged gaps that had been torn in the superstructure.

Shivering violently and mottled blue and white with the cold, the burial party and mourners returned to the only reasonably warm congregating space left on the San Andreas – the dining and recreational area in the hospital between the wards and the cabins.

‘We owe you a very great debt, Mr McKinnon,’ Dr Singh said. He had been one of the mourners and his teeth were still chattering. ‘Very swift, very efficient. It must have been a gruesome task.’

‘I had six willing pairs of hands,’ the Bo’sun said. ‘It was worse for them than it was for me.’ The Bo’sun did not have to explain what he meant: everybody knew that anything would always be worse for anybody than for that virtually indestructible Shetlander. He looked at Patterson. ‘I have a suggestion, sir.’

‘A Royal Naval one?’

‘No, sir. Deep-sea fisherman’s. Anyway, it’s close enough, these are the waters of the Arctic trawlers. A toast to the departed.’

‘I endorse that, and not for traditional or sentimental reasons.’ Dr Singh’s teeth still sounded like castanets. ‘Medicinal. I don’t know about the rest of you but my red corpuscles are in need of some assistance.’

The Bo’sun looked at Patterson, who nodded his approval. McKinnon turned and looked at an undersized, freckle-faced youth who was hovering at a respectful distance. ‘Wayland.’

Wayland came hurrying forward. ‘Yes, Mr McKinnon, sir?’

‘Go with Mario to the liquor store. Bring back some refreshments.’

‘Yes, Mr McKinnon, sir. Right away, Mr McKinnon, sir.’ The Bo’sun had long given up trying to get Wayland Day to address him in any other fashion.

Dr Singh said: ‘That won’t be necessary, Mr McKinnon. We have supplies here.’

‘Medicinal, of course?’

‘Of course.’ Dr Singh watched as Wayland went into the galley. ‘How old is that boy?’

‘He claims to be seventeen or eighteen, says he’s not sure which. In either case, he’s fibbing. I don’t believe he’s ever seen a razor.’

‘He’s supposed to be working for you, isn’t he? Pantry boy, I understand. He spends nearly all his day here.’

‘I don’t mind, Doctor, if you don’t.’

‘No, not at all. He’s an eager lad, willing and helpful.’

‘He’s all yours. Besides, we haven’t a pantry left. He’s making eyes at one of the nurses?’

‘You underestimate the boy. Sister Morrison, no less. At a worshipful distance, of course.’

‘Good God!’ the Bo’sun said.

Mario entered, bearing, one-handed and a few inches above his head, a rather splendid silver salver laden with bottles and glasses, which, in the circumstances, was no mean feat, as the San Andreas was rolling quite noticeably. With a deft, twirling movement, Mario had the tray on the table without so much as the clink of glass against glass. Where the salver had come from was unexplained and Mario’s business. As became the popular conception of an Italian, Mario was darkly and magnificently mustachioed, but whether he possessed the traditional flashing eyes was impossible to say as he invariably wore dark glasses. There were those who purported to see in those glasses a connection with the Sicilian Mafia, an assertion that was always good-humouredly made, as he was well-liked. Mario was overweight, of indeterminate age and claimed to have served in the Savoy Grill, which may have been true. What was beyond dispute was that there lay behind Mario, a man whose rightful home Captain Bowen considered to be either a prisoner-of-war or internment camp, a more than usually chequered career.

After no more than two fingers of Scotch, but evidently considering that his red corpuscles were back on the job, Dr Singh said: ‘And now, Mr Patterson?’

‘Lunch, Doctor. A very belated lunch but starving ourselves isn’t going to help anyone. I’m afraid it will have to be cooked in your galley and served here.’

‘Already under way. And then?’

‘And then we get under way.’ He looked at the Bo’sun. ‘We could, temporarily, have the lifeboat’s compass in the engine-room. We already have rudder control there.’

‘It wouldn’t work, sir. There’s so much metal in your engine-room that any magnetic compass would have fits.’ He pushed back his chair and rose. ‘I think I’ll pass up lunch. I think you will agree, Mr Patterson, that a telephone line from the bridge to the engine-room and electric power on the bridge – so that we can see what we are doing – are the two first priorities.’

Jamieson said: ‘That’s already being attended to, Bo’sun.’

‘Thank you, sir. But the lunch can still wait.’ He was speaking now to Patterson. ‘Board up the bridge and let some light in. After that, sir, we might try to clear up some of the cabins in the superstructure, find out which of them is habitable and try to get power and heating back on. A little heating on the bridge wouldn’t come amiss, either.’

‘Leave all that other stuff to the engine-room staff – after we’ve had a bite, that is. You’ll be requiring some assistance?’

‘Ferguson and Curran will be enough.’

‘Well, that leaves only one thing.’ Patterson regarded the deckhead. ‘The plate glass for your bridge windows.’

‘Indeed, sir. I thought you –’

‘A trifle.’ Patterson waved a hand to indicate how much of a trifle it was. ‘You have only to ask, Bo’sun.’

‘But I thought you – perhaps I was mistaken.’

‘We have a problem?’ Dr Singh said.

‘I wanted some plate glass from the trolleys or trays in the wards. Perhaps, Dr Singh, you would care –’

‘Oh no.’ Dr Singh’s reply was as quick as it was decisive. ‘Dr Sinclair and I run the operating theatre and look after our surgical patients, but the running of the wards has nothing to do with us. Isn’t that so, Doctor?’

‘Indeed it is, sir.’ Dr Sinclair also knew how to sound decisive.

The Bo’sun surveyed the two doctors and Patterson with an impassive face that was much more expressive than any expression could have been and passed through the doorway into Ward B. There were ten patients in this ward and two nurses, one very much a brunette, the other very much a blonde. The brunette, Nurse Irene, was barely in her twenties, hailed from Northern Ireland, was pretty, dark-eyed and of such a warm and happy disposition that no one would have dreamed of calling her by her surname, which no one seemed to know anyway. She looked up as the Bo’sun entered and for the first time since she’d joined she failed to give him a welcoming smile. He patted her shoulder gently and walked to the other end of the ward where Nurse Magnusson was rebandaging a seaman’s arm.

Janet Magnusson was a few years older than Irene and taller, but not much. She had a more than faintly windswept, Viking look about her and was unquestionably good-looking: she shared the Bo’sun’s flaxen hair and blue-grey eyes but not, fortunately, his burnt-brick complexion. Like the younger nurse, she was much given to smiling: like her, the smile was in temporary abeyance. She straightened as the Bo’sun approached, reached out and touched his arm.

‘It was terrible, wasn’t it, Archie?’

‘Not a thing I would care to do again. I’m glad you weren’t there, Janet.’

‘I didn’t mean that – the burial, I mean. It was you who sewed up the worst of them – they say that the Radio Officer was, well, all bits and pieces.’

‘An exaggeration. Who told you that?’

‘Johnny Holbrook. You know, the young orderly. The one that’s scared of you.’

‘There’s nobody scared of me,’ the Bo’sun said absently. He looked around the ward. ‘Been quite some changes here.’

‘We had to turf some of the so-called recuperating patients out. You’d have thought they were being sent to their deaths. Siberia, at least. Nothing the matter with them. Not malingerers, really, they just liked soft beds and being spoiled.’

‘And who was spoiling them, if not you and Irene? They just couldn’t bear to be parted from you. Where’s the lioness?’

Janet gave him a disapproving look. ‘Are you referring to Sister Morrison?’

‘That’s the lioness I mean. I have to beard her in her den.’

‘You don’t know her, Archie. She’s very nice really. Maggie’s my friend. Truly.’

‘Maggie?’

‘When we’re off duty, always. She’s in the next ward.’

‘Maggie! Good lord! I thought she disapproved of you because she disapproves of me because she disapproves of me talking to you.’

‘Fiddlesticks. And Archie?’

‘Yes?’

‘A lioness doesn’t have a beard.’

The Bo’sun didn’t deign to answer. He moved into the adjacent ward. Sister Morrison wasn’t there. Of the eight patients, only two, McGuigan and Jones, were visibly conscious. The Bo’sun approached their adjacent beds and said: ‘How’s it going, boys?’

‘Ach, we’re fine, Bo’sun,’ McGuigan said. ‘We shouldn’t be here at all.’

‘You’ll stay here until you’re told to leave.’ Eighteen years old. He was wondering how long it would take them to recover from the sight of the almost decapitated Rawlings lying by the wheel when Sister Morrison entered by the far door.

‘Good afternoon, Sister Morrison.’

‘Good afternoon, Mr McKinnon. Making your medical rounds, I see.’

The Bo’sun felt the stirrings of anger but contented himself with looking thoughtful: he was probably unaware that his thoughtful expression, in certain circumstances, could have a disquieting effect on people.

‘I just came to have a word with you, Sister.’ He looked around the ward. ‘Not a very lively bunch, are they?’

‘I hardly think this is the time or place for levity, Mr McKinnon.’ The lips were not as compressed as they might have been but there was an appreciable lack of warmth behind the steel-rimmed spectacles.

The Bo’sun looked at her for long seconds, during which time she began to show distinct signs of uneasiness. Like most people – with the exception of the timorous Johnny Holbrook – she regarded the Bo’sun as being cheerful and easy-going, with the rider, in her case, that he was probably a bit simple: it required only one glance at that cold, hard, bleak face to realize how totally wrong she had been. It was an unsettling experience.

The Bo’sun spoke in a slow voice. ‘I am not in the mood for levity, Sister. I’ve just buried fifteen men. Before I buried them I had to sew them up in their sheets of canvas. Before I did that I had to gather up their bits and pieces and stick their guts back inside. Then I sewed them up. Then I buried them. I didn’t see you among the mourners, Sister.’

The Bo’sun was more than aware that he shouldn’t have spoken to her like that and he was also aware that what he had gone through had affected him more than he had thought. Under normal circumstances it was impossible that he should have been so easily provoked: but the circumstances were abnormal and the provocation too great.

‘I’ve come for some plate glass, such as you have on the tops of your trolleys and trays. I need them urgently and I don’t need them for any light-hearted purposes. Or do you require an explanation?’

She didn’t say whether she required an explanation or not. She didn’t do anything dramatic like sinking into a chair, reaching out for the nearest support or even putting a hand to her mouth. Only her colour changed. Sister Morrison had the kind of complexion that, like her eyes and lips, was in marked contrast to her habitually severe expression and steel-rimmed glasses, the kind of complexion that would have had the cosmetic tycoons sending their scientists back to the bench: at that moment, however, the peaches had faded from the traditional if rarely seen peaches and cream of the traditional if equally rarely seen English rose.

The Bo’sun removed the glass top from a table by Jones’s bedside, looked around for trays, saw none, nodded to Sister Morrison and went back to Ward B. Janet Magnusson looked at him in surprise.

‘Is that what you went for?’ The Bo’sun nodded. ‘Maggie – Sister Morrison – had no objection?’

‘Nary an objection. Have you any glass-topped trays?’

Chief Patterson and the others had already begun lunch when the Bo’sun returned, five sheets of plate glass under his arm. Patterson looked faintly surprised.

‘No trouble then, Bo’sun?’

‘One only has to ask. I’ll need some tools for the bridge.’

‘Fixed,’ Jamieson said. ‘I’ve just been to the engine-room. There’s a box gone up to the bridge – all the tools you’ll require, nuts, bolts, screws, insulating tape, a power drill and a power saw.’

‘Ah. Thank you. But I’ll need power.’

‘Power you have. Only a temporary cable, mind you, but the power is there. And lights, of course. The phone will take some time.’

‘That’s fine. Thank you, Mr Jamieson.’ He looked at Patterson. ‘One other thing, sir. We have a fair number of nationalities in our crew. The captain of the Greek tanker – Andropolous, isn’t it? – might have a mixed crew too. I should think there’s a fair chance, sir, that one of our men and one of the Greek crew might have a common language. Perhaps you could make enquiries, sir.’

‘And how would that help, Bo’sun?’

‘Captain Andropolous can navigate.’

‘Of course, of course. Always the navigation, isn’t it, Bo’sun?’

‘There’s nothing without it, sir. Do you think you could get hold of Naseby and Trent – they’re the two men who were with me here when we were attacked? Weather’s worsening, sir, and we have ice forming on the deck. Would you have them rig up lifelines between here and the superstructure?’

‘Worsening?’ Dr Singh said. ‘How much worse, Mr McKinnon?’

‘Quite a bit, I’m afraid. Bridge barometer is smashed but I think the one in the Captain’s cabin is intact. I’ll check.’ He brought out the hand compass which he’d removed from the lifeboat. ‘This thing’s virtually useless but at least it does show changes in direction. We’re wallowing in the troughs port side to, so that means the wind and the sea are coming at us on the port beam. Wind direction is changing rapidly, we’ve backed at least five degrees since we came down here. Wind’s roughly north-east. If experience is any guide that means heavy snow, heavy seas and a steadily dropping temperature.’

‘No slightest light in the gloom, is that it, Mr McKinnon?’ Dr Singh said. ‘Where every prospect pleases and only man is vile. Except this is the other way round.’

‘A tiny speck of light, Doctor. If the temperature keeps falling like this, the cold room is going to stay cold and the frozen meat and fish should stay that way. And we do have a vile man – or men – aboard or we shouldn’t be in the state we are. You’re worried about your patients, aren’t you, Doctor – especially the ones in Ward A?’

‘Telepathy, Mr McKinnon. If conditions deteriorate much more they’re going to start falling out of their beds – and the last thing I want to do is to start strapping wounded men to their beds.’

‘And the last thing I want is for the superstructure to topple over the side.’

Jamieson had pushed back his chair and was on his feet. ‘I have my priorities right, no, Bo’sun?’

‘Indeed, Mr Jamieson. Thank you very much.’

Dr Singh half-smiled. ‘Not more telepathy?’

The Bo’sun smiled back. Dr Singh appeared to be very much the right man in the right place. ‘I think he’s gone to have a word with the men rigging up the telephone line from the bridge to the engine-room.’

‘And then I press the button,’ Patterson said.

‘Yes, sir. And then south-west. I don’t have to tell you why.’

‘You might tell a landlubber why,’ Dr Singh said.

‘Of course. Two things. Heading south-west will mean that the wind and the seas from the northeast are dead astern. That should eliminate all rolling so that you don’t have to put your patients in straitjackets or whatever. There’ll be some pitching, of course, but not much and even then Mr Patterson can smooth that out by adjusting the ship’s speed to the wave speed. The other big advantage is that by heading south-west there’s no land we can bump into for hundreds of miles to come. If you will excuse me, gentlemen.’ The Bo’sun left, together with his sheets of plate glass and hand compass.

‘Doesn’t miss much, does he?’ Dr Singh said. ‘Competent, you would say, Mr Patterson?’

‘Competent? He’s more than that. Certainly the best bo’sun I’ve ever sailed with – and I’ve never known a bad bo’sun yet. If we ever get to Aberdeen – and with McKinnon around I rate our chances better than even – I won’t be the man you’ll have to thank.’

The Bo’sun arrived on the bridge, a bridge now over-illuminated with two garish arc lamps, to find Ferguson and Curran already there, with enough plywood of various shapes and sizes to build a modest hut. Neither of the two men could be said to be able to walk, not in the proper sense of the term. Muffled to the ears and with balaclavas and hoods pulled low over their foreheads, they were so swaddled in layers of jerseys, trousers and coats that they were barely able to waddle: given a couple of white fur coats they would have resembled nothing so much as a pair of polar bears that had given up on their diet years ago. As it was, they were practically white already: the snow, driving almost horizontally, swept, without let or hindrance, through the yawning gaps where the port for’ard screens and the upper wing door screen had once been. Conditions weren’t improved by the fact that, at a height of some forty feet above the hospital, the effects of the rolling were markedly worse than they had been down below, so bad, in fact, that it was very difficult to keep one’s footing, and that only by hanging on to something. The Bo’sun carefully laid the plate glass in a corner and wedged it so that it wouldn’t slide all over the deck. The rolling didn’t bother him, but the creaking and groaning of the superstructure supports and the occasional juddering vibration that shook the bridge bothered him a very great deal.

‘Curran! Quickly! Chief Engineer Patterson. You’ll find him in the hospital. Tell him to start up and turn the ship either into the wind or away from the wind. Away is better – that means hard a-starboard. Tell him the superstructure is going to fall over the side any minute.’

For a man usually slow to obey any order and handicapped though he was by his constricted lower limbs, Curran made off with remarkable alacrity. It could have been that he was a good man in an emergency, but more likely he didn’t fancy being on the bridge when it vanished into the Barents Sea.

Ferguson eased two layers of scarf from his mouth. ‘Difficult working conditions, Bo’sun. Impossible, a man might say. And have you seen the temperature?’

The Bo’sun glanced at the bulkhead thermometer which was about the only thing still working on the bridge. ‘Two above,’ he said.

‘Ah! Two above. But two above what? Fahrenheit, that’s what it’s above. That means thirty degrees of frost.’ He looked at the Bo’sun in what he probably regarded as a meaningful fashion. ‘Have you ever heard of the chill factor, eh?’

The Bo’sun spoke with commendable restraint. ‘Yes, Ferguson, I have heard of the chill factor.’

‘For every knot of wind the temperature, as far as the skin is concerned, falls by one degree.’ Ferguson had something on his mind and as far as he was concerned the Bo’sun had never heard of the chill factor. ‘Wind’s at least thirty knots. That means it’s sixty below on this bridge. Sixty!’ At that moment, at the end of an especially alarming roll, the superstructure gave a very loud creak indeed, more of a screech than a creak, and it didn’t require any kind of imagination to visualize metal tearing under lateral stress.

‘If you want to leave the bridge,’ the Bo’sun said, ‘I’m not ordering you to stay.’

‘Trying to shame me into staying, eh? Trying to appeal to my better nature? Well, I got news for you. I ain’t got no better feelings, mate.’

The Bo’sun said, mildly: ‘Nobody aboard this ship calls me “mate”.’

‘Bo’sun.’ Ferguson made no move to carry out his implied threat and he wasn’t even showing any signs of irresolution. ‘Do I get danger money for this? Overtime, perhaps?’

‘A couple of tots of Captain Bowen’s special malt Scotch. Let’s spend our last moments usefully, Ferguson. We’ll start with some measuring.’

‘Already done.’ Ferguson showed the spring-loaded steel measuring tape in his hand and tried hard not to smile in smug self-satisfaction. ‘Me and Curran have already measured the front and side screens. Written down on that bit of plywood there.’

‘Fine, fine.’ The Bo’sun tested both the electric drill and electric saw. Both worked. ‘No problem. We’ll cut the plywood three inches wider and higher than your measurements to get the overlap we need. Then we’ll drill holes top, bottom and sides, three-quarters of an inch in, face the plywood up to the screen bearers, mark the metal and drill the holes through the steel.’

‘That steel is three-eighths of an inch. Take to next week to drill all those holes.’

The Bo’sun looked through the tool box and came up with three packets of drills. The first he discarded. The drills in the second, all with blue tips, he showed to Ferguson.

‘Tungsten. Goes through steel like butter. Mr Jamieson doesn’t miss much.’ He paused and cocked his head as if listening, though it was a purely automatic reaction, any sound from the after end of the ship was carried away by the wind: but there was no mistaking the throbbing that pulsed through the superstructure. He looked at Ferguson, whose face cracked into what might almost have been a smile.

The Bo’sun moved to the starboard wing door – the sheltered side of the ship – and peered through the gap where the screen had been in the upper half of the door. The snow was so heavy that the seas moving away from the San Andreas were as much imagined as seen. The ship was still rolling in the troughs. A vessel of any size that has been lying dead in the water can take an unconscionable time – depending, of course, on the circumstances – to gather enough momentum to have steerage way on, but after about another minute the Bo’sun became aware that the ship was sluggishly answering to the helm. He couldn’t see this but he could feel it: a definite quartering motion had entered into the rolling to which they had been accustomed for some hours.

McKinnon moved away from the wing door. ‘We’re turning to starboard. Mr Patterson has decided to go with the wind. We’ll soon have both sea and snow behind us. Fine, fine.’

‘Fine, fine,’ Ferguson said. This was about twenty seconds later and the tone of his voice indicated that everything was all but fine. He was, indeed, acutely uneasy and with reason. The San Andreas was heading almost due south, the heavy seas bearing down on her port quarter were making her corkscrew violently and the markedly increased creaking and groaning of the superstructure was doing little enough for his morale. ‘God’s sake, why couldn’t we have stayed where we were?’

‘A minute’s time and you’ll see why.’ And in a minute’s time he did see why. The corkscrewing and rolling gradually eased and ceased altogether, so did the creaking in the superstructure and the San Andreas, on an approximately south-west course, was almost rock-steady in the water. There was a slight pitching, but, compared to what they had just experienced, it was so negligible as not to be worth the mentioning. Ferguson, with a stable deck beneath his feet, the fear of imminent drowning removed and the snowstorm so squarely behind them that not a flake reached the bridge, had about him an air of profound relief.

Shortly after the Bo’sun and Ferguson had started sawing out the rectangles of plywood, four men arrived on the bridge – Jamieson, Curran, McCrimmon and another stoker called Stephen. Stephen was a Pole and was called always by his first name: nobody had ever been heard to attempt the surname of Przynyszewski. Jamieson carried a telephone, Curran two black heaters, McCrimmon two radiant heaters and Stephen two spools of rubber-insulated cable, one thick, one thin, both of which he unreeled as he went.

‘Well, this is more like it, Bo’sun,’ Jamieson said. ‘A millpond, one might almost call it. Done a power of good for the morale down below. Some people have even rediscovered their appetites. Speaking of appetites, how’s yours? You must be the only person aboard who hasn’t had lunch today.’

‘It’ll keep.’ The Bo’sun looked to where McCrimmon and Stephen were already attaching wires from the heaters to the heavy cable. ‘Thanks for those. They’ll come in handy in an hour or two when we’ve managed to keep all this fresh air out.’

‘More than handy, I should have thought.’ Jamieson shivered. ‘My word, it is fresh up here. What’s the temperature?’

The Bo’sun looked at the thermometer. ‘Zero. That’s two degrees it’s dropped in a few minutes. I’m afraid, Mr Jamieson, that we’re going to be very cold tonight.’

‘Not in the engine-room,’ Jamieson said. He unscrewed the back of the telephone and started connecting it to the slender cable. ‘Mr Patterson thinks this is an unnecessary luxury and that you just want it so that you can talk to someone when you feel lonely. Says that keeping the stern on to wind and seas is child’s play and that he could do it for hours without deviating more than two or three degrees off course.’

‘I’ve no doubt he could. That way we’ll never see Aberdeen. You can tell Mr Patterson that the wind is backing and that if it backs far enough and he still keeps stern on to the wind and sea we’ll end up by making a small hole in the north of Norway and a large hole in ourselves.’

Jamieson smiled. ‘I’ll explain that to the Chief. I don’t think the possibility has occurred to him – it certainly didn’t to me.’

‘And when you go below, sir, would you send up Naseby? He’s an experienced helmsman.’

‘I’ll do that. Need any more help up here?’

‘No, sir. The three of us are enough.’

‘As you say.’ Jamieson screwed the back of the telephone in place, pressed the call-up button, spoke briefly and hung up. ‘Satisfaction guaranteed. Are you through, McCrimmon? Stephen?’ Both men nodded, and Jamieson called the engine-room again, asked for power to be switched on and told McCrimmon and Stephen to switch on one heater apiece, one black, one radiant. ‘Still require McCrimmon as a runner, Bo’sun?’

The Bo’sun nodded towards the telephone. ‘Thanks to you, I’ve got my runner.’

One of McCrimmon’s radiant heaters had started to glow a dim red. Stephen removed a hand from the black heater and nodded.

‘Fine. Switch off. It would seem, Bo’sun, that Flannelfoot has knocked off for the day. We’ll go below now, see what cabins we can make habitable. I’m afraid there won’t be many. The only way we can make a cabin habitable – the clearing up won’t take long, I’ve already got a couple of our boys working on that – is to replace defective heating systems. That’s all that matters. Unfortunately, most of the doors have been blasted off their hinges or cut away by the oxyacetylene torches and there’s no point in replacing heating if we can’t replace the doors. We’ll do what we can.’ He spun the useless wheel. ‘When we’ve finished below and you’ve finished here – and when the temperature is appropriate for myself and other hothouse plants from the engine-room – we’ll come and have a go at this steering.’

‘Big job, sir?’

‘Depends upon what damage in the decks, below. Don’t hold me to it, Bo’sun, but there’s a fair chance that we’ll have it operational, in what you’ll no doubt regard as our customary crude fashion, some time this evening. To give me some leeway, I won’t specify what time.’

The temperature on the bridge continued to drop steadily and because numbing cold slows up a man both physically and mentally it took McKinnon and his two men well over two hours to complete their task: had the temperature been anything like normal they could probably have done it in less than half the time. About three-quarters of the way through the repairs they had switched on all four heaters and the temperature had begun to rise, albeit very slowly.

McKinnon was well enough satisfied with their end product. Five sheets of hardboard had been bolted into position, each panel fitted with an inlet oblong of plate glass, one large, the other four, identical in shape, about half the size. The large one was fitted in the centre, directly ahead of where the helmsman normally stood: two of the others were fitted on either side of this and the remaining two on the upper sections of the wing doors. The inevitable gaps between the glass and the plywood and between the plywood and the metal to which they had been bonded had been sealed off with Hartley’s compound, a yellow plastic material normally used for waterproofing external electrical fittings. The bridge was as draughtproof as it was possible to make it.

Ferguson put away the last of the tools and coughed. ‘There was some mention of a couple of tots of Captain Bowen’s special malt.’

McKinnon looked at him and at Curran. Their faces were mottled blue and white with cold and both men were shivering violently: chronic complainers, neither had complained once.

‘You’ve earned it.’ He turned to Naseby. ‘How’s she bearing?’

Naseby looked at his hand-held compass in distaste. ‘If you can trust this thing, two-twenty. Give or take. So the wind’s backed five degrees in the past couple of hours. We don’t bother the engine-room for five degrees?’

George Naseby, a solid, taciturn, dark-haired and swarthy Yorkshireman – he hailed from Whitby, Captain Cook’s home town – was McKinnon’s alter ego and closest friend. A bo’sun himself on his two previous ships, he had elected to sail on the San Andreas simply because of the mutual regard that he and McKinnon shared. Although he held no official ranking, he was regarded by everyone, from the Captain down, as the number two on the deckside.

‘We don’t bother them. Another five, perhaps, ten degrees off, then we bother them. Let’s go below – ship can look after itself for a few minutes. Then I’ll have Trent relieve you.’

The level of Scotch in the Captain’s bottle of malt had fallen quite rapidly – Ferguson and Curran had their own ideas as to what constituted a reasonably sized tot. McKinnon, in between rather more frugal sips, examined the Captain’s sextant, thermometer and barometer. The sextant, as far as the Bo’sun could tell, was undamaged – the felt lining of its wooden box would have cushioned it from the effects of the blast. The thermometer, too, appeared to be working: the mercury registered I7°F., which was about what McKinnon reckoned the cabin temperature to be. The Captain’s cabin was one of the few with its door still intact and Jamieson had already had a black heater installed.

He gave the thermometer to Naseby, asking that it be placed on one of the bridge wings, then turned his attention to the barometer. This was functioning normally, for when he tapped the glass the black needle fell sharply to the left.

‘Twenty-nine point five,’ the Bo’sun said. ‘Nine nine nine millibars – and falling.’

‘Not good, eh?’ Ferguson said.

‘No. Not that we need a barometer to tell us that.’

McKinnon left and went down from deck to the officers’ quarters. He found Jamieson at the end of the passageway.

‘How’s it coming, sir?’

‘We’re about through. Should be five cabins fit for human habitation – depending, of course, upon what your definition of human is.’

The Bo’sun tapped the bulkhead beside him. ‘How stable do you reckon this structure is, sir?’

‘Highly unstable. Safe enough in those conditions, but I gather you think those conditions are about to change.’

‘If the wind keeps backing and we keep holding to this course then we’re going to have the seas on the starboard quarter and a lot of nasty corkscrewing. I was thinking perhaps –’

‘I know what you were thinking. I’m a ship’s engineer, Bo’sun, not a constructive engineer. I’ll have a look. Maybe we can bolt or weld a few strengthening steel plates at the weakest points. I don’t know. There’s no guarantee. First of all, we’ll go have a look at the steering on the bridge. How are things up top?’

‘Draught-free. Four heaters. Ideal working conditions.’

‘Temperature?’

‘Fifteen.’

‘Above freezing, or below?’

‘Below.’

‘Ideal. Thank you very much.’

McKinnon found four people in the staff dining area – Chief Engineer Patterson, Dr Singh, and Nurses Janet Magnusson and Irene. The nurses were off-duty – the San Andreas, as did all hospital ships, carried an alternate nursing staff. The Bo’sun went to the galley, asked for coffee and sandwiches, sat at the table and made his report to the Chief Engineer. When he was finished he said: ‘And how did you get on, sir? Finding a translator, I mean?’

Patterson scowled. ‘With our luck?’

‘Well, I didn’t really have any hope, sir. Not, as you say, with our luck.’ He looked at Janet Magnusson. ‘Where’s Sister Morrison?’

‘In the lounge.’ Neither her voice nor her eyes held much in the way of warmth. ‘She’s upset. You upset her.’

‘She upset me.’ He made an impatient, dismissive gesture with his hand. ‘Tantrums. This is neither the time nor the place. If ever there is a time and a place.’

‘Oh, come now.’ Dr Singh was smiling. ‘I don’t think either of you is being quite fair. Sister Morrison is not, as you suggest, Mr McKinnon, sulking in her tent and, Nurse, if she’s feeling rather unhappy, it’s not primarily the Bo’sun’s fault. She and Mr Ulbricht are not quite seeing eye to eye.’

‘Ulbricht?’ the Bo’sun said.

‘Flight-Lieutenant Karl Ulbricht, I understand. The captain of the Condor.’

‘He’s conscious?’

‘Very much so. Not only conscious but wanting out of bed. Quite remarkable powers of recuperation. Three bullet wounds, all flesh, all superficial. Bled a great deal, mind you, but he’s had a transfusion: one hopes that the best British blood goes well with his own native Aryan stock. Anyway, Sister Morrison was with me when he came to. She called him a filthy Nazi murderer. Hardly makes for the ideal nurse-patient relationship.’

‘Not very tactful, I agree,’ Patterson said. ‘A wounded man recovering consciousness might expect to be entitled to a little more sympathy. How did he react?’

‘Very calmly. Mild, you might say. Said he wasn’t a Nazi and had never murdered anyone in his life. She just stood and glared at him – if you can imagine Sister Morrison glaring at anybody – and –’

‘I can imagine it very easily,’ the Bo’sun said with some feeling. ‘She glares at me. Frequently.’

‘Perhaps,’ Nurse Magnusson said, ‘you and Lieutenant Ulbricht have a lot in common.’

‘Please.’ Dr Singh held up a hand. ‘Lieutenant Ulbricht expressed deep regrets, said something about the fortunes of war, but didn’t exactly call for sackcloth and ashes. I stopped it there – it didn’t look like being a very profitable discussion. Don’t be too hard on the Sister, Bo’sun. She’s no battleaxe, far less a termagant. She feels deeply and has her own way of expressing her feelings.’

McKinnon made to reply, caught Janet’s still far from friendly eye and changed his mind. ‘How are your other patients, Doctor?’

‘The other aircrew member – a gunner, it seems, by the name of Helmut Winterman – is okay, just a scared kid who expects to be shot at dawn. Commander Warrington, as you guessed, Mr McKinnon, is badly hurt. How badly, I don’t know. His occiput is fractured but only surgery can tell us how serious it is. I’m a surgeon but not a brain surgeon. We’ll have to wait until we get to a mainland hospital to ease the pressure on the sight centre and find out when, if ever, he’ll see again.’

‘The Andover’s navigator?’

‘Lieutenant Cunningham?’ Dr Singh shook his head. ‘I’m sorry – in more ways than one, I’m afraid this may be your last hope gone – that the young man won’t be doing any more navigating for some time to come. He’s in a coma. X-ray shows a fracture of the skull and not a hairline fracture either. Pulse, respiration, temperature show no sign of organic damage. He’ll live.’

‘Any idea when he might come to, Doctor?’

Dr Singh sighed. ‘If I were a first-year intern, I’d hazard a fairly confident guess. Alas, it’s twenty-five years since I was a first-year intern. Two days, two weeks, two months – I simply don’t know. As for the others, the Captain and Chief Officer are still under sedation and when they wake up I’m going to put them to sleep again. Hudson, the one with the punctured lung, seems to have stabilized – at least, the internal bleeding has stopped. Rafferty’s fractured tibia is no problem. The two injured crewmen from the Argos, one with a broken pelvis, the other with multiple burns, are still in the recovery room, not because they’re in any danger but because Ward A was full and it was the best place to keep them. And I’ve discharged two young seamen, I don’t know their names.’

‘Jones and McGuigan.’

‘That’s the two. Shock, nothing more. I understand they’re lucky to be alive.’

‘We’re all lucky to be alive.’ McKinnon nodded his thanks as Mario put coffee and sandwiches before him, then looked at Patterson. ‘Do you think it might help, sir, if we had a word with Lieutenant Ulbricht?’

‘If you’re halfway right on your way of thinking, Bo’sun, it might be of some help. At least, it can be of no harm.’

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to wait a bit,’ Dr Singh said. ‘The Lieutenant was getting a little bit too active – or beginning to feel too active – for his own good. It’ll be an hour, perhaps two. A matter of urgency, Mr McKinnon?’

‘It could be. Or a matter of some importance, at least. He might be able to tell us why we’re all so lucky as to be still alive. And if we knew, then we might have some idea, or a guess at least, as to what lies in store for us.’

‘You think the enemy is not yet finished with us?’

‘I should be surprised if they are, Doctor.’

McKinnon, alone now in the dining area, had just finished his third cup of coffee when Jamieson and three of his men entered, to the accompaniment of much arm-flapping and teeth-chattering. Jamieson went to the galley, ordered coffee for himself and his men and sat beside McKinnon.

‘Ideal working conditions, you said, Bo’sun. Snug as a bug in a rug, one might say. Temperature’s soaring – it’s almost ten degrees up there. Minus.’

‘Sorry about that, sir. How’s the steering?’

‘Fixed. For the moment, at least. Not too big a job. Quite a bit of play on the wheel, but Trent says it’s manageable.’

‘Fine. Thank you. We have bridge control?’

‘Yes. I told the engine-room to cease and desist. Chief Patterson seemed quite disappointed – seems to think that he can do a better job than the bridge. What’s next on the agenda?’

‘Nothing. Not for me, that is.’

‘Ah! I take your point. Our idle hands, is that it? We’ll have a look at the chances of bracing the superstructure in a moment – a moment depending on how long it takes us to get defrosted.’

‘Of course, sir.’ The Bo’sun looked over his shoulder. ‘I have noticed that Dr Singh doesn’t bother to keep the hospital’s private liquor cabinet locked.’

‘Well, now. A little something in our coffee, perhaps?’

‘I would recommend it, sir. Might help to speed up the defrosting process.’

Jamieson gave him an old-fashioned look, rose and crossed towards the cabinet.

Jamieson drained his second cup of reinforced coffee and looked at McKinnon. ‘Something bothering you, Bo’sun?’

‘Yes.’ McKinnon had both hands on the table, as if preparing to rise. ‘Motion’s changed. A few minutes back the ship started quartering a little, not too much, as if Trent was making a slight course adjustment, but now she’s quartering too damn much. It could be that the steering has failed again.’

McKinnon left at speed, Jamieson close behind him. Reaching the now smoothly ice-coated deck, McKinnon grabbed a lifeline and stopped.

‘Corkscrewing,’ he shouted. He had to shout to make himself heard above the near gale-force wind. ‘Twenty degrees off course, maybe thirty. Something far wrong up there.’

And indeed, when they arrived on the bridge, there was something far wrong. Both men paused momentarily, and McKinnon said: ‘My apologies, Mr Jamieson. It wasn’t the steering after all.’

Trent was lying, face up, just behind the wheel, which was mindlessly jerking from side to side in response to the erratic seas striking against the rudder. Trent was breathing, no doubt about that, his chest rising and falling in a slow, rhythmic fashion. McKinnon bent over to examine his face, looked more closely, sniffed, wrinkled his nose in distaste and straightened.

‘Chloroform.’ He reached out for the wheel and began to bring the San Andreas back on course again.

‘And this.’ Jamieson stooped, picked up the fallen compass and showed it to McKinnon. The glass was smashed, the needle irremediably twisted out of position. ‘Flannelfoot strikes again.’

‘So it would appear, sir.’

‘Ah. You don’t seem particularly surprised, Bo’sun?’

‘I saw it lying there. I didn’t have to look. There are quite a few other helmsmen aboard. That was our only compass.’

Chapter Four

‘Whoever was responsible for this must have had access to the dispensary,’ Patterson said. He was with Jamieson and McKinnon in the hospital’s small lounge.

‘That won’t help, sir,’ McKinnon said. ‘Since ten o’clock this morning everybody aboard this ship – except, of course, the wounded, the unconscious and those under sedation – have had access to the dispensary. There’s not a single person who hasn’t been in the hospital area, either to eat, sleep or just rest.’

‘Maybe we’re not looking at it in the right way,’ Jamieson said. ‘Why should anyone want to smash the compass? It can’t just be to stop us from following whatever course we were following or that we might outrun someone. The chances are high that Flannelfoot is still transmitting his homing signal and that the Germans know exactly where we are.’

‘Maybe he’s hoping to panic us,’ McKinnon said. ‘Maybe he’s hoping we’ll slow down, rather than travel around in circles, which could easily happen if the weather deteriorates, the sea becomes confused, and if we have no compass. Perhaps there’s a German submarine in the vicinity and he doesn’t want us to get too far away. There’s an even worse possibility. We’ve been assuming that Flannelfoot has only a transmitter: maybe he has a transceiver, what if he’s in radio contact with Alta Fjord or a U-boat or even a reconnaissance Condor? There could be a British warship in the vicinity and the last thing they would want is that we make contact with it. Well, we couldn’t contact it: but its radar could pick us up ten, fifteen miles away.’

‘Too many “ifs”, “maybes” and “perhaps this” and “perhaps that”.’ Patterson’s voice was decisive, that of a man who has made up his mind. ‘How many men do you trust aboard this ship, Bo’sun?’

‘How many –’ McKinnon broke off in speculation. ‘The three of us here and Naseby. And the medical staff. Not that I have any particular reason to trust them – nor do I have any particular reason to distrust them – but we know that they were here, all present and accounted for, when Trent was attacked, so that rules them out.’

‘Two doctors, six nursing staff, three orderlies and the four of us. That makes fifteen,’ Jamieson said. He smiled. ‘Apart from that, everyone is a suspect?’

The Bo’sun permitted himself a slight smile in return. ‘It’s difficult to see kids like Jones, McGuigan and Wayland Day as master spies. Those apart, I wouldn’t put my hand in the fire for any of them, that’s to say I’ve no reason to trust them in a matter of life and death.’

Patterson said: ‘The crew of the Argos? Survivors? Guests by happenstance?’

‘Ridiculous, I know, sir. But who’s to say the nigger is not in the most unlikely woodpile? I just don’t trust anyone.’ The Bo’sun paused. ‘Am I wrong in thinking that it is your intention to search through the quarters and possessions of everyone aboard?’

‘You are not wrong, Bo’sun.’

‘With respect sir, we’ll be wasting our time. Anyone as smart as Flannelfoot is too smart to leave anything lying around, or at least to leave it in any place where it might be remotely associated with him. There are hundreds of places aboard where you can hide things and we are not trained rummagers. On the other hand, it’s better than doing nothing. But I’m afraid that’s what we’ll find, Mr Patterson. Nothing.’

They found nothing. They searched every living quarter, every wardrobe and cupboard, every case and duffel bag, every nook and cranny, and they found nothing. A rather awkward moment had arisen when Captain Andropolous, a burly, dark-bearded and seemingly intemperate character who had been given one of the empty cabins normally reserved for recuperating patients, objected violently and physically to having his quarters searched: McKinnon, who had no Greek, resolved this impasse by pointing his Colt at the Captain’s temple, after which, probably realizing that McKinnon wasn’t acting for his own amusement, the Captain had been cooperation itself, even to going to the extent of accompanying the Bo’sun and ordering his crew to open up their possessions for scrutiny.

The two Singhalese cooks in the hospital galleys were more than competent and Dr Singh, who appeared to be something of a connoisseur in such matters, produced some Bordeaux that would not have been found wanting in a Michelin restaurant, but poor justice was done to the food and, more surprisingly, the wine at dinner that evening. The atmosphere was sombre. There was an uneasiness about, even a faint air of furtiveness. It is one thing to be told that there is a saboteur at large: it is quite another to have your luggage and possessions searched on the basis of the possibility that you might be the saboteur in question. Even, or perhaps especially, the hospital staff seemed unduly uncomfortable: their possessions had not been searched so they were not, officially, in the clear. An irrational reaction it may have been but, in the circumstances, understandable.

Patterson pushed back his unfinished plate and said to Dr Singh: ‘This Lieutenant Ulbricht. Is he awake?’

‘He’s more than awake.’ Dr Singh sounded almost testy. ‘Remarkable recuperative powers. Wanted to join us for dinner. Forbade it, of course. Why?’

‘The Bo’sun and I would like to have a word with him.’

‘No reason why not.’ He pondered briefly. ‘Two possible minor complications. Sister Morrison is there – she’s just relieved Sister Maria for dinner.’ He nodded towards the end of the table where a fair-haired, high-cheekboned girl in a sister’s uniform was having dinner. Apart from Stephen Przybyszewski she was the only Polish national aboard and as people found her surname of Szarzynski, like Stephen’s, rather difficult, she was invariably and affectionately referred to as Sister Maria.

‘We’ll survive,’ Patterson said. ‘The other complication?’

‘Captain Bowen. Like Lieutenant Ulbricht, he has a high tolerance to sedatives. Keeps surfacing – longer and longer spells of consciousness and when he is awake he’s in a very bad humour. Who has ever seen Captain Bowen in ill humour?’

Patterson rose. ‘If I were the Captain I wouldn’t be very much in the mood for singing and dancing. Come on, Bo’sun.’

They found the Captain awake, very much so, and, indeed, in a more than irritable frame of mind. Sister Morrison was seated on a stool by his bedside. She made to rise but Patterson waved to her to remain where she was. Lieutenant Ulbricht was half-sitting, half-lying in the next bed, his right hand behind his neck: Lieutenant Ulbricht was very wide awake.

‘How do you feel, Captain?’

‘How do I feel, Chief?’ Briefly and forcefully Bowen told him how he felt. He would no doubt have expressed himself even more forcefully had he not been aware that Sister Morrison was sitting by his side. He raised a bandaged hand to cover a cough. ‘All’s gone to hell and breakfast, isn’t it, Chief?’

‘Well, yes, things could be better.’

‘Things couldn’t be worse.’ Captain Bowen’s words were blurred and indistinct: speaking through those blistered lips had to be agonizing. ‘Sister has told me. Even the boat compass smashed. Flannelfoot.’

‘Flannelfoot?’

‘He’s still around. Flannelfoot.’

‘Flannelfeet,’ McKinnon said.

‘Archie!’ It said much for the Captain’s state of mind that, for the first time ever, he had, in company, addressed the Bo’sun by his first name. ‘You’re here.’

‘Bad pennies, sir.’

‘Who’s on watch, Bo’sun?’

‘Naseby, sir.’

‘That’s all right. Flannelfeet?’

‘There’s more than one, sir. There has to be. I know. I don’t know how I know, but I know.’

‘You never mentioned this to me,’ Patterson said.

‘That’s because I didn’t think about it until now. And there’s another thing I didn’t think about until now. Captain Andropolous.’

‘The Greek master,’ Bowen said. ‘What about him?’

‘Well, sir, you know we’re having a little trouble with the navigation?’

‘A little? That’s not how Sister Morrison tells it.’

‘Well, then, a lot. We thought Captain Andropolous might give us a hand if we could communicate with him. But we can’t. Maybe we don’t have to. Maybe if we just show him your sextant, Captain, and give him a chart, that might be enough. Trouble is, the chart’s ruined. Blood.’

‘No problem,’ Bowen said. ‘We always carry duplicates. It’ll be under the table or in the drawers at the after end of the chart room.’

‘I should be back in fifteen minutes,’ the Bo’sun said.

It took him considerably longer and, when he did return, his set face and the fact that he was carrying with him the sextant in its box and a chart bespoke a man who had come to report the failure of a mission.

Patterson said: ‘No cooperation? Or Flannelfoot?’

‘Flannelfoot. Captain Andropolous was lying on his bunk, snoring his head off. I tried to shake him but I might as well have shaken a sack of potatoes. My first thought was that the same person who had been to attend to Trent had also been to see the captain, but there was no smell of chloroform. I fetched Dr Singh, who said he had been heavily drugged.’

‘Drugged!’ Bowen tried to express astonishment but his voice came out as a croak. ‘God’s sake, is there no end to it? Drugged! How in heaven’s name could he have been drugged?’

‘Quite easily, it would seem, sir. Dr Singh didn’t know what drug it was but he said he must have taken it with something he’d eaten or drunk. We asked Achmed, the head cook, if the captain had had anything different to eat from the rest of us and he said he hadn’t but also said that he had coffee afterwards. Captain Andropolous had his own idea as to how coffee should be made – half coffee, half brandy. Dr Singh said that that amount of brandy would have disguised the taste of any drug he knows of. There was a cup and saucer by the captain’s bunkside table. It was empty.’

‘Ah.’ Patterson looked thoughtful. ‘There must have been dregs. I know nothing about those things, of course, but couldn’t Dr Singh have analysed those dregs?’

‘There were none. The captain could have done it himself – washed the cup, I mean. More likely, I think it was Flannelfoot covering his tracks. There was no point in making enquiries about who might or might not have been seen going into or leaving the captain’s cabin.’

‘No communication, is that it?’ Patterson said.

‘That’s it. Only his own crew were around at the time.’

Patterson said: ‘Assuming that our saboteur has been at work again – and I don’t think we can assume anything else – where the hell would he have got hold of powerful drugs like this?’

‘Where did he get hold of the chloroform? I would think that Flannelfoot is well-stocked with what he considers essentials. Maybe he’s not only a bit of a chemist, too. Maybe he knows what to look for in the dispensary.’

‘No,’ Bowen said. ‘I asked Dr Singh. The dispensary is kept locked.’

‘Yes, sir,’ McKinnon said. ‘But if this person is a professional, a trained saboteur, then among what he rates essentials I would think that a set of skeleton keys comes pretty high on his list.’

‘My cup overfloweth,’ Bowen mumbled. ‘As I said, all gone to hell and breakfast. If the weather breaks down much more, and I understand it’s doing just that, we can end up any place. Coast of Norway, most like.’

‘May I speak, Captain?’ It was Lieutenant Ulbricht.

Bowen twisted his head to one side, an ill-advised move that made him grunt in pain. ‘Is that Lieutenant Ulbricht?’ There was little encouragement in his voice and, had his eyes not been bandaged, it was quite certain that there would have been none there either.

‘Yes, sir. I can navigate.’

‘You are very kind, Lieutenant.’ Bowen tried to sound icy but his blistered mouth wasn’t up to it. ‘You’re the last person in the world I would ever turn to for help. You have committed a crime against humanity.’ He paused for some seconds but it was no pause for reflection, a combination of anger and pain was making speech very difficult. ‘If we get back to Britain you will be shot. You? God!’

McKinnon said: ‘I can understand how you feel, sir. Because of his bombs, fifteen men are dead. Because of his bombs, you are the way you are. So are the Chief Officer, Hudson and Rafferty. But I still think you should listen to him.’

The Captain was silent for what seemed an unconscionably long time. It said much for the regard in which he held the Bo’sun that probably no other man could have given him pause for so long. When he spoke his voice was thick with bitterness. ‘Beggars can’t be choosers. That’s it, isn’t it?’ McKinnon made no reply. ‘Anyway, navigating a plane is quite different from navigating a ship.’

‘I can navigate a ship,’ Ulbricht said. ‘In peacetime I was at a Marine Schule – a marine school. I have a marine navigation certificate.’ He smiled briefly. ‘Not on me, of course, but I have one. Besides, I have many times taken starsights from a plane. That is much more difficult than taking sight from the bridge of a ship. I repeat, I can navigate.’

‘Him! That monster!’ Sister Morrison sounded even more bitter than the Captain but maybe that was because her lips weren’t blistered. ‘I’m quite sure he can navigate, Captain Bowen. I’m also sure that he would navigate us straight to Alta Fjord or Trondheim or Bergen – some place in Norway, anyway.’

Ulbricht said: ‘That’s a very silly statement, Sister. Mr McKinnon may not be a navigator but he must be a very experienced seaman and it would require only one glimpse of the sun or the Pole Star to let him know whether we were steering roughly south-east instead of roughly south-west.’

‘I still don’t trust him an inch,’ Sister Morrison said. ‘If what he says is true, then I trust him even less.’ Her eyes were coldly appraising, her lips firmly compressed, one could see that she had missed out on her profession, she was well on the way to being the headmistress of Roedean with Ulbricht cast in the unlikely role of a trembling and errant pigtailed third-former. ‘Look what happened to Trent. Look what happened to that Greek captain. Why shouldn’t the same thing happen to Mr McKinnon?’

‘With respect, Sister,’ McKinnon said in a voice notably lacking in respect, ‘I have to repeat what Lieutenant Ulbricht said – that’s a very silly statement indeed. It’s silly for two reasons. The first is Naseby is also a bo’sun and a very fine one, too. Not that I would expect you to know that.’ The Bo’sun put an unnecessary emphasis on the word ‘you’. ‘Trent, Ferguson and Curran can also tell the difference between north and south. So, I’m sure, can Chief Patterson and Mr Jamieson. There could be half-a-dozen others among the crew. Are you suggesting that by some mysterious means that passes my comprehension – but not, it would seem, yours – Lieutenant Ulbricht is going to have us all immobilized?’

Sister Morrison parted lips that had been tightly, even whitely, compressed. ‘And the second reason?’

‘If you think that Lieutenant Ulbricht is in cahoots with the persons who were responsible for the destruction of his plane and, near as a whisker, the loss of his own life – well, if you believe that, you’ll believe anything.’

If it is possible to clear a throat in a soothing fashion, Patterson did just that. ‘I think, Captain, that the Lieutenant here might not be quite as black a villain as you and Sister think.’

‘Not a villain! The black-hearted –’ Bowen broke off and when he spoke again his voice was quiet and almost thoughtful. ‘You would not say that without a reason, Chief. What makes you think so?’

‘It was the Bo’sun who first came up with the suggestion. I think I agree with him. Bo’sun, tell the Captain what you told me.’

‘I’ve had time to think about this,’ McKinnon said apologetically. ‘You haven’t. From what Dr Singh tells me about the pain you must be suffering, it must be a damn hard job to think at all. It’s my belief, sir, that the Lieutenant’s Luftwaffe have sold him down the river.’

‘Sold him down – what the devil is that meant to mean?’

‘I don’t think he knew he was attacking a hospital ship. Sure, he knows now. But he didn’t when he dropped the bombs.’

‘He didn’t know! Bomber pilots, I would remind you, Bo’sun, are supposed to have excellent eyesight. All those red crosses –’

‘I don’t think he saw them, sir. The lights were off. It was half dark. As he was approaching from dead astern, he certainly couldn’t have seen the crosses on the sides and he was so low the superstructure would have blocked off any view of the for’ard cross. As for the cross aft, we were making so much smoke at the time that it might have been obscured. And I can’t imagine for a moment that Lieutenant Ulbricht would have made so suicidal an approach, so suicidal an attack on the San Andreas, if he had known there was a British frigate only a couple of miles away. I wouldn’t have put his chances of survival very high.’

‘Neither did I.’ Lieutenant Ulbricht spoke with feeling.

‘And the clincher, sir. Those four Heinkel torpedo-bombers. I know you didn’t see them, sir, even hear them, you were unconscious at the time. But Chief Patterson and I saw them. They deliberately avoided us – lifted over us – and headed straight for the Andover. So what do you make of it, sir? A Condor attacks us – I’m sure it must have been with low-power bombs – and the Heinkels, who could have sent us to the bottom, didn’t. The Heinkel pilots knew the Andover was there: Lieutenant Ulbricht did not. The Luftwaffe, Captain, would seem to have two hands, with the left hand not telling the right hand what it was doing. I’m more than ever convinced that the Lieutenant was sold down the river, sold by his own high command and the saboteur who blacked out our Red Cross lights.

‘Besides, he doesn’t look like a man who would bomb a hospital ship.’

‘How the hell can I tell what he looks like?’ Bowen spoke with, understandably, some irritation. ‘A babyface with a harp can be no less of a murderer, no matter what he looks like. But yes, I agree, Bo’sun, it does raise some very odd questions. Questions that seem to call for some very odd answers. Don’t you agree, Sister?’

‘Well, yes, perhaps.’ Her tone was doubtful, grudging. ‘Mr McKinnon could be right.’

‘He is right.’ The voice was Kennet’s and it was very firm.

‘Mr Kennet.’ Bowen turned to the bed on the other side of him and cursed, not too sotto voce, as his neck and head reminded him that sudden movements were not advisable. ‘I thought you were asleep.’

‘Never more awake, sir. Just that I don’t feel too much like talking. Of course the Bo’sun’s right. Has to be.’

‘Ah. Well.’ More carefully, this time, Bowen turned back to face Ulbricht. ‘No apologies for what you have done but maybe you’re not the black-hearted murderer we thought you were. Bo’sun, Chief tells me that you’ve been smashing furniture in my cabin.’

‘No more than I had to, sir. Couldn’t find the keys.’

‘The keys are in the back left-hand corner of the left drawer in my desk. Look in the right-hand locker under my bunk. There’s a chronometer there. See if it’s working.’

‘A spare chronometer, sir?’

‘Many captains carry one. I always have done. If the sextant has survived the blast, maybe the chronometer has too. The sextant is functioning, isn’t it?’

‘As far as I can tell.’

‘May I see it?’ Lieutenant Ulbricht said. He examined it briefly. ‘It works.’

McKinnon left, taking the sextant and chart with him.

When he returned, he was smiling. ‘Chronometer is intact, sir. I’ve put Trent back on the wheel and Naseby in your cabin. There he can see anybody who tries to go up the bridge ladder and, more important, clobber any unauthorized person who tries to come into your cabin. I’ve told him the only authorized people are Mr Patterson, Mr Jamieson and myself.’

‘Excellent,’ Bowen said. ‘Lieutenant Ulbricht, we may yet call upon your services.’ He paused. ‘You are aware, of course, that you will be navigating yourself into captivity?’

‘Not a firing squad?’

‘That would be a poor return for your – ah – professional services. No.’

‘Better a live prisoner-of-war than floating around and frozen to death in a rubber raft, which I would have been but for Mr McKinnon here.’ Ulbricht propped himself up in his bed. ‘Well, no time like the present.’

McKinnon placed a restraining hand on his shoulder. ‘Sorry, Lieutenant, it’ll have to wait.’

‘You mean – Dr Singh?’

‘He wouldn’t be too happy but it’s not that. Blizzard. Zero visibility. No stars, and there’ll be none tonight.’

‘Ah.’ Ulbricht lay back in bed. ‘I wasn’t feeling all that energetic, anyway.’

It was then that, for the third time that day, the lights failed. McKinnon switched on his torch, located and switched on four nickel-cadmium emergency lights and looked thoughtfully at Patterson. Bowen said: ‘Something up?’

‘Sorry, sir,’ Patterson said. He had momentarily forgotten that the Captain couldn’t see. ‘Another blasted power-cut.’

‘Another. Jesus!’ The Captain sounded less concerned and angry than just disgusted. ‘No sooner do we think we have cleared up one problem than we have another. Flannelfoot, I’ll be bound.’

‘Maybe, sir,’ McKinnon said. ‘Maybe not. I don’t imagine the lights have failed because someone has been drugged or chloroformed. I don’t imagine they’ve failed because someone wanted to douse our topside Red Cross lights, because visibility is zero and it would serve no point. If it’s sabotage, it’s sabotage for some other reason.’

‘I’ll go see if they can tell me anything in the engine-room,’ Patterson said. ‘Looks like another job for Mr Jamieson.’

‘He’s working in the superstructure,’ McKinnon said. ‘I was going there anyway. I’ll get him for you. Meet you back here, sir?’ Patterson nodded and hurried from the ward.

On the now relatively stable upper deck the lifelines were no longer needed as such but were invaluable as guidelines, for, with the absence of deck-lights and the driving snow, McKinnon literally could not see an inch before his face. He brought up short as he bumped into someone.

‘Who’s that.’ His voice was sharp.

‘McKinnon? Jamieson. Not Flannelfoot. He’s been at it again.’

‘Looks like it, sir. Mr Patterson would like to see you in the engine-room.’

On the deck level of the superstructure the Bo’sun found three of the engine-room crew welding a cross-plate to two beams, the harsh glare of the oxy-acetylene flame contrasting eerily with the utter blackness around. Two decks up he came across Naseby in the Captain’s cabin, a marlin-spike, butt end cloth-wrapped, in his hand and a purposeful expression on his face.

‘No visitors, George?’

‘Nary a visitor, Archie, but it looks as if someone has been visiting somewhere.’

The Bo’sun nodded and went up to the bridge, checked with Trent and descended the ladder again. He stopped outside the Captain’s cabin and looked at Naseby. ‘Notice anything?’

‘Yes, I notice something. I notice that the engine revs have dropped, we’re slowing. This time, perhaps, a bomb in the engine-room?’

‘No. We’d have heard it in the hospital.’

‘A gas grenade would have done just as well.’

‘You’re getting as bad as I am,’ McKinnon said.

He found Patterson and Jamieson in the hospital dining area. They were accompanied, to McKinnon’s momentary surprise, by Ferguson. But the surprise was only momentary.

‘Engine-room’s okay, then?’ McKinnon said.

Patterson said: ‘Yes. Reduced speed as a precaution. How did you know?’

‘Ferguson here is holed up with Curran in the carpenter’s shop, which is as far for’ard as you can get in this ship. So the trouble is up near the bows – nothing short of an earthquake would normally get Ferguson out of his bunk – or whatever he’s using for a bunk up there.’

Ferguson looked and sounded aggrieved. ‘Just dropping off, I was, when Curran and me heard this explosion. Felt it, too. Directly beneath us. Not so much an explosion as a bang or a clang. Something metallic, anyway. Curran shouted that we’d been mined or torpedoed but I told him not to be daft, if a mine or torpedo had gone off beneath us we wouldn’t have been alive to talk about it. So I came running aft – well, as fast as you can run on that deck – it’s like a skating rink.’

McKinnon said to Patterson: ‘So you think the ship’s hull is open to the sea?’

‘I don’t know what to think, but if it is then the slower we go the less chance of increasing the damage to the hull. Not too slow, of course, if we lose steerage way then we’ll start rolling or corkscrewing or whatever and that would only increase the strain on the hull. I suppose Captain Bowen has the structural plans in his cabin?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose he has but it doesn’t matter. I know the lay-out. I’m sure Mr Jamieson does as well.’

‘Oh dear. That means I don’t?’

‘Didn’t say that, sir. Let me put it this way. Next time I see a chief engineer crawling around the bilges will be the first time. Besides, you have to stay up top, sir. If an urgent decision has to be taken the bilges are no place for the commanding officer to be.’

Patterson sighed. ‘I often wonder, Bo’sun, where one draws a line between commonsense and diplomacy.’

‘This is it, you think, Bo’sun?’

‘It has to be, sir.’ Jamieson and the Bo’sun, together with Ferguson and McCrimmon, were in the paint store, a lowermost deck compartment on the port side for’ard. Facing them was an eight-clamped door set in a watertight bulkhead. McKinnon placed the palm of his hand against the top of the door and then against the bottom. ‘Normal temperatures above – well, almost normal – and cold, almost freezing, below. Seawater on the other side, sir – not more than eighteen inches, I would think.’

‘Figures,’ Jamieson said. ‘We’re not more than a few feet below the waterline here and that’s as much as the compressed air will let in. That’s one of the ballast rooms, of course.’

‘That’s the ballast room, sir.’

‘And this is the paint store.’ Jamieson gestured at the irregularly welded patch of metal on the ship’s side. ‘Chief Engineer never did have any faith in what he called those Russkie shipwrights.’

‘That’s as maybe, sir. But I don’t see any Russian shipwrights leaving a time-bomb in the ballast room.’

Russian shipwrights had indeed been aboard the San Andreas, which had sailed from Halifax, Nova Scotia, as the freighter Ocean Belle, Ocean being a common prefix for American-built Liberty Ships. At the time of sailing, the Ocean Belle was neither fish nor fowl but was, in fact, a three-parts completed hospital ship. Its armament, at that stage, had been removed, its magazines emptied, all but the essential watertight bulkheads breached or partially cut away, the operating theatre completed, as were the cabins for the medical staff and the dispensary, already fully stocked: the medical store was almost finished, the galley partially so, whereas work had not yet begun on the wards, the recovery room and messes. The medical staff, which had come from Britain, were already on board.

Orders were received from the Admiralty that the Ocean Belle was to join the next fast convoy to Northern Russia, which had already assembled at Halifax. Captain Bowen had not refused – refusal of an Admiralty order was not permitted – but he had objected in a fashion so strongly as to be tantamount to refusal. He was damned, he said, if he was going to sail to Russia with a shipload of civilians aboard. He was referring to the medical staff aboard and, as they constituted only a round dozen, they could hardly have been called a shipload: he was also conveniently overlooking the fact that every member of the crew, from himself downwards, was also, technically, a civilian.

The medical staff, Bowen had maintained, were a different kind of civilian. Dr Singh had pointed out to him that ninety per cent of the medical staff of the armed forces were civilians, only they wore different kinds of uniforms: the staff on board the San Andreas wore different kinds of uniforms too, which happened to be white. Captain Bowen had then fallen back on his last defence: he was not, he said, going to take women through a war zone – he was referring to the six nursing staff aboard. A by now thoroughly irritated escort commander forcefully made three points that had forcefully been made to him by the Admiralty: thousands of women and children had been in war zones while being transported as refugees to the United States and Canada: in the current year, as compared to the previous two years, U-boat losses had quadrupled while Mercantile Marine losses had been cut by eighty per cent: and the Russians had requested, or rather insisted, that as many wounded Allied personnel as possible be removed from their overcrowded Archangel hospitals. Captain Bowen, as he should have done at the beginning, had capitulated and the Ocean Belle, still painted in its wartime grey but carrying adequate supplies of white, red and green paint, had sailed with the convoy.

As convoys to Northern Russia went, it had been an exceptionally uneventful one. Not one merchant ship and not one escort vessel had been lost. Only two incidents had occurred and both had involved the Ocean Belle. Some way south of Jan Mayen Island they had come across a venerable V and W class destroyer, stopped in the water with an engine breakdown. This destroyer had been a unit of the destroyer screen escorting a previous convoy and had stopped to pick up survivors from a sinking cargo vessel, which had been heavily on fire. The time had been about 2.30 p.m., well after sunset, and the rescue operation had been interrupted by a brief air attack. The attacker had not been seen but had obviously no difficulty in seeing the destroyer, silhouetted as it was against the blazing cargo ship. It had been assumed that the attacker was a reconnaissance Condor, for it had dropped no bombs and contented itself with raking the bridge with machine gun fire, which had effectively destroyed the radio office. Thus, when the engines had broken down some hours later – the breakdown had nothing to do with the Condor, the V and Ws were superannuated, overworked and much plagued by mechanical troubles – they had been unable to contact the vanished convoy.[*]

The wounded survivors were taken aboard the Ocean Belle. The destroyer itself, together with its crew and unwounded survivors, was taken in tow by an S-class destroyer. It was later learnt that both vessels had reached Scapa Flow intact.

Three days afterwards, somewhere off North Cape, they had come across an equally ancient ‘Kingfisher’ corvette, which had no business whatever in those distant waters. It, too, was stopped, and so deep in the water astern that its poop was already awash. It, too, had survivors aboard – the survivors of the crew of a Russian submarine that had been picked up from a burning oil-covered sea.[*] The Russians, for the most part badly burned, had been transferred, inevitably, to the Ocean Belle, the crew being transferred to an escort destroyer. The corvette was sunk by gunfire. It was during this transfer that the Ocean Belle had been holed twice, just below the water line, on the port side, in the paint store and ballast room. The reason for the damage had never been established.

The convoy had gone to Archangel but the Ocean Belle had put in to Murmansk – neither Captain Bowen nor the escort commander had thought it wise that the Ocean Belle should proceed any further than necessary in its then present condition – slightly down by the head and with a list to port. There were no dry dock facilities available but the Russians were masters of improvisation – the rigours of war had forced them to be. They topped up the after tanks, drained the for’ard tanks and removed the for’ard slabs of concrete ballast until the holes in the paint store and ballast room were just clear of the water, after which it had taken them only a few hours to weld plates in position over the holes. The equalization of the tanks and the replacement of ballast had then brought the Ocean Belle back to an even keel.

While those repairs were being effected a small army of Russian carpenters had worked, three shifts in every twenty-four hours, in the hospital section of the ship, fitting out the wards, recovery room, messes, galley and medical store. Captain Bowen was astonished beyond measure. On his previous visits to the two Russian ports he had encountered from his allies, blood brothers who should have been in tears of gratitude for the dearly-bought and vital supplies being ferried to their stricken country, nothing but sullenness, indifference, a marked lack of cooperation and, not occasionally, downright hostility. The baffling sea-change he could only attribute to the fact that the Russians were only showing their heartfelt appreciation for the Ocean Belle having brought their wounded submariners back home.

When they sailed it was as a hospital ship – Bowen’s crew, paintbrushes in hands, had worked with a will during their brief stay in Murmansk. They did not, as everyone had expected, proceed through the White Sea to pick up the wounded servicemen in Archangel. The Admiralty’s orders had been explicit: they were to proceed, and at all speed, to the port of Aberdeen in Scotland.

Jamieson replaced the cover of the small electrical junction box, having effectively isolated the ballast room from the main power system. He tapped the watertight door. ‘Short in there – could have been caused by the blast or sea-water, it doesn’t matter – should have blown a fuse somewhere. It didn’t. Somewhere or other there’s a fuse, that’s been tampered with – fuse-wire replaced by a nail or some such. That doesn’t matter either. I’m not going to look for it. McCrimmon, go ask the engine-room to try the generator.’

McKinnon tapped the same door. ‘And what do we do here?’

‘What, indeed?’ Jamieson sat on a paint drum and thought. ‘Three choices, I would say. We can get an air compressor down here, drill a hole through the bulkhead at about shoulder level and force the water out which would be fine if we knew where the level of the hole in the hull is. We don’t. Besides, the chances are that the compressed air in the ballast room would escape before we could get the nozzle of the compressed air hose into the hole we drilled which could only mean that more water would pour into the ballast room. Or we could reinforce the bulkhead. The third choice is to do nothing. I’m for the third choice. It’s a pretty solid bulkhead. We’d have to reduce speed, of course. No bulkhead is going to stand up to the pressure at full speed if there’s a hole the size of a barn door in the hull.’

‘A barn door would not be convenient,’ McKinnon said, ‘I think I’ll go and have a look.’

It was a very cold and rather bruised McKinnon who half-climbed and was half-pulled up to the foredeck of the San Andreas, which, engines stopped, was wallowing heavily in quartering seas. In the pale half-light given by the again functioning deck arc lamps they presented a strange quartet, Jamieson, Ferguson and McCrimmon, wraithlike figures completely shrouded in snow, McKinnon a weirdly-gleaming creature, the sea water on his rubber suit, aqualung and waterproof torch already, in that 35° below temperature, beginning to harden into ice. At a gesture from Jamieson, McCrimmon left for the engine-room while Ferguson pulled in the rope-ladder: Jamieson took McKinnon’s arm and led him, the newly-formed ice on the rubber suit crackling as he stumbled along, towards the shelter of the superstructure where McKinnon pulled off his aqualung. His teeth were chattering uncontrollably.

‘Pretty bad down there, Bo’sun?’

‘Not that, sir. This damned rubber suit.’ He fingered a waist-high gash in the material. ‘Tore it on a jagged piece of metal. From here down the suit is filled with water.’

‘Good God! You’ll freeze to death, man. Hurry, hurrry!’ In what was left of his cabin McKinnon began to strip off his rubber suit. ‘You located the damage?’

‘No problem – and no barn door. Just a ragged hole about the size of my fist.’

Jamieson smiled. ‘Worth risking pneumonia to find that out. I’m going to the bridge. See you in the Captain’s cabin.’

When McKinnon, in dry clothing but still shivering violently, joined Jamieson and Naseby in the Captain’s cabin, the San Andreas was back on course and steadily picking up speed. Jamieson pushed a glass of Scotch across to him.

‘I’m afraid the Captain’s supplies are taking a fearful beating, Bo’sun. This shouldn’t increase the risk of pneumonia – I’ve left the water out. I’ve been speaking to Mr Patterson and the Captain – we’ve got a line through to the hospital now. When I told him you’d been over the side in this weather, he didn’t say thank-you or anything like that, just said to tell you that you’re mad.’

‘Captain Bowen is not often wrong and that’s a fact.’ McKinnon’s hands were shaking so badly that he spilt liquid from his admittedly brimming glass. ‘Any instructions from the Captain or Mr Patterson?’

‘None. Both say they’re quite happy to leave the topside to you.’

‘That’s kind of them. What they really mean is that they have no option – there’s only George and myself.’

‘George?’

‘Sorry, sir. Naseby, here. He’s a bo’sun, too. We’ve been shipmates on and off, friends for twenty years.’

‘I didn’t know.’ Jamieson looked thoughtfully at Naseby. ‘I can see it now. You’ve made arrangements for up here, Bo’sun?’

‘About to, sir. George and I will take turns here, looking after the family jewels, so to speak. I’ll have Trent, Ferguson and Curran spell one another on the wheel. I’ll tell them to give me a shake – if I’m asleep – when or if the weather clears.’

‘Cue for Lieutenant Ulbricht?’

‘Indeed. I would like to make a suggestion, sir, if I may. I would like to have some people keeping watch at the fore and aft exits of the hospital, just to make absolutely certain that nobody’s going to start sleepwalking during the night.’

‘Who’s going to watch the watchers?’

‘A point, sir. The watchers I would suggest are Jones, McGuigan, McCrimmon and Stephen. Unless they’re wonderful actors, the first two are too young and innocent to be criminals. McCrimmon may, indeed, have a criminal bent, but I think he’s an honest criminal. And Stephen strikes me as being a fairly trustworthy lad. More important, he’s not likely to forget that it was a naval minesweeper that picked him up out of the North Sea.’

‘I didn’t know that, either. You seem to be better informed about my own department than I am. I’ll arrange for Stephen and McCrimmon, you look after the others. Our resident saboteur is not about to give up all that easily?’

‘I would be surprised if he did. Wouldn’t you?’

‘Very much. I wonder what form of sabotage his next attempt to nobble us will take?’

‘I just have no idea. But another thought occurs, sir. The person you have keeping an eye on the aft exit from the hospital might also keep an eye on the entrance to A Ward.’

‘A Ward? That bunch of crooks? Whatever for?’

‘The person or persons who are trying to slow us and are doing their best to get us lost might think it a rather good idea to nobble Lieutenant Ulbricht.’

‘Indeed they might. I’ll stay in the ward myself tonight. There’s a spare bed. If I do drop off, the duty nurse can always give me a shake if anyone comes in who shouldn’t be coming in.’ Jamieson was silent for a few moments. ‘What’s behind it all, Bo’sun?’

‘I think you know as well as I do, sir. Somebody, somewhere, wants to take over the San Andreas, although why anyone should want to take over a hospital ship I can’t even begin to imagine.’

‘No more can I. A U-boat, you think?’

‘It would have to be, wouldn’t it? I mean, you can’t capture a ship from the air and they’re hardly likely to send the Tirpitz after us.’ McKinnon shook his head. ‘A U-boat? Any fishing boat, with a few armed and determined men, could take us over whenever they felt like it.’

[*]Throughout the wartime convoy sailings to Murmansk and Archangel the use of rescue ships remained a bone of contention between the Royal Navy at sea and the Royal Navy on land – the latter being the London-based Admiralty which acquitted itself with something less than distinction during the long years of the Russian convoys. In the earlier days, the use of rescue ships was the rule, not the exception. After the loss of the Zafaaran and the Stockport, which was lost with all hands including the many survivors that had been picked up from other sunken vessels, the Admiralty forbade the further use of rescue ships.

This was a rule that was observed in the breach. In certain convoys a self-selected member of the escort group, usually a destroyer or smaller, would assign to itself the role of rescue ship, an assignment in which the force commander would acquiesce or to which he turned a blind eye. The task of the rescue ships was a hazardous one indeed. There was never any question of a convoy stopping or of their escorts leaving the convoy, so that, almost invariably the rescue ship was left alone and unprotected. The sight of a Royal Naval vessel stopped in the water alongside a sinking vessel was an irresistible target for many U-boat commanders.

[*]It was neither appreciated nor reported that the Russians had a few submarines operational in the area at that time. One of them almost certainly damaged the Tirpitz sufficiently to make it return to its moorings in Alta Fjord.

Chapter Five

McKinnon, deep in sleep though he was, was instantly awake at Naseby’s shake and swung his legs over the edge of Captain Bowen’s bunk.

‘What’s the time, George?’

‘Six a.m. Curran’s just been down from the bridge. Says the blizzard has blown itself out.’

‘Stars?’

‘He didn’t say.’

The Bo’sun pulled on an extra jersey, duffel coat and sea-boots, made his way up to the bridge, spoke briefly to Curran and went out on the starboard wing. Within only a second or two, bent double and with his back to the gale-force wind, coughing and gasping as the ice-chilled air reached down into his lungs, he was beginning to wish himself anywhere except where he was. He switched on his torch and picked up the thermometer. It showed –8° 40° of frost on the Fahrenheit scale. Combined with the strong wind the temperature, expressed in terms of the chill factor on exposed skin, was in the region of –80°F.

He straightened slowly and looked out towards the bows. In the light of the Red Cross arc lamps on the foredeck it was at once clear, as Curran had said, that the blizzard had blown itself out. Against the deep indigo of the sky, the stars were preternaturally bright and clear. Breathing through a mittened hand that covered both mouth and nose, McKinnon turned into the wind and looked aft.

At first he could see nothing, for the bitter wind brought instantaneous tears to his eyes. He ducked below the shelter of the canvas windbreaker, fumbled a pair of goggles from his coat pocket, strapped them under his duffel hood, straightened again, and, by dint of wiping the back of his free mitten against the glasses, was able to see, intermittently, what was going on astern.

The waves – the weather had not yet worsened to the extent that the seas had become broken and confused – were between twelve and fifteen feet in height, their lee sides whitely streaked with spume and half-hidden in flying spray as the wind tore their tops away. The stars were as brilliant as they had been in the other direction and McKinnon soon located the Pole Star, off the starboard quarter. The wind was no longer backing to the north and the San Andreas, as far as he could judge, was still heading roughly between southwest and south-south-west.

McKinnon moved back into the bridge, thankfully closed the door and pondered briefly. Their present course, it was safe to assume, offered no danger: on the other hand it was not safe to assume that they would or could maintain their present course. The weather, in this grey and undefined area between the Barents and Norwegian Seas, was notoriously fickle. He had not, for instance, expected – and had said as much – that the skies would clear that night: there was equally no guarantee that they would remain clear and that the wind would not back further to the north. He descended two decks, selected an armful of warm clothing from the now mostly abandoned crew’s quarters and made for the hospital area. Crossing the dangerously slippery upper deck and guided only by the lifeline, he became acutely and painfully aware that a change was already under way, a factor that he had not experienced on the starboard wing only a few minutes ago. Needle-pointed ice spicules were beginning to lance into the unprotected areas of his skin. It augured ill.

In the hospital mess-deck he came across both Jones and McGuigan, both of whom assured him that no one was or had been abroad. He passed into B ward, at the far end of which Janet Magnusson was seated at her desk, her elbows propped on it, her chin propped on her hands, and her eyes closed.

‘Aha!’ McKinnon said. ‘Asleep on the job, Nurse Magnusson.’

She looked up, startled, blinked and tried to sound indignant. ‘Asleep? Of course not.’ She peered at his armful of clothing. ‘What on earth is that for? Have you moved into the old rags trade, Archie? No, don’t tell me. It’s for that poor man in there. Maggie’s in there too – she won’t be pleased.’

‘As far as your precious Maggie is concerned, I would have thought that a little suffering for Lieutenant Ulbricht would be preferable to none. No salt tears for either Sister Morrison or the Lieutenant.’

‘Archie!’ She was on her feet. ‘Your face. Blood!’

‘As far as the Lieutenant and myself are both concerned that should please your friend.’ He wiped the blood off his face. ‘It’s not nice up top.’

‘Archie.’ She looked at him uncertainly, concern in the tired eyes.

‘It’s all right, Janet.’ He touched her shoulder and passed into A ward. Sister Morrison and Lieutenant Ulbricht were both awake and drinking tea, the sister at her desk, Ulbricht sitting up in bed: clear-eyed and rested, the German pilot, as Dr Singh had said, unquestionably had quite remarkable recuperative powers. Jamieson, fully clothed and stretched out on the top of a bed, opened an eye as McKinnon passed by.

‘’Morning, Bo’sun. It is morning, isn’t it?’

‘Six-twenty, sir.’

‘Good lord. Selfishness, that’s what it is – I’ve been asleep for seven hours. How are things?’

‘A quiet night up top. Here, too?’

‘Must have been – no one gave me a shake.’ He looked at the bundle of clothing that McKinnon was carrying, then at Ulbricht. ‘Stars?’

‘Yes, sir. At the moment, that is. I don’t think they’ll be there for long.’

‘Mr McKinnon!’ Sister Morrison’s voice was cold, with a touch of asperity, as it usually was when addressing the Bo’sun. ‘Do you intend to drag that poor man out of bed on a night like this? He’s been shot several times.’

‘I know he’s been shot several times – or have you forgotten who picked him out of the water?’ The Bo’sun was an innately courteous man but never at his best when dealing with Sister Morrison. ‘So he’s a poor man, now – well, it’s better than being a filthy Nazi murderer. What do you mean – on a night like this?’

‘I mean the weather, of course.’ Her fists were actually clenched. Jamieson surveyed the ward deckhead.

‘What do you know about the weather? You haven’t been out of here all night. If you had been, I would have known.’ He turned a dismissive back on her and looked at Ulbricht. ‘How do you feel, Lieutenant?’

‘I have an option?’ Ulbricht smiled. ‘I feel well enough. Even if I didn’t I’m still coming. Don’t be too hard on the ward sister, Bo’sun – even your lady with a lamp in the Crimea had a pretty short way with difficult patients – but she’s overlooking my natural selfishness. I’m on this ship too.’ He climbed stiffly out of bed and, with the assistance of McKinnon and Jamieson, started to pull clothing on over his pyjamas while Sister Morrison looked on in frigid disapproval. The disapproval finally culminated in the drumming of fingertips on the table.

‘I think,’ she said, ‘that we should have Dr Singh in here.’

McKinnon turned slowly and looked at her and when he spoke his voice was as expressionless as his face. ‘I don’t think it matters very much what you think, Sister. I suggest you just give a shake to Captain Bowen there and find out just how much your thinking matters.’

‘The Captain is under heavy sedation. When he regains consciousness, I shall report you for insolence.’

‘Insolence?’ McKinnon looked at her with indifference. ‘I think he would prefer that to stupidity – the stupidity of a person who is trying to endanger the San Andreas and all those aboard her. It’s a pity we don’t have any irons on this ship.’

She glared at him, made to speak, then turned as Dr Sinclair came into the ward. Sleepy-eyed and tousle-haired, he looked in mild astonishment at the spectacle before him.

‘Dr Sinclair! Thank heavens you’re here!’ Rapidly and urgently she began to explain the situation to him. ‘Those – those men want starsights or navigation or something and in spite of all my protests they insist on dragging a seriously ill man up to the bridge or wherever and –’

‘I can see what’s happening,’ Sinclair said mildly. ‘But if the Lieutenant is being dragged he’s not putting up much in the way of resistance, is he? And by no stretch of the imagination can you describe him as being seriously ill. But I do take your point, Sister. He should be under constant medical supervision.’

‘Ah! Thank you, Doctor.’ Sister Morrison came very close to permitting herself a smile. ‘So it’s back to bed for him.’

‘Well, no, not quite. A duffel coat, a pair of sea boots, my bag of tricks and I’ll go up with them. That way the Lieutenant will be under constant medical supervision.’

Even with three men lending what assistance they could, it took twice as long as expected to help Lieutenant Ulbricht as far as the Captain’s cabin. Once there, he sank heavily into the chair behind the table.

‘Thank you very much, gentlemen.’ He was very pale, his breathing shallow and abnormally rapid. ‘Sorry about that. It would seem that I am not as fit as I thought I was.’

‘Nonsense.’ Dr Sinclair was brisk. ‘You did splendidly. It’s that inferior English blood that we had to give you this morning, that’s all.’ He made free with Captain Bowen’s supplies. ‘Superior Scotch blood. Effects guaranteed.’

Ulbricht smiled faintly. ‘Isn’t there something about opening pores?’

‘You won’t be out in the open long enough to give your pores a chance to protest.’

Up on the bridge McKinnon adjusted Ulbricht’s goggles, then scarfed him so heavily above and below the goggles that not a square millimetre of skin was left exposed. When he was finished, Lieutenant Ulbricht was as immune to the weather as it was possible for anyone to be: two balaclavas and a tightly strung duffel hood made sure of that.

McKinnon went out on the starboard wing, hung a trailing lamp from the canvas windbreaker, went back inside, picked up the sextant, took Ulbricht by his right arm – the undamaged one – and led him outside. Even although he was so cocooned against the elements, even though the Bo’sun had warned him and even though he had already had an ominous foretaste of what lay in store in their brief journey across the upper deck, he was totally unprepared for the power and savagery of the wind that caught him as soon as he stepped out on the wing. His weakened limbs were similarly unprepared. He took two short sharp steps forward, and though he managed to clutch the top of the windbreaker, would probably have fallen but for McKinnon’s sustaining hand. Had he been carrying the sextant he would almost certainly have dropped it.

With McKinnon’s arm around him Ulbricht took three starsights, to the south, west and north, clumsily noting down the results as he did so. The first two sights were comparatively quick and simple: the third, to the north, took much longer and was far more difficult, for Ulbricht had to keep clearing away the ice spicules from his goggles and the sextant. When he had finished he handed the sextant back to McKinnon, leant his elbows on the after edge of the wing and stared out towards the stern, occasionally and mechanically wiping his goggles with the back of his hand. After almost twenty seconds of this McKinnon took his good arm and almost literally dragged him back into the shelter of the bridge, banging the door to behind him. Handing the sextant to Jamieson, he quickly removed Ulbricht’s duffel hood, balaclavas and goggles.

‘Sorry about that, Lieutenant, but there’s a time and a place for everything and daydreaming or sightseeing out on that wing is not one of them.’

‘The funnel.’ Ulbricht looked slightly dazed. ‘What’s happened to your funnel?’

‘It fell off.’

‘I see. It fell off. You mean – I –’

‘What’s done is done,’ Jamieson said philosophically. He handed a glass to the Lieutenant. ‘To help you with your calculations.’

‘Thank you. Yes.’ Ulbricht shook his head as if to clear it. ‘Yes. My calculations.’

Weak though he was and shivering constantly – this despite the fact that the bridge temperature was already over 55°F. – Ulbricht left no doubt that, as a navigator, he knew precisely what he was about. Working from starsights, he had no need to worry about the vagaries of deviation and variation. With a chart, dividers, parallel rules, pencils and chronometer, he completed his calculations in remarkably short order and made a tiny cross on the chart after having consulted navigational tables.

‘We’re here. Well, near enough. 68.05 north, 7.20 east – more or less due west of the Lofotens. Our course is 218. Is one permitted to ask our destination?’

Jamieson smiled. ‘Quite frankly, Lieutenant Ulbricht, you wouldn’t be much use to us if you didn’t. Aberdeen.’

‘Ah! Aberdeen. They have a rather famous prison there, do they not? Peterhead, isn’t it? I wonder what the cells are like.’

‘It’s a prison for civilians. Of the more intractable kind. I should hardly think you’d end up there. Or in any prison.’ Jamieson looked at him with some curiosity. ‘How do you know about Peterhead, Lieutenant?’

‘I know Scotland well. I know England even better.’ Ulbricht did not seek to elaborate. ‘So, Aberdeen. We’ll stay on this course until we get to the latitude of Trondheim, then south until we get to the latitude of Bergen – or, if you like Mr McKinnon, the latitude of your home islands.’

‘How did you know I’m a Shetlander?’

‘Some members of the nursing staff don’t seem to mind talking to me. Then on a more westerly course. That’s speaking roughly, we’ll work out the details as we go along. It’s a very simple exercise and there’s no problem.’

‘Of course it’s no problem,’ Jamieson said, ‘neither is playing Rachmaninoff, not as long as you are a concert pianist.’

Ulbricht smiled. ‘You overrate my simple skills. The only problem that will arise is when we make our landfall, which of course will have to be in daylight. At this time of year North Sea fogs are as common as not and there’s no way I can navigate in a fog without a radio and compass.’

‘With any luck, there shouldn’t be all that much of a problem,’ McKinnon said. ‘War or no war, there’s still pretty heavy traffic on the east coast and there’s more than an even chance that we can pick up a ship and be guided into harbour.’

‘Agreed,’ Ulbricht said. ‘A Red Cross ship is not easily overlooked – especially one with its funnel missing.’ He sipped his drink, pondered briefly, then said: ‘Is it your intention to return me to the hospital?’

‘Naturally,’ Sinclair said. ‘That’s where you belong. Why do you ask?’

Ulbricht looked at Jamieson. ‘I would, of course, be expected to do some more navigating?’

‘Expecting, Lieutenant? “Depending” is the word you’re after.’

‘And at frequent intervals if cloud or snow conditions permit. We never know when the set of the sea and the wind may change without our being aware of it. Point is, I don’t much fancy dragging myself back down to the hospital, then coming back up here again every time I have to take starsights. Couldn’t I just lie down in the Captain’s cabin?’

‘No objections,’ Jamieson said. ‘Dr Sinclair?’

‘Makes sense. Lieutenant Ulbricht is hardly on the critical list and it could only help his recuperation. I’ll pop up every two or three hours to see how he’s getting on.’

‘Bo’sun?’

‘Fine by me. Fine by Sister Morrison too, I should imagine.’

‘I shall have company, of course?’

‘Company?’ Sinclair said. ‘You mean a nurse, Lieutenant?’

‘I don’t mean a nurse. With all respect to your charming young ladies, Dr Sinclair, I don’t think any of them would be much use if this fellow you call Flannelfoot came up to remove or destroy the sextant and chronometer and the way I’m feeling I couldn’t fight off a determined fly. Also, of course, he’d have to dispose of witnesses and I don’t much fancy that.’

‘No problem, Lieutenant,’ the Bo’sun said. ‘He’ll have to try to dispose of either Naseby or myself and I don’t much think he would fancy that. We would, though.’

Sinclair shook his head sadly. ‘Sister Morrison isn’t going to like this one little bit. Further usurpment of her authority. After all, the Lieutenant is her patient, not mine.’

‘Again no problem,’ McKinnon said. ‘Just tell her the Lieutenant fell over the side.’

‘And how are your patients this morning, sir?’ McKinnon was having breakfast with Dr Singh.

‘No dramatic changes, Bo’sun. The two Argos crewmen in the recovery room are much of a muchness – as well as can be expected when one has a fractured pelvis and the other massive burns. The condition of Commander Warrington and his navigating officer is unchanged – Cunningham is still in deep coma and is being fed intravenously. Hudson is stabilized – the lung bleeding has stopped. Chief Officer Kennet is definitely on the mend although heaven knows how long it will be before we can take those bandages off his face. The only one that gives some cause for worry is the Captain. It’s nothing critical, not even serious, just worrisome. You saw how he was when you last saw him – breathing hellfire and brimstone in all directions. He’s gone strangely quiet now, almost lethargic. Or maybe he’s just more calm and relaxed now that he knows the ship’s position and course. That was a fine job you did there, Bo’sun.’

‘No credit to me, sir. It was Lieutenant Ulbricht who did the fine job.’

‘Be that as it may, Captain Bowen appears to be in at least a more philosophical mood. I suggest you come along and see him.’

When a man’s face is completely obscured by bandages it is difficult to say what kind of mood he is in. He had the stem of a rather evil-smelling briar stuck between his burnt lips and again it was impossible to say whether he was enjoying it or not. When he heard McKinnon’s voice he removed the pipe.

‘We are still afloat, Bo’sun?’ The enunciation was clearer than it had been and was costing him less effort.

‘Well, sir, let’s say we’re no longer all gone to hell and breakfast. No more alarms and excursions either. As far as I can tell, Lieutenant Ulbricht is very much of an expert – I don’t think you’d hesitate to have him as your navigating officer. He’s lying down on the bunk in your cabin, sir – but you will have been told that and the reasons why.’

‘Broaching my rapidly dwindling supplies, I have no doubt.’

‘He did have a couple of tots, sir. He needed it. He’s still a pretty sick man and very weak and the cold out there on the wing bridge was vicious, I don’t think I’ve ever known it worse in the Arctic. Anyway, he wasn’t doing any broaching when I left him. He was sound asleep.’

‘As long as he keeps on acting in this fashion he can do as much broaching as he likes. Give him my sincere thanks.’

‘I’ll do that. Have you any instructions, sir?’

‘Instructions, Bo’sun? Instructions? How can I give any instructions?’

‘I wouldn’t know, sir. I’ve never been a captain.’

‘You bloody well are now. I’m in no position to give anyone instructions. Just do what you think best – and from what I’ve heard to date your best seems to be very good indeed. Not,’ Bowen added deprecatingly, ‘that I would have expected anything else of Archie McKinnon.’

‘Thank you, sir. I’ll try.’ McKinnon turned to leave the ward but was stopped by Sister Morrison. For once, she was looking at him as if he might even belong to the human race.

‘How is he, Mr McKinnon?’

‘The Lieutenant? Resting. He’s a lot weaker than he says he is but he’d never admit it. A very brave man. And a fine navigator. And a gentleman. When he says he didn’t know the San Andreas was a hospital ship I believe him absolutely. I don’t believe many people absolutely.’

‘I’m quite sure you don’t.’ The return to the old asperity proved to be momentary. ‘I don’t think I believe he knew it either. In fact, I don’t believe it.’

‘That’s nice.’ McKinnon smiled at her, the first time, he reflected with some astonishment, that he’d ever smiled at her. ‘Janet – Nurse Magnusson – tells me you come from the east coast. Would it be impertinent to ask where exactly?’

‘Of course not.’ She smiled and McKinnon realized with an even greater sense of shock that this was the first time she’d ever smiled at him. ‘Aberdeen. Why?’

‘Odd. Lieutenant Ulbricht seems to know Aberdeen rather well. He certainly seems to know about Peterhead prison and isn’t all that keen on ending up there.’

A brief flicker of what could have been concern registered on her face. ‘Will he?’

‘Not a chance. If he brings this ship back to Aberdeen they’ll probably give him a medal. Both your parents from Aberdeen, Sister?’

‘My father is. My mother’s from Kiel.’

‘Kiel?’

‘Yes. Germany. Didn’t you know?’

‘Of course not. How should I have known? Now that I do know, is that supposed to make a difference?’

‘I’m half German.’ She smiled again. ‘Aren’t you surprised, Mr McKinnon? Shocked, perhaps?’

‘No, I’m not shocked.’ McKinnon looked gloomy. ‘I have troubles of my own in that direction. My sister Jean is married to an Italian. I have a niece and a nephew, two bambinos who can’t – or couldn’t before the war – speak a word of English to their old uncle.’

‘It must make – must have made – communication a bit difficult.’

‘Luckily, no. I speak Italian.’

She removed her glasses as if to examine them more closely. ‘You speak Italian, Mr McKinnon?’

‘Yes. And Spanish. And German. You must be able to speak German – you can try me any time. Surprised, Sister? Shocked?’

‘No.’ She shook her head slowly and smiled a third time. It was borne in upon McKinnon that a smiling Margaret Morrison, with her warm, friendly brown eyes was a totally different creature from the Sister Morrison he thought he had come to know. ‘No, I’m not. Really.’

‘You come from seafaring people, Sister?’

‘Yes.’ This time she was surprised. ‘How did you know?’

‘I didn’t. But it was a fair guess. It’s the Kiel connection. Many British sailors know Kiel well – I do myself – and it has, or did have, the finest regatta in Europe. Your father’s from Aberdeen. A fisherman? A seaman of some sort?’

‘A seaman of some sort.’

‘What sort?’

‘Well ….’ She hesitated.

‘Well what?’

‘He’s a captain in the Royal Navy.’

‘Good Lord!’ McKinnon looked at her in mild astonishment, then rubbed an unshaven chin. ‘I shall have to treat you with more respect in future, Sister Morrison.’

‘I hardly think that will be necessary, Mr McKinnon.’ The voice was formal but the smile that followed was not. ‘Not now.’

‘You sound almost as if you were ashamed of being the daughter of a Royal Navy captain.’

‘I am not. I’m very proud of my father. But it can be difficult. Do you understand?’

‘Yes. I think I do.’

‘Well, now, Mr McKinnon.’ The glasses were back in position and Sister Morrison was back in business. ‘You’ll be seeing Lieutenant Ulbricht up top?’ McKinnon nodded. ‘Tell him I’ll be up to see him in an hour, maybe two.’

McKinnon blinked, which was about as far as he ever permitted himself to go in the way of emotional expression. ‘You?’

‘Yes. Me.’ If bridling hadn’t gone out of fashion she would have bridled.

‘But Dr Sinclair said he would come –’

‘Dr Sinclair is a doctor, not a nurse.’ Sister Morrison made it sound as if there was something faintly discreditable in being a doctor. ‘I’m the Lieutenant’s sister-in-charge. He’ll probably require to have his bandages changed.’

‘When exactly will you be coming?’

‘Does it matter? I can find my own way.’

‘No, Sister, you won’t. You don’t know what it’s like up top. There’s a full gale blowing, it’s forty below, black as the Earl of Hell’s waistcoat and the deck’s like a skating rink. No one goes up top without my permission and most certainly not nurses. You will phone and I will come for you.’

‘Yes, Mr McKinnon,’ she said primly. She gave a slight smile. ‘The way you put it, it doesn’t leave much room for argument.’

‘I’m sorry. No offence. Before you come up, put on as much warm clothing as you think you will need. Then double the amount.’

Janet Magnusson was in B ward when he passed through it. She took one quick look at his face and said: ‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘Prepare thyself, Nurse Magnusson. The end is nigh.’

‘What on earth do you mean, Archie?’

‘The dragon next door.’ He jerked a thumb towards A ward. ‘She has just –’

‘Dragon? Maggie? Yesterday she was a lioness.’

‘Dragon. She’s stopped breathing fire. She smiled at me. First time since leaving Halifax. Smiled. Four times. Unsettles a man.’

‘Well!’ She shook his shoulders. ‘I am pleased. So you admit you misjudged her.’

‘I admit it. Mind you, I think she may have misjudged me a bit, too.’

‘I told you she was nice, Archie. Remember?’

‘Indeed I remember. And indeed she is.’

‘Very nice. Very.’

McKinnon regarded her with suspicion. ‘What’s that meant to mean?’

‘She smiled at you.’

The Bo’sun gave her a cold look and left.

Lieutenant Ulbricht was awake when McKinnon returned to the Captain’s cabin.

‘Duty calls, Mr McKinnon? Another fix?’

‘Rest easy, Lieutenant. No stars. Overcast. More snow, I’m thinking. How do you feel?’

‘Well enough. At least when I’m lying down. That’s physically, I mean.’ He tapped his head. ‘Up here, not so well. I’ve been doing a lot of wondering and thinking.’

‘Wondering and thinking why you’re lying here?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Haven’t we all? At least, I’ve been doing nothing else but wondering about it. Haven’t got very far, though. In fact, I haven’t got anywhere.’

‘I’m not saying it would help any, just call it curiosity if you like, but would you mind very much telling me what’s been happening to the San Andreas since you left Halifax? Not, of course, if it means telling me naval secrets.’

McKinnon smiled. ‘I don’t have any. Besides, even if I did have and told you, what would you do with them?’

‘You have a point. What indeed?’

McKinnon gave a brief résumé of what had happened to the ship since leaving Nova Scotia and when he had finished Ulbricht said: ‘Well, now let me see if I can count.

‘As far as I can make out there were seven different parties involved in the movements of the San Andreas – actually aboard it, that is. To begin with, there was your own crew. Then there were the wounded survivors picked up from this crippled destroyer. After that came the Russian submarine survivors you took from this corvette you had to sink. Then you picked up some wounded servicemen in Murmansk. Since leaving there you’ve picked up survivors from the Argos, the Andover and Helmut and myself. That makes seven?’

‘That makes seven.’

‘We can eliminate the survivors from the broken-down destroyer and the sinking frigate. Their presence aboard your ship could only have been due to sheer happenstance, nothing else. We can equally forget Commander Warrington and his two men and Helmut Winterman and myself. That leaves just your crew, the survivors from the Argos and the sick men you picked up in Murmansk.’

‘I couldn’t imagine a more unlikely trio of suspects.’

‘Neither could I, Bo’sun. But it’s not imagination we’re concerned with here, it’s logic. It has to be one of those three. Take the sick men you picked up in Murmansk. One of them could have been suborned. I know it sounds preposterous but war itself is preposterous, the most unbelievable things happen in preposterous circumstances, and if there is one thing that is for certain it is that we are not going to find the answer to this enigma in the realms of the obvious. How many sick men are you repatriating from Russia?’

‘Seventeen.’

‘Do you happen to know the nature of their injuries?’

McKinnon regarded the Lieutenant speculatively. ‘I have a fair idea.’

‘All seriously wounded?’

‘There are no seriously wounded, far less critically injured patients aboard. If they were, they wouldn’t be here. Poorly, you might call them, I suppose.’

‘But bedridden? Immobile?’

‘The wounded are.’

‘They are not all wounded?’

‘Only eight.’

‘Good God! Eight! You mean to tell me that there are nine who are not injured?’

‘It all depends upon what you mean by injured. Three are suffering from advanced cases of exposure – frostbite, if you like. Then there are three with tuberculosis and the remaining three have suffered mental breakdowns. Those Russian convoys take a pretty vicious toll, Lieutenant, in more ways than one.’

‘You have no cause to love our U-boats, our Luftwaffe, Mr McKinnon.’

The Bo’sun shrugged. ‘We do send the occasional thousand bombers over Hamburg.’

Ulbricht sighed. ‘I suppose this is no time for philosophizing about how two wrongs can never make a right. So we have nine unwounded. All of them mobile?’

‘The three exposure cases are virtually immobile. You’ve never seen so many bandages. The other six – well, they can get around as well as you and I. Well, that’s not quite accurate – as well as I can and a damned sight better than you can.’

‘So. Six mobiles. I know little enough of medicine but I do know just how difficult it is to gauge how severe a case of TB is. I also know that a man in a pretty advanced stage can get around well enough. As for mental breakdowns, those are easy enough to simulate. One of those three may be as rational as we are – or think we are. Come to that, all three of them may be. I don’t have to tell you, Mr McKinnon, that there are those who are so sick of the mindlessness, the hellishness, of war that they will resort to any means to escape from it. Malingerers, as they are commonly and quite often unfairly called. Many of them have quite simply had enough and can take no more. During the First World War quite a number of British soldiers were affected by an incurable disease that was a sure-fire guarantee for a one-way ticket to Blighty. DAH it was called – Disorder Affecting the Heart. The more unfeeling of the British doctors commonly referred to it as Desperate Affection for Home.’

‘I’ve heard of it. Lieutenant, I’m not by nature an inquisitive person, but may I ask you a personal question?’

‘Of course.’

‘Your English. So much better than mine. Thing is, you don’t sound like a foreigner talking English. You sound like an Englishman talking English, an Englishman who’s been at an English public school. Funny.’

‘Not really. You don’t miss much, Mr McKinnon, and that’s a fact. I was educated in an English public school. My mother is English. My father was for many years an attaché in the German Embassy in London.’

‘Well, well.’ McKinnon shook his head and smiled. ‘It’s too much. It’s really too much. Two shocks like this inside twenty minutes.’

‘If you were to tell me what you are talking about –’

‘Sister Morrison. You and she should get together. I’ve just learnt that she’s half-German.’

‘Good God! Goodness gracious me.’ Ulbricht could hardly be said to be dumbfounded but he was taken aback. ‘German mother, of course. How extraordinary! I tell you, Bo’sun, this could be a serious matter. Her being my nurse, I mean. Wartime. International complications, you know.’

‘I don’t know and I don’t see it. You’re both just doing your job. Anyway, she’s coming up to see you shortly.’

‘Coming to see me? That ruthless Nazi killer?’

‘Maybe she’s had a change of heart.’

‘Under duress, of course.’

‘It’s her idea and she insists on it.’

‘It’ll be a hypodermic syringe. Lethal dose of morphine or some such. To get back to our six walking unwounded. Widens the field a bit, doesn’t it? A suborned malingerer or ditto TB patient. How do you like it?’

‘I don’t like it at all. How many suborned men, spies, saboteurs, do you think we’ve picked up among the survivors from the Argos? Another daft thought, I know, but as you’ve more or less said yourself, we’re looking for daft answers to daft questions. And speaking of daft questions, here’s another one. How do we know the Argos really was mined? We know that tankers are extremely tough, heavily compartmented and that this one was returning with empty tanks. Tankers don’t die easily and even laden tankers have been torpedoed and survived. We don’t even know the Argos was mined. How do we know it wasn’t sabotaged so as to provide the opportunity to introduce a saboteur or saboteurs aboard the San Andreas? How do you like that?’

‘Like yourself, I don’t like it at all. But you’re not seriously suggesting that Captain Andropolous would deliberately –’

‘I’m not suggesting anything about Captain Andropolous. For all I know, he may be as double-dyed a villain as is sailing the seas these days. Although I’m willing to consider almost any crazy solution to our questions, I can’t go along with the idea that any captain would sacrifice his ship for any imaginable purpose. But a person or persons to whom the Argos meant nothing might quite happily do just that. It would be interesting to know whether Andropolous had taken on any extra crew members in Murmansk, such as fellow nationals who had survived a previous sinking. Unfortunately, Andropolous and his crew speak nothing but Greek and nobody else aboard speaks Greek.’

‘I speak a little Greek, very little, schoolboy stuff – English public schools are high on Greek – and I’ve forgotten most of that. Not that I can see that it would do much good anyway even if we were to find out that a person or x number of persons joined the Argos at Murmansk. They would only assume expressions of injured innocence, say they don’t know what we are talking about and what could we do then?’ Ulbricht was silent for almost a minute, then suddenly said: ‘The Russian shipwrights.’

‘What Russian shipwrights?’

‘The ones that fixed the damage to the hull of your ship and finished off your sick-bay. But especially the hull repairers.’

‘What about them?’

‘Moment.’ Ulbricht thought some more. ‘I don’t know just how many niggers in the woodpile there may be aboard the San Andreas, but I’m all at once certain that the original one was a member of your own crew.’

‘How on earth do you figure that out? Not, mind you, that anything would surprise me.’

‘You sustained this hull damage to the San Andreas while you were alongside the sinking corvette, before you sunk her by gunfire. That is correct?’

‘Correct.’

‘How did it happen?’

‘I told you. We don’t know. No torpedoes, no mines, nothing of that nature. A destroyer was along one side of the corvette, taking off her crew, while we were on the other taking off the survivors of the sunken Russian submarine. There was a series of explosions inside the corvette before we could get clear. One was a boiler going off, the others could have been gun-cotton, two-pounders, anything – there was some sort of fire inside. It was at that time that the damage must have happened.’

‘I suggest it didn’t happen that way at all. I suggest, instead, that it was then that a trusty member of your crew detonated a charge in the port ballast room. I suggest that it was someone who knew precisely how much explosive to use to ensure that it didn’t sink the ship but enough to inflict sufficiently serious damage for it to have to make for the nearest port where repair facilities were available, which, in this case, was Murmansk.’

‘It makes sense. It could have happened that way. But I’m not convinced.’

‘In Murmansk, did anyone see the size or type of hole that had been blown in the hull?’

‘No.’

‘Did anyone try to see?’

‘Yes. Mr Kennet and I.’

‘But surprise, surprise, you didn’t. You didn’t because you weren’t allowed to see it.’

‘That’s how it was. How did you know?’

‘They had tarpaulins rigged all around and above the area under repair?’

‘They had.’ McKinnon was beginning to look rather thoughtful.

‘Did they give any reasons?’

‘To keep out the wind and snow.’

‘Was there much in the way of those?’

‘Very little.’

‘Did you ask to get behind the tarpaulins, see behind them?’

‘We did. They wouldn’t let us. Said it was too dangerous and would only hold up the work of the shipwrights. We didn’t argue because we didn’t think it was all that important. There was no reason why we should have thought so. If you know the Russians at all you must know how mulish they can be about the most ridiculous things. Besides, they were doing us a favour and there was no reason why we should have been suspicious. All right, all right, Lieutenant, there’s no reason to beat me over the head with a two-by-four. You don’t have to be an engineer or a metallurgist to recognize a hole that has been blown from the inside out.’

‘And does it now strike you as strange that the second damage to the hull should have occurred in precisely the same ballast compartment?’

‘Not now it doesn’t. Our gallant – ours, not yours – our gallant allies almost certainly left the charge in the ballast room with a suitable length of fuse conveniently attached. You have the right of it, Lieutenant.’

‘So all we have to do now is to find some member of your crew with a working knowledge of explosives. You know of any such, Mr McKinnon?’

‘Yes.’

‘What!’ Ulbricht propped himself up on an elbow. ‘Who?’

McKinnon raised his eyes to the deckhead. ‘Me.’

‘That’s a help.’ Ulbricht lowered himself to his bunk again. ‘That’s a great help.’

Chapter Six

It was shortly after ten o’clock in the morning that the snow came again. McKinnon had spent another fifteen minutes in the Captain’s cabin, leaving only when he saw the Lieutenant was having difficulty in keeping his eyes open, then had spoken in turn with Naseby, Patterson and Jamieson, who was again supervising the strengthening of the superstructure. All three had agreed that Ulbricht was almost certainly correct in the assessment he had made: and all three agreed with the Bo’sun that this fresh knowledge, if knowledge it were, served no useful purpose whatsoever. McKinnon had returned to the bridge when the snow came.

He opened a wing door in a duly circumspect fashion but, for all his caution, had it torn from his grasp to crash against the leading edge of the bridge, such was the power of the wind. The snow, light as yet, was driving along as nearly horizontally as made no difference. It was quite impossible to look into it, but with his back to it and looking out over the bows, he could see that the wave pattern had changed: the dawn was in the sky now and in its light he could see that the last semblance of serried ranks had vanished and that the white-veined, white-spumed seas were now broken walls of water, tending this way and that in unpredictable formless confusion. Even without the evidence of his eyes he would have known that this was so: the deck beneath his feet was beginning to shake and shudder in a rather disconcerting manner. The cold was intense. Even with his very considerable weight and strength, McKinnon found it no easy task to heave the wing door shut behind him as he stepped back into the bridge.

He was in desultory conversation with Trent, who had the helm, when the phone rang. It was Sister Morrison. She said she was ready to come up to the Captain’s cabin.

‘I wouldn’t recommend it, Sister. Things are pretty unpleasant up top.’

‘I would remind you that you gave me your promise.’ She was speaking in her best sister’s voice.

‘I know. It’s just that conditions have worsened quite a bit.’

‘Really, Mr McKinnon –’

‘I’m coming. On your own head.’

In Ward B, Janet Magnusson looked at him with disapproval. ‘A hospital is no place for a snowman.’

‘Just passing through. On a mission of mercy. At least, your mule-headed friend imagines she is.’

She kept her expression in place. ‘Lieutenant Ulbricht?’

‘Who else? I’ve just seen him. Looks fair enough to me. I think she’s daft.’

‘The trouble with you, Archie McKinnon, is that you have no finer feelings. Not as far as caring for the sick is concerned. In other ways too, like as not. And if she’s daft, it’s only because she’s been saying nice things about you.’

‘About me? She doesn’t know me.’

‘True, Archie, true.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘But Captain Bowen does.’

McKinnon sought briefly for a suitable comment about captains who gossiped to ward sisters, found none and moved into Ward A. Sister Morrison, suitably bundled up, was waiting. There was a small medical case on a table by her side. McKinnon nodded at her.

‘Would you take those glasses off, Sister?’

‘Why?’

‘It’s the Lothario in him,’ Kennet said. He sounded almost his old cheerful self again. ‘He probably thinks you look nicer without them.’

‘It’s no morning for a polar bear, Mr Kennet, far less a Lothario. If the lady doesn’t remove her glasses the wind will do the job for her.’

‘What’s the wind like, Bo’sun?’ It was Captain Bowen.

‘Force eleven, sir. Blizzard. Eight below. Nine-ninety millibars.’

‘And the seas breaking up?’ Even in the hospital the shuddering of the vessel was unmistakable.

‘They are a bit, sir.’

‘Any problems?’

‘Apart from Sister here seeming bent on suicide, none.’ Not, he thought, as long as the superstructure stayed in place.

Sister Morrison gasped in shock as they emerged on to the upper deck. However much she had mentally prepared herself, she could not have anticipated the savage power of that near hurricane force wind and the driving blizzard that accompanied it, could not even have imagined the lung-searing effect of the abrupt 80°F drop in temperature. McKinnon wasted no time. He grabbed Sister Morrison with one hand, the lifeline with the other, and allowed the two of them to be literally blown across the treacherous ice-sheathed deck into the shelter of the superstructure. Once under cover, she removed her duffel hood and stood there panting, tenderly massaging her ribs.

‘Next time, Mr McKinnon – if there is a next time – I’ll listen to you. My word! I never dreamt – well, I just never dreamt. And my ribs!’ She felt carefully as if to check they were still there. ‘I’ve got ordinary ribs, just like anyone else. I think you’ve broken them.’

‘I’m sorry about that,’ McKinnon said gravely. ‘But I don’t think you’d have much fancied going over the side. And there will be a next time, I’m afraid. We’ve got to go back again and against the wind, and that will be a great deal worse.’

‘At the moment, I’m in no hurry to go back, thank you very much.’

McKinnon led her up the companionway to the crew’s quarters. She stopped and looked at the twisted passageway, the buckled bulkheads, the shattered doors.

‘So this is where they died.’ Her voice was husky. ‘When you see it, it’s all too easy to understand how they died. But you have to see it first to understand. Ghastly – well, ghastly couldn’t have been the word for it. Thank God I never saw it. And you had to clear it all up.’

‘I had help.’

‘I know you did all the horrible bits. Mr Spenser, Mr Rawlings, Mr Batesman, those were the really shocking cases, weren’t they? I know you wouldn’t let anyone else touch them. Johnny Holbrook told Janet and she told me.’ She shuddered. ‘I don’t like this place. Where’s the Lieutenant?’

McKinnon led her up to the Captain’s cabin, where Naseby was keeping an eye on the recumbent Lieutenant.

‘Good morning again, Lieutenant. I’ve just had a taste of the kind of weather Mr McKinnon has been exposing you to. It was awful. How do you feel?’

‘Low, Sister. Very low. I think I’m in need of care and attention.’

She removed oilskins and duffel coat. ‘You don’t look very ill to me.’

‘Appearances, appearances. I feel very weak. Far be it from me to prescribe for myself, but what I need is a tonic, a restorative.’ He stretched out a languid hand. ‘Do you know what’s in that wall cupboard there?’

‘No.’ Her tone was severe. ‘I don’t know. I can guess, though.’

‘Well, I thought, perhaps – in the circumstances, you understand –’

‘Those are Captain Bowen’s private supplies.’

‘May I repeat what the Captain told me?’ McKinnon said. ‘As long as Lieutenant Ulbricht keeps navigating, he can keep on broaching my supplies. Words to that effect.’

‘I don’t see him doing any navigating at the moment. But very well. A small one.’

McKinnon poured and handed him a glass of Scotch: the expression on Sister Morrison’s face was indication enough she and the Bo’sun placed different interpretations on the word ‘small’.

‘Come on, George,’ McKinnon said. ‘This is no place for us.’

Sister Morrison looked faintly surprised. ‘You don’t have to go.’

‘We can’t stand the sight of blood. Or suffering, come to that.’

Ulbricht lowered his glass. ‘You would leave us to the mercy of Flannelfoot?’

‘George, if you wait outside I’ll go and give Trent a spell on the wheel. When you’re ready to go back, Sister, you’ll know where to find me.’

McKinnon would have expected that her ministrations might have taken ten minutes, fifteen at the most. Instead, almost forty minutes elapsed before she put in an appearance on the bridge. McKinnon looked at her sympathetically.

‘More trouble than you expected, Sister? He wasn’t just joking when he said he felt pretty low?’

‘There’s very little the matter with him. Especially not with his tongue. How that man can talk!’

‘He wasn’t talking to an empty bulkhead, was he?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well,’ McKinnon said reasonably, ‘he wouldn’t have kept on talking if you hadn’t kept on listening.’

Sister Morrison seemed to be in no hurry to depart. She was silent for some time, then said with a slight trace of a smile: ‘I find this – well, not infuriating but annoying. Most people would be interested in what we were saying.’

‘I am interested. I’m just not inquisitive. If you wanted to tell me, then you’d tell me. If I asked you to tell me and you didn’t want to, then you wouldn’t tell me. But, fine, I’d like you to tell me.’

‘I don’t know whether that’s infuriating or not.’ She paused. ‘Why did you tell Lieutenant Ulbricht that I’m half German?’

‘It’s not a secret, is it?’

‘No.’

‘And you’re not ashamed of it. You told me so yourself. So why – ah! Why didn’t I tell you that I’d told him? That’s what you’re asking. Just never occurred to me.’

‘You might at least have told me that he was half English.’

‘That didn’t occur to me either. It’s unimportant. I don’t care what nationality a person is. I told you about my brother-in-law. Like the Lieutenant, he’s a pilot. He’s also a lieutenant. If he thought it his duty to drop a bomb on me, he’d do it like a shot. But you couldn’t meet a finer man.’

‘You’re a very forgiving man, Mr McKinnon.’

‘Forgiving?’ He looked at her in surprise. ‘I’ve nothing to forgive. I mean, he hasn’t dropped a bomb on me yet.’

‘I didn’t mean that. Even if he did, it wouldn’t make any difference.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I know.’

McKinnon didn’t pursue the matter. ‘Doesn’t sound like a very interesting conversation to me. Not forty minutes’ worth, anyway.’

‘He also took great pleasure in pointing out that he’s more British than I am. From the point of view of blood, I mean. Fifty per cent British to start with plus two more British pints yesterday.’

McKinnon was polite. ‘Indeed.’

‘All right, so statistics aren’t interesting either. He also says that his father knows mine.’

‘Ah. That is interesting. Wait a minute. He mentioned that his father had been an attaché at the German Embassy in London. He didn’t mention whether he was a commercial or cultural attaché or whatever. He didn’t just happen to mention to you that his father had been the naval attaché there?’

‘He was.’

‘Don’t tell me that his old man is a captain in the German Navy.’

‘He is.’

‘That makes you practically blood brothers. Or brother and sister. Mark my words, Sister,’ McKinnon said solemnly, ‘I see the hand of fate here. Something pre-ordained, you might say?’

‘Pfui!’

‘Are they both on active service?’

‘Yes.’ She sounded forlorn.

‘Don’t you find it funny that your respective parents should be prowling the high seas figuring out ways of doing each other in?’

‘I don’t find it at all funny.’

‘I didn’t mean funny in that sense.’ If anyone had ever suggested to McKinnon that Margaret Morrison would one day strike him as a woebegone figure he would have questioned his sanity: but not any longer. He found her sudden dejection inexplicable. ‘Not to worry, lassie. It’ll never happen.’ He wasn’t at all sure what he meant by that.

‘Of course not.’ Her voice carried a total lack of conviction. She made to speak, hesitated, looked down at the deck, then slowly lifted her head. Her face was in shadow but he felt almost certain that he saw the sheen of tears. ‘I heard things about you, today.’

‘Oh. Nothing to my credit, I’m sure. You can’t believe a word anyone says these days. What things, Sister?’

‘I wish you wouldn’t call me that.’ The irritation was as unaccustomed as the dejection.

McKinnon raised a polite eyebrow. ‘Sister? But you are a sister.’

‘Not the way you make it sound. Sorry, I didn’t mean that, you don’t make it sound different from anyone else. It’s like those cheap American films where the man with the gun goes around calling everyone “sister”.’

He smiled. ‘I wouldn’t like you to confuse me with a hoodlum. Miss Morrison?’

‘You know my name.’

‘Yes. I also know that you started out to say something, changed your mind and are trying to stall.’

‘No. Yes. Well, not really. It’s difficult, I’m not very good at those things. I heard about your family this morning. Just before we came up. I’m sorry, I am terribly sorry.’

‘Janet?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s no secret.’

‘It was a German bomber pilot who killed them.’ She looked at him for a long moment, then shook her head. ‘Along comes another German bomber pilot, again attacking innocent civilians, and you’re the first person to come to his defence.’

‘Don’t go pinning any haloes or wings on me. Besides, I’m not so sure that’s a compliment. What did you expect me to do? Lash out in revenge at an innocent man?’

‘You? Don’t be silly. Well, no, maybe I was silly to say it, but you know very well what I mean. I also heard Petty Officer McKinnon, BEM, DSM and goodness knows what else was in a Malta hospital with a broken back when he heard the news. An Italian Air Force bomber got your submarine. You seem to have an affinity for enemy bombers.’

‘Janet didn’t know that.’

She smiled. ‘Captain Bowen and I have become quite friendly.’

‘Captain Bowen,’ McKinnon said without heat, ‘is a gossipy old woman.’

‘Captain Bowen is a gossipy old woman. Mr Kennet is a gossipy old woman. Mr Patterson is a gossipy old woman. Mr Jamieson is a gossipy old woman. They’re all gossipy old women.’

‘Goodness me! That’s a very serious allegation, Sister. Sorry. Margaret.’

‘Gossipy old women speak in low voices or whispers. Whenever any two of them or three of them or indeed all four are together they speak in low voices or whispers. You can feel the tension, almost smell the fear – well, no, that’s the wrong word, apprehension, I should say. Why do they whisper?’

‘Maybe they’ve got secrets.’

‘I deserve better than that.’

‘We’ve got saboteurs aboard.’

‘I know that. We all know that. The whisperers know that we all know that.’ She gave him a long, steady look. ‘I still deserve better than that. Don’t you trust me?’

‘I trust you. We’re being hunted. Somebody aboard the San Andreas has a transmitter radio that is sending out a continuous location signal. The Luftwaffe, the U-boats know exactly where we are. Somebody wants us. Somebody wants to take over the San Andreas.’

For long moments she looked at his eyes as if searching for an answer to a question she couldn’t formulate. McKinnon shook his head and said: ‘I’m sorry. That’s all I know. You must believe me.’

‘I do believe you. Who could be sending out this signal?’

‘Anybody. My guess is that it is a member of our own crew. Could be a survivor from the Argos. Could be any of the sick men we picked up in Murmansk. Each idea is quite ridiculous but one has to be less ridiculous than the others. Which, I have no idea.’

‘Why would anyone want us?’

‘If I knew that, I’d know the answer to a lot of things. Once again, I have no idea.’

‘How would they take us over?’

‘Submarine. U-boat. No other way. They have no surface ships and an aircraft is out of the question. Praying, that’s what your whisperers are probably at – praying. Praying that the snow will never end. Our only hope lies in concealment. Praying, as the old divines used to say, that we will not be abandoned by fortune.’

‘And if we are?’

‘Then that’s it.’

‘You’re not going to do anything?’ She seemed more than faintly incredulous. ‘You’re not even going to try to do anything?’

It was quite some hours since McKinnon had made up his mind where his course of action would lie but it seemed hardly the time or the place to elaborate on his decision. ‘What on earth do you expect me to do? Send them to the bottom with a salvo of stale bread and old potatoes? You forget this is a hospital ship. Sick, wounded and all civilians.’

‘Surely there’s something you can do.’ There was a strange note in her voice, one almost of desperation. She went on bitterly: ‘The much-bemedalled Petty Officer McKinnon.’

‘The much-bemedalled Petty Officer McKinnon,’ he said mildly, ‘would live to fight another day.’

‘Fight them now!’ Her voice had a break in it. ‘Fight them! Fight them! Fight them!’ She buried her face in her hands.

McKinnon put his arm round her shaking shoulders and regarded her with total astonishment. A man of almost infinite resource and more than capable of dealing with anything that came his way, he was at an utter loss to account for her weird conduct. He sought for words of comfort and consolation but as he didn’t know what he was supposed to be comforting or consoling about he found none. Nor did repeating phrases like ‘Now, now, then’ seem to meet the case either, so he finally contented himself with saying: ‘I’ll get Trent up and take you below.’

When they had arrived below, after a particularly harrowing trip across the upper deck between superstructure and hospital – they had to battle their way against the great wind and the driving blizzard – he led her to the little lounge and went in search of Janet Magnusson. When he found her he said: ‘I think you’d better go and see your pal, Maggie. She’s very upset.’ He raised a hand. ‘No, Janet, not guilty. I did not upset her.’

She said accusingly: ‘But you were with her when she became upset.’

‘She’s disappointed with me, that’s all.’

‘Disappointed?’

‘She wants me to commit suicide. I don’t see it her way.’

She tapped her head. ‘One of you is touched. I don’t much doubt who it is.’ McKinnon sat down on a stool by a mess table while she went into the lounge. She emerged some five minutes later and sat down opposite him. Her face was troubled.

‘Sorry, Archie. Not guilty. And neither of you is touched. She’s got this ambivalent feeling towards the Germans.’

‘Ambi what?’

‘Mixed up. It doesn’t help that her mother is German. She’s had rather a bad time. A very rough time. Oh, I know you have, too, but you’re different.’

‘Of course I’m different. I have no finer feelings.’

‘Oh, do be quiet. You weren’t to know – in fact, I think I’m the only person who does know. About five months ago she lost both her only brother and her fiancé. Both died over Hamburg. Not in the same plane, not even in the same raid. But within weeks of each other.’

‘Oh Jesus.’ McKinnon shook his head slowly and was silent for some moments. ‘Poor bloody kid. Explains a lot.’ He rose, crossed to Dr Singh’s private source of supplies and returned with a glass. ‘The legendary McKinnon willpower. You were with Maggie when this happened, Janet?’

‘Yes.’

‘You knew her before then?’

‘Of course. We’ve been friends for years.’

‘So you must have known those two boys?’ She said nothing. ‘Known them well, I mean?’ Still she said nothing, just sat there with her flaxen head bowed, apparently gazing down at her clasped hands on the table. As much in exasperation as anything McKinnon reached out, took one of her wrists and shook it gently. ‘Janet.’

She looked up. ‘Yes, Archie?’ Her eyes were bright with unshed tears.

‘Oh dear, oh dear.’ McKinnon sighed. ‘You, too.’ Again he shook his head, again he remained silent for some time. ‘Look, Janet, those boys knew what they were doing. They knew the risks. They knew that, if they could at all, the German anti-aircraft batteries and night-fighter pilots would shoot them down. And so they did and so they had every right to do. And I would remind you that those were no mere pinpoint raids – it was saturation bombing and you know what that means. So while you and Maggie are crying for yourselves, you might as well cry for the relatives of all the thousands of innocent dead that the RAF left behind in Hamburg. You might as well cry for all mankind.’

Two tears trickled down her cheeks. ‘You, McKinnon, are a heartless fiend.’

‘I’m all that.’ He rose. ‘If anyone wants me I’ll be on the bridge.’

Noon came and went and as the day lengthened the wind strengthened until it reached the screaming intensity commonly found in the hurricanes and typhoons of the more tropical parts of the world. By two o’clock in the afternoon when the light, which at best had never been more than a grey half-light, was beginning to fade, what little could be seen of the mountainous seas abeam and ahead of the San Andreas – the blizzard made it quite impossible to see anything abaft of the bridge – were as white as the driving snow itself, the shapeless troughs between the towering walls of water big enough to drown a suburban house or, to the more apprehensive eye, big enough to drown a suburban church including a fair part of its steeple. The San Andreas was in trouble. At 9,300 tons it was not a small vessel and the Bo’sun had had engine revolutions reduced until the ship had barely steerage way on, but still she was in trouble and the causes for this lay neither in the size of the ship, nor the size of the seas, for normally the San Andreas could have ridden out the storm without much difficulty. The two main reasons for concern lay elsewhere.

The first of these was ice. A ship in a seaway can be said to be either stiff or tender. If it is stiff, it is resistant to roll, and, when it does roll, recovers sharply: when it is tender it rolls easily and recovers slowly and reluctantly. Tenderness arises when a vessel becomes top-heavy, raising the centre of gravity. The prime cause of this is ice. As the thickness of ice on the upper decks increases, so does the degree of tenderness: when the ice becomes sufficiently thick the vessel will fail to recover from its roll, turn turtle and founder. Even splendidly seaworthy ocean-going trawlers, specially built for Arctic operations, have succumbed to the stealthily insidious and deadly onslaught of ice: and for aircraft carriers operating in the far north, ice on their vast areas of open upper decks provided a constant threat to stability.

McKinnon was deeply worried by the accumulation of ice on the decks of the San Andreas. Compacted snow from the blizzard had formed a certain thickness of ice but not much, for apart from the area abaft of the superstructure, most of the snow had simply been blown away by the powerful wind: but for hours now, according to the ever-changing direction of the constantly shifting masses of water, the San Andreas had been shipping copious amounts of water and spray, water and spray that turned to ice even before it hit the decks. The vessel occasionally rode on an even keel but more and more frequently it lurched into a sudden roll and each time recovered from it more and more slowly. The critical limit, he was well aware, was still some time away: but without some amelioration in the conditions, it would inevitably be reached. There was nothing that could be done: sledgehammers and crowbars would have had but a minimal effect and the chances were high that people wielding those would have ended up, in very short order, over the side: on those lurching ice-rink decks footing would have been impossible to maintain. For once, McKinnon regretted that he was aboard an American-built oil-burning ship instead of a British-built coal-burning one: boiler ashes spread on the deck would have given a reasonably secure footing and helped considerably towards melting the ice. There was nothing that one could do with diesel oil.

Of even more immediate worry was the superstructure. Except when on even keel the overstressed metal, shaking and shuddering, creaked and groaned its protesting torture and, when it fell into the depths of a trough, the entire structure shifted quite perceptibly. At the highest point, the bridge on which he was standing, McKinnon estimated the lateral movement to be between four and six inches at a time. It was an acutely uncomfortable sensation and a thought-provoking one: how much of a drop and how acute an angle would be required before the shear factor came into operation and the superstructure parted company with the San Andreas? With this in mind McKinnon went below to see Lieutenant Ulbricht.

Ulbricht, who had lunched on sandwiches and Scotch and slept a couple of hours thereafter, was propped up in the Captain’s bunk and was in a reasonably philosophical mood.

‘Whoever named this ship the San Andreas,’ he said, ‘named it well. You know, of course, that the San Andreas is a famous – or notorious – earthquake-fault.’ He grabbed the side of his bunk as the ship fell into a trough and juddered in a most alarming fashion. ‘At the present moment I feel I’m living through an earthquake.’

‘It was Mr Kennet’s idea. Mr Kennet has, at times, a rather peculiar sense of humour. A week ago this was still the Ocean Belle. When we changed our paint from grey to the Red Cross colours of white, green and red, Mr Kennet thought we should change the name too. This ship was built in Richmond, California. Richmond is on the Hayward’s Fault which is a branch of the San Andreas. He was of the opinion that San Andreas was much more of a romantic name than Hayward’s Fault. He also thought it was an amusing idea to name it after a potential disaster area.’ McKinnon smiled. ‘I wonder if he still thinks it was an amusing idea.’

‘Well, he’s had plenty of time for reflection since I dropped those bombs on him yesterday morning. I should rather think he’s had second thoughts on the matter.’ Ulbricht tightened his grip on the side of his bunk as the San Andreas fell heavily into another trough. ‘The weather does not improve, Mr McKinnon?’

‘The weather does not improve. That’s what I came to talk about, Lieutenant. Force twelve wind. With the darkness and the blizzard – it’s as strong as ever – visibility is absolutely zero. Not a chance of a starsight for hours. I think you’d be far better off in the hospital.’

‘Certainly not. I’d have to fight my way against a hurricane, not to say a blizzard, to reach the hospital. A man in my weakened condition? Not to be thought of.’

‘It’s warmer down there, Lieutenant. More comfortable. And the motion, naturally, is much less.’

‘Dear me, Mr McKinnon, how could you overlook the most important inducement – all those pretty nurses. No, thank you. I prefer the Captain’s cabin, not to mention the Captain’s Scotch. The truth of the matter is, of course, that you suspect that the superstructure may go over the side at any moment and that you want me out of here before that happens. Isn’t that so?’

‘Well.’ McKinnon touched the outer bulkhead. ‘It is a bit unstable.’

‘While you remain, of course.’

‘I have a job to do.’

‘Unthinkable. The honour of the Luftwaffe is at stake. You stay, I stay.’

McKinnon didn’t argue. If anything, he felt obscurely pleased by Ulbricht’s decision. He tapped the barometer and lifted an eyebrow. ‘Three millibars?’

‘Up?’

‘Up.’

‘Help is at hand. There’s hope yet.’

‘Take hours for the weather to moderate – if it does. Superstructure could still go at any time. Even if it doesn’t, our only real hope lies with the snow.’

‘And when the snow goes?’

‘Then your U-boats come.’

‘You’re convinced of that?’

‘Yes. Aren’t you?’

‘I’m afraid I am, rather.’

Three hours later, shortly after five o’clock in the afternoon and quite some time before McKinnon had expected it, the weather began to moderate, almost imperceptibly at first, then with increasing speed. The wind speed dropped to a relatively benign Force six, the broken and confused seas of the early afternoon resolved themselves, once again, into a recognizable wave pattern, the San Andreas rode on a comparatively even keel, the sheeted ice on the decks no longer offered a threat and the superstructure had quite ceased its creaking and groaning. But best of all, from McKinnon’s point of view, the snow, though driving much less horizontally than it had earlier on, still fell as heavily as ever. He was reasonably certain that when an attack did come it would come during the brief hours of daylight but was well aware that a determined U-boat captain would not hesitate to press home an attack in moonlight. In his experience most U-boat captains were very determined indeed – and there would be a moon later that night. Snow would avail them nothing in daytime but during the hours of darkness it was a virtual guarantee of safety.

He went to the Captain’s cabin where he found Lieutenant Ulbricht smoking an expensive Havana – Captain Bowen, a pipe man, permitted himself one cigar a day – and sipping an equally expensive malt, both of which no doubt helped to contribute to his comparatively relaxed mood.

‘Ah, Mr McKinnon. This is more like it. The weather, I mean. Moderating by the minute. Still snowing?’

‘Heavily. A mixed blessing, I suppose. No chance of starsights but at least it keeps your friends out of our hair.’

‘Friends? Yes. I spend quite some time wondering who my friends are.’ He waved a dismissive hand which was no easy thing to do with a glass of malt in one and a cigar in the other. ‘Is Sister Morrison ill?’

‘I shouldn’t think so.’

‘I’m supposed to be her patient. One could almost term this savage neglect. A man could easily bleed to death.’

‘We can’t have that.’ McKinnon smiled. ‘I’ll get her for you.’

He phoned the hospital and, by the time he arrived there, Sister Morrison was ready. She said: ‘Something wrong? Is he unwell?’

‘He feels cruelly neglected and says something about bleeding to death. He is, in fact, in good spirits, smoking a cigar, drinking malt whisky and appears to be in excellent health. He’s just bored or lonely or both and wants to talk to someone.’

‘He can always talk to you.’

‘When I said someone, I didn’t mean anyone. I am not Margaret Morrison. Crafty, those Luftwaffe pilots. He can always have you up for dereliction of duty.’

He took her to the Captain’s cabin, told her to call him at the hospital when she was through, took the crew lists from the Captain’s desk, left and went in search of Jamieson. Together they spent almost half an hour going over the papers of every member of the deck and engine-room crews, trying to recall every detail they knew of their past histories and what other members of the crew had said about any particular individual. When they had finished consulting both the lists and their memories, Jamieson pushed away the lists, leaned back in his chair and sighed.

‘What do you make of it, Bo’sun?’

‘Same as you do, sir. Nothing. I wouldn’t even begin to know where to point the finger of suspicion. Not only are there no suitable candidates for the role of saboteur, there’s nobody who’s even remotely likely. I think we’d both go into court and testify as character witnesses for the lot of them. But if we accept Lieutenant Ulbricht’s theory – and you, Mr Patterson, Naseby and I do accept it – that it must have been one of the original crew that set off that charge in the ballast room when we were alongside that corvette, then it must have been one of them. Or, failing them, one of the hospital staff.’

‘The hospital staff?’ Jamieson shook his head. ‘The hospital staff. Sister Morrison as a seagoing Mata Hari? I have as much imagination as the next man, Bo’sun, but not that kind of imagination.’

‘Neither have I. We’d both go to court for them, too. But it has to be someone who was aboard this ship when we left Halifax. When we retire, Mr Jamieson, I think we’d better not be applying for a job with Scotland Yard’s CID. Then there’s the possibility that whoever it is may be in cahoots with someone from the Argos or one of the nine invalids we picked up in Murmansk.’

‘About all of whom we know absolutely nothing, which is a great help.’

‘As far as the crew of the Argos is concerned, that’s true. As for the invalids, we have, of course, their names, ranks and numbers. One of the TB cases, man by the name of Hartley, is an ERA – Engine-Room Artificer. He would know about electrics. Another, Simons, a mental breakdown case, or an alleged mental breakdown case, is an LTO – Leading Torpedo Operator. He would know about explosives.’

‘Too obvious, Bo’sun.’

‘Far too obvious. Maybe we’re meant to overlook the far too obvious.’

‘Have you seen those two? Spoken to them, I mean?’

‘Yes. I should imagine you also have. They’re the two with the red hair.’

‘Ah. Those two. Bluff, honest sailormen. Don’t look like criminal types at all. But then, I suppose, the best criminals never do. Look that way, I mean.’ He sighed. ‘I agree, with you, Bo’sun. The CID are in no danger from us.’

‘No, indeed.’ McKinnon rose. ‘I think I’ll go and rescue Sister Morrison from Lieutenant Ulbricht’s clutches.’

Sister Morrison was not in the Lieutenant’s clutches nor did she show any signs of wanting to be rescued. ‘Time to go?’ she said.

‘Of course not. Just to let you know I’ll be on the bridge when you want me.’ He looked at Ulbricht, then at Sister Morrison. ‘You managed to save him, then?’

Compared to what it had been only a few hours previously the starboard wing of the bridge was now almost a haven of peace and quiet. The wind had dropped to not more than Force four and the seas, while far from being a millpond, had quietened to the extent that the San Andreas rarely rolled more than a few degrees when it did at all. That was on the credit side. On the debit side was the fact that the snow had thinned to the extent that McKinnon had no difficulty in making out the arc-lit shape of the red cross on the foredeck reflecting palely under its sheathing of ice. He went back inside the bridge and called up Patterson in the engine-room.

‘Bo’sun here, sir. Snow’s lightening. Looks as if it’s going to stop altogether pretty soon. I’d like permission to switch off all exterior lights. Seas are still too high for any U-boat to see us from periscope depth, but if it’s on the surface, if the snow has stopped and we still have the Red Cross lights on, we can be seen miles away from its conning-tower.’

‘We wouldn’t want that, would we. No lights.’

‘One other thing. Could you have some men clear a pathway – sledges, crowbars, whatever – in the ice between the hospital and the superstructure. Two feet should be wide enough.’

‘Consider it done.’

Fifteen minutes later, still without any sign of Margaret Morrison, the Bo’sun moved out on the wing again. The snow had stopped completely. There were isolated patches of clear sky above and some stars shone, although the Pole Star was hidden. The darkness was still pretty complete, McKinnon couldn’t even see as far as the fo’c’s’le with the deck lights extinguished. He returned inside and went below to the Captain’s cabin.

‘The snow’s stopped, Lieutenant, and there are a few stars around, not many, and certainly not at the moment the Pole, but a few. I don’t know how long those conditions might last so I thought you might like to have a look now. I assume that Sister Morrison has staunched the flow of blood.’

‘There never was any flow of blood,’ she said. ‘As you know perfectly well, Mr McKinnon.’

‘Yes, Sister.’

She winced, then smiled. ‘Archie McKinnon.’

‘Wind’s dropped a lot,’ McKinnon said. He helped Ul-bricht on with outer clothing. ‘But those are just as necessary as they were before. The temperature is still below zero.’

‘Fahrenheit?’

‘Sorry. You don’t use that. It’s about twenty degrees below, Centigrade.’

‘May his nurse come with him? After all, Dr Sinclair went with him last time.’

‘Of course. Wouldn’t advise you to come on the wing bridge, though.’ McKinnon gathered up sextant and chronometer and accompanied them up to the bridge. This time Ulbricht made it unaided. He went out on both wing bridges in turn and chose the starboard from which to make his observations. It took him longer than it had on the previous occasion, for he found it necessary to take more sights, presumably because the Pole Star was hidden. He came back inside, worked on the chart for some time and finally looked up.

‘Satisfactory. In the circumstances, very satisfactory. Not my navigation. The course we’ve been holding. No idea if we’ve been holding it all the time, of course, and that doesn’t matter. We’re south of the Arctic Circle now, near enough 66.20 north, 4.20 east. Course 213, which seems to indicate that the wind’s backed only five degrees in the past twelve hours. We’re fine as we are, Mr McKinnon. Keeping the sea and the wind to the stern should see us through the night and even if we do wander off course we’re not going to bump into anything. This time tomorrow morning we’ll lay off a more southerly course.’

‘Thank you very much, Lieutenant,’ McKinnon said. ‘As the saying goes, you’ve earned your supper. Incidentally, I’ll have that sent up inside half an hour. You’ve also earned a good night’s sleep – I won’t be troubling you any more tonight.’

‘Haven’t I earned something else, too? It was mighty cold out there, Mr McKinnon.’

‘I’m sure the Captain would approve. As he said, so long as you’re navigating.’ He turned to the girl. ‘You coming below?’

‘Yes, yes, of course she must,’ Ulbricht said. ‘I’ve been most remiss, most.’ If remorse were gnawing it didn’t show too much. ‘All your other patients –’

‘All my other patients are fine. Sister Maria is looking after them. I’m off duty.’

‘Off duty! That makes me feel even worse. You should be resting, my dear girl, that or sleeping.’

‘I’m wide awake, thank you. Are you coming below? It’s no trouble now, ship’s like a rock and you’ve just been told you won’t be required any more tonight.’

‘Well, now.’ Ulbricht paused judiciously. ‘On balance, I think I should remain. Unforeseeable emergencies, you understand.’

‘Luftwaffe officers shouldn’t tell fibs. Of course I understand. I understand that the only foreseeable emergency is that you run short of supplies and the only reason you’re not coming below is that we don’t serve malt whisky with ward dinners.’

The Lieutenant shook his head in sadness. ‘I am deeply wounded.’

‘Wounded!’ she said. They had returned to the hospital mess-deck. ‘Wounded.’

‘I think he is.’ McKinnon looked at her in speculative amusement. ‘And you, too.’

‘Me? Oh, really!’

‘Yes. Really. You’re hurt because you think he prefers Scotch to your company. Isn’t that so?’ She made no reply. ‘If you believe that, then you’ve got a very low opinion of both yourself and the Lieutenant. You were with him for about an hour tonight. What did he drink in that time?’

‘Nothing.’ Her voice was quiet.

‘Nothing. He’s not a drinker and he’s a sensitive lad. He’s sensitive because he’s an enemy, because he’s a captive, a prisoner of war and, of course, he’s sensitive above all because he’s now got to live all his life with the knowledge that he killed fifteen innocent people. You asked him if he was coming down. He didn’t want to be asked “if”. He wanted to be persuaded, even ordered. “If” implies indifference and the way he’s feeling it could be taken for a rejection. So what happens? The ward sister tells her feminine sympathy and intuition to take a holiday and delivers herself of some cutting remarks that Margaret Morrison would never have made. A mistake, but easy enough to put right.’

‘How?’ The question was a tacit admission that a mistake had indeed been made.

‘Ninny. You take his hand and say sorry. Or are you too proud?’

‘Too proud?’ She seemed uncertain, confused. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Too proud because he’s a German? Look, I know about your fiancé and brother and I’m terribly sorry but that doesn’t –’

‘Janet shouldn’t have told you.’

‘Don’t be daft. You didn’t object to her telling you about my family.’

‘And that’s not all.’ She sounded almost angry. ‘You said they went around killing thousands of innocent people and that –’

‘Those were not my words. Janet did not say that. You’re doing what you accused the Lieutenant of doing – fibbing. Also, you’re dodging the issue. Okay, so the nasty Germans killed two people you knew and loved. I wonder how many thousands they killed before they were shot down. But that doesn’t matter really, does it? You never knew them or their names. How can you weep over people you’ve never met, husbands and wives, sweethearts and children, without faces or names? It’s quite ridiculous, isn’t it, and statistics are so boring. Tell me, did your brother ever tell you how he felt when he went out in his Lancaster bomber and slaughtered his mother’s fellow countrymen? But, of course, he’d never met them so that made it all right, didn’t it?’

She said in a whisper: ‘I think you’re horrible.’

‘You think I’m horrible. Janet thinks I’m a heartless fiend. I think you’re a pair of splendid hypocrites.’

‘Hypocrites?’

‘You know – Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The ward sister and Margaret Morrison. Janet’s just as bad. At least I don’t deal in double standards.’ McKinnon made to leave but she caught him by the arm and indulged, not for the first time, in the rather disconcerting practice of examining each of his eyes in turn.

‘You didn’t really mean that, did you? About Janet and myself being hypocrites?’

‘No.’

‘You are devious. All right, all right, I’ll make it right with him.’

‘I knew you would. Margaret Morrison.’

‘Not Ward Sister Morrison?’

‘You don’t look like Mrs Hyde.’ He paused. ‘When were you to have been married?’

‘Last September.’

‘Janet. Janet and your brother. They were pretty friendly, weren’t they?’

‘Yes. She told you that?’

‘No. She didn’t have to.’

‘Yes, they were pretty friendly.’ She was silent for a few moments. ‘It was to have been a double wedding.’

‘Oh hell,’ McKinnon said and walked away. He checked all the scuttles in the hospital area – even from the relatively low altitude of a submarine conning-tower the light from an uncovered porthole can be seen for several miles – went down to the engine-room, spoke briefly to Patterson, returned to the mess-deck, had dinner, then went into the wards. Janet Magnusson, in Ward B, watched his approach without enthusiasm.

‘So you’ve been at it again.’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you know what I’m talking about?’

‘No. I don’t know and I don’t care. I suppose you’re talking about your friend Maggie – and yourself. Of course I’m sorry for you both, terribly sorry, and maybe tomorrow or when we get to Aberdeen I’ll break my heart for yesterday. But not now, Janet. Now I have one or two more important things on my mind such as, say, getting to Aberdeen.’

‘Archie.’ She put a hand on his arm. ‘I won’t even say sorry. I’m just whistling in the dark, don’t you know that, you clown? I don’t want to think about tomorrow.’ She gave a shiver, which could have been mock or not. ‘I feel funny. I’ve been talking to Maggie. It’s going to happen tomorrow, isn’t it, Archie?’

‘If by tomorrow you mean when daylight comes, then, yes. Could even be tonight, if the moon breaks through.’

‘Maggie says it has to be a submarine. So you said.’

‘Has to be.’

‘How do you fancy being taken a prisoner?’

‘I don’t fancy it at all.’

‘But you will be, won’t you?’

‘I hope not.’

‘How can you hope not? Maggie says you’re going to surrender. She didn’t say so outright because she knows we’re friends – we are friends, Mr McKinnon?’

‘We are friends, Miss Magnusson.’

‘Well, she didn’t say so, but I think she thinks you’re a bit of a coward, really.’

‘A very – what’s the word, perspicacious? – a very perspicacious girl is our Maggie.’

‘She’s not as perspicacious as I am. You really think there’s a chance we’ll reach Aberdeen?’

‘There’s a chance.’

‘And after that?’

‘Aha! Clever, clever Janet Magnusson. If I haven’t got any plans for the future then I don’t see any future. Isn’t that it? Well, I do see a future and I do have plans. I’m going to take my first break since nineteen thirty-nine and have a couple of weeks back home in the Shetlands. When were you last back home in the Shetlands?’

‘Not for years.’

‘Will you come with me, Janet?’

‘Of course.’

McKinnon went into Ward A and passed up the aisle to where Sister Morrison was sitting at her table. ‘How’s the Captain?’

‘Well enough, I suppose. Bit dull and quiet. But why ask me? Ask him.’

‘I have to ask the ward sister’s permission to take him out of the ward.’

‘Take him out – whatever for?’

‘I want to talk to him.’

‘You can talk to him here.’

‘I can just see the nasty suspicious looks I’d be getting from you if we started whispering together and the nasty suspicious questions I’d be getting afterwards. My dear Margaret, we have matters of state to discuss.’

‘You don’t trust me, is that it?’

‘That’s the second time you’ve asked me that silly question. Same answer. I do trust you. Totally. I trust Mr Kennet there. But there are five others I don’t know whether to trust or not.’

McKinnon took the Captain from the ward and returned with him inside two minutes. After she’d tucked him back in bed, Margaret Morrison said: ‘That must rank as the shortest state conference in history.’

‘We are men of few words.’

‘And that’s the only communiqué I’ll be getting?’

‘Well, that’s the way high-level diplomacy is conducted. Secrecy is the watchword.’

As he entered Ward B he was stopped by Janet Magnusson. ‘What was all that about, then? You and Captain Bowen, I mean.’

‘I have not had a private talk with the Captain in order to tell all the patients in Ward B about it. I am under an oath of silence.’

Margaret Morrison came in, looked from one to the other, then said: ‘Well, Janet, has he been more forthcoming with you than with me?’

‘Forthcoming? Under an oath of silence, he claims. His own oath, I have no doubt.’

‘No doubt. What have you been doing to the Captain?’

‘Doing? I’ve been doing nothing.’

‘Saying, then. He’s changed since he came back. Seems positively cheerful.’

‘Cheerful? How can you tell. With all those bandages, you can’t see a square inch of his face.’

‘There are more ways than one of telling. He’s sitting up in bed, rubbing his hands from time to time and twice he’s said “Aha”.’

‘I’m not surprised. It takes a special kind of talent to reach the hearts and minds of the ill and depressed. It’s a gift. Some of us have it.’ He looked at each in turn. ‘And some of us haven’t.’

He left them looking at each other.

McKinnon was woken by Trent at 2.0 a.m. ‘The moon’s out, Bo’sun.’

The moon, as McKinnon bleakly appreciated when he arrived on the port wing of the bridge, was very much out, a three-quarter moon and preternaturally bright – or so it seemed to him. At least half the sky was clear. The visibility out over the now almost calm seas was remarkable, so much so that he had no difficulty in picking out the line of the horizon: and if he could see the horizon, the Bo’sun all too clearly realized, then a submarine could pick them up ten miles away, especially if the San Andreas were silhouetted against the light of the moon. McKinnon felt naked and very vulnerable. He went below, roused Curran, told him to take up lookout on the starboard wing of the bridge, found Naseby, asked him to check that the falls and davits of the motor lifeboats were clear of ice and working freely and then returned to the port wing where, every minute or two, he swept the horizon with his binoculars. But the sea between the San Andreas and the horizon remained providentially empty.

The San Andreas itself was a remarkable sight. Wholly covered in ice and snow, it glittered and shone and sparkled in the bright moonlight except for a narrow central area abaft of the superstructure where wisping smoke from the shattered funnel had laid a brown smear all the way to the stern post. The fore and aft derricks were huge glistening Christmas trees, festooned with thick-ribbed woolly halliards and stays, and the anchor chains on the fo’c’s’le had been transformed into great fluffy ropes of the softest cotton wool. It was a strange and beautiful world with an almost magical quality about it, ethereal almost: but one had only to think of the lethal dangers that lay under the surrounding waters and the beauty and the magic ceased to exist.

An hour passed by and everything remained quiet and peaceful. Another hour came and went, nothing untoward happened and McKinnon could scarcely believe their great good fortune. And before the third uneventful hour was up the clouds had covered the moon and it had begun to snow again, a gentle snowfall only, but enough, with the hidden moon, to shroud them in blessed anonymity again. Telling Ferguson, who now had the watch, to shake him if the snow stopped, he went below in search of some more sleep.

It was nine o’clock when he awoke. It was an unusually late awakening for him but he wasn’t unduly perturbed – dawn was still an hour distant. As he crossed the upper deck he noted that the conditions were just as they had been four hours previously – moderate seas, a wind no stronger than Force three and still the same gently falling snow. McKinnon had no belief in the second sight but he felt in his bones that this peace and calm would have gone before the morning was out.

Down below he talked in turn with Jones, McGuigan, Stephen and Johnny Holbrook. They had taken it in turn, and in pairs, to monitor the comings and goings of everybody in the hospital. All four swore that nobody had stirred aboard during the night and that, most certainly, no one had at any time left the hospital area.

He had breakfast with Dr Singh, Dr Sinclair, Patterson and Jamieson – Dr Singh, he thought, looked unusually tired and strained – then went to Ward B where he found Janet Magnusson. She looked pale and there were shadows under her eyes.

McKinnon looked at her with concern.

‘What’s wrong, Janet?’

‘I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t sleep a wink last night. It’s all your fault.’

‘Of course. It’s always my fault. Cardinal rule number one – when anything goes wrong blame the Bo’sun. What am I supposed to have done this time?’

‘You said the submarine, the U-boat, would attack if the moon broke through.’

‘I said it could, not would.’

‘Same thing. I spent most of the night looking out through the porthole – no, Mr McKinnon, I did not have my cabin light switched on – and when the moon came out at about two o’clock I was sure the attack must come any time. And when the moon went I was sure it would come again. Moon. U-boat. Your fault.’

‘A certain logic, I must admit. Twisted logic, of course, but not more than one would expect of the feminine mind. Still, I’m sorry.’

‘But you’re looking fine. Fresh. Relaxed. And you’re very late on the road this morning. Our trusty guardian sleeping on the job.’

‘Your trusty guardian lost a little sleep himself, last night,’ McKinnon said. ‘Back shortly. Must see the Captain.’

It was Sister Maria, not Sister Morrison, who was in charge in A Ward. McKinnon spoke briefly with both the Captain and First Officer, then said to Bowen: ‘Still sure, sir?’

‘More sure than ever, Archie. When’s dawn?’

‘Fifteen minutes.’

‘I wish you well.’

‘I think you better wish us all well.’

He returned to Ward B and said to Janet: ‘Where’s your pal?’

‘Visiting the sick. She’s with Lieutenant Ulbricht.’

‘She shouldn’t have gone alone.’

‘She didn’t. You were asleep so your friend George Naseby came for her.’

McKinnon looked at her with suspicion. ‘You find something amusing.’

‘That’s her second time up there this morning.’

‘Is he dying or something?’

‘I hardly think she would smile so much if a patient was slipping away.’

‘Ah! Mending fences, you would say?’

‘She called him “Karl” twice.’ She smiled. ‘I’d call that mending fences, wouldn’t you?’

‘Good lord! Karl. That well-known filthy Nazi murderer.’

‘Well, she said you asked her to make it right. No, you told her. So now you’ll be taking all the credit, I suppose.’

‘Credit where credit is due,’ McKinnon said absently. ‘But she must come below at once. It’s too exposed up there.’

‘Dawn.’ Her voice had gone very quiet. ‘This time you’re sure, Archie?’

‘This time I’m sure. The U-boat will come at dawn.’

The U-boat came at dawn.

Chapter Seven

It was little more than half-light when the U-boat, in broken camouflage paint of various shades of grey and at a distance of less than half a mile, suddenly appeared from behind a passing snow-squall. It was running fully on the surface with three figures clearly distinguishable on the conning-tower and another three manning the deck gun just for’ard of that. The submarine was on a course exactly parallelling that of the San Andreas and could well have been for many hours. The U-boat was on their starboard hand so that the San Andreas lay between it and the gradually lightening sky to the south. Both bridge wing doors were latched back in the fully open position. McKinnon reached for the phone, called the engine-room for full power, nudged the wheel to starboard and began to edge imperceptibly closer to the U-boat.

He and Naseby were alone on the bridge. They were, in fact, the only two people left in the superstructure because McKinnon had ordered everyone, including a bitterly protesting Lieutenant Ulbricht, to go below to the hospital only ten minutes previously. Naseby he required and for two reasons. Naseby, unlike himself, was an adept Morse signaller and had a signalling lamp ready at hand: more importantly, McKinnon was more than reasonably certain that the bridge would be coming under attack in a very short space of time indeed and he wanted a competent helmsman to hand in case he himself were incapacitated.

‘Keep out of sight, George,’ McKinnon said. ‘But try to keep an eye on them. They’re bound to start sending any minute now.’

‘They can see you,’ Naseby said.

‘Maybe they can see my head and shoulders over the wing of the bridge. Maybe not. It doesn’t matter. The point is that they will believe I can’t see them. Don’t forget that they’re in the dark quadrant of the sea and have no reason to think that we’re expecting trouble. Besides, a helmsman’s job is to keep an eye on the compass and look ahead – no reason on earth why I should be scanning the seas around.’ He felt the superstructure begin to shudder as Patterson increased the engine revolutions, gave the wheel another nudge to starboard, picked up a tin mug from the shattered binnacle and pretended to drink from it. ‘It’s like a law of nature, George. Nothing more reassuring than the sight of an unsuspecting innocent enjoying a morning cup of tea.’

For a full minute, which seemed like a large number of full minutes, nothing happened. The superstructure was beginning to vibrate quite strongly now and McKinnon knew that the San Andreas was under maximum power. They were now at least a hundred yards closer to the U-boat than they had been when it had first been sighted but the U-boat captain gave no indication that he was aware of this. Had McKinnon maintained his earlier speed his acute angling in towards the U-boat would have caused him to drop slightly astern of the submarine, but the increase in speed had enabled him to maintain his relative position. The U-boat captain had no cause to be suspicious – and no one in his right mind was going to harbour suspicions about a harmless and defenceless hospital ship.

‘He’s sending, George,’ McKinnon said.

‘I see him. “Stop,” he says. “Stop engines or I will sink you.” What do I send, Archie?’

‘Nothing.’ McKinnon edged the San Andreas another three degrees to starboard, reached again for his tin mug and pretended to drink from it. ‘Ignore him.’

‘Ignore him!’ Naseby sounded aggrieved. ‘You heard what the man said. He’s going to sink us.’

‘He’s lying. He hasn’t stalked us all this way just to send us to the bottom. He wants us alive. Not only is he not going to torpedo us, he can’t, not unless they’ve invented torpedoes that can turn corners. So how else is he going to stop us? With that little itsy-bitsy gun he’s got on the foredeck? It’s not all that much bigger than a pom-pom.’

‘I have to warn you, Archie, the man’s going to get very annoyed.’

‘He’s got nothing to be annoyed about. We haven’t seen his signal.’

Naseby lowered his binoculars. ‘I also have to warn you that he’s about to use that little itsybitsy gun.’

‘Sure he is. The classic warning shot over the bows to attract our attention. If he really wants to attract our attention, it may be into the bows for all I know.’

The two shells, when they came, entered the sea just yards ahead of the San Andreas, one disappearing silently below the waves, the other exploding on impact. The sound of the explosion and the sharp flat crack of the U-boat’s gun made it impossible any longer to ignore the submarine’s existence.

‘Show yourself, George,’ McKinnon said. ‘Tell him to stop firing and ask him what he wants.’

Naseby moved out on the starboard wing and transmitted the message: the reply came immediately.

‘He has a one-track mind,’ Naseby said. ‘Message reads: “Stop or be sunk”.’

‘One of those laconic characters. Tell him we’re a hospital ship.’

‘You think he’s blind, perhaps?’

‘It’s still only half-light and the starboard side is our dark side. Maybe he’ll think that we think he can’t see. Tell him we’re a neutral, mention the Geneva Convention. Maybe he’s got a better side to his nature.’

Naseby clacked out his message, waited for the reply, then turned gloomily to McKinnon. ‘He hasn’t got a better side to his nature.’

‘Not many U-boat captains have. What does he say?’

‘Geneva Conventions do not apply in the Norwegian Sea.’

‘There’s little decency left on the high seas these days. Let’s try for his sense of patriotism. Tell him we have German survivors aboard.’

While Naseby sent the message McKinnon rang down for slow ahead. Naseby turned in the doorway and shook his head sadly.

‘His patriotism is on a par with his decency. He says: “Will check nationals when we board. We commence firing in twenty seconds”.’

‘Send: “No need to fire. We are stopping. Check wake”.’

Naseby sent the message, then said: ‘Well, he got that all right. He’s already got his glasses trained on our stern. You know, I do believe he’s angling in towards us. Very little, mind you, but it’s there.’

‘I do believe you’re right.’ McKinnon gave the wheel another slight nudge to starboard. ‘If he notices anything he’ll probably think it’s because he’s closing in on us and not vice versa. Is he still examining our wake?’

‘Yes.’

‘Turbulence aft must have died away quite a lot by this time. That should make him happy.’

‘He’s lowered his glasses,’ Naseby said. ‘Message coming.’

The message didn’t say whether the U-boat captain was happy or not but it did hold a certain degree of satisfaction. ‘Man says we are very wise,’ Naseby said. ‘Also orders us to lower our gangway immediately.’

‘Acknowledge. Tell Ferguson to start lowering the gangway immediately but to stop it about, say, eight feet above the water. Then tell Curran and Trent to swing out the lifeboat and lower it to the same height.’

Naseby relayed both messages, then said: ‘You think we’re going to need the lifeboat?’

‘I quite honestly have no idea. But if we do, we’re going to need it in a hurry.’ He called the engine-room and asked for Patterson.

‘Chief? Bo’sun here. We’re slowing a bit, as you know, but that’s only for the moment. The U-boat is closing in on us. We’re lowering both the gangway and the lifeboat, the gangway on the U-boat’s instructions, the lifeboat on mine … No, they can’t see the lifeboat – it’s on our port side, their blind side. As soon as they are in position I’m going to ask for full power. A request, sir. If I do have to use the boat I’d appreciate it if you’d permit Mr Jamieson to come with me. With your gun.’ He listened for a few moments while the receiver crackled in his ear, then said: ‘Two things, sir. I want Mr Jamieson because apart from yourself and Naseby he’s the only member of the crew I can trust. Show him where the safety-catch is. And no, sir, you know damn well you can’t come along instead of Mr Jamieson. You’re the officer commanding and you can’t leave the San Andreas.’ McKinnon replaced the receiver and Naseby said, plaintive reproach in his voice: ‘You might have asked me.’

McKinnon looked at him coldly. ‘And who’s going to steer this damned ship when I’m gone?’

Naseby sighed. ‘There’s that, of course, there’s that. They seem to be preparing some kind of boarding party across there, Archie. Three more men on the conning-tower now. They’re armed with sub-machine-guns or machine-pistols or whatever you call those things. Something nasty, anyway.’

‘We didn’t expect roses. How’s Ferguson coming along? If that gangway doesn’t start moving soon the U-boat captain is going to start getting suspicious. Worse, he’s going to start getting impatient.’

‘I don’t think so. At least, not yet awhile. I can see Ferguson so I’m certain the U-boat captain can too. Ferguson’s having difficulty of some kind, he’s banging away at the lowering drum with a hammer. Icing trouble for a certainty.’

‘See how the boat’s getting on, will you?’

Naseby crossed the bridge, moved out on to the port wing and was back in seconds. ‘It’s down. About eight feet above the water, as you asked.’ He crossed to the starboard wing, examining the U-boat through his binoculars, lowered them and turned back to McKinnon.

‘That’s bloody funny. All those characters seem to be wearing some kind of gas-masks.’

‘Gas-masks? Are you all right?’

‘Certainly I’m all right. They’re all wearing a horseshoe-shaped kind of life-jacket around their necks with a corrugated hose attached to the top. They’re not wearing it at the moment, it’s dangling down in front, but there’s a mouthpiece and goggles attached to the end of the tube. When did German submariners start using gas?’

‘They don’t. What good on earth would gas be to a U-boat?’ He took Naseby’s binoculars, examined the U-boat briefly and handed the glasses back. ‘Tauchretter, George, Tauchretter. Otherwise known as the Dräger Lung. It’s fitted with an oxygen cylinder and a carbon dioxide canister and its sole purpose is to help people escape from a sunken submarine.’

‘No gas?’ Naseby sounded vaguely disappointed.

‘No gas.’

‘That doesn’t look like a sunken submarine to me.’

‘Some U-boat commanders make their crews wear them all the time they’re submerged. Bit pointless in these waters, I would have thought. At least six hundred feet deep here, maybe a thousand. There’s no way you can escape from those depths, Dräger set or not. How’s Ferguson coming along?’

‘As far as I can tell, he’s not. Still hammering away. No, wait a minute, wait a minute. He’s put the hammer down and is trying the release lever. It’s moving, Archie. It’s coming down.’

‘Ah!’ McKinnon rang for full power.

Some seconds passed, then Naseby said: ‘Half way.’ A similar length of time elapsed, then Naseby said in the same matter-of-fact voice: ‘It’s down, Archie. Eight feet, give or take. Ferguson’s secured it.’

McKinnon nodded and spun the wheel to starboard until he had maximum rudder on. Slowly, ponderously at first, then with increasing speed, the San Andreas began to come round.

‘Do you want to get your head blown off, George?’

‘Well, no.’ Naseby stepped inside, closed the wing door behind him and peered out through the little window in the door. The San Andreas, no longer riding with the sea, was beginning to corkscrew, although only gently so: but the entire superstructure was beginning to vibrate in a rather alarming fashion as the engines built up to maximum power.

‘And don’t you think you ought to lie down?’

‘In a minute, Archie, in a minute. Do you think they’ve gone to sleep aboard that U-boat?’

‘Some trouble with their eyes, that’s for sure. I think they’re rubbing them and not believing what they’re seeing.’

Except that there was no actual eye-rubbing going on aboard the U-boat, McKinnon’s guess was very close to the mark. The reactions of both the submarine commander and his crew were extraordinarily slow. Extraordinarily, but in the circumstances, understandably. The U-boat’s crew had made both the forgivable and unforgivable mistake of relaxing, of lowering their guard at the precise moment when their alertness and sense of danger should have been honed to its keenest edge. But the sight of the gangway being lowered in strict compliance with their orders must have convinced them that there was no thought or possibility of any resistance being offered and that the taking over of the San Andreas was no more than a token formality. Besides, no one in the history of warfare had ever heard of a hospital ship being used as an offensive weapon. It was unthinkable. It takes time to rethink the unthinkable.

The San Andreas was so far round now that the U-boat was no more than 45° off the starboard bow. Naseby moved from the starboard wing door to the nearest small window let into the front of the bridge.

‘They’re lining up what it pleases you to call that little itsy-bitsy gun, Archie.’

‘Then maybe we’d both better be getting down.’

‘No. They’re not lining up on the bridge, they’re lining up on the hull aft. I don’t know what they intend to –’ He broke off and shouted: ‘No! No! Get down, get down!’ and flung himself at McKinnon, bringing both men crashing heavily to the deck of the bridge. Even as they landed, hundreds of bullets, to the accompaniment of the staccato chattering of several machine-guns, smashed into the fore end and starboard side of the bridge. None of the bullets succeeded in penetrating the metal but all four windows were smashed. The fusillade lasted no more than three seconds and had no sooner ceased when the U-boat’s deck gun fired three times in rapid succession, on each occasion causing the San Andreas to shudder as the shells exploded somewhere in the after hull.

McKinnon hauled himself to his feet and took the wheel. ‘If I’d been standing there I’d have been very much the late Archie McKinnon. I’ll thank you tomorrow.’ He looked at the central window before him. It was holed, cracked, starred, abraded and completely opaque. ‘George?’

But Naseby needed no telling. Fire-extinguisher in hand, he smashed away the entire window in just two blows. He hitched a cautious eye over the bottom of where the window had been, saw that the San Andreas was arrowing in on the bows of the U-boat, then abruptly straightened in the instinctive reaction of a man who realizes that all danger is past.

‘Conning-tower’s empty, Archie. They’ve all gone. Bloody funny, isn’t it?’

‘Nothing funny about it.’ The Bo’sun’s tone was dry; if he was in any way moved or shaken by the narrowness of his recent escape he showed no signs of it. ‘It’s customary, George, to go below and pull down the hatch after you when you’re going to dive. In this case, crash dive.’

‘Crash dive?’

‘Captain has no option. He knows he hasn’t the firepower to stop us and he can’t possibly bring his torpedoes to bear. Right now he’s blowing all main ballast. See those bubbles? That’s water being blown from the ballast tanks by high pressure air – something like three thousand pounds per square inch.’

‘But – but he’s left his gun crew on deck.’

‘Indeed he has. Again, no option. A U-boat is much more valuable than the lives of three men. See those valves they’re twisting on the right-hand side of their suits? Oxygen valves. They’re turning their Dräger lungs into life jackets. Much good it will do them if they run into a propeller. Will you go out on the wings, George, and see if there’s any flame or smoke aft.’

‘You could phone.’

McKinnon pointed to the phone in front of the wheel, a phone that had been shattered by a machine gun bullet. Naseby nodded and went out on both wings in turn.

‘Nothing. Nothing you can see from the outside.’ He looked ahead towards the U-boat, not much more than a hundred yards distant. ‘She’s going down, Archie. Fore and aft decks are awash.’

‘I can see that.’

‘And she’s turning away to her starboard.’

‘I can see that, too. Counsel of desperation. He’s hoping that if he can turn his sub at an acute enough angle to us he’ll be struck only a glancing blow. A glancing blow he could survive. I think.’

‘Hull’s submerged now. Is he going to make it?’

‘He’s left it too late.’ McKinnon rang down for full astern and eased the wheel slightly to port. Five seconds later, with the top of the conning tower barely awash, the forefoot of the San Andreas tore into the hull of the U-boat some thirty feet for’ard of the conning tower. The San Andreas juddered throughout its length but the overall effect of the impact was curiously small. For a period of not more than three seconds they felt rather than heard the sensation of steel grinding over steel, then all contact was abruptly lost.

‘Well,’ Naseby said, ‘so that’s how it’s done, is it?’ He paused. ‘There’s going to be a lot of jagged metal on that U-boat. If a prop hits that –’

‘No chance. The U-boat’s been driven down, deep down – and they’ll still be blowing main ballast. Let’s just hope we haven’t damaged ourselves too badly.’

‘You said the U-boat captain had no option. We didn’t either. You think there’ll be any survivors?’

‘I don’t know. If there are any, we’ll find out soon enough. I question very much whether they would even have had time to close watertight doors. If they didn’t, then that U-boat is on its way to the bottom. If anyone is going to escape, they’re going to have to do it before it reaches the two-hundred-and-fifty-foot mark – I’ve never heard of anyone escaping from a submarine at a depth greater than that.’

‘They’d have to use the conning-tower?’

‘I suppose. There is a for’ard escape hatch – it’s really an access hatch to the deck gun. But the chances are high that the fore part of the U-boat is completely flooded, so that’s useless. There may be an after escape hatch, I don’t know. The conning-tower is probably their best bet, or would have been if we hadn’t rammed their vessel.’

‘We didn’t hit anywhere near the conning-tower.’

‘We didn’t have to. The compressive power of something like ten thousand tons dead weight has to be pretty fierce. The conning-tower hatch may have been jammed solid. Whether it would be possible to ease it or not I wouldn’t know. Worse still, it may have sprung open and with a hundred gallons of water a second pouring down into the control room there is no way anyone is going to get out, they’d probably be battered unconscious in the first few seconds. I’m going down on deck now. Keep going round to starboard and keep her astern till you stop, then heave to. I’ll take the motorboat out as soon as you’ve lost enough way.’

‘What’s the point in taking the boat out if there are going to be no survivors?’

McKinnon led him out on to the port wing and astern to where three men were floundering about in the water. ‘Those three characters. The gun crew. As far as I could tell they were only wearing overalls and oilskins. Maybe the odd jersey or two, but that would make no difference. Leave them out there another ten, fifteen minutes and they’ll just freeze to death.’

‘Let them. Those three bastards hit us aft three times. For all we can tell, some of those shells may have exploded inside the hospital.’

‘I know, George, I know. But I dare say there’s something in the Geneva Convention about it.’ McKinnon clapped him lightly on the shoulder and went below.

Just outside the deck entrance to the hospital McKinnon found half a dozen people waiting for him – Patterson, Jamieson, Curran, Trent, McCrimmon and Stephen. Patterson said: ‘I believe we’ve been in some sort of collision, Bo’sun.’

‘Yes, sir. U-boat.’

‘And?’

McKinnon pointed downwards. ‘I just hope we don’t go the same way. For’ard watertight bulkheads, sir?’

‘Of course. At once.’ He looked at McCrimmon and Stephen, who left without a word. ‘And next, Bo’sun?’

‘We were hit three times aft, sir. Any damage in the hospital?’

‘Some. All three hit the hospital area. One appears to have exploded when it passed through the bulkhead between A and B wards. Some injuries, no fatalities. Dr Sinclair is attending to them.’

‘Not Dr Singh?’

‘He was in the recovery room with the two injured seamen from the Argos. Door’s jammed and we can’t get inside.’

‘Shell explode in there?’

‘Nobody seems to know.’

‘Nobody seems – but that’s the next compartment to A ward. Are they all deaf in there?’

‘They were. It was the first shell that exploded between the two wards. That deafened them all right.’

‘Ah. Well, the recovery room will just have to wait. What happened to the third shell?’

‘Didn’t explode.’

‘Where is it?’

‘In the dining area. Rolling about quite a bit.’

‘Rolling about quite a bit,’ McKinnon repeated slowly. ‘That’s handy. Just because it didn’t go off on impact –’ He broke off and said to Curran: ‘A couple of heaving lines in the motorboat. Don’t forget your knives.’ He went inside and reappeared within twenty seconds, carrying a very small, very innocuous-looking shell, threw it over the side and said to Jamieson: ‘You have your gun, sir?’

‘I have my gun. What do you want the heaving lines for, Bo’sun?’

‘Same reason as your gun, sir. To discourage people. Tie them up if we have to. If there are any survivors, they’re not going to feel very kindly disposed because of what we’ve done to their boat and their shipmates.’

‘But those people aren’t armed. They’re submariners.’

‘Don’t you believe it, sir. Many officers carry hand guns. Petty officers, too, for all I know.’

‘Even if they had guns, what could they do?’

‘Take us hostage, that’s what they could do. And if they could take us hostage they could still take over the ship.’

Jamieson said, almost admiringly: ‘You don’t trust many people, do you?’

‘Some. I just don’t believe in taking chances.’

The motorboat was less than fifty yards away from the spot where the U-boat’s gun crew were still floundering about in the water when Jamieson touched McKinnon on the arm and pointed out over the starboard side.

‘Bubbles. Lots of little bubbles.’

‘I see them. Could be there’s someone coming up.’

‘I thought they always came up in a great big air bubble.’

‘Never. Big air bubble when they leave the submarine, perhaps. But that collapses at once.’ McKinnon eased back on the throttle as he approached the group in the water.

‘Someone’s just broken the surface,’ Jamieson said. ‘No, by God, two of them.’

‘Yes. They’ve got inflatable life jackets on. They’ll keep.’ McKinnon stopped the engines and waited while Curran, Trent and Jamieson literally hauled the gun crew aboard – they seemed incapable of helping themselves. The trio were young, hardly more than boys, teeth chattering, shivering violently and trying hard not to look terrified.

‘We search this lot?’ Jamieson said. ‘Tie them up?’

‘Good lord, no. Look at their hands – they’re blue and frozen stiff. If they couldn’t even hang on to the gunwale, and they couldn’t, how could they press the trigger of a gun even if they could unbutton their oilskins, which they can’t?’

McKinnon opened the throttle and headed for the two men who had surfaced from the submarine. As he did, a third figure bobbed to the surface some two hundred yards beyond.

The two men they hauled aboard seemed well enough. One of them was a dark-haired, dark-eyed man in his late twenties: his face was lean, intelligent and watchful. The other was very young, very blond and very apprehensive. McKinnon addressed the older man in German.

‘What is your name and rank?’

‘Obersteuermann Doenitz.’

‘Doenitz? Very appropriate.’ Admiral Doenitz was the brilliant C-in-C of the German submarine fleet. ‘Do you have a gun, Doenitz? If you say you haven’t and I find one I shall have to shoot you because you are not to be trusted. Do you have a gun?’

Doenitz shrugged, reached under his blouse and produced a rubber-wrapped pistol.

‘Your friend here?’

‘Young Hans is an assistant cook.’ Doenitz spoke in fluent English. He sighed. ‘Hans is not to be trusted with a frying-pan, far less a gun.’

McKinnon believed him and headed for the third survivor. As they approached McKinnon could see that the man was at least unconscious for his neck was bent forward and he was face down in the water. The reason for this was not far to seek. His Dräger apparatus was only partially inflated and the excess oxygen had gone to the highest point of the bag at the back of the neck, forcing his head down. McKinnon drew alongside, caught the man by his life jacket, put his hand under his chin and lifted the head from the water.

He studied the face for only a second or two, then said to Doenitz: ‘You know him, of course.’

‘Heissmann, our First Lieutenant.’

McKinnon let the face fall back into the water. Doenitz looked at him with a mixture of astonishment and anger.

‘Aren’t you going to bring him aboard? He may just be unconscious, just half-drowned perhaps.’

‘Your First Lieutenant is dead.’ McKinnon’s voice carried total conviction. ‘His mouth is full of blood. Ruptured lungs. He forgot to breathe out oxygen on the way up.’

Doenitz nodded. ‘Perhaps he didn’t know that he had to do that. I didn’t know. I’m afraid we don’t have much time for escape training these days.’ He looked curiously at McKinnon. ‘How did you know? You’re not a submariner.’

‘I was. Twelve years.’

Curran called from the bows: ‘There’s one more, Bo’sun. Just surfaced. Dead ahead.’

McKinnon had the motorboat alongside the struggling man in less than a minute and had him brought aboard and laid on the thwarts. He lay there in a peculiar position, knees against his chest, his hands hugging both knees and trying to roll from side to side. He was obviously in considerable pain. McKinnon forced open the mouth, glanced briefly inside, then gently closed it again.

‘Well, this man knew enough to exhale oxygen on the way up.’ He looked at Doenitz. ‘You know this man, of course.’

‘Of course. Oberleutnant Klaussen.’

‘Your captain?’ Doenitz nodded. ‘Well, he’s obviously in considerable pain but I wouldn’t think he’s in any danger. You can see he’s been cut on the forehead – possibly banged his head on the escape hatch on the way out. But that’s not enough to account for his condition, for he must have been conscious all the way up or he wouldn’t have got rid of the oxygen in his lungs. Were you travelling underwater or on the surface during the night?’

‘On the surface. All the time.’

‘That rules out carbon dioxide, which can be poisonous; but you can’t build up carbon dioxide when the conning-tower is open. From the way he’s holding his chest and legs it would seem to be caisson disease; for that’s where the effects hurt most, but it can’t be that either.’

‘Caisson disease?’

‘Diver’s bends. When there’s too rapid a buildup of nitrogen bubbles in the blood when you’re making a very fast ascent.’ McKinnon, with the motor boat under full throttle, was heading directly for the San Andreas, which was stopped in the water at not much more than half a mile’s distance. ‘But for that you have to be breathing in a high pressure atmosphere for quite some time and your captain certainly wasn’t below long enough for that. Perhaps he escaped from a very great depth, perhaps a greater depth than anyone has ever escaped from a submarine and then I wouldn’t know what the effects might be. We have a doctor aboard. I don’t suppose he’ll know either – the average doctor can spend a lifetime and not come across a case like this. But at least he can stop the pain.’

The motor boat passed close by the bows of the San Andreas which, remarkably, appeared to be quite undamaged. But that damage had been done was unquestionable – the San Andreas was at least three feet down by the head, which was no more than was to be expected if the for’ard compartments had been flooded, as, inevitably, they must have been.

McKinnon secured alongside and half-helped, half-carried the semi-conscious U-boat captain to the head of the gangway. Patterson was waiting for him there, as was Dr Sinclair and three other members of the engine-room staff.

‘This is the U-boat captain,’ McKinnon said to Dr Sinclair. ‘He may be suffering from the bends – you know, nitrogen poisoning.’

‘Alas, Bo’sun, we have no decompression chamber aboard.’

‘I know, sir. He may just be suffering from the effects of having surfaced from a great depth. I don’t know, all I know is he’s suffering pretty badly. The rest are well enough, all they need is dry clothing.’ He turned to Jamieson who had just joined him on deck. ‘Perhaps, sir, you would be kind enough to supervise their change of clothing?’

‘You mean to make sure that they’re not carrying anything they shouldn’t be carrying?’

McKinnon smiled and turned to Patterson. ‘How are the for’ard watertight bulkheads, sir?’

‘Holding. I’ve had a look myself. Bent and buckled but holding.’

‘With your permission, sir, I’ll get a diving suit and have a look.’

‘Now? Couldn’t that wait a bit?’

‘I’m afraid waiting is the one thing we can’t afford. We can be reasonably certain that the U-boat was in contact with Trondheim right up to the moment that he signalled us to stop – I think it would be very silly of us to assume otherwise. Flannelfoot is still with us. The Germans know exactly where we are. Till now, for reasons best known to themselves, they have been treating us with kid gloves. Maybe now they’ll be feeling like taking those gloves off, I shouldn’t imagine that Admiral Doenitz will take too kindly to the idea of one of his U-boats having been sunk by a hospital ship. I think it behoves us, sir, to get out of here and with all speed. Trouble is, we’ve got to make up our minds whether to go full speed ahead or full speed astern.’

‘Ah. Yes. I see. You have a point.’

‘Yes, sir. If the hole in our bows is big enough, then if we make any speed at all I don’t see the watertight bulkheads standing up to the pressure for very long. In that case we’d have to go astern. I don’t much fancy that. It not only slows us down but it makes steering damn difficult. But it can be done. I knew of a tanker that hit a German U-boat about seven hundred miles from its port of destination. It made it – going astern all the way. But I don’t much care for the idea of going stern first all the way to Aberdeen, especially if the weather breaks up.’

‘You make me feel downright nervous, Bo’sun. With all speed, Bo’sun, as you say, with all speed. How long will this take?’

‘Just as long as it takes me to collect a rubber suit, mask and torch, then get there and back again. At the most, twenty minutes.’

McKinnon was back in fifteen minutes. Mask in one hand, torch in the other, he climbed up the gangway to where Patterson was awaiting him at the top.

‘We can go ahead, sir,’ McKinnon said. ‘Full ahead, I should think.’

‘Good, good, good. Damage relatively slight, I take it. How small is the hole?’

‘It’s not a small hole. It’s a bloody great hole, big as a barn door. There’s a ragged piece of that U-boat, about eight foot by six, embedded in our bows. Seems to be forming a pretty secure plug and I should imagine that the faster we go the more securely it will be lodged.’

‘And if we stop, or have to go astern, or run into heavy weather – I mean, what if the plug falls off?’

‘I’d be glad, sir, if you didn’t talk about such things.’

Chapter Eight

‘And what are you doing there?’ McKinnon looked down on the recumbent form of Janet Magnusson who, her face very pale, was lying on, not in, the bed nearest the desk where she normally sat.

‘I normally have a rest at this time of the morning.’ She tried to inject an acid tone into her voice but her heart wasn’t in it and she smiled, albeit wanly. ‘I have been badly wounded, Archie McKinnon. Thanks to you.’

‘Oh dear.’ McKinnon sat on her bedside and put his hand on her shoulder. ‘I am sorry. How –’

‘Not there.’ She pushed his hand away. ‘That’s where I’ve been wounded.’

‘Sorry again.’ He looked up at Dr Sinclair. ‘How bad is badly?’

‘Nurse Magnusson has a very slight graze on her right shoulder. Piece of shrapnel.’ Sinclair pointed to a jagged hole in the bulkhead about six feet above deck level, then indicated the scarred and pock-marked deckhead. ‘That’s where the rest of the shrapnel appears to have gone. But Nurse Magnusson was standing at the time and caught quite a bit of the blast effect. She was thrown across the bed she’s on now – it was, providentially, empty at the time – and it took us ten minutes to bring her round. Shock, that’s all.’

‘Layabout.’ McKinnon stood. ‘I’ll be back. Anybody else hurt here, Doctor?’

‘Two. At the far end of the ward. Seamen from the Argos. One in the chest, the other in the leg. Shrapnel ricocheting from the ceiling and pretty spent shrapnel at that. Didn’t even have to dig it out. Not even bandages – cotton wool and plaster.’

McKinnon looked at the man, restless and muttering, in the bed opposite. ‘Oberleutnant Klaussen – the U-boat commander. How is he?’

‘Delirious, as you can see. The trouble with him – I’ve no idea. I tend to go along with your suggestion that he must have come up from a very great depth. If that’s the case, I’m dealing with the unknown. Sorry and all that.’

‘I hardly think there’s any need to be sorry, sir. Every other doctor would be in the same boat. I don’t think anyone has ever escaped from a depth greater than two hundred and fifty feet before. If Klaussen did – well, it’s uncharted territory. There simply can’t be any literature on it.’

‘Archie.’

McKinnon turned round. Janet Magnusson was propped up on an elbow.

‘You’re supposed to be resting.’

‘I’m getting up. What are you doing with that sledgehammer and chisel in your hand?’

‘I’m going to try to open a jammed door.’

‘I see.’ She was silent for some moments while she bit her lower lip. ‘The recovery room, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Dr Singh and the two men from the Argos – the one with the multiple burns and the other with the fractured pelvis – they’re in there, aren’t they?’

‘So I’m told.’

‘Well, why don’t you go to them?’ She sounded almost angry. ‘Why stand around here blethering and doing nothing?’

‘I hardly think that’s quite fair, Nurse Magnusson.’ Jamieson, who was accompanying McKinnon and Sinclair, spoke in tones of gentle reproof. ‘Doing nothing? The Bo’sun does more than the whole lot of us put together.’

‘I’m thinking perhaps there’s no great hurry, Janet,’ McKinnon said. ‘People have been banging on that door for the past fifteen minutes and there’s been no reply. Could mean anything or nothing. Point is, there was no point in trying to force that door till there was a doctor at hand and Dr Sinclair has just finished in the wards.’

‘What you mean – what you really mean, Archie – is that you don’t think the people inside the recovery room will be requiring the services of a doctor.’

‘I hope I’m wrong but, yes, that’s what I’m afraid of.’

She sank back in her bed. ‘As Mr Jamieson didn’t say, I was talking out of turn. I’m sorry.’

‘There’s really nothing to be sorry about.’ McKinnon turned away and went into Ward A. The first person to catch his attention was Margaret Morrison. Even paler than Janet Magnusson had been, she was sitting in her chair behind her desk while Sister Maria carefully tied a bandage around her head. McKinnon didn’t immediately go to her but went to the far right-hand side of the ward where Lieutenant Ulbricht was sitting up in his bed while Bowen and Kennet lay flat in theirs.

‘Three more victims,’ Sinclair said. ‘Well, unfortunates, I should say. While the blast in Ward B went upwards I’m afraid it was slightly downwards here …’

McKinnon looked at Ulbricht. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Ulbricht had a thick bandage round his neck.

‘I’ll tell you what’s the matter with him,’ Sinclair said. ‘Luck. The devil’s own luck. A piece of shrapnel – it must have been as sharp as a razor – sliced through the side of his neck. Another quarter-inch to the right and it would have sliced through the carotid artery as well and then he’d have been very much the late Lieutenant Ulbricht.’

Ulbricht looked at McKinnon with little in the way of expression on his face. ‘I thought you sent us down here for our own safety.’

‘That’s what I thought, too. I was certain they’d concentrate their fire on the bridge. I’m making no excuses but I don’t think I miscalculated. I think the U-boat’s gun crew panicked. I’m sure that Klaussen gave no instructions to fire into the hull.’

‘Klaussen?’

‘Oberleutnant. The captain. He survived. He seems fairly ill.’

‘How many survivors altogether?’

‘Six.’

‘And the rest you sent to the bottom.’

‘I’m the guilty party, if that’s what you mean. I don’t feel particularly guilty. But I’m responsible, yes.’

‘I suppose that makes two of us. Responsible but not guilty.’ Ulbricht shrugged and seemed disinclined to continue the conversation. McKinnon moved to the Captain’s bed.

‘Sorry to hear you’ve been hurt again, sir.’

‘Me and Kennet. Left thighs. Both of us. Dr Sinclair tells me it’s only a scratch and as I can’t see it I have to take his word for it. Doesn’t feel like a scratch, I can tell you. Well, Archie my boy, you’ve done it. I knew you would. If it weren’t for those damned bandages I’d shake hands with you. Congratulations. You must feel pretty good about this.’

‘I don’t feel good at all, sir. If there were any survivors and if they managed to find a sealed compartment they’ll be gasping out their lives – now – on the floor of the Norwegian Sea.’

‘There’s that, of course, there’s that. But not to reproach yourself, Archie. Them or us. Unpleasant, but still well done.’ Bowen adroitly switched the subject. ‘Building up speed, aren’t we? Limited damage up front, I take it.’

‘Far from limited, sir. We’re badly holed. But there’s a large chunk of the U-boat’s casing embedded in that hole. Let’s just hope it stays there.’

‘We can but pray, Bo’sun, we can but pray. And regardless of how you feel, every person aboard this boat is deeply in your debt.’

‘I’ll see you later, sir.’

He turned away, looked at Margaret Morrison, then at Dr Sinclair. ‘Is she hurt? Badly, I mean.’

‘She’s the worst of the lot but nothing dangerous, you understand. She was sitting by Captain Bowen’s bedside at the time and was hit twice. Nasty gash on the upper right arm and a minor scalp wound – that’s the one Sister Maria has just finished bandaging.’

‘Shouldn’t she be in bed?’

‘Yes. I tried to insist on it but I can tell you I won’t be doing it again. How about you trying?’

‘No, thank you.’ McKinnon approached the girl, who looked at him with reproachful brown eyes that were slightly dulled with pain.

‘This is all your fault, Archie McKinnon.’

McKinnon sighed. ‘Exactly what Janet said to me. It’s difficult to please everybody. I’m very, very sorry.’

‘And so you should be. Not for this, though. The physical pain, I can tell you, is nothing compared to the mental hurt. You deceived me. Our greatly respected Bo’sun is exactly what he accused me of being – a fibber.’

‘Oh dear. Long-suffering Bo’sun back in court again. What am I supposed to have done wrong now?’

‘Not only that but you’ve made me feel very, very foolish.’

‘I have? I would never do that.’

‘You did. Remember on the bridge you suggested – in jest, of course – that you might fight the U-boat with a fusillade of stale bread and old potatoes. Well, something like that.’

‘Ah!’

‘Yes, ah! Remember that emotional scene on the bridge – well, emotional on my part, I cringe when I think about it – when I begged you to fight them and fight them and fight them. You remember, don’t you?’

‘Yes, I think I do.’

‘He thinks he does! You had already made up your mind to fight them, hadn’t you?’

‘Well, yes.’

‘Well, yes,’ she mimicked. ‘You had already made up your mind to ram that U-boat.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me, Archie?’

‘Because you might have casually mentioned it to somebody who might have casually mentioned it – unknowingly, of course – to Flannelfoot who would far from casually have mentioned it to the U-boat captain who would have made damn certain that he would never put himself in a position where he could be rammed. You might even – again unknowingly – have mentioned it directly to Flannelfoot.’

She made no attempt to conceal the hurt in her eyes. ‘So you don’t trust me. You said you did.’

‘I trust you absolutely. I did say that.’

‘Then why –’

‘It was one of those then-and-now things. Then you were Sister Morrison. I didn’t know there was a Margaret Morrison. I know now.’

‘Ah!’ She pursed her lips, then smiled, clearly mollified. ‘I see.’

McKinnon left her, joined Dr Sinclair and Jamieson, and together they went to the door of the recovery room. Jamieson was carrying with him an electric drill, a hammer and some tapered wooden pegs. Jamieson said: ‘You saw the entry hole made by the shell when you went up to examine the bows?’

‘Yes. Just on – well, an inch or two above – the waterline. Could be water inside. Or not. It’s impossible to say.’

‘How high up?’

‘Eighteen inches, say. Anybody’s guess.’

Jamieson plugged in his drill and pressed the trigger. The tungsten carbide bit sank easily into the heavy steel of the door. Sinclair said: ‘What happens if there’s water behind?’

‘Tap in one of those wooden pegs, then try higher up.’

‘Through,’ Jamieson said. He withdrew the bit. ‘Clear.’

McKinnon struck the steel handle twice with the sledge. The handle did not even budge a fraction of an inch. On the third blow it sheared off and fell to the deck.

‘Pity,’ McKinnon said. ‘But we have to find out.’

Jamieson shrugged. ‘No option. Torch?’

‘Please.’ Jamieson left and was back in two minutes with the torch, followed by McCrimmon carrying the gas cylinder and a lamp on the end of a wandering lead. Jamieson lit the oxy-acetylene flame and began to carve a semi-circle round the space where the handle had been: McCrimmon plugged in the wandering lead and the wire-caged lamp burned brightly.

Jamieson said from behind his plastic face-shield: ‘We’re only assuming that this is where the door is jammed.’

‘If we’re wrong we’ll cut away round the hinges. I don’t think we’ll have to. The door isn’t buckled in any way. It’s nearly always the lock or latch that’s jammed.’

The compartment was filled with stinging acrid smoke when Jamieson finally straightened. He gave the lock a couple of blows with the side of his fist, then desisted.

‘I’m sure I’ve cut through but the damn thing doesn’t seem to want to fall away.’

‘The latch is still in its socket.’ McKinnon tapped the door with his sledge, not heavily, and the semi-circular piece of metal fell away inside. He hit the door again, heavily this time, and it gave an inch. With a second blow it gave several more inches. He laid aside the sledge and pushed against the door until, squeaking and protesting, it was almost wide open. He took the wandering lead from McCrimmon and went inside.

There was water on the deck, not much, perhaps two inches. Bulkheads and deckhead had been heavily starred and pock-marked by shrapnel from the exploding shell. The entrance hole formed by the shell in the outer bulkhead was a jagged circle not more than a foot above the deck.

The two men from the Argos were still lying in their beds while Dr Singh, head bowed to his chest, was sitting in a small armchair. All three men seemed unharmed, unmarked. The Bo’sun brought the light closer to Dr Singh’s face. Whatever shrapnel may have been embedded in his body, none had touched his face. The only sign of anything untoward were tiny trickles of blood from his ears and nose. McKinnon handed the lamp to Dr Sinclair, who stooped over his dead colleague.

‘Good God! Dr Singh.’ He examined him for a few seconds, then straightened. ‘That this should happen to a fine doctor, a fine man like this.’

‘You didn’t really expect to find anything else, did you, Doctor?’

‘No. Not really. Had to be this or something like this.’ He examined, briefly, the two men lying in their beds, shook his head and turned away. ‘Still comes as a bit of a shock.’ It was obvious that he was referring to Dr Singh.

McKinnon nodded. ‘I know. I don’t want to sound callous, Doctor, I know it might sound that way, but – you won’t be needing those men any more? I mean, no postmortems, nothing of that kind.’

‘Good lord, no. Death must have been instantaneous. Concussion. If it’s any consolation, they died without knowing.’ He paused. ‘You might look through their clothing, Bo’sun. Or maybe it’s in their effects or perhaps Captain Andropolous has the details.’

‘You mean names, birth-dates, things like that, sir?’

‘Yes. I have to fill out the death certificates.’

‘I’ll attend to that.’

‘Thank you, Bo’sun.’ Sinclair essayed a smile but it could hardly have been rated as a success. ‘As usual, I’ll leave the grisly part to you.’ With that he was gone, a man glad to be gone. The Bo’sun turned to Jamieson.

‘Could I borrow McCrimmon, sir?’

‘Of course.’

‘McCrimmon, go and find Curran and Trent, will you? Tell them what’s happened. Curran will know what size of canvases to bring.’

‘Needles and thread, Bo’sun?’

‘Curran is a sailmaker. Just leave it to him. And you could tell him that it’s a clean job this time.’

McCrimmon left and Jamieson said: ‘A clean job? It’s a lousy job. You always get the dirty end of the stick, McKinnon. I honestly don’t know how you keep on doing it. If there’s anything nasty or unpleasant to be done, you’re number one on everybody’s list.’

‘Not this time I’m not. This time, sir, you’re number one on my list. Someone has to tell the Captain. Someone has to tell Mr Patterson. Worst of all – much the worst of all – someone has to tell the nursing staff. That last is not a job I’d care for at all.’

‘The girls. God, I hadn’t thought of that. I don’t care for it either. Don’t you think, Bo’sun – seeing you know them so well, I mean –’

‘No, I don’t think, sir.’ McKinnon half smiled. ‘Surely as an officer, you wouldn’t think of delegating to an underling something you wouldn’t do yourself?’

‘Underling! God, that’s rich. Very well, never let it be said that I shirked my duty but as from now I feel one degree less sorry for you.’

‘Yes, sir. One other thing: when this place is clear, would you have a couple of your men weld a patch over this hole in the bulkhead? Heaven knows they’ve had enough practice in welding patches recently.’

‘Of course. Just let’s hope it’s the last patch.’

Jamieson left and McKinnon looked idly around him. His attention was caught by a fairly large wooden box in one corner and that only because its lid had been slightly sprung by the shock of the explosion. McKinnon, not without some effort, lifted the lid and peered for some seconds at the contents. He replaced the lid, retrieved his sledge and tapped the lid securely back into place. Stamped on the lid in big red letters were the words CARDIAC ARREST.

McKinnon, rather wearily, sat down at the table in the dining area. The injured sister and nurse, both looking as if they should have been in bed – they had been relieved by Sister Maria and Nurse Irene – were sitting there, as was, inevitably, Lieutenant Ulbricht, who not only gave the impression of having completely forgotten his narrow brush with death but was sufficiently back on balance to have found himself a seat between the two girls. Sinclair, Patterson and Jamieson were clustered round one end of the table. McKinnon looked consideringly at Ulbricht, then addressed himself to Dr Sinclair.

‘Not calling your professional competence into question, sir, but is the Lieutenant fit to be up and around?’

‘My professional competence is irrelevant.’ One could see that Dr Sinclair had not yet recovered from the shock of the death of his colleague. ‘The Lieutenant, like Sister Morrison and Nurse Magnusson, is uncooperative, intransigent and downright disobedient. The three of them would probably call it having minds of their own. Lieutenant Ulbricht, as it so happens, is in no danger. The injury to his neck couldn’t even be described as a flesh wound. Torn skin, more like.’

‘Then perhaps, Lieutenant, you would be prepared to take another fix? We haven’t had one since last night.’

‘At your disposal, Bo’sun.’ If the Lieutenant harboured any ill will towards the Bo’sun for the deaths of his fellow countrymen, he was at pains to conceal it. ‘Any time. I suggest just on noon.’

Patterson said: ‘You finished through in the recovery room, Bo’sun?’ McKinnon nodded. ‘Well, one gets tired of keeping on saying thank-you so I’ll spare you that. When do we bury them?’

‘Your decision, sir.’

‘Early afternoon, before it starts to get dark.’ Patterson laughed without humour. ‘My decision. Chief Engineer Patterson is your man when it comes to making decisions on matters that are of no importance. I don’t recall making the decision to attack that submarine.’

‘I did consult with Captain Bowen, sir.’

‘Ah!’ It was Margaret Morrison. ‘So that was what that two-minute conference was about.’

‘Of course. He approved.’

Janet said: ‘And if he hadn’t? Would you still have rammed that U-boat?’

McKinnon said patiently: ‘He not only approved, he was enthusiastic. Very enthusiastic. With all respect to Lieutenant Ulbricht here, the Captain wasn’t feeling too kindly disposed towards the Germans. Not at that moment of time, anyway.’

‘You’re being evasive, Archie McKinnon. Answer my question. If he had disapproved would you still have attacked?’

‘Yes. No need to mention that to the Captain, though.’

‘Nurse Magnusson.’ Patterson smiled at Janet to rob his words of any offence. ‘I hardly think Mr McKinnon deserves either interrogation or disapproval. I think he deserves congratulations for a magnificent job well done.’ He rose, went to the cupboard where Dr Singh had kept his private supplies and returned with a bottle of Scotch and some glasses, poured a measure for McKinnon and set it before him. ‘I think Dr Singh would have approved of this.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ McKinnon looked down at the glass on the table. ‘He won’t be needing this any more.’

There was silence round the table. Predictably, it was broken by Janet.

‘I think, Archie, that that was less than a gracious remark.’

‘You think so now. Maybe. Maybe not.’ There was no hint of apology in his voice. He raised his glass and sipped from it. ‘Knew his Scotch, did Dr Singh.’

The silence was longer this time, longer and strained. It was Sinclair, embarrassed by the silence, who broke it.

‘I’m sure we all echo Mr Patterson’s sentiments, Mr McKinnon. A splendid job. But – to quote yourself, I’m not questioning your professional competence – you did take a bit of a chance, didn’t you?’

‘You mean I endangered the lives of all aboard?’

‘I didn’t say that.’ His look of discomfiture made it evident that he had thought it, if not said it.

‘It was a calculated risk,’ McKinnon said, ‘but not all that calculated. The odds were on my side, quite heavily, I believe. I am quite certain that the U-boat was under orders that we were to be seized, not sunk, which is why I am equally certain that the gun crew fired into the San Andreas without orders.

‘The U-boat captain, Oberleutnant Klaussen, was the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was tired or immature or inexperienced or incompetent or over-confident – he may have been all those things at the same time. What is certain is that an experienced U-boat commander would never have put himself in a position where he was running parallel to us and less than a half a mile away. He should have stayed at a couple of miles’ distance – which in an emergency would have given him plenty of time to crash dive – ordered us to send across a boat, loaded it up with a half-dozen men with machine pistols and sent them back to take over the San Andreas. We could have done nothing to stop them. Even better, he should have closed up from astern, a position that would have made ramming impossible, then eased up alongside the gangway.

‘And of course, he was too confident, too sure of himself, too relaxed by half. When he saw us lowering the gangway, he was convinced the game was over. It never even occurred to him that a hospital ship could be used as a man-o’-war. And he was either so blind or so stupid that he never even noticed that we were steadily closing in on him all the time we were in contact. In short, he made every mistake in the book. It would have been difficult to pick a worse man for the job.’

There was a long and rather uncomfortable silence. Mario, unobtrusive and efficient as ever, had filled all the glasses on the table but no one, with the exception of the Bo’sun, had as yet touched theirs.

Sinclair said: ‘On the basis of what you say, the U-boat captain was indeed the wrong man for the job. And, of course, you wholly out-manoeuvered him. But surely the danger still existed. In the actual collision, I mean. The U-boat could have sunk us and not vice versa. We are only made of thin sheet plating: the hull of the submarine is immensely strong.’

‘I would not presume to lecture you on medical matters, Dr Sinclair.’

Sinclair smiled. ‘Meaning I should not presume to advise you on matters maritime. But, Mr McKinnon, you’re a bo’sun on a merchant vessel.’

‘Today, yes. Before that I spent twelve years in the submarine service.’

‘Oh no.’ Sinclair shook his head. ‘Too much, just too much. This is definitely not Dr Sinclair’s day.’

‘I’ve known a good number of cases of collisions between merchant vessels and submarines. In nearly all cases those collisions were between friend and friend or, in peacetime, between a submarine and a harmless foreign vessel. The results were always the same. The surface vessel came off best.

‘It doesn’t seem logical but it does make sense. Take a hollow glass sphere with walls, say, of a third of an inch in diameter, submerge it to a very considerable depth – I’m talking of hundreds of feet – and it still won’t implode. Bring it to the surface, give it a light tap with a hammer and it will shatter into a hundred pieces. Same with the pressure hull of a submarine. It can resist pressure at great depths but on the surface a short sharp blow, as from the bows of a merchant ship, will cause it to rupture. Admittedly, the chances of the submarine are not improved by the fact that the merchant ship may displace many thousands of tons and be travelling at a fair speed. On the other hand, even a vessel as small as a trawler can sink a submarine. Point is, Dr Sinclair, it wasn’t all that dangerous: I hadn’t much doubt as to what the outcome would be.’

‘Point taken, Mr McKinnon. You see before you a rueful cobbler who will stick to his last from now on.’

Patterson said: ‘This ever happen to you?’

‘No. If it had, the chances are very high that I wouldn’t be here now. I know plenty of instances. When I was in the service, the trade as we called it, we had a maxim which said, in effect, never mind the enemy, just watch out for your friends. Back in the Twenties, a British submarine – the MI it was – was accidentally struck by a merchant ship off the Devon coast. All died. Not long afterwards the American SI was overrun by the Italian passenger liner City of Rome. All died. Some time later, another American submarine was overrun by a coastguard destroyer off Cape Cod. All died. The Poseidon, British, was sent to the bottom by a Japanese ship. Accident. It was off the north China coast. A good number of survivors, but some died from the diver’s bends. In the early years of the war, the Surcouf, crewed by the Free French and the biggest submarine in the world – so big that it was called a submarine cruiser – was sunk in the Caribbean by a ship in a convoy she was escorting. The Surcouf had a crew of a hundred and fifty: all died.’ McKinnon passed a hand across his eyes. ‘There were others. I forgot most of them. Ah, yes, there was the Umpire. Forty-one, I think. It took only a trawler, and not a very big one, to destroy her.’

Patterson said: ‘You’ve made your point, as Dr Sinclair says, you’ve more than made your point. I accept that the element of risk was not high. You’ll just have to bear with us, Mr McKinnon. Amateurs all. We didn’t know. You did. The fact that the U-boat is at the bottom of the sea is testimony enough to that.’ He paused. ‘I have to say, Bo’sun, that your achievement doesn’t appear to have given you any great satisfaction.’

‘It hasn’t.’

Patterson nodded. ‘I understand. To have been responsible for the deaths of so many men – well, it’s hardly a cheerful thought.’

McKinnon looked at him in mild surprise. ‘What’s done is done. So the U-boat’s gone and its crew with it. It’s no matter for celebration but it’s no matter for recrimination either. The next Allied merchant ship to have appeared on the cross hairs of Klaussen’s periscope sight would surely have gone to where Klaussen’s U-boat is now. The only good U-boat is a U-boat with a ruptured pressure hull at the bottom of the ocean.’

‘Then why –’ Patterson broke off, plainly at a loss for both thought and words, then said: ‘The hell with the pros and cons, it was still a splendid job. I didn’t fancy a prison camp any more than you. Well, I don’t feel as modest about your accomplishments as you do.’ He looked around the table. ‘A toast to our Bo’sun here – and to the memory of Dr Singh.’

‘I’m not nearly as modest as you think I am. I haven’t the slightest objection to drinking a toast to myself.’ McKinnon looked slowly around the other six. ‘But I draw the line at drinking a toast to the memory of Flannelfoot.’

McKinnon was becoming very expert at causing silences. This, the fourth such silence, was much longer and much more uncomfortable than the ones that had preceded it. The other six stared at him, looked at each other with questioning, frowning glances, then returned their exclusive attention to McKinnon. Again, it was Janet who broke the silence.

‘You do know what you’re saying, Archie? At least I hope you do.’

‘I’m afraid I do. Dr Sinclair, you had a cardiac arrest unit in the recovery room. Did you have another similar unit elsewhere?’

‘Yes. In the dispensary.’

‘And you were under strict instructions that, in an emergency, the dispensary unit was the one that was to be used first.’

‘That is so.’ Sinclair looked at him without understanding. ‘How on earth do you know that?’

‘Because I’m clever.’ The normally calm and unemotional Bo’sun made no attempt to conceal his bitterness. ‘After the event, I’m very clever.’ He shook his head. ‘There’s no point in you listening to me telling you how clever I haven’t been. I suggest you go – I suggest you all go – and have a look at the recovery room cardiac unit. The unit’s not there any more – it’s in Ward A, by the Sister’s desk. The lid is closed but the lock has been damaged as has the seal. You can wrench the lid open easily enough.’

All six looked at each other, then rose, left and were back within a minute. They sat in silence and remained in silence: they were either stunned by what they had seen or could not find the words to express their emotions.

‘Nice, is it not?’ McKinnon said. ‘A high-powered radio transceiver. Tell me, Dr Sinclair, did Dr Singh ever lock himself up in the recovery room?’

‘I couldn’t say.’ Sinclair shook his head quite violently, as if to clear it of disbelief. ‘May well have done for all anyone would know.’

‘But he did frequently go into that room alone?’

‘Yes. Alone. Quite often. He insisted on looking after the two injured men personally. Perfectly within his rights, of course – he was the man who had operated on them.’

‘Of course. After I’d found the radio – I still don’t know what made me open up that damned cardiac unit – I examined the lock, the keyhole part that Mr Jamieson had burnt away with his torch, and the latch. Both were heavily oiled. When Dr Singh turned that key you would have heard no sound of metal against metal or even the faintest click, not even if you were listening outside a couple of feet away – not that anyone could have had any conceivable reason for lurking outside a couple of feet away. After locking the door and checking that his two patients were under sedation – and if they weren’t he would make sure they very quickly were – he could use his radio to his heart’s content. Not, I should imagine, that he used it very often: the primary purpose, the essential purpose, of the radio was that it kept on sending out a continual homing location signal.’

‘I still can’t understand it or bring myself to believe it.’ Patterson spoke slowly, a man still trying to struggle free of a trance. ‘Of course it’s true, it has to be true, but that doesn’t make it any more credible. He was such a good man, such a kind man – and a fine doctor, was he not, Dr Sinclair?’

‘He was an excellent doctor. No question. And a brilliant surgeon.’

‘So was Dr Crippen for all I know,’ McKinnon said. ‘I find it as baffling as you do, Mr Patterson. I have no idea what his motives could have been and I should imagine that we’ll never find out. He was a very clever man, a very careful man who never took a chance, a man who totally covered his tracks – if it weren’t for a trigger-happy U-boat gun crew we’d never have found out who Flannelfoot was. His treachery may have had something to do with his background – although he spoke of Pakistani descent he was, of course, an Indian, and I believe that educated Indians have little reason to love the British Raj. May have had something to do with religion, if he had Pakistani roots he was probably a Muslim. The connection – I have no idea. There are a dozen other reasons apart from nationality and politics and religion that make a man a traitor. Where did those cardiac arrest units come from, Dr Sinclair?’

‘They were loaded aboard at Halifax, Nova Scotia.’

‘I know that. But do you know where they came from?’

‘I have no idea. Does it matter?’

‘It could. Point is, we don’t know whether Dr Singh installed the radio transceiver after the unit came aboard or whether the unit was supplied with the transceiver already installed. I would take long odds that the transceiver had already been installed. Very tricky thing to do aboard a boat. Difficult to smuggle the transceiver aboard, equally difficult to get rid of the cardiac unit that was inside the box.’

Sinclair said: ‘When I said I didn’t know where that unit came from, that’s quite true. But I know the country of origin. Britain.’

‘How can you tell?’

‘Stencil marks.’

‘Would there be many firms in Britain that make those things?’

‘Again, no idea. Not a question that comes up. A cardiac unit is a cardiac unit. Very few, I should imagine.’

‘Should be easy enough to trace the source – and I don’t for a moment imagine that the unit left the factory already equipped with the transceiver.’ He looked at Patterson. ‘Naval Intelligence should be very interested in finding out what route that cardiac unit took between the factory and the San Andreas and what stopovers it made en route.’

‘They should indeed. And it should take them no time at all to find out where it changed hands and who made the switch. Seems damned careless of our saboteur friends to have left themselves so wide open.’

‘Not really, sir. They simply never expected to be found out.’

‘I suppose. Tell me, Bo’sun, why did you take so long in getting around to telling us about Dr Singh?’

‘Because I had the same reaction as you – I had to work damned hard to convince myself of the evidence of my own eyes. Besides, you all held Dr Singh in very high regard – no one likes to be the bearer of bad news.’ He looked at Jamieson. ‘How long would it take, sir, to fix up a push button on Sister’s desk in Ward A so that it would ring a buzzer in, say, here, the bridge and the engine-room?’

‘No time at all.’ Jamieson paused briefly. ‘I know you must have an excellent reason for this – what shall we call it? – alarm system. May we know what it is?’

‘Of course – so that the sister or nurse in charge of Ward A can let us know if any unauthorized person comes into the ward. That unauthorized person will be in the same state of ignorance as we are at the moment – he will not know whether that transceiver is in working order or not. He has to assume that it is, he has to assume that we may be in a position to send out an SOS to the Royal Navy. It’s obviously all-important to the Germans that such a signal be not sent and that we remain alone and unprotected. They want us and they want us alive so the intruder will do everything in his power to destroy the set.’

‘Wait a minute, wait a minute,’ Patterson said. ‘Intruder? Unauthorized person? What unauthorized person. Dr Singh is dead.’

‘I’ve no idea who he is. All that I’m certain of is that he exists. You may remember that I said earlier that I thought we had more than one Flannelfoot aboard. Now I’m certain. Dr Sinclair, during the entire hour before Lieutenant Ulbricht and his Focke-Wulf made their appearance – and indeed for some time afterwards – you and Dr Singh were operating on the two wounded sailors – now the two dead sailors – from the Argos. That is correct?’

‘That’s so.’ Sinclair looked and sounded puzzled.

‘Did he leave the surgery at any time?’

‘Not once.’

‘And it was during this period that some unknown was busy tinkering with junction boxes and fuses. So, Flannelfoot number two.’

There was a brief silence, then Jamieson said: ‘We’re not very bright, are we? Of course you’re right. We should have worked that out for ourselves.’

‘You would have. Finding Dr Singh’s dead body and then finding out what he was is enough to put any other thought out of your mind. It’s only just now occurred to me. More time to get over the shock, I suppose.’

‘Objection,’ Patterson said. ‘Query, rather. If that set is smashed the Germans have no means of tracking us.’

‘They’re not tracking us now,’ McKinnon said patiently. ‘Battery leads are disconnected. Even if they weren’t, smashing the transceiver would be far the lesser of two evils. The last thing that Flannelfoot number two wants to see is the Royal Navy steaming over the horizon. They may have another transmitter cached away somewhere, although I very much doubt it. Dr Sinclair, would you please check the other cardiac unit in the dispensary, although I’m sure you’ll find it okay.’

‘Well,’ Sinclair said, ‘there’s at least some satisfaction in knowing that they’ve lost us.’

‘I wouldn’t bet on that, Doctor. In fact, I’d bet against it. A submarine can’t use its radio underwater but you have to remember that this lad was trailing us on the surface and was almost certainly in constant contact with its shore base. They’ll know exactly our position and course at the time of the sinking of the submarine. I wouldn’t even be surprised if there’s another U-boat tagging along behind us – for some damned reason we seem to be very important to the Germans. And you mustn’t forget that the further south-west we steam, the more hours of daylight we have. The sky’s pretty clear and the chances are good that a Focke-Wulf or some such will pick us up during the day.’

Patterson looked at him morosely. ‘You make a splendid Job’s comforter, Bo’sun.’

McKinnon smiled. ‘Sorry about that, sir. Just reckoning the odds, that’s all.’

‘The odds,’ Janet said. ‘You’re betting against our chances of getting to Aberdeen, aren’t you, Archie?’

McKinnon turned his hands palms upwards. ‘I’m not a gambler and there are too many unknowns. Any of your opinions is just as good as mine. I’m not betting against our chances, Janet. I think we have a fair chance of making it.’ He paused. ‘Three things. I’ll go and see Captain Andropolous and his men. I should think that “radio” is a pretty universal word. If not, sign language should work. Most of the crew of the Argos survived so the chances are good that there is a radio officer among them. He can have a look at this machine and see if we can transmit with it. Lieutenant Ulbricht, I’d be grateful if you could come up to the bridge when it’s time and take a noon sight. Third thing – if the lights in Ward A fail at any time, whoever is in charge is to press the panic button immediately.’

McKinnon made to rise, stopped and looked at his untouched drink.

‘Well, perhaps after all, a toast to the departed. An old Gaelic curse, rather. Dr Singh. May his shade walk on the dark side of hell tonight.’ He raised his glass. ‘To Flannelfoot.’

McKinnon drank his toast alone.

Chapter Nine

Less than ten minutes after McKinnon’s arrival on the bridge the phone rang.

‘Jamieson here,’ the voice said. ‘Things do keep happening aboard this damned ship. There’s been another accident.’

‘Accident?’

‘Accident on purpose. Incident, I should have said. Your pal Limassol.’

‘Limassol’ was the name that McKinnon had given to the man whom he had discovered to be the radio operator of the Argos. Apart from this discovery, the only other thing that the Bo’sun had been able to discover about him was that he was a Greek Cypriot from Limassol.

‘What’s happened to my pal Limassol?’

‘He’s been clobbered.’

‘Ah.’ McKinnon was not a man much given to exclamatory outbursts. ‘Inevitably. Who clobbered him?’

‘You should know better than to ask that question, Bo’sun. How the hell should I know who clobbered him? Nobody ever knows who does anything aboard the San Andreas. The Chief Officer was more prophetic than he knew when he gave this ship its new name. It’s a bloody disaster area. I can only give you the facts as I know them. Sister Maria was on duty when Limassol sat down to have a look at the transceiver. After a while he stood and made the motion of screwing his forefinger against the palm of his other hand. She guessed, correctly, that he wanted tools and sent for Wayland Day to take him down to the engine-room. I was there and gave him the tools he wanted. He also took a bridge-megger with him. Gave every impression of a man who knew what he was doing. On his way back, in the passageway leading to the mess-deck, he was clobbered. Something hard and heavy.’

‘How hard, how heavy?’

‘If you’ll just hang on for a moment. We have him down here in a bed in A Ward. Dr Sinclair is attending to him. He can tell you better than I can.’

There was a brief silence, then Sinclair was on the phone. ‘Bo’sun? Well, damn it, confirmation of the existence of Flannelfoot number two – not that any confirmation was needed, but I didn’t expect such quick and violent proof. This lad doesn’t hang around, does he? Dangerous, violent, acts on his own initiative and his mind’s working on the same wavelength as ours.’

‘Limassol?’

‘Pretty poorly, to say the least. Some metallic object, no question, could easily have been a crowbar. I would guess that the attacker’s intent was to kill him. With most people he might well have succeeded but this Limassol seems to have a skull like an elephant. Fractured, of course. I’ll have an X-ray. Routine and quite superfluous but mandatory. No signs of any brain damage, which is not to say that there isn’t any. But no obvious damage, not, at least, at this stage. Two things I’m pretty certain about, Mr McKinnon. He’ll live but he’s not going to be of much use to you – or anyone – for some time to come.’

‘As Dr Singh said about Lieutenant Cunningham – two hours, two days, two weeks, two months?’

‘Something like that. I’ve simply no idea. All I know is that if he does recover rapidly he’ll be of no possible use to you for days to come, so you can rule him out of any plans you may have.’

‘I’m fresh out of plans, Doctor.’

‘Indeed. We seem to be running out of options. Mr Jamieson would like to have another word with you.’

Jamieson came back on the phone. ‘Maybe this could have been my fault, Bo’sun. Maybe if I’d been thinking a bit more clearly and a bit quicker this wouldn’t have happened.’

‘How on earth were you to know that Limassol was going to be attacked?’

‘True. But I should have gone with him; not for his protection, but to watch him to see what he did to make the set work. That way I might have picked up enough to have some knowledge – rudimentary, but some – so that we wouldn’t have to rely entirely on one man.’

‘Flannelfoot would probably have clobbered you too. No point, sir, in trying to place the blame where none exists. The milk’s spilt and you didn’t spill it. Just give me enough time and I’ll find out it was all McKinnon’s fault.’

He hung up and related the gist of his conversation to Naseby, who had the wheel, and to Lieutenant Ulbricht, who had declared himself as feeling so fit that he no longer qualified as a bed patient.

‘Disturbing,’ Ulbricht said. ‘Our friend seems to be resourceful, very quick-thinking and very much a man of decision and action. I say “disturbing” because it has just occurred to me that he may have been Flannelfoot number one and not Dr Singh, in which case we can expect a great deal more unpleasantness. In any event, it seems to rule out the crew of the Argos – none of them speaks English so they couldn’t have known about the fake cardiac unit being in A Ward.’

McKinnon looked morose. ‘The fact that none of them appears to understand a word of English – they’re very good with their blank stares when you address them in that language – doesn’t mean that one or two of them don’t speak better English than I do. It doesn’t rule out the crew of the Argos. And, of course, it doesn’t rule out our own crew or the nine invalids we picked up in Murmansk.’

‘And how would they have known that the tampered cardiac unit had been transferred from the recovery room to Ward A? Only – let me see – only seven people knew about the transfer. The seven at the table this morning. One of us could have talked, perhaps?’

‘No.’ McKinnon was very definite.

‘Inadvertently?’

‘No.’

‘You trust us that much?’ Ulbricht smiled but there was no humour in it. ‘Or is it that you have to trust somebody?’

‘I trust you all right.’ McKinnon sounded a little weary. ‘Point is, it wasn’t necessary for anyone to talk. Everybody knows that Dr Singh and the two injured crewmen from the Argos are dead.’ McKinnon made a dismissive little gesture with his hand. ‘After all, we’re going to bury them inside the half-hour. Everybody knows that they were killed by an explosive blast inside the recovery room and our newest Flannelfoot must have known that the transceiver was there and may have guessed, or suspected, that the case of the cardiac unit had been damaged sufficiently to reveal the existence of the transmitter. It had not, in fact, but that was pure luck on my part.’

‘How do you explain the attack on the radio officer?’

‘Easily.’ McKinnon looked and sounded bitter. ‘Flannelfoot didn’t have to know where the radio was, all he had to know was that we had developed a certain interest in radio. Mr Jamieson tried to take some of the blame for the attack. Totally unnecessary when Mastermind McKinnon is around. My fault. My fault entirely. When I went down to find a radio officer the crew of the Argos were, as usual, in a corner by themselves. They weren’t alone in the mess-deck – some of the injured men we picked up in Murmansk and some of our crew were there – but not close enough to hear us talking. Not that there was any talking. I just said the word “radio” several times, low enough not to be overheard, and this lad from Limassol looked at me. Then I made a motion of tapping my forefinger as if sending a signal in Morse. After that, I spun the handle of an imaginary electrical generator. None of this could have been seen except by the crew of the Argos. Then I made my stupid mistake. I cupped my hand to my ear as if listening to something. By this time Limassol had got the message and was on his feet. But our new Flannelfoot had got the message too. Just one little movement of my hand and he got it. He’s not only violent and dangerous but very smart too. An unpleasant combination.’

‘Indeed it is,’ Ulbricht said. ‘You have it right, you must have, and I can’t see any reason for self-reproach. I used the right word back there – disturbing.’

Naseby said: ‘Do you by any chance remember who exactly was in the mess-deck when you were there?’

‘I do. Every crew member who wasn’t on watch. On the deckside, only two were on watch – you and Trent down in the Captain’s cabin there keeping an eye on the sextant and chronometer. All the off-duty engine-room staff. Two cooks and Mario. Seven of the seventeen invalids we picked up in Murmansk – the three who were supposed to be tubercular cases, the three who are supposed to be suffering from nervous breakdowns, and one of the exposure cases. He’s so wrapped in bandages that he can barely walk so he doesn’t come into consideration. A couple of nurses – they don’t come into consideration either. And there’s no doubt you’re right, Lieutenant – the crew of the Argos has to be in the clear.’

‘Well, that’s something,’ Ulbricht said. ‘A moment ago you were expressing reservations against them which I found rather puzzling, as in that long talk in the Captain’s cabin we had more or less agreed that the crew of the Argos was in the clear. The original suggestion, you may remember, came from you.’

‘I remember. Next thing you know I’ll be looking into the mirror and saying “and I don’t trust you, either”. Yes, I know I made the suggestion, but I still had this tiny doubt. At the time I more than suspected that we had another Flannelfoot aboard but I wasn’t certain until less than half an hour ago. It’s impossible to believe that it wasn’t our new Flannelfoot who blew the hole in the for’ard ballast room when we were alongside that sinking corvette. And it’s unthinkable – and for me this is the clincher – that a member of the Argos crew would deliberately set out to murder a person who was not only a crewmate but a fellow countryman.’

‘At least it’s something,’ Naseby said. ‘Brings it down to our own crew, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes, our crew – and at least six allegedly physical and mentally disturbed cripples from Murmansk.’

Naseby shook his head sorrowfully. ‘Archie, this trip is going to be the ruination of you. Never known you to be so terribly suspicious of everybody – and you’ve just said you could find yourself not even trusting yourself.’

‘If a nasty suspicious mind is any kind of hope for survival, George, then I’m going to keep on having just that kind of mind. You will remember that we had to leave Halifax in a tearing hurry, in a cargo ship little more than half converted to a hospital. Why? To get to Archangel and that with all possible speed. Then, after that little accident when we were alongside that corvette it became equally essential that we be diverted to Murmansk. Why?’

‘Well, we were listing a bit and down by the head.’

‘We had stopped making water, weather conditions were fair, we could have reached the White Sea, crossed it, and made Archangel without much trouble. But no, it was Murmansk or nothing. Again, why?’

‘So that the Russians could place that explosive charge in the ballast room.’ Ulbricht smiled. ‘I recall your words – our gallant allies.’

‘I recall them too. I wish I didn’t. We all make mistakes, I’m certainly no exception, and that was one of my biggest. The Russians didn’t place that charge – your people did.’

‘The Germans? Impossible!’

‘Lieutenant, if you imagine Murmansk and Archangel aren’t hotching with German spies and agents, you’re living in Alice’s never-never Wonderland.’

‘It’s possible, it’s possible. But to infiltrate a Russian naval working party – that’s impossible.’

‘It’s not impossible but it doesn’t even have to be necessary. People are capable of being suborned, and while it may not be true that every man has his price, there are always those who have.’

‘A Russian traitor, you suggest?’

‘Why not? You have your traitors. We have our traitors. Every country has its traitors.’

‘Why should we – the Germans – want to place a charge in the San Andreas?’

‘I simply have no idea. In the same way as I have simply no idea why the Germans have attacked, harassed and pursued us – but not tried to sink us – ever since we rounded the North Cape. What I’m suggesting is, it’s very likely that the same German agent or agents suborned one or more of the invalids we picked up in Murmansk. An alleged psychiatric case or mental breakdown patient, who is sick of both the war and the sea, would make an ideal choice for the traitor’s part and I shouldn’t even imagine that the price would have to be very high.’

‘Objection, Mr McKinnon. It was a last-minute decision to detach the San Andreas from the convoy. You can’t suborn a man overnight.’

‘True. At the most, highly unlikely. Maybe they knew a week or two ago that we would be detached to Murmansk.’

‘How on earth could they have known that?’

‘I don’t know. The same way I don’t know why someone in Halifax knew quite a long time ago that Dr Singh would be in need of a transceiver.’

‘And you don’t think it extraordinary that the Russians, if they were not responsible for placing that charge, should have brought the San Andreas into Murmansk apparently for the sole benefit of your mysterious German agents?’

‘They’re not my agents but they’re mysterious all right. The answer again is that I simply don’t know. The truth appears to be that I just don’t know anything about anything.’ He sighed. ‘Ah, well. Close to noon, Lieutenant. I’ll go get the sextant and chronometer.’

Lieutenant Ulbricht straightened from the chart. ‘Still, remarkably, holding the same course – 213. Precisely 64° North. Ideally, we should steer due south now but we’re near enough to Trondheim as we are now, and that would only bring us closer. I suggest we maintain this course for the present, then turn due south some time during the night, midnight or thereabouts. That should bring us down the east coast of your native islands tomorrow, Mr McKinnon. I’ll work it out.’

‘You’re the navigator,’ McKinnon said agreeably.

In marked contrast to the conditions that had existed exactly forty-eight hours previously when the mass burial had taken place, the weather was now almost benign. The wind was no more than Force three, the sea calm enough to keep the San Andreas on an all but steady keel, and the cloud cover consisted of no more than a wide band of white, fleecy, mackerel sky against the pale blue beyond. McKinnon, standing by the starboard rail of the San Andreas, derived no pleasure whatsoever from the improvement: he would greatly have preferred the blanketing white blizzard of the previous burial.

Besides, the Bo’sun, the only other attendants or witnesses – by no stretch of the imagination could they have been called mourners – at the burial were Patterson, Jamieson, Sinclair and the two stokers and two seamen who had brought up the bodies. No one else had asked to come. For obvious reasons no one was going to mourn Dr Singh, and only Sinclair had known the two dead crewmen from the Argos and even then as no more than two unconscious bodies on operating tables.

Dr Singh was unceremoniously tipped over the side – not for him the well-wishing for his journey into the hereafter. Patterson, who would obviously never have made it as a clergyman, quickly read the liturgy from the prayer-book over the two dead Greek seamen and then they, too, were gone.

Patterson closed the prayer-book. ‘Twice of that lot is twice too often. Let’s hope there’s not going to be a third time.’ He looked at McKinnon. ‘I suppose we just plod on on our far from merry way?’

‘All we can do, sir. Lieutenant Ulbricht suggests that we alter course by and by to due south. That’ll take us on a more direct route to Aberdeen. He knows what he’s about. But that will be approximately twelve hours yet.’

‘Whatever’s best.’ Patterson gazed around the empty horizon. ‘Doesn’t it strike you as rather odd, Bo’sun, that we’ve been left unmolested, or at least not located, for the better part of three hours? Since all communication from the U-boat has ceased in that time they must be very dense if they’re not aware that something is far wrong with it.’

‘I should imagine that Admiral Doenitz’s U-boat fleet commander in Trondheim is very far from dense. I’ve the feeling they know exactly where we are. I understand that some of the latest U-boats are quite quick under water and one could easily be trailing us by Asdic without our knowing anything about it.’ Like Patterson, only much more slowly, he looked around the horizon, then stood facing the port quarter. ‘We are being tailed.’

‘What? What’s that?’

‘Can’t you hear it?’

Patterson cocked his head, then nodded slowly, ‘I think I can. Yes, I can.’

‘Condor,’ McKinnon said. ‘Focke-Wulf.’ He pointed, ‘I can see it now. It’s coming straight out of the east and Trondheim is about due east of us now. The pilot of that plane knows exactly where we are. He’s been told, probably via Trondheim, by the U-boat that’s trailing us.’

‘I thought a submarine had to surface to transmit?’

‘No. All it has to do is to raise its transmitting aerial above the water. It could do that a couple of miles away and we wouldn’t see it. Anyway, it’s probably a good deal further distant than that.’

‘One wonders what the Condor’s intentions are.’

‘Your guess, sir. We’re not, unfortunately, inside the minds of the U-boat and Luftwaffe commanders in Trondheim. My guess is that they’re not going to try to finish us off and that’s not because they’ve been at great pains not to sink us so far. If they wanted to sink us, one torpedo from the U-boat I’m sure is out there would do the job nicely. Or, if they wanted to sink us from the air, they wouldn’t use a Condor which is really a reconnaissance plane: Heinkels, Heinkel III’s or Stukas with long-range tanks could do the job much more efficiently – and Trondheim is only about two hundred miles from here.’

‘What’s he after, then?’ The Condor was two miles distant now and losing height rapidly.

‘Information.’ McKinnon looked up at the bridge and caught sight of Naseby out on the port wing looking aft towards the approaching Condor. He cupped his hands and shouted: ‘George!’ Naseby swung round.

‘Get down, get down!’ McKinnon made the appropriate gesture with his hand. Naseby raised an arm in acknowledgement and disappeared inside the bridge. ‘Mr Patterson, let’s get inside the superstructure. Now.’

Patterson knew when to ask questions and when not to. He led the way and within ten seconds they were all in shelter except the Bo’sun, who remained in the shattered doorway.

‘Information,’ Patterson said. ‘What information?’

‘One moment.’ He moved quickly to the side of the ship, looked aft for no more than two seconds, then returned to shelter.

‘Half a mile,’ McKinnon said. ‘Very slow, very low, about fifty feet. Information? Shell-holes, say, on the sides or superstructure, something to indicate that we had been in a fight with some vessel. He won’t see any holes on the port side.’

Patterson made to speak but whatever he had to say was lost in the sudden clamour of close-range fire by machine-guns, in the cacophonous fury of hundreds of bullets striking the superstructure and side in the space of seconds, and in the abrupt crescendo of sound as giant aero engines swept by not more than fifty yards away. Another few seconds and all was relatively quiet again.

Jamieson said: ‘Well, yes, I can see now why you told Naseby to get his head down.’

‘Information.’ Patterson sounded aggrieved, almost plaintive. ‘Bloody funny way they set about getting information. And I thought you said they weren’t going to attack us.’

‘I said they wouldn’t sink us. Knocking a few of the crew off would be all grist to their mill. The more of us they can kill, the more they think they’ll have us at their mercy.’

‘You think they got the information they wanted?’

‘I’m certain of it. You can be sure that every eye on that Condor was examining us very closely indeed as they passed by fifty yards away. They won’t have seen the damage to our bows because it’s underwater but they can’t have helped seeing something else that’s underwater up for’ard – our load-line. Unless they’re completely myopic they’re bound to have seen that we’re down by the head. And unless they’re equally dense they’re bound to realize that we’ve either hit something or been hit by something. It couldn’t have been a mine or torpedo or we’d be at the bottom now. They’ll have known at once that we must have rammed something and there won’t be much guessing about what that was.’

‘Dear, oh dear,’ Jamieson said, ‘I don’t think I like this one little bit, Bo’sun.’

‘Nor me, sir. Changes things quite a bit, doesn’t it? Question of the German high command’s priorities, I suppose. A question of alive or dead. Is it more important to them that they take us more or less alive or do they take revenge for their lost U-boat?’

‘Whichever they choose, there’s damn-all we can do about it,’ Patterson said. ‘Let’s go and have lunch.’

‘I think we should wait a moment, sir.’ McKinnon remained still and silent for a few moments, then said: ‘It’s coming back.’

And back it came, flying at the same near wave-top height. The second fly-past was a mirror image of the first: instead of flying stern to stem on the port side it flew stem to stern on the starboard side, again to the accompaniment of the same fusillade of machine-gun fire. Some ten seconds after the firing ceased McKinnon, followed by the others, left the shelter and went to the port rail.

The Condor was off the port quarter, climbing steadily and flying directly away from them.

‘Well, well,’ Jamieson said. ‘We seem to have got off lightly. Bound to have seen those three shell-holes on the starboard side, weren’t they, Bo’sun?’

‘Couldn’t have missed them, sir.’

‘They could be gaining bombing altitude before turning back to settle accounts with us?’

‘He could bomb us from a hundred feet without the slightest bit of danger to himself.’

‘Or maybe he just isn’t carrying any bombs?’

‘No. He’ll be carrying bombs all right. Only the Focke-Wulfs on the big half-circle from Trondheim to Lorient in France round the British Isles, or the ones who patrol as far out as the Denmark Strait don’t carry bombs. They carry extra fuel tanks instead. The ones on shorter patrols always carry bombs – 250-kilo bombs, usually, not the smaller ones that Lieutenant Ulbricht used. The pilot of the Condor is, of course, in direct radio communication with Trondheim, has told them why they’re not hearing from the U-boat any more, but still has been told to lay off us. For the meantime, anyway.’

‘You’re right,’ Patterson said. ‘He’s not coming back. Funny. He could have spent all day – till nightfall at least – circling us and reporting our position. But no, he’s off. I wonder why.’

‘No need to wonder, sir. The Condor’s exit is all the proof we require that we are being tailed by a U-boat. No point in having a U-boat and a plane tailing us at the same time.’

‘Isn’t there anything we can do about that damned U-boat?’

‘Well, we can’t ram him because we don’t know where he is and we can be certain that there’s no chance that he’ll surface because he’s bound to have heard by now – or will hear very soon – what happened to the other U-boat. We can, just possibly, shake him off but not at this moment. Sure, by shutting off our engines and generators we could make him lose contact but that wouldn’t be for very long – he’d just raise his periscope, traverse the horizon and nail us again.’

‘Not at this moment – you mean, after it gets dark?’

‘Yes, I thought we might try then. We lie doggo for half an hour, then steam away on a new course at very low engine revolutions – the less racket we make the less chance there is of our being picked up. Might take us the better part of an hour to reach full speed. At the best, it’s only a gamble and even if we do win that gamble it’s still no guarantee that we’re free and clear. The U-boat will just radio Trondheim that they’ve lost us. They still know approximately where we are and a Condor with a few dozen flares can cover an awfully big area in a very short time.’

‘You do my morale a power of good,’ Jamieson said. ‘Their tactics puzzle me. Why do they have a Condor fly out here, fly back again and then, as you suggest, fly out here at dusk? Why doesn’t it stay out here all the time and have another Condor relieve it. It doesn’t make sense to me.’

‘It does to me. Although we’re still a long way from Aberdeen the German brass-hats in Norway may well be making a decision as to whether or not to try to stop us again. My feeling – it’s no more than that – says they will. No way a Condor can stop us without sinking or crippling us. It’s become quite clear that they have no wish to sink us or cripple us to the extent that we can no longer proceed under our own steam. The U-boat can surface about a mile off, watch carefully for even a couple of degrees deviation in our course – and they’ll be watching for that very, very carefully – then proceed to pump shell after shell into the superstructure and hospital zone until we run up the little white flag.’

‘You’re a great comfort to me, Bo’sun.’

As McKinnon entered the bridge, Naseby handed him a pair of binoculars.

‘Starboard door, Archie. No need to go outside. A bit for’ard of midships. Near enough west, I would say.’

McKinnon took the glasses, studied the area indicated for about ten seconds, then handed the glasses back.

‘Mile and a half, I would say. Looks like a mirror only, of course, it’s not a mirror, it’s a U-boat’s periscope reflecting the sun. We, George, are being subjected to psychological warfare.’

‘Is that what you call it?’

‘Meant to see it, of course. By accident, of course. Carelessness, of course. Slowly, very slowly, George, round to port until we’re heading more or less due east, then keep it on that bearing. While you’re doing that I’ll call up the Chief Engineer and ask his permission.’

He located Patterson in the mess-deck, told him the situation and asked for permission to head east.

‘Whatever you say, Bo’sun. Doesn’t exactly get us nearer home, does it?’

‘That’s what will make the Germans happy, sir. It’s also what makes me happy. As long as we’re heading for Norway, which is where they want us anyway, and not to Scotland, they’re hardly likely to clobber us for doing exactly what they want us to do. Come darkness, of course, it’s heigh-ho for Scotland again.’

‘Satisfactory, Bo’sun, very satisfactory indeed. Do we make the news public?’

‘I suggest you tell Mr Jamieson and Lieutenant Ulbricht, sir. As for the rest, any more talk about U-boats would only put them off their lunch.’

Chapter Ten

‘Have I the ward sister’s permission to have a few words with the Captain?’

‘The Captain is only two beds away.’ Margaret Morrison eyed the Bo’sun speculatively. ‘Or do you have another secret session in mind?’

‘Well, yes, it is rather private.’

‘More U-boat ramming, is it?’

‘I never want to see another U-boat in my life.’ McKinnon spoke with some feeling. ‘The only thing that heroics will get us is an early and watery grave.’ He nodded towards the bed where Oberleutnant Klaussen was lying, moving restlessly and mumbling to himself in a barely audible monologue. ‘Is he like this all the time?’

‘All the time. Never stops rambling on.’

‘Does any of what he says make sense?’

‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’

McKinnon guided the Captain into a chair in the small lounge off the crew’s mess.

‘Mr Patterson and Mr Jamieson are here, sir. I wanted them to hear what I have in mind and to have your permission to – perhaps – carry out certain things I have in mind. I have three suggestions to make.

‘The first concerns our destination. Are we absolutely committed to Aberdeen, sir? I mean, how ironclad are the Admiralty orders?’

Captain Bowen made a few pointed but unprintable observations about the Admiralty, then said: ‘The safety of the San Andreas and of all aboard her are of paramount importance. If I consider this safety to be in any way endangered I’ll take the San Andreas to any safe port in the world and the hell with the Admiralty. We’re here, the Admiralty is not. We are in the gravest danger: the biggest peril facing the Admiralty is falling off their chairs in Whitehall.’

‘Yes, sir.’ The Bo’sun half-smiled, ‘I did think those questions rather unnecessary but I had to ask them.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’m convinced there’s a German espionage network in Murmansk.’ He outlined the reasons he had given to Lieutenant Ulbricht less than an hour previously, ‘If the Germans know so much about us and our movements, then it’s nearer a certainty than a possibility that they also know that our destination is Aberdeen. Maintaining any kind of course for Aberdeen is like handing the Germans a gift from the gods.

‘Even more important, from my way of thinking, anyway, is why the Germans are so very interested in us. We probably won’t know until we arrive in some safe port and even then it might take some time to find out. But if this unknown factor is so very valuable to the Germans, might it not be even more valuable to us? It is my belief – I can’t give any solid grounds for this belief – that the Germans would rather lose this valuable prize than let us have it. I have the uncomfortable feeling that if we got anywhere near Aberdeen the Germans would have a submarine, maybe two, loitering somewhere off Peterhead – that’s about twenty-five miles nor’-nor’-east of Aberdeen – with orders not to let us move any further south. That could mean only one thing – torpedoes.’

‘Say no more, Bo’sun,’ Jamieson said. ‘You’ve got me convinced. Here’s one passenger who wants Aberdeen struck right off our cruise itinerary.’

‘I have a feeling you’re right,’ Bowen said. ‘Maybe one hundred per cent. Even if the chances were only ten per cent we wouldn’t be justified in taking the risk. I have a complaint to make against myself, Bo’sun. I’m supposed to be the captain. Why didn’t I think of that?’

‘Because you had other things on your mind, sir.’

‘And where does that leave me?’ Patterson said.

‘I’ve only just thought of it myself, sir. I’m sure that when Mr Kennet and I were ashore in Murmansk we missed something. We must have. What I still don’t understand is why the Russians pulled us into Murmansk, why they were so prompt and efficient in repairing the hole in the hull and completing the hospital. If I had the key to answer that question I’d know the answer to everything, including the answer to why the Russians were so helpful and cooperative, in marked contrast to their standard behaviour which usually ranges from unfriendliness to downright hostility. But I don’t have that key.’

‘We can only speculate,’ Bowen said, ‘If you’ve had time to consider this, Bo’sun, you’ve obviously had time to consider alternative ports. Safe ports. Bolt-holes, if you like.’

‘Yes, sir. Iceland or the Orkneys – that is, Reykjavík or Scapa Flow. Reykjavík has the disadvantage of being half as far away again as Scapa: on the other hand, the further west we go the more we steam out of the reach of the Heinkels and Stukas. Heading for Scapa, we should be within easy reach, practically all the way, of the Heinkels and Stukas based in Bergen and there’s the other disadvantage that ever since Oberleutnant Prien sank the Royal Oak up there, the mine defences make entry impossible. But it has the advantage that both the Navy and the RAF have bases there. I don’t know for certain but I should think it very likely that they maintain frequent air patrols round the Orkneys – after all, it is the base of the Home Fleet. I have no idea how far out those patrols range, fifty miles, a hundred, I don’t know. I think there’s a good chance that we would be picked up long before we’re even near Scapa.’

‘Tantamount to being home and dry, is that it, Bo’sun?’

‘I wouldn’t quite say that, sir. There are always the U-boats.’ McKinnon paused and considered. ‘As I see it, sir, four things. No British pilot is going to attack a British hospital ship. We’d probably be picked up by a patrol plane like a Blenheim which wouldn’t waste much time in calling up fighter support and no German bomber pilot in his senses is going to risk meeting up with Hurricanes or Spitfires. The patrol plane would also certainly radio Scapa to have them open a minefield passage for us. Lastly, they’d probably send out a destroyer or frigate or sloop – something fast, anyway, with enough depth-charges to discourage any U-boat that might be around.’

‘Not a very enviable choice,’ Bowen said. ‘Three days to Scapa, you would say?’

‘If we manage to shake off this U-boat which I’m pretty sure is following us. Five days to Reykjavík.’

‘What if we don’t manage to shake off our shadower? Aren’t they going to become very suspicious indeed when they see us altering course for Scapa Flow?’

‘If they do succeed in following us, they won’t notice any course alteration for a couple of days or more. During that time we’ll be on a direct course to Aberdeen. Once we get south of the latitude of Fair Isle we’ll alter course south-west or west-south-west or whatever for Scapa.’

‘It’s a chance. It’s a chance. You have any preference, Mr Patterson?’

‘I think I’ll leave my preference to the Bo’sun.’

‘I second that,’ Jamieson said.

‘Well?’

‘I’d feel happier in Scapa, sir.’

‘I think we all would. Well, Bo’sun, suggestion number one dealt with. Number two?’

‘There are six exits from the hospital area, sir, three for’ard and three aft. Don’t you think it would be wiser, sir, if we had everybody confined to the hospital area, except, of course, for those on watch in the engine-room and on the bridge? We know our latest Flannelfoot is still with us and it seems a good idea to confine his sphere of operations – if he has any left, which we don’t know – to as limited an area as possible. I suggest we seal up four of those doors, two aft, two for’ard and post guards at the other two doors.’

‘Weld them up, you mean?’ Jamieson said.

‘No. A bomb might hit the hospital. The two doors not sealed off might buckle and jam. Everyone would be trapped. We just close the doors in the usual way and give them a couple of moderate taps with a sledge.’

Patterson said: ‘And maybe Flannelfoot has access to his own private sledgehammer.’

‘He’d never dare use it. First metallic clang and he’d have the whole ship’s company on his back.’

‘True, true.’ Patterson sighed, ‘I grow old. You had a third point?’

‘Yes, sir. Involves you, if you will. I don’t think it would do any harm if you were to assemble everybody and tell them what’s going on – not that you can get across to Captain Andropolous and his crew – because I’m sure most have no idea what’s going on. Tell them about Dr Singh, the transceiver and what happened to Limassol. Tell them that another Flannelfoot is at large and that’s why we’ve closed all four doors so as to limit his movements. Please tell them that although it’s not a very nice thing, they are to watch each other like hawks – it is, after all, in their own survival interests – and to report any suspicious behaviour. It might just cramp Flannelfoot’s style and it will at least give them something to do.’

Bowen said: ‘You really think, Bo’sun, that this – the sealing off of the doors and the warning to the ship’s company – will keep Flannelfoot in check?’

‘On the basis of our performance to date,’ McKinnon said gloomily, ‘I very much doubt it.’

The afternoon and the early evening – and even although they were now more than three hundred miles south of the Arctic Circle early evening in those latitudes was still very early indeed – passed away as peacefully as McKinnon had expected. There was no sign of the U-boat but he had been certain that the U-boat would not show itself. There was no sign of any reconnaissance Condor, which only served to confirm his belief in the enemy concealed below, nor did any Heinkels or Stukas appear over the eastern horizon, for the hour of the coup de grâce had not yet come.

Half an hour after sunset the night was as dark as it was likely to become on the Norwegian Sea. Cloud cover was patchy and the rest of the sky hazy although a few pale stars could be seen.

‘Time, I think, George,’ McKinnon said to Naseby. ‘I’m going below. When the engines stop – that should be in seven or eight minutes’ time – bring her round 180° till we’re heading back the way we came. You should be able to pick up our wash even though it is dark. After that – well, we can only hope that you’ll pick up a star. I should be back in about ten minutes or so.’

On his way down he passed the Captain’s cabin. There was no longer anyone there to guard the sextant and chronometer: with two of the for’ard exits from the hospital area closed off and the third under guard it was impossible for anyone to reach the upper deck and so the bridge. On the deck it was so dark, the Bo’sun was pleased to note, that he had to use the guideline to find his way to the hospital. Stephen, the young stoker, was there, acting the part of sentry: McKinnon told him to join the others on the mess-decks. When they got there McKinnon found Patterson waiting for him.

‘Everybody here, sir?’

‘Everybody. Not forgetting Curran and Ferguson.’ Those two had been holed up in the carpenter’s shop in the bows. ‘Riot Act duly read. Anybody making the slightest sound after we stop – after the engines have stopped, rather – inadvertently or not, will be silenced. Talking only in whispers. Tell me, Bo’sun, is it really true that you can pick up the sound of a knife and fork on a plate?’

‘I don’t really know. I don’t know how sensitive the listening devices on a modern U-boat are. I do know that the sound of a spanner being dropped on a steel deck is easily detectable. No chances.’

He went into the two wards, checked that everybody had been told of the need for absolute silence, switched on the emergency lamps and went down to the engine-room. Only Jamieson and McCrimmon were there. Jamieson looked at him and switched on an emergency lamp.

‘Now, I take it?’

‘It’s as dark as it’s going to get, sir.’

Even by the time McKinnon had reached the mess-decks the engine revolutions had fallen away. He sat down at a mess table next to Patterson and waited in silence until the engines had stopped and the sound of the generator had died away. With the complete silence and only the feeble light from the emergency lamps to illuminate the area, the atmosphere held the elements of both the eerie and the sinister.

Patterson whispered: ‘No chance that the U-boat will think that their listening apparatus has failed?’

‘No, sir. You wouldn’t have to be a very efficient Asdic operator to know when engine revolutions are falling, then dying away.’

Jamieson and McCrimmon appeared, each carrying an emergency lamp. Jamieson sat beside McKinnon.

‘All we need now, Bo’sun, is a ship’s chaplain.’

‘A few prayers wouldn’t come amiss, sir. Especially a prayer that Flannelfoot hasn’t got a bug sending out a location signal.’

‘Please. Don’t even talk about such things.’ He was silent for some moments, then said: ‘We’re heeling, aren’t we?’

‘We are, yes. Naseby is making a 180° turn, heading back the way we came.’

‘Ah!’ Jamieson looked thoughtful. ‘So that he will over-shoot us. Turning back on our tracks. But won’t he do the same? I mean, wouldn’t that be the first thing that would occur to him?’

‘Quite honestly, I don’t and wouldn’t have the faintest idea as to what his first, second or tenth thoughts are. His first thought might be that our reversing course is so obvious a ploy that he’s not even going to consider it. He might even think that we’re carrying straight on for the Norwegian coast, which is so ludicrous a possibility that he may even be considering it. Or we might be heading back north-east again for the Barents Sea. Only a madman would do that, of course, but he’ll have to consider the fact, whether we think he thinks we’re mad – or not. Alternatively – and there are a lot of alternatives – he may figure that once we figure we’re clear of his Asdic clutches we’ll just continue on our course to Aberdeen. Or some place in north Scotland. Or the Orkneys. Or the Shetlands. There are an awful lot of options open to us and the chances are that he will pick the wrong one.’

‘I see,’ Jamieson said. ‘I say this in admiration, Bo’sun, and not in reproof: you have a very devious mind.’

‘Let’s just hope the Oberleutnant in charge of that U-boat out there hasn’t an even more devious mind.’ He turned to Patterson. ‘I’m going up top to join Naseby and see if there’s any sign of life around.’

‘Sign of life? You mean you think the U-boat may have surfaced and is looking for us.’

‘May have done.’

‘But it’s dark, you said.’

‘He’ll have a searchlight. Two of them, for all I know.’

Jamieson said: ‘And you think he’ll be using them?’

‘It’s a possibility. Not a probability. He’s bound to know by this time what happened to his fellow U-boat this morning.’

Patterson touched his arm. ‘You wouldn’t – ah – be considering another possibility – another collision?’

‘Heavens, no. I don’t really think the San Andreas could survive another bump like that. Not, of course, that the captain of that submarine is to know that. He may well be convinced that we’re desperate enough for anything.’

‘And we’re not?’

‘It’s a long way down to the bottom of the Norwegian Sea.’ McKinnon paused reflectively. ‘What we really need now is a nice little old blizzard.’

‘Still the Condor, still the flares. Is that it, Bo’sun?’

‘It’s not a thought that goes away easily.’ He turned to Jamieson. ‘Under way in half an hour, sir?’

‘Half an hour it is. But gently, gently?’

‘If you would, sir.’

McKinnon examined the sea from both sides of the upper deck but all was dark and quiet and still. He climbed to the bridge and went out on the wings, but even from this higher perspective there was nothing to be seen, no sweeping finger of a searchlight, nothing.

‘Well, George, this makes a change. All is quiet, all is peaceful.’

‘Is that a good sign or a bad one?’

‘Take your pick. Still quite a bit under way, aren’t we?’

‘Yes. I’ve just picked up our wake. And I’ve just located a couple of stars, one off the port bow, the other off the starboard. No idea what they are, of course, but it should keep us heading more or less west until we come to a halt.’

‘Which should take quite a while yet.’

In just under fifteen minutes the San Andreas was dead in the water and fifteen minutes after that she came to life again, albeit very, very slowly. From the bridge any sounds from the engine-room were quite inaudible, the only indication that they were under way came from the very faint vibration of the superstructure. After a few minutes McKinnon said: ‘Any steerage way yet, George?’

‘Barely. We’re about ten degrees off course right now. To the south. A couple of minutes and we’ll be heading west again. I wonder, I wonder.’

‘You wonder, I wonder, we all wonder – are we alone in the Norwegian Sea or do we have company, company that has no intention of making its presence known? I just guess and hope that we’re alone. Beyond a certain distance a submarine is not very good at picking up a very slow-turning engine and prop. What it can pick up is a generator – which is why there will be no lights down below for another fifteen minutes yet.’

Just under half an hour after McKinnon had arrived on the bridge the telephone bell shrilled. Naseby answered and handed the phone to the Bo’sun.

‘Bo’sun? This is Ward A. Sinclair speaking. I think you had better come down.’ Sinclair sounded weary or dispirited, or both. ‘Flannelfoot has struck again. There’s been an accident. No need to break your neck, though – nobody’s been hurt.’

‘We’ve been far too long without an accident.’ The Bo’sun felt as weary as Sinclair. ‘What happened?’

‘Transceiver’s wrecked.’

‘That’s just splendid. I’m on my way – at a leisurely pace.’ He replaced the phone. ‘Flannelfoot’s at it again, George. It seems that the transceiver in Ward A is not quite what it was.’

‘Oh Jesus.’ It wasn’t an exclamation of shock, horror or anger, just a sign of resignation. ‘Why wasn’t the alarm buzzer pressed.’

‘I shall no doubt find that out when I get there. I’ll send Trent to relieve you. I suggest you broach Captain Bowen’s supplies. Life aboard the San Andreas, George, is like life everywhere, just one damned thing after another.’

The first thing that took McKinnon’s eye in Ward A was not the transceiver in the Cardiac Arrest box but the sight of Margaret Morrison, eyes closed, lying on a bed with Janet Magnusson bending over her. The Bo’sun looked at Dr Sinclair, who was sitting disconsolately in the chair that was normally occupied by the ward sister.

‘I thought you said nobody had been hurt.’

‘Not hurt in the medical sense, although Sister Morrison might take issue with me on that matter. She’s been chloroformed but will be fine in a few minutes.’

‘Chloroformed? Flannelfoot doesn’t seem to have a very original turn of mind.’

‘He’s a callous bastard. This girl has just been wounded, once quite nastily, but this character seems to have been missing when they handed out humanitarian instincts.’

‘You expect delicacy and a tenderness of feeling from a criminal who tries to murder a man with a crowbar?’ McKinnon walked to the side of the table and looked down at the mangled remains of the transceiver. ‘I’ll spare you the obvious remarks. Naturally, of course, no one knows what happened because of course there were no eyewitnesses.’

‘That’s about it. If it’s any use, Nurse Magnusson here was the person to discover this.’

McKinnon looked at her. ‘Why did you come through? Did you hear a noise?’

She straightened from the bed and looked at him with some disfavour.

‘You are a cold-blooded fish, Archie McKinnon. This poor, poor girl lying here, the radio smashed and you don’t even look upset or annoyed, far less furious. I am furious.’

‘I can see that. But Margaret will be all right and the set is a total ruin. I see no point in getting angry about things I can do nothing about and what passes for my mind has other things to worry about. Did you hear anything?’

‘You’re hopeless. No, I heard nothing. I just came in to talk to her. She was crumpled over her table. I ran for Dr Sinclair and we lifted her into this bed here.’

‘Surely someone saw something. They couldn’t all have been asleep.’

‘No. The Captain and the Chief Officer were awake.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘You may have noticed, Mr McKinnon, that the eyes of both Captain Bowen and Chief Officer Kennet are heavily bandaged.’

‘You just wait,’ McKinnon said sotto voce, ‘until I get you to the Shetlands. They think a lot of me in Lerwick.’ She made a moue and the Bo’sun looked across to Bowen. ‘Did you hear anything, Captain?’

‘I heard something that sounded like the tinkling of glass. Wasn’t much, though.’

‘You, Mr Kennet?’

‘Same, Bo’sun. Again it wasn’t much.’

‘It didn’t have to be. You don’t require a sledgehammer to crush a few valves. A little pressure from the sole of the foot would be enough.’ He turned to Janet again. ‘But Margaret wouldn’t have been asleep. She’d have been bound – no, he couldn’t have come that way. He’d have had to pass through your ward. I’m not being very bright today, am I?’

‘No, you’re not.’ She smiled again but this time without malice. ‘Not our usual hawk-eyed selves this evening, are we?’

McKinnon turned and looked past the Sister’s table. The door to the recovery room was about an inch ajar. McKinnon nodded.

‘It figures. Why should he bother to close it when it would be obvious to anyone with half an eye – he must have forgotten about me – that there was no other way he could have entered. Mess-deck, side passage, operating room, recovery room, Ward A – simple as that. Every door unlocked, of course. Why should they have been otherwise? Well, we don’t bother locking them now. When did this happen, anyone know – sometime between engine start-up and the lights coming back on again?’

‘I think it had to be that,’ Sinclair said. ‘It would have been the ideal time and opportunity. About ten minutes after start-up but five minutes before the generator came on Mr Patterson gave permission for people to talk normally and move around as long as they didn’t make any loud noise. The emergency lights are pretty feeble at the best of times, everyone was talking excitedly – relief of tension I suppose, hopes that we had slipped the submarine, thankfulness that we were still in one piece, that sort of thing – and lots of people moving around. It would have been childishly simple for anyone to disappear unnoticed and return again after a minute, still unnoticed.’

‘Had to be that,’ the Bo’sun said. ‘Anyone of the crew, or that lot from Murmansk – in fact, anyone who was out there. Still no nearer the identity of the man with the key to the dispensary. Captain, Mr Kennet, I am wondering why you didn’t call Sister Morrison. Surely you must have smelled the chloroform?’

Janet said: ‘Oh, come on Archie, you can see that their noses are bandaged up. Could you smell anything with a handkerchief to your nose?’

‘You’re just half right, Nurse,’ Bowen said. ‘I did smell it but it was very faint. The trouble is that there are so many medical and antiseptic smells in a ward that I paid no attention to it.’

‘Well, he wouldn’t have gone back to the mess-deck with a sponge reeking of chloroform. Hands too, for that matter. Back in a moment.’

The Bo’sun unhooked an emergency light, went into the recovery room, looked around briefly, then passed into the operating theatre where he switched on the lights. Almost immediately, in a bucket in a corner, he found what he was looking for and returned to Ward A.

‘A sponge – duly reeking of chloroform – a smashed ampoule and a pair of rubber gloves. Quite useless.’

‘Not to Flannelfoot, they weren’t,’ Sinclair said.

‘Useless to us. Useless as evidence. Gets us nowhere.’ McKinnon perched on the Sister’s table and looked in slight irritation at Oberleutnant Klaussen who was muttering away to himself, unintelligibly, incessantly.

‘Is he still like this? Always like this?’

Sinclair nodded. ‘Goes on non-stop.’

‘Must be damned annoying. To the other patients and to the sister or nurse in charge. Why isn’t his bed wheeled into the recovery room?’

‘Because the sister in charge – that’s Margaret, remember? – doesn’t want him removed.’ Janet was being cool and patient. ‘He’s her patient, she wants to keep a close eye on him and she doesn’t mind. Any more questions, Archie?’

‘You mean why don’t I be on my way or keep quiet or go and do something. Do what? Do some detecting?’ He looked gloomy. ‘There’s nothing to detect. I’m just waiting till Margaret comes round.’

‘Signs of grace at last.’

‘I want to ask her some questions.’

‘I might have known. What questions? It’s as certain as can be that the assailant crept up behind her unseen and had her unconscious before she knew anything about it. Otherwise she’d have reached for the button or called for help. She did neither. There are no questions you can ask her that we can’t answer.’

‘As I’m not a gambler I won’t take your money away from you. Question number one. How did Flannelfoot know – and he must have known – that, apart from Captain Bowen and Mr Kennet who are effectively blind at the moment, everyone else in Ward A was asleep? He would never have dared to do what he did if there was even a remote possibility of someone being awake. So how did he know? Answer, please.’

‘I – I don’t know.’ She was obviously taken aback. ‘That had never occurred to me before. But I don’t think it occurred to anyone else either.’

‘Understandable. Such questions occur only to stupid old bo’suns. You’re just being defensive, Janet. Question number two. Who told him?’

‘I don’t know that either.’

‘But maybe Maggie does. Number three. What solicitous member of the crew or passengers made solicitous enquiries about the state of health of the patients in Ward A?’

‘How should I know?’

‘Maggie might know, mightn’t she? After all, she would be the obvious choice to be asked that question, wouldn’t she? And you said you could answer any questions that she could. Bosh! Question number four.’

‘Archie, you’re beginning to sound like a prosecuting counsel. I’m not guilty of anything.’

‘Don’t be daft. You’re not in dock. Fourth question and the most important of all. Flannelfoot, as we all know to our cost, is no fool. He must have taken into account the possibility that someone would ask the question of Maggie: with whom, Sister Morrison, did you discuss the state of health of your patients? He had to assume that Maggie was in the position to put the finger on him. So my question is why, to protect his anonymity, did he not, after rendering her unconscious, slit her throat? A nice sharp knife is just as silent as a chloroform sponge. It would have been the logical thing to do, wouldn’t it, Janet? But he didn’t. Why didn’t he murder her?’

Janet had gone very pale and when she spoke her voice was barely above a whisper.

‘Horrible,’ she said. ‘Horrible, horrible.’

‘Are you referring to me again? Goes well, I must say with what you last called me – a heartless fiend.’

‘Not you, not you.’ Her voice was still unsteady. ‘It’s the question. The thought. The possibility. It – it could have happened that way, couldn’t it, Archie?’

‘I’m more than mildly astonished that it didn’t. But I think we’ll find the answer when Maggie wakes up.’

The silence that fell upon the ward was broken by Bowen.

‘Very gallant of you, Bo’sun, very gallant indeed. Not to have reproached the young lady for being unable, as she had claimed she could, to answer the questions you asked. If it’s any consolation to your friend Janet, not one of those questions occurred to me either.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ she said. ‘That was very kind of you. Makes me feel more than halfway better already. See, Archie, I can’t be all that stupid.’

‘Nobody ever suggested you were. How long will it take her to come round, Dr Sinclair?’

‘Five minutes, fifteen, twenty-five? Impossible to say. People vary so much in their recovery times. And even when she does come out of it she’ll be fuzzy for some time, not mentally clear enough to remember and answer what might be difficult questions.’

‘When she is, call me, please. I’ll be on the bridge.’

Chapter Eleven

Half an hour later McKinnon joined Margaret Morrison in the small lounge off the mess-deck. She was pale and unsmiling but looked composed enough. He sat down opposite her.

‘How do you feel now?’

‘Bit sick. Bit nauseated.’ She half-smiled. ‘Dr Sinclair seemed to be more concerned about the state of my mind. I think that’s well enough.’

‘Fine. Well, not fine, it was a damnable thing to happen to you, but I feel less like commiserating with you than congratulating you.’

‘I know. Janet told me. I’m not one for mock shudders, Archie – but, well, he could have done, couldn’t he? I mean, cut my throat.’

‘He could have done. He should have done.’

‘Archie!’

‘Oh God, that wasn’t very well put, was it? I meant that for his own sake he should have done. He may just possibly have given away enough rope to hang himself.’

‘I don’t understand what you mean.’ She smiled to rob her words of offence. ‘I don’t think anyone understands quite what you mean. Janet says you’re a very devious character.’

‘Be you white as snow, etcetera. Only the truly honest get maligned in this fashion. A cross one has to bear.’

‘I have difficulty in seeing you in the role of martyr. Janet said you had lots of questions to ask me.’

‘Not lots. Just one. Well, a few, but all the same question. Where were you this afternoon before we stopped?’

‘In the mess-deck. Out there. Then I went to relieve Irene just before the lights went out.’

‘Anyone enquire about the health of the patients in Ward A when you were out there?’

‘Well, yes.’ She seemed faintly surprised. ‘I often get asked about the patients. Natural, isn’t it?’

‘This late afternoon, I meant.’

‘Yes. I told them. Also natural, isn’t it?’

‘Did they ask if anyone was asleep?’

‘No. Come to think of it, they didn’t have to. I remember telling them that only the Captain and First Officer were awake. It was some sort of joke.’ She broke off, touched her lips with her hand and looked thoroughly chagrined. ‘I see. It wasn’t really such a joke, was it – it let me in for half-an-hour’s involuntary sleep, didn’t it?’

‘I’m afraid it did. Who asked the question?’

‘Wayland Day.’

‘Ah! Our pantry boy – ex-pantry boy, I should say, and now your faithful shadow and worshipper from afar.’

‘Not always as far away as you might think, gets a little embarrassing at times.’ She smiled and then was suddenly serious. ‘You’re barking up the wrong tree, Archie. He may be a bit of a pest, but he’s only a boy and a very nice boy. It’s unthinkable.’

‘I don’t see a tree in sight. Agree, unthinkable. Our Wayland would never be a party to anything that might harm you. Who were the others at your table? Within hearing distance, I mean.’

‘How do you know there was anyone else at my table?’

‘Margaret Morrison is too clever to be stupid.’

‘That was stupid. Maria was there –’

‘Sister Maria?’ She nodded. ‘She’s out. Who else?’

‘Stephen. The Polish boy. Can’t pronounce his surname – no one can. Then there were Jones and McGuigan, who are nearly always with Wayland Day – I suppose because they are the three youngest members of the crew. Two seamen by the name of Curran and Ferguson – I hardly know them because I hardly ever see them. And, yes, I seem to remember there were two of the sick men we picked up in Murmansk. I don’t know their names.’

‘You seem to remember?’

‘No. I do. It’s because I don’t know their names, I suppose. I’m sure one’s a TB case, the other a nervous breakdown.’

‘You could identify them again?’

‘Easily. Both had red hair.’

‘E.R.A. Hartley and L.T.O. Simons.’ McKinnon opened the lounge door. ‘Wayland!’

Wayland Day appeared within seconds and stood at respectful attention. ‘Sir.’

‘Go and find Mr Patterson and Mr Jamieson. Oh yes, and Lieutenant Ulbricht. My compliments to them and ask them if they would please come here.’

‘Yes, sir. Right away, sir.’

Margaret Morrison looked at the Bo’sun in amusement. ‘How did you know that Wayland was so close?’

‘Ever tried to lose your shadow on a sunny day? I can prophesy things – nothing to do with the second sight – such as that Lieutenant Ulbricht will be the first along.’

‘Oh, do be quiet. Has this been of any good to you? Another stupid question. Must have been or you wouldn’t have sent for those three.’

‘Indeed it has. Another little complication but I think we can manage it. Ah, Lieutenant Ulbricht. That was very quick. Please sit down.’ Ulbricht took his seat by the side of Margaret Morrison while McKinnon contemplated the ceiling.

She said in a vexed voice: ‘There’s no need for that.’

Ulbricht looked at her. ‘What do you mean, Margaret?’

‘The Bo’sun has a warped sense of humour.’

‘Not at all. She just doesn’t like me being right.’ He looked round, greeted Patterson and Jamieson then rose and closed the door with a firm hand.

‘As serious as that, is it?’ Patterson said.

‘I’d rather we weren’t overheard, sir.’ He gave them a brief résumé of the talks he’d had with Janet Magnusson and Margaret Morrison, then said: ‘One of those nine people within hearing distance of Sister Morrison knew that Captain Bowen and Mr Kennet were the only two patients in Ward A who were awake and made the fullest use of that information. Agreed?’

No one disagreed.

‘We can rule out Sister Maria. No hard reason, except that it’s inconceivable.’

‘Inconceivable.’ Both Patterson and Jamieson spoke at the same time.

‘Stephen? No. He’s pro-British enough to make us all feel ashamed and he’ll never forget that it was the Royal Navy that saved his life in the North Sea.’

Margaret Morrison looked up in surprise. ‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Neither did we, Sister, even although he is in the engine-room department. Not till the Bo’sun told us. His agents are in every nook and cranny.’ Patterson seemed slightly aggrieved.

‘Wayland Day, Jones and McGuigan. No. They’re hardly out of kindergarten and haven’t lived enough or been steeped enough in sin to make apprentice counter-espionage agents, junior grade. That leaves us with four suspects.’

‘Curran and Ferguson are out. I know them. They are shirkers and malingerers of the first order and haven’t the energy, interest or intelligence to make the grade. That apart, they spend all their spare time holed up in the carpenter’s shop in the bows and leave it so seldom that they can hardly know what’s going on in the rest of the ship. Final proof, of course, is that though they may not be very bright they’re hardly stupid enough to set off an explosive charge in the ballast room while they are sleeping in the carpenter’s shop directly above. That leaves Simons and Hartley, two of the sick men – or allegedly sick men – that we picked up in Murmansk. Don’t you think we should have them up here, Mr Patterson?’

‘I do indeed, Bo’sun. This is becoming interesting.’

McKinnon opened the door. ‘Wayland!’

If possible, Wayland Day made it in even less time than the previous occasion. McKinnon gave him his instructions, then added: ‘Have them here in five minutes. Tell them to bring their pay-books.’ He closed the door and looked at Margaret Morrison.

‘Wouldn’t you like to leave now?’

‘No, I wouldn’t. Why should I? I’m as interested and involved in this as any of you.’ In a wholly unconscious gesture, she touched her throat. ‘More, I would say.’

‘You might not like it.’

‘A Gestapo-type interrogation, is that it?’

‘How they are treated depends entirely on Mr Patterson. I’m only venturing an opinion, but I wouldn’t think that Mr Patterson goes in very much for thumbscrews and racks. Not standard engine-room equipment.’

She looked at him coldly. ‘Facetiousness does not become you.’

‘Very little does, it seems.’

‘Hartley and Simons,’ Jamieson said. ‘We had them on our list of suspects. Well, more or less. Remember, Bo’sun?’

‘I remember. I also remember that we agreed that the CID were in no danger of a takeover from us.’

‘Something I have to say,’ Ulbricht said. ‘Discouraging, but I have to say it. I was here from the time the generator lights went out until they came on again. With their red heads, those two men are unmistakable. Neither of them left their seats in that time.’

‘Well, now.’ Margaret Morrison had an air of satisfaction about her. ‘Rather puts a damper on your theory doesn’t it, Mr McKinnon?’

‘Sad, Sister, very sad. You really would like to prove me wrong, wouldn’t you? I have the odd feeling that I will have been proved wrong before this trip is over. Not by you, though.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s still sad.’

Sister Morrison could be very persistent. She put on her best ward sister’s face and said: ‘You heard what the Lieutenant said – neither of those two men left their seats during the crucial period.’

‘I should be astonished if they had done.’ Margaret Morrison’s prim frown gave way to perplexity which in turn yielded to a certain wariness. McKinnon looked at Ulbricht. ‘Lieutenant, we are not just dealing with Flannelfoot number two: we are dealing with Flannelfeet numbers two and three. We have established that it was number two, a crew member, who blew the hole in the ballast room when we were alongside that sinking corvette. But no crew member under suspicion was within hearing range of Sister Morrison. So the finger points at Hartley or Simons. Maybe both. It was clever. There was no way we could reasonably associate them with the misfortune of the San Andreas, for at the time the first hole was blown in the ballast they were still in hospital in Murmansk, where one or both had been suborned. Of course neither was going to leave his seat during the time of the attack. That could have been too obvious.’

Ulbricht tapped his head. ‘The only thing that is obvious to me is that Lieutenant Ulbricht is not at his brightest and best today. Hit me over the head with a two-by-four long enough and I’ll see the point as fast as any man. Of course you have the right of it. Obvious.’ He looked at Margaret Morrison. ‘Don’t you agree?’

There was a distinct tinge of red in the normally pale face. ‘I suppose so.’

‘There’s no supposing.’ The Bo’sun sounded slightly weary. ‘What happened was that the information was passed on before – well before – the engines stopped. How long before the engines stopped did Wayland Day ask you the question about Ward A?’

‘I don’t know. I’m not sure.’

‘Come on, Margaret. Can’t you see it’s important?’

‘Fifteen minutes?’ she said uncertainly. ‘Maybe twenty. I’m really not sure.’

‘Of course you’re not. People don’t check their watches every five minutes. But during those fifteen or twenty minutes one of those two men left his seat and returned?’

‘Yes.’ Her voice was very low.

‘Which one?’

‘I don’t know. I really don’t. Please believe me. I know I said earlier that I could easily identify them –’

‘Please, Margaret. I believe you. What you meant is that you could identify them as a pair, not individually. Both look uncommonly alike, both have red hair and you didn’t even know their names.’

She smiled at him, a grateful little smile, but said nothing.

‘You do have the right of it, Bo’sun. Apart from that, I’m convinced of it because there’s no other explanation.’ Patterson rubbed his chin. ‘This interrogation business. Like Mr Jamieson and yourself, I don’t really think I’m CID material. How do we set about it?’

‘I suggest we first try to establish their bona fides – if any – to see if they are what they say they are. Hartley claims to be an Engine-Room Artificer. I’ll leave him to you. Simons says he’s a Leading Torpedo Operator. I’ll speak to him.’ He looked at his watch. ‘The five minutes are up.’

Patterson didn’t invite either man to sit. For some seconds he looked at them coolly and thoughtfully, then said: ‘My name is Chief Engineer Patterson. I am in temporary command of this vessel and have some questions to ask. The reasons for the questioning can wait. Which of you is E.R.A. Hartley?’

‘I am, sir.’ Hartley was slightly taller, slightly more heavily built than Simons, but otherwise the resemblance was remarkable: Margaret Morrison’s confusion over the pair was more than understandable.

‘You claim to be an E.R.A. Can you prove it?’

‘Prove it?’ Hartley was taken aback. ‘What do you mean – “prove it”, sir? I don’t have any certificates on me if that’s what you’re after.’

‘You could pass a practical test?’

‘A practical test?’ Hartley’s face cleared. ‘Of course, sir. I’ve never been in your engine-room but that’s no matter. An E.R.A. is an E.R.A. Take me to your engine-room and I’ll identify any piece of equipment you have. I can do that blindfold – all I have to do is touch. I’ll tell you the purpose of that or any piece of equipment and I can strip it down and put it together again.’

‘Hm.’ Patterson looked at Jamieson. ‘What do you think?’

‘I wouldn’t waste our time, sir.’

‘Neither would I.’ He nodded to the Bo’sun, who looked at Simons.

‘You L.T.O. Simons?’

‘Yeah. And who are you?’ McKinnon looked at the thin arrogant face and thought it unlikely that they would ever be blood-brothers. ‘You’re not an officer.’

‘I’m a seaman.’

‘I don’t answer questions from a Merchant Navy seaman.’

‘You will, you know,’ Patterson said. ‘Mr McKinnon is hardly the equivalent of the Royal Navy’s ordinary seaman. The senior seaman aboard, the equivalent of your warrant officer. Not that it matters to you what he is. He’s acting under my orders and if you defy him you defy me. You understand?’

‘No.’

McKinnon said in a mild voice: ‘“No, sir,” when you’re talking to a senior officer.’

Simons sneered, there was a blur of movement and Simons was doubled over, making retching sounds and gasping for breath. McKinnon looked at him unemotionally as he gradually straightened and said to Patterson: ‘May I have an option as regards this man, sir? He’s an obvious suspect.’

‘He is. You may.’

‘Either irons, bread and water till we reach port or a private interrogation with me.’

‘Irons!’ Simons’ voice was a wheeze, a McKinnon jab to the solar plexus was not something from which one made an instant recovery. ‘You can’t do that to me.’

‘I can and if necessary will.’ Patterson’s tone was chillingly indifferent, ‘I am in command of this ship. If I choose, I can have you over the side. Alternatively, if I have proof that you are a spy, I can have you shot as a spy. Wartime regulations say so.’ Wartime regulations, in fact, said nothing of the kind but it was most unlikely that Simons knew this.

‘I’ll settle for the private interrogation,’ McKinnon said.

A horrified Margaret Morrison said: ‘Archie, you can’t –’

‘Be quiet.’ Patterson’s voice was cold, ‘I suggest, Simons, that you will be well advised to answer a few simple questions.’ Simons scowled and said nothing.

McKinnon said: ‘You an L.T.O?’

‘’Course I am.’

‘Can you prove it?’

‘Like Hartley here, I haven’t any certificates with me. And you don’t have any torpedoes to test me with. Not that you would know one end of a torpedo from another.’

‘What’s your barracks?’

‘Portsmouth.’

‘Where did you qualify L.T.O.?’

‘Portsmouth, of course.’

‘When?’

‘Early ‘forty-three.’

‘Let me see your pay-book.’ McKinnon examined it briefly, then looked up at Simons. ‘Very new and very clean.’

‘Some people look after their things.’

‘You didn’t make a very good job of looking after your old one, did you?’

‘What the hell do you mean?’

‘This is either a new one, a stolen one or a forged one.’

‘God’s sake, I don’t know what you’re talking about!’

‘You know all right.’ The Bo’sun tossed the pay-book on the table. ‘That’s a forgery, you’re a liar and you’re not an L.T.O. Unfortunately for you, Simons, I was a Torpedo Gunner’s Mate in the Navy. No L.T.O’s qualified in Portsmouth in early nineteen forty-three, or indeed for some considerable time before and after that. They qualified at Roedean College near Brighton – used to be the leading girls’ school in Britain before the war. You’re a fraud and a spy, Simons. What’s the name of your accomplice aboard the San Andreas?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Amnesia.’ McKinnon stood and looked at Patterson. ‘Permission to lock him up, sir?’

‘Permission granted.’

‘Nobody’s going to bloody well lock me up,’ Simons shouted. ‘I demand –’ His voice broke off in a scream as McKinnon twisted his forearm high up behind his back.

‘You’ll stay here, sir?’ McKinnon said. Patterson nodded. ‘I won’t be long. Five, ten minutes. We won’t be needing E.R.A. Hartley any more?’

‘Of course not. Sorry about that, E.R.A. But we had to know.’

‘I understand, sir.’ It was quite apparent that he did not understand.

‘You don’t. But we’ll explain later.’ Hartley left, followed by McKinnon and Simons, the latter with his right wrist still somewhere up in the vicinity of his left shoulder-blade.

‘Ten minutes,’ Margaret Morrison said. ‘It takes ten minutes to lock up a man.’

‘Sister Morrison,’ Patterson said. She looked at him. ‘I admire you as a nurse. I like you as a person. But don’t interfere in things or presume to pass judgement on things you know nothing about. The Bo’sun may only be a bo’sun but he operates at a level you know nothing about. If it weren’t for him you’d be either a prisoner or dead. Instead of constantly sniping at him you’d be better occupied in giving thanks for a world where there’s still a few Archie McKinnons around.’ He broke off and cursed in silent self-reproach as he saw tears trickling down the lowered head.

McKinnon pushed Simons inside an empty cabin, locked the door, pocketed the key, turned and hit Simons in exactly the same spot as previously although with considerably more force. Simons staggered backwards across the corticene, smashed heavily into the bulkhead and slid to the deck. McKinnon picked him up, held his right arm against the bulkhead and struck his right biceps with maximum power. Simons screamed, tried to move his right arm and found it impossible: it was completely paralysed. The Bo’sun repeated the process on the left arm and let him slide down again.

‘I am prepared to keep this up indefinitely,’ McKinnon’s voice was conversational, almost pleasant. ‘I’m going to keep on hitting you, and if necessary, kicking you anywhere between your shoulders and toes. There won’t be a mark on your face. I don’t like spies, I don’t like traitors and I don’t care too much for people with innocent blood on their hands.’

McKinnon returned to the lounge and resumed his seat. Ulbricht looked at his watch and said: ‘Four minutes. My word, you do keep your word, Mr McKinnon.’

‘A little dispatch, that’s all.’ He looked at Margaret Morrison and the still visible tear stains. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing. It’s just this whole horrible ugly business.’

‘It’s not nice.’ He looked at her for a speculative moment, made as if to say something, then changed his mind. ‘Simons has come all over cooperative and volunteered some information.’

‘Cooperative?’ Margaret said incredulously. ‘Volunteered?’

‘Never judge a man by his appearances. There are hidden depths in all of us. His name is not Simons, it’s Braun, “au”, not “ow”.’

‘German, surely,’ Patterson said.

‘Sounds that way but he is RN. His passport is a forgery – someone in Murmansk gave it to him. He couldn’t be more specific than that, I assume it must have been a member of what must now be that espionage ring up there. He’s not an L.T.O., he’s an S.B.A., a Sick Bay Attendant, which ties in rather nicely with the chloroform used twice and the drugging of Captain Andropolous.’ He tossed two keys on the table. ‘I’m sure Dr Sinclair will confirm that those are the dispensary keys.’

‘Goodness me,’ Jamieson said. ‘You have not been idle, Bo’sun, and that’s a fact. He – Braun – must have been most communicative.’

‘He was indeed. He even gave me the identity of Flannelfoot number two.’

‘What!’

‘Remember, Margaret, that I said to you only a few minutes ago that I would be proved wrong about something before the trip was over. Well, it hasn’t taken long for me to prove I was right about that. It’s McCrimmon.’

‘McCrimmon!’ Jamieson was half out of his seat. ‘McCrimmon. That bloody young bastard!’

‘You are sitting – well, more or less – next to a young lady.’ McKinnon’s tone of reproof was mild.

‘Ah! Yes. So I am. Sorry, Sister.’ Jamieson sat again. ‘But – McCrimmon!’

‘I think the fault is mainly mine, sir. I’ve been on record as saying that although he was a criminal, I regarded him as a trustworthy criminal. Serious flaw in judgement. But I was half right.’

‘I can accept that it was McCrimmon.’ Patterson’s tone was calm and if he was upset it wasn’t showing. ‘Never liked him. Truculent, offensive, foul-mouthed. Two terms in Barlinnie, the maximum security prison outside Glasgow. Both for street violence. I should imagine that the feel of an iron crowbar in his hand is nothing new to that man. The Royal Navy would never have accepted a man with his record. One can only assume that we have lower standards.’ He paused and considered. ‘We pull him in?’

‘I wonder. I’d love to have a little chat with him. Point is, Mr Patterson, I don’t think we’d get any useful information out of him. Men who hired him would be far too clever to tell a character like McCrimmon any more than he needed to know. They certainly wouldn’t tell him what their plans, their end was. It would be a case of “just do so-and-so and here’s your cash”. Also, sir, if we leave him loose, we can watch every move he makes without his knowing that we are watching. It’s quite possible he has something more up his sleeve and if we can watch him in the act of what he’s doing it might give us some very valuable information indeed. What, I can’t imagine, but I have the feeling that we should give him that little more rope.’

‘I agree. If he’s bent on hanging himself, just that little more rope.’

Lieutenant Ulbricht had found them a star to steer themselves by. He was on the bridge with McKinnon as the San Andreas headed due west at full speed, Curran at the wheel. Cloud cover was patchy, the wind light and the sea relatively calm. Ulbricht had just caught a brief but sufficient glance of the Pole Star and had established that they were in almost exactly the same place as they had been at noon that morning. He had remained on the bridge where he seemed to prefer to spend his time except, the Bo’sun couldn’t help noticing, during those periods when Margaret Morrison was off duty.

‘Think we’ve shaken him now, Mr McKinnon? Three and a half hours, maybe four, since we may have shaken him.’

‘Nor hide nor hair of him and that’s a fact. But because we can’t see him, as I keep on saying, doesn’t mean that he’s not there. But, yes, I do have this odd feeling that we may have slipped him.’

‘I have a certain regard for your so-called odd feelings.’

‘I only said “may”. We won’t know for certain until the first Condor comes along with its flares.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t talk about such things. Anyway, it’s possible that we may have lost him and that the Focke-Wulf may fail to find us. How long do you intend to maintain this course?’

‘The longer the better, I should think. If they have lost us, then they’ll probably reason that we’re heading back on a course to Aberdeen – as far as we know, they have no reason to believe that we have reason to believe that they know we’re heading for Aberdeen and would therefore opt for some place else. So they may still think that we’re on a roughly south-south-west course instead of due west. I have heard it said, Lieutenant Ulbricht, I can’t remember who it was, that some Germans at some times have one-track minds.’

‘Nonsense. Look at our poets and playwrights, our composers and philosophers.’ Ulbricht was silent for some moments and McKinnon could imagine him smiling to himself in the darkness. ‘Well, yes, maybe now and again. I sincerely hope that this is one of those times. The longer they keep combing the area in the direction of Aberdeen and the longer we keep heading west the less chance they will have of locating us. So we keep this course for an hour or two more?’

‘Yes. Longer. I propose that we maintain this course throughout the night, then, shortly before dawn, lay off a course directly for Scapa Flow.’

‘Sounds fair enough to me. That’ll mean leaving the Shetlands on our port hand. May even have a glimpse of your islands. Pity you couldn’t drop in in passing.’

‘There’ll come a day. Dinner-time, Lieutenant.’

‘So soon? Mustn’t miss that. Coming?’

‘May as well. Curran, get on the phone and ask Ferguson to come up here. Tell him to keep a constant look-out on both wings. 360 degrees, you understand.’

‘I’ll do that. What’s he supposed to be looking out for, Bo’sun?’

‘Flares.’

McKinnon met Jamieson just after they’d entered the mess-deck and drew him to one side.

‘Our traitorous friend been up to anything he should not have been up to, sir?’

‘No. Guaranteed. Chief Patterson and I had a discussion and we decided to take all the engine-room staff into our confidence – well, all except one, Reilly, who seems to be the only person who talks to him. Reilly apart, McCrimmon would win any unpopularity contest without trying, he’s the most cordially detested person in the engine-room. So we spoke to each man individually, told them the score, and told them not to discuss the matter with any other member of the crew. So he’ll be under constant supervision, both in the engine-room and in the mess-decks.’ He looked closely at McKinnon. ‘We thought it a good idea. You don’t seem quite sure?’

‘Whatever you and Mr Patterson decide is okay by me.’

‘Dammit.’ Jamieson spoke with some feeling. ‘I suggested to the Chief that we talk to you but he was sure you’d think it a good idea.’

‘I really don’t know, sir.’ McKinnon was doubtful. ‘It seems a good idea. But – well, McCrimmon may be a villain but he’s a clever villain. Don’t forget that he’s gone completely undetected and unsuspected so far and would have kept on that way but for a lucky accident. Being a crude, violent and detestable person with a penchant for crowbars doesn’t mean that he can’t be sensitive to atmosphere, to people being over-casual on the one hand and too furtively watchful on the other. Also, if Reilly is on speaking terms with him shouldn’t he be under observation too?’

‘It’s not all that bad, Bo’sun. Even if he does suspect he’s under observation, isn’t that a guarantee for his good behaviour?’

‘Either that or a guarantee that when – if – he does something he shouldn’t be doing he’s going to make damn sure that there’s no one around when he does it, which is the last thing we wanted. If he believed he was still in the clear he might have betrayed himself. Now he never will.’ McKinnon looked at their table. ‘Where’s Mr Patterson?’

Jamieson looked uncomfortable. ‘Keeping an eye on things.’

‘Keeping an eye on things? Keeping an eye on McCrimmon, you mean. Mr Patterson has never missed dinner since joining this ship. You know that, I know that – and you can be sure McCrimmon knows that. If he has the slightest suspicion that we have the slightest suspicion I can just hear those alarm bells clanging in his head.’

‘It is possible,’ Jamieson said slowly, ‘that it may not have been such a good idea after all.’

Patterson wasn’t the only absentee at the table that night. Janet Magnusson was on duty and both Sister Maria and Dr Sinclair were engaged in the ticklish and rather painful task of re-bandaging Captain Bowen’s head. Captain Bowen, it was reported, was making a considerable amount of noise.

Jamieson said: ‘Does Dr Sinclair think he’ll be able to see again?’ Jamieson, like the three others at the table, was nursing a glass of wine while waiting for the first course to be served.

‘He’s pretty sure,’ Margaret Morrison said. ‘So am I. Some days yet, though. The eyelids are badly blistered.’

‘And the rest of the ward sound asleep as usual?’ She winced and shook her head and Jamieson said hastily: ‘Sorry, that wasn’t a very tactful question, was it?’

She smiled. ‘It’s all right. It’s just that it’ll take me a day or two to get Simons and McCrimmon out of my head. As usual, only Mr Kennet is awake. Perhaps Oberleutnant Klaussen is too – it’s hard to say. Never still, keeps rambling on.’

‘And making as little sense as ever?’ McKinnon said.

‘None. All in German, of course, except for one word in English which he keeps repeating over and over again as if he was haunted by it. It’s odd, the theme of Scotland keeps cropping up all the time.’ She looked at Ulbricht. ‘You know Scotland well. We’re headed for Scotland. I’m half-Scots. Archie and Janet, although they claim to be Shetlanders, are really Scots.’

McKinnon said: ‘And don’t forget the lad with the chloroform pad.’

She grimaced. ‘I wish you hadn’t said that.’

‘Sorry. Stupid. And what’s the Scots connection with Klaussen?’

‘It’s the word he keeps repeating. Edinburgh.’

‘Ah! Edinburgh. The Athens of the North!’ Ulbricht sounded very enthusiastic. ‘Know it well, very well. Better than most Scots, I dare say. Edinburgh Castle. Holyrood Palace. The shrine. The Gardens. Princes Street, the most beautiful of all –’ His voice trailed off, then he said in a sharp tone: ‘Mr McKinnon! What’s the matter?’

The other two looked at the Bo’sun. His eyes were those of a man who was seeing things at a great distance and the knuckles of the big hand around the glass were showing white. Suddenly the glass shattered and the red wine flowed over the table.

‘Archie!’ The girl reached across the table and caught his wrist. ‘Archie! What is it!’

‘Well, now that was a damn stupid thing to do, wasn’t it?’ The voice was calm, without emotion, the Bo’sun back on balance again. He wiped away the blood with a paper napkin. ‘Sorry about that.’

She twisted his wrist until the palm showed. ‘You’ve cut yourself. Quite badly.’

‘It doesn’t matter. Edinburgh, is it? He’s haunted by it. That’s what you said, Margaret. Haunted. So he damn well ought to be. And I should be haunted, too. All my life. For being so blind, so bloody well eternally stupid.’

‘How can you say such a thing? If you see something that we can’t see, then we’re all more stupid than you are.’

‘No. Because I know something that you don’t know.’

‘What is it, then?’ There was curiosity in her voice, but it was overlaid by a deeper apprehension. ‘What is it?’

McKinnon smiled. ‘Margaret, I would have thought that you of all people would have learnt the dangers of talking in public. Would you please bring Captain Bowen to the lounge.’

‘I can’t. He’s having his head bandaged.’

‘I rather think, Margaret, you should do what the Bo’sun suggests.’ It was the first time that Ulbricht had used her Christian name in company. ‘Something tells me that the Captain will need no second invitation.’

‘And bring your pal,’ McKinnon said. ‘What I have to say may well be of interest to her.’

She looked at him for a long and thoughtful moment, then nodded and left without a word. McKinnon watched her go, an equally thoughtful expression on his face, then turned to Jamieson. ‘I think you should ask one of your men to request Mr Patterson to come to the lounge also.’

Captain Bowen came into the lounge accompanied by Dr Sinclair, who had no alternative but to come for he was still only half way through re-bandaging Bowen’s head.

‘It looks as if we’ll have to change our minds again about our plans,’ McKinnon said. He had a certain air of resignation about him, due not to the change in plans but to the fact that Janet was firmly bandaging his cut palm. ‘It’s certain now that the Germans, if they can’t take us, will send us to the bottom. The San Andreas is no longer a hospital ship, it’s more of a treasure ship. We are carrying a fortune in gold. I don’t know how much but I would guess at something between twenty and thirty million pounds sterling.’

Nobody said anything. There wasn’t much one could make in the way of comment about such a preposterous statement and the Bo’sun’s relaxed certainty didn’t encourage what might have been the expected exclamatory chorus of surprise, doubt or disbelief.

‘It is, of course, Russian gold, almost certainly in exchange for lend-lease. The Germans would love to get their hands on it, for I suppose gold is gold no matter what the country of origin, but if they can’t get it they’re going to make damned sure that Britain doesn’t get it either, and this is not out of spite or frustration, although I suppose that that would play some part. But what matters is this. The British Government is bound to know that we’re carrying this gold – you’ve only got to think about it for a moment to see that this must have been a joint planned operation between the Soviet and British Governments.’

‘Using a hospital ship as a gold transport?’ Jamieson’s disbelief was total. ‘The British Government would never be guilty of such a pernicious act.’

‘I am in no position to comment on that, sir. I can imagine that our Government can be as perfidious as any other and there are plenty of perfidious governments around. Ethics, I should think, take very much a back seat in war – if there are any ethics in war. All I want to say about the Government is that they are going to be damned suspicious of the Russians and would put the worst possible interpretation on our disappearance – they may well arrive at the conclusion that the Russians intercepted the ship after it had sailed, got rid of the crew, sailed the San Andreas to any port in northern Russia, unloaded the gold and scuttled the ship. Alternatively, they might well believe the Russians didn’t even bother to load any gold at all but just lay in wait for the San Andreas. The Russians do have a submarine fleet, small as it is, in Murmansk and Archangel.

‘Whichever option the Government prefers to believe, and I can imagine it highly likely that they will believe one or the other, the result will be the same and one that would delight the hearts of the Germans. The British Government is going to believe that the Russians welshed on the deal and will be extremely suspicious not only of this but of any future deal. They’ll never be able to prove anything but there is something they can do – reduce or even stop all future lend-lease to Russia. This could be a more effective way of stopping Allied supplies to Russia than all the U-boats in the North Atlantic and Arctic.’

There was quite a long silence, then Bowen said: ‘It’s a very plausible scenario, Bo’sun, attractive – if one may use that word – even convincing. But it does rather depend on one thing: why do you think we have this gold aboard?’

‘I don’t think, sir. I know. Only a few minutes ago, just after we had sat down to dinner, Sister Morrison here happened to mention Oberleutnant Klaussen’s constant delirious ramblings. In his delirium one word kept recurring – Edinburgh. Sister says he seemed to be haunted by that word. I should damn well think he was. It was not so very long ago that a U-boat sent the cruiser Edinburgh to the bottom on her way back from Russia. The Edinburgh was carrying at least twenty million pounds of gold bullion in her holds.’

‘Good God!’ Bowen’s voice was no more than a whisper: ‘Good God above! You have the right of it, Archie, by heaven you have the right of it.’

‘It all ties in too damn nicely, sir. It had been dunned into Klaussen that he was not to repeat the exploits of his illustrious predecessor who had dispatched the Edinburgh. It also accounts – the sinking of the Edinburgh, I mean – for the rather underhanded decision to use the San Andreas. Any cruiser, any destroyer can be sunk. By the Geneva Convention, hospital ships are inviolate.’

‘I only wish I had told you sooner,’ Margaret Morrison said. ‘He’d been muttering about Edinburgh ever since he was brought aboard. I should have realized that it must have meant something.’

‘You’ve nothing to reproach yourself with,’ McKinnon said. ‘Why should the word have had any significance for you? Delirious men rave on about anything. It wouldn’t have made the slightest difference if we had found out earlier. What does matter is that we have found out before it’s too late. At least, I hope it’s not too late. If there are any reproaches going they should come in my direction. At least I knew about the Edinburgh – I don’t think anyone else did – and shouldn’t have had to be reminded of it. Spilt milk.’

‘It does all mesh together, doesn’t it?’ Jamieson said. ‘Explains why they wouldn’t let you and Mr Rennet see what was going on behind that tarpaulin when they were repairing the hole in the ship’s side. They didn’t want you to see that they were replacing that ballast they’d taken out to lighten ship by a different sort of ballast altogether. I suppose you knew what the original ballast looked like?’

‘As a matter of fact, I didn’t. I’m sure Mr Kennet didn’t know either.’

‘The Russians weren’t to know that and took no chances. Oh, I’m sure they’d have painted the bullion grey or whatever the colour of the ballast was: the size and shape of the blocks and bars of the gold would almost certainly have been different. Hence the “No Entry” sign at the tarpaulin. Everything that has happened since can be explained by the presence of that gold.’ Jamieson paused, seemed to hesitate then nodded as if he had made up his mind. ‘Doesn’t it strike you, Bo’sun, that McCrimmon poses a bit of a problem?’

‘Not really. He’s a double agent.’

‘Damn it!’ Jamieson was more than a little chagrined. ‘I’d hoped, for once, that I might be the first to come up with the solution to a problem.’

‘A close run thing,’ McKinnon said. ‘The same question had occurred to me at the same time. It’s the only answer, isn’t it? Espionage history – or so I am led to believe – is full of accounts of double agents. McCrimmon’s just another. His primary employer – his only really true employer – is, of course, Germany. We may find out, we may not, how the Germans managed to infiltrate him into the service of the Russians but infiltrate him they did. Sure, it was the Russians who instructed him to blow that hole in the ballast room, but that was even more in the Germans’ interest than the Russians’. Both had compelling reasons to find an excuse to divert the San Andreas to Murmansk, the Russians to load the gold, the Germans to load Simons and that charge in the ballast room.’

‘A tangled story,’ Bowen said, ‘but not so tangled when you take the threads apart. This alters things more than a little, doesn’t it, Bo’sun?’

‘I rather think it does, sir.’

‘Any idea of the best course – I use that word in both its senses – to take for the future?’

‘I’m open to suggestions.’

‘You’ll get none from me. With all respect to Dr Sinclair, his ministrations have just about closed down a mind that wasn’t working all that well in the first place.’

‘Mr Patterson?’ McKinnon said. ‘Mr Jamieson?’

‘Oh no,’ Jamieson said. ‘I have no intention of being caught out in that way again. It does my morale no good to have it quietly explained to me why my brilliant scheme won’t work and why it would be much better to do it your way. Besides, I’m an engineer. What do you have in mind?’

‘On your own heads. I have in mind to continue on this course, which is due west, until about midnight. This will help to take us even further away from the Heinkels and Stukas. I’m not particularly worried about them, they rarely attack after dark and if we’re right in our assumption that we’ve slipped that U-boat, then they don’t know where to look for us and the absence of any flares from a Condor would suggest that, if they are looking, they are looking in the wrong place.

‘At midnight, I’ll ask the Lieutenant to lay off a course for Aberdeen. We must hope that there will be a few helpful stars around. That would take us pretty close to the east coast of the Shetlands, Lieutenant?’

‘Very close indeed, I should say. Hailing distance. You’ll be able to wave a last farewell to your homeland, Mr McKinnon.’

‘Mr McKinnon isn’t going to wave farewell to any place.’ The voice was Janet Magnusson’s and it was pretty positive. ‘He needs a holiday, he tells me, he’s homesick and Lerwick is his home. Right, Archie?’

‘You have the second sight, Janet.’ If McKinnon was chagrined at having his thunder stolen he showed no signs of it. ‘I thought it might be a good idea, Captain, to stop off a bit in Lerwick and have a look at what we have up front. This has two advantages, I think. We’re certain now that the Germans will sink us sooner than permit our safe arrival in any British port and the further south we go the greater the likelihood of being clobbered, so we make as little southing as possible. Secondly, if we are found by either plane or U-boat, they’ll be able to confirm that we’re still on a direct course to Aberdeen and so have plenty of time in hand. At the appropriate moment we’ll turn west, round a place called Bard Head, then north-west and north to Lerwick. From the time we alter course till the time we reach harbour shouldn’t be much more than an hour and it would take rather longer than that for the German bombers to scramble from Bergen and reach there.’

‘Sounds pretty good to me,’ Jamieson said.

‘I wish I could say the same. It’s far too easy, too cut and dried, and there’s always the possibility of the Germans figuring out that that’s exactly what we will do. Probability would be more like. It’s too close to a counsel of desperation, but it’s the least of all the evils I can imagine and we have to make a break for it some time.’

‘As I keep on saying, Bo’sun,’ Jamieson said, ‘it’s a great comfort having you around.’

Chapter Twelve

The time wore on to midnight and still the Condors kept away. Apart from two men on watch in the engine-room, Naseby and Trent on the bridge and Lieutenant Ulbricht and McKinnon in the Captain’s cabin, two hospital look-outs and two night nurses, everyone was asleep, or appeared to be asleep, or should have been asleep. The wind, backing to the north, had freshened to Force four and there was a moderate sea running, enough to make the San Andreas roll as she headed steadily west but not enough to inconvenience one.

In the Captain’s cabin Lieutenant Ulbricht looked up from the chart he had been studying, then glanced at his watch.

‘Ten minutes to midnight. Not that the precise time matters – we’ll be making course alterations as we go along. I suggest we take a last sight, then head for the Shetlands.’

Dawn came, a cold and grey and blustery dawn, and still the Condors stayed away. At ten o’clock, a rather weary McKinnon – he’d been on the wheel since 4.0 a.m. – went below in search of breakfast. He found Jamieson having a cup of coffee.

‘A peaceful night, Bo’sun. Does look as if we’ve shaken them off, doesn’t it?’

‘So it would seem.’

‘Seem? Only “seem”?’ Jamieson looked at him speculatively. ‘Do I detect a note of something less than cheerful confidence? A whole night long without a sign of the enemy. Surely we should be happy with our present circumstances?’

‘Sure, I am. The present’s just fine. What I’m not so happy about is the future. It’s not only quiet and peaceful at the moment, it’s too damn quiet and peaceful. As the old saying goes, it’s the lull before the storm, the present the lull, the future the storm. Don’t you feel it, sir?’

‘No, I don’t!’ Jamieson looked away and frowned slightly. ‘Well, I didn’t, not until you came along and disturbed the quiet and even tenor of my way. Any moment now and you’ll be telling me I’m living in a fool’s paradise.’

‘That would be stretching it a bit, sir.’

‘Too quiet, too peaceful? Maybe it is at that. Cat and mouse, again – with us, of course, in the role of mouse? They have us pinned and are just waiting for a convenient moment – convenient for them, that is – to strike?’

‘Yes. I’ve just spent six hours on the wheel and I’ve had plenty of time to think about it – two minutes should have been enough. If there’s anybody living in a fool’s paradise it’s been me. How many Focke-Wulf Condors do you think they have in the Trondheim and Bergen airfields, sir?’

‘I don’t know. Too damn many for my liking, I’m sure.’

‘And for mine. Three or four of them acting in concert could cover ten thousand square miles in a couple of hours, all depending upon how high they are and what the visibility is. Bound to locate us – us, the most valuable prize on the Norwegian Sea. But they haven’t, they haven’t even bothered to try. Why?’

‘Because they know where we are. Because we didn’t manage to slip that submarine after sunset.’

McKinnon nodded and propped his chin on his hands. His breakfast lay untouched before him.

‘You did your best, Bo’sun. There was never any guarantee. You can’t reproach yourself.’

‘Oh yes I can. It’s a thing I’m getting pretty good at – reproaching myself, I mean. But in this case, not for the reason you think. Given only the slightest degree of luck we should have shaken him yesterday evening. We didn’t. We forgot the Factor X.’

‘You sound like an advertisement, Bo’sun. Factor X, the secret ingredient in the latest ladies’ cosmetics.’

‘What I mean, sir, is that even if we slipped him – moved out of his Asdic listening range – he could still have found us, Asdic or not, Condors or not. A good archer always carries a second string for his bow.’

‘A second string?’ Jamieson put his cup down very carefully. ‘You mean we have a second of those damned location transmitter bugs aboard?’

‘Can you think of any other solution, sir? Luck has made us too smug, too self-confident, to the extent that we have been guilty of gravely underestimating the ungodly. Singh or McCrimmon or Simons – all three of them, for all I know – have been smarter than us, smart enough, anyway, to gamble on the likelihood of our missing the glaringly obvious, just because it was too obvious. Chances are high that this won’t be a transceiver, just a simple transmitter no bigger than a lady’s handbag.’

‘But we’ve already searched, Bo’sun. Very thoroughly indeed. If there wasn’t anything there then, there won’t be anything now. I mean, transmitters just don’t materialize out of thin air.’

‘No. But there could have been one before we made our search. It could have been transferred elsewhere before that – it’s entirely possible that any or all of the three Flannelfeet may have anticipated just such a search. Sure we combed the area of the hospital, cabins, store-rooms, galleys, everything – but that’s all we did search.’

‘Yes, but where else –’ Jamieson broke off and looked thoughtful.

‘Yes, sir, the same thought had occurred to me. The superstructure is no more than an uninhabited warren at the moment.’

‘Isn’t it just?’ Jamieson put down his cup and rose. ‘Well, heigh-ho for the superstructure. I’ll take a couple of my boys with me.’

‘Would they recognize a bug if they saw one? I don’t think I would.’

‘I would. All they’ve got to do is to bring me any piece of equipment that has no place aboard a ship.’

After he had gone McKinnon reflected that Jamieson, in addition to his engineering qualifications, was also an A.M.I.E.E. and, as such, probably able to identify a bug.

Not more than ten minutes later Jamieson returned, smiling widely and in evident satisfaction.

‘The unfailing instinct of your true bug-hunter, Bo’sun. Got it first time. Unerring, you might say.’

‘Where?’

‘Cunning devils. Suppose they thought it would be ironic and the last place we would look. What more fitting place for a radio device than a wrecked radio room? Not only had they used one of the few undamaged batteries there to power it, they’d even rigged up a makeshift aerial. Not that you would ever know that it was an aerial of any kind, not just to look at it.’

‘Congratulations, sir. That was well done. Is it still in place?’

‘Yes. First instincts, of course, were to rip the damn thing out. But then, wiser counsels, if I can use that term about myself, prevailed. If they have us on that transmitter, then they have us on their Asdic.’

‘Of course. And if we’d dismantled our set and stopped the engine and generator, they’d just have poked their periscope above the surface and located us in nothing flat. There’ll be a better time and better place to dismantle that bug.’

‘During the night, you mean, Bo’sun – if we’re still afloat by nightfall?’

‘I’m not rightly sure, sir. As you infer, it all depends upon what condition we’re in come the dark.’

Jamieson looked at him in what could have been a faintly disbelieving speculation, but said nothing.

McKinnon, in an empty cabin next to that of Captain Andropolous, was sound asleep when Johnny Holbrook shook him half an hour after noon.

‘Mr Naseby is on the phone, sir.’

McKinnon sat up in his bunk, rubbed his eyes and looked with something less than favour at the teenage ward orderly who, like Wayland Day, walked in awe of the Bo’sun.

‘Couldn’t somebody else have spoken to him?’

‘Sorry, sir. Specially asked for you.’

McKinnon moved out into the mess-deck where people were already gathering for lunch. Patterson was there with Jamieson and Sinclair, together with Margaret Morrison and Nurse Irene. He picked up the phone.

‘George, I was in a better world right now.’

‘Sorry about that, Archie. Thought you’d better know. We have company.’ Naseby could have been talking about the weather.

‘Ah!’

‘Starboard. About two miles. A bit under, perhaps. Says to stop or he will fire.’

‘Oh.’

‘Also says that if we try to alter course he will sink us.’

‘Is that so?’

‘So he says. May even mean it. Shall I turn into him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Full power?’

‘I’ll ask for it. Up in a minute.’ He replaced the phone.

‘My word,’ Margaret Morrison said. ‘That was an intriguing conversation. Full of information, if I may say so.’

‘We bo’suns are men of few words. Mr Patterson, could we have full power?’ Patterson nodded heavily, rose without speaking and crossed to the telephone.

Jamieson said in a resigned voice: ‘No need to ask, I suppose?’

‘No, sir. Sorry about your lunch.’

‘The usual – ah – direct tactics?’ Sinclair said.

‘No option. Man says he’s going to sink us.’

‘He’s going to say more than that when he sees us altering course towards him,’ Jamieson said. ‘He’s going to say that the San Andreas is crewed by a bunch of unreconstructed lunatics.’

‘If he does, he could well be right.’ As he turned to go Ulbricht put out a restraining hand.

‘I’m coming too.’

‘Please not, Lieutenant. I don’t believe our new acquaintance is going to sink us but he’s sure as hell going to try to stop us. The primary target will be the bridge, I’m sure. You want to undo all the good work Dr Sinclair and the nursing staff have already done, the stitching and bandaging all over again? Selfish. Margaret!’

‘You stay where you are, Karl Ulbricht.’

Ulbricht scowled, shrugged, smiled and stayed where he was.

When McKinnon reached the bridge the San Andreas, under maximum helm, was already beginning to slew round to starboard. Naseby looked round as McKinnon entered.

‘Take the wheel, Archie. He’s sending.’

Naseby moved out on the starboard wing. Someone on the conning-tower of the U-boat was indeed using an Aldis lamp but transmitting very slowly – almost certainly, McKinnon guessed, because a non-English-speaking operator was sending letter by given letter. For’ard of the conning-tower three men were crouched around the deck-gun which, as far as the bo’sun could judge at that distance, was pointed directly at them. The signalling ceased.

‘What does he say, George?’

‘“Regain course. Stop or I fire”.’

‘Send him that bit about a hospital ship and the Geneva Convention.’

‘He won’t pay a blind bit of attention.’

‘Send it anyway. Distract him. Give us time. The rules say you don’t shoot a man when you’re having a conversation with him.’

Naseby started transmitting but almost immediately jumped back inside the bridge. The puff of smoke from the gun was unmistakable, as was the shock and sound of a shell exploding inside the superstructure almost immediately afterwards. Naseby gave McKinnon a reproachful look.

‘They’re not playing by your rules, Archie.’

‘So it would seem. Can you see where we’ve been hit?’

Naseby went out on the starboard wing and looked below and aft.

‘Crew’s mess-deck,’ he said. ‘Well, what was the crew’s mess-deck. Nobody there now, of course.’

‘Not what they were aiming for, you can be sure of that. A Force four is nothing to us but it makes for a very unstable gun-platform on a submarine. I don’t like that very much, George, they’re liable to hit anywhere except where they’re aiming for. We can only hope that the next one is as high above the bridge as that one was below it.’

The next one came straight through the bridge. It shattered the starboard for’ard window – one of those that had been replaced after Klaussen’s machine-gunners had destroyed them – penetrated the thin sheet-metal that separated the bridge from what had been the wireless office and exploded just beyond. The sliding wooden door, now in a hundred jagged fragments, blew forward into the bridge and the concussive blast of the explosion sent both men staggering, McKinnon against the wheel, Naseby against a small chart table: but the razor-sharp shards of the shell casing had flown in the other direction and both men were unhurt.

Naseby recovered some of the air that had been driven from his lungs. ‘They’re improving, Archie.’

‘Fluke.’ The San Andreas, its superstructure beginning to vibrate quite badly as engine revolutions built up, was now bearing down directly on the conning-tower of the U-boat which, however, was still considerably more than a mile distant. ‘Next one will miss the bridge by a mile.’

The next one, in fact, missed the ship completely and went into the sea a hundred yards astern of the San Andreas. It did not detonate on impact.

The following shell struck somewhere in the vicinity of the bows. Where it had exploded was impossible to tell from the bridge, for there was no visible uplifting or buckling of the fo’c’s’le deck, but that it had done its damage was beyond doubt: the furious rattling of chain as one of the fore anchors plunged down to the floor of the Norwegian Sea could be heard a mile away. The rattling ceased as abruptly as it had begun, the fastening doubtless torn from the floor of the chain locker.

‘No loss,’ Naseby said. ‘Who’s ever anchored in a thousand feet or whatever?’

‘Who cares about the anchor? Point is, are we open to the sea?’

Yet another shell buried itself in the bows and this time there was no doubt where it had landed for a small area of the fo’c’s’le deck, port side, lifted upwards almost a foot.

‘Open to the sea or not,’ Naseby said, ‘this hardly seems to be the time to investigate. Not as long as they are zeroing in on the bows, which is what they appear to be doing. We’re all that closer now so they’re getting all the more accurate. They seem to be going for the waterline. It can’t be that they want to sink us. And don’t they know the gold is there?’

‘I don’t know what they know. Probably know there’s gold aboard: no reason why they should know where. Not that a little shrapnel lowers the value of gold. Anyway, I suppose we should be grateful for small mercies: at this angle of approach it’s impossible that they can hit the hospital area.’

A third shell struck and exploded in the bows in almost the same position as the previous one – the already uplifted section of the fo’c’s’le had heaved up almost another foot.

‘That’s where the paint and carpenter’s shops are,’ Naseby said absently.

‘That’s what I’ve been thinking.’

‘Were Ferguson and Curran in the mess-deck when you left?’

‘That’s why I’ve been thinking. Can’t remember seeing them, although that’s not to say they weren’t there. They’re such an idle couple they might well have passed up lunch for an hour’s kip. I should have warned them.’

‘There wasn’t time for you to warn anyone.’

‘I could have sent someone. I did think they’d concentrate their fire on the bridge but I should still have sent someone. My fault. Slipping, as I told Jamieson.’ He paused, narrowed his eyes in concentration and said: ‘I think they’re turning away, George.’

Naseby had the glasses to his eyes. ‘They are. And there’s someone on the bridge, captain or whoever, using a loud-hailer. Ah! The gun crew are working on their gun and – yes – they’re aligning it fore-and-aft. This mean what I think it means, Archie?’

‘Well, the conning-tower’s empty and the gun crew are going down the hatch so it must mean what you think. See any bubbles coming up?’

‘No. Wait a minute. Yes. Yes, lots.’

‘Blowing main ballast.’

‘But we’re still a mile away from them.’

‘Captain’s taking no chances and I don’t blame him. He’s not a clown like Klaussen.’

They watched for some moments in silence. The U-boat was now at a 45° angle, the decks barely awash and vanishing quickly.

‘Take the wheel, George. Give the Chief Engineer a ring, will you, tell him what’s happened and ask him to drop down to normal speed. Then back on the course we were on. I’m going to check on any flooding for’ard.’

Naseby watched him go and knew that flooding was secondary in the Bo’sun’s mind. He was going to find out whether, indeed, Curran and Ferguson had elected to miss lunch.

McKinnon was back in about ten minutes. He had a bottle of Scotch in his hand and two glasses and no smile on his face.

Naseby said: ‘Their luck run out?’

‘Abandoned by fortune, George. Abandoned by McKinnon.’

‘Archie, you must stop it. Please stop blaming yourself. What’s done is done.’ Janet had intercepted him as he had entered the mess-deck – he had come down with Naseby and left Trent on the wheel with Jones and McGuigan as look-outs – and pulled him into a corner. ‘Oh, I know that’s trite, meaningless, if you want. And if you want another trite and meaningless remark, you can’t bring back the dead.’

‘True, true.’ The Bo’sun smiled without humour. ‘And speaking of the dead – and one should speak no ill of the dead – they were a couple of moderately useless characters. But both were married, both had two daughters. What would they think if they knew that the gallant bo’sun, in his anxiety to get at a U-boat, completely forgot them?’

‘The best thing would be if you forgot them. Sounds cruel, I know, but let the dead bury their dead. We are alive: when I say “we” I’m not talking about you, I’m talking about every other person aboard, including myself. Your duty is to the living. Don’t you know that every single person on this ship, from the Captain and Mr Patterson down, depends on you? We’re depending on you to take us home.’

‘Do be quiet, woman.’

‘You’ll take me home, Archie?’

‘Scalloway? Hop, skip and jump. Of course I will.’

She stood back at arm’s length, hands on his shoulders, searched his eyes, then smiled.

‘You know, Archie, I really believe you will.’

He smiled in return. ‘I’m glad of that.’ He didn’t for a moment believe it himself but there was no point in spreading undue gloom and despondency.

They joined Patterson, Jamieson and Ulbricht at the table. Patterson pushed a glass in front of him. ‘I would say that you have earned that, Bo’sun. A splendid job.’

‘Not so splendid, sir. I had no option but to do what I did. Can’t say I feel sorry for a U-boat captain but he’s really up against a nearly impossible problem, faced with a hiding to nothing. He’s under orders not to sink us so the best he can do is to try to incapacitate us as much as possible. We run at him and he hides. Simple as that.’

‘The way you put it, yes. I hear you had a very narrow escape on the bridge.’

‘If the shell had passed through metal and exploded in the bridge, that would have been it. But it passed through the glass instead. Luck.’

‘And up front?’

‘Three holes. All above the waterline. What with those and the damage that the U-boat did to us – rather, the damage we inflicted on ourselves – there’s going to be a fair old job for the ship repairers when we get into dry dock. The watertight bulkheads seem sound enough. That’s the good part. The bad part – and I’m afraid this is all my fault – is that –’

‘Archie!’ Janet’s voice was sharp.

‘Oh, all right. You’ll have heard – Ferguson and Curran are dead.’

‘I know and I’m sorry. Damnable. That makes twenty now.’ Patterson thought for a few moments. ‘You reckon this situation will continue for some time?’

‘What situation, sir?’

‘That they keep on trying to stop us instead of sinking us.’

McKinnon shrugged. ‘It is much more important to the Germans that they discredit the Russians with our Government than that they get the gold. As things stand at the moment they want both to have their cake and eat it. Factor of greed, really.’

‘So as long as they remain greedy we’re relatively safe?’

‘Safe from sinking, yes. But not safe from being taken over.’

‘But you just said –’

‘All they have to do is to bring up another U-boat and they’ll have us cold. With two U-boats we have no chance. If we go after one the other will parallel our course and pump shells into us at their leisure. Not the engine-room, of course, they want to take us under our own steam to Norway. The hospital area. First shell in there and the white flag flies – if we’ve any sense we’d fly it before the first shot. Next time I go up to the bridge I’ll take a nice big bedsheet with me.’

‘There are times, Bo’sun,’ Jamieson said, ‘when I wish you’d keep your thoughts to yourself.’

‘Merely answering a question, sir. And I have another thought, another question, if you like. Only a tiny handful of people would have known of this operation, the plan to use the San Andreas as a bullion carrier. A cabinet minister or two, an admiral or two. No more. I wonder who the traitor is who sold us down the river. If we get back and if some famous and prominent person unaccountably commits suicide, then we’ll know.’ He rose. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I have some work to do.’

‘What work, Archie?’ It was Janet. ‘Haven’t you done enough for one day?’

‘A bo’sun’s work is never done. Routine, Janet, just routine.’ He left the mess-deck.

‘Routine,’ Janet said. ‘What routine?’

‘Curran’s dead.’

She looked puzzled. ‘I know that.’

‘Curran was the sailmaker. It’s the sailmaker’s job to sew up the dead.’

Janet rose hastily and left the table. Patterson gave Jamieson a sour look.

‘There are times, Second, when I wish you would keep your thoughts to yourself. You do have half an eye, I take it.’

‘True, true. Delicacy? A water buffalo could have done it better.’

Chapter Thirteen

Patterson finished speaking – by this time he was getting quite professional at reading burial services – planks tilted and the shrouded forms of Curran and Ferguson slid down into the icy wastes of the Norwegian Sea. It was then that the engine-room noise faded away and the San Andreas began to slow.

Nearly all the crew were on deck – the dead men had been an amiable enough couple and well liked. The cooks and stewards were below, as were the nursing staff and three stokers. Trent and Jones were on the bridge.

Jamieson was the first to move. ‘It looks,’ he said, ‘as if we have made a mistake.’ He walked away, not quickly, with the air of a man who knew that this was not a moment that called for any particular urgency.

Patterson and McKinnon followed more slowly. Patterson said: ‘What did he mean by that? That we’ve made a mistake, I mean?’

‘He was being kind, sir. What he meant was that the all-wise bo’sun has made another blunder. Who was on watch down below?’

‘Just young Stephen. You know, the Polish boy.’

‘Let’s hope he’s not the next to go over the side.’

Patterson stopped and caught McKinnon by the arm. ‘What do you mean by that? And what do you mean – ”blunder”?’

‘The one thing ties up with the other.’ McKinnon’s voice sounded dull. ‘Maybe I’m tired. Maybe I’m not thinking too well. Did you notice who wasn’t at the funeral, sir?’

Patterson looked at him for a few silent moments, then said: ‘The nursing staff. Kitchen staff. Stewards. Men on the bridge.’ His grip tightened on the Bo’sun’s arm. ‘And McCrimmon.’

‘Indeed. And whose brilliant idea was it to let McCrimmon roam around on the loose?’

‘It just worked out the wrong way. You can’t think of everything. No man can. He’s a slippery customer, this McCrimmon. Do you think we’ll be able to pin anything on him?’

‘I’m certain we won’t. Nevertheless, sir, I’d like your permission to lock him up.’ McKinnon shook his head, his face bitter. ‘There’s nothing like locking the door when the horse has bolted.’

Stephen was lying on the steel plates, covered with oil still gushing from a severed fuel line. There was a rapidly forming bruise, bleeding slightly, behind his right ear. Sinclair finished examining his head and straightened.

‘I’ll have him taken to hospital. X-ray, but I don’t think it necessary. I should think he’ll waken up with nothing more than a sore head.’ He looked at the two steel objects lying on the deck-plates beside Stephen. ‘You know who did this, Bo’sun?’

‘Yes.’

‘The Stilson wrench that laid him out and the fire-axe that slashed the fuel line. There could be fingerprints.’

‘No.’ With his toe McKinnon touched a clump of engine-room waste. ‘He used that and there’ll be no prints on that. He looked at Patterson. ‘This line can be replaced, sir?’

‘It can. How long, Second?’

‘Couple of hours,’ Jamieson said. ‘Give or take.’

McKinnon said: ‘Would you come along with me, Mr Patterson?’

‘It will be a pleasure, Bo’sun.’

‘You could have killed him, you know,’ McKinnon said conversationally.

From his bench seat in the mess-deck McCrimmon looked up with an insolent stare.

‘What the bloody hell are you talking about?’

‘Stephen.’

‘Stephen? What about Stephen?’

‘His broken head.’

‘I still don’t know what you’re talking about. Broken head? How did he get a broken head?’

‘Because you went down to the engine-room and did it. And cut open a fuel line.’

‘You’re crazy. I haven’t left this seat in the past quarter of an hour.’

‘Then you must have seen whoever went down to the engine-room. You’re a stoker, McCrimmon. An engine stops and you don’t go down to investigate?’

McCrimmon chewed some gum. ‘This is a frame-up. What proof do you have?’

‘Enough,’ Patterson said. ‘I am putting you under arrest, McCrimmon, and in close confinement. When we get back to Britain, you’ll be tried for murder, high treason, convicted and certainly shot.’

‘This is absolute rubbish.’ He prefaced the word ‘rubbish’ with a few choice but unprintable adjectives. ‘I’ve done nothing and you can’t prove a thing.’ But his normally pasty face had gone even pastier.

‘We don’t have to,’ McKinnon said. ‘Your friend Simons or Braun or whatever his name is – has been, well, as the Americans say, been singing like a canary. He’s willing to turn King’s evidence on you in the hope of getting less than life.’

‘The bastard!’ McCrimmon was on his feet, lips drawn back over his teeth, his right hand reaching under his overalls.

‘Don’t,’ Patterson said. ‘Whatever it is, don’t touch it. You’ve got no place to run, McCrimmon – and the Bo’sun could kill you with one hand.’

‘Let me have it,’ McKinnon said. He stretched out his hand and McCrimmon, very slowly, very carefully, placed the knife, hilt first, in the Bo’sun’s palm.

‘You haven’t won.’ His face was both scared and vicious at the same time. ‘It’s the person who laughs last that wins.’

‘Could be.’ McKinnon looked at him consideringly. ‘You know something that we don’t?’

‘As you say, could be.’

‘Such as the existence of a transmitting bug concealed in the wireless office?’

McCrimmon leapt forward and screamed, briefly, before collapsing to the deck. His nose had broken against the Bo’sun’s fist.

Patterson looked down at the unconscious man and then at McKinnon. ‘That give you a certain kind of satisfaction?’

‘I suppose I shouldn’t have done it but – well, yes, it did give a certain kind of satisfaction.’

‘Me, too,’ Patterson said.

What seemed, but wasn’t, a long day wore on into the evening and then darkness, and still the Germans stayed away. The San Andreas, under power again, was still on a direct course to Aberdeen. Stephen had regained consciousness and, as Dr Sinclair had predicted, was suffering from no more than a moderate headache. Sinclair had carried out what were no better than temporary repairs to McCrimmon’s broken face but it was really a job for a plastic surgeon and Sinclair was no plastic surgeon.

Lieutenant Ulbricht, a chart spread out on the table before him, rubbed his chin thoughtfully and looked at McKinnon who was seated opposite him in the Captain’s cabin.

‘We’ve been lucky so far. Lucky? Never thought I’d say that aboard a British ship. Why are we being left alone?’

‘Because we’re just that. Lucky. They didn’t have a spare U-boat around and our friend who’s trailing us wasn’t going to try it on his own again. Also, we’re still on a direct course to Aberdeen. They know where we are and have no reason to believe that we still aren’t going where we’re supposed to be going. They have no means of knowing what’s happened aboard this ship.’

‘Reasonable, I suppose.’ Ulbricht looked at the chart and tapped his teeth. ‘If something doesn’t happen to us during the night something is going to happen to us tomorrow. That’s what I think. At least, that’s what I feel.’

‘I know.’

‘What do you know?’

‘Tomorrow. Your countrymen aren’t clowns. We’ll be passing very close to the Shetlands tomorrow. They’ll suspect that there is a possibility that we might make a break for Lerwick or some such place and will act on that possibility.’

‘Planes? Condors?’

‘It’s possible.’

‘Does the RAF have fighters there?’

‘I should imagine so. But I don’t know. Haven’t been there for years.’

‘The Luftwaffe will know. If there are Hurricanes or Spitfires there, the Luftwaffe would never risk a Condor against them.’

‘They could send some long-range Messerschmitts as escort.’

‘If not, it could be a torpedo?’

‘That’s not something I care to think about.’

‘Nor me. There’s something very final about a torpedo. You know, it’s not necessary to sail south round Bressay and turn round Bard Head. We could use the north channel. Maryfield is the name of the village, isn’t it?’

‘I was born there.’

‘That was stupid. Stupid of me, I mean. We make a sharp turn for the north channel and it’s a torpedo for sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘And if we steam steadily south past Bressay they may well think that we’re keeping on course to Aberdeen?’

‘We can only hope, Lieutenant. A guarantee is out of the question. There’s nothing else we can do.’

‘Nothing?’

‘Well, there’s something. We can go down below and have dinner.’

‘Our last, perhaps?’

McKinnon crossed his fingers, smiled and said nothing.

Dinner, understandably, was a rather solemn affair. Patterson was in a particularly pensive mood.

‘Has it ever occurred to you, Bo’sun, that we might outrun this U-boat? Without bursting a few steam valves, we could get two or three knots more out of this tub.’

‘Yes, sir. I’m sure we could.’ The tension in the air was almost palpable. ‘I’m also sure that the U-boat would pick up the increased revolutions immediately. He would know that we were on to him, know that we know that he’s following us. He would just surface – that would increase his speed – and finish us off. He’s probably carrying a dozen torpedoes. How many do you think would miss us?’

‘The first one would be enough.’ Patterson sighed. ‘Rather desperate men make rather desperate suggestions. You could sound more encouraging, Bo’sun.’

‘Rest after toil,’ Jamieson said. ‘Port after stormy seas. There’s going to be no rest for us, Bo’sun. No safe harbour. Is that it?’

‘Has to be, sir.’ He pointed at Janet Magnusson. ‘You heard me promise to take this lady back home.’

Janet smiled at him. ‘You’re very kind, Archie McKinnon. Also, you’re lying in your teeth.’

McKinnon smiled back at her. ‘Ye of little faith.’

Ulbricht was the first to sense a change in the atmosphere. ‘Something has occurred to you, Mr McKinnon?’

‘Yes. At least, I hope it has.’ He looked at Margaret Morrison. ‘I wonder if you would be so kind as to ask Captain Bowen to come to the lounge?’

‘Another secret conference? I thought there were no more spies or criminals or traitors left aboard.’

‘I don’t think so. But no chances.’ He looked around the table. ‘I would like it if you all joined us.’

Just after dawn the next morning – still a very late dawn in those latitudes – Lieutenant Ulbricht gazed out through the starboard wing doorway at low-lying land that could be intermittently seen through squalls of sleety snow.

‘So that’s Unst, is it?’

‘That’s Unst.’ Although McKinnon had been up most of the night he seemed fresh, relaxed and almost cheerful.

‘And that – that is what you Shetlanders break your hearts over?’

‘Yes, indeed.’

‘I don’t want to give any offence, Mr McKinnon, but that’s probably the most bare, bleak, barren and inhospitable island I’ve ever had the misfortune to clap my eyes on.’

‘Home sweet home,’ McKinnon said placidly. ‘Beauty, Lieutenant, is in the eye of the beholder. Besides, no place would look its sparkling best in weather conditions like this.’

‘And that’s another thing. Is the Shetland weather always as awful as this?’

McKinnon regarded the slate-grey seas, the heavy cloud and the falling snow with considerable satisfaction. ‘I think the weather is just lovely.’

‘As you say, the eye of the beholder. I doubt whether a Condor pilot would share your point of view.’

‘It’s unlikely.’ McKinnon pointed ahead. ‘Fine off the starboard now. That’s Fetlar.’

‘Ah!’ Ulbricht consulted the chart. ‘Within a mile – or two at the most – or where we ought to be. We haven’t done too badly, Mr McKinnon.’

‘We? You, you mean. A splendid piece of navigation, Lieutenant. The Admiralty should give you a medal for your services.’

Ulbricht smiled. ‘I doubt whether Admiral Doenitz would quite approve of that. Speaking of services, you will now, I take it, be finished with mine. As a navigator, I mean.’

‘My father was a fisherman, a professional. My first four years at sea I spent with him around those islands. It would be difficult for me to get lost.’

‘I should imagine.’ Ulbricht went out on the starboard wing, looked aft for a few seconds, then hastily returned, shivering and dusting snow off his coat.

‘The sky – or what I can see of the sky – is getting pretty black up north. Wind’s freshening a bit. Looks as if this awful weather – or, if you like, wonderful weather – is going to continue for quite some time. This never entered your calculations.’

‘I’m not a magician. Nor am I a fortune-teller. Reading the future is not one of my specialities.’

‘Well, just let’s call it a well-timed stroke of luck.’

‘Luck we could use. A little, anyway.’

Fetlar was on the starboard beam when Naseby came up to take over the wheel. McKinnon went out on the starboard wing to assess the weather. As the San Andreas was heading just a degree or two west of south and the wind was from the north it was almost directly abaft. The clouds in that direction were dark and ominous but they did not hold his attention for long: he had become aware, very faintly at first but then more positively, of something a great deal more ominous. He went back inside and looked at Ulbricht.

‘Remember we were talking about luck a little while back?’ Ulbricht nodded. ‘Well, our little luck has just run out. We have company. There’s a Condor out there.’

Ulbricht said nothing, just went outside on the wing and listened. He returned after a few moments.

‘I can hear nothing.’

‘Variation in wind force or direction. Something like that. I heard it all right. Up in a north-easterly direction. I’m quite sure that the pilot didn’t intend that we should hear him. Some passing freak of wind. They’re being either very careful or very suspicious or maybe both. They have to consider the possibility that we might make a break for some port in the Shetlands. So the U-boat surfaces before dawn and calls up the Focke-Wulf. Pilot’s doubtless been told to stay out of sight and hearing. He’ll do that until he hears from the U-boat that we’ve suddenly changed direction. Then he’ll come calling.’

‘To finish us off,’ Naseby said.

‘They won’t be dropping any rose petals, that’s for sure.’

Ulbricht said: ‘You no longer think that it will be torpedo-bombers or glider-bombers or Stukas that will come and do the job?’

‘No. They wouldn’t get here in time and they can’t come earlier and hang around waiting. They haven’t the range. But that big lad out there can hang around all day if need be. Of course, I’m only assuming there’s only one Condor out there. Could be two or three of them. Don’t forget we’re a very, very important target.’

‘It’s a gift not given to many.’ Ulbricht was gloomy. ‘This ability to cheer up people and lighten their hearts.’

‘I second that.’ Naseby didn’t sound any happier than Ulbricht. ‘I wish to hell you hadn’t gone out on that wing.’

‘You wouldn’t like me to keep the burden of my secrets alone, would you? No need to tell anyone else. Why spread gloom and despondency unnecessarily, especially when there’s damn-all we can do about it.’

‘Blissful ignorance, is that it?’ Naseby said. McKinnon nodded. ‘I could do with some of that.’

Shortly after noon, when they were off a small and dimly seen group of islands which McKinnon called the Skerries, he and Ulbricht went below, leaving Naseby and McGuigan on the bridge. The snow, which was now really more sleet than snow, had eased but not stopped. The wind, too, had eased. The visibility, if that was the word for it, varied intermittently between two and four miles. Cloud cover was about two thousand feet and somewhere above that the unseen Condor lurked. McKinnon had not heard it again but he didn’t for a moment doubt that it was still there.

The Captain and Rennet were sitting up in bed and the Bo’sun passed the time of day with them and Margaret Morrison. Everybody was being elaborately calm but the tension and expectancy in the air were unmistakable and considerable. It would have been even more considerable, McKinnon reflected, if they had known of the Condor patrolling above the clouds.

He found Patterson and Sinclair in the mess-deck. Sinclair said: ‘Singularly free from alarms and excursions this morning, aren’t we, Bo’sun?’

‘Long may it continue that way.’ He wondered if Sinclair would consider the accompanying Condor an alarm or an excursion. ‘The weather is rather on our side. Snowing, poor visibility – not fog but not good – and low cloud cover.’

‘Sounds promising. May yet be that we shall touch the Happy Isles.’

‘We hope. Speaking of the Happy Isles, have you made preparations for off-loading our wounded cripples when we reach the Isles?’

‘Yes. No problem. Rafferty is a stretcher case. So are four of the men we picked up in Murmansk – two with leg wounds, two frostbite cases. Five in all. Easy.’

‘Sounds good. Mr Patterson, those two rogues, McCrimmon and Simons or whatever his name is. We’ll have to tie them up – at least tie their hands behind their backs – before we take them ashore.’

‘If we get the chance to take them ashore. Have to leave it to the last minute – double-dyed criminals they may be but we can’t have a couple of men go down in a sinking ship.’

‘Please don’t talk about such things,’ Sinclair said.

‘Of course, sir. Have they been fed? Not that I really care.’

‘No.’ It was Sinclair. ‘I saw them. Simons says he’s lost his appetite and McCrimmon’s face is too painful to let him eat. I believe him, he can hardly move his lips to speak. It looks, Bo’sun, as if you hit him with a sledgehammer.’

‘No tears for either.’

McKinnon had a quick lunch and rose to go. ‘Have to go to relieve Naseby.’

McKinnon said: ‘Two hours or so. Perhaps earlier if I can see a convenient bank of low cloud or snow or even fog – anything we can disappear into. You or Mr Jamieson will be in the engine-room about then?’

‘Both, probably.’ Patterson sighed. ‘We can only hope it works, Bo’sun.’

‘That’s all we can do, sir.’

Shortly after three o’clock in the afternoon, on the bridge with Naseby and Ulbricht, McKinnon made his decision to go. He said to Ulbricht: ‘We can’t see it but we’re near enough opposite the south tip of Bressay?’

‘I would say so. Due west of us.’

‘Well, no point in putting off the inevitable.’ He lifted the phone and called the engine-room. ‘Mr Patterson? Now, if you please. George, hard a-starboard. Due west.’

‘And how am I to know where west is?’

McKinnon went to the starboard wing door and latched it open. ‘Going to be a bit chilly – and damp – but if you keep the wind fair and square on your right cheek that should be it, near enough.’ He went into the wrecked radio room, disconnected the transmitting bug, returned to the bridge and went out on the port wing.

The weather had changed very little. Grey skies, grey seas, moderate sleet and a patchy visibility extending to not more than two miles. He returned to the bridge again, leaving the door open so that the north wind had a clear passage through the bridge.

‘One wonders,’ Ulbricht said, ‘what thoughts are passing through the mind of the U-boat captain at this moment.’

‘Probably not very pleasant ones. All depends whether he was depending on the transmitting bug or the Asdic or both to keep tabs on us. If it was the bug, then he might trail us at a prudent distance so that he could have his aerial raised to pick up the transmitting signal without being seen. In that case he might have been out of Asdic listening range. And if that is the case he might well believe that the transmitter has failed. He has, after all, no reason to believe that we might have stumbled on the bug and that we know of McCrimmon’s shenanigans.’

The San Andreas, silent now, was heading approximately west, still with a good turn of speed on.

‘So he’s in a quandary,’ McKinnon said. ‘Not a position I would like to be in. So what decision does he make? Does he increase speed on the same course we’ve been following in the hope of catching us up or does he think we might be running for shelter and go off on an interception course for Bard Head in the hope of locating us? All depends how crafty he is.’

‘I just don’t know,’ Ulbricht said.

‘I know,’ Naseby said. ‘We’re just assuming that he hasn’t been tracking us on Asdic. If he’s as crafty as you are, Archie, he’ll set off on an interception course – and he’ll ask the Condor to come down and look for us.’

‘I was afraid you’d say that.’

Fifteen minutes passed in an increasingly eerie silence, then McKinnon went out on the port wing. He didn’t remain there long.

‘You were right, George.’ The Bo’sun sounded resigned. ‘He’s out there, searching for us. I can hear the Condor’s engines quite clearly but he hasn’t seen us yet. But he will, though, he will. He’s only got to quarter the area long enough – and that won’t be long – and he’ll nail us. Then a signal to the U-boat, a cluster of bombs for us and the U-boat comes to finish us off.’

‘That’s a very depressing thought,’ Naseby said.

Ulbricht went out on to the port wing and returned almost immediately. He said nothing, just nodded his head.

McKinnon picked up the engine-room phone. ‘Mr Patterson? Would you start up, please? And please don’t bother working her up slowly. Quickly, if you would, and to maximum power. The Condor is down searching for us and it can only be a matter of minutes before he finds us. I’d like to make tracks out of here with all speed.’

‘You’re not as fast as a Condor,’ Naseby said.

‘I’m sadly aware of that, George. But I don’t intend to remain here like a sitting duck while he comes and clobbers us. We can always try a little evasive action.’

‘He can also turn and twist a damn sight faster than we can. You’d be better off trying a few prayers.’

The Condor took another twenty minutes to find them but find them he did and wasted no time in making his presence felt as well as heard. In the classic fashion he approached from astern, flying low as Naseby had predicted he would, certainly at not more than three hundred feet. Naseby gave the rudder maximum helm to port but it was a wasted effort: as Naseby had also said, the Condor could turn and twist much faster than they could.

The bomb, certainly not the size of a 500-pounder, struck the deck some sixty feet for’ard of the superstructure, penetrated and exploded in a flash of flame and a large jet of oily black water.

‘That was odd,’ Naseby said.

The Bo’sun shook his head. ‘Not odd. Greed.’

‘Greed?’ Ulbricht looked at him, then nodded. ‘Gold.’

‘They haven’t given up hope yet. How far would you say it was to Bard Head?’

‘Four miles?’

‘About that. If they don’t get us – stop us, I mean – by that point, then they’re going to sink us.’

‘And if they stop us?’

‘They wait till the U-boat comes up and takes us over.’

‘It’s a sad thing,’ Naseby said. ‘Very sad. This love of money, I mean.’

‘I think,’ McKinnon said, ‘that they’ll be back in a minute or so to show us some more love.’

And, indeed, the Condor was executing a very tight turn and heading back to pass the San Andreas on the port side.

‘Some of you Condor pilots,’ McKinnon said to Ulbricht, ‘have very determined and one-track minds.’

‘There are times when one wishes they hadn’t.’

The second attack was an exact replica of the first. The pilot – or his navigator – was evidently a precision bombardier of some note for the second bomb landed in exactly the same place with precisely the same results.

‘These are not very big bombs,’ McKinnon said, ‘but it’s for sure we can’t take much more of this. Another one like that and I think we’ll call it a day.’

‘The white bedsheet, is that it?’

‘That’s it. I have it up here. I wasn’t kidding. Listen! I hear an aero engine!’

‘So did I,’ Ulbricht said. ‘All made in Germany.’

‘Not this one, it’s not. Different note altogether. It’s a fighter plane. My God, how stupid can I be! Come to that, how stupid can you be? Or the pilot of that Condor? Of course they’ve got radar on the island. Place is probably hotching with the stuff. Of course they’ve picked us up, of course they’ve picked the Condor up. So they’ve sent out someone to investigate. No. Not someone. I hear two.’ McKinnon reached out and flooded the decks and side of the San Andreas with its Red Cross lights. ‘We had better not be mistaken for the Tirpitz.’

‘I can see them now,’ Ulbricht said. His voice was without expression.

‘Me, too.’ McKinnon looked at Ulbricht and managed to keep the elation out of his voice. ‘Do you recognize them?’

‘Yes. Hurricanes.’

‘I’m sorry, Lieutenant.’ The regret in the Bo’sun’s voice was genuine. ‘But you know what this means?’

‘I’m afraid I do.’

It was no contest. The Hurricanes rapidly overhauled the Condor from the rear and fired simultaneously, one from above, the other from below. The Focke-Wulf didn’t blow up or disintegrate or burst into flames or anything dramatic of that nature. Trailing clouds of smoke, it crashed steeply into the sea and vanished at once below the waves. Lieutenant Ulbricht’s face still remained empty of all expression.

The two fighter planes returned to the San Andreas and began to circle it, one close in, the other at the distance of about a mile. Although it was difficult to see what they could do against a submarine about to launch a torpedo except blow its periscope off, their presence was immensely comforting and reassuring.

McKinnon stepped out on the port wing and waved at one of the planes, the one making a close circuit of the ship. The Hurricane waggled its wings.

Jamieson answered the telephone when McKinnon called. ‘I think you can reduce to normal speed now, sir. The Condor’s gone.’

‘Gone where?’ There was, as there might well have been, bafflement in Jamieson’s voice.

‘Under the sea. A couple of Hurricanes shot him down.’

The Hurricanes remained with them until they were within a mile of Bard Head when a lean, purposeful frigate approached out of the gathering dusk and slid effortlessly alongside. The Bo’sun was on the deck.

A man aboard the frigate – presumably the captain – used a loud-hailer.

‘Are you in need of care and protection, friend?’

‘Not now we’re not.’

‘Are you badly damaged?’

‘Some. A few shells and bombs. But we’re a going concern. There’s a nasty old U-boat hanging around.’

‘Not now he won’t be. He’ll be all to hell and gone. What’s that you see on my poop?’

‘Ah! Depth charges.’

‘Well, well.’ The bearded naval Commodore shook his head in wonderment and looked at the others gathered in the small lounge of the hotel. ‘The story is impossible, of course, but on the evidence of my eyes – well, I’ve just got to believe you. Your crew and passengers all taken care of, Mr Patterson?’

‘Yes, sir. Here and in nearby houses. We have everything we want.’

‘And there’s somebody very high up in either the Cabinet or Admiralty who’s been telling tales. Shouldn’t take too long to root him out. Bo’sun, you’re quite, quite sure about this gold?’

‘Your pension against mine, sir. I should imagine there’s a considerable difference.’ He rose, took Janet Magnusson’s arm and helped her to her feet. ‘If you will excuse me, everybody. I promised to take this lady back home.’

ALISTAIR MACLEAN

The Golden Rendezvous

Dedication

To A. A. Lamont

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

I: Tuesday Noon–5 p.m.

II: Tuesday 8 p.m.–9.30 p.m.

III: Tuesday 9.30 p.m.–10.15 p.m.

IV: Tuesday 10.15 p.m.–Wednesday 8.45 a.m.

V: Wednesday 8.45 a.m.–3.30 p.m.

VI: Wednesday 7.45 p.m.–8.15 p.m.

VII: Wednesday 8.30 p.m.–Thursday 10.30 a.m.

VIII: Thursday 4 p.m.–10 p.m.

IX: Thursday 10 p.m.–Midnight

X: Friday 9 a.m.–Saturday 1 a.m.

XI: Saturday 1 a.m.–2.15 a.m.

XII Saturday 6 a.m.–7 a.m.

I.

Tuesday Noon–5 p.m.

My shirt was no longer a shirt but just a limp and sticky rag soaked with sweat. My feet ached from the fierce heat of the steel deck plates. My forehead, under the peaked white cap, ached from the ever-increasing constriction of the leather band that made scalping only a matter of time. My eyes ached from the steely glitter of reflected sunlight from metal, water and white-washed harbour buildings. And my throat ached, from pure thirst. I was acutely unhappy.

I was unhappy. The crew were unhappy. The passengers were unhappy. Captain Bullen was unhappy and this last made me doubly unhappy because when things went wrong with Captain Bullen he invariably took it out on his chief officer. I was his chief officer.

I was bending over the rail, listening to the creak of wire and wood and watching our after jumbo derrick take the strain as it lifted a particularly large crate from the quayside, when a hand touched my arm. Captain Bullen again, I thought drearily, and then I realised that whatever the captain’s caprices wearing Chanel No. 5 wasn’t one of them. This would be Miss Beresford.

And it was. In addition to the Chanel she was wearing a white silk dress and that quizzical half-amused smile that made most of the other officers turn mental cartwheels and handsprings but served only to irritate me. I have my weaknesses, but tall, cool, sophisticated and worldly young women with a slightly malicious sense of humour is not one of them.

“Good afternoon, Mr. First Officer,” she said sweetly. She had a soft musical voice with hardly a hint of superiority or condescension when talking to the lower orders like myself, “We’ve been wondering where you were. You are not usually an absentee at apéritif time.”

“I know, Miss Beresford. I’m sorry.” What she said was true enough: what she didn’t know was that I turned up for apéritifs with the passengers more or less at the point of a gun. Standing company orders stated that it was as much a part of the ship’s officers’ duties to entertain the passengers as to sail the ship, and as Captain Bullen loathed all passengers with a fierce and total loathing, he saw to it that most of the entertaining fell to me. I nodded at the big crate now hovering over the hatchway of number five hold, then at the piled-up crates on the quayside. “I’m afraid I have work to do. Four or five hours at least. Can’t even manage lunch today, far less an apéritif.”

“Not Miss Beresford. Susan.” It was as if she had heard only my first few words. “How often do I have to ask you?”

Until we reach New York, I said to myself, and even then it will be no use. Aloud I said, smiling: “You mustn’t make things difficult for me. Regulations require that we treat all passengers with courtesy, consideration and respect.”

“You’re hopeless,” she laughed. I was too tiny a pebble to cause even a ripple in her smiling pool of self-complacency. “And no lunch, you poor man. I thought you were looking pretty glum as I came along.” She glanced at the winch-driver then at the seamen manhandling the suspended crate into position on the floor of the hold. “Your men don’t seem too pleased at the prospect either. They are a morose-looking lot.”

I eyed them briefly. They were a morose-looking lot.

“Oh, they’ll be spelled for food all right. It’s just that they have their own private worries. It must be about a hundred and ten down in that hold there, and it’s an almost unwritten law that white crews should not work in the afternoons in the tropics. Besides, they’re all still brooding darkly over the losses they’ve suffered. Don’t forget that it’s less than seventy-two hours since they had that brush with the Customs down in Jamaica.”

“Brush,” I thought was good: in what might very accurately be described as one fell swoop the Customs had confiscated from about forty crew members no fewer than 25,000 cigarettes and over two hundred bottles of hard liquor that should have been placed on the ship’s bond before arrival in Jamaican waters. That the liquor had not been placed in bond was understandable enough as the crew were expressly forbidden to have any in their quarters in the first place: that not even the cigarettes had been placed in bond had been due to the crew’s intention of following their customary practice of smuggling both liquor and tobacco ashore and disposing of them at a handsome profit to Jamaicans more than willing to pay a high price for the luxury of duty-free Kentucky bourbon and American cigarettes. But then, the crew had not been told that, for the first time in its five years’ service on the West Indian run, the s.s. Campari was to be searched from stem to stern with a thorough ruthlessness that spared nothing that came in its path, a high and searching wind that swept the ship clean as a whistle. It had been a black day.

And so was this. Even as Miss Beresford was patting me consolingly on the arm and murmuring a few farewell words of sympathy which didn’t go any too well with the twinkle in her eyes, I caught sight of Captain Bullen perched on top of the companionway leading down from the main deck. “Glowering” would probably be the most apt term to describe the expression on his face. As he came down the companionway and passed Miss Beresford he made a heroic effort to twist his features into the semblance of a smile and managed to hold it for all of two seconds until he had passed her by, then got back to his glowering again. For a man who is dressed in gleaming whites from top to toe to give the impression of a black approaching thundercloud is no small feat, but Captain Bullen managed it without any trouble. He was a big man, six feet two and very heavily built, with sandy hair and eyebrows, a smooth red face that no amount of sun could ever tan and a clear blue eye that no amount of whisky could ever dim. He looked at the quayside, the hold and then at me, all with the same impartial disfavour.

“Well, Mister,” he said heavily. “How’s it going? Miss Beresford giving you a hand, eh?” When he was in a bad mood, it was invariably “Mister”: in a neutral mood, it was “First”: and when in a good temper—which, to be fair, was most of the time—it was always “Johnny-me-boy.” But today it was “Mister.” I took my guard accordingly and ignored the implied reproof of time-wasting. He would be gruffly apologetic the next day. He always was.

“Not too bad, sir. Bit slow on the dock-side.” I nodded to where a group of men were struggling to attach chain slings to a crate that must have been at least eighteen feet in length by six square. “I don’t think the Carracio stevedores are accustomed to handling such heavy lifts.”

He took a good look.

“They couldn’t handle a damned wheel-barrow,” he snapped eventually. “Can you manage it by six, Mister?” Six o’clock was an hour past the top of the tide and we had to clear the harbour entrance sandbar by then or wait another ten hours.

“I think so, sir,” and then, to take his mind off his troubles and also because I was curious, asked: “What are in those crates? Motor-cars?”

“Motor-cars? Are you mad?” His cold blue eyes swept over the white-washed jumble of the little town and the dark green of the steeply-rising forested hills behind. “This lot couldn’t build a rabbit-hutch for export, far less a motorcar. Machinery. So the Bills of Lading say. Dynamos, generators, refrigerating, air-conditioning and refining machinery. For New York.”

“Do you mean to tell me,” I said carefully, “that the generalissimo, having successfully completed the confiscation of all the American sugar-refining mills, is now dismantling them and selling the machinery back to the Americans? Bare-faced theft like that?”

“Petty larceny on the part of the individual is theft,” Captain Bullen said morosely. “When governments engage in grand larceny, it’s economics.”

“The generalissimo and his government must be pretty desperate for money?”

“What do you think?” Bullen growled. “No one knows how many were killed in the capital and a dozen other towns in Tuesday’s hunger riots. Jamaican authorities reckon the number in hundreds. Since they turfed out most foreigners and closed down or confiscated nearly all foreign businesses they haven’t been able to earn a penny abroad. The coffers of the revolution are as empty as a drum. Man’s completely desperate for money.”

He turned away and stood staring out over the harbour, big hands wide-spaced on the guard-rail, his back ramrod-stiff. I recognised the sign, after three years of sailing with him it would have been impossible not to. There was something he wanted to say, there was some steam he wanted to blow off and no better outlet than that tried and trusty relief valve, Chief Officer Carter. Only whenever he wished to blow off steam it was a matter of personal pride with him never to bring the matter up himself. It was no great trick to guess what was troubling him, so I obliged.

I said, conversationally: “The cables we sent to London, sir. Any reply to them yet?”

“Just ten minutes ago.” He turned round casually as if the matter had already slipped his memory, but the slight purpling tinge in the red face betrayed him, and there was nothing casual about his voice when he went on: “Slapped me down, Mister, that’s what they did. Slapped me down. My own company. And the Ministry of Transport. Both of them. Told me to forget about it, said my protests were completely out of order, warned me of the consequences of future lack of co-operation with the appropriate authorities, whatever the hell appropriate authorities might be. Me! My own company! Thirty-five years I’ve sailed with the Blue Mail Line and now—and now …” His fists clenched and his voice choked into fuming silence.

“So there was someone bringing very heavy pressure to bear after all,” I murmured.

“There was, Mister, there was.” The cold blue eyes were very cold indeed and the big hands opened wide then closed, tight, till the ivory showed. Bullen was a captain, but he was more than that: he was the commodore of the Blue Mail fleet and even the board of directors walk softly when the fleet commodore is around: at least, they don’t treat him like an office boy. He went on softly: “If ever I get my hands on Dr. Slingsby Caroline I’ll break his bloody neck.”

Captain Bullen would have loved to get his hands on the oddly named Dr. Slingsby Caroline. Tens of thousands of police, government agents and American servicemen engaged in the hunt for him would also have loved to get their hands on him. So would millions of ordinary citizens if for no other reason than the excellent one that there was a reward of 50,000 dollars for information leading to his capture. But the interest of Captain Bullen and the crew of the Campari was even more personal: the missing man was very much the root of all our troubles.

Dr. Slingsby Caroline had vanished, appropriately enough, in South Carolina. He had worked at a U.S. Government’s very hush-hush Weapons Research Establishment south of the town of Columbia, an establishment concerned with the evolving, as had only become known in the past week or so, of some sort of small fission weapon for use by either fighter-planes or mobile rocket-launchers in local tactical nuclear wars. As nuclear weapons went, it was the veriest bagatelle compared to the five megaton monsters already developed by both the United States and Russia, developing barely one-thousandth of the explosive power of those and hardly capable of devastating more than a square mile of territory. Still, with the explosive potential of 5,000 tons of T.N.T., it was no toy.

Then one day—night to be precise—Dr. Slingsby Caroline had vanished. As he was the director of the Research Establishment, this was serious enough, but what was even more dismaying was that he had taken the working prototype of the weapon with him. He had apparently been surprised by two of the night guards at the plant and had killed them both, presumably with a silenced weapon, since no one heard or suspected anything amiss. He had driven through the plant gates about ten o’clock at night at the wheel of his own blue Chevrolet station wagon: the guards at the gate recognising both the car and their own chief and knowing that he habitually worked until a late hour, had waved him on without a second glance. And that was the last anyone had ever seen of Dr. Caroline or the Twister, as the weapon, for some obscure reason, had been named. But it wasn’t the last that was seen of the blue Chevrolet. That had been discovered abandoned outside the port of Savannah, some nine hours after the crime had been committed but less than an hour after it had been discovered, which showed pretty smart police work on someone’s part.

And it had just been our evil luck that the s.s. Campari had called in at Savannah on the afternoon of the day the crime had been committed.

Within an hour of the discovery of the two dead guards in the research establishment an all inter-state and foreign air and sea traffic in the South-Eastern United States had been halted. As from seven o’clock in the morning, all planes were grounded until they had been rigorously searched: as from seven o’clock police stopped and examined every truck crossing a state border: and, of course, everything larger than a rowing-boat was forbidden to put out to sea. Unfortunately for the authorities in general and us in particular, the s.s. Campari had sailed from Savannah at six o’clock that morning. Automatically, the Campari became very, very “hot,” the number one suspect for the gateway.

The first radio call came through at 8.30 a.m. Would Captain Bullen return immediately to Savannah? The captain, no beater about the bush, asked why the hell he should. He was told that it was desperately urgent that he return at once. Not, replied the captain, unless they gave him a very compelling reason indeed. They refused to give him a reason and Captain Bullen refused to return. Deadlock. Then, because they hadn’t much option, the Federal Authorities, who had already taken over from the state, gave him the facts.

Captain Bullen asked for more facts. He asked for a description of the missing scientist and weapon, and he’d soon find out for himself whether or not they were on board. Followed a fifteen-minute delay, no doubt necessary to secure the release of top classified information, then the descriptions were reluctantly given.

There was a curious similarity between the two descriptions. Both the Twister and Dr. Caroline were exactly 75 inches in length. Both were very thin, the weapon being only eleven inches in diameter. The doctor weighed 180 pounds, the Twister 275. The Twister was covered in a one-piece sheath of polished anodised aluminium, the doctor in a two-piece grey gabardine. The Twister’s head was covered by a grey Pyroceram nose-cap, the doctor’s by black hair with a tell-tale lock of grey in the centre.

The orders for the doctor were to identify and apprehend: for the Twister to identify but do not repeat do not touch. The weapon should be completely stable and safe and normally it would take one of the only two experts who were as yet sufficiently acquainted with it at least ten minutes to arm it; but no one could guess what effect might have been had upon the Twister’s delicate mechanism by the jolting it might have suffered in transit.

Three hours later Captain Bullen was able to report with complete certainty that neither the missing scientist nor weapon was aboard. Intensive would be a poor word to describe that search, every square foot between the chain locker and steering compartment was searched and searched again. Captain Bullen had radioed the Federal Authorities and then forgotten about it.

And in Kingston the blow had fallen. We had no sooner arrived than the harbour authorities had come on board requesting that a search party from the American destroyer lying almost alongside be allowed to examine the Campari. The search party, about forty of them, were already lined up on the deck of the destroyer.

They were still there four hours later. Captain Bullen, in a few simple well-chosen words that had carried far and clear over the sunlit waters of Kingston harbour, had told the authorities that if the United States Navy proposed, in broad daylight, to board a British Mercantile Marine vessel in a British harbour, then they were welcome to try. They were also welcome, he had added, to suffer, apart from the injuries and the loss of blood they would incur in the process, the very heavy penalties which would be imposed by an international court of maritime law arising from charges ranging from assault, through piracy to an act of war: which maritime court, Captain Bullen had added pointedly, had its seat not in Washington, D.C., but in The Hague, Holland.

This stopped them cold. The authorities withdrew to consult with the Americans. Coded cables, as we learnt later, were exchanged with Washington and London. Captain Bullen remained adamant. Our passengers, 90 per cent. of them Americans, gave him their enthusiastic support. Messages were received from both the company head office and the Ministry of Transport requiring Captain Bullen to co-operate with the United States Navy. Pressure was being brought to bear. Bullen tore the messages up, seized the offer of the local Marconi agent to give the radio equipment an overdue check-up as a heaven-sent excuse to take the wireless officers off watch and told the quartermaster at the gangway to accept no more messages.

And so it had continued for all of thirty hours. And, because troubles never come singly, it was on the morning following our arrival that the Harrisons and Curtises, related families who occupied the for’ard two suites on “A” Deck, received cables with the shocking news that members of both families had been fatally involved in a car crash and left that afternoon. Black gloom hung heavy over the Campari.

Towards evening, the deadlock was broken by the skipper of the American destroyer, a diplomatic, courteous and thoroughly embarrassed commander by the name of Varsi. He had been allowed aboard the Campari, been gruffly asked into Bullen’s day-cabin, accepted a drink, been very apologetic and respectful and suggested a way out of the dilemma.

How would it be if the search were carried out not by his own men but by British Customs officials in the regular course of their duty, with his men present solely in the capacity of observers. Captain Bullen, after much outraged humming and hawing, had finally agreed. Not only did this suggestion save face and salvage honour to a certain degree, but he was in an impossible situation anyway, and he knew it. Until the search was completed, the Kingston authorities refused medical clearance, and until he had this clearance it would be impossible to unload the six hundred tons of food and machinery he had for delivery there. And the port officials could also make things very difficult indeed by refusing clearance papers to sail.

And so what seemed like every Customs official in Jamaica was routed out and the search began at 9 p.m. It lasted until 2 a.m. the following morning. Captain Bullen fumed as steadily and sulphurously as a volcano about to erupt. The passengers fumed, partly because of having to suffer the indignity of having their cabins so meticulously searched, partly because of their being kept out of their beds until the early hours of the morning. And, above all, the crew fumed because, on this occasion, even the normally tolerant Customs were forced to take note of the hundreds of bottles of liquor and thousands of cigarettes uncovered by their search.

Nothing else, of course, was found. Apologies were offered and ignored. Medical clearance was given and unloading began: we left Kingston late that night. For all of the following twenty-four hours Captain Bullen brooded over the recent happenings, then had sent off a couple of cablegrams, one to the head office in London, the other to the Ministry of Transport, telling them what he, Captain Bullen thought of them. And now, it seemed, they in turn had told Captain Bullen what they thought of him. I could understand his feelings about Dr. Slingsby Caroline, who was probably in China by this time.

A high-pitched shout of warning brought us both sharply back to the present and what was going on around us. One of the two chain slings round the big crate now poised exactly over the hatchway to number four hold had suddenly come adrift, one end of the crate dropping down through an angle of 60 degrees and bringing up with a jerking jolt that made even the big jumbo derrick shake and quiver with the strain. The chances were good that the crate would now slip through the remaining sling and crash down on to the floor of the hold far below, which is probably what would have happened if two of the crew holding on to a corner guiding rope hadn’t been quick-witted enough to throw all their weight on to it and so prevent the crate from tilting over at too steep an angle and sliding free. But even as it was it was still touch and go.

The crate swung back towards the side of the ship, the two men on the guide-rope still hanging on desperately. I caught a glimpse of the stevedores on the quayside below, their faces twisted into expressions of frozen panic: in the new people’s democracy where all men were free and equal, the penalty for this sort of carelessness was probably the firing squad: nothing else could have accounted for their otherwise inexplicably genuine terror. The crate began to swing back over the hold. I yelled to the men beneath to run clear and simultaneously gave the signal for emergency lowering. The winchman, fortunately, was as quick-witted as he was experienced, and as the wildly careering crate swung jerkily back to dead centre he lowered away at two or three times the normal speed, braking just seconds before the lowermost corner of the crate crunched and splintered against the floor of the hold. Moments later the entire length of the crate was resting on the bottom.

Captain Bullen fished a handkerchief from his drills, removed his gold-braided cap and slowly mopped his sandy hair and sweating brow. He appeared to be communing with himself.

“This,” he said finally, “is the bloody end. Captain Bullen in the dog-house. The crew sore as hell. The passengers hopping mad. Two days behind schedule. Searched by the Americans from truck to keelson like a contraband-runner. Now probably carrying contraband. No sign of our latest bunch of passengers. Got to clear the harbour bar by six. And now this band of madmen trying to send us to the bottom. A man can stand so much, First, just so much.” He replaced his cap. “Shakespeare had something to say about this, First.”

“A sea of troubles, sir?”

“No, something else. But apt enough.” He sighed. “Get the second officer to relieve you. Third’s checking stores. Get the fourth—no, not that blithering nincompoop—get the bo’sun, he talks Spanish like a native anyway, to take over on the shore side. Any objections and that’s the last piece of cargo we load. Then you and I are having lunch, First.”

“I told Miss Beresford that I wouldn’t——”

“If you think,” Captain Bullen interrupted heavily, “that I’m going to listen to that bunch jangling their money-bags and bemoaning their hard lot from hors d’œuvre right through to coffee, you must be out of your mind. We’ll have it in my cabin.”

And so we had it in his cabin. It was the usual Campari meal, something for even the most blasé epicure to dream about, and Captain Bullen, for once and understandably, made an exception to his rule that neither he nor his officers should drink with lunch. By the time the meal was over he was feeling almost human again and once went so far as to call me “Johhny-me-boy.” It wouldn’t last. But it was all pleasant enough, and it was with reluctance that I finally quit the air-conditioned coolness of the captain’s day-cabin for the blazing sunshine outside to relieve the second officer.

He smiled widely as I approached number four hold. Tommy Wilson was always smiling. He was a dark, wiry Welshman of middle height, with an infectious grin and an immense zest for life, no matter what came his way.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“You can see for yourself.” He waved a complacent hand towards the pile of stacked crates on the quayside, now diminished by a good third since I had seen it last. “Speed allied with efficiency. When Wilson is on the job let no man ever——”

“The bo’sun’s name is MacDonald, not Wilson,” I said.

“So it is.” He laughed, glanced down to where the bo’sun, a big, tough, infinitely competent Hebridean islander was haranguing the bearded stevedores, and shook his head admiringly. “I wish I could understand what he’s saying.”

“Translation would be superfluous,” I said dryly. “I’ll take over. Old man wants you to go ashore.”

“Ashore?” His face lit up, in two short years the second’s shoregoing exploits had already passed into the realms of legend. “Let no man ever say that Wilson ignored duty’s call. Twenty minutes for a shower, shave and shake out the number ones——”

“The agent’s offices are just beyond the dock gates,” I interrupted. “You can go as you are. Find out what’s happened to our latest passengers. Captain’s beginning to worry about them, if they’re not here by five o’clock he’s sailing without them.”

Wilson left. The sun started westering, but the heat stayed as it was. Thanks to MacDonald’s competence and uninhibited command of the Spanish language, the cargo on the quayside steadily and rapidly diminished. Wilson returned to report no sign of our passengers. The agent had been very nervous indeed. They were very important people, Señor, very, very important. One of them was the most important man in the whole province of Camafuegos. A jeep had already been dispatched westwards along the coast road to look for them. It sometimes happened, the señor understood, that a car spring would go or a shock absorber snap. When Wilson had innocently inquired if this was because the revolutionary government had no money left to pay for the filling in of the enormous potholes in the roads, the agent had become even more nervous and said indignantly that it was entirely the fault of the inferior metal those perfidious Americanos used in the construction of their vehicles. Wilson said he had left with the impression that Detroit had a special assembly line exclusively devoted to turning out deliberately inferior cars destined solely for this particular corner of the Caribbean.

Wilson went away. The cargo continued to move steadily into number four hold. About four o’clock in the afternoon I heard the sound of the clashing of gears and the asthmatic wheezing of what sounded like a very elderly engine indeed. This, I thought, would be the passengers at last, but no: what clanked into view round the corner of the dock gate was a dilapidated truck with hardly a shred of paint left on the bodywork, white canvas showing on the tyres and the engine hood removed to reveal what looked, from my elevation, like a solid block of rust. One of the special Detroit jobs, probably. On its cracked and splintered platform it carried three medium-sized crates, freshly boxed and metal-banded.

Wrapped in a blue haze from the staccato back-firing of its exhaust, vibrating like a broken tuning fork and rattling in every bolt in its superannuated chassis, the truck trundled heavily across the cobbles and pulled up not five paces from where MacDonald was standing. A little man in white ducks and peaked cap jumped out through the space where the door ought to have been, stood still for a couple of seconds until he got the hang of terra firma again and then scuttled off in the direction of our gangway. I recognised him as our Carracio agent, the one with the low opinion of Detroit, and wondered what fresh trouble he was bringing with him.

I found out in three minutes flat when Captain Bullen appeared on deck, an anxious-looking agent scurrying along behind him. The captain’s blue eyes were snapping, the red complexion was overlaid with puce, but he had the safety valve screwed right down.

“Coffins, Mister,” he said tightly. “Coffins, no less.”

I suppose there is a quick and clever answer to a conversational gambit like that but I couldn’t find it so I said politely: “Coffins, sir?”

“Coffins, Mister. Not empty, either. For shipment to New York.” He flourished some papers. “Authorisations, shipping notes, everything in order. Including a sealed request signed by no less than the ambassador. Three of them. Two British, one American subjects. Killed in the hunger riots.”

“The crew won’t like it, sir,” I said. “Especially the Gôanese stewards. You know their superstitions and how——”

“It will be all right, Señor,” the little man in white broke in hurriedly. Wilson had been right about the nervousness, but there was more to it than that, there was a strange over lay of anxiety that came close to despair. “We have arranged——”

“Shut up!” Captain Bullen said shortly. “No need for the crew to know, Mister. Or the passengers.” You could see they were just a careless after-thought. “Coffins are boxed—that’s them on the truck there.”

“Yes, sir. Killed in the riots. Last week.” I paused and went on delicately: “In this heat——”

“Lead-lined, he says. So they can go in the hold. Some separate corner, Mister. One of the—um—deceased is a relative of one of the passengers boarding here. Wouldn’t do to stack the coffins among the dynamos, I suppose.” He sighed heavily. “On top of everything else, we’re now in the funeral undertaking business. Life, First, can hold no more.”

“You are accepting this—ah—cargo, sir?”

“But of course, but of course,” the little man interrupted again. “One of them is a cousin of Señor Carreras, who sails with you. Señor Miguel Carreras. Señor Carreras, he is what you say heartbroken. Señor Carreras is the most important man——”

“Be quiet,” Captain Bullen said wearily. He made a gesture with the papers. “Yes, I’m accepting. Note from the Ambassador. More pressure. I’ve had enough of cables flying across the Atlantic. Too much grief. Just an old beaten man, First, just an old beaten man.” He stood there for a moment, hands outspread on the guard-rail, doing his best to look like an old beaten man and making a singularly unsuccessful job of it, then straightened abruptly as a procession of vehicles turned in through the dock gates and made for the Campari.

“A pound to a penny, Mister, here comes still more grief.”

“Praise be to God,” the little agent murmured. The tone, no less than the words, was a prayer of thanksgiving. “Señor Carreras himself! Your passengers, at last, Captain.”

“That’s what I said,” Bullen growled. “More grief.”

The procession, two big chauffeur-driven prewar Packards, one towed by a jeep, had just pulled up by the gangway and the passengers were climbing out. Those who could, that was—for very obviously there was one who could not. One of the chauffeurs, dressed in green tropical drills and a bush hat, had opened the boot of his car, pulled out a collapsible hand-propelled wheel-chair and, with the smooth efficiency of experience, had it assembled in ten seconds flat while the other chauffeur, with the aid of a tall thin nurse clad in overall white from her smart, starched cap to the skirt that reached down to her ankles, tenderly lifted a bent old man from the back seat of the second Packard and set him gently in the wheel-chair. The old boy—even at that distance I could see the face creased and stretched with the lines of age, the snowy whiteness of the still plentiful hair—did his best to help them, but his best wasn’t very much.

Captain Bullen looked at me. I looked at Captain Bullen. There didn’t seem to be any reason to say anything. Nobody in a crew likes having permanent invalids aboard ship: they cause trouble to the ship’s doctor, who has to look after their health, to the cabin stewards who have to clean their quarters, to the dining-room stewards who have to feed them, and to those members of the deck crew detailed for the duty of moving them around. And when the invalids are elderly, and often infirm—and if this one wasn’t, I sadly missed my guess—there was always the chance of a death at sea, the one thing sailors hate above all else. It was also very bad for the passenger trade.

“Well,” Captain Bullen said heavily, “I suppose I’d better go and welcome our latest guests aboard. Finish it off as quickly as possible, Mister.”

“I’ll do that, sir.”

Bullen nodded and left. I watched the two chauffeurs slide a couple of long poles under the seat of the invalid chair, straighten and carry the chair easily up the sparred foot-planks of the gangway.

They were followed by the tall angular nurse and she in turn by another nurse, dressed exactly like the first but shorter and stockier. The old boy was bringing his own medical corps along with him, which meant that he had more money than was good for him or was a hypochondriac or very far through indeed or a combination of any or all of those.

But I was more interested in the last two people to climb out of the Packards.

The first was a man of about my own age and size, but the resemblance stopped short there. He looked like a cross between Ramon Novarro and Rudolph Valentino, only handsomer. Tall, broad-shouldered, with deeply-tanned, perfectly-sculpted Latin features, he had the classical long thin moustache, strong even teeth with that in-built neon phosphorescence that seems to shine in any light from high noon till dark, and a darkly gleaming froth of tight black curls on his head: he would have been a lost man if you’d let him loose on the campus of any girls’ university. For all that, he looked as far from being a sissy as any man I’d ever met: He had a strong chin, the balanced carriage, the light springy boxer’s step of a man well aware that he can get through this world without any help from a nursemaid. If nothing else, I thought sourly, he would at least take Miss Beresford out of my hair.

The other man was a slightly smaller edition of the first, same features, same teeth, same moustache and hair, only those were greying. He would be about fifty-five. He had about him that indefinable look of authority and assurance which can come from power, money or a carefully cultivated phoneyness. This, I guessed would be the Señor Miguel Carreras who inspired such fear in our local Carracio agent. I wondered why.

Ten minutes later the last of our cargo was aboard and all that remained were the three boxed coffins on the back of the old truck. I watched the bo’sun readying a sling round the first of those when a well-detested voice said behind me:

“This is Mr. Carreras, sir. Captain Bullen sent me.”

I turned round and gave Fourth Officer Dexter the look I specially reserved for Fourth Officer Dexter. Dexter was the exception to the rule that the fleet commodore always got the best available in the company as far as officers and men were concerned, but that was hardly the old man’s fault: there are some men that even a fleet commodore has to except and Dexter was one of them. A personable enough youngster of twenty-one, with fair hair, slightly prominent blue eyes, an excruciatingly genuine public school accent and limited intelligence, Dexter was the son—and, unfortunately, heir—of Lord Dexter, Chairman and Managing Director of the Blue Mail. Lord Dexter, who had inherited about ten millions at the age of fifteen and, understandably enough, had never looked back, had the quaint idea that his own son should start from the bottom up and had sent him to sea as a cadet some five years previously. Dexter took a poor view of this arrangement: every man in the ship, from Bullen downwards, took a poor view of the arrangement and Dexter: but there was nothing we could do about it.

“How do you do, sir?” I accepted Carreras’s outstretched hand and took a good look at him. The steady dark eyes, the courteous smile couldn’t obscure the fact that there were many more lines about his eyes and mouth at two feet than at fifty: but it also couldn’t obscure the compensatory fact that the air of authority and command was now redoubled in force, and I put out of my mind any idea that this air originated in phoneyness: it was the genuine article and that was that.

“Mr. Carter? My pleasure.” The hand was firm, the bow more than a perfunctory nod, the cultured English the product of some Stateside Ivy League college. “I have some interest in the cargo being loaded and if you would permit——”

“But certainly, Señor Carreras.” Carter, that rough-hewn Anglo-Saxon diamond, not to be outdone in Latin courtesy. I waved towards the hatch. “If you would be so kind as to keep to the starboard—the right hand—of the hatch——”

“‘Starboard’ will do, Mr. Carter,” he smiled. “I have commanded vessels of my own. It was not a life that ever appealed to me.” He stood there for a moment, watching MacDonald tightening the sling, while I turned to Dexter, who had made no move to go. Dexter was seldom in a hurry to do anything: he had a remarkably thick skin.

“What are you on now, Fourth?” I inquired.

“Assisting Mr. Cummings.”

That meant he was unemployed. Cummings, the purser, was an extraordinarily competent officer who never required help. He had only one fault, brought on by years of dealing with passengers—he was far too polite. Especially to Dexter. I said: “Those charts we picked up in Kingston. You might get on with the corrections, will you?” Which meant that he would probably land us on a reef off the Great Bahamas in a couple of days’ time.

“But Mr. Cummings is expecting——”

“The charts, Dexter.”

He looked at me for a long moment, his face slowly darkening, then spun on his heel and left. I let him go three paces then said, not loudly: “Dexter.”

He stopped, then turned, slowly.

“The charts, Dexter,” I repeated. He stood there for maybe five seconds, eyes locked on mine, then broke his gaze.

“Aye, aye, sir.” The accent on the “sir” was faint but unmistakable. He turned again and walked away and now the flush was round the back of his neck, his back ramrod stiff. Little I cared, by the time he sat in the chairman’s seat I’d have long since quit. I watched him go, then turned to see Carreras looking at me with a slow, still speculation in the steady eyes. He was putting Chief Officer Carter in the balance and weighing him, but whatever figures he came up with he kept to himself, for he turned away without any haste and made his way across to the starboard side of number four hold. As I turned, I noticed for the first time the very thin ribbon of black silk stitched across the left lapel of his grey tropical suit. It didn’t seem to go any too well with the white rose he wore in his button-hole, but maybe the two of them together were recognised as a sign of mourning in those parts.

And it seemed very likely, for he stood there perfectly straight, almost at attention, his hands loosely by his sides as the three crated coffins were hoisted inboard. When the third crate came swinging in over the rail he removed his hat casually, as if to get the benefit of the light breeze that had just sprung up from the north, the direction of the open sea: and then, looking around him almost furtively, lifted his right hand under the cover of the hat held in his left and made a quick abbreviated sign of the cross. Even in that heat I could feel the cold cat’s paw of a shiver brush lightly across my shoulders, I don’t know why, not even by the furthest stretch of imagination could I visualise that prosaic hatchway giving on number four hold as an open grave. One of my grandmothers was Scots, maybe I was psychic or had the second sight or whatever it was they called it up in the Highlands: or maybe I had just lunched too well.

Whatever might have upset me, it didn’t seem to have upset Señor Carreras. He replaced his hat as the last of the crates touched lightly on the floor of the hold, stared down at it for a few seconds, then turned and made his way for’ard, lifting his hat again and giving me a clear untroubled smile as he came by. For want of anything better to do, I smiled back at him.

Five minutes later, the ancient truck, the two Packards, the jeep and the last of the stevedores were gone, and MacDonald was busy supervising the placing of the battens on number four hold. By five o’clock, a whole hour before deadline and exactly on the top of the tide, the s.s. Campari was steaming slowly over the bar to the north of the harbour, then west-north-west into the setting sun, carrying with it its cargo of crates and machinery and dead men, its fuming captain, disgruntled crew and thoroughly outraged passengers. At five o’clock on that brilliant June evening it was not what one might have called a happy ship.

II.

Tuesday 8 p.m.–9.30 p.m.

By eight o’clock that night cargo, crates and coffins were, presumably, just as they had been at five o’clock: but among the living cargo, the change for the better, from deep discontent to something closely approaching light-hearted satisfaction, was marked and profound.

There were reasons for this, of course. In Captain Bullen’s case—he twice called me “Johnny-me-boy” as he sent me down for dinner—it was because he was clear of what he was pleased to regard as the pestiferous port of Carracio, because he was at sea again, because he was on his bridge again and because he had thought up an excellent reason for sending me below while he remained on the bridge, thus avoiding the social torture of having to dine with the passengers. In the crew’s case, it was because the captain had seen fit, partly out of a sense of justice and partly to repay the head office for the indignities they had heaped on him, to award them all many more hours’ overtime pay than they were actually entitled to for their off-duty labours in the past three days. And in the case of the officers and passengers it was simply because there are certain well-defined fundamental laws of human nature and one of them was that it was impossible to be miserable for long aboard the s.s. Campari.

As a vessel with no regular ports of call, with only very limited passenger accommodation and capacious cargo holds that were seldom far from full, the s.s. Campari could properly be classed as a tramp ship and indeed was so classed in the Blue Mail’s travel brochure’s. But—as the brochures pointed out with a properly delicate restraint in keeping with the presumably refined sensibilities of the extraordinarily well-heeled clientele it was addressing—the s.s. Campari was no ordinary tramp ship. Indeed, it was no ordinary ship in any sense at all. It was, as the brochure said simply, quietly, without any pretentiousness and in exactly those words, “a medium-sized cargo vessel offering the most luxurious accommodation and finest cuisine of any ship in the world today.”

The only thing that prevented all the great passenger shipping companies from the Cunard White Star downwards from suing the Blue Mail for this preposterous statement was the fact that it was perfectly true.

It was the chairman of the Blue Mail, Lord Dexter, who had obviously kept all his brains to himself and refrained from passing any on to his son, our current fourth officer, who had thought it up. It was, as all his competitors who were now exerting themselves strenuously to get into the act admitted, a stroke of pure genius. Lord Dexter concurred.

It had started off simply enough in the early fifties with an earlier Blue Mail vessel, the s.s. Brandywine. (For some strange whimsy, explicable only on a psycho-analysts’ couch, Lord Dexter himself a rabid teetotaller, had elected to name his various ships after divers wines and other spirituous liquors.) The Brandywine had been one of the two Blue Mail vessels engaged on a regular run between New York and various British possessions in the West Indies, and Lord Dexter, eyeing the luxury cruise liners which plied regularly between New York and the Caribbean and seeing no good reason why he shouldn’t elbow his way into this lucrative dollar-earning market, had some extra cabins fitted on the Brandywine and advertised them in a few very select American newspapers and magazines, making it quite plain that he was interested only in Top People. Among the attractions offered had been a complete absence of bands, dances, concerts, fancy-dress balls, swimming pools, tombola, deck games, sight-seeing and parties—only a genius could have made such desirable and splendidly resounding virtues out of things he didn’t have anyway. All he offered on the positive side was the mystery and romance of a tramp ship which sailed to unknown destinations—this didn’t make any alterations to regular schedules, all it meant was that the captain kept the names of the various ports of call to himself until shortly before he arrived there—and the resources and comfort of a telegraph lounge which remained in continuous touch with the New York, London and Paris stock exchanges.

The initial success of the scheme was fantastic. In stock exchange parlance, the issue was over-subscribed a hundred times. This was intolerable to Lord Dexter; he was obviously attracting far too many of the not quite Top People, aspiring wouldbe’s on the lower-middle rungs of the ladder who had not yet got past their first few million, people with whom Top People would not care to associate. He doubled his prices. It made no difference. He trebled them and in the process made the gratifying discovery that there were many people in the world who would pay literally almost anything not only to be different and exclusive but to be known to be different and exclusive. Lord Dexter held up the building of his latest ship, the Campari, had designed and built into her a dozen of the most luxurious cabin suites ever seen and sent her to New York, confident that she would soon recoup the outlay of a quarter of a million pounds extra cost incurred through the building of those cabins. As usual, his confidence was not misplaced.

There were imitators, of course, but one might as well have tried to immitate Buckingham Palace, the Grand Canyon or the Cullinan diamond. Lord Dexter left them all at the starting gate. He had found his formula and he stuck to it unswervingly: comfort, convenience, quiet, good food and good company. Where comfort was concerned, the fabulous luxury of the state-rooms had to be seen to be believed: convenience, as far as the vast majority of the male passengers was concerned, found its ultimate in the juxtaposition, in the Campari’s unique telegraph lounge, of the stock exchange tickers and one of the most superbly stocked bars in the world: quiet was achieved by an advanced degree of insulation both in cabin suites and engine-room, by imitating the royal yacht Britannia inasmuch as that no orders were ever shouted and the deck crew and stewards invariably wore rubber-soled sandals, and by eliminating all the bands, parties, games and dances which lesser cruise passengers believed essential for the enjoyment of ship-board life: the magnificent cuisine had been achieved by luring away, at vast cost and the expense of even more bad feeling, the chefs from one of the biggest embassies in London and one of the finest hotels in Paris: those masters of the culinary world operated on alternate days and the paradisical results of their efforts to outdo one another was the envious talk of the Western Ocean.

Other shipowners might, perhaps, have suceeded in imitating some or all of those features, although most certainly to a lesser degree. But Lord Dexter was no ordinary shipowner. He was, as said, a genius and he showed it in his insistence, above all, on having the right people aboard.

Never a single trip passed but the Campari had a Personage on its passenger list, a Personage varying from Notable to World-famous. A special suite was reserved for Personages. Well-known politicians, cabinet ministers, top stars of the stage and screen, the odd famous writer or artist—if he was clean enough and used a razor—and the lower echelons of the English nobility—travelled in this suite at vastly reduced prices: royalty, ex-presidents, ex-premiers, ranking dukes and above travelled free. It was said that if all the British peerage on the Campari’s waiting list could be accommodated simultaneously, the House of Lords could close its doors. It need hardly be added that there was nothing philanthropic in Lord Dexter’s offer of free hospitality: he merely jacked up his prices to the wealthy occupants of the other eleven suites, who would have paid the earth anyway for the privilege of voyaging in such close contact with such exalted company.

After several years on this run, our passengers consisted almost entirely of repeaters. Many came as often as three times a year, fair enough indication of the size of their bankroll. By now, the passenger list on the Campari had become the most exclusive club in the world. Not to put too fine a point on it, Lord Dexter had distilled the aggregate elements of social and financial snobbery and found in its purest quintessence an inexhaustible supply of gold.

I adjusted my napkin and looked over the current gold mine. Five hundred million dollars on the hoof—or on the dove-grey velvet of the armchair seats in that opulent and air-conditioned dining-room: perhaps nearer 1,000 million dollars, and old man Beresford himself would account for a good third of it.

Julius Beresford, president and chief stockholder of the Hart-McCormick Mining Federation, sat where he nearly always sat, not only now but on half a dozen previous cruises, at the top right-hand side of the captain’s table, next Captain Bullen himself: he sat there in the most coveted position in the ship, not because he insisted on it through sheer weight of weal, but because Captain Bullen himself insisted on it. There are exceptions to every rule, and Julius Beresford was the exception to Bullen’s rule that he couldn’t abide any passenger, period. Beresford, a tall, thin, relaxed man with tufted black eyebrows, a horseshoe ring of greying hair fringed the sunburnt baldness of his head and lively hazel eyes twinkling in the lined brown leather of his face, came along only for the peace, comfort and food: the company of the great left him cold, a fact vastly appreciated by Captain Bullen, who shared his sentiments exactly. Beresford, sitting diagonally across from my table, caught my eye.

“Evening, Mr. Carter.” Unlike his daughter, he didn’t make me feel that he was conferring an earldom upon me every time he spoke to me. “Splendid to be at sea again, isn’t it? And where’s our captain tonight?”

“Working, I’m afraid, Mr. Beresford. I have to present his apologies to his table. He couldn’t leave the bridge.”

“On the bridge?” Mrs. Beresford, seated opposite her husband, twisted round to look at me. “I thought you were usually on watch at this hour, Mr. Carter?”

“I am.” I smiled at her. Plump, bejewelled, over-dressed, with dyed blonde hair but still beautiful at fifty, Mrs. Beresford bubbled over with good humour and laughter and kindness: this was only her first trip but Mrs. Beresford was already my favourite passenger. I went on: “But there are so many chains of islets, reefs and coral keys hereabouts that Captain Bullen prefers to see to the navigation himself.” I didn’t add, as I might have done, that had it been in the middle of the night and all the passengers safely in their beds, Captain Bullen would have been in his also, untroubled by any thoughts about his chief officer’s competence.

“But I thought a chief officer was fully qualified to run a ship?” Miss Beresford, needling me again, sweet-smiling, the momentarily innocent clear green eyes almost too big for the delicately-tanned face. “In case anything went wrong with the captain, I mean. You must hold a master’s certificate, mustn’t you?”

“I do. I also hold a driver’s licence, but you wouldn’t catch me driving a bus in the rush hour in downtown Manhattan.”

Old man Beresford grinned. His wife smiled. Miss Beresford regarded me thoughtfully for a moment, then bent to examine her hors d’œuvre, showing the gleaming auburn hair cut in a bouffant style that looked as if it had been achieved with a garden rake and a pair of secateurs, but had probably cost a fortune. The man by her side wasn’t going to let it go so easily, though. He laid down his fork, raised his thin dark head until he had me more or less sighted along his aquiline nose and said in his clear high drawling voice: “Oh, come now, Chief Officer. I don’t think the comparison is very apt at all.”

The “Chief Officer “was to put me in my place. The Duke of Hartwell spent a great deal of his time aboard the Campari in putting people in their places, which was pretty ungrateful of him considering that he was getting it all for free. He had nothing against me personally, it was just that he was publicly lending Miss Beresford his support: even the very considerable sums of money earned by inveigling the properly respectful lower classes into viewing his stately home at two and six a time were making only a slight dent on the crushing burden of death duties, whereas an alliance with Miss Beresford would solve his difficulties for ever and ever. Things were being complicated for the unfortunate duke by the fact that though his intellect was bent on Miss Beresford, his attentions and eyes were for the most part on the extravagantly opulent charms—and undeniable beauty—of the platinum blonde and oft-divorced cinema actress who flanked him on the other side.

“I don’t suppose it is, sir,” I acknowledged. Captain Bullen refused to address him as “Your Grace “and I’d be damned if I’d do it either. “But the best I could think up on the spur of the moment.”

He nodded as though satisfied and returned to attack his hors d’œuvre. Old Beresford eyed him speculatively, Mrs. Beresford half-smilingly, Miss Harcourt—the cinema acress—admiringly, while Miss Beresford herself just kept on treating us to an uninterrupted view of the auburn bouffant.

The courses came and went. Antoine was on duty in the kitchen that night and you could almost reach out and feel the blissful hush that descended on the company. Velvet-footed Gôanese waiters moved soundlessly on the dark grey pile of the Persian carpet, food appeared and vanished as if in a dream, an arm always appeared at the precisely correct moment with the precisely correct wine. But never for me. I drank soda water. It was in my contract.

The coffee appeared. This was the moment when I had to earn my money. When Antoine was on duty and on top of his form, conversation was a desecration and a hallowed hush of appreciation, an almost cathedral ecstasy, was the correct form. But about forty minutes of this rapturous silence was about par for the course. It couldn’t and never did go on. I never yet met a rich man—or woman, for that matter—who didn’t list talking, chiefly and preferably about themselves, as among their favourite occupations. And the prime target for their observations was invariably the officer who sat at the head of the table.

I looked round ours and wondered who would start the ball rolling. Miss Harrbride—her original central European name was unpronounceable—thin, scrawny, sixtyish and tough as whalebone, who had made a fortune out of highly-expensive and utterly worthless cosmetic preparations which she wisely refrained from using on herself? Mr. Greenstreet, her husband, a grey anonymity of a man with a grey sunken face, who had married her for heaven only knew what reason for he was a very wealthy man in his own fight? Tony Carreras? His father, Miguel Carreras? There should have been a sixth at my table, to replace the Curtis family of three who, along with the Harrisons, had been so hurriedly called home from Kingston, but the old man who had come aboard in his bath-chair was apparently to have his meals served in his cabin during the voyage, with his nurses, in attendance. Four men and one woman: it made an ill-balanced table.

Señor Miguel Carreras spoke first.

“The Campari’s prices, Mr. Carter, are quite atrocious,” he said calmly. He puffed appreciatively at his cigar. “Robbery on the high seas would be a very fitting description. On the other hand, the cuisine is as claimed. You have a chef of divine gifts.”

“From all accounts, sir, ‘divine’ is just about right. Experienced travellers who have stayed in the best hotels on both sides of the Atlantic maintain that Antoine has no equal in either Europe or America. Except, perhaps, Henriques.”

“Henriques?”

“Our alternate chef. He’s on tomorrow.”

“Do I detect a certain immodesty, Mr. Carter, in advancing the claims of the Campari?” There was no offence meant, not with that smile.

“I don’t think so, sir. But the next twenty-four hours will speak for themselves—and Henriques—better than I can.”

“Touché!” He smiled again and reached for the bottle of Remy Martin—the waiters vanished at coffee-time. “And the prices?”

“They’re terrible,” I agreed. I told that to all the passengers and it seemed to please them. “We offer what no other ship in the world offers, but the prices are still scandalous. At least a dozen people in this room at this very moment have told me that—and most of them are here for at least their third trip.”

“You make your point, Mr. Carter.” It was Tony Carreras speaking and his voice was as one might have expected—slow, controlled, with a deep resonant timbre. He looked at his father. “Remember the waiting list at the Blue Mail’s offices?”

“Indeed. We were pretty far down the list—and what a list. Half the millionaires in Central and South America. I suppose we may consider ourselves fortunate, Mr. Carter, in that we were the only ones able to accept at such short notice after the sudden departure of our predecessors in Jamaica. Can you give us any idea of our itinerary?”

“That’s supposed to be one of the attractions, sir. No set itinerary. Our schedule largely depends on the availability and destination of cargoes. One thing certain, we’re going to New York. Most of our passengers boarded there and passengers like to be returned to where they came from.” He knew this anyway, knew that we had coffins consigned to New York. “We may stop off at Nassau. Depends how the captain feels—the company gives him a lot of leeway in adjusting local schedules to suit the best needs of the passengers—and the weather reports. This is the hurricane season, Mr. Carreras, or pretty close to it: if the reports are bad Captain Bullen will want all the sea room he can and give Nassau a bye.” I smiled. “Among the other attractions of the s.s. Campari is that we do not make our passengers seasick unless it is absolutely essential.”

“Considerate, very considerate,” Carreras murmured. He looked at me speculatively. “But we’ll be making one or two calls on the east coast, I take it?”

“No idea, sir. Normally, yes. Again it’s up to the captain, and how the captain behaves depends on a Dr. Slingsby Caroline.”

“They haven’t caught him yet,” Miss Harrbride declared in her rough gravelly voice. She scowled with all the fierce patriotism of a first-generation American, looked round the table and gave us all the impartial benefit of her scowl.

“It’s incredible, frankly incredible. I still don’t believe it. A thirteenth-generation American!”

“We heard about this character.” Tony Cerreras, like his father, had had his education in some Ivy League college: he was rather less formal in his attitude towards the English language. “Slingsby Caroline, I mean. But what’s this guy got to do with us, Mr. Carter?”

“As long as he is at large every cargo vessel leaving the eastern seaboard gets a pretty thorough going over to make sure that neither he nor the Twister is aboard. Slows up the turn-round of cargo and passenger ships by 100 per cent., which means that the longshoremen are losing stevedoring money pretty fast. They’ve gone on strike—and the chances are, so many unpleasant words have been said on both sides, that they’ll stay on strike when they do nab Dr. Caroline. If.”

“Traitor,” said Miss Harrbride. “Thirteen generations!”

“So we stay away from the east coast, eh?” Carreras senior asked. “Meantime, anyway?”

“As long as possible, sir. But New York is a must. When, I don’t know. But if it’s still strike-bound, we might go up the St. Lawrence first. Depends.”

“Romance, mystery and adventure,” Carreras smiled. “Just like your brochure said.” He glanced over my shoulder. “Looks like a visitor for you, Mr. Carter.”

I twisted in my seat. It was a visitor for me. Rusty Williams—Rusty from his shock of flaming hair—was advancing towards me, whites immaculately pressed, uniform cap clasped stiffly under his left arm. Rusty was sixteen, our youngest cadet, desperately shy and very impressionable.

“What is it, Rusty?” Age-old convention said that cadets should always be addressed by their surnames, but everyone called Rusty just that. It seemed impossible not to.

“The captain’s compliments, sir. Could he see you on the bridge, please, Mr. Carter?”

“I’ll be right up.” Rusty turned to leave and I caught the gleam in Susan Beresford’s eye, a gleam that generally heralded some crack at my expense. This one, predictably, would be about my indispensability, about the distraught captain sending for his trusty servant when all was lost, and although I didn’t think she was the sort of a girl to say it in front of a cadet I wouldn’t have wagered pennies on it so I rose hastily to my feet, said “Excuse me, Miss Harrbride, excuse me, gentlemen,” and followed Rusty quickly out of the door into the starboard alleyway. He was waiting for me.

“The captain is in his cabin, sir. He’d like to see you there.”

“What? You told me——”

“I know, sir. He told me to say that. Mr. Jamieson is on the bridge”—George Jamieson was our third officer—“and Captain Bullen is in his cabin. With Mr. Cummings.”

I nodded and left. I remembered now that Cummings hadn’t been at his accustomed table as I’d come out although he’d certainly been there at the beginning of dinner. The captain’s quarters were immediately below the bridge and I was there in ten seconds. I knocked on the polished teak door, heard a gruff voice and went in.

The Blue Mail certainly did its commodore well. Even Captain Bullen, no admirer of the sybaritic life, had never been heard to complain of being pampered. He had a three-room and bathroom suite, done in the best millionaire’s taste, and his day-cabin, in which I now was, was a pretty fair guide to the rest—wine-red carpet that sunk beneath your feet, darkly-crimson drapes, gleaming sycamore panelling, narrow oak beams overhead, oak and green leather for the chairs and settee. Captain Bullen looked up at me as I came in: He didn’t have any of the signs of a man enjoying the comforts of home.

“Something wrong, sir?” I asked.

“Sit down.” He waved to a chair and sighed. “There’s something wrong all right. Banana-legs Benson is missing. White reported it ten minutes ago.”

Banana-legs Benson sounded like the name of a domesticated anthropoid or, at best, like a professional wrestler on the small town circuits, but in fact, it belonged to our very suave, polished and highly-accomplished head steward, Frederick Benson: Benson had the well-deserved reputation of being a very firm disciplinarian, and it was one of his disgruntled subordinates who, in the process of receiving a severe and merited dressing-down had noticed the negligible clearance between Benson’s knees and rechristened him as soon as his back was turned. The name had stuck, chiefly because of its incongruity and utter unsuitability. White was the assistant chief steward.

I said nothing. Bullen didn’t appreciate anyone, especially his officers, indulging in double-takes, exclamations or fatuous repetition. Instead I looked at the man seated across the table from the captain. Howard Cummings.

Cummings, the purser, a small plump amiable and infinitely shrewd Irishman, was next to Bullen, the most important man on the ship. No one questioned that, though Cummings himself gave no sign that this was so. On a passenger ship a good purser is worth his weight in gold, and Cummings was a pearl beyond any price. In his three years on the Campari friction and trouble among—and complaints from—the passengers had been almost completely unknown. Howard Cummings was a genius in mediation, compromise, the soothing of ruffled feelings and the handling of people in general. Captain Bullen would as soon have thought of cutting off his right hand as of trying to send Cummings off the ship.

I looked at Cummings for three reasons. He knew everything that went on on the Campari, from the secret take-over bids being planned in the telegraph lounge to the heart troubles of the youngest stoker in the boiler-room. He was the man ultimately responsible for all the stewards aboard the ship. And, finally, he was a close personal friend of Banana-legs.

Cummings caught my look and shook his dark head.

“Sorry, Johnny,” I’m as much in the dark as you. I saw him shortly before dinner, about ten to eight it would have been, when I was having a noggin with the paying guests.” Cummings’s noggin came from a special whisky bottle filled only with ginger ale. “We’d White up here just now. He says he saw Benson in cabin suite 6, fixing it for the night, about 8.20—half an hour ago, no, nearer forty minutes now. He expected to see him shortly afterwards because for every night for the past couple of years, whenever the weather was good, Benson and White have had a cigarette together on deck when the passengers were at dinner.”

“Regular time?” I interrupted.

“Very. Eight-thirty, near enough, never later than 8.35. But not tonight. At 8.40 White went to look for him in his cabin. No sign of him there. Organised half a dozen stewards for a search and still nothing doing. He sent for me and I came to the captain.”

And the captain sent for me, I thought. Send for old trusty Carter when there’s dirty work on hand. I looked at Bullen.

“A search, sir?”

“That’s it, Mister. Damned nuisance, just one damned thing after another. Quietly, if you can.”

“Of course, sir. Can I have Wilson, the bo’sun, some stewards and A.B.s?”

“You can have Lord Dexter and his board of directors just so long as you find Benson,” Bullen grunted.

“Yes, sir,” I turned to Cummings. “Didn’t suffer from any ill-health, did he? Liable to dizziness, faintness, heart attacks, that sort of thing?”

“Flat feet, was all,” Cummings smiled. He wasn’t feeling like smiling. “Had his annual medical check-up last month from Doc Marston. One hundred per cent. The flat feet are an occupational disease.”

I turned back to Captain Bullen.

“Could I have twenty minutes, perhaps half an hour, for a quiet look around, sir, first? With Mr. Cummings. Your authority to look anywhere, sir?”

“Within reason, of course.”

“Everywhere?” I insisted. “Or I’m wasting my time. You know that, sir.”

“My God! And it’s only a couple of days since that Jamaican lot. Remember how our passengers reacted to the Customs and American Navy going through their cabins? The board of directors are going to love this.” He looked up wearily. “I suppose you are referring to the passengers’ quarters?”

“We’ll do it quietly, sir.”

“Twenty minutes, then. You’ll find me on the bridge. Don’t tramp on any toes if you can help it.”

We left, dropped down to “A” deck and made a right-left turn into the hundred-foot central passageway between the cabin suites on “A” deck: there were only six of those suites, three on each side. White was about half-way down the passageway, nervously pacing up and down. I beckoned to him and he came walking quickly towards us, a thin, balding character with a permanently pained expression who suffered from the twin disabilities of chronic dyspepsia and over-conscientiousness.

“Got all the pass-keys, White?” I asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Fine.” I nodded to the first main door on my right, number one suite on the port side. “Open it, will you?”

He opened up. I brushed past him, followed by the purser. There was no need to switch on the lights, they were already on; asking the Campari’s passengers, at the prices they were paying, to remember to turn off the lights would have been a waste of breath and an insult.

There were no bunks in the Campari’s cabin suites. Four-posters and massive four-posters at that, with concealed and mechanically operated side-boards which could be quickly raised in bad weather; such was the standard of modern weather reporting, the latitude allowed Captain Bullen in avoiding bad weather and the efficiency of our Denny-Brown stabilisers that I don’t think those side-boards had ever been used. Seasickness was not allowed aboard the Campari.

The suite was composed of a sleeping cabin, an adjacent lounge and bathroom, and beyond the lounge another cabin. All the plate-glass windows faced out over the port aide. We went through the cabins in a minute, looking beneath beds, examining cupboards, wardrobes, behind drapes, everywhere. Nothing. We left.

Out in the passageway again I nodded at the suite opposite. Number two.

“This one now,” I said to White.

“Sorry, sir. Can’t do it. It’s the old man and his nurses, sir. They had three special trays sent up to them when now, let me see, yes, sir, about 6.15 tonight, and Mr. Carreras, the gentleman who came aboard today, he gave instructions that they were not to be disturbed till morning.” White was enjoying this. “Very strict instructions, sir.”

“Carreras?” I looked at the purser. “What’s he got to do with this, Mr. Cummings?”

“You haven’t heard? No, I don’t suppose so. Seems like Mr. Carreras—the father—is the senior partner in one of the biggest law firms in the country, Cerdan & Carreras. Mr. Cerdan, founder of the firm, is the old gentleman in the cabin here. Seems he’s been a semi-paralysed cripple—but a pretty tough old cripple—for the past eight years. His son and wife—Cerdan Junior being the next senior partner to Carreras—have had him on their hands all that time, and I believe the old boy has been a handful and a half. I understood Carreras offered to take him along primarily to give Cerdan Junior and his wife a break. Carreras, naturally, feels responsible for him so I suppose that’s why he left his orders with Benson.”

“Doesn’t sound like a man at death’s door to me,” I said. “Nobody’s wanting to kill him off, just to ask him a few questions. Or the nurses.” White opened his mouth to protest again, but I pushed roughly past him and knocked on the door.

No answer. I waited all of thirty seconds, then knocked again, loudly. White, beside me, was stiff with outrage and disapproval. I ignored him and was lifting my hand to put some real weight on the wood when I heard a movement and suddenly the door opened inwards.

It was the shorter of the two nurses, the plump one, who had answered the door. She had an old-fashioned pull-string linen cap over her head and was clutching with one hand a light woollen wrap that left only the toes of her mules showing. The cabin behind her was only dimly lit, but I could see it held a couple of beds, one of which was rumpled. The free hand with which she rubbed her eyes told the rest of the story.

“My sincere apologies, miss,” I said. “I had no idea you were in bed. I’m the chief officer of this ship and this is Mr. Cummings, the purser. Our chief steward is missing and we were wondering if you may have seen or heard anything that might help us.”

“Missing?” She clutched the wrap more tightly. “You mean—you mean he’s just disappeared?”

“Let’s say we can’t find him. Can you help us at all?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been asleep. You see,” she explained, “we take it in three-hour turns to be by old Mr. Cerdan’s bed. It is essential that he is watched all the time. I was trying to get in some little sleep before my turn came to relieve Miss Werner.”

“I’m sorry,” I repeated. “You can’t tell us anything, then?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Perhaps your friend Miss Werner can?”

“Miss Werner?” She blinked at me. “But Mr. Cerdan is not to be——”

“Please. This might be very serious.”

“Very well.” Like all competent nurses she knew how far she could go and when to make up her mind. “But I must ask you to be very quiet and not to disturb Mr. Cerdan in any way at all.”

She didn’t say anything about the possibility of Mr. Cerdan disturbing us, but she might have warned us. As we passed through the open door of his cabin he was sitting up in bed, a book on the blankets before him, with a bright overhead bead-light illuminating a crimson tasselled night-cap and throwing his face into deep shadow, but a shadow not quite deep enough to hide the hostile gleam under bar-straight tufted eyebrows. The hostile gleam, it seemed to me, was as much a permanent feature of his face as the large beak of a nose that jutted out over a straggling white moustache. The nurse who led the way made to introduce us, but Cerdan waved her to silence with a peremptory hand. Imperious, I thought, was the word for the old boy, not to mention bad-tempered and downright ill-mannered.

“I hope you can explain this damnable outrage, sir.” His voice was glacial enough to make a polar bear shiver. “Bursting into my private stateroom without so much as by your leave.” He switched his gimlet eyes to Cummings. “You You there. You had your orders, damn it. Strictest privacy, absolutely. Explain yourself, sir.”

“I cannot tell you how sorry I am, Mr. Cerdan,” Cummings said smoothly. “Only the most unusual circumstances——”

“Rubbish!” Whatever this old coot was living for it couldn’t have been with the object of outliving his friends; he’d lost his last friend before he’d left the nursery. “Amanda! Get the captain on the phone. At once!”

The tall thin nurse sitting on the high-backed chair by the bedside made to gather up her knitting—an all but finished pale blue cardigan—lying on her knees, but I gestured to her to remain where she was.

“No need to tell the captain, Miss Werner. He knows all about it—he sent us here. We have only one very small request to make of you and Mr. Cerdan——”

“And I have only one very small request to make of you, sir.” His voice cracked into a falsetto, excitement or anger or age or all three of them. “Get the hell out of here!”

I thought about taking a deep breath to calm myself but even that two or three seconds’ delay would only have precipitated another explosion, so I said at once: “Very good, sir. But first I would like to know if either yourself or Miss Werner here heard any strange or unusual sounds inside the past hour or saw anything that struck you as unusual: Our chief steward is missing. So far we have found nothing to explain his disappearance.”

“Missing, hah?” Cerdan snorted. “Probably drunk or asleep.” Then, as an afterthought: “Or both.”

“He is not that sort of man,” Cummings said quietly. “Can you help us?”

“I’m sorry, sir.” Miss Werner, the nurse, had a low husky voice. “We heard and saw nothing. Nothing at all that might be of any help. But if there’s anything we can do——”

“There’s nothing for you to do,” Cerdan interrupted harshly, “except your job. We can’t help you, gentlemen. Good evening.”

Once more outside in the passageway I let go a long deep breath that I seemed to have been holding for the past two minutes and turned to Cummings.

“I don’t care how much that old battle-axe is paying for his stateroom,” I said bitterly. “He’s still being undercharged.”

“I can see why Mr. and Mrs. Cerdan, Junior, were glad to have him off their hands for a bit,” Cummings conceded. Coming from the normally imperturbable and diplomatic purser, this was the uttermost limit in outright condemnation. He glanced at his watch. “Not getting anywhere, are we? And in another fifteen, twenty minutes the passengers will start drifting back to their cabins. How about if you finish off here while I go below with White?”

“Right. Ten minutes.” I took the keys from White and started on the remaining four suites of cabins while Cummings left for the six on the deck below.

Ten minutes later, having drawn a complete blank in three of the four remaining suites, I found myself in the last of them, the big one on the port side, aft, belonging to Julius Beresford and his family. I searched the cabin belonging to Beresford and his wife—and by this time I was really searching, not just only for Benson, but for any signs that he might have been there—but again a blank. The same in the lounge and bathroom. I moved into a second and smaller cabin—the one belonging to Beresford’s daughter. Nothing behind the furniture, nothing behind the drapes, nothing under the four-poster. I moved to the aft bulkhead and slid back the roll doors that turned that entire side of the cabin into one huge wardrobe.

Miss Susan Beresford, I reflected, certainly did herself well in the way of clothes. There must have been about sixty or seventy hangers in that wall cupboard, and if any one hanger was draped with anything less than two or three hundred dollars I sadly missed my guess. I ploughed my way through the Balenciagas, Diors and Givenchys, looking behind and beneath. But nothing there.

I closed the roll doors and moved across to a small wardrobe in a corner. It was full of furs, coats, capes, stoles; why anyone should haul that stuff along on a cruise to the Caribbean was completely beyond me. I laid my hand on a particularly fine full-length specimen and was moving it to one side to peer into the darkness behind when I heard a faint click, as of a handle being released, and a voice said:

“It is rather a nice mink, isn’t it, Mr. Carter? That should be worth two years’ salary to you any day.”

III.

Tuesday 9.30 p.m.–10.15 p.m.

Susan Beresford was a beauty, all right. A perfectly oval-shaped face, high cheek-bones, shining auburn hair, eyebrows two shades darker and eyes the greenest green you ever saw, she had all the officers on the ship climbing the walls, even the ones she tormented the life out of. All except Carter, that was. A permanent expression of cool amusement does nothing to endear the wearer to me.

Not, just then, that I had any complaint on that ground. She was neither cool nor amused and that was a fact. Two dull red spots of anger—and was there perhaps a tinge of fear?—touched the tanned cheeks and if the expression on her face didn’t yet indicate the reaction of someone who has just come across a particularly repulsive beetle under a flat stone you could see that it was going to turn into something like that pretty soon, it didn’t require any micrometer to measure the curl at the corner of her mouth. I let the mink drop into place and pulled the wardrobe door to.

“You shouldn’t startle people like that,” I said reproachfully. “You should have knocked.”

“I should have——” Her mouth tightened, she still wasn’t amused. “What were you going to do with that coat?”

“Nothing. I never wear mink, Miss Beresford. It doesn’t suit me.” I smiled, but she didn’t. “I can explain.”

“I’m sure you can.” She was half-way round the edge of the door now, on her way out. “But I think I would rather you made the explanation to my father.”

“Suit yourself,” I said easily. “But please hurry. What I’m doing is urgent. Use the phone there. Or shall I do it?”

“Leave that phone alone,” she said irritably. She sighed, closed the door and leaned against it, and I had to admit that any door, even the expensively-panelled ones on the Campari, looked twice the door with Susan Beresford draped against it. She shook her head, then gave me an up from under look with those startling green eyes. “I can picture many things, Mr. Carter, but one thing I can’t visualise is our worthy chief officer taking off for some deserted island in a ship’s lifeboat with my mink in the sternsheets.” Getting back to normal, I noted with regret. “Besides, why should you? There must be over fifty thousand dollars’ worth of jewellery lying loose in that drawer there.”

“I missed that,” I admitted. “I wasn’t looking in drawers. I am looking for a man who is sick or unconscious or worse and Benson wouldn’t fit into any drawer I’ve ever seen.”

“Benson? Our head steward? That nice man?” She came a couple of steps towards me and I was obscurely pleased to see the quick concern in her eyes. “He’s missing?”

I told her all I knew myself. That didn’t take long. When I was finished, she said: “Well, upon my word! What a to-do about nothing. He could have gone for a stroll around the decks, or a sit-down, or a smoke, yet the first thing you do is to start searching cabins——”

“You don’t know Benson, Miss Beresford. He has never in his life left the passenger accommodation before 11 p.m. We couldn’t be more concerned if we’d found that the officer of the watch had disappeared from the bridge or the quartermaster left the wheel. Excuse me a moment.” I opened the cabin door to locate the source of voices outside, and saw White and another steward some way down the passage. White’s eyes lit up as he caught sight of me, then clouded in disapproval when he saw Susan Beresford emerging through the doorway behind me. White’s sense of propriety was having a roller-coaster ride that night.

“I was wondering where you were, sir,” he said reprovingly. “Mr. Cummings sent me up. No luck down below, I’m afraid, sir. Mr. Cummings is going through our quarters now.” He stood still for a moment, then the anxiety came to the foreground and erased the disapproval from his face. “What shall I do now, sir?”

“Nothing. Not personally. You’re in charge till we find the chief steward, and the passengers come first, you know that. Detail the stewards to be at the for’ard entrance to the ‘A’ accommodation in ten minutes’ time. One to search the officers’ quarters for’ard, another for the officers’ quarters aft, the third for the galleys, pantries, store-rooms. But wait till I give the word. Miss Beresford, I’d like to use your phone, please.”

I didn’t wait for permission. I lifted the phone, got the exchange, and had them put me through to the bo’sun’s cabin and found I was lucky. He was at home.

“MacDonald? First mate here. Sorry to call you out, Archie, but there’s trouble. Benson’s missing.”

“The chief steward, sir?” There was something infinitely reassuring about that deep slow voice that had never lost a fraction of its lilting West Highland intonation in twenty years at sea, in the complete lack of surprise or excitement in the tone. MacDonald was never surprised or excited about anything. He was more than my strong right arm, he was deck-side the most important person on the ship. And the most indispensable. “You’ll have searched the passengers’ and the stewards’ quarters, then?”

“Yes. Nothing doing. Take some men, on or off watch, doesn’t matter, move along the main decks. Lots of the crew usually up there at this time of night. See if any of them saw Benson, or saw or heard anything unusual. Maybe he’s sick, maybe he fell and hurt himself, for all I know he’s overboard.”

“And if we have no luck? Another bloody search, sir, I suppose?”

“I’m afraid so. Can you be finished and up here in ten minutes?”

“That will be no trouble, sir.”

I hung up, got through to the duty engineer officer, asked him to detail some men to come to the passenger accommodation, made another call to Tommy Wilson, the second officer, then asked to be put through to the captain. While I was waiting, Miss Beresford gave me her smile again, the sweet one with too much malice in it for my liking.

“My, my,” she said admiringly. “Aren’t we efficient? Phoning here, phoning there, crisp and commanding, General Carter planning his campaign. This is a new chief officer to me.”

“A lot of unnecessary fuss,” I said apologetically. “Especially for a steward. But he’s got a wife and three daughters who think the sun rises and sets on him.”

She coloured right up to the roots of her auburn hair and for a moment I thought she was going to haul off and hit me. Then she spun on her heel, walked across the deep-piled carpet and stood staring out through a window to the darkness beyond. I’d never realised before that a back could be so expressive of emotion.

Then Captain Bullen was on the phone. His voice was as gruff and brusque as usual, but even the metallic impersonality of the phone couldn’t hide the worry.

“Any luck yet, Mister?”

“None at all, sir. I’ve a search party lined up. Could I start in five minutes?”

There was a pause, then he said: “It has to come to that, I suppose. How long will it take you?”

“Twenty minutes, half an hour.”

“You’re going to be very quick about it, aren’t you?”

“I don’t expect him to be hiding from us, sir. Whether he’s sick or hurt himself, or had some urgent reason for leaving the passengers’ quarters, I expect to find him in some place pretty obvious.”

He grunted and said: “Nothing I can do to help?” Half-question, half-statement.

“No, sir.” The sight of the captain searching about the upper deck or peering under lifeboat covers would do nothing to increase the passengers’ confidence in the Campari.

“Right then, Mister. If you want me, I’ll be in the telegraph lounge. I’ll try to keep the passengers out of your hair while you’re getting on with it.” That showed he was worried all right, and badly worried; he’d just as soon have gone into a cageful of Bengal tigers as mingle socially with the passengers.

“Very good, sir.” I hung up. Susan Beresford had re-crossed the cabin and was standing near, screwing a cigarette into a jade holder about a foot in length. I found the holder vaguely irritating as I found everything about Miss Beresford irritating, not least the way she stood there confidently awaiting a light. I wondered when Miss Beresford had last been reduced to lighting her own cigarettes. Not in years, I supposed, not so long as there was a man within a hundred yards. She got her light, puffed out a lazy cloud of smoke and said: “A search party, is it? Should be interesting. You can count on me.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Beresford.” I must say I didn’t sound sorry. “Ship’s company business. The captain wouldn’t like it.”

“Nor his first officer, is that it? Don’t bother to answer that one.” She looked at me consideringly. “But I could be unco-operative, too. What would you say if I picked up this phone and told my parents I’d just caught you going through our personal belongings?”

“I should like that, lady. I know your parents. I should like to see you being spanked for behaving like a spoilt child when a man’s life may be in danger.”

The colour in the high cheek-bones was going on and off like a neon light that evening. Now it was on again; she wasn’t by a long way as composed and detached as she’d like the world to think. She stubbed out the newly-lit cigarette and said quietly: “How would it be if I reported you for insolence?”

“Don’t just stand there talking about it. The phone’s by your side.” When she made no move towards it I went on: “Quite frankly, lady, you and your kind make me sick. You use your father’s great wealth and your privileged position as a passenger on the Campari to poke fun, more often than not malicious fun, at members of the crew who are unable to retaliate. They’ve just got to sit and take it, because they’re not like you. They have no money in the bank at all, most of them, but they have families to feed, mothers to support, so they know they have to keep smiling at Miss Beresford when she cracks jokes at their expense or embarrasses or angers them, because if they don’t, Miss Beresford and her kind will see to it that they’re out of a job.”

“Please go on,” she said. She had suddenly become very still.

“That’s all of it. Misuse of power, even in so small a thing, is contemptible. And then, when anyone dares retaliate, as I do, you threaten them with dismissal, which is what your threat amounts to. And that’s worse than contemptible, it’s cowardly.”

I turned and made for the door. First I’d look for Benson, then I’d tell Bullen I was quitting. I was getting tired of the Campari anyway.

“Mr. Carter.”

“Yes?” I turned, but kept my hand on the door-knob. The colour mechanism in her cheeks was certainly working overtime, this time she’d gone pale under the tan. She took a couple of steps towards me and put her hand on my arm. Her hand wasn’t any too steady.

“I am very, very sorry,” she said in a low voice. “I had no idea. Amusement I like, but not malicious amusement. I thought—well, I thought it was harmless, and no one minded. And I would never never dream of putting anyone’s job in danger.”

“Ha!” I said.

“You don’t believe me.” Still the same small voice, still the hand on my arm.

“Of course I believe you,” I said unconvincingly. And then I looked into her eyes, which was a big mistake and a very dangerous thing to do for those big green eyes, I noticed for the first time, had a curious trick of melting and dissolving that could interfere very seriously with a man’s breathing. It was certainly interfering with my breathing. “Of course I believe you,” I repeated and this time the ring of conviction staggered even myself. “You will please forgive my rudeness. But I must hurry, Miss Beresford.”

“Can I come with you, please?”

“Oh, damn it all, yes,” I said irritably. I’d managed to look away from her eyes and start breathing again. “Come if you want.”

At the for’ard end of the passageway, just beyond the entrance to Cerdan’s suite, I ran into Carreras Senior. He was smoking a cigar and had that look of contentment and satisfaction that passengers invariably had when Antoine was finished with them.

“Ah, there you are, Mr. Carter,” he said. “Wondered why you hadn’t returned to our table. What is wrong, if I may ask? There must be at least a dozen of the crew gathered outside the accommodation entrance. I thought regulations forbade——”

“They’re waiting for me, sir. Benson—you probably haven’t had the chance to meet him since you came aboard, he’s our chief steward—is missing. That’s a search-party outside.”

“Missing?” The grey eyebrows went up. “What on earth—well, of course you haven’t any idea what has happened to him or you wouldn’t be organising this search. Can I help?”

I hesitated, thought of Miss Beresford, who had already elbowed her way in, realised I’d now no way of stopping any or all of the passengers from getting into the act if they wanted to and said: “Thank you, Mr. Carreras. You don’t look like a man who would miss very much.”

“We come from the same mould, Mr. Carter.”

I let his cryptic remark go and hurried outside. A cloudless night, with the sky crowded with the usual impossible number of stars, a soft warm wind blowing out of the south, a moderate cross-swell running, but no match for our Denny-Brown stabilisers that could knock 25 degrees off a 30-degree roll without half trying. A black shape detached itself from a nearby shadowed bulkhead, and Archie MacDonald, the bo’sun, came towards me. For all his solid fifteen stone bulk he was as light on his feet as a dancer.

“Any luck, Bo’sun?” I asked.

“No one saw anything: no one heard anything. And there were at least a dozen folk on deck tonight, between eight and nine.”

“Mr. Wilson there? Ah, there. Mr. Wilson, take the engine-room staff and three A.B.s Main deck and below. You should know where to look by this time,” I added bitterly. “MacDonald, you and I will do the upper decks. Port side you, starboard side me. Two seamen and a cadet. Half an hour. Then back here.”

I sent one man to examine the boat positions—why Benson should have wished to get into a boat I couldn’t even imagine except that lifeboats have always a queer attraction for those who wished to hide, although why he should wish to hide I couldn’t guess either—and another to scour the top superstructure abaft the bridge. I started going through the various cabins on the boat-deck, chart-house, flag and radar cabins, and had Mr. Carreras to help me. Rusty, our youngest apprentice, went aft to work his way for’ard, accompanied by Miss Beresford, who had probably guessed, and rightly, that I was in no mood for her company. But Rusty was. He always was. Nothing that Susan Beresford said to or about him made the slightest difference to him. He was her slave and didn’t care who knew it. If she’d asked him to jump down the funnel, just for her sake, he’d have considered it an honour: I could just imagine him searching about the upper decks with Susan Beresford by his side, his face the same colour as his flaming shock of hair.

As I stepped out of the radar office I literally bumped into him. He was panting, as if he’d run a long way, and I could see I had been wrong about the colour of his face: in the half-light on the deck it looked grey, like old newspaper.

“Radio office, sir.” He gasped out the words, and caught my arm, a thing he would never normally have dreamed of doing. “Come quickly, sir. Please.”

I was already running. “You found him?”

“No, sir. It’s Mr. Brownell.” Brownell was our chief wireless operator. “Something seems to have happened to him.”

I reached the office in ten seconds, brushed past the pale blur of Susan Beresford standing just outside the door, crossed over the storm-sill and stopped.

Brownell had the overhead rheostat turned down until the room was less than half-lit, a fairly common practice among radio operators on duty night watches. He was leaning forward over his table, his head pillowed on his right forearm, so that all I could see was his shoulders, dark hair and a bald spot that had been the bane of his life. His left hand was outflung, his fingers just brushing the bridge telephone. The transmitting key was sending continuously. I eased the right forearm forward a couple of inches. The transmitting stopped.

I felt for the pulse in the outstretched left wrist. I felt for the pulse in the side of the neck. I turned to Susan Beresford, still standing in the doorway, and said: “Do you have a mirror.” She nodded wordlessly, fumbled in her bag and handed over a compact, opened, the mirror showing. I turned up the rheostat till the radio cabin was harsh with light, moved Brownell’s head slightly, held the mirror near mouth and nostrils for maybe ten seconds, took it away, glanced at it and then handed it back.

“Something’s happened to him all right,” I said. My voice was steady, unnaturally so. “He’s dead. Or I think he’s dead. Rusty, get Dr. Marston right away, he’s usually in the telegraph lounge this time of night. Tell the captain, if he’s there. Not a word to anyone else about this.”

Rusty disappeared, and another figure appeared to take his place beside Susan Beresford in the doorway. Carreras. He stopped, one foot over the storm-sill, and said: “My God! Benson.”

“No, Brownell. Wireless officer. I think he’s dead.” On the off-chance that Bullen hadn’t yet gone down to the lounge I reached for the bulkhead phone labelled “Captain’s Cabin” and waited for an answer, staring down at the dead man sprawled across the table. Middle-aged, cheerful, his only harmless idiosyncrasy being an unusual vanity about his personal appearance that had once even driven him to the length of buying a toupee for his bald spot—public shipboard opinion had forced him to discard it—Brownell was one of the most popular and genuinely liked officers on the ship. Was? Had been. I heard the click of a lifted receiver.

“Captain? Carter here. Could you come down to the wireless office? At once, please.”

“Benson?”

“Brownell. Dead, sir, I think.”

There was a pause, a click. I hung up, reached for another phone that connected directly to the radio officers’ cabins. We had three radio officers and the one with the middle watch, from midnight to 4 a.m., usually skipped dinner in the dining-room and made for his bunk instead. A voice answered: “Peters here.”

“First mate. Sorry to disturb you, but come up to the radio room right away.”

“What’s up?”

“You’ll find out when you get here.”

The overhead light seemed far too bright for a room with a dead man in it. I turned down the rheostat and the white glare was replaced by a deep yellow glow. Rusty’s face appeared in the doorway. He didn’t seem so pale any more but maybe the subdued light was just being kind to him.

“Surgeon’s coming, sir.” His breathing was quicker than ever. “Just picking up his bag in the dispensary.”

“Thanks. Go and fetch the bo’sun, will you. And no need to kill yourself running, Rusty. There’s no great hurry now.”

He left, and Susan Beresford said in a low voice: “What’s wrong? What—what happened to him?”

“You shouldn’t be here, Miss Beresford.”

“What happened to him?” she repeated.

“That’s for the ship’s surgeon to say. Looks to me as if he just died where he sat. Heart attack, coronary thrombosis, something like that.”

She shivered, made no reply. Dead men were no new thing to me but the faint icy prickling on the back of my neck and spine made me feel like shivering myself. The warm trade wind seemed cooler, much cooler, than it had a few minutes ago.

Doctor Marston appeared. No running, no haste even, with Dr. Marston: a slow measured man with a slow measured stride. A magnificent mane of white hair, clipped white moustache, a singularly smooth and unlined complexion for a man getting so far on in years, steady clear keen blue eyes with a peculiarly penetrating property, here, you knew instinctively, was a doctor who you could trust implicitly, which only went to show that your instinct should be taken away from you and locked up in some safe place where it couldn’t do you any harm. Admittedly, even to look at him made you feel better, and that was all right as far as it went: but to go further, to put your life into his hands, say, was a very different and dicey proposition altogether for there was an even chance that you wouldn’t get it back again. Those piercing eyes had not lighted on the Lancet or made any attempt to follow the latest medical developments since quite a few years prior to the Second World War. But they didn’t have to: he and Lord Dexter had gone through prep school, public school and university together and his job was secure as long as he could lift a stethoscope. And, to be fair to him, when it came to treating wealthy and hypochondriacal old ladies he had no equal on the seven seas.

“Well, John,” he boomed. With the exception of Captain Bullen, he addressed every officer on the ship by his first name exactly as a public school headmaster would have addressed one of his more promising pupils, but a pupil that needed watching all the same. “What’s the trouble? Beau Brownell taken a turn?”

“Worse than that, I’m afraid, Doctor. Dead.”

“Good lord! Brownell? Dead? Let me see, let me see. A little more light if you please, John.” He dumped his bag on the table, fished out his stethoscope, sounded Brownell here and there, took his pulse and then straightened with a sigh. “In the midst of life, John … and not recently, either. Temperature’s high in here but I should say he’s been gone well over an hour.”

I could see the dark bulk of Captain Bullen in the doorway now, waiting, listening, saying nothing.

“Heart attack, Doctor?” I ventured. After all he wasn’t all that incompetent, just a quarter century out of date.

“Let me see, let me see,” he repeated. He turned Brownell’s head and looked closely at it. He had to look closely. He was unaware that everyone in the ship knew that, piercing blue eyes or not, he was as short-sighted as a dodo, and refused to wear glasses. “Ah, look at this. The tongue, the lips, the eyes, above all the complexion. No doubt about it, no doubt about it at all. Cerebral hæmorrhage. Massive. And at his age. How old, John?”

“Forty-seven, eight. Thereabouts.”

“Forty-seven. Just forty-seven.” He shook his head. “Gets them younger every day. The stress of modern living.”

“And that outstretched hand, Doctor?” I asked. “Reaching for the phone. You think——”

“Just confirms my diagnosis, alas. Felt it coming on, tried to call for help, but it was too sudden, too massive. Poor old Beau Brownell.” He turned, caught sight of Bullen looming in the doorway. “Ah, there you are, Captain. A bad business, a bad business.”

“A bad business,” Bullen agreed heavily. “Miss Beresford, you have no right to be here. You’re cold and shivering. Go to your cabin at once.” When Captain Bullen spoke in that tone, the Beresford millions didn’t seem to matter any more. “Doctor Marston will bring you a sedative later.”

“And perhaps Mr. Carreras will be so kind!——” I began.

“Certainly,” Carreras agreed at once. “I will be honoured to see the young lady to her cabin.” He bowed slightly, offered her his arm. She seemed more than glad to take it and they disappeared.

Five minutes later all was back to normal in the radio cabin. Peters had taken the dead man’s place, Dr. Marston had returned to his favourite occupation of mingling socially and drinking steadily with our millionaires, the captain had given me his instructions, I’d passed them on to the bo’sun and Brownell, canvas-wrapped, had been taken for’ard to the carpenter’s store.

I stayed in the wireless office for a few minutes, talking to a very shaken Peters, and looked casually at the latest radio message that had come through. All radio messages were written down in duplicate as received, the original for the bridge and the carbon for the daily spiked file.

I lifted the topmost message from the file, but it was nothing very important, just a warning of deteriorating weather far to the south-east of Cuba which might or might not build up into a hurricane. Routine and too far away to bother us. I lifted the blank message pad that lay by Peters’s elbow.

“May I have this?”

“Help yourself.” He was still too upset even to be curious as to why I wanted it. “Plenty more where that came from.”

I left him, walked up and down the deck outside for some time, then made my way to the captain’s cabin where I’d been told to report when I was through. He was in his usual seat by the desk with Cummings and the chief engineer sitting on the settee. The presence of McIlroy, a short, stout Tynesider with the facial expression and hair style of Friar Tuck, meant a very worried Captain and a council of war. McIlroy’s brilliance wasn’t confined to reciprocating engines, that plump laughter-creased face concealed a brain that was probably the shrewdest on the Campari, and that included Mr. Julius Beresford, who must have been very shrewd indeed to make his three hundred million dollars or whatever it was.

“Sit down, Mister, sit down,” Bullen growled. The “Mister “didn’t mean I was in his black books, just another sign that he was worried. “No signs of Benson yet?”

“No sign at all.”

“What a bloody trip!” Bullen pushed across a tray with whisky and glasses on it, unaccustomedly open-handed liberality that was just another sign of his worry. “Help yourself, Mister.”

“Thank you sir.” I helped myself lavishly, the chance didn’t come often, and went on: “What are we going to do about Brownell?”

“What the devil do you mean ‘What are we going to do about Brownell’? He’s got no folks to notify, no consent to get about anything. Head office has been informed. Burial at sea at dawn, before our passengers are up and about. Mustn’t spoil their blasted trip, I suppose.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to take him to Nassau, sir?”

“Nassau?” He stared at me over the rim of his glass, then lowered it carefully to the table. “Just because a man has died you don’t have to go off your blasted rocker, do you?”

“Nassau or some other British territory. Or Miami. Some place where we can get competent authorities, police authorities, to investigate things.”

“What things, Johnny?” McIlroy asked. He had his head cocked to one side like a fat and well-stuffed owl.

“Yes, what things?” Bullen’s tone was quite different from McIlroy’s. “Just because the search party hasn’t turned up Benson yet, you——”

“I’ve called off the search-party, sir.”

Bullen pushed back his chair till his hands rested on the table at the full stretch of his arms.

“You’ve called off the search party,” he said softly. “Who the hell gave you authority to do anything of the kind.”

“No one, sir. But I——”

“Why did you do it, Johnny?” McIlroy again, very quietly.

“Because we’ll never see Benson again. Not alive, that is, Benson’s dead. Benson’s been killed.”

No one said anything, not for all of ten seconds. The sound of the cool air rushing through the louvres in the overhead trunking seemed abnormally loud. The captain said harshly: “Killed? Benson killed? Are you all right, Mister? What do you mean, killed?”

“Murdered is what I mean.”

“Murdered? Murdered?” McIlroy shifted uneasily in his chair. “Have you seen him? Have you any proof? How can you say he was murdered?”

“I haven’t seen him. And I haven’t any proof. Not a scrap of evidence.” I caught a glimpse of the purser sitting there, his hands twisting together and his eyes staring at me, and I remembered that Benson had been his best friend for close on twenty years. “But I have proof that Brownell was murdered tonight. And I can tie the two together.”

There was an even longer silence.

“You’re mad,” Bullen said at length with harsh conviction. “So now Brownell’s been murdered too. You’re mad, Mister, off your bloody trolley. You heard what Dr. Marston said? Massive cerebral hæmorrhage. But of course he’s only a doctor of forty years’ standing. He wouldn’t know——”

“How about giving me a chance, sir,” I interrupted. My voice sounded as harsh as his own. “I know he’s a doctor. I also know he hasn’t very good eyes. But I have. I saw what he missed. I saw a dark smudge on the back of Brownell’s uniform collar—and when has anybody on this ship ever seen a mark on any shirt that Brownell ever wore? They didn’t call him Beau Brownell for nothing. Somebody had hit him, with something heavy and with tremendous force, on the back of the neck. There was also a faint discoloration under the left ear—I could see it as he lay there. When the bo’sun and I got him down to the carpenter’s store we examined him together. There was a corresponding slight bruise under his right ear—and traces of sand under his collar. Someone sandbagged him and then, when he was unconscious, compressed the carotid arteries until he died. Go and see for yourselves.”

“Not me,” McIlroy murmured. You could see that even his normally monolithic composure had been shaken. “Not me. I believe it—absolutely. It would be too easy to disprove it. I believe it all right—but I still can’t accept it.”

“But damn it all, Chief!” Bullen’s fists were clenched.

“The doctor said that——”

“I’m no medical man,” McIlroy interrupted. “But I should imagine the symptoms are pretty much the same in both cases. Can hardly blame old Marston.”

Bullen ignored him, gave me the full benefit of his commodore’s stare.

“Look, Mister,” he said slowly. “You’ve changed your tune, haven’t you? When I was there, you agreed with Dr. Marston. You even put forward the heart failure idea. You showed no signs——”

“Miss Beresford and Mr. Carreras were there,” I interrupted. “I didn’t want them to start getting wrong ideas. If word got around the ship—and it would have been bound to—that we suspected murder, then whoever was responsible might have felt themselves forced to act again, and act quickly, to forestall any action we might take. I don’t know what they might do, but on the form to date it would have been something damned unpleasant.”

“Miss Beresford? Mr. Carreras?” Bullen had stopped clenching his hands but you could see that it wouldn’t take much to make him start up again. “Miss Beresford is above suspicion. But Carreras? And his son? Just aboard today—and in most unusual circumstances. It just might tie up.”

“It doesn’t. I checked. Carreras Senior and Junior had both been in either the telegraph lounge or the dining-room for almost two hours before we found Brownell. They’re completely in the clear.”

“Besides being too obvious,” McIlroy agreed. “I think, Captain, it’s time we took our hats of to Mr. Carter here: he’s been getting around and using his head while all we have been doing is twiddling our thumbs.”

“Benson,” Captain Bullen said. He didn’t show any signs of taking off his hat. “How about Benson? How does he tie up?”

“This way.” I slid the empty telegraph book across the table. “I checked the last message that was received and went to the bridge. Routine weather report. Time, 2007. But later there was another message written on this pad: original, carbon, duplicate. The message is indecipherable—but to people with modern police equipment it would be child’s play to find out what was written there. What is decipherable is the impression of the last two time figures. Look for yourself. It’s quite clear. 33. That means 2033. A message came through at that moment, a message so urgent in nature that, instead of waiting for the routine bridge messenger collection, Brownell made to phone it through at once. That was why his hand was reaching for the phone when we found him, not because he was feeling ill all of a sudden. And then he was killed. Whoever killed him had to kill. Knocking Brownell out and stealing the message would have accomplished nothing for as soon as he would have come to he would have remembered the contents of the message and immediately sent it to the bridge. It must,” I added thoughtfully, “have been a damned important message.”

“Benson,” Bullen repeated impatiently. “How about Benson?”

“Benson was the victim of a lifetime of habit. Howie here tells us how Benson invariably went out on deck between half past eight and twenty-five to nine for a smoke, while the passengers were at dinner. The radio room is immediately above where he would have been taking his promenade—and the message came through, and Brownell was killed, inside those five minutes. Benson must have seen or heard something unusual and gone to investigate. He might even have caught the murderer in the act. And so Benson had to die too.”

“But why?” Captain Bullen demanded. He still couldn’t believe it all. “Why, why, why? Why was he killed? Why was that message so desperately important? The whole damned thing’s crazy. And what in God’s name was in that message anyway?”

“That’s why we’ve got to go to Nassau to find out, sir.”

Bullen looked at me without expression, looked at his drink, evidently decided that he preferred his drink to me—or the ill news I brought with me—and knocked back the contents in a couple of gulps.

McIlroy didn’t touch his. He sat there for a whole minute looking at it consideringly, then he said: “You haven’t missed much, Johnny. But you’ve missed one thing. The wireless officer on watch—Peters, isn’t it? How do you know the same message won’t come through again? Maybe it was a message requiring acknowledgment? If it was, and it’s not acknowledged, it’s pretty certain to come through again. Then what’s the guarantee that Peters won’t get the same treatment?”

“The bo’sun’s the guarantee, Chief. He’s sitting in black shadow not ten yards from the wireless office with a marlin-spike in his hand and Highland murder in his heart. You know MacDonald. Heaven help anyone who goes within a Sunday walk of the wireless office.”

Bullen poured himself another small whisky, smiled tiredly and glanced at his single broad commodore’s stripe.

“Mr. Carter, I think you and I should change jackets.” It was as far in apology as he could ever go and about twelve hours ahead of par. “Think you’d like this side of my desk?”

“Suit me fine, sir,” I agreed. “Especially if you took over entertaining the passengers.”

“In that case we’ll stay as we are.” Another brief smile, no sooner there than vanished. “Who’s on the bridge? Jamieson, isn’t it? Better take over, First.”

“Later, sir, with your permission. There’s still the most important thing of all to investigate. But I don’t even know how to start.”

“Don’t tell me there’s something else,” Bullen said heavily.

“I’ve had some time to think about this, that’s all,” I said. “A message came through to our wireless office, a message so important that it had to be intercepted at all costs. But how could anybody possibly know that message was coming through? The only way that message could have come into the Campari was through a pair of earphones clamped to Brownell’s head, yet someone else was taking down that message at the same instant as Brownell was. Must have been. Brownell had no sooner finished transcribing that message on to his pad than he reached for the phone to get the bridge, and he no sooner reached for the phone than he died. There’s some other radio receiver aboard the Campari tuned into the same wave-length and wherever it is it’s not a hop, skip and jump from the wireless office, for wherever the eavesdropper was he got from there to the wireless office in seconds. Problem, find the receiver.”

Bullen looked at me. McIlroy looked at me. They both looked at each other. Then McIlroy objected: “But the wireless officer keeps shifting wave-lengths. How could anybody know what particular wave-length he was on at any one moment?”

“How can anyone know anything?” I asked. I nodded at the message pad on the table. “Until we get that deciphered.”

“The message.” Bullen gazed at the pad, abruptly made up his mind. “Nassau it is. Maximum speed, Chief, but slowly, over half an hour, so that no one will notice the step up in revs. First, the bridge. Get our position.” He fetched chart, rules, dividers while I was getting the figures, nodded at me as I hung up. “Lay off the shortest possible course.”

It didn’t take long. “047 from here to here, sir, approximately 220 miles, then 350.”

“Arrival?”

“Maximum speed?”

“Of course.”

“Just before midnight tomorrow night.”

He reached for a pad, scribbled for a minute, then read out: “‘Port authorities, Nassau, s.s. Campari, position such-and-such, arriving 2330 tomorrow Wednesday. Request police alongside immediate investigation one murdered man, one missing man. Urgent. Bullen, Master.’ That should do.” He reached for the phone. I touched his arm.

“Whoever has this receiver can monitor outgoing calls just as easily as incoming ones. Then they’ll know we’re on to them. God only knows what might happen then.”

Bullen looked slowly first at me, then at McIlroy, then at the purser, who hadn’t spoken a word since I’d arrived in the cabin, then back at me again. Then he tore the message into tiny shreds and dropped it into his waste-paper basket.

IV.

Tuesday 10.15 p.m.–Wednesday 8.45 a.m.

I didn’t get a great deal of investigating done that night. I’d figured out how to start, all right, but the devil of it was I couldn’t start till the passengers were up and about in the morning. Nobody likes being turfed out of his bed in the middle of the night, a millionaire least of all.

After having cautiously identified myself to the bo’sun to ensure that I didn’t get the back of my head stove in with a marline-spike, I spent a good fifteen minutes in the vicinity of the wireless office relating its position to other offices and nearby accommodation. The wireless office was on the starboard side, for’ard, immediately above the passengers’ “A” deck accommodation—old man Cerdan’s suite was directly below—and on the basis of my assumption that the murderer, even if he didn’t wait for the last few words of the message to come through, could have had no more time than ten seconds to get from wherever the hidden receiver was to the wireless office, then any place within ten seconds’ reach of the wireless office automatically came under suspicion.

There were quite a few places within the suspected limits. There was the bridge, flag office, radar office, chart-room and all the deck officers’ and cadets’ accommodation. Those could be ruled out at once. There was the dining-room, galleys, pantries, officers’ lounge, telegraph lounge, and, immediately adjacent to the telegraph lounge, another lounge which rejoiced in the name of the drawing-room—it having been found necessary to provide an alternative lounge for our millionaire’s wives and daughters who weren’t all so keen on the alcoholic and ticker-tape attractions of the telegraph lounge as their husbands and fathers were. I spent forty minutes going through those—they were all deserted at that time of night—and if anyone had yet invented a transistor receiver smaller than a matchbox, then I might have missed it: but anything larger, I’d have found it for sure.

That left only the passengers’ accommodation, with the cabins on “A” deck, immediately below the wireless office, as the prime suspects. The “B” deck suites, on the next deck below, were not out-with the bounds of possibility: but when I ran a mental eye over the stiff-legged bunch of elderly crocks on “B” deck, I couldn’t think of a man among them who could have made it to the wireless office in under ten seconds. And it certainly hadn’t been a woman: Because whoever had killed Brownell had not only also laid out Benson but removed him from sight, and Benson weighed a hundred and eighty pounds if he weighed an ounce.

So, “A” or “B” decks. Both of them would have to go through the sieve tomorrow. I prayed for good weather to tempt our passengers out on to the sun-decks to give the stewards, in the course of making up beds and cleaning out the cabins, the chance to carry out a thorough search. The Customs in Jamaica, of course, had already done this; but they had been looking for a mechanism over six feet in length, not a radio which, in those days of miniaturisation, could easily have been hidden in, say, one of those hefty jewel-boxes which were the run of the mill among our millionaires’ wives.

We were running almost due north-east now, under the same indigo sky ablaze with stars, the Campari rolling gently as it sliced along the line of the long slow swell. We’d taken almost half an hour to make an eighty degree change of course so that no night-owl passenger abroad on deck could see the changing direction of our wake: not that those precautions were going to be of any use if any of our passengers had the faintest idea of stellar navigation or, come to that, the very elementary ability to locate the Pole Star.

I was walking slowly up the boat-deck, port side, when I saw Captain Bullen approaching. He lifted his arm, motioned me into the deep shadow cast by one of the ship’s lifeboats.

“Thought I would find you here or hereabouts,” he said softly. He reached under his jacket and pressed something cold and hard into my hand. “I believe you know how to use one of those.”

Starlight glinted dully off the blued metal in my hand. A Colt automatic, one of the three kept on a locked chain in a glass cabinet in the captain’s sleeping cabin. Captain Bullen was certainly taking things seriously at last.

“I can use it, sir.”

“Right. Stick it in your belt or wherever you stick those damned things. Never realised they were so blasted awkward to conceal about your person. And here’s a spare magazine. Hope to God we don’t have to use them.” Which meant the captain had one also.

“The third gun, sir?”

“I don’t know.” He hesitated. “Wilson, I thought.”

“He’s a good man. But give it to the bo’sun.”

“The bo’sun?” Bullen’s voice sharpened, then he remembered the need for secrecy and dropped his voice to a conspiratorial growl. “You know the regulations, Mister. Those guns to be used only in times of war, piracy or mutiny—and never to be issued to anyone other than an officer.”

“The regulations don’t concern me half as much as my own neck does, sir. You know MacDonald’s record—youngest-ever sergeant-major in the Commandos, a list of decorations as long as your arm. Give it to MacDonald, sir.”

“We’ll see,” he grunted, “we’ll see. I’ve just been to the carpenter’s store. With Doc Marston. First time I’ve ever seen that old phoney shaken to the core. He agrees with you, says there’s no doubt Brownell was murdered. You’d think he was up in the dock of the Old Bailey with the alibis he’s giving himself. But I think McIlroy was right when he said the symptoms were about the same.”

“Well,” I said doubtfully. “I hope nothing comes of it, sir.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know old Doc Marston as well as I do, sir. The two great loves of his life are Jamaica rum and the desire to give the impression that he’s on the inside of everything that goes on. A dangerous combination. Apart from McIlroy, the purser, yourself and myself the only person who knows that Brownell didn’t die a natural death is the bo’sun, and he’d never talk. Doc Marston is a different proposition altogether.”

“Not to worry, my boy,” Bullen said with something like relish in his voice. “I told our worthy surgeon that, Lord Dexter’s pal or not, if he as much as lifted a glass of rum before we arrived in Nassau, I’d have him on the beach, for good, within the week.”

I tried to imagine anyone telling the venerable and aristocratic doctor anything of the sort: my mind boggled at the very thought. But they hadn’t made old Bullen company commodore for nothing. I knew he’d done exactly as stated.

“He didn’t take off any of Brownell’s clothes?” I asked. “His shirt, for instance?”

“No. What does it matter?”

“It’s just that it’s probable that whoever strangled Brownell had his fingers locked round the back of the neck to give him leverage, and I believe that police today can pick up fingerprints from practically any substance, including certain types of clothes. They shouldn’t have much trouble picking up prints from those nice shiny starched collars Brownell wore.”

“You don’t miss much,” Bullen said thoughfully. “Except that maybe you’ve missed your profession. Anything else?”

“Yes. About this burial at sea tomorrow at dawn.”

There was a long pause, then he said with the blasphemously weary restraint of a long-suffering man who has already held himself in check far too long: “What bloody burial at dawn? Brownell is our only exhibition for the Nassau police.”

“Burial, sir,” I repeated. “But not at dawn. About, say, eight o’clock, when a fair number of our passengers will be up and about, having their morning constitutional. This is what I mean, sir.”

I told him what I meant and he listened patiently enough, considering. When I was finished he nodded slowly, two or three times in succession, turned and left me without a word.

I moved out into a lane of light between two lifeboats, and glanced at my watch. Twenty-five minutes past eleven. I’d told MacDonald I’d relieve him at midnight. I walked across to the rail and stood there by a life-jacket locker, staring out over the slow shimmering swell of the sea, hands at arms’ length on the rail, vainly trying to figure out what could possibly lie behind all that had happened that evening.

When I awoke, it was twenty minutes to one. Not that I was immediately aware of the time when I awoke: I wasn’t immediately and clearly aware of anything. It’s difficult to be aware of anything when your head is being squeezed between the jaws of a giant vice and your eyes have gone blind, to be aware of anything, that is, except the vice and the blindness. Blindness. My eyes. I was worried about my eyes. I raised a hand and fumbled around for a while and then I found them. They were filled with something hard and encrusted and when I rubbed the crust came away and there was stickiness beneath. Blood. There was blood in my eyes, blood that was gumming the lids together and making me blind. At least, I hoped vaguely it was blood that was making me blind.

I rubbed some more blood away with the heel of my hand, and then I could see. Not too well, not the way I was used to seeing, the stars in the sky were not the bright pin-points of light to which I was accustomed, but just a pale fuzzy haze seen through a frosted glass window. I reached out a trembling hand and tried to touch this frosted glass but it vanished and dissolved as I reached out, and what my hand touched was cool and metallic. I strained my eyes wide open and saw that there was indeed no glass there, what I was touching was the lowermost bar of the ship’s rail.

I could see better now, at least better than a blind man could. My head was lying in the scuppers, inches away from one of the lifeboat davits. What in God’s name was I doing there with my head in the scuppers, inches away from the davits? I managed to get both hands under me and, with a sudden drunken lurch, heaved myself into a semi-sitting position with one elbow still on the deck. A great mistake, a very great mistake, for at once a blinding agonising pain, that never-recorded pain that must be experienced in the final shattering milli-second of awareness as a plunging guillotine slices through bone, flesh and muscle before crashing into the block beneath, slashed its paralysing way across head, neck and shoulders and toppled me back to the deck again. My head must have struck heavily against the iron of the scuppers, but I don’t think I even moaned.

Slowly, infinitely slowly, consciousness came back to me. Consciousness of a kind. Where clarity and awareness and speed of recovery were concerned I was a man chained hand and foot, surfacing from the bottom of a sea of molasses. Something, I dimly realised, was touching my face, my eyes, my mouth: something cold and moist and sweet. Water. Someone was sponging my face with water, gently trying to mop the blood from my eyes. I made to turn my head to see who it was and then I vaguely remembered what had happened last time I moved my head. I raised my right hand instead and touched someone’s wrist.

“Take it easy, sir. You just take it easy.” The man with the sponge must have had a long arm, he was at least two miles away, but I recognised the voice for all that. Archie MacDonald. “Don’t you try moving now. Just you wait a bit. You’ll be all right, sir.”

“Archie?” We were a real disembodied pair, I thought fuzzily. I was at least a couple of miles away, too. I only hoped we were a couple of miles away in the same direction. “Is that you, Archie?” God knows I didn’t doubt it, I just wanted the reassurance of hearing him say so.

“It’s myself, sir. Just you leave everything to me.” It was the bo’sun all right, he couldn’t have used that sentence more than five thousand times in the years I’d known him. “Just you lie still.”

I’d no intention of doing anything else. I’d be far gone in years before I’d ever forget the last time I moved, if I lived that long, which didn’t seem a bit likely at the moment.

“My neck, Archie.” My voice sounded a few hundred yards closer. “I think it’s broken.”

“Aye, I’m sure it feels that way, sir, but I’m thinking myself maybe it’s not as bad as all that. We’ll see.”

I don’t know how long I lay there, maybe two or three minutes, while the bo’sun swabbed the blood away until eventually the stars began to swim into some sort of focus again. Then he slid one arm under my shoulders and under my head and began to lift me, inch by inch, into a sitting position.

I waited for the guillotine to fall again, but it didn’t. This time it was more like a butcher’s meat-chopper, but a pretty blunt chopper: several times in a few seconds the Campari spun round 360 degrees on its keel, then settled down on course again. 047, I seemed to recall. And this time I didn’t lose consciousness.

“What time is it, Archie?” A stupid question to ask, but I wasn’t at my very best. And my voice, I was glad to hear, was at last practically next door to me.

He turned my left wrist.

“Twelve forty-five, your watch says, sir. I think you must have been lying there a good hour. You were in the shadow of the boat and no one would have seen you if they had passed by this way.”

I moved my head an experimental inch and winced at the pain of it. Two inches and it would fall off.

“What the hell happened to me, Archie? Some kind of turn or other? I don’t remember——”

“Some kind of turn!” His voice was soft and cold. I felt his fingers touch the back of my neck. “Our friend with the sandbag has been taking a walk again, sir. One of those days,” he added thoughtfully, “I’m going to catch him at it.”

“Sandbag!” I struggled to my feet, but I’d never have made it without the bo’sun. “The wireless office! Peters!”

“It’s young Mr. Jenkins that’s on now, sir. He’s all right. You said you’d relieve me for the middle watch, and when twenty past twelve came I knew something was wrong. So I just went straight into the wireless office and phoned Captain Bullen.”

“The captain?”

“Who else could I phone, sir?” Who else, indeed. Apart from myself the captain was the only deck officer who really knew what had happened, who knew where the bo’sun was concealed and why, MacDonald had his arm around me now, still half supporting me, leading me for’ard to the cross-passage that led to the wireless office. “He came at once. He’s there now, talking to Mr. Jenkins. Worried stiff—thinks the same thing might have happened to you as to Benson. He gave me a present before I came looking for you.” He made a movement and I could see the barrel of a pistol that was all but engulfed in his huge hand. “I am hoping that I get a chance to use this, Mr. Carter, and not the butt end, either. I suppose you realise that if you had toppled forward instead of sideways, you’d most likely have fallen over the rail into the sea.”

I wondered grimly why they—or he—hadn’t, in fact, shoved me over the side, but said nothing, just concentrated on reaching the wireless office.

Captain Bullen was waiting there, just outside the door, and the bulge in the pocket of his uniform jacket wasn’t caused only by his hand. He came quickly to meet us, probably to get out of earshot of the wireless officer, and his reaction to my condition and story of what had happened were all that anyone could reasonably have wished for. He was just mad clear through; I’d never seen him in such a mood of tightly-controlled anger since I’d first met him three years ago. When he’d calmed down a bit, he said: “But why the devil didn’t they just go the whole hog and throw you overboard while they were at it?”

“They didn’t have to, sir,” I said wearily. “They didn’t want to kill me. Just to get me out of the road.”

He peered closely at me, the cold eyes speculative.

“You talk as if you knew why they coshed you.”

“I do. Or I think I do.” I rubbed the back of my neck with a gentle hand. I was pretty sure now there weren’t any vertebrae broken, it just felt that way. “My own fault. I overlooked the obvious. Come to that, we all overlooked the obvious. Once they’d killed Brownell and we’d deduced, by association, that they’d also killed Benson, I lost all interest in Benson. I just assumed that they’d got rid of him. All I was concerned with, all any of us was concerned with, was to see that there was no further attack made on the wireless officer, to try to find out where the receiver was and to figure out what lay behind it all. Benson, we were sure, was dead and a dead Benson could no longer be of any use to us. So we forgot Benson. Benson belonged to the past.”

“Are you trying to tell me that Benson was—or is—still alive?”

“He was dead all right.” I felt about ninety, a badly crippled ninety, and the vice round my head wasn’t easing off any I could notice. “He was dead, but they hadn’t got rid of him. Maybe they hadn’t had a chance to get rid of him. Maybe they had to wait till it was real good and dark to get rid of him. But they had to get rid of him—if we’d found him, we’d have known there was a murderer on board. They probably had him stashed away in some place where we wouldn’t have thought of looking for him anyway, lying on top of one of the offices, stuck in a ventilator, behind one of the sun-deck benches, it could have been anywhere. And I was either too near where they’d stashed him, so that they couldn’t get at him, or they couldn’t chuck him overboard as long as I was standing by the rail there. Barring myself, they knew they were safe enough. Going at maximum speed, with a bow-wave like we’re throwing up right now, no one would have heard anything if they had dropped him into the sea: and on a dark moonless night like this, no one would have seen anything either. So they’d only me to deal with—and they didn’t find that any trouble at all,” I finished bitterly.

Bullen shook his head. “You never heard a thing? Not the faintest fall of a footstep, not even the swish of a cosh coming through the air.”

“Old flannel-feet must be a pretty dangerous character, sir,” I said reflectively. “He didn’t make the slightest whisper of sound. I wouldn’t have thought it possible. For all I know, I might have taken a fainting turn and struck my head on the davit as I fell. That’s what I thought myself—I even suggested it to the bo’sun here. And that’s what I’m going to tell anyone who wants to know tomorrow.” I grinned and winked at MacDonald, and even the wink hurt. “I’ll tell them you’ve been overworking me, sir, and I collapsed from exhaustion.”

“Why tell anyone?” Bullen wasn’t amused. “It doesn’t show where you have been coshed, that wound is just above the temple and inside the hairline, and could be pretty well camouflaged. Agreed?”

“No, sir. Someone knows I had an accident—the character responsible for it, and he’s going to regard is as damned queer if I make no reference to it at all: but if I do mention it and pass it off as a lady-like swoon, there’s an even chance he may accept it, and if he does we’re still going to have the advantage of being in the position of knowing that there’s murder and mayhem abroad, while they will have no suspicion we know anything of the kind.”

“Your mind,” said Captain Bullen unsympathetically, “is beginning to clear at last.”

When I awoke in the morning the already hot sun was streaming in through my uncurtained window. My cabin, immediately abaft the captain’s was on the starboard side, and the sun was coming from for’ard, which meant that we were still steaming north-east. I raised myself on my elbow to have a look at the sea conditions, for the Campari had developed a definite if gentle pitching movement, and it was then that I discovered that my neck was rigidly bound in a plaster cast. At least, it felt exactly like it. I could move it about an inch to either side and then a pair of clamps took hold. A dull steady ache, but no pain worth mentioning. I tried to force my head beyond the limits of the clamps, but I only tried once. I waited till the cabin stopped swaying around and the red-hot wires in my neck had cooled off to a tolerable temperature, then climbed stiffly out of my bunk. Let them call me stiff-neck Carter if they wanted. That was enough of that lot.

I crossed to the window. Still a cloudless sky with the sun, white, glaring, already high above the horizon, striking a glittering blinding path across the blueness of the sea. The swell was deeper, longer, heavier than I had expected, and coming up from the starboard quarter. I wound down the window and there was no wind I could notice, which meant that there was a fair breeze pushing up from astern, but not enough to whiten the smoothly roiled surface of the sea.

I showered, shaved,—I’d never before appreciated how difficult it was to shave when the turning motion of your head is limited to an arc of two inches—then examined the wound. Seen in daylight it looked bad, much worse than it had in the night: above and behind the left temple, it was a two-inch gash, wide and very deep. And it throbbed heavily in a way I didn’t much care for. I picked up the phone and asked for Doc Marston. He was still in bed but, yes, he would see me right away, an early-bird Hippocratic willingness that was very much out of character, but maybe his conscience was bothering him about his wrong diagnosis of the previous night. I dressed, put on my hat, adjusted it to a suitably rakish angle till the band just missed the wound and went down to see him.

Dr. Marston, fresh, rested, and unusually clear of eye—no doubt due to Bullen’s warning to lay off the rum—didn’t look like a conscience-stricken man who’d tossed and turned the sleepless night long. He didn’t even seem unduly worried about the fact that we carried aboard a passenger who, if he’d truthfully listed his occupation, would have put down the word “murderer.” All he seemed concerned about was the entry in last night’s log, and when I told him no entry about Brownell had been made nor would be made until we arrived in Nassau and that when it was no mention of my name would appear in connection with the diagnosis of Brownell’s death, he became positively jovial. He shaved off a few square inches of hair, jabbed in a local anæsthetic, cleaned and sutured the wound, covered it with a sticking-plaster pad and wished me good morning. He was through for the day.

It was quarter to eight. I dropped down the series of accommodation ladders that led to the fo’c’sle and made my way for’ard to the carpenter’s store. The fo’c’sle was unusually crowded for that time of the morning. There must have been close on forty members of the ship’s company gathered there, deck staff, engine-room staff, cooks and stewards, all waiting to pay their last respects to Brownell. Nor were these all the spectators. I looked up and saw that the promenade deck, which curved right round the for’ard superstructure of the Campari, was dotted with passengers, eleven or twelve in all: not many, but they represented close on the total male passenger compliment aboard—I could see no women there—with the exception of old Cerdan and possibly one or two others. Bad news travelled fast and even for millionaires the chance of seeing a burial at sea didn’t come along too often. Right in the middle of them was the Duke of Hartwell, looking nautical as anything in his carefully-adjusted Royal Yachting Club cap, silk scarf and brass-buttoned navy doeskin jacket.

I skirted number one hold and thought grimly that there might indeed be something in the old superstitions: the dead cried out for company, the old salts said, and the dead men loaded only yesterday afternoon and now lying in the bottom of number four hold hadn’t been slow to get their company. Two others gone in the space of a few hours, near as a toucher three: only, I’d fallen sideways instead of toppling over the rail. I felt those ice-cold fingers on the back of my neck again, and shivered: then passed into the comparative gloom of the carpenter’s store, right up in the forepeak.

Everything was ready. The bier—a hastily nailed together platform of boards, seven feet by two—lay on the deck: and the Red Ensign, tied to two corners of the handles at the top of the bier but free at the other end, covered the canvas-swathed mound beneath. Only the bo’sun and carpenter were there. To look at MacDonald you would never have guessed that he hadn’t slept the previous night. He had volunteered to remain on guard outside the wireless office until dawn: it had also been his idea that, though the chances of any trouble in daylight were remote, two men should be detailed for holystoning the deck outside the wireless office after breakfast, for the entire day if necessary. Meantime, the radio office was closed—and heavily padlocked—to allow Peters and Jenkins to attend the funeral of their colleague. There was no difficulty about this: as was common, there was a standard arrangement whereby a bell rang either on the bridge or in the chief wireless operator’s cabin whenever a call came through on the distress frequency or on the Campari’s call-sign.

The slight vibration of the Campari’s engines died away as the engines slowed and the revs dropped until we had just enough speed to give us steerage-way in that heavy swell. The captain came down the companionway, carrying a heavy brass-bound bible under his arm. The heavy steel door in the port hand fo’c’sle side was swung open and back till it secured with a clang in its retaining latch. A long wooden box was slid into position, one end level with the opening in the side of the ship. Then MacDonald and the carpenter, bareheaded, appeared, carrying bier and burden and laid them on the box.

The service was very brief, very simple. Captain Bullen said a few words about Brownell, about as true as words usually are in those circumstances, led the tattered singing of “Abide With Me,” read the burial service and nodded to the bo’sun. The Royal Navy did this sort of thing better, but we didn’t carry any bugles aboard the Campari. MacDonald lifted the inboard end of the bier, the canvas swathed mound slid out slowly from beneath the Red Ensign and was gone with only the faintest of splashings to mark its departure. I glanced up at the promenade deck and saw the Duke of Hartwell there standing stiffly at attention, right arm bent up to his peaked cap in rigid salute. Even allowing for the natural disadvantages lent him by his face, I had seldom seen a more ludicrous sight. No doubt to the unbiased observer he was putting up a more fitting show than myself but I find it hard to be at my reverent best when I know that all I’m committing to the deep is a length of canvas, large quantities of engine-room waste and a hundred and fifty pounds of rusty chain to give the necessary negative buoyancy.

The door in the ship’s side clanged shut, Captain Bullen handed over the Bible to a cadet, the engine revs mounted and the Campari was back in business again. And the first item on the agenda was breakfast.

In my three years aboard the Campari I had rarely seen more than half a dozen passengers in the dining-saloon for breakfast. Most of them preferred to have it served in their suites or on the private verandas outside their suites. Barring a few apéritifs, followed by Antoine’s or Henriques’s superb cooking, there was nothing to beat a good funeral to bring out the sociable best in our passengers. There could only have been seven or eight missing altogether.

I had a full complement at my table except, of course, for the invalid, Mr. Cerdan. I should have been on watch but the captain had decided that, as there was a very able quartermaster on the wheel and no land within seventy miles, young Dexter, who usually stood the watch with me, could stand it alone for the length of breakfast.

No sooner had I pulled in my chair than Miss Harrbride fixed her beady eyes on me.

“What on earth’s happened to you, young man?” she demanded.

“To tell you the truth, Miss Harrbride, I don’t really know myself.”

“You what?”

“It’s true.” I put on my best shamed-face. “I was standing up on the boat-deck last night and the next thing I knew I was lying in the scuppers with my head cut—I must have struck it against the davit when I fell.” I had my story all prepared. “Dr. Marston thinks it was a combination of sunstroke—I was loading cargo most of the day yesterday and I can assure you that the sun was very hot—and the fact that owing to our troubles in Kingston and the delay caused by it, I haven’t had very much sleep in the past three days.”

“I must say things do keep happening aboard the Campari,” Miguel Carreras said. His face was grave. “One man dead from a heart attack or whatever it was, another missing—they haven’t found our chief steward yet, have they?”

“I’m afraid not, sir.”

“And now you get yourself banged up. Let’s sincerely hope that’s the end of it.”

“Troubles always happen in threes, sir. I’m sure this is the end of it. We’ve never before——”

“Young man, let me have a look at you,” a peremptory voice demanded from the captain’s table. Mrs. Beresford, my favourite passenger. I twisted round in my seat to find that Mrs. Beresford, who normally sat with her back to me, had herself completely turned round in hers. Beyond her, the Duke of Hartwell, unlike the previous night, was having no trouble at all in devoting his entire attention to Susan Beresford: the usual counter-attraction on his right, in the best traditions of the theatrical world, rarely rose before noon. Mrs. Beresford studied me in silence for the best part of ten seconds.

“You don’t look well at all, Mr. Carter,” she pronounced finally. “Twisted your neck, too, didn’t you? You didn’t have to turn around in your chair to talk to me.”

“A little,” I admitted. “It’s a bit stiff.”

“And hurt your back into the bargain,” she added triumphantly. “I can tell from the peculiar way you sit.”

“It hardly hurts at all,” I said bravely. It didn’t, in fact, hurt me in the slightest, but I hadn’t yet got the hang of carrying a gun in my waistband and the butt kept sticking painfully into my lower ribs.

“Sun-stroke, eh?” Her face held genuine concern. “And lack of sleep. You should be in bed. Captain Bullen, I’m afraid you’re overworking this young man.”

“That’s what I keep telling the captain, ma’am,” I said, “but he doesn’t pay any attention to me.”

Captain Bullen smiled briefly and rose to his feet. His eyes, as they roved slowly over the room, held the expression of one who wanted both attention and quiet: such was the personality of the man that he got it in three seconds flat.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began. The Duke of Hartwell regarded the tablecloth with that smell-of-bad-fish expression he reserved for tenants wanting a cut in rent and merchant navy captains who forgot to preface public addresses with the words “Your Grace.”

“I am most distressed,” the captain went on, “as I am sure you are all distressed by the events of the past twelve hours. That we should lose our chief wireless officer through death by natural causes is, God knows, bad enough: but that our chief steward should vanish the same evening—well, in thirty-six years at sea I have never known anything like it.

“What happened to Chief Steward Benson we cannot say with any certainty: but I hazard a guess and at the same time issue a warning. There are literally hundreds of recorded cases of men vanishing overboard during the night and I have little doubt but that Benson’s death is due to the same reason which probably accounts for 99 per cent, of all the other cases. Even on the most experienced sailors the effect of leaning over the rail at night and watching the black water passing below has a weirdly hypnotic effect. I think it’s something akin to the vertigo that affects a great number of people, people who are convinced that if they go near, say, the parapet of a high building, some strange force will make them topple over, no matter what their conscious minds may say. Only, with leaning over the rails of a ship, there is no fear. Just a gradual mesmerism. A man just leans farther and farther over until his centre of gravity is suddenly displaced. And then he is gone.”

As an alibi or explanation for Benson’s disappearance it was as good as any: as a general statement it was also, unfortunately true.

“And so, ladies and gentlemen, I would counsel you all, most strongly, never to approach the ship’s rail at night unless you are accompanied by someone else. I would be most grateful if you would all bear that strongly in mind.”

I looked round the passengers as far as my stiff neck would allow. They would bear it in mind, all right. From now on, wild horses wouldn’t drag them near the Campari’s rails at night.

“But,” Bullen went on emphatically, “it will help neither of those unfortunate men and only do ourselves a great disservice if we allow ourselves to brood over those things. I cannot ask you to dismiss those deaths from your minds at once, but I can ask you not to dwell on them. On a ship, as elsewhere, life must go on—especially, I might say, on a ship. You are aboard the Campari to enjoy the cruise: we are aboard to help you enjoy it. I would be most grateful if you would give us your every assistance to get shipboard life back to normal as soon as absolutely possible.”

There was a subdued murmur of agreement, then Julius Beresford, rising from his seat beside the captain, was on his feet.

“Do you mind if I say a few words, sir?” He could have bought the Blue Mail Line without even denting his bank balance, but still he asked permission to speak and called old Bullen “sir.”

“Certainly, Mr. Beresford.”

“It’s just this.” Julius Beresford had addressed too many board meetings to be anything other than completely at ease when speaking to people, no matter how many million dollars they represented. “I agree, and agree completely with everything our captain has said. Captain Bullen has said that he and his crew have a job to do and that that job is to look after the every comfort and convenience of his passengers: under the rather sad circumstances in which we have to meet this morning, I think that we, the passengers, have also a job to do—to make things as easy as possible for the captain, officers and crew and help them bring things back to normal as soon as possible.

“I’d like to start the ball rolling by asking you all to be my guests for a brief period this evening. Today, ladies and gentlemen, my wife celebrates her birthday.” He smiled down at Mrs. Beresford. “She forgets exactly which one. I cannot invite you to a birthday dinner, for what could I offer you as a special meal that Antoine and Henriques do not give us every night of the week? But Mrs. Beresford and I should be grateful if you would be our guests at a cocktail party this evening. Seven forty-five. In the drawing-room. Thank you.”

I looked round the table. Miguel Carreras was nodding slightly, as if in grave acceptance and appreciation of Beresford’s underlying motives. Miss Harrbride was beaming with pleasure: she doted on the Beresfords, not for their money but for the fact that they were one of the very oldest American families, with goodness only knew how many generations behind them. Mr. Greenstreet, her husband, studied the tablecloth in his usual intent fashion. And Tony Carreras, more impossibly handsome than ever, leaned back in his chair and regarded Julius Beresford with a slightly amused, speculative interest. Or maybe it was Susan Beresford he was looking at; I was more certain than ever that there was something wrong with Tony Carreras’s eyes; it was almost impossible to tell in what direction they were looking. He caught my glance and smiled.

“You’ll be there, Mr. Carter?” He had that relaxed easygoing manner that comes from having a bank account bursting at the seams, but none of the usual hint of condescension: Tony Carreras I could get to like.

“Briefly, only, I’m afraid. I have to go on watch at eight o’clock this evening.” I smiled. “If you’re still at it at midnight, I’ll join you.” Like hell I’d join them: at midnight I’d be showing the Nassau police over the ship. “And I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me now: I have to relieve the officer of the watch.”

I made my excuses and left. On the deck I almost bumped into a sandy-haired young seaman, Whitehead, who usually shared my watches on the bridge in his capacity as engine-room telegraphist, lookout, bridge messenger and coffee-maker.

“What are you doing here?” I asked sharply. With young Dexter on watch I wanted as many sharp eyes and quick minds as possible around him: Whitehead had both. “You know you’re not to leave the bridge in my absence.”

“Sorry, sir. But Ferguson sent me.” Ferguson was the quarter-master on the forenoon watch. “We’ve missed the last two course alterations and he’s getting pretty worried about it.” We were bringing round three degrees to the north every fifteen minutes to get on a north by west course, but slowly, so as not to excite anyone.

“Why come and bother me about it?” I said irritably. “Fourth Officer Dexter is perfectly capable of handling these matters.” He wasn’t, but one of the drawbacks of being a fellow-officer of Dexter was that you were forced to lie like fury to maintain an outward appearance of solidarity.

“Yes, sir. But he’s not there, Mr. Carter. He left the bridge about twenty minutes ago and he hasn’t come back yet.”

I pushed violently past Whitehead, knocking him to one side, and made for the bridge at a dead run, three steps at a time up the companionways. Rounding one corner I caught a glimpse of Whitehead staring up after me with a most peculiar expression on his face. He probably thought I had gone mad.

V.

Wednesday 8.45 a.m.–3.30 p.m.

Ferguson, a tall swarthy saturnine Cockney with no hair left to speak of, glanced round as I burst through the doorway from the starboard wing of the bridge into the wheelhouse. His face showed his relief.

“Strewth, am I glad to see——”

“Where’s the fourth mate?” I demanded.

“Search me, sir. Them course alterations——”

“To hell with the course alterations! Where did he go?”

Ferguson blinked in surprise. He had the same look on his face as Whitehead had had a few seconds ago, the wary bafflement of a man who sees another going off his rocker.

“I don’t know, sir. He didn’t say.”

I reached for the nearest phone, got through to the dining-room, asked for Bullen. He came on and I said: “Carter here, sir. Could you come up to the bridge straightaway?”

There was a brief pause, then: “Why?”

“Dexter’s missing, sir. He had the watch but he left the bridge twenty minutes ago.”

“Left the bridge.” Bullen’s voice held no inflexion, but only because he made it that way. Lord Dexter’s son or not, young Dexter was finished on the Campari unless he could explain this one away. “Looked for him yet? He could be anywhere.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of, sir.”

The phone clicked and I hung up. Young Whitehead, still looking apprehensive, had just arrived in the cabin. I said: “You’ll find the third mate in his cabin. My compliments to him, ask him if he’ll take over the bridge for a few minutes. Ferguson?”

“Sir?” The voice was still wary.

“Mr. Dexter said nothing at all when he left?”

“Yes, sir. I heard him say something like ‘Wait a minute, what the hell’s going on here?’ Or something like that, I can’t be sure. Then he said: ‘Keep her as she is. Back in a jiffy,’ and then he was off.”

“That was all?”

“That was all, sir.”

“Where was he standing at the time?”

“On the starboard wing, sir. Just outside the door.”

“And he went down that side?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where was Whitehead at the time?”

“Out on the port wing, sir.” Ferguson’s expression and tone showed beyond all doubt that he was vis-à-vis with a loony, but he was playing it cool all the same.

“Didn’t cross to see where Mr. Dexter had gone?”

“No, sir.” He hesitated. “Well, not right away. But I thought it a bit funny so I asked him to have a look. He couldn’t see anything.”

“Damn! How long after Mr. Dexter left before he took this look?”

“A minute. Maybe closer on two. Couldn’t be sure, sir.”

“But whatever Mr. Dexter saw, it was aft?”

“Yes, sir.”

I moved out on to the wing bridge and looked aft. There was no one to be seen on any of the two decks below. The crew had long finished washing down decks and the passengers were still at breakfast. Nobody there. Nothing of any interest at all to be seen. Even the wireless office was deserted, its door closed and locked. I could see the brass padlock clearly, gleaming and glittering in the morning sun as the Campari pitched slowly, gently, through the ever-lengthening swell.

The wireless office! I stood there perfectly rigid for all of three seconds, a candidate, in Ferguson’s eyes, for a strait-jacket if ever there had been one, then took off down the companionway the same way as I had come up, three steps at a time. Only a smart piece of braking on my part and a surprisingly nimble bit of dodging on the captain’s prevented a head-on collision at the foot of the companionway. Bullen put into words the thought that was obviously gaining currency around the bridge.

“Have you gone off your bloody rocker, Mister?”

“The wireless office, sir,” I said quickly. “Come on.”

I was there in a few seconds, Bullen close behind. I tried the padlock, a heavy-duty double-action Yale, but it was securely locked.

It was then I noticed a key sticking out from the bottom of the padlock. I twisted it, first one way, then the other, but it was jammed fast. I tried to pull it out and had the same lack of success. I became aware that Bullen was breathing heavily over my shoulder.

“What the devil’s the matter, Mister? What’s got into you all of a sudden?”

“One moment, sir.” I’d caught sight of Whitehead making his way up to the bridge and beckoned him across. “Get the bo’sun, tell him to bring a pair of pliers.”

“Yes, sir, I’ll get the pliers——”

“I said ‘Tell the bo’sun to bring them,’” I said savagely. “Then ask Mr. Peters for the key to this door. Hurry!”

He hurried. You could see he was glad to escape. Bullen said: “Look here, Mister——”

“Dexter left the bridge because he saw something funny going on. So Ferguson said. Where else but here, sir?”

“Why here? Why not——”

“Look at that.” I took the padlock in my hand. “That bent key. And everything that’s happened has happened because of here.”

“The window?”

“No good. I’ve looked.” I led him round the corner to the single square of plate glass. “Night curtains are still drawn.”

“Couldn’t we smash the damn’ thing in?”

“What’s the point? It’s too late now.”

Bullen looked at me queerly, but said nothing. Half a minute passed in silence. Bullen was getting more worried every second. I wasn’t—I was as worried as could be already. Jamieson appeared, on his way to the bridge, caught sight of us, made to come towards us, then carried on as Bullen waved him away. And then the bo’sun was there, carrying a pair of heavy insulated pliers in his hand.

“Open this damned door,” Bullen said curtly.

MacDonald tried to remove the key with his fingers, failed and brought the pliers into use. With the first tug of the pliers the key in the lock snapped cleanly in half.

“Well,” Bullen said heavily. “That helps.”

MacDonald looked at him, at me, then back at the broken key still held in the jaws of the pliers.

“I didn’t even twist it, sir,” he said quietly. “And if that’s a Yale key,” he added with an air of faint distaste, “then I’m an Englishman.” He handed the key over for inspection. The break showed the grey, rough, porous composition of some base metal. “Home-made, and not very well made at that, either.”

Bullen pocketed the broken key.

“Can you get the other bit out?”

“No, sir. Completely jammed.” He fished in his overalls, produced a hacksaw. “Maybe this, sir?”

“Good man.”

It took MacDonald three minutes’ hard work—the hasp, unlike the padlock, was made of tempered steel—and then the hacksaw was through. He slid out the padlock, then glanced inquiringly at the captain.

“Come in with us,” Bullen said. There was sweat on his brow. “See that nobody comes near.” He pushed open the door and passed inside: I was on his heels.

We’d found Dexter all right, and we’d found him too late. He had that bundle of old clothes look, that completely relaxed huddled shapelessness that only the dead can achieve: face-down, out-flung on the Corticene flooring, he hardly left standing room for Bullen and myself.

“Shall I get the doctor, sir?” It was MacDonald speaking: he was standing astride the storm-sill and the knuckles of the hand holding the door shone bonily through the tautened skin.

“It’s too late for a doctor now, Bo’sun,” Bullen said stonily. Then his composure broke and he burst out violently: “My God, Mister, where’s it all going to end? He’s dead, you can see he’s dead. What’s behind—what murderous fiend—why did they kill him, Mister? Why did they have to kill him? Damn it to hell, why did the fiends have to kill him? He was only a kid, what real harm did young Dexter ever do anybody?” It said much for Bullen at the moment that the thought never even occurred to him that the dead man was the son of the chairman and managing director of the Blue Mail Line. That thought would come later.

“He died for the same reason that Benson died,” I said. “He saw too much.” I kneeled beside him, examined the back and sides of his neck. No marks there at all. I looked up and said: “Can I turn him over, sir?”

“It can’t do any harm now.” Bullen’s normally ruddy face had lost some colour and the lips were clamped in a thin hard line.

I heaved and pulled for a few seconds and managed to get Dexter more or less turned over, half on his shoulders and half on his back. I didn’t waste any time checking his breathing or his pulse; when you’ve been shot three times through the middle of the body the breathing and the pulse are things of the past. And Dexter’s white uniform shirt, with the three small powder-blackened blood-tinged holes just beneath the breast-bone, showed indeed that he had been shot three times: the area covering those holes could have been blotted out by a playing card. Somebody had made very sure indeed. I rose to my feet, looked from the captain to the bo’sun, then said to Bullen: “We can’t pass this off as a heart attack, sir.”

“They shot him three times,” Bullen said matter-of-factly.

“We’re up against someone in the maniac class, sir.” I stared down at Dexter, unable to look away from the face racked and twisted by his last conscious moment of life, that fleeting moment of tearing agony that had opened the door to death. “Any one of those bullets would have killed him. But whoever killed him killed him three times, someone who likes pressing a trigger, someone who likes seeing bullets thud into a human being, even although that human being is dead already.”

“You seem very cool about this, Mister.” Bullen was looking at me with a strange look in his eyes.

“Sure I’m cool.” I showed Bullen my gun. “Show me the man who did this and I’ll give him what he gave Dexter. Exactly the same and to hell with Captain Bullen and the laws of the land. That’s how cool I am.”

“I’m sorry, Johnny.” Then his voice hardened again. “Nobody heard anything. How did nobody hear anything?”

“He had his gun close up to Dexter, maybe jammed right against him. You can see the marks of burnt powder. That would help to deaden the sound. Besides, everything points to this person—or those persons—as being professionals. They would have silencers on their guns.”

“I see.” Bullen turned to MacDonald. “Could you get Peters here, Bo’sun. At once.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” MacDonald turned to leave, and I said quickly: “Sir, a word before MacDonald goes.”

“What is it?” His voice was hard, impatient.

“You’re going to send a message?”

“Too right I’m going to send a message. I’m going to ask for a couple of fast patrol boats to be sent out to meet us. At the speed those gas turbine jobs can go they’ll be alongside before noon. And when I tell them I’ve had three men murdered in twelve hours, they’ll come running. I’ve had enough of playing it smart, First. This fake burial to lull their suspicions this morning, to make them think we’d got rid of the only evidence of murder against them. See where it’s got us? Another murdered man.”

“It’s no use, sir. It’s too late now.”

“What do you mean?”

“He didn’t even bother to replace the lid after he left, sir.” I nodded towards the big transmitter-receiver, with its metal lid slightly askew, the securing screws loose. “Maybe he was in a hurry to get away, maybe he just knew there was no point in securing it anyway, we were bound to find it out sooner or later—and sooner rather than later.” I lifted the lid and stood to one side to let Bullen look also.

Nothing was ever surer than that no one would ever use that transmitter again. It was littered inside with torn wire, bent metal, smashed condensers and valves. Someone had used a hammer. There was no guesswork about that: the hammer was still lying among the tangled splintered wreckage that was all that was left of the once complicated innards of the transmitter. I replaced the lid.

“There’s an emergency set,” Bullen said hoarsely. “In the cupboard under the table there. The one with the petrol generator. He’ll have missed that.”

But the murderer hadn’t missed it, he wasn’t the type to miss anything. And he certainly hadn’t missed with that hammer. If anything, he’d done an even more thorough job on the emergency set than on the main set: and, just for good measure, he’d smashed up the armature of the patrol generator.

“Our friend must have been listening in on his receiver again,” MacDonald put in quietly. “So he came out either to stop the message or smash up the sets, so that no more messages could go through. He was lucky, had he been a bit later and the radio officer back on watch my men would have been holystoning the decks outside and there would have been nothing he would be able to do.”

“I don’t associate luck with this killer in any way,” I said. “He’s too damned efficient for that. I don’t think any more messages which might have worried him had come through, but he was afraid they might. He knew both Peters and Jennings were off watch at the burial, and he probably checked that the wireless office was locked. So he waited till the coast was clear, came out on deck, unlocked the office and went inside. And Dexter, unfortunately for himself, saw him going in.”

“The key, Mister,” Bullen said harshly. “The key. How come?”

“The Marconi-man in Kingston who checked the sets, sir. Remember?” He remembered all right: the Marconi-man had telephoned the ship asking if servicing facilities were required and Bullen had seized on it as a heaven-sent opportunity to close down the radio office and refuse to accept any more embarrassing and infuriating messages from London and New York. “He spent about four hours here. Time to do anything. If he was a Marconiman, I’m the Queen of the May. He had a nice big impressive tool-kit with him, but the only tool he used, if he could call it that, was a stick of wax, heated to the right temperature, to take an impression of the Yale—even if he had managed to pinch the Yale and return it unseen it would have been impossible for him to cut a new one, those special Yales are far too complicated. And my guess is that that was all he did while he was there.”

And my guess was completely wrong. But the thought that this fake Marconi-man might have employed himself in another way during his stay in the wireless office did not occur to me until many hours later: it was so blindingly obvious that I missed it altogether, although two minutes’ constructive thought would have been bound to put me on to it. But those hours were to elapse before I got around to the constructive thought: and by that time it was too late. Too late for the Campari, too late for its passengers, and far far too late for all too many of the crew.

We left young Dexter lying in the wireless office and secured the door with a new padlock. We’d talked for almost five minutes about the problem of where to put him before the simple solution occurred to us: leave him where he was. Nobody was going to use that wireless office any more that day: he was as well there as anywhere till the Nassau police came aboard.

From the wireless office we’d gone straight to the telegraph lounge. The teleprinters in there were coupled to receiver-transmitters on fixed wavelengths to London, Paris and New York, but could be adapted by men who knew what they were doing, such as Peters and Jenkins, to receive and transmit on practically any wavelength. But not even Peters and Jenkins could do anything about the situation we found: there were two big transmitters in the telegraph lounge, cleverly designed to look like cocktail cabinets, and both had received the same treatment as the sets in the wireless office: the exteriors intact, the interiors smashed beyond repair. Somebody had been very busy during the night: the wireless office must have been the last item on the list.

I looked at Bullen.

“With your permission, sir, MacDonald and I will go and have a look at the lifeboats. We might as well waste our time that way as in any other.”

He knew what I meant all right, and nodded. Captain Bullen was beginning to look slightly hunted. He was the ablest, the most competent master in the Blue Mail: but nothing in his long training and experience had ever been designed to cope with a situation like this.

And so MacDonald and I duly wasted our time. There were three lifeboats equipped with hand-cranked transmitters for emergency use if the Campari sank or had otherwise to be abandoned. Or they had been equipped with them. But not any more. The transmitters were gone. No need to waste time or make a racket smashing up sets when all you have to do is to drop them over the side. Our murderous friend hadn’t missed a single trick.

When we got back to the captain’s cabin, where we had been told to report, there was something in the atmosphere that I didn’t like at all. They say you can smell fear: I don’t know about that but you can sense it and you could certainly sense it in that cabin at nine o’clock that morning. The fear, the atmosphere of trapped helplessness, the sense of being completely at the mercy of unknown and infinitely powerful and ruthless forces made for an atmosphere of nervously brittle tension that I could almost reach out and touch.

McIlroy and Cummings were there with the captain and so, too, was our second mate, Tommy Wilson. He had had to be told, the stage had been reached now where every officer would have to be told, so Bullen said, in the interests of their own safety and self-defence: I wasn’t so sure. Bullen looked up as we came through the door: his face was grim and still, a thinly opaque mask for the consuming worry that lay beneath.

“Well?”

I shook my head, took a seat. MacDonald remained standing but Bullen gestured him irritably to a chair. He said, to no one in particular: “I suppose that accounts for all the transmitters on the ship?”

“As far as we know, yes.” I went on: “Don’t you think we should have White up here, sir?”

“I was about to do that.” He reached for the phone, spoke for a moment, hung up then said roughly: “Well, Mister, you were the man with the bright ideas last night. Got any this morning?” Just to repeat the words makes them sound harsh and unpleasant: but they were curiously empty of any offence, Bullen didn’t know which way to turn and he was grasping at straws.

“None. All we know is that Dexter was killed at eight twenty-six this morning, give or take a minute. No question about that. And that at that moment most of our passengers were at breakfast: no question about that either. The only passengers not at breakfast were Miss Harcourt, Mr. Cerdan and his two nurses, Mr. and Mrs. Piper from Miami and that couple from Venezuela—old Hournos and his wife, and their daughter. Our only suspects, and none of them makes any sense.”

“And all of those were at dinner last night when Brownell and Benson were killed,” McIlroy said thoughtfully, “except the old man and his nurses. Which leaves them as the only suspects, which is not only ridiculous but far too obvious: I think we’ve already had plenty of proof that whatever the people behind all this are guilty of, being obvious is not one of them. Unless, of course,” he added slowly, “some of the passengers are working in collusion with each other.”

“Or with the crew,” Tommy Wilson murmured.

“What?” Old Bullen gave him the full benefit of his commodore’s stare. “What did you say?”

“I said the crew,” Wilson repeated clearly. If old Bullen was trying to frighten Tommy Wilson he was wasting his time. “And by the crew I also include the officers. I agree, sir, that I heard—or knew—of those murders for the first time only a few minutes ago, and I admit I haven’t had time to sort out my thoughts. On the other hand, I haven’t had a chance to become so involved as all the rest of you are. With all respects, I’m not so deeply lost in the wood that I can’t see the trees. You all seem to be convinced that it must be one or more of the passengers responsible—our chief officer here seems to have set this bee firmly in all your bonnets—but if a passenger were in cahoots with one of the crew then it’s quite possible that that member of the crew was detailed to hang around in the vicinity of the wireless office and start laying about him when necessary.”

“You said the chief officer was responsible for planting this idea in our minds,” Bullen said slowly. “What do you mean by that?”

“No more than I said, sir. I only——” Then the implications of the captain’s question struck him. “Good God, sir! Mr. Carter? Do you think I’m crazy?”

“No one think’s you’re crazy,” McIlroy put in soothingly. Our chief engineer had always regarded Wilson as a bit of a mental bantam-weight, but you could see him slowly revising his opinion. “The crew, Tommy. What makes you suspect the crew?”

“Elimination, motive and opportunity,” Wilson said promptly. “We seem to have more or less eliminated the passengers. All with alibis. And the motive. What are the usual motives?” he asked of no one in particular.

“Revenge, jealousy, gain,” said McIlroy. “Those three.”

“There you are, then. Take revenge and jealousy. It is conceivable that any of our passengers should have their knives so deeply in Brownell, Benson and Dexter as to want to kill them all? Ridiculous. Gain? What could that bunch of bloated plutocrats want with any more lucre.” He looked round slowly. “And what officer or man aboard the Campari couldn’t do with a little more lucre. I could, for one.”

“Opportunity, Tommy,” McIlroy prompted him gently. “Opportunity, you said.”

“I don’t have to go into that,” Wilson said. “Engineer and deck crews could be eliminated at once. The engineering side, except for officers at mealtimes, never go anywhere near the passenger and boat-decks. The bo’sun’s men here are only allowed there in the morning watch, for washing down decks. But”—he looked around him again, even more slowly—“every deck officer, radio officer, radar operator, cook, galley slave and steward aboard the Campari has a perfect right to be within a few yards of the wireless office at any time: no one could question his presence there. Not only that——”

A knock came at the door and Assistant Chief Steward White came in, hat in hand. He was looking acutely unhappy and looked even more so when he saw the extent and composition of the welcoming committee.

“Come in and sit down,” Bullen said. He waited till White had done this, then went on: “Where were you between eight and half past eight this morning, White?”

“This morning. Eight and half past.” White was immediately all stiff outrage. “I was on duty, sir, of course. I——”

“Relax,” Bullen said wearily. “No one is accusing you of anything.” Then he said more kindly: “We’ve all had some very bad news, White. Nothing that concerns you directly, so don’t get too apprehensive. You’d better hear it.”

Bullen told him, without any trimmings, of the three murders and the one immediate result was that everyone present could immediately remove White from the list of suspects. He might have been a good actor, but not even an Irving could have turned his colour from a healthy red to a greyish pallor at the touch of a switch, which was what White did. He looked so bad, his breathing got so quick and shallow that I rose hastily and fetched him a glass of water. He swallowed it in a couple of gulps.

“Sorry to upset you, White,” Bullen went on. “But you had to know. Now then, between eight and eight-thirty: how many of our passengers had breakfast in their rooms?”

“I don’t know, sir, I’m not sure.” He shook his head, then went on slowly. “Sorry, sir, I do remember. Mr. Cerdan and his nurses, of course. The Hournos family. Miss Harcourt. Mr. and Mrs. Piper.”

“As Mr. Carter said,” McIlroy murmured.

“Yes,” Bullen nodded. “Now, White, be very careful. Did any of those passengers at any time leave their rooms during this period? At any time? Even for a moment?”

“No, sir. Quite definitely not. Not on my deck, anyway. The Hournos are on ‘B’ deck. But none of the others went in or out of any of the suites: only stewards with trays. I can swear to that, sir. From my cubicle—Mr. Benson’s, that is—I can see every door in the passageway.”

“That’s so,” Bullen agreed. He asked for the name of the senior steward on “B” deck, spoke briefly on the phone, then hung up. “All right, White, you can go. But keep your eyes—and ears—open and report to me immediately you come across anything that strikes you as unusual. And don’t talk about this to anyone.” White rose quickly, and left. He seemed glad to go.

“There it is, then,” Bullen said heavily. “Everyone—every one of the passengers, that is—in the clear. I’m beginning to think you may have the right of it after all, Mr. Wilson.” He looked speculatively at me. “How about it now, Mr. Carter?”

I looked at him, then at Wilson, and said: “Mr. Wilson seems to be the only one of us that makes any sense. What he says is logical, completely plausible and fits the facts. It’s too logical, too plausible. I don’t believe it.”

“Why not?” Bullen demanded. “Because you can’t believe that any crew member of the Campari could be bought? Or because it knocks your own pet theories on the head?”

“I can’t give you any why’s or why not’s, sir. It’s just a hunch, the way I feel.”

Captain Bullen grunted, not a very kindly grunt either, but unexpected support came from the chief engineer.

“I agree with Mr. Carter. We’re up against very very clever people—if it is people.” He paused, then said suddenly: “Is the passage money for the Carreras family, father and son, paid in yet?”

“What the devil has that got to do with anything?” Bullen demanded.

“Has it been paid?” McIlroy repeated. He was looking at the purser.

“It’s been paid,” Cummings said quietly. He was still a long way from getting over the shock caused by the murder of his friend Benson.

“In what currency?”

“Travellers’ cheques. Drawn on a New York bank.”

“Dollars, eh? Now, Captain Bullen, I submit that’s very interesting indeed. Paid in dollars. Yet in May of last year the generalissimo made it a penal offence to be in possession of any foreign currency whatsoever. I wonder where our friends got the money from. And why are they permitted to be in possession of it? Instead of lingering in some jungle jail?”

“What are you suggesting, Chief?”

“Nothing,” McIlroy confessed. “That’s the devil of it. I just don’t see how it can tie up with anything. I just submit that it is very curious indeed and that anything curious, in the present circumstances, is worth investigating.” He sat silently for a moment, then said idly: “I suppose you know that our generalissimo friend recently received a gift from the other side of the Iron Curtain? A destroyer and a couple of frigates? Trebled his naval strength in one fell sweep. I suppose you know the generalissimo is desperate for money—his régime is coming apart at the seams for lack of it and that’s what lay behind last week’s bloody riots. You know that we have a dozen people aboard who would be worth God knows how many millions in ransom money? And that if a frigate suddenly did heave over the horizon and order us to stop—well, how could we send out an SOS with all our transmitters smashed.”

“I have never heard such a ridiculous suggestion in my life,” Bullen said heavily. But ridiculous or not you’re thinking about it, Captain Bullen, I said to myself, by heaven you’re thinking about it. “To knock your suggestion on the head straightaway. How could any vessel ever find us? Where to look for us? We changed course last night, we’re over a hundred miles away from where they might expect us to be—even if they had any idea where we were going in the first place?”

“I could support the chief’s arguments in that, sir,” I put in. There seemed no point in mentioning that I thought McIlroy’s idea as far-fetched as did the captain. “Any person with a radio receiver might equally have a transmitter—and Miguel Carreras himself mentioned to me that he used to command his own ships. Navigation, by sun or stars would be easy for him. He probably knows our position to within ten miles.”

“And those messages that came through on the radio,” McIlroy went on. “Message or messages. A message so damned important that two men died: and the possibility that another such message might come through caused a third man to die. What message, Captain, what so tremendously important message? Warnings: from where, from whom, I don’t know. Warnings, Captain Bullen. Knowledge which in our hands would have destroyed some carefully laid plans: and the scope of those plans you can judge from the fact that three men died so that that message should not come through.”

Old Bullen was shaken. He tried not to show it but, he was shaken. Badly. And I knew it next moment when he turned to Tommy Wilson.

“On the bridge, Mr. Wilson. Double lookouts: stay doubled till we get to Nassau.” He looked at McIlroy. “If we get to Nassau. Signaller to stand by the Aldis all day. ‘I want assistance’ flags ready for the yardarm. Radar office: if they take their eyes off the screen for a second I’ll have ’em on the beach. No matter how small a blip they see, no matter what distance, report immediately to the bridge.”

“We turn towards them for assistance, sir?”

“You blithering idiot,” Bullen snarled. “We run for our lives in the opposite direction. Do you want to steam into the waiting guns of a destroyer?” No question but that Bullen was far off balance: the self-contradictory element in his instructions escaped him completely.

“You believe the chief, then, sir?” I asked.

“I don’t know what to believe,” Bullen growled. “I’m just taking no chances.”

When Wilson left I said: “Maybe the chief is right. Maybe Wilson is right, too. Both could go together—an armed attack on the Campari with certain suborned members of the crew backing up the attackers.”

“But you still don’t believe it,” McIlroy said, quietly.

“I’m like the captain. I don’t know what to believe. But one thing I do know for certain. The radio receiver that intercepted the message we never got—that’s the key to it all.”

“And that’s the key we’re going to find.” Bullen heaved himself to his feet. “Chief, I’d be glad if you came with me. We’re going to search for this radio, personally. First we start in my quarters, then in yours, then we go through the quarters of every member of the crew of the Campari. Then we start looking anywhere where it might be cached outside their quarters. You come with us, MacDonald.”

The old man was in earnest all right. If that radio was in the crew’s quarters, he’d find it. The fact that he’d offered to start the search in his own suite was warranty enough for that.

He went on: “Mr. Carter, I believe it’s your watch.”

“Yes, sir. But Jamieson could look out for me for an hour. Permission to search the passengers’ quarters?”

“Wilson was right about that bee in the bonnet, Mister.” Which only went to show how upset Bullen was: normally, where circumstances demanded, he was the most punctilious of men and, in the presence of the bo’sun, would never have spoken as he had done to Wilson and myself. He glowered at me and walked out.

He hadn’t given me permission, but he hadn’t refused it either. I glanced at Cummings: he nodded, and rose to his feet.

We had luck in the conditions of our search, the purser and I, in that we didn’t have to turf anyone out of their cabins: they were completely deserted. Radio reports in the morning watch had spoken of weather conditions deteriorating sharply to the south-east and bulletins had been posted warning of approaching bad weather: the sun-decks were crowded with passengers determined to make the most of the blue skies before the weather broke. Even old Cerdan was on deck, flanked by his two watchful nurses, the tall one with a big mesh-string knitting bag and clicking away busily with her needles, the other with a pile of magazines, reading. You had the impression with them, as with all good nurses, that less than half their minds were on what they were doing: without stirring from their chairs they seemed to hover over old Cerdan like a couple of broody hens. I had the feeling that when Cerdan paid nurses to hover, he would expect his money’s worth. He was in his bath-chair, with a richly-embroidered rug over his bony knees. I took a good long look at that rug as I passed by, but I was only wasting my time: so tightly was that rug wrapped round his skinny shanks that he couldn’t have concealed a matchbox under it, far less a radio.

With a couple of stewards keeping watch we went through the suites on “A” and “B” decks with meticulous care. I had a bridge megger with me, which was to lend cover to our cover story, if we had to use one, that we were trying to trace an insulation break in a power cable: but no passenger with a guilty mind was going to fall for that for a moment if he found us in his cabin, so we thought the stewards a good idea.

There should have been no need for any passenger aboard the Campari to have a radio. Every passenger’s cabin on the ship, with the Campari’s usual extravagance, was fitted out with not one but two bulkhead relay receivers, fed from a battery of radios in the telegraph lounge: Eight different stations could be brought into circuit simply by pressing the eight pre-selector buttons. This was all explained in the brochure so nobody thought of bringing radios along.

Cummings and I missed nothing. We examined every cupboard, wardrobe, bed, drawer, even my ladies’ jewel-boxes. Nothing. Nothing anywhere, except in one place: Miss Harcourt’s cabin. There was a portable there, but, then, I had known that there had been one: every night when the weather was fine Miss Harcourt would wander out on deck clad in one of her many evening gowns, find a chair and twiddle around the tuning knob till she found some suitable soft music. Maybe she thought it lent something to the air of enchantment and mystery that should surround a movie queen: maybe she thought it romantic: it could have been, of course, that she just liked soft music. However it was, one thing was certain, Miss Harcourt was not our suspect: not to put too fine a point on it, she just didn’t have the intelligence. And, in fairness, despite her pretensions, she was too nice.

I retired defeated to the bridge and took over from Jamieson. Almost an hour elapsed before another defeated man came to the bridge: Captain Bullen. He didn’t have to tell me he was defeated: it was written on him, in the still, troubled face, the slight sag of the broad shoulders. And a mute headshake from me told him all he needed to know. I made a mental note, in the not unlikely event of Lord Dexter turfing us both out of the Blue Mail, to turn down any suggestions by Captain Bullen that we should go into a detective agency together: there might be faster ways of starving, perhaps, but none more completely certain.

We were on the second leg of our course now, 10 degrees west of north, heading straight for Nassau. Twelve hours and we would be there. My eyes ached from scanning the horizons and skies, even although I knew there were at least ten others doing the same thing, still my eyes ached. Whether I believed McIlroy’s suggestion or not, I certainly behaved as if I did. But the horizon remained clear, completely, miraculously clear, for this was normally a fairly heavily travelled steamer lane. And the loudspeaker from the radar room remained obstinately silent. We had a radar screen on the bridge, but rarely troubled to consult it: Walters, the operator on watch, could isolate and identify a blip on the screen before most of us could even see it.

After maybe half an hour’s restless pacing about the bridge, Bullen turned to go. Just at the head of the companionway he hesitated, turned, beckoned me and walked out to the end of the starboard wing. I followed.

“I’ve been thinking about Dexter,” he said quietly. “What would be the effect—I’m past caring about the passengers now, I’m only worried about the lives of every man and woman aboard—if I announced that Dexter had been murdered?”

“Nothing,” I said. “If you can call mass hysteria nothing.”

“You don’t think the fiends responsible for all this might call it off? Whatever ‘it’ is?”

“I’m dead certain they wouldn’t. As no mention has been made of Dexter yet, no attempt to explain away his absence, they must know we know he’s dead. They’ll know damn’ well that the officer of the watch can’t disappear from the bridge without a hue and cry going up. We’d just be telling them out loud what they already know without being told. You won’t scare this bunch off. People don’t play as rough as they do unless there’s something tremendous at stake.”

“That’s what I thought myself, Johnny,” he said heavily. “That’s just what I thought myself.” He turned and went below, and I had a sudden foreknowledge of how Bullen would look when he was an old man.

I stayed on the bridge until two o’clock, long past my usual time for relief, but then I’d deprived Jamieson, who had the afternoon watch, of much free time that morning. A tray came up to me from the galley, and for the first time ever I sent an offering by Henriques back untouched. When Jamieson took over the bridge he didn’t exchange a word with me except routine remarks about course and speed. From the strained, set expression on his face you would have thought he was carrying the mainmast of the Campari over his shoulder. Bullen had been talking to him, he’d probably been talking to all the officers. That would get them all as worried as hell and jittery as a couple of old spinsters lost in the Casbah: I didn’t see that it would achieve anything else.

I went to my cabin, closed the door, pulled off shoes and shirt and lay on my bunk—no four-posters for the crew of the Campari—after adjusting the louvre in the overhead cold-air trunking until the draught was directed on my chest and face. The back of my head ached, and ached badly. I adjusted a pillow under it and tried to ease the pain. It still ached, so I let it go and tried to think. Somebody had to think and I didn’t see that old Bullen was in any state for it. Neither was I, but I thought all the same. I would have bet my last cent that the enemy—I couldn’t think of them as anything else by this time—knew our course, destination and time of arrival almost as well as we did ourselves. And I knew they couldn’t afford to let us arrive in Nassau that night, not, at least, until they had accomplished what they had set out to accomplish, whatever that might be. Somebody had to think. Time was terribly short.

By three o’clock I’d got nowhere. I’d worried all round the problem as a terrier worries an old slipper, I’d examined it from every angle, I’d put forward a dozen different solutions, all equally improbable, and turned up a round dozen suspects, all equally impossible. My thinking was getting me nowhere. I sat up, careful of my stiff neck, fished a bottle of whisky from a cupboard, poured a drink, watered it, knocked it back and then, because it was illegal, helped myself to another. I placed this second on the table by my bunk, and lay down again.

The whisky did it, I’ll always swear the whisky did it, as a mental lubricant for rusted-up brains it has no parallel. After five more minutes of lying on my back, staring sightlessly up at the cold-air trunking above my head, I suddenly had it. I had it suddenly, completely and all in a moment, and I knew beyond doubt that I had it right. The radio! The receiver on which the message to the wireless office had been intercepted! There had been no radio, God, only a blind man like myself could have missed it, of course there had been no radio. But there had been something else again. I sat bolt upright with a jerk, Archimedes coming out of his bath, and yelped with pain as a hot blade skewered through the back of my neck.

“Are you subject to those attacks often or do you always carry on like this when you are alone?” a solicitous voice inquired from the doorway. Susan Beresford, dressed in a square-necked white silk dress, was standing in the entrance, her expression half-amused, half-apprehensive. So complete had been my concentration that I’d never even heard the door open.

“Miss Beresford.” I rubbed my aching neck with my right hand. “What are you doing here? You know passengers are not allowed in the officers’ quarters.”

“No? I understand my father has been up here several times in the past few trips talking to you.”

“Your father is not young, female and unmarried.”

“Phui!” She stepped into the cabin and closed the door behind her. All at once the smile was no longer on her face. “Will you talk to me, Mr. Carter?”

“Any time,” I said courteously. “But not here …” My voice trailed away, I was changing my mind even as I spoke.

“You see, you’re the only person I can talk to,” she said.

“Yes.” A beautiful girl alone in my cabin and plainly anxious to speak to me and I wasn’t even listening to her. I was figuring out something: it did involve Susan Beresford, but only incidentally.

“Oh, do pay attention,” she said angrily.

“All right,” I said resignedly. “I’m paying.”

“You’re paying what?” she demanded.

“Attention.” I reached for my whisky glass. “Cheers!”

“I thought you were forbidden alcohol on duty?”

“I am. What do you want?”

“I want to know why no one will talk to me.” She lifted a hand as I made to speak. “Please don’t be facetious. I’m worried. Something’s terribly wrong, isn’t it? You know I always talk more to the officers than any of the other passengers”—I passed up the pleasure of loosing off a couple of telling shafts—“and now nobody will talk to me. Daddy says I’m imagining it. I’m not, I know I’m not. They won’t talk. And not because of me. I know. They’re all dead scared about something, going about with tight faces and not looking at anyone but looking at them all the time. Something is wrong, isn’t it? Terribly, terribly wrong. And Fourth Officer Dexter—he’s missing, isn’t he?”

“What would be wrong, Miss Beresford?”

“Please.” This was something for the books. Susan Beresford pleading with me. She walked across the cabin—with the size of the accommodation old Dexter saw fit to provide for his chief officers that didn’t require any more than a couple of steps—and stood in front of me. “Tell me the truth. Three men are missing in twenty-four hours—don’t tell me that’s coincidence. And all the officers looking as if they’re going to be shot at dawn.”

“Don’t you think it strange you’re the only person who seems to have noticed anything unusual? How about all the other passengers?”

“The other passengers!” The tone of her voice didn’t say a great deal for the other passengers. “How can they notice anything with all the women either in bed for their afternoon sleep or at the hairdresser’s or in the massage room and all the men sitting around in the telegraph lounge like mourners at a funeral just because the stock exchange machines have broken down? And that’s another thing. Why have those machines broken down? And why is the radio office closed? And why is the Campari going so fast? I went right aft just now to listen to the engines and I know we’ve never gone so fast before.”

She didn’t miss much, and that was a fact. I said. “Why come to me?”

“Daddy suggested it.” She hesitated, then half smiled. “He said I was imagining things and that for a person suffering from delusions and a hyperactive imagination he could recommend nothing better than a visit to Chief Officer Carter, who doesn’t know the meaning of either.”

“Your father is wrong.”

“Wrong? You do—ah—suffer from delusions?”

“About you’re imagining things. You aren’t.” I finished my whisky and got to my feet. “Something is wrong, far wrong, Miss Beresford.”

She looked at me steadily in the eyes, then said quietly: “Will you tell me what it is? Please!” The cool amusement was now completely absent from both face and voice: a completely different Susan Beresford from the one I’d known, and one I liked very much better than the old one. For the first time, and very late in the day, the thought occurred to me that this might be the real Susan Beresford: when you wear a price ticket marked umpteen million dollars and are travelling through a forest alive with wolves looking for gold and a free meal ticket for life, some sort of shield, some kind of protective device against the wolves is liable to be very handy indeed and I had to admit that the air of half-mocking amusement which seldom left her was a most effective deterrent.

“Will you tell me, please?” she repeated. She’d come close to me now, the green eyes had started to melt in that weird way they had and my breathing was getting all mixed up again. “I think you could trust me, Mr. Carter.”

“Yes.” I looked away—it took the last of my will-power, but I looked away—and managed to get my breathing working again, in-out, in-out, it wasn’t too difficult when you got the hang of it. “I think I could trust you, Miss Beresford. I will tell you. But not right away. If you knew why I say that you wouldn’t press me to tell you. Any of the passengers out taking the air or sun-bathing?”

“What?” The sudden switch made her blink, but she recovered quickly and gestured to the window. “In this?”

I saw what she meant. The sun had gone, completely, and heavy dark cumulus cloud coming up from the south-east had all but obscured the sky. The sea looked no rougher than it had been, but I had the feeling that the temperature would have fallen away. I didn’t like the look of the weather. And I could quite understand why none of the passengers would be on deck. That made things awkward. But there was another way.

“I see what you mean. I promise you I’ll tell you all you want to know this evening”—that was a pretty elastic time-limit—“if you in turn promise you won’t tell anyone I’ve admitted anything is wrong—and if you will do something for me.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“This. You know your father is holding some sort of cocktail party for your mother in the drawing-room tonight. It’s timed for seven forty-five. Get him to advance it to seven-thirty. I want more time before dinner—never mind why now. Use any reason you like but don’t bring me into it. And ask your father to invite old Mr. Cerdan to the party also. Doesn’t matter if he has to take his wheel-chair and two nurses along with him. Get him to the party. Your father’s a man of very considerable powers of persuasion—and I imagine you could persuade your father to do anything: Tell him you feel sorry for the old man, always being left out of things. Tell him anything: only get old man Cerdan to the cocktail party. I can’t tell you how vital that is.”

She looked at me in slow speculation. She really had the most extraordinary eyes, three weeks she’s been with us and I’d never really noticed them before, eyes of that deep yet translucent green of sea-water over sand in the Windward Isles, eyes that melted and shimmered in the same way as when a cat’s-paw of wind ruffled the surface of the water, eyes that—I dragged my own eyes away. See Carter, old Beresford had said. There’s the man for you. No imaginative fancies about him. That’s what he thought. I became aware that she was saying, quietly: “I’ll do it. I promise. I don’t know what track you’re on, but I know it’s the right track.”

“What do you mean?” I said slowly.

“That nurse of Mr. Cerdan’s. The tall one with the knitting. She can no more knit than fly over the moon. She just sits there, clicking needles, botching every other stitch and getting practically nowhere. I know. Being a millionaire’s daughter doesn’t mean that you can’t be as slick with a pair of knitting needles as the next girl.”

“What!” I caught her by the shoulders and stared down at her. “You saw this? You’re sure of it?”

“Sure I’m sure.”

“Well, now.” I was still looking at her but this time I wasn’t seeing the eyes, I was seeing a great number of other things and I didn’t like any of them. I said: “This is very very interesting. I’ll see you later. Be a good girl and get that fixed up with your father, will you?” I gave her shoulder an absent-minded pat, turned away and stared out of the window.

After a few seconds I became aware that she hadn’t yet gone. She’d the door opened, one hand on the handle, and was looking at me with a peculiar expression on her face.

“You wouldn’t like to give me a toffee-apple to suck?” If you can imagine a voice both sweet and bitter at the same moment, then that is how hers was. “Or a ribbon for my pigtails?” With that she banged the door and was gone. The door didn’t splinter in any way but that was only because it was made of steel.

I gazed at the closed door for a moment, then gave up. Any other time I might have devoted some minutes to figuring out the weird and wonderful workings of the female brain. But this wasn’t just any other time. Whatever it was, this just wasn’t any other time. I pulled on shoes, shirt and jacket, pulled out the Colt from under the mattress, stuck it in my waist-belt and went off in search of the captain.

VI.

Wednesday 7.45 pm.–8.15 p.m.

As far as attendance went, Mr. Julius Beresford had no grounds for complaint that night: every single passenger on the ship had turned up for his wife’s cocktail party and, as far as I could see, every off-duty officer on the Campari was there as well. And the party was certainly going splendidly: already, at seven forty-five, practically everyone was already on his or her second drink, and the drinks served up in the drawing-room of the Campari were never small ones.

Beresford and his wife had been moving around speaking to each of the guests in rotation and now it was my turn. I saw them approaching, raised my glass and said: “Many happy returns, Mrs. Beresford.”

“Thank you, young man. Enjoying yourself?”

“Of course. So is everybody. And you should be, most of all.”

“Yes.” She sounded just the slightest bit doubtful. “I don’t know if Julius was right—I mean, it’s less than twenty-four hours——”

“If you’re thinking about Benson and Brownell, ma’am, you’re worrying unnecessarily. You couldn’t have done a better thing than arrange this. I’m sure every passenger on the ship is grateful to you for helping to get things back to normal so quickly. I know all the officers are, anyway.”

“Just as I told you, my dear.” Beresford patted his wife’s hand then looked at me, amusement touching the corners of his eyes. “My wife, like my daughter, seems to have the greatest faith in your judgment, Mr. Carter.”

“Yes sir. I wonder if you could persuade your daughter not to go visiting in the officers’ quarters?”

“No,” Beresford said regretfully. “It’s impossible. Self-willed young lady.” He grinned. “I’ll bet she didn’t even knock.”

“She didn’t.” I looked across the room to where Miss Beresford was giving Tony Carreras the full benefit of her eyes over the rim of a Martini glass. They certainly made a striking couple. “She had, with respect, some bee in her bonnet about something being wrong aboard the Campari. I think the unfortunate happenings last night must have upset her.”

“Naturally. And you managed to remove this—um—bee?”

“I think so, sir.”

There was a slight pause, then Mrs. Beresford said impatiently: “Julius, we’re just beating about the bush.”

“Oh, now, Mary, I don’t think——”

“Rubbish,” she said briskly. “Young man, do you know one of the principal reasons I came along on this trip. Apart,” she smiled, “from the food? Because my husband asked me to, because he wanted a second opinion—on you. Julius, as you know, has made several trips on your ship. He has, as the saying goes, had an eye on you for a job in his organisation. My husband, I may say, has made his fortune not so much by working himself as by picking the right men to work for him. He’s never made a mistake yet. I don’t think he’s making a mistake now. And you have another very special recommendation.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said politely.

“You’re the only young man of our acquaintance who doesn’t turn himself into a carpet to be trampled upon as soon as our daughter appears in sight. A very important qualification, believe me.”

“Would you like to work for me, Mr. Carter?” Beresford asked bluntly.

“I think I would, sir.”

“Well!” Mrs. Beresford looked at her husband. “That’s settled——”

“Will you,” Julius Beresford interrupted.

“No, sir.”

“Why not?”

“Because your interests are in steel and oil. I know only the sea and ships. They don’t mix. I have no qualifications to work for you and at my present age I’d be too long in acquiring them. And I couldn’t accept a job for which I’d no qualifications.”

“Even at double the money? Or three times?”

“I’m grateful for the offer, sir, believe me. I do appreciate it. But there’s more to it than money.”

“Ah, well.” The Beresfords looked at each other. They didn’t seem too disturbed over my refusal: there was no reason why they should. “We asked a question, we got an answer. Fair enough.” He changed the subject. “What do you think of my feat in getting the old man here tonight?”

“I think it was very thoughtful of you.” I glanced across the room to the spot near the door where old Cerdan, sherry glass in hand, was sitting in his wheel-chair, with his nurses on a settee by his side. They too had sherry glasses. The old boy seemed to be talking animatedly to the captain. “He must lead a very shut-in life. Much difficulty in persuading him?”

“None at all. He was delighted to come.” I filed away this piece of information: my one encounter with Cerdan had left me with the impression that the only thing that would delight him about such an invitation would be the opportunity to give a surly refusal. “If you’ll excuse us, Mr. Carter. Hosts’ duties to their guests, you know.”

“Certainly, sir.” I stood to one side, but Mrs. Beresford planted herself in front of me and smiled quizzically.

“Mr. Carter,” she said firmly, “you’re a very stiff-necked young man. And please don’t for a moment imagine that I’m referring to your accident of last night.”

They moved off. I watched them go, thinking all sorts of thoughts, then crossed to the hinged flap that led to the rear of the bar. Whenever I approached that flap I felt it was not a glass I should have in my hand but a machete to help me hack my way through the jungle of flowers, potted shrubs, cacti, and festoons of creepers and hanging plants that transformed the place into the most unlikely-looking bar you’d ever seen. The interior designer responsible had gone into rhapsodies over it, but it was all right for him, he didn’t have to live with it, all he had to do was to retire nightly to his semi-detached in South London where his wife would have had him out the door if he’d tried on any such nonsense at home. But the passengers seemed to like it.

I made it to the back of the bar without getting scratched too much and said to the barman: “How’s it going, Louis?”

“Very well, sir,” Louis said stiffly. His bald pate was gleaming with sweat and his hair-line moustache twitching nervously. There were irregularities going on and Louis didn’t like irregularities. Then he thawed a bit and said: “They seem to be drinking a fair bit more than usual tonight, sir.”

“Not half as much as they will be later on.” I moved to the crystal-laden shelves from where I could see under the back of the bar, and said: “You don’t look very comfortable to me.”

“By God, and I’m not!” And indeed there wasn’t much room for the bo’sun to wedge his bulk between the raised deck and the under-side of the bar: his knees were up to his chin, but at least he was completely invisible to anyone on the other side of the counter. “Stiff as hell, sir. Never be able to move when the time comes.”

“And the smell of all that liquor driving you round the bend,” I said sympathetically. I wasn’t as cool as I sounded; I had to keep wiping the palms of my hands on the sides of my jacket, but try as I would I couldn’t seem to get them properly dry. I moved over to the counter again. “A double whisky, Louis. A large double whisky.”

Louis poured the drink and handed it across without a word. I raised it to my lips, lowered it below counter level and a large hand closed gratefully around it. I said quietly, as if speaking to Louis: “If the captain notices the smell afterwards you can claim it was that careless devil Louis that spilt it over you. I’m taking a walk now, Archie. If everything’s O.K., I’ll be back in five minutes.”

“And if not? If you’re wrong?”

“Heaven help me. The old man will feed me to the sharks.”

I made my way out from behind the bar and sauntered slowly towards the door. I saw Bullen trying to catch my eye but I ignored him; he was the world’s worst actor. I smiled at Susan Beresford and Tony Carerras, nodded civilly enough to old Cerdan, bowed slightly to the two nurses—the thin one, I noticed, had returned to her knitting and she seemed to me to be doing all right—and reached the doorway.

Once outside, I dropped all pretence of sauntering. I reached the entrance to the passengers’ accommodation on “A” deck in ten seconds. Halfway down the long central passageway White was sitting in his cubicle. I walked quickly down there, lifted the lid of his desk and took out the four items lying inside: Colt revolver, torch, screwdriver and master-key. I stuffed the Colt into my belt, the torch in one pocket, the screwdriver in the other. I looked at White, but he didn’t look at me. He was staring down into one corner of his cubicle as if I didn’t exist. He had his hands clasped tightly together, like one in prayer. I hoped he was praying for me. Even with his hands locked he couldn’t stop them from shaking uncontrollably. I left him without a word and ten seconds later was inside Cerdan’s and the nurses’ suite with the door locked behind me. On a sudden instinct I switched on my torch and played the beam round the edges of the door. The door was pale blue against a pale blue bulkhead. Hanging from the top of the bulkhead, dangling down for a couple of inches over the top of the door, was a pale blue thread. A broken pale blue thread: to the people who had put it there, an unmistakable calling card that visitors had been. I wasn’t worried about that but I was worried by the fact that it showed that someone was suspicious, very very suspicious. This might make things very awkward indeed. Maybe we should have announced Dexter’s death.

I passed straight through the nurses’ cabin and the lounge into Cerdan’s cabin. The curtains were drawn, but I left the lights off: light could show through the curtains and if they were suspicious as I thought someone might have wondered why I had left so suddenly and taken a walk outside. I hooded the torch to a small pencil beam and played it over the deckhead. The cold air trunking ran fore and aft and the first louvre was directly over Cerdan’s bed. I didn’t even need the screwdriver. I shone the torch through the louvre opening and saw, inside the trunking, something gleaming metallically in the bright spot of light. I reached up two fingers and slowly worked that something metallic down through the louvre. A pair of earphones. I peered into the louvre again. The earphones lead had a plug on the end of it and the plug was fitted into a socket that had been screwed on to the upper wall of the trunking. And the radio office was directly above. I pulled out the plug, rolled the lead round the headphones and switched off my torch.

White was exactly as I had left him, still vibrating away like a tuning fork. I opened his desk, returned the key, screwdriver and torch. The earphones I kept. And the gun.

They were into their third cocktails by the time I returned to the drawing-room. I didn’t need to count empty bottles to guess that, the laughter, the animated conversation, the increase in the decibel ratio was proof enough. Captain Bullen was still chatting away to Cerdan. The tall nurse was still knitting, the short one holding a newly-filled glass. Tommy Wilson was over by the bar. I rubbed my cheek and he crushed out the cigarette he was holding. I saw him say something to Miguel and Tony Carreras—at twenty feet, in that racket, it was impossible to hear a word he said—saw Tony Carreras lift a half-amused, half-questioning eyebrow, then all three of them moved over towards the bar.

I joined Captain Bullen and Cerdan. Long speeches weren’t going to help me here and only a fool would throw away his life by tipping off people like those.

“Good evening, Mr. Cerdan,” I said. I pulled my left hand out from under my jacket and tossed the earphones on to his rug-covered lap. “Recognise them?”

Cerdan’s eyes stared wide, then he flung himself forwards and sideways as if to clear his encumbering deck-chair, but old Bullen had been waiting for it and was too quick for him. He hit Cerdan with all the pent-up worry and fury of the past twenty-four hours behind the blow, and Cerdan toppled over the side of his chair and crashed heavily on the carpet.

I didn’t see him fall, I only heard the sound of it. I was too busy looking out for myself. The nurse with the sherry glass in her hand, quick as a cat, flung the contents in my face at the same instant that Bullen hit Cerdan. I flung myself sideways to avoid being blinded, and as I fell I saw the tall thin nurse flinging her knitting to one side and thrusting her right hand deep into the string knitting bag.

With my right hand I managed to tug the Colt clear of my belt before I hit the ground and squeezed the trigger, twice: it was my right shoulder that hit the carpet first, just as I fired, and I didn’t really know where the bullets went nor, for that one nearly blinding instant of agony as the shock of falling was transmitted to my injured neck, did I care: then my head cleared and I saw that the tall nurse was on her feet. Not only on her feet but raised high on her toes, head and shoulders arched sharply forwards, ivory knuckled hands pressed deep into her midriff: then she swayed forward, in macabre slow-motion action, and crumpled over the fallen Cerdan. The other nurse hadn’t moved from her seat: with Captain Bullen’s Colt only six inches from her face, and his finger pretty white in the trigger, she wasn’t likely to, either.

The reverberations of my heavy Colt, painful and deafening in their intensity in that confined metal-walled space, faded away into a silence that was deathly in more ways than one, and through the silence came a soft Highland voice saying gently: “If either of you move I will kill you.”

Carreras Senior and Junior, who must have had their backs to the bar, were now turned round half-way towards it, staring at the gun in MacDonald’s hand. Miguel Carreras’s face was unrecognisable, his expression changed from that of a smooth, urbane and highly prosperous businessman into something very ugly indeed. His right hand, as he had whirled round, had come to rest on the bar near a cut-glass decanter. Archie MacDonald wasn’t wearing any of his medals that night, and Carreras had no means of knowing the long and blood-stained record the bo’sun had behind him, or he would never have tried to hurl that decanter at MacDonald’s head. Carreras’s reactions were so fast, the movement so unexpected, that against another man he might have made it: against MacDonald he didn’t even manage to get the decanter off the counter, and a split-second later was staring down at the shattered bloody mass that had been his hand.

For the second time in a few seconds the crashing roar of a heavy gun, this time intermingled with the tinkle of smashed and flying glass, died away and again MacDonald’s voice came, almost regretfully: “I should have killed you, but I like reading about those murder trials. We’re saving you for the hangman, Mr. Carreras.”

I was climbing back to my feet when someone screamed, a harsh ugly sound that drilled through the room. Another woman took it up, a sustained shriek like an express, whistle wide open, heading for a level-crossing, and the stage seemed all set for mass hysteria.

“Stop that damned screaming!” I snarled. “Do you hear? Stop it at once. It’s all over now.”

The screaming stopped. Silence again, a weird unnatural silence that was almost as bad as the racket that had gone before. And then Beresford was coming towards me, a bit unsteadily, his lips forming words that didn’t come, his face white. I couldn’t blame him, in his well-ordered and wealth-cushioned world the entertainments offered his guests couldn’t often have ended up with bodies strewn all over the floor.

“You’ve killed her, Carter,” he said at length. His voice was harsh and strained. “You’ve killed her. I saw it, we all saw it. A—a defenceless woman.” He stared at me, and if he had any thought of offering me a job again I couldn’t see it in his face. “You murdered her!”

“Woman my foot!” I said savagely. I bent down, yanked off the nurse’s hat, then ruthlessly ripped away a glued wig to show a black close-cropped crew-cut. “Attractive, isn’t it? The very latest from Paris. And defenceless!” I grabbed her bag, turned it upside down, emptied the contents on the carpet, stooped and came up with what had originally been a full-length double-barrelled shotgun: the barrels had been sawn off until there was no more than six inches of them left, the wooden stock removed and a roughly-made pistol type grip fitted in its place. “Ever seen one of those before, Mr. Beresford? Native product of your own country, I believe. A whippet or some such name. Fires lead shot and from the range our nurse friend here intended to use it it would have blown a hole clear through my middle. Defenceless!” I turned to where Bullen was standing, his gun still trained on the other nurse. “Is that character armed, sir?”

“We’ll soon find out,” Bullen said grimly. “You carrying a gun, my friend?”

The “nurse” swore at him, two words in basic Anglo-Saxon, in a low, snarling voice. Bullen gave him no warning, he swept up the Colt and struck the barrel heavily across the man’s face and temple. He staggered and swayed, out on his feet. I caught him, held him with one hand while with the other I ripped the dress down the front, pulled out a snub-nosed automatic from a felt holster under the left arm, then let him go. He swayed some more, collapsed on the settee, then rolled to the floor.

“Is—is all this necessary?” Beresford’s voice was still hoarse and strained.

“Stand back everyone,” Bullen said authoritatively. “Keep well over to the windows and clear of those two men, our two Carreras’s friends. They are highly dangerous and might try to jump in among you for cover. MacDonald, that was splendidly done. But next time shoot to kill. That’s an order. I accept full responsibility. Dr. Marston, bring the necessary equipment, please, and attend to Carreras’s hand.” He waited till Marston had left, then turned to Beresford with a wry smile. “Sorry to ruin your party, Mr. Beresford. And all this, I assure you, is highly necessary.”

“But—but the violence, the—the killing——”

“They murdered three of my men in the past twenty-four hours.”

“They what?”

“Benson, Brownell and Fourth Officer Dexter. Murdered them. Brownell was strangled. Benson was strangled or shot, Dexter’s lying dead in the wireless office with three bullets in his stomach, and God knows how many more men would have died if Chief Officer Carter here hadn’t got on to them.”

I looked around the white, strained, still unbelieving faces, there was no real understanding there yet of what the captain was saying, the shock, the fear, the near-hysteria left no room for thought in their minds: of them all, I had to admit that old Beresford had taken it best, to adjust himself to what must have been the incredible spectacle of seeing fellow-passengers suddenly gunned down by officers of the Campari, to fight his way out of this fog of crazy bewilderment.

“But—I mean, Captain, what part can an old cripple like Mr. Cerdan have in all this?”

“According to Mr. Carter, Cerdan isn’t old at all—he’s just made up to look old. And also according to Mr. Carter, if Cerdan is a cripple, paralysed from the waist down as he is supposed to be, then you’re going to witness a modern miracle of healing just as soon as he recovers consciousness. For all we know, Cerdan is very probably the leader of this bunch of murderers. We don’t know.”

“But what in God’s name is behind it all?” Beresford demanded.

“That’s just what we are about to find out,” Bullen said tightly. He glanced at Carreras, father and son. “Come here, you two.”

They came, MacDonald and Tommy Wilson following: Carreras Senior had a handkerchief wrapped round his shattered hand trying, not very successfully, to stem the flow of blood, and the eyes that caught mine were wicked with hate: Tony Carreras on the other hand, seemed calmly unconcerned, even slightly amused. I made a mental note to keep a very close eye indeed on Tony Carreras. He was calm and relaxed by half.

They halted a few feet away. Bullen said: “Mr. Wilson.”

“Sir?”

“That sawn-off shotgun belonging to our late friend here. Pick it up.”

Wilson picked it up.

“Do you think you could use it? And don’t point the damned thing at me,” he added hastily.

“I think so, sir.”

“Cerdan and that so-called nurse. A sharp eye on them. If they come to try anything——” Bullen left the sentence unfinished. “Mr. Carter, Carreras and his son may be armed.”

“Yes, sir.” I moved round behind Tony Carreras. careful to keep out of the line of fire of both Bullen and MacDonald, caught his jacket by the collar and jerked it savagely down over shoulders and arms till it reached the level of his elbows.

“You seem to have done this sort of thing before, Mr. Carter,” Tony Carreras said easily. He was a cool customer all right, too damned cool for my liking.

“Television,” I explained. He was carrying a gun, under the left shoulder. He was wearing a specially made shirt with a couple of hemmed slips front and back on the left-hand side so that the chest strap for the holster was concealed under the shirt. Tony Carreras was very thorough in his preparations.

I went over his clothes, but he’d only the one gun. I went through the same routine with Miguel Carreras, he wasn’t anywhere near as affable as his son, but maybe his hand was hurting him. He wasn’t carrying any gun. And maybe that made Miguel Carreras the boss: maybe he didn’t have to carry any gun, maybe he was in a position to order other people to do his killing for him.

“Thank you,” Captain Bullen said. “Mr. Carreras, we will be in Nassau in a few hours’ time. The police will be aboard by midnight. Do you wish to make a statement now or would you rather make it to the police?”

“My hand is broken.” Miguel Carreras’s voice was a harsh whisper. “The forefinger is smashed, it will have to be amputated. Someone is going to pay for this.”

“I take it that is your answer,” Bullen said calmly. “Very well. Bo’sun, four heaving lines, if you please. I want those men trussed like turkeys.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” The bo’sun took one step forward, then stood stockstill. Through the open doorway had come a flat staccato burst of sound—the unmistakable chattering of a machine-gun. It seemed to come from almost directly above, from the bridge. And then all the lights went out.

I think I was the first person to move. I think I was the only person to move. I took a long step forward, hooked my left arm round Tony Carreras’s neck, rammed the Colt into the small of his back and said softly: “Don’t even think of trying anything, Carreras.”

And then there was silence again. It seemed to go on and on and on, but it probably didn’t last more than a few seconds altogether. A woman screamed, a brief choking sound that died away into a moan, and then there was silence once more, a silence that ended abruptly with a violent crashing, splintering and tinkling as heavy solid metallic objects, operating in almost perfect unison, smashed in the plate-glass windows that gave to the deck outside: at the same instant there came a sharp echoing crash of metal against metal as the door was kicked wide open to smash back against the bulkhead.

“Drop your guns, all of you,” Miguel Carreras called in a high, clear voice. “Drop them—now! Unless you want a massacre.”

The lights came on.

Vaguely outlined against the four smashed windows of the drawing-room I could see the blurs of four indistinct heads and shoulders and arms. The blurs I didn’t care about, it was what they held in their arms that worried me—the wicked-looking snouts and cylindrical magazines of four sub-machine-guns. A fifth man, dressed in jungle green and wearing a green beret on his head, stood in the doorway, a similar automatic carbine cradled in his hands.

I could see what Carreras meant by dropping our guns. It seemed an excellent idea to me, we had about as much chance as the last ice-cream at a children’s party. I was already starting to loosen my grip on the gun when, incredulously, I saw Captain Bullen jerk up his Colt on the armed man in the doorway. It was criminal, suicidal folly, either he was acting completely instinctively, without any thought at all, or the bitter chargin, the killing disappointment after having thought that he had held all the cards in his hands, had been too much for him. I might have known, I thought briefly and wildly, he’d been far too calm and self-controlled, the safety valve screwed down on the bursting boiler.

I tried to shout out a warning, but it was too late, it was far too late. I shoved Tony Carreras violently aside and tried to reach Bullen, to strike down his gun-hand, but I was still far too late, a lifetime too late. The heavy Colt was roaring and bucking in Bullen’s hand, and the man in the doorway, to whom the ridiculous idea of resistance must have been the very last thought in his head, let the machine-gun slide slowly out of his lifeless hands and toppled backwards out of sight.

The man outside the window nearest the door had his machine-gun lined up on the captain. Bullen, in that second, was the biggest fool in the world, a crazy suicidal maniac, but even so I couldn’t let him be gunned down where he stood. I don’t know where my first bullet went but the second must have struck the machine-gun, I saw it jerk violently as if struck by a giant hand, and then came a continuous cacophonous drumfire of deafening sound as a third man squeezed the trigger of his machine-gun and kept on squeezing it. Something with the power and weight of a plunging pile-driver smashed into my left thigh, hurling me back against the bar. My head struck the heavy brass rail at the foot of the counter and the sound of the drumfire died away.

The stink of drifting cordite and the silence of the grave. Even before consciousness came fully back to me, even before I opened my eyes, I was aware of those, of the cordite and the unearthly stillness. I opened my eyes slowly, pushed myself shakily up till I was sitting with my back more or less straight against the bar, and shook my head to try to clear it. I had, understandably enough, forgotten about my stiff neck: the sharp stab of pain did more to clear my head than anything else could have done.

The first thing I was aware of was the passengers. They were all stretched out on the carpet, lying very still. For one heart-stopping moment I thought they were all dead or dying, mown down in swathes by that stuttering machine-gun, then I saw Mr. Greenstreet, Miss Harrbride’s husband, move his head slightly and look around the drawing-room with a cautious and terrified eye. One eye was all I could see. At any other time it would have been very, very funny: but I never felt less like laughing. The passengers, perhaps through wisdom but more probably through the reflex reaction of instinctive self-preservation, must have flung themselves to the deck the moment the machine-gun had opened up and were only now daring to lift their heads. I concluded that I couldn’t have been unconscious for more than a few seconds.

I moved my eyes to the right. Carreras and son were standing just where they had been and Tony Carreras had a gun in his hand now. My gun. Beyond them, a huddled group lay sprawling or sitting on the floor: Cerdan, the “nurse” I’d shot and three others.

Tommy Wilson, the laughing, lovable happy-go-lucky Tommy Wilson, was dead. He wouldn’t have to worry about his mathematics any more.

It didn’t need old Doc Marston and his short-sighted peering to tell me that Wilson was dead. He was lying on his back and it looked to me as if half his chest had been shot away, he must have taken the main brunt of that concentrated burst of machine-gun fire. And Tommy hadn’t even lifted his gun.

Archie MacDonald was stretched out on his side, close to Wilson. He seemed to me to be very still, far, far too still. I couldn’t see the front of his body for he was turned away from me, for all I knew machine-gun slugs had torn the life out of him as they had out of Tommy Wilson. But I could see blood all over his face and neck, slowly soaking into the carpet.

Captain Bullen was the one who was sitting. He wasn’t dead anyway, but I wouldn’t have bet a brass farthing on his chances of staying alive. He was fully conscious, his mouth warped and dragged into an unnatural smile, his face white and twisted with pain. From shoulder almost to the waist his right side was soaked in blood, so soaked that I couldn’t see where the bullets had gone home: but I could see bright red bubbles flecking the twisted lips, which meant that he had been shot through the lung.

I looked at the three of them again. Bullen, MacDonald, Wilson. Three better men it would have been hard to find, three better shipmates impossible to find. They had wanted none of this, none of this blood and agony and death, all they had wanted was the chance to do their jobs in peace and quiet as best they could. Hard-working, companionable and infinitely decent men, they had sought no violence, thought no violence, so now they lay there dead and dying. MacDonald and Bullen with their wives and families, Tommy Wilson with his fiancée in England and a girl in every port in America and the Caribbean. I looked at them and I felt no sadness or sorrow or anger or shock, I just felt cold and detached and strangely uninvolved in it all. I looked from them to the Carreras family and Cerdan and I made myself a promise, and it was well for me that neither Carreras heard my promise or knew of its irrevocable finality for they were clever, calculating men and they would have shot me dead as I lay there.

I wasn’t feeling any pain at all but I remembered about the pile-driver that had hurled me back against the bar. I looked down at my leg, and from mid-thigh to well below the knee the trousers were so saturated with blood that there was no trace of white left. The carpet all around my leg was soaked in it. That carpet I remembered vaguely, had cost over £10,000, and it was certainly taking a terrific beating that night. Lord Dexter would have been furious. I looked at my leg again and fingered the soggy material. Three distinct tears, which meant I had been shot three times. I supposed the pain would come later. A great deal of blood, far too much blood: I wondered if an artery had been torn.

“Ladies and gentlemen.” It was Carreras speaking, and although his hand had been giving him hell there was no sign of it in his face. The fury, the malevolence I had so recently seen, was only a memory: he was back on balance again, urbane, commanding, in complete control of the situation.”

“I regret all this, regret it extremely.” He waved his left hand in the direction of Bullen and Wilson, MacDonald and myself. “All so unnecessary, so terribly unnecessary, brought upon Captain Bullen and his men by Captain Bullen’s reckless folly.” Most of the passengers were on their feet now, and I could see Susan Beresford standing beside her father, staring down at me as if she weren’t seeing too well, eyes abnormally large in the pale face. “I regret, too, the distress you have been caused, and to you, Mr. and Mrs. Beresford, I tender my apologies for the ruin of your night’s entertainment. Your kindness has been ill-rewarded.”

“For God’s sake cut out the fancy speeches,” I interrupted. My voice didn’t sound like mine at all, a harsh, strained croak, a bull-frog with laryngitis. “Get the doctor for Captain Bullen. He’s been shot through the lung.”

He looked at me speculatively, then at Bullen, then back at me.

“A certain indestructible quality about you, Mr. Carter,” he said thoughtfully. He bent over and peered at my bloodstained leg. “Shot three times, your leg must be pretty badly smashed, yet you can observe so tiny a detail as a fleck of blood on Captain Bullen’s mouth. You are incapacitated, and I am glad: had your captain, officers and crew composed exclusively of men like yourself I would never have come within a thousand miles of the Campari. As for the doctor, he will be here soon. He is tending a man on the bridge.”

“Jamieson? Our third officer?”

“Mr. Jamieson is beyond all help,” he said curtly. “Like Captain Bullen, he fancied himself as a man in a heroic mould: like Captain Bullen he has paid the price for his stupidity. The man at the wheel was struck in the arm by a stray bullet.” He turned to face the passengers. “You need have no further worry about your personal safety. The Campari is now completely in my hands and will remain so: however, you form no part of my plans and will be transferred in two or three days to another vessel. Meanwhile you will all eat, live and sleep in this room: I cannot spare individual guards for each stateroom. Mattresses and blankets will be brought to you. If you co-operate, you can exist in reasonable comfort: you certainly have no more to fear.”

“What is the meaning of this damnable outrage, Carreras?” There was a shake in Beresford’s voice. “Those desperadoes, those killers. What of them? Who are they? Where in the name of God did they come from? What do you intend to do? You’re mad, man, completely mad. Surely you know that you can’t expect to get off with this?”

“You may use that thought for consolation. Ah, Doctor, there you are.” He held out his right hand, swathed in its bloodstained handkerchief. “Have a look at this, will you?”

“Damn you and your hand,” Dr. Marston said bitterly. The old boy was trembling, the sight of the dead and dying must have hit him hard, but he was hopping mad for all that. “There are other more seriously injured men here, I must——”

“You may as well realise that I, and I alone, give the orders from now on,” Carreras interrupted. “My hand. At once. Ah, Juan.” This to a tall thin swarthy man who had just entered, a rolled-up chart under his arm. “Give that to Mr. Carter here. That’s him, yes. Mr. Carter, Captain Bullen said—and I have been aware of it for many hours—that we are heading for Nassau and are due there in less than four hours. Lay off a course to take us well clear of Nassau, to the east, then out midway between the Great Abaco and Eleuthera islands and so approximately north-north-west into the North Atlantic. My own navigation has become rather rusty, I fear. Mark in the approximate times for course changes.”

I took the chart, pencil, parallel rulers and dividers and laid the chart on my knee. Carreras said consideringly: “What, no ‘Do your own damned navigation’ or words to that effect?”

“What’s the point?” I said wearily. “You wouldn’t hesitate to line up all the passengers and shoot them one by one if I didn’t co-operate.”

“It’s a pleasure to deal with a man who sees and accepts the inevitable,” Carreras smiled. “But you greatly overestimate my ruthlessness. Later, Mr. Carter, when we have you fixed up you shall become a permanent installation on the bridge. It is unfortunate, but I suppose you realise that you are the only deck officer left to us?”

“You’ll have to get some other installation on the bridge,” I said bitterly. “My thigh-bone is smashed”

“What?” He looked at me narrowly.

“I can feel it grating.” I twisted my face up to let him see how I could feel it grating. “Dr. Marston will soon confirm it.”

“We can arrive at some other arrangement,” Carreras said equably. He winced as Dr. Marston probed at his hand. “The forefinger: it will have to come off?”

“I don’t think so. A local anæsthetic, a small operation and I believe I can save it.” Carreras didn’t know the danger he was in, if he let old Marston get to work on him he’d probably end up by losing his whole arm. “But it shall have to be done in my surgery.”

“It’s probably time we all went to the surgery. Tony, check engine-room, radar-room, all men off duty: see that they are all safely under guard. Then take that chart to the bridge and see that the helmsman makes the proper course alterations at the proper time. See that the radar operator is kept under constant supervision and reports the slightest object on his screen: Mr. Carter here is quite capable of laying off a course which would take us smack into the middle of Eleuthera Island. Two men to take Mr. Cerdan to his cabin. Dr. Marston, is it possible to take those men down to your surgery without endangering their lives?”

“I don’t know.” Marston finished his temporary bandaging of Carreras’s hand and crossed to Bullen. “How do you feel, Captain?”

Bullen looked at him with lack-lustre eyes. He tried to smile but it was no more than an agonised grimace. He tried to speak but no words came, just fresh bubbles of blood at his lips. Marston produced scissors, cut the captain’s shirt open, examined him briefly and said. “We may as well risk it. Two of your men, Mr. Carreras, two strong men. See that his chest is not compressed.”

He left Bullen, bent over MacDonald and straightened almost immediately. “This man can be moved with safety.”

“MacDonald!” I said. “The bo’sun. He—he’s not dead?”

“He’s been hit on the head. Creased, probably concussed, perhaps even the skull fractured: but he’ll survive. He seems to have been hit on the knee, too: nothing serious.”

I felt as if someone had lifted the Sydney Bridge off my back. The bo’sun had been my friend, my good friend, for too many years now: and, besides, with Archie MacDonald by me all things were possible.

“And Mr. Carter?” Carreras queried.

“Don’t touch my leg,” I yelled. “Not until I get an anæsthetic.”

“He’s probably right,” Marston murmured. He peered closely. “Not much blood now, you’ve been lucky, John: if the main artery had been severed—well, you’d have been gone.” He looked at Carreras, his face doubtful. “He could be moved. I think, but with a fractured thigh-bone the pain will be excruciating.”

“Mr. Carter is very tough,” Carreras said unsympathetically. It wasn’t his thigh-bone, he’d been a Good Samaritan for a whole minute now and the strain had proved too much for him. “Mr. Carter will survive.”

VII.

Wednesday 8.30 p.m.–Thursday 10.30 a.m.

I survived all right but no credit for that was due to the handling I received on the way down to the sick-bay. The sick-bay was on the port side, two decks below the drawing-room: on the second companionway one of the men who were carrying me slipped and fell and I was aware of nothing more until I woke up in bed.

Like every other compartment on the Campari, the sickbay was fitted out regardless of cost. A large room, twenty feet by sixteen, it had the usual wall-to-wall Persian carpeting and pastel walls decorated with murals depicting water-skiing, skin-diving, swimming and other such sporting activities symbolic of fitness and good health craftily designed to encourage to get on their feet and out of there with all possible speed any patient unfortunate enough to be confined to any of the three beds. The beds themselves, with their heads close up to the windows in the ship’s side, struck a jarring note: they were just plain standard iron hospital beds, the only concession to taste being that they were painted in the same pastel tints as the bulkheads. In the far corner of the room remote from the door was old Marston’s consulting desk, with a couple of chairs: farther along the inner bulkhead, nearer the door, was a flat-topped couch that could be raised for examinations, or, if need be, the carrying out of minor operations. Between couch and desk, a door led to two smaller compartments, a dispensary and a dentist’s surgery. I knew that because I had recently spent three-quarters of an hour in that dentist’s chair, with Marston attending to a broken tooth: the memory of the experience would stay with me the rest of my days.

The three beds were occupied. Captain Bullen was in the one nearest the door, the bo’sun next to him and myself in the corner, opposite Marston’s desk, all of us lying on rubber sheets placed over the beds. Marston was bent over the middle bed, examining the bo’sun’s knee: beside him, holding a metal tray with bowls, sponges, instruments and bottles containing some unidentifiable liquids, was Susan Beresford. She looked very pale. I wondered vaguely what she was doing here. Seated on the couch was a young man, badly in need of a shave: he was wearing green trousers, a green sweat-stained epauletted shirt and green beret. He had his eyes half closed against the smoke spiralling up from the cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth and carried an automatic carbine in his hand. I wondered how many men with how many automatic carbines were posted all over the Campari. Detailing a man to guard three broken-down crocks like MacDonald, Bullen and myself showed that Carreras had plenty of men to spare or was excessively cautious. Or maybe both.

“What are you doing here, Miss Beresford?” I asked.

She looked up, startled, and the instruments rattled metallically on the tray in her hands.

“Oh, I am glad,” she said. She sounded almost as if she meant it. “I thought, I—how do you feel?”

“The way I look. Why are you here?”

“Because I needed her.” Doc Marston straightened slowly and rubbed his back. “Dealing with wounds like these—well, I must have a helper. Nurses, John, are usually young and female and there are only two on the Campari in that category. Miss Beresford and Miss Harcourt.”

“I don’t see any signs of Miss Harcourt.” I tried to visualise the glamorous young actress in the real-life role of Florence Nightingale, but my imagination was in no shape to cope with absurdities like that. I couldn’t even see her playing it on the screen.

“She was here,” he said curtly. “She fainted.”

“That helps. How’s the bo’sun?”

“I must ask you not to talk, John,” he said severely, “You’ve lost a great deal of blood and you’re very weak. Please conserve your strength.”

“How’s the bosun?” I repeated.

Dr. Marston sighed.

“He’ll be all right. That is, he’s in no danger. Abnormally thick skull, I should say: that saved him. Concussion, yes but not fractured. I think. Hard to say without an X-ray. Respiration, pulse, temperature, blood pressure—none of them shows any signs pointing to extensive brain injury. It’s his leg I’m worried about.”

“His leg?”

“Patella. Knee-cap to you. Completely shattered, beyond repair. Tendons sliced, tibia fractured. Leg sawn in half. Must have been hit several times. The damned murderers!”

“Amputation? You don’t think——”

“No amputation.” He shook his head irritably. “I’ve removed all the broken pieces I can find. Bones will either have to be fused, so shortening the leg, or a metal plate. Too soon to say. But this I can say: he’ll never bend that knee again.”

“You’re telling me he’s crippled? For life?”

“I’m sorry. I know you’re very friendly.”

“So he’s finished with the sea?”

“I’m sorry,” Marston repeated. Medical incompetence apart, he was really a pretty decent old duffer. “Your turn now, John.”

“Yes,” I wasn’t looking forward to my turn. I looked at the guard. “Hey, you! Yes, you. Where’s Carreras?”

“Señor Carreras.” The young man dropped his cigarette on the Persian carpet and ground it out with his heel. Lord Dexter would have gone off his rocker. “It is not my business to know where Señor Carreras is.”

That settled that. He spoke English. I couldn’t have cared less at that moment where Carreras was. Marston had his big scissors out, and was preparing to slit up my trouser leg.

“Captain Bullen?” I asked. “What chance?”

“I don’t know. He’s unconscious now.” He hesitated. “He was wounded twice. One bullet passed clean through below the shoulder, tearing the pectoral muscle. The other entered the right chest a little lower, breaking a rib, then must have gone through the lung near the apex. The bullet is still lodged inside the body, almost certainly in the vicinity of the shoulder-blade. I may decide to operate later to remove it.”

“Operate.” The thought of old Marston hacking around inside an unconscious Bullen made me feel even paler than I looked. I choked down the next few words I thought of and said: “Operate? You would take the grave chance, you would be willing to risk your lifetime’s professional reputation——”

“A man’s life is at stake, John,” he said solemnly.

“But you might have to penetrate the chest wall. A major operation, Dr. Marston. Without assistant surgeons, without skilled nurses, without a competent anæsthetist, no X-rays, and you might be removing a bullet that’s plugging a vital gap in the lung or pleura or whatever you call it. Besides, the bullet might have been deflected anywhere.” I took a deep breath. “Dr. Marston, I cannot say how much I respect and admire you for even thinking of operating in such impossible conditions. But you will not run the risk. Doctor, as long as the captain is incapacitated I am in command of the Campari—in nominal command, anyway,” I added bitterly. “I absolutely forbid you to incur the very heavy responsibility of operating in such adverse conditions. Miss Beresford, you are a witness to that.”

“Well, John, you may be right,” old Marston said weightily. He was suddenly looking five years younger. “You may indeed be right. But my sense of duty——”

“It does you great credit, Doctor. But think of all those people who have been carrying a bullet about inside their chests since the First World War and still going strong.”

“There’s that, of course, there’s that.” I had rarely seen a man looking so relieved. “We’ll give nature a chance, hey?”

“Captain Bullen’s as strong as a horse.” The old man had at least a fighting chance now. I felt as if I’d just saved a life. I said weakly: “You were right, Doctor. I’m afraid I have been talking too much. Could I have some water, please?”

“Of course, my boy, of course.” He brought some, watched me drink it and said: “That feel better?”

“Thank you.” My voice was very faint. I moved my lips several times, as if speaking, but no words came. Marston, alarmed, put his ear close to my mouth to make out what I was trying to say, and I murmured, slowly and distinctly: “My thighbone is not broken: but pretend it is.”

He stared, eyes reflecting astonishment, opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. He wasn’t all that slow, the old boy. He nodded slightly and said: “Ready for me to begin?”

He began. Susan Beresford helped him. My leg was a gory sight but looked worse than it was. One bullet had passed directly through the leg, but the other two had just torn ragged superficial gashes on the inside, and it was from those that most of the blood had come. All the while he was working, Dr. Marston kept up, for the sake of the guard, a running commentary on the extent and severity of my wounds, and if I hadn’t known he was lying fluently he would have made me feel very ill indeed. He certainly must have convinced the guard. When he’d cleaned and bound the wounds, a process I bore with stoic fortitude only because I didn’t want to start yelling in front of Susan Beresford, he fixed some splints to my leg and bound those on also. This done, he propped up my leg on a pile of pillows, went into the dispensary and reappeared with a couple of screwed pulleys, a length of wire with a heavy weight attached to the end and a leather strap. The strap he fitted to my left ankle.

“What’s this in aid of?” I demanded.

“I’m the medical officer, please remember,” he said curtly. His left eyelid dropped in a slow wink. “Traction, Mr. Carter. You don’t want your leg to be permanently shortened for life?”

“Sorry,” I muttered. Maybe I had been misjudging old Marston just a little. Nothing would ever make me reconsider my opinion of him as a doctor, but he was shrewd enough in other things: the first thing a man like Carreras would have asked was why a man with a broken bone in his leg was not in traction. Marston screwed the two hooks into holes in the deckhead, passed the wire through, attached the weight to one end and the strap to the other. It didn’t feel too uncomfortable. He then picked up the length of trouser leg that had been cut off, checked quickly to see if the guard was watching, splashed some water on it and then wrung it out on top of my bandages. Even to myself I had to admit that I’d seldom seen a more convincing sight, a patient more completely and thoroughly immobilised.

He finished just in time. He and Susan Beresford were just clearing away when the door opened and Tony Carreras came in. He looked at Bullen, MacDonald and myself, slowly, consideringly—he wasn’t a man who would miss very much—then came to my bedside.

“Good evening, Carter,” he said pleasantly. “How are you feeling?”

“Where’s that murderous parent of yours?” I asked.

“Murderous parent? You do my father an injustice. Asleep, at the moment, as it happens: his hand was giving him great pain after Marston had finished with it”—I wasn’t surprised at that—“so he was given a sleeping draught. The good ship Campari is all buttoned up for the night and Captain Tony Carreras in charge. You may all sleep easy. You’ll be interested to hear that we’ve just picked up Nassau on the radar-scope—port 40, or some such nautical term—so you weren’t playing any funny tricks with that course after all.”

I grunted and turned my head away. Carreras walked across to Marston. “How are they, Doctor?”

“How do you expect them to be after your thugs have riddled them with bullets?” Marston demanded bitterly. “Captain Bullen may live or die, I don’t know. MacDonald, the bo’sun, will live, but he’ll be a stiff-legged cripple for life. The chief officer has a compound fracture of the femur—the thigh-bone. Completely shattered. If we don’t get him to hospital in a couple of days, he also will be crippled for life: as it is, he’ll never be able to walk properly again.”

“I am genuinely sorry,” Tony Carreras said. He actually sounded as if he meant it. “Killing and crippling good men is an unforgivable waste. Well, almost unforgivable. Some things justify it.”

“Your humanity does you credit,” I sneered from my pillow.

“We are humane men,” he said.

“You’ve proved that all right.” I twisted to look at him. “But you could still show a little consideration for a very sick man.”

“Indeed?” He was very good at lifting eyebrows.

“Indeed. Dan’l Boone, here.” I nodded towards the sentry with the gun. “You permit your men to smoke on duty?”

“José?” He smiled. “José is an inveterate chain-smoker. Take his cigarettes away and he’d probably go on strike. This isn’t the Grenadier Guards, you know, Carter. Why the sudden concern?”

“You heard what Dr. Marston said. Captain Bullen. He’s in a critical condition with a hole through his lung.”

“Ah, I think I understand. You agree, Doctor?”

I held my breath. The chances were that the old boy haden’t even the faintest idea what we were talking about. But again I’d underrated his astuteness.

“For a man with a ruptured lung,” he said gravely, “there can be nothing worse than a smoke-laden atmosphere.”

“I see. José!” Carreras spoke rapidly in Spanish to the guard, who grinned amiably, got to his feet and made for the door, picking up a chair en route. The door swung to behind him.

“No discipline,” Tony Carreras sighed. “None of the brisk sentry-go marching and counter-marching like Buckingham Palace, Mr. Carter. A chair tilted against a wall. Our Latin blood, I fear. But I warn you, none the less effective a guard for all that. I see no harm in his keeping a watch outside, apart from jumping through one of the windows into the sea below—not that you are in any condition to do that anyway—I can’t see what mischief you can get up to.” He paused, looked at me consideringly. “You are singularly incurious, Mr. Carter? Far from being in character. Makes one suspicious, you know.”

“Curious about what?” I growled. “Nothing to be curious about. How many of those armed thugs do you have aboard the Campari?”

“Forty. Not bad, eh? Well, thirty-eight effectives. Captain Bullen killed one and you seriously damaged the hand of another. Where did you learn to shoot like that, Carter?”

“Luck. Cerdan recovered yet?”

“Yes,” he said briefly. He didn’t seem to want to talk about Cerdan.

“He killed Dexter?” I persisted.

“No. Werner, the nurse—the one you killed tonight.” For a professed humanitarian, the death of one of his colleagues in crime left him strangely unmoved. “A steward’s uniform and a tray of food at face level. Your head steward—White—saw him twice and never suspected: not that he went within thirty feet of White. And it was just Dexter’s bad luck that he saw this steward unlocking the radio room.”

“I suppose the same murderous devil got Brownell?”

“And Benson. Benson caught him coming out of the radio room after disposing of Brownell, and was shot. Werner was going to dump him straight over the side, but there were people—crew—directly beneath. He dragged him across to the port side. Again crew beneath. So he emptied a life-jacket locker and put Benson inside.” Carreras grinned. “And just your bad luck that you happened to be standing right beside that locker when we sent Werner up to dispose of the body, just before midnight last night.”

“Who dreamed up this scheme of having the fake Marconi-man in Kingston drill through from the wireless office to the cold air trunking in Cerdan’s room below and buttoning the earphones permanently into the wireless officer’s receiving circuit? Cerdan, your old man or you?”

“My father.”

“And the Trojan horse idea. Your father also?”

“He is a brilliant man. Now I know why you were not curious. You knew.”

“It wasn’t hard to guess,” I said wearily. “Not, that is, when it was too late. All our troubles really started in Carracio. And we loaded those huge crates in Carracio. Now I know why the stevedores were so terrified when one of the crates almost slipped from its slings. Now I know why your old man was so damned anxious to inspect the hold—not to pay his respects to the dead men in their coffins but to see how his men were placed for smashing their way out of the crates. And then they broke out last night and forced the battens of the hatch. How many men in a crate, Carreras?”

“Twenty. Rather uncomfortably jammed, poor fellows. I think they had a rough twenty-four hours.”

“Twenty. Two crates. We loaded four of those. What’s in the other crates?”

“Machinery, Mr. Carter, just machinery.”

“One thing I am really curious about.”

“Yes?”

“What’s behind all this murderous business? Kidnap? Ransom?”

“I am not at liberty to discuss those things with you.” He grinned. “At least, not yet. You remaining here, Miss Beresford, or do you wish me to—ah—escort you up to your parents in the drawing-room?”

“Please leave the young lady,” Marston said. “I want her to help me keep a twenty-four hour watch on Captain Bullen. He might have a relapse at any moment.”

“As you wish.” He bowed to Susan Beresford. “Good night all.”

The door closed. Susan Beresford said: “So that’s how they came aboard. How in the world did you know?”

“How in the world did I know! You didn’t think they had forty men hidden up inside the funnel, did you?” Once we knew it was Carreras and Cerdan, it was obvious. They came aboard at Carracio. So did those huge crates. Two and two, Miss Beresford’ have never failed to add up to four.” She flushed and gave me a very old-fashioned look, but I ignored it and went on: “You both see what this means, don’t you?”

“Let him tell us, Doctor,” Miss Beresford said acidly. “He’s just dying to tell us.”

“It means that there’s something very very big behind it all,” I said slowly. “All cargoes, except those in free ports and under certain transshipment conditions, which don’t apply here, have to be inspected by Customs. Those crates passed the Carracio Customs—which means that the Customs know what’s inside. Probably explains, too, why our Carracio agent was so nervous. But the Customs let it pass. Why? Because they had orders to let those crates pass. And who gave them the orders? Their government. Who gave the government its orders? Who but the generalissimo—after all, he is the government. The generalissimo,” I went on thoughtfully, “is directly behind all this. And we all know he’s desperate for money. I wonder, I wonder?”

“You wonder what?” Marston asked.

“I don’t really know. Tell me, Doctor, have you the facilities for making tea or coffee here?”

“Never yet seen a dispensary that hadn’t my boy.”

“What an excellent idea!” Susan Beresford jumped to her feet. “I’d love a cup of tea.”

“Coffee.”

“Tea.”

“Coffee. Humour a sick man. This should be quite an experience for Miss Beresford. Making her own coffee, I mean. You fill the percolator with water——”

“Please stop there.” She crossed over to my bedside and looked down at me, her face without expression, her eyes very steady. “You have a short memory, Mr. Carter. I told you night before last that I was sorry, very sorry. Remember?”

“I remember,” I acknowledged. “Sorry, Miss Beresford.”

“Susan.” She smiled. “If you want your coffee, that is.”

“Blackmail.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake call her ‘Susan’ if she wants,” Dr. Marston interrupted irritably. “What’s the harm?”

“Doctor’s orders,” I said resignedly. “O.K., Susan, bring the patient his coffee.” The circumstances were hardly normal: I could get back to calling her Miss Beresford later on.

Five minutes passed, then she brought the coffee. I looked at the tray and said: “What? Only three cups? There should be four.”

“Four?”

“Four. Three for us and one for our friend outside.”

“Our friend—you mean the guard?”

“Who else?”

“Have you gone mad, Mr. Carter?”

“Fair’s fair,” Marston murmured. “‘John’ to you.”

She looked coldly at him, glared at me and said icily: “Have you gone mad? Why should I bring that thug coffee? I’ll do nothing——”

“Our chief officer always has a reason for his actions,” Marston said in sharp and surprising support. “Please do as he asks.”

She poured a cup of coffee, took it through the outside door and was back in a few seconds.

“He took it?” I asked.

“Didn’t he just. Seems he’s had nothing except a little water to drink in the past day or so.”

“I can believe it. I should imagine that they weren’t too well equipped in the catering line in those crates.” I took the cup of coffee she offered me, drained it and set it down. It tasted just the way coffee ought to taste.

“How was it?” Susan asked.

“Perfect. Any suggestion I made that you didn’t even know how to boil water I withdraw unreservedly.”

She and Marston looked at each other and then Marston said: “No more thinking or worrying to do tonight, John?”

“Nary a bit. All I want is a good night’s sleep.”

“And that’s why I put a pretty powerful sedative in your coffee.” He looked at me consideringly. “Coffee has a remarkable quality of disguising other flavours, hasn’t it?”

I knew what he meant and he knew I knew what he meant. I said: “Dr. Marston, I do believe I have been guilty of underestimating you very considerably.”

“I believe you have, John,” he said jovially. “I believe you have indeed.”

I became drowsily aware that my left leg was hurting, not badly but badly enough to wake me up. Someone was pulling it, giving it a strong steady tug every few seconds, letting go, then tugging it again. And he kept on talking all the time he was doing it. I wished that that someone, whoever he was, would give it up. The tugging and the talking. Didn’t he know I was a sick man?

I opened my eyes. The first thing I saw was the clock on the opposite bulkhead. Ten o’clock. Ten o’clock in the morning, for broad daylight was coming in through uncurtained windows. Dr. Marston had been right about the sedative: “powerful” was hardly the word for it.

Someone was talking, sure enough, old Bullen babbling away incoherently in a drugged and troubled sleep, but there was no one tugging at my leg. It was the traction weight suspended from the ceiling that was doing the tugging. The Campari, in spite of her stabilisers, was rolling through a ten-to-fifteen degree arc, which meant that there must be a pretty heavy and steep beam sea or swell running. Whenever the ship came to the end of a roll, the suspended pulley, reaching the limit of its pendulum swing, would give a pronounced jerk: a few seconds later another jerk. Now that I was fully awake, it was more painful than I had at first thought. Even if I had had a genuinely fractured femur that sort of thing wouldn’t be doing me any good at all. I looked around to see Dr. Marston and to ask him to remove it.

But the first person who caught my eye was not Dr. Marston but Miguel Carreras. He was standing near the top of my bed, maybe he had been shaking me awake. He was newly shaven, looked fresh and rested, had his neatly bandaged right hand in a sling and carried some charts under his arm. He gave me a slight smile.

“Good morning, Mr. Carter. How do you feel now?”

I ignored him. Susan Beresford was sitting at the doctor’s desk. She looked pretty tired to me and there were dark smudges under her green eyes. I said: “Susan, where’s doctor Marston?”

“Susan?” Carreras murmured. “How swiftly contiguity breeds familiarity.”

I ignored him again. Susan said: “In the dispensary, asleep. He’s been up most of the night.”

“Wake him, will you? Tell him I want this damned weight off. It’s tearing my leg in two.”

She went into the dispensary and Carreras said: “Your attention, Mr. Carter, if you please.”

“When I get that weight off,” I said surlily. “Not before.”

Dr. Marston appeared, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, and started to remove the weight without a word.

“Captain Bullen and the bo’sun?” I asked. “How are they?”

“The captain’s holding his own—just.” The old boy looked tired and sounded tired. “The bo’sun’s recovering fast. Both of them came too early this morning: I gave them sedatives. The longer they sleep, the better.”

I nodded, waited till he had lifted me to a sitting position and adjusted my leg, then said curtly: “What do you want, Carreras?”

He unrolled a chart and spread it over my knees. “A little navigational assistance—cross-checking, shall we call it? You will co-operate?”

“I’ll co-operate.”

“What?” Susan Beresford crossed from the desk and stared down at me. “You—you’re going to help this man?”

“You heard me, didn’t you? What do you want me to be—a hero?” I nodded at my leg. “Look where being heroic’s got me.”

“I wouldn’t have believed it!” Patches of colour flared in the pale cheeks. “You. Going to help this—this monster, this murderer.”

“If I don’t,” I said wearily, “he’ll like as not start on you. Maybe break a finger at a time or yank out a tooth at a time with Dr. Marston’s forceps—and without anæsthetic. I’m not saying he’d like doing it: but he’d do it.”

“I’m not afraid of Mr. Carreras,” she said defiantly. But she was paler than ever.

“Then it’s time you were,” I said curtly. “Well, Carreras?”

“You have sailed the North Atlantic, Mr. Carter? Between Europe and America, I mean?”

“Many times.”

“Good.” He jabbed the chart. “A vessel leaving the Clyde and sailing for Norfolk, Virginia. I wish you to sketch the course it would take. Any reference books you wish I can have fetched.”

“I don’t require any.” I took his pencil. “North about round Ireland, so, a slightly flattened great circle route along the west-bound summer lane, so, to this point well southeast of Newfoundland. The northward curve looks strange, but that’s only because of the projection of the chart: it is the shortest route.”

“I believe you. And then?”

“Shortly after that the course diverges from the main west-bound New York lane, approximately here, and comes into Norfolk more or less from the east-north-east.” I twisted my head around to try to see out the surgery door “What’s all that racket? Where’s it coming from? Sounds like riveting guns or pneumatic chisels to me.”

“Later, later,” he said irritably. He unrolled another chart and the irritation vanished from his face. “Splendid, Carter, splendid. Your track coincides almost exactly with the information I have here.”

“Why the hell did you ask me——”

“I double-check everything, Mr. Carter. This vessel, now, is due to arrive at Norfolk at exactly ten o’clock at night, on Saturday, in two days’ time. Not earlier, not later: exactly ten o’clock. If I wish to meet that vessel at dawn that day, where would the interception point be?”

I kept my questions to myself. “Dawn, in that latitude, at this time, is five o’clock. Give or take a few minutes. What speed does this vessel do?”

“Of course. Foolish of me. Ten knots.”

“Ten knots. Seventeen hours. One hundred and seventy nautical miles. The interception point would be here.”

“Exactly.” He’d consulted his own chart again. “Exactly. Most gratifying.” He looked at a slip of paper in his hand. “Our present position is 26.52 north, 76.33 west, near enough, anyway. How long would it take us to get to this interception spot?”

“What is that hammering outside?” I demanded. “What devilry are you up to now, Carreras?”

“Answer my question!” he said sharply.

He held all the cards. I said: “What’s our speed just now?”

“Fourteen knots.”

“Forty three hours,” I said after a minute. “Just under.”

“Forty-three hours,” he said slowly. “It’s now 10 a.m. Thursday and I have to rendezvous at 5 a.m. on Saturday. My God, that is only forty-three hours.” The first shadow of worry crossed his face. “What is the maximum speed of the Campari?”

“Eighteen knots.” I caught a glimpse of Susan’s face. She was fast losing all her illusions about Chief Officer Carter.

“Ah! Eighteen?” His face cleared. “And at eighteen knots?”

“At eighteen knots you’ll probably tear the stabilisers off and break up the Campari,” I told him.

He didn’t like that. He said: “What do you mean?”

“I mean you’ve got trouble coming. Carreras. Big trouble.” I looked at the window. “I can’t see that sea, but I can feel it. An abnormally long deep swell. Ask any fisherman in the Bahamas what that means at this time of the year and he’ll tell you. It can mean only one thing, Carreras—tropical storm, pretty certainly a hurricane. The swell is coming from the east and that’s where the heart of the storm lies. Maybe a couple of hundred miles away yet, but it’s there. And the swell’s getting worse. Have you noticed? It’s getting worse because the classic path of a hurricane in those parts is west-north-west, at a speed of ten to fifteen miles an hour. And we’re heading north by east. In other words the hurricane and the Campari are on a collision course. Time you started listening to some weather reports, Carreras.”

“How long would it take at eighteen knots?”

“Thirty-three hours. About. In good weather.”

“And the course?”

I laid it off and looked at him. “The same as you have on that chart, undoubtedly.”

“It is. What wave-length for weather reports?”

“No wave-length,” I said dryly. “If there’s a hurricane moving in westwards from the Atlantic every commercial station on the eastern seaboard will be broadcasting practically nothing else.”

He moved across to Marston’s phone, spoke to the bridge, gave instructions for maximum speed and for listening-in to weather reports. When he’d finished, I said: “Eighteen knots? Well, I warned you.”

“I must have as much time as possible in hand.” He looked down at Bullen, who was still rambling on incoherently in his sleep. “What would your captain do in those circumstances?”

“Turn and run in any direction except north. We have our passengers to think of. They don’t like getting sea-sick.”

“They’re going to be very very sea-sick, I’m afraid. But all in a good cause.”

“Yes,” I said slowly. I knew now the source of the hammering on the deck. “A good cause. For a patriot such as yourself, Carreras, what better cause could there be? The generalissimo’s coffers are empty. Not a sou in sight—and his régime is tottering. Only one thing can save the sick man of the caribbean—a transfusion. A transfusion of gold. This ship that we’re going to intercept, Carreras—how many millions in gold bullion is she carrying?”

Marston was back in the surgery now and he and Susan looked at me, then at each other, and you could see their mutual diagnosis: delayed shock had made me light-headed. Carreras, I could see, wasn’t thinking anything of the kind: his face, like his body, had gone very still.

“You have access to sources of information of which I am completely unaware.” His voice was hardly more than a whisper. “What sources, Carter? Quickly?”

“There are no sources, Carreras.” I grinned at him. “Should there be?”

“No one plays cat and mouse with me.” He was still very quiet. “The sources, Carter?”

“Here.” I tapped my head. “Only here. This source.”

He regarded me for some seconds in cold silence, then nodded fractionally. “I knew it the first time I saw you. There is a—a quality about you. A champion boxer looks a champion boxer even in repose. A dangerous man cannot look anything else but dangerous, even in the most domestic situations, the most harmless surroundings. You have that quality. I have trained myself to recognise such things.”

“Hear that?” I said to Susan. “You never even suspected it, hey? Thought I was just like everybody else, didn’t you?”

“You are even more astute than I thought, Mr. Carter,” Carreras murmured.

“If adding two and two to make an obvious four is what you call being astute, then, sure, I’m astute. My God, if I were astute, I wouldn’t be lying here now with a shattered leg.” An occasional reminder of my helplessness would do no harm. “The generalissimo needing cash—I should have worked it out long ago.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. Shall I tell you why Brownell, our radio officer, was killed?”

“I should be interested.”

“Because you had intercepted a message from the Harrisons and Curtises, the two families recalled by cable from Kingston: this message said that the cables had been a hoax, and if we knew it had been a hoax we would have started looking very closely at Messrs. Carreras and Cerdan, the people who had taken their places. The point is that the cables they had received came through your capital city, Carreras, which argues Post Office connivance and, by inference, government knowledge. The government owns the Post Office.

“Secondly, there is a long waiting list in your country for berths on the Campari: you were near the bottom but were mysteriously jumped to the top. You said you were the only people who could take immediate advantage of the availability of the two suddenly vacant suites. Poppycock. Somebody in authority—in great authority—said ‘Carreras and Cerdan go to the top.’ And no one squawked. I wonder why?

“Thirdly, although there is a waiting list, none of the people on it are your nationals, Carreras. They are not permitted to travel on foreign-going vessels—and, in addition, find themselves immediately in prison if caught in possession of foreign currency. But you were permitted to travel—and you paid in U.S. dollars. You’re still with me?”

He nodded. “We had to take the chance of paying in dollars.”

“Fourthly, the Customs closed their eyes to those crates with your men aboard—and those crates with the cannons. That shows——”

“Cannons?” Marston interrupted. He was looking almost completely dazed. “Cannons?”

“The noise you can hear outside,” Carreras said equably. “Mr Carter will explain by and by. I wish,” he went on almost with regret, “that we were on the same side of the fence. You would have made an incomparable lieutenant, Mr. Carter. You could have named your own price.”

“That’s just about what Mr. Beresford said to me yesterday,” I agreed. “Everybody’s offering me jobs these days. The timing of the offers could have been improved.”

“Do you mean to tell me,” Susan said, “that Daddy offered——”

“Don’t panic,” I said. “He changed his mind. So, Carreras, there we have it. Government connivance on all sides. And what do the government want? Money. Completely desperate. Paid 350 million dollars to Iron Curtain countries in the past year or two, for arms. Trouble was, the generalissimo never had 350 million dollars in the first place. Now nobody will buy his sugar, trade’s practically non-existent, so how does an honest man raise money? Easy. He steals it.”

“Insulting personal remarks we can dispense with.”

“Suit yourself. Maybe armed robbery and piracy on the high seas sounds more moral than stealing. I wouldn’t know. Anyway, what does he steal? Bonds, stocks, shares, convertible drafts, currency? Not on your life. He only wants something that can never be traced back to him—and the only stuff he can get in sufficient quantity is gold. Your leader, Mr. Carreras,” I finished thoughtfully, “must have a very extensive spy network both in Britain and America.”

“If one is prepared to lay out sufficient capital on an affair such as this,” he said indifferently, “a large spy system is unnecessary. I even have the complete loading plans of the bullion vessel in my cabin. Most men have their price, Mr. Carter.”

“I wish someone would try me some day,” I said. “Well, there you are. The American Government has made no secret recently of its great success in recovering a large proportion of its gold reserves which went to Europe in the past few years. That bullion has to be transported—and part of it, I’ll bet my boots is in this ship we’re intercepting. The fact that it is not due to arrive in Norfolk until after dark is interesting enough in itself: what is even more interesting is that Norfolk, in this case, almost certainly means the Hampton Roads Naval Operating Base where the ship can be unloaded with the maximum security. And Norfolk, I would say, is the point that offers the shortest overland route to Fort Knox, where the gold will eventually be stored. How much gold, Carreras?”

“One hundred and fifty million dollars,” he said calmly. “You have missed very little. And nothing of importance.”

One hundred and fifty million dollars. I mentally examined this sum from several different angles but there didn’t seem to be any comment to meet the case, so I asked: “Why did you pick on the Campari?”

“I thought you would have guessed that, too. In point of fact we had three other ships under active consideration as well, all ships on the New York-Caribbean run. We have been studying the movements of all four ships for some time. Yours suited best.”

“You cut things pretty fine, didn’t you? If we had been a couple of days later in arriving at Carracio——”

“There has been a naval vessel, a frigate, standing by and ready to intercept you on a peaceful pretext ever since you left Savannah. I was aboard. But it wasn’t necessary.” So that explained the vessel we had seen on our radar screens at night after leaving Savannah: not an American warship, as we had thought, but the generalissimo’s. “This way was much easier, much more satisfactory.”

“And, of course,” I said, “you couldn’t have used the frigate for this job. Hasn’t the cruising range. Hopeless in bad weather. No derricks for heavy trans-shipment lifts. And conspicuous, far too conspicuous. But the Campari. Who’s going to miss the Campari if she’s only a few days late in arriving at her destination. Only the head office and——”

“The head office is being taken care of,” Carreras said. “You don’t think we overlooked the obvious, do you? Our own transmitter was brought aboard and is already in circuit. A stream of perfectly satisfactory messages are going out, I can assure you.”

“So you fixed that. And the Campari has the speed to overtake most cargo ships, it’s a good large seaboat for practically any weather, has first-class radar for picking up other vessels and jumbo derricks for heavy lifts.” I paused and looked at him. “We even have reinforced decks for gun-platforms both for’ard and on the poop. Most British vessels since the war have had those installed as a matter of course when building. But I warn you that they have to be strengthened from below with angle-irons, a couple of days’ job in itself. Without them, anything more than a three-inch will buckle and twist the plates beyond repair after even only a couple of shots.”

“A couple of shots will be all that we require.”

I thought about this last remark. A couple of shots. It didn’t make any kind of sense at all. What was Carreras up to?

“What on earth are you both talking about?” Susan asked wearily. “Reinforced steel decks, angle-irons—what is it all about?”

“Come with me, Miss Beresford, and I shall take pleasure in showing you personally what I mean.” Carreras smiled. “Besides I’m sure your good parents are becoming very anxious about you. I shall see you later, Mr. Carter. Come, Miss Beresford.”

She looked at him in doubtful hesitation. I said: “You might as well go, Susan. You never know what luck you’ll have. One good shove when he’s near the rail and off-balance. Just pick your time.”

“Your Anglo-Saxon sense of humour becomes rather wearisome,” Carreras said thinly. “One hopes that you will be able to preserve it intact in the days to come.”

He left on this suitably sinister note, and Marston looked at me, speculation taking the place of puzzlement in his eyes. “Did Carreras mean what I thought he meant?”

“He did. That’s the hammering you’ve been hearing, the pneumatic drills. There are prepared bolt-holes in the reinforced sections on the poop and fore-deck to accept the base-plates of several sizes of British guns. Carreras’s guns probably come from the other side of the Iron Curtain and he has to drill new holes.”

“He—he’s actually going to fit naval guns.”

“He had them in a couple of these crates. Almost certainly stripped down into sections, ready for quick assembly. Don’t have to be anything very big—can’t be, it’s a dockyard job to fit anything of any size. But it will be big enough to stop this ship.”

“I don’t believe it!” Marston protested. “Holdup on the high seas? Piracy in this day and age? It’s ridiculous! It’s impossible!”

“You tell that to Carreras. He hasn’t a moment’s doubt but that it’s very very possible. Neither have I. Can you tell me what’s going to stop him?”

“But we’ve got to stop him, John. We must stop him!”

“Why?”

“Good God! Why? Let a man like that get away with heaven only knows how many million pounds——”

“Is that what you’re worried about?”

“Of course,” Marston snapped. “So would anyone be.”

“You’re right, of course, Doctor,” I agreed. “I’m not at my best today.” What I could have said was that if he thought about it a bit more, he would become ten times as worried as he was, and not about the money. About half as worried as I was. And I was worried to death and frightened, badly frightened. Carreras was clever, all right, but perhaps a shade less so than he imagined. He made the mistake of letting himself get too involved in conversation: and when a man gets too involved and has anything to hide he makes the further mistake of either talking too much or not talking enough. Carreras had made the mistake on both counts. But why should he worry about whether he talked too much or not? He couldn’t lose. Not now.

Breakfast came. I didn’t feel much like eating, but I ate all the same. I had lost far too much blood and whatever little strength I could recover I was going to need that night. I felt even less like sleep, but for all that I asked Marston for a sedative and he gave it to me. I was going to need all the sleep I could get, too. I wouldn’t get much that coming night.

The last sensation I recalled as I dozed off was in my mouth, a queer unnatural dryness, the kind of dryness that usually comes with overmastering fear. But it wasn’t fear, I told myself, it wasn’t really fear. Just the effect of the sleeping draught. That’s what I told myself.

VIII.

Thursday 4 p.m.–10 p.m.

It was late afternoon when I awoke, around four o’clock: still a good four hours short of sunset, but already the surgery lights were on and the sky outside dark, almost, as night. Driving slanting rain was sheeting down torrentially from the black louring clouds and even through closed doors and windows I could hear the high thin sound, part whine, part whistle, of a gale-force wind howling through the struts and standing rigging.

The Campari was taking a hammering. She was still going fast, far, far too fast for the weather conditions, and was smashing her way through heavy rolling seas bearing down on her starboard bow. That they weren’t mountainous waves, or waves of even an unusual size for a tropical storm, I was quite sure: it was the fact that the Campari was battering her way at high speed through quartering seas that seemed to be almost tearing her apart. She was cork-screwing viciously, a movement that applies the maximum possible strain on a ship’s hull. With metronomic regularity the Campari was crashing, starboard bow first, into a rising sea, lifting bows and rolling over to port as she climbed up the wave, hesitating, then pitching violently for’ard and rolling over to starboard as she slid down the far shoulder of the vanishing wave to thud with a teeth-rattling, jolting violence into the shoulder of the next sea, a shaking, shuddering collision that made the Campari vibrate for seconds on end in every plate and rivet throughout her entire length. No doubt but that the Clyde yard that had built her had built her well: but they wouldn’t have constructed her on the assumption that she was going to fall into the hands of maniacs. Even steel can come apart.

“Dr. Marston,” I said. “Try to get Carreras on that phone.”

“Hallo, awake?” He shook his head. “I’ve been on to him myself, an hour ago. He’s on the bridge and he say’s he’s going to stay there all night if need be. And he won’t reduce speed any further: he’s taken her down to fifteen knots already, he says.”

“The man’s mad. Thank God for the stabilisers. If it weren’t for them, we’d be turning somersaults.”

“Can they stand up to this sort of thing indefinitely?”

“I should think it highly unlikely. The captain and bo’sun—how are they?”

“The captain’s still asleep, still delirious, but breathing easier. Our friend Mr. MacDonald you can ask for yourself.”

I twisted in my bed. The bo’sun was indeed awake, grinning at me. Marston said; “Seeing you’re both awake, do you mind if I have a kip down in the dispensary for an hour? I could do with it.”

He looked as if he could, too, pale and exhausted.

“We’ll call you if anything goes wrong.” I watched him go, then said to MacDonald: “You like your sleep, don’t you?”

“Just naturally idle, Mr. Carter.” He smiled. “I was wanting to get up, but the doctor wasn’t keen.”

“Surprised? You know your knee-cap is smashed and it’ll be weeks before you can walk properly again.” He’d never walk properly again.

“Aye, it’s inconvenient. Dr. Marston has been talking to me about this fellow Carreras and his plans. The man’s daft.”

“He’s all that. But daft or not, what’s to stop him?”

“The weather, perhaps. It’s pretty nasty outside.”

“The weather won’t stop him. He’s got one of those fantastic one-track minds. But I might have a small try at it myself.”

“You?” MacDonald had raised his voice, now lowered it to a murmur. “You! With a smashed thigh-bone. How in the——”

“It’s not broken.” I told him of the deception. “I think I can get around on it if I don’t have too much climbing to do.”

“I see. And the plan, sir?”

I told him. He thought me as daft as Carreras. He did his best to dissuade me, finally accepted the inevitable and had his own suggestions to make. We were still discussing it in low voices when the sick-bay door opened and a guard showed Susan Beresford in, closed the door and left.

“Where have you been all day?” I said accusingly.

“I saw the guns.” She was pale and tired and seemed to have forgotten that she had been angry with me for co-operating with Carreras. “He’s got a big one mounted on the poop and a smaller one on the fo’c’sle. Covered with tarpaulins now. The rest of the day I spent with Mummy and Daddy and the others.”

“And how are our passengers?” I inquired. “Hopping mad at being shanghaied or do they regard it as yet another of the attractions of the Campari—a splendid adventure thrown in at no extra charge that they can talk about to the end of their days. I’m sure most of them must be pretty relieved that Carreras is not holding them all to ransom.”

“Most of them are not caring one way or another,” she said. “They’re so sea-sick they couldn’t care if they lived or died. I feel a bit the same way myself, I can tell you.”

“You’ll get used to it,” I said callously. “You’ll all get used to it. I want you to do something for me.”

“Yes, John?” The dutiful murmur in the voice which was really tiredness, the use of the first name, had me glancing sharply across at the bo’sun, but he was busy examining a part of the deckhead that was completely devoid of anything to examine.

“Get permission to go to your cabin. Say you’re going for blankets, that you felt too cold here last night. Your father’s dinner suit—slip it between the blankets. Not the tropical one, the dark one. For heaven’s sake see you’re not observed. Have you any dark-coloured dresses?”

“Dark-coloured dresses?” She frowned. “Why——”

“For Pete’s sake!” I said in low-voiced exasperation. I could hear the murmur of voices outside. “Answer me!”

“A black cocktail dress——”

“Bring it also.”

She looked at me steadily. “Would you mind telling me——”

The door opened and Tony Carreras came in, balancing easily on the swaying, dipping deck. He carried a rain-spattered chart under his arm.

“Evening, all.” He spoke cheerfully enough, but for all that he looked rather pale. “Carter, a small job from my father. Course positions of the Fort Ticonderoga at 8 a.m., noon and 4 p.m. today. Plot them and see if the Ticonderoga is still on its predicted course.”

“Fort Ticonderoga being the name of the ship we have to intercept?”

“What else?”

“But—but the positions,” I said stupidly. “The course positions of—how the devil do you know? Don’t tell me the Ticonderoga is actually sending you her positions? Are the—are the radio operators on that ship——”

“My father thinks of everything,” Tony Carreras said calmly. “Literally everything. I told you he was a brilliant man. You know we’re going to ask the Ticonderoga to stand and deliver. Do you think we want it sending out S.O.S’s when we fire a warning shot across its bows? The Ticonderoga’s own radio officers had a slight accident before the ship left England and had to be replaced by—ah—more suitable men.”

“A slight accident?” Susan said slowly. What with seasickness and emotion her face was the colour of paper, but she wasn’t scared of Carreras any that I could see. “What kind of accident?”

“A kind that can so easily happen to any of us, Miss Beresford.” Tony Carreras was still smiling, but somehow he no longer looked charming and boyish: I couldn’t really see any expression on the face at all, all I could see were the curiously flattened eyes. More than ever I was sure that there was something wrong with young Carreras’s eyes: and more than ever I was sure that the wrongness lay not in the eyes alone but was symptomatic and indicative of a wrongness that lay much deeper than the eyes. “Nothing serious, I assure you.” Meaning that they hadn’t been killed more than once. “One of the replacements is not only a radio man but an expert navigator. We saw no reason why we should not take advantage of this fact to keep us informed as to the exact position of the Ticonderoga. Every hour on the hour.”

“Your father leaves nothing to chance,” I admitted. “Except that he seems to be depending on me as the expert navigator on this ship.”

“He didn’t know—we weren’t to know—that all the other deck officers on the Campari were going to be—ah—so foolish. We—both my father and I—dislike killing of any kind.” Again the unmistakable ring of sincerity, but I was beginning to wonder if the bell hadn’t a crack in it. “My father is also a competent navigator, but, unfortunately, he has his hands very full at the moment. He happens to be the only professional seaman we have.”

“Your other men aren’t?”

“Alas, no. But they are perfectly adequate to the task of seeing that professional seamen—your men—do their duties as they should.”

This was cheering news. If Carreras persisted in pushing the Campari through the storm at this rate, practically everyone who wasn’t a professional seaman was going to be feeling very ill indeed. That might help to ease my night’s labours.

I said: “What’s going to happen to us after you’ve hijacked this damn’ bullion?”

“Dump you all on the Ticonderoga,” he said lazily. “What else?”

“Yes?” I sneered. “So that we can straightaway notify every ship that the Campari had——”

“Notify whoever you like,” he said placidly. “Think we’re crazy? We’re abandoning the Campari the same morning: another vessel is already standing by. Miguel Carreras does think of everything.”

I said nothing and turned my attention to the charts while Susan made her request to be allowed to bring blankets. He smilingly said he would accompany her and they left together. When they returned in five minutes’ time I had entered in the course positions on the chart and found that the Fort Ticonderoga was really on course. I handed the chart to Carreras with that information: he thanked me and left.

Dinner came at eight o’clock. It wasn’t much of a meal as Campari dinners went, Antoine was never at his best when the elements were against him, but it was fair enough for all that. Susan ate nothing; I suspected she had been sick more than once, but had made no mention of it: millionaire’s daughter or not, she was no cry-baby and had no self-pity, which was only what I would have expected from the daughter of the Beresfords. I wasn’t hungry myself, there was a knot in my stomach that had nothing to do with the motion of the Campari, but again on the principle that I was going to need all the strength I could find, I made a good meal. MacDonald ate as if he hadn’t seen food for a week. Bullen still slept under sedation, restless against the securing straps that held him to his bed, breathing still distressed, mumbling away continually to himself.

At nine o’clock Marston said: “Time now for coffee, John?”

“Time for coffee,” I agreed. Marston’s hands, I noticed, weren’t quite steady. After too many years of consuming the better part of a bottle of rum every night, his nerves weren’t in any too fit a condition for this sort of thing.

Susan brought in five cups of coffee, one at a time—the wild pitching of the Campari, the jarring, jolting shocks as we crashed down into the troughs, made the carrying of more than one at a time impossible. One for herself, one for MacDonald, one for Marston, one for me—and one for the sentry, the same youngster as had been on guard the previous night. For the four of us, sugar: for the sentry, a spoonful of white powder from Marston’s dispensary. Susan took his cup outside.

“How’s our friend?” I asked when she returned.

“Almost as green as I am.” She tried to smile but it didn’t come off. “Seemed glad to get it.”

“Where is he?”

“In the passage. Sitting on the floor, jammed in a corner, gun across his knees.”

“How long before that stuff acts, Doctor?”

“If he drinks it straightaway, maybe twenty minutes. And don’t ask me how long the effects will last. People vary so much that I’ve no idea. Maybe half an hour, maybe three hours. You can never be certain with those things.”

“You’ve done all you can. Except the last thing. Take off those outside bandages and those damned splints, will you?”

He looked nervously at the door. “If someone comes——”

“We’ve been all through that,” I said impatiently. “Even by taking a chance and losing, we’ll be no worse off than we were before. Take them off.”

Marston fetched a chair to give himself steadier support, sat down, eased the point of his scissors under the bandages holding the splints in place and sliced through them with half a dozen swift clean cuts. The bandages fell away, the splints came loose and the door opened. Half a dozen long strides and Tony Carreras was by my bedside, staring down thoughtfully. He looked even paler than the last time I’d seen him.

“The good healer on the night shift, eh? Having a little patient trouble, Doctor?”

“Trouble?” I said hoarsely. I’d my eyes screwed half shut, lips compressed, fists lying on the coverlet tightly clenched. Carter in agony. I hoped wasn’t overdoing it. “Is your father mad, Carreras?” I closed my eyes completely and stifled—nearly—a moan as the Campari lurched forward and down into an abnormally deep trough with a shuddering, jarring impact that all but threw Carreras off his feet. Even through closed doors, even above the eldritch howl of the wind and the lash of the gale-driven rain, the sound of the impact was like gunfire, and not distant gunfire at that. “Does he want to kill us all? Why in God’s name can’t he slow down?”

“Mr. Carter is in very great pain,” Doc Marston said quietly. Whatever his faults as a doctor, he was fast at catching on, and when you looked into those steady wise blue eyes beneath the magnificent mane of white hair, it was impossible not to believe him. “Agony would be a better word. He has, as you know, a compound fracture of the femur.” With delicate fingers he touched the bloodstained bandages that had been concealed by the splints so that Carreras could see just how compound it was. “Every time the ship moves violently, the broken ends of the bone grind together. You can imagine what it’s like—no, I doubt if you can. I am trying to rearrange and tighten the splints so as to immobilise the leg completely. Difficult job for one man in those conditions. Care to give me a hand?”

In one second flat I revised my estimate of Marston’s shrewdness. No doubt he’d just been trying to allay any suspicions that Carreras might have had but he couldn’t have thought up a worse way. Not, that is, if Carreras offered his help, for the chances were that if he did delay to help he’d find the sentry snoring in the passageway outside when he left.

“Sorry.” Beethoven never sounded half as sweet as the music of that single word from Carreras. “Can’t wait. Captain Carreras making his rounds and all that. That’s what Miss Beresford is here for anyway. Failing all else, just shoot him full of morphia.” Five seconds later he was gone.

Marston raised an eyebrow.

“Less affable than of yore, John, you would say. A shade lacking in sympathy he so often professes?”

“He’s worried,” I said. “He’s also a little frightened and perhaps, heaven be praised, even more than a little sea-sick. But still very tough for all that. Susan, go collect the sentry’s cup and see if friend Carreras has really gone.”

She was back in fifteen seconds.

“He’s gone. The coast is clear.”

I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood up. A moment later I had fallen heavily to the floor, my head just missing the iron foot of MacDonald’s bed. Four things were responsible for this: the sudden lurch of the deck as the Campari had fallen into a trough, the stiffness of both legs, the seeming paralysis of my left leg and the pain that had gone through my thigh like a flame as soon as my foot had touched the deck.

Hands gripping the bo’sun’s bed, I dragged myself to my feet and tried again. Marston had me by the right arm and I needed all the support I could get. I made it to my own bed and sat down heavily. MacDonald’s face was expressionless. Susan looked as if she were about to cry. For some obscure reason that made me feel better. I lurched to my feet like an opening jack-knife, caught hold of the foot of my own bed and had another go.

It was no good. I wasn’t made of iron. The lurching of the Campari I could cope with and the first stiffness was slowly beginning to disappear. Even that frightening weakness in my left leg I could in some measure ignore. I could always hop along. But that pain I couldn’t ignore. I wasn’t made of iron, I have a nervous system for transmitting pain just like anyone else’s and mine was operating in top gear at the moment. Even the pain I believe I could have coped with: but every time I set my left foot on the deck the shooting agony in my left thigh left me dizzy and light-headed, barely conscious. A few steps on that leg and I just wouldn’t be conscious at all. I supposed vaguely it must have had something to do with all the blood I had lost. I sat down again.

“Get back into bed,” Marston ordered. “This is madness. You’re going to have to lie on your back for at least the next week.”

“Good old Tony Carreras,” I said. I was feeling a bit lightheaded, and that’s a fact. “Clever lad, Tony. He’d the right idea. Your hypodermic, Doctor. Pain-killer for the thigh. Shoot me full of it. You know, the way a football player with a gammy leg gets an injection before a game.”

“No football player ever went out on a field with three bullet holes through his leg,” Marston said grimly.

“Don’t do it, Dr. Marston,” Susan said urgently. “Please don’t do it. He’ll surely kill himself.”

“Bo’sun?” Marston queried.

“Give it to him, sir,” the bo’sun said quietly. “Mr. Carter knows best.”

“Mr. Carter knows best,” Susan mimicked furiously. She crossed to the bo’sun and stared down at him. “It’s easy for you to lie there and say he knows best. You don’t have to go out there and get killed, to be shot down or die from the loss of blood.”

“Not me, miss.” The bo’sun smiled up at her. “You won’t catch me taking risks like that.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. MacDonald.” She sat down wearily on his bedside. “I’m so ashamed. I know that if your leg wasn’t smashed up—but look at him! He can’t even stand, far less walk. He’ll kill himself, I tell you, kill himself!”

“Perhaps he will. But then he will only be anticipating by about two days, Miss Beresford,” MacDonald said quietly. “I know. Mr. Carter knows. We both know that no one on the Campari has very long to live—not unless someone can do something. You don’t think, Miss Beresford,” he went on heavily, “that Mr. Carter is doing this just for the exercise?”

Marston looked at me, face slowly tightening. “You and the bosun have been talking? Talking about something I know nothing about?”

“I’ll tell you when I come back.”

“If you come back.” He went to his dispensary, came back with a hypodermic and injected some pale fluid. “Against all my instincts, this. It’ll ease the pain, no doubt about that, but it will also permit you to overstrain your leg and cause permanent damage.”

“Not half as permanent as being dead.” I hopped across into the dispensary, pulled old man Beresford’s suit out from the pile of folded blankets Susan had fetched and dressed as quickly as my bad leg and the pitching of the Campari would allow. I was just turning up the collar and tying the lapels together with a safety pin when Susan came in. She said, abnormally calm: “It suits you very well. Jacket’s a bit tight, though.”

“It’s a damn’ sight better than parading about the upper deck in the middle of the night wearing a white uniform. Where’s this black dress you spoke of?”

“Here.” She pulled it out from the bottom blanket.

“Thanks.” I looked at the label. Balenciaga. Should make a fair enough mask. I caught the hem of the dress between my hands, glanced at her, saw the nod and ripped, a dollar a stitch. I tore out a rough square, folded it in a triangle and tied it round my face, just below the level of my eyes. Another few rips, another square and I had a knotted cloth covering head and forehead until only my eyes showed. The pale glimmer of my hands I could always conceal.

“Nothing is going to stop you, then?” she said steadily.

“I wouldn’t say that.” I eased a little weight on to my left leg, used my imagination and told myself that it was going numb already. “Lots of things can stop me. Any one of forty-two men, all armed with guns and sub-machine-guns, can stop me. If they see me.”

She looked at the ruins of the Balenciaga. “Tear off a piece for me while you’re at it.”

“For you?” I looked at her. She was as pale as I felt. “What for?”

“I’m coming with you.” She gestured at her clothes, the navy-blue sweater and slacks. “It wasn’t hard to guess what you wanted Daddy’s suit for. You don’t think I changed into those for nothing?”

“I don’t suppose so.” I tore off another piece of cloth. “Here you are.”

“Well.” She stood there with the cloth in her hand. “Well. Just like that, eh?”

“It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

She gave me a slow, old-fashioned, up-from-under, shook her head and tied on the cloth. I hobbled to the sick-bay, Susan following.

“Where’s Miss Beresford going?” Marston demanded sharply. “Why is she wearing that hood?”

“She’s coming with me,” I said. “So she says.”

“Going with you? And you’d let her?” He was horrified. “She’ll get herself killed.”

“It’s likely enough,” I agreed. Something, probably the anæsthetic, was having a strange effect on my head: I felt enormously detached and very calm. “But, as the bo’sun says, what’s a couple of days early? I need another pair of eyes, somebody who can move quickly and lightly to reconnoitre, above all a lookout. Let’s have one of your torches, Doctor.”

“I object. I strongly protest against——”

“Get him the torch,” Susan interrupted.

He stared at her, hesitated, sighed and turned away. MacDonald beckoned me.

“Sorry I can’t be with you, sir, but this is the next best thing.” He pressed a seaman’s knife into my hand, wide-hinged blade on one side, shackle-locking marline-spike on the other: the marline came to a needle point. “If you have to use it hit upwards with the spike, the blade under in your hand.”

“Take your word for it any time.” I hefted the knife, saw Susan staring at it, her green eyes wide.

“You—you would use that thing?”

“Stay behind if you like. The torch, Dr. Marston.”

I pocketed the flash, kept the knife in my hand and passed through the surgery door. I didn’t let it swing behind me, I knew Susan would be there.

The sentry, sitting wedged into a corner of the passage, was asleep. His automatic carbine was across his knees. It was an awful temptation, but I let it go. A sleeping sentry would call for a few curses and kicks: but a sleeping sentry without his gun would start an all-out search of the ship.

It took me two minutes to climb up two companionways to the level of “A” deck. Nice wide flat companionways, but it took me two minutes. My left leg was very stiff, very weak and didn’t respond at all to auto-suggestion when I kept telling myself it was getting less painful by the minute: besides, the Campari was pitching so violently now that it would have been a full-time job for a fit person to climb upwards without being flung off.

Pitching. The Campari was pitching, but with a now even more exaggerated cork-screw motion, great sheets of flying water breaking over the bows and being hurled back against the superstructure. At some hundreds of miles from the centre of a hurricane—and I didn’t need any barometers or weather forecasts to tell me what was in the offing—it is the outspreading swell that indicates the direction of the centre: but closer in, and we were getting far too close for comfort, it is the wind direction that locates the centre. We were heading roughly 20 degrees east of north, and the wind blowing from dead ahead. That meant the hurricane was roughly to the east of us, with a little southing, still keeping pace with us, travelling roughly north-west, a more northerly course than was usual: and the Campari and the hurricane were on more of a collision course than ever. The strength of the wind I estimated at force eight or nine on the old Beaufort scale: that made the centre of the storm less than a hundred miles away. If Carreras kept on his present course at his present speed, everybody’s troubles, his as well as ours, would soon be over.

At the top of the second companion way I stood still for a few moments to steady myself, took Susan’s arm for support, then lurched aft in the direction of the drawing-room, twenty feet away. I’d hardly starting lurching when I stopped. Something was wrong.

Even in my fuzzy state it didn’t take long to find out what was wrong. On a normal night at sea, the Campari was like an illuminating Christmas tree: tonight, every deck light was off. Another example of Carreras taking no chances, although this was an unnecessary and exaggerated example. Sure he didn’t want anyone to see him, but in a black gale like this no one would have seen him anyway, even had any vessel been heading on the same course, which was hardly possible unless its master had taken leave of his senses. But it suited me well enough. We staggered on, making no attempt to be silent. With the shriek of the wind, the thunderous drumming of the torrential rain and the repeated pistol-shot explosions as the rearing Campari’s bows kept smashing into the heavy rolling combers ahead no-one could have heard us a couple of feet away.

The smashed windows of the drawing-room had been roughly boarded up. Careful not to cut a jugular or put an eye out on one of the jagged splinters of glass, I pressed my face close to the boards and peered through one of the cracks.

The curtains were drawn inside, but with the gale whistling through the gaps between the boards they were blowing and flapping wildly almost all the time. One minute there and I’d seen all I wanted to see and it didn’t help me at all. The passengers were all hearded together at one end of the room, most of them huddled down on close-packed mattresses, a few sitting with their backs to the bulkhead. A more miserably sea-sick collection of millionaires I had never seen in my life: their complexions ranged from a faintly greenish shade to a dead white pallor. They were suffering all right. In the corner I saw some stewards, cooks and engineer officers, including McIlroy, with Cummings beside him: seaman’s branch apart, it looked as if every off-duty man was imprisoned there with the passengers. Carreras was economising on his guards: I could see only two of them, hard-faced, unshaven characters with a tommy-gun apiece. For a moment I had the idea of bursting in the door and rushing them: but only for a moment. Armed with only a clasp-knife and with a top speed of about that of a fairly active tortoise, I wouldn’t have got a yard.

Two minutes later we were outside the wireless office. No one had challenged us, no one had seen us, the decks were entirely deserted. It was a night for deserted decks.

The wireless office was in darkness. I pressed one ear to the metal of the door, closed a hand over the other ear to shut out the clamour of the storm and listened as hard as I could. Nothing. I placed a gentle hand on the knob, turned and pushed. The door didn’t budge a fraction of an inch. I eased my hand off that door-knob with all the wary caution and thistledown delicacy of a man withdrawing the Koh-i-noor from a basket of sleeping cobras.

“What’s the matter?” Susan asked. “Is——”

That was as far as she got before my hand closed over her mouth, not gently. We were fifteen feet away from that door before I took my hand away.

“What is it? What is it?” Her low whisper had a shake in it, she didn’t know whether to be scared or angry or both.

“The door was locked.”

“Why shouldn’t it be? Why should they keep watch——”

“That door is locked by a padlock. From the outside. We put a new one on there yesterday morning. It’s no longer there. Somebody has shut the catch on the inside.” I didn’t know how much of this she was getting: the roar of the sea, the drumfire of the rain, the wind rushing in from the darkness of the north and playing its high-pitched threnody in the rigging seemed to drown out and snatch away the words even as I spoke them. I pulled her into what pitiful shelter was offered by a ventilator and her next words showed that she had indeed heard and understood most of what I had said.

“They have left a sentry? Just in case anyone tried to break in? How could anyone break in? We’re all under guard and lock and key.”

“It’s as Carreras Junior says—his old man never takes a chance.” I hesitated, then, because I didn’t know what else to say. I went on: “I’ve no right to do this. But I must. I’m desperate. I want you to be a stalking horse—help get that character out of there.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Good girl.” I squeezed her arm. “Knock at the door. Pull that hood off and show yourself at the window. He’ll almost certainly switch on a light or flash a torch, and when he sees it’s a girl—well, he’ll be astonished, but not scared. He’ll want to investigate.”

“And then you—you——”

“That’s it.”

“With only a clasp-knife.” The tremor in the voice was unmistakable. “You’re very sure of yourself.”

“I’m not sure at all. But if we don’t make a move until we’re certain of success we might as well jump over the side now. Ready?”

“What are you going to do? Once you get inside?” She was scared, and stalling. Not that I was happy myself.

“Send an SOS on the distress frequency. Warn every vessel within listening range that the Campari has been seized by force and is intending to intercept a bullion-carrying vessel at such and such a spot. Within a few hours everyone in North America will know the situation. That’ll get action all right.”

“Yes.” A long pause. “That’ll get action. The first action it will get is that Carreras will discover that his guard is missing—and where had you thought of hiding him?”

“In the Atlantic.”

She shivered briefly, then said obliquely: “I think perhaps Carreras knows you better than I do … The guard’s missing. They’ll know it must be one of the crew responsible. They’ll soon find out that the only guard keeping an eye on the crew who wasn’t awake all the time is the boy outside the sick-bay.” She was silent for a moment, then went on so softly that I could hardly hear her above the storm: “I can just see Carreras ripping those bandages off your leg and finding out that your thigh is not broken. You know what will happen then?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me.” She said the words calmly, matter-of-factly, as if they were of no particular significance. “Another thing. You said everybody would know the set-up within a few hours. The two radio operators Carreras has planted on the Ticonderoga will know immediately. They will immediately radio the news back to the Campari, to Carreras.”

“After I’m finished in the wireless office no one will ever be able to send or receive on that set again.”

“All right. So you’ll smash it up. That itself would be enough to let Carreras know what you’ve done. And you can’t smash up every radio receiver on the Campari. You can’t for instance, get near the ones in the drawing-room. Everybody will know, you say. That means that the generalissimo and his government will know also: and then all the stations on the island will do nothing but keep up a non-stop broadcast of news. Carreras is bound to hear it.”

I said nothing. I thought vaguely that I must have lost a great deal of blood. Her mind was working about ten times as quickly and clearly as mine. Not that that made her very smart.

She went on: “You and the bo’sun seem very sure that Carreras won’t let us—the passengers and crew—live. Perhaps you think it’s because he can’t have any witnesses, that whatever advantage the generalissimo gained from getting this money would be offset over and over again by the world wide reaction against him if the world knew what he had done. Perhaps——”

“Reaction!” I said. “Reaction! He’d find the American and British navies and air forces on his doorstep the following morning and that would be the end of the generalissimo. Not even Russia would raise a hand to help him, they wouldn’t as much as rattle a rocket. Of course he can’t afford to let anyone know. He’d be finished.”

“In fact, he couldn’t even afford to let anyone know he’d made the attempt? So, as soon as Carreras picks up the news of your SOS, he gets rid of all the witnesses—permanently—sheers off, trans-ships to this other vessel that’s waiting and that’s that.”

I stood there saying nothing. My mind felt dull and heavy and tired, my body even more so. I tried to tell myself it was just the drug Marston had pumped into me, but it wasn’t that, I knew it wasn’t that, the sense of defeat is the most powerful opiate of all. I said, hardly knowing what I was saying: “Well, at least we would have saved the gold.”

“The gold!” You had to be a multi-millionaire’s daughter before you could put all that scorn into your voice when you mentioned the word “gold.” “Who cares a fig for all the gold in the world? What’s gold compared to your life and my life, my mother’s and father’s and the lives of everyone on the Campari? How much money did Carreras say the Fort Ticonderoga was carrying?”

“You heard him. A hundred and fifty million dollars.”

“A hundred and fifty million! Daddy could raise that in a week and still have as much again left.”

“Lucky Daddy,” I muttered. Light-headed, that’s what I was getting.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing. Nothing. It all seemed such a good idea when MacDonald and I worked it out, Susan.”

“I’m sorry.” She caught my right hand in both of hers and held it tight. “I’m truly sorry, Johnny.”

“Where did you get this ‘Johnny’ business from?” I mumbled.

“I like it. What’s good enough for Captain Bullen—your hands are like ice;” she exclaimed softly. “And you’re shivering.” Gentle fingers pushed up under my hood. “And your forehead is burning. Running a temperature and fever. You’re not well, oh, you’re not well. Come on back down to the sick-bay, Johnny. Please.”

“No.”

“Please!”

“Don’t nag at me, woman.” I pushed myself wearily off the ventilator. “Come on.”

“Where are you going?” She was quickly beside me, her arm in mine, and I was glad to hang on.

“Cerdan. Our mysterious friend Mr. Cerdan. Do you realise that we know practically nothing about Mr. Cerdan—except that he seems to be the one who lies back and lets the others do all the work? Carreras and Cerdan—they seem to be the king-pins and maybe Carreras isn’t the boss after all. But I do know this: if I could get a knife sticking into the throat or a gun jabbing into the back of either of those men I would have a big card to play in this game.”

“Come on, Johnny,” she pleaded. “Come on down below.”

“All right, so I’m loopy. But it’s still true. If I could shove either of those men into the drawing-room ahead of me and threaten the two guards with his death if they don’t drop their guns, I rather think they would. With two machine-guns and all the men in there to help I could do a lot on a night like this. I’m not crazy, Susan, just desperate, like I said.”

“You can hardly stand.” There was a note of desperation in her voice now.

“That’s why you’re here. To hold me up. Carreras is out of the question. He’ll be on the bridge and that’ll be the most heavily-guarded place on the ship, because it’s the most important place.” I winced and shrank back into a corner as a great blue-white jagged streak of forked lightning, almost directly overhead, flickered and stabbed through the black wall of cumulonimbus clouds and the driving rain, momentarily illuminating every detail of the Campari’s decks in its blinding glare. The curiously flat explosive clap of thunder was muffled, lost in the teeth of the gale.

“That helps,” I muttered. “Thunder, lightning, a tropical rainstorm and moving into the heart of a hurricane. King Lear should have seen this little lot. He’d never have complained of his blasted heath again.”

“Macbeth,” she said. “That was Macbeth.”

“Oh, hell,” I said. She was getting as nutty as I was. I took her arm or she took mine, I forget which. “Come on. We’re too exposed here.”

A minute later we were down on “A” deck, crouched against a bulkhead. I said: “Finesse will get us nowhere. I’m going into the central passageway, straight into Cerdan’s cabin. I’ll stick my hand in my pocket, pretend I have a gun. Stay at the entrance to the passageway, warn me if anyone comes.”

“He’s not in,” she said. We were standing at the starboard for’ard end of the accommodation, just outside Cerdan’s sleeping cabin. “He’s not at home. There’s no light on.”

“The curtains will be drawn,” I said impatiently. “The ship’s fully darkened. I’ll bet Carreras hasn’t even got the navigation lights on.” We shrank against the bulkhead as another lightning flash reached down from the darkened clouds, seemed almost to dance on the tip of the Campari’s mast. “I won’t be long.”

“Wait!” She held me with both hands. “The curtain’s aren’t drawn. That flash—I could see everything inside the cabin.”

“You could see——” for some reason I’d lowered my voice almost to a whisper. “Anyone inside?”

“I couldn’t see all the inside. It was just for a second.”

I straightened, pressed my face hard against the window, and stared inside. The darkness in the cabin was absolute—absolute, that is, until another forked finger of lightning lit up the entire upperworks of the Campari once more. Momentarily, I saw my own hooded face and staring eyes reflected back at me in the glass, then exclaimed involuntarily for I had seen something else again.

“What is it?” Susan demanded huskily. “What’s wrong?”

“This is wrong.” I fished out Marston’s torch, hooded it with my hand and shone it downwards through the glass.

The bed was up against the bulkhead, almost exactly beneath the window. Cerdan was lying on the bed, clothed and awake, his eyes staring up as if hypnotised by the beam of the torch. Wide eyes, staring eyes. His white hair was not just where his white hair had been, it had slipped back, revealing his own hair beneath. Black hair, jet black hair, with a startling streak of iron-grey almost exactly in the middle. Black hair with an iron-grey streak? Where had I seen somebody with hair like that? When had I ever heard of somebody with hair like that? All of a sudden, I knew it was “when” not “where”: I knew the answer. I switched off the light.

“Cerdan!” There was shock and disbelief and utter lack of comprehension in Susan’s voice. “Cerdan! Bound hand and foot and tied to his bed so that he can’t move an inch. Cerdan! But—no, no!” She was ready to give up. “Oh, Johnny, what does it all mean?”

“I know what it all means.” No question now but that I knew what it all meant, and I wished to heaven I didn’t. I’d only thought I’d been afraid before, the time I had only been guessing. But the time for guessing was past, oh, my God, it was past. I knew the truth now and the truth was worse than I had ever dreamed. I fought down the rising panic and said steadily through dry lips: “Have you ever robbed a grave, Susan?”

“Have I ever——” She broke off and when her voice came again there were tears in it. “We’re both worn out, Johnny. Let’s get down below. I want to go back to the sick-bay.”

“I have news for you, Susan. I’m not mad. But I’m not joking. And I hope to God that grave’s not empty.” I caught her arm to lead her away, and as I did the lightning flashed again and her eyes were wild and full of fear. I wondered what mine looked like to her.

IX.

Thursday 10 p.m.–Midnight

What with the darkness, my bad leg, the intermittent lightning, the wild rearing, wave-top staggering and plunging of the Campari and the need to use the greatest caution all the way, it took us a good fifteen minutes to reach number four hold, far back on the after-deck. And when we got there, pulled back the tarpaulin, loosened a couple of battens and peered down into the near Stygian depths of the hold, I wasn’t at all sure that I was glad we had come.

Along with several tools, I’d filched an electric lantern from the bo’sun’s store on the way there, and though it didn’t give off much of a light it gave off enough to let me see that the floor of the hold was a shambles. I’d secured for sea after leaving Carracio, but I hadn’t secured for a near-hurricane, for the excellent reason that whenever the weather was bad the Campari had invariably run in the other direction.

But now Carreras had taken us in the wrong direction and he either hadn’t bothered or forgotten to secure for the worsening weather conditions. Forgotten, almost certainly: for number four hold presented a threat, to say the least, to the lives of everybody aboard, Carreras and his men included. At least a dozen heavy crates, the weight of one or two of which could be measured in tons, had broken loose and were sliding and lurching across the floor of the hold with every cork-screwing pitch of the Campari, alternatively crashing into the secured cargo aft or the bulkhead for’ard. My guess was that this wasn’t doing the for’ard bulkhead any good: and just let the motion of the Campari change from pitching to rolling, especially as we neared the centre of the hurricane, and the massive deadweights of those sliding crates would begin to assault the sides of the ship. Buckled plates, torn rivets and a leak that couldn’t be repaired would only be a matter of time.

To make matters worse, Carreras’s men hadn’t bothered to remove the broken splintered sides of the wooden crates in which they and the guns had been slung aboard: they, too, were sliding about the floor with every movement of the ship, being continually smashed and becoming progressively smaller in size as they were crushed between the sliding crates and bulkheads, pillars and fixed cargo. Not the least frightening part of it was the din, the almost continuous goose-pimpling metallic screech as iron-banded cases slid over steel decks, a high-pitched grating scream that set your teeth on edge, a scream that invariably ended, predictably yet always unexpectedly, in a jarring crash that shook the entire hold as the crates brought up against something solid. And every sound in that echoing, reverberating, emptily cavernous hold was magnified ten times. All in all, the floor of that hold wasn’t the place I would have chosen for an afternoon nap.

I gave the electric lantern to Susan, after shining it on a vertical steel ladder tapering down into the depths of the hold.

“Down you go,” I said. “For heaven’s sake, hang on to that ladder. There’s a baffle about three feet high at the bottom of it. Get behind it. You should be safe there.”

I watched her climb slowly down, manœuvred two of the battens back into place over my head—no easy job with one hand—and left them like that. Maybe they would be jarred loose, they might even fall down into the hold. It was a chance I had to take, they could only be secured from above, and the covering tarpaulin could also only be secured from above. There was nothing I could do about that either. If anyone was crazy enough to be out on deck that night—especially as Carreras had no lifelines rigged—the chances were in that blinding storm that they wouldn’t even notice the flapping corner of the tarpaulin or, if they did, they would only either pass it by or at the most secure it. If someone was curious enough to go to the length of pushing back a batten—well, there was no point in worrying about that.

I went down the hatch slowly, awkwardly, painfully—Marston had a higher opinion of his anæsthetics than I had—and joined Susan on the floor behind the baffle. At this level the noise was redoubled, the sight of those head-high behemoths of crates charging across the hold more terrifying than ever. Susan said: “The coffins. Where are they?” All I had told her was that I wanted to examine some coffins: I couldn’t bring myself to tell her what we might find in them.

“They’re boxed. In wooden crates. On the other side of the hold.”

“The other side!” She twisted her head, lined up the lantern and looked at the sliding wreckage and crates screeching and tearing their way across the floor. “The other side! We would—we would be killed before we got halfway there.”

“Like enough, but I can’t see anything else for it. Hold on a minute, will you?”

“You! With your leg! You can’t even hobble. Oh, no!” Before I could stop her she was over the baffle and half running, half staggering across the hold, tripping and stumbling as the ship lurched and her feet caught on broken planks of wood, but always managing to regain balance, to stop suddenly or dodge nimbly as a crate slid her away. She was agile, I had to admit, and quick on her feet: but she was exhausted with sea-sickness, with bracing herself for the past hours against the constant violent lurching of the Campari: she’d never make it.

But make it she did, and I could see her on the other side flashing her torch around. My admiration for her spirit was equalled only by my exasperation at her actions. What was she going to do with those boxed coffins when she found them: carry them back across the floor, one under each arm.

But they weren’t there, for after she had looked everywhere she shook her head. And then she was coming back and I was shouting out a warning, but the warning stuck in my throat and was only a whisper and she wouldn’t have heard it anyway. A plunging, careening crate, propelled by a sudden viscious lurch as the Campari plunged headlong into an exceptional trough, caught her back and shoulder and pitched her to the floor, pushing her along before its massive weight as if it were imbued with an almost human—or inhuman—quality of evil and malignance and determined to crush the life out of her against the for’ard bulkhead. And then, in the last second before she would have died, the Campari straightened, the crate screeched to a halt less than a yard from the bulkhead and Susan was lying there between crate and bulkhead, very still. I must have been at least fifteen feet away from her but I have no recollection of covering the distance from the baffle to where she lay and then back again, but I must have done for suddenly we were there in the place of safety and she was clinging to me as if I were the last hope left in the world.

“Susan!” My voice was hoarse, a voice belonging to someone else altogether. “Susan, are you hurt?”

She clung even closer. By some miracle she still held the lantern clutched in her right hand. It was round the back of my neck somewhere but the reflected beam from the ship’s side gave enough light to see by.… Her mask had been torn off, her face was scratched and bleeding, her hair a bedraggled mess, her clothes soaked and her heart going like a captive bird’s. For an incongruous moment an unbidden recollection touched my mind, a recollection of a very cool, very poised, sweetly-malicious, pseudo-solicitous young lady asking me about cocktails only two days ago in Carracio, but the vision faded as soon as it had come, the incongruity was too much.

“Susan!” I said urgently. “Are you——”

“I’m not hurt.” She gave a long tremendous sigh that was more shudder than sigh. “I was just too scared to move.” She eased her grip a trifle, looked at me with green eyes enormous in the pallor of her face, then buried her face in my shoulder. I thought she was going to choke me.

It didn’t last long, fortunately. I felt the grip slowly easing, saw the beam of the lantern shifting, and she was saying in an abnormally matter-of-fact voice: “There they are.”

I turned round and there, not ten feet away, they were indeed. Three coffins—Carreras had already removed the cases—and securely stowed between baffle and bulkhead and padded with tarpaulins, so that they could come to no harm. As Tony Carreras kept on repeating, his old man didn’t miss much. Dark shiny coffins with black-braided ropes and brass handles: one of them had an inlet plaque on the lid, copper or brass, I couldn’t be sure.

“That saves me some trouble.” My voice was almost back to normal. I took the hammer and chisel I’d borrowed from the bosun’s store and let them drop. “This screwdriver will be all I need. We’ll find two of those with what’s normally inside them. Give me the lantern and stay there. I’ll be as quick as I can.”

“You’ll be quicker if I hold the lantern,” Her voice matched my own in steadiness but the pulse in her throat was going like a trip-hammer. “Hurry, please.”

I was in no way to argue. I caught the foot of the nearest coffin and pulled it towards me so that I could have room to work. It was jammed. I slid my hand under the end to lift it and suddenly my finger found a hole in the bottom of the coffin. And then another. And a third. A lead-lined coffin with holes bored in the bottom of it. That was curious, to say the least.

When I’d moved it far enough out, I started on the screws. They were brass and very heavy, but so was the screwdriver I’d taken from MacDonald’s store. And at the back of my mind was the thought that if the knock-out drops Dr Marston had provided for the sentry were in any way ineffective as the anæsthetic he had given me, then the sentry would be waking up any minute now. If he hadn’t already come to. I had that coffin lid off in no time at all.

Beneath the lid was not the satin shroud or silks I would have expected, but a filthy old blanket. In the generalissimo’s country, perhaps, their customs with coffins were different from ours. I pulled of the blanket and found I was right. Their customs were on occasion, different. The corpse, in this case consisted of blocks of amatol—each block was clearly marked with the word, so there was no mistake about it—a primer, a small case of detonators and a compact square box with wires leading from it, a timing device probably.

Susan was peering over my shoulder. “What’s amatol?”

“High explosive. Enough here to blow the Campari apart.”

She asked nothing else. I replaced the blanket, screwed on the lid and started on the next coffin. This too, had holes in the under side, probably to prevent the explosive sweating. I removed the lid, looked at the contents and replaced the lid. Number two was a duplicate of number one. And then I started on the third one. The one with the plaque. This would be the one. The plaque was heart-shaped and read with impressive simplicity: “Richard Hoskins. Senator.” Just that. Senator of what I didn’t know. But impressive. Impressive enough to ensure its reverent transportation to the United States. I removed the lid with care, gentleness and as much respectful reverence as if Richard Hoskins actually were inside, which I knew he wasn’t.

Whatever lay inside was covered with a rug. I lifted the rug gingerly, Susan brought the lantern nearer, and there it lay, cushioned in blankets and cotton wool. A polished aluminium cylinder, 75 inches in length, 11 inches in diameter, with a whitish pyroceram nose-cap. Just lying there, there was something frightening about it, something unutterably evil: but perhaps that was just because of what was in my own mind.

“What is it?” Susan’s voice was so low that she had to come closer to repeat the words. “Oh, Johnny, what in the world is it?”

“The Twister.”

“The—the what?”

“The Twister.”

“Oh, dear God!” She had it now. “This—this atomic device that was stolen in South Carolina. The Twister.” She rose unsteadily to her feet and backed away. “The Twister!”

“It won’t bite you,” I said. I didn’t feel too sure about that either. “The equivalent of five thousand tons of TNT. Guaranteed to blast any ship on earth into smithereens, if not actually vapories. And that’s just what Carreras intends to do.”

“I—I don’t understand.” Maybe she was referring to the actual hearing of the words—our talk was continually being punctuated by the screeching of metal and the sounds of wood being crushed and snapped—or to the meaning of what I was saying. “You—when he gets the gold from the Ticonderoga and trans-ships it to this vessel he has standing by, he’s going to blow up the Campari—with this?”

“There is no ship standing by. There never was. When he’s loaded the gold aboard, the kind-hearted Miguel Carreras is going to free all the passengers and crew of the Campari and let them sail off in the Fort Ticonderoga. As a further mark of his sentimentality and kindness he’s going to ask Senator Hoskins here and his two presumably illustrious companions to be taken back for burial in their native land. The captain of the Ticonderoga would never dream of refusing—and, if it came to the bit, Carreras would make certain that he damn’ well didn’t refuse. See that?” I pointed to a panel near the tail of the Twister.

“Don’t touch it!” If you can imagine anyone screaming in a whisper, then that’s what she did.

“I wouldn’t touch it for all the money in the Ticonderoga,” I assured her fervently. “I’m even scared to look at the damn’ thing. Anyway, that panel is almost certainly a timing device which will be pre-set before the coffin is trans-shipped. We sail merrily on our way, hell-bent for Norfolk, the Army, Navy, Air Force, FBI and what have you—for Carreras’s radio stooges aboard the Ticonderoga will make good and certain that the radios will be smashed and we’ll have no means of sending a message. Half an hour, an hour after leaving the Campari—an hour, at least, I should think, even Carreras wouldn’t want to be within miles of an atomic device going up—well, it would be quite a bang.”

“He’ll never do it—never.” The emphatic voice didn’t carry the slightest shred of conviction. “The man must be a fiend.”

“Grade one,” I agreed. “And don’t talk rubbish about his not doing it. Why do you think they stole the Twister and made it appear as if Dr. Slingsby Caroline had lit out with it?

“From the very beginning it was with the one and only purpose of blowing the Fort Ticonderoga to kingdom come. So that there would be no possibility of any come-back, everything hinged on the total destruction of the Ticonderoga and everyone aboard it, including passengers and crew of the Campari. Maybe Carreras’s two fake radio men could have smuggled some explosives aboard—but it would be quite impossible to smuggle enough to ensure complete destruction. Hundreds of tons of high explosives in the magazines of a British battle-cruiser blew up in the last war—but still there were survivors. He couldn’t sink it by gunfire—a couple of shots from a moderately heavy gun and the Campari’s decks would be so buckled that the guns would be useless—and even then there would be bound to be survivors. But with the Twister there will be no chances of survival. None in the world.”

“Carreras’s men,” she said slowly. “They killed the guards in the atomic research establishment.”

“What else? And then forced Dr. Caroline to drive out through the gates with themselves and the Twister in the back. The Twister was probably en route to their island, by air, inside the hour, but someone drove the brake wagon down to Savannah before abandoning it. No doubt to throw suspicion on the Campari, which they knew was leaving Savannah that morning. I’m not sure why, but I would take long odds it was because Carreras, knowing the Campari was bound for the Caribbean, was reasonably sure that she would be searched at her first port of call, giving him his opportunity to introduce his bogus Marconi-man aboard.”

While I had been talking I’d been studying two circular dials inset in the panel on the Twister. Now I spread the rug back in position with all the loving care of a father smoothing out the bedcover over his youngest son and started to screw the coffin lid back in position. For a time Susan watched me in silence, then said wonderingly: “Mr. Cerdan. Dr. Caroline. The same person. It has to be the same person. I remember now. At the time of the disappearance of the Twister it was mentioned that only one or two people so far know how to arm the Twister.”

“He was just as important to their plans as the Twister. Without him, it was useless. Poor old Doc Caroline has had a rough passage, I’m afraid. Not only kidnapped and forced to do as ordered, but knocked about by us also, the only people who could have saved him. Under constant guard by those two thugs disguised as nurses. He bawled me out of his cabin first time I saw him, but only because he knew that his devoted nurse, sitting beside him with her dear little knitting bag on her lap, had a sub-machine-gun inside it.”

“But—but why the wheel-chair? Was it necessary to take such elaborate——”

“Of course it was. They couldn’t have him mingling with the passengers, communicating with them. It helped conceal his unusual height. And it also gave them a perfect reason to keep a non-stop radio watch on incoming messages. He came to your father’s cocktail party because he was told to—the coup was planned for that evening and it suited Carreras to have his two armed nurses there to help in the take-over. Poor old Caroline. That dive he tried to make from his wheel-chair when I showed him the earphones wasn’t made with the intention of getting at me at all: He was trying to get at the nurse with the sub-machine-gun, but Captain Bullen didn’t know that, so he laid him out.” I tightened the last of the screws and said: “Don’t breathe a word of this back in the sick-bay—the old man talks non-stop in his sleep—or anywhere else. Not even to your parents. Come on. That sentry may come to any minute.”

“You—you’re going to leave that thing here?” She stared at me in disbelief. “You must get rid of it—you must!”

“How? Carry it up a vertical ladder over my shoulder. That thing weighs about 350 lb. altogether, including the coffin. And what happens if I do get rid of it? Carreras finds out within hours. Whether or not he finds out or guesses who took it doesn’t matter: what does matter is that he’ll know he can no longer depend on the Twister to get rid of all the inconvenient witnesses on the Campari. What then? My guess is that not one member of the crew or passengers will have more than a few hours to live. He would have to kill us then—no question of trans-shipping us to the Ticonderoga. As for the Ticonderoga, he would have to board it, kill all the crew and open the seacocks. That might take hours and would inconvenience him dangerously, might wreck all his plans. But he would have to do it. The point is that getting rid of the Twister is not going to save any lives at all, all it would accomplish is the certain death of all of us.”

“What are we going to do?” Her voice was strained and shaky, her face a pale blur in the reflected light. “Oh, Johnny, what are we going to do?”

“I’m going back to bed.” Heaven only knew I felt like it. “Then I’ll waste my time trying to figure out how to save Dr. Caroline.”

“Dr. Caroline? I don’t see—why Dr. Caroline?”

“Because he’s number one for the high-jump, as things stand. Long before the rest of us. Because he’s the man who’s going to arm the Twister,” I said patiently. “Do you think they’ll transfer him to the Ticonderoga and let him acquaint the captain with the fact that the coffin he’s taking back to the states contains not Senator Hoskins but an armed and ticking atom bomb?”

“Where’s it all going to end?” There was panic, open panic in her voice now, a near hysteria. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. It’s like some dark nightmare.” She had her hands twisted in my lapels, her face buried in my jacket—well, anyway, her old man’s jacket—and her voice was muffled. “Oh, Johnny, where’s it all going to end?”

“A touching scene, a most touching scene,” a mocking voice said from close behind me. “It all ends here and now. This moment.”

I whirled round, or at least I tried to whirl round, but I couldn’t even do that properly. What with disengaging Susan’s grip, the weakness of my leg, and the lurching of the ship, the sudden turn threw me completely off balance and I stumbled and fell against the ship’s side. A powerful light switched on, blinding me, and in black silhouette against the light I could see the snub barrel of an automatic.

“On your feet, Carter.” There was no mistaking the voice. Tony Carreras’s, no longer pleasant and affable, but cold, hard, vicious, the real Tony Carreras at last. “I want to see you fall when this slug hits you. Clever-clever Carter. Or so you thought. On your feet, I said! Or you’d rather take it lying there? Suit yourself.”

The gun lifted a trifle. The direct no-nonsense type, he didn’t believe in fancy farewell speeches. Shoot them and be done with it. I could believe now that he was his father’s son. My bad leg was under me and I couldn’t get up. I stared into the beam of light, into the black muzzle of the gun. I stopped breathing and tensed myself. Tensing yourself against a .38 fired from a distance of five feet is a great help but I wasn’t feeling very logical at the moment.

“Don’t shoot!” Susan screamed. “Don’t kill him or we’ll all die.”

The torch beam wavered, then steadied again. It steadied on me. And the gun hadn’t shifted any that I could see.

Susan took a couple of steps towards him, but he fended her off, stiff-armed.

“Out of my way, lady.” I’d never in my life heard such concentrated venom and malignance. I’d misjudged young Carreras all right. And her words hadn’t even begun to register on him, so implacable was his intention. I still wasn’t breathing and my mouth was dry as a kiln.

“The Twister!” Her voice was urgent, compelling, desperate. “He armed the Twister!”

“What! What are you saying?” This time she had got through. “The Twister? Armed?” The voice malignant as ever, but I thought I detected overtones of fear.

“Yes, Carreras, armed!” I’d never known before how important lubrication of the throat and mouth was to the human voice, a buzzard with tonsilitis had nothing on my croak. “Armed, Carreras, armed!” The repetition was not for emphasis. I couldn’t think of anything else to say, how to carry this off, how to exploit the few seconds’ grace Susan had brought from me. I shifted the hand that was propping me up, the one in the black shadow behind me, as if to brace myself against the pitching of the Campari. My fingers closed over the handle of the hammer I’d dropped. I wondered bleakly what I was going to do with it. The torch and gun were steady as ever.

“You’re lying, Carter.” The confidence was back in his voice. “God knows how you found out about it, but you’re lying: you don’t know how to arm it.”

That was it: keep him talking, just keep him talking.

“I don’t. But Dr. Slingsby Caroline does.”

That shook him, literally. The torch wavered. But it didn’t waver enough.

“How do you know about Dr. Caroline?” he demanded hoarsely. His voice was almost a shout. “How do you——”

“I was speaking to him tonight,” I said calmly.

“Speaking with him! But—there’s a key to arm this. The only key to arm it. And my father has it.”

“Dr. Caroline has a spare. In his tobacco pouch. You never thought to look, did you, Carreras?” I sneered.

“You’re lying,” he repeated mechanically. Then, more strongly: “Lying, I say, Carter! I saw you tonight. I saw you leave the sick bay—my God, do you think I was so stupid as not to get suspicious when I saw the sentry drinking coffee given him by kind-hearted Carter—locked it up, followed you to the radio office and then down to Caroline’s cabin. But you never went inside, Carter. I lost you then for a few minutes, I admit. But you never went inside.”

“Why didn’t you stop us earlier?”

“Because I wanted to find out what you were up to. I found it.”

“So he’s the person we thought we saw!” I said to Susan. The conviction in my voice astonished even myself. “You poor fool, we noticed something in the shadows and left in a hurry. But we went back, Carreras, oh, yes, we went back. To Dr. Caroline. And we didn’t waste any time talking to him, either. We had a far smarter idea than that. Miss Beresford wasn’t quite accurate. I didn’t arm the Twister. Dr. Caroline himself did that.” I smiled and shifted my eyes from the beam of the torch to a spot behind and to the right of Carreras. “Tell him Doctor.”

Carreras half turned, cursed viciously, swung back. His mind was fast, his reactions faster, he’d hardly even begun to fall for the old gag. All he allowed us was a second of time and in that brief moment I hadn’t even got past tightening my grip on the hammer. And now he was going to kill me.

But he couldn’t get his gun lined up. Susan had been waiting for the chance, she sensed I’d been building up towards the chance, she dropped her lantern and flung herself forward even as Carreras started to turn and she had only about three feet to go. Now she was clinging desperately to his gun arm, all her weight on it, forcing it down towards the floor. I twisted myself convulsively forward and that two-pound hammer came arching over my shoulder and flew straight for Carreras’s face with all the power, all the hatred and viciousness that was in me.

He saw it coming. His left hand, still gripping the torch, was raised high to smash down on the unprotected nape of Susan’s neck. He jerked his head sideways, flung out his left arm in instinctive reaction: the hammer caught him just below the left elbow with tremendous force, his torch went flying through the air and the hold was plunged into absolute darkness. Where the hammer went I don’t know: a heavy crate screeched and rumbled across the floor just at that moment and I never heard it land.

The crate ground to a standstill. In the sudden momentary silence I could hear the sound of struggling, of heavy breathing. I was slow in getting to my feet, my left leg was practically useless, but maybe it only seemed slow to me. Fear, when it is strong enough, has the curious effect of slowing up time. And I was afraid. I was afraid for Susan. Carreras, except as the source of menace to her, didn’t exist for me at that moment. Only Susan: he was a big man, a powerful man, he could break her neck with a single wrench, kill her with a single blow.

I heard her cry out, a cry of shock or fear. A moment’s silence, a heavy soft thump as of falling bodies, a scream of agony from Susan, and then that silence again.

They weren’t there. When I reached the spot where they had been struggling, they weren’t there. For a second I stood still in that impenetrable darkness, bewildered, then my hand touched the top of the three-foot baffle and I had it: In their wrestling on that crazily careening deck they’d staggered against the baffle and toppled over on to the floor of the hold. I was over that baffle before I had time to think, before I knew what I was doing: the bo’sun’s knife was in my hand, the needle-pointed marlinespike open, the locking shackle closed.

I stumbled as the weight came on my left leg, fell to my knees, touched someone’s head and hair. Long hair. Susan. I moved away, and had just reached my feet again when he came at me. He came at me. He didn’t back away, try to keep out of my reach in that darkness. He came at me. That meant he’d lost his gun.

We fell to the floor together, clawing, clubbing, kicking. Once, twice, half a dozen times he caught me on the chest, the side of the body, with sledgehammer short-arm jabs that threatened to break my ribs. But I didn’t really feel them. He was a strong man, tremendously strong, but even with all his great strength, even had his left arm not been paralysed and useless, he would have found no escape that night.

I grunted with the numbing shock of it and Carreras shrieked out in agony as the hilt of MacDonald’s knife jarred solidly home against his breast-bone. I wrenched the knife free and struck again. And again. And again. After the fourth blow he didn’t cry out any more.

Carreras died hard. He’d stopped hitting me now, his right arm was locked round my neck, and with every blow I struck the throttling pressure of his arm increased. All the convulsive strength of a man dying in agony was being brought to bear on exactly that spot where I had been so heavily sandbagged. Pain, crippling pain, red-hot barbed lances of fire shot through my back and head, I thought my neck was going to break. I struck again. And then the knife fell from my hand.

When I came to, the blood was pounding dizzily in my ears, my head felt as if it were going to burst, my lungs were heaving and gasping for air that wouldn’t come. I felt as if I were choking, being slowly and surely suffocated.

And then I dimly realised the truth. I was being suffocated, the arm of the dead man, by some freak of muscular contraction, was still locked around my neck. I couldn’t have been out for long, not for more than a minute. With both hands I grasped his arm by the wrist and managed to tear it free from my neck. For thirty seconds, perhaps longer, I lay there stretched out on the floor of the hold, my heart pounding, gasping for breath as waves of weakness and dizziness washed over me, while some faraway insistent voice, as desperately urgent as it was distant, kept saying in this remote corner of my mind, you must get up, you must get up.

And then I had it. I was lying on the floor of the hold and those huge crates were still sliding and crashing around with every heave and stagger of the Campari. And Susan. She was lying there too.

I pushed myself to my knees, fumbled around in my pocket till I found Marston’s pencil flash and switched it on. It still worked. The beam fell on Carreras and I’d time only to notice that the whole shirt-front was soaked with blood before I involuntary turned the torch away, sick and nauseated.

Susan was lying close in to the baffle, half on her side, half on her back. Her eyes were open, dull and glazed with shock and pain, but they were open.

“It’s finished.” I could scarcely recognise the voice as mine. “It’s all over now.” She nodded, and tried to smile.

“You can’t stay here,” I went on. “The other side of the baffle—quick.”

I rose to my feet, caught her under the arms and lifted her. She came easily, lightly, then cried out in agony and went limp on me. But I had her before she could fall, braced myself against the ladder, lifted her over the baffle and laid her down gently on the other side.

In the beam of my torch she lay there on her side, her arms outflung. The left arm, between wrist and elbow, was twisted at an impossible angle. Broken, no doubt of it. Broken. When she and Carreras had toppled over the baffle she must have been underneath: her left arm had taken the combined strain of their falling bodies and the strain had been too much. But there was nothing I could do about it. Not now. I turned my attention to Tony Carreras.

I couldn’t leave him there, I knew I couldn’t leave him there. When Miguel Carreras found out that his son was missing he’d have the Campari searched from end to end I had to get rid of him, but I couldn’t get rid of him in that hold. There was only one place where I could finally, completely and without any fear of re-discovery put the body of Tony Carreras. In the sea.

Tony Carreras must have weighed at least two hundred pounds, that narrow vertical steel ladder was at least thirty feet high, I was weak from loss of blood and sheer physical exhaustion and I’d only one sound leg, so I never even stopped to think about it. If I had, the impossibility of what I had to do would have defeated me even before I had begun.

I hauled him to the ladder, dragged him up to a sitting position against it, hooked my hands under his shoulders and jerked up his dead-weight, inch by inch, until his shoulders and hanging head were on a level with my own, stooped quickly, caught him in a fireman’s lift and started climbing.

For the first time that night, the pitching, corkscrewing Campari was my friend. When the ship plunged into a trough, rolling to starboard at the same time, the ladder would incline away from me as much as fifteen degrees and I’d take a couple of quick steps, hang on grimly as the Campari rolled back and the ladder swung out above me, wait for the return roll and repeat the process. Twice Carreras all but slipped from my shoulder, twice I had to take a quick step down to renew my purchase. I hardly used my left leg at all, my right leg and both arms took all the strain. Above all, my shoulders took the strain, I felt at times as if the muscles would tear, but it wasn’t any worse than the pain in my leg, so I kept on going. I kept on till I reached the top. Another half-dozen rungs and I would have had to let him drop for I don’t think I could ever have made it.

I heaved him over the hatch-coaming, followed, sank down on deck and waited till my pulse rate dropped down to the low hundreds. After the stench of oil and the close stuffiness of that hold, the driving gale-born rain felt and tasted wonderful I cupped the torch in my hand—not that there was more than a very remote chance of anyone being around at that hour, in that weather—and went through his pockets till I found a key tagged “Sick Bay.” Then I caught him by the collar and started for the side of the ship.

A minute later I was down in the bottom of the hold again. I found Tony Carreras’s gun, stuck it in my pocket and looked at Susan. She was still unconscious, which was the best way to be if I had to carry her up that ladder, and I had. With a broken arm she couldn’t have made it alone, and if I waited till she regained consciousness she would be in agony all the way. And she wouldn’t have remained conscious long.

After coping with Carreras’s dead weight, the task of getting Susan Beresford up on deck seemed almost easy. I laid her carefully on the rain-washed decks, replaced the battens and tied the tarpaulin back in place. I was just finishing when I sensed rather than heard her stir.

“Don’t move,” I said quickly. On the upper deck again I had to raise my voice to a shout to make myself heard against the bedlam of the storm. “Your forearm’s broken.”

“Yes.” Matter-of-fact, far too matter-of-fact. “Tony Carreras? Did you leave——”

“That’s all over. I told you that was all over.”

“Where is he?”

“Overboard.”

“Overboard?” The tremor was back in her voice now and I liked it much better than the abnormal calmness. “How did he——”

“I stabbed him God knows how many times,” I said wearily. “Do you think he got up all by himself, climbed the ladder and jumped——Sorry, Susan. I shouldn’t—well, I’m not quite my normal, I guess. Come on. Time old Doc Marston saw that arm.”

I made her cradle the broken forearm in her right hand, helped her to her feet and caught her by her good arm to help steady her on that heaving deck. The blind leading the blind.

When we reached the for’ard break of the well-deck I made her sit in the comparative shelter there while I went into the bo’sun’s store. It took me only a few seconds to find out what I wanted: two coils of nylon rope which I stuck into a canvas bag, and a short length of thicker manilla. I closed the door, left the bag beside Susan, and staggered across the sliding, treacherous decks to the port side and tied the manilla to one of the guard-rail stanchions. I considered knotting the rope, then decided against it. MacDonald, whose idea this was, had been confident that no one, in this wild weather, would notice so small a thing as a knot round the base of a stanchion, and even if it were noticed Carreras’s men would not be seamen enough to investigate and pull it in: but anyone peering over the side and seeing the knots might have become very curious indeed. I made the knot round that stanchion very secure indeed for there was going to depend on it the life of someone who mattered very much to me—myself.

Ten minutes later we were back outside the sick-bay. I need not have worried about the sentry. Head bent low over his chest, he was still far away in another world and showed no signs of leaving it. I wondered how he would feel when he came to. Would he suspect he had been drugged—or would he put any unusual symptoms down to a combination of exhaustion and sea-sickness? I decided I was worrying about nothing, one sure guess I could make and that was that when the sentry awoke he would tell no one about his sleep. Miguel Carreras struck me as the kind of man who might have a very short way indeed with sentries who slept on duty.

I took out the key I’d found on Tony Carreras and unlocked the door. Marston was at his desk, the bo’sun and Bullen were both sitting up in bed. This was the first time I’d seen Bullen conscious since he’d been shot. He was pale and haggard and obviously in considerable pain, but he didn’t look as if he were on his last legs. It took a lot to kill off a man like Bullen.

He gave me a long look that was pretty close to a glare.

“Well, Mister. Where the hell have you been?” Normally, with those words, it would have come out like a rasp, but his lung wound had softened his rasp to a hoarse whisper. If I’d had the strength to grin, I’d have done just that, but I didn’t have the strength: there was hope for the old man yet.

“A minute, sir. Dr. Marston, Miss Beresford has——”

“I can see, I can see. How in the world did you manage” Close to us now, he broke off and peered at me with his short-sighted eyes. “I would say, John, that you’re in the more immediate need of attention.”

“Me? I’m all right.”

“Oh, you are, are you?” He took Susan by her good arm and led her into the dispensary. He said, over his shoulder: “Seen yourself in a mirror recently?”

I looked in a mirror. I could see his point. Balenciagas weren’t blood-proof. The whole of the left side of my head, face and neck was covered in blood that had soaked through hood and mask, matted in thick dark blood and even the rain hadn’t been able to remove: the rain, if anything, had made it look worse than it really was. It must all have come from Tony Carreras’s bloodstained shirt when I’d carried him up the ladder of number four hold.

“It’ll wash off,” I said to Bullen and the bo’sun. “It’s not mine. That’s from Tony Carreras.”

“Carreras?” Bullen stared at me, then looked at MacDonald. In spite of the evidence in front of his eyes, you could see that he thought I’d gone off my rocker. “What do you mean?”

“I mean what I say. Tony Carreras.” I sat heavily on a, chair and gazed down vacantly at my soaking clothes. Maybe Captain Bullen wasn’t so far wrong: I felt an insane desire to laugh. I knew it was a climbing hysteria that came from weakness, from over-exhaustion, from mounting fever, from expending too much emotion in too short a time, and I had to make a physical effort to fight it down. “I killed him tonight down in number four hold.”

“You’re mad,” Bullen said flatly. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Don’t I?” I looked at him, then away again. “Ask Susan Beresford.”

“Mr. Carter’s telling the truth, sir,” MacDonald said quietly. “My knife, sir? Did you bring it back?”

I nodded, rose wearily, hobbled across to MacDonald’s bed and handed him the knife. I’d had no chance to clean it. The bo’sun said nothing, just handed it to Bullen, who stared down at it for long unspeaking moments.

“I’m sorry, my boy,” he said at length. His voice was husky; “Damnably sorry: But we’ve been worried to death.”

I grinned faintly. It was an effort even to do that. “So was I, sir, so was I.”

“All in your own good time,” Bullen said encouragingly.

“I think Mr. Carter should tell us later, sir,” MacDonald suggested. “He’s got to clean himself up, get those wet clothes off and into bed. If anyone comes——”

“Right, Bo’sun, right.” You could see that even so little talk was exhausting him. “Better hurry, my boy.”

“Yes.” I looked vaguely at the bag I’d brought with me. “I’ve got the ropes, Archie.”

“Let me have them, sir.” He took the bag, pulled out the two coils of rope, pulled the pillow from his lower pillowcase, stuffed the ropes inside and placed them under his top pillow. “Good a place as any, sir. If they really start searching, they’re bound to find it anyway. Now if you’d just be dropping this pillow and bag out the window.…”

I did that, stripped, washed, dried myself as best I could and climbed into bed, just as Marston came into the bay.

“She’s all right, John. Simple fracture. All wrapped up and in her blankets and she’ll be asleep in a minute. Sedatives, you know.”

I nodded. “You did a good job tonight, Doctor. Boy outside is still asleep and I hardly felt a thing in my leg.” It was only half a lie and there was no point in hurting his feelings unnecessarily. I glanced down at my leg. “The splints——”

“I’ll fix them right away.”

He fixed them, not more than half killing me in the process, and while he was doing so I told them what had happened. Or part of what happened. I told them the encounter with Tony Carreras was a result of an attempt to spike the gun on the after-deck: with old Bullen talking away non-stop in his sleep, any mention of the Twister would not have been clever at all.

At the end of it all, after a heavy silence, Bullen said hopelessly: “It’s finished. It’s all finished. All that work and suffering for nothing. All for nothing.”

It wasn’t finished, it wasn’t going to be finished ever. Not till either Miguel Carreras or myself was finished. If I were a betting man I’d have staked the last cent of my fortune on Carreras.

I didn’t say that to them. I told them instead of the simple plan I had in mind, an unlikely plan concerned with taking over the bridge at gunpoint. But it wasn’t half as hopeless and desperate as the plan I really had in mind. The one I’d tell Archie MacDonald about later. Again I couldn’t tell the old man, for again the chances were heavy that he would have betrayed it in his half delirious muttering under sedation. I hadn’t even liked to mention Tony Carreras: but the blood had had to be explained away.

When I finished, Bullen said in a hoarse whisper: “I’m still the captain of this ship. I will not permit it. Good God, Mister, look at the weather, look at your condition. I will not allow you to throw your life away. I cannot permit it.”

“Thank you, sir. I know what you mean. But you have to permit it. You must. Because if you don’t …”

“What if someone comes into the sick-bay when you’re not here?” he asked helplessly. He’d accepted the inevitable.

“This.” I produced a gun and tossed it to the bo’sun. “This was Tony Carreras’s. There are still seven shots in the magazine.”

“Thank you, sir,” MacDonald said quietly. “I’ll be very careful with those shots.”

“But yourself, man?” Bullen demanded huskily. “How about yourself?”

“Give me back that knife, Archie,” I said.

X.

Friday 9 a.m.–Saturday 1 a.m.

I slept that night and slept deeply, as deeply, almost, as Tony Carreras: I had neither sedatives nor sleeping pills, exhaustion was the only drug I needed.

Coming awake next morning was a long slow climb from the depths of a bottomless pit. I was climbing in the dark but in the strange way of dreams I wasn’t climbing and it wasn’t dark, some great beast had me in his jaws and was trying to shake the life out of me. A tiger, but no ordinary tiger. A sabre-toothed tiger, the kind that had passed from the surface of the earth a million years ago. So I kept on climbing in the dark and the sabre-toothed tiger kept on shaking me like a terrier shaking a rat and I knew that my only hope was to reach the light above, but I couldn’t see any light. Then, all of a sudden, the light was there, my eyes were open and Miguel Carreras was bending over me and shaking my shoulder with no gentle hand. I would have preferred the sabre-toothed tiger any day.

Marston stood at the other side of the bed, and when he saw I was awake he caught me under the arms and lifted me gently to a sitting position. I did my best to help him but I wasn’t concentrating on it, I was concentrating on the lip-biting and eye-closing so that Carreras couldn’t miss how far through I was. Marston was protesting.

“He shouldn’t be moved, Mr. Carreras, he really shouldn’t be moved. He’s in constant great pain and I repeat that major surgery is essential at the earliest possible moment.” It was about forty years too late now, I supposed, for anyone to point out to Marston that he was a born actor. No question in my mind now but that that was what he should have been: the gain to both the thespian and medical worlds would have been incalculable.

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and smiled wanly. “Why don’t you say it outright, Doctor? Amputation is what you mean.”

He looked at me gravely then went away without saying anything. I looked across at Bullen and MacDonald. Both of them were awake, both of them carefully not looking in my direction. And then I looked at Carreras.

At first glance he looked exactly the same as he had a couple of days ago. At first glance, that was. A second and closer inspection showed the difference: a slight pallor under the tan, a reddening of the eyes, a tightening of the face that had not been there before. He had a chart under his left arm, a slip of paper in his left hand.

“Well,” I sneered. “How’s the big bold pirate captain this morning?”

“My son is dead,” he said dully.

I hadn’t expected it to come like this, or so soon, but the very unexpectedness of it helped me to the right reaction, the reaction he would probably expect from me anyway. I stared at him through slightly narrowed eyes and said: “He’s what?”

“Dead.” Miguel Carreras, whatever else he lacked, unquestionably had all the normal instincts of a parent, a father. The very intensity of his restraint showed how badly he had been hit. For a moment I felt genuinely sorry for him. For a very short moment. Then I saw the faces of Wilson and Jamieson and Benson and Brownell and Dexter, the faces of all those dead men, and I wasn’t sorry any more.

“Dead?” I repeated. Stocked puzzlement, but not too much shock, it wouldn’t be expected of me. “Your son? Dead? How can he be dead? What did he die of?” Almost of its own volition, before I suddenly checked the movement, my hand started reaching for the clasp-knife under the pillow. Not that it would have made much difference even if he had seen it—five minutes in the dispensary steriliser had removed the last traces of blood.

“I don’t know.” He shook his head and I felt like cheering; there were no traces of suspicion in his face. “I don’t know.”

“Dr. Marston,” I said. “Surely you——”

“We haven’t been able to find him. He has disappeared.”

“Disappeared?” It was Captain Bullen making his contribution and his voice sounded a shade stronger, a little less husky, than it had the previous night. “Vanished? A man just can’t vanish aboard a ship like that, Mr. Carreras.”

“We spent over two hours searching the ship. My son is not aboard the Campari. When did you last see him Mr. Carter?”

I didn’t indulge in guilty starts, sharp upward glances or anything daft like that. I wondered what his reactions would have been if I’d said: “When I heaved him over the side of the Campari last night.” Instead, I pursed my lips and said: “After dinner last night when he came here. He didn’t linger. Said something like ‘Captain Carreras making his rounds,’ and left.”

“That is correct. I’d sent him to make a tour of inspection. How did he look?”

“Not his usual self. Green. Sea-sick.”

“My son was a poor sailor,” Carreras acknowledged. “It is possible——”

“You said he was making rounds,” I interrupted. “Of the whole ship? Decks and everything?”

“That is so.”

“Did you have life-lines rigged on the fore- and after-decks?”

“No. I had not thought it necessary.”

“Well,” I said grimly, “there’s your possible answer. Your probable answer. No lifelines, nothing to hang on to. Felt ill, ran for the side, a sudden lurch——” I left the sentence hanging.

“It is possible, but not in character. He had an exceptional sense of balance.”

“Balance doesn’t help much if you slip on a wet deck.”

“Quite. I also haven’t ruled out the possibility of foul play.”

“Foul play?” I stared at him, duly grateful that the gift of telepathy is so very limited. “With all the crew and passengers under guard, lock and key, how is foul play possible? Unless,” I added thoughtfully, “there’s a nigger in your own woodpile.”

“I have not yet completed my investigations.” The voice was cold, the subject was closed and Miguel Carreras was back in business again. Bereavement wouldn’t crush this man. However much he might inwardly mourn his son, it wouldn’t in the slightest detract from his efficiency or his ruthless determination to carry out exactly the plans he had made. It wasn’t, for instance, going to make the slightest difference in his plans to send us all into orbit the following day. Signs of humanity there might be but the abiding fundamental in Carreras’s character was an utter and all-excluding fanaticism that was all the more dangerous in that it lay so deeply hidden beneath the smooth urbanity of the surface.

“The chart, Carter.” He handed it across to me along with a paper giving a list of fixes. “Let me know if the Fort Ticonderoga is on course. And if she is running on time. We can later calculate our time of interception if and when I get a fix this morning.”

“You’ll get a fix,” Bullen assured him huskily. “They say the devil is good to his own, Carreras, and he’s been good to you. You’re running out of the hurricane and you’ll have clear patches of sky by noon. Rain later in the evening, but first clearing.”

“You are sure, Captain Bullen? You are sure we are running out of the hurricane?”

“I’m sure. Or, rather, the hurricane is running away from us.” Old Bullen was an authority on hurricanes and would lecture on his pet subject at the drop of a hat, even to Carreras, even when a hoarse whisper was all the voice he could summon. “Neither wind nor sea have moderated very much—they certainly hadn’t—but what matters is the direction of the wind. It’s from the north-west now, which means that the hurricane lies to the north-east of us. It passed us by to the east, on our starboard hand, some time during the night, moving northwards, then suddenly swung north-east. Quite often when a hurricane reaches the northern limits of its latitude and then is caught up by the westerlies it can remain stationary at its point of recurvature for twelve or twenty-four hours—which would have meant that you would have had to sail through it. But you had the luck: it recurved and moved to the east almost without a break.” Bullen lay back, close to exhaustion. Even so little had been too much for him.

“You can tell all this just lying in your bed there?” Carreras demanded.

Bullen gave him the commodore’s look he would have given any cadet who dared question his knowledge, and ignored him.

“The weather is going to moderate?” Carreras persisted.

“That’s obvious, isn’t it?”

Carreras nodded slowly. Making his rendezvous in time and being able to trans-ship the gold had been his two great worries: and now both of those were gone. He turned abruptly, walked out of the sick-bay.

Bullen cleared his throat and said formally, in his strained whisper: “Congratulations, Mr. Carter. You are the most fluent liar I’ve ever known.”

MacDonald just grinned.

The forenoon, the afternoon came and went. The sun duly appeared, as Bullen had prophesied, and later disappeared, also as he had prophesied. The sea moderated, although not much, not enough, I guessed, to alleviate the sufferings of our passengers, and the wind stayed where it was, out of the north-west. Bullen, under sedation, slept nearly all day, once again relapsing into his incoherent mumblings—none of them, I was relieved to note, were about Tony Carreras—while MacDonald and I talked or slept. But we didn’t sleep before I told him what I hoped to do that night when—and if—I managed to get loose on the upper deck.

Susan I hardly saw that day. She made her appearance after breakfast with her arm in plaster and in a sling. There was no danger of this arousing any suspicion, even in a mind like Carreras’s: the story was to be that she had gone to sleep in a chair, been flung out of it during the storm and sprained her wrist. Such accidents were so commonplace in heavy weather that no one would think to raise an eyebrow. About ten o’clock in the morning she asked to be allowed to join her parents in the drawing-room, and stayed there all day.

Fifteen minutes after noon Carreras appeared again. If his investigations into possible foul play connected with his son’s death had made any progress, he made no mention of it: he did not even refer to the disappearance again. He had the inevitable chart—two of them this time—with him and the noon position of the Campari. Seemingly he’d managed to take a good fix from the sun.

“Our position, our speed, their position, their speed and our respective course. Do we intercept at the point marked ‘X’?”

“I suppose you’ve already worked it out for yourself?”

“I have.”

“We don’t intercept,” I said after a few minutes. “At our present speed we should arrive at your rendezvous in between eleven and eleven and a half hours. Say midnight. Five hours ahead of schedule.”

“Thank you, Mr. Carter. My own conclusion exactly. The five-hour wait for the Ticonderoga won’t take long in passing.”

I felt a queer sensation in my middle, the phrase about a person’s heart sinking may not be physiologically accurate but it described the feeling perfectly. This would ruin everything, completely destroy what little chance my plan ever had of succeeding. But I knew the consternation did not show in my face.

“Planning on arriving there at midnight and hanging around till the fly walks into your parlour?” I shrugged. “Well, you’re the man who’s making the decisions.”

“What do you mean by that?” he asked sharply.

“Nothing much,” I said indifferently. “It’s just that I would have thought that you would want your crew at the maximum stage of efficiency for trans-shipping the gold when we meet the Fort Ticonderoga.”

“So?”

“So there’s still going to be a heavy sea running in twelve hours’ time. When we stop at the rendezvous, the Campari is going to lie in the trough of the seas and, in the elegant phrase of our times, roll her guts out. I don’t know how many of that crowd of landlubbers you have along with you were sea-sick last night, but I’ll bet there will be twice as many tonight. And don’t think our stabilisers are going to save you—they depend upon the factor of the ship’s speed for their effect.”

“A well-taken point,” he agreed calmly. “I shall reduce speed, aim at being there about 4 a.m.” He looked at me with sudden speculation. “Remarkably co-operative, full of helpful suggestions. Curiously out of the estimate I had formed of your character.”

“Which only goes to show how wrong your estimate is, my friend. Common sense and self-interest explain it. I want to get into a proper hospital as soon as possible—the prospect of going through life with one leg doesn’t appeal. The sooner I see passengers, crew and myself transferred aboard the Ticonderoga the happier I’ll be. Only a fool kicks against the pricks: I know a fait accompli when I see one. You are going to transfer us all aboard the Ticonderoga, aren’t you, Carreras?”

“I shall have no further use for any member of the Campari’s crew, far less for the passengers.” He smiled thinly. “Captain Teach and Blackbeard are not my ideals, Mr. Carter. I should like to be remembered as a humane pirate. You have my word that all of you will be transferred in safety and unharmed.” The last sentence had the ring of truth and sincerity, because it was true and sincere. It was the truth, but it wasn’t of course, the whole truth: he’d left out the bit about our being blown out of existence half an hour later.

About seven o’clock in the evening Susan Beresford returned and Marston left, under guard, to dispense pills and soothing words to the passengers in the drawing-room, many of whom were, after twenty-four hours of continuously heavy weather, understandably not feeling at their best.

Susan looked tired and pale, no doubt the emotional and physical suffering of the previous night together with the pain from her broken arm accounted for that, but I had to admit for the first time, in an unbiased fashion, that she also looked very lovely: I’d never before realised that auburn hair and green eyes were a combination that couldn’t be matched, but possibly that was because I’d never before seen an auburn-haired girl with green eyes.

She was also tense, nervous and jumpy as a cat. Unlike old Doc Marston and myself, she’d never have made it in the Method school.

She came softly to my bedside—Bullen was still under sedation and MacDonald either asleep or dozing—and sat down on a chair. After I’d asked her how she was and how the passengers were, and she’d asked me how I was and I’d told her and she hadn’t believed me, she said suddenly: “Johnny, if everything goes all right, will you get another ship?”

“I don’t follow.”

“Well,” she said impatiently, “if the Campari’s blown up and we get away or if we’re saved some other way, will you——”

“I see. I suppose I would. Blue Mail has plenty of ships and I’m supposed to be the senior chief officer.”

“You’ll like that? Getting back to sea again?” This was a crazy conversation, but she was only whistling in the dark. I said: “I don’t think I’ll be back to sea again, somehow.”

“Giving in?”

“Giving up. A different thing altogether. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life catering to the whims of wealthy passengers. I don’t include the Beresford family, father, mother—or daughter.”

She smiled at this, going into this weird routine of melting the green in her eyes, the kind of smile that could have a very serious effect on the constitution of a sick man like myself, so I looked away and went on: “I’m a pretty fair mechanic and I’ve a bit of cash put away. There’s a very nice flourishing little garage down in Kent that I can take over any time I want. And Archie MacDonald there is an outstanding mechanic. We’d make a pretty fair team, I think?”

“Have you asked him yet?”

“What chance have I had?” I said irritably. “I’ve only just thought about it.”

“You’re pretty good friends, aren’t you?”

“Good enough? What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Nothing, just nothing. Funny, that’s all. There’s the bo’sun, he’ll never walk properly again, nobody will want him at sea any more, he’s probably got no qualifications for any decent job on land—especially with that leg—and all of a sudden Chief Officer Carter gets tired of the sea and decides——”

“It’s not that way at all,” I interrupted.

“I’m not very clever. But you don’t have to worry about him, anyway. Daddy told me this afternoon that he’s got a good job for him.”

“Oh?” I took a chance and looked at her eyes again. “What kind of job?”

“A storeman.”

“A storeman.” I know I sounded disappointed, but I’d have sounded ten times as disappointed if I had been able to take all this seriously, if I’d been able to share her belief that there was a future. “Well, it’s kind of him. Nothing wrong with a storeman, but I just don’t see Archie MacDonald as one, that’s all. Especially not in America.”

“Will you listen?” she asked sweetly. A touch of the Miss Beresford that was.

“I’m listening.”

“You’ve heard that Daddy’s building a big refinery in the West of Scotland? Storage tanks, own port to take goodness knows how many tankers?”

“I’ve heard.”

“Well, that’s the place. Stores for the oil-port and the refinery—millions and millions of dollars of stores, Daddy says, with goodness knows how many men to look after them. And your friend in charge—and with a dream house attached.”

“That is a different proposition altogether. I think it sounds wonderful, Susan, just wonderful. It’s terribly kind of you.”

“Not me!” she protested. “Daddy.”

“Look at me. Say that without blushing.”

She looked at me. She blushed. With those green eyes the effect was devastating. I thought about my constitution again and looked away, and then I heard her saying: “Daddy wants you to be the manager of the new oil-port. So then you and the bo’sun would be in business together after all. Wouldn’t you?”

I turned slowly and stared at her. I said slowly: “Was that the job he meant when he asked me if I’d like to work for him?”

“Of course. And you didn’t even give him a chance to tell you. Do you think he’d given up—he hadn’t really started. You don’t know my father. And you can’t claim I’d anything to do with it either.”

I didn’t believe her. I said: “I can’t tell you how—well, how grateful I am. It’s a terrific chance, I know and admit. If you see your father again this evening thank him very much indeed from me.”

Her eyes were shining. I’d never seen a girl’s eyes shining for me before. Not in this way.

“Then you’ll—then you’ll——”

“And tell him no.”

“And tell him——”

“It’s a foolish thing to have pride, perhaps, but I’ve still got a little left.” I hadn’t meant my voice to sound so harsh, it just came out that way. “Whatever job I’ll get, I’ll get one I found for myself, not one bought for me by a girl.” As a thumbs-down on a genuine offer, I reflected bitterly, the refusal could have been more graciously phrased.

She looked at me, her face suddenly very still, said, “Oh, Johnny” in a curiously muffled voice, turned and buried her face half on the pillow, half on the sheets, her shoulders heaving, sobbing as if her heart would break.

I didn’t feel good at all. I could have walked under a five-barred gate without opening it. I reached out and touched her head awkwardly and said: “I’m terribly sorry, Susan. But just because I turn down——”

“It’s not that, it’s not that.” She shook her head in the pillow, voice more muffled than ever. “It was all make-believe. No, not that, everything I said was true, but just for a few moments we—well, we weren’t here. We—were away from the Campari, it was something that had nothing to do with the Campari. You—you understand.”

I stroked her hair. “Yes, Susan, I understand.” I didn’t know what she was talking about.

“It was like a dream.” I didn’t see where she came into the dream. “In the future. Away—away from this dreadful ship. And then you burst the dream and we’re back on the Campari. And no one knows what the end’s to be, except us—Mummy, Daddy, all of them, Carreras has them believing their lives will be spared.” She sobbed again, then said, between sobs: “Oh, my dear. We’re just kidding ourselves. It’s all over. Everything’s over. Forty armed men and they’re prowling all over the ship. I saw them. Double guards everywhere—there are two outside this door. And every door locked. There’s no hope, there’s no hope. Mummy, Daddy, you, me, all of us—this time tomrorrow it will all be over. Miracles don’t happen any more.”

“It’s not all over, Susan.” I’d never make a salesman, I thought drearily, if I met a man dying of thirst in the Sahara I couldn’t have convinced him that water was good for him. “It’s never all over.” But that didn’t sound any better than my first attempt.

I heard the creak of springs and saw MacDonald propped up on one elbow, thick black eyebrows raised in puzzlement and concern. The sound of her crying must have awakened him.

“It’s all right, Archie,” I said. “Just a bit upset, that’s all.”

“I’m sorry.” She straightened herself and turned her tear-stained face in the bo’sun’s direction. Her breath was coming in the quick, short, indrawn gasps that are the aftermath of crying. “I’m terribly sorry. I woke you up. But there is no hope, is there, Mr. MacDonald?”

“‘Archie’ will do for me,” the bo’sun said gravely.

“Well, Archie.” She tried to smile at him through her tears. “I’m just a terrible coward.”

“And you spending all day with your parents and never once being able to tell them what you knew? What kind of cowardice do you call that, miss?” MacDonald said reproachfully.

“You’re not answering me,” she said in tearful accusation.

“I am a West Highlander, Miss Beresford,” MacDonald said slowly. “I have the gift of my ancestors, a black gift at times that I’d rather be without, but I have it. I can see what comes tommorrow or the day after tommorrow: not often, but at times I can. You cannot will the second sight to come, but come it does. I have seen what is to come many times in the past few years, and Mr. Carter there will tell you that I have never once been wrong.” This was the first I had ever heard of it, he was as fluent a liar as myself. “Everything is going to turn out well.”

“Do you think so, do you really think so?” There was hope in her voice now, hope in her eyes, that slow, measured speech of MacDonald’s, the rock-like steadiness of the dark eyes in that sun-weathered face, bespoke a confidence, a certainty, an unshakable belief that was most impressive. There, now, I thought, was a man who would have made a great salesman.

“I don’t think, Miss Beresford.” Again the grave smile. “I know. Our troubles are almost at their end. Do what I do—put your last cent on Mr. Carter here.”

He even had me convinced. I, too, knew that everything was going to turn out just fine, until I remembered who he was depending on. Me. I gave Susan a handkerchief and said: “Go and tell Archie about that job.”

“You’re not going to trust your life to that thing?” There was horror in Susan’s face, panic in her voice as she watched me tie a bowline round my waist. “Why, it’s no thicker than my little finger.” I could hardly blame her: the thin three-stranded rope, no bigger than an ordinary clothes line, was hardly calculated to inspire confidence in anyone. It didn’t inspire much in me, even although I did know its properties.

“It’s nylon, miss,” MacDonald explained soothingly. “The very rope mountaineers use in the Himalayas—and you don’t think they’d trust their lives to anything they weren’t dead sure of? You could hang a big motor-car on the end of this and it still wouldn’t break.” Susan gave him her it’s-all-right-for-you-to-talk-it’s-not-your-life-that’s-depending-on-it look, bit her lip and said nothing.

The time was exactly midnight. If I’d read the clock dial settings on the Twister properly, six hours was the maximum delayed action that could be obtained. Assuming Carreras rendezvoused exactly on time at 5 a.m., it would be at least another hour before he could get clear: so, the Twister wouldn’t be armed until after midnight.

Everything was ready. The sick-bay door had been cautiously locked on the inside with the key I’d taken from Tony Carreras so that neither of the two guards could burst in unexpectedly in the middle of things. And even if they did get suspicious and force an entrance, MacDonald had a gun.

MacDonald himself was now sitting at the top of my bed, beside the window. Marston and I had half-carried him there from his own bed. His left leg was quite useless—like myself, he’d been given an injection by Doc Marston to deaden the pain, mine being twice as powerful as the previous night’s dose—but then MacDonald was not going to be called upon to use his leg that night, only his arms and shoulders, and there was nothing wrong with MacDonald’s arms and shoulders. They were the strongest on the Campari. I had the feeling I was going to need all their strength that night. Only MacDonald knew the purpose I had in mind that night. Only MacDonald knew that I intended returning the way I went. The others believed in my suicidal plan for an attack on the bridge, believed if I were successful I would be returning via the sick-bay door. But they didn’t believe I would return at all. The atmosphere was less than festive.

Bullen was awake now, lying flat on his back, his face silent and grim.

I was dressed in the same dinner suit as I’d worn the previous night. It was still damp, still crusted with blood. I’d no shoes on. The clasp-knife was in one pocket, oilskin-wrapped torch in the other, the mask round my face, hood over my head. My leg ached, I felt as a man feels after a long bout of ’flu and the fever still burned in my blood: but I was as ready as I ever was going to be.

“Lights,” I said to Marston.

A switch clicked and the sick-bay was dark as the tomb. I drew back the curtains, pulled open the window and secured it on the latch. I stuck my head outside.

It was raining steadily, heavily, a cold driving rain out of the north-west, slanting straight in through the window on to the bed. The sky was black with no star above. The Campari still pitched a little, rolled a little, but it was nothing as compared with the previous night. She was doing about twelve knots. I twisted my neck and peered upwards. No one there. I leaned out as far as possible and looked fore and aft. If there was a light showing on the Campari that night I couldn’t see it.

I came inside, stooped, picked up a coil of nylon rope, checked that it was the one secured to the top of the iron bedstead and flung it out into the rain and the darkness. I made a last check of the rope knotted round my waist—this was the one the bo’sun held in his hands—and said: “I’m off.” As a farewell speech it could perhaps have been improved upon, but it was all I could think of at the time.

Captain Bullen said: “Good luck, my boy.” He’d have said an awful lot more if he knew what I really had in mind. Marston said something I couldn’t catch. Susan said nothing at all. I wriggled my way through the window, favouring my wounded leg, and then was fully outside, suspended from the sill by my elbows. I could sense rather than see the bo’sun by the window, ready to pay out the rope round my waist.

“Archie,” I said softly. “Give me that spiel again. The one about how everything is going to turn out all right.”

“You’ll be here again before we know you’re gone,” he said cheerfully. “See and bring my knife back.”

I felt for the rope attached to the bed, got it in both hands, eased my elbows off the sill and dropped quickly, hand over hand, as MacDonald paid out my lifeline. Five seconds later I was in the water.

The water was dark and cold and it took my breath away. After the warmth of the sick-bay the shock of the almost immediate transition, the abrupt drop in temperature, was literally paralysing. Momentarily, involuntarily, I lost my grip on the rope, panicked when I realised what had happened, floundered about desperately and caught it again. The bo’sun was doing a good job above: the sudden increase in weight as I’d lost my lifeline must have had him half-way out of the window.

But the cold wasn’t the worst. If you can survive the initial shock you can tolerate the cold to a limited degree, accustomed but not reconciled: what you can’t tolerate, what you can’t become accustomed to is the involuntary swallowing of large mouthfuls of salt water every few seconds. And that was what was happening to me.

I had known that being towed alongside a ship doing twelve knots wasn’t going to be any too pleasant, but I had never thought it was going to be as bad as this. The factor I hadn’t taken into the reckoning was the waves. One moment I was being towed, face down and planing, up the side of a wave: the next, as the waves swept by under me, I was almost completely out of the water, then falling forwards and downwards to smash into the rising shoulder of the next wave with a jarring violence that knocked all the breath from my body. And when all the breath has been driven from you the body’s demands that you immediately gulp in air are insistent, imperative and not to be denied. But with my face buried in the sea I wasn’t gulping in air, I was gulping down large quantities of salt water. It was like having water under high pressure forced down my throat by a hose. I was floundering, porpoising, twisting and spinning exactly like a hooked fish being pulled in on the surface through the wake of a fast-trolling motorboat. Slowly, but very surely, I was drowning.

I was beaten before I started. I knew I had to get back, and at once, I was gasping and choking on sea-water, my nostrils were on fire with it, my mouth was full of it, my stomach was full of it, my throat burned with it and I knew that at least some of it had already reached my lungs.

A system of signals had been arranged, and now I began to tug frantically on the rope round my waist, hanging on to the other rope with my left hand. I tugged half a dozen times, slowly, in some sort of order at first, then, as no response came, frantically, despairingly. Nothing happened. I was porpoising up and down so violently that all MacDonald could be feeling anyway was a constant and irregular series of alternate tightenings and slackenings of the line: he had no means of distinguishing between one type of tug and another.

I tried to pull myself back on my own line, but against the onrushing pressure of the water as the Campari ploughed through that stormy sea, it was quite impossible. When the tension came off the line round my waist, it needed all the strength of both my hands just to hang on to the lifeline without being swept away. With all the strength and desperation that was in me I tried to edge forward an inch. But I couldn’t even make that inch. And I knew I couldn’t hang on much longer.

Salvation came by sheer chance: no credit to me. One particularly heavy wave had twisted me round till I was on my back, and in this position I fell into the next trough and hit the following wave with back and shoulders. Followed the inevitable explosive release of air from my lungs, the just as inevitable sucking in of fresh air—and this time I found I could breathe! Air rushed into my lungs, not water: I could breathe! Lying on my back like this, half lifted out of the water by my grip on the lifeline and with my head bent forward almost to my chest between my overhead arms, my face remained clear of the water and I could breathe.

I wasted no time but went hand over hand down the lifeline as fast as MacDonald paid out the rope about my waist. I was still swallowing some water, but not enough to matter.

After about fifteen seconds I took my left hand off the lifeline and started scraping it along the side of the ship, feeling for the rope I’d left dangling over the side of the after-deck last night. The lifeline was now sliding through my right hand and, wet though it was, it was burning the skin off my palm. But I hardly noticed it. I had to find that manilla I’d left tied to the guard-rail stanchion: if I didn’t, then it was curtains. Not only would the hopes of my carrying out my plan be at an end, it would be the end of me also. MacDonald and I had had to act on the assumption that the rope would be there and no attempt would be made to pull me back until he got the clear pre-arranged-signal that it was time to begin just that. And to make any such clear signal while in the water, I had discovered, was impossible. If the manilla wasn’t there I’d just be towed along at the end of that nylon rope until I drowned. Nor would that take long. The salt water I’d swallowed, the violent buffeting of the waves, the blows I’d suffered from being flung a score of times against the iron walls of the Campari, the loss of blood and my injured leg—all those had taken their frightening toll and I was dangerously weak. It would not be long.

My left hand brushed against the manilla: I grabbed it, a drowning man seizing the last straw in the whole endless expanse of the ocean.

Tucking the lifeline through the rope round my waist, I over-armed myself up the manilla till I was all but clear of the water, wrapped my one good leg round the rope and hung there, gasping like an exhausted dog, shivering and then being violently sick as I brought up all the sea-water that had collected in my stomach. After that I felt better, but weaker than ever. I started to climb.

I hadn’t far to go, twenty feet and I’d be there, but I hadn’t gone two feet before I was bitterly regretting the fact that I hadn’t followed my impulse of the previous night and knotted the manilla. The manilla was soaking wet and slippery and I had to clamp tight with all the strength of my hands to get any purchase at all. And there was little enough strength left in my hands, my aching forearm muscles were exhausted from clinging so long and so desperately to the lifeline: my shoulders were just as far gone, even when I could get a good purchase, even when my weakening hands didn’t slide down the rope when I put all my weight on them, I could still pull myself up only two or three inches at a time. Three inches, no more: that was all I could manage at one time.

I couldn’t make it, reason, instinct, logic, common sense all told me that I couldn’t make it: but I made it. The last few feet of the climb was something out of a dark nightmare, hauling myself up two inches, slipping back an inch, hauling myself up again and always creeping nearer the top. Three feet away from the top I stopped: I knew I was only that distance away from safety, but to climb another inch on that rope was something I knew I could never do. Arms shaking ague-like from the strain, shoulders on fire with agony, I hauled my body up until my eyes were level with knotted hands: even in that almost pitchy darkness I could see the faint white blur of my gleaming knuckles. For a second I hung there, then flung my right hand desperately upwards. If I missed the coaming of the scuppers … but I couldn’t miss it. I had no more strength in me, I could never make such an effort again.

I didn’t miss it. The top joint of my middle finger hooked over the coaming and locked there, then my other hand was beside it, I was scrabbling desperately for the lowermost bar in the guardrails, I had to get it over and over at once or I’d fall back into the sea. I found the bar, had both hands on it, swung my body convulsively to the right till my sound foot caught the coaming, reached up to the next bar, reached the teak rail, half dragged, half slid my body over the top and fell heavily on the deck on the other side.

How long I lay there, trembling violently in every weary muscle in my body, whooping hoarsely for the breath my tortured lungs were craving, gritting my teeth against the fire in my shoulders and arms, and trying not to let the red mist before my eyes envelop me completely, I do not know. It may have been two minutes, it may have been ten. Somewhere during that time I was violently ill again. And then slowly, ever so slowly, the pain eased a little, my breathing slowed and the mists before my eyes cleared away: but I still couldn’t stop trembling. It was well for me that no five-year-old happened along the deck that night: he could have had me over the side without taking his hands out of his pockets.

I untied the ropes from my waist with numbed and fumbling and all but useless hands, tied them both to the stanchion just above the manilla, pushed the lifeline till it was almost taut, then gave three sharp deliberate tugs. A couple of seconds passed, then came three clearly defined answering tugs. They knew now I had made it. I hoped they felt better about it than I did. Not that that would be hard.

I sat there for at least another five minutes till some measure of strength came back to me, rose shakily to my feet and padded across the deck to number four hold. The tarpaulin on the starboard forward corner was still secured. That meant there was no one down below. But I really hadn’t expected them to be there yet.

I straightened, looked all around me, then stood very still, the driving rain streaming down my sodden mask and soaking clothes. Not fifteen yards away from me, right aft, I had seen a red glow come and vanish in the darkness. Ten seconds passed, then the glow again. I’d heard of waterproof cigarettes, but not all that waterproof. But someone was smoking a cigarette, no question about that.

Like falling thistledown, only quieter, I drifted down in the direction of the glow. I was still trembling, but you can’t hear trembling. Twice I stopped to line up direction and distance by that glowing cigarette and finally stopped less than ten feet away from it. My mind was hardly working at all or I’d never have dared to do it: a careless flick of a torch beam, say, and it would have been all over. But no one flicked a torch.

The red glow came again, and I could now just make out that the smoker wasn’t standing in the rain. He was in the V-shaped entrance of a tarpaulin, a big tarpaulin draped over some big object. The gun, of course, the gun that Carreras had mounted on the after-deck, with the tarpaulin serving the dual purpose of protecting the mechanism from the rain and concealing it from any other vessel they might have passed during the day.

I heard the murmur of voices. Not the smoker, but another two crouched somewhere inside the shelter of the tarpaulin. That meant three people there. Three people guarding the gun. Carreras was certainly taking no chances with that gun. But why so many as three, he didn’t need three? Then I had it. Carreras hadn’t just been talking idly when he’d spoken of the possibility of foul play in connection with the death of his son. He did suspect it, but his cold logical mind had told him that neither crew nor passengers of the Campari could have been responsible. If his son had met death by violence, then death could only have come from one of his own men. The renegade who had killed his son might strike again, might attempt to ruin his plans. And so, three men on guard together. They could watch each other.

I left, skirted the hatch and made my way to the bo’sun’s store. I fumbled around in the darkness, found what I wanted, a heavy marline-spike, and then was on my way, marline-spike in one hand, MacDonald’s knife in the other.

Dr. Caroline’s cabin was in darkness. I was pretty sure that the windows were uncurtained, but I left my torch where it was. Susan had said that Carreras’s men were prowling around the decks that night: the chance wasn’t worth it. And if Dr. Caroline wasn’t already in number four hold, then the chances were high indeed that he would only be in one other place—in his bed, and bound to it hand and foot.

I climbed up to the next deck and padded along to the wireless office. My breathing and pulse were almost back to normal now, the shaking had eased and I could feel the strength slowly flooding back into my arms and shoulders. Apart from the constant dull ache in my neck where the sandbag merchant and Tony Carreras had been at work, the only pain I felt was a sharp burning in my left thigh where the salt water had got into the open wounds. Without the anæsthetic, I’d have been doing a war dance. On one leg, of course.

The wireless office was in darkness. I leaned my ear against the door, straining to hear the slightest sound from inside, and was just reaching out a delicate hand for the door-knob when I just about had a heart-attack. A telephone bell had gone off with a shattering metallic loudness not six inches from the ear I’d so hard pressed against the door. It jarred me rigid, for all of five seconds Lot’s wife couldn’t even have hoped to compete with me, then I pussy-footed silently across the deck into the shelter of one of the lifeboats.

I heard the vague murmur of someone talking on the telephone, saw the light come on in the wireless office, the door open and a man came out. Before he switched off the light I saw two things: I saw him bring a key from his right-hand trousers’ pocket, and I saw who it was, the artist with the machine-gun who had killed Tommy Wilson and cut down all the rest of us. If I had to settle any more accounts that night, I hoped bleakly it would be with this man.

He closed the door, locked it and went down the ladder to “A” deck below. I followed him to the top of the ladder and stayed there. There was another man at the foot of the ladder, lit torch in hand, just outside Dr. Caroline’s cabin, and in the backwash of light from the cabin bulkhead I could see who it was. Carreras himself. There were two other men close by, and I could distinguish neither of them, but I was certain that one of them would be Dr. Caroline. They were joined by the radio operator and the four men moved off aft. I never even thought of going after them. I knew where they were going.

Ten minutes. That was the detail the news broadcast about the disappearance of the Twister had mentioned. There were only one or two men who could arm the Twister, and it couldn’t be done in less than ten minutes. I wondered vaguely if Caroline knew he had only ten minutes to live. And that was all the time I had to do what I had to do. It wasn’t long.

I was coming down the ladder while Carreras’s swinging torch was still in sight. Three-quarters of the way down, three steps from the bottom, I froze into immobility. Two men—in that driving rain their black blurred shapes were barely distinguishable but I knew it was two men because of the low murmur of voices—were approaching the foot of the ladder. Armed men, they were bound to be armed, almost certainly with the ubiquitous tommy-gun which seemed the standard weapon among the generalissimo’s henchmen.

They were at the foot of the ladder now, I could feel the ache in my hands from the tension of my grip round marline-spike and opened clasp-knife, then suddenly they went veering off to the right, round the side of the ladder. I could have reached out and touched them both, I could see them almost clearly now, clearly enough to see that both had beards, and had I not been wearing the black hood and mask they would have been bound to see the white glimmer of my face. How they didn’t even see my shape standing there on the third bottom step was beyond me: The only reason I could think of was that they both had their heads lowered against the driving rain.

Seconds later I was inside the central passageway of “A” accommodation. I hadn’t poked my head round the outside passage door to see if the land was clear, after that escape I’d felt that nothing mattered, I’d just walked straight inside. The passageway was empty.

The first door on the right, the one opposite Caroline’s, was the entrance to Carreras’s suite. I tried the door. Locked. I walked down the passage to where Benson, the dead chief steward, had had his cubicle, hoping that the luxurious carpet underfoot was absorbent enough to soak up the water that was almost cascading off me. White, Benson’s successor, would have had a blue fit if he could have seen the damage I was doing.

The master-key to the passengers’ suites was in its secret little cubby-hole. I removed it, went back to Carreras’s cabin, unlocked the door and went inside, locking it behind me.

The lights were on throughout the suite. Carreras probably hadn’t bothered to switch them off when he’d left, he wasn’t paying for the electricity. I went through the cabins, sending each door in turn flying open with the sole of my stockinged foot. Nothing? No one. I had one bad moment when I entered Carreras’s own sleeping cabin and saw this desperate hooded, crouched figure, dripping water, hands clenched round weapons, with wide staring eyes and blood dripping down beside the left eye. Myself in a looking-glass. I had seen prettier sights. I hadn’t been aware that I had been cut, I supposed it must have been the result of one of the many knocks I’d had had against the side of the Campari, opening up the wound in my head.

Carreras had boasted that he had a complete loading plan of the Fort Ticonderoga in his cabin. Nine minutes now, maybe even less. Where in the name of God would he keep the plan? I went through the dressing-tables, wardrobes, lockers, cupboards, bedside tables. Nothing. Nothing. Seven minutes.

Where, where would he keep it? Think, Carter, for heaven’s sake think. Maybe Caroline was getting on with the arming of the Twister faster than anyone had thought possible. How did anyone know, as the broadcast had said, that it took all of ten minutes to arm it? If the Twister was such a secret—and until it had been stolen it had been such a top priority hush-hush secret that no member of the public had known of its existence—how did anyone know it took ten minutes to arm it? How could anyone know? Maybe all it required was a twist here, a turn there. Maybe—maybe he was finished already. Maybe——

I put those thoughts to one side, drove them out of my mind, crushed them ruthlessly. That way lay panic and defeat. I stood stock-still and forced myself to think, calmly, dispassionately. I had been looking in all the obvious places. But should I have been looking in the obvious places? After all I’d gone through this cabin once before, looking for a radio, I’d gone through it pretty thoroughly, and I hadn’t seen any signs. He would have it hidden, of course he would have it hidden. He wouldn’t have taken a chance on anyone finding it, such as the steward whose daily duty it was to clean out his cabin, before his men had taken over the ship. No stewards on duty now, of course, but then he probably hadn’t bothered to shift it since the take-over. Where would he have hidden it where a steward wouldn’t stumble across it?

That ruled out all the furniture fittings, all the places I’d wasted time in searching. It also ruled out bed, blankets, mattresses—but not the carpet! The ideal hiding-place for a sheet of paper.

I almost threw myself at the carpet in his sleeping cabin. The carpets in the Campari’s accommodation were secured by press-button studs for ease of quick removal. I caught the corner of the carpet by the door, ripped free a dozen studs, and there it was right away, six inches from the edge. A large sheet of canvas paper, folded in four, with “T.E.S. Fort Ticonderoga. Most Secret” printed in one corner. Five minutes to go.

I stared at the paper until I had memorised its exact position relative to the carpet, picked it up and smoothed it out. Diagrams of the Ticonderoga with complete stowage plans of the cargo. But all I was interested in was the deck cargo. The plan showed crates stacked on both fore- and aft-decks, and twenty of those on the foredeck were marked with a heavy red cross. Red for gold.

In a small careful hand Carreras had written on the side: “All deck cargo crates identical in size. Gold in waterproof, kapok-filled welded steel boxes to float free in event of damage or sinking. Each crate equipped with yellow water-stain.” I supposed this was some chemical which, when it came into contact with salt water, would stain the sea for a wide area around. I read on: “Gold crates indistinguishable from general cargo. All crates stamped ‘Harmsworth & Holden Electrical Engineering Company.’ Stated contents generators and turbines. For’ard deck cargo consigned to Nashville Tennessee, exclusively turbines: after-deck cargo consigned to Oak Ridge Tennessee, exclusively generators. So marked. For’ard twenty crates on for’ard deck gold.”

I didn’t hurry. Time was desperately short, but I didn’t hurry. I studied the plan, which corresponded exactly to Carreras’s observations, and I studied the observations themselves until I knew I would never forget a word of them. I folded and replaced the plan exactly as I had found it, pressed the carpet snap-studs back into place, went swiftly through the cabins on a last check to ensure that I had left no trace on my passing: there were none that I could see. I locked the door and left.

The cold driving rain was falling even more heavily than ever now, slanting in across the port side, drumming metallically against the accommodation bulkheads, rebounding ankle-high off the polished wooden decks. On the likely enough theory that Carreras’s patrolling men would keep to the sheltered starboard side of the accommodation, I kept to the opposite side as I hurried aft: in my stocking soles and wearing that black suit and mask, no one could have heard or seen me at a distance of more than a few feet. No one heard or saw me, I heard or saw no one. I made no attempt to look, listen or exercise any caution at all. I reached number four hold within two minutes of leaving Carreras’s cabin.

I needn’t have hurried. Carreras had made no attempt to replace the tarpaulin he’d had to pull back in order to remove the battens, and I could see straight down into the bottom of the hold. Four men down there, two holding powerful electric lanterns, Carreras with a gun in the hand hanging by his side, the lanky, stooped form of Dr. Slingsby Caroline, still wearing that ridiculous white wig askew on his head, bent over the Twister. I couldn’t see what he was doing.

It was like a nineteenth-century print of grave-robbers at work? The tomb-like depths of the hold, the coffins, the lanterns, the feeling of apprehension and hurry and absorbed concentration that lent an evilly conspiratorial air to the scene—all the elements were there. And especially the element of tension, an electric tension that you could almost feel pulsating through the darkness of the night. But a tension that came not from the fear of discovery but from the possibility that at any second something might go finally and cataclysmically wrong. If it took ten minutes to arm the Twister, and obviously it took even longer than that, then it must be a very tricky and complicated procedure altogether. Dr. Caroline’s mind, it was a fair guess, would be in no fit state to cope with tricky and complicated procedures: he’d be nervous, probably badly scared, his hands would be unsteady, he was working, probably with inadequate tools, on an unstable platform by the light of unsteady torches and even though he might not be desperate enough or fool enough to jinx it deliberately there seemed to me, as there obviously seemed to the men down in the hold, that there was an excellent chance that his hand would slip. Instinctively, I moved back a couple of feet until the coaming of the hatch came between me and the scene below. I couldn’t see the Twister any more so that made me quite safe if it blew up.

I rose to my feet and made a couple of cautious circuits of the hatch, the first close in, the second farther out. But Carreras had no prowlers there: apart from the guards on the gun, the after-deck appeared to be completely deserted. I returned to the port for’ard corner of the hatch and settled down to wait.

I hoped I wouldn’t have to wait too long. The sea-water had been cold, that heavy rain was cold, the wind was cold, I was soaked to the skin and was recurringly and increasingly subject to violent bouts of shivering, shivering I could do nothing to control. The fever ran fiercely in my blood. Maybe the thought of Dr. Caroline’s hand slipping had something to do with the shivering: whatever the reason, I’d be lucky to get off with no more than pneumonia.

Another five minutes, and I took a second cautious peek down into the hold. Still at it. I rose, stretched and began to pace softly up and down to ward off the stiffness and cramp that was settling down on my body, especially on the legs. If things went the way I hoped I couldn’t afford to have stiffness anywhere.

If things went the way I hoped. I peered down a third time into the hold and this time stayed in that stooped position, unmoving. Dr. Caroline had finished. Under the watchful eye and gun of the radio operator, he was screwing the brass-topped lid back on to the coffin while Carreras and the other man had the lid already off the next coffin and were bent over it. Presumably fusing the conventional explosive inside: probably it was intended as a stand-by in case of the malfunction of the Twister, or even more probably, in the event of the failure of the Twister’s timing mechanism, it was designed to set it off by sympathetic detonation. I didn’t know, I couldn’t guess. And, for the moment, I was not in the slightest worried. The crucial moment had come.

The crucial moment for Dr. Caroline. I knew—as he was bound to know—that they couldn’t afford to let him live. He’d done all they required of him. He was of no further use to them. He could die any moment now. If they chose to put a gun to his head and murder him where he stood, there was nothing in the world I could do about it, nothing I would even try to do about it. I would just have to stand there silently, without movement or protest, and watch him die. For if I let Dr. Caroline die without making any move to save him, then only he would die: but if I tried to save him and failed—and with only a knife and marline-spike against two sub-machine-guns and pistols the chances of failure were a hundred per cent—then not only Caroline but every member of the passengers and crew of the Campari would die also. The greatest good of the greatest number … Would they shoot him where he stood or would they do it on the upper deck?

Logic said they would do it on the upper deck. Carreras would be using the Campari for a few days yet, he wouldn’t be wanting a dead man lying in the hold and there would be no point in shooting him down there and then carrying him up above when he could make the climb under his own steam and be disposed of on the upper deck. If I were Carreras, that is what I would have figured.

And that was how he did figure. Caroline tightened the last screw, laid down the screwdriver and straightened. I caught a glimpse of his face, white, strained, one eye twitching uncontrollably. The radio operator said: “Señor Carreras?”

Carreras straightened, turned, looked at him, then at Caroline and nodded.

“Take him to his cabin, Carlos. Report here afterwards.”

I moved back swiftly as a torch shone vertically upwards from the hold. Carlos was already climbing the ladder. “Report here afterwards.” God, I’d never thought of so obvious a possibility! For a moment I panicked, hands clenched on my pitiful weapons, irresolute, paralysed in thought and action. Without any justification whatsoever I’d had the picture firmly in my mind of being able to dispose of Caroline’s appointed executioner without arousing suspicion. Had Carlos, the radio operator, been under instructions to knock off the unsuspecting Caroline on the way for’ard then carry on himself to his wireless office, then I might have disposed of him and hours might have passed before Carreras got suspicious. But now what he was, in effect, saying was: “Take him up top, shove him over the side and come back and tell me as soon as you have done so.”

I could see the heavy rain slanting whitely through the wavering torch beam as Carlos climbed swiftly up the ladder. By the time he reached the top I was round the other side of the hatch coaming, lying flat on the deck.

Cautiously, I hitched an eye over the top of the coaming. Carlos was standing upright on the deck now, his torch shining downwards into the hold. I saw Dr. Caroline’s white head appear, saw Carlos move back a couple of steps and then Caroline, too, was over the top, a tall hunched figure pulling high his collar against the cold lash of the rain. I heard, but failed to understand, a quick sharp command and then they were moving off diagonally, Caroline leading, Carlos with his torch on him from behind, in the direction of the companion-way leading up to “B” deck.

I rose to my feet, remained immobile. Was Carlos taking him back to his cabin after all? Had I been mistaken? Could it be——

I never finished the thought, I was running after them as quickly, as lightly, as silently as the stiffness in my left leg would permit. Of course Carlos was taking him in the direction of the companionway, had he marched him straight towards the rail Caroline would have known at once what awaited him, would have turned and hurled himself against Carlos with all the frantic savagery of a man who knows he is about to die.

Five seconds, only five seconds elapsed from the time I started running until I caught up with them. Five seconds, far too short a time to think of the suicidal dangers involved, far too short to think what would happen if Carlos should swing his torch round, if any of the three guards at the gun should happen to be watching this little procession, if either Carreras or his assistant in the hold should choose to look over the coaming to see how the problem of disposal was being attended to, far too little time to figure out what I was going to do when I caught up with Carlos.

And I was given no time to figure. I was only three or four feet away when, in the backwash of light from the torch, I saw Carlos reverse his grip on his tommy-gun, catch it by the barrel, swing it up high over his head. It had reached its highest point and was just started on the down-swing when the base of the heavy marline-spike caught him on the back of the neck with all my weight and fury behind it. I heard something crack, caught the tommy-gun out of his suddenly nerveless hand before it could crash to the deck and made a grab for the torch. I missed. The torch struck the deck with a muffled thud, it must have been a ship’s rubber composition issue, rolled over a couple of times and came to rest, its beam shining straight out over the edge of the ship. Carlos himself pitched heavily forward, struck Dr. Caroline, and the two of them fell against the lower steps of the companionway.

“Keep quiet!” I whispered urgently. “Keep quiet if you want to live!” I dived for the torch, fumbled desperately for the switch, couldn’t find it, stuck the glass face against my jacket to kill the beam, finally located the switch and turned it off.

“What in heaven’s name——”

“Keep quiet!” I found the trigger on the automatic pistol and stood there stock-still, staring aft into the darkness, in the direction of both the hold and the gun, striving to pierce the darkness, listening as if my life depended upon it. Which it did. Ten seconds I waited. Nothing. I had to move, I couldn’t afford to wait another ten seconds. Thirty seconds would have been enough and more than enough for Carlos to dispose of Dr. Caroline: a few seconds after that and Carreras would start wondering what had happened to his trusty henchman.

I thrust gun and torch towards Caroline, found his hands in the darkness “Hold these,” I said softly.

“What—what is this?” An agonised whisper in the dark.

“He was going to smash your head in. Now shut up. You can still die. I’m Carter, the chief officer.” I’d pulled Carlos clear of the companionway where he’d held Caroline pinned by the legs and was going through his pockets as quickly as I could in the darkness. The key. The key of the wireless office. I’d seen him take it from his right-hand trousers’ pocket but it wasn’t there any more. The left-hand one. Not there either. The seconds were rushing by. Desperately I tore at the patch-pockets of his army type blouse, and I found it in the second pocket. But I’d lost at least twenty seconds.

“Is—is he dead?” Caroline whispered.

“Are you worried? Stay here.” I shoved the key into a safe inner pocket, caught the guard by his collar and started to drag him across the wet deck. It was less than ten feet to the ship’s rail. I dropped him, located the hinged section of the teak rail, fumbled for the catch, released it, swung the rail through 180 degrees and snapped it back in its open position. I caught the guard by his shoulders, eased the upper part of his body over the second rail, then tipped the legs high. The splash he made couldn’t have been heard thirty feet away. Certainly no one in number four hold or under the gun tarpaulin could possibly have heard anything.

I ran back to where Dr. Caroline was still sitting on the lower steps of the companionway. Maybe he was just obeying the order I’d given him, but probably he was just too dazed to move anyway. I said: “Quick, give me your wig.”

“What? What?” My second guess had been right. He was dazed.

“Your wig!” It’s no easy feat to shout in a whisper, but I almost made it.

“My wig? But—but it’s glued on.”

I leaned forward, twisted my fingers in the temporary thatch and tugged. It was glued on, all right. The gasp of pain and resistance offered to my hand showed he hadn’t been kidding: that wig felt as if it was riveted to his skull. It was no night for half measures. I clamped my left hand over his mouth and pulled savagely with my right. A limpet the size of a soup plate couldn’t have offered more resistance, but it did come off. I don’t know how much pain there was in it for him but it certainly cost me plenty: his teeth almost met through the heel of my palm.

The machine-gun was still in his hand. I snatched it away, whirled, and stopped motionless. For the second time in a minute I could see rain slanting whitely through the vertical beam of a torch. That meant only one thing: someone was climbing up the ladder from the bottom of the hold.

I reached the ship’s side in three long steps, placed the wig in the scuppers, laid the gun on top of it, raced back to the companionway, jerked Dr. Caroline to his feet and dragged him towards the bo’sun’s store, less than ten feet inboard from the companionway. The door was still less than halfway shut when Carreras appeared over the coaming, but his torch wasn’t pointing in our direction. I closed the door silently until only a crack remained.

Carreras was closely followed by another man, also with a torch. Both of them headed straight for the ship’s side. I saw the beam of Carreras’s torch suddenly steady on the opened rail, then heard the sharp exclamation as he bent forward and peered in the scuppers. A moment later he was erect again, examining the gun and the wig he held in his hand. I heard him say something short and staccato, repeated several times. Then he started talking rapidly to his companion, but it was in Spanish and I couldn’t get it. He then examined the inside of the wig, indicated something with the torch beam, shook his head in what might have been sorrow but was more probably exasperated anger, flung the wig over the side and returned to the hold, taking the tommy-gun with him. His companion followed.

“Our friend didn’t seem so happy,” I murmured.

“He’s a devil, a devil!” Dr. Caroline’s voice was shaking, only now was he beginning to realise the narrowness of his escape, how closely death had brushed him by. “You heard him. One of his own men dead and all he could call him was a crazy fool, and he just laughed when the other man suggested they turn the ship to look for him.”

“You understand Spanish?”

“Pretty well. He said something like: ‘Just like that sadistic so-and-so to force Caroline to open the rail so that he could see what was coming to him.’ He thinks I turned on the guard, grabbed his gun and that in the fight, before we both went overboard, my wig was torn off. There was a handful of my hair sticking to the underside of the wig, he says.”

“Sorry about that, Dr. Caroline.”

“Good God, Sorry! You saved both our lives. Mine anyway. Sorry!” Dr. Caroline, I thought, was a pretty strong-nerved person, he was recovering fast from the shock. I hoped his nerves were very strong indeed, he was going to need them all to survive the ordeal of the next few hours. “It was that handful of hair that really convinced him.”

I said nothing, and he went on: “Please tell me exactly what is going on?”

For the next five minutes, while I kept watch through that crack in the doorway, Dr. Caroline plied me with questions and I answered them as quickly and briefly as I could. He had a highly intelligent, incisive mind, which I found vaguely surprising which in turn was a stupid reaction on my part: you don’t pick a dim-wit as the chief of development for a new atomic weapon. I supposed his rather comical-sounding name and the brief glimpse I’d had of him the previous night—a man bound hand and foot to a four-poster and looking into a torch beam with wide and staring eyes looks something less than his best—had unconsciously given me the wrong impression entirely. At the end of the five minutes he knew as much about the past developments as I did myself: what he didn’t know was what was to come, for I hadn’t the heart to tell him. He was giving me some details of the kidnap when Carreras and his companion appeared.

They replaced battens, tied the tarpaulins and went for’ard without any delay. That meant, I supposed, that the fusing of the auxiliary time-bombs in the other two coffins were complete. I unwrapped the torch from its oilskin covering, looked around the store, picked up a few tools and switched off the light.

“Right,” I said to Caroline. “Come on.”

“Where?” He wasn’t keen to go anywhere, and after what he’d been through I didn’t blame him.

“Back down that hold. Hurry. We may have little enough time.”

Two minutes later, with the battens and tarpaulins as well pulled back into place as possible above us, we were on the floor of the hold. I needn’t  have bothered bringing any tools, Carreras had left his behind him, scattered carelessly around. Understandably he hadn’t bothered to remove them: he would never be using these tools again.

I gave Caroline the torch to hold, selected a screwdriver and started on the lid of the brass-plaqued coffin.

“What are you going to do?” Caroline asked nervously.

“You can see what I’m doing.”

“For pity’s sake be careful! That weapon is armed!”

“So it’s armed. It’s not due to go off until when?”

“Seven o’clock. But it’s highly unsafe, highly unsafe. It’s as unstable as hell. Good God, Carter, I know. I know!” His unsteady hand went on my arm, his face contorted with anxiety. “The development of this missile wasn’t fully completed when it was stolen. The fuse mechanism was only in an untried experimental state, and tests showed that the retaining spring on the trembler switch is far too weak. The Twister is dead safe normally, but this trembler switch is brought into circuit as soon as it is armed.”

“And?”

“A jar, a knock, the slightest fall—anything could overcome the tension of the spring and short-circuit the firing mechanism. Fifteen seconds later the bomb goes up.”

I hadn’t noticed until then, but it was much warmer down in that hold than it had been on deck. I raised a soaking sleeve in a half-witted attempt to wipe some sweat off my forehead.

“Have you told Carreras this?” The warmth was also affecting my voice, bringing it out as a harsh strained croak.

“I told him. He won’t listen. I think—I think Carreras is a little mad. More than a little. He seems perfectly prepared to take a chance. And he has the Twister tightly packed in cotton wool and blankets to eliminate the possibility of a jar.”

I gazed at him for a long moment without really seeing him, then got on with the next screw. It seemed much stiffer than the last one but it was just possible that I wasn’t applying so much pressure as I had been before. For all that, I had all the screws undone inside three minutes. Gently I slid off the lid, placed it to one side, slowly peeled back a couple of blankets and there lay the Twister. It looked more evil than ever.

“Of course.”

“There are your tools. Disarm the bloody thing.”

He stared at me, his face suddenly empty of expression. “That’s why we’re here?”

“Why else? Surely it was obvious? Get on with it.”

“It can’t be done.”

“It can’t be done?” I caught him by the arm, not gently. “Look friend, you armed the damn’ thing. Just reverse the process, that’s all.”

“Impossible.” Finality in the voice. “When it’s armed, the mechanism is locked in position. With a key. The key is in Carreras’s pocket.”

XI.

Saturday 1 a.m.–2.15 a.m.

The weakness in my left leg, a near paralysing weakness, hit me all of a sudden and I had to sit down on the baffle and hang on to the ladder for support. I gazed at the Twister. For a long time I gazed down at it, with bitter eyes: then I stirred and looked at Dr. Caroline.

“Would you mind repeating that?”

He repeated it. “I’m terribly sorry, Carter, but there you have it. The Twister can’t be rendered safe without the key. And Carreras has the key.”

I thought of all the impossible solutions to this one and recognised them at once for what they were—impossible. I knew what had to be done now, the only thing that could be done. I said tiredly: “Do you know, Dr. Caroline, that you’ve just condemned forty people to certain death?”

“I have done that?”

“Well, Carreras. When he put that key in his pocket he was condemning himself and all his men to death just as surely as the man who pulls the switch for the electric chair. And what am I worrying about, anyway? Death’s the only certain and permanent cure for scourges like Carreras and the people who associate with him. As for Lord Dexter, he’s rolling in the stuff. He can always build another Campari.”

“What are you talking about, Mr. Carter?” There was apprehension in his face as he looked at me, more than apprehension, fear. “Are you feeling all right, Carter?”

“Of course I’m all right,” I said irritably. “Everybody’s always asking the same stupid questions.” I stooped, picked up the rope grommet and Haltrac Midget Hoist I’d taken from the bo’sun’s store, then rose wearily to my feet. “Come on, Doctor, give me a hand with this.”

“Give you a hand with what?” He knew damn’ well what I meant but the fear in his mind wouldn’t let him believe it.

“The Twister, of course,” I said impatiently. “I want to get it over to the port side, hidden in the tarpaulins behind the baffle.”

“Are you crazy?” he whispered. “Are you quite crazy? Did you hear what I said? You’re going to lift it out of its coffin with—with that? One little slip, the tiniest jar——”

“Are you going to help me?”

He shook his head, shuddered and turned away. I hooked the hoist on to a head-high rung of the ladder, pulled the lower block until it hung just above the Twister, picked up the grommet and moved around to the tail of the weapon. I was stooping low over it when I heard a quick footstep behind me and a pair of arms locked themselves around my body, arms informed with all the strength of fear and desperation. I struggled briefly to free myself but I might as well have tried to shrug off the tentacles of a squid. I tried to stamp on his instep but all I did was hurt my heel: I’d forgotten that I wasn’t wearing shoes.

“Let go!” I said savagely. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m not going to let you do it! I’m not going to let you do it!” He was panting, his voice low and hoarse and desperate. “I’m not going to let you kill us all!”

There are certain people in certain situations with whom there is no arguing. This was such a situation and Caroline such a person. I half turned, thrust backwards with all the power of my good leg and heard him gasp as his back struck heavily against the ship’s side. A momentary loosening of his grip, a wrench and I was free. I picked up the big marline-spike and showed it to him in the light of the torch.

“I don’t want to use this,” I said quietly. “Next time I will. My promise. Can’t you stop shaking long enough to realise that I’m trying to save all our lives, not throw them away. Don’t you realise that anyone might pass by up top any moment, see the loose tarpaulin and investigate?”

He stood there, hunched against the metal, staring down at the floor. He said nothing. I turned, took the torch in my teeth, placed the grommet on the edge of the coffin and bent down to lift the tail of the Twister. Or to try to lift it. It weighed a ton. To me it did, anyway, what with one thing and another I wasn’t as fit as I had been. I’d managed to lift it perhaps three inches and didn’t see how I was going to hold it there for even a couple of seconds when I heard a footstep and a kind of moan behind me. I tensed, braced myself for the next assault, then relaxed slowly as Dr. Caroline stepped past me, bent down and slid the grommet round the tail of the Twister. Together we managed to move the grommet up to approximately the mid-point of the missile. Neither of us said anything.

I hauled on the Haltrac pulley until it became taut. Dr. Caroline said hoarsely: “It’ll never take it. That thin cord——”

“It’s tested to a thousand pounds.” I hauled some more and the tail began to lift. The grommet wasn’t central. I lowered it again, the grommet was adjusted, and next time I hauled the Twister came clear along its entire length. When it was about three inches above its cotton wool and blanket bed, I set the automatic lock. I mopped my forehad again. It was warmer than ever down in that hold.

“How are we going to get it across to the other side?” Caroline’s voice had lost its shake now, it was flat and without inflection, the voice of a man resigned to the dark inevitability of a nightmare.

“We’ll carry it across. Between us we should manage it.”

“Carry it across?” he said dully. “It weighs 275 lb.”

“I know what it weighs,” I said irritably.

“You have a bad leg.” He hadn’t heard me. “My heart’s not good. The ship’s rolling, you can see that that polished aluminium is as slippery as glass. One of us would stumble, lose his grip. Maybe both of us. It would be bound to fall.”

“Wait here,” I said. I took the torch, crossed to the port side, picked up a couple of tarpaulins from behind the baffle and dragged them across the floor. “We’ll place it on these and pull it across.”

“Pull it across the floor? Bump it across the floor?” He wasn’t as resigned to the nightmare as I had thought. He looked at me, then at the Twister, then at me again and said with unshakable conviction: ‘’You’re mad.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, can’t you think of something else to say?” I grabbed the pulley again, released the lock, hauled and kept on hauling. Caroline wrapped both arms round the Twister as it came clear of the coffin, struggling to make sure that the nose of the missile didn’t collide with the baffle.

“Step over the baffle and take it with you,” I said. “Keep your back to the ladder as you turn.”

He nodded silently, his face strained and set in the pale beam of the torch. He put his back to the ladder, tightened his grip on the Twister, an arm on each side of the grommet, lifted his leg to clear the baffle, then staggered as a sudden roll of the ship threw the weight of the missile against him. His foot caught the top of the baffle, the combined forces of the Twister and the ship’s roll carried him beyond his centre of gravity, he cried out and overbalanced heavily across the baffle to the floor of the hold.

I’d seen it coining—or, rather, I’d seen the last second of it happening. I swept my hand up blindly, hit the auto-lock and jumped for the swinging missile, throwing myself between it and the ladder, dropping my torch as I reached out with both hands to prevent the nose from crashing into the ladder. In the sudden impenetrable darkness I missed the Twister—but it didn’t miss me. It struck me just below the breast-bone with a force that brought an agonised gasp from me, then I’d both arms wrapped round that polished aluminium shell as if I were going to crush it in half.

“The torch,” I yelled. Somehow, in that moment, it didn’t seem in any way important that I should keep down my voice. “Get the torch!”

“My ankle——”

“The hell with your ankle! Get the torch!”

I heard him give a half-suppressed moan, then sensed that he was clambering over the baffle. I heard him again, his hands scuffing over the steel floor. Then silence.

“Have you found it?” The Campari had started on its return roll and I was fighting to keep my balance.

“I’ve found it.”

“Then switch it on, you fool!”

“I can’t.” A pause. “It’s broken.”

That helped a lot. I said quickly: “Catch hold of the end of this damn’ thing. I’m slipping.”

He did, and the strain eased. He said: “Have you any matches?”

“Matches!” Carter showing inhuman restraint, if it hadn’t been for the Twister it would have been funny. “Matches! After being towed through the water for five minutes alongside the Campari?”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” he said gravely, A few moments’ silence, then he offered: “I have a lighter.”

“God help America,” I said fervently. “If all her scientists—light it, man, light it!”

A wheel scraped on flint and a flickering pool of pale yellow light did its pitiful best to illuminate that one tiny corner of the dark hold.

“The block and tackle. Quickly.” I waited until he had reached it. “Take the strain on the free end, knock off the lock and lower gently. I’ll guide it on to the tarpaulins.”

I moved out half a step from the baffle, taking much of the weight of the missile with me. I was barely a couple of feet away from the tarpaulins when I heard the click of the auto-lock coming off and suddenly my back was breaking. The pulley had gone completely slack, the entire 275 lb. of the Twister was in my arms, the Campari was rolling away from me, I couldn’t hold it, I knew I couldn’t hold it, my back was breaking. I staggered and lurched forward, and the Twister, with myself above and still clinging desperately to it, crashed heavily on to the tarpaulins with a shock that seemed to shake the entire floor of the hold.

I freed my arms and climbed shakily to my feet. Dr. Caroline, the flickering flame held just at the level of his eyes, was staring down at the gleaming missile like a man held in thrall, his face a frozen mask of all the terrible emotions ever known. Then the spell broke.

“Fifteen seconds!” he shouted hoarsely. “Fifteen seconds to go!” He flung himself at the ladder, but got no further than the second step when I locked arms round both himself and the ladder. He struggled violently, frantically, briefly, then relaxed.

“How far do you think you’re going to get in fifteen seconds?” I said. I don’t know why I said it, I was barely aware that I had said it, I had eyes and mind only for the missile lying there, my face probably showed all the emotions that Dr. Caroline’s had been registering. And he was staring too. It was a senseless thing to do but for the moment we were both senseless men. Staring at the Twister to see what was going to happen, as if we would ever see anything, neither eyes nor ears nor mind would have the slightest chance in the world of registering anything before that blinding nuclear flash annihilated us, vaporised us, blew the Campari out of existence.

Ten seconds passed. Twelve. Fifteen. Twenty. Half a minute. I eased my aching lungs—I hadn’t drawn a breath in all that time—and my grip round Caroline and the ladder. “Well,” I said, “how far would you have got?”

Dr. Caroline climbed slowly down the two steps to the floor of the hold, dragged his gaze away from the missile, looked at me for a long moment with uncomprehending eyes, then smiled. “Do you know, Mr. Carter, the thought never even occurred to me.” His voice was quite steady and his smile wasn’t the smile of a crazy man. Dr. Caroline had known that he was going to die and then he hadn’t died, and nothing would ever be quite so bad again. He had found that the valley of fear does not keep on going down for ever: somewhere there is a bottom, then a man starts climbing again.

“You grab the trailing rope first and then release the auto-lock,” I said reproachfully. If I was light-headed, who was to blame me? “Not the other way around. You might remember the next time.”

There are some things for which to make an apology is impossible, so he didn’t even try. He said regretfully: “I’m afraid I’ll never make a sailorman. But at least we know now that the retaining spring on the trembler switch is not as weak as we had feared.” He smiled wanly. “Mr. Carter, I think I’ll have a cigarette.”

“I think I’ll join you,” I said.

After that it was easy—well, relatively easy. We still treated the Twister with the greatest respect—had it struck at some other angle it might indeed have detonated—but not with respect exaggerated to the extent of tiptoeing terror. We dragged it on its tarpaulins across to the other side of the hold, transferred the Haltrac hoist to the corresponding ladder on the port side, arranged a couple of spare tarpaulins and blankets from the coffin to make a cushioned bed for the Twister between baffle and the ship’s side, hoisted the missile across the baffle without any of the acrobatics that had accompanied the last transfer, lowered it into position, pulled over the blankets and covered it completely with the tarpaulins on which we had dragged it across the floor.

“It’ll be safe here?” Dr. Caroline inquired. He seemed almost back to what I should have imagined his normal self to be, except for the hurried breathing, the cold sweat on his brow and face.

“They’ll never see it. They’ll never even think to look here. Why should they?”

“What do you propose to do now?”

“Leave with all possible speed. I’ve played my luck far enough. But first the coffin—must weight it to compensate for the absence of the Twister, then batten down the lid again.”

“And then where do we go?”

“You’re not going anywhere. You’re staying here.” I explained to him just why he had to stay there, and he didn’t like it one little bit. I explained to him some more, pointed out carefully, so that he couldn’t fail to understand, that his only chance of life depended on his staying there and he still didn’t like it any more. But he saw that it had to be done, and the fear of certain death eventually outweighed the very understandable and almost hysterical panic my suggestion had caused him. And after that fifteen second lifetime when we had waited for the Twister to detonate, nothing could ever seem so terrifying again.

Five minutes later I battened down the coffin lid for the last time, thrust the screwdriver into my pocket and left the hold.

The wind, I thought, had eased a little: the rain, beyond question, was heavier by far, even in the pitchy darkness of that night I could see the blur of whiteness round my stockinged feet as the heavy wind-driven drops spattered on the iron decks and rebounded ankle-high.

I took my time making my way forward. There was no hurry any more, and now that the worst was behind I had no mind to destroy us all by undue haste. I was a black shadow, at one with the blackness of the night, and no ghost was ever half so quiet. Once two patrolling guards passed me by, going aft, once I passed a couple huddled miserably in the lee of “A” accommodation deck, seeking what little shelter they could from the cold rain. Neither pair saw me, neither even suspected my presence, which was just as it should have been. The dog never catches the hare, for lunch is less important than life.

I had no means of telling the time, but at least twenty minutes must have passed before I once more found myself outside the wireless office. Every major event in the past three days, right from the very first, had in some way or other stemmed from that wireless office: it seemed only fitting that it should also be the scene of the playing of the last card left in my hand.

The padlock was through the hasp and it was locked. That meant there was no one inside. I retreated to the shelter of the nearest boat and settled down to wait. The fact that there was no one in there didn’t mean that there wasn’t going to be someone there very soon. Tony Carreras had mentioned that their stooges on the Ticonderoga reported course and position every hour. Carlos, the man I’d killed, must have been waiting for just such a message, and if there was another report due through, then it was a certainty that Carreras would have his other operator up to intercept it. At this penultimate state of the game, he would be leaving nothing at all to chance. And, in the same state of the game, neither was I: the radio operator bursting in and finding me sitting in front of his transmitter was the last thing I could have afford happen.

The rain drummed pitilessly on my beat back. I couldn’t get any wetter than I was, but I could get colder. I got colder, very cold indeed, and within fifteen minutes I was shivering constantly. Twice guards padded softly by—Carreras was certainly taking no chances that night—and twice I was sure they must find me, so violent was my shivering that I had to clamp my sleeve between my teeth to prevent the chattering from betraying me. But on both occasions the guards passed by oblivious. The shivering became even worse. Would that damned radio operator never come? Or had I outsmarted myself, had I double-guessed and double-guessed wrongly? Perhaps the radio operator wasn’t going to come at all?

I had been sitting on a coiled lifeboat fall and now I rose to my feet, irresolute. How long would I have to wait there before I would be convinced that he wasn’t going to come? or maybe he wasn’t due for another hour yet, or more? Wherein lay the greater danger—risking going into the wireless office now with the ever-present possibility of being discovered and trapped in there, or waiting an hour, maybe two hours, before making my move, by which time it would almost certainly be too late anyway? Better a chance of failure, I thought, than the near certainty of it, and now that I’d left number four hold the only life which would be lost through my mistakes would be my own. Now, I thought, I’ll do it now. I took three silent steps, then no more. The radio operator had arrived. I took three silent steps back.

The click of a key turning in the padlock, the faint creak of the door, the metallic sound of it shutting, a faint gleam of light behind the curtained window. Our friend preparing to receive, I thought. He wouldn’t stay long, that was a safe enough guess, just long enough to take down the latest details of course and speed of the Ticonderoga—unless the weather was radically different to the north-east it was most unlikely that the Ticonderoga could have fixed its position that night—and take it up to Carreras on the bridge. I presumed that Carreras would still be there, it would be entirely out of keeping with the man if, in those last few crucial hours, he didn’t remain on the bridge and take personal charge of the entire operation as he had done throughout. I could just see him accepting the sheet of figures with the latest details of the Ticonderoga’s progress, smiling his smile of cold satisfaction, making his calculations on the chart.

My thoughts stopped dead right there. I felt as if someone had turned a master switch inside me and everything had seized up, heart, breathing, mind and every organ of sensation I felt as I had felt during those dreadful fifteen seconds while Dr. Caroline and I had waited for the Twister to blow up. I felt that way because there had abruptly, paralysingly flashed on me the realisation that would have come to me half an hour ago if I hadn’t been so busy commiserating with myself on the misery I was suffering. Whatever else Carreras had not established himself as—and there were many things—he had established himself as a consistent prudent and methodical man: and he’d never yet worked out any chart problems on figures supplied him without coming to have a check made by his trusty navigator, Chief Officer John Carter.

My mind churned into low gear again, but it didn’t make any difference. True, he’d sometimes waited some hours before having his check made, but he wouldn’t be waiting some hours tonight because by then it would be far too late. We couldn’t be more than three hours now from our rendezvous with the Ticonderoga, and he’d want a check made immediately. Waking up a sick man in the middle of the night would hardly be a consideration to worry Carreras. Nothing was surer than that within ten or fifteen minutes of that message coming through he’d be calling at the sick-bay. To find his navigator gone. To find the door locked from the inside. To find MacDonald waiting with a gun in his hand. MacDonald had only one automatic, Carreras could call on forty men with sub-machine-guns. There could only be one ending to any battle in the sick-bay and the end would be swift and certain and final. In my mind’s eye I could just see stammering machine-guns spraying the sick-bay, could see MacDonald and Susan, Bullen and Marston—I crushed down the thought, forced it from my mind. That way lay defeat.

When the radio operator left the office, if I got inside unseen, if I was left undisturbed to send off the message, how long would that leave me to get back to the sick-bay? Ten minutes, not any more than ten minutes, say seven or eight minutes to make my way undetected right aft to the port side to where I had left the three ropes tied to the guard-rail stanchion, secure one to myself, grab the lifeline, give the signal to the bo’sun, lower myself into the water and then make the long half-drowning trip back to the sick-bay. Ten minutes? Eight? I knew I could never do it in double that time, if my trip from the sick-bay to the after-deck through that water had been any criterion, the trip back, against instead of with the current, would be at least twice as bad: and the first trip had been near enough the end of me. Eight minutes? The chances were high I’d never get back there at all.

Or the radio operator? I could kill the radio operator as he left the office. I was desperate enough to try anything and frantic enough to have a fair chance of success. Even with the patrolling guards around. That way Carreras would never get the message. But he would be waiting for it, oh, yes, he would be waiting for it. He would be very anxious indeed to have the last check, and if it didn’t come within minutes he was going to send someone to investigate and when that someone found the operator was dead or missing the balloon would be up with a vengeance. Guards running here, guards running there, lights on all over the ship, every possible source of trouble investigated—and that still included the sick-bay. And MacDonald would still be there. With his gun.

There was a way. It was a way that gave little enough hope of success, with the added drawback that I would be forced to leave those three incriminating ropes attached to the guardrail aft: but at least it didn’t carry with it an outright guarantee of failure.

I stooped, felt for the coiled fall rope, cut it with my clasp-knife. One end of the rope I secured to my waist with a bowline: the rest of it, about sixty feet, I wrapped round my waist, tucking the end in. I fumbled for and found the radio office key that I’d taken off the dead Carlos. I stood in the rain and the darkness and waited.

A minute elapsed, no more, then the radio operator appeared, locked the door behind him and made for the companionway leading up to the bridge. Thirty seconds later I was sitting in the seat he’d just vacated, looking up the call-sign of the Fort Ticonderoga.

I made no attempt to hide my presence there by leaving the light off. That would only have aroused the suspicions, and quickly, too, of any passing guards hearing the stutter of transmitted Morse coming from a darkened wireless office.

Twice I tapped out the call sign of the Ticonderoga, and on the second occasion I got an acknowledgment. One of Carreras’s radio operator stooges aboard the Ticonderoga was certainly keeping a pretty sharp watch. I should have expected nothing else.

It was a brief message, speeded on its way by the introductory words “HIGHEST PRIORITY URGENT IMMEDIATE REPEAT IMMEDIATE ATTENTION MASTER FORT TICONDEROGA.” I sent the message and took the liberty of signing it “FROM THE OFFICE OF THE MINISTER OF TRANSPORT BY THE HAND OF VICE-ADMIRAL RICHARD HODSON DIRECTOR NAVAL OPERATIONS.” I switched off the light, opened the door and peered out cautiously. No curious listeners, no one at all in sight. I came all the way out, locked the padlock and threw the key over the side.

Thirty seconds later I was on the port side of the boat-deck carefully gauging, as best I could in that darkness and driving rain, the distance from where I stood to the break in the fo’c’sle. About thirty feet, I finally estimated, and the distance from the fo’c’sle break aft to the window above my bed was, I guessed, about the same. If I was right, I should be almost directly above that window now: the sick-bay was three decks below. If I wasn’t right—well, I’d better be right.

I checked the knot round my waist, passed the other end of the rope round a convenient arm of a davit and let it hang down loosely over the side. I was just about to start lowering myself when the rope below me smacked wetly against the ship’s side and went taut. Someone had caught that rope and hauled it tight.

Panic touched me but the instinct for self-preservation still operated independently of my mind. I flung an arm round the davit and locked on to the wrist of the other hand. Anyone wanting to pull me over the side would have to pull that davit and lifeboat along with me. But as long as that pressure remained on the rope I couldn’t escape, couldn’t free a hand to untie the bowline or get at my clasp-knife.

The pressure eased. I fumbled for the knot, then stopped as the pressure came on again. But the pressure was only momentary, no pull but a tug. Four tugs, in rapid succession. If I wasn’t feeling weak enough already, I’d have felt that way with relief. Four tugs. The pre-arranged signal with MacDonald to show I was on my way back: I might known Archie MacDonald would have been keeping watch every second of the time I was away. He must have seen or heard or even felt the rope snaking down past the window and guessed that it could only be myself. I went down that rope like a man reborn, checked suddenly as a strong hand caught me by the ankle and five seconds later was on terra firma inside the sickbay.

“The ropes!” I said to MacDonald. I was already untying the one around my own waist. “The two ropes on the bedstead. Off with them. Throw them out the window.” Moments later the last of the three ropes had vanished, I was closing the window, pulling the curtains and calling softly for lights.

The lights came on. MacDonald and Bullen were as I had left them, both eyeing me with expressionless faces: MacDonald, because he knew my safe return meant at least possible success and did not want to betray his knowledge: Bullen, because I had told him that I intended to take over the bridge by force, and he was convinced that my method of return meant failure and didn’t want to embarrass me. Susan and Marston were by the dispensary door, both fully dressed, neither making any attempt to conceal disappointment. No time for greetings.

“Susan, on with the heaters! Full on. This place feels like a frig after this window being open so long. Carreras will be here any minute and it’s the first thing he’ll notice. After that, towels for me. Doc, a hand to get MacDonald back to his own bed. Move, man, move! And why aren’t you and Susan dressed for bed? If Carreras sees you——”

“We were expecting the gentleman to come calling with a gun,” MacDonald reminded me. “You’re frozen stiff, Mr. Carter, blue with cold. And shivering like you were in an icebox.”

“I feel like it.” We dumped MacDonald, none too gently, on his bed, pulled up sheets and blankets, then I tore off my clothes and started to towel myself dry. No matter how I towelled, I couldn’t stop the shivering.

“The key,” MacDonald said sharply. “The key in the sick-bay door.”

“God, yes!” I’d forgotten all about it. “Susan, will you? Unlock it. And then to bed. Quickly! And you, Doctor.” I took the key from her, opened the window behind the curtain and flung the key out: the suit I had been wearing, the socks, the wet towels following in short order, but not before I had remembered to remove the screwdriver and MacDonald’s clasp-knife from the jacket. I dried and combed my hair into some sort of order—as orderly as anyone could expect it to be after a few hours sleeping in bed—and helped Doc Marston as he swiftly changed the plaster on my head and wrapped splints and fresh bandages round the still soaking ones covering the wounds in my leg. Then the lights clicked off and the sick-bay was once more in darkness.

“Have I forgotten anything, anybody?” I asked. “Anything that might show I’ve been out of here?”

“Nothing, I don’t think there’s anything.” The bo’sun speaking. “I’m sure.”

“The heaters?” I asked. “Are they on? It’s freezing in here.”

“It’s not that cold, my boy,” Bullen said in his husky whisper “You’re freezing, that’s what. Marston, haven’t you—?”

“Hot-water bags,” Marston said briskly. “Two of them Here they are.” He thrust them into my hands in the dark.

“Had them all prepared for you, we suspected all that sea water and rain wouldn’t do that fever of yours any good. And here’s a glass to show your friend Carreras a few drops of brandy in the bottom to convince him how far through you are.”

“You might have filled it,” I complained.

“I did.”

I emptied it. No question but that that neat brandy had a heating effect, it seemed to burn a hole through me all the way down to my stomach: but the only overall effect it had was to make the rest of me seem colder than ever.

Then MacDonald’s voice, quick and quiet: “Someone coming.”

I’d time to fumble the empty glass on to the bedside table, but time for nothing more, not even time to slide down to a lying position under the blankets. The door opened, the overhead lights clicked on and Carreras, the inevitable chart under his arm, advanced across the sick-bay towards my bed. As usual, he had his expressions and emotions under complete control: anxiety, tension, anticipation, all those must have been in his mind, and behind everything the memory of his lost son: but no trace showed.

He stopped a yard away and stared down at me, eyes speculative and narrowed and cold.

“Not asleep, Carter, eh?” he said slowly. “Not even lying down.” He picked up the glass from the bedside table, sniffed it and set it down again. “Brandy. And you’re shivering, Carter. Shivering all the time. Why? Answer me!”

“I’m frightened,” I said sourly. “Every time I see you I get terrified.”

“Mr. Carreras!” Doc Marston had just appeared through the dispensary doorway, a blanket wrapped round him, his magnificent mane of white hair tousled in splendid disorder, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “This is outrageous, completely outrageous. Disturbing this very sick boy—and at this hour. I must ask you to leave, sir. And at once!”

Carreras looked him over from head to toe and back again, then said quietly and coldly: “Be quiet.”

“I will not be quiet!” Doc Marston shouted. M.G.M. would have given him a life-contract any day. “I’m a doctor, I’ve my duty as a doctor and, by God, I’m going to have my say as a doctor!” There was unfortunately no table at hand otherwise he would have crashed down his fist on it, but even without the table-banging it was a pretty impressive performance and Carreras was obviously taken aback by Marston’s professional ire and outrage.

“Chief Officer Carter is a very sick man,” Marston thundered on. “I haven’t the facilities here to treat a compound fracture of the femur and the result was inevitable. Pneumonia, sir, pneumonia! In both lungs, so much fluid gathered already that he can’t lie down, he can hardly breathe. Temperature 104, pulse 130, high fever, constant shivering. I’ve packed him with hot-water bottles, fed him drugs, aspirin, brandy, all to no effect. Fever just won’t go down: one moment burning hot, the next soaking wet.” He was right about the soaking wet bit, anyway, I could feel the sea-water from the sodden bandages seeping through to the mattress below. “For God’s sake, Carreras, can’t you see he’s a sick man? Leave him be.”

“I’ll only keep him a moment, Doctor,” Carreras said soothingly. Whatever faint stirrings of suspicion he might have had had been completely laid to rest by Marston’s Oscar-winning performance. “I can see that Mr. Carter is unwell. But this will give him no trouble at all.”

I was reaching for the chart and pencil even before he handed it to me. What with the constant shivering and the numbness that seemed to be spreading from my injured leg over my entire body, the calculations took me longer than usual, but they weren’t difficult. I looked at the sick-bay clock and said: “You should be in position shortly before 4 a.m.”

“We can’t miss him, you would say, Mr. Carter?” He wasn’t as confident and unworried as he looked. “Even in the dark?”

“With the radar going I don’t see how you can.” I wheezed some more so that he wouldn’t forget to remember how sick I was, and went on: “How do you propose to make the Ticonderoga stop?” I was as anxious as he was that contact should be established and transfers accomplished as quickly and smoothly as possible. The Twister in the hold was due to blow up at 7 a.m.: I’d just as soon be a long distance away by that time.

“A shell across the bows and a signal to stop. If that doesn’t work,” he added reflectively, “a shell through the fo’c’sle.”

“You really do surprise me, Carreras,” I said slowly.

“Surprise you?” A barely perceptible lift of the left eyebrow, for Carreras a perfect riot of expression. “How so?”

“A man who has taken such infinite pains and, I must admit, shown such superb planning throughout—to throw it all away by such careless haphazard action at the end.” He made to speak, but I held up my hand and carried on: “I’m just as interested as you are in seeing that the Fort Ticonderoga is stopped. I don’t give a tuppenny damn about the gold. I do know it’s essential that Captain Bullen, the bo’sun and I get to a first-class hospital immediately. I do want to see all the passengers and crew transferred to safety. I don’t want to see any members of the Ticonderoga’s crew killed by gunfire. And finally——”

“Get on with it,” he interrupted coldly.

“Right. You intercept at five. In the present weather conditions it’ll be half light then—light enough to let the master of the Fort Ticonderoga see you approaching. When he sees another vessel closing in on him—with the whole width of the Atlantic to use to pass him by—he’ll become immediately suspicious. After all, he knows he’s carrying a fortune in gold. He’ll turn and run for it. In the half light, with poor visibility, falling rain, pitching decks and a gun-crew almost certainly untrained in naval gunnery, your chances of registering a hit on the small target presented by a target running away from you are pretty small. Not that that pop-gun I’m told you’ve mounted on the fo’c’sle will achieve very much anyway.”

“No one could call the gun I have mounted on the after-deck a pop-gun, Mr. Carter.” But for all the untroubled smoothness of the face, he was thinking plenty. “It’s almost the equivalent of a 3.7.”

“So what? You’ll have to turn broadside on to bring that one to bear, and while you’re turning the Ticonderoga will be getting even farther away from you. For the reasons already given, you’ll almost certainly miss anyway. After the second shot, those deck-plates will probably be buckled to hell and gone. Then how do you propose to stop him? You can’t make a 14,000-ton cargo ship stop just by waving a few tommy-guns at it.”

“It will not come to that. There is an element of uncertainty in everything. But we shall not fail.”

“There’s no need for any element of uncertainty, Carreras.”

“Indeed? How do you propose it should be done?”

“I think that’s enough!” It was Captain Bullen who broke in, his husky voice heavy with all the weight and authority of the commodore of the Blue Mail. “Doing chart-work under pressure is one thing: voluntarily scheming to further this criminal’s plans is another. I have listened to all of this. Haven’t you gone far enough, Mister?”

“Hell, no,” I said. “I won’t have gone far enough till all of us have gone all the way to the Navy Hospital in Hampton Roads. The thing’s dead simple, Carreras. When he comes within a few miles on the radar scope, start firing off distress signals. At the same time—you’d better arrange this now—have your stooges on the Ticonderoga take a message to the master saying they’ve just picked up SOS signals from the Campari. When he comes nearer, send an Aldis message that you sprung engine-room plates coming through the hurricane, which he’s bound to have heard of.” I smiled my wan smile. “The last part is true anyway. When he’s stopped alongside and you whip the tarpaulins off your guns—well, you have him. He can’t and won’t dare to try to get away.”

He stared at me without seeing me, then gave a small nod.

“I suppose it’s out of the question to persuade you to become my—all—lieutenant, Carter?”

“Just see me safe aboard the Ticonderoga, Carreras. That’s all the thanks I want.”

“That shall be done.” He glanced at his watch. “In under three hours six of your crew will be here with stretchers to transfer Captain Bullen, the bo’sun and yourself to the Ticonderoga.”

He left. I looked round the sick-bay, they were all there, Bullen and MacDonald in their beds, Susan and Marston by the dispensary door, both shawled in blankets. They were all looking at me and the expressions on their faces were very peculiar indeed, to say the least of it.

The silence went on and on for what seemed like a quite unnecessarily long time, then Bullen spoke, his voice slow and hard.

“Carreras has committed one act of piracy: he is about to commit another. By doing so he declares himself an enemy of Queen and country. You will be charged with giving aid and comfort to the enemy, with being directly responsible for the loss of 150 million dollars in gold bullion. I shall take statements from witnesses present as soon as we get aboard the Ticonderoga.” I couldn’t blame the old man, he still believed in Carreras’s promise as to our future safety. In his eyes, I was just making things too damned easy for Carreras. But now wasn’t the time to enlighten him.

“Oh, here,” I said, “that’s a bit hard, isn’t it? Aiding, abetting, accessorying, if you like, but all this treason stuff——”

“Why did you do it?” Susan Beresford shook her head wonderingly. “Oh, why did you do it? Helping him like that just to save your own neck.” And now wasn’t the time to enlighten her either: neither she nor Bullen were actor enough to carry off their parts in the morning if they knew the whole truth.

“That’s a bit hard, too,” I protested. “Only a few hours ago there was no one keener than yourself to get away from the Campari. And now that——”

“I didn’t want it done this way! I didn’t know until now that there was a good chance that the Ticonderoga could escape.”

“I wouldn’t have believed it, John,” Dr. Marston said heavily. “I just wouldn’t have believed it.”

“It’s all right for all of you to talk,” I said. “You’ve all got families. I’ve only got myself. Can you blame me for wanting to took after all I have?”

No one took me up on this masterpiece of logical reasoning. I looked round them one by one and they turned away one by one, Susan, Marston and Bullen, not bothering to hide their expressions. And then MacDonald, too, turned away, but not before his left eyelid had dropped in a long slow wink.

I eased myself down in bed and made up my mind for sleep. No one asked me how I had got on that night.

XII.

Saturday 6 a.m.–7 a.m.

When I awoke I was stiff and sore and still shivering. But it wasn’t the pain or the cold or the fever that had brought me up from the murky depths of that troubled sleep. It was noise, a series of grinding, creaking metallic crashes that echoed and shuddered throughout the entire length of the Campari as if she were smashing into an iceberg with every roll she took. I could tell from the slow, sluggish, lifeless roll that the stabilisers weren’t working: the Campari was stopped dead in the water.

“Well, Mister.” Bullen’s voice was a harsh grate. “Your plan worked, damn you. Congratulations. The Ticonderoga’s alongside.”

“Right alongside,” MacDonald confirmed. “Lashed alongside.”

“In this weather?” I winced as the two ships rolled heavily together in the trough of a deep swell, and I heard the harsh tearing scream of sound as topsides metal buckled and rended under the staggering weight of the impact. “It’ll ruin the paintwork. The man’s mad.”

“He’s in a hurry,” MacDonald said. “I can hear the jumbo winch aft. He’s started trans-shipping cargo already.”

“Aft?” I couldn’t keep the note of excitement out of my voice, and everybody suddenly looked at me, curiosity in their eyes. “Aft? Are you sure?”

“I’m sure, sir.”

“Are we tied bow to bow and stern to stern or are we facing in opposite directions?”

“No idea.” Both he and Bullen were giving me very close looks, but there was a difference in the quality of the closeness. “Does it matter, Mr. Carter?” He knew damned well it did.

“It didn’t matter,” I said indifferently. Not much it didn’t matter: only 150 million dollars, that was all it mattered.

“Where’s Miss Beresford?” I asked Marston.

“With her folks,” he said shortly. “Packing clothes. Your kind friend Carreras is allowing the passengers to take one suitcase apiece with them. He says they’ll get the rest of their stuff back in due course—if anyone manages to pick up the Campari after he has abandoned it, that is.”

It was typical, I thought, of the man’s extraordinary thoroughness in all he did: by letting them pack some clothes and promising the eventual safe return of the remainder, he would eliminate from even the most suspicious mind the unworthy thought that perhaps his intentions towards the crew and passengers weren’t of the highest and noblest.

The phone rang. Marston picked it up, listened briefly, then hung up.

“Stretcher party in five minutes,” he announced.

“Help me dress, please,” I said. “My white uniform shorts and white shirt.”

“You—you’re not getting up?” Marston was aghast.

“What if——”

“I’m getting up, dressing and getting back to bed again,” I said shortly. “Do you think I’m daft? What’s Carreras going to think if he sees a man with a compound fracture of the thigh hopping briskly over the rail on to the Ticonderoga”

I dressed, stuck the screwdriver under the splints on my left leg and got back to bed again. I was no sooner there than the stretcher party appeared and all three of us, still blanket-wrapped were lowered gently on to the stretchers. The six bearers stooped, caught the handles and we were on our way.

We were carried straight aft along the main deck passage to the after-deck. I saw the end of the passage approaching, the grey cold dawn light replacing the warm electric glow of the passageway, and I could feel my muscles tense involuntarily. The Ticonderoga would be in sight in a few seconds along our starboard side and I wondered if I would dare to look. Would we be tied bow to bow or bow to stern? Would I have won or lost? We came out on the after-deck. I forced myself to look.

I’d won. Bow to bow and stern to stern. From my low elevation on the stretcher I couldn’t see much, but that I could see—bow to bow, stern to stern. That meant that the Campari’s after jumbo was unloading from the Ticonderoga’s after-deck. I looked again and checked again and there was no mistake. Bow to bow, stern to stern. I felt like a million dollars, A hundred million dollars.

The Ticonderoga, a big cargo vessel, dark blue with a red funnel, was almost the same size as the Campari. More important, their after-decks were almost the same height above the water, which made for ease of transfer of both cargo and human beings. I could count eight crates already aboard the after-deck of the Campari: a dozen still to come.

The transfer of human livestock had gone even further: all of the passengers, as far as I could judge, and at least half of the Campari’s crew were already standing on the after-deck of the Ticonderoga, making no move except to brace themselves against the rolling of the ship: their stillness was encouraged by a couple of hard-faced characters in green jungle uniform, each with a machine-pistol cocked. A third gunman covered two Ticonderoga seamen who were stationed at lowered guard-rails to catch and steady men as they stepped or jumped from the after-deck of the Campari to that of the Ticonderoga, as the two ships rolled together. Two more supervised Ticonderoga crew members fitting slings to the crates still to be transferred. From where I lay I could see four other armed men—there were probably many more—patrolling the decks of the Ticonderoga and four others on the after-deck of the Campari. Despite the fact that most of them were dressed in a quasi-uniform of jungle-green, they didn’t look like soldiers to me: they just looked like what they were, hardened criminals with guns in their hands, cold-eyed men with their history written in their faces by the lines of brutality and depravity. Although he was maybe a bit short on the side of æsthetic appreciation, there was no doubt but that Carreras picked his killers well.

The sky was low with grey tattered cloud stretching away to the grey indistinctness of a tumbled horizon, the wind, westerly now, was still strong, but the rain had almost stopped, no more than a thin cold smirr of a drizzle, felt rather than seen. Visibility was poor, but it would be good enough to let Carreras see that there were no other ships in the vicinity: and the radar-scope, of course, would be working all the time. But apparently the visibility hadn’t been good enough to let Carreras see the three ropes still attached to the base of the guard-rail stanchion on the port side. From where I lay I could see them clearly. To me they looked about the size of the cables supporting the Brooklyn Bridge. I hastily averted my eyes.

But Carreras, I could now see, had no time to look around him anyway. He himself had taken personal charge of the trans-shipment of crates, hurrying on both his own men and the crew of the Ticonderoga, shouting at them, encouraging them, driving them on with an unflagging unrelenting energy and urgency which seemed strangely at variance with his normally calm, dispassionate bearing. He would, of course, be understandably anxious to have the transfer completed before any curious third ship might heave in sight over the horizon, but even so … And then I knew what accounted for all the nearly desperate haste: I looked at my watch.

It was already ten minutes past six. Ten past six! From what I’d gathered of Carreras’s proposed schedule for the transfer and from the lack of light in the sky I’d have put the time at no more than half past five. I checked again, but no mistake. Six-ten. Carreras would want to be over the horizon when the Twister went up—he would be safe enough from blast and radio-active fall-out but heaven alone knew what kind of tidal wave would be pushed up by the explosion of such an underwater nuclear device—and the Twister was due to go up in fifty minutes. His haste was understandable. I wondered what had held him up. Perhaps the late arrival of the Ticonderoga or the lapse of a longer period of time than he had expected in luring it alongside. Not that it mattered now.

A signal from Carreras and it was time for the stretcher cases to be transferred. I was the first to go. I didn’t much fancy the prospect of the brief trip, I’d just be a reddish stain spread over a couple of hundred square feet of metal if one of the bearers slipped as the two big ships rolled together, but the nimble-footed seamen probably had the same thought in mind for themselves, for they made no mistake. A minute later and both other stretchers had been brought across.

We were set down near the for’ard break of the after-deck, beside our passengers and crew. In a group slightly to one side, with a guard all to themselves, stood a few officers and maybe a dozen men of the Ticonderoga’s crew. One of them, a tall lean angry-eyed man in his early fifties with the four gold rings of a captain on his sleeves and carrying a telegraph form in his hand was talking to McIlroy, our chief engineer, and Cummings. McIlroy, ignoring the sudden lift of the guard’s gun, brought him across to where we’d been set down.

“Thank God you all survived,” McIlroy said quietly. “Last time I saw you three, I wouldn’t have given a bent penny for any of your chances. This is Captain Brace of the Ticonderoga. Captain Brace, Captain Bullen, Chief Officer Carter.”

“Glad to make your acquaintance, sir,” Bullen whispered huskily. “But not in those damnable circumstances.” No question about it, the old man was on the way to recovery. “We’ll leave Mr. Carter out of it, Mr. McIlroy. I intend to prefer charges against him for giving undue and unwarranted aid to that damned monster Carreras.” Considering I’d saved his life by refusing to let Doc Marston operate on him, I did think he might have shown a little more gratitude.

“Johnny Carter?” McIlroy looked his open disbelief. “It’s impossible!”

“You’ll have your proof,” Bullen said grimly. He looked up at Captain Brace. “Knowing that you knew what cargo you were carrying, I should have expected you to make a run for it when intercepted, naval guns or no naval guns. But you didn’t, did you? You answered an SOS, isn’t that it? Distress rockets, claims that plates had been sprung in the hurricane, sinking, come and take us off? Right, Captain?”

“I could have outrun or out-manœuvred him,” Brace said tightly. Then, in sudden curiosity: “How did you know that?”

“Because I heard our first mate here advising him that that was the best way to do it. Part of your answer already, eh, McIlroy.” He looked at me without admiration, then back at McIlroy. “Have a couple of men move me nearer that bulkhead. I don’t feel too comfortable here.”

I gave him an injured glance but it bounced right off him. His stretcher was shifted and I was left more or less alone in front of the group. I lay there for about three minutes watching the cargo transfer. A crate a minute, and this despite the fact that the manilla holding the after-ends of the two vessels together snapped and had to be replaced. Ten minutes at the most and he should be all through.

A hand touched my shoulder and I looked round. Julius Beresford was squatting by my side.

“Never thought I’d see you again, Mr. Carter,” he said candidly. “How do you feel?”

“Better than I look,” I said untruthfully.

“And why left alone here?” he asked curiously.

“This,” I explained, “is what is known as being sent to Coventry. Captain Bullen is convinced that I gave unwarranted help or aid or some such legal phrase, to Carreras. He’s not pleased with me.”

“Rubbish!” he snorted.

“He heard me doing it.”

“Don’t care what he heard,” Beresford said flatly. “Whatever he heard he didn’t hear what he thought he did. I make as many mistakes as the next man, maybe more than most, but I never make a mistake about men.… Which reminds me, my boy, which reminds me, I can’t tell you how pleased I am—and how delighted. Hardly the time and place for it, but nevertheless my very heartiest congratulations. My wife feels exactly the same way about it, I can assure you.”

It was taking me all my time to pay attention to him. One of those crates was swinging dangerously in its slings, and if one of those crates dropped, fell on the deck and burst open to reveal its contents I didn’t see that there was going to be much future for any of us. It wasn’t a thought I liked to dwell on, It would be better to turn my mind to something else, like concentrating on what Julius Beresford was saying.

“I beg your pardon,” I said.

“The job at my Scottish oil-port.” He was half impatient, half smiling. “You know. Delighted that you are going to accept. But not half as delighted as we are about you and Susan. All her life she’s been pursued, as you can guess, by hordes of gold-digging dead-beats, but I always told her that when the day came that she met a man who didn’t give a damn for her money, even though he was a hobo, I wouldn’t stand in her way. Well, she’s found him. And you’re no hobo.”

“The oil-port? Susan—and me?” I blinked at him. “Look, sir——”

“I might have known it, I might have known it!” The laugh was pretty close to a guffaw. “That’s my daughter. Never even got around to telling you yet. Wait till my wife hears this!”

“When did she tell you?” I asked politely. When I’d last seen her about two-fifteen that morning I would have thought it the last thing in her mind.

“Yesterday afternoon.” That was even before she had made the job proposal to me. “But she’ll get around to it, my boy, she’ll get around to it.”

“I won’t get around to it!” I didn’t know how long she had been standing there, but she was there now, a stormy voice to match stormy eyes. “I’ll never get around to it. I must have been mad, I’m ashamed of myself for even thinking of it, I heard him, Daddy. I was there last night with the others in the sick-bay when he was telling Carreras that the best way of stopping the Ticonderoga was——”

A long piercing blast on a whistle brought the tale of Carter’s cowardice to a merciful end. Immediately green-shirted armed men began to appear from other parts of the Ticonderoga, from the bridge and engine-room where they had been on guard during the trans-shipment, which was now finished except for one last crate. Two of the men with guns, I noticed, were dressed in blue Merchant Navy uniforms: those would be the radio officers Carreras had introduced aboard the Ticonderoga. I looked at my watch. Six twenty-five. Carreras was cutting it fine enough.

And now Carreras himself had jumped across to the after-deck of the Ticonderoga. He said something to Captain Brace, I couldn’t hear what it was, but I could see Brace, his face hard and grim, nodding reluctantly. Carreras arranging for the transfer of the coffins. On his way back to the rail he stopped beside me.

“You see that Miguel Carreras keeps his word. Everybody safely transferred.” He glanced at his watch. “I still need a lieutenant.”

“Goodbye, Carreras.”

He nodded, turned on his heel and left as his men brought the coffins on to the after-deck of the Ticonderoga. They handled them very reverently indeed, with a tender delicacy that showed they were only too aware of the contents. The coffins were not immediately recognisable as such: in the final gesture of the consummate actor paying the minutest attention to the last detail in his role, he had draped them with three Stars and Stripes. Knowing Carreras, I was pretty sure he’d brought them all the way from the Caribbean.

Captain Brace stooped, lifted a corner of the flag on the coffin nearest him and looked down at the brass plaque with the name of Senator Hoskins on it. I heard a quick in-drawing of breath, saw that Susan Beresford, hand to her parted lips, was staring down wide-eyed at it too, remembered that she must still be under the impression that the Twister was inside, reached out and grabbed her ankle. I grabbed it hard.

“Be quiet!” I muttered fiercely. “For heaven’s sake shut up!”

She heard me. She kept quiet. Her old man heard me, but he kept quiet also, which must have taken quite a bit of doing on his part when he saw me with my hand round his daughter’s ankle. But the ability to keep expressions and emotions buttoned up must be among the most elementary training for an aspiring multi-millionaire.

The last of Carreras’s men was gone. Carreras with them. He didn’t waste any time wishing us “Bon voyage” or anything of the kind, he just ordered ropes cast off and disappeared at speed for the bridge. A minute later the Campari was under way and her after-deck haphazardly packed with crates, was slewing round and heading away towards the east.

“Well,” Bullen said into the heavy silence. “There he goes, the murderer. With my ship, damn his soul!”

“He won’t have it for long,” I said. “Not even for half an hour. Captain Brace, I advise you——”

“We’ll dispense with your advice, Mister.” Captain Bullen’s voice was a series of rat-traps snapping shut, the blue eyes very frosty indeed.

“This is urgent, sir. It’s imperative that Captain Brace——”

“I gave you a direct order, Mr. Carter. You will obey——”

“Will you please be quiet, Captain Bullen?” Respectful exasperation, but more exasperation than respect.

“I think you’d better be listening to him, sir,” the bo’sun put in, gravely unhappy. “Mr. Carter was not idle last night, unless I’m much mistaken.”

“Thanks, Bo’sun.” I turned to Captain Brace again. “Phone the officer of the watch. Due west 180 degrees from the Campari and full speed. No, emergency power. Now, Captain Brace.”

The urgency in my voice got through. For a person who had just lost 150 million dollars in gold Brace reacted surprisingly quickly and well to the man who had caused him to lose it. He gave a few quick words of instruction to a junior officer, then turned a coldly speculative gaze on me.

“Your reasons, sir?”

“In number four hold of the Campari Carreras is carrying an armed atomic bomb with the time fuse running out. The Twister, the new missile stolen from the Americans a week or so ago.” A glance round the strained incredulous faces of the listeners showed that they knew what I was talking about all right; it showed equally clearly that they couldn’t believe it. “The Twister——”

“Atomic bomb?” Brace’s voice was harsh and too loud. “What damned rubbish——”

“Will you listen? Miss Beresford, am I telling the truth?”

“You’re telling the truth.” Her voice was unsteady, her green eyes jumpy and still on that coffin. “I saw it, Captain. But——”

“So,” I said. “The bomb. Armed. Due to go off in”—I glanced at my watch—“less than twenty-five minutes. Carreras knows it’s due to go off then. That’s why he’s in such a tearing hurry to get away: he imagines the Twister is aboard here. And that’s why I’m in such a tearing great hurry to go in the opposite direction: I know it’s not.”

“But it is here,” Susan said violently. “It is, you know it is! That coffin! There!”

“You’re wrong, Miss Beresford.” The Ticonderoga was picking up speed now, the rumbling thrust of her propeller shaft vibrating through the deck-plates. I wouldn’t have put it past Carreras to have had his glasses trained on our after-deck as long as he possibly could, so I lay quietly there where I was for the next ten or fifteen seconds while about forty pairs of frankly terrified eyes stared at the flag-shrouded coffins. Then the poop of the Ticonderoga had swung round to the east, the Campari was blocked from sight and I was out of my blankets, ripping off the outside bandages and splints and fishing for the concealed screwdriver before getting stiffly to my feet. The effect upon the passengers and crew, who had believed implicitly that Chief Officer Carter had a compound fracture of the thigh, was startling, to say the least. But I had no time to consider effects. I hobbled to the nearest coffin and pulled the flag clear.

“Mr. Carter.” Captain Brace was by my side. “What on earth are you doing? Criminal though Carreras may be, he told me Senator Hoskins——”

“Ha!” I said. With the handle of the screwdriver I rapped out three sharp double-knocks on the lid of the coffin: three knocks came in reply. I glanced round the ever-closing ring of watchers: a cameraman should have been there, recording those expressions for posterity.

“Remarkable recuperative powers, those American senators,” I said to Captain Brace. “You just can’t keep them down. You’ll see.”

I had the lid off that coffin in two minutes flat: in coffin-lid removing, as in everything else, practice makes perfect.

Dr. Slingsby Caroline was as pale as any corpse I’d ever seen. He looked as if he had been frightened to death. I didn’t blame him: there must be lots of harrowing experiences calculated to drive a man around the bend, but I think being screwed down in a coffin for about five hours must beat the lot. Dr. Caroline wasn’t yet round the bend, but he’d been approaching it pretty fast, with the throttle wide open, by the time I got to him. He was shaking like a broken bed-spring, his eyes were wide with fear and he could hardly speak: that knock of mine must have been the sweetest music he’d ever heard.

I left the ministrations to other hands and headed for the next coffin. The lid on this one was either pretty stiff or I was pretty weak, and I wasn’t making much progress when a burly seaman from the Ticonderoga’s crew took the driver from my hand. I wasn’t sorry to let it go. I looked at my watch. Seventeen minutes to seven.

“And this time, Mr. Carter?” It was Captain Brace once more at my elbow, a man whose expression clearly showed that his mind had given up trying to cope. It was understandable enough.

“Conventional explosive with a time-setting. I think it’s meant to blow up the Twister in sympathetic detonation if the Twister’s own time mechanism doesn’t work. Frankly, I don’t know. The thing is that even this could sink the Ticonderoga.”

“Couldn’t we—Couldn’t we just heave it over the side?” he asked nervously.

“Not safe, sir. About due to go off and the jar of its hitting the water might be enough to trigger off the clock. It would blow a hole the size of a barn through the side of your ship.… You might get someone to unscrew the third lid, too.”

I looked at my watch again. Fifteen minutes to seven. The Campari was already hardly more than a dark smudge far down on the lightening horizon to the east, six, perhaps seven miles away. A fair distance off: but not far enough.

The lid was clear of the second coffin. I pulled back the covering blankets, located the primer and the two slender leads of the inset detonator, and gingerly sliced through these, one at a time, with a knife. Just to be on the safe side I threw detonator and primer over the side. Two minutes later I’d rendered the time-bomb in the third coffin equally harmless. I looked round the after-deck, if those people had any sense, the place should have been deserted by now. No one seemed to have stirred an inch.

“Mr. Carter,” Bullen said slowly. He’d stopped glaring at me. “I think perhaps you owe us a little explanation. This business of Dr. Caroline, the coffins, the—the substitutions——”

So I gave it to him, highly condensed, while everybody crowded round, and at the end he said: “And I think maybe I might owe you a small apology.” Contrite, but not going overboard about it. “But I can’t get the thought of the Twister out of my head—the Twister and the Campari. She was a good ship, Mister. Damn it, I know Carreras is a villain, a monster, a man surrounded by cutthroats. But did you have to do it this way? To condemn them all to death? Forty lives on your hands?”

“Better than a hundred and fifty lives on Carreras’s hands,” Julius Beresford said sombrely. “Which is what it would have been but for our friend here.”

“Couldn’t be done, sir,” I said to Bullen. “The Twister was armed and locked in position. Carreras has the key. The only way to render the bomb safe would be to tell Carreras and let him unlock it. If we’d told him before he’d left here, sure, he’d have disarmed it: then he would have killed every man and woman on the Ticonderoga. You can bet what you like that the generalissimo’s last instruction was: ‘no one must live to talk about this.’”

“It’s still not too late,” Bullen said insistently. He wasn’t giving a damn about Carreras, but he loved the Campari. “Once we’re under way there’s no chance of his being able to board us again and kill us, even assuming he comes after us. We can dodge whatever shells——”

“One moment, sir,” I interrupted. “How do we warn him?”

“By radio, man, by radio! There’s still six minutes. Get a message——”

“The Ticonderoga’s transmitters are useless,” I said wearily. “They’re smashed beyond repair.”

“What!” Brace caught my arm. “What? Smashed? How do you know?”

“Use your head,” I said irritably. “Those two bogus wireless operators were under orders to wreck the transmitters before they left. Do you think Carreras wanted you sending out SOSs all over the Atlantic the moment he took off?”

“The thought hadn’t even occurred to me.” Brace shook his head and spoke to a young officer. “On the phone. You heard. Check.”

He checked, and was back in thirty seconds, his face grave. “He’s right, sir. Completely smashed.”

“Our friend Carreras,” I murmured. “His own executioner.”

Two seconds later and five minutes ahead of schedule, the Campari blew itself out of existence. She must have been at least thirteen miles away, she was well hull-down over the horizon and the high square bulk of the Ticonderoga’s raised poop lay in our direct line of sight, but, for all that, the searing blue-white glare that was the heart of the exploding bomb struck our cringing wounded eyes with all the strength of a dozen noon-day suns while it momentarily high-lit the Ticonderoga in blinding white and shadows blacker than night as if some giant searchlight had been switched on only yards away. The intense whiteness, the murderous dazzlement, lasted no more than a fraction of a second—although its imprint on the eye’s retina lasted many times longer—and was replaced by a single bar-straight column of glowing red fire that streaked up into the dawn until it pierced the cloud above: and, following that, a great column of boiling seething-white water surged up slowly from the surface of the sea, incredibly slowly, seemed to reach half-way up to the clouds, then as slowly began to fall again. What little was left of the shattered and vaporised Campari would have been in that gigantic waterspout. The Campari and Carreras.

From birth to death that waterspout must have taken a full minute and it was only seconds after it had vanished and the eastern horizon became clear again that the single flat thunderclap of sound followed by the deep menacing rumble of the after-explosion and accompanying shock-waves came to us over the surface of the sea. Then again all was silence, profound and deathly.

“Well, Dr. Caroline,” I said conversationally, “at least you have the satisfaction of knowing that the damn’ thing works.”

He didn’t take me up on my conversational gambit. No one took me up on it. They were all waiting for the tidal wave, but no tidal wave came. After a minute or two a long low, very fast-moving swell bore down on us from the east, passed under the Ticonderoga, made her pitch heavily perhaps half a dozen times and then was gone. It was Captain Brace who was the first of them all to find his voice.

“That’s it, then Captain Bullen. All gone up in smoke. Your ship and my 150 million dollars in gold.”

“Just the ship, Captain Brace,” I said. “Just the ship. As for the twenty vaporised generators. I’m sure the United States Government will gladly recompense the Harmsworth and Holden Electrical Engineering Company.”

He smiled faintly, heaven knows he couldn’t have felt like smiling.

“There were no generators in those crates, Mr. Carter. Gold bullion for Fort Knox. How that devil Carreras——”

“You knew there was gold in those crates?” I asked.

“Of course I did. Rather I knew we had it on board. But there had been a mistake in marking the crates. So much damned secrecy, I suppose, that one hand didn’t know what the other hand was doing. According to my manifest, the crates of gold were the for’ard twenty on the upper deck, but an Admiralty message last night informed me of the mistake that had been made. Rather, it informed those damned renegades of radio operators. Never showed it to me, of course. They must have radioed the news to Carreras and the first thing they did when he tied up alongside was to give him the written message itself as confirmation. He gave it to me as a souvenir,” he added bitterly. He held out his hand with the form in it. “Want to see it?”

“No need.” I shook my head. “I can tell you word for word what’s in that cable, ‘HIGHEST PRIORITY URGENT IMMEDIATE REPEAT IMMEDIATE ATTENTION MASTER FORT TICONDEROGA: GRAVE ERROR IN LOADING MANIFEST: SPECIAL CARGO NOT REPEAT NOT IN FOR’ARD TWENTY CRATES FOR’ARD DECK MARKED TURBINES NASHVILLE TENNESSEE BUT REPEAT BUT IN FOR’ARD TWENTY CRATES AFTER DECK MARKED GENERATORS OAK RIDGE TENNESSEE: INDICATIONS YOU MAY BE RUNNING INTO HURRICANE ESSENTIAL SECURE AFTER DECK CARGO EARLIEST: FROM THE OFFICE OF THE MINISTER OF TRANSPORT BY THE HAND OF VICE-ADMIRAL RICHARD HODSON DIRECTOR NAVAL OPERATIONS.’”

Captain Brace stared at me.

“How in the name of——”

“Miguel Carreras also had a manifest in his cabin,” I said. “Marked—and correctly—exactly the same as yours. I saw it. That radio message never came from London. It came from me. I sent it from the wireless office of the Campari at two o’clock this morning.”

It was a long long silence indeed that followed: predictably enough, it was Susan Beresford who finally broke it. She moved across to Bullen’s stretcher, looked down at him and said: “Captain Bullen, I think you and I both owe Mr. Carter a very great apology.”

“I think we do, Miss Beresford, I think we do indeed.” He tried to scowl, but it didn’t quite come off. “But he told me to shut up, mind you. Me. His captain. You heard him?”

“That’s nothing,” she said in dismissal. “You’re only his captain. He told me to shut up, too, and I’m his fiancée. We’re getting married next month.”

“His fiancée? Getting—getting married next month?” In spite of the pain Captain Bullen propped himself up on one elbow, stared uncomprehendingly at each of us in turn, then lay back heavily on his stretcher. “Well, I’ll be damned! This is the first I’ve heard of this.”

“It’s the first Mr. Carter has heard of it too,” she admitted. “But he’s hearing it now.”

THE END

ALISTAIR MACLEAN

Seawitch

Dedication

To Lachlan

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Prologue

Normally there are only two types of marine machines concerned with the discovery and recovery of oil from under the ocean floor. The first one, which is mainly engaged in the discovery of oil, is a self-propelled vessel, sometimes of very considerable size. Apart from its towering drilling derrick, it is indistinguishable from any ocean-going cargo vessel; its purpose is to drill bore-holes in areas where seismological and geological studies suggest oil may exist. The technical operation of this activity is highly complex, yet these vessels have achieved a remarkable level of success. However, they suffer from two major drawbacks. Although they are equipped with the most advanced and sophisticated navigational equipment, including bow-thrust propellers, for them to maintain position in running seas, strong tides and winds when boring can be extremely difficult; and in really heavy weather operations have to be suspended.

For the actual drilling of oil and its recovery – principally its recovery – the so-called ‘jack-up system’ is in almost universal use. A rig of this type has to be towed into position, and consists of a platform which carries the drilling rig, cranes, helipads and all essential services, including living accommodation, and is attached to the seabed by firmly anchored legs. In normal conditions it is extremely effective, but like the discovery ships it has drawbacks. It is not mobile. It has to suspend operations in even moderately heavy weather. And it can be used only in comparatively shallow water: the deepest is in the North Sea, where most of those rigs are to be found. This North Sea rig stands in about four hundred and fifty feet of water and the cost of increasing the length of those legs would be so prohibitive as to make oil recovery quite uneconomical, even although there are plans for the Americans to construct a rig with eight-hundred-feet legs off the Californian coast. There is also the unknown safety factor. Two such rigs have already been lost in the North Sea. The cause of those disasters has not been clearly evaluated, although it is suspected, obviously not without cause, that there may have been design, structural or metallic faults in one or more of the legs.

And then there is the third type of oil rig – the TLP – technically, the tension leg drilling/production platform. At the time of this story there was only one of its type in the world. The platform – the working area – was about the size of a football field – if, that is, one can imagine a triangular football field, for the platform was, in fact, an equilateral triangle. The deck was not made of steel but of a uniquely designed ferro-concrete, specially developed by a Dutch oil ship-building company. The supports for this massive platform had been designed and built in England and consisted of three enormous steel legs, each at one corner of the structure, all three being joined together by a variety of horizontal and diagonal hollow cylinders, the total combination offering so tremendous a degree of buoyancy that the working platform they supported was out of the reach of even the highest waves.

From each of the bases of the three legs, three massive steel cables extended to the base of the ocean floor, where each triple set was attached to large sea-floor anchors. Powerful motors could raise or lower it to a depth two or three times that of most modern fixed oil derricks, which meant that it could operate at depths far out on the continental shelf.

The TLP had other very considerable advantages.

Its great buoyancy put the anchor cables under constant tension, and this tension practically eliminated the heaving, pitching and rolling of the platform. Thus the rig could continue operating in very severe storms, storms that would automatically stop production on any other type of derrick.

It was also virtually immune to the effects of an under-sea earthquake.

It was also mobile. It had only to up anchors to move to potentially more productive areas.

And compared to standard oil rigs its cost of establishing position in any given spot was so negligible as to be worth no more than a passing mention.

The name of the TLP was the Seawitch.

Chapter One

In certain places and among certain people, the Seawitch was a very bad name indeed. But, overwhelmingly, their venom was reserved for a certain Lord Worth, a multi – some said bulti – millionaire, chairman and sole owner of Worth Hudson Oil Company and, incidentally, owner of the Seawitch. When his name was mentioned by any of the ten men present at that shoreside house on Lake Tahoe, it was in tones of less than hushed reverence.

Their meeting was announced in neither the national nor local press. This was due to two factors. The delegates arrived and departed either singly or in couples and among the heterogeneous summer population of Lake Tahoe such comings and goings went unremarked or were ignored. More importantly, the delegates to the meeting were understandably reluctant that their assembly become common knowledge. The day was Friday 13th, a date that boded no good for someone.

There were nine delegates present, plus their host. Four of them were American, but only two of these mattered – Corral, who represented the oil and mineral leases in the Florida area, and Benson, who represented the rigs off Southern California.

Of the other six, again only two mattered. One was Patinos of Venezuela; the other was Borosoff of Russia: his interest in American oil supplies could only be regarded as minimal. It was widely assumed amongst the others that his main interest in attending the meeting was to stir up as much trouble as possible, an assumption that was probably correct.

All ten were, in various degrees, suppliers of oil to the United States and had the one common interest: to see that the price of those supplies did not drop. The last thing they all wanted to see was an oil value depreciation.

Benson, whose holiday home this was and who was nominally hosting the meeting, opened the discussion.

‘Gentlemen, does anyone have any strong objections if I bring a third party – that is, a man who represents neither ourselves nor Lord Worth – into this meeting?’

Practically everyone had, and there were some moments of bedlamic confusion: they had not only objections but very strong ones at that.

Borosoff, the Russian, said: ‘No. It is too dangerous.’ He glanced around the group with calculated suspiciousness. ‘There are already too many of us privy to these discussions.’

Benson, who had not become head of one of Europe’s biggest oil companies, a British-based one, just because someone had handed him the job as a birthday present, could be disconcertingly blunt.

‘You, Borosoff, are the one with the slenderest claims to be present at this meeting. You might well bear that in mind. Name your suspect.’ Borosoff remained silent. ‘Bear in mind, gentlemen, the objective of this meeting – to maintain, at least, the present oil price levels. The OPEC is now actively considering hiking all oil prices. That doesn’t hurt us much here in the US – we’ll just hike our own prices and pass them on to the public.’

Patinos said: ‘You’re every bit as unscrupulous and ruthless as you claim us to be.’

’Realism is not the same as ruthlessness. Nobody’s going to hike anything while Worth Hudson is around. They are already undercutting us, the majors. A slight pinch, but we feel it. If we raise our prices more and theirs remain steady, the slight pinch is going to increase. And if they get some more TLPs into operation then the pinch will be beginning to hurt. It will also hurt the OPEC, for the demand for your products will undoubtedly fall off.

’We all subscribe to the gentlemen’s agreement among major oil companies that they will not prospect for oil in international waters, that is to say outside their own legally and internationally recognized territorial limits. Without observance of this agreement, the possibilities of legal, diplomatic, political and international strife, ranging from scenes of political violence to outright armed confrontation, are only too real. Let us suppose that Nation A – as some countries have already done – claims all rights for all waters a hundred miles offshore from its coasts. Let us further suppose that Nation B comes along and starts drilling thirty miles outside those limits. Then, horror of horrors, let us suppose that Nation A makes a unilateral decision to extend its offshore limits to a hundred and fifty miles – and don’t forget that Peru has claimed two hundred miles as its limits: the subsequent possibilities are too awesome to contemplate.

’Alas, not all are gentlemen. The chairman of the Worth Hudson Oil Company, Lord Worth, and his entire pestiferous board of directors, would have been the first vehemently to deny any suggestion that they were gentlemen, a fact held in almost universal acceptance by their competitors in oil. They would also equally vehemently have denied that they were criminals, a fact that may or may not have been true, but most certainly is not true now.

’He has, in short, committed what should be two indictable offences. “Should,” I say. The first is unprovable, the second, although an offence in moral terms, is not, as yet, strictly illegal.

‘The facts of the first – and what I consider much the minor offence – concerns the building of Lord Worth’s TLP in Hudson. It is no secret in the industry that the plans for those were stolen – those for the platform from the Mobil Oil Company, those for the legs and anchoring systems from the Chevron Oilfield Research Company. But, as I say, unprovable. It is commonplace for new inventions and developments to occur at two or more places simultaneously, and he can always claim that his design team, working in secret, beat the others to the gun.’

In saying which Benson was perfectly correct. In the design of the Seawitch Lord Worth had adopted short-cuts which the narrow-minded could have regarded as unscrupulous if not illegal. Like all oil companies, Worth Hudson had its own design team. As they were all cronies of Lord Worth and were employed for purely tax-deductible purposes, their combined talents would have been incapable of designing a rowing boat.

This didn’t worry Lord Worth. He didn’t need a design team. He was a vastly wealthy man, had powerful friends – none of them, needless to say, among the oil companies – and was a master of industrial espionage. With the resources at his disposal he found little trouble in obtaining those two secret advance plans, which he passed on to a firm of highly competent marine designers, whose exorbitant fees were matched only by their extreme discretion. The designers found little difficulty in marrying the two sets of plans, adding just sufficient modifications and improvements to discourage those with a penchant for patent rights litigation.

Benson went on: ‘But what really worries me, and what should worry all you gentlemen here, is Lord Worth’s violation of the tacit agreement never to indulge in drilling in international waters.’ He paused, deliberately for effect, and looked slowly at each of the other nine in turn. ‘I say in all seriousness, gentlemen, that Lord Worth’s foolhardiness and greed may well prove to be the spark that triggers off the ignition of a third world war. Apart from protecting our own interests I maintain that for the good of mankind – and I speak from no motive of spurious self-justification – if the governments of the world do not intervene then the imperative is that we should. As the governments show no signs of intervention, then I suggest that the burden lies upon us. This madman must be stopped. I think you gentlemen would agree that only we realize the full implications of all of this and that only we have the technical expertise to stop him.’

There were murmurs of approval from around the room. A sincere and disinterested concern for the good of mankind was a much more morally justifiable reason for action than the protection of one’s own selfish interests. Patinos, the man from Venezuela, looked at Benson with a smile of mild cynicism on his face. The smile signified nothing. Patinos, a sincere and devout Catholic, wore the same expression when he passed through the doors of his church.

‘You seem very sure of this, Mr Benson?’

‘I’ve given quite some thought to it.’

Borosoff said: ‘And quite how do you propose to stop this madman, Mr Benson?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know?’ One of the others at the table lifted his eyebrows about a millimeter – which, for him, was a sign of complete disapproval. ‘Then why did you summon us all this distance?’

‘I didn’t summon you. I asked you. I asked you to approve whatever course of action we might take.’

‘This course of action being? –’

‘Again, I don’t know.’

The eyebrows returned to normal. A twitch of the man’s lip showed that he was contemplating smiling.

‘This – ah – third party?’

‘Yes.’

‘He has a name?’

‘Cronkite. John Cronkite.’

A hush descended upon the company. The open objections had turned into pensive hesitation which in turn gave way to nodding acceptance. Benson apart, no one there had ever met Cronkite, but his name was a household word to all of them. In the oil business his name had in his own lifetime long become a legend, although at times a far from savoury one. They all knew that any of them might require his incomparable services at any time, while at the same time hoping that that day would never come.

When it came to the capping of blazing gushers, Cronkite was without peer. Wherever in the world a gusher blew fire no one even considered putting it out themselves, they just sent for Cronkite. To wincing observers his modus operandi seemed nothing short of Draconian, but Cronkite would blasphemously brook no interference. Despite the extortionate fees he charged it was more common than not for a four-engined jet to be put at his disposal to get him to the scene of the disaster as quickly as possible. Cronkite always delivered. He also knew all there was to know about the oil business. And he was, hardly surprisingly, extremely tough and ruthless.

Henderson, who represented oil interests in Honduras, said: ‘Why should a man with his extraordinary qualifications, the world’s number one, as we all know, choose to engage himself in – ah – an enterprise of this nature? From his reputation I would hardly have thought that he was one to be concerned about the woes of suffering mankind.’

‘He isn’t. Money. Cronkite comes very high. A fresh challenge – the man’s a born adventurer. But, basically, it’s because he hates Lord Worth’s guts.’

Henderson said: ‘Not an uncommon sentiment, it seems. Why?’

‘Lord Worth sent his own private Boeing for him to come cap a blazing gusher in the Middle East. By the time Cronkite arrived Lord Worth’s own men had capped it. This, alone, Cronkite regarded as a mortal insult. He then made the mistake of demanding the full fee for his services. Lord Worth has a reputation for notorious Scottish meanness, which, while an insult to the Scots, is more than justified in his case. He refused, and said that he would pay him for his time, no more. Cronkite then compounded his error by taking him to court. With the kind of lawyers Lord Worth can afford, Cronkite never had a chance. Not only did he lose but he had to pay the costs.’

‘Which wouldn’t be low?’ Henderson said.

‘Medium-high to massive. I don’t know. All I know is that Cronkite has done quite a bit of brooding about it ever since.’

‘Such a man would not have to be sworn to secrecy?’

‘A man can swear a hundred different oaths and break them all. Besides, because of the exorbitant fees Cronkite charges, his feeling towards Lord Worth and the fact that he might just have to step outside the law, his silence is ensured.’

It was the turn of another of those grouped round the table to raise his eyebrows. ‘Outside the law? We cannot risk being involved –’

‘“Might,” I said. For us, the element of risk does not exist.’

‘May we see this man?’

Benson nodded, rose, went to a door and admitted Cronkite.

Cronkite was a Texan. In height, build and cragginess of features he bore a remarkable resemblance to John Wayne. Unlike Wayne he never smiled. His face was of a peculiarly yellow complexion, typical of those who have had an overdose of anti-malarial tablets, which was just what had happened to Cronkite. Mepacrine does not make for a peaches and cream complexion – not that Cronkite had ever had anything even remotely resembling that. He was newly returned from Indonesia, where he had inevitably maintained his hundred percent record.

‘Mr Cronkite,’ Benson said. ‘Mr Cronkite, this is –’

Cronkite was brusque. In a gravelly voice he said: ‘I do not wish to know their names.’

In spite of the abruptness of his tone, several of the oilmen round the table almost beamed. Here was a man of discretion, a man after their own hearts.

Cronkite went on: ‘All I understand from Mr Benson is that I am required to attend to a matter involving Lord Worth and the Seawitch. Mr Benson has given me a pretty full briefing. I know the background. I would like, first of all, to hear any suggestions you gentlemen may have to offer.’ Cronkite sat down, lit what proved to be a very foul-smelling cigar, and waited expectantly.

He kept silent during the following half-hour discussion. For ten of the world’s top businessmen they proved to be an extraordinary inept, not to say inane lot. They talked in an ever-narrowing series of concentric circles.

Henderson said: ‘First of all it must be agreed that there is no violence to be used. Is it so agreed?’

Everybody nodded their agreement. Each and every one of them was a pillar of business respectability who could not afford to have his reputation besmirched in any way. No one appeared to notice that Cronkite sat motionless as a graven image. Except for lifting a hand to puff out increasingly vile clouds of smoke, Cronkite did not move throughout the discussion. He also remained totally silent.

After agreeing that there should be no violence the meeting of ten agreed on nothing.

Finally Patinos spoke up. ‘Why don’t you – one of you four Americans, I mean – approach your Congress to pass an emergency law banning offshore drilling in extra-territorial waters?’

Benson looked at him with something akin to pity. ‘I am afraid, sir, that you do not quite understand the relations between the American majors and Congress On the few occasions we have met with them – something to do with too much profits and too little tax – I’m afraid we have treated them in so – ah – cavalier a fashion that nothing would give than greater pleasure than to refuse any request we might make.’

One of the others, known simply as ‘Mr A’, said: ‘How about an approach to that international legal ombudsman, the Hague? After all, this is an international matter.’

‘Not on.’ Henderson shook his head ‘Forget it. The dilatoriness of that august body is so legendary that all present would be long retired – or worse – before a decision is made. The decision would just as likely be negative anyway.’

‘UNO?’ Mr A said.

‘That talk-shop!’ Benson had obviously a low and not uncommon view of the UNO. ‘They haven’t even the power to order New York to install a new parking meter outside their front door.’

The next revolutionary idea came from one of the Americans.

‘Why shouldn’t we all agree, for an unspecified time – let’s see how it goes – to lower our price below that of Worth Hudson. In that case no one would want to buy their oil.’

This proposal was met with a stunned disbelief.

Corral spoke in a kind voice. ‘Not only would that lead to vast losses to the major oil companies, but would almost certainly and immediately lead Lord Worth to lower his prices fractionally below their new ones. The man has sufficient working capital to keep him going for a hundred years at a loss – in the unlikely event, that is, of his running at a loss at all.’

A lengthy silence followed. Cronkite was not quite as immobile as he had been. The granitic expression on his face remained unchanged but the fingers of his non-smoking hand had begun to drum gently on the arm-rest of his chair. For Cronkite, this was equivalent to throwing a fit of hysterics.

It was during this period that all thoughts of the ten of maintaining their high, gentlemanly and ethical standards against drilling in international waters were forgotten.

‘Why not,’ Mr A said, ‘buy him out?’ In fairness to Mr A it has to be said that he did not appreciate just how wealthy Lord Worth was and that, immensely wealthy though he, Mr A, was, Lord Worth could have bought him out lock, stock and barrel. ‘The Seawitch rights, I mean. A hundred million dollars. Let’s be generous, two hundred million dollars. Why not?’

Corral looked depressed. ‘The answer “why not” is easy. By the latest reckoning Lord Worth is one of the world’s five richest men and even two hundred million dollars would only come into the category of pennies as far as he was concerned.’

Mr A looked depressed.

Benson said: ‘Sure, he’d sell.’

Mr A visibly brightened.

‘For two reasons only. In the first place he’d make a quick and splendid profit. In the second place, for less than half the selling price, he could build another Seawitch, anchor it a couple of miles away from the present Seawitch – there are no leasehold rights in extra-territorial waters – and start sending oil ashore at his same old price.’

A temporarily deflated Mr A slumped back in his armchair.

‘A partnership, then,’ Mr A said. His tone was that of a man in a state of quiet despair.

‘Out of the question.’ Henderson was very positive. ‘Like all very rich men, Lord Worth is a born loner. He wouldn’t have a combined partnership with the King of Saudi Arabia and the Shah of Persia even if it had been offered him.’

In a pall-like gloom a baffled and exhausted silence fell upon the embattled ten. A thoroughly bored and hitherto wordless John Cronkite rose.

He said without preamble: ‘My personal fee will be one million dollars. I will require ten million dollars for operating expenses. Every cent of this will be accounted for and the unspent balance returned. I demand a completely free hand and no interference from any of you. If I do encounter any such interference I shall retain the balance of the expenses and at the same time abandon the mission. I refuse to disclose what my plans are – or will be when I have formulated them. Finally, I would prefer to have no further contact with any of you, now or at any time.’

The certainty and confidence of the man were astonishing. Agreement among the mightily-relieved ten was immediate and total. The ten million dollars – a trifling sum to those accustomed to spending as much in bribes every month or so – would be delivered within twenty-four, at the most forty-eight hours to a Cuban numbered account in Miami – the only place in the United States where Swiss-type numbered accounts were permitted. For tax evasion purposes the money, of course, would not come from any of their respective countries; instead, ironically enough, from their bulging offshore funds.

Chapter Two

Lord Worth was tall, lean and erect. His complexion was of the mahogany hue of the playboy millionaire who spends his life in the sun: Lord Worth seldom worked less than sixteen hours a day. His abundant hair and moustache were snow-white. According to his mood and expression and to the eye of the beholder he could have been a Biblical patriarch, a better-class Roman senator or a gentlemanly seventeenth-century pirate – except for the fact, of course, that none of those ever, far less habitually, wore lightweight alpaca suits of the same colour as Lord Worth’s hair.

He looked and was every inch an aristocrat. Unlike the many Americanas who bore the Christian names of Duke or Earl, Lord Worth really was a lord, the fifteenth in succession of a highly distinguished family of Scottish peers of the realm. The fact that their distinction had lain mainly in the fields of assassination, endless clan warfare, the stealing of women and cattle and the selling of their fellow peers down the river was beside the point: the earlier Scottish peers didn’t go in too much for the more cultural activities. The blue blood that had run in their veins ran in Lord Worth’s. As ruthless, predatory, acquisitive and courageous as any of his ancestors, Lord Worth simply went about his business with a degree of refinement and sophistication that would have lain several light years beyond their understanding.

He had reversed the trend of Canadians coming to Britain, making their fortunes and eventually being elevated to the peerage: he had already been a peer, and an extremely wealthy one, before emigrating to Canada. His emigration, which had been discreet and precipitous, had not been entirely voluntary. He had made a fortune in real estate in London before the Internal Revenue had become embarrassingly interested in his activities. Fortunately for him, whatever charges which might have been laid against his door were not extraditable.

He had spent several years in Canada, investing his millions in the Worth Hudson Oil Company and proving himself to be even more able in the oil business than he had been in real estate. His tankers and refineries spanned the globe before he had decided that the climate was too cold for him and moved south to Florida. His splendid mansion was the envy of the many millionaires – of a lesser financial breed, admittedly – who almost literally jostled for elbow-room in the Fort Lauderdale area.

The dining-room in that mansion was something to behold. Monks, by the very nature of their calling, are supposed to be devoid of all earthly lusts, but no monk, past or present, could ever have gazed on the gleaming magnificence of that splendid oaken refectory table without turning pale chartreuse in envy. The chairs, inevitably, were Louis XIV. The splendidly embroidered silken carpet, with a pile deep enough for a fair-sized mouse to take cover in, would have been judged by an expert to come from Damascus and to have cost a fortune: the expert would have been right on both counts. The heavy drapes and embroidered silken walls were of the same pale grey, the latter being enhanced by a series of original Impressionist paintings, no less than three by Matisse and the same number by Renoir. Lord Worth was no dilettante and was clearly trying to make amends for his ancestors’ shortcomings in the cultural fields.

It was in those suitably princely surroundings that Lord Worth was at the moment taking his ease, revelling in his second brandy and the company of the two beings whom after money – he loved most in the world: his two daughters Marina and Melinda, who had been so named by their now divorced Spanish mother. Both were young, both were beautiful, and could have been mistaken for twins, which they weren’t: they were easily distinguishable by the fact that while Marina’s hair was black as a raven’s wing Melinda’s was pure titian.

There were two other guests at the table. Many a local millionaire would have given a fair slice of his ill-gotten gains for the privilege and honour of sitting at Lord Worth’s table. Few were invited, and then but seldom. These two young men, comparatively as poor as church mice, had the unique privilege, without invitation, of coming and going as they pleased, which was pretty often.

Mitchell and Roomer were two pleasant men in their early thirties for whom Lord Worth had a strong if concealed admiration and whom he held in something close to awe – inasmuch as they were the only two completely honest men he had ever met. Not that Lord Worth had ever stepped on the wrong side of the law, although he frequently had a clear view of what happened on the other side: it was simply that he was not in the habit of dealing with honest men. They had both been highly efficient police sergeants, only they had been too efficient, much given to arresting the wrong people such as crooked politicians and equally crooked wealthy businessmen who had previously laboured under the misapprehension that they were above the law. They were fired, not to put too fine a point on it, for their total incorruptibility.

Of the two Michael Mitchell was the taller, the broader and the less good-looking. With slightly craggy face, ruffled dark hair and blue chin, he could never have made it as a matinée idol. John Roomer, with his brown hair and trimmed brown moustache, was altogether better-looking. Both were shrewd, intelligent and highly experienced. Roomer was the intuitive one, Mitchell the one long on action. Apart from being charming both men were astute and highly resourceful. And they were possessed of one other not inconsiderable quality: both were deadly marksmen.

Two years previously they had set up their own private investigative practice, and in that brief space of time had established such a reputation that people in real trouble now made a practice of going to them instead of to the police, a fact that hardly endeared them to the local law. Their homes and combined office were within two miles of Lord Worth’s estate where, as said, they were frequent and welcome visitors. That they did not come for the exclusive pleasure of his company Lord Worth was well aware. Nor, he knew, were they even in the slightest way interested in his money, a fact that Lord Worth found astonishing, as he had never previously encountered anyone who wasn’t thus interested. What they were interested in, and deeply so, were Marina and Melinda.

The door opened and Lord Worth’s butler, Jenkins – English, of course, as were the two footmen – made his usual soundless entrance, approached the head of the table and murmured discreetly in Lord Worth’s ear. Lord Worth nodded and rose.

‘Excuse me, girls, gentlemen. Visitors. I’m sure you can get along together quite well without me.’ He made his way to his study, entered and closed the door behind him, a very special padded door that, when shut, rendered the room completely soundproof.

The study, in its own way – Lord Worth was no sybarite but he liked his creature comforts as well as the next man – was as sumptuous as the dining-room: oak, leather, a wholly unnecessary log fire burning in one corner, all straight from the best English baronial mansions. The walls were lined with thousands of books, many of which Lord Worth had actually read, a fact that must have caused great distress to his illiterate ancestors, who had despised degeneracy above all else.

A tall bronzed man with aquiline features and grey hair rose to his feet. Both men smiled and shook hands warmly.

Lord Worth said: ‘Corral, my dear chap! How very nice to see you again. It’s been quite some time.’

‘My pleasure, Lord Worth. Nothing recently that would have interested you.’

‘But now?’

‘Now is something else again.’

The Corral who stood before Lord Worth was indeed the Corral who, in his capacity as representative of the Florida off-shore leases, had been present at the meeting of ten at Lake Tahoe. Some years had passed since he and Lord Worth had arrived at an amicable and mutually satisfactory agreement. Corral, widely regarded as Lord Worth’s most avowedly determined enemy and certainly the most vociferous of his critics, reported regularly to Lord Worth on the current activities and, more importantly, the projected plans of the major companies, which didn’t hurt Lord Worth at all. Corral, in return, received an annual tax-free retainer of $200,000, which didn’t hurt him very much either.

Lord Worth pressed a bell and within seconds Jenkins entered bearing a silver tray with two large brandies. There was no telepathy involved, just years of experience and a long-established foreknowledge of Lord Worth’s desires. When he left both men sat.

Lord Worth said: ‘Well, what news from the west?’

‘The Cherokee, I regret to say, are after you.’

Lord Worth sighed and said: ‘It had to come some time. Tell me all.’

Corral told him all. He had a near-photographic memory and a gift for concise and accurate reportage. Within five minutes Lord Worth knew all that was worth knowing about the Lake Tahoe meeting.

Lord Worth who, because of the unfortunate misunderstanding that had arisen between himself and Cronkite, knew the latter as well as any and better than most, said at the end of Corral’s report: ‘Did Cronkite subscribe to the ten’s agreement to abjure any form of violence?’

‘No.’

‘Not that it would have mattered if he had. Man’s a total stranger to the truth. And ten million dollars expenses, you tell me?’

‘It did seem a bit excessive.’

‘Can you see a massive outlay like that being concommitant with anything except violence?’

‘No.’

‘Do you think the others believed that there was no connection between them?’

‘Let me put it this way, sir. Any group of people who can convince themselves, or appear to convince themselves, that any action proposed to be taken against you is for the betterment of mankind is also prepared to convince themselves, or appear to convince themselves, that the word “Cronkite” is synonymous with peace on earth.’

‘So their consciences are clear. If Cronkite goes to any excessive lengths in death and destruction to achieve their ends they can always throw up their hands in horror and say, “Good God, we never thought the man would go that far.” Not that any connection between them and Cronkite would ever be established. What a bunch of devious, mealy-mouthed hypocrites!’

He paused for a moment.

‘I suppose Cronkite refused to divulge his plans?’

‘Absolutely. But there is one little and odd circumstance that I’ve kept for the end. Just as we were leaving Cronkite drew two of the ten to one side and spoke to them privately. It would be interesting to know why.’

‘Any chance of finding out?’

‘A fair chance. Nothing guaranteed. But I’m sure Benson could find out – after all, it was Benson who invited us all to Lake Tahoe.’

‘And you think you could persuade Benson to tell you?’

‘A fair chance. Nothing more.’

Lord Worth put on his resigned expression. ‘All right, how much?’

‘Nothing. Money won’t buy Benson.’ Corral shook his head in disbelief. ‘Extraordinary, in this day and age, but Benson is not a mercenary man. But he does owe me the odd favour, one of them being that, without me, he wouldn’t be the president of the oil company that he is now.’ Corral paused. ‘I’m surprised you haven’t asked me the identities of the two men Cronkite took aside.’

‘So am I.’

‘Borosoff of the Soviet Union and Pantos of Venezuela.’ Lord Worth appeared to lapse into a trance. ‘That mean anything to you?’

Lord Worth bestirred himself. ‘Yes. Units of the Russian navy are making a so-called “goodwill tour” of the Caribbean. They are, inevitably, based on Cuba. Of the ten, those are the only two that could bring swift – ah – naval intervention to bear against the Seawitch.’ He shook his head. ‘Diabolical. Utterly diabolical.’

‘My way of thinking too, sir. There’s no knowing. But I’ll check as soon as possible and hope to get results.’

‘And I shall take immediate precautions.’ Both men rose. ‘Corral, we shall have to give serious consideration to the question of increasing this paltry retainer of yours.’

‘We try to be of service, Lord Worth.’

Lord Worth’s private radio room bore more than a passing resemblance to the flight deck of his private 707. The variety of knobs, switches, buttons and dials was bewildering. Lord Worth seemed perfectly at home with them all, and proceeded to make a number of calls.

The first of these were to his four helicopter pilots, instructing them to have his two largest helicopters – never a man to do things by halves, Lord Worth owned no fewer than six of these machines – ready at his own private airfield shortly before dawn. The next four were to people of whose existence his fellow directors were totally unaware. The first was to Cuba, the second to Venezuela. Lord Worth’s world-wide range of contacts – employees, rather – was vast. The instructions to both were simple and explicit. A constant monitoring watch was to be kept on the naval bases in both countries, and any sudden and expected departures of any naval vessels, and their type, was to be reported to him immediately.

The third, to a person who lived not too many miles away, was addressed to a certain Giuseppe Palermo, whose name sounded as if he might be a member of the Mafia, but who definitely wasn’t: the Mafia Palermo despised as a mollycoddling organization which had become so ludicrously gentle in its methods of persuasion as to be in imminent danger of becoming respectable. The next call was to Baton Rouge in Louisiana, where there lived a person who only called himself ‘Conde’ and whose main claim to fame lay in the fact that he was the highest-ranking naval officer to have been court-martialled and dishonourably discharged since World War Two. He, like the others, received very explicit instructions. Not only was Lord Worth a master organizer, but the efficiency he displayed was matched only by his speed in operation.

The noble lord, who would have stoutly maintained – if anyone had the temerity to accuse him, which no one ever had – that he was no criminal, was about to become just that. Even this he would have strongly denied and that on three grounds. The Constitution upheld the rights of every citizen to bear arms; every man had the right to defend himself and his property against criminal attack by whatever means lay to hand; and the only way to fight fire was with fire.

The final call Lord Worth put through, and this time with total confidence, was to his tried and trusted lieutenant, Commander Larsen.

Commander Larsen was the captain of the Seawitch.

Larsen – no one knew why he called himself ‘Commander’, and he wasn’t the kind of person you asked – was a rather different breed of man from his employer. Except in a public court or in the presence of a law officer he would cheerfully admit to anyone that he was both a non-gentleman and a criminal. And he certainly bore no resemblance to any aristocrat, alive or dead. But for all that there did exist a genuine rapport and mutual respect between Lord Worth and himself. In all likelihood they were simply brothers under the skin.

As a criminal and non-aristocrat – and casting no aspersions on honest unfortunates who may resemble him – he certainly looked the part. He had the general build and appearance of the more viciously daunting heavy-weight wrestler, deep-set black eyes that peered out under the overhanging foliage of hugely bushy eyebrows, an equally bushy black beard, a hooked nose and a face that looked as if it had been in regular contact with a series of heavy objects. No one, with the possible exception of Lord Worth, knew who he was, what he had been or from where he had come. His voice, when he spoke, came as a positive shock: beneath that Neanderthaloid façade was the voice and the mind of an educated man. It really ought not to have come as such a shock: beneath the façade of many an exquisite fop lies the mind of a retarded fourth-grader.

Larsen was in the radio room at that moment, listening attentively, nodding from time to time, then flicked a switch that put the incoming call on to the loudspeaker.

He said: ‘All clear, sir. Everything understood. We’ll make the preparations. But haven’t you overlooked something, sir?’

‘Overlooked what?’ Lord Worth’s voice over the telephone carried the overtones of a man who couldn’t possibly have overlooked anything.

‘You’ve suggested that armed surface vessels may be used against us. If they’re prepared to go to such lengths isn’t it feasible that they’ll go to any lengths?’

‘Get to the point, man.’

‘The point is that it’s easy enough to keep an eye on a couple of naval bases. But I suggest it’s a bit more difficult to keep an eye on a dozen, maybe two dozen airfields.’

‘Good God!’ There was a long pause during which the rattle of cogs and the meshing of gear-wheels in Lord Worth’s brain couldn’t be heard. ‘Do you really think –’

‘If I were on the Seawitch, Lord Worth, it would be six and half a dozen to me whether I was clobbered by shells or bombs. And planes could get away from the scene of the crime a damn sight faster than ships. They could get clean away. The US navy or land-based bombers would have a good chance of intercepting surface vessels. And another thing, Lord Worth.’

There was a moment’s pause.

‘A ship could stop at a distance of a hundred miles. No distance at all for the guided missile, I believe they have a range of four thousand miles these days. When the missile was, say, twenty miles from us, they could switch on its heat-source tracking device. God knows, we’re the only heat-source for a hundred miles around.’

Another lengthy pause, then: ‘Any more encouraging thoughts occur to you, Commander Larsen?’

‘Yes, sir. Just one. If I were the enemy – I may call them the enemy –’

‘Call the devils what you want.’

‘If I were the enemy I’d use a submarine. They don’t even have to break water to loose off a missile. Poof! No Seawitch. No signs of any attacker. Could well be put down to a massive explosion aboard the Seawitch. Far from impossible, sir.’

‘You’ll be telling me next that there’ll be atomic-headed missiles.’

‘To be picked up by a dozen seismological stations? I should think it hardly likely, sir. But that may just be wishful thinking. I have no wish to be vaporized.’

‘I’ll see you in the morning.’ The line went dead.

Larsen hung up his phone and smiled widely. One would have subconsciously imagined this action to reveal a set of yellowed fangs: instead, it revealed a perfect set of gleamingly white teeth. He turned to look at Scoffield, his head driller and right-hand man.

Scoffield was a large, rubicund, smiling man, the easy-going essence of good nature. To the fact that this was not precisely the case any member of his drilling crews would have eagerly and blasphemously testified. Scoffield was a very tough citizen indeed and one could assume that it was not innate modesty that made him conceal this: much more probably it was a permanent stricture of the facial muscles caused by the four long vertical scars on his cheeks, two on either side. Clearly he, like Larsen, was no great advocate of plastic surgery. He looked at Larsen with understandable curiosity.

‘What was all that about?’

‘The day of reckoning is at hand. Prepare to meet thy doom. More specifically, his lordship is beset by enemies.’ Larsen outlined Lord Worth’s plight. ‘He’s sending what sounds like a battalion of hard men out here in the early morning, accompanied by suitable weaponry. Then in the afternoon we are to expect a boat of some sort, loaded with even heavier weaponry.’

‘One wonders where he’s getting all those hard men and weaponry from.’

‘One wonders. One does not ask.’

‘All this talk – your talk – about bombers and submarines and missiles. Do you believe that?’

‘No. It’s just that it’s hard to pass up the opportunity to ruffle the aristocratic plumage.’ He paused then said thoughtfully: ‘At least I hope I don’t believe it. Come, let us examine our defences.’

‘You’ve got a pistol. I’ve got a pistol. That’s defences?’

‘Well, where we’ll mount the defences when they arrive. Fixed large-bore guns, I should imagine.’

‘If they arrive.’

‘Give the devil his due. Lord Worth delivers.’

‘From his own private armoury, I suppose.’

‘It wouldn’t surprise me.’

‘What do you really think, Commander?’

‘I don’t know. All I know is that if Lord Worth is even half-way right life aboard may become slightly less monotonous in the next few days.’

The two men moved out into the gathering dusk on to the platform. The Seawitch was moored in 150 fathoms of water – 900 feet – which was well within the tensioning cables’ capacities – safely south of the US’s mineral leasing blocks and the great east-west fairway, straight on top of the biggest oil reservoir yet discovered round the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. The two men paused at the drilling derrick where a drill, at its maximum angled capacity, was trying to determine the extent of the oilfield. The crew looked at them without any particular affection but not with hostility. There was reason for the lack of warmth.

Before any laws were passed making such drilling illegal, Lord Worth wanted to scrape the bottom of this gigantic barrel of oil. Not that he was particularly worried, for government agencies are notoriously slow to act: but there was always the possibility that they might bestir themselves this time and that, horror of horrors, the bonanza might turn out to be vastly larger than estimated.

Hence the present attempt to discover the limits of the strike and hence the lack of warmth. Hence the reason why Larsen and Scoffield, both highly gifted slave-drivers, born centuries out of their time, drove their men day and night. The men disliked it, but not to the point of rebellion. They were highly paid, well housed and well fed. True, there was little enough in the way of wine, women and song but then, after an exhausting twelve-hour shift, those frivolities couldn’t hope to compete with the attractions of a massive meal then a long, deep sleep. More importantly and most unusually, the men were paid a bonus on every thousand barrels of oil.

Larsen and Scoffield made their way to the western apex of the platform and gazed out at the massive bulk of the storage tank, its topsides festooned with warning lights. They gazed at this for some time, than turned and walked back towards the accommodation quarters.

Scoffield said: ‘Decided upon your gun emplacements yet, Commander – if there are any guns?’

‘There’ll be guns.’ Larsen was confident. ‘But we won’t need any in this quarter.’

‘Why?’

‘Work it out for yourself. As for the rest, I’m not too sure. It’ll come to me in my sleep. My turn for an early night. See you at four.’

The oil was not stored aboard the rig – it is forbidden by a law based strictly on common sense to store hydrocarbons at or near the working platform of an oil rig. Instead, Lord Worth, on Larsen’s instructions – which had prudently come in the form of suggestions – had had built a huge floating tank which was anchored, on a basis exactly similar to that of the Seawitch herself, at a distance of about three hundred yards. Cleansed oil was pumped into this after it came up from the ocean floor, or, more precisely, from a massive limestone reef deep down below the ocean floor, a reef caused by tiny marine creatures of a now long-covered shallow sea of anything up to half a billion years ago.

Once, sometimes twice a day, a 50,000 dw tanker would stop by and empty the huge tank. There were three of those tankers employed on the criss-cross run to the southern US. The Worth Hudson Oil Company did, in fact, have supertankers, but the use of them in this case did not serve Lord Worth’s purpose. Even the entire contents of the Seawitch tank would not have filled a quarter of the super-tanker’s carrying capacity, and the possibility of a super-tanker running at a loss, however small, would have been the source of waking nightmares for the Worth Hudson: equally important, the more isolated ports which Lord Worth favoured for the delivery of his oil were unable to offer deep-water berth-side facilities for anything in excess of 50,000 dw.

It might in passing be explained that Lord Worth’s choice of those obscure ports was not entirely fortuitous. Among those who were a party to the gentlemen’s agreement against offshore drilling – some of the most vociferous of those who roundly condemned Worth Hudson’s nefarious practices – were regrettably Worth Hudson’s best customers. They were the smaller companies who operated on marginal profits and lacked the resources to engage in research and exploration, which the larger companies did, investing allegedly vast sums in those projects and then, to the continuous fury of the Internal Revenue Service and the anger of numerous Congressional investigation committees, claiming even vaster tax exemptions.

But to the smaller companies the lure of cheaper oil was irresistible. The Seawitch, which probably produced as much oil as all the government official leasing areas combined, seemed a sure and perpetual source of cheap oil until, that was, the government stepped in, which might or might not happen in the next decade: the big companies had already demonstrated their capacity to deal with inept Congressional enquiries and, as long as the energy crisis continued, nobody was going to worry very much about where oil came from, as long as it was there. In addition, the smaller companies felt, if the OPEC – the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries – could play ducks and drakes with oil prices whenever they felt like it, why couldn’t they?

Less than two miles from Lord Worth’s estate were the adjacent homes and common office of Michael Mitchell and John Roomer. It was Mitchell who answered the door bell.

The visitor was of medium height, slightly tubby, wore wire-rimmed glasses and alopecia had hit him hard. He said: ‘May I come in?’ in a clipped but courteous enough voice.

‘Sure.’ Mitchell let him in. ‘We don’t usually see people this late.’

‘Thank you. I come on unusual business. James Bentley.’ A little sleight of hand and a card appeared. ‘FBI.’

Mitchell didn’t even look at it. ‘You can have those things made at any joke shop. Where you from?’

‘Miami.’

‘Phone number?’

Bentley reversed the card which Mitchell handed to Roomer. ‘My memory man. Saves me from having to have a memory of my own.’

Roomer didn’t glance at the card either. ‘It’s okay, Mike. I have him. You’re the boss man up there, aren’t you?’ A nod. ‘Please sit down, Mr Bentley.’

‘One thing clear, first,’ Mitchell said. ‘Are we under investigation?’

‘On the contrary. The State Department has asked me to ask you to help them.’

‘Status at last,’ Mitchell said. ‘We’ve got it made, John, but for one thing – the State Department don’t know who the hell we are.’

‘I do.’ Discussion closed. ‘I understand you gentlemen are friendly with Lord Worth.’

Roomer was careful. ‘We know him slightly, socially – just as you seem to know a little about us.’

‘I know a lot about you, including the fact that you are a couple of ex-cops who never learned to look the right way at the right time and the wrong way at the wrong time. Bars the ladder to promotion. I want you to carry out a little investigation into Lord Worth.’

‘No deal,’ Mitchell said. ‘We know him slightly better than slightly.’

‘Hear me out, Mike.’ But Roomer’s face, too, had lost whatever little friendliness it may have held.

‘Lord Worth has been making loud noises – over the phone – to the State Department. He seems to be suffering from a persecution complex. This interests the State Department, for they see him more in the role of the persecutor than the persecuted.’

‘You mean the FBI does,’ Roomer said. ‘You’ll have had him on your files for years. Lord Worth always gives the impression of being eminently capable of looking after himself.’

‘That’s precisely what intrigues the State Department.’

Mitchell said: ‘What kind of noises?’

‘Nonsense noises. You know he has an oil rig out in the Gulf of Mexico?’

‘The Seawitch? Yes.’

‘He appears to be under the impression that the Seawitch is in mortal danger. He wants protection. Very modest in his demands, as becomes a bulti-millionaire – the odd missile frigate, some missile fighters standing by, just in case.’

‘In case of what?’

‘That’s the rub. He refused to say. Just said he had secret information – which, in fact, wouldn’t surprise me. The Lord Worths of this world have their secret agents everywhere.’

‘You’d better level with us,’ Mitchell said.

‘I’ve told you all I know. The rest is surmise. Calling the State Department means that there are foreign countries involved. There are Soviet naval vessels in the Caribbean at present. The State Department smell an international incident or worse.’

‘What do you want us to do?’

‘Not much. Just to find out Lord Worth’s intended movements for the next day or two.’

Mitchell said: ‘And if we refuse? We have our licences rescinded?’

‘I am not a corrupt police chief. Just forget that you ever saw me. But I thought you might care enough about Lord Worth to help protect him against himself or the consequences of any rash action he might take. I thought you might care even more about the reactions of his two daughters if anything were to happen to their father.’

Mitchell stood up, jerked a thumb. ‘The front door. You know too damn much.’

‘Sit down.’ A sudden chill asperity. ‘Don’t be foolish. Of course it’s my job to know too damn much. But apart from Lord Worth and his family I thought you might have some little concern for your country’s welfare.’

Roomer said: ‘Isn’t that pitching it a little high?’

‘Very possibly. But it is the policy of both the State Department and the FBI not to take any chances.’

Roomer said: ‘You’re putting us in a damned awkward situation.’

‘Don’t think I don’t appreciate that. Horns of a dilemma, torn loyalties, biting the hand that feeds you, all that sort of thing. I know I’ve put you in a spot and apologize for it, but I’m afraid you’ll have to resolve that particular dilemma yourselves.’

Mitchell said: ‘Thank you for dropping this little problem in our laps. What do you expect us to do? Go to Lord Worth, ask him why he’s been hollering to the State Department, ask him what he’s up to and what his immediate plans are?’

Bentley smiled. ‘Nothing so crude. You have a remarkable reputation – except, of course, in the police department – of being, in that vulgar phrase, a couple of classy operators. The approach is up to you.’ He stood. ‘Keep that card and let me know when you find out anything. How long would that take, do you think?’

Roomer said: ‘A couple of hours.’

‘A couple of hours?’ Even Bentley seemed momentarily taken aback. ‘You don’t, then, require an invitation to visit the baronial mansion?’

‘No.’

‘Millionaires do.’

‘We aren’t even thousandaires.’

‘It makes a difference. Well, thank you very much, gentlemen. Good night.’

After Bentley’s departure the two men sat for a couple of minutes in silence, then Mitchell said: ‘We play it both ways?’

‘We play it every way.’ Roomer reached for a phone, dialled a number and asked for Lord Worth. He had to identify himself before he was put through – Lord Worth was a man who respected his privacy.

Roomer said: ‘Lord Worth? Mitchell and Roomer here. Something to discuss with you, sir, which may or may not be of urgency and importance. We would prefer not to discuss it over the phone.’ He paused, listened for a few moments, murmured a thank you and hung up.

‘He’ll see us right away. Park the car in the lane. Side door. Study. Says the girls have gone upstairs.’

‘Think our friend Bentley will already have our phone tapped?’

‘Not worth his FBI salt if he hasn’t.’

Five minutes later, car parked in the lane, they were making their way through the trees to the side door. Their progress was observed with interest by Marina, standing by the window in her upstairs bedroom. She looked thoughtful for a moment, then turned and unhurriedly left the room.

Lord Worth welcomed the two men in his study and securely closed the padded door behind them. He swung open the doors of a concealed bar and poured three brandies. There were times when one rang for Jenkins and there were times when one didn’t. He lifted his glass.

‘Health. An unexpected pleasure.’

‘It’s no pleasure for us,’ Roomer said gloomily.

‘Then you haven’t come to ask me for my daughters’ hands in marriage?’

‘No, sir.’ Mitchell said. ‘No such luck. John here is better at explaining these things.’

‘What things?’

‘We’ve just had a visit from a senior FBI agent.’ Roomer handed over Bentley’s card. ‘There’s a number on the back that we’re to ring when we’ve extracted some information from you.’

‘How very interesting.’ There was a long pause then Lord Worth looked at each man in turn. ‘What kind of information?’

‘In Bentley’s words, you have been making “loud noises” to the State Department. According to them, you seem to think that the Seawitch is under threat. They want to know where you got this secret information, and what your proposed movements are.’

‘Why didn’t the FBI come directly to me?’

‘Because you wouldn’t have told them any more than you told the State Department. If, that is to say, you’d even let them over the threshold of your house. But they know – Bentley told us this – that we come across here now and again, so I suppose they figured you’d be less off your guard with us.’

‘So Bentley figures that you’d craftily wring some careless talk from me without my being aware that I was talking carelessly.’

‘Something like that.’

‘But doesn’t this put you in a somewhat invidious position?’

‘Not really.’

‘But you’re supposed to uphold the law, no?’

‘Yes.’ Mitchell spoke with some feeling. ‘But not organized law. Or have you forgotten, Lord Worth, that we’re a couple of ex-cops because we wouldn’t go along with your so-called organized law? Our only responsibility is to our clients.’

‘I’m not your client.’

‘No.’

‘Would you like me to be your client?’

Roomer said: ‘What on earth for?’

‘It’s never something for nothing in this world, John. Services have to be rewarded.’

‘Failure of a mission.’ Mitchell was on his feet. ‘It was kind of you to see us, Lord Worth.’

‘I apologize.’ Lord Worth sounded genuinely contrite. ‘I’m afraid I rather stepped out of line there.’ He paused ruminatively, then smiled. ‘Just trying to recall when last I apologized to anybody. I seem to have a short memory. Bless my lovely daughters. Information for our friends of the FBI? First, I received my information in context of several anonymous threats – telephone calls – on the lives of my daughters. A double-barrelled threat, if you will – against the girls if I didn’t stop the flow of oil – as they pointed out I can’t hide them for ever and there’s nothing one can do against a sniper’s bullet – and if I were too difficult they’d have the Seawitch blown out of the water. As for my future movements. I’m going out to the Seawitch tomorrow afternoon and will remain there for twenty-four hours, perhaps forty-eight.’

Roomer said: ‘Any truth in either of those two statements?’

‘Don’t be preposterous. Of course not. I am going out to the rig – but before dawn. I don’t want those beady-eyed bandits watching me from the undergrowth at my heliport as I take off.’

‘You are referring to the FBI, sir?’

‘Who else? Will that do for the moment?’

‘Splendidly.’

They walked back to the lane in silence. Roomer got in behind the wheel of the car, Mitchell beside him.

Roomer said: ‘Well, well, well.’

‘Well, as you say, well, well, well. Crafty old devil.’

Marina’s voice came from the back. ‘Crafty he may be, but –’

She broke off in a gasp as Mitchell whirled in his seat and Roomer switched on the interior lights. The barrel of Mitchell’s .38 was lined up between her eyes, eyes at the moment wide with shock and fear.

Mitchell said in a soft voice: ‘Don’t ever do that to me again. Next time it may be too late.’

She licked her lips. She was normally as high-spirited and independent as she was beautiful, but it is a rather disconcerting thing to look down the muzzle of a pistol for the first time in your life. ‘I was just going to say that he may be crafty but he’s neither old nor a devil. Will you please put that gun away? You don’t point guns at people you love.’

Mitchell’s gun disappeared. He said: ‘I’m not much given to falling in love with crazy young fools.’

‘Or spies.’ Roomer was looking at Melinda. ‘What are you two doing here?’

Melinda was more composed than her sister. After all, she hadn’t had to look down the barrel of a pistol. She said: ‘And you, John Roomer, are a crafty young devil. You’re just stalling for time.’ Which was quite true.

‘What’s that meant to mean?’

‘It means you’re thinking furiously of the answer to the same question we’re about to ask you. What are you two doing here?’

‘That’s none of your concern.’ Roomer’s normally soft-spoken voice was unaccustomedly and deliberately harsh.

There was a silence from the back seat, both girls realizing that there was more to the men than they had thought, and the gap between their social and professional lives wider than they had thought.

Mitchell sighed. ‘Let’s cool it, John. Sharper than a serpent’s tooth is an ungrateful child.’

‘Jesus!’ Roomer shook his head. ‘That you can say again.’ He hadn’t the faintest idea What Mitchell was talking about.

Mitchell said: ‘Why don’t you go to your father and ask him? I’m sure he’ll tell you – at the cost of the biggest shellacking you’ve ever had in your lives for interfering in his private business.’ He got out, opened the rear door, waited until the sisters got out, closed the rear door, said ‘Good night’ and returned to his seat, leaving the sisters standing uncertainly at the side of the road.

Roomer drove off. He said: ‘Very masterful, though I didn’t like doing it. God knows, they meant no harm. Never mind, it may stand us in good stead in the future.’

‘It’ll stand us in even better stead if we get to the phone box just round the corner as soon as we can.’

They reached the booth in fifteen seconds and one minute later Mitchell emerged from it. As he took his seat Roomer said: ‘What was all that about?’

‘Sorry, private matter.’ Mitchell handed Roomer a piece of paper. Roomer switched on the overhead light. On the paper Mitchell had scrawled. ‘This car bugged?’

Roomer said: ‘Okay by me.’ They drove home in silence. Standing in his carport Roomer said: ‘What makes you think my car’s bugged?’

‘Nothing. How far do you trust Bentley?’

‘You know how far. But he – or one of his men – wouldn’t have had time.’

‘Five seconds isn’t a long time. That’s all the time it takes to attach a magnetic clamp.’

They searched the car, then Mitchell’s. Both were clean. In Mitchell’s kitchen Roomer said: ‘Your phone call?’

‘The old boy, of course. Got to him before the girls did. Told him what had happened and that he was to tell them he’d received threats against their lives, that he knew the source, that he didn’t trust the local law and so had sent for us to deal with the matter. Caught on at once. Also to give them hell for interfering.’

Roomer said: ‘He’ll convince them.’

‘More importantly, did he convince you?’

‘No. He thinks fast on his feet and lies even faster. He wanted to find out how seriously he would be taken in the case of a real emergency. He now has the preliminary evidence that he is being taken seriously. You have to hand it to him – as craftily devious as they come. Not that we haven’t always known that. I suppose we tell Bentley exactly what he told us to tell him?’

‘What else?’

‘Do you believe what he told us to be truth?’

‘That he has his own private intelligence corps? I wouldn’t question it for a moment. That he’s going out to the Seawitch? I believe that, too. I’m not so sure about his timing, though. We’re to tell Bentley that he’s leaving in the afternoon. He told us he’s leaving about dawn. If he can lie to Bentley he can lie to us. I don’t know why he should think it necessary to lie to us, probably just his lordship’s second nature. I think he’s going to leave much sooner than that.’

Roomer said: ‘Me, too, I’m afraid. If I intended to be up by dawn’s early light I’d be in bed by now or heading that way. He shows no signs of going to bed, from which I can only conclude that he has no intentions of going to bed, because it wouldn’t be worth his while.’ He paused. ‘So. A double stake-out?’

‘I thought so. Up by Lord Worth’s house and down by his heliport. You for the heliport, me for the tail job?’

‘What else?’ Mitchell was possessed of phenomenal night-sight. Except on the very blackest of nights he could drive without any lights at all, an extraordinarily rare quality which, in wartime, made generals scour an army for such men as chauffeurs. ‘I’ll ‘hole up behind the west spinney. You know it?’

‘I know it. How about you feeding the story to Bentley while I make a couple of flasks of coffee and some sandwiches?’

‘Fine.’ Roomer reached for the phone, then paused. ‘Tell me, why are we doing all this? We owe nothing to the FBI. We have no authority from anyone to do anything. As you said yourself, we and organized law walk in different directions. I feel under no obligation to save my country from a non-existent threat. We have no client, no commission, no prospect of fees. Why should we care if Lord Worth sticks his head into a noose?’

Mitchell paused in slicing bread. ‘As to your last question, why don’t you ring up Melinda and ask her?’

Roomer gave him a long, old-fashioned look, sighed and reached for the telephone.

Chapter Three

Scoffield had been wrong in his guess. Lord Worth was possessed of no private armoury. But the United States armed services were, and in their dozens, at that.

The two break-ins were accomplished with the professional expertise born of a long and arduous practice that precluded any possibility of mistakes. The targets in both cases were government armouries, one army and one naval. Both, naturally, were manned by round-the-clock guards, none of whom was killed or even injured if one were to disregard the cranial contusions – and those were few – caused by sandbagging and sapping: Lord Worth had been very explicit on the use of minimal violence.

Giuseppe Palermo, who looked and dressed like a successful Wall Street broker, had the more difficult task of the two, although, as a man who held the Mafia in tolerant contempt, he regarded the exercise as almost childishly easy. Accompanied by nine almost equally respectable men – sartorially respectable, that was – three of whom were dressed as army majors, he arrived at the Florida armoury at fifteen minutes to midnight. The six young guards, none of whom had even seen or heard a shot fired in anger, were at their drowsiest and expecting nothing but their midnight reliefs. Only two were really fully awake – the other four had dozed away – and those two, responding to a heavy and peremptory hammering on the main entrance door, were disturbed, not to say highly alarmed, by the appearance of three army officers who announced that they were making a snap inspection to test security and alertness. Five minutes later all six were bound and gagged – two of them unconscious and due to wake up with very sore heads because of their misguided attempts to put up a show of resistance – and safely locked up in one of the many so-called secure rooms in the armoury.

During this period and the next twenty minutes one of Palermo’s men, an electronics expert called Jamieson, made a thorough and totally comprehensive search for all the external alarm signals to both the police and nearest military HQ. He either defused or disconnected them all.

It was when he was engaged in this that the relief guard, almost as drowsy as those whom they had been expecting to find, made their appearance and were highly disconcerted to find themselves looking at the muzzles of three machine-carbines. Within minutes, securely bound but not gagged, they had joined the previous guards, whose gags were now removed. They could safely shout until doomsday as the nearest place of habitation was over a mile away: the temporary gagging of the first six guards had been merely for the purpose of preventing their making loud noises and warning off their reliefs.

Palermo now had almost eight hours before the break-in could be discovered.

He next sent one of his men, Watkins, to bring round to the front the concealed mini-bus in which they had arrived. All of them, Watkins excepted, changed from their conservative clothing and military uniforms into rough work clothes, which resulted in the effecting of rather remarkable changes in their appearance and character. While they were doing this Watkins went to the armoury garage, picked a surprisingly ineffectual lock, selected a two-ton truck, wired up the ignition – the keys were, understandably, missing – and drove out to the already open main loading doors of the armoury.

Palermo had brought along with him one by the name of Jacobson who, between sojourns in various penitentiaries, had developed to a remarkable degree the fine art of opening any type of lock, combination or otherwise. Fortunately, his services were not needed, for nobody, curiously enough, had taken the trouble to conceal some score of keys hanging on the wall in the main office.

In less than half an hour Palermo and his men had loaded aboard the truck – chosen because it was a covered-van type – a staggering variety of weaponry, ranging from bazookas to machine-pistols, together with sufficient ammunition for a battalion and a considerable amount of high explosives. This done, they locked all the doors they had unlocked and took the keys with them – when the next relief arrived at eight in the morning it would take them all that much longer to discover what had actually happened. After that, they locked the loading and main entrance doors.

Watkins drove the mini-bus, with its load of discarded clothes, back to its place of concealment, returned to the truck and drove off. The other nine sat or lay in varying degrees of discomfort among the weaponry in the back. It was as well for them that it was only twenty minutes’ drive to Lord Worth’s private, isolated and deserted heliport – deserted, that was, except for two helicopters, their pilots and co-pilots.

The truck, using only its sidelights, came through the gates of the heliport and drew up alongside one of the helicopters. Discreet portable loading lights were switched on, casting hardly more than a dull glow, but sufficient for a man only 80 yards away and equipped with a pair of night-glasses to distinguish clearly what was going on. And Roomer, prone in the spinney and with the binoculars to his eyes, was only 80 yards away. No attempt had been made to wrap or in any way disguise the nature of the cargo. It took only twenty minutes to unload the truck and stow its contents away in the helicopter under the watchful eye of a pilot with a keen regard for weight distribution.

Palermo and his men, with the exception of Watkins, boarded the other helicopter and sat back to await promised reinforcements. The pilot of this helicopter had already, as was customary, radio-filed his flight plan to the nearest airport, accurately giving their destination as the Seawitch. To have done otherwise would have been foolish indeed. The radar tracking systems along the Gulf states are as efficient as any in the world, and any deviation of course from a falsely declared destination would have meant that, in very short order, two highly suspicious pilots in supersonic jets would be flying alongside and asking some very unpleasant questions.

Watkins drove the truck back to the armoury garage, de-wired the ignition, locked the door, retrieved the mini-bus and left. Before dawn all his friends’ clothes would have been returned to their apartments and the mini-bus, which had, inevitably, been stolen, to its parking lot.

Roomer was getting bored and his elbows were becoming sore. Since the mini-bus had driven away some half hour ago he had remained in the same prone position, his night-glasses seldom far from his eyes. His sandwiches were gone as was all his coffee, and he would have given much for a cigarette but decided it would be unwise. Clearly those aboard the helicopters were waiting for something and that something could only be the arrival of Lord Worth.

He heard the sound of an approaching engine and saw another vehicle with only sidelights on turn through the gateway. It was another minibus. Whoever was inside was not the man he was waiting for, he knew: Lord Worth was not much given to travelling in mini-buses. The vehicle drew up alongside the passenger helicopter and its passengers disembarked and climbed aboard the helicopter. Roomer counted twelve in all.

The last was just disappearing inside the helicopter when another vehicle arrived. This one didn’t pass through the gateway, it swept through it, headlights on but dipped. A Rolls-Royce. Lord Worth for a certainty. As if to redouble his certainty, there came to his ears the soft swish of tyres on the grass. He twisted round to see a car, both lights and engine off, coasting to a soundless stop beside his own.

‘Over here,’ Roomer called softly. Mitchell joined him, and together they watched the white-clad figure of Lord Worth leave the Rolls and mount the steps of the helicopter. ‘I should think that that completes the payload for the night.’

‘The payload being?’

‘There are twenty-one other passengers aboard that machine. I can’t swear to it, but instinct tells me they are not honest, upright citizens. The story goes that every multi-millionaire –’

‘Bulti.’

‘Bulti. The story goes that every bulti-millionaire has his own private army. I think I’ve just seen one of Lord Worth’s platoons filing by.’

‘The second chopper plays no part in this?’

‘Far from it. It’s the star of the show. It’s loaded to the gunwales with weaponry.’

‘Not a crime in itself. Could be part of Lord Worth’s private collection. He’s got one of the biggest in the country.’

‘Private citizens aren’t allowed to have bazookas, machine-guns and high explosives in their collection.’

‘He borrowed them, you think?’

‘Yes. Without payment or receipt.’

‘The nearest government armoury?’

‘I should imagine.’

‘They’re still sitting there. Maybe they’re waiting a pre-set time before take-off. Might be some time. Let’s go to one of the cars and radio-phone the law.’

‘The nearest army command post is seven miles from here.’

‘Right.’

The two men were on their feet and had taken only two steps towards the cars when, almost simultaneously, the engines of both helicopters started up with their usual clattering roar. Seconds later, both machines lifted off.

Mitchell said: ‘Well, it was a thought.’

‘“Was” is right. And just look at them go. Honest God-fearing citizens with all their navigational lights on.’

‘That’s just in case someone bumps into them.’ Mitchell thought. ‘We could call up the nearest air force base and have them forced down.’

‘On what grounds?’

‘Stolen government property.’

‘No evidence. Just our say-so. They’ll have to know Lord Worth is aboard. Who’s going to take the word of a couple of busted cops against his?’

‘No one. A sobering thought. Ever felt like a pariah?’

‘Like now. I just feel goddamned helpless. Well, let’s go and find some evidence. Where’s the nearest armoury from here?’

‘About a mile from the command post. I know where.’

‘Why can’t they keep their damned armouries inside their command posts?’

‘Armouries can and do blow up. How would you like to be sitting in a crowded barracks when an armoury blew up?’

Roomer straightened from the key-hole of the main door of the armoury and reluctantly pocketed the very large set of keys for the carrying of which any ill-disposed law officer could have had him behind bars without any need for a warrant.

‘I thought I could open any door with this little lot. But not this door. You don’t have to guess where the keys are now.’

‘Probably sailing down from a chopper in the Gulf.’

‘Like as not. Those loading doors have the same lock. Apart from that, nothing but barred windows. You don’t have a hacksaw on you, Mike?’

‘I will next time.’ He shone his torch through one of the barred windows. All he could see was his own reflection. He took out his pistol, and holding it by the barrel, struck the heavy butt several times against the glass, without any noticeable effect – hardly surprising considering that the window lay several inches beyond the bars and the force of the blows was minimal.

Roomer said: ‘And just what are you trying to do?’

Mitchell was patient. ‘Break the glass.’

‘Breaking the glass won’t help you get inside.’

‘It’ll help me see and maybe hear. I wonder if that’s just plate glass or armoured stuff?’

‘How should I know?’

‘True. Watch me finding out. If it’s armoured, the bullet will ricochet. Get down.’ Both men crouched and Mitchell fired one shot at an upward angle. The bullet did not ricochet. It passed through, leaving a jagged hole with radiating cracks. Mitchell began chipping away round the hole but desisted when Roomer appeared with a heavy car jack: a few powerful blows and Roomer had a hole almost a foot in diameter. Mitchell shone his torch through this: an office lined with filing cabinets and an open door beyond. He put his ear as close to the hole as possible and he heard it at once, the faint but unmistakable sound of metal clanging against metal and the shouting of unmistakably hoarse voices. Mitchell withdrew his head and nodded to Roomer, who stooped and listened in turn.

Five seconds was enough. Roomer straightened and said: ‘There are a lot of frustrated people in there.’

About a mile beyond the entrance to the army command post they stopped by a roadside telephone booth. Mitchell telephoned the army post, told them the state of defences at their armoury would bear investigation and that it would be advisable for them to bring along a duplicate set of keys for the main door. When asked who was speaking he hung up and returned to Roomer’s car.

‘Too late to call in the air force now, I suppose?’

‘Too late. They’ll be well out over extra-territorial waters by now. There’s no state of war. Not yet.’ He sighed. ‘Why, oh why, didn’t I have an infrared ciné camera tonight?’

Over in Mississippi Conde’s task of breaking into the naval armoury there turned out to be ridiculously easy. He had with him only six men, although he had sixteen more waiting in reserve aboard the 120-foot vessel Roamer which was tied up dockside less than thirty feet from the armoury. Those men had already effectively neutralized the three armed guards who patrolled the dock area at night.

The armoury was guarded by only two retired naval petty officers, who regarded their job not only as a sinecure but downright nonsense, for who in his right mind would want to steal depth-charges and naval guns? It was their invariable custom to prepare themselves for sleep immediately upon arrival, and asleep they soundly were when Conde and his men entered through the door they hadn’t even bothered to lock.

They used two fork-lift trucks to trundle depth-charges, light, dual-purpose anti-aircraft guns and a sufficiency of shells down to the dockside, then used one of the scores of cranes that lined the dockside to lower the stolen equipment into the hold of the Roamer, which was then battened down. Clearing the customs was the merest formality. The customs officials had seen the Roamer come and go so many times that they had long ago lost count, Besides, no one was going to have the temerity to inspect the ocean-going property of one of the richest men in the world: the Roamer was Lord Worth’s seismological survey vessel.

At its base not far from Havana, a small, conventionally powered and Russian-built submarine slipped its moorings and quietly put out to sea. The hastily assembled but nonetheless hand-picked crew were informed that they were on a training cruise designed to test the sea-going readiness of Castro’s tiny fleet. Not a man aboard believed a word of this.

Meanwhile Cronkite had not been idle. Unlike the others, he had no need to break into any place to obtain explosives. He just had to use his own key. As the world’s top expert in capping blazing gushers he had access to an unlimited number and great variety of explosives. He made a selection of those and had them trucked down from Houston, where he lived – apart from the fact that Houston was the oil rig centre of the south the nature of his business made it essential for him to live within easy reach of an airport with international connections. They were then sent off to Galveston.

As the truck was on its way another seismological vessel, a converted coastguard cutter, was also closing in on Galveston. This vessel, without explaining his reasons why, Cronkite had obtained through the good offices of Durant, who had represented the Galveston area companies at the meeting of the ten at Lake Tahoe. The cutter, which went by the name of Questar, was normally based at Freeport, and Cronkite could quite easily have taken the shipment there, but this would not have suited his purpose. The tanker Crusader was unloading at Galveston and the Crusader was one of the three tankers that plied regularly between the Seawitch and the Gulf ports.

The Questar and Cronkite arrived almost simultaneously. Mulhooney, the Questar’s skipper, eased his ship into a berth conveniently close to the Crusader. Mulhooney was not the regular captain of the Questar. That gentleman had been so overcome by the sight of two thousand dollars in cash that he had fallen ill, and would remain so for a few days. Cronkite had recommended his friend, Mulhooney. Cronkite didn’t immediately go aboard the Questar. Instead he chatted with the chief customs inspector, who watched with an idle eye as what were obviously explosives were transferred to the Questar. The two men had known each other for years. Apart from observing that someone out in the Gulf had been careless with matches again, the customs official had no further pertinent comment to make.

In response to idle questioning Cronkite learned that the Crusader had just finished offloading its cargo, and would be sailing in approximately one hour.

He boarded the Questar, greeted Mulhooney and went straight to the crew’s mess. Seated among the others there were three divers already fully clad in scuba suits. He gave brief instructions and the three men went on deck. Under cover of the superstructure and on the blind side of the ship – the side remote from the dock – the three men went down a rope ladder and slid quietly into the water. Six objects – radio-detonated magnetic mines equipped with metallic clamps – were lowered down towards them. They were so constructed as to have a very slight negative buoyancy, which made them easy to tow along under water.

In the pre-dawn darkness the hulls of the vessels cast so heavy a shadow from the powerful shorelights that it was virtually certain that the men could have swum unobserved on the surface. But Cronkite was not much given to taking any chances at all. The mines were attached along the stern half of the Crusader’s hull, thirty feet apart and set at a depth of about ten feet. Five minutes after their departure the scuba divers were back. After a further five minutes the Questar put out to sea.

Cronkite, despite his near-legendary reputation for ruthlessness, had not quite lost touch with humanity: to say that he was possessed of an innate kindliness would have been a distortion of the truth, for he was above all an uncompromising and single-minded realist, but one with no innate killer instinct. Nonetheless, there were two things that would at that moment have given him considerable satisfaction.

The first of these was that he would have preferred to have the Crusader at sea before pressing the sheathed button before him on the bridge. He had no wish that innocent lives should be lost in Galveston, but it was a chance that he had to take. Limpet mines, as the Italian divers had proved in Alexandria in World War Two – and this to the great distress of the Royal Navy – could be devastatingly effective against moored vessels. But what might happen to high buoyancy limpets when a ship got under way and worked its way up to a maximum speed was impossible to forecast, as there was no known case of a vessel under way ever having been destroyed by limpet mines. It was at least possible that water pressure of a ship under way might well overcome the tenuous magnetic hold of the limpets and tear them free.

The second temptation was to board the helicopter on the Questar’s after helipad – many such vessels carried helicopters for the purpose of having them drop patterned explosives on the seabed to register on the seismological computer – and go to have a close look at what would be the ensuing havoc, a temptation which he immediately regarded as pure self-indulgence.

He put both thoughts from his mind. Eight miles out from Galveston he unscrewed the button-covered switch and leaned firmly on the button beneath. The immediate results were wholly unspectacular, and Cronkite feared that they might have been out of radio range. But for those in the port area in Galveston the results were highly spectacular. Six shattering explosions occurred almost simultaneously, and within twenty seconds the Crusader, her stern section torn in half, developed a marked list to starboard as thousands of tons of water poured through the ruptured side Another twenty seconds later – making forty seconds in all – the distant rumble of the explosions reached the ears of the listeners on the Questar. Cronkite and Mulhooney, alone on the bridge – the ship was on automatic pilot – looked at each other with grim satisfaction. Mulhooney, an Irishman with a true Irishman’s sense of occasion, produced an opened bottle of champagne and poured two brimming glassfuls. Cronkite, who normally detested the stuff, consumed his drink with considerable relish and set his glass down. It was then that the Crusader caught fire.

Its petrol tanks, true, were empty, but its engine diesel fuel tanks were almost completely topped up. In normal circumstances ignited diesel does not explode but burns with a ferocious intensity. Within seconds the smoke-veined flames had risen to a height of 200 feet, the height increasing with each passing moment until the whole city was bathed in a crimson glow, a phenomenon which the citizens of Galveston had never seen before and would almost certainly never see again. Even aboard the Questar, now some miles distant, the spectacle had an awe-inspiring and unearthly quality about it. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the fire stopped as the Crusader turned completely over on its side, the harbour waters quenching the flames into hissing extinction. Some patches of floating oil still flickered feebly across the harbour, but that was all that there was to it.

Clearly, Lord Worth was going to require a new tanker, a requirement that presented quite a problem. In this area of a gross over-supply of tankers, any one of scores of laid-up super-tankers could be had just through exercising enough strength to lift a telephone. But 50,000 dw tankers, though not a dying breed, were a dwindling breed, principally because the main shipyards throughout the world had stopped producing them. ‘Had’ is the operative word. Keels of that size and even smaller were now being hastily laid down, but would not be in full operation for a year or two to come. The reason was perfectly simple. Super-tankers on the Arabian Gulf-Europe run had to make the long and prohibitively expensive circuit of the Cape of Good Hope because the newly reopened Suez Canal could not accommodate their immense draught, a problem that presented no difficulties to smaller tankers. It was said, and probably with more than a grain of truth, that the notoriously wily Greek ship-owners had established a corner of this particular market.

The dawn was in the sky.

At that precise moment there were scenes of considerable activity around and aboard the Seawitch. The Panamanian registered tanker, the Torbello, was just finishing the off-loading of the contents of the Seawitch’s massive floating conical oil tank. As they were doing so, two helicopters appeared over the north-eastern horizon. Both were very large Sikorsky machines which had been bought by the thrifty Lord Worth for the traditional song, not because they were obsolete but because they were two of the scores that had become redundant since the end of the Vietnam war, and the armed forces had been only too anxious to get rid of them: civilian demand for ex-gunships is not high.

The first of those to land on the helipad debarked twenty-two men, led by Lord Worth and Giuseppe Palermo. The other twenty, who from their appearance were not much given to caring for widows and orphans, all carried with them the impeccable credentials of oil experts of one type or another. That they were experts was beyond question: what was equally beyond question was that none of them would have recognized a barrel of oil even if he had fallen into it. They were experts in diving, underwater demolition, the handling of high explosives and the accurate firing of a variety of unpleasant weapons.

The second helicopter arrived immediately after the first had taken off. Pilot and co-pilot apart, it carried no other human cargo. What it did carry was the immense and varied quantity of highly offensive weaponry from the Florida armoury, the loss of which had not yet been reported in the newspapers.

The oil rig crew watched the arrival of gunmen and weapons with an oddly dispassionate curiosity. They were men to whom the unusual was familiar; the odd, the incongruous, the inexplicable, part and parcel of their daily lives. Oil rig crews were a race apart and Lord Worth’s men formed a very special subdivision of that race.

Lord Worth called them all together, told of the threat to the Seawitch and the defensive measures he was undertaking, measures which were thoroughly approved of by the crew, who had as much regard for their own skins as the rest of mankind. Lord Worth finished by saying that he knew he had no need to swear them to secrecy.

In this the noble lord was perfectly correct. Though all experienced oilmen, there was hardly a man aboard who had not at one time or another had a close and painful acquaintanceship with the law. There were ex-convicts among them. There were escaped convicts among them. There were those whom the law was very anxious to interview. And there were parolees who had broken their parole. There could be no safer hideouts for those men than the Seawitch and Lord Worth’s privately-owned motel where they put up during their off-duty spells. No law-officer in his sane mind was going to question the towering respectability and integrity of one of the most powerful oil barons in the world, and by inevitable implication this attitude of mind extended to those in his employ.

In other words Lord Worth, through the invaluable intermediacy of Commander Larsen, picked his men with extreme care.

Accommodation for the newly-arrived men and storage for the weaponry presented no problem. Like many jack-ups, drill-ships and submersibles, the Seawitch had two complete sets of accommodation and messes, one for Westerners, the other for Orientals: there were at that time no Orientals aboard.

Lord Worth, Commander Larsen and Palermo held their own private council of war in the luxuriously equipped sitting-room which Lord Worth kept permanently reserved for himself. They agreed on everything. They agreed that Cronkite’s campaign against them would be distinguished by a noticeable lack of subtlety: outright violence was the only course open to him. Once the oil was offloaded ashore there was nothing Cronkite could do about it. He would not attempt to attack and sink a loaded tanker, just as he would not attempt to destroy their huge floating storage tank. Either method would cause such a massive oil slick, comparable to or probably exceeding the great oil slick caused by the Torrey Canyon disaster off the south-west coast of England some years previously. The ensuing international uproar would be bound to uncover something, and if Cronkite were implicated he would undoubtedly implicate the major oil companies – who wouldn’t like that at all. And that there would be a massive investigation was inevitable: ecology and pollution were still the watchwords of the day.

Cronkite could attack the flexible oil pipe that connected the rig with the tank, but the three men agreed that this could be taken care of. After Conde and the Roamer arrived and its cargo had been hoisted aboard, the Roamer would maintain a constant day-and-night patrol between the rig and the tank. The Seawitch was well equipped with sensory devices, apart from those which controlled the tensioning anchor cables. A radar scanner was in constant operation atop the derrick, and sonar devices were attached to each of the three giant legs some twenty feet under water. The radar could detect any hostile approach from air or sea, and the dual-purpose anti-aircraft guns, once aboard and installed, could take care of those. In the highly unlikely event of an underwater attack sonar would locate the source and a suitably placed depth-charge from the Roamer would attend to that.

Lord Worth, of course, was unaware that at that very moment another craft was moving out at high speed to join Cronkite on the Questar. It was a standard and well-established design irreverently known as the ‘pull-push’, where water was ducted in through a tube forward under the hull and forced out under pressure at the rear. It had no propeller and had been designed primarily for work close inshore or in swamps where there was always the danger of the propeller being fouled. The only difference between this vessel – the Starlight – and others was that it was equipped with a bank of lead acid batteries and could be electrically powered. Sonar could detect and accurately pinpoint a ship’s engines and propeller vibrations: it was virtually helpless against an electric pull-push.

Lord Worth and the others considered the possibility of a direct attack on the Seawitch. Because of her high degree of compartmentalization and her great positive buoyancy nothing short of an atom bomb was capable of disposing of something as large as a football field. Certainly no conventional weapon could. The attack, when it came, would be localized. The drilling derrick was an obvious target, but how Cronkite could approach it unseen could not be imagined. But of one thing Lord Worth was certain: when the attack came it would be levelled against the Seawitch.

The next half hour was to prove, twice, just how wrong Lord Worth could be.

The first intimations of disaster came when Lord Worth was watching the fully-laden Torbello just disappearing over the northern horizon; the Crusader, he knew, was due alongside the tank late that afternoon. Larsen, his face one huge scowl of fury, silently handed Lord Worth a signal just received in the radio office. Lord Worth read it, and his subsequent language would have disbarred him for ever from a seat in the House of Lords. The message told, in cruelly unsparing fashion, of the spectacular end of the Crusader in Galveston.

Both men hurried to the radio room. Larsen contacted the Jupiter, their third tanker then offloading at an obscure Louisiana port, told its captain the unhappy fate of the Crusader and warned him to have every man on board on constant look-out until they had cleared harbour.

Lord Worth personally called the chief of police in Galveston, announced who he was and demanded more details of the sinking of the Crusader. These he duly received and none of them made him any happier. On inspiration he asked if there had been a man called John Cronkite or a vessel belonging to a man of that name in the vicinity at the time. He was told to hang on while a check was made with the Customs. Two minutes later he was told yes, there had been a John Cronkite aboard a vessel called the Questar, which had been moored directly aft of the Crusader. It was not known whether Cronkite was the owner or not. The Questar had sailed half an hour before the Crusader blew up.

Lord Worth peremptorily demanded that the Questar be apprehended and returned to port and that Cronkite be arrested. The police chief pointed out that international law prohibited the arrest of vessels on the high sea except in time of war and, as for Cronkite, there wasn’t a shred of evidence to connect him with the sinking of the Crusader. Lord Worth then asked if he would trace the owner of the Questar. This the police chief promised to do, but warned that there might be a considerable delay. There were many registers to be consulted.

At that moment the Cuban submarine steaming on the surface at full speed was in the vicinity of Key West and heading directly for the Seawitch. At almost the same time a missile-armed Russian destroyer slipped its moorings in Havana and set off in apparent pursuit of the Cuban submarine. And, very shortly after that, a destroyer slipped its moorings at its home base in Venezuela.

The Roamer, Lord Worth’s survey vessel under the command of Conde, was now half-way towards its destination. The Starlight, under the command of Easton, was just moving away from the Questar, which was lying stopped in the water. Men on stages had already painted out the ship’s name, and with the aid of cardboard stencils were painting in a new name – Georgia. Cronkite had no wish that any vessel with whom they might make contact could radio for confirmation of the existence of a cutter called Questar. From aft there came the unmistakable racket of a helicopter engine starting up, then the machine took off, circled and headed south-east, not on its usual pattern-bombing circuit but to locate and radio back to the Questar the location and course of the Torbello, if and when it found it. Within minutes the Questar was on its way again, heading in approximately the same direction as the helicopter.

Chapter Four

Lord Worth, enjoying a very early morning cup of tea, was in his living-room with Larsen and Palermo when the radio operator knocked and entered, a message sheet in his hand. He handed it to Lord Worth and said: ‘For you, sir. But it’s in some sort of code. Do you have a code-book?’

‘No need.’ Lord Worth smiled with some little self-satisfaction, his first smile of any kind for quite some time. ‘I invented this code myself.’ He tapped his head. ‘Here’s my code-book.’

The operator left. The other two watched in mild anticipation as Lord Worth began to decode. The anticipation turned into mild apprehension as the smile disappeared from Lord Worth’s face, and the apprehension gave way in turn to deep concern as reddish-purplish spots the size of pennies touched either cheek-bone. He laid down the message sheet, took a deep breath, then proceeded to give a repeat performance, though this time more deeply felt, more impassioned, of the unparliamentary language he had used when he had greeted the news of the loss of the Crusader. After some time he desisted, less because he had nothing fresh to say as from sheer loss of breath.

Larsen had more wit than to ask Lord Worth if something were the matter. Instead he said in a quiet voice: ‘Suppose you tell us, Lord Worth?’

Lord Worth, with no little effort, composed himself and said: ‘It seems that Cor –’ He broke off and corrected himself: it was one of his many axioms that the right hand shouldn’t know what the left hand doeth. ‘I was informed – all too reliably, as it now appears – that a couple of countries hostile to us might well be prepared to use naval force against us. One, it appears, is already prepared to do so. A destroyer has just cleared its Venezuelan home port and is heading in what is approximately our direction.’

‘They wouldn’t dare,’ Palermo said.

‘When people are power-and money-mad they’ll stop at nothing.’ It apparently never occurred to Lord Worth that his description of people applied, in excelsis, to himself.

‘Who’s the other power?’ said Larsen.

‘The Soviet Union.’

‘Is it now?’ Larsen seemed quite unmoved. ‘I don’t know if I like the sound of that.’

‘We could do without them.’ Lord Worth was back on balance again. He flipped out a telephone notebook and consulted it. ‘I think I’ll have a talk to Washington.’ His hand was just reaching out for the receiver when the phone rang. He lifted the receiver, at the same time making the switch that cut the incoming call into the bulkhead speaker.

‘Worth.’

A vaguely disembodied voice came through the speaker. ‘You know who I am?’ Disembodied or not, Worth knew to whom the voice belonged. Corral.

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve checked my contact, sir. I’m afraid our guesses were only too accurate. Both X and Y are willing to commit themselves to naval support.’

‘I know. One of them has just moved out and appears to be heading in our general direction.’

‘Which one?’

‘The one to the south. Any talk of air commitment?’

‘None that I’ve heard, sir. But I don’t have to tell you that that doesn’t rule out its use.’

‘Let me know if there is any more good news.’

‘Naturally. Goodbye, sir.’

Lord Worth replaced the receiver, then lifted it again.

‘I want a number in Washington.’

‘Can you hold a moment, sir?’

‘Why?’

‘There’s another code message coming through. Looks like the same code as the last one, sir.’

‘I shouldn’t be surprised.’ Lord Worth’s tone was sombre. ‘Bring it across as soon as possible.’

He replaced the receiver, pressed a button on the small console before him, lifting the receiver as he did so.

‘Chambers?’ Chambers was his senior pilot.

‘Sir?’

‘Your chopper refuelled?’

‘Ready to go when you are, sir.’

‘May be any second now. Stand by your phone.’ He replaced the receiver.

Larsen said: ‘Washington beckons, sir?’

‘I have the odd feeling that it’s about to. There are things that one can achieve in person that one can’t over the phone. Depends upon this next message.’

‘If you go, anything to be done in your absence?’

‘There’ll be dual-purpose anti-aircraft guns arriving aboard the Roamer this afternoon. Secure them to the platform.’

‘To the north, south, east but not west?’

‘As you wish.’

‘We don’t want to start blowing holes in our own oil tank.’

‘There’s that. There’ll also be mines. Three piles, each half-way between a pair of legs.’

‘An underwater explosion from a mine wouldn’t damage the legs?’

‘I shouldn’t think so. We’ll just have to find out, won’t we? Keep in constant half-hourly touch with both the Torbello and the Jupiter. Keep the radar and sonar stations constantly manned. Eternal vigilance, if you will. Hell, Commander, I don’t have to tell you what to do.’ He wrote some figures on a piece of paper. ‘If I do have to go, contact this number in Washington. Tell them that I’m coming Five hours or so.’

‘This is the State Department?’

‘Yes. Tell them that at least the Under-Secretary must be there. Remind him, tactfully, of future campaign contributions. Then contact my aircraft pilot, Dawson. Tell him to be standing by with a filed flight plan for Washington.’

The radio operator knocked, entered, handed Lord Worth a message sheet and left. Lord Worth, hands steady and face now untroubled, decoded the message, reached for the phone and told Chambers to get to the helicopter at once.

He said to the two men: ‘A Russian-built Cuban submarine is on its way from Havana. It’s being followed by a Russian guided missile destroyer. Both are heading this way.’

‘A visit to the State Department or the Pentagon would appear to be indicated,’ Larsen said. ‘There isn’t too much we can do about guided missiles. Looks like there might be quite some activity hereabouts: that makes five vessels arrowing in on us – three naval vessels, the Jupiter and the Roamer.’ Larsen might have been even more concerned had he known that the number of vessels was seven, and not five: but then Larsen was not to know that the Questar and the Starlight were heading that way also.

Lord Worth rose. ‘Well, keep an eye on the shop. Back this evening some time. I’ll be in frequent radio contact.’

Lord Worth was to fly four legs that day: by helicopter to the mainland, by his private Boeing to Washington, the return flight to Florida and the final leg by helicopter out to the Seawitch. On each of those four legs something very unpleasant was going to happen – unpleasant for Lord Worth, that was. Fortunately for Lord Worth he was not blessed with the alleged Scottish second sight – the ability to look into the future.

The first of those unpleasantnesses happened when Lord Worth was en route to the mainland. A large estate wagon swept up to the front door of Lord Worth’s mansion, carrying five rather large men who would have been difficult later to identify, for all five wore stocking masks. One of them carried what appeared to be a large coil of clothes rope, another a roll of adhesive tape. All carried guns.

MacPherson, the elderly head gardener, was taking his customary pre-work dawn patrol to see what damage the fauna had wreaked on his flora during the night when the men emerged from the estate wagon. Even allowing for the fact that shock had temporarily paralysed his vocal chords he never had a chance. In just over a minute, bound hand and foot and with his lips literally sealed with adhesive tape he had been dumped unceremoniously into a clump of bushes.

The leader of the group, a man by the name of Durand, pressed the front-door bell. Durand, a man who had a powerful affinity with banks and who was a three-time ex-convict, was by definition a man of dubious reputation, a reputation confirmed by the fact that he was a close and long-term associate of Cronkite. Half a minute passed then he rang again. By and by the door opened to reveal a robe-wrapped Jenkins, tousle-haired and blinking the sleep from his eyes – it was still very early in the morning. His eyes stopped blinking and opened wide when he saw the pistol in Durand’s hand.

Durand touched the cylinder screwed on to the muzzle of his gun. As hooked a TV addict as the next man, Jenkins recognized a silencer when he saw one.

‘You know what this is?’

A fully awake Jenkins nodded silently.

‘We have no wish to harm anyone in this household. Especially, no harm will come to you if you do what you are told. Doing what you are told includes not telling lies. Understood?’

Jenkins understood.

‘How many staff do you have here?’

There was a noticeable quaver in Jenkins’s voice. ‘Well, there’s me – I’m the butler –’

Durand was patient. ‘You we can see.’

‘Two footmen, a chauffeur, a radio operator, a secretary, a cook and two housemaids. There’s a cleaning lady but she doesn’t come until eight.’

‘Tape him,’ Durand said. Jenkins’s lips were taped. ‘Sorry about that, but people can be silly at times. Take us to those eight bedrooms.’

Jenkins reluctantly led the way. Ten minutes later all eight of the staff were securely bound and silenced. Durand said: ‘And now, the two young ladies.’

Jenkins led them to a door Durand picked out three of his men and said softly: ‘The butler will take you to the other girl. Check what she packs and especially her purse.’

Durand, followed by his man, entered the room, his gun in its concealed holster so as not to arouse too much alarm. That the bed was occupied was beyond doubt, although all that could be seen was a mop of black hair on the pillow. Durand said in a conversational voice: ‘I think you better get up, ma’am.’ Durand was not normally given to gentleness, but he did not want a case of screaming hysterics on his hands.

A case of hysterics he did not have. Marina turned round in bed and looked at him with drowsy eyes. The drowsiness did not last long. The eyes opened wide, either in fear or shock, then returned to normal. She reached for a robe, arranged it strategically on the bed cover, then sat bolt upright, wrapping the robe round her.

‘Who are you and what do you want?’ Her voice was not quite as steady as she might have wished.

‘Well, would you look at that, now?’ Durand said admiringly. ‘You’d think she was used to being kidnapped every morning of her life.’

‘This is a kidnap?’

‘I’m afraid so.’ Durand sounded genuinely apologetic.

‘Where are you taking me?’

‘Vacation. Little island in the sun.’ Durand smiled. ‘You won’t be needing any swim-suit though. Please get up and get dressed.’

‘And if I refuse?’

‘We’ll dress you.’

‘I’m not going to get dressed with you two watching me.’

Durand was soothing. ‘My friend will stand out in the corridor. I’ll go into the bathroom there and leave the door open just a crack – not to watch you, but to watch the window, to make sure that you don’t leave by it. Call me when you’re ready and be quick about it.’

She was quick about it. She called him inside three minutes. Blue blouse, blue slacks and her hair combed. Durand nodded his approval.

‘Pack a travelling bag. Enough for a few days.’

He watched her while she packed. She zipped the bag shut and picked up her purse. ‘I’m ready.’

He took the purse from her, unclipped it and up-ended the contents on the bed. From the jumble on the bed he selected a small pearl-handled pistol, which he slipped into his pocket.

‘Let’s pack the purse again, shall we?’

Marina did so, her face flushed with mortification.

A somewhat similar scene had just taken place in Melinda’s bedroom.

Twenty-five minutes had elapsed since the arrival of Durand and his men and their departure with the two girls. No one had been hurt, except in their pride, and they had even been considerate to the extent of seating Jenkins in a deep armchair in the front hall. Jenkins, as he was now securely bound hand and foot, did not appreciate this courtesy as much as he might have done.

About ten minutes after their departure Lord Worth’s helicopter touched down beside his Boeing in the city airport. There were no customs, no clearance formalities Lord Worth had made it plain some years previously that he did not much care for that sort of thing, and when Lord Worth made things plain they tended to remain that way.

It was during the second leg of his flight that the second unfortunate occurrence happened. Again, Lord Worth was happily unaware of anything that was taking place.

The Questar’s (now the Georgia’s) helicopter had located the Torbello. The pilot reported that he had sighted the vessel two minutes previously and gave her latitude and longitude as accurately as he could judge. More importantly, he gave her course as 315°, which was virtually on a collison course with the Georgia. They were approximately forty-five miles apart. Cronkite gave his congratulations to the pilot and asked him to return to the Georgia.

On the bridge of the Georgia, Cronkite and Mulhooney looked at each other with satisfaction. Between planning and execution there often exists an unbridgeable gap. In this case, however, things appeared to be going exactly according to plan.

Cronkite said to Mulhooney: ‘Time, I think, to change into more respectable clothes. And don’t forget to powder your nose.’

Mulhooney smiled and left the bridge. Cronkite paused only to give a few instructions to the helmsman, then left the bridge also.

Less than an hour later the Torbello stood clear over the horizon. The Georgia headed straight for it, then at about three miles’ distance made a thirty degree alteration to starboard, judged the timing to a nicety and came round in a wide sweeping turn to port. Two minutes later the Georgia was on a parallel course to the Torbello, alongside its port quarter – the bridge of a tanker lies very far aft – paralleling its course at the same speed and not more than thirty yards away. Cronkite moved out on to the wing of the Georgia’s bridge and lifted his loud-hailer.

‘Coastguard here. Please stop. This is a request, not an order. I believe your vessel to be in great danger. Your permission, please, to bring a trained search party aboard. If you value the safety of your men and the ship, on no account break radio silence.’

Captain Thompson, an honest sailor with no criminal propensities whatsoever, used his own loud-hailer.

‘What’s wrong? Why is this boarding necessary?’

‘It’s not a boarding. I am making a polite request for your own good. Believe me, I’d rather not be within five miles of you. It is necessary. I’d rather come aboard with my lieutenant and explain privately. Don’t forget what happened to your sister ship, the Crusader, in Galveston harbour last night.’

Captain Thompson, clearly, had not forgotten and was, of course, completely unaware that Cronkite was the man responsible for what had happened to his sister ship: a ringing of bells from the bridge was indication enough of that. Three minutes later the Torbello lay stopped in the calm waters. The Georgia edged up alongside the Torbello until its midships were just ahead of the bulk of the tanker’s superstructure. At this point it was possible to step from the Georgia’s deck straight on to the deck of the deeply-laden tanker, which was what Cronkite and Mulhooney proceeded to do. They paused there until they had made sure that the Georgia was securely moored fore and aft to the tanker, then climbed a series of companion-ways and ladders up to the bridge.

Both men were quite unrecognizable as themselves. Cronkite had acquired a splendidly bushy black beard, a neatly trimmed moustache and dark glasses and, with his neatly tailored uniform and slightly rakish peaked cap, looked the epitome of the competent and dashing coastguard cutter captain which he was not. Mulhooney was similarly disguised.

There was only Captain Thompson and an unemployed helmsman on the bridge. Cronkite shook the captain’s hand.

‘Good morning. Sorry to disturb you when you are proceeding about your lawful business and all that, but you may be glad we stopped you. First, where is your radio room?’ Captain Thompson nodded to a door set in back of the bridge. ‘I’d like my lieutenant to check on the radio silence. This is imperative.’ Again Captain Thompson, now feeling distinctly uneasy, nodded. Cronkite looked at Mulhooney. ‘Go check, Dixon, will you?’

Mulhooney passed through into the radio room, closing the door behind him. The radio operator looked up from his transceiver with an air of mild surprise.

‘Sorry to disturb.’ Mulhooney sounded almost genial, a remarkable feat for a man totally devoid of geniality. ‘I’m from the coastguard cutter alongside. The captain has told you to keep radio silence?’

‘That’s just What I’m doing.’

‘Made any radio calls since leaving the Seawitch?’

‘Only the routine half-hourly on course, on time calls.’

‘Do they acknowledge those? I have my reasons for asking.’ Mulhooney carefully refrained from saying what his reasons were.

‘No. Well, just the usual “Roger-and-out” business.’

‘What’s the call-up frequency?’

The operator pointed to the console. ‘Pre-set.’

Mulhooney nodded and walked casually behind the operator. Just to make sure that the operator kept on maintaining radio silence, Mulhooney clipped him over the right ear with the butt of his pistol. He then returned to the bridge where he found Captain Thompson in a state of considerable and understandable perturbation.

Captain Thompson, a deep anxiety compounded by a self-defensive disbelief, said: ‘What you’re telling me in effect is that the Torbello is a floating time-bomb.’

‘A bomb, certainly. Maybe lots of bombs. Not only possible but almost certain. Our sources of information – sorry, I’m not at liberty to divulge those – are as nearly impeccable as can be.’

‘God’s sake, man, no one would be so mad as to cause a vast oilslick in the Gulf.’

Cronkite said: ‘It’s your assumption, not mine, that we’re dealing with sane minds. Who but a madman would have endangered the city of Galveston by blowing up your sister tanker there?’

The captain fell silent and pondered the question gloomily.

Cronkite went on: ‘Anyway, it’s my intention – with your consent, of course – to search the engine room, living accommodation and every storage space on the ship. With the kind of search crew I have it shouldn’t take more than half an hour.’

‘What kind of pre-set time-bomb do you think it might be?’

‘I don’t think it’s a time-bomb – or bombs – at all. I think that the detonator – or detonators – will be a certain radio-activated device that can be triggered off by any nearby craft, plane or helicopter. But I don’t think it’s slated to happen till you’re close to the US coast.’

‘Why?’

‘Then you will have the maximum pollution along the shores. There will be a national outcry against Lord Worth and the safety standards aboard his – if you will excuse me – rather superannuated tankers, perhaps resulting in the closing down of the Seawitch or the arrest of any of Lord Worth’s tankers that might enter American territorial waters.’ In addition to his many other specialized qualifications, Cronkite was a consummate liar. ‘Okay if I call my men?’ Captain Thompson nodded without any noticeable enthusiasm.

Cronkite lifted the loud-hailer and ordered the search party aboard. They came immediately, fourteen of them, all of them wearing stocking masks, all of them carrying machine-pistols. Captain Thompson stared at them in stupefaction then turned and stared some more at Cronkite and Mulhooney, both of whom had pistols levelled against him. Cronkite may have been looking satisfied or even triumphant, but such was the abundance of his ersatz facial foliage that it was impossible to tell.

Captain Thompson, in a stupefaction that was slowly turning into a slow burn, said: ‘What the hell goes?’

‘You can see what goes. Hijack. A very popular pastime nowadays. I agree that nobody’s ever hijacked a tanker before, but there always has to be someone to start a new trend. Besides, it’s not really something new. Piracy on the high seas. They’ve been at it for thousands of years. Don’t try anything rash, Captain, and please don’t try to be a hero. If you all behave no harm will come to you. Anyway, what could you possibly do with fourteen submachine-guns lined up against you?’

Within five minutes all the crew, officers and men, with one exception, were herded in the crew’s mess under armed guard. Nobody had even as much as contemplated offering resistance. The exception was an unhappy-looking duty engineer in the engine room. There are few people who don’t look slightly unhappy, when staring at the muzzle of a Schmeisser from a distance of five feet.

Cronkite was on the bridge giving Mulhooney his final instructions.

‘Continue sending the Seawitch its half-hourly on time, on course reports. Then report a minor breakdown in two or three hours – a fractured fuel line or something of the sort – enough that would keep the Torbello immobilized for a few hours. You’re due in Galveston tonight and I need time and room to manoeuvre. Rather, you need time and room to manoeuvre. When darkness comes keep every navigational light extinguished – indeed, every light extinguished. Don’t let’s underestimate Lord Worth.’ Cronkite was speaking with an unaccustomed degree of bitterness, doubtless recalling the day Lord Worth had taken him to the cleaner’s in court. ‘He’s an exceptionally powerful man, and it’s quite on the cards that he can have an air and sea search mounted for his missing tanker.’

Cronkite rejoined the Georgia, cast off and pulled away. Mulhooney, too, got under way, but altered course ninety degrees to port so that he was heading south-west instead of north-west. On the first half-hour he sent the reassuring report to the Seawitch – ‘on course, on time.’

Cronkite waited for the Starlight to join him, then both vessels proceeded together in a generally south-eastern direction until they were about thirty-five nautical miles from the Seawitch, safely over the horizon and out of reach of the Seawitch’s radar and sonar. They stopped their engines and settled down to wait.

The big Boeing had almost halved the distance between Florida and Washington. Lord Worth, in his luxurious state-room immediately abaft the flight deck, was making up for time lost during the previous night and, blissfully unaware of the slings and arrows that were coming at him from all sides, was soundly asleep.

Mitchell had been unusually but perhaps not unexpectedly late in waking that morning. He showered, shaved and dressed while the coffee percolated, all the time conscious of a peculiar and unaccustomed sense of unease. He paced up and down the kitchen, drinking coffee, then abruptly decided to put his unease at rest. He lifted the phone and dialled Lord Worth’s mansion. The other end rang, rang again and kept on ringing. Mitchell replaced the receiver, then tried again with the same result. He finished his coffee, went across to Roomer’s house and let himself in with his pass-key. He went into the bedroom to find Roomer still asleep. He woke him up. Roomer regarded him with disfavour.

‘What do you mean by waking up a man in the middle of the night?’

‘It’s not the middle of the night.’ He pulled open the drapes and the bright summer sunlight flooded the room. ‘It’s broad daylight, as you will be able to see when you open your eyes.’

‘Is your house on fire or something, then?’

‘I wish it were something as trivial as that. I’m worried, John. I woke up feeling bugged by something, and the feeling got worse and worse. Five minutes ago I called up Lord Worth’s house. I tried twice. There was no reply. Must have been at least eight or ten people in that house, but there was no reply.’

‘What on earth do you suppose –’

‘You’re supposed to be the man with the intuition. Get yourself ready. I’ll go make some coffee.’

Long before the coffee was ready, in fact less than ninety seconds later, Roomer was in the kitchen. He had neither showered nor shaved but had had the time and the grace to run a comb through his hair. He was looking the same way as the expressionless Mitchell was feeling.

‘Never mind the coffee.’ Roomer was looking at him with an almost savage expression on his face, but Mitchell knew that it wasn’t directed at him. ‘Let’s get up to the house.’

Roomer drove his own car, which was the nearer.

Mitchell said: ‘God, we’re a bright lot. Hit us over the head often enough and then maybe – I only say maybe – we’ll begin to see the obvious. But we’re far too smart to see the obvious, aren’t we?’ He held on to his seat as Roomer, tyres screeching, rounded a blind corner. ‘Easy, boy, easy. Too late to bolt the stable door now.’

With what was clearly a conscious effort of will Roomer slowed down. He said: ‘Yes, we’re the clever ones, Lord Worth offered as an excuse for his actions a threat of the girls’ abduction. You told him to offer the threat of the girls’ abduction as an excuse for our presence there last night. And it never occurred to either of our staggering intellects that their abduction was both logical and inevitable. Lord Worth was not exaggerating – he has enemies, and vicious enemies, who are out to get him, come what may. Two trump cards – and what trumps. All the aces in the pack. He’s powerless now. He pretends to be loftily indulgent towards the two girls. He’ll give away half his money to get them back. Just half. He’ll use the other half to hunt them down. Money can buy any co-operation in the world, and the old boy has all the money in the world.’

Mitchell now seemed relaxed, comfortable, even calm. He said: ‘But we’ll get to them first, won’t we, John?’

Roomer stirred uncomfortably in his seat as they swung into the mansion’s driveway. He said: ‘I’m just as sick and mad as you are. But I don’t like it when you start to talk that way. You know that.’

‘I should say I’m expressing an intention or at least a hope.’ He smiled. ‘Let’s see.’

Roomer stopped his car in a fashion that did little good to Lord Worth’s immaculately raked gravel. The first thing that caught Mitchell’s eye as he left the car was an odd movement by the side of the driveway in a clump of bushes. He took out his gun and went to investigate, then put his gun away, opened his clasp-knife and sliced through MacPherson’s bonds. The head gardener, after forty years in Florida, had never lost a trace of a very pronounced Scottish accent, an accent that tended to thicken according to the degree of mental stress he was undergoing. On this occasion, with the adhesive removed, his language was wholly indecipherable – which, in view of what he was almost certainly trying to say, was probably just as well in the circumstances.

They went through the front doorway. Jenkins, apparently taking his ease in a comfortable armchair, greeted them with a baleful glare, a glare that was in no way directed at them. He was just in a baleful mood, a mood that was scarcely bettered when Mitchell swiftly, painfully, and with scant regard for Jenkins’s physical and mental feelings, yanked away the adhesive from his lips. Jenkins took a deep breath, doubtless preparatory to lodging some form of protest, but Mitchell cut in before he could speak.

‘Where does Jim sleep?’ Jim was the radio operator.

Jenkins stared at him in astonishment. Was this the way to greet a man who had been through a living hell, snatched, one might almost say, from the jaws of death? Where was the sympathy, the condolences, the anxious questioning? Mitchell put his hands on his shoulders and shook him violently.

‘Are you deaf? Jim’s room?’

Jenkins looked at the bleak face less than a foot from his own and decided against remonstrating. ‘In back, first floor, first right.’

Mitchell left. So, after a second or two, did Roomer. Jenkins called after him in a plaintive voice: ‘You aren’t leaving me too, Mr Roomer?’

Roomer turned and said patiently: ‘I’m going to the kitchen to get a nice sharp carver. Mr Mitchell has taken the only knife we have between us.’

Jim Robertson was young, fresh-faced and just out of college, a graduate in electrical engineering in no hurry to proceed with his profession. He sat on the bed massaging his now unbound wrists, wincing slightly as the circulation began to return. As tiers of knots, Durand’s henchmen had been nothing if not enthusiastic.

Mitchell said: ‘How do you feel?’

‘Mad.’

‘I shouldn’t wonder. Fit to operate your set?’

‘I’m fit for anything if it means getting hold of those bastards.’

‘That’s the general idea. Did you get a good look at the kidnappers?’

‘I can give you a general description –’ He broke off and stared at Mitchell. ‘Kidnappers?’

‘It appears that Lord Worth’s daughters have been abducted.’

‘Holy Christ!’ The assimilation of this news took some little time. ‘There’ll be all hell to pay for this.’

‘It should cause a considerable furore. Do you know where Marina’s room is?’

‘I’ll show you.’

Her room showed all the signs of a hasty and unpremeditated departure. Cupboard doors were open, drawers the same and some spilled clothing lay on the floor. Mitchell was interested in none of this. He quickly rifled through the drawers in her bedside table and within seconds found what he had hoped to find – a United States passport. He opened it and it was valid. He made a mental note that she had lied about her age – she was two years older than she claimed to be – returned the passport and hurried down to the radio room with Robertson, who unlocked the door to let them in. Robertson looked questioningly at Mitchell.

‘The County Police Chief. His name is McGarrity. I don’t want anyone else. Say you’re speaking on behalf of Lord Worth. That should work wonders. Then let me take over.’

Roomer entered while Robertson was trying to make contact. ‘Seven more of the staff, all suitably immobilized. Makes ten in all. I’ve left Jenkins to free them. His hands are shaking so badly that he’s bound to slice an artery or two, but for me the freeing of elderly cooks and young housemaids lies above and beyond the call of duty.’

‘They must have been carrying a mile of rope,’ Mitchell said absently. He was figuring out how much not to tell the chief of police.

Roomer nodded to the operator. ‘Who’s he trying to contact?’

‘McGarrity.’

‘That hypocritical old time-server.’

‘Most people would regard that as a charitable description. But he has his uses.’

Robertson looked up. ‘On the line, Mr Mitchell. That phone.’ He made discreetly to replace his own but Roomer took it from him and listened in.

‘Chief of Police McGarrity?’

‘Speaking.’

‘Please listen very carefully. This is extremely important and urgent, and the biggest thing that’s ever come your way. Are you alone?’

‘Yes. I’m quite alone.’ McGarrity’s tone held an odd mixture of suspicion and aroused interest.

‘Nobody listening in, no recorder?’

‘Goddam it, no. Get to the point.’

‘We’re speaking from Lord Worth’s house. You know of him?’

‘Don’t be a damned fool. Who’s “we”?’

‘My name is Michael Mitchell. My partner is John Roomer. We’re licensed private investigators.’

‘I’ve heard of you. You’re the pair who give the local law so much trouble.’

‘I’d put it the other way round, but that’s hardly relevant. What is relevant is that Lord Worth’s two daughters have been kidnapped.’

‘Merciful God in heaven!’ There ensued what could fairly have been described as a stunned silence at the other end of the line.

Roomer smiled sardonically and covered his mouthpiece. ‘Can’t you see the old twister grabbing his seat, eyes popping, big signs saying “Promotion” flashing in front of him?’

‘Kidnapped, you said?’ McGarrity’s voice had suddenly developed a certain hoarseness.

‘Kidnapped. Abducted. Snatched.’

‘Sure of this?’

‘Sure as can be. The girls’ rooms have every sign of a hurried unpremeditated departure. Ten of the staff bound and gagged. What would you conclude from that?’

‘Kidnap.’ McGarrity made it sound as if he’d made the discovery all by himself.

‘Can you put a block on all escape routes? They haven’t taken their passports, so that rules out international flights. I hardly think the kidnappers would have taken any commercial internal flight. Can you see Lord Worth’s daughters passing through the crowded concourse of any terminal without being recognized? I suggest a stop order and permanent guard on every private airfield and heliport in the southern part of the state. And that goes for every port, big and small, in the same area.’

McGarrity sounded bemused, befuddled. ‘That would call for hundreds of policemen.’

The tone of anguished protest was unmistakable. Mitchell sighed, cupped the mouthpiece, looked at Roomer and said: ‘Man’s out of his depth. Can I call him lunk-head?’ He removed his hand. ‘Look, Chief McGarrity, I don’t think you quite realize what you’re sitting on. It’s the daughters of Lord Worth that we’re talking about. You could lift your phone and have a thousand cops for the asking. You could call out the National Guard if you wanted – I’m sure Lord Worth would recoup every cent of expenses. Good God, man, there’s been nothing like this since the Lindbergh kidnapping.’

‘That’s so, that’s so.’ It wasn’t difficult to visualize McGarrity licking his lips. ‘Descriptions?’

‘Not much help there, I’m afraid. They all wore stocking masks. The leader wore gloves, which may or may not indicate a criminal record. All were big, well-built men and all wore dark business suits. I don’t require to give you a description of the girls, I suppose?’

‘Lady Marina? Lady Melinda?’ McGarrity was a classic snob of awesome proportions, who followed with avid interest the comings and goings of alleged society, of the internationally famous and infamous. ‘Good heavens, no. Of course not. They must be the most photographed couple in the State.’

‘You’ll keep this under wraps, tight as possible, for the moment?’

‘I will, I will.’ McGarrity had his baby clutched close to his heart, and nobody, but nobody, was going to take it away from him.

‘Lord Worth will have to be informed first of all. I’ll refer him to you.’

‘You mean you haven’t told him yet?’ McGarrity could hardly believe his good fortune.

‘No.’

‘Tell him to rest easy, well, as easy as he can, that is. Tell him I’m taking complete and personal charge of the investigation.’

‘I’ll do that, Chief.’

Roomer winced and screwed his eyes shut.

McGarrity sounded positively brisk. ‘Now, about the local law.’

‘I suppose I’ve got to call them in. I’m not too happy about it. They’re biased against us. Suppose they refuse to keep the wraps on this –’

‘In which case,’ McGarrity said ominously, ‘just put the person concerned directly on the line to me. Anyone else know about this yet?’

‘Of course not. You’re the only man with the power to authorize the closing of the escape routes. Naturally we contacted you first.’

‘And you were perfectly right, Mr Mitchell.’ McGarrity was warm and appreciative, as well he might have been, for he had a very shaky reelection coining up and the massive publicity the kidnapping was bound to generate would guarantee him a virtual shoe-in. ‘I’ll get the wheels turning this end. Keep me posted.’

‘Of course, Chief.’ Mitchell hung up.

Roomer looked at him admiringly. ‘You are an even bigger and smarmier hypocrite than McGarrity.’

‘Practice. Anyway, we got what we wanted.’ Mitchell’s face was sombre. ‘Has it occurred to you that the birds may have flown?’

Roomer looked equally unhappy. ‘It has. But first things first. Lord Worth next?’ Mitchell nodded. ‘I’ll pass this one up. They say that, under provocation, he has a rich command of the English language, not at all aristocratic. I’d be better employed interviewing the staff. I’ll ply them with strong drink to help them overcome the rigours of their ordeal and to loosen their tongues – Lord Worth’s reserve Dom Perignon for choice – and see what I can extract from them. I have little hope. All I can ask them is about descriptions and voices and Whether or not they touched anything that might yield up fingerprints. Not that that will help if their prints aren’t on file.’

‘The brandy sounds the best part of your programme. Would you ask Jenkins to bring a large one –’ he looked at Robertson – ‘two large ones?’

Roomer was at the door when he turned. ‘Do you know what happened in ancient times to the bearers of bad news?’

‘I know. They got their heads cut off.’

‘He’ll probably blame us for carelessness and lack of foresight – and he’ll be right, too, even although he’s just as guilty as we are.’ Roomer left.

‘Get me Lord Worth, Jim.’

‘I would if I knew where he was. He was here last night when I left.’

‘He’s on the Seawitch.’

Robertson raised an eyebrow, lowered it, said nothing and turned his attention to the switchboard. He raised the Seawitch in fifteen seconds. Mitchell took the phone.

‘Lord Worth, please.’

‘Hold on.’

Another voice came on, a rasping gravelly voice, not as friendly.

‘What is it that you want?’

‘Lord Worth, please.’

‘How do you know he’s here?’

‘How do I – what does that matter? May I speak to him?’

‘Look, mister, I’m here to protect Lord Worth’s privacy. We get far too many oddball calls from oddball characters. How did you know he was here?’

‘Because he told me.’

‘When?’

‘Last night. About midnight.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Mitchell. Michael Mitchell.’

‘Mitchell.’ Larsen’s tone had quite changed. ‘Why didn’t you say so in the first place?’

‘Because I didn’t expect a Gestapo investigation, that’s why. You must be Commander Larsen?’

‘That’s me.’

‘Not very bloody civil, are you?’

‘I’ve a job to do.’

‘Lord Worth.’

‘He’s not here.’

‘He wouldn’t lie to me.’ Mitchell thought it impolitic to add that he’d actually seen Lord Worth take off.

‘He didn’t lie to you. He was here. He left hours ago to go to Washington.’

Mitchell was silent for a few moments while he re-adjusted himself. ‘Has he got a number where he can be reached?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘I didn’t ask you why he’d gone to Washington. It’s an urgent, private and personal matter. From what I’ve heard of you from Lord Worth, and that’s quite a bit, you’d react in exactly the same way. Give me the number and I’ll call you just as soon as Lord Worth gives me clearance.’

‘Your promise?’

So Mitchell gave him his promise and Larsen gave him the number.

Mitchell replaced the receiver. He said to Robertson: ‘Lord Worth has left the Seawitch and gone to Washington.’

‘He does get around. In his Boeing, I presume?’

‘I didn’t ask. I took that for granted. Do you think you can reach him?’

Robertson didn’t look encouraging. ‘When did he leave the Seawitch?’

‘I don’t know. Should have asked, I suppose. Hours ago, Larsen said.’

Robertson looked even more discouraged. ‘I wouldn’t hold out any hope, Mr Mitchell. With this set I can reach out a couple of thousand miles. Lord Worth’s Boeing can reach any airport not quite as far away, just as the airport can reach him. But the receiving equipment aboard the Boeing hasn’t been modified to receive long-range transmissions from this set, which is a very specialized set indeed. Short-range only. Five hundred miles, if that. The Boeing is bound to be well out of range by now.’

‘Freak weather conditions?’

‘Mighty rare, Mr Mitchell.’

‘Try anyway, Jim.’

He tried and kept on trying for five minutes, during which it became steadily more apparent that Lord Worth was going to have another brief spell of peace before being set up for his coronary. At the end of five minutes Robertson shrugged his shoulders and looked up at Mitchell.

‘Thanks for the try, Jim.’ He gave Robertson a piece of paper with a number on it. ‘Washington. Think you can reach that?’

‘That I can guarantee.’

‘Try for it in half an hour. Ask for Lord Worth. Emphasize the urgency. If you don’t contact him try again every twenty minutes. You have a direct line to the study?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll be there. I have to welcome the law.’

Lord Worth, still happily unaware of his disintegrating world, slept soundly. The Boeing, at 33,000 feet, was just beginning its descent to Dulles airport.

Chapter Five

Lord Worth, a glass of scotch in one hand and an illegal Cuban cigar in the other, was comfortably ensconced in a deep armchair in the Assistant Secretary of State’s very plush office. He should have been contented and relaxed: he was, in fact, highly discontented and completely unrelaxed. He was becoming mad, steadily and far from slowly, at the world in general and the four other people in that room in particular.

The four consisted of Howell, the Assistant, a tall, thin, keen-faced man with steel-rimmed glasses who looked like, and in fact was, a Yale professor. The second was his personal assistant, whose name, fittingly enough, Lord Worth had failed to catch, for he had about him the grey anonymity of a top-flight civil servant. The third was Lieutenant-General Zweicker, and all that could be said about him was that he looked every inch a general. The fourth was a middle-aged stenographer who appeared to take notes of the discussion whenever the mood struck her, Which didn’t appear to be very often: most likely, long experience had taught her that most of what was said at any conference wasn’t worth noting anyway.

Lord Worth said: ‘I’m a very tired man who has just flown up from the Gulf of Mexico. I have spent twenty-five minutes here and appear to have wasted my time. Well, gentlemen, I have no intention of wasting my time. My time is as important as yours. Correction. It’s a damn sight more important. “The big brush-off”, I believe it’s called.’

‘How can you call it a brush-off? You’re sitting in my office and General Zweicker is here. How many other citizens rate that kind of treatment?’

‘The bigger the façade, the bigger the brush-off. I am not accustomed to dealing with underlings. I am accustomed to dealing with the very top, which I haven’t quite reached yet, but will. The cool, diplomatic, deep-freeze treatment will not work. I am no trouble-maker, but I’ll go to any lengths to secure justice. You can’t sweep me under your diplomatic carpet, Mr Howell. I told you recently that there were international threats to the Seawitch, and you chose either to disbelieve me or ignore me. I come to you now with additional proof that I am under threat – three naval vessels heading for the Seawitch – and still you propose to take no action. And I would point out, incidentally, if you still don’t know independently of the movements of those vessels, then it’s time you got yourselves a new intelligence service.’

General Zweicker said. ‘We are aware of those movements. But as yet we see no justification for taking any kind of action. You have no proof that what you claim is true. Suspicions, no more. Do you seriously expect us to alert naval units and a squadron of fighter-bombers on the unproven and what may well be the unfounded suspicions of a private citizen?’

‘That’s it in a nutshell,’ Howell said. ‘And I would remind you, Lord Worth, that you’re not even an American citizen.’

Lord Worth, his voice gone very soft, pounced. ‘“Not even an American citizen.”’ He turned to the stenographer. ‘I trust you made a note of that.’ He lifted his hand as Howell made to speak. ‘Too late, Howell. Too late to retrieve your blunder, a blunder, I may say, of classical proportions. Not an American citizen? I would point out that I paid more taxes last year than all your precious oil companies in the States combined – this apart from supplying the cheapest oil to the United States. If the level of competence of the State Department is typical of the way this country is run, then I can only rejoice in the fact that I still retain a British passport. One law for Americans, another for the heathen beyond the pale. Even-handed justice. “Not an American citizen.” This should make a particularly juicy titbit for the news conference I intend to hold immediately after I leave.’

‘A news conference?’ Howell betrayed unmistakable signs of agitation.

‘Certainly.’ Lord Worth’s tone was as grim as his face. ‘If you people won’t protect me then, by God, I’ll protect myself.’

Howell looked at the General then back at Lord Worth. He strove to inject an official and intimidating note into his voice. ‘I would remind you that any discussions that take place here are strictly confidential.’

Lord Worth eyed him coldly. ‘It’s always sad to see a man who has missed his true vocation. You should have been a comedian, Howell, not a senior member of government. Confidential. That’s good. How can you remind me of something that you never even mentioned before? Confidential. If there wasn’t a lady present I’d tell you what I really think of your asinine remark. God, it’s rich, a statement like that coming from the number two in a Government department with so splendid a record of leaking State secrets to muckraking journalists, doubtless in return for a suitable quid pro quo. I cannot abide hypocrisy. And this makes another juicy titbit for the press conference – the State Department tried to gag me. Classical blunder number two, Howell.’

Howell said nothing. He looked as if he were considering the advisability of wringing his hands.

‘I shall inform the press conference of the indecision, reluctance, inaction, incompetence and plain running-scared vacillation of a State Department which will be responsible for the loss of a hundred million dollar oil rig, the stopping of cheap supplies of fuel to the American people, the biggest oil slick in history and the possible – no, I would say probable – beginnings of a third major war. In addition to holding this news conference, I shall buy TV and radio time, explain the whole situation and further explain that I am forced to go to those extraordinary lengths because of the refusal and inability of the State Department to protect me.’ He paused. ‘That was rather silly of me. I have my own TV and radio stations. It’s going to be such a burning hot topic that the big three companies will jump at it and it won’t cost me a cent. By tonight I’ll have the name of the State Department, particularly the names of you and your boss, if not exactly blackened at least tarnished across the country. I’m a desperate man, gentlemen, and I’m prepared to adopt desperate methods.’

He paused for their reactions. Facially they were all he could have wished. Howell, his assistant and the General all too clearly realized that Lord Worth meant every word he said. The implications were too horrendous to contemplate. But no one said anything, so Lord Worth took up the conversational burden again.

‘Finally, gentlemen, you base your pusillanimous refusal to act on the fact that I have no proof of evil intent. I do, in fact, possess such proof, and it’s cast-iron. I will not lay this proof before you because it is apparent that I will achieve nothing here. I require a decision-maker and the Secretary has the reputation for being just that. I suggest you get him here.’

‘Get the Secretary?’ Howell was clearly appalled by this suggested lese-majesty. ‘One doesn’t “get” the Secretary. People make appointments days, even weeks in advance. Besides, he is in a very important conference.’

Lord Worth remained unmoved. ‘Get him. This conference he’d better have with me will be the most important of his life. If he elects not to come then he’s probably holding the last conference of his political career. I know he’s not twenty yards from here. Get him.’

‘I – I don’t really think –’

Lord Worth rose. ‘I hope your immediate successors – and the operative word is “immediate” – will, for the country’s sake, display more common sense and intestinal fortitude than you have. Tell the man who, through your gross negligence and cowardly refusal to face facts, will be held primarily responsible for the outbreak of the next war, to watch TV tonight. You have had your chance – as your stenographer’s notebook will show – and you’ve thrown it away.’ Lord Worth shook his head, almost in sadness. ‘There are none so blind as those who will not see – especially a spluttering fuse leading to a keg of dynamite. I bid you good day, gentlemen.’

‘No! No!’ Howell was in a state of very considerable agitation. ‘Sit down! Sit down! I’ll see what I can do.’

He practically ran from the room.

During his rather protracted absence – he was gone for exactly thirteen minutes – conversation in the room was minimal.

Zweicker said: ‘You really mean what you say, don’t you?’

‘Do you doubt me, General?’

‘Not any more. You really intend to carry out those threats?’

‘I think the word you’re searching for is “promises”.’

After this effective conversation-stopper an uncomfortable silence fell on the room. Only Lord Worth appeared in no way discomforted. He was, or appeared to be, calm and relaxed, which was quite a feat, because he knew that the appearance or non-appearance of the Secretary meant whether he had won or lost.

He’d won, The Secretary, John Belton, when Howell nervously ushered him in, didn’t look at all like his reputation – which was that of a tough, shrewd-minded, hard-nosed negotiator, ruthless when the situation demanded and not much given to consulting his cabinet colleagues when it came to decision-making. He looked like a prosperous farmer, and exuded warmth and geniality – which deceived Lord Worth, a man who specialized in warmth and geniality, not a whit. Here, indeed, was a very different kettle of fish from Howell, a man worthy of Lord Worth’s mettle. Lord Worth rose.

Belton shook his hand warmly. ‘Lord Worth! This is a rare privilege – to have, if I may be forgiven the unoriginal turn of speech, to have America’s top oil tycoon calling on us.’

Lord Worth was courteous but not deferential. ‘I wish it were under happier circumstances. My pleasure, Mr Secretary. It’s most kind of you to spare a few moments. Well, five minutes, no more. My promise.’

‘Take as long as you like.’ Belton smiled. ‘You have the reputation for not bandying words. I happen to share that sentiment.’

‘Thank you.’ He looked at Howell. ‘Thirteen minutes to cover forty yards.’ He looked back at the Secretary. ‘Mr Howell will have – ah – apprised you of the situation?’

‘I have been fairly well briefed. What do you require of us?’ Lord Worth refrained from beaming: here was a man after his own heart. John Belton continued. ’We can, of course, approach the Soviet and Venezuelan ambassadors, but that’s like approaching a pair of powder-puffs. All they can do is to report our suspicions and veiled threats to their respective governments. They’re powerless, really. Even ten years ago ambassadors carried weight. They could negotiate and make decisions. Not any more. They have become, through no fault of their own, faceless and empty people who are consistently bypassed in State-to-State negotiations. Even their second chauffeurs, who are customarily trained espionage agents, wield more power than the ambassadors themselves.

‘Alternatively, we can make a direct approach to the governments concerned. But for that we would have to have proof. Your word doesn’t come into question, but it’s not enough. We must be able to adduce positive proof of, shall we say, nefarious intent.’

Lord Worth replied immediately. ‘Such proof I can adduce and can give you the outline now. I am extremely reluctant to name names because it will mean the end of the professional career of a friend of mine. But if I have to, that I will do. Whether I release those names to you or to the public will depend entirely upon the Department’s reaction. If I can’t receive a promise of action after I have given you this outline, then I have no recourse other than to approach the public. This is not blackmail. I’m in a corner and the only solution is to fight my way out of it. If you will, as I hope you will, give me a favourable reaction, I shall, of course, give you a list of names, which, I would hope, will not be published by your department. Secrecy, in other words. Not, of course, that this will prevent you from letting loose the FBI the moment I board my helicopter out there.’

‘The great warm heart of the American public versus the incompetent bumbling of the State Department.’ Belton smiled. ‘One begins to understand why you are a millionaire – I do apologize, billionaire.’

‘Earlier this week a highly secret meeting was held in a lakeside resort out west. Ten people, all of them very senior oilmen, attended this meeting. Four were Americans, representing many of the major oil companies in the States. A fifth was from Honduras. A sixth was from Venezuela, a seventh from Nigeria. Numbers eight and nine were oil sheikhs from the Gulf. The last was from the Soviet Union. As he was the only one there who had no interest whatsoever in the flow of oil into the United States, one can only presume that he was there to stir up as much trouble as possible.’

Lord Worth looked around the five people in the room. That he had their collective ear was beyond dispute. Satisfied, he continued.

’The meeting had one purpose and one only in mind. To stop me and to stop me at all costs. More precisely, they wanted to stop the flow of oil from the Seawitch – that is the name of my oil rig – because I was considerably undercutting them in price and thereby raising all sorts of fiscal problems. If there are any rules or ethics in the oil business I have as yet to detect any. I believe your congressional investigative committees would agree one hundred per cent with me on that. Incidentally, Worth Hudson – that’s the official name of my company – has never been investigated.

’The only permanent way to stop the flow of oil is to destroy the Seawitch. Halfway through the meeting they called in a professional trouble-shooter, a man whom I know well, and a highly dangerous man at that. For reasons I won’t explain until I get some sort of guarantee of help, he has a deep and bitter grudge against me. He also happens – just coincidentally, of course – to be one of the world’s top experts – if not the very top – on the use of high explosives.

‘After the meeting this trouble-shooter called aside the Venezuelan and Soviet delegates and asked for naval cooperation. This he was guaranteed.’ Lord Worth looked at the company with a singular lack of enthusiasm. ’Now perhaps you people will believe me.

‘I would add that this man so hates me that he would probably do the job for nothing. However, he has asked for – and got – a fee of a million dollars. He also asked for – and got – ten million dollars “operating expenses”. What does ten million dollars mean to you – except the unlimited use of violence?’

‘Preposterous. Incredible.’ The Secretary shook his head. ‘It has, of course, to be true. You are singularly well-informed, Lord Worth. You would appear to have an intelligence service to rival our own.’

‘Better. I pay them more. This oil business is a jungle and it’s a case of the survival of the most devious.’

‘Industrial espionage?’

‘Most certainly not.’ It was just possible that Lord Worth actually believed this.

‘This friend who may be coming to the end of his –’

‘Yes.’

‘Give me all the details, including a list of the names. Put a cross against the name of your friend. I shall see to it that he is not implicated and that only I will see that list.’

‘You are very considerate, Mr Secretary.’

‘In return I shall consult with Defence and the Pentagon.’ He paused. ‘Even that will not be necessary. In return I can personally guarantee you a sufficiency of air and sea cover against any normal or even considerable hazard.’

Lord Worth didn’t doubt him. Belton had the reputation of being a man of unshakeable integrity. More important, he had the justly-deserved reputation of being the President’s indispensable right-hand man. Belton delivered. Lord Worth decided against showing too much relief.

‘I cannot tell you how deeply grateful I am.’ He looked at the stenographer, and then at Howell. ‘If I could borrow this lady’s services –’

‘Of course.’ The stenographer turned to a fresh page in her notebook and waited expectantly.

Lord Worth said: ‘The place – Lake Tahoe, California, The address –’

The telephone jangled. The stenographer gave Lord Worth an ‘excuse-me’ smile and picked up the receiver. Howell said to the Secretary: ‘Dammit, I gave the strictest instructions –’

‘It’s for Lord Worth.’ She was looking at Belton. ‘A Mr Mitchell from Florida. Extremely urgent.’ The Secretary nodded and the stenographer rose and handed rest and receiver to Lord Worth.

‘Michael? How did you know I was here? … Yes, I’m listening.’

He listened without interruption. As he did so, to the considerable consternation of those watching him, the colour drained from his tanned cheeks and left them an unhealthy sallow colour. It was Belton himself who rose, poured out a brandy and brought it across to Lord Worth, who took it blindly and drained the not inconsiderable contents at a gulp. Belton took the glass from him and went for a refill. When he came back Lord Worth took the drink but left it untouched. Instead he handed the receiver to Belton and held his left hand over his now screwed-shut eyes.

Belton spoke into the phone. ‘State Department. Who’s speaking?’

Mitchell’s voice was faint but clear. ‘Michael Mitchell, from Lord Worth’s home. Is that – is that Dr Belton?’

‘Yes. Lord Worth seems to have received a severe snock.’

‘Yes, sir. His two daughters have been kidnapped.’

‘Good God above.’ Belton’s habitual imperturbability had received a severe dent. No one had ever seen him register shock before. Perhaps it was the bluntness of the announcement. ‘Are you sure?’

‘I wish to hell I wasn’t, sir.’

‘What are you?’

‘We – my partner John Roomer and I – are private investigators. We are not here in an investigative capacity. We are here because we are neighbours and friends of Lord Worth and his daughters.’

‘Called the police?’

‘Yes.’

‘What’s been done?’

‘We have arranged for the blocking of all air and sea escape routes.’

‘You have descriptions?’

‘Poor. Five men, heavily armed, wearing stocking masks.’

‘What’s your opinion of the local law?’

‘Low.’

‘I’ll call in the FBI.’

‘Yes, sir. But as the criminals haven’t been traced there’s no evidence that they’ve crossed the state line.’

‘Hell with state lines and regulations. If I say they’re called in, that’s it. Hold on. I think Lord Worth would like another word.’ Lord Worth took the receiver. Some colour had returned to his cheeks.

‘I’m leaving now. Less than four hours, I should say. I’ll radio from the Boeing half an hour out. Meet me at the airport.’

‘Yes, sir. Commander Larsen would like to know –’

‘Tell him.’ Lord Worth replaced the receiver, took another sip of his brandy. ‘There’s no fool like an old fool and only a blind fool would have overlooked so obvious a move. This is war, even if undeclared war, and in war no holds are barred. To think that it should come to this before you had incontrovertible proof that I am indeed under siege. Unforgivable. To have left my daughters unguarded was wholly unforgivable. Why didn’t I have the sense to leave Mitchell and Roomer on guard?’ He looked at his now-empty glass and the stenographer took it away.

Belton was faintly sceptical. ‘Five armed men?’

Lord Worth looked at him morosely. ‘I had forgotten that you don’t know these men. Mitchell, for example, could have taken care of them all by himself. He’s lethal.’

‘So they’re your friends, and you respect them. Don’t take offence, Lord Worth, but is there any way that they could be implicated in this?’

‘You must be out of your mind.’ Lord Worth, still morose, sipped his third brandy. ‘Sorry. I’m not myself. Sure they’d like to kidnap my daughters, almost as much as my daughters would like to be kidnapped by them.’

‘That the way?’ Belton seemed mildly astonished. In his experience, billionaires’ daughters did not normally associate with the lower orders.

‘That’s the way. And in answer to your next two questions: yes, I approve and no, they don’t give a damn about my money.’ He shook his head wonderingly. ‘It is extremely odd. And I shall forecast this, Mr Secretary. When Marina and Melinda are brought back to me it won’t be through the good offices of either the local police or your precious FBI. Mitchell and Roomer will bring them back. One does not wish to sound overly dramatic, but they would, quite literally, give their lives for my daughters.’

‘And, as a corollary, they would cut down anyone who got in their way?’

For the first time since the phone call Lord Worth smiled, albeit faintly. ‘I’ll take the fifth amendment on that one.’

‘I must meet these paragons some time.’

‘Just as long as it’s not over the wrong end of Mitchell’s gun.’ He rose, leaving his drink unfinished, looked round the room. ‘I must go. Thank you all for your kindness and consideration, not to say forbearance.’ He left, with the Secretary by his side.

When the door closed behind them General Zweicker rose and poured himself a brandy. ‘Well. What may be the kidnapping of the century pales into insignificance compared to the likelihood of the Russkies starting to throw things at us.’ He took some brandy. ‘Don’t tell me I’m the only person who can see the hellish witches’ brew Lord Worth is stirring up for us.’

It was clear that all three listening to him had a very clear view of the cauldron. Howell said: ‘Let’s give Lord Worth his due. He could even be right when he says he’s glad he’s got a British passport. The stirrers-up are our own compatriots; the holier-than-thou major American oil companies, who are willing to crucify Lord Worth and put their country at jeopardy because of their blind stupidity.’

‘I don’t care who’s responsible.’ The stenographer’s voice was plaintive. ‘Does anyone know where I can get a nuclear shelter, cheap?’

Belton led Worth down one flight of stairs and out on to the sunlit lawn, where the helicopter was waiting.

Belton said: ‘Ever tried to find words to tell someone how damnably sorry one feels?’

‘I know from experience. Don’t try. But thanks.’

‘I could have our personal physician accompany you down to Florida.’

‘Thanks again. But I’m fine now.’

‘And you haven’t had lunch?’ Belton, clearly, was finding conversational gambits heavy going.

‘As I don’t much care for plastic lunches from plastic trays, I have an excellent French chef aboard my plane.’ Again a faint smile. ‘And two stewardesses, chosen solely for their good looks. I shall not want.’

They reached the steps of the helicopter. Belton said: ‘You’ve had neither the time, inclination nor opportunity to give me that list of names. For the moment that is of no consequence. I just want you to know that my guarantee of protection remains in force.’

Lord Worth shook his hand silently and climbed the steps.

By this time Conde, aboard the Roamer, had arrived at the Seawitch, and the big derrick crane aboard the platform was unloading the heavy weaponry and mines from the Louisiana armoury. It was a slow and difficult task, for the tip of the derrick boom was 200 feet above sea level and in all the transfer was to take about three hours. As each dual-purpose anti-aircraft gun came aboard Larsen selected its site and supervised Palermo and some of his men in securing it in position: this was done by drilling holes in the concrete platform, then anchoring the gun-carriage base with sledgehammer-driven steel spikes. The guns were supposed to be recoil-less, but then neither Larsen nor Palermo were much given to taking chances.

The depth-charges, when they came, were stacked together in three groups, each half-way between the three apexes of the triangle. That there was an inherent risk in this Larsen was well aware: a stray bullet or shell – or perhaps not so stray – could well trigger off the detonating mechanism of one of the depth-charges, which would inevitably send up the other charges in sympathetic detonation. But it was a risk that had to be taken if for no other reason than the fact that there was no other place where they could be stored ready for immediate use. And when and if the time came for their use the need would be immediate.

The drilling crew watched Palermo and his crew at work, their expressions ranging from dispassion to approval. Neither group of men spoke to the other. Larsen was no great believer in fraternization.

Things were going well. The defensive system was being steadily installed. The Christmas Tree, the peculiar name given to the valve which controlled the flow of oil from the already tapped reservoir, was wide open and oil was being steadily pumped to the huge storage tank while the derrick drill, set at its widest angle, was driving ever deeper into the sub-stratum of the ocean floor, seeking to discover as yet untapped new oil deposits. All was going well, there were no overt signs of attack or preparation for attack from air or sea, but Larsen was not as happy as he might have been, even despite the fact that they were still receiving the half-hour regular ‘on course, on time’ reports from the Torbello.

He was unhappy partly because of the nonexistence of the Questar. He had recently learned from Galveston that there was no vessel listed in naval or coastguard registries under the name of Questar. He had then asked that they check civilian registrations and had been told that this was a forlorn hope. It would take many hours, perhaps days, to carry out this type of investigation and private vessels, unless fully insured, would show up neither in official registries nor in those of the major marine insurance companies. There was no law which said they had to be insured, and the owners of the older and more decrepit craft didn’t even bother to insure: there are such things as tax write-offs.

Larsen was not to know that his quest was a hopeless one. When Mulhooney had first taken over the Questar it had been called the Hammond, which he had thoughtfully had painted out and replaced by the name of Questar on the way to Galveston. Since Cronkite had since replaced that by the name Georgia, both the Hammond and the Questar had ceased to exist.

But what concerned Larsen even more was his conviction that something was far wrong. He was quite unable to put a finger on what this might be. He was essentially a pragmatist of the first order, but he was also a man who relied heavily on instinct and intuition. He was a man occasionally given to powerful premonitions, and more often than not those premonitions had turned into reality. And so when the loudspeaker boomed ‘Commander Larsen to the radio cabin. Commander Larsen to the radio cabin,’ he was possessed of an immediate certainty that the hour of his premonition had come.

He walked leisurely enough towards the radio cabin, partly because it would never do for Commander Larsen to be seen hurrying anxiously anywhere, partly because he was in no great hurry to hear the bad news he was convinced he was about to hear. He told the radio operator that he would like to take this call privately, waited until the man had left and closed the door behind him, then picked up the telephone.

‘Commander Larsen.’

‘Mitchell. I promised I’d call.’

‘Thanks. Heard from Lord Worth? He promised to keep in touch, but no word.’

‘And no wonder. His daughters have been kidnapped.’

Larsen said nothing immediately. Judging from the ivoried knuckles, the telephone handpiece seemed in danger of being crushed. Although caring basically only for himself, he had formed an avuncular attachment towards Lord Worth’s daughters, but even that was unimportant compared to the implications the kidnapping held about the welfare of the Seawitch. When he did speak it was in a steady, controlled voice.

‘When did this happen?’

‘This morning. And no trace of them. We’ve blocked every escape route in the southern part of the State. And there is no report from any port, airport, or heliport of any unusual departure from any of those since the time of the kidnapping.’

‘Vanished into thin air?’

‘Vanished, anyway. But not into thin air, we think. Terra firma, more likely. We think they’ve gone to earth, and are holed up not all that far away. But it’s only a guess.’

‘No communication, no demands, from the kidnappers?’

‘None. That’s what makes it all so odd.’

‘You think this is a ransom kidnap?’

‘No.’

‘The Seawitch?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you know why Lord Worth went to Washington?’

‘No. I’d like to.’

‘To demand naval protection. Early this morning a Russian destroyer and a Cuban submarine left Havana, while another destroyer left Venezuela. They are on converging courses. The point of convergence would appear to be the Seawitch.’

There was a silence, then Mitchell said: ‘This is for sure?’

‘Yes. Well, Lord Worth’s cup of woes would seem to be fairly full. The only consolation is that nothing much else can happen to him after this. Please keep me informed.’

In Lord Worth’s radio room both Mitchell and Roomer hung up their phones.

Mitchell briefly indulged in some improper language. ‘God, I never thought his enemies would go to this length.’

Roomer said: ‘Neither did I. I’m not sure that I even think so now.’

‘Uncle Sam’s not going to let any foreign naval powers play ducks and drakes in his own backyard?’

‘Something like that. I don’t think the Soviets would go so far as to risk a confrontation. Could be a bluff, a diversionary move. Maybe the real attack is coming from elsewhere.’

‘Maybe anything. Could be a double bluff. One thing’s sure: Larsen’s right in saying that Lord Worth’s cup of woes is fairly full. In fact I’d say it was over-spilling.’

‘Looks that way,’ Roomer said absently. His thoughts were clearly elsewhere.

Mitchell said: ‘Don’t tell me you’re in the throes of intuition again?’

‘I’m not sure. When you were talking to Larsen just now you mentioned “terra firma”. Firm land, dry land. What if it weren’t dry land? What if it were unfirm land?’

Mitchell waited politely.

Roomer said: ‘If you wanted to hole up, really get lost in Florida, where would you go?’

Mitchell hardly had to think. ‘We are bright. Unfirm land, infirm land, whatever you want to call it. The swamps, of course. Where else?’

‘Man could hide out for a month there, and a battalion of troops couldn’t find him. Which explains why the cops have been unable to find the station wagon.’ Between them MacPherson and Jenkins had been able to give a fairly accurate description of the kidnappers’ estate wagon. ‘They’ve been checking the highways and byways. I’ll bet they never thought of checking the roads into the swamps.’

‘Did we?’

‘As you said, we’re bright. There are dozens of those roads into the swamps, but most of them are very short and in no time you reach a point where no wheeled vehicle can go any further. A few dozen police cars could comb the nearest swamps in an hour.’

Mitchell said to Robertson: ‘Get Chief McGarrity.’

A knock came on the half-open door and Louise, one of the young housemaids, entered. She held a card in her hand. She said: ‘I was just making up Miss Marina’s bed when I found this between the sheets.’

Mitchell took the card. It was a plain calling card giving Marina’s name and address.

Louise said: ‘Other side.’

Mitchell reversed the card, holding it so that Roomer could see. Handwritten with a ball-point were the words: ‘Vacation. Little island in the sun. No swim-suit.’

‘You know Miss Marina’s handwriting, Louise?’ Mitchell had suddenly realized that he didn’t.

The girl looked at the card. ‘Yes, sir. I’m sure.’

‘Thank you, Louise. This could be very useful.’ Louise smiled and left. Mitchell said to Roomer: ‘What kind of lousy detective are you, then? Why didn’t you think of searching the bedrooms?’

‘Hmm. I can only guess that she asked them to leave while she dressed.’

‘You’d have thought she’d have been too scared to think of this.’

‘The handwriting’s steady enough. Besides, she doesn’t scare easily. Except, that is, when you point a pistol between her eyes.’

‘I wish, right here and now, that I was pointing a pistol between someone else’s eyes. Little island in the sun where you can’t go bathing. An overconfident kidnapper can talk too much. You thinking what I’m thinking?’

‘Roomer nodded. The Seawitch.’

At 33,000 feet Lord Worth had just completed a light but delicious lunch accompanied by a splendid Bordeaux wine, specially bottled for him in a Rothschild vinery. He had regained his habitual calm. He was almost philosophical. He had, he reckoned, touched his nadir. All that could happen had happened. In common with Larsen, Mitchell and Roomer he was convinced that the Fates could touch him no more. All four were completely and terribly wrong. The worst was yet to come. It was, in fact, happening right then.

Colonel Farquharson, Lieutenant-Colonel Dewings and Major Breckley were not in fact the people their ID cards claimed they were, for the sufficient reason that there were no officers of that rank with corresponding names in the US army. But then it was a very big army, and nobody, not even the officers, could possibly be expected to know the names of more than a tiny fraction of their fellow officers. Nor were their faces their normal faces, although they could hardly be described as being heavily disguised. The man responsible had been a Hollywood make-up artist who preferred subtlety to false beards. All three men were dressed in sober and well-cut business suits.

Farquharson presented his card to the corporal at the outer reception desk. ‘Colonel Farquharson to see Colonel Pryce.’

‘I’m afraid he’s not here.’

‘Then the officer in charge, man.’

‘Yes, sir.’

A minute later they were seated before a young and apprehensive Captain Martin, who had just finished a rather reluctant and very perfunctory scrutiny of their ID cards.

Farquharson said: ‘So Colonel Pryce has been called to Washington. I can guess why.’

He didn’t have to guess. He himself had put through the fake call that had led to Pryce’s abrupt departure. ‘And his second in command?’

‘Flu.’ Martin sounded apologetic.

‘At this time of year? How inconvenient. Especially today. You can guess why we’re here.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Martin looked slightly unhappy. ‘Security check. I had a phone call telling me of the break-ins into the Florida and Louisiana armouries.’ Dewings had put through that one. ‘I’m sure you’ll find everything in order.’

‘Doubtless. I have already discovered something that is not in order.’

‘Sir?’ There was a definite apprehension now in Martin’s voice and appearance.

‘Security-consciousness. Do you know that there are literally dozens of shops where I could buy, perfectly legally, a general’s uniform? Those are the speciality shops that cater primarily for the film and stage industries. If I walked in dressed in such a uniform, would you accept me for what my uniform proclaimed me to be?’

‘I suppose I would, sir.’

‘Well, don’t. Not ever again.’ He glanced at his identity card lying on the desk. ‘Forging one of those presents no problems. When a stranger makes an appearance in a top-security place like this, always, always, check his identity with Area Command. And always talk only to the commanding officer.’

‘Yes, sir. Do you happen to know his name? I’m new here.’

‘Major-General Harsworth.’

Martin had the corporal at the front desk put him through. On the first ring a voice answered. ‘Area Command.’

The voice did not in fact come from Area Command. It came from a man less than half a mile away, seated at the base of a telegraph pole. He had with him a battery-powered transceiver. A sheathed copper line from that led up to a crocodile clip attached to one of the telegraph lines.

Martin said: ‘Netley Rowan Armoury. Captain Martin. I’d like to speak to General Harsworth.’

‘Hold.’ There was a series of clicks, a pause of some seconds, then the same voice said: ‘On the line, Captain.’

Martin said: ‘General Harsworth?’

‘Speaking.’ The man by the telegraph pole had deepened his voice by an octave. ‘Problems, Captain Martin?’

‘I have Colonel Farquharson with me. He insists that I check out his identity with you.’

The voice at the other end was sympathetic. ‘Been at the receiving end of a security lecture?’

‘I’m afraid I have rather, sir.’

‘Very hot on security, the Colonel. He’ll be with Lieutenant-Colonel Dewings and Major Breckley?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Well, it’s hardly the end of your professional career. But he’s right, you know.’

Farquharson himself took the wheel of the car on the three-mile journey, a chastened, compliant Martin sitting up front beside him. A fifteen-foot-high electrical warning barbed-wire fence surrounded the armoury, a squat, grey, windowless building covering almost half an acre of land. A sentry with a machine-carbine barred the entrance to the compound. He recognized Captain Martin, stepped back and saluted. Farquharson drove up to the one and only door of the armoury and halted. The four men got out. Farquharson said to Martin: ‘Major Breckley has never been inside a TNW armoury before. A few illuminating comments, perhaps?’ It would be illuminating for Farquharson also. He had never been inside an armoury of any description in his life.

‘Yes, sir. TNW – Tactical Nuclear Warfare. Walls thirty-three inches thick, alternating steel and ferro-concrete. Door – ten inches tungsten steel. Both walls and door capable of resisting the equivalent of a fourteen-inch armour-piercing naval shell. This glass panel is recording us on TV videotape. This meshed grille is a two-way speaker which also records our voices.’ He pressed a button sunk in the concrete.

A voice came through the grille. ‘Identification, please?’

‘Captain Martin with Colonel Farquharson and security inspection.’

‘Code?’

‘Geronimo.’ The massive door began to slide open, and they could hear the hum of a powerful electrical motor. It took all of ten seconds for the door to open to its fullest extent. Martin led them inside.

A corporal saluted their entrance. Martin said: ‘Security inspection tour.’

‘Yes, sir.’ The corporal didn’t seem too happy.

Farquharson said: ‘You seem to have a troubled conscience, soldier?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Then you should have.’

Martin said: ‘Something wrong, sir?’ He was patently nervous.

‘Four things.’ Martin dipped his head so that Farquharson couldn’t see that he had been swallowing. One thing would have been bad enough.

‘In the first place, that sentry gate should be kept permanently locked. It should only be opened after a phone call to your HQ and an electronic link for opening the gate installed in your office. What’s to prevent a person or persons with a silenced automatic disposing of your sentry and driving straight up here? Secondly, what would prevent such people walking through the open doorway and riddling us all with sub-machine-guns? That door should have been shut the moment we passed through.’ The corporal started to move but Farquharson stopped him with upraised hand.

‘Thirdly, all people who are not base personnel – such as us – should be finger-printed on arrival – I will arrange to have your guards trained in those techniques. Fourthly, and most importantly, show me the controls for those doors.’

‘This way, sir.’ The corporal led the way to a small console. ‘The red button opens, the green one closes.’

Farquharson pressed the green button. The massive door hissed slowly closed. ‘Unsatisfactory. Totally. Those are the only controls to operate the door?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Martin looked very unhappy indeed.

‘We shall have another electronic link established with your HQ, which will render those buttons inoperable until the correct signal is sent.’ Farquharson was showing signs of irritation. ‘I would have thought all those things were self-evident.’

Martin smiled weakly. ‘They are now, sir.’

‘What percentage of explosives, bombs and shells stored here are conventional?’

‘Close on ninety-five per cent, sir.’

‘I’d like to see the nuclear weapons first.’

‘Of course, sir.’ A now thoroughly demoralized Martin led the way.

The TNW section was compartmented off but not sealed. One side was lined with what appeared to be shells, stowed on racks, the other with pear-shaped metal canisters about thirty inches high, with buttons, a clock-face and a large knurled screw on top. Beyond them were stacked what looked like very odd-shaped fibre-glass suitcases, each with two leather handles.

Breckley indicated the pear-shaped canisters. ‘What are those? Bombs?’

‘Both bombs and landmines.’ Martin seemed glad to talk and take his mind off his troubles. ’Those controls on top are relatively simple. Before you get at those two red switches you have to unscrew those two transparent plastic covers. The switches have then to be turned ninety degrees to the right. They are then still in the safe position. They then have to be flipped ninety degrees to the left. This is the ready-to-activate position.

‘Before that is done, you have to put the time setting on the clock. That is done by means of this knurled knob here. One complete turn means a one-minute time delay which will show up on this clock face here. It registers in seconds, as you can see. Total time delay is thirty minutes – thirty turns.’

‘And this black button?’

‘The most important of them all. No cover and no turning. You might want to get at it in a hurry. Depressing that stops the clock and, in fact, deactivates the bomb.’

‘What’s the area of damage?’

‘Compared to the conventional atom bomb, tiny. The vaporization area would be a quarter-mile radius. Perhaps less. The blast, shock and radiation areas would, of course, be considerably greater.’

‘You said they could be used as both bombs and mines.’

’For mines I should perhaps have said an explosive device for use on land. As bombs the setting would probably be only six seconds – in tactical warfare they would be carried by low-flying supersonic planes. They’d be about two miles clear by the time the bomb went off and moving too fast for the shock waves to catch up with them. For land use – well, say you wanted to infiltrate an ammunition dump. You’d check how long it would take you to infiltrate there, calculate how long it would take you to get out and clear of the blast zone and set the timer accordingly.

‘The missiles here –’

‘We’ve seen and heard enough,’ Farquharson said. ‘Kindly put your hands up.’

Five minutes later, with furiously reluctant assistance from Martin, they had loaded two bombs, safely concealed in their carrying-cases, into the trunk of their car. In so doing the need of the two carrying handles became clear: each bomb must have weighed at least ninety pounds.

Farquharson went back inside, looked indifferently at the two bound men, pressed the button and slipped through the doorway as the door began to close. He waited until the door was completely shut, then climbed into the front seat beside Martin, who was at the wheel this time. Farquharson said: ‘Remember, one false move and you’re a dead man. We will, of course, have to kill the sentry too.’

There were no false moves. About a mile from the armoury the car stopped by a thicket of stunted trees. Martin was marched deep into the thicket, bound, gagged and attached to a tree just in case he might have any ideas about jack-knifing his way down to the roadside. Farquharson looked down at him.

‘Your security was lousy. We’ll phone your HQ in an hour or so, let them know where they can find you. I trust there are not too many rattlesnakes around.’

Chapter Six

Robertson looked up from the radio console. ‘Chief McGarrity.’

Mitchell took the phone. ‘Mitchell? We’ve found the kidnappers’ estate wagon. Down by the Wyanee swamp.’ McGarrity sounded positively elated. ‘I’m going there personally. Tracker dogs. I’ll wait for you at the Walnut Tree crossing.’ Mitchell replaced the receiver and said to Roomer: ‘McGarrity’s got it all wrapped up. He’s found the estate wagon. Well, someone else did, but it will be made clear eventually that McGarrity did.’

‘Empty, of course. Doesn’t that old fool know that this makes it more difficult, not easier? At least we knew what transport they were using. Not any more. He didn’t mention anything about bringing along a newspaper photographer that he just sort of accidentally bumped into?’

‘Tracker dogs were all he mentioned.’

‘Did he suggest source material for the dogs to sniff at?’ Mitchell shook his head, Roomer shook his and after a few minutes Jenkins appeared. ‘Will you get Louise, please?’

Louise appeared very quickly. Roomer said: ‘We’d like an article, a piece of clothing, that the ladies used to wear a lot.’

She looked uncertain. ‘I don’t understand –’

‘Some things we can give bloodhounds to sniff so that they pick up scent.’

‘Oh.’ It required only a second’s thought. ‘Their dressing-gowns, of course.’ This with but the slightest hint of disapproval, as if the girls spent most of the day lounging about in those garments.

‘Handle as little as possible, please. Put each in a separate plastic bag.’

A police car and a small closed police van awaited them at the Walnut Tree crossing. McGarrity was standing by the police car. He was a small bouncy man who radiated bonhomie and who only stopped smiling when he vehemently denounced corruption in politics. He was a police chief of incomparable incompetence, but was a consummate and wholly corrupt politician, which was why he was police chief. He shook the hands of Mitchell and Roomer with all the warmth and sincerity of an incumbent coming up for re-election, which was precisely what he was.

‘Glad to meet you two gentlemen at last. Heard very good reports about you.’ He appeared to have conveniently forgotten his allegation that they gave a lot of trouble to the local law. ‘Appreciate all the co-operation you’ve given me – and for turning up here now. This is Ron Stewart of the Herald.’ He gestured through an open car window where a man, apparently festooned in cameras, sat in the back seat. ‘Kind of accidentally bumped into him.’

Mitchell choked, turning it into a cough. ‘Too many cigarettes.’

‘Same failing myself. Driver’s the dog-handler. Driver of the van is the other one. Just follow us, please.’

Five miles further on they reached the turn-off – one of many – into the Wyanee swamp. The foliage of the trees, almost touching overhead, quickly reduced the light to that of a late winter afternoon. The increase in the humidity was almost immediately noticeable, as was the sour nose-wrinkling miasma as they neared the swamps. A distinctly unhealthy atmosphere, or such was the first impression: but many people with a marked aversion to what passed for civilization lived there all their lives and seemed none the worse for it.

The increasingly rutted, bumpy road had become almost intolerable until they rounded a blind corner and came across the abandoned station wagon.

The first essential was, apparently, that pictures be taken, and the second that McGarrity be well-placed in each one, his hand, for preference, resting in a proprietorial fashion on the hood. That done, the cameraman fitted a flashlight and was reaching for the rear door when Roomer clamped his wrist not too gently. ‘Don’t do that!’

‘Why not?’

‘Never been on a criminal case before? Fingerprints is why not.’ He looked at McGarrity. ‘Expecting them soon?’

‘Shouldn’t be long. Out on a case. Check on them, Don.’ This to the driver who immediately got busy on his radio. It was clear that the idea of bringing fingerprint experts along had never occurred to McGarrity.

The dogs were released from the van. Roomer and Mitchell opened up their plastic bags and allowed the dogs to sniff the dressing-gowns. McGarrity said: ‘What you got there?’

‘The girls’ dressing-gowns. To give your hounds a trace. We knew you’d want something.’

‘Of course. But dressing-gowns!’ McGarrity was a past master in covering up. Something else, clearly, that had not occurred to him.

The dogs caught the scents at once and strained at their leashes as they nosed their way down a rutted path, for the road had come to an abrupt end. Inside a hundred yards, their path was blocked by water. It wasn’t a true part of the swamp but a slow, meandering, mud-brown creek, perhaps twenty feet across, if that. There was a hitching-post nearby, with a similar one at the far bank. Also by the far bank was a warped and aged craft which not even the charitable could have called a boat. It was built along the lines of an over-sized coffin, with a squared-off end where the bows should have been. The ferry – probably the most kindly name for it – was attached to the two hitching-posts by an endless pulley.

The two dog-handlers hauled the boat across, got into it with understandable caution, and were joined by their dogs, who kept on displaying considerable signs of animation, an animation which rapidly diminished then vanished shortly after they had landed on the far bank. After making a few fruitless circles, they lay down dejectedly on the ground.

‘Well, ain’t that a shame,’ a voice said. ‘Trail gone cold, I guess.’

The four men on the near bank turned to look at the source of the voice. He was a bizarre character, wearing a new panama hat with a tartan band, gleaming thigh-length leather boots (presumably as a protection against snakebites) and clothes discarded by a scarecrow. ‘You folks chasin’ someone?’

‘We’re looking for someone,’ McGarrity said cautiosly.

‘Lawmen, yes?’

‘Chief of Police McGarrity.’

‘Honoured, I’m sure. Well, Chief, you’re wasting your time. Hot trail here, cold on the other side. So, the party you’re looking for got off halfway across.’

‘You saw them?’ McGarrity asked suspiciously.

‘Hah! More than one, eh? No, sir. Just happened by right now. But if I was on the run from the law that’s what I’d do because it’s been done hundreds of times. You can get out midway, walk half a mile, even a mile, up-stream or downstream. Dozens of little rivulets come into this creek. You could turn up any of those, go a mile into the swamp without setting foot on dry land. Wouldn’t find them this side of Christmas, Chief.’

‘How deep is the creek?’

‘Fifteen inches. If that.’

‘Then why the boat? I mean, with those boots you could walk across without getting your feet wet?’

The stranger looked almost shocked. ‘No siree. Takes me an hour every morning to polish up them critters.’ It was assumed that he was referring to his boots. ‘Besides, there’re the water-moccasins.’ He seemed to have a rooted aversion to snakes. ‘The boat? Come the rains, the creek’s up to here.’ He touched his chest.

McGarrity called the dog-handlers to return. Mitchell said to the stranger: ‘Any place in the swamps where a helicopter could land?’

‘Sure. More firm land out there than there is swampland. Never seen any helicopters, though. Yes, lots of clearings.’

The dog-handlers and dogs disembarked. Leaving the stranger to flick some invisible dust off his boots, they made their way back to the estate wagon. Mitchell said: ‘A moment. I’ve just had a thought.’ He opened up the two plastic bags containing the dressing-gowns and presented them to the dogs again. He then walked back up the rutted lane, past the two cars and van, beckoning the dog-handlers to follow him, which they did, almost having to drag the reluctant dogs behind them.

After about twenty yards the reluctance vanished. The dogs yelped and strained at their leashes. For another twenty yards they towed their handlers along behind them, then abruptly stopped and circled a few times before sitting down dispiritedly. Mitchell crouched and examined the surface of the lane. The others caught up with him.

McGarrity said: ‘What gives, then?’

‘This.’ Mitchell pointed to the ground. ‘There was another vehicle here. You can see where its back wheels spun when it started to reverse. The kidnappers guessed we’d be using tracker dogs – it wasn’t all that hard a guess. So they carried the girls twenty yards or so, to break the scent, before setting them down again.’

‘Right smart of you, Mr Mitchell, right smart.’ McGarrity didn’t look as pleased as his words made out. ‘So the birds have flown, eh? And now we haven’t the faintest idea what the getaway vehicle looks like.’

Roomer said: ‘Somebody’s flown, that’s for sure. But maybe only one or two. Maybe they’ve gone to borrow a helicopter.’

‘A helicopter?’ The waters didn’t have to be very deep for Chief McGarrity to start floundering.

With a trace of weary impatience Mitchell said: ‘It could be a double bluff. Maybe they reversed the procedure and took the girls back to the station wagon again. Maybe they are still in the swamp, waiting for a helicopter to come and pick them up. You heard the old boy back there – he said there were plenty of places in the swamp where a helicopter could touch down.’

McGarrity nodded sagely and appeared to ponder the matter deeply. The time had come, he felt, for him to make a positive contribution. ‘The swamp’s out. Hopeless. So I’ll have to concentrate on the helicopter angle.’

Mitchell said: ‘How do you propose to do that?’

‘Just you leave that to me.’

Roomer said: ‘That’s hardly fair, Mr McGarrity. We’ve given you our complete confidence. Don’t you think we’re entitled to some in return?’

‘Well, now.’ McGarrity appeared to ruminate, although he was secretly pleased to be asked the question, as Roomer had known he would be. ‘If the chopper doesn’t get in there, it can’t very well lift them out, can it?’

‘That’s a fact,’ Roomer said solemnly.

‘So I station marksmen round this side of the swamp. It’s no great deal to bring down a low-flying chopper.’

Mitchell said: ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you.’

‘No indeed.’ Roomer shook his head. ‘The law frowns on murder.’

‘Murder?’ McGarrity stared at them. ‘Who’s talking of murder?’

‘We are,’ Mitchell said. ‘Rifle or machine-gun fire might well kill someone inside the helicopter. If it brings down the helicopter they’d all probably die. Maybe there are criminals aboard, but they’re entitled to a fair trial before execution. And has it occurred to you that the pilot will almost certainly be an innocent party with a pistol pointed at his head?’ McGarrity, clearly, had not thought of that. ‘Not going to make us very popular, is it?’

McGarrity winced. Even the very thought of unpopularity and the forthcoming election made him feel pale inside.

‘So what the devil do we do?’

Roomer was frank. ‘I’ll be damned if I know. You can post observers. You can even have a grounded helicopter standing by to chase the other one when it takes off. If, that’s to say, it ever comes in the first place. We’re only guessing.’

‘No more we can do here,’ Mitchell said. ‘We’ve already missed too many appointments today. We’ll be in touch.’

Back on the highway Roomer said: ‘How do you think he’d do as a dog-catcher?’

‘Place would be overrun by stray dogs in a few months. How much faith do you have in this idea that they might use a helicopter?’

‘Quite a lot. If they just wanted to change cars they wouldn’t have gone through this elaborate rigmarole. They could have parked their station wagon out of sight almost any place. By apparently going into hiding in the swamp they hoped to give the impression that they were preparing to hole up in there for quite some time to come. They hadn’t figured on our backing – your backtracking – up the lane.’

‘We’re pretty sure that their destination is the Seawitch. We’re pretty sure they’ll use a helicopter. Which helicopter and pilot would you use?’

‘Lord Worth’s. Not only are his pilots almost certainly the only ones who know the exact coordinates of the Seawitch, but the very distinctly marked Worth Hudson helicopters are the only ones that could approach the Seawitch without raising suspicion.’ Roomer reached for the phone, fiddled with the waveband and raised Lord Worth’s house. ‘Jim?’

‘At my post, Mr Roomer.’

‘We’re coming back there. Look for Lord Worth’s address book. Probably right by you in your radio room. Make us a list of the names and addresses of his helicopter pilots. Is the gatekeeper at the heliport on the radiophone, too?’

‘Yes.’

‘Get that for us too, please.’

‘Will do.’

He said to Mitchell: ‘Still think we shouldn’t warn Larsen about our suspicions?’

‘That’s for sure.’ Mitchell was very definite. ‘The Seawitch is Larsen’s baby, and the kind of reception he’d prepare might all too easily be over-enthusiastic. Or would you care for the job of explaining to Lord Worth how come his daughters got caught in cross-fire?’

‘I would not.’ Roomer spoke with some feeling.

‘Or even explaining to yourself how Melinda got shot through the lung?’

Roomer ignored him. ‘What if we’re wrong in our guesses about his lordship’s pilots?’

‘Then turn the whole thing over to that ace detective, McGarrity.’

‘So we’d better be right.’

They were right. They were also too late.

John Campbell was both an avid fisherman and an avid reader. He had long since mastered the techniques of indulging his two pleasures simultaneously. A creek, fairly popular with fish, ran within twenty feet of his back porch. Campbell was sitting on a canvas chair, parasol over his head, alternating every page with a fresh cast of his line, when Durand and one of his men, stocking-masked and holding guns in their hands, came into his line of vision. Campbell rose to his feet, book still in hand.

‘Who are you and what do you want?’

‘You. You’re Campbell, aren’t you?’

‘What if I am?’

‘Like you to do a little job for us.’

‘What job?’

‘Fly a helicopter for us.’

‘I’ll be damned if I do.’

‘So you are Campbell. Come along.’

Following the gesturing of their guns Campbell moved between the two men. He was within one foot of Durand’s gun hand when he chopped the side of his hand on the wrist that held the gun. Durand grunted in pain, the gun fell to the ground and a second later the two men were locked together, wrestling, kicking and punching with a fine disregard for the rules of sport, altering position so frequently that Durand’s henchman, gun barrel now in his hand – the last thing he wanted to do was to shoot Campbell – at first found no opportunity to intervene. But the opportunity came very soon. The unsportsmanlike but effective use of Campbell’s right knee doubled Durand over in gasping agony, but enough instinct was left him to seize Campbell’s shirt as he fell over backwards. This was Campbell’s downfall in more ways than one, for the back of his head simply cried out for the attentions of a gun-butt.

The man who had felled Campbell pulled Campbell clear, allowing Durand to climb painfully to his feet, although still bent over at an angle of 45 degrees. He pulled off his stocking mask as if to try to gain access to more air. Durand, surprisingly, was Latin American. He had a pale, coffee-coloured face, thick black curling hair and a pencil-line moustache and might even have proved to be handsome when the twisted lines of agony ceased to contort his face. He straightened inch by inch and finally obtained a modicum of breath, enough, at least, to allow him to announce what he would like to do with Campbell.

‘Have to be some other time, Mr Durand. He can’t very well fly a chopper from a hospital bed.’

Durand painfully acknowledged the truth of this. ‘I hope you didn’t hit him too hard.’

‘Just a tap.’

‘Tie him, tape him and blindfold him.’ Durand was now about twenty degrees off the vertical. His helpmate left for the car and returned in moments with cord, tape and blindfold. Three minutes later they were on their way, with a rug-covered and still unconscious Campbell on the floor at the back. Resting comfortably on the rug were Durand’s feet – he still didn’t feel quite up to driving. Both men had their masks off now – even in the free-wheeling state of Florida men with stocking masks in cars were apt to draw just a little more than passing attention.

Mitchell glanced briefly at the list of names and addresses Robertson had given them. ‘Fine. But what are those ticks opposite five of the names?’

Robertson sounded apologetic. ‘I hope you don’t mind – I don’t want to seem interfering – but I took the liberty of phoning those gentlemen to see if they would be at home when you called. I assumed you’d be calling because you asked for the addresses.’

Mitchell looked at Roomer. ‘Why the hell didn’t you think of that?’

Roomer bestowed a cold glance on him and said to Robertson, ‘Maybe I should have you as a partner. What did you find out?’

‘One pilot is standing by at the airport. Four of the others are at home. The one whose name I haven’t ticked – Mr John Campbell – isn’t home. I asked one of the other pilots about this, and he seemed a bit surprised. Said that Mr Campbell usually spends his afternoons fishing outside the back of his house. He’s a bachelor and lives in a pretty isolated place.’

‘It figures,’ Roomer said. ‘A bachelor in isolation. The kidnappers seem to have an excellent intelligence system. The fact that he doesn’t answer the phone may mean nothing – he could have gone for a walk, shopping, visiting friends. On the other hand –’

‘Yes. Especially on the other hand.’ Mitchell turned to leave, then said to Robertson: ‘Does the gate-keeper have a listed phone number as well as the radio-phone?’

‘I’ve typed it on that list.’

‘Maybe we should both have you as a partner.’

Mitchell and Roomer stood on Campbell’s back lawn and surveyed the scene unemotionally. The canvas chair, on its side, had a broken leg. The parasol was at full length on the grass, straddling an upturned book. The fishing rod was in the water up to its handle, and would have floated away had not the reel snagged on a shrub root. Roomer retrieved the rod while Mitchell hurried through the back doorway – the back door was wide open, as was the front. He dialled a phone number, which answered on the first ring.

‘Lord Worth’s heliport. Gorrie here.’

‘My name’s Mitchell. You have a police guard?’

‘Mr Mitchell? You Lord Worth’s friend?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sergeant Roper is here.’

‘That all? Let me speak to him.’ There was hardly a pause before Roper came on the phone.

‘Mike? Nice to hear from you again.’

‘Listen, Sergeant, this is urgent. I’m speaking from the house of John Campbell, one of Lord Worth’s pilots. He has been forcibly abducted, almost certainly by some of the kidnappers of Lord Worth’s daughters. I have every reason to believe – no time for explanations now – that they are heading in your direction with the intention of hijacking one of Lord Worth’s helicopters and forcing Campbell to fly it. There’ll be two of them at least, maybe three, armed and dangerous. I suggest you call up reinforcements immediately. If we get them we’ll break them – at least Roomer and I will, you can’t, you’re a law officer and your hands are tied – and we’ll find out where the girls are and get them back.’

‘Reinforcements coming up. Then I’ll look the other way.’

Mitchell hung up. Roomer was by his side. Roomer said: ‘You prepared to resort to torture to get the information you want?’

Mitchell looked at him bleakly. ‘I look forward to it. Don’t you?’

‘No. But I’ll go along with you.’

Once again Mitchell and Roomer had guessed correctly. And once again they were too late.

Mitchell had driven to Lord Worth’s heliport with a minimum regard for traffic and speed regulations, and now, having arrived there, realized bitterly that his haste had been wholly unnecessary.

Five men greeted their arrival, although it was hardly a cheerful meeting: Gorrie, the gateman, and four policemen. Gorrie and Sergeant Roper were tenderly massaging their wrists. Mitchell looked at Roper.

‘Don’t tell me.’ Mitchell sounded weary. ‘They jumped you before the reinforcements were to hand.’

‘Yes.’ Roper’s face was dark with anger. ‘I know it sounds like the old lame excuse, but we never had a chance. This car comes along and stops outside the gate-house, just here. The driver – he was alone in the car – seemed to be having a fit of sneezes and was holding a big wad of Kleenex to his face.’

Roomer said: ‘So you wouldn’t recognize him again?’

‘Exactly. Well, we were watching this character when a voice behind us – the back window was open – told us to freeze. I didn’t even have my hand on my gun. We froze. Then he told me to drop my gun. Well, this guy was no more than five feet away and I had my back to him. I dropped my gun. Dead heroes are no good to anyone. Then he told us to turn round. He was wearing a stocking mask. Then the driver came in and tied our wrists behind our backs. When we turned round he was wearing a stocking mask too.’

‘Then they tied your feet and tied you together so that you wouldn’t have any funny ideas about using a telephone?’

‘That’s how it was. But they weren’t worried about the phones. They smashed them both before they took off.’

‘They took off immediately?’

Gorrie said: ‘No. Five minutes later. The pilots always radio-file a flight plan before take-off. I suppose the kidnappers forced Campbell to do the same. To make it look kosher.’

Mitchell shrugged his indifference. ‘Means nothing. You can file a flight plan to any place. Doesn’t mean you have to keep it. How about fuel – for the helicopters, I mean?’

‘Fuel’s always kept topped up. My job. Lord Worth’s orders.’

‘What direction did the kidnappers go?’

‘That-away.’ Gorrie indicated with an outstretched arm.

‘Well, the birds have flown. Might as well be on our way.’

‘Just like that?’ Roper registered surprise.

‘What do you expect me to do that the police can’t?’

‘Well, for starters, we could call in the air force.’

‘Why?’

‘They could force it down.’

Mitchell sighed. ‘There’s a great deal of rubbish talked about forcing planes down. What if they refuse to be forced down?’

‘Then shoot it down.’

‘With Lord Worth’s daughters aboard? Lord Worth wouldn’t be very pleased. Neither would you. Think of all the cops that would be out of a job.’

‘Lord Worth’s daughters!’

‘It’s all this routine police work,’ Roomer said. ‘Atrophies the brain. Who the hell do you think that helicopter has gone to pick up?’

Once clear of the heliport Roomer extended an arm. ‘“That-away” the man said. “That-away” is north-west. The Wyanee swamp.’

‘Even if they’d taken off to the southeast they’d still have finished up in Wyanee.’ Mitchell pulled up by a public booth. ‘How are you with McGarrity’s voice?’ Roomer was an accomplished mimic.

‘It’s not the voice that worries me. It’s the thought processes. I’ll give it a try.’ He didn’t say what he was going to try because he didn’t have to. He left for the booth and was back inside two minutes.

‘Campbell filed a flight plan for the Seawitch.’

‘Any questions asked?’

‘Not really. Told them that some fool had made a mistake. Anyone who knows McGarrity would know the identity of the fool that made the mistake.’

Mitchell switched on the engine then switched off as the phone rang. Mitchell lifted the receiver.

‘Jim here. Tried to ring you a couple of times, fifteen minutes ago, five minutes ago.’

‘Figures. Out of the car both times. More bad news?’

‘Not unless you consider Lord Worth bad news. Touch-down in fifteen minutes.’

‘We’ve time.’

‘Says he’s coming up to the house.’

‘Sent for the Rolls?’

‘No. Probably wants to talk private. And it looks as if he’s planning to stay away some time. Ordered a bag packed for a week.’

‘Seven white suits.’ Mitchell hung up.

Roomer said: ‘Looks as if we’re going to have to do some bag-packing ourselves.’ Mitchell nodded and switched on again.

Lord Worth was looking his old self when he settled in the back seat of their car. Not quite radiating his old bonhomie, to be sure, but calm and lucid and, to all appearances, relaxed. He told of his success in Washington, for which he was duly and politely congratulated. Roomer then told him in detail what had happened in his absence: this time the absence of congratulations was marked.

‘You’ve notified Commander Larsen of your suspicions, of course?’

‘Not suspicions,’ Mitchell said. ‘Certainties. And there’s no “of course” and no, we didn’t notify him. I’m primarily responsible for that.’

‘Taking the law into your own hands, eh? Mind telling me why?’

‘You’re the person who knows Larsen best. You know how possessive he is about the Seawitch. You yourself have told us about his anger and violence. Do you think a man like that, duly forewarned, wouldn’t have a very warm reception waiting for the kidnappers? Stray bullets, ricocheting bullets, are no respecters of persons, Lord Worth. You want a daughter crippled for life? We prefer that the kidnappers establish a bloodless beach-head.’

‘Well, all right.’ The words came grudgingly. ‘But from now on keep me fully informed of your intentions and decisions.’ Lord Worth, Roomer noted with sardonic amusement, had no intention of dispensing with their unpaid services. ‘But no more taking the law into your own hands, do you hear?’

Mitchell stopped car and engine. Roomer’s amusement changed to apprehension. Mitchell twisted in his seat and looked at Lord Worth in cool speculation.

‘You’re a fine one to talk.’

‘What do you mean, sir?’ There were fifteen generations of Highland aristocracy in the glacial voice.

Mitchell remained unmoved. ‘For taking the law into your own hands by breaking into and robbing that armoury last night. If Roomer and I were decent citizens and law-abiding detectives, we’d have had you behind bars last night. Not even a billionaire can get off with that sort of thing, especially when it involves the assault and locking up of the armoury guards. John and I were there.’ Mitchell was not above a little prevarication when the need arose.

‘You were there?’ Most rarely for him, Lord Worth was at a loss for words. He recovered quickly. ‘But I wasn’t there.’

‘We know that. We also know you sanctioned the break-in. Ordered it, rather.’

‘Balderdash. And if you actually witnessed this, why did you not stop it?’

‘John and I take our chances. But not against nine men armed with nine machine-guns.’

This gave Lord Worth to pause. They had their figures and facts right. Clearly they had been there. He said: ‘Supposing any of this rigmarole were true, how in God’s name do you tie me up with this?’

‘Now you’re being a fool. We were also at your heliport. We saw the truck arrive. We saw nine men unload a fairly massive quantity of more than fairly lethal weaponry into one helicopter. Then a man drove the truck away – an army truck, of course – back to the armoury from where it had been stolen. The other eight men boarded another helicopter. Then a mini-bus arrived, carrying twelve heavily-armed thugs, who joined the other eight. John and I recognized no fewer than five of them – two of them we’ve personally put behind bars.’ Roomer looked at him admiringly, but Mitchell wasn’t looking at him, he was looking at Lord Worth, and both voice and tone were bereft of any form of encouragement. ‘It came as a shock to both of us to find that Lord Worth was consorting with common criminals. Your brow is very damp, Lord Worth. Why is it very damp?’

Lord Worth didn’t enlighten them as to the reason why his brow was damp.

‘And then, of course, you came along in the Rolls. One of the very best sequences we got on our infra-red ciné camera last night.’ Roomer choked, but the peculiar coughing sound had no effect on Lord Worth, who was now perspiring freely. That Lord Worth believed Mitchell, Roomer did not for a moment doubt: everything that Mitchell had said, even the slight embellishments, Lord Worth knew or believed to be true, so he had no reason to doubt the truth of the ciné camera fiction.

‘We actually debated phoning the nearest army HQ and have them send along some armoured cars and a trailered tank. Even your murderous thugs would have stood no chance. We thought of going down the road, blocking the Rolls and holding you until the army arrived – it was perfectly obvious that the helicopters had no intention of leaving until you turned up. Once captured, God knows how many of them – especially those who had already served prison terms – would have jumped at the chance of turning State’s evidence and incriminating you. It’s quite true, you know – there is no honour among thieves.’ If Lord Worth had any objection to being categorized as a thief it didn’t register in his face. ‘But after the standard bit of soul-searching we decided against it.’

‘Why, in God’s name?’

‘So you admit it.’ Mitchell sighed. ‘Why couldn’t you do that at the beginning and save me all this trouble?’

‘Why?’ Lord Worth repeated his question.

It was Roomer who answered. ‘Partly because even though you’re a confessed law-breaker, we still have a regard for you. But it’s chiefly because we didn’t want to see your daughters confronted with the unedifying spectacle of seeing their father behind bars. In hindsight, of course, we’re extremely glad we didn’t. In comparison with the kidnapping of your daughters, your own ventures outside the law fade into something that is comparatively a peccadillo.’

Mitchell started the motor again and said: ‘It is understood that there will be no more such peccadilloes again. It is also understood that there will be no more silly talk as to whether we take the law into our own hands or not.’

Lord Worth lay back in his study armchair. His second brandy tasted just as good as his first – it seemed to be his day for brandies. He hadn’t spoken a word for the rest of the trip which, fortunately, had been mercifully short, for Lord Worth had felt urgently in need of restoratives. Not for the first time he found himself silently blessing his kidnapped daughters.

He cleared his throat and said: ‘I assume you are still willing to come out to the rig with me?’

Mitchell contemplated his glass. ‘We never expressed our intentions one way or another about that. But I suppose someone has to look after you and your daughters.’

Lord Worth frowned. There had, he felt, been more than a subtle change in their relationships. Perhaps the establishment of an employer-employee status would help redress the balance. He said: ‘I feel it’s time we put your co-operation on a business-like footing. I propose to retain you in your professional capacities as investigators, in other words to become your client. I shall not quibble at your demanded fees.’ He had no sooner finished than he realized that he had made a mistake.

Roomer’s voice was coldly unenthusiastic. ‘Money doesn’t buy everything, Lord Worth. Particularly, it doesn’t buy us. What you are proposing is that you establish a moral ascendancy on the basis of the man who pays the piper calls the tune. We have no intention of being shackled, of having our freedom of action curtailed. And as to the question of fees and your “sky’s-the-limit” inference, the hell with your fees. How often do you have to be told that we don’t barter money for your daughters’ lives?’

‘Hear, hear,’ Mitchell said. ‘Couldn’t have put it better myself.’

Lord Worth didn’t even bother frowning. The change in relationship, he reflected sadly, had been even greater than he had realized. ‘As you will. One assumes that you will be suitably disguised?’

Mitchell said: ‘Why?’

Lord Worth was impatient. ‘You said you saw some ex-convicts boarding the helicopter. People you recognized. They’ll surely recognize you?’

‘We never saw any of them before in our lives.’

Lord Worth was properly shocked. ‘But you told me –’

‘You told us big black lies. What’s a little white lie? Let’s go aboard as – say – your technological advisers. Geologists, seismologists – it’s all the same to us, we know nothing about geology or seismology. All we need are a couple of well-cut business suits, panamas, horn-rimmed glasses with plain lenses – for the studious look – and briefcases.’ He paused. ‘And we’ll also need a doctor, with full medical kit and a large supply of bandages.’

‘A doctor?’

‘For extracting bullets, sewing up gunshot wounds. Or are you so naïve as to believe that there will be no shot fired in anger aboard the Seawitch?’

‘I abhor violence.’

‘Sure. That’s why you sent twenty heavily-armed thugs out to the Seawitch during the night? Fine, so you abhor violence. Others welcome it. Can you lay hands on such a doctor?’

‘Dozens of them. The average doctor hereabouts rates his scanning of X-rays a very poor second to the scanning of his bank balances. I know the man. Greenshaw. After seven years in Vietnam, he should fit your bill.’

Roomer said: ‘And ask him to bring along two spare white lab-coats.’

‘Why?’ Mitchell said.

‘Want to look scientific, don’t you?’

Lord Worth picked up the phone, made the arrangements, replaced the receiver and said: ‘You must excuse me. I have some private calls to make from the radio room.’ Lord Worth’s sole reason for returning to his house was to contact his inside man, Corral, and have him, without incriminating himself, inform Benson, who had hosted the Lake Tahoe meeting, that the Government intended to blast out of the water any foreign naval ships that approached the Seawitch. An exaggeration but, Lord Worth thought, a pardonable one. Despite the Secretary’s promise, Lord Worth placed more faith in his direct approach.

Mitchell said: ‘Which one of us do you want to go with you?’

‘What do you mean? “Private”, I said.’ His face darkened in anger. ‘Am I to be ordered around in my own house, supervised as if I’m an irresponsible child?’

‘You behaved responsibly last night? Look, Lord Worth, if you don’t want either of us around, then it’s obvious you want to say something that you don’t want us to hear.’ Mitchell gave him a speculative look. ‘I don’t like that. You’re either up to something shady if you like, or it’s a vote of no confidence in us.’

‘It’s a personal and highly important business call. I don’t see why you should be privy to my business affairs.’

Roomer said: ‘I agree. But it so happens that we don’t think that it is a business call, that business would be the last thing in your mind at such a time.’ Both Mitchell and Roomer stood up. ‘Give our regards to the girls – if you ever find them.’

‘Blackmail! Damned blackmail!’ Lord Worth rapidly weighed the importance of his call to Corral compared to the importance of having Mitchell and Roomer around. It took all of two seconds to make up his mind, and Corral was clear out of sight at the winning post. He was sure that the two men were bluffing, but there was no way he could call their bluff, for that was the one sure way of provoking a genuine walk-out.

Lord Worth put on his stony face. ‘I suppose I have no option other than to accede to your threats. I suggest you go and pack your bags and I’ll pick you up in the Rolls.’

Mitchell said: ‘Packing will take minutes. I feel it would be much more polite if we were to wait here until you’re ready.’

Lord Worth glared at him. ‘You think I’d head for a telephone the moment your backs are turned?’

Mitchell smiled. ‘Isn’t it odd that the same thought should occur to the three of us at the same instant?’

Chapter Seven

Commander Larsen and Scoffield observed the approach of the Worth Hudson helicopter with surprise but without undue concern. Lord Worth customarily gave advance warning of his arrival but could occasionally be forgetful on his point. In any event it was his helicopter, and this should be about his expected time of arrival. They sauntered across the platform and arrived at the north-east helipad just as the helicopter touched down.

Surprisingly, no one emerged immediately from the machine. Larsen and Scoffield looked at each other in some perplexity, a perplexity that was considerably deepened when the disembarkation door slid back and Durand appeared in the doorway with a machine-pistol cradled in his hands. Just behind him stood a similarly equipped henchman. From their shadowed position it was impossible for them to be observed by any of the rig duty crew.

Durand said: ‘Larsen and Scoffield? If you are carrying weapons please don’t be so foolish as to try to use them.’ The boarding steps swung down. ‘Come and join us.’

The two men had no option. Once aboard, without taking his eyes off them, Durand said: ‘Kowenski, Rindler – see if they are armed.’

Both Larsen and Scoffield carried automatics but seemed quite indifferent to being deprived of them: their attention was directed exclusively to the presence of Lord Worth’s daughters.

Marina smiled, albeit a trifle wanly. ‘We could have met under happier circumstances, Commander.’

Larsen nodded. ‘Your kidnappers. This can carry a death sentence.’ He looked at Campbell. ‘Why did you fly those criminals out here?’

‘Because I come over all cowardly when I have a pistol barrel screwed into the back of my neck all the way from take-off to touch-down.’ Campbell spoke with a certain justifiable bitterness.

Larsen looked at Melinda. ‘Have you been maltreated in any fashion?’

‘No.’

‘And they won’t be,’ Durand said. ‘Unless, of course, you refuse to do as we tell you.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘You close down the Christmas tree.’ This meant closing off all the oil supplies from the ocean floor.

‘I’ll be damned if I do.’ Larsen’s dark piratical face was suffused with fury. Here, Durand realized, was a man who, even without arms, could be highly dangerous. He glanced briefly at Rindler, who struck Larsen on the back of the neck with the butt of his machine-pistol, a shrewdly calculated blow designed to daze but not knock out. When Larsen’s head had cleared he found that he had bracelets around both wrists and ankles. His attention then focused on a pair of gleaming stainless steel medical cutters of the type much favoured by the surgical fraternity for snipping through ribs. The handles were in Durand’s firm grip: the unpleasant operating end was closed lightly round the little finger of Melinda’s right hand.

Durand said: ‘Lord Worth isn’t going to like you too much for this, Larsen.’

Larsen, apparently, was of the same opinion. ‘Take those damned pliers away and my bracelets off. I’ll close down your damned Christmas tree.’

‘And I’ll come with you just to see that you really do turn off this Christmas tree. Not that I would recognize one of those things if I saw it, but I do know that there are such things as flow gauges. I shall carry a walkie-talkie with me. Aaron here has another. I shall keep in constant contact with him. If anything should happen to me –’ Durand looked consideringly at the medical cutters, then handed them to Heffer, the fifth man in his team. He told Campbell to put his arms behind his seat-back and handcuffed his wrists.

‘Don’t miss much, do you?’ Larsen’s voice was sour.

‘You know how it is. So many villains around these days. Come on.’

The two men walked across the platform in the direction of the drilling rig. After only a few paces Durand stopped and looked around him admiringly.

‘Well, well, now. Dual-purpose anti-aircraft guns. Piles of depth-charges. One would almost think that you were prepared to withstand a siege. Dear me, dear me. Federal offence, you know. Lord Worth, even with the millions he can pay for lawyers, can’t fail to spend at least ten years in penitentiary for this.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Hardly standard equipment aboard an oil rig. I’ll wager it wasn’t here twenty-four hours ago. I’ll wager it was inside the Mississippi naval armoury that was broken into last night. The Government takes a very dim view of people who steal its military equipment. And, of course, you must have specialists aboard who are skilled in handling such equipment, and that’s hardly part of the basic training of oil rig crews. I wonder if those crews are also carrying special equipment – such, for instance, as was stolen from a Florida armoury last night. I mean, two unrelated armoury break-ins in the same night is just too much of a coincidence. Twenty years in prison with no possibility of remission for you too, as the person chiefly responsible for aiding and abetting. And people call us criminals!’

Larsen had a few choice observations to make in return, none of which would have received the approval of even the most tolerant board of censors.

The Christmas tree was duly neutralized. The pressure gauges registered zero. Durand turned his attention to the Roamer, carrying out its short and wearisome patrol between the rig and the huge floating oil tank. ‘What’s our friend up to?’

‘Even a land-lubber like you should be able to guess. He’s patrolling the pipe-line.’

‘What on earth for? You could replace a cut line in a day. What would that achieve? It’s crazy.’

‘You have to use crazy methods to deal with crazy people. From all accounts Lord Worth’s enemies should be locked up for their own good. For everybody’s good.’

‘Worth’s band of cut-throats aboard this rig? Who’s their leader?’

‘Giuseppe Palermo.’

‘That mobster! So the noble lord, apart from indulging in grand larceny, is a known associate of criminals and convicted felons.’

‘You know him, then?’

‘Yes.’ Durand saw no point in elaborating upon the fact that he and Palermo had spent two prison terms together. ‘I want to talk to him.’

The talk was brief and one-sided. Durand said: ‘We’ve got Lord Worth’s daughters prisoner. You’re Lord Worth’s men, so we know that no harm will come to them from you. We’re bringing them towards the living quarters here but they will not mingle with you – we don’t want you to take our aces away from us. You will remain inside your quarters. If you don’t you’re likely to hear quite a lot of screaming and see bits and pieces of fingers or ears being dropped through your windows. I hope you believe me.’

Palermo believed him. Palermo had a reputation for ruthlessness that matched Durand’s, but it couldn’t begin to match Durand’s unholy joy in sadism. Durand was perfectly capable of not only doing what he threatened but of deriving immense satisfaction in so doing.

Palermo returned to his Oriental quarters. Durand called up Rindler on the walkie-talkie and told them a to come across, including Campbell, the pilot: Campbell was tough and resourceful and it was just possible that, by standing up, he could slip his manacled arms over the back of his seat, step through them and take them off. Whether he would have enough fuel for the return fight would be a problem for him, even though he would almost certainly head, not for Florida, but for the nearest spot on the mainland, which would be due south of New Orleans.

As the prisoners and guards disembarked from the helicopter Durand said: ‘Accommodation?’

‘Plenty. There are spare rooms in the Oriental quarters. There’s Lord Worth’s private suite.’

‘Lock-ups?’

‘What do you mean? This isn’t a prison.’

‘Store-rooms? Ones that can be locked from the outside.’

‘Yes.’

Durand looked at Larsen consideringly. ‘You’re being extremely co-operative, Larsen. Your reputation says otherwise.’

‘Two minutes’ walk around and you could confirm all I’m saying for yourself.’

‘You’d like to kill me, wouldn’t you, Larsen?’

‘When the time is ripe, yes. But it’s not yet.’

‘Even so.’ Durand produced a pistol. ‘Stay about ten feet away. You might be tempted to attack me and tell our men that you’ll tear me limb from limb unless they release the girls. A tempting thought, no?’

Larsen looked at him yearningly and said nothing.

The girls, the pilot and their four escorts arrived. Durand said: ‘Well, now, we must find some suitable overnight accommodation for you.’ He led the way to the first of several store-houses and opened the door to reveal a room packed roof-high with tinned foods. He bundled Campbell inside, locked the door and pocketed the key. The next store-house contained coils of rope, a powerful smell of crude oil and an active, scuttling population of those indestructible creatures, cockroaches. Durand said to the two girls: ‘Inside.’

The girls took one shuddering look then turned away. Marina said: ‘We will not go inside that disgusting place.’

Kowenski said in a gently-chiding voice which accorded ill with the Colt he held in his hand: ‘Don’t you know what this is?’ Rindler had a similar weapon trained on Melinda.

Both girls glanced briefly at each other and then, in what was obviously a prepared and rehearsed movement, walked towards the men with the guns, seized the barrels with their right hands and hooked their right thumbs behind the trigger forefingers, pulling the guns hard against themselves.

Marina said: ‘I can squeeze my thumb far faster than you can jerk that gun away. Want to try?’

‘Jesus Christ!’ Durand was badly shaken. He had run up against most situations in his life, but this one lay far beyond his most remote conception. ‘You trying to commit suicide?’

Melinda said: ‘Precisely.’ Her eyes never left Rindler’s. ‘You’re lower than those horrible cockroaches in there. You are vermin who are trying to destroy our father. With us dead you won’t have a singe card left to pay.’

‘You’re crazy! Simple pain crazy!’

‘That’s as may be,’ Marina said. ‘But for crazy people our logic is pretty good. With nothing to shackle his hands you can imagine how our father will react – especially as he will believe, as everybody will believe, that you murdered us. He won’t have recourse to the law, of course – you simply have no idea what power a few billion dollars can bring to bear. He’ll destroy you and a your criminal associates to the last man.’ She looked at Kowenski with contempt. ‘Why don’t you press the trigger? No? Then drop your gun.’ Kowenski dropped his gun and Rindler did the same.

Melinda said: ‘My sister and I are taking a walk. We will return when you have quarters prepared fitting for Lord Worth’s daughters.’

Durand’s face had definitely lost colour and his voice was hoarse and not quite steady as he tried to regain a measure of authority. ‘Have your walk if you must. Heffer, go with them. Any trouble, shoot them in the legs.’

Marina stooped, picked up Kowenski’s Colt, walked up to Heffer and rammed the muzzle into his left eye. Heffer howled in agony. Marina said: ‘Fair deals. You shoot me through the leg – now, I mean – and I’ll blow your brains out.’

‘God’s sake!’ Durand’s voice was almost imploring. He was just one step removed from wringing his hands. ‘Somebody’s got to go with you. If you’re out there on your own and in no danger, Palermo’s men will cut us to pieces.’

‘What a perfectly splendid idea.’ Marina withdrew the pistol from an already bruising eye, and looked in distaste at Heffer, a rodent-faced creature of indeterminate age and nationality. ‘We see your point. But this – this animal is not to approach within ten yards of us at any time. That is understood?’

‘Yes, yes, of course.’ If they asked him for the moon Durand would have levitated himself and got it for them. Having overwhelmingly displayed what it was to have sixteen generations of Highland aristocratic ancestry, the two girls walked away towards one of the triangular perimeters. It was fully twenty yards before they both began, at the same instant, to tremble violently. Once started, they could not control the trembling and they prayed that the following Heffer could not notice it.

Marina whispered shakily: ‘Would you do that again?’

‘Never, never, never. I’d rather die.’

‘I think we came pretty close to it. Do you think that Michael and John would be shaking like us after an experience like that?’

‘No. If there’s any truth in half the hints Daddy lets drop, they’d already be planning what to do next. And Durand and his obnoxious friends wouldn’t be shaking either. Dead men don’t shake very much.’

Marina’s trembling turned into a genuine shiver. ‘I only wish to God they were here right now.’

They stopped ten feet short of the platform perimeter. Neither girl had a head for heights. They turned and looked north-eastwards as the distant and muted roar of an aero-engine came to their ears.

Durand and Larsen heard it at the same time. They could see nothing because dusk had already fallen, but neither man had any doubts as to the identity of the approaching helicopter and its occupants. With some satisfaction Durand said: ‘Company. This has to be Lord Worth. Where will they land?’

‘The south-east helipad.’

Durand glanced across the platform to where the two girls were standing with Heffer, gun carried loosely in his right hand, less than the regulation ten yards away. Satisfied, Durand picked up his machine-pistol and said: ‘Let’s go and welcome his lordship aboard. Aaron, come with us.’

Larsen said: ‘You’d better hope that Lord Worth proves a bit more tractable than his daughters.’

‘What do you mean?’

Larsen smiled in sardonic satisfaction. ‘You really did catch a couple of tigresses by their tails, didn’t you?’

Durand scowled and walked away, followed by Larsen and Aaron, the latter armed similarly to Durand. They reached the south-east helipad just as the Worth Hudson helicopter touched down. Lord Worth himself was the first out. He stood at the foot of the steps and stared in disbelief at the armed men. He said to Larsen: ‘What in God’s name goes on here?’

Durand said: ‘Welcome aboard the Seawitch, Lord Worth. You may regard me as your host and yourself as a guest – an honoured guest, of course. There has been a slight change of ownership.’

‘I’m afraid that this man here – his name is Durand and one must assume that he is one of Cronkite’s lieutenants –’

‘Cronkite!’ Durand was jarred. ‘What do you know about Cronkite?’

‘I can hardly congratulate him on his choice of lieutenants.’ When Lord Worth poured on his icy contempt he used a king-sized can. ‘Do you think we are such fools as not to know who your paymaster is? Not that Mr Cronkite has long to live. Nor you, either, for that matter.’ Durand stirred uneasily; Lord Worth sounded far too much like his daughters for his peace of mind. Lord Worth directed his attention to Larsen. ‘One assumes that this ruffian arrived with accomplices. How many?’

‘Four.’

‘Four! But with Palermo and his men you have over twenty! How is it possible –’

Durand was back on balance. When he spoke it was with a slight if pardonable smugness. ‘We have something that Larsen hasn’t. We have your daughters.’

What was apparently pure shock rendered Lord Worth temporarily speechless, then in a hoarse voice he said: ‘Great God Almighty! My daughters!’ Lord Worth could have had his Oscar just for the asking. ‘You – you are the kidnapper?’

‘Fortunes of war, sir.’ It said much for Lord Worth’s aristocratic magnetism that even the most villainous eventually addressed him in respectful tones. ‘Now, if we could see the rest of the passengers.’

Mitchell and Roomer descended. In perfectly-cut tan alpaca suits, horn-rimmed glasses and discreet panamas, they were innocuousness personified. Lord Worth said: ‘Mitchell and Roomer. Scientists – geologists and seismologists.’ He turned to Mitchell and Roomer and said dully: ‘They’re holding my daughters captive aboard the Seawitch.’

‘Good God!’ Mitchell was properly shocked. ‘But surely this is the last place –’

‘Of course. The unexpected, keeping the necessary one or two steps ahead of the opposition. What is your purpose in coming here?’

‘To find new sources of oil. We have a perfectly equipped laboratory here –’

‘Your journey has not been necessary. May we search your bag and that of your friend?’

‘Have I any option?’

‘No.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Aaron.’

Aaron carried out a quick examination of Mitchell’s bag. ‘Clothes. Some scientific books and scientific instruments. Is all.’

Dr Greenshaw clambered down the ladder, reached up and relieved the pilot of various bags and boxes. Durand looked at the doctor and said: ‘Who the hell is he?’

‘Dr Greenshaw,’ Lord Worth said. ‘A highly respected doctor and surgeon. We did expect a certain amount of violence and bloodshed aboard the Seawitch. We came prepared. We do have a dispensary and small sick-bay here.’

‘Another wasted trip. We hold all the cards, and violence is the last thing we expect. May we examine your equipment, Doctor?’

‘If you so wish. As a doctor I deal in life and not in death. I have no concealed lethal weapons. The medical code forbids it.’ Greenshaw sighed. ‘Please search but do not destroy.’

Durand pulled out his walkie-talkie. ‘Send one of Palermo’s men across here with an electric truck. There’s quite a bit of equipment to pick up.’ He replaced his walkie-talkie and looked at Mitchell. ‘Your hands are shaking Why?’

‘I’m a man of peace,’ Mitchell said. He crossed his hands behind his back to conceal the tremor.

Roomer, the only man to recognize the signals, licked his lips and looked at Mitchell in exaggerated, nervous apprehension. Durand said: ‘Another hero. I despise cowards.’

Mitchell brought his hands in front of him. The tremor was still there. Durand stepped forward, his right hand swinging back as if to strike Mitchell open-handed, then let his hand fall in disgust, which was, unwittingly, the wisest thing he had ever done. Durand’s mind was brutalized to the extent where it was incapable of picking up any psychic signals: had it been so attuned he could not have failed to hear the black wings of the bird of death flapping above his head.

The only person who derived any satisfaction, carefully concealed, from this vignette, was Larsen. Although he had talked to Mitchell on the telephone he had never met him: but he had heard a great deal about him from Lord Worth, more than enough to make him realize that Mitchell would cheerfully have reduced Durand to mincemeat sooner than back down before him. Mitchell had taken only seconds to establish the role he wished to establish – that of the cowardly nonentity who could be safely and contemptuously ignored. Larsen, who was no mean hand at taking care of people himself, felt strangely comforted.

Lord Worth said: ‘May I see my daughters?’

Durand considered, then nodded. ‘Search him, Aaron.’

Aaron, carefully avoiding Lord Worth’s basilisk glare of icy outrage, duly searched. ‘He’s clean, Mr Durand.’

‘Across there.’ Durand pointed through the gathering gloom. ‘By the side of the platform.’

Lord Worth walked off without a word. The others made their way towards the accommodation quarters. As Lord Worth approached his daughters Heffer barred his way.

‘Where do you think you’re going, mister?’

‘Lord Worth to you.’

Heffer pulled out his walkie-talkie. ‘Mr Durand? There’s a guy here –’

Durand’s voice crackled over the receiver. ‘That’s Lord Worth. He has been searched and has my permission to speak to his daughters.’

Lord Worth plucked the walkie-talkie from Heffer. ‘And would you please instruct this individual to remain outside listening range?’

‘You heard, Heffer.’ The walkie-talkie went dead.

The reunion between father and daughters was a tearful and impassioned one, at least on the daughters’ side. Lord Worth was all that a doting parent reunited with his kidnapped children should have been, but his effusiveness was kept well under control. Marina was the first to notice this.

‘Aren’t you glad to see us again, Daddy?’

Lord Worth hugged them both and said simply: ‘You two are my whole life. If you don’t know that by this time, you will never know it.’

‘You’ve never said that before.’ Even in the deepening dusk it was possible to see the sheen of tears in Melinda’s eyes.

‘I did not think it necessary. I thought you always knew. Perhaps I’m a remiss parent, perhaps still too much the reserved Highlander. But all my billions aren’t worth a lock of your black hair, Marina, or a lock of your red hair, Melinda.’

‘Titian Daddy, titian. How often must I tell you?’ Melinda was openly crying now.

It was Marina, alwavs the more shrewd and perceptive of the two, who put her finger on it. ‘You aren’t surprised to see us, Daddy, are you? You knew we were here.’

‘Of course I knew.’

‘How?’

‘My agents,’ Lord Worth said loftily, ‘lie thick upon the ground.’

‘And what is going to happen now?’

Lord Worth was frank. ‘I’m damned if I know.’

‘We saw three other men come off the helicopter. Didn’t recognize them – getting too dark.’

‘One was a Dr Greenshaw. Excellent surgeon.’

Melinda said: ‘What do you want a surgeon for?’

‘Don’t he silly. What does anyone want a surgeon for? You think we’re going to hand over the Seawitch on a plate?’

‘And the other two?’

‘You don’t know them. You’ve never heard of them. And if you do meet them you will give no indication that you recognize them or have ever seen them before.’

Marina said: ‘Michael and John.’

‘Yes. Remember – you’ve never seen them before.’

‘We’ll remember,’ the girls said almost in chorus. Their faces were transformed. Marina said: ‘But they’ll be in great danger. Why are they here?’

‘Something to do, I understand, with their stated intent of taking you back home.’

‘How are they going to do that?’

Again Lord Worth was frank. ‘I don’t know. If they know, they wouldn’t tell me. They’ve become bossy, very bossy. Watch me like a hawk. Won’t even let me near my own blasted phone.’ The girls refrained from smiling, principally because Lord Worth didn’t seem particularly perturbed. ‘Mitchell, especially, seems in a very tetchy mood.’ Lord Worth spoke with some relish. ‘Near as a whisker killed Durand inside the first minute. Would have, too, if you weren’t held hostage. Well, let’s go to my suite. I’ve been to Washington and back. Long, tiring day. I need refreshment.’

Durand went into the radio room, told the regular operator that his services would not be required until further notice and that he was to return to his quarters and remain there. The operator left. Durand, himself an expert radio operator, raised the Georgia within a minute and was speaking to Cronkite thirty seconds later.

‘Everything under control on the Seawitch. We have the two girls here and Lord Worth himself.’

‘Excellent.’ Cronkite was pleased, and sounded it. Everything was going his way, but then, he had expected nothing else. ‘Lord Worth bring anyone with him?’

‘Apart from the pilot, three people. A doctor – surgeon, rather – and he seems genuine enough. Lord Worth appears to have expected some blood to be spilt. I’ll check his credentials in Florida in a few minutes. Also, two technicians – seismologists, or something of that kind. Genuine and harmless – even the sight of a slung machine-pistol gives them a severe attack of St Vitus’s dance. All are unarmed.’

‘So no worries?’

‘Yes.’ Three. Lord Worth has a squad of about twenty men aboard. They have the look of trained killers about them, and I’m pretty certain they’re all ex-military personnel. They have to be because of my second worry – Lord Worth has eight dual-purpose anti-aircraft guns bolted on to the platform.’

‘The hell he has!’

‘I’m afraid so. He also has piles of mines lining the sides of the platform. Now we know who broke into the Mississippi naval armoury last night. And the third problem is that we’re far too thin on the ground. There’s only myself and four others to watch everybody. Some of us have to sleep sometime. I need reinforcements and I need them quickly.’

‘You’ll have over twenty arriving at dawn tomorrow morning. The relief rig crew are due in then. A man called Gregson – you’ll recognize him by the biggest red beard you ever saw – will be in charge.’

‘I can’t wait that long. I need reinforcements now. You have your chopper on the Georgia.’

‘And what do you think I carry aboard the Georgia? An army of reinforcements?’ Cronkite paused, then went on reluctantly: ‘I can spare eight men, no more.’

‘They have radar aboard.’

‘No’ unheard of. What does it matter? You’re in charge.’

‘Yes, Mr Cronkite. But your own golden rule: never take a chance.’

‘When you get the word that our helicopter has taken off, neutralize it.’

‘Destroy the radar cabin?’

‘No. We’ll almost certainly want to use it when we’ve completely taken over. The scanner will be on top of the drilling derrick. Right?’

‘Right.’

‘It’s a simple mechanical job to stop it from turning. All it needs is someone with a spanner and a head for heights. Now tell me exactly where Lord Worth’s hard men are quartered. Gregson will require this information.’

Durand told him what he wanted to know and hung up.

The dispensary/sick-bay and the laboratory were next to each other. Mitchell and Roomer were helping Dr Greenshaw to unpack his very considerable amount of medical equipment. They were, understandably, not unguarded, but Aaron and his Schmeisser were on watch on the two outside doors. Aaron could not have been accused of being in a very alert or trigger-ready state of mind, In fact, he regarded his vigil as being close to pointless. He had been present along with Durand when the three men had disembarked from the helicopter, and had formed the same opinion of them as his boss had done.

In the sick-bay Dr Greenshaw up-ended and removed the false bottom of one of his medical supply boxes. With a gingerly and patently nervous apprehension he removed two waistband holsters, two Smith & Wesson 38s, two silencers and two spare magazines. Wordlessly, Mitchell and Roomer buckled on the weaponry. Dr Greenshaw, a man, as they were discovering, of a genuinely devout turn of mind, said: ‘I only hope no one discovers you wearing those pistols.’

Roomer said: ‘We appreciate your concern, Doctor. But don’t worry about us.’

‘I wasn’t worrying about you.’ Dr Greenshaw assumed his most sombre expression. ‘A good Christian can also pray for the souls of the ungodly.’

A long distance away the meeting of ten were again assembled at Lake Tahoe. At the former meeting the atmosphere had been hopeful, forceful, determined and confident that things would go their way, spuriously motivated by their expressed intent to avert a third world war. On this evening the spirit – if that was the word – of the meeting had changed 180 degrees. They were depressed, vacillating, uncertain and wholly lacking in confidence especially as their allegedly humanitarian attempts to prevent the outbreak of war looked like having precisely the opposite effect.

Again, as it was his holiday home, Benson was hosting the meeting. But this time Benson was also undoubtedly the man in charge. Opening the discussion, he said: ’We, gentlemen, are in trouble. Not just simple plain trouble but enormous trouble that could bring us all down. It stems from two facts – we underestimated Lord Worth’s extraordinary power and we overestimated Cronkite’s ability to handle the situation with a suitable degree of discretion and tact. I admit that I was responsible for introducing Cronkite to you, but on the other hand you were unanimous in your belief that Cronkite was the only man to handle the job. And we were not aware that Cronkite’s detestation of Lord Worth ran to the extent of a virulent and irresponsible hatred.

‘I have friends in the Pentagon, not important ones but ones that matter. The Pentagon normally, like any other department of the State, leaks secrets as though through a broken sieve. This time I had to pay twenty thousand dollar to a stenographer and the same to a cypher clerk which, for a pair of comparatively lowly-paid government employees, represents a pretty fair return for a few hours’ work.

‘First, everything is known about our previous meeting here every word and sentiment that was expressed and the identities of all of us.’ Benson paused and looked round the room partly to allow time for the damning enormity of this information to sink in, partly to make it clear that he expected to be recognized for his very considerable outlay.

Mr A, one of the vastly powerful Arabian Gulf potentates, said: ‘I thought our security here was one hundred per cent. How could anyone have known of our presence?’

‘No external agency was involved. I have good friends in California Intelligence. Their interest in us is zero. Nor was the FBI involved. For that to have happened we’d have had to commit some crime and then cross State lines. Neither of those have we done. And before we met last time I had an electronics expert in to check not only this room but the entire house for bugs. There were none.’

Mr A said: ‘Perhaps he planted a bug?’

‘Impossible. Apart from the fact that he’s an old friend of immaculate reputation, I was with him all the time, a fact that did not prevent me from calling in a second expert.’

Patinos, the Venezuelan, said: ‘We give you full marks for security. That leaves only one possibility. One of us here is a traitor.’

‘Yes.’

‘Who?’

‘I have no idea. We shall probably never know.’

Mr A stroked his beard. ‘Mr Corral here lives very close to Lord Worth, no?’

Corral said: ‘Thank you very much.’

Benson said: ‘Intelligent men don’t make so obvious a link.’

‘As you said on our previous meeting, I’m the only person who has no declared interest in being here.’ Borosoff seemed quietly relaxed. ‘I could be your man.’

‘It’s a point but one which I don’t accept. Whether you are here to stir up trouble for the United States may or may not be the case. Again it comes down to the factor of intelligence.’ Benson was being disarmingly frank. ‘You could be, and probably are, a Soviet agent. But top agents are never caught in the role of agent provocateur. I am not complimenting you on your unquestioned intelligence. I prefer to rely on simple common sense.’ Benson, who appeared to have developed a new maturity and authority, looked around the company. ’Every word spoken here will doubtless be relayed to either Lord Worth or the State Department. It no longer matters. We are here to set right whatever wrongs for which we may have been – however unwittingly, I may say – responsible.

’We know that a Russian missile craft and a Russian-built Cuban submarine are closing in on the Seawitch. We also know that a Venezuelan destroyer is doing the same. What you don’t know is that counter-measures are being taken. My information – and the source is impeccable – is that Lord Worth was today closeted with Belton, the Secretary of State, in Washington. My further information is that Belton was only partially convinced of Lord Worth’s statement of suspicion. He was, unfortunately, wholly convinced when the news came through of Cronkite’s irresponsible folly in kidnapping Lord Worth’s two daughters. As a result a United States cruiser and a destroyer, both armed with the most sophisticated weaponry, have moved out into the Gulf of Mexico. An American nuclear submarine is already patrolling those waters. Another American vessel is already shadowing your destroyer, Mr Patinos: your destroyer, with its vastly inferior detecting equipment, is wholly unaware of this. Additionally, at a Louisiana air-base, a squadron of supersonic fighter-bombers is on instant alert.

‘The Americans are no longer in any mood to play around. My information is that they are prepared for a showdown and are prepared for the eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation which John Kennedy had with Khrushchev over Cuba. The Russians, clearly, would never risk a local nuclear confrontation where the home territory advantages are so overwhelmingly American. Neither side would dream of mounting a pre-emptive strike over the issue of a few pennies on a barrel of oil. But if the hot line between Washington and Moscow begins to burn, national prestige will make it difficult for either side to back down until they arrive at a face-saving formula which could take quite some time and would, much worse, generate overwhelming world-wide publicity. This would inevitably involve us. So I would advise you, Mr Borosoff and Mr Patinos, to call off your dogs of war before that hot line starts burning. That way, and only by that way, can we survive with our good names left unbesmirched. I blame neither of you gentlemen. You may have given the nod to Cronkite but you did not reckon on the possibility that Cronkite would carry matters to such ridiculous lengths. Please, please believe me that the Americans will not hesitate to blast your ships out of the water.’

Oil ministers do not become oil ministers because they are mentally retarded. Patinos smiled a smile of wry resignation. ‘I do not relish the thought of personal ruin. Nor do I relish the thought of becoming a scapegoat for my government.’ He looked across at Borosoff. ‘We call off the dogs of war?’

Borosoff nodded ‘Back to their kennels, and no alas. I wish to return to my Russia and this will give me great standing for they will not have to lose face in the world.’

Mr A leaned back in his chair. His relief was manifest. ‘Well that would seem to cover that.’

‘It covers most of it,’ Benson said. ‘But not all. Another very unpleasant and potentially terrifying crime occurred this afternoon. I heard of it only an hour ago, and it will be the hottest topic in the nation tonight. I only hope to God that although we were in no way responsible for it, we won’t be implicated in it. A place called the “Netley Rowan Armoury” was broken into this afternoon. It’s supposed to be just another armoury insofar as the public is concerned and so, mainly, it is. But it’s also a TNW armoury: “TNW” mean “tactical nuclear weapons”. Two of them were stolen in the break-in, and appear to have vanished without trace.’

‘God above!’ The expression and tone of the man from Honduras accurately reflected the shocked feelings of all around the table. ‘Cronkite?’

‘My life on it. No proof, naturally, but who the hell else?’

Corral said: ‘No disrespect to Mr Borosoff here, but couldn’t the Russians, say, have been seeking a prototype?’

Benson looked as weary as his voice sounded. ‘The Russian already have God knows how many of those things. It’s public knowledge that they have thousands of them deployed along the border between the Warsaw Pact countries and Nato, many of them, it is suspected, more sophisticated than ours. The Russians need our TNWs the way they need bows and arrows.’ Borosoff, despite the anxiety he shared with the others, permitted himself the ghost of a smile of complacency. ‘Cronkite. The man’s running wild.’

Mr A said: ‘You think he’s so totally crazed as to use a nuclear device against the Seawitch?’

‘I do not profess to understand the workings of an obviously diseased mind,’ Benson said. ‘He’s capable of anything.’

Patinos said: ‘What’s this weapon like?’

‘I don’t know. I phoned the Pentagon, a very senior official there, but even although he’s an old friend of mine he refused to release highly classified information. All I know is that it can be used as a land-based time-bomb – I suppose that includes the sea as well – or as an aircraft bomb. We can forget the second use. It can only be used in a limited number of supersonic fighter-bombers, which will already, I suppose, be under the heaviest security guard ever, which would strike me as a superfluous precaution as there is no chance that Cronkite, even with his obviously wide range of contacts, could know anyone who could fly one of those planes.’

‘So what happens?’

‘I think we’d better consult an astrologer on that one. All I know is that Cronkite has gone stark raving mad.’

Cronkite, aboard the Georgia, would have thought the same of them. He had a job to do and he was doing it to the best of his ability. Had he known of the possible withdrawal of the warships that had sailed from Cuba and Venezuela he would not have been overduly concerned. He had had some vague idea that they might have been useful to him as a cover and a smokescreen. Cronkite’s vendetta against Lord Worth was a highly personal and extremely vindictive one, and he wanted no one other than himself to administer the coup de grâce. Retribution exacted through the medium of other hands would not do at all.

Meantime, he was well content. He was convinced that the Seawitch was in his hands. Come the dawn it would be doubly in his hands. He knew of their defences and radar. The Starlight, under Easton, was waiting until full darkness before it moved in for the initial attack, and as rain had been falling steadily for some time now and the lowering sky blotted out the quarter-moon, it promised to be as nearly dark as it ever becomes at sea – it never becomes wholly so as it does on land.

A message was brought to him from the radio office. Cronkite glanced at it briefly, picked up the phone to the helipad and reached the pilot in his shelter. ‘Ready to go, Wilson?’

‘Whenever you say, Mr Cronkite.’

‘Then now,’ Cronkite made a rheostat switch, and a dull glow of light outlined the helipad, little enough to be sure but enough to let Wilson make a clean take-off. The helicopter made a half-circle, switched on its landing lights and made a smooth landing on the calm waters less than a hundred yards from the stationary Georgia.

Cronkite called the radar room. ‘You have him on the screen?’

‘Yes, sir. He’s making an instrument approach on our radar.’

‘Let me know when he’s about three miles out.’

Less than a minute later the operator gave him the word. Cronkite turned the rheostat to full, and the helipad became brilliantly illuminated.

A minute later a helicopter, landing lights on, appeared from the north through the driving rain. Just over another minute later it touched down as delicately as a moth, an understandable precaution by the pilot in view of the cargo he was carrying. The fuelling hoses were connected immediately. The door opened and three men descended – the alleged Colonel Farquharson, Lieutenant-Colonel Dewings and Major Breckley who had been responsible for the Netley Rowan Armoury break-in. They helped unload two large, double-handed and obviously very heavy suitcases. Cronkite, with suitable admonitions as to delicacy in handling, showed crew members where to stow the cases in shelter.

Within ten minutes the helicopter was on its way back to the mainland. Five minutes after that the Georgia’s own helicopter had returned and all the helipad lights were switched off.

Chapter Eight

It was due only to the most cruel ill-luck and the extremely jittery state of Durand’s nerves that John Roomer and Melinda Worth found themselves the first patients in Dr Greenshaw’s sick-bay.

Durand was in a highly apprehensive state of mind, a mood that transferred itself all too easily to his four subordinates. Although he held control of the Seawitch he was acutely aware that his hold was a tenuous one: he had not bargained on finding Palermo and his cut-throats on board, and even though he held the master keys to both the Occidental and Oriental quarters in his pocket – the drilling crew was in the former quarters, Palermo and his men in the latter – he was well aware that there were far too many windows in both quarters and he didn’t have the men to cover every possible exit. He had broadcast a message over the external loud-hailer that anyone found on the platform would be shot on sight, and had two men on constant patrol round the Oriental quarters – he had no fear of the unarmed drilling rig crew – and another two constantly patrolling the platform. He had no fear of Lord Worth, his seismologists and the girls – as sources of danger he held them in contempt. Besides, they were unarmed. Even so, the two men patrolling the platform had been instructed to do so in such a fashion as to make sure that at least one had an eye on the doors to the suite of Lord Worth, the laboratory and the sickbay, all three of which had inter-communicating doors.

Tragically, no one inside those three places had heard the warning broadcast – and this, ironically, because Lord Worth was not above indulging in what he regarded as the bare minimum of basic creature comforts. Oil rigs can be uncommonly noisy places and those quarters he had heavily insulated.

Mitchell had been in his tiny cubicle off the laboratory at the time, reading the plan of the layout of the Seawitch over and over again until he was certain that he could have found his way around the Seawitch blindfold. This had taken him about twenty minutes. It was in the fifth minute of his studying that the shots had been fired but again, because of the soundproofing, the firing had not reached him. He had just put the plans away in a drawer when his door opened and Marina entered. She was white-faced and shaking and her face was streaked with tears. As soon as she reached him he put his arms round her and she grabbed him as if he were the last straw in the middle of the Pacific.

‘Why weren’t you there?’ she sobbed. ‘Why weren’t you there? You could have stopped them. You could have saved them!’

Mitchell took no time out to dwell upon the injustices of life. He said gently: ‘Stopped what? Saved whom?’

‘Melinda and John. They’ve been terribly hurt.’

‘How?’

‘Shot.’

‘Shot? I heard nothing.’

‘Of course you heard nothing. This area is all soundproofed. That’s why Melinda and John didn’t hear the broadcast warning.’

‘Broadcast warning? Tell it to me slowly.’

So she told him as slowly and coherently as she could. There had been such a warning but it had gone unheard in Lord Worth’s suite. The rain had stopped, at least temporarily, and when Mitchell had retired to study the plans Melinda and Roomer had elected to go for a stroll. They had been wandering around the foot of the drilling rig, where most of the lights had been turned off since Durand had ordered the abandonment of drilling, and it was there that they had been gunned down without warning.

‘“Terribly hurt”, you said. How badly hurt?’

‘I’m not sure. Dr Greenshaw is operating in the sickbay. I’m not a coward, you know that, but there was so much blood that I didn’t want to look.’

Arrived in the sickbay, Mitchell could hardly blame her. Melinda and Roomer lay in adjacent cots and both were saturated with blood. Melinda already had her left shoulder heavily bandaged. Roomer had bandages swathed round his neck and Dr Greenshaw was working on his chest.

Lord Worth, his face a mask of bitter fury, was sitting in a chair. Durand, his face a mask of nothingness, was standing by the doorway. Mitchell looked speculatively at both, then spoke to Dr Greenshaw. ‘What have you been able to determine so far, Doctor?’

‘Would you listen to him?’ Roomer’s voice was a hoarse whisper and his face creased with near-agony. ‘Never think of asking us how we feel.’

‘In a moment. Well, Doctor?’

‘Lady Melinda’s left shoulder-blade is in a pretty bad way. I’ve extracted the bullet, but she needs immediate surgery. I’m a surgeon, but I’m not an orthopaedic surgeon, and that’s what she must have. Roomer hasn’t been quite so lucky. He got hit twice. The one through the neck missed his carotid artery by a whisker, but the bullet passed straight through and there’s no worry there. The chest wound is serious. Not fatal but very serious. The bullet struck the left lung, no doubt about that, but the internal bleeding isn’t that much, so I think it’s a nick, no more. The trouble is, I think the bullet is lodged against the spine.’

‘He can wiggle his toes?’

Roomer moaned. ‘My God, what sympathy.’

‘He can. But the bullet should be removed as soon as possible. I could do it but I have no X-ray equipment here. I’ll give them blood transfusions in a moment.’

‘Shouldn’t they be flown to hospital as soon as possible?’

‘Of course.’

Mitchell looked at Durand. ‘Well?’

‘No.’

‘But it wasn’t their fault. They didn’t hear the warning.’

‘Their bad luck. There’s no way I’ll fly them ashore. Think I want a battalion of US Marines out here in a few hours?’

‘If they die it’ll be your fault.’

‘Everybody’s got to die sometime.’ Durand left, slamming the door behind him.

‘Dear, dear.’ Roomer tried to shake his head then winced at the pain in his neck. ‘He shouldn’t have said that.’

Mitchell turned to Lord Worth. ‘You can be of great help, sir. Your suite is in direct contact with the radio room, of course. Can you actually hear what is being said in the radio room?’

‘No bother. Two switches and I can hear both sides of any conversation, either on the telephone, earphones or wall-receivers.’

‘Please go and do so and don’t stop listening for a second.’ He looked at the two patients on the cots. ‘We’ll have them airborne for hospital within the half-hour.’

‘How can that be possible?’

‘I don’t know.’ Mitchell sounded vague. ‘I dare say we’ll think of something.’

Lord Worth left. Mitchell pulled out a slender pencil flashlight and started to flick it on and off in apparent aimlessness. His complexion had gone pale and the hands that held the pencil light trembled slightly. Marina looked at him first uncomprehendingly, then in dismay, finally in something approaching contempt. Incredulously, she said: ‘You’re frightened.’

‘Your gun?’ Mitchell said to Roomer.

‘When they went off for help I managed to drag myself a bit nearer the edge. I unclipped the belt and threw the lot over the side.’

‘Good lad. So we’re still in the clear.’ He seemed to become aware of the tremor in his hands, put away his flashlight and thrust his hands into his pockets. He said to Melinda: ‘Who shot you?’

‘A pair of very unpleasant characters called Kowenski and Rindler. We’ve had trouble with them before.’

‘Kowenski and Rindler,’ Mitchell repeated. He left the sickbay.

Marina said, half in sadness, half in bitterness: ‘My idol with the feet of clay.’

Roomer said huskily: ‘Put out the light and then put out the light.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I didn’t say it. Chap called Othello. That’s the trouble with you millionaire’s daughters. Illiterate. First Mitchell puts out the lights. He’s got cat’s eyes. He can see in almost total darkness where an ordinary man is blind. Did you know that?’

‘No.’

‘Puts him at a tremendous advantage. And then he extinguishes another kind of light.’

‘I know what you mean and I don’t believe you. I saw him shaking.’

‘You poor, silly, stupid, foolish ninny. You don’t deserve him.’

She stared at him in disbelief. ‘What did you say?’

‘You heard me.’ Roomer sounded tired and the doctor was looking at him in disapproval. He went on in a sombre voice: ‘Kowenski and Rindler are dead men. They have minutes to live. He loves your sister almost as much as he does you, and I’ve been his closest friend and partner since we were kids. Mitchell looks after his own.’ He smiled faintly. ‘I’m afraid he takes care of things in a rather final way.’

‘But he was shaking – only cowards shake.’ Her voice was now lacking in conviction.

‘He’s afraid of nothing that lives. As for the shaking – he’s a throw-back to the old Scandinavian berserker. He’s just trying to contain his fury. He usually smiles. As for being a coward, quite a number of people have thought that of him – probably their last thought on earth.’ He smiled. ‘You’re shaking now.’

She said nothing.

Roomer said: ‘There’s a cupboard in the vestibule. Bring what you find there.’

She looked at him uncertainly, left, and returned in a few minutes carrying a pair of shoes. She held them at arm’s length and from the look of horror on her face might have been holding a cobra.

Roomer said: ‘Mitchell’s?’

‘Yes.’

‘Better return them. He’ll be requiring them quite soon.’

When she came back Melinda said: ‘Do you really think you could marry a man who kills people?’

Marina shivered and said nothing. Roomer said sardonically: ‘Better than marrying a coward, I should think.’

In the generator room Mitchell found what he wanted right away – a breaker marked ‘Deck Lights’. He pulled down the lever and stepped out on to the now darkened platform. He waited a half-minute until his eyes adjusted themselves to the darkness, then moved in the direction of the derrick crane where he could hear two men cursing in far from muted voices. He approached on soundless stockinged feet until he was less than two yards away. Still soundlessly, he laid his pencil flash on top of the barrel of the Smith & Wesson and slid forward the flash switch.

The two men swung round in remarkably swift unison, hands reaching for their guns.

Mitchell said: ‘You know what this is, don’t you?’

They knew. The deep-bluish sheen of a silenced .38 is not readily mistakable for a pop-gun. Their hands stopped reaching for their guns. It was, to say the least, rather unnerving to see an illuminated silenced gun and nothing but blackness beyond it.

‘Clasp your hands behind your necks, turn round and start walking.’

They walked until they could walk no more for the good reason that they had reached the end of the platform. Beyond that lay nothing but the 200-foot drop to the Gulf of Mexico.

Mitchell said: ‘Keep your hands even more tightly clasped and turn round.’

They did so. ‘You are Kowenski and Rindler?’

There was no reply.

‘You are the two who gunned down Lady Melinda and Mr Roomer?’

Again there was no reply. Vocal chords can become paralysed when the mind is possessed of the irrevocable certainty that one is but one step, one second removed from eternity. Mitchell squeezed the trigger twice and was walking away before the dead men had hit the waters of the Gulf. He had taken only four steps when a flashlight struck him in the face.

‘Well, well, if it isn’t clever-clever Mitchell, the scaredy scientist.’ Mitchell couldn’t see the man – and undoubtedly the gun behind the flash – but he had no difficulty in recognizing the voice of Heffer, the one with the sharp nose and rodentlike teeth. ‘And carrying a silenced gun. Whatever have we been up to, Mr Mitchell?’

Heffer had made the classic blunder of all incompetent would-be assassins. He should have shot Mitchell on sight and then asked the question: Mitchell flicked on his pencil torch and spun it upwards, where it spun around like a demented firefly. Heffer would have been less than human not to have had the automatic and instinctive reaction of glancing upward while either his conscious or subconscious mind speculated as to what the hell Mitchell was up to: Whichever it was, the speculation was of very brief duration indeed because Heffer was dead before the flash fell back on to the platform.

Mitchell picked up the flash, still surprisingly working, dragged Heffer by the heels to join his friends at the bottom of the Gulf, returned to the sickbay vestibule, donned his shoes and entered the sickbay itself. Dr Greenshaw had both his patients on blood transfusion.

Roomer looked at his watch. ‘Six minutes. What took you so long?’

A plainly unnerved Marina looked at Roomer, half in disbelief, half in stupefaction.

‘Well, I’m sorry.’ Mitchell actually managed to sound apologetic. ‘I had the misfortune to run into Heffer on the way back.’

‘You mean he had the misfortune to run into you. And where are our friends?’

‘I’m not rightly sure.’

‘I understand.’ Roomer sounded sympathetic. ‘It’s difficult to estimate the depth of the water hereabouts.’

‘I could find out. It hardly seems to matter. Dr Greenshaw, you have stretchers? Complete with straps and so forth?’ Greenshaw nodded. ‘Please prepare them. Let them stay where they are meantime. Blood transfusions can be carried on in flight?’

‘That’s no problem. I assume you want me to accompany them?’

‘If you would be so kind. I know it’s asking an awful lot but, after you’ve handed them over to the competent medical authorities, I’d like you to return.’

‘It will be a pleasure. I am now in my seventieth year and thought there was nothing fresh left in life for me to experience. I was wrong.’

Marina stared at them in disbelief. All three men seemed calm and relaxed. Melinda appeared to have dropped off into a coma but she was merely, in fact, under heavy sedation. Marina said with conviction: ‘You’re all mad.’

Mitchell said: ‘That’s what the inmate of a lunatic asylum says of the outside world, and he may well be right. However, that’s hardly the point at issue. You, Marina, will be accompanying the others on the trip back to Florida. There you will be perfectly safe – your father will ensure that the most massive security guard ever mounted will be there. No president in history will ever have been so well protected.’

‘How splendid. I love being made a fuss of, being the centre of attraction. However, mastermind, there’s just one small flaw in your reasoning. I’m not going. I’m staying with my father.’

‘That’s exactly the point I’m going to discuss with him now.’

‘You mean you’re going out to kill someone else?’

Mitchell held out his hands, fingers splayed. They could have been carved from marble.

‘Later,’ Roomer said. ‘He appears to have some other things on his mind at the moment.’

Mitchell left. Marina turned furiously on Roomer. ‘You’re just as bad as he is.’

‘I’m a sick man. You mustn’t upset me.’

‘You and his berserker moods. He’s just a killer.’

Roomer’s face went very still. ‘I don’t look forward to the prospect of having a mentally retarded person as a sister-in-law.’

She was shocked and the shock showed. Her voice was a whisper. ‘I don’t really know you, do I?’

‘No. We’re the men who walk down the dark side of the streets. Somebody has to look after the people on the dark side. We do it. Do you know how much your father offered us to take you home?’ Roomer smiled. ‘I’m afraid I’m not much good in that department at the moment, but Mike will take care of it.’

‘How much did he offer you?’

‘Whatever we wanted in the world. A million dollars to take you home? A hundred million if we’d asked for it? Sure.’

‘How much did you ask for?’ Her face wasn’t registering much in the way of expression.

Roomer sighed, which, in the low physical state he felt, wasn’t too difficult. ‘Poor Mike. To think that he regards you as the pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow. Maybe he’d better get off that rainbow – insubstantial things at the best of times. Poor me, too. I’m going to have to live with you too, even at second hand. Let’s be corny. Your father loves you. We love you. To pile cliché upon cliché, there are some things that can’t be bought. Pearls beyond price. Don’t make yourself an artificial pearl, Marina. And don’t ever again insult us in that fashion. But we have to live on something, so we’ll send him a bill.’

‘For what?’

‘Ammunition expended.’

She crossed to his cot-side, knelt and kissed him. Roomer seemed too weak to resist. Dr Greenshaw was severe. ‘Lady Marina, he’s not only having a blood transfusion, there’s also the factor of blood pressure.’

Roomer said: ‘My blood pressure is registering no complaints.’

She kissed him again. ‘Is that apology enough?’ Roomer smiled and said nothing. ‘“Berserker”, you said. Can anyone stop him when he’s like that? Can I?’

‘No. Some day, yes.’

‘The one person is you. Yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘You didn’t.’

‘No.’

‘Why?’

‘They carried guns.’

‘You carry guns.’

‘Yes. But we’re not evil people who carry guns to do evil things.’

‘That’s all?’

‘No.’ He looked across at Melinda. ‘You see?’

‘Please.’

‘If Kowenski and Rindler hadn’t been such damned lousy shots, she’d be dead.’

‘So you let Michael loose?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re going to marry her?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you asked her?’

‘No.’

‘You don’t have to. Sisters talk.’

‘Mike?’

‘I don’t know, John. I’m a running coward, running scared.’

‘Well?’

‘He kills.’

‘I’ve killed.’

‘He’ll kill again?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘John.’

He reached out, took a lock of her gleaming black hair, picked out a single thread. ‘That.’

‘You mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘I have to see.’ She kicked off her high-heeled shoes.

‘So much to learn. Sit.’

She sat on his bed. Dr Greenshaw rolled his eyes heavenwards. She was wearing navy-blue jeans and a white blouse. Roomer reached up and undid the top button of her blouse. She looked at him and said nothing. Roomer said: ‘You do the rest. Navy or black jumper.’

She was back in thirty seconds, wearing a navy polo. She looked enquiringly at Roomer, who nodded. She left the sickbay.

In Lord Worth’s living-room he and Mitchell were seated in adjacent armchairs. The wall-speakers were on. When Marina came in Mitchell waved her to urgent silence.

Over the speakers Durand’s unmistakable voice sounded testy. ‘All I know is that the deck lights went out some minutes ago and came back on a minute ago.’ Marina glanced at Mitchell, who nodded. ‘But you’ve all the light you need to hand.’

‘Have you neutralized the radar scanner yet?’

Marina had never heard the voice before, but the tightening of Lord Worth’s lip showed that Cronkite’s voice was no stranger to him.

‘It hardly seems necessary now.’

‘It was your idea. Do it. We’ll leave in ten minutes, then there’ll be about fifteen minutes’ flying time.’

‘“We’ll leave”? That mean you’re coming too?’

‘No. I’ve more important things to do.’ There was a click: Cronkite had ceased to transmit.

Lord Worth said uneasily: ‘I wonder what that devious devil means by that?’

‘We’ll just have to find out the hard way.’ Mitchell looked at Marina. ‘Where are your shoes?’

She smiled sweetly. ‘I’m a quick study. Shoes make too much noise out on the platform.’

‘You’re not going out on any platform.’

‘I am. There are gaps in my education. I want to see how killers operate.’

Mitchell said in irritation: ‘I’m not going to kill anyone. Go get your bag packed. You’ll be leaving soon.’

‘I’m not leaving.’

‘Why?’

‘Beacuse I want to stay with Daddy – and with you. Don’t you think that natural?’

‘You’re leaving if I have to tie you up.’

‘You can’t tie my tongue up. Wouldn’t the law just love to know where the guns stolen from the Mississippi armoury are?’

Lord Worth looked slightly stunned. ‘You’d do that to me? Your own father?’

‘You’d tie me up and force me aboard that helicopter – Your own daughter?’

‘Talk about logic.’ Mitchell shook his head. ‘With respect to Lord Worth, he appears to have fathered a nutcase. If you think –’

The wall-speakers crackled again. It was Cronkite’s voice. ‘Well don’t just hang around. Stop that radar.’

‘How?’ It was Aaron and he sounded aggrieved. ‘Do you expect me to climb that damned drilling rig –’

‘Don’t be stupid. Go to the radar room. There’s a red lever switch just above the console. Pull it down.’

‘That I can do.’ Aaron sounded relieved. They heard the sound of a door closing. Mitchell kicked off his shoes, turned off the light in the living-room and eased the door open a crack. Aaron, his back already to them, was heading for the radar room. He reached it, opened the door and passed inside. Mitchell moved after him, pulling out his silenced gun and held it in his left hand. A soft voice behind him said: ‘I thought you were right-handed?’

Mitchell didn’t even bother to curse. He said in a resigned whisper: ‘I am.’

Aaron was just pulling the red lever when Mitchell made his soundless entrance. He said: ‘Don’t turn round.’

Aaron didn’t turn round.

‘Clasp your hands behind your neck, then turn and come here.’

Aaron turned. ‘Mitchell!’

‘Please don’t try anything clever. I’ve already had to kill three of your friends tonight. A fourth isn’t going to give me a sleepless night. Stop right there and turn again.’

Aaron did as he was told. Mitchell withdrew his right hand from his coat pocket. The braided leather strap attached to his wrist by a thong was no more than five inches long, but when it struck Aaron with considerable force and accuracy above and behind the right ear it was apparent that five inches was quite long enough. Mitchell caught him as he fell and eased him to the deck.

‘Did you have to do that? –’ Marina choked and stopped speaking as Mitchell’s hand clamped itself none too gently over her mouth. She flinched as he shook the strap before her eyes.

‘Keep your voice down.’ The whisper was intentionally savage. He knelt over Aaron, removed and pocketed his gun.

‘Did you have to do that?’ she said in a low voice. ‘You could have tied him up and gagged him.’

‘When I require advice from ignorant amateurs I’ll turn to you immediately. I haven’t time for folde-rols. He’ll just have a half-hour’s peaceful rest, and then all he’ll need is an aspirin.’

‘And now?’

‘Durand.’

‘Why?’

‘Ninny.’

‘I’m getting tired of people calling me “ninny”. John just called me that. He also said I was mentally retarded and an artificial pearl.’

‘No shrewder judge of character than our John,’ Mitchell said approvingly. ‘If Aaron doesn’t return Durand will come looking for him. Then he’ll get on the radiophone and stop the helicopter flight.’

‘Well, that’s what you want, isn’t it?’

‘No.’

He switched off the light and walked away, Marina following. Mitchell stopped outside the entrance to Lord Worth’s sitting-room.

‘Get inside. You’re both an irritation and a liability. I can’t function properly with you around. Heroines I can do without.’

‘I promise you I won’t say a word. I promise –’

He caught her by the arm and thrust her forcibly inside. Lord Worth looked up in mild surprise. Mitchell said: ‘I will hold you personally responsible, Lord Worth, if you allow this pesky daughter of yours outside that door again. More, I’m dimming the deck lights. Any unauthorized person seen moving around the platform will be shot on sight. That is my promise, and you’d better believe it. This is no place for children who want to play games.’ The door closed behind him.

‘Well!’ Marina sat down and gripped her hands together. ‘What kind of husband do you think he would make?’

‘A perfectly splendid one, I should imagine. Look, my dear, one of Mitchell’s outstanding assets is a hair-trigger reaction. You blunt it. And you know damn well how he feels about you – your presence just constitutes an additional worry at a time when he can least afford either. A wife doesn’t accompany her husband down a coal mine or on a wartime bombing mission. And Mitchell is much more of a loner than such people are.’

She attempted something between a glower and a scowl, but her beautiful face really wasn’t made for it, so she settled for a rueful smile, rose and replenished his glass of malt whisky.

Mitchell removed the gun and two large keys from the pockets of an unconscious Durand, made his way to the main entrance to the Oriental quarters, opened the door and switched on the corridor lights.

‘Commander Larsen,’ he called out. ‘Palermo.’

Doors opened and the two men were with him in a few seconds. Larsen said: ‘Mitchell! What the hell are you doing here?’

‘Just a harmless seismologist taking his constitutional.’

‘But didn’t you hear the broadcast warning – anyone seen on the platform to be shot on sight?’

‘That’s past. One piece of bad news, two of good. Bad first. Roomer and Miss Melinda didn’t hear the warning – those quarters are sound-insulated. So they took a walk. Both were hurt quite badly. Melinda has a shattered left shoulder, Roomer was shot through the neck and chest. The doctor thinks the bullet is lodged against his spine. We must get them to hospital and quick. Who’s Lord Worth’s personal pilot?’

‘Chambers,’ Larsen said.

‘Get one of your men to have him refuel his machine. The good news: Durand is in the radio room, his number two, fellow called Aaron, is in the radar room. Both are unconscious.’ He looked at Palermo. ‘When they come to – it’ll be some time yet – could you have them looked after with loving care and attention?’

‘Our pleasure.’

Larsen said: ‘Durand had three other men.’

‘They’re dead.’

‘You?’

‘Yes.’

‘We didn’t hear any shooting.’

Mitchell gave them a brief sight of his silenced .38. Larsen looked thoughtful. ‘Lord Worth talked quite a bit about you. I used to think he was exaggerating.’

‘The other bit of good news. Cronkite is sending some reinforcements by helicopter – not many, I believe, eight or nine – and they should be taking off about now. A fifteen minutes’ flight, I gather, so I reckon that Cronkite’s boat is just somewhere below the horizon, below our radar sweep.’

Palermo brightened. ‘We blast this chopper out of the sky?’

‘My original thought, I must admit. But let’s try to play it clever and lull him into some sort of sense of false security. I suggest we let them land, then take them. We’ll have their leader report to Cronkite that all is well.’

‘What if he refuses? Or tries to shout a warning?’

‘We’ll write out his script. If he deviates one word I’ll shoot him. Silencer. Cronkite will hear nothing.’

‘He could hear the man scream.’

‘When a .38 enters the base of your skull and travels upwards at forty-five degrees you don’t tend to scream much.’

‘You mean you’d kill him?’ While not exactly incredulous, Larsen was obviously taken aback.

‘Yes. Then we’d line up number two. We shouldn’t have too much trouble with him.’

Larsen said with some feeling: ‘When Lord Worth talked of you he didn’t tell me the half of it.’

‘Another thing. I want that helicopter. We’ll fake up a tale that the engine failed above the helipad, crash-landed and will take some hours to repair. Always useful to have another helicopter around but, more importantly, I want to deprive Cronkite of the use of his.’ He looked at Palermo ‘I take it that the reception committee can be safely left in your hands.’

‘You sure can. Any suggestions?’

‘Well, I’m a bit diffident about lecturing an expert like yourself.’

‘You know me?’

’I used to be a cop. The rig is loaded with portable search-lights. They’ll head for the administration buildings. I’d keep in hiding, switch off the deck lights and turn on the search-lights when they are, say, thirty yards away. ‘They’ll be blind and won’t be able to see you.’

‘You can’t cater for nutcases.’

‘I’ll bet you can.’ Mitchell smiled briefly at him, cop to crook. He said to Larsen: ‘I have a feeling that Lord Worth would like to confer with his rig boss.’

‘Yes.’ They walked away as Palermo was already giving rapid instructions to his men. ‘Lord Worth know what you’re up to?’

‘I haven’t had time. Anyway, I wouldn’t tell Lord Worth how to make a billion out of oil.’

‘A point.’ They stopped briefly by the radio room. Larsen gazed at the crumpled form of Durand, half in appreciation, half in regret. ‘What a beautiful sight. Wish it had been me, though.’

‘I’ll bet Durand – when he awakes – doesn’t. Plastic surgeons come high.’

They made their next brief stop at the sickbay. He looked at a still comatose Melinda and a wide-awake Roomer, and his massive fists clenched. Roomer smiled. ‘I know. But you’re too late. How deep’s the water here?’

‘Nine hundred feet.’

‘Then you’d require a diving-bell to get your hands round the throats of those responsible. And how are things with you, Commander Larsen? You can see how things are with us.’

‘I’ve been resting. Mitchell here has been rather more active. Apart from the three men at the bottom of the Gulf, he’s also deprived me of the pleasure of beating the living daylights out of Durand. Aaron isn’t feeling too well either.’

Roomer said apologetically: ‘He doesn’t go in much for diplomacy. So the Seawitch is in our hands?’

‘For the moment.’

‘For the moment?’

‘Do you see a man like Cronkite giving up? So he’s lost five men and is probably about to lose another eight or nine. What’s that for a man with ten millions to play about with? And don’t forget his vicious personal vendetta with Lord Worth. If achieving his intent involves the crippling or even the destruction of the Seawitch, including all aboard it – well, Cronkite isn’t going to be conscience-ridden for all his days – or even for a minute if it comes to that.’ He turned to Dr Greenshaw. ‘I think it’s time you got busy with the stretchers. Could you spare four of your drilling crew, Commander, to help have them transferred to the stretchers and then carried across to the helicopter? I’m afraid, John, that you’re going to have some very unpleasant company on the trip. Durand and Aaron. Trussed like chickens, of course.’

‘Well, thank you very much.’

‘I can – occasionally – be as leery as you. I wouldn’t put it past Cronkite to gain access to the Seawitch. How he would do it I haven’t the faintest idea, but with a devious mind a highly-motivated man can accomplish almost anything he wants. Should he succeed. I don’t want Durand and Aaron pointing accusing fingers at me. I should like to remain an inconspicuous and harmless seismologist.’

Larsen gave a few orders on the phone, then he and Mitchell went through to Lord Worth’s room. Lord Worth was on the phone, listening and scowling. Marina looked at Mitchell with an expression as forbidding as her father’s.

‘I suppose you’ve been littering the platform with a few more dead men?’

‘You do me a grave injustice. There’s no one left to kill.’ She gave what might have been a tiny shudder and looked away.

Larsen said: ‘The ship is in our hands, Lady Marina. We’re expecting a little more trouble in about ten minutes, but we can take care of that.’

Lord Worth replaced his receiver. ‘What’s that?’

‘Cronkite is sending some reinforcements by helicopter. Not many – eight or nine. They’ll have no chance. He’s under the impression that Durand is still in charge here.’

‘I take it he’s not.’

‘He’s unconscious and very securely bound. So is Aaron.’

A yearning look came over Lord Worth’s face. ‘Is Cronkite coming with them?’

‘No.’

‘How very unfortunate. And I’ve just had some more bad news. The Torbello has broken down.’

‘Sabotage?’

‘No. The main fuel supply line to its engine has fractured. Just a temporary stop, though it may take some hours to repair. But there is no cause for worry and half-hourly reports on the state of repairs should be forthcoming.’

Another disturbing point had arisen. No major marine insurance companies or Lloyd’s of London had ever heard of the existence of the Questar. Even more disturbing, however, was that the Marine Gulf Corporation had reported the disappearance of its seismological survey vessel from Freeport. It was called the Hammond.

The US navy had two points of cold comfort to offer. What the United States did with its obsolete submarines was to scrap them or sell them to foreign governments: none had ever fallen into the hands of commercial companies or private individuals. Nor were there any Cousteau-type submersibles along the Gulf Coast.

The telephone call-up bell jangled. Lord Worth switched on the wall-receivers. The radio officer was succinct.

‘Helicopter, flying low, due north-west, five miles out.’

‘Well, now,’ Larsen said, ‘this should provide a diversion. Coming, Mitchell?’

‘In a moment. I have a little note to write. Remember?’

‘The note, of course.’ Larsen left. Mitchell penned a brief note in neat printed script that left no room for misinterpretation, folded it in his pocket and went to the door. Lord Worth said: ‘Mind if I come along?’

‘Well, there’ll be no danger, but I think you’d be better occupied in listening for messages from radar, radio, sonar and those monitoring the sensory devices attached to the massive anchoring cables.’

‘Agreed. And I’ll call up the Secretary to see what luck he’s had in hauling those damned warships off my back.’

Marina said sweetly: ‘If there’s no danger I’m coming with you.’

‘No.’

‘You have a very limited vocabulary, Mr Mitchell.’

‘Instead of trying to be a heroine you might try the Florence Nightingale bit – there are two very sick people through there who require their hands held.’

‘You’re too bossy by half, Michael.’

‘In today’s idiom, a male chauvinist pig.’

‘Could you imagine me marrying a person like you?’

‘Your imagination is your business. Besides, I’ve never asked you to.’ He left.

‘Well!’ She looked suspiciously at her father, but Lord. Worth had his risibility under complete control. He picked up a phone and asked for the Christmas tree to be opened and the exploratory drilling restarted.

The helicopter was making its landing approach as Mitchell joined Larsen and Palermo and his men in the deep shadows of the accommodation area. The platform lights had been dimmed but the helipad was brightly illuminated. Palermo had six portable search-lights in position. He nodded to Mitchell, then made his unhurried way to the helipad. He was carrying an envelope in his hand.

The helicopter touched down, the door opened and men with a discouraging assortment of automatic weapons started to disembark. Palermo said: ‘I’m Marino. Who’s in charge here?’

‘Me. Mortensen.’ He was a bulky young man in battle fatigues, and looked more like a bright young lieutenant than the thug he undoubtedly was. ‘I thought Durand was in charge here?’

‘He is. At the moment he’s having a brief and painful conversation with Lord Worth. He’s waiting for you in Lord Worth’s quarters.’

‘Why are the deck lights so dim?’

‘Voltage drop. Being fixed. The helipads have their own generators.’ He pointed. ‘Over there.’

Mortensen nodded and led his eight men away. Palermo said: ‘Join you in a minute. I have a private message for the pilot from Cronkite.’

Palermo climbed up into the helicopter. He greeted the pilot and said: ‘I have a message here for you from Cronkite.’

The pilot registered a degree of surprise. ‘I was under orders to fly straight back.’

‘Won’t be long. It appears that Cronkite is anxious to see Lord Worth and his daughters.’

The pilot grinned and took the envelope from Palermo. He opened it, examined both sides of a blank sheet of paper and said: ‘What gives?’

‘This.’ Palermo showed him a gun about the size of a small cannon. ‘I can’t stand dead heroes.’

The platform lights went out and six searchlights came on. Larsen’s stentorian voice carried clearly. ‘Throw down your guns. You have no chance.’

One of Mortensen’s men suicidally thought different. He flung himself to the platform deck, loosed off a burst of sub-machine-gun fire and successfully killed one of the search-lights. If he felt any sense of gratification it must have been the shortest on record, for he was dead while the shattered glass was still tinkling down on the platform. The other eight men threw down their guns.

Palermo sighed, He said to the pilot: ‘See? Dead heroes are no good to anyone, Come along.’

Eight of the nine men, together with the pilot, were shepherded into a windowless store-room and locked inside. The ninth, Mortensen, was taken to the radio room where he was shortly joined by Mitchell. For the occasion Mitchell had changed into a boiler-suit and makeshift hood, which not only effectively masked his face but also muffled his voice He had no wish to be identified.

He produced the paper on which he had made notes, screwed the muzzle of his .38 into the base of Mortensen’s neck, told him to contact Cronkite and read out the message and that the slightest deviation from the script would mean a shattered brain. Mortensen was no fool and in his peculiar line of trade he had looked into the face of death more than once. He made the contact, said all was well, that he and Durand were in complete control of the Seawitch but that it might be several hours before the helicopter could return as last-minute engine-failure had damaged the undercarriage. Cronkite seemed reasonably satisfied and hung up.

When Larsen and Mitchell returned to Lord Worth’s cabin Lord Worth seemed in a more cheerful frame of mind. The Pentagon had reported that the two naval vessels from Cuba and the one from Venezuela were stopped in the water and appeared to be awaiting instructions. The Torbello was on its way again and was expected to arrive in Galveston in ninety minutes. Lord Worth might have felt less satisfied if he’d known that the Torbello, shaking in every rivet, seam and plate, was several hundred miles from Galveston, travelling south-west in calm seas. Mulhooney was in no mood to hang around.

Marina said accusingly: ‘I heard shots being fired out there.’

‘Just warning shots in the air,’ Mitchell said. ‘Frightens the hell out of people.’

‘You made them all prisoner.’

Lord Worth said irritably: ‘Don’t talk nonsense. Now do be quiet. The Commander and I have important matters to discuss.’

‘We’ll leave,’ Mitchell said. He looked at Marina. ‘Come and let’s see the patients off.’

They followed the two stretchers out to the helicopter. They were accompanied by Durand and Aaron – both with their hands lashed behind their backs and on a nine-inch hobble – Dr Greenshaw and one of Palermo’s men, a menacing individual with a sawn-off shot-gun who was to ride guard on the captives until they reached the mainland.

Mitchell said to Marina: ‘Last chance.’

‘No.’

‘We’re going to make a great couple,’ Mitchell said gloomily. ‘Monosyllabic is what I mean.’

They said their goodbyes, watched the helicopter lift off and made their way back to Lord Worth’s quarters. Both he and Larsen were on separate lines, and from the expressions on their faces it was clear that they were less happy with life than they might have been. Both men were trying, with zero effect, to obtain some additional tankerage. There were, in fact, some half-dozen idle tankers on the south and east coast in the 50,000 dw range, but all belonged to the major oil companies who would have gone to the stake sooner than charter any of their vessels to the Worth Hudson Oil Company. The nearest tankers of the required tonnage were either in Britain, Norway or the Mediterranean, and to have brought them across would have involved an intolerable loss of time, not to say money, which last matter lay very close to Lord Worth’s heart. He and Larsen had even considered bringing one of their super-tankers into service, but had decided against it. Because of the tankers’ huge carrying capacity, the loss in revenue would have been unbearably high. And what had happened to the Crusader might even happen to a super-tanker. True, they were insured at Lloyd’s, but that august firm’s marine accident investigators were notoriously, if justifiably, cagey, prudent and thoroughly cautious men, and although they invariably settled any genuine claim they tended to deliberate at length before making any final decision.

Another call came through from the Torbello. On course, its estimated time of arrival in Galveston was one hour. Lord Worth said gloomily that they had at least two tankers in operation: they would just have to step up their already crowded schedules.

One half-hour later another message came through from the tanker. One half-hour to Galveston. Lord Worth might have felt less assured had he known that now that dark had fallen the Starlight, leaving the Georgia where it was, had already moved away in the direction of the Seawitch, its engines running on its electrical batteries. Its chances of sonar detection by the Seawitch were regarded as extremely small. It carried with it highly skilled divers and an unpleasant assortment of mines, limpet mines and amatol beehives, all of which could be controlled by long-distance radio.

Yet another half-hour passed before the welcome news came through that the tanker Torbello was safely berthed in Galveston. Lord Worth said to Larsen that he intended to make an immediate voice-link call to the port authorities in Galveston to ensure the fastest turn-round ever, money no object.

He got his voice-link in just one minute – the Lord Worths of this world are never kept waiting. When he made his customary peremptory demands the harbour-master expressed a considerable degree of surprise.

‘I really can’t imagine what you are talking about, sir.’

‘God damn it, I always know what I’m talking about.’

‘Not in this case, Lord Worth. I’m afraid you’ve been misinformed or hoaxed. The Torbello has not arrived.’

‘But damn it, I’ve just heard –’

‘One moment, please.’

The moment passed into about thirty, during which Mitchell thoughtfully brought Lord Worth a glass of scotch, which he half-consumed at one gulp. Then the voice came through again.

‘Disturbing news. Not only is there no sign of your tanker, but our radar scanners show no signs of any vessel of that size being within a radius of forty miles.’

‘Then what the devil can have happened to her? I was speaking to her only two or three minutes ago.’

‘On her own call-sign?’

‘Yes. damn it.’

‘Then obviously she’s come to no harm.’

Lord Worth hung up without as much as a courtesy thank-you. He glowered at Larsen and Mitchell as if what had happened had been their fault. He said at length: ‘I can only conclude that the captain of the Torbello has gone off his rocker.’

Mitchell said: ‘And I conclude that he’s safely under lock and key aboard his own ship.’

Lord Worth was heavily ironic. ‘In addition to your many other accomplishments you’ve now become psychic.’

‘Your Torbello has been hijacked.’

‘Hijacked! Hijacked! Now you’ve gone off your rocker. Whoever heard of a tanker being hijacked?’

‘Whoever heard of a jumbo-jet being hijacked until the first one was? After what happened to the Crusader in Galveston the captain of the Torbello would have been extremely wary of being approached, far less boarded, by any other vessel unless it were a craft with respectability beyond question. The only two such types of craft are naval or coastguard. We’ve heard that the Marine Gulf Corporation’s survey vessel has been stolen. Many of those survey vessels are ex-coastguard with a helipad for a helicopter to carry out seismological pattern bombing. The ship was called the Hammond. With your connections you could find out in minutes.’

Lord Worth did find out in minutes. He said: ‘So you’re right.’ He was too dumbfounded even to apologize. ‘And this of course was the Questar that Cronkite sailed from Galveston. God only knows what name it goes under now. What next, I wonder?’

Mitchell said: ‘A call from Cronkite, I should think.’

‘What would he call me for?’

‘Some outrageous demands, I should imagine. I don’t know.’

Lord Worth was nothing if not resilient. He had powerful and influential friends. He called an admiral friend in the naval headquarters in Washington and demanded that an air-sea search unit be despatched immediately to the scene. The navy apologetically said that they would have to obtain the permission of their Commander-in-Chief – in effect, the President. The President, apparently, professed a profound if polite degree of disinterest. Neither he nor Congress had any reason to love the oil companies who had so frequently flouted them, which was less than fair to Lord Worth who had never flouted anyone in Washington in his life More, the search almost certainly lay outside their jurisdictional waters. Besides, it was raining in the Gulf and black as the Earl of Hell’s waistcoat, and though their radar might well pick up a hundred ships in the area visual identification would be impossible.

He tried the CIA. Their disinterest was even more profound. In the several years past they had had their fingers badly burnt in public and all their spare time was devoted to licking their wounds.

The FBI curtly reminded him that their activities were purely internal and that anyway they got sea-sick whenever they ventured on water.

Lord Worth considered making an appeal to the UNO, but was dissuaded by Larsen and Mitchell. Not only would the Gulf states, Venezuela, Nigeria, every Communist country and what now went by the name of the Third World – and they held the vast majority of votes in the UNO – veto any such suggestion: the UNO had no legal power to initiate any such action. Apart from that, by that time the entire UNO were probably in bed anyway.

For once in his life Lord Worth appeared to be at a loss. Life, it appeared, could hold no more for him. But Lord Worth was discovering that, upon occasion, he could be as fallible as the next man: for seconds later he was at an utter and total loss.

A voice-over call came through. It was, as Mitchell had predicted it would be, Cronkite. He was glad to inform Lord Worth that there was no cause for concern over the Torbello as she was in safe hands.

‘Where?’ Had his daughter not been present Lord Worth would undoubtedly have qualified his question with a few choice adjectives.

‘I prefer not to specify exactly. Enough to say that she is securely anchored in the territorial waters of a Central American country. It is my intention to dispose of the oil to this very poor and oil-deficient country –’ he did not mention that it was his intention to sell it at half-price, which would bring in a few acceptable hundred thousand dollars – ‘then take the tanker out to sea and sink it in a hundred fathoms. Unless, of course –’

‘Unless what?’ Lord Worth asked. His voice had assumed a peculiar hoarseness.

‘Unless you close down the Christmas tree on the Seawitch and immediately stop all pumping and drilling.’

‘Fool.’

‘You said what?’

‘Your thugs have already attended to that. Haven’t they told you?’

‘I want proof. I want Mortensen.’

Lord Worth said wearily: ‘Hold on. We’ll get him.’

Mitchell went to fetch him. By the time he returned, again overalled and masked, Mortensen had been thoroughly briefed. He confirmed to Cronkite that all pumping and drilling had stopped. Cronkite expressed his satisfaction and the radio link went dead. Mitchell removed the .38 from the base of Mortensen’s skull and two of Palermo’s men took him from the room. Mitchell took off his hood and Marina looked at him with a mixture of horror and incredulity.

She whispered: ‘You were ready to kill him.’

‘Not at all. I was going to pat him on the head and tell him what a good boy he was. I asked you to get off this rig.’

Chapter Nine

Lord Worth had barely begun to wipe his brow when two men hurried into the room. One was Palermo and the other was one of the rig crew, Simpson, whose duty it was to monitor the sensory instruments attached to the platform’s legs and the tensioning anchor cables. He was obviously in a state of considerable agitation.

Lord Worth said: ‘What fresh horror does fate hold in store for us now?’

‘Somebody below the rig, sir. My instruments have gone a bit haywire. Some object, something almost certainly metallic, sir, is in intermittent contact with the western leg.’

‘There can be no doubt about this?’ Simpson shook his head. ‘Seems damnably odd that Cronkite would try to bring down the Seawitch with his own men on board.’

Mitchell said ‘Maybe he doesn’t want to bring it down, just damage the leg enough to destroy the buoyancy in the leg and the adjacent members and to tilt the Seawitch so that the drill and the pumping mechanism are rendered useless Maybe anything. Or maybe he would be prepared to sacrifice his own men to get you.’ He turned to Palermo ‘I know you have scuba equipment aboard. Show me.’ They left.

Marina said: ‘I suppose he’s off to murder someone else. He’s not really human, is he?’

Lord Worth looked at her without enthusiasm. ‘If you call being inhuman wanting to see that you don’t die, then he’s inhuman. There’s only one person aboard this rig he really cares for and you damned well know it. I never thought. I’d be ashamed of a daughter of mine.’

Palermo had in fact, two trained scuba divers with him, but Mitchell chose only one to accompany him. Palermo was not a man to be easily impressed but he had seen enough of Mitchell not to question his judgment. In remarkably quick time Mitchell and the other man, who went by the name of Sawyers, were dressed in scuba outfits, and were equipped with reloadable compressed air harpoon guns and sheath knives. They were lowered to the water by the only available means in such a giant TLP – in a wire mesh cage attached to the boom of the derrick crane. Once at water level they opened the hinged door, dived and swam to the giant western leg.

Simpson had made no mistake. They were indeed at work down there, two of them, attached by airlines and cables to the shadowy outline of a vessel some twenty feet above them. Both wore powerful headlamps. They were energetically engaged in attaching limpet mines, conventional magnetic mines and wrap round rolls of beehive amatol to the enormous leg. They had enough explosives there, Mitchell figured, to bring down the Eiffel Tower. Maybe Cronkite did intend to destroy the leg. That Cronkite was unhinged seemed more probable than not.

The two saboteurs were not only energetically engaged in their task, they were so exclusively preoccupied with it that they quite failed to notice the stealthy approach of Mitchell and Sawyers. The two scuba divers pressed their masks together, looked into each other’s eyes – there was sufficient reflected light from the other divers to allow them to do this – and nodded simultaneously. Not being much given to squeamishness where potential killers were concerned, they harpooned the two saboteurs through their backs. In both cases death must have been instantaneous. Mitchell and Sawyers reloaded their compressed air harpoons then, for good measure, they sliced their two victims’ breathing tubes which, as was standard, also contained the communication wires.

On the Starlight Easton and his crew were instantly aware that something had gone drastically wrong. The dead men were pulled up, the harpoons still embedded in their backs, and as they were being hauled over the gunwales two of the crew cried out in agony: Mitchell and Sawyers had surfaced and picked off two more targets. Whether either had been mortally or grievously injured was impossible to say, but far more than enough had happened for Easton to take off at speed, this time on his much faster diesels: the engines were admittedly noisy but the darkness was so intense that only a near-miracle would have enabled the alerted gunners on the platform to obtain an accurate fix on them.

The two scuba divers, their own headlights now switched on, swam down to the spot where the mines and explosives had been attached to the legs. There were time fuses attached to both mines and explosives. Those they detached and let fall to the bottom of the ocean. For good measure they also removed the detonators. The explosives, now harmless, they unwound and let them follow the time fuses. The mines they prudently left where they were. Both men were explosives experts but not deep water explosives experts. Mines, as many ghosts can attest to, can be very tricky and unpredictable. They consist of, as the main charge, TNT, amatol or some such conventional explosive. In their central tube they have a primer, which may consist of one of a variety of slow-burning explosives, and fitted to the top of the primer is a travelling detonator, activated by sea pressure, which usually consists of seventy-seven grains of fulminate of mercury. Even with this detonator removed the primer can still detonate under immense pressure. Neither diver had any wish to blow up the pile-driven anchors or the tensioning cables attached to the anchors. Via the derrick crane they made their way back to the platform and reported to the radio room. They had to wait for some time before making their report, for Lord Worth was in a far from amicable telephone conversation with Cronikite. Marina sat apart, her hands clenched and her normally tanned face a greyish colour. She looked at Mitchell then averted her eyes as if she never wished to set eyes on him again which, at the moment, she probably didn’t.

Cronkite was furious. ‘You murderous bastard, Worth.’ He was clearly unaware that he was talking in the presence of ladies. ‘Three of my best men dead, all of them harpooned through the back.’ Involuntarily, Marina looked at Mitchell again. Mitchell had the impression that he was either a monster from outer space or from the nethermost depths: at any rate, a monster.

Lord Worth was no less furious. ‘It would be a pleasure to repeat the process – with you as the central figure this time.’

Cronkite choked, then said with what might have been truth: ‘My intention was just temporarily to incapacitate the Seawitch without harming anyone aboard. But if you want to play it rough you’ll have to find a new Seawitch in twenty-four hours. If, that is, you’re fortunate enough to survive the loss of the present Seawitch. I’m going to blast you out of the water.’

Lord Worth was calmer now. ‘It would be interesting to know how you’re going to achieve that My information is that your precious warships have been ordered back to base.’

‘There’s more than one way of blasting you out of the water.’ Cronkite sounded very sure of himself. ‘In the meantime, I’m going to off-load the Torbello’s oil, then sink it.’ In point of fact Cronkite had no intention of sinking the tanker: the Torbello was a Panamanian-registered tanker and Cronkite was not lacking in Panamanian friends: a tanker could be easily disposed of for a very considerable sum indeed. The conversation, if such an acrimonious exchange could be so called, ended abruptly.

Mitchell said: ‘One thing’s for sure. Cronkite is a fluent liar. He’s nowhere near Central America. Not with that kind of reception. And we heard him talking to his friend Durand. He had elected not to come on this helicopter flight – which lasted only fifteen minutes. He’s lurking somewhere just over the horizon.’

Lord Worth said: ‘How did things go down there?’

‘You heard from Cronkite. There was no trouble.’

‘Do you expect more?’

‘Yes. Cronkite sounds too damn confident for my liking.’

‘How do you think it’ll come?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine. He might even try the game thing again.’

Lord Worth was incredulous. ‘After what happened to him?’

‘He may be relying on the unexpected. One thing I’m sure of. If he does try the same again he’ll use different tactics. I’m sure he won’t try an air or submarine approach, if for no other reason that he doesn’t – he can’t – have skilled men. So I don’t think you’ll require your radar or sonar watch-keepers tonight. Come to that, your radio operator may need a rest – after all, he’s got an alarm call-up in his cabin. I’d keep Simpson on duty, though. Just in case our friends try for one of the legs again.’

Palermo said: ‘But they’d be waiting this time. They’d be operating close to the surface. They’d have armed guards ready and waiting to protect the divers, maybe even infra-red search-lights that we couldn’t detect from the platform. You and Sawyers had luck the first time, and luck depends very much on the element of surprise: but there would be no luck this time, because there would be no surprise.’

‘We don’t need luck. Lord Worth wouldn’t have had all those depth-charges stolen and brought aboard unless one of your men is an expert in depth-charges. You have such a man?’

‘Yes.’ Palermo eyed him speculatively. ‘Cronin. Ex-petty officer. Why?’

‘He could arrange the detonator setting so that the depth-charge would explode immediately or soon after hitting the water?’

‘I should imagine so. Again, why?’

‘We trundle three depth-charges along the platform to within, say, twenty-five yards of each of the legs. Your friend Cronin could advise us on this. My distance could be wrong. If Simpson detects anything on his sensors we just push one of the depth-charges over the side. The blast effect could or should have no effect on the leg concerned. I doubt if the boat with the divers would receive anything more than a severe shaking. But for divers in the water the concussive shock effects could hardly fail to be fatal.’

Palermo looked at him with cold, appraising eyes. ‘For a man supposed to be on the side of the law, you, Mitchell, are the most cold-blooded bastard I’ve ever met.’

‘If you want to die just say so. I should imagine you’d find conditions a bit uncomfortable nine hundred feet down in the Gulf. I suggest you get Cronin and a couple of your men and arrange the charges accordingly.’

Mitchell went to watch Palermo, Cronin and two of their men at work. Cronin had agreed with Mitchell’s estimate of placing the depth-charges twenty-five yards from the legs. As he stood there Marina came up to him.

She said: ‘More men are going to die, aren’t they, Michael?’

‘I hope not.’

‘But you are getting ready to kill, aren’t you?’

‘I’m getting ready to survive. I’m getting ready for all of us to survive.’

She took his arm. ‘Do you like killing?’

‘No.’

‘Then how come you’re so good at it?’

‘Somebody has to be.’

‘For the good of mankind, I suppose?’

‘You don’t have to talk to me.’ He paused and went on slowly. ‘Cops kill. Soldiers kill. Airmen kill. They don’t have to like it. In the First World War a fellow called Marshal Foch became the most decorated soldier of the war for being responsible for the deaths of a million men. The fact that most of them were his own men would appear to be beside the point. I don’t hunt, I don’t shoot game, I don’t even fish. I mean, I like lamb as much as the next man but I wouldn’t put a hook in its throat and drag it around a field for half an hour before it dies from agony and exhaustion. All I do is exterminate vermin. To me, all crooks, armed or not, are vermin.’

‘That’s why you and John got fired from the police?’

‘I have to tell you that?’

‘Ever killed what you, what I, would call a good person?’

‘No. But unless you shut up –’

‘In spite of everything, I think I might still marry you.’

‘I’ve never asked you.’

‘Well, what are you waiting for?’

Mitchell sighed, then smiled. ‘Lady Marina Worth, would you do me the honour –’

Behind them, Lord Worth coughed. Marina swung round, the expression on her face indicating that only her aristocratic upbringing was preventing her from stamping her foot. ‘Daddy, you have a genius for turning up at the wrong moment.’

Lord Worth was mild. ‘The right moment I would have said. My unreserved congratulations.’ He looked at Mitchell. ‘Well, you certainly took your time about it. Everything ship-shape and secured for the night?’

‘As far as I can guess at what goes on in Cronkite’s devious mind.’

‘My confidence in you, my boy, is total. Well, it’s bed for me – I feel, perhaps not unaccountably, extremely tired.’

Marina said: ‘Me, too. Well, good night, fiancé.’ She kissed him lightly and left with her father.

For once Lord Worth’s confidence in Mitchell was slightly misplaced. He had made a mistake, though a completely unwitting one, in sending the radio officer off duty. For had that officer remained on duty he would undoubtedly have picked up the news flash about the theft of the nuclear weapons from the Netley Rowan Armory: Mitchell could not have failed to put two and two together.

During the third hour of Lord Worth’s conscience-untroubled sleep Mulhooney had been extremely active. He had discharged his 50,000 tons of oil and taken the Torbello well out to sea, far over the horizon. He returned an hour later with two companions and the ship’s only motorized lifeboat with the sad news that, in the sinking of the tanker, a shattering explosion had occurred which had decimated his crew. They three were the only survivors. The ‘decimated crew’ were, at that moment, taking the Torbello south to Panama. The official condolences were widespread, apparently sincere and wholly hypocritical: when a tanker blows up its motorized lifeboat does not survive intact. The republic had no diplomatic relation with the United State and the only things they would cheerfully have extradited to that country were cholera and the bubonic plague. A private jet awaited the three at the tiny airport. Passports duly stamped Mulhooney and his friends took out a flight plan for Guatemala.

Some hour later they arrived at the Houston International Airport. With much of the remaining ten million dollars still remaining at his disposal, Cronkite was not the man to worry about incidental expenses. Mulhooney and his friends immediately hired a long-range helicopter and set out for the Gulf.

In the fourth hour of his sleep, which had remained undisturbed by the sound of a considerable underwater explosion, Lord Worth was unpleasantly awakened by a call from a seethingly mad Cronkite who accused him of killing two more of his men and that he, Cronkite, was going to exact a fearful vengeance. Lord Worth hung up without bothering to reply, sent for Mitchell and learned that Cronkite had indeed made another attempt to sabotage the western leg. The depth-charge had apparently done everything that had been expected of it, for their search-lights had picked up the bodies of two divers floating on the surface. The craft that had been carrying them could not have been seriously damaged, for they had heard the sound of its diesels starting up. Instead of making a straight escape, it had disappeared under the rig and by the time they had reached the other tide it had so vanished into the darkness and rain that they had been unable to pick it up. Lord Worth smiled happily and went back to sleep.

In the fifth hour of his sleep he would not have been smiling quite so happily if he had been aware of certain strange activities that were taking place in a remote Louisiana motel, one exclusively owned and managed by Lord Worth himself. Here it was that the Seawitch’s relief crew spent their weekly vacation in the strictest seclusion. In addition to abundant food, drink, films, TV and a high-class bordello that might have been run by Sally Stanford herself in her hey-day, it offered every amenity for which off-duty oil rig men could ever have wished. ’Not that any of them wished to step outside the compound gates: when nine out of ten men are wanted by the law, total privacy is a paramount requirement.

The intruders, some twenty in all, arrived in the middle of the night. They were led by a man – a humanoid would have been a better term for him – called Gregson: of all Cronkite’s associates he was by far the most dangerous and lethal and was possessed of the morality and instincts of a fer-de-lance with toothache. The staff were all asleep and were chloroformed before they had any opportunity of regaining consciousness.

The rig relief crew, also, were all asleep but in a somewhat different fashion and for quite different reasons. Liquor is forbidden on oil rigs and the relief crews on their last night before returning to duty generally made the best of their last chance. Their dormant states ranged from the merely befuddled to the paralytic. The rounding up of them, most of whom, once afoot, remained still asleep on their feet, took no more than five minutes. The only two relatively sober members of the relief crew made to offer some show of resistance. Gregson, with a silenced Biretta, gunned them down as if they had been wild dogs.

The captives were pushed inside a completely standard, albeit temporarily purloined, removal van and transported to an abandoned and very isolated warehouse on the outskirts of town. To say the least it was somewhat less than salubrious, but perfectly fitted for Gregson’s purpose. The prisoners were neither bound nor gagged, which would have been pointless in the presence of two armed guards who carried the customary intimidating machine-carbines. In fact the carbines were also superfluous: the besotted captives had already drifted off into a dreamless slumber.

It was in the sixth hour of Lord Worth’s equally dreamless slumber that Gregson and his men lifted off in one of Lord Worth’s helicopters. The two pilots had been reluctant to accept them as passengers but Schmeissers are powerful persuasive agents.

It was in the seventh hour of Lord Worth’s slumber that Mulhooney and his two colleagues touched down on the empty helipad of the Georgia. As Cronkite’s own helicopter was temporarily marooned on the Seawitch he had no compunction in impounding both the helicopter and its hapless pilot.

At almost exactly the same moment another helicopter touched down on the Seawitch and a solitary passenger and pilot emerged. The passenger was Dr Greenshaw, and he looked, and was, a very tired, elderly man. He went straight to the sickbay and, without as much as trying to remove his clothes, lay down on one of the cots and composed himself for sleep. He should, he supposed, have reported to Lord Worth that his daughter Melinda and John Roomer were in good hands and in good shape: but good news could wait.

On the eighth hour, with the dawn in the sky, Lord Worth, a man who enjoyed his sleep, awoke, stretched himself luxuriously, pulled on his splendidly embroidered dressing-gown and strolled out on to the platform. The rain had stopped, the sun was tipping the horizon and there was every promise of a beautiful day to come. Privately congratulating himself on his prescience that no trouble would occur during the night, he retired to his quarters to perform his customary and leisurely morning ablutions.

Lord Worth’s self-congratulation on his prescience was entirely premature. Fifteen minutes earlier the radio operator, newly returned to duty, had picked up a news broadcast that he didn’t like at all and gone straight to Mitchell’s room. Like every man on board, even including Larsen and Palermo, he knew that the man to contact in an emergency was Mitchell: the thought of alerting Lord Worth never entered his head.

He found Mitchell shaving. Mitchell looked tired, less than surprising as he had spent most of the night awake. Mitchell said: ‘No more trouble, I hope?’

‘I don’t know.’ He handed Mitchell a strip of teletype. It read: ‘Two tactical nuclear weapons stolen from the Netley Rowan Armoury yesterday afternoon. Intelligence suspects they are being flown or helicoptered south over Gulf of Mexico to an unknown destination. A world-wide alert has been issued. Anyone able to provide information should –’

‘Jesus! Get hold of this armoury any way you can. Use Lord Worth’s name. With you in a minute.’

Mitchell was with him in half a minute. The operator said: ‘I’m through already. Not much cooperation, though.’

‘Give me that phone. Hello? My name’s Mitchell. Who’s speaking, please?’

‘Colonel Pryce.’ The tone wasn’t exactly distant, just a senior officer talking to a civilian.

‘I work for Lord Worth. You can check that with the Lauderdale Police, the Pentagon or the Secretary of State.’ He said to the operator, but loudly enough that Pryce could hear: ‘Get Lord Worth here. I don’t care if he is in his bloody bath, just get him here now. Colonel Pryce, an officer of your standing should know that Lord Worth’s daughters have been kidnapped. I have been engaged to recover them and this I have done. More importantly, this oil rig, the Seawitch, is under threat of destruction. Two attempts have already been made. They were unsuccessful. Further questioning of the Pentagon will confirm that they have stopped three foreign warships headed here for the purpose of destroying the Seawitch. I want information about those tactical weapons and I must warn you that Lord Worth will interpret any failure to provide this information as a gross dereliction of duty. And you know the immense power Lord Worth has.’

There was a far from subtle change in Colonel Pryce’s tone. ‘It’s quite unnecessary to threaten me.’

‘One moment. Lord Worth’s just arrived.’ Mitchell gave a brief résumé of what he had said, making sure that Pryce could hear every word that was spoken.

‘Nuclear bloody bombs! That’s why Cronkite said he could blast us out of the water!’ Lord Worth snatched the phone from Mitchell. ‘Lord Worth here. I have a hot line to the Secretary of State, Dr Belton. I could catch him in fifteen seconds. Want I should do that?’

‘That will not be necessary, Lord Worth.’

‘Then give us a detailed description of those damned evil things and tell us how they work.’

Pryce, almost eagerly, gave the description. It was almost precisely similar to the one that Captain Martin had given to the bogus Colonel Farquharson. ‘But Martin was a new officer and shaky on his details. The nuclear devices you – can hardly call them bombs – are probably twice as effective as he said. They took the wrong type – those devices have no black button to shut off in an emergency. And they have a ninety-minute setting, not sixty. And they can be radio activated.’

‘Something complicated? I mean, a VHF number or something of the kind?’

‘Something very uncomplicated. You can’t expect a soldier in the heat of battle to remember abstruse numbers. It’s simply a pear-shaped device with a plastic seal. Strip that off and turn a black switch through three hundred and sixty degrees. It is important to remember that turning this switch off will de-activate the detonating mechanism in the nuclear device. It can be turned on again at any time.’

‘If it should be used against us? We have a huge oil storage tank nearby. Wouldn’t this cause a massive oil slick?’

‘My dear fellow, oil is by nature combustible and much more easily vaporized than steel.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Seems to be you want a squadron of supersonic fighter-bombers out there. But I’ll have to get Pentagon permission first.’

‘Thank you again.’

Lord Worth and Mitchell left for the former’s quarters. Lord Worth said: ‘Two things. We’re only assuming, although it would be dangerous not to assume, that those damned things are meant for us. Besides, if we keep our radar, sonar and sensory posts manned I don’t see how Cronkite could approach and deliver those damned things.’

‘It’s difficult to see how. But then it’s difficult to figure out that devious devil’s cast of mind.’

From Lord Worth’s helicopter Gregson made contact with the Georgia. ‘We’re fifteen miles out.’

Cronkite himself replied. ‘We’ll be airborne in ten.’

A wall radio crackled in Lord Worth’s room. ‘Helicopters approaching from the north-east.’

‘No worry. Relief crew.’

Lord Worth had gone back to his shower when the relief helicopter touched down. Mitchell was in his laboratory, looking very professional in his white coat and glasses. Dr Greenshaw was still asleep.

Apart from gagging and manacling the pilots, the helicopter passengers offered them no violence. They disembarked in quiet and orderly fashion. The drill duty crew observed their arrival without any particular interest. They had been well trained to mind their own business and had highly personal reasons for not fraternizing with unknowns. And the new arrivals were unknowns. Off the coast Lord Worth owned no fewer than nine oil rigs – all legally leased and paid for – and, for reasons best known to his devious self, was in the habit of regularly rotating his drill crews. The new arrivals carried the standard shoulder-slung clothes-bags. Those bags did indeed contain a minimal amount of clothes, but not clothing designed to be worn: the clothes were there merely to conceal and muffle the shape of the machine-pistols and other more deadly weapons inside the bags.

Thanks to the instructions he had received from Cronkite via Durand, Gregson knew exactly where to go. He noted the presence of two idly patrolling guards and marked them down for death.

He led his men to the Oriental quarters where they placed their bags on the platform and unzipped them. Windows were smashed and what followed was sheer savage massacre. Within half a dozen seconds of machine-gun fire, bazooka fire and incinerating flame-throwers, all of which had been preceded by a flurry of tear-gas bombs, all screaming inside had ceased. The two advancing guards were mown down even as they drew their guns. The only survivor was Larsen, who had been in his own private room in the back: Palermo and all his men were dead.

Four people appeared almost at the same instant from the quarters at the end of the block. Soundproofed though those quarters were, the noise outside had been too penetrating not to be heard. There were four of them, two men in white coats, a man in a Japanese kimono and a black-haired guard in a wrap. One of Gregson’s men fired twice at the nearest white-coated figure and Mitchell staggered and fell backwards to the deck. Gregson brutally smashed the wrist of the man who had fired, who screamed in agony as the gun fell from his shattered hand.

‘You bastard idiot!’ Gregson’s voice was as vicious as his appearance. The hard men only, Mr Cronkite said.’

Gregson was nothing if not organized. He detailed five groups of two men. One group herded the drilling rig crew into the Oriental quarters. The second, third and fourth went respectively to the sensory room, the sonar room and the radar room. There they tied up but did not otherwise harm the operators, before they riddled all the equipment with a burst of machine-gun bullets. For all practical purposes the Seawitch was now blind, deaf and benumbed. The fifth group went to the radio room, where the operator was tied up but his equipment left intact.

Dr Greenshaw approached Gregson. ‘You are the leader?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m a doctor.’ He nodded to Mitchell, whose white coat accentuated his blood and who was rolling about in a convincing manner, Marina bending over him with bitter tears rolling down her cheeks. ‘He’s hurt bad. Can I take him into the sickbay and patch him up?’

‘We have no quarrel with you,’ Gregson said, which was, unwittingly, the most foolish remark he’d ever made in his life.

Dr Greenshaw helped the weak and staggering Mitchell into the sickbay where, the door closed behind him, he made an immediate and remarkable recovery. Marina stared at him in astonishment, then in something approaching anger.

‘Why you deceiving, double-crossing –’

‘That’s no way to talk to a sick man.’ He was pulling off his white coat, jacket and shirt. ‘Never seen you cry before. Makes you look even more beautiful. And that’s real blood.’ He turned to Dr Greenshaw. ‘Superficial wound on the left shoulder, a scratch on the right forearm. Dead-eyed Dick himself. Now make a real good job on me, Doc. Right forearm bandaged from elbow to wrist. Left arm bandaged from shoulder to above the elbow with a lovely big sling. Marina, even ravishing beauties like you carry talcum powder. I hope you’re no exception.’

Not yet mollified, she said stiffly: ‘I have some. Baby powder,’ she added nastily.

‘Get it, please.’

Five minutes later Mitchell had been rendered into the epitome of the walking wounded. His right arm was heavily bandaged and his left arm was swathed in white from shoulder to wrist. The sling was nothing short of voluminous. His face was very pale indeed. He left for his room and returned a few seconds later.

‘Where have you been?’ Marina asked suspiciously.

He reached inside the depths of the sling and pulled out his silenced .38. ‘Fully loaded.’ He returned it to its hiding place where it was quite invisible.

‘Never give up, do you?’ Her voice held a curious mixture of awe and bitterness.

‘Not when I’m about to be vaporized.’

Dr Greenshaw stared at him. ‘What in God’s name do you mean?’

‘Our good friend Cronkite has pinched a couple of tactical nuclear weapons. He intends to finish off the Seawitch in a style of befitting splendour. He should be here about now. Now, Doc, I would like you to do something for me. Take the biggest medical bag you have and tell Gregson that it is your humanitarian duty to go inside that shambles that used to be the Oriental quarters to succour any that may be dying or, if necessary, to put them out of their agony. They have, I know, a respectable supply of hand-grenades in there. I’d like some.’

‘No sooner said than done. God, you look awful. Destroys my faith in myself as a doctor.’

They went outside. Cronkite’s helicopter was indeed just touching down. Cronkite himself was the first out, followed by Mulhooney, the three bogus officers who had stolen the nuclear weapons, the commandeered pilot and lastly Easton. Easton was the unknown quantity. Mitchell did not appreciate it at the time but Easton’s Starlight had been so badly damaged by the depth-charge that it was no longer serviceable. Less than four miles away what appeared to be a coastguard cutter was heading straight for the Seawitch. It required no guessing to realize that this was the missing Hammond, the infamous Questar, the present Georgia.

Dr Greenshaw approached Gregson. ‘Mind if I have a look at the little you’ve left of those quarters? Maybe there’s someone still alive in there: more likely there’s someone who requires a little kindly euthanasia.’

Gregson pointed to an iron door. ‘I’m more interested in who’s in there. Spicer –’ this to one of his men – ‘a bazooka shot at that lock.’

‘That’s hardly necessary,’ Greenshaw said mildly. ‘A knock from me is all that is required. That’s Commander Larsen, the boss of the oil rig. He’s no enemy of yours. He just sleeps here because he likes his privacy.’ Dr Greenshaw knocked. ‘Commander Larsen. It’s okay. It’s me, Greenshaw. Come on out. If you don’t their are some people who are going to blast your door down and you with it. Come on, man. I’m not saying this under duress.’

There was the turning of a heavy key and Larsen emerged He looked dazed, almost shell-shocked, as well he might. He said: ‘What the hell goes on?’

‘You’ve been taken over, friend,’ Gregson said. Larsen was dressed, Greenshaw was pleased to note, in a voluminous lumber-jacket, zipped around the waist. ‘Search him.’ They searched and round nothing.

‘Where’s Scoffield?’ Larsen said.

Greenshaw said: ‘In the other quarters. He should be okay.’

‘Palermo?’

‘Dead And all his men. At least I think so. I’m just going to have a look-see.’ Stooping his shoulders to look more nearly eighty than his seventy years, Dr Greenshaw shambled along the shattered corridor, but he could have saved himself the trouble of acting. Gregson had just met Cronkite outside the doorway and the two men were talking in animated and clearly self-congratulatory terms.

After the first few steps Greenshaw realized that there could be nobody left alive in that charnel-house. Those who were dead were very dead indeed, most of them destroyed beyond recognition, either by machine-gun fire, shattered by bazookas or shrivelled by the flame throwers. But he did find the primary reason for his visit there – a box of hand-grenades in prime condition and a couple of Schmeisser sub-automatics, fully loaded. A few of the grenades he stuffed into the bottom of his medical bag. He peered out of one of the shattered windows at the back and found the area below in deep shadow. He carefully lowered some grenades to the platform and laid the two Schmeissers beside them. Then he made his way outside again.

It was apparent that Cronkite and Lord Worth had already met, although the meeting could not have been a normal one. Lord Worth was lying apparently senseless on his back, blood flowing from smashed lips and apparently broken nose, while both cheek were badly bruised. Marina was bending over him dabbing at his wounds with a flimsy handkerchief. Cronkite, his face unmarked but his knuckles bleeding, had apparently for the moment at least, lost interest in Lord Worth, no doubt waiting until Lord Worth had regained full consciousness before starting in on him again.

Lord Worth whispered between smashed lips: ‘Sorry, my darling, sorry, my beloved. My fault and all my fault. The end of the road.’

‘Yes.’ Her voice was as low as his own, but strangely there were no tears in her eyes. ‘But not for us. Not while Michael is alive.’

Lord Worth looked at Michael through rapidly closing eyes. ‘What can a cripple like that do?’

She said with low but utter conviction: ‘He’ll kill Cronkite and all his evil friends.’

He tried to smile but his smashed lips wouldn’t let him. ‘I thought you hated killing.’

‘Not vermin. Not people who do things like this to my dad.’

Mitchell spoke quietly to Dr Greenshaw, then both men approached Cronkite and Gregson, who broke off what appeared to be either a discussion or an argument. Dr Greenshaw said: ‘I’m afraid you’ve done your damn murderous work all too well, Gregson. There’s not a soul in there even recognizable as a human being.’

Cronkite said: ‘Who’s he?’

‘A doctor.’

Cronkite looked at Mitchell, who was looking worse by the minute. ‘And this?’

‘A scientist. Shot by mistake.’

‘He’s in great pain,’ Greenshaw said. ‘I’ve no X-ray equipment but I suspect the arm’s broken just below the shoulder.’

Cronkite was almost jovial, the joviality of a man now almost detached from reality. ‘An hour from now he won’t be feeling a thing.’

Greenshaw said wearily: ‘I don’t know what you mean. I just want to take him to the sickbay and give him a pain-killing injection.’

‘Certainly. I’d like everyone to be fully prepared for what’s about to happen to him.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘Later, later.’

Greenshaw and the unsteady Mitchell moved off. They reached the sickbay, passed inside, went through the opposite side and made their unobserved way to the radio room. Greenshaw stood guard just inside the door while Mitchell, ignoring the bound operator, went straight to the transceiver. He raised the Roamer inside twenty seconds,

‘Captain Conde, please.’

‘Speaking.’

‘Next circuit out to the oil tank get round behind it then head south at full speed. The Seawitch has been taken over but I’m certain there’s nobody here who can operate the anti-aircraft guns. Stop at twenty miles and issue a general warning to all ships and aircraft not to approach within twenty miles of the Seawitch. You have its co-ordinates?’

‘Yes. But why –’

‘Because there’s going to be a mighty big bang. Christ’s sake, don’t argue.’

‘Don’t argue about what?’ a voice behind Mitchell said.

Mitchell turned round slowly. The man behind the pistol was smiling a smile that somehow lacked a genuine warmth. Greenshaw had been pushed to one side and the gun moved in a slow arc covering them both. ‘I’ve a feeling that Gregson would like to see you both.’

Mitchell rose, turned, half-staggered and clutched his left forearm inside the sling Greenshaw said sharply: ‘God’s sake, man, can’t you see he’s ill?’

The man glanced at Greenshaw for a second but a second was all that Mitchell would ever require. The bullet from the silenced .38 took him through the heart. Mitchell peered through the doorway. There was a fair degree of shadow there, no one in sight and the edge of the platform not more than twenty feet away. A few seconds later the dead man vanished over the edge. Mitchell and Greenshaw returned to the main body of the company via the sickbay. Cronkite and Gregson were still deep in discussion. Larsen stood some distance apart, apparently in a state of profound dejection. Greenshaw approached him and said quietly: ‘How do you feel?’

‘How would you feel if you knew they intended to kill us all?’

‘You’ll feel better by and by. Round the back of the building, when you get the chance, you’ll find some hand-grenades which should rest comfortably inside that lumber-jacket of yours. You’ll also find two loaded Schmeissers. I have a few grenades in my medical bag here. And Mitchell has his silenced .38 inside his sling.’

Larsen took care not to show his feelings. He looked as morose as ever. All he said was: ‘Boy, oh boy, oh boy.’

Lord Worth was on his feet now, supported by his daughter. Mitchell joined them. ‘How do you feel, sir?’

Lord Worth spoke or rather mouthed his words with understandable bitterness. ‘I’m in great shape.’

‘You’ll feel better soon.’ He lowered his voice and spoke to Marina. ‘When I give the word, say you want to go to the ladies’ room. But don’t go there. Go to the generator room. You’ll see a red lever there marked ‘Deck Light”. Pull it down. After you count twenty put it on again.’

Cronkite and Gregson appeared to have finished their discussion. From Cronkite’s smile it appeared that his view had prevailed. Lord Worth, Marina, Larsen, Greenshaw and Mitchell stood together, a forlorn and huddled group. Facing them were the serried ranks of Cronkite, Mulhooney, Easton, the bogus Golonel Farquharson, Lieutenant-Colonel Dewings, Major Breckley, Gregson and all his killers, a most formidable group and armed to the teeth.

Cronkite spoke to a man by his side. ‘Check.’

The man lifted a walkie-talkie, spoke into it and nodded. He said to Cronkite: ‘Charges secured in position.’

‘Excellent. Tell them to steam due north for twenty miles and remain there.’ This was done. Unfortunately for Cronkite, his view to the west was blocked by the shattered building behind him and he could not see that the Roamer was already steaming steadily to the south. Even had he had a clear view it would hardly have mattered: Conde had prudently extinguished every light aboard the Roamer.

Cronkite smiled. ‘Well, Lord Worth, it’s the end of the road for both you and the Seawitch. Even a billionaire can step out of his class. I have two nuclear devices attached to the western leg of the Seawitch.’ He dug into a pocket and produced a black pear-shaped metal container. ‘The radioactive detonating device. You will not fail to observe this small switch here. It’s supposed to be good for ninety minutes, but I have already run off forty minutes of it. Fifty more minutes and poof! the Seawitch, you, Lord Worth, and everyone aboard will be vaporized. Nobody will feel a thing, I assure you.’

‘You mean you intend to kill all my innocent employees aboard the rig? Your mind, Cronkite, has totally gone. You are stark raving mad.’

‘Never saner. Can’t have any witnesses left who can identify us. Then we destroy two of the helicopters, immobilize your derrick crane, smash your radio room and take off in the other two helicopters. You may, of course, contemplate jumping into the Gulf, but your chances of survival would be about the same as a suicide jumping off the Golden Gate bridge.’

Mitchell nudged Marina. She said in a faint voice: ‘May I go to the ladies’ room?’

Cronkite was joviality itself. ‘Certainly. But be quick about it.’

Fifteen seconds later the deck lights went out.

It was Mitchell, with his unique capacity to see in the dark, who ran round the corner of the battered building, retrieved the two Schmeissers – he didn’t bother about the grenades – returned and thrust one into Larsen’s hands. Twelve seconds had elapsed but in eight seconds two men with sub-machine-guns can achieve an extraordinary amount of carnage. Larsen was firing blind but Mitchell could see and pick out his targets They were helped, in a most haphazard fashion, by Dr Greenshaw who flung grenades at random inflicting even more damage on the already shattered building but not actually injuring anyone.

The lights came on again.

There were still seven people left alive – Cronkite. Mulhooney, Easton, Gregson and three of his men. To those seven Mitchell said: ‘Lay down your arms.’ Shattered and stunned though the survivors were, they still had enough of their wits to comply at once.

Marina arrived back and was promptly sick in a very unladylike fashion.

Mitchell put down his Schmeisser and advanced on Cronkite. ‘Give me that detonating device.’

Cronkite removed it slowly from his pocket, suddenly turned the switch and lifted his arm preparatory to throwing it over the side. Whatever else, it would have meant the destruction of the Seawitch. Cronkite screamed in agony as the bullet from the silenced .38 shattered his right elbow. Mitchell caught the detonating device even before it could reach the deck.

He said to Larsen: ‘Are there two absolutely secure places with no windows and iron doors which can be securely locked without any possibility of opening them from the inside?’

‘Just two. Safe as the Fort Knox vaults. Along here.’

‘Search them and search them thoroughly. Make sure they haven’t even a penknife.’

Larsen searched. ‘Not even a penknife.’ He led them to a steel-reinforced cell-like structure, and he and Mitchell ushered them inside.

In spite of his agony Cronkite said: ‘You’re not going to leave us in here, for God’s sake!’

‘Just as you were going to leave us.’ Mitchell paused then added soothingly: ‘As you said, you won’t feel a thing.’ He closed the door, double-locked it and put the key in his pocket. He said to Larsen: ‘The other cell?’

‘Along here.’

‘This is madness!’ Lord Worth’s voice was almost a shout. ‘The Seawitch is safe now. Why in God’s name destroy it?’

Mitchell ignored him. He glanced at the timing device on the detonator. ‘Twenty-nine minutes to go. We’d better move.’ He placed the device on the floor of the cell, locked the door and sent the key spinning far out over the Gulf. ‘Get the men out of the Oriental buildings, free the men in the sensory, radar, sonar and radio rooms and make sure that all the helicopter pilots are safe.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Twenty-five minutes.’

Everyone moved with astounding alacrity except for Lord Worth, who just stood around with a stunned look on his face. Larsen said: ‘Is there a need for all this mad rush?’

Mitchell said mildly: ‘How do we know that the settings on that detonator are accurate?’

The mad rush redoubled itself. Thirteen minutes before the deadline the last of the helicopters took off and headed south. The first to land on the Roamer’s helipad held Mitchell, Larsen, Lord Worth and his daughter, in addition to the doctor and several rig men, while the other helicopter still hovered overhead. They were still only about fourteen miles south of the Seawitch, which was as far as the Roamer had succeeded in getting in that time, but Mitchell reckoned the margin of safety more than sufficient. He spoke to Conde who assured him that every vessel and aircraft had been warned to keep as far away as possible from the danger area.

When the Seawitch blew up, dead on schedule, it did so with a spectacular effect that would have satisfied even the most ghoulish. There was even a miniature mushroom cloud such as the public had become accustomed to in the photographs of detonating regular megaton atom bombs. Seventeen seconds later those in the Roamer heard the thunderclap of sound and shortly afterwards a series of miniature but harmless tidal waves rocked, but did not unduly disturb the Roamer. After Mitchell had told Conde to broadcast the news to all aircraft and shipping he turned to find a stony-faced Marina confronting him.

‘Well, you’ve lost Daddy his Seawitch. I do hope you’re satisfied with yourself.’

‘My, my, how bitter we are. Yes, quite a satisfactory job, even if I have to say it myself, for obviously no one else is going to.’

‘Why? Why? Why?’

‘Every man who died there was a murderer, some mass murderers. They might have escaped to countries with no extradition treaties with the States. Even if caught their cases might have dragged on for years. Proof would have been very difficult to obtain. And, of course, parole after a few years. This way, we know they’ll never kill again.’

‘And it was worth it to lose Daddy’s pride and joy?’

‘Listen, stupid. My father-in-law-to-be is –’

‘That he’ll never be.’

‘So okay. That old geezer is almost as big a crook as any of them. He associated with and hired for lethal purposes known and convicted criminals. He broke into two federal armouries and mounted the equipment on the Seawitch. Had the Seawitch survived, federal investigators would have been aboard within the hour. He’d have got at least fifteen to twenty years in prison, and he’d probably have died in prison.’ Her eyes were wide, partly with fear, partly with understanding. ‘But now every last tiny shred of evidence lies vaporized at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. A little in radiation clouds, maybe, but that’s not the point. Nothing can ever be traced against him.’

‘That’s really why you vaporized the Seawitch?’

‘Why should I admit anything to an ex-fiancée?’

‘Mrs Michael Mitchell,’ she mused. ‘I suppose I could go through life with a worse name.’

ALISTAIR MACLEAN

Santorini

Dedication

To Tom and Rena

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Map

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Map

Chapter 1

An overhead broadcaster on the bridge of the frigate Ariadne crackled into life, a bell rang twice and then O’Rourke’s voice came through, calm, modulated, precise and unmistakably Irish. O’Rourke was commonly referred to as the weatherman, which he wasn’t at all.

‘Just picked up an odd-looking customer. Forty miles out, bearing 222.’

Talbot pressed the reply button. ‘The skies above us, Chief, are hotching with odd-looking customers. At least six airlines criss-cross this patch of the Aegean. NATO planes, as you know better than all of us, are all around us. And those pesky fighter-bombers and fighters from the pesky Sixth Fleet bloweth where the wind listeth. Me, I think they’re lost half the time.’

‘Ah! But this is a very odd odd-looking lad.’ O’Rourke’s voice was unruffled as ever, unmoved by the less than flattering reference to the Sixth Fleet, from which he was on temporary loan. ‘No trans-Aegean airline uses the flight path this plane is on. There are no NATO planes in this particular sector on my display screen. And the Americans would have let us know. A very courteous lot, Captain. The Sixth Fleet, I mean.’

‘True, true.’ The Sixth Fleet, Talbot was aware, would have informed him of the presence of any of their aircraft in his vicinity, not from courtesy but because regulations demanded it, a fact of which O’Rourke was as well aware as he was. O’Rourke was a doughty defender of his home fleet. ‘That all you have on this lad?’

‘No. Two things. This plane is on a due southwest to north-east course. I have no record, no information of any plane that could be following this course. Secondly, I’m pretty sure it’s a big plane. We should see in about four minutes – his course is on a direct intersection with ours.’

‘The size is important, Chief? Lots of big planes around.’

‘Not at 43,000 feet, sir, which is what this one is. Only a Concorde does that and we know there are no Concordes about. Military job, I would guess.’

‘Of unknown origin. A bandit? Could be. Keep an eye on him.’ Talbot looked around and caught the eye of his second-in-command, Lieutenant-Commander Van Gelder. Van Gelder was short, very broad, deeply tanned, flaxen-haired and seemed to find life a source of constant amusement. He was smiling now as he approached the captain.

‘Consider it done, sir. The spy-glass and a photo for your family album?’

‘That’s it. Thank you.’ The Ariadne carried an immense and, to the uninitiated, quite bewildering variety of looking and listening instruments that may well have been unmatched by any naval ship afloat. Among those instruments were what Van Gelder had referred to as the spy-glass. This was a combined telescope and camera, invented and built by the French, of the type used by spy satellites in orbit and which was capable, under ideal atmospheric circumstances, of locating and photographing a white plate from an altitude of 250 miles. The focal length of the telescope was almost infinitely adjustable: in this case Van Gelder would probably use a one in a hundred resolution, which would have the optical effect of bringing the intruder – if intruder it was – to an apparent altitude of four hundred feet. In the cloudless July skies of the Cyclades this presented no problem at all.

Van Gelder had just left the bridge when another loudspeaker came to life, the repeated double buzzer identifying it as the radio-room. The helmsman, Leading Seaman Harrison, leaned forward and made the appropriate switch.

‘I have an SOS. I think – repeat think – vessel’s position is just south of Thera. All I have. Very garbled, certainly not a trained operator. Just keeps repeating “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday”.’ Myers, the radio operator on duty, sounded annoyed: every radio operator, the tone of his voice said, should be as expert and efficient as he was. ‘Wait a minute, though.’ There was a pause, then Myers came on again. ‘Sinking, he says. Four times he said he was sinking.’

Talbot said: ‘That all?’

‘That’s all, sir. He’s gone off the air.’

‘Well, just keep listening on the distress frequency, Harrison, 090 or near enough. Can’t be more than ten, twelve miles away.’ He reached for the engine control and turned it up to full power. The Ariadne, in the modern fashion, had dual engine-room and bridge controls. The engine-room had customarily only one rating, a leading stoker, on watch, and this only because custom dictated it, not because necessity demanded it. The lone watchman might, just possibly, be wandering around with an oil-can in hand but more probably was immersed in one of the lurid magazines with which what was called the engine-room library was so liberally stocked. The Ariadne’s chief engineer, Lieutenant McCafferty, rarely ventured near his own domain. A first-class engineer, McCafferty claimed he was allergic to diesel fumes and treated with a knowing disdain the frequently repeated observation that, because of the engine-room’s highly efficient extractor fans, it was virtually impossible for anyone to detect the smell of diesel. He was to be found that afternoon, as he was most afternoons, seated in a deckchair aft and immersed in his favourite form of relaxation, the reading of detective novels heavily laced with romance of the more dubious kind.

The distant sound of the diesels deepened – the Ariadne was capable of a very respectable 35 knots – and the bridge began to vibrate quite noticeably. Talbot reached for a phone and got through to Van Gelder.

‘We’ve picked up a distress signal. Ten, twelve miles away. Let me know when you locate this bandit and I’ll cut the engines.’ The spy-glass, though splendidly gimballed to deal with the worst vagaries of pitching and rolling, was quite incapable of coping with even the mildest vibration which, more often than not, produced a very fuzzy photograph indeed.

Talbot moved out on to the port wing to join the lieutenant who stood there, a tall, thin young man with fair hair, thick pebbled glasses and a permanently lugubrious expression.

‘Well, Jimmy, how do you fancy this? A maybe bandit and a sinking vessel at the same time. Should relieve the tedium of a long hot summer’s afternoon, don’t you think?’

The lieutenant looked at him without enthusiasm. Lieutenant the Lord James Denholm – Talbot called him ‘Jimmy’ for brevity’s sake – seldom waxed enthusiastic about anything.

‘I don’t fancy it at all, Captain.’ Denholm waved a languid hand. ‘Disturbs the even tenor of my ways.’

Talbot smiled. Denholm was surrounded by an almost palpable aura of aristocratic exhaustion that had disturbed and irritated Talbot in the early stage of their acquaintanceship, a feeling that had lasted for no more than half an hour. Denholm was totally unfitted to be a naval officer of any kind and his highly defective eyesight should have led to his automatic disbarment from any navy in the world. But Denholm was aboard the Ariadne not because of his many connections with the highest echelons of society – heir to an earldom, his blood was indisputably the bluest of the blue – but because, without question, he was the right man in the right place. The holder of three scientific degrees – from Oxford, UCLA and MIT, all summa cum laude – in electrical engineering and electronics, Denholm was as close to being an electronics wizard as any man could ever hope to be. Not that Denholm would have claimed to be anything of what he would have said to be the ridiculous kind. Despite his lineage and academic qualifications, Denholm was modest and retiring to a fault. This reticence extended even to the making of protests which was why, despite his feeble objections – he had been under no compulsion to go – he had been dragooned into the Navy in the first place.

He said to Talbot: ‘This bandit, Captain – if it is a bandit – what do you intend to do about it?’

‘I don’t intend to do anything about it.’

‘But if he is a bandit – well, then, he’s spying, isn’t he?’

‘Of course.’

‘Well, then –’

‘What do you expect me to do, Jimmy? Bring him down? Or are you itching to try out this experimental laser gun you have with you?’

‘Heaven forfend.’ Denholm was genuinely horrified. ‘I’ve never fired a gun in anger in my life. Correction. I’ve never even fired a gun.’

‘If I wanted to bring him down a teeny-weeny heat-seeking missile would do the job very effectively. But we don’t do things like that. We’re civilized. Besides, we don’t provoke international incidents. An unwritten law.’

‘Sounds a very funny law to me.’

‘Not at all. When the United States or NATO play war games, as we are doing now, the Soviets track us very closely indeed, whether on land, sea or air. We don’t complain. We can’t. When they’re playing their game we do exactly the same to them. Can, admittedly, have its awkward moments. Not so long ago, when the US Navy were carrying out exercises in the Sea of Japan an American destroyer banged into, and quite severely damaged, a Russian submarine which was monitoring things a little too closely.’

‘And that didn’t cause what you’ve just called an international incident?’

‘Certainly not. Nobody’s fault. Mutual apologies between the two captains and the Russian was towed to a safe port by another Russian warship. Vladivostok, I believe it was.’ Talbot turned his head. ‘Excuse me. That’s the radio-room call-up.’

‘Myers again,’ the speaker said. ‘Delos. Name of the sinking vessel. Very brief message – explosion, on fire, sinking fast.’

‘Keep listening,’ Talbot said. He looked at the helmsman who already had a pair of binoculars to his eyes. ‘You have it, Harrison?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Harrison handed over the binoculars and twitched the wheel to port. ‘Fire off the port bow.’

Talbot picked it up immediately, a thin black column of smoke rising vertically, unwaveringly, into the blue and windless sky. He was just lowering his glasses when the bell rang twice again. It was O’Rourke, the weatherman, or, more officially, the senior long-range radar operator.

‘Lost him, I’m afraid. The bandit, I mean. I was looking at the vectors on either side of him to see if he had any friends and when I came back he was gone.’

‘Any ideas, Chief?’

‘Well …’ O’Rourke sounded doubtful. ‘He could have exploded but I doubt it.’

‘So do I. We’ve had the spy-glass trained on his approach bearing and they’d have picked up an explosion for sure.’

‘Then he must have gone into a steep dive. A very steep dive. God knows why. I’ll find him.’ The speaker clicked off.

Almost at once a telephone rang again. It was Van Gelder.

‘222, sir. Smoke. Plane. Could be the bandit.’

‘Almost certainly is. The weatherman’s just lost it off the long-range radar screen. Probably a waste of time but try to get that photograph anyway.’

He moved out on to the starboard wing and trained his glasses over the starboard quarter. He picked it up immediately, a heavy dark plume of smoke with, he thought, a glow of red at its centre. It was still quite high, at an altitude of four or five thousand feet. He didn’t pause to check how deeply the plane was diving or whether or not it actually was on fire. He moved quickly back into the bridge and picked up a phone.

‘Sub-Lieutenant Cousteau. Quickly.’ A brief pause. ‘Henri? Captain. Emergency. Have the launch and the lifeboat slung outboard. Crews to stand by to lower. Then report to the bridge.’ He rang down to the engine-room for Slow Ahead then said to Harrison: ‘Hard a-port. Steer north.’

Denholm, who had moved out on to the starboard wing, returned, lowering his binoculars.

‘Well, even I can see that plane. Not a plane, rather a huge streamer of smoke. Could that have been the bandit, sir – if it was a bandit?’

‘Must have been.’

Denholm said, tentatively: ‘I don’t care much for his line of approach, sir.’

‘I don’t care much for it myself, Lieutenant, especially if it’s a military plane and even more especially if it’s carrying bombs of any sort. If you look, you’ll see that we’re getting out of its way.’

‘Ah. Evasive action.’ Denholm hesitated, then said doubtfully: ‘Well, as long as he doesn’t alter course.’

‘Dead men don’t alter courses.’

‘That they don’t.’ Van Gelder had just returned to the bridge. ‘And the man or the men behind the controls of that plane are surely dead. No point in my staying there, sir – Gibson’s better with the spy-glass camera than I am and he’s very busy with it. We’ll have plenty of photographs to show you but I doubt whether we’ll be able to learn very much from them.’

‘As bad as that? You weren’t able to establish anything?’

‘Very little, I’m afraid. I did see the outer engine on the port wing. So it’s a four-engined jet. Civil or military, I’ve no idea.’

‘A moment, please.’ Talbot moved out on the port wing, looked aft, saw that the blazing plane – there was no mistaking the flames now – was due astern, at less than half the height and distance than when he had first seen it, returned to the bridge, told Harrison to steer due north, then turned again to Van Gelder.

‘That was all you could establish?’

‘About. Except that the fire is definitely located in the nose cone, which would rule out any engine explosion. It couldn’t have been hit by a missile because we know there are no missile-carrying planes around – even if there were, a heat-seeking missile, the only type that could nail it at that altitude, would have gone for the engines, not the nose cone. It could only have been an up-front internal explosion.’

Talbot nodded, reached for a phone, asked the exchange for the sick bay and was through immediately.

‘Doctor? Would you detail an SBA – with first-aid kit – to stand by the lifeboat.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Sorry, no time to explain. Come on up to the bridge.’ He looked aft through the starboard wing doorway, turned and took the wheel from the helmsman. ‘Take a look, Harrison. A good look.’

Harrison moved out on the starboard wing, had his good look – it took him only a few seconds – returned and took the wheel again.

‘Awful.’ He shook his head. ‘They’re finished, sir, aren’t they?’

‘So I would have thought.’

‘They’re going to miss us by at least a quarter mile. Maybe a half.’ Harrison took another quick look through the doorway. ‘This angle of descent – they should land – rather, hit the sea – a mile, mile and a half ahead. Unless by some fluke they carry on and hit the island. That would be curtains, sir.’

‘It would indeed.’ Talbot looked ahead through the for’ard screens. Thera Island was some four miles distant with Cape Akrotiri lying directly to the north and Mount Elias, the highest point of the island – it was close on 2000 feet – to the north-east. Between them, but about five miles further distant, a tenuous column of bluish smoke, hardly visible against a cloudless sky, hung lazily in the air. This marked the site of Thira Village, the only settlement of any size on the island. ‘But the damage would be limited to the plane. The south-west of the island is barren. I don’t think anyone lives there.’

‘What are we going to do, sir? Stop over the point where it goes down?’

‘Something like that. You can handle it yourself. Or maybe another quarter or half mile further on along the line he was taking. Have to wait and see. Fact is, Harrison, I know no more about it than you do. It may disintegrate on impact or, if it survives that, it may carry on some distance under water. Not for far, I should think – not if its nose has gone. Number One –’ this to Van Gelder ‘– what depths do we have here?’

‘I know the five fathom mark is about half a mile offshore along the south of the island. Beyond that, it shelves pretty steeply. I’ll have to check in the chart-room. At the moment I’d guess we’re in two to three hundred fathoms. A sonar check, sir?’

‘Please.’ Van Gelder left, brushing by Sub-Lieutenant Cousteau as he did. Cousteau, barely in his twenties, was a happy-go-lucky youngster, always eager and willing and a more than competent seaman. Talbot beckoned him out on to the starboard wing.

‘Have you seen it, Henri?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Cousteau’s normal cheerfulness was in marked abeyance. He gazed in unwilling fascination at the blazing, smoking plane, now directly abeam and at an altitude of under a thousand feet. ‘What a damnable, awful thing.’

‘Aye, it’s not nice.’ They had been joined by Surgeon Lieutenant-Commander Andrew Grierson. Grierson was dressed in white shorts and a flowing multi-coloured Hawaiian shirt which he doubtless regarded as the correct dress of the day for the summer Aegean. ‘So this is why you wanted Moss and his first-aid box.’ Moss was the Leading Sick Bay Attendant. ‘I’m thinking maybe I should be going myself.’ Grierson was a West Highland Scot, as was immediately evident from his accent, an accent which he never attempted to conceal for the excellent reason that he saw no earthly reason why he ever should. ‘If there are any survivors, which I consider bloody unlikely, I know something about decompression problems which Moss doesn’t.’

Talbot was conscious of the increased vibration beneath his feet. Harrison had increased speed and was edging a little to the east. Talbot didn’t even give it a second thought: his faith in his senior quartermaster was complete.

‘Sorry, Doctor, but I have more important things for you to do.’ He pointed to the east. ‘Look under the trail of smoke to the plane’s left.’

‘I see it. I should have seen it before. Somebody sinking, for a fiver.’

‘Indeed. Something called the Delos, a private yacht, I should imagine, and, as you say, sinking. Explosion and on fire. Pretty heavily on fire, too, I would think. Burns, injuries.’

‘We live in troubled times,’ Grierson said. Grierson, in fact, lived a singularly carefree and untroubled existence but Talbot thought it was hardly the time to point this out to him.

‘The plane’s silent, sir,’ Cousteau said. ‘The engines have been shut off.’

‘Survivors, you think? I’m afraid not. The explosion may have destroyed the controls in which case, I imagine, the engines shut off automatically.’

‘Disintegrate or dive?’ Grierson said. ‘Daft question. We’ll know all too soon.’

Van Gelder joined them. ‘I make it eighty fathoms here, sir. Sonar says seventy. They’re probably right. Doesn’t matter, it’s shallowing anyway.’

Talbot nodded and said nothing. Nobody said anything, nobody felt like saying anything. The plane, or the source of the dense column of smoke, was now less than a hundred feet above the water. Suddenly, the source of the smoke and flame dipped and then was abruptly extinguished. Even then they failed to catch a glimpse of the plane, it had been immediately engulfed in a fifty-foot-high curtain of water and spray. There was no sound of impact and certainly no disintegration for when the water and the spray cleared away there was only the empty sea and curiously small waves, little more than ripples, radiating outwards from the point of impact.

Talbot touched Cousteau on the arm. ‘Your cue, Henri. How’s the whaler’s radio?’

‘Tested yesterday, sir. Okay.’

‘If you find anything, anybody, let us know. I have a feeling you won’t need that radio. When we stop, lower away then keep circling around. We should be back in half an hour or so.’ Cousteau left and Talbot turned to Van Gelder. ‘When we stop, tell sonar I want the exact depth.’

Five minutes later the whaler was in the water and moving away from the side of the Ariadne, Talbot rang for full power and headed east.

Van Gelder hung up a phone. ‘Thirty fathoms, sonar says. Give or take a fathom.’

‘Thanks. Doctor?’

‘Hundred and eighty feet,’ Grierson said. ‘I don’t even have to rub my chin over that one. The answer is no. Even if anyone could escape from the fuselage – which I think would be impossible in the first place – they’d die soon after surfacing. Diver’s bends. Burst lungs. They wouldn’t know that they’d have to breathe out all the way up. A trained, fit submariner, possibly with breathing apparatus, might do it. There would be no fit, trained submariners aboard that plane. Question’s academic, anyway. I agree with you, Captain. The only men aboard that plane are dead men.’

Talbot nodded and reached for a phone.

‘Myers? Signal to General Carson. Unidentified four-engined plane crashed in sea two miles south of Cape Akrotiri, Thera Island. 1415 hours. Impossible to determine whether military or civilian. First located altitude 43,000 feet. Apparent cause internal explosion. No further details available at present. No NATO planes reported in vicinity. Have you any information? Sylvester. Send Code B.’

‘Wilco, sir. Where do I send it?’

‘Rome. Wherever he is he’ll have it two minutes later.’

Grierson said: ‘Well, yes, if anyone knows he should.’ Carson was the C-in-C Southern European NATO. He lifted his binoculars and looked at the vertical column of smoke, now no more than four miles to the east. ‘A yacht, as you say, and making quite a bonfire. If there’s anyone still aboard, they’re going to be very warm indeed. Are you going alongside, Captain?’

‘Alongside.’ Talbot looked at Denholm. ‘What’s your estimate of the value of the electronic gear we have aboard?’

‘Twenty million. Maybe twenty-five. A lot, anyway.’

‘There’s your answer, Doctor. That thing’s gone bang once already. It can go bang once again. I am not going alongside. You are. In the launch. That’s expendable. The Ariadne’s not.’

‘Well, thank you very much. And what intrepid soul –’

‘I’m sure Number One here will be delighted to ferry you across.’

‘Ah. Number One, have your men wear overalls, gloves and flash-masks. Injuries from burning diesel can be very unpleasant indeed. And you. I go to prepare myself for self-immolation.’

‘And don’t forget your lifebelts.’

Grierson didn’t deign to answer.

They had halved the remaining distance to the burning yacht when Talbot got through to the radio-room again.

‘Message dispatched?’

‘Dispatched and acknowledged.’

‘Anything more from the Delos?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Delos,’ Denholm said. ‘That’s about eighty miles north of here. Alas, the Cyclades will never be the same for me again.’ Denholm sighed. Electronics specialist or not, he regarded himself primarily as a classicist and, indeed, he was totally fluent in reading and writing both Latin and Greek. He was deeply immersed in their ancient cultures as the considerable library in his cabin bore testimony. He was also much given to quotations and he quoted now.

‘The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!

Where burning Sappho loved and sung,

Where grew the arts of war and peace,

Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung,

Eternal summer—’

‘Your point is taken, Lieutenant,’ Talbot said. ‘We’ll cry tomorrow. In the meantime, let us address ourselves to the problem of those poor souls on the fo’c’s’le. I count five of them.’

‘So do I.’ Denholm lowered his glasses. ‘What’s all the frantic waving for? Surely to God they can’t imagine we haven’t seen them?’

‘They’ve seen us all right. Relief, Lieutenant. Expectation of rescue. But there’s more to it than that. A certain urgency in their waving. A primitive form of semaphoring. What they’re saying is “get us the hell out of here and be quick about it”.’

‘Maybe they’re expecting another explosion?’

‘Could be that. Harrison, I want to come to a stop on their starboard beam. At, you understand, a prudent distance.’

‘A hundred yards, sir?’

‘Fine.’

The Delos was – or had been – a rather splendid yacht. A streamlined eighty-footer, it was obvious that it had been, until very, very recently, a dazzling white. Now, because of a combination of smoke and diesel oil, it was mainly black. A rather elaborate superstructure consisted of a bridge, saloon, a dining-room and what may or may not have been a galley. The still dense smoke and flames rising six feet above the poop deck indicated the source of the fire – almost certainly the engine-room. Just aft of the fire a small motorboat was still secured to its davits: it wasn’t difficult to guess that either the explosion or the fire had rendered it inoperable.

Talbot said: ‘Rather odd, don’t you think, Lieutenant?’

‘Odd?’ Denholm said carefully.

‘Yes. You can see that the flames are dying away. One would have thought that would reduce the danger of further explosion.’ Talbot moved out on the port wing. ‘And you will have observed that the water level is almost up to the deck.’

‘I can see she’s sinking.’

‘Indeed. If you were aboard a vessel that was either going to go up or drag you down when it sank, what would your natural reaction be?’

‘To be elsewhere, sir. But I can see that their motorboat has been damaged.’

‘Agreed. But a craft that size would carry alternative life-saving equipment. If not a Carley float, then certainly an inflatable rubber dinghy. And any prudent owner would carry a sufficiency of lifebelts and life-jackets for the passengers and crew. I can even see two lifebelts in front of the bridge. But they haven’t done the obvious thing and abandoned ship. I wonder why.’

‘I’ve no idea, sir. But it is damned odd.’

‘When we’ve rescued those distressed mariners and brought them aboard, you, Jimmy, will have forgotten how to speak Greek.’

‘But I will not have forgotten how to listen in Greek?’

‘Precisely.’

‘Commander Talbot, you have a devious and suspicious mind.’

‘It goes with the job, Jimmy. It goes with the job.’

Harrison brought the Ariadne to a stop off the starboard beam of the Delos at the agreed hundred yards distance. Van Gelder was away at once and was very quickly alongside the fo’c’s’le of the Delos. Two boat-hooks around the guard-rail stanchions held them in position. As the launch and the bows of the sinking yacht were now almost level it took only a few seconds to transfer the six survivors – another had joined the group of five that Talbot had seen – aboard the launch. They were, indeed, a sorry and sadly bedraggled lot, so covered in diesel and smoke that it was quite impossible to discriminate among them on the basis of age, sex or nationality.

Van Gelder said: ‘Any of you here speak English?’

‘We all do.’ The speaker was short and stocky and that was all that could be said of him in the way of description. ‘Some of us just a little. But enough.’ The voice was heavily accented but readily understood. Van Gelder looked at Grierson.

‘Any of you injured, any of you burnt?’ Grierson said. All shook their heads or mumbled a negative. ‘Nothing here for me, Number One. Hot showers, detergents, soap. Not to mention a change of clothing.’

‘Who’s in charge here?’ Van Gelder asked.

‘I am.’ It was the same man.

‘Anybody left aboard?’

‘Three men, I’m afraid. They won’t be coming with us.’

‘You mean they’re dead?’ The man nodded. ‘I’ll check.’

‘No, no!’ His oil-soaked hand gripped Van Gelder’s arm. ‘It is too dangerous, far too dangerous. I forbid it.’

‘You forbid me nothing.’ When Van Gelder wasn’t smiling, which wasn’t often, he could assume a very discouraging expression indeed. The man withdrew his hand. ‘Where are those men?’

‘In the passageway between the engine-room and the stateroom aft. We got them out after the explosion but before the fire began.’

‘Riley.’ This to a Leading Seaman. ‘Come aboard with me. If you think the yacht’s going, give me a call.’ He picked up a torch and was about to board the Delos when a hand holding a pair of goggles reached out and stopped him. Van Gelder smiled. ‘Thank you, Doctor. I hadn’t thought of that.’

Once aboard he made his way aft and descended the after companionway. There was smoke down there but not too much and with the aid of his torch he had no difficulty in locating the three missing men, all huddled shapelessly in a corner. To his right was the engine-room door, slightly buckled from the force of the explosion. Not without some difficulty, he forced the door open and at once began coughing as the foulsmelling smoke caught his throat and eyes. He pulled on the goggles but still there was nothing to see except for the red embers of a dying fire emanating from some unknown source. He pulled the door to behind him – he was reasonably certain there was nothing for him to see in the engine-room anyway – and stooped to examine the three dead men. They were far from being a pretty sight but he forced himself to carry out as thorough an investigation as he could. He spent some quite considerable time bent over the third man – in the circumstances thirty seconds was a long time – and when he straightened he looked both puzzled and thoughtful.

The door to the after stateroom opened easily. There was some smoke there but not so much that he required to use his goggles. The cabin was luxuriously furnished and immaculately tidy, a condition which Van Gelder very rapidly altered. He pulled a sheet from one of the beds, spread it on the floor, opened up wardrobes and drawers, scooped up armfuls of clothes – there was no time to make any kind of selection and even if there had been he would have been unable to pick and choose, they were all women’s clothing – dumped them on the sheet, tied up the four corners, lugged the bundle up the companionway and handed it over to Riley.

‘Put this in the launch. I’m going to have a quick look at the for’ard cabins. I think the steps will be at the for’ard end of the saloon under the bridge.’

‘I think you should hurry, sir.’

Van Gelder didn’t answer. He didn’t have to be told why he should hurry – the sea was already beginning to trickle over on to the upper deck. He passed into the saloon, found the companionway at once and descended to a central passage.

He switched on his torch – there was, of course, no electrical power left. There were doors on both sides and one at the end. The first door to port opened up into a food store, the corresponding door to starboard was locked. Van Gelder didn’t bother with it: the Delos didn’t look like the kind of craft that would lack a commodious liquor store. Behind the other doors lay four cabins and two bathrooms. All were empty. As he had done before, Van Gelder spread out a sheet – in the passageway, this time – threw some more armfuls of clothes on to it, secured the corners and hurried up on deck.

The launch was no more than thirty yards away when the Delos, still on even keel, slid gently under the surface of the sea. There was nothing dramatic to mark its going – just a stream of air bubbles that became gradually smaller and ceased altogether after about twenty seconds.

Talbot was on deck when the launch brought back the six survivors. He looked in concern at the woebegone and bedraggled figures before him.

‘My goodness, what a state you people are in. This the lot, Number One?’

‘Those that survived, sir. Three died. Impossible to get their bodies out in time.’ He indicated the figure nearest him. ‘This is the owner.’

‘Andropulos,’ the man said. ‘Spyros Andropulos. You are the officer in charge?’

‘Commander Talbot. My commiserations, Mr Andropulos.’

‘And my thanks, Commander. We are very deeply grateful –’

‘With respect, sir, that can wait. First things first, and the very first thing is to get yourselves cleaned up immediately. Ah. And changed. A problem. Clothes. We’ll find some.’

‘Clothing we have,’ Van Gelder said. He pointed at the two sheet-wrapped packages. ‘Ladies. Gentlemen.’

‘A mention in dispatches for that, Number One. You said “ladies”?’

‘Two, Commander,’ Andropulos said. He looked at the two people standing by him. ‘My niece and her friend.’

‘Ah. Well, should apologize, I suppose, but difficult to tell in the circumstances.’

‘My name is Charial.’ The voice was unmistakably feminine. ‘Irene Charial. This is my friend Eugenia.’

‘We could have met under happier circumstances. Lieutenant Denholm here will take you to my cabin. The bathroom is small but adequate. By the time you bring them back, Lieutenant, I trust they are recognizable for what they are.’ He turned to a burly, dark-haired figure who, like most of the crew, wore no insignia of rank. ‘Chief Petty Officer McKenzie.’ McKenzie was the senior NCO on the Ariadne. ‘The four gentlemen here, Chief. You know what to do.’

‘Right away, sir. If you will come with me, gentlemen.’

Grierson also left and Van Gelder and Talbot were left alone. ‘We can find this place again?’ Van Gelder asked.

‘No trouble.’ Talbot looked at him speculatively and pointed towards the north-west. ‘I’ve taken a bearing on the monastery and radar station on Mount Elias there. Sonar says that we’re in eighteen fathoms. Just to make sure, we’ll drop a marker buoy.’

General Carson laid down the slip of paper he had been studying and looked at the colonel seated across the table from him.

‘What do you make of this, Charles?’

‘Could be nothing. Could be important. Sorry, that doesn’t help. I have a feeling I don’t like it. It would help a bit if we had a sailor around.’

Carson smiled and pressed a button. ‘Do you know if Vice-Admiral Hawkins is in the building?’

‘He is, sir.’ A girl’s voice. ‘Do you wish to speak to him or see him?’

‘See him, Jean. Ask him if he would be kind enough to stop by.’

Vice-Admiral Hawkins was very young for one of his rank. He was short, a little overweight, more than a little rubicund as to his features and exuded an aura of cheerful bonhomie. He didn’t look very bright, which he was. He was widely regarded as having one of the most brilliant minds in the Royal Navy. He took the seat to which Carson had gestured him and glanced at the message slip.

‘I see, I see.’ He laid the message down. ‘But you didn’t ask me here to comment on a perfectly straightforward signal. The Sylvester is one of the code names for the frigate HMS Ariadne. One of the vessels under your command, sir.’

‘Don’t rub it in, David. I know it, of course – more accurately I know of it. Don’t forget I’m just a simple landlubber. Odd name, isn’t it? Royal Naval ship with a Greek name.’

‘Courtesy gesture to the Greeks, sir. We’re carrying out a joint hydrographic survey with them.’

‘Is that so?’ General Carson ran a hand through his grizzled hair. ‘I was not aware that I was in the hydrographic business, David.’

‘You’re not, sir, although I have no doubt it could carry out such a survey if it were called for. The Ariadne has a radio system that can transmit to, and receive transmissions from, any quarter of the globe. It has telescopes and optical instruments that can pick out the salient features of, say, any passing satellite, even those in geosynchronous orbit – and that’s 22,000 miles up. It carries long-range and surface radar that is as advanced as any in the world. And it has a sonar location and detection system that can pick up a sunken object at the bottom of the ocean just as easily as it can pinpoint a lurking submarine. The Ariadne, sir, is the eyes and the ears and the voice of your fleet.’

‘That’s nice to know, I must say. Very reassuring. The ability of the commanding officer of the Ariadne is – ah – commensurate with this extraordinary array of devices he controls?’

‘Indeed, sir. For an exceptionally complex task an exceptionally qualified man. Commander Talbot is an outstanding officer. Hand-picked for the job.’

‘Who picked him?’

‘I did.’

‘I see. That terminates this line of conversation very abruptly.’ Carson pondered briefly. ‘I think, Colonel, that we should ask General Simpson about this one.’ Simpson, the over-all commander of NATO, was the only man who outranked Carson in Europe.

‘Don’t see what else we can do, sir.’

‘You would agree, David?’

‘No, General. I think you’d be wasting your time. If you don’t know anything about this, then I’m damned sure General Simpson doesn’t know anything either. This is not an educated guess, call it a completely uneducated guess, but I have an odd feeling that this is one of your planes, sir – an American plane. A bomber, almost certainly, perhaps not yet off the secret lists – it was, after all, flying at an uncommon height.’

‘The Ariadne could have been in error.’

‘The Ariadne does not make mistakes. My job and my life on it.’ The flat, unemotional voice carried complete conviction. ‘Commander Talbot is not the only uniquely qualified man aboard. There are at least thirty others in the same category. We have, for example, an electronics officer so unbelievably advanced in his speciality that none of your much-vaunted high-technology whizzkids in Silicon Valley would even begin to know what he’s talking about.’

Carson raised a hand. ‘Point taken, David, point taken. So an American bomber. A very special bomber because it must be carrying a very special cargo. What would you guess that to be?’

Hawkins smiled faintly. ‘I am not yet in the ESP business, sir. People or goods. Very secret, very important goods or very secret and very important people. There’s only one source that can give you the answer and it might be pointed out that their refusal to divulge this information might put the whole future of NATO at risk and that the individual ultimately responsible for the negative decision would be answerable directly to the president of the United States. One does not imagine that the individual concerned would remain in a position of responsibility for very much longer.’

Carson sighed. ‘If I may speak in a spirit of complaint, David, I might point out that it’s easy for you to talk and even easier to talk tough. You’re a British officer. I’m an American.’

‘I appreciate that, sir.’

Carson looked at the colonel, who remained silent for a couple of moments, then nodded, slowly, twice. Carson reached for the button on his desk.

‘Jean?’

‘Sir?’

‘Get me the Pentagon. Immediately.’

Chapter 2

‘You are unhappy, Vincent?’ Vincent was Van Gelder’s first name. There were three of them seated in the wardroom, Talbot, Van Gelder and Grierson.

‘Puzzled, you might say, sir. I don’t understand why Andropulos and the others didn’t abandon ship earlier. I saw two inflatable dinghies aboard. Rolled up, admittedly, but those things can be opened and inflated from their gas cylinders in seconds. There were also lifebelts and life-jackets. There was no need for this the-boy-stood-on-the-burning-deck act. They could have left at any time. I’m not saying they’d have been sucked down with the yacht but they might have had a rather uncomfortable time.’

‘Same thought had occurred to me. Mentioned it to Andrew here. Odd. Maybe Andropulos had a reason. Anything else?’

‘The owner tried to stop me from boarding the yacht. Maybe he was concerned with my health. I have the feeling he wasn’t. Then I would much like to know what caused that explosion in the engine-room. A luxurious yacht like that must have carried an engineer – we can find that out easily enough – and it’s a fair guess that the engines would have been maintained in an immaculate condition. I don’t see how they could have caused an explosion. We’ll have to ask McCafferty about that one.’

‘That, of course, is why you were so anxious that we pinpoint the spot where the Delos went down. You think an expert on the effects of explosives could identify and locate the cause of the explosion? I’m sure he could, especially if he were an expert at determining the causes of aircraft lost through explosions – those people are much better at that sort of thing than the Navy is. Explosives experts we have aboard but no experts on the effects of explosives. Even if we did, we have no divers aboard – well, you and myself apart – trained to work at levels below a hundred feet. We could borrow one easily enough from a lifting vessel or salvage tug but the chances are high that he’d know nothing about explosives. But there’s really no problem. It would be a simple matter for any lifting vessel to raise an aircraft fuselage to the surface.’ Talbot regarded Van Gelder thoughtfully. ‘But there’s something else worrying you, isn’t there?’

‘Yes, sir. The three dead men aboard the Delos – well, to be specific, just one of them. That’s why I asked the doctor here to come along. The three of them were so smoke begrimed and blackened that it was difficult to tell what they were wearing but two of them appeared to be dressed in white while the third was in a navy blue overall. An engineer wouldn’t wear whites. Well, I admit our engineer Lieutenant McCafferty is a dazzling exception; but he’s a one-off case, he never goes near his engines anyway. In any event I assumed the man in the overalls was the engineer and he was the one who caught my attention. He had a vicious gash on the back of his head as if he had been blown backwards against a very hard, very sharp object.’

Grierson said: ‘Or been struck by a very hard, sharp object?’

‘Either way, I suppose. I wouldn’t know. I’m afraid I’m a bit weak on the forensic side.’

‘Had his occiput been crushed?’

‘Back of his head? No. At least I’m reasonably certain it hadn’t been. I mean, it would have given, wouldn’t it, or been squashy. It wasn’t like that.’

‘A blow like that should have caused massive bruising. Did you see any?’

‘Difficult to say. He had fairly thick hair. But it was fair. No, I don’t think there was any.’

‘Had it bled a lot?’

‘He hadn’t bled at all. I’m quite sure of that.’

‘You didn’t notice any holes in his clothing?’

‘Not that I could see. He hadn’t been shot, if that is what you’re asking and that is what I think you are asking. Who would want to shoot a dead man? His neck was broken.’

‘Indeed?’ Grierson seemed unsurprised. ‘Poor man was through the wars, wasn’t he?’

Talbot said: ‘What do you think, Andrew?’

‘I don’t know what to think. The inflicting of the wound on the head and the snapping of the vertebra could well have been simultaneous. If the two weren’t simultaneous, then it could equally well have been – as Vincent clearly seems to think – a case of murder.’

‘Would an examination of the corpse help at all?’

‘It might. I very much doubt it. But an examination of engine-room bulkheads would.’

‘To see if there were any sharp edges or protrusions that could have caused such a head wound?’ Grierson nodded. ‘Well, when – and if – we ever raise that hull, we should be able to kill two birds with one stone: to determine the causes of both the explosions and this man’s death.’

‘Maybe three birds,’ Van Gelder said. ‘It would be interesting to know the number and layout of the fuel tanks in the engine-room. There are, I believe, two common layouts – in one case there is just one main fuel tank, athwartships and attached to the for’ard bulkhead, with a generator or generators on one side of the engine and batteries on the other, plus a water-tank to port and another to starboard: or there could be a fuel tank on either side with the water-tank up front. In that case the two fuel tanks are interconnected to keep the fuel levels equal and maintain equilibrium.’

‘A suspicious mind, Number One,’ Talbot said. ‘Very suspicious. What you would like to find, of course, is just one fuel tank because you think Andropulos is going to claim that he didn’t abandon ship because he thought another fuel tank was about to go and he didn’t want his precious passengers splashing about in a sea of blazing fuel oil which would, of course, also have destroyed the rubber dinghies.’

‘I’m grieved, sir. I thought I’d thought of that first.’

‘You did, in fact. When the passengers are cleaned up see if you can get this young lady, Irene Charial, alone and find out if she knows anything about the layout of the engine-room. The casual approach, Vincent, the innocent and cherubic expression, although I doubt the last is beyond you. Anyway it’s possible she’s never been there and may possibly know nothing about it.’

‘It’s equally possible, sir, that she knows all about it and may well choose to tell me something. Miss Charial is Andropulos’s niece.’

‘The thought had occurred. However, if Andropulos is not all he might be, then the chances are high that there is some other member of his ship’s company in his confidence and I would have thought that would be a man. I don’t say that that’s because you know what the Greeks are like because I don’t know what the Greeks are like. And we mustn’t forget that Andropulos may be as innocent as the driven snow and that there is a perfectly rational explanation for all that has happened. Anyway, it would do no harm to try and you never can tell, Vincent – she might turn out to be a classic Greek beauty.’

From the fact that the whaler was lying stopped in the water and that Cousteau, his hand resting idly on the tiller, appeared to be expressing no great degree of interest in anything, it was obvious that his wait had been a vain one, a fact he confirmed on his arrival on the bridge.

Talbot called the sonar room. ‘You have pinpointed the location of the plane?’

‘Yes, sir. We’re sitting exactly above it. Depth registered is eighteen fathoms. That’s the echo from the top of the fuselage. Probably lying in about twenty fathoms. It’s lying in the same direction as it was flying when it came down – northeast to south-west. Picking up some rather odd noises down here, sir. Would you care to come down?’

‘Yes, I will.’ For reasons best known to himself Halzman, the senior sonar operator, preferred not to discuss it over an open line. ‘A minute or two.’ He turned to Van Gelder. ‘Have McKenzie put down a marker buoy, about midships. Tell him to lower the weight gently. I don’t want to bump too hard against the plane’s fuselage in case we do actually come into contact with it. When that’s been done, I want to anchor. Two anchors. A stern anchor to the north-west, about a hundred yards distant from the buoy, then a bow anchor a similar distance to the south-east.’

‘Yes, sir. May I suggest the other way around?’

‘Of course, you’re right. I’d forgotten about our old friend. Taking a holiday today, isn’t it? The other way around, of course.’ The ‘old friend’ to which he referred and which Van Gelder clearly had in mind, was the Meltemi wind, referred to as the ‘Etesian’ in the British sailing directions. In the Cyclades, in the summer months – and indeed in most of the Aegean – it blew steadily, but usually only in the afternoon and early evening, from the north-west. If it did start up, the Ariadne would ride more comfortably if it were bows on to it.

Talbot went to the sonar room which was only one deck down and slightly aft. The sonar room was heavily insulated against all outside noise and dimly lit by subdued yellow lighting. There were three display screens, two sets of control panels and, over and above all, a considerable number of heavily padded earphones. Halzman caught sight of him in an overhead mirror – there were a number of such mirrors around, speaking as well as any other kind of sound was kept to a minimum in the sonar room – removed his earphones and gestured to the seat beside him.

‘Those earphones, sir. I thought you might be interested in listening for a minute.’

Talbot sat and clamped the earphones on. After about fifteen seconds he removed them and turned to Halzman, who had also removed his.

‘I can’t hear a damned thing.’

‘With respect, sir, when I said a minute, I meant just that. A minute. First of all you have to listen until you hear the silence, then you’ll hear it.’

‘Whatever that means, I’ll try it.’ Talbot listened again, and just before the allotted minute was up, he leaned forward and creased his brow. After another thirty seconds he removed the head-set.

‘A ticking sound. Strange, Halzman, you were right. First you hear the silence and then you hear it. Tick … tick … tick, once every two to three seconds. Very regular. Very faint. You’re certain that comes from the plane?’

‘I have no doubt, sir.’

‘Have you ever heard anything like it before?’

‘No, sir. I’ve spent hundreds of hours, more likely thousands, listening to sonar, asdics, hydrophones, but this is something quite new on me.’

‘I’ve got pretty good hearing but I had to wait almost a moment before I could imagine I could hear anything. It’s very, very faint, isn’t it?’

‘It is. I had to turn the hearing capacity up to maximum before I stumbled on it – not a practice I would normally follow or recommend – in the wrong circumstances you can get your eardrums blasted off. Why is it so faint? Well, the source of the sound may be very faint to begin with. I’ve been thinking about this, sir – well, I’ve had nothing else to think about. It’s either a mechanical or electrical device. In either case it has to be inside a sealed or waterproof casing. A mechanical device could, of course, operate in water even if it was totally submerged, but operating in water would dampen out the sound almost completely. An electrical device would have to be totally sealed against sea-water. The plane’s own electrical system, of course, has ceased to function, so it would have to have its own supply system, almost certainly battery-powered. In either event, mechanical or electrical, the sound impulses would have to pass through the waterproof casing, after which they must pass through the fuselage of the plane.’

‘Have you any idea as to what it might be?’

‘None whatsoever. It’s a two and a half second sequence – I’ve timed it. I know of no watch or clock movement that follows that sequence. Do you, sir?’

‘No, I don’t. You think it could be some sort of timing device?’

‘I thought about that too, sir, but I put it out of my mind.’ Halzman smiled. ‘Maybe I’m prejudiced against that idea because of all those cheap and awful video film cassettes we have aboard, with all their special effects and pseudo science. All I know for sure, sir, is that we have a mysterious plane lying on the sea-bed there. Lord only knows what mysterious kind of cargo it was carrying.’

‘Agreed. I think we’d better leave it at that for the moment. Have one of your boys monitor it, once, say, in every fifteen minutes.’

When Talbot returned to the bridge he could see the marker buoy just astern, bobbing gently in the very small wake Van Gelder was creating as he edged the Ariadne gently to the north-west. Very soon he stopped, juggled the engines to and fro until he reckoned the bows were a hundred yards distant from the buoy, had the anchor dropped, then moved just as slowly astern, the anchor chain being paid out as he went. Soon the stern anchor had been paid out and the Ariadne was back to where she had started, the buoy nudging the midships port side.

‘Neatly done,’ Talbot said. ‘Tell me, Number One, how are you on puzzles?’

‘Useless. Even the simplest crossword baffles me.’

‘No matter. We’re picking up a strange noise on the sonar. Maybe you’d like to take a turn along there, perhaps even identify it. Baffles me.’

‘Consider it done. Back in two or three minutes.’

Twenty minutes elapsed before he returned to the bridge where Talbot was now alone: as the ship was no longer under way, Harrison had retired to his Mess.

‘That was a long couple of minutes, Vincent, and what are you looking so pleased about?’

‘I really don’t know how you do it, sir. Incredible. I don’t suppose you have any Scottish blood?’

‘Not a drop, as far as I’m aware. Am I supposed to be following you, Number One?’

‘I thought maybe the second sight. You were right. A classic Greek beauty. Irene. Miss Charial, that is. Odd, mind you, blonde as they come. I thought all those warm-blooded young Latin ladies had hair as black as a raven’s wing.’

‘It’s the sheltered life you lead, Vincent. You should go to Andalucia some day. Seville. On one street corner a dusky Moorish maiden, the next a Nordic blonde. We’ll discuss pigmentation some other time. What did you learn?’

‘Enough, I hope. It’s an art, sir, this casual and inconsequential approach. The questioning, I mean. She seems honest and open enough, not ingenuous, if you know what I mean, but quite straightforward. Certainly didn’t give the impression of having anything to hide. Says she doesn’t know the engine-room well but has been there a couple of times. We came to the question of fuel oil – I was just wondering out loud, natural curiosity, I hope she thought – as to what could have caused the explosion. Seems I was wrong when I said there were just two common ways of arranging fuel and water tanks. Seems there’s a third. Two big tanks on either side of the engine, one fuel, one water. How big, I don’t know, she was a bit vague about that – no reason why she should know – but at least thousands of litres, she says. If there was a spare fuel tank she didn’t know about it. I look forward, sir, to hearing Mr Andropulos justifying his decision not to abandon ship.’

‘So do I. Should be interesting. Anyway, congratulations. A good job.’

‘No hardship, sir.’ Van Gelder scanned the sea around. ‘Odd, don’t you think, sir? I mean, are we the only ones who heard the SOS? I would have thought the horizon would have been black with converging vessels by this time.’

‘Not so strange, really. Nearly all the vessels around at this time of year are private yachts and fishermen. Lots of them don’t carry any radio at all and even those who do almost certainly wouldn’t be permanently tuned to the distress frequency.’

‘But we are.’

‘This time I’m ahead of you. The Delos – or at least Andropulos – knew that we would be permanently tuned to the distress frequency, that we are automatically alerted by bell or buzzer whenever the distress frequency is energized. This presupposes two things. He knew we were a naval vessel and he also knew that we were in the vicinity.’

‘You realize what you are saying, sir? Sorry, I didn’t mean it to sound that way. But the implications, sir. I must say I really don’t like those at all.’

‘Neither do I. Opens up all sorts of avenues of interesting speculation, doesn’t it?’ He turned as McKenzie came on to the bridge: ‘And how are our oil-stained survivors, Chief?’

‘Clean, sir. And in dry clothes. I don’t think any of them will make the list of the ten best-dressed men.’ He looked at Van Gelder. ‘I gather you didn’t have too much time, sir, for the selection and careful matching up of clothes. They’re a bit of an odd sight, I must say, but respectable enough. I knew you would want to see them, Captain – Mr Andropulos seems very anxious to see you – and I know you don’t like unauthorized people on the bridge so I took the liberty of putting the four gentlemen and the two young ladies in the wardroom. I hope that’s all right, sir.’

‘Fine. You might ask the Surgeon Commander and Lieutenant Denholm to join us there. And send a couple of your boys up here to keep a lookout. Who knows, our radar might have a day off.’

The six survivors from the Delos were standing around rather awkwardly, not talking, when Talbot and Van Gelder reached the wardroom. The four men, as McKenzie had suggested, did present rather an odd spectacle. They looked rather as if they had just raided an old clothes shop, few of the items of their clothing being a match, and for the most part, fitting only where they touched. In striking contrast, both girls were immaculately clad: dressed in white blouses and white skirts, they could have stepped straight from the pages of Vogue.

‘Please,’ Talbot said. ‘All of you be seated. Before we talk, I suggest we get our priorities right. First things first. You’ve had a harrowing experience and a lucky escape. I suggest you will not take amiss the suggestion of a suitable restorative.’ He pressed a bell and a steward entered. ‘Jenkins. Refreshments. Find out what they would like.’ Jenkins did so and left.

‘I’m the captain,’ Talbot said. ‘Talbot. This is Lieutenant-Commander Ven Gelder. Ah!’ The door had opened. ‘And this is Surgeon-Commander Grierson, whom you have met and whose services you fortunately didn’t require, and Lieutenant Denholm.’ He looked at the short stocky man seated before him. ‘I take it that you, sir, are Mr Andropulos, the owner.’

‘I am, Commander, I am.’ Andropulos had black hair, black eyes, white teeth and a deeply tanned complexion. He looked as if he hadn’t shaved that morning but then, he would always look as if he hadn’t shaved that morning. He leapt to his feet, took Talbot’s hand, and shook it vigorously. He positively radiated a combined aura of benevolence and bonhomie. ‘Words cannot express our gratitude. A close-run thing, Commander, a very close-run thing. We owe you our lives.’

‘I wouldn’t go as far as to say that but I’ll admit you were in a rather nasty pickle.’

‘Pickle? Pickle?’

‘Dangerous circumstances. I deeply regret both your loss of the members of your crew and your yacht.’

‘The yacht is nothing. I can always buy another. Well, Lloyd’s of London can buy it for me. Still sadder to lose an old friend like the Delos but sadder still, much sadder, to lose the three members of my crew. Been with me for many years. I treasured them all.’

‘Who were they, sir?’

‘My engineer, chef and steward. With me for many years.’ Andropulos shook his head. ‘They will be sadly missed.’

‘Wasn’t it odd for a chef and steward to be in the engine-room?’

Andropulos smiled sadly. ‘Not aboard the Delos, Commander. It was not exactly run along the lines of a ship of the Royal Navy. They were in the habit of having an after-lunch drink there with the engineer. They had my permission, of course, but they preferred to be discreet about it – and what more discreet place than the engine-room? Alas, their discretion cost them their lives.’

‘That is ironic. May I be introduced to the others?’

‘Of course, of course. This is my very dear friend Alexander.’ Alexander was a tall man with a thin, unsmiling face and black, cold eyes who didn’t look as if he could possibly be anybody’s very dear friend. ‘This is Aristotle, my captain.’ Andropulos didn’t say whether Aristotle was the first or last name: he had watchful eyes and a serious expression but looked as if he might, unlike Alexander, be capable of smiling occasionally. ‘And this is Achmed.’ He didn’t say what occupation Achmed held. He was young, pleasant-faced and smiled readily. Talbot couldn’t even begin to guess at his nationality except that he wasn’t Greek.

‘But I forget myself. Deplorable, deplorable. I forget myself. Such manners. Should have been ladies first, of course. This is my niece, Irene.’ Van Gelder hadn’t made any mistakes about her, Talbot thought, except that he’d missed out on the wide green eyes and a rather bewitching smile. ‘And this is Eugenia.’ This one, Talbot reflected, was much closer to Van Gelder’s concept of a warm-blooded young Latin lady. She had a slightly dusky skin, black hair and warm brown eyes. And she also, no doubt, was quite beautiful. It seemed to Talbot that Van Gelder was going to find himself in something of a quandary.

‘I congratulate you, Mr Andropulos,’ Talbot said gallantly, ‘and ourselves. Certainly the loveliest passengers we’ve ever had aboard the Ariadne. Ah. The steward.’

Andropulos took his glass – a scotch and not a small one, and disposed of half the contents in one gulp.

‘My goodness, I needed that. Thank you, Commander, thank you. Not as young as I was nor as tough, either. Age cometh to us all.’ He quaffed the rest of his drink and sighed.

Talbot said: ‘Jenkins, another for Mr Andropulos. A slightly larger measure this time.’ Jenkins looked at him expressionlessly, closed his eyes momentarily and left.

‘The Ariadne,’ Andropulos said. ‘Rather odd, is it not. Greek name, British vessel.’

‘Courtesy gesture to your Government, sir. We are carrying out a hydrographic charting exercise with your people.’ Talbot saw no point in mentioning that the Ariadne had never carried out a hydrographic exercise in its life and that the ship had been called Ariadne to remind the Greeks that it was a multi-national vessel and to persuade a wavering Greek government that perhaps NATO wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

‘Hydrographic, you say. Is that why we’re moored fore and aft – a fixed platform for taking bearings.’

‘A fixed platform, yes, but in this instance the purpose is not hydrographic. We’ve had quite a busy afternoon, Mr Andropulos, and at the moment we’re anchored over a plane that crashed into the sea just about the time we were receiving your SOS.’

‘A plane? Crashed? Good God! What – what kind of plane?’

‘We have no idea. It was so wreathed in smoke that it was impossible to distinguish any important features.’

‘But surely – well, don’t you think it was a big plane?’

‘It may have been.’

‘But it could have been a big jet. Maybe hundreds of passengers.’ If Andropulos knew it wasn’t a jet carrying hundreds of passengers, his face wasn’t saying so.

‘It’s always possible.’ Talbot saw no point in telling Andropulos that it was almost certainly a bomber and equally certainly not carrying hundreds of passengers.

‘You – you mean to tell me that you left the area to come to our aid?’

‘A reasonable enough decision, I think. We were pretty certain that there were people alive aboard the Delos and we were also pretty certain that there was no one alive aboard that plane.’

‘There could have been survivors aboard that plane. I mean, you weren’t there to see.’

‘Mr Andropulos.’ Talbot allowed a certain coldness to creep into his voice. ‘We are, I hope, neither callous nor stupid. Before leaving, we lowered one of our motorboats to circle the area. There were no survivors.’

‘Oh dear,’ Irene Charial said, ‘Isn’t it awful? All those people dead and there we were, busy doing nothing except feeling sorry for ourselves. I’m not being inquisitive, Captain, and I know it’s none of my business, but why do you remain anchored here? I mean, there can’t possibly be any hope now that some survivors may surface.’

‘There is no hope, Miss Charial. We’re remaining here as a marker until the diving ship arrives.’ He didn’t like lying to her but thought it inadvisable to tell her that there was no rescue ship hurrying to the scene and that, as far as he knew, the only other people who knew of the disaster were the NATO HQ in Italy. More especially, he didn’t want any person or persons in her company to know.

‘But – but it will be too late to save anyone.’

‘It’s already too late, young lady. But they’ll send divers down to investigate, to find out whether it’s a passenger-carrying jet or not and to try to ascertain the cause of the accident.’ He was looking, without seeming to look, at Andropulos as he said the last words and felt almost certain that he saw a flicker of expression cross his face.

Andropulos’s captain, Aristotle, spoke for the first time. ‘How deep is this plane, Commander?’

‘Seventeen, eighteen fathoms. Just over thirty metres or so.’

‘Thirty metres,’ Andropulos said. ‘Even if they do get inside – and there’s no guarantee that they will be able to do so – won’t it be difficult to move around and see anything?’

‘I can guarantee they’ll get inside. There are such things as oxyacetylene torches, you know. And they’ll have powerful underwater torches. But they won’t bother with either of those things. The divers will carry down a couple of slings with them. A diving ship will have no difficulty at all in bringing the fuselage to the surface. Then they’ll be able to examine the plane at their leisure.’ This time there was no trace of expression in Andropulos’s face: Talbot wondered if he, Andropulos, had become aware that such changes in expression were being sought for.

Jenkins entered and handed Talbot a sealed envelope. ‘From the radio-room, sir. Myers said it was urgent.’

Talbot nodded, opened the envelope, extracted and read the slip of paper it had held. He slipped it in his pocket and stood.

‘My apologies, ladies and gentlemen. I have to go to the bridge. Come along with me, Number One. I’ll join you at seven o’clock for dinner.’

Once outside, Van Gelder said: ‘You really are a fearful liar, sir. A fearfully good liar, I mean.’

‘Andropulos isn’t half bad, either.’

‘He’s had practice. Between the two of you – well, in his own phrase, it’s a close-run thing. Ah, thank you.’ He unfolded the slip of paper Talbot had handed him. ‘“Vitally urgent you remain in closest contact with downed plane Stop will join you earliest in the morning Stop Hawkins”. Isn’t that the Vice-Admiral, sir?’

‘None other. Vitally urgent and flying down to see us. What do you make of that?’

‘I make it that he knows something that we don’t.’

‘Indeed. Incidentally, you’ve kind of forgotten to tell me about your visit to sonar.’

‘Sorry about that, sir. I had something else on my mind.’

‘Somebody, not something. Having seen her I can understand. Well?’

‘The noise from the plane? Tick … tick … tick. Could be anything. Halzman half suggested it might be some sort of timing device. Could be that he’s right. I don’t want to sound alarmist, sir, but I don’t think I like it very much.’

‘I don’t particularly care for it myself. Well, then, the radio-room.’

‘I thought you said you were going to the bridge?’

‘That was for Andropulos’s benefit. The less that character knows about anything the better. I think he’s cunning, astute and alert for the slightest nuances.’

‘Is that why you didn’t make any reference to the engine-room explosion?’

‘Yes. I may, of course, be doing him a massive injustice. For all I know he may be as fresh and innocent as the dawn’s early dew.’

‘You don’t really believe that, sir.’

‘No.’

Myers was alone in the radio-room. ‘Another message to Rome,’ Talbot said. ‘Again Code B. To Vice-Admiral Hawkins. Message received. Strongly advise that you come soonest. Tonight. Report repeated two and a half second ticking sounds from plane. Could be timing device. Please phone immediately.’

‘A ticking sound, possibly a timing device, Talbot says.’ Vice-Admiral Hawkins was standing by Carson’s chair as the general read and reread the slip of paper Hawkins had just handed him.

‘A timing device. We don’t have to discuss the implications of this.’ From his high-rise office Carson looked out over the roofs of Rome, then at the colonel across the desk, then finally up at Hawkins. He pressed a button on his desk.

‘Get me the Pentagon.’

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was also standing as the man behind the desk read the slip of paper he had just been handed. He read it three times, laid it down carefully on the desk, smoothed it out and looked across at the Chairman. His face looked drawn and tired and old.

‘We know what this means, or what it could mean. If anything goes wrong the international repercussions will be enormous, General.’

‘I’m afraid I’m fully aware of that, sir. Apart from the universal condemnation, we will become the pariah dog, the outcasts of the world.’

‘And no hint of any Soviet involvement.’

‘None whatsoever. No proof, direct or indirect. As far as the world is concerned, they are blameless. My first reaction is that they are indeed blameless. My second thoughts are exactly the same. I can see no way they are linked with this. We bear the burden, sir.’

‘We bear the burden. And will stand condemned before the court of mankind.’ The General made no reply. ‘The Chiefs have no suggestions?’

‘None that I regard as very useful. In short, bluntly, none. We have to rely on our people out there. Carte blanche, sir?’

‘We have no option. How good are your men in the Mediterranean?’

‘The very best. No rhetoric, sir. I mean it.’

‘And this British vessel on the spot?’

‘The frigate Ariadne? A very special vessel indeed, I am given to understand. Whether or not it can cope with this, no one can say. There are too many imponderables.’

‘Do we pull it out?’

‘That’s not for my decision, sir.’

‘I know it’s not.’ He was silent for a long moment then said: ‘It may be our only hope. It stays.’

‘Yes, Mr President.’

Talbot was alone with Van Gelder on the bridge when the radio-room called.

‘I have voice contact with Rome, sir. Where will you take it?’

‘Here.’ He gestured to Van Gelder to take up a listening phone. ‘Talbot here.’

‘Hawkins. I’m leaving shortly with two civilians for Athens. You’ll have a phone call from there letting you know our estimated time of arrival. We’ll be landing on Thera Island. Have a launch standing by to meet us.’

‘Yes, sir. Take a taxi down to Athinio – there’s a new quay about two miles south of the Thira Village anchorage.’

‘My map shows that the Thira anchorage is nearer.’

‘What your map may not show is that the only way down to Thira anchorage is by mule-track down a precipitous cliff. A seven-hundred-foot cliff, to be precise.’

‘Thank you, Talbot. A life saved. You have not forgotten my twin bêtes noires, my fatal flaws. Till this evening, then.’

‘What bêtes noires?’ Van Gelder said. ‘What flaws?’

‘He hates horses. I would imagine the detestation extends to mules. And he suffers from acrophobia.’

‘That sounds a very nasty thing to suffer from. And what might that be?’

‘Vertigo. A fear of heights. Almost got him disbarred from entry to the Navy. He had a powerful aversion to climbing up rigging.’

‘You know him well, then?’

‘Pretty well. Now, this evening. I’d normally send young Henri to pick anybody up but Vice-Admiral Hawkins and the two no doubt equally distinguished civilians who are with him are not anybody. So we do it in style. A Lieutenant-Commander, I thought.’

‘My pleasure, sir.’

‘And tell them all you know about the plane, the Delos and the survivors. Also our suspicions about the survivors. Saves the time when they get here.’

‘I’ll do that. Speaking about the survivors, when I go ashore do you want me to take them along and dump them?’

‘You are unwell, Number One?’

‘I’m fine. Didn’t for a moment think you’d want them out of your sight. And we couldn’t very well abandon the two young ladies on that barren rock there.’

‘It’s as well the islanders can’t hear you. There’s fourteen hundred people in the Thira township and there’s a fair amount of tourist accommodation. And speaking again of the survivors, not to mention our three other visitors, we’ll have to find sleeping accommodation for them. The Admiral can have the admiral’s cabin – it’ll be the first time an admiral has slept there. There are three empty cabins. You can have mine, I’ll sleep here or in the chart-room. The rest, well, you fix it.’

‘Five minutes,’ said he confidently.

He was back in forty-five.

‘Took me a little longer than I thought. Ticklish problems.’

‘Who’s got my cabin?’

‘Irene. Eugenia has mine.’

‘It took you three-quarters of an hour to arrange that?’

‘Decisions, decisions. Calls for a little delicacy and a modicum of finesse.’

‘My word, you do do yourselves well, Commander,’ Andropulos said. He sipped some claret. ‘Or is this a special treat for us?’

‘Standard fare, I assure you.’ Andropulos, whom Grierson had reported as having a remarkable affinity for scotch, seemed relaxed to the point of garrulity. Talbot would have taken long odds that he was cold sober. He talked freely about quite a number of subjects, but had not once broached the question of being sent ashore. It was clear that he and Talbot had at least one thing in common – the wish that he remain aboard the Ariadne.

Jenkins came in and spoke softly to Van Gelder, who looked at Talbot.

‘Call from the radio-room. Shall I take it?’ Talbot nodded. Van Gelder left and returned within half a minute.

‘Call was delayed, sir. Difficulty in contacting us. They will be there in less than half an hour. I’d better go now.’

‘I’m expecting visitors later this evening,’ Talbot said, ‘I shall have to ask you not to come to the wardroom for some time after they come. Not for too long. Twenty minutes at the most.’

‘Visitors?’ Andropulos said. ‘At this time of the evening. Who on earth are they?’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Andropulos. This is a naval vessel. There are certain things I can’t discuss with civilians.’

Chapter 3

Vice-Admiral Hawkins was the first up the gangway. He shook Talbot’s hand warmly. The Admiral didn’t go in much for saluting.

‘Delighted to see you again, John. Or I would be if it weren’t for the circumstances. And how are you, my boy?’

‘Fine, sir. Again, considering the circumstances.’

‘And the children? Little Fiona and Jimmy?’

‘In the best, thank you, sir. You’ve come a long way in a short time.’

‘Needs must when the devil drives. And he’s sitting on my tail right now.’ He turned to the two men who had followed him up the gangway. ‘Professor Benson. Dr Wickram. Gentlemen, Commander Talbot, the captain of the Ariadne.’

‘If you will come with me, gentlemen. I’ll have your gear taken to your quarters.’ Talbot led them to the wardroom and gestured them to their seats. ‘You want me to get my priorities right?’

‘Certainly.’ Talbot pressed a bell and Jenkins came in. ‘A large gin and tonic for those two gentlemen,’ Hawkins said. ‘Lots of ice. They’re Americans. Large scotch and water for me. Quarters, you said. What quarters?’

‘You haven’t been aboard since before commissioning but you won’t have forgotten. For an admiral, an admiral’s quarters. Never been used.’

‘How perfectly splendid. Honoured, I’m sure. And for my two friends here?’

‘A cabin apiece. Also never been used. I think they’ll find them quite comfortable. I’d like to bring along some of my officers, sir.’

‘But of course. Whom did you have in mind?’

‘Surgeon-Commander Grierson.’

‘Know him,’ Hawkins said. ‘Very wise bird.’

‘Lieutenant Denholm. Our electronic Wunderkind. I know you’ve met him, sir.’

‘That I have.’ He looked at his two friends, smiling broadly. ‘You’ll have to mind your p’s and q’s here. Lieutenant Denholm is the heir to an earldom. The genuine article. Fearfully languid and aristocratic. Don’t be deceived for an instant. Mind like a knife. As I told General Carson, he’s so incredibly advanced in his electronic speciality that your high-tech whizzkids in Silicon Valley wouldn’t even begin to understand what he’s talking about.’

‘Then there’s Lieutenant McCafferty, our senior engineer, and, of course, Lieutenant-Commander Van Gelder whom you’ve already met.’

‘For the first time. Favourably impressed. Very. Struck me as an able lad indeed.’

‘He’s all that. More. If I were laid low tomorrow you wouldn’t have to worry. He could take over the Ariadne at any moment and you wouldn’t notice the difference.’

‘From you, that’s worth any half-dozen testimonials. I’ll bear it in mind.’

Introductions completed, Hawkins looked at Talbot and his four officers and said: ‘The first question in your minds, of course, gentlemen, is why I have brought two civilians with me. First I will tell you who they are and then, when I have explained the purpose of our coming, you will understand why they are here. In passing, I might say how extraordinarily lucky I am to have them here with me. They seldom leave their home state of California: it just so happened that both were attending an international conference in Rome.

‘Professor Alec Benson here.’ Benson was a large, calm man in his early sixties, grey of hair, cherubic and cheerful of countenance, and wearing a sports jacket, flannels and polo jersey, all of varying shades of grey and all so lived in, comfortable and crumpled that he could well have inherited them from his grandfather. ‘The Professor is the director of the seismological department of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. He’s also a geologist and vulcanologist. Anything that makes the earth bang or shake or move is his field. Regarded by everybody in that line as the world’s leading expert – he chaired, or was chairing until I so rudely interrupted him, an international conference in seismology in Rome. You all know, of course, what seismology is.’

‘A rough idea,’ Talbot said. ‘A kind of science – I think “study” would be a better word for it – of the causes and effects of earthquakes.’

‘A kind of science?’ Hawkins said. ‘I am distressed. It is a science.’

‘No offence meant, I’m sure, and none taken,’ Benson said equably. ‘The Commander is perfectly correct. Far from being a science, we’re still only dabbling on the periphery of the subject.’

‘Ah, well. Dr Wickram is a physicist, as well known in his own field as Professor Benson is in his. He specializes in nuclear physics.’

Talbot looked at Dr Wickram who, in startling contrast to Benson, was thin, dark and immaculately dressed in a blue suit, white button-down collar and a black tie, the funereal hue of which went rather well with the habitual severity of his expression, and said: ‘Does your interest in nuclear physics extend to nuclear weaponry, Dr Wickram?’

‘Well, yes, it does rather.’

‘You and the Professor are to be congratulated. There should be some kind of civilian medal for this. Vice-Admiral Hawkins, of course, is acting in the line of duty. I would have thought you two gentlemen should have stayed in Rome. I mean, isn’t it safer there?’

Hawkins cleared his throat. ‘You wouldn’t dream of stealing a superior officer’s thunder, would you?’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it, sir.’

‘Well, to the point. Your two signals duly received. The first gave rise to some concern, the second was profoundly disturbing.’

‘The “tick … tick … tick” bit, sir?’

‘The “tick … tick … tick” bit. Both signals were sent to the Pentagon, the second one also going to the White House. I should imagine that the word consternation would suitably describe their reaction. Guessing, of course, but I think the speed of the reply to the second message showed how badly shaken they were. Normally, it can take forever – well, even months at times – to extract just a nugget of information from the Pentagon, but this time minutes only. When I read their reply, I could understand all too well.’ Hawkins paused, possibly for suitable dramatic effect.

‘So can I,’ Talbot said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘If I were the Pentagon or the White House I’d be upset too if a US Air Force bomber or cargo plane, carrying a load of bombs, suddenly disappeared into the sea. Especially if the bombs – or missiles – that plane was carrying were of the nuclear variety. Even more especially if they were hydrogen bombs.’

‘Well, damn your eyes, Talbot, you do deprive ageing vice-admirals of the simpler pleasures of life. There goes my thunder.’

‘It wasn’t all that difficult, sir. We had already guessed it was a bomber. Civilian planes, with the exception of Concorde, don’t fly at the height at which we picked it up. We’d have had to be pretty stupid not to assume what we did. Bombers usually carry bombs. American reaction made it inevitable that it was an American plane. And you wouldn’t have come down here in such a tearing hurry, and be accompanied by an expert in nuclear weaponry, unless the bombs were of a rather nasty variety. I can’t imagine anything nastier than hydrogen bombs.’

‘Nor can anyone. When you put it the way you put it, I suppose I should have guessed that you had guessed. Even the Pentagon don’t know or won’t divulge what type of plane it was. They suggest an advanced design of the C.141 Starlifter cargo plane. It was refuelled in the Azores and heading for Greece. From your first message we gathered you saw the plane crash into the sea but couldn’t identify it. Why not?’

‘Number One, show the Admiral why not.’

Van Gelder produced a sheaf of photographs and handed them to Hawkins who flipped through them quickly, and then, more slowly, a second time. He sighed and looked up.

‘Intriguing, I suppose, if you’re a connoisseur of the pattern effects of smoke and flame. I’m not. All I can make out is what I take to be the outer port engine and that’s no help at all. And it gives no indication as to the source or cause of the fire.’

‘I think Van Gelder would disagree with you, sir,’ Talbot said. ‘He’s of the opinion that the fire originated in the nose cone and was caused by an internal explosion. I agree with him. It certainly wasn’t brought down by ship-based anti-aircraft fire. We would have known. The only alternative is a heat-seeking missile. Two objections to that. Such a missile would have targeted on the engines, not the fuselage and, more importantly, there are no vessels in the area. Our radar would have picked them up. As a corollary to that, the missile didn’t come from an aircraft, either. The Admiral will not need reminding that the radar aboard the Ariadne is as advanced as any in the world.’

‘That may no longer be true, sir.’ Denholm’s tone was deferential but not hesitant. ‘And if it is true, then we can’t discount missiles just like that. This is not a dissenting opinion, I’m just exploring another possibility.’

‘Explore away, Lieutenant,’ Hawkins said. ‘Any light that can illumine the darkness of our ignorance, etcetera, etcetera.’

‘I’m not sure I’m all that good as a beacon, sir. I do know that I don’t go along with the belief that the Soviets always trail the West in technological advancement. Whether this belief is carefully and officially nurtured I do not know. I admit that the Soviets spend a certain amount of time and trouble in extracting military secrets from the West. I say “certain” because they don’t have to try all that hard: there appears to be a steady supply of scientists, both American and British, who, along with associates not necessarily involved in direct research at all, are perfectly willing to sell the Soviets anything they want – provided, that is, the price is right. I believe this to be true in the case of computers where they do lag behind the West: I do not believe it in the case of radar.

‘In this field, Plessey, of Britain, probably leads the West. They have developed a revolutionary new radar system, the Type 966, which is fitted, or about to be fitted, to Invincible-class aircraft-carriers, the Type 42 Sheffield-class destroyers and the new Type 23 Norfolk-class frigates. This new radar is designed not only to detect and track aircraft and sea-skimming missiles, but it also –’

Hawkins cleared his throat. ‘Sorry to interrupt, Denholm. You may know this but surely it comes under the heading of classified information?’

‘If it did, I wouldn’t talk about it even in this company, sir. It’s in the public domain. As I was about to say, it’s also able to control Sea Dart and Seawolf missiles in flight and home them in on their targets with great accuracy. I also understand they’re virtually immune to jamming and radar decoys. If Plessey have done this, the Soviets may well have also. They’re not much given to advertising such things. But I believe they have the know-how.’

Hawkins said: ‘And you also believe, in this case, that a missile was the culprit?’

‘Not at all, sir. I’m only suggesting a possibility. The Captain and Lieutenant-Commander Van Gelder may well be right. Trouble is, I know nothing about explosives. Maybe there are missiles with such a limited charge that they cause only limited damage. I would have thought that a standard missile would have ensured that a plane it brought down would not have struck the sea with its fuselage relatively intact but in a thousand pieces. Again, I simply don’t know. I just wonder what the security was like at the base from which that plane took off in the States.’

‘Security? In the case of a super-sensitive plane such as this? Total.’

‘Does the Admiral really believe there is such a thing as total security?’ The Admiral didn’t say what he believed, he just sipped his scotch in silence. ‘There were four major air disasters last year, all four planes involved having taken off from airports which were regarded as having maximum security. In all four cases terrorists found the most stringent airport checks childishly easy to circumvent.’

‘Those were civilian airports. This would be a top-secret US Air Force base, manned exclusively by US Air Force personnel, specially chosen for their position, rigidly screened, backgrounds exhaustively researched, and all subjected to liedetector tests.’

‘With respect to the Vice-Admiral, and our American friends, lie-detector tests – more accurately, polygraph tests – are rubbish. Any moderately intelligent person can be trained to beat the polygraph test, which, after all, depends on crudely primitive measurements of pulse rate, blood pressure and perspiration. You can be trained to give right answers, wrong answers or merely confusing ones and the scrutineer can’t tell the difference.’

‘Doesn’t measure up to your idea of electronics, eh?’

‘Nothing to do with electronics, sir. Polygraphs belong to the horse-and-buggy era. You’ve just used the word supersensitive, sir. The Ariadne, if I may put it that way, is a hotbed of super-sensitivity. How many members of this crew have ever been subjected to a polygraph test? None.’

Hawkins considered his glass for a few moments, then looked up at Talbot. ‘Should the need arise, Captain, how long would it take you to contact the Pentagon?’

‘Immediately. Well, half a minute. Now?’

‘No. Wait. Have to think about it. Trouble is, even the Pentagon is having difficulty in extracting information from this Air Force base which is, I believe, somewhere in Georgia. The Pentagon’s own fault, really, although you can’t expect them to admit this. They’ve so inculcated this passion for absolute secrecy into the senior officers of all four services that no one is prepared to reveal anything without the permission of the commanding officer of the Air Force base or ship or whatever. In this particular case, the commanding officer who, to the Pentagon’s distress, would appear to have a human side to his nature, has elected to take twenty-four hours off. No one appears to know where he is.’

Van Gelder said: ‘Makes it a bit awkward, sir, doesn’t it, if war breaks out in the next half-hour?’

‘No. Base remains in full operational readiness. But there’s still no relaxation of the iron-bound rules concerning the release of classified information.’

Talbot said: ‘You wouldn’t be sitting here unless they’d released some information.’

‘Naturally not. The news they’ve released is vague and incomplete but all very, very bad. One report says there were twelve nuclear weapons aboard, another fifteen. Whether they were missiles or bombs was not disclosed: what was disclosed was that they were hydrogen devices, each one in the monster megaton range, twelve to fifteen megatons. The plane was also understood to be carrying two of the more conventional atom bombs.’

‘I think I’ll break a self-imposed regulation and have a scotch myself,’ Talbot said. A half-minute passed in silence, then he said quietly: ‘This is worse than I ever dreamed.’

‘Dream?’ Grierson said. ‘Nightmare.’

‘Dream or nightmare, it won’t matter to us,’ Lieutenant Denholm said. ‘Not when we’re drifting through the stratosphere in vaporized orbit.’

‘A hydrogen bomb, Dr Wickram,’ Talbot said. ‘Let’s call it that. Is there any way it can spontaneously detonate?’

‘In itself, impossible. The President of the United States has to press one button, the man on the spot another: the radio frequencies are so wildly different that the chances of anyone happening on the right combination are billions to one.’

‘Is there a chance – say a billion to one – that the Soviets might have this combination?’

‘None.’

‘You say it’s impossible to detonate in itself. Is there any other way, some external means, whereby it could be detonated?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Does that mean you’re not saying or that you’re not sure? I don’t think, Dr Wickram, that this is the time to dwell on such verbal niceties.’

‘I’m not sure. If there were a sufficiently powerful explosion close by it might go up by sympathetic detonation. We simply don’t know.’

‘The possibility has never been explored? I mean, no experiments?’

‘I should hope not,’ Lieutenant Denholm said. ‘If such an experiment were successful, I wouldn’t care to be within thirty or forty miles at the time.’

‘That is one point.’ For the first time, Dr Wickram essayed a smile, but it was a pretty wintry one. ‘In the second place, quite frankly, we have never envisaged a situation where such a possibility might arise. We could, I suppose, have carried out such an experiment without the drastic consequences the Lieutenant has suggested. We could detonate a very small atom bomb in the vicinity of another. Even a charge of conventional explosive in the vicinity of a small atom bomb would suffice. If the small atom bomb went up, so then would the hydrogen bomb. Everybody knows that it’s the fissioning of an atom bomb that triggers off the fusion of a hydrogen bomb.’

Talbot said: ‘Is there any timing device, specifically a delayed one, fitted in a hydrogen bomb?’

‘None.’ The flat finality in the voice left no room for argument.

‘According to Vice-Admiral Hawkins, there may be a couple of conventional atom bombs aboard the sunken plane. Could they be fitted with timing devices?’

‘Again, I don’t know. Not my field. But I see no reason why they couldn’t be.’

‘For what purpose?’

‘Search me. Realms of speculation, Captain, where your guess is as good as mine. The only thing that occurs to me is a mine, a marine mine. Neatly dispose of any passing aircraft carrier, I should think.’

‘That’s thinking small,’ Van Gelder said. ‘A hydrogen mine would neatly dispose of any passing battle fleet.’

‘Whose passing fleet? One of ours? In wartime as in peacetime, the seas are open to all.’

‘Not the Black Sea. Not in wartime. But a bit far-fetched. How would this mine be activated?’

‘My continued ignorance must be a great disappointment. I know nothing about mines.’

‘Well, time was when mines were either magnetic or acoustic. Degaussing has made magnetic mines passé. So, acoustic. Triggered by a passing ship’s engines. Interesting, isn’t it? I mean, we’ve passed over it several times since we first heard the ticking and we’ve triggered nothing. So far. So maybe that ticking doesn’t mean that the mine is set to go off any time. Maybe it’s not activated – by which I mean ready to go off when a vessel passes over it – until the ticking stops. Or maybe it’s just set to go up whenever the ticking stops. Trouble is, we’ve no idea what started the ticking in the first place. I can’t see any way it could have been deliberate. Must have been caused by the explosion that brought down the plane or by the impact of striking the water.’

‘You’re a source of great comfort, Van Gelder,’ Hawkins said heavily.

‘I admit, sir, that the alternatives aren’t all that attractive. My own conclusions, which in this case are probably completely worthless, are that this ticking represents a period of grace – I mean that it cannot explode – as long as the ticking lasts and that it’s not designed to explode when the ticking stops but is then activated and ready to explode when triggered by passing engines. A guess, sir, but not necessarily a wild one. I’m going on the assumption that this mine could well be dropped by a surface vessel as well as a plane. In that case, the ship would want to be a large number of miles away before the mine was activated. So it would start the timing mechanism running at the moment it dropped it over the side. I am sure, sir, that the Pentagon could provide some illumination on this subject.’

‘I’m sure it could,’ Hawkins said. ‘And your conclusions are far from worthless, they make a good deal of sense to me. Well, Captain, what do you propose to do about all this?’

‘I rather thought, sir, that your purpose in coming down here was to tell me what to do.’

‘Not at all. I just came to make myself au fait with the situation and to garner some information in return for some I give you.’

‘Does this mean, Admiral – I say this carefully, you understand – that I have a hand in making the decisions?’

‘You don’t have a hand. You damn well make them. I’ll endorse them.’

‘Thank you. Then my first decision – or, if you like, a suggestion respectfully made – is that you and your two friends depart for Rome immediately. It’s not going to help anyone, and will be a considerable loss to both the scientific and naval communities, if you three gentlemen elect for self-immolation. Besides, by asking me to make the decisions, you have implied that there’s nothing you can do here that my crew and I can’t. Lieutenant-Commander Van Gelder is at your immediate service.’

‘The Lieutenant-Commander will have to wait. For me, at least. Your logic is sound but I’m not feeling very logical at the moment. But I do agree as far as my two friends are concerned. They could be back at their international conference in Rome tomorrow, without anyone having noticed their absence. We have no right to put the lives of civilians, not to mention two such eminent civilians, at risk.’

‘You’ve just put your finger on it, Admiral.’ Benson puffed comfortably on a sadly blackened pipe. ‘Eminent or not, we are civilians. Civilians don’t take orders from the military. I prefer the Aegean to Rome.’

‘Agreed,’ Wickram said. ‘Ludicrous. Preposterous.’

‘You don’t seem to have any more clout with your two friends than I have with the three of you.’ Talbot produced two slips of paper from his inner pocket, ‘I suggest you sign those, sir.’

Hawkins took them, looked thoughtfully at Talbot, scanned the two sheets, then read from one of them.

‘“Request urgent immediate dispatch of nearest salvage or diving vessel to 36.21N, 25.22E due south Cape Akrotiri, Thera Island, to recover one sunken plane, one sunken yacht. Further request immediate dispatch by plane to Thera Island two deep-sea divers with diving equipment for four, repeat four. Priority one double A. Signed Vice-Admiral Hawkins.”’ Hawkins looked at Benson and Wickram. ‘This message is directed to Rear-Admiral Blyth, HMS Apollo. Rear-Admiral Blyth is the operational commander of European section of NATO sea forces in the Eastern Mediterranean. Priority one double A means drop everything else, this has absolute priority. Admiral Hawkins is, I take it, my good self. Why, Captain, the request for four diving suits?’

‘Van Gelder and I are trained divers, sir. Ex-submariners.’

‘I see. Second signal directed to Defence Minister, Athens. “Urgent contact Air Control Athens airport for information re aircraft, thought American, that crashed 1415 today south of Thera Island. Did it ask permission for flight path to, and landing in, Athens or other Greek airfield? Further request you enlist immediate aid of police and Intelligence re anything known about one Spyros Andropulos, owner of yacht Delos.” This message is also, I’m flattered to observe, signed by me. Well, well, well, Captain, I nearly did you a great injustice a minute or two ago, I thought you had not perhaps addressed yourself to the problem on hand. But you have, and in some style and quite some time before I arrived. Two questions.’

‘The aircraft and Andropulos?’ Hawkins nodded. ‘At 43,000 feet, the pilot didn’t have to bother to notify anyone about his presence. He knew he was alone in the sky. But once he started descending, it was a different matter entirely. He wouldn’t be too keen on bumping into anyone, especially not with the cargo he had on board. And, of course, he would require permission to land.’

‘But why Greece?’

‘Because the flight path he was following when we first located him would have taken him to Ankara in Turkey, or some place pretty close by. Now, even although Turkey is – nominally, at least – a member of NATO, I’m sure the Americans have no air bases at, or near, Ankara. I don’t even know if they have any air bases at all in Turkey. I’m certain they have no missile launching bases. In Greece, the Americans have both. So, Greece. As for Andropulos, several of my officers and I think he’s a leery customer and a suspicious one. Not one thing that could be proved in a court of law, of course. We suspect that he may know something about the downing of this plane that we don’t know he knows, if you follow me. He says the Delos was sunk as the result of an explosion. But it’s the old question of did he fall or was he pushed? In other words, was the explosion accidental or deliberate? If we could hoist the Delos to the surface we might well find out.’

‘We might well indeed. Still, first things first.’ Hawkins looked briefly at the signals again. ‘Seem to fit the task admirably. I’ll gladly sign.’ Hawkins produced a pen, signed and handed the papers to Talbot. ‘As you had all this figured out quite some time, I suspect, before I left Rome, why didn’t you send those signals yourself?’

‘Lowly commanders don’t give the instructions to Rear-Admiral Blyth. I haven’t the authority. You have. That’s why I asked you to join us as soon as was possible. Thanks for the signing, sir. That was the easy part. Now comes the difficult part.’

‘Difficult part?’ Hawkins said warily. ‘What difficult part?’

‘Have we the moral right to ask the crew of the salvage vessel or lifting vessel, not to mention the divers, to join us, in Lieutenant Denholm’s elegant phrase, in drifting through the stratosphere in vaporized orbit?’

‘Ah. Yes. A point, of course. What do you think?’

‘Again, not a decision for lowly commanders. Admirals only.’

‘Dear, oh dear. Then, if things go wrong, you’ll have nothing on your conscience and everything in the world to reproach me with.’

‘If anything goes wrong, sir, I don’t think we’ll be having too much to say to each other when we’re in vaporized orbit.’

‘True. Mine was an unworthy remark. No one likes to bear the responsibility for such decisions. Send the signals.’

‘Very good, sir. Lieutenant Denholm, ask Myers to come here.’

Hawkins said: ‘I understand – I’m not making comparisons – that the President of the United States was faced with a problem similar to the one you’ve just confronted me with. He asked the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff if he should pull out the Ariadne which they knew, of course, was sitting over the crashed plane. The Chairman said, quite rightly, that that wasn’t his responsibility, the old and honoured American tradition of passing the buck. The President decided that the Ariadne should stay.’

‘Well, I could come all over bitter and say that’s very noble and gallant of the President, especially as there’s no chance of his being blown out of his seat in the Oval Office when this little lot goes up, but I won’t. It’s not a decision I would care to have to make. I assume he gave a reason for his decision?’

‘Yes. The greatest good of the greatest number.’

Myers came in. Talbot handed him the two messages.

‘Get these off at once. Code B in both cases. To both messages add “Immediate, repeat Immediate, confirmation is requested.”’ Myers left and Talbot said: ‘It is my understanding, Admiral, that in your capacity as officer commanding the naval forces in the Eastern Mediterranean you have the power to overrule the President’s instructions.’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you done so?’

‘No. You will ask why. Same reason as the President. The greatest good of the greatest number. Why the questioning, Captain? You wouldn’t leave here even if I gave a direct order.’

‘I’m just a bit puzzled about the reason given – the greatest good of the greatest number. Bringing a rescue vessel, which admittedly is my idea, will only increase the greatest danger to a greater number.’

‘I don’t think you quite appreciate just how great the greatest number is in this case. I think Professor Benson here can enlighten you. Enlighten all of us, for I’m rather vague about it. That’s why Professor Benson is here.’

‘The good Professor is not at his best,’ Benson said. ‘He’s hungry.’

‘Most remiss of us,’ Talbot said. ‘Of course you haven’t eaten. Dinner, say, in twenty minutes?’

‘I’d settle for a sandwich.’ Talbot looked at Hawkins and Wickram, both of whom nodded. He pressed a bell.

‘I’m a bit vague about it myself,’ Benson said. ‘Certain facts are beyond dispute. What we’re sitting on top of at this moment is one of them. According to which estimate of the Pentagon’s you choose to believe, there’s something like a total of between 144 and 225 megatons of high explosive lying down there. Not that the difference between the lowest and highest estimate is of any significance. The explosion of a pound of high explosive in this wardroom would kill us all. What we are talking about is the explosive power of, let me see, yes, four and a half billion pounds. The human mind cannot comprehend, differences in estimates become irrelevant. All we can say with certainty is that it would be the biggest man-made explosion in history, which doesn’t sound so bad when you say it quickly as I’m saying it now.

‘The results of such an explosion are quite unknown but stupefyingly horrendous however optimistic your guess might be, if optimistic is the word I’m looking for, which it isn’t. It might fracture the earth’s crust, with cataclysmic results. It might destroy part of the ozone layer, which would permit the sun’s ultra-violet radiation either to tan us or fry us, depending upon how large a hole had been blasted in the stratosphere: it might equally well cause the onset of a nuclear winter, which is so popular a topic among both scientists and laymen these days. And lastly, but by no means least, are the tsunami effects, vast tidal waves usually generated by undersea earthquakes: those tsunami have been responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people at a time when they struck low-lying coastal areas.’

Benson reached out a grateful hand for a glass that Jenkins had brought. Talbot said: ‘If you’re trying to be encouraging, Professor, you’re not doing too well at it.’

‘Ah, better, much better.’ Benson lowered his glass and sighed, ‘I needed that. There are times when I’m quite capable of terrifying even myself. Encouraging? That’s only the half of it. Santorini’s the other half. In fact, Santorini is the major part of it. Gifted though mankind is in creating sheer wanton destruction, nature has him whacked every time.’

‘Santorini?’ Wickram said. ‘Who or what is Santorini?’

‘Ignorance, George, ignorance. You and your fellow physicists should look out from your ivory towers from time to time. Santorini is less than a couple of miles from where you’re sitting. Had that name for many centuries. Today it’s officially known, as it was five thousand years ago at the height of its civilization, as Thera Island.

‘The island, by whatever name, has had a very turbulent seismic and volcanic history. Don’t worry, George, I’m not about to sally forth on my old hobby-horse, not for long anyway, just long enough to try to explain what the greatest number means in the term the greatest good of the greatest number.

‘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 Chichón in Mexico and one just north-west of Bogotá 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 2500 BC. However it hasn’t done too badly since 1450 BC. In 236 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 archæological 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 – 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 ourselves in at this moment, there are four facts that can be regarded as certainties or near-certainties. Santorini is about 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 200 million tons of TNT. If that goes up I would say it is highly probable – in fact I 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 tête-à-tête 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 multimillionaire. 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.’

‘Indeed it could.’

‘One thing strikes me as odd: why is Tehran missing from the list?’

‘True, true. The Iranians – with the possible exception of the Afghans, are more desperate for arms than any other place around. But gunrunners don’t specialize in blowing up planes in flight.’

‘I don’t know what we’re talking about, sir. The Hampton Court maze has nothing on this lot. I have the feeling that it’s going to take us quite some time to figure this out. Fortunately we have more immediate problems to occupy our minds.’

‘Fortunately?’ Hawkins lifted his eyes heavenwards. ‘Did you say fortunately?’

‘Yes, sir. Vincent?’ This to Van Gelder. ‘I should think Jenkins knows the requirements of the Vice-Admiral and his two friends by this time.’

‘You are not joining us?’ Benson said.

‘Better not. We expect to be quite busy later on tonight.’ He turned to Van Gelder again. ‘And give orders for our six shipwrecked mariners to return to their cabins. They are to remain there until further orders. Post guards to see that those instructions are obeyed.’

‘I think I’d better go and do this myself, sir.’

‘Fine. I’m all out of tact at the moment.’

Hawkins said: ‘Do you think they’ll take kindly to this – ah – incarceration?’

‘Incarceration? Let’s call it protective custody. Fact is, I don’t want them to see what’s going on in the next few hours. I’ll explain why in a moment.

‘The Ministry of Defence had another item of information for us. About the bomber. It had been in touch with air control in Athens and had been instructed to alter course over the island of Amorgós – that’s about forty miles north-east of here – and proceed on a roughly north-north-west course. Two fighter planes – US Air Force F15s – went up to meet it and escort it in.’

‘Did you see any such planes in the vicinity?’

‘No, sir. Wouldn’t have expected to. Rendezvous point was to be over the island of Euboea. The destination was not Athens but Thessalonika. I assume the Americans have a missile base in that area. I wouldn’t know.

‘Admiral Blyth on the Apollo has also come through. We’ve had luck here – two pieces of luck. A recovery ship en route to Piraeus has been diverted to Santorini. Diving crews, recovery gear, the lot. You’ll know it, sir. The Kilcharran.’

‘I know it. Auxiliary Fleet vessel. Nominally under my command. I say “nominally” because I also have the misfortune to know its captain. Lad called Montgomery. A very crusty Irishman with a low opinion of Royal Navy regulations. Not that that matters. He’s brilliant at his job. Couldn’t ask to have a better man around. Your other item of good news?’

‘There’s a plane en route to Santorini at this moment with a couple of divers and diving equipment for four aboard. Very experienced men, I’m told, a Chief Petty Officer and a Petty Officer. I’ve sent Sub-Lieutenant Cousteau ashore to pick them up. They should be here in half an hour or so.’

‘Excellent, excellent. And when do you expect the Kilcharran?’

‘About five in the morning, sir.’

‘By Jove, things are looking up. You have something in mind?’

‘I have. With your permission, sir.’

‘Oh, do shut up.’

‘Yes, sir. It will also answer your two questions – why Van Gelder and I are on the wagon and why the six survivors have been – well, locked up out of harm’s way. When Cousteau comes back with the divers and equipment, Van Gelder and I are going down with them to have a look at this plane. I’m pretty sure we won’t be able to accomplish much. But we’ll be able to assess the extent of the damage to the plane, with luck locate this ticking monster and with even greater luck try to free it. I know in advance that we’re not going to have that kind of luck but it’s worth a try. You’d be the first to agree, sir, that in the circumstances, anything is worth a try.’

‘Yes, yes, but, well, you’ll excuse me if I frown a bit but you and Van Gelder are the two most important people on this ship.’

‘No, we’re not. If anything should happen to us personally, and I don’t see what can happen, you are, in your spare time, so to speak, accustomed to commanding a battle fleet. I can hardly see that a mere frigate is going to inconvenience you to all that extent. And if anything should happen on a catastrophic scale, nobody’s going to be worrying too much about anything.’

Wickram said: ‘You are a cold-blooded so-and-so, Commander.’

Hawkins sighed. ‘Not cold blood, Dr Wickram. Cold logic, I’m afraid. And when and if you come back up, what then?’

‘Then we’re off to have a look at the Delos. Should be very interesting. Andropulos may have made a mistake, Admiral, in telling you that he was scared that his spare fuel tank might blow up. But then, he could have had no idea that we were going to have a look at the Delos. That’s why he’s locked up. I don’t want him to know we’ve got divers aboard and I especially don’t want him to see me taking off with divers in the general direction of the Delos. If we find that there was no spare tank, we shall have to keep an even closer eye on him. And, for good measure, on his dear friend Alexander and his captain, Aristotle. I can’t believe that that young seaman, Achmed or whatever his name is, or either of the two girls can have anything to do with this. I think they’re along for the purpose of camouflage, respectability, if you will. In any event we should be back long before the Kilcharran arrives.’ He turned to look at Denholm who had just arrived on the bridge. ‘Well, Jimmy, what drags you away from the fleshpots?’

‘If I may say so with some dignity, sir, I’m trying to set them an example. I’ve just had a thought, sir. If you will excuse me, Admiral?’

‘I think that any thought you might have could be well worth listening to, young man. Not Greek literature this time, I’ll be bound. This – ah – hobby of yours. Electronics, is it not?’

‘Well, yes, it is, sir.’ Denholm seemed faintly surprised. He looked at Talbot. ‘That atom bomb down there, the one that goes tick … tick … tick. The intention is, or the hope, anyway, to detach it from the other explosives?’

‘If it can be done.’

‘And then, sir?’

‘One thing at a time, Jimmy. That’s as far as my thinking has got so far.’

‘Would we try to de-activate it?’ Denholm looked at Wickram. ‘Do you think it could be de-activated, sir?’

‘I honestly don’t know, Lieutenant. I have powerful suspicions, but I just don’t know. I should have imagined that this lay more in your field than mine. Electronics, I mean. I know how to build those damned weapons but I know nothing about those fancy triggering devices.’

‘Neither do I. Not without knowing how they work. For that I’d have to see the blueprint, a diagramatic layout. You said you had powerful suspicions. What suspicions, sir?’

‘I suspect that it can’t be de-activated. In fact, I’m certain the process is irreversible. The second suspicion is also a certainty. I’m damn sure that I’m not going to be the one to try.’

‘That makes two of us. So what other options are open to us?’

Benson said: ‘May a total ignoramus venture an opinion? Why don’t we take it to some safe place a hundred miles away and dump it at the bottom of the deep blue sea?’

‘A tempting thought, Professor,’ Denholm said, ‘but not a very practicable one. It is, of course, a hundred per cent certain that this triggering device is battery-powered. The latest generation of Nife cells can lie dormant for months, even years, and still spring smartly to attention when called on to do their duty. You can’t declare a whole area of the Mediterranean off-limits to all shipping for years to come.’

‘I prefaced my suggestion by saying that I was an ignoramus. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. Another doubtlessly ludicrous suggestion. We take it to the self-same spot and detonate it.’

Denholm shook his head, ‘I’m afraid that still leaves us with a couple of problems. The first is, how are we going to get it there?’

‘We take it there.’

‘Yes. We take it there. Or we set out to take it there. Then somewhere en route the ticking stops. Then the triggering device cocks its ear and says, “Aha! What’s this I hear? Ship’s engines,” and detonates. There wouldn’t even be a second’s warning.’

‘Hadn’t thought of that. We could – I say this hopefully – tow it there.’

‘Our little friend is still listening and we don’t know and have no means of knowing how sensitive its hearing is. Engines, of course, would set it off. So would a generator. A derrick winch, even a coffee-grinder in the galley might provide all the impulse it requires.’

Talbot said: ‘You came all the way up to the bridge, Jimmy, just to spread sweetness and light, your own special brand of Job’s comfort?’

‘Not quite, sir. It’s just that a couple of ideas occurred to me, one of which will have occurred to you and one which you probably don’t know about. Getting the bomb to its destination would be easy enough. We use a sailing craft. Lots of them hereabouts. Aegean luggers.’

Talbot looked at Hawkins. ‘One can’t think of everything. I forgot to mention, sir, that in addition to being a student of ancient Greek language and literature Lieutenant Denholm is also a connoisseur of the small craft of the Aegean. Used to spend all his summers here – well, until we nabbed him, that is.’

‘I wouldn’t begin to know how to sail those luggers or caïques, in fact I couldn’t even sail a dinghy if you paid me. But I’ve studied them, yes. Most of them come from the island of Samos or Bodrum in Turkey. Before the war – the First World War, that is – they were all sailing craft. Nowadays, they’re nearly all engined, most of them with steadying sails. But there’s quite a few both with engines and a full set of sails. Those are the Trehandiri and Perama types and I know there are some in the Cyclades. One of those would be ideal for our purposes. Because they have shallow keels, a minimum draught and no ballast they are almost useless performers to windward but that wouldn’t matter in this case. The prevailing wind here is north-west and the open sea lies to the south-east.’

‘Useful information to have,’ Talbot said. ‘Very useful indeed. Um – you wouldn’t happen to know anyone with such a craft?’

‘As a matter of fact I do.’

‘Good God! You’re as useful as your information.’ Talbot broke off as Van Gelder entered the bridge. ‘Duty done, Number One?’

‘Yes, sir. Andropulos was a bit reluctant to go. So were Alexander and Aristotle. In fact, they point-blank refused to go. Infringement of their liberties as Greek civilians or some tosh to that effect. Demanded to know on whose orders. I said yours. Demanded to see you. I said in the morning. More outrage. I didn’t argue with them, just called up McKenzie and some of his merry men, who removed them forcibly. I told McKenzie not to post any guards, just lock the doors and pocket the keys. You’re going to hear from the Greek government about this, sir.’

‘Excellent. Wish I’d been there. And the girls?’

‘Sweet reason. No problem.’

‘Fine. Now, Jimmy, you said a couple of ideas had occurred to you. What was the second one?’

‘It’s about the second problem that the Professor raised. The detonation. We could, of course, try sympathetic detonation by dropping a depth charge on it but as we would be in the immediate vicinity at the time I don’t think that would be a very good idea.’

‘Neither do I. So?’

‘The Pentagon could have the answer. Despite feeble denials to the contrary, everyone knows that the Pentagon controls NASA – the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA, in turn, is supposed to administer the Kennedy Space Center. “Supposed” is the operative word. They don’t. The centre is operated by EG & G, a major defence contractor. EG & G – Dr Wickram will know much more about this than I do – oversees such things as nuclear-weapons tests and the so-called Star Wars. More importantly, they are developing, or have developed, what they call the krytron, a remote-controlled electronic impulse trigger that can detonate nuclear weapons. A word from the Admiral in the ear of the Pentagon might work wonders.’

Hawkins cleared his throat. ‘This little titbit of information, Lieutenant. It will, of course, like your other titbits, be in the public domain?’

‘It is, sir.’

‘You astonish me. Most interesting, most. Could be a big part of the answer to our problem, don’t you agree, Commander?’ Talbot nodded. ‘I think we should act immediately on this one. Ah! The very man himself.’

Myers had just entered, carrying a piece of paper which he handed to Talbot. ‘Reply to your latest query to the Pentagon, sir.’

‘Thank you. No, don’t go. We’ll have another message to send them in a minute.’ Talbot handed the paper to Hawkins.

‘“Security at bomber base”,’ Hawkins read, ‘“believed to be 99.9% effective. But cards on the table. However unlikely, there may be one chance in ten thousand that security has been penetrated. This could have been that one chance”. Well, isn’t that nice. Absolutely useless piece of information, of course.

‘“Plane carried fifteen H-bombs of fifteen megatons each and three atom bombs, all three equipped with timing devices”. Well, that’s just fine. So now we have three of those ticking monsters to contend with.’

‘With any luck, just one,’ Talbot said. ‘Sonar picks up only one. Extremely unlikely that all three would be ticking in perfect unison. Point’s academic, anyway. One or a hundred, the big boys would still go up.’

‘Identified by size, they say,’ Hawkins went on. ‘Sixty inches by six. Pretty small for an atom bomb, I would have thought. 4000 kilotons. That’s a lot, Dr Wickram?’

‘By today’s standards, peanuts. Less than half the size of the Hiroshima bomb. If the bomb is the dimensions they say, then it’s very large for such a small explosive value.’

‘It goes on to say that they’re designated for marine use. I suppose that’s a fancy way of saying that they are mines. So your guess was right, Dr Wickram.’

‘Also explains the size of the bomb. Quite a bit of space will be taken up by the timing mechanism and, of course, it will have to be weighted to give it negative buoyancy.’

‘The real sting comes in the tail,’ Hawkins said. ‘“When the ticking stops the timing clock has run out and the firing mechanism is activated and ready to be triggered by mechanical stimulation”, by which I take it they mean ship’s engines. So it looks as if you were right about that one, Van Gelder. Then, by way of cheerful farewell, they say that enquiries so far confirm that the timing mechanism, once in operation, cannot be neutralized and appears to be irreversible.’

The last words were met with silence. No one had any comment to make for the excellent reason that everyone had already been convinced of the fact.

‘A message to the Pentagon, Myers. “Urgently require to know state of development of the EG & G krytron” – that’s k-r-y-t-r-o-n, isn’t it, Lieutenant? – “nuclear detonation device.”’ Talbot paused. ‘Add: “If operating model exists essential dispatch immediately with instructions.” That do, Admiral?’ Hawkins nodded. ‘Sign it Admiral Hawkins.’

‘We must be giving them quite some headaches in the Pentagon,’ Hawkins said in some satisfaction. ‘This should call for still more aspirin.’

‘Aspirins are not enough,’ Van Gelder said. ‘Sleepless nights are what are called for.’

‘You have something in mind, Van Gelder?’ ‘Yes, sir. They can have no idea of the really horrendous potential of the situation here in Santorini – the combination of all those megatons of hydrogen bombs, thermal plumes and volcanoes and earthquakes along the tectonic plate boundaries and the possibly cataclysmic results. If Professor Benson here were to make a very brief précis of the lecture he gave us in the wardroom this evening it might give them something more to think about.’

‘You have an evil mind, Van Gelder. What a perfectly splendid suggestion. Uneasy will lie the heads along the Potomac this night. What do you think, Professor?’

‘It will be a pleasure.’

When Sub-Lieutenant Cousteau, together with the two divers and their equipment, returned from Santorini, they found the Ariadne in virtual darkness. With the thought of the malevolent listening bug on the sea-floor dominating every other in his mind, Talbot had sought Lieutenant Denholm’s advice on the question of noise suppression: Denholm had not been half-hearted in his recommendations, with the result that the use of all mechanical devices on the ship, from generators to electric shavers, had been banned. Only essential lighting, radar, sonar and radio were functioning normally: all these could function equally well, as they had been designed to do, on battery power. The sonar watch on the ticking device in the crashed bomber was now continuous.

The two divers, Chief Petty Officer Carrington and Petty Officer Grant, were curiously alike, both aged about thirty, of medium height and compact build: both were much given to smiling, a cheerfulness that in no way detracted from their almost daunting aura of competence. They were with Talbot and Van Gelder in the wardroom.

‘That’s all I know about the situation down there,’ Talbot said, ‘and heaven knows it’s little enough. I just want to know those three things – the extent of the damage, the location of this ticking noise and to see if it’s possible to remove this atom bomb or whatever, which I’m convinced in advance is impossible. You are aware of the dangers and you are aware that I cannot order you to do this. How does the prospect appeal, Chief?’

‘It doesn’t appeal at all, sir.’ Carrington was imperturbable. ‘Neither Bill Grant nor I is cast in the heroic mould. We’ll walk very softly down there. You shouldn’t be worrying about us, you should be worrying about what your crew is thinking. If we slip up they’ll all join us in the wide blue yonder or whatever. I know you want to come down, sir, but is it really necessary? We’re pretty experienced in moving around inside wrecks without banging into things and we’re both Torpedo Gunner Mates and explosives, you might say, are our business. Not, I admit, the kind of explosives you have down there but we know enough not to trigger a bomb by accident.’

‘And we might?’ Talbot smiled. ‘You’re very tactful, Chief. What you mean is that we might bang into things or kick a detonator on the nose or something of the kind. When you say “necessary”, do you mean “wise”? I refer to our diving experience or lack of it.’

‘We know about your diving experience, sir. You will understand that when we knew what we were coming into we made some discreet enquiries. We know that you have commanded a submarine and the Lieutenant-Commander was your first lieutenant. We know you’ve both been through the HMS Dolphin Submarine Escape Tower and that you’ve done more than a fair bit of free diving. No, we don’t think you’ll be getting in our way or banging things around.’ Carrington turned up palms in acceptance. ‘What’s your battery capacity, sir?’

‘For essential and non-mechanical purposes, ample. Several days.’

‘We’ll put down three weighted floodlights and suspend them about twenty feet above the bottom. That should illuminate the plane nicely. We’ll have a powerful hand-flash each. We have a small bag of tools for cutting, sawing and snipping. We also have an oxyacetylene torch, which is rather more difficult to use under water than most people imagine, but as this is just a reconnaissance trip we won’t be taking it along. The closed-circuit breathing is of the type we prefer, fifty-fifty oxygen and nitrogen with a carbon dioxide scrubber. At the depth of a hundred feet, which is what we will be at, we could easily remain underwater for an hour without any risk of either oxygen poisoning or decompression illness. That’s academic, of course. Provided there’s access to the plane and the fuselage is not crushed a few minutes should tell us all we want to know.

‘Two points about the helmet. There’s a rotary chin switch which you depress to activate an amplifier that lets us talk, visor to visor. A second press cuts it off. It also has a couple of sockets over the ears where you can plug in what is to all effects a stethoscope.’

‘That’s all?’

‘All.’

‘We can go now?’

‘A last check, sir?’ Carrington didn’t have to specify what check.

Talbot lifted a phone, spoke briefly and replaced it.

‘Our friend is still at work.’

The water was warm and still and so very clear that they could see the lights of the suspended arc-lamps even before they dipped below the surface of the darkened Aegean. With Carrington in the lead and using the marker buoy anchor rope as a guide they slid down fifty feet and stopped.

The three arc-lamps had come to rest athwart the sunken bomber, sharply illuminating the fuselage and the two wings. The left wing, though still attached to the fuselage, had been almost completely sheared off between the inner engine and the fuselage and was angled back about thirty degrees from normal. The tail unit had been almost completely destroyed. The fuselage, or that part of it that could be seen from above, appeared to be relatively intact. The nose cone of the plane was shrouded in shadow.

They continued their descent until their feet touched the top of the fuselage, half-walked, half-swam until they reached the front of the plane, switched on their flash-lights and looked through the completely shattered windows of the cockpit. The pilot and the co-pilot were still trapped in their seats. They were no longer men, just the vestigial remains of what had once been human beings. Death must have been instantaneous. Carrington looked at Talbot and shook his head, then dropped down to the sea-bed in front of the nose cone.

The hole that had been blasted there was roughly circular with buckled and jagged edges projecting outwards, conclusive proof that the blast had been internal: the diameter of the whole was approximately five feet. Moving slowly and cautiously so as not to rip any of the rubber components of their diving suits, they passed in file into a compartment not more than four feet in height but almost twenty feet in length, extending from the nose cone, under the flight deck and then several feet beyond. Both sides of the compartment were lined with machinery and metal boxes so crushed and mangled that their original function was incomprehensible.

Two-thirds of the way along the compartment a hatch had been blasted upwards. The opening led to a space directly behind the seats of the two pilots. Aft of this was what was left of a small radio-room with a man who appeared to be peacefully sleeping leaning forward on folded arms, the fingers of one hand still on a transmitting key. Beyond this, four short steps led down to an oval door let into a solid steel bulkhead. The door was secured by eight clamps, some of which had been jammed into position by the impact of the blast. A hammer carried by Carrington in his canvas bag of tools soon tapped them into a loosened position.

Beyond the door lay the cargo compartment, bare, bleak, functional and obviously designed for one purpose only, the transport of missiles. These were secured by heavy steel clamps which were in turn bolted to longitudinal reinforced steel beams let into the floor and sides of the fuselage. There was oil mixed with the water in the compartment but even in the weird, swirling, yellowish light they looked neither particularly menacing nor sinister. Slender, graceful, with either end encased in a rectangular metal box they looked perfectly innocuous. Each contained fifteen megatons of high explosive.

There were six of those in the first section of the compartment. As a formality, and not because of any expectations, Talbot and Carrington applied their stethoscopes to each cylinder in turn. The results were negative as they had known they would be: Dr Wickram had been positive that they contained no timing devices.

There were also six missiles in the central compartment. Three of these were of the same size as those in the front compartment: the other three were no more than five feet in length. Those had to be the atom bombs. It was when he was testing the third of those with his stethoscope that Carrington beckoned to Talbot, who came and listened in turn. He didn’t have to listen long. The two and a half second ticking sequence sounded exactly as it had done in the sonar room.

In the aft compartment they went through the routine exercise of listening to the remaining six missiles and found what they had expected, nothing. Carrington put his visor close to Talbot’s.

‘Enough?’

‘Enough.’

‘That didn’t take you long,’ Hawkins said.

‘Long enough to find out what we needed. Missiles are there, all present and correct as listed by the Pentagon. Only one bomb has been activated. Three dead men. That’s all, except for the most important fact of all. The bomber crashed because of an internal explosion. Some kindly soul had concealed a bomb under the flight deck. The Pentagon must be glad that they added the faint possibility that there was one chance in ten thousand that security might be breached. The faint possibility came true. Raises some fascinating questions, doesn’t it, sir? Who? What? Why? When? We don’t have to ask “where” because we already know that.’

‘I don’t want to sound grim or vindictive,’ Hawkins said, ‘because I’m not. Well, maybe a little. Should cut the gentlemen on Foggy Bottom, or wherever, down to size and make them a mite more civil and cooperative in future. Not only is it an American plane that is responsible for the dreadful situation in which we find ourselves, but it was someone in America who was ultimately responsible. If they ever do discover who was responsible, and it’s not without the bounds of possibility, it’s going to cause an awful lot of red faces and I’m not just referring to the villain himself. I’d lay odds that the person responsible is an insider, a pretty high-up insider with free access to secret information, such as closely guarded secrets as to the composition of the cargo, the destination and the time of take-off and arrival. Wouldn’t you agree, Commander?’

‘I don’t see how it can be otherwise. Not a problem I’d care to have on my hands. However, that’s their problem. We have an even bigger problem on our hands.’

‘True, true.’ Hawkins sighed. ‘What’s the next step, then? In recovering this damn bomb, I mean?’

‘I think you should ask Chief Petty Officer Carrington, sir, not me. He and Petty Officer Grant are the experts.’

‘It’s a tricky one, sir,’ Carrington said. ‘Cutting away a fuselage section large enough to lift the bomb through is straightforward enough. But before we could lift the bomb out we would have to free it from its clamps and this is where the great difficulty lies. Those clamps are made of high-tensile steel fitted with a locking device. For that we need a key and we don’t know where the key is.’

‘It could be,’ Hawkins said, ‘that the key is held at the missile base where the bombs were due to be delivered.’

‘With respect, sir, I think that unlikely. Those clamps had to be locked at the Air Force base where they were loaded. So they would have to have a key there. I think it would be much easier and more logical if they just took the key with them. Trouble is, a key is a very small thing and that’s a very big bomber indeed.

‘If there’s no key there are two ways we can remove that clamp. One is chemical, using either a metal softener or corrosive. The metal softener is used by stage magicians who go in for spoon-bending and such-like.’

‘Magicians?’ Hawkins said. ‘Charlatans, you mean.’

‘Whatever. The principle is the same. They use a colourless paste which has no effect on the skin but has the peculiar property of altering the molecular structure of a metal and making it malleable. A corrosive is simply a powerful acid that eats through steel. Lots of them on the market. But in this case, both softeners and corrosives have one impossible drawback: you can’t use them underwater.’

Hawkins said: ‘You mentioned two ways of removing the clamp. What’s the other?’

‘Oxyacetylene torch, sir. Make short work of any clamp. It would also, I imagine, make even shorter work of the operator. Those torches generate tremendous heat and I should also imagine that anyone who even contemplates using an oxyacetylene torch on an atom bomb is an obvious candidate for the loony-bin.’

Hawkins looked at Wickram. ‘Comment?’

‘No comment. Not on the unthinkable.’

‘I speak in no spirit of complaint, Carrington,’ Hawkins said, ‘but you’re not very encouraging. What you are about to suggest, of course, is that we wait for the Kilcharran to come along and hoist the damn thing to the surface.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Carrington hesitated. ‘But there’s a snag even to that.’

‘A snag?’ Talbot said. ‘You are referring, of course, to the distinct and unpleasant possibility that the ticking might stop while the Kilcharran’s winch engine is working overtime at hauling the bomber to the surface?’

‘I mean just that, sir.’

‘A trifle. There are no trifles that the combined brain-power aboard the Ariadne can’t solve.’ He turned to Denholm. ‘You can fix that, Lieutenant?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘How, sir?’ There was a pardonable note of doubt if not outright disbelief in Carrington’s voice: Lieutenant Denholm didn’t look like the type of person who could fix anything.

Talbot smiled. ‘If I may say this gently, Chief, one does not question Lieutenant Denholm on those matters. He knows more about electrics and electronics than any man in the Mediterranean.’

‘It’s quite simple, Chief,’ Denholm said. ‘We just couple up the combined battery powers of the Ariadne and the Kilcharran. The Kilcharran’s winches are probably diesel-powered. We may or may not be able to convert them to electrical use. If we can’t, it doesn’t matter. We have excellent electric anchor windlasses on the Ariadne.’

‘Yes, but – well, with one of your two anchors out of commission you’d start drifting, wouldn’t you?’

‘We wouldn’t drift. A diving ship normally carries four splayed anchors to moor it precisely over any given spot on the ocean floor. We just tie up to the Kilcharran, that’s all.’

‘I’m not doing too well, am I? One last objection, sir. Probably a feeble one. An anchor is only an anchor. This bomber and its cargo probably weighs over a hundred tons. I mean, it’s quite a lift.’

‘Diving ships also carry flotation bags. We strap them to the plane’s fuselage and pump them full of compressed air until we achieve neutral buoyancy.’

‘I give up,’ Carrington said. ‘From now on, I stick to diving.’

‘So we twiddle our thumbs until the Kilcharran arrives,’ Hawkins said. ‘But not you, I take it, Commander?’

‘I think we’ll have a look at the Delos, sir.’

Chapter 5

They had rowed about a mile when Talbot called up the Ariadne. He spoke briefly, listened briefly, then turned to McKenzie who was at the tiller.

‘Ship oars. The timing device is still at it so I think we’ll start the engine. Gently, at first. At this distance I hardly think we’d trigger anything even if the bomb was activated, but no chances. Course 095.’

There were nine of them in the whaler – Talbot, Van Gelder, the two divers, McKenzie and the four seamen who had rowed them so far. Those last would not be required again until they reached the last mile of the return trip.

After about forty minutes Van Gelder moved up into the bows with a portable six-inch searchlight which, on such a clear night, had an effective range of over a mile. The searchlight was probably superfluous for there was a three-quarter moon and Talbot, with his night-glasses, had a clear bearing on the monastery and the radar station on Mount Elias. Van Gelder returned within minutes and handed the searchlight to McKenzie.

‘Fine off the port bow, Chief.’

‘I have it,’ McKenzie said. The yellow buoy, in the light of both the moon and the searchlight, was clearly visible. ‘Do I anchor?’

‘Not necessary,’ Talbot said. ‘No current that’s worth speaking of, no wind, a heavy anchor weight and a stout anchor rope. Just make fast to the buoy.’

In course of time McKenzie did just that and the four divers slipped over the side, touching down on the deck of the Delos just over an hour after leaving the Ariadne. Carrington and Grant disappeared down the for’ard companionway while Talbot and Van Gelder took the after one.

Talbot didn’t bother entering the after stateroom. The two girls had stayed there and he knew it would hold nothing of interest for him. He looked at the dead engineer, or the man whom Van Gelder had taken to be the engineer because of his blue overalls, and examined the back of his head carefully. The occiput had not been crushed and there were no signs of either bruising or blood in the vicinity of the deep gash in the skin of the skull. He rejoined Van Gelder who had already moved into the engine-room.

There was, of course, no smoke there now and very little traces of oil. In the light of their two powerful flashlights visibility was all that could be wished for and it took them only two minutes to carry out their examination: unless one is looking for some obscure mechanical fault there is very little to look for in an engine-room. On their way out they opened up a tool-box and took out a long slender chisel apiece.

They found the bridge, when they arrived there, to be all that they would have expected a bridge on such a yacht to be, with a plethora of expensive and largely unnecessary navigational aids, but in all respects perfectly innocuous. Only one thing took Talbot’s attention, a wooden cupboard on the after bulkhead. It was locked, but on the understandable assumption that Andropulos wouldn’t be having any further use for it Talbot wrenched it open with a chisel. It contained the ship’s papers and ship’s log, nothing more.

A door on the port side of the same bulkhead led to a combined radio-room and chart-room. The chart-room section held nothing that a chartroom should not have had, including a locked cupboard which Talbot opened in the same cavalier fashion he had used on the bridge: it held only pilot books and sailing directions. Andropulos, it seemed, just liked locking cupboards. The radio was a standard RCA. They left.

They found Carrington and Grant waiting for them in the saloon. Carrington was carrying what appeared to be a portable radio: Grant had a black metallic box slightly larger than a sheet of foolscap paper and less than three inches thick. Carrington put his visor close to Talbot’s.

‘All we could find. Of interest, I mean.’

‘We have enough.’

‘Dispatch would appear to be the keynote of your investigations, Commander,’ Hawkins said. Glass in hand, he was seated across the wardroom table from Talbot, ‘I mean, you seem to spend singularly little time on your – um – aquatic investigation.’

‘You can find out interesting things in a very short space of time, sir. Too much, for some people.’

‘You refer to our shipwrecked friends?’

‘Who else? Five things, sir. Van Gelder was right, there were no signs of bruising or blood where the engineer had been gashed on the head. An examination of the engine-room turned up no signs of protrusions, angle-beams or sharp metallic corners that could have caused the injury. Circumstantial evidence, I know, but evidence that strongly suggests that the engineer was clobbered by a heavy metallic instrument. No shortage of those in an engine-room. We have, of course, no clue as to the identity of the assailant.

‘Secondly, I’m afraid the owner of the Delos has been guilty of telling you fibs, Admiral. He said he abandoned the Delos because he was afraid that the reserve fuel tank might blow up. There is no such tank.’

‘Isn’t that interesting. Does make things look a little black for Andropulos.’

‘It does a bit. He could always claim of course that he knew nothing of the layout of the engine-room and had always assumed that there had to be a reserve tank or that in a panic-stricken concern for the welfare of his beloved niece he had quite forgotten that there was no such tank. He’s undoubtedly intelligent, we know he’s a thespian of some note and could put up a spirited and convincing defence in court. But he’d have no defence against a further charge that the explosion was not due to natural causes, unless you regard the detonation of a bomb, almost certainly a plastic explosive, under the main fuel tank as being a natural cause.’

‘Well, well, well. One wonders how he’ll talk his way out of this one. You’re quite certain, of course?’

‘We are wounded, sir,’ Van Gelder said. ‘The Captain and I are developing quite some expertise on the effects of explosives on metal. In the bomber, the metal of the fuselage was blown outwards: in this case the metal of the fuel tank was blown inwards.’

‘We are not explosives experts, sir,’ Talbot said. ‘But it would seem that Andropulos wasn’t either.’ He nodded towards Carrington and Grant. ‘But those two gentlemen are experts. We were talking about it on the way back. They reckon that Andropulos – if it was Andropulos, it could have been Alexander or Aristotle – made an amateurish blunder. They say the villain, whoever he was, should have used what they call an inverted beehive plastic explosive attached to the underside of the tank by a magnetic clamp, in which case more than ninety per cent of the explosive charge would have been directed upwards. It would seem that they didn’t use such a device.’

Hawkins looked at Carrington. ‘You can be sure of this, Chief?’

‘As sure as can be, sir. We do know that he couldn’t have used a beehive. The explosive charge would have been either flat, circular or cylindrical and in any of those cases the disruptive explosive power would have been uniformly distributed in all directions. Grant and I think he didn’t deliberately sink the yacht but that he just, through ignorance, kind of accidentally blew a hole through the bottom.’

‘If it weren’t for the three dead men, this could be almost amusing. As it is, one has to admit that life is full of its little ironies. What’s that you’ve got in front of you there, Carrington?’

‘Some sort of radio, sir. Took it from the captain’s cabin.’

‘Why did you take it?’

‘Struck me as odd, sir, unusual, out of place, you might say. Every cabin is fitted with its own bulkhead radio – all probably fed from the central radio in the saloon. So why should he require this additional radio, especially when he had access to – and was probably the only user of – the much superior radio in his radio-room?’

Talbot looked at Denholm. ‘Just a standard radio, is it?’

‘Not quite.’ Denholm took the radio and examined it briefly. ‘A transceiver, which means it can transmit as well as receive. Hundreds of them around, thousands, most commonly as ship-to-shore radios in private yachts. Also used in geological and seismological work and construction building. Remote control detonation.’ He paused and looked around myopically. ‘I don’t want to sound sinister, but it could equally well be used to trigger off the detonator in an explosive device being carried by an American Air Force bomber.’

There was a brief silence, then Hawkins said: ‘I don’t want to complain, Denholm, but you do rather tend to complicate matters.’

‘I used the word “could”, sir, not “did”. On the whole, given the mysterious and inexplicable circumstances, I rather think I prefer the word “did”. If that is the case it leads, of course, to even more mysteries. How did Andropulos or whoever know when, and from where, that bomber was leaving? How did he know its cargo? How did he know an explosive device was being smuggled aboard? How did he know the radio wavelength to set it off? And, of course, there’s the why, why, why.’

The silence was considerably longer this time. Finally, Hawkins said: ‘Maybe we’re doing Andropulos an injustice. Maybe Alexander is the mastermind.’

‘Not a chance, sir.’ Van Gelder was definite. ‘Andropulos lied about the spare tank. He has connections with main centres of known gun-running activities. The fact that Alexander, who unquestionably plays the role of assistant villain, had the radio in his cabin is of no significance. I should imagine that Irene Charial might be in the habit of dropping in on her uncle occasionally and he wouldn’t want her saying, “Whatever are you doing with a spare radio in your cabin, Uncle?” I can hardly imagine her dropping in on Alexander at any time, far less occasionally. So, Alexander kept the radio.’

‘You mentioned the possibility of an insider at this Air Force base in America, sir,’ Talbot said, ‘I think we should be thinking in terms of a whole platoon of insiders. You will be composing messages for the Pentagon, Air Force Intelligence and the CIA? Suitably etched in acid. I think by this time they must be dreading the thought of another signal from the Ariadne. I don’t see much point in your going to Washington and entering a popularity stakes contest.’

‘The slings and arrows – well, we’re accustomed to injustices. What do you have in that box?’

‘Petty Officer Grant picked this up in Andropulos’s cabin. Haven’t opened it yet.’ Not without difficulty he undid two spring clips and lifted the lid. ‘Waterproof, by Jove.’ He looked at the contents. ‘Means nothing to me.’

Hawkins took the box from him, lifted out some sheets of paper and a paperback book, examined them briefly and shook his head. ‘Means nothing to me, either. Denholm?’

Denholm shuffled through the papers. ‘In Greek, naturally. Looks like a list of names, addresses and telephone numbers to me. But I can’t make sense of it.’

‘I thought you understood Greek?’

‘I do. But I don’t understand Grecian code. And this is what it’s written in – a code.’

‘Code! Damn it to hell.’ Hawkins spoke with considerable feeling. ‘This could be urgent. Vital.’

‘It’s more than likely, sir.’ Denholm looked at the paperback. ‘Homer’s Odyssey. I don’t suppose it’s here just by coincidence. If we knew the connection between the poem and what’s written on those sheets, then cracking the code would be child’s play. But we don’t have the key. That’s locked away inside Andropulos’s mind. Anagrams and word puzzles are not in my line of country, sir. I’m no cryptologist.’

Hawkins looked moodily at Talbot. ‘You don’t have a code-cracker among this motley crew you have aboard?’

‘To the best of my knowledge, no. And certainly not a Greek code-cracker. Shouldn’t be too difficult to find one, I should imagine. The Greek Defence Ministry and their Secret Service are bound to have some cryptologists on their staffs. Just a radio call and a half-hour’s flight away, sir.’

Hawkins glanced at his watch. ‘Two a.m. All God-fearing cryptologists are tucked up in their beds by this time.’

‘So are all God-fearing admirals,’ Denholm said. ‘Besides, my friend Wotherspoon didn’t mind being rousted out of bed an hour ago. Positively cheerful about it, in fact.’

Talbot said: ‘Who, may I ask warily, is Wotherspoon?’

‘Professor Wotherspoon. My friend with the Aegean lugger. You asked me to contact him, remember? Lives in Naxos, seven or eight hours’ sail from here. He’s on his way with the Angelina.’

‘Very civil of him, I must say. Angelina? Odd name.’

‘Better not let him hear you say that, sir. Name of his lugger. Ancient and honoured Grecian name, some sort of classical goddess, I believe. Also the name of his wife. Charming lady.’

‘Is he – what shall we say? – slightly eccentric?’

‘All depends upon what you mean by eccentric. He regards the rest of the world as being slightly eccentric.’

‘A professor? What does he profess?’

‘Archæology. Used to. He’s retired now.’

‘Retired? Oh dear. I mean, have we any right to bring an elderly archæologist into this?’

‘Don’t let him hear you say that either, sir. He’s not elderly. Old man left him a fortune.’

‘You warned him of the perils, of course?’

‘As directly as I could. Seemed amused. Said his ancestors fought at Agincourt and Crécy. Something to that effect.’

‘What’s good enough for a retired archæologist should be good enough for a Greek cryptologist,’ Hawkins said. ‘Not that I follow the logic of that. If you would be so good, Commander.’

‘We’ll radio Athens right away. Two things, sir. I suggest we release Andropulos and his friends for breakfast and leave them free. Sure, we’ve got plenty on them, but as yet no conclusive proof and the three A’s – Andropulos, Aristotle and Alexander – are a close-mouthed and secretive lot and we can be certain they won’t talk to us or give anything away. But they might, just might, talk among themselves. Lieutenant Denholm will lurk unobtrusively. They don’t, and won’t, know that he talks Greek as well as they do. Number One, would you tell McKenzie to warn the four seamen who were with us tonight that they are on no account to mention the fact that we were on the Delos. Keel-hauling, walking the plank, that sort of thing. One other thing. The presence of the cryptographer, when he arrives, will not go unnoticed.’

‘He’s not a cryptographer,’ Van Gelder said. ‘Peace be to Lieutenant Denholm but he’s a civilian electronics specialist who’s come out to fix some abstruse electronic fault that only he can fix. Also gives a splendid reason for him to use Denholm’s cabin while he gets on with his decoding.’

‘Well, thank you very much.’ Denholm smiled and turned to Talbot. ‘With the Captain’s permission, I’d like to retire there right now and get some sleep before this impostor arrives.’

‘An excellent idea. Vice-Admiral Hawkins, Professor Benson, Dr Wickram, I suggest you follow his example. I promise you we’ll give you a shake if anything untoward occurs.’

‘Another excellent idea,’ Hawkins said. ‘After our nightcap. And after you’ve sent your signal to Athens and I’ve composed a suitably stirring message to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington.’

‘Stirring?’

‘Certainly. Why should I be the only one suffering from insomnia? I shall tell him that we have every reason to believe that the bomber was carrying a smuggled explosive device aboard, that its detonation was triggered by a radio wave and that we have the miscreant responsible in our hands. Reason to believe, not proof. I shall name Andropulos. I shall want to know how he knew when and from where that bomber was taking off. How did he know what it was carrying? How could this explosive device possibly have been smuggled aboard? How did he know the radio wavelength to set it off? I shall suggest that our concern should be made immediately known to the White House, Air Force Intelligence, the CIA and the FBI. I will suggest that Andropulos has been provided with top-level, ultra-secret information from a very senior official. I will suggest that this should considerably narrow their field of search. I will further suggest that it seems very likely that the traitor is in his own fiefdom, the Pentagon.’

‘Stirring indeed. Laying it on the line as you might say.’ Talbot paused, ‘It has occurred to you, Admiral Hawkins, that you might also be laying your own career on the line?’

‘Only if I’m wrong.’

‘Only if we’re wrong.’

‘In the circumstances, a bagatelle. You would do exactly the same thing.’

‘Five o’clock, sir.’ Talbot woke in his sea-cabin abaft the bridge to find Van Gelder bending over him. ‘The Kilcharran is three miles out.’

‘What’s the latest word from sonar?’

‘Still ticking away, sir. Captain Montgomery says he’s going to shut down his engines in another half-mile. Sees us clearly and reckons he’ll come to a stop more or less alongside. He says that if he’s going to overshoot he’ll use a sea anchor or drop a stern anchor and if he stops short of us he’ll send a crew with a rope. From the way he talks he seems to regard either possibility as a remote contingency. Doesn’t seem the shy or bashful type.’

‘I gathered as much from the admiral. Has our cryptologist arrived?’

‘Yes. Calls himself Theodore. Speaks perfect English but I suppose he’s Greek. Installed in Denholm’s cabin. Denholm himself is up in the wardroom trying to resume his slumbers.’ Van Gelder broke off to accept a sheet of paper from a seaman who had appeared in the doorway, glanced briefly at the message and handed it without a word to Talbot, who read it in turn, muttered something inaudible and swung his legs to the deck.

‘He’ll have to try to resume his slumbers later on. Tell him to join us in the admiral’s cabin at once.’

A pyjama-clad Vice-Admiral Hawkins, propped up on the pillows of his bunk, glowered at the message in his hand and passed it across to Denholm. ‘Pentagon. Unsigned. This krytron device you suggested.’

‘If I were the spluttering type, which I’m not, this would be a sure fire-starter.’ Denholm re-read the message. ‘“Understand krytron experimental device in hand. Endeavour expedite soonest clearance.” Gobbledygook, sir. Writer is ignorant or stupid or thinks he’s clever. Very likely all three at once. What does he mean – “endeavour”? He can either do it or not. What does he mean – “understand”? He either knows or not. Expedite? Means to try to hurry things along. The Pentagon doesn’t expedite – they demand immediate compliance. Same goes for that meaningless word “soonest”. Again, should be immediate. Clearance by whom? The Pentagon can clear anything they want. What do they mean – “experimental”? Either it works or it doesn’t. And doesn’t the phrase “in hand” have a splendid meaningless vagueness about it. Gobbledygook, sir.’

‘Jimmy’s right, sir,’ Talbot said, ‘It’s insulting. Stalling for time. What they’re saying in effect is that they’re not going to entrust their latest toy to their closest ally because we’d flog it to the first Russian we came across.’

‘It’s rich,’ Denholm said, ‘It’s really wonderful. The Americans positively force their Stinger surface-to-air missiles on the rebels who are fighting the Marxist regime in Angola and the Contras in Nicaragua. It’s no secret that those guerrilla bands contain a fair proportion of characters who are just as undesirable as the dictatorial governments they’re supposed to be fighting and who would have no hesitation in disposing of those $60,000 missiles, at a fraction of their cost, to any passing terrorists who, in turn, would have no hesitation in loosing off one of those missiles at a passing Boeing 747, preferably one packed with five hundred American citizens. But that’s perfectly OK for the American administration’s ad hoc knee-jerk set of reactions that passes for their foreign policy. But it’s unthinkable that they should allow the krytron into the hands of their oldest ally. It makes me sick.’

‘It makes me mad,’ Hawkins said. ‘Let us give them a lesson on clear and unequivocal English. “Unsigned message received. Meaningless mumbo-jumbo designed to stall and delay. Demand immediate repeat immediate repeat immediate dispatch of krytron or immediate repeat immediate repeat immediate explanation of why not available. Sender of message and person responsible for delay in clearance will be held directly responsible for possible deaths of thousands. Can you not imagine the world-wide reaction when it is learnt that not only is America responsible for this potential disaster but that it was almost certainly caused by treason in the highest American military echelons? A copy of this message is being sent directly to the President of the United States.” That do, you think?’

‘You could have pitched it a bit more strongly, sir,’ Talbot said, ‘but I’d have to spend the rest of the night thinking how. You spoke earlier of sleepless heads along the Potomac. I think we should now talk of heads rolling along the Potomac. If I were you, sir, I’d keep clear of Washington for some little time, by which I mean the rest of your life.’ He rose. ‘The Kilcharran will be alongside in a few minutes. I assume you are in no hurry to meet Captain Montgomery?’

‘You assume right. There is no charity in me.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Five-thirteen. My respects to the captain and ask him to join me for breakfast at, say, eight-thirty. In my cabin here.’

Captain Montgomery, whether by luck or design – design, Talbot was certain – brought the Kilcharran alongside the Ariadne with faultless precision. Talbot stepped across the two gunwales – they were almost exactly of a height – and made his way up to the bridge. Captain Montgomery was a tall, burly character with a jutting black beard, white teeth, a slightly hooked nose and humorous eyes and, in spite of the immaculately cut uniform and four golden rings on either cuff, could easily have passed for a well-to-do and genial eighteenth-century Caribbean pirate. He extended a hand.

‘You’ll be Commander Talbot, of course.’ The voice was deep, the Irish brogue unmistakable. ‘You are welcome aboard. Has there been any further deterioration in the situation?’

‘No. The only deterioration possible, Captain, is one I don’t care to imagine.’

‘Indeed. I shall be sadly missed in the Mountains of Mourne. We’re great ones for the lamentations, the weepings and the wailings in the Mountains of Mourne. Is this atom bomb, or whatever, still ticking away?’

‘It is. I suppose you might call it a deterioration when the ticking stops. You shouldn’t have come here, Captain. You should have nipped into the Gulf of Corinth – you might have stood a chance there.’

‘Not to be thought of for a moment. Nothing to do with heroics – heroics are for those epics they make in Hollywood – or the fact that I couldn’t live with myself. I just couldn’t stand the thought of what that man would say.’

‘You’ll be referring to Vice-Admiral Hawkins?’

‘The very same. Maligning and blackening my character as usual, I dare say?’

‘Hardly.’ Talbot smiled. ‘He did, mind you, make some casual remark about you being allergic to certain naval regulations. He also said you’re the best in the business.’

‘Aye. A fair man and a bloody good admiral – but don’t tell him I said so. I suggest coffee in my cabin, Commander, and perhaps you’ll be kind enough to tell me all you know.’

‘That shouldn’t take long.’

‘Eleven p.m.,’ the President said. ‘What’s the time over there?’

‘Six a.m. There’s a seven-hour time difference.’

‘A very forthright character, this Admiral Hawkins.’ The President gazed thoughtfully at the two dispatches lying on his desk. ‘You know him, of course?’

‘Pretty well, sir.’

‘An able man, General?’

‘Exceptionally so.’

‘He also appears to be an exceptionally tough s.o.b.’

‘That’s undoubtedly true, sir. But then you have to be to command the NATO Mediterranean sea forces.’

‘Do you know him, John?’ This was to John Heiman, the Defence Secretary, the only other person present.

‘Yes. Not as well as the General, but well enough to agree with the General’s assessment.’

‘Pity I never met him. Who selected him for the job, General?’

‘Usual NATO committee.’

‘You were on it, of course?’

‘Yes. I was the chairman.’

‘Ah. The man with the casting vote?’

‘No casting vote. The decision was unanimous.’

‘I see. He – well, he seems to have rather a low opinion of the Pentagon.’

‘He doesn’t exactly say that. But he does appear to have a low opinion, deep suspicions if you like, of a person or persons in the Pentagon.’

‘Puts you in a rather unhappy position. I mean, there must be some stirrings in the Pentagon dovecote.’

‘As you say, Mr President, a few ruffled feathers. Some are hopping mad. Others are giving the matter serious consideration. Generally, you could speak of an air of quiet consternation.’

‘Are you, personally, prepared to lend any credence to this outrageous suggestion? Or what appears to be outrageous?’

‘Think the unthinkable? I don’t have any option, do I? Every instinct says no, this cannot be, those are all my friends and colleagues of many years standing, all honourable men. But instinct is a fallible guide, Mr President. Common sense and what little knowledge of history I have tells me that every man has his price. I have to investigate. The enquiry is already under way. I thought it prudent not to involve the intelligence arms of the four services. So, the FBI. The Pentagon does not care to be investigated by the FBI. It’s an extremely difficult and delicate situation, sir.’

‘Yes. One can hardly go up to an admiral of the fleet and ask him what he was doing on the night of Friday the thirteenth. I wish you luck.’ The President looked at one of the papers before him. ‘Your message re the krytron that provoked Hawkins’s ire must have been badly handled.’

‘It was. Very badly. The matter has been attended to.’

‘This krytron device. Is it operational?’

‘Yes.’

‘Been sent?’ The General shook his head, the President pressed a button and a young man entered. ‘Take this message for the General here. “Krytron device en route. Would greatly appreciate up-to-date assessment of existing problems and measures being taken. Fully appreciate extreme gravity, dangers and complexities of the situation. I personally guarantee total and immediate repeat immediate repeat immediate support and cooperation in all measures undertaken.” That should do it. Sign my name.’

‘I hope he appreciates the three “immediates”,’ the General said.

‘Eight-forty, sir,’ McKenzie said. ‘Admiral’s apologies, but he’d like to see you. He’s in his cabin with Captain Montgomery.’

Talbot thanked him, rose, washed the sleep from his face and eyes and made his way to the admiral’s quarters. A shirtsleeved Hawkins beckoned him to join himself and Montgomery at the breakfast table.

‘Coffee? Sorry to disturb you but these are times that are sent to try men’s souls.’ For a troubled soul Hawkins looked remarkably fresh, rested and relaxed and was attacking his breakfast with some gusto. ‘Captain Montgomery has been reporting the state of progress and I thought you might like to hear it. Incidentally, our friend the timing device is still ticking merrily away.’

‘We are making progress,’ Montgomery said. ‘Slow but steady – slow, because the presence of what the Admiral calls your friend the timing device does have a rather inhibitory effect and we’re probably taking some quite needless precautions as far as acoustic levels are concerned. But we’re dealing with a devil we don’t know and we’re paying the devil more than his due. Our own sonar is now locked on to this device and the sonar room has suddenly become the focal centre of interest in the Kilcharran.

‘We have achieved two things. First, by coupling up the battery resources of our two vessels we have ample electric power to lift this wreck. Your young Lieutenant Denholm looks and talks like a character out of P. G. Wodehouse, but he unquestionably knows his stuff. Your engineer officer, McCafferty, is no slouch either and neither is mine. Anyway, no problem. Secondly, we’ve cut away the port wing of the bomber.’

‘You’ve what?’ Talbot said.

‘Well, you know how it is.’ Montgomery sounded almost apologetic. ‘It was three parts torn away in any case and I figured that neither you nor the US Air Force would have any further use for it. So I had it burnt off.’ Despite his faint air of apology, it was quite clear that Montgomery had no regrets about what had been a wholly unilateral decision: as the only expert on the spot, he had no intention of consulting anybody. ‘A difficult decision and a tricky operation. No one, as far as I know, has ever before cut away the wing of a submerged big jet. That’s where the fuel tanks are located and though it seemed likely that the partial tearing away of the wing had also ruptured the fuel lines and spilled the fuel, there was no way of being sure and no one, again as far as I know, has ever come up against the problem of what happens when an oxyacetylene jet meets a fuel tank under water. But my men were very careful, there was no fuel and so no trouble. And now, at the present moment, my men are securing flotation bags and lifting slings to the plane.

‘Removing this wing gives us two advantages, one minor, one major. The minor one is that with the wing and two very heavy jet engines gone we have all that less to lift although I’m certain we could have lifted the whole lot without trouble. The major one is that the wing, had it been left there, would have snagged on the underside of the Kilcharran as it surfaced and tilted the fuselage, maybe to so acute an angle as to make access to this damned bomb difficult or impossible.’

‘Very well done, Captain,’ Hawkins said. ‘But surely there’s still one problem. When the bomber surfaces, isn’t the weight of the remaining wing and its two engines going to tilt it just as far in the other direction?’

Montgomery smiled in a kindly and tolerant fashion which any average person would have found more than wildly infuriating. Hawkins, fortunately, was not an average person.

‘No problem,’ Montgomery said. ‘We’re also securing flotation bags under that wing. When the fuselage surfaces, the wings will still be under water – you know how low wings are set on a modern jet. In the first stage of surfacing, only the top of the fuselage will be above water-level – when we cut away a rectangular section over where the bomb is located I want as much water as possible below that section to dissipate the heat of the oxyacetylene torches. After we’ve made that hole in the top we’ll lift the fuselage high enough to drain most of the water from it.’

‘How long will it take to inflate the bags and haul the plane to the surface?’

‘An hour or two. I don’t know.’

‘An hour or two?’ Hawkins made no attempt to conceal his surprise, ‘I should have thought a few minutes. You don’t know, you say. I would have thought those things could have been pretty closely calculated.’

‘Normally, yes.’ Montgomery’s air of massive restraint was on a par for provocation with his kindly tolerance. ‘But normally we’d use powerful diesel compressors. Out of deference to the little lady lying on the sea floor, no diesel. Electricity again but using only a fraction of the power. So, an indeterminate period. Do you think I could have some more coffee?’ Montgomery clearly regarded the conversation as over.

Van Gelder knocked on the opened door and entered, a message slip in his hand. He handed it to Hawkins.

‘For you, Admiral. Came in a couple of hours or so ago. Not urgent, so I didn’t think it worth waking you for it.’

‘A wise decision, my boy.’ Hawkins read it, smiled broadly and handed it to Talbot, who glanced at it, smiled in turn and read it out aloud.

‘Well, well,’ Talbot said. ‘Hobnobbing with presidents. Perhaps, after all, sir, you could walk down Pennsylvania Avenue without being clapped in irons or whatever they do to you over in those parts. More importantly, you have the krytron and this splendid pledge of cooperation. Your indignation – the less charitable would call it calculated gamble – has paid off. I like the “repeat immediate” bit. The President would appear to have a sense of humour.’

‘He would indeed. One has to be grateful to him for intervening personally. Very, very satisfactory. I note that he requires information. Would you, please.’

‘Naturally. Emphasis, of course, on the gravity and the dangers?’

‘Of course.’

‘Another item of news, sir,’ Van Gelder said to Talbot. ‘I’ve just had a rather intriguing chat with Irene Charial.’

‘I can well imagine that. Andropulos and company, of course, are now at liberty. How are they this fine morning?’

‘Glowering a bit, sir. At least Andropulos and Alexander were. But the cook was in fine form and they seemed to be thawing a bit when I left them chattering away in Greek with Denholm sitting among them and not understanding a word they were saying. Irene wasn’t there.’

‘Oh? So, naturally, overcome by concern, you hurried up to my cabin to enquire after her health.’

‘Naturally. I knew that was what you would want me to do, sir. She didn’t look as if she had slept too well and admitted as much. Seemed worried, apprehensive even. At first she was rather reluctant to talk about what was bothering her. Misplaced loyalty, I should say.’

‘I would say so too,’ Talbot said. ‘If, that is, I knew what you were talking about.’

‘Sorry. Turned out she wanted to know if Uncle Adam had been sending any radio messages. It seems –’

‘Uncle Adam?’

‘Adamantios Andropulos. His parents have a lot to answer for. Seems that she and her pal Eugenia – both sets of parents live in Piraeus, the two girls are at the University in Athens – were in the habit of phoning home every night. She wanted their parents to know that they had had an accident, were safely aboard a Royal Navy ship and would be home soon.’

‘I hope she’s right,’ Hawkins said.

‘Me too, sir. I told her no messages had been sent and suggested that if Uncle was a businessman – I thought it better not to mention that we already knew he was a multi-millionaire businessman – he might naturally tend to be secretive and that he might also be reluctant to broadcast the fact that he had lost his yacht through what might have been his own fault. She said that was no excuse for not informing the next of kin of the three crew members of the Delos who had died. I asked her if she had raised the question with him and she said no. She was a bit evasive on this point. I gather she either doesn’t know very much about Uncle Adam or doesn’t care very much about what she does know.’ Van Gelder produced a paper from his pocket, ‘I told her to write a message and I would see it was sent.’

Talbot looked at the paper, ‘It’s in Greek. Perhaps this Uncle Adam –’

‘We share the same nasty, suspicious mind, sir. I called Jimmy from the breakfast table. Quite innocent, he says.’

‘I have a better idea. Take the two young ladies to the radio-room. It’s a simple matter to lock into the telephone land lines through the Piraeus radio station. They can talk direct to their folks.’

‘With Jimmy just happening to be there?’

‘We share, as you say, the same nasty, suspicious minds. Before you do that, however, I think we’ll go and see how our latest recruit is getting on.’

‘Ah! Our resident cryptologist. Theodore.’

‘Theodore. After we’ve seen him and the young ladies have finished their calls I want you to take Irene Charial aside.’

‘And engage her in casual conversation?’

‘What else? It would seem that she and her uncle are less than soul-mates and, of course, she will be feeling suitably grateful to you for having permitted her to speak to her folks. Find out what you can about Andropulos. Find out what she thinks of him. See what you can discover about his business or businesses. Find out who his business contacts and friends are and what she thinks of them, assuming, of course, that she’s ever met any of them. And it would be very interesting to know where his travels take him – I’m not talking about his yacht cruises when she is with him – and why they take him there.’

‘You are asking me, sir, in effect, to ply Irene with cunning and devious questions, to entrap her, if you will, to engage in duplicity and extract unwitting information from a sweet and innocent girl?’

‘Yes.’

‘A pleasure, sir.’

Theodore was a cheerful, plump man in his late forties, with a pale face and thick pebble glasses, those last a very probable consequence of having spent a lifetime poring over abstruse codes.

‘You have come to check on progress, gentlemen. I am making some, I’m happy to report. Took me quite some time to find the key, the connection between the code and the Odyssey. Since then, it’s straightforward. These sheets are in three sections and I’m now about two-thirds of the way through the first one.’

‘Found anything of interest?’ Talbot said.

‘Interesting? Fascinating, Captain, fascinating. Statements of his accounts, bank holdings, if you like. He has his money stashed away – “stashed” is the word? – all over the world, it seems. As a matter of interest, I’m totting up the sum of his holdings as I go along. He’s made it very easy for me, everything is in US dollars. So far, let me see, it’s two-eighty. Yes, two-eighty. Dollars.’

‘A man could retire on that,’ Van Gelder said.

‘Indeed. Two-eighty. Followed by six zeros.’

Talbot and Van Gelder looked at each other in silence, then bent forward over Theodore’s shoulders to look at the figures he had added up. After some seconds they straightened, looked at each other again, then bent forward once more.

‘Two hundred and eighty million dollars,’ Talbot said. ‘On that you could retire, Vincent.’

‘If I scraped and pinched a bit, I might manage. Do you know where those bank accounts are kept, Theodore? Cities, countries, I mean?’

‘Some I do, because he’s given names and addresses, some I don’t. For the second lot, he may have another code which I don’t have or he just knows them by heart. By heart, I would guess. I have no means of knowing where at least half the accounts are. Just the amounts, that’s all.’

‘Could you show us some of those?’ Talbot said.

‘Of course.’ Theodore pointed to some entries, flipped over several pages and indicated several more. ‘Just amounts, as I said. As you see, there’s a differing capital letter after each entry. They mean nothing to me. Maybe they do to Andropulos.’

Talbot leafed through the pages again. ‘Five letters, just five, recur regularly – Z, W, V, B and G. Well, now. If you were a thrifty citizen and wanted a safe piggy-bank secure from the prying eyes of nasty parties such as police and income tax authorities, which country would you choose?’

‘Switzerland.’

‘I think the same far from original thought had occurred to Andropulos – for at least half his assets. Z for Zürich. W? Winterthur, perhaps. V? Off-hand, I don’t know about that one.’

‘Vevey?’ Van Gelder said. ‘On Lake Geneva?’

‘I don’t think so. Hardly what you might call an international banking centre. Ah! I have it. Not in Switzerland, but it might as well be. Vaduz. Liechtenstein. I don’t know much about those things but I understand that once cash disappears into the vaults of Vaduz it never surfaces again. B could be Berne or Basle – Andropulos would know, of course. G has to be Geneva. How am I doing, Number One?’

‘Splendidly. I’m sure you’re right. I hardly like to point out, sir, that we still don’t have the names and addresses of those banks.’

‘True. Crest-fallen, but only slightly. We still have names and addresses of other banks. You have a list of those cities where those banks are located?’

‘I don’t have to,’ Theodore said, ‘I have it in my head. They’re all over the place, west, east and in between. Places as different as Miami, Tijuana, Mexico City, Bogotá in Colombia, Bangkok, Islamabad in Pakistan, Kabul in Afghanistan. Why anyone should want to hide away money in Kabul is quite beyond me. Country is torn by war and the Russians occupy and control the capital.’

‘Andropulos would appear to have friends everywhere,’ Talbot said. ‘Why should the poor Russians be left out in the cold? That about the lot?’

‘Quite a few other places,’ Theodore said. ‘Mostly smaller accounts. One exception, though. The biggest deposit of the lot.’

‘Where?’

‘Washington, DC.’

‘Well, now.’ Talbot was silent for a few minutes. ‘What do you make of that, Number One?’

‘I think I’ve just about stopped making anything out of anything. My mind has kind of taken a leave of absence. But my eyes are still working, in a fashion, you might say. I think I see a faint light at the end of the tunnel.’

‘I think if we think a bit more it might turn into a searchlight. How much money?’

‘Eighteen million dollars.’

‘Eighteen million dollars,’ Van Gelder said. ‘My, my. Even in Washington, DC, a man could buy a lot with eighteen million dollars.’

Chapter 6

The Angelina, to put it at its most kindly, was a rather striking-looking craft. An eighty-tonner built of pinewood from the forests of the island of Samos, she had a dazzling white hull which contrasted strongly – some would have said violently – with her vermilion gunwale. Wide of beam and low in the water amidships, she had a pronounced flare aft and for’ard, a curved stem that projected high above the gunwale. As a sailing boat, she was well equipped with a standing-lug main and balance-lug foresail, together with two jibs. Had it been left at that, as she had originally been built, the Angelina, a typical example of the Tehandiri class, would not only have been striking but downright handsome. Unfortunately, it had not been left at that.

The owner, Professor Wotherspoon, although a self-avowed traditionalist, was also strongly attached to his creature comforts. Not content with converting the craft’s very considerable hold – it was, after all, originally constructed as a cargo vessel – into cabins and bathrooms, he had constructed on the deck a bridge, saloon and galley which, while admittedly functional, detracted notably from the overall æsthetic effect.

Shortly before ten o’clock in the morning, the Angelina, almost slack-sailed and ghosting along under a Meltemi that hardly rated as a zephyr, tied up along the starboard side of the Ariadne. Talbot, accompanied by Denholm, climbed down a rope ladder to greet the owner.

The first impression that Talbot had of Wotherspoon was that he didn’t look a bit like a professor or an archæologist but then, he had to admit, he had no idea what a professor or archæologist was supposed to look like. He was tall, lean, shock-haired and deeply tanned: humorous of mien and colloquial of speech, he was the last person one would expect to find wandering through the groves of Academe. He was certainly not more than forty years old. His wife, with auburn hair and laughing hazel eyes, was at least ten years younger and was also, it seemed, an archæologist.

Introductions effected by Denholm, Talbot said: ‘I appreciate this very much, Professor. Very kind of you to come. Not to say very gallant. You appreciate that there is a fair chance that you might find yourself prematurely in another world? Lieutenant Denholm did explain the dangers to you?’

‘In a cautious and roundabout fashion. He’s become very tight-lipped since he joined the Senior Service.’

‘I didn’t join. I was dragooned.’

‘He did mention something about vaporization. Well, one gets a bit tired of studying ancient history. Much more interesting to be a part of the making of it.’

‘It might be a very short-lived interest indeed. Does Mrs Wotherspoon share your short-lived interests?’

‘“Angelina”, please. We had to entertain a very prim and proper Swiss lady the other day and she insisted on addressing me as Madame Professor Wotherspoon. Ghastly. No, I can’t say I share all of my husband’s more extravagant enthusiasms. But, alas, he does have one professorial failing. He’s horribly absent-minded. Someone has to look after him.’

Talbot smiled. ‘A fearful thing for so young and attractive a lady to be trapped for life. Again, thank you both very, very much. I should like it if you would join us for lunch. Meantime, I’ll leave Lieutenant Denholm to explain the full horrors of the situation to you – especially the ones you’ll encounter across the lunch table.’

‘Gloom and despondency,’ Van Gelder said, ‘It ill becomes one so young and beautiful to be gloomy and despondent. What is the matter, Irene?’

In so far as one so young and beautiful could look morose, Irene Charial gazed out morosely over the taffrail of the Ariadne.

‘I am not, Lieutenant-Commander Van Gelder, in the mood for flattery.’

‘Vincent. Flattery is an insincere compliment. How can the truth be flattery? But you’re right about the word “mood”. You are in a mood. You’re worried, upset. What’s troubling you?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Being beautiful doesn’t mean you’re above telling fibs. You could hardly call that flattery, could you?’

‘No.’ A fleeting smile touched the green eyes. ‘Not really.’

‘I know this is a very unpleasant situation you find yourself in. But we’re all trying to make the best of it. Or did something your parents say upset you?’

‘You know perfectly well that that’s not true.’ Van Gelder also knew it, Denholm had reassured him on that point.

‘Yes, that’s so. You were hardly in a cheerful frame of mind when I first met you this morning. Something worries you. Is it so dreadful a secret that you can’t tell me?’

‘You’ve come here to pry, haven’t you?’

‘Yes. To pry and probe. Crafty, cunning, devious questions to extract information from you that you don’t know you’re giving away.’ It was Van Gelder’s turn to look morose, ‘I don’t think I’m very good at it.’

‘I don’t think you are, either. That man sent you, didn’t he?’

‘What man?’

‘Now you’re being dishonest. Commander Talbot. Your captain. A cold man. Distant. Humourless.’

‘He’s neither cold nor distant. And he’s got a very considerable sense of humour.’

‘Humour. I don’t see any signs of it.’

‘I’m beginning not to be surprised.’ Van Gelder had stopped smiling. ‘Maybe he thought it would be wasted on you.’

‘Maybe he’s right.’ She appeared not to have taken offence. ‘Or maybe I just don’t see too much to laugh about at the moment. But I’m right about the other thing. He’s remote, distant. I’ve met people like him before.’

‘I doubt it very much. In the same way that I doubt your power of judgement. You don’t seem to be very well equipped in that line.’

‘Oh.’ She made a moue. ‘Flattery and charm have flown out the window, is that it?’

‘I don’t flatter. I’ve never claimed to have charm.’

‘I meant no harm. Please. I see nothing wrong with being a career officer. But he lives for only two things – the Royal Navy and the Ariadne.’

‘You poor deluded creature.’ Van Gelder spoke without heat. ‘But how were you to know? John Talbot lives for only two things – his daughter and his son. Fiona, aged six, and Jimmy, aged three. He dotes on them. So do I. I’m their Uncle Vincent.’

‘Oh.’ She was silent for some moments. ‘And his wife?’

‘Dead.’

‘I am sorry.’ She caught his arm. ‘To say I didn’t know is no excuse. Go ahead. Call me a clown.’

‘I don’t flatter, I don’t charm – and I don’t tell lies.’

‘But you do turn a pretty compliment.’ She took her hand away, leaned on the rail and looked out over the sea. After some time, she said, without looking around: ‘It’s my Uncle Adam, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. We don’t know him, we don’t trust him and we think he’s a highly suspicious character. You will forgive me talking about your nearest and dearest in this fashion.’

‘He is not my nearest and dearest.’ She had turned to face him. There was neither vehemence in her voice nor marked expression in her face: at most, a slight degree of bewilderment in both. ‘I don’t know him, I don’t trust him and I think he’s a highly suspicious character.’

‘If you don’t know him, what on earth are – were – you doing aboard his yacht?’

‘I suppose that, too, seems suspicious. Not really. Three reasons, I would think. He’s a very persuasive man. He seems to be genuinely fond of our family – my younger brother and sister and myself – for he is forever giving us presents, very expensive presents, too, and it seemed churlish to refuse his invitation. Then there was the element of fascination – I know practically nothing about him, nor what his business activities are or why he spends so much time in foreign countries. And, of course, perhaps both Eugenia and I are snobs at heart and were flattered by the invitation to go cruising on a very expensive yacht.’

‘Well, good enough reasons. But still not good enough to explain why you went with him if you dislike him.’

‘I didn’t say I disliked him. I said I distrusted him. Not the same thing. And I didn’t begin distrusting him until this trip.’

‘Why start now?’

‘Alexander is why.’ She gave a mock shudder. ‘Would you trust Alexander?’

‘Candidly, no.’

‘And Aristotle is almost as bad. The three of them spent hours talking together, usually in the radio-room. Whenever Eugenia or I went near them, they stopped talking. Why?’

‘Obvious, isn’t it? They didn’t want you to hear what they were talking about. Ever been with him abroad on his business trips?’

‘Good heavens, no.’ She was genuinely startled at the idea.

‘Not even on the Delos?’

‘I’ve only been on the Delos once before. With my brother and sister. A short trip to Istanbul.’

He was going to have less than a sensational report to make to his captain, Van Gelder reflected. She didn’t know her uncle. She didn’t know what his businesses were. She never travelled with him. And her only reason for distrusting him was that she distrusted Alexander, a feeling almost certainly shared by the majority of people who had ever met him. Van Gelder made one last try.

‘Your mother’s brother, of course?’ She nodded. ‘What does she think of him?’

‘She never speaks ill of him. But she never speaks ill of anyone. She’s a wonderful lady, a wonderful mother, not simple or anything like that, just a very trusting person who could never bring herself to speak ill of anyone.’

‘She’s obviously never met Alexander. Your father?’

‘He never speaks of Uncle Adam either, but he doesn’t speak in a very different way, if you follow me. My father is a very straight, very honest man, very clever, head of a big construction company, highly respected by everyone. But he doesn’t speak of my uncle. I’m not as trusting as my mother. I believe my father strongly disapproves of Uncle Adam or whatever businesses he runs. Or both. I don’t believe they’ve talked in years.’ She shrugged and gave a faint smile. ‘Sorry I can’t be of more help. You haven’t learnt anything, have you?’

‘Yes, I have. I’ve learnt I can trust you.’

This time the smile was warm and genuine and friendly. ‘You don’t flatter, you don’t charm and you don’t tell lies. But you are gallant.’

‘Yes,’ Van Gelder said, ‘I believe I am.’

‘Sir John,’ the President said, ‘you have put me in a most damnably awkward position. I speak, you understand, more in sorrow than in anger.’

‘Yes, Mr President. I am aware of that and I’m sorry for it. It is, of course, no consolation for you to know that I am in an equally awkward situation.’ If Sir John Travers, the British Ambassador to the United States, did indeed find himself in such a situation, he showed no signs of it. But then Sir John was renowned throughout the diplomatic world for his savoir-faire, his monolithic calm and his ability to remain wholly unruffled in the most trying and difficult situations, ‘I’m only the messenger boy. Grade one, of course.’

‘Who the hell is this fellow Hawkins, anyway?’ Richard Hollison, deputy head of the FBI, couldn’t quite match Sir John’s tranquil serenity but he had his obvious anger under tight control, ‘I don’t think I care very much for having a foreigner telling the White House, the Pentagon and the FBI how to run their business.’

‘Hawkins is a Vice-Admiral in the British Navy.’ The General was the fourth and only other person in the office. ‘An exceptionally able man. I cannot think of any United States naval officer whom I would sooner have in his place in those near-impossible circumstances. And I don’t think I need point out that I am in the most awkward situation of all. I don’t want to sound overly possessive but, bloody hell, the Pentagon is my concern.’

‘Richard Hollison,’ Sir John said. ‘I’ve known you for some years now. I know your reputation for toughness is matched only by your reputation for fairness. Be fair in this case. Admiral Hawkins, as the General has just said, is in a position of having to cope with almost impossible circumstances which, as you are in a position to know better than most, involves making almost impossible decisions. He’s not telling anyone how to run their business. In order to get a message to the President, without anyone in the Government or the Pentagon seeing the message before the President, he elected to bypass the Pentagon and all the standard avenues of communication. Certainly the Pentagon knows it’s already under investigation, but Hawkins didn’t want anyone to know that he was pointing fingers in certain directions. If it is your intention to set a cat among the pigeons or let loose an eagle in the dovecote, you don’t send a postcard in advance announcing your intentions.’

‘Yes, I accept that,’ Hollison said. ‘With weary resignation, I accept it. But don’t ask me to like it.’

‘Like it or lump it,’ the President said, ‘I accept it, too.’ He looked unenthusiastically at the paper before him on his desk. ‘It would appear that this Adamantios Andropulos, who is Hawkins’s temporary guest – I could well imagine that Admiral Hawkins would use the term “guest” even if this unfortunate were clapped in irons in some shipboard dungeon – has an account with a Washington bank, name and address supplied, of some eighteen million dollars, and would we kindly make enquiries to see if he has been disbursing any of this of late and, if so, in what direction. I know this lies well within your capabilities, Richard. Point is, how long will it take?’

‘All depends upon how many false names, how many dud companies, how much of the usual laundering paraphernalia is involved. The villain, if there is a villain, might well have a numbered account in outer Mongolia. Unlikely, I admit, but you take my point. One hour, maybe three. We will not stand upon the order of our going. Excuse me, Mr President. Excuse me, gentlemen.’ Hollison left.

‘The Army and the Marines will be pleased to learn – when they do learn of it – that Admiral Hawkins does not consider them worthy of his regard,’ the President went on. ‘Only the Air Force and the Navy. The Air Force I can, in the circumstances, understand. But it would be interesting to know why he has deemed the Navy to be deserving of his interests. He gives no indications on that score.’ The President sighed. ‘Maybe he doesn’t even trust me. Or maybe he knows something that we don’t know.’

Sir John said placidly: ‘If that is the case – that he knows something we don’t – I have little doubt that he’ll tell us in the fullness of time.’

The man under discussion in the White House was, at that moment, dwelling on precisely the same subject.

‘Time’s winged chariot, John. I forget the rest of the quotation but it’s definitely on the wing.’ Leaning back in a comfortable armchair, a glass of frosted lime juice in his hand, Hawkins succeeded only in giving the impression of a man with all the time in the world. ‘So much to do, so little time to do it in. How stands the Ariadne in respect of the rest of this uncaring world?’

‘I think you might say, sir, that the patient is coming along as well as could be expected. Our carpenter is aboard the Angelina, building a cradle for the bomb according to the specifications the Pentagon gave us. There will be two hinged clamps to secure it in even the worst weather which, as you can see for yourself, is the last thing we expect today.’

‘Indeed.’ The Admiral looked through the window of his cabin. ‘The weather is all wrong, John. Considering the possibly apocalyptic and doom-laden task we have on hand, the least we could reasonably expect is high winds, torrential rain, thunder, lightning, tempests, tornadoes and all those other adverse weather conditions that King Lear encountered on his walkabout around the blasted heath. But what do we have? A blistering July sun, a cloudless blue sky and the wine-dark seas without even a ripple to show for themselves. Downright disappointing. Also disappointing, not to say extremely disturbing, is the likelihood that if those zero-wind conditions persist, it’ll take the Angelina a week to get even half way towards the horizon.’

‘I don’t think we have to worry about that, sir. Weather conditions in the Cyclades between early July and mid-September are remarkably predictable. It’s already eleven forty-five. Any minute now the Meltemi, the Etesian wind, will start up from the north-west. During the afternoon it reaches Forces 5 or 6, sometimes even 7. Usually dies away in the evening but it has been known to last all night. The Meltemi will be ideally suited for the Angelina. Those luggers, as Denholm said, are hopeless windward sailors but in this case it will be directly astern of them and carry them down towards the Kásos Strait to the east of the easternmost tip of Crete.’

‘Sounds fine, but, well, even if Montgomery manages to raise this bomber, if he manages to cut a hole in the fuselage without blowing us all to kingdom come, if he manages to extract the atom bomb and if he manages to secure it to the Angelina’s cradle, what happens if the thing detonates before he reaches the Kásos Strait?’

‘Then that’s it for Wotherspoon and his crew. For us, the risk is low. I’ve been talking to Dr Wickram about this. He seems convinced of the inherent stability of the hydrogen bomb – after all, he does build the damn things. While he says it would be a hundred per cent certain to go up if an atom bomb exploded alongside it, we mustn’t over-estimate the effects of a more remote explosive shock, even at a distance of a few miles. After all, those bombs did survive the effect of the explosion in the nose of the bomber and the impact of the plane hitting the water at high speed. Besides, the intervening miles of water – we hope there will be those intervening miles – should have a powerfully dampening effect.’

‘There’ll be no such effect for those aboard the Angelina. Curtains. What motivates a man like that, John? Obviously, he’s incredibly brave – but, well, is he all right?’

‘If you mean is he off his rocker, then we’re all off our rockers. He’s as sane as you or I. He’s a romantic at heart, a born adventurer; a couple of hundred years ago and he’d have been somewhere on the other side of the world building up the odd empire.’

‘That’s as may be. But it’s still a terrible thought that a man like that should die for us.’

‘He won’t be dying for all of us. I’m going on the Angelina. So is Vincent Van Gelder.’

Hawkins put down his glass and stared at him. ‘Do you know what you’re saying? I know what you’re saying and I think you’ve taken leave of your senses. Are you mad? You and Van Gelder? Quite mad?’

‘Van Gelder insists on coming along. I insist on going. That’s all there is to it.’

‘I absolutely forbid it.’

‘With the deepest respect, Admiral, you’ll forbid me nothing. Did you honestly expect me to leave a job half done? Did you honestly expect me to let him go out there and die alone? I would remind you that I am the captain of this ship and that at sea not even an admiral can take over from me or give orders which I consider to be to the detriment of this vessel.’

‘Mutiny!’ Hawkins waved a dismissive hand at his lime juice. ‘Have we nothing stronger than this?’

‘Naturally.’ Talbot went to the Admiral’s wine cupboard and prepared a drink while Hawkins gazed at a spot on the deck which was about a thousand miles away. ‘A large scotch and water. No ice.’

‘Thank you.’ Hawkins drained almost half the contents. ‘Mutiny, forsooth!’

‘Yes, sir. Can’t hang me from the yard-arm, though. It’s my yard-arm. You haven’t yet met Angelina – Professor Wotherspoon’s wife, I mean, not the lugger. But you will. I’ve invited them aboard for lunch. Young, rather lovely, nice sense of humour and dotty about her husband. She has to be – dotty, I mean – to do something she clearly doesn’t want to do, that is to go along from here with her husband and the bomb on the lugger.’

‘I’m sure I shall be delighted to make her acquaintance.’ Hawkins took another sip of his drink. ‘What’s she got to do with the matter in hand?’

‘She’s not going with the bomb and the lugger. Neither is Wotherspoon, for that matter, or his two crew members. They remain aboard the Ariadne. Wotherspoon, of course, will have to be forcibly restrained, but that’s no problem at all. Van Gelder and I will take the Angelina down through the Kásos Strait. Two small medals will suffice.’

Hawkins was silent for quite some time, then said: ‘How are you going to pin on a couple of posthumous VCs or whatever when you’re circling the earth in a vaporized orbit?’

‘One problem at a time. We can’t let the girl go.’

‘Good God, no. I’ll never forgive myself. I never even started to think. I wonder –’

‘Wonder me no wonders, sir. We don’t have room for three heroes aboard the Angelina. Someone has to take the Ariadne home again, remember? Well, that’s the Angelina. Now, the Kilcharran. I’ve just been talking to Captain Montgomery. He’s just given a couple of experimental tugs on the lifting slings and he reckons the bomber, with the help of the flotation bags, of course, is nearing a state of neutral buoyancy. Twenty minutes, half an hour at the most, and he’s going to start to haul away. You won’t want to miss that, sir.’

‘No, indeed. What did Walter de la Mare say – look your last on all things lovely every hour? This may be the last thing I’ll ever see?’

‘I rather hope it doesn’t come to that, sir. Apart from the lugger and the recovery of the bomber, we have to wait for three other things. The reaction to the message we sent to the President via our embassy in Washington, which might take quite some time, for even the most cooperative of banks, and banks almost by definition are secretive and detest the very thought of cooperation, are going to be very reluctant to disclose any information about their important clients, because important clients don’t like that sort of thing. Admittedly, Air Force Generals and Admirals are unlikely to be very important financially, but they are from the point of view of prestige and power and would, I should think, carry a disproportionate amount of clout. I do hope we haven’t upset too many people over there. Then, and this I should expect very soon, there should be a reply from Greek Intelligence to our query asking for the complete list of places where Andropulos has conducted business, any kind of business, over the past few years. Then, of course, we await the arrival of this krytron device from America.’

‘Which may arrive any old time. I mean, we have no idea, have we? Do the Americans have supersonic planes?’

‘Sure they have. But fighters only. And their nearest refuelling point would be the Azores and I’m quite certain no fighter could fly the close on two thousand miles they’d have to travel to get there. Question of fuel capacity. Besides, it’s not absolutely essential that we get this device before leaving with the bomb – always assuming, of course, that we do leave. We could always dump the bomb, drop a marker, warn all shipping to keep clear, wait for the krytron to arrive, return there and detonate the bomb.’

‘Much more satisfactory if it could all be done in one fell swoop.’ Hawkins thought for a moment, then smiled. ‘What’s the time in Washington?’

‘Four a.m., I think.’

‘Excellent, excellent. A short message. Ask them how it’s being transported and what’s the expected time of arrival. Give ’em something to do.’ Talbot lifted a phone and dictated the message.

‘Haven’t seen your second-in-command lately,’ Hawkins said. ‘I understood he was prising secrets loose from Andropulos’s niece?’

‘Vincent normally carries out his duties with efficiency and dispatch. When the duties involve Irene Charial, it seems to take a little longer.’

‘Not so many years ago it would have taken me a little longer myself. Ah!’ Van Gelder had appeared in the doorway. ‘Just discussing you, young man. A difficult and protracted interview, I take it?’

‘One treads delicately, sir. But she told me everything she knew.’ He looked reproachfully at Talbot. ‘I detect a trace of scepticism in your expression, sir. Unwarranted, I assure you. I believe her, I trust her and I was not bewitched by her green eyes, owing to the fact that I was on duty at the time.’

‘Less than admirable though they may be, Vincent, deviousness and low cunning have their place in the scheme of things.’

‘It wasn’t like that at all. I told her that you had sent me to try to trap her into making unwary and unguarded statements and unwittingly to betray herself. After that, we got along famously.’

Talbot smiled. ‘Just another way of being devious. What does she know?’

‘Nothing. I guarantee you’d come to the same conclusion, sir. She doesn’t know her uncle, except superficially. She doesn’t trust him. She thinks he’s a highly suspicious character. She thinks Alexander is a highly suspicious character, although that wouldn’t require any great acumen on anyone’s part. She knows nothing about his businesses. She’s never travelled with him. Her father, whom she obviously dotes on and has the highest respect for, thinks he’s a highly suspicious character – he and Andropulos haven’t spoken for years. She’s convinced that her father knows a great deal about her uncle and his businesses, but Dad refuses to discuss any aspect of the matter.’

‘Sounds as if we could do with Dad aboard right now,’ Hawkins said, ‘I have the feeling we could learn some very interesting things from him.’

‘I’m sure we could, sir. One odd thing – she’s convinced that her uncle is genuinely fond of her.’

Hawkins smiled, ‘I think it would be rather difficult not to be fond of the young lady. However, I would point out in the passing, and apropos of nothing, that mass murderers have been known to dote on tiny tots.’

‘I hardly think he’s a mass murderer, sir.’

‘And she’s certainly not a tiny tot.’ He looked speculatively at Talbot. ‘A passing thought, John?’

‘Yes.’ Talbot looked out through the window for an unseeing moment, then back at Hawkins. ‘How do we know he’s not a mass murderer?’

The speculation was still in Hawkins’s eyes. ‘You don’t normally make remarks like that. Not without good reason. You have something in mind?’

‘I think I have. But it’s so far back in my mind that I can’t reach it. It’ll come.’ He turned as Denholm entered the cabin, ‘I seem to recall having asked you this question before. What drags you away from the fleshpots?’

‘Duty, sir.’

‘You will have noticed, Admiral,’ Talbot said, ‘how devoted the Ariadne’s officers are to their duty. I thought, Jimmy, that you were supposed to be lurking and eavesdropping?’

‘I have lurked, sir. And eavesdropped. I have also been plying Mr Andropulos and his friends with strong drink.’

‘At this time of the morning?’ Hawkins said.

‘Captain’s orders, sir. I hope, Captain, that the Admiralty are going to take care of my bar bill.’

‘Prodigious?’

‘Not as prodigious as their thirsts. They have relaxed a bit. They have apparently agreed that I’m simple-minded. They are quite certain I don’t know a word of Greek but even so they’re still very cautious. Much given to allusions and cryptic references, all made, for good measure, in a Macedonian dialect.’

‘Which you learnt at your mother’s knee?’

‘A bit later than that. But I’m at home in it. I don’t know whether you will consider this good news or bad, sir, but Andropulos knows there are hydrogen bombs aboard that bomber. He even knows there are fifteen of them.’

There was a fairly lengthy silence while the other three men in the cabin considered the implications of Denholm’s words, then Hawkins said: ‘Good news and bad news. Good news for us, bad news for Andropulos. Well done, my boy. Very well done.’

‘I echo that, sir,’ Talbot said. ‘Lieutenant Denholm is miscast as either a classicist or electronics officer. MI5 should have him. There is no way that Andropulos could have learnt aboard the Ariadne of the existence of those bombs. So he knew before. Proof, if that were needed, of our near-certain conviction that Andropulos has penetrated the Pentagon.’

‘I would point out, sir,’ Denholm said, ‘that the words hydrogen bombs weren’t actually used. Also, it’s only my word against theirs.’

‘That’s irrelevant and this is no court of law. There will be no confrontation. All that matters is that we know and they don’t know that we do.’

‘My usefulness is over? Or do I continue to lurk?’

‘Lurk, of course. The three A’s must be making some contingency plans. We know now why they wanted aboard the Ariadne. What we don’t know is what they intend to do now that they are here. Resume your wassailing.’

‘Wassailing?’ Denholm sounded bitter, ‘I have an arrangement with Jenkins whereby I consume copious quantities of tonic water, lemon and ice. Ghastly.’ He turned to go but Talbot stopped him as a seaman entered and handed over a sheet of paper.

‘You might as well hear what’s in this.’ He studied the paper briefly. ‘This is in reply to a request we made of Greek Intelligence for as exhaustive a list as they could supply of all places where Andropulos is known either to do business or have contacts. No names, no addresses, just towns. Forty or fifty of them. My, my. This list wasn’t compiled on the spur of the moment. Greek Intelligence must have been taking a more than passing interest in the activities of our friend Andropulos over a long period, years I would think. I wonder why. About half of those places are marked by asterisks. Again I wonder why. Was that for their own information or is it intended to suggest something to us?’

He handed the paper to Hawkins, who studied it for a moment, then said: ‘I know those places marked with an asterisk. I don’t see their relevance in our circumstances. I can’t even remotely associate them with our problem. I’d swear that none of those places had any connection with hydrogen bombs.’

‘So would I,’ Talbot said. ‘Maybe they handle something else. In spite of the situation we find ourselves in, maybe hydrogen bombs aren’t the biggest cause for concern. If you can imagine anything worse than our present situation, that is. Could I have that back, sir?’

He sat at the desk, made some marks on the paper before him, then looked up.

‘Bangkok, Islamabad, Kabul, Bogotá, Miami, Mexico City, Tijuana, San Diego, Bahamas, Ocho Rios, Ankara, Sofia – Andropulos playing both sides of the fence with those last two, the ethnic Turks are having a very bad time in Bulgaria just now, but Andropulos wouldn’t let that interfere with his business interests – and Amsterdam. What does that list suggest?’

‘Drugs,’ Van Gelder said.

‘Drugs. Heroin, cocaine, marijuana, you name. it. Now some more towns. Tehran, Baghad – Andropulos again playing both sides of the fence, Iran and Iraq had been at war for six years now – Tripoli, Damascus, Beirut, Athens, Rome, East Berlin, New York and London. That suggest something?’

‘Yes.’ It was Van Gelder again. ‘Terrorism. I’m not quite sure why New York and London qualify.’

‘I seem to remember there have been two attempts, one at John F. Kennedy, the other at Heathrow to smuggle bombs aboard planes. Both bungled, both failed. I think it’s fairly safe to assume – in fact, it would be criminally negligent not to assume – that the terrorists who planned those crimes are still in residence in London and New York, waiting. Jimmy, would you please go to your cabin and bring Theodore here with whatever further results his cryptology has turned up.’

Hawkins said: ‘I most sincerely hope that you are not thinking what I think you are, if you follow me.’

‘It may be, sir, that I am thinking what you are, if you follow me.’

‘What you are suggesting is that this Andropulos is some kind of mastermind – possible world co-ordinator – of drug-smuggling? Is that what you meant by your remark that we didn’t know he wasn’t a mass murderer?’

‘Yes, sir. What else can that list of contacts he has in drug areas mean? Where else has he accumulated his vast wealth – and we haven’t added it all up yet, not by any means.’

‘There’s no actual proof.’

‘All depends on what you call proof. It’s very powerful suggestive evidence. How far are you prepared to stretch the long arm of coincidence? To infinity?’

‘And you’re further suggesting he’s engaged in terrorism. That he’s using his vast profits from drug-smuggling to finance his terrorist activities?’

‘It’s possible, but I don’t think so. I think the two activities are being run in tandem.’

‘A drug-peddler is one thing. A terrorist quite another. Incompatibles. Poles apart. Never the twain shall meet.’

‘One hesitates to contradict a senior officer. But I’m afraid you’re wrong, sir. Vincent, would you enlighten the Admiral? You know what I’m talking about.’

‘All too well, sir. October 1984, Admiral, our last submarine patrol. North Atlantic, about two hundred miles west of the Irish coast. I can remember it as if it were yesterday. We were asked to move into position to observe, but not to intercept, a small American ship en route from the States to Ireland and given its course and estimated time when it would pass a certain point. Neither the crew of this vessel nor its captain, a certain Captain Robert Anderson who, I believe, is still at large, knew that they had been monitored from the moment they had left port by an American spy-in-the-sky satellite. We upped periscope, identified it, then downed periscope. They never saw us. It was a New England trawler, the Valhalla, based on Gloucester, Massachusetts, from which it had sailed a few days earlier. It transferred its cargo to an Irish tug, the Marita Ann, which was duly seized by the Irish Navy.

‘The cargo consisted entirely of military hardware – rifles, machine-guns, shotguns, pistols, hand grenades, rockets and, as I recall, about 70,000 rounds of ammunition, all destined for the IRA. It was to have been the IRA’s biggest gun-running plot ever, but it was foiled because of what was called “Operation Leprechaun”, where the CIA, our MI5 and Irish Intelligence took a healthy – or unhealthy, it all depends on your point of view – interest in the activities of Noraid, an Irish-American group that specialized – for all I know it may still be specializing – in buying American arms and shipping them to the IRA in Ireland.

‘Round about the same time a Panamanian registered cargo ship by the name of the Ramsland, chartered by the same gang who had organized the Valhalla, put into Boston harbour and was promptly seized by the United States Coast Guard. The Ramsland had secret compartments below decks but the Coast Guard knew all about those secret compartments. They held no less than thirty tons of marijuana, another smuggling record. The proceeds from the sale of those drugs were, of course, intended to fund IRA terrorist activities.’

‘We became quite interested in the drugsterrorist connection,’ Talbot said, ‘and made some discreet enquiries. At least five other drug-terrorist connections had been discovered and broken up. It is believed that considerably more connections have not been discovered and so not broken up. Why should Andropulos be an exception to what appears to be a fairly well established rule?’

‘A suitably chastened admiral sits before you,’ Hawkins said. ‘We live, we learn. You two should join Denholm and offer your services to MI5. Ah, the man himself.’

Denholm entered the cabin with Theodore, who handed over to Talbot some papers he had with him. Talbot looked at them and handed them over to Hawkins.

‘Well, well, well,’ Hawkins said. ‘What an interesting coincidence or, in view of what I’ve just been learning, perhaps not all that much of a coincidence. Fifteen of the towns that Greek Intelligence asterisked – if that’s the word – on their list. Only, in this case – my, my, my! – they give names and addresses. Isn’t that splendid? Captain, a thought has occurred to me. There’s one of those towns marked with an asterisk that you omitted to mention. Washington, DC. Does that come under D for drugs or T for terrorism?’

‘Neither. B for bribery. Are you about through this list, Theodore?’

‘Two-thirds, I would say.’

‘And that will be the end of it?’

‘No, Captain. There’s still a last list.’

‘It would be gratifying if it held some more revelations, but perhaps that would be too much to hope for. How long have you been up and around, Theodore?’

‘Three o’clock this morning. Three-thirty. I’m not sure, I was a bit fuzzy. If I had known what would be required of me this morning I wouldn’t have gone to that birthday celebration last night.’

‘And it’s now noon, or thereabouts. Seven hours of beating your brains out when you weren’t feeling all that hot to begin with. You must be exhausted. But I would appreciate it if you could at least finish this present list off. After that, Jimmy, I suggest that Theodore has a drink, snack and snooze in that order.’ The two men left. ‘If you agree, Admiral, I suggest that Vincent contacts Greek Intelligence after Theodore has finished that list and furnishes them with a list of the towns together with the appropriate names and addresses. Could help.’

‘And what do you imagine Greek Intelligence can do?’

‘Very little, I imagine. But they can forward the list, with utmost urgency, to Interpol. Admittedly, Interpol’s writ doesn’t run worldwide – they would have zero clout in places, say, like Tripoli, Tehran or Beirut – and they are an information gathering and dispensing agency not an executive unit, and they know more about bad people than any other group in the world. And ask them if they suspect – suspect, not have proof – that Andropulos is engaged in drug-running.’

‘Shall be done, sir. Sign it “Admiral Hawkins”?’

‘Naturally.’

Hawkins shook his head. ‘Admiral Hawkins here, Admiral Hawkins there, it seems he’s signing his name everywhere. Or, rather somebody’s signing it for him. I shall have to look to my cheque-books.’

Chapter 7

The heavy steel derrick projected upwards and outwards from the midships side of the Kilcharran at an angle of about thirty degrees off the vertical. From the winch at the foot of the derrick the hawser rose upwards through the pulley at the top of the derrick and then descended vertically into the sea. The lower end of the hawser was attached to a heavy metal ring which was distanced about twenty feet above the fuselage of the sunken plane: from the ring, two shorter cables, bar-taut, were attached to the two lifting slings that had been attached fore and aft to the nose and tail of the bomber.

The winch turned with what seemed to most watchers an agonizing and frustrating slowness. There was ample electrical power available to have revolved the drum several times as quickly but Captain Montgomery was in no hurry. Standing there by the winch, he exhibited about as much anxiety and tension as a man sitting with his eyes closed in a garden deckchair on a summer’s afternoon. Although it was difficult to visualize, it was possible that a sling could have loosened and slipped and Montgomery preferred not to think what might happen if the plane should slip and strike heavily against the bottom, so he just stood patiently there, personally guiding the winch’s control wheel while he listened with clamped earphones to the two divers who were accompanying the plane on its ten foot a minute ascent.

After about five minutes the grotesque shape of the plane – grotesque because of the missing left wing – could be dimly discerned through the now slightly wind-ruffled surface of the sea. Another three minutes and the lifting ring came clear of the water. Montgomery centred the winch wheel, applied the brake, went to the gunwale, looked over the rail and turned to the officer by his side.

‘Too close in. Fuselage is going to snag on the underside. Have to distance it a bit. More fenders fore and aft –’ the side of the Kilcharran was already festooned with rubberized fenders ‘– and lay out ropes to secure the nose and tail of the plane.’ He returned to the winch, eased forward on a lever and slowly lowered the derrick until it was projecting outwards from the ship’s side at an angle of forty degrees above the horizontal. The plane, which could now be clearly seen only twenty feet below the surface, moved sluggishly outwards from the ship’s side. Montgomery started up the winch again and soon the top of the plane’s fuselage broke the surface. He stopped the winch when the top eighteen inches was clear. The starboard wing was still beneath the surface. Montgomery turned to Admiral Hawkins.

‘So far, a simple and elementary exercise. With luck, the rest of it should be equally straightforward. We cut away the appropriate section on the top of the fuselage while attaching more flotation bags to the undersides of the fuselage and the wing and inflating those. Then we’ll lift a bit more until the fuselage is almost clear of the water and go inside.’ He lifted a ringing phone, thanked the caller and replaced the receiver. ‘Well, perhaps not quite so straightforward. It would appear that the timing device has stopped ticking.’

‘Has it now?’ Hawkins didn’t look particularly concerned and certainly not upset. ‘It could have happened at a better time and a better place. But it had to happen. So our friend is armed.’

‘Indeed. Still, no reason why we shouldn’t go ahead as planned.’

‘Especially as we have no option. Every person on both ships to be warned. No mechanical devices to be used: no banging or crashing, everyone on fairy tiptoes. They already know that, of course, but I imagine they’ll now redouble their caution.’

A gangway had been lowered down the ship’s side until one of its feet rested on the plane’s fuselage. Carrington and Grant descended and ran a tape-measure back along the top of the fuselage from the cockpit – the internal distance from the cockpit to the exact location of the bomb had already been measured – to the corresponding area above. This they mopped dry with engine-room waste and then proceeded to paint the outline of a black rectangle to guide the two men with the oxyacetylene cutters who were already standing by.

Hawkins said: ‘How long will this take?’

‘I can only guess,’ Montgomery said. ‘An hour, maybe a bit longer. We don’t know how thick the fuselage skin is or how tough it is. We don’t know how thick or tough the lateral reinforcing members are. What I do know is that we’re going to cut with the lowest possible flame that will do the job – even with that reduced power we’re going to generate a fair amount of heat in the air-space and water below. It goes without saying that no one has ever done this sort of thing before.’

‘Will your standing here, supervising operations – just looking on, rather – help things along? Resolve the unknown, I mean.’

‘Not a bit of it. Ah! Lunch?’

‘Whether we’re here or in the wardroom of the Ariadne, it’s not going to make all that difference if this lot goes up.’

‘True, true. A millisecond here, a millisecond there. The condemned man ate a hearty breakfast. In our case, lunch.’

Lunch, while hardly festive, was by no means the doom-laden affair it could have been in view of the fact that most of the people at the table were well aware that they were sitting on top of a time-bomb that had now ceased to tick. Conversation flowed freely but in no way resembled the compulsive nervous chatter of those conscious of being under stress. Professor Wotherspoon spoke freely and often on any subject that arose, not through garrulity but because he was a born conversationalist who loved discussion and the free exchange of ideas. Andropulos, too, was far from silent, although he appeared to have only one idea in mind, and that was the mystery of the bomber that had just been raised from the depths. He had not been invited aboard the Kilcharran but had seen well enough from the Ariadne what had been going on. He appeared to be deeply and understandably interested in what had happened and was going to happen to the bomber but was clever enough not to ask any penetrating questions or say a word that he knew anything whatever about what was going on. Across the table Talbot caught the eye of Admiral Hawkins who nodded almost imperceptibly. It was clear that they couldn’t keep him completely and totally in the dark.

‘Up to now, Mr Andropulos,’ Talbot said, ‘we have not told you everything we know. We have not been remiss and no apology for our silence is necessary. Our sole concern, I can assure you, was not to cause unnecessary alarm and apprehension, especially to your two young ladies. But a man like you must have a keen interest in international affairs, and you are, after all, a Greek and member of NATO and have a right to know.’ No one could have guessed from Talbot’s openness and relaxed tone that he considered Andropulos to have a keen interest in international crime, that he didn’t give a damn about either Greece or NATO and had a right to know only what he, Talbot, chose to tell him.

‘The plane was an American bomber and was carrying a lethal cargo, among them hydrogen and atomic bombs, almost certainly for a NATO missile base somewhere in Greece.’ Andropulos’s expression, at first stunned, rapidly changed to grim-faced understanding. ‘We can only guess at what caused the crash. It could have been an engine explosion. On the other hand it could have been carrying a variety of weapons, and one of them – obviously of the non-nuclear variety – may have malfunctioned. We don’t know, we have no means of telling and probably, almost certainly, we will never know. The crew, of course, died.’

Andropulos shook his head. The clear, innocent eyes were deeply tinged with sadness. ‘Dear God, what a tragedy, what a tragedy.’ He paused and considered. ‘But there are terrorists in this world.’ He spoke of terrorists as if they were alien beings from an alien planet. ‘I know this sounds unthinkable, but could this have been a case of sabotage?’

‘Impossible. This plane flew from a top secret Air Force base where security would have been absolute. Carelessness there may have been but the idea of the deliberate implantation of any explosive device passes belief. It can only be classified as an act of God.’

‘I wish I shared your trust in our fellow-man.’ Andropulos shook his head again. ‘There are no depths which some inhuman monsters would not plumb. But if you say it was physically impossible, then I accept that, and gladly, for I would not care to be counted as a member of a human race that could proceed to such unspeakable lengths. What’s past is past, I suppose, but there’s also a future. What happens next, Commander?’

‘Before we decide on that we’ll have to wait until we get inside the plane. I understand that impacts and explosions such as those nuclear weapons have experienced can have – what shall we say? – a very disturbing effect on their delicate firing control systems.’

‘You – or some member of your crew – have the expertise to pass judgement on such matters?’

‘Neither I nor my crew know anything about such matters. But seated only two chairs away from you is a man who does. Dr Wickram – I will not spare his blushes – is a world-famous nuclear physicist who specializes in nuclear weaponry. We are fortunate indeed to have him aboard.’

‘My word, that is convenient.’ Andropulos leaned forward and half-bowed to Wickram. ‘I was, of course, unaware that you were an expert on those matters. I hope you can help resolve this dreadful dilemma.’

‘Hardly in the dreadful category yet, Mr Andropulos,’ Talbot said. ‘A problem, shall we say.’ He turned as Denholm, who had not joined them for lunch, entered the wardroom. ‘Lieutenant?’

‘Sorry to disturb you, sir. Lieutenant McCafferty’s apologies, but would you be kind enough to come to the engine-room.’

Once outside, Talbot said. ‘What’s the trouble in the engine-room, Jimmy?’

‘Nothing. This habit of deception grows on one. A message from the Pentagon, sir, and some interesting information turned up by Theodore.’

‘I thought he was resting.’

‘He elected not to, sir. Just as well, as I’m sure you’ll agree.’ He produced a slip of paper. ‘The Washington message.’

‘“Krytron device en route direct New York – Athens via Concorde.” My word, someone over there does carry some clout. I detect the hand of the President in this. Can’t you just see the outrage of a hundred-odd Europe-bound passengers when they find themselves being dumped on the tarmac of John F. Kennedy in favour of a teeny-weeny electrical device? Not that they’ll know why they have been dumped. It goes on: “Fullest cooperation British Airways, Spanish and Italian authorities.”’

‘Why Spain and Italy?’ Denholm said. ‘You don’t require permission to overfly friendly countries. Just Air Control notification, that’s all.’

‘Except, I imagine, when you’re going to upset their normal peace and quiet by a non-stop sonic boom. Message ends: “ETA your time 3 p.m.” Just over an hour. We’ll have to make arrangements to have a plane standing by in Athens airport. Let’s see what Theodore has for us. Something of significance, I’ll be bound.’

Theodore had, indeed, found something of significance, although its relevance was not immediately evident.

‘I’ve started on the third and last list, Captain,’ Theodore said, ‘and this is the sixth name I’ve come up with. George Skepertzis. Full Washington address. Under the address, as you see, it says Ref. KK, TT. Means nothing to me.’

‘Nor to me,’ Talbot said. ‘Anything to you, Lieutenant?’

‘It might. Skepertzis is a Greek name, that’s for sure. Could be a fellow-countryman of Andropulos. And if our friend has contacts in the Pentagon, you can lay odds that he wouldn’t be writing to them, using their names, care of the Pentagon. You’d expect Andropulos to use a buffer-man, a go-between.’

‘I’d expect anything of that character. You’re probably right. So, a message to the bank asking if they have any accounts under those initials and one to the FBI to find out if there are any Air Force generals or admirals with those initials. A shot in the dark, of course, but it might find a target. In the remote event of their contemplating a sound night’s sleep, a personal message to the President, via the FBI, that the tick … tick … tick has stopped and that the atomic mine is armed. We’ll clear it with the Admiral first. Would you ask him to join us. Have Number One and Dr Wickram come along too. I suggest the bridge. I’m sure you’ll think up a suitable excuse on the way to the wardroom.’

‘I don’t have to think, sir. It’s second nature now.’

‘Fair enough.’ Hawkins laid down the three radio messages that Talbot had already drafted. ‘The Greek Ministry of Defence will have a plane standing by when the Concorde lands. If its estimated time of arrival is reasonably accurate we should have this krytron device in Santorini about three-thirty. Even allowing for the fact that your men will have to row to and from at least Cape Akrotiri we should have the device aboard by five p.m. There’s an even chance that the messages to the FBI and the Washington bank may produce some positive results. As to the news that the mine is armed, we shall await the Presidential reaction with interest. Send these at once. You have some other matters on your mind, Captain. Urgent, I take it?’

‘As you said yourself not so long ago, sir, time is on the wing. Questions, sir, and we’d better try to find some answers quickly. Why was Andropulos so restrained in his questioning about the bombers? Because – apart from that ticking time device – he already knew everything there was to know and saw no point in asking questions when he already held the answers.

‘Why did he express no surprise at Dr Wickram here just happening to be aboard at this critical juncture? Even the most innocent of people would have thought it the most extraordinary coincidence that Dr Wickram should be here at the moment when he was most needed and would have said so.

‘What’s going to pass through that crafty and calculating mind when he sees us hauling that atom bomb out of the fuselage – always providing we do, of course? And what are we going to do to satisfy his curiosity?’

‘I can answer your last two questions and explain my presence here,’ Wickram said. ‘I’ve had time to think although, to be honest, it didn’t require all that much thought. You heard that the plane had hydrogen bombs aboard, you didn’t know what the degree of danger was so you called in the resident expert. That’s me. The resident expert informs you there is a high degree of danger. There’s no way to prevent a slow but continuous degree of radioactive emanations from a hydrogen bomb, and there are fifteen of those aboard that plane. This radioactivity builds up inside the atom bomb, which is of an entirely different construction, until the critical stage is reached. Then it’s goodnight, all. All a question of mass, really.’

‘This really happens?’

‘How the hell should I know? I’ve just invented it. But it sounds scientific enough and more than vaguely plausible. Your average citizen has a zero knowledge level of nuclear weaponry. Who is going to dream of questioning the word of a world-famous nuclear physicist which, in case you’ve forgotten Commander Talbot’s words, is me.’

Talbot smiled, ‘I wouldn’t dream of it, Dr Wickram. Excellent. Next query. What are Andropulos’s code lists doing aboard the Ariadne?’

‘Well, to start with,’ Hawkins said, ‘you put them there. No need for massive restraint, Captain. You had something else in mind?’

‘Wrong question. Why did he leave them behind? He forgot? Not likely. Not something as important as that. Because he thought they’d never be found? Possible, but again not likely. Because he thought that if anyone found them then it would be unlikely that that person would recognize it as a code or try to decode it? Rather more likely, but I think the real reason is that he thought it would be too dangerous to bring them aboard the Ariadne. The very fact that that was the only item he chose to salvage from the wreck would have been significant and suspicious in itself. So he elected to leave them behind and recover them later by diving. He may always have had this possibility in his mind and if he did he wouldn’t have left them in a cardboard folder. So he chose a waterproof metal box.

‘Recovery of the box from the bottom of the sea would mean the presence or availability of a diving ship. Just a hunch. I think that the Delos was sunk by accident and not by design. Probably Andropulos never visualized the need of a diving ship for that purpose. But a convenient diving ship would have been useful for other purposes, such as, dare I suggest, the recovery of nuclear weapons from a sunken bomber. They – whoever they are – wouldn’t have brought it down anywhere in the Sea of Crete – that’s the area between the Peloponnese in the west, the Dodecanese in the east, the Cyclades in the north and Crete to the south – because by far the greater part of that area is between 1,500 and 7,000 feet – much too deep for recovery by diving. Maybe it was meant to bring it down where it was brought down. Maybe this hypothetical diving ship was meant to be where we inconveniently were.’

‘It’s a long shot,’ Hawkins said, ‘but no stone unturned, is that it? What you would like to know is whether there is any diving ship based in those parts or temporarily located or cruising by. Isn’t that it?’ Talbot nodded. ‘Finding out is no problem.’

‘Heraklion in Crete?’

‘Of course. The US Air Force base there is our main centre for electronic surveillance in those parts. They use AWACs and other high-flying radar planes to monitor Soviet, Libyan and other countries’ military movements. The Greek Air Force use their Phantoms and Mirages for the same purpose. I know the base commander rather well. An immediate signal. They’ll either find out in very short order or have the information already. A couple of hours should do it.’

‘I speak in no spirit of complaint,’ Captain Montgomery said to Talbot. His voice, in fact, held a marked note of complaint. ‘But I think we might have been spared this.’ He indicated a bank of heavy dark cloud approaching from the north-west. ‘The wind’s already Force 5 and we’re beginning to rock a bit. Travel agents wouldn’t like this at all. This is supposed to be a golden summer’s day in the golden Aegean.’

‘Force 5 isn’t uncommon here in the afternoons, even at this time of year. Rain is most unusual but it looks as if we’re going to have quite a lot of the unusual in the very near future. Weather forecast is poor and the barometer unhappy.’ Talbot looked over the rail of the Kilcharran. ‘And this is what makes you unhappy.’

Montgomery’s ship was not, in fact, rocking at all. Headed directly north-west into the gentle three-foot swell, it was quite motionless, which couldn’t be said for the plane lashed alongside. Because of its much shorter length and the fact that it was nine-tenths submerged, it was reacting quite badly to the swell, pitching rather noticeably to and fro and snubbing alternately on the ropes that secured its nose and the remnants of its tail to the Kilcharran. Cutting the metal and maintaining balance was becoming increasingly difficult for the oxyacetylene team on top of the fuselage as the tops of the swells periodically washed over the area on which they were working. They had already reached the stage where they were spending more time looking after their own safety than using their torches.

‘Not so much unhappy as annoyed. Their rate of progress has been reduced to almost zero and God knows they were moving slowly enough even in good conditions – that fuselage and especially the transverse members are proving much tougher than expected. If things don’t improve – and looking at that weather coming at us I’m sure they won’t – I’m going to have to withdraw the cutters. They’re in no danger, of course, but the plane might very well be. We have no way of knowing how weakened the nose or tail may be and I don’t care to imagine what will happen if one of them comes off.’

‘So you’re going to float it astern on a single tow-rope?’

‘I don’t see I have any option. I’ll build a cradle of ropes round the nose and wing of the plane, attach a single rope – a heavy one, to act as a spring – to it and let it drift a cable length astern. Have to inform the Admiral first.’

‘No need. He never interferes with an expert. An unpleasant thought occurs, Captain. What happens if it breaks loose?’

‘Send a boat out – rowing, of course – to secure it with an anchor.’

‘And if that goes?’

‘We puncture the flotation bags and sink it. Can’t have it drifting all over the shop ready to blow the whole works whenever the first ship’s engines come within auditory range.’

‘And if it sinks where it is, we, of course, won’t be able to move from here.’

‘You can’t have everything.’

‘Agreed,’ Hawkins said. ‘Montgomery’s got no option. When is he starting?’

‘Any moment. Perhaps you might have a word with him. I said that there was no question but that you would agree, but I think he’d like your say-so.’

‘Of course,’ Hawkins said. ‘What’s your weather forecast?’

‘Deteriorating. Any word from the Washington bank, the FBI or Heraklion?’

‘Nothing. Just a lot of unsolicited rubbish from diverse heads of states, presidents, premiers and so forth commiserating with us in one breath and asking us why we aren’t doing something about it in the second breath. One wonders how the news has been leaked.’

‘I don’t know, sir. What’s more, I really don’t care.’

‘Nor I.’ He waved to some papers on his desk. ‘Want to read them? They don’t know that the tick … tick has stopped.’

‘I don’t want to read them.’

‘I didn’t think you would. What’s next for you, John?’

‘I didn’t have much sleep last night. It’s quite possible I may lack some tonight. Now’s the time. Nothing I can do.’

‘An excellent idea. Same for me when I come back from the Kilcharran.’

When Talbot emerged from his day cabin and passed through to the bridge shortly after six o’clock in the evening it should still have been broad daylight, but so low was the level of light in the sky that it could well have been late twilight. He found Van Gelder and Denholm waiting for him.

‘In this weather,’ Talbot said, ‘I could almost say “Well, watchmen, what of the night?” Everything running smoothly and under control while Drake was in his hammock?’

‘We have not been idle,’ Van Gelder said. ‘Neither has Captain Montgomery. He’s got the bomber strung out about a cable length to the south-east. Riding quite badly – it’s either a Force 6 or 7 out there – but it seems to be holding together. He’s got a searchlight – well, a six-inch signalling lamp – on it, either to check that it doesn’t break away or to discourage the disaffected from snaffling it, although why there should be anyone around, or daft enough, to try that I can’t imagine. I’d advise against going out on the wing to have a look, sir. You might get washed away.’ Van Gelder’s advice was superfluous. The rain falling from the black and leaden skies was of the torrential or tropical downpour variety, the heavy warm drops rebounding six inches from the deck.

‘I take your point.’ He looked at the brown metal box lying on the deck. ‘What’s that?’

‘Voilà!’ Denholm seized the handle let into the top and swept off the cover with all the panache of a stage magician unveiling his latest impossible trick. ‘The pièce de résistance.’ What was presumably the control panel on the top of the box was singularly unimpressive and old-fashioned, reminiscent of a pre-war radio, with two calibrated dials, some knobs, a press-button and two orange hemispherical glass domes let into the surface.

‘The krytron, I assume,’ Talbot said.

‘No less. Three cheers for presidents. This particular one has been as good as his word.’

‘Excellent. Really excellent. Let’s only hope we get the chance to use it under, let us say, optimal circumstances.’

‘“Optimal” is the word,’ Denholm said. ‘Very simple device – as far as operating it is concerned, that is. Inside, it’s probably fiendishly complicated. This particular model – there may be others – runs off a twenty-four volt battery.’ He placed his forefinger on a button. ‘I depress this – and hey presto!’

‘If you’re trying to make me nervous, Jimmy, you’re succeeding. Take your finger off that damned button.’

Denholm depressed it several times. ‘No battery. We supply that. No problem. And under those two orange domes are two switches that have to be rotated through 180 degrees. Specially designed, you see, for careless clowns like me. As an added precaution, you can’t unscrew those domes. One sharp tap with a light metal object, the instructions say, and they disintegrate. Again, I should imagine, designed with people like me in mind, in case we remove the tops and start twiddling the switches around. Designed, if you follow me, to be a one-off operation. The only time those switches will ever be exposed is immediately before the firing button is depressed.’

‘When are you going to attach the battery?’

‘As an added precaution – this is my precaution – only immediately before use. These are positive and negative connections. We use spring-loaded crocodile clips. Two seconds to attach the clips. Three seconds to crack the domes and align the switches. One second to press the button. Nothing could be simpler. Only one other trifling requirement, sir – that we have that atom bomb, on its own and a long, long way from anywhere and us at a very prudent distance when we detonate it.’

‘You ask for very little, Jimmy.’ Talbot looked out at the driving rain and the dark and now white-capped seas. ‘We may have to wait a little – an hour or two as an optimistic guess, all night as a pessimistic one, before we can even begin to move. Anything else?’

‘I repeat, we have not been idle,’ Van Gelder said. ‘We’ve heard from the Heraklion Air Base. There is – or was – a diving vessel in the near vicinity, if you can call the western tip of Crete the near vicinity.’

‘Is – or was?’

‘Was. It was anchored off Souda Bay for a couple of days and apparently took off about one a.m. this morning. As you know, Souda Bay is a very hush-hush Greek naval base, and the area is very protected, very restricted. Foreign vessels, even harmless cruising yachts, are definitely not welcomed. Souda Bay naturally took an interest in this lad. It’s their business to be suspicious, especially at a time when NATO are operating in the area.’

‘What did they find out?’

‘Precious little. It was called the Taormina and registered in Panama.’

‘A Sicilian name? No significance. Panama – a convenience registry, some of the most successful ocean-going crooks in the world are registered there. Anyway, you don’t have to be an artist to change both names in very short order – all you require is a couple of pots of paint and a set of stencils. Where had it come from?’

‘They didn’t know. As it had anchored off-shore it didn’t have to register with either the customs or the port authorities. But they did know that it took off in a roughly north-easterly direction which, just coincidentally, is the course it would have taken if it were heading for Santorini. And as Souda Bay is just under a hundred miles from here, even a slow ship could have been in this area well before the bomber came down. So your hunch could have been right, sir. Only problem is, we’ve seen no sign of him.’

‘Could have been a coincidence. Could have been that the Delos warned him off. Did Heraklion say anything about going to have a look for this ship?’

‘No. Jimmy and I discussed the idea but we didn’t think it important enough to disturb you when you were – ah – resting lightly. And the Admiral.’

‘Probably unimportant. We should have a go. Normally, that is. Where does Heraklion lie from here? About due south?’

‘Near enough.’

‘A couple of planes, one carrying out a sweep to the north, the other to the east, should locate this lad, if he is in the area, in half an hour, probably less. Part of an urgent NATO exercise, you understand. But conditions aren’t normal. A waste of time in near zero visibility. An option we’ll keep in mind for better weather. Anything else?’

‘Yes. We’ve heard from both the Washington bank and the FBI. Mixed results, you might say. Under the initials of KK, the bank says it has a certain Kyriakos Katzanevakis.’

‘Promising. You could hardly get anything more Grecian than that.’

‘Under TT, they have a Thomas Thompson. You can’t have anything more Anglo-Saxon than that. The FBI say there are no high-ranking officers in the Pentagon – by which I take it they mean admirals and Air Force generals or, at the outside, vice-admirals and lieutenant-generals – with those initials.’

‘On the face of it, disappointing, but it may equally well be just another step in the laundering cover-up, another step to distance themselves from their paymaster. The FBI hasn’t been in touch with the bank? Of course not. We didn’t even mention the bank to them. Remiss of us. No, remiss of me. The bank must have addresses for Messrs KK and TT, and although those will almost certainly turn out to be accommodation addresses they may lead to something else. And another omission, again my fault entirely. We didn’t let the FBI have the name and address of this George Skepertzis. We’ll do that now. There’s an outside chance that the FBI may be able to link Skepertzis, KK and TT together. And what was the presidential reaction to the stopping of the tick … tick …?’

‘He appears to be beyond any further reaction.’

Montgomery sipped his drink, gazed gloomily through his cabin window, winced and looked away.

‘The weather has deteriorated in the past half-hour, Commander Talbot.’

‘It couldn’t possibly be any worse than it was half an hour ago.’

‘I’m an expert on such matters.’ Montgomery sighed. ‘Makes me quite homesick for the Mountains of Mourne. We get a lot of rainfall in the Mountains of Mourne. Do you see this lot clearing up in the near future?’

‘Not this side of midnight.’

‘And that would be an optimistic estimate, I’m thinking. By the time we haul this damn bomber back alongside, cut away the hole in the fuselage, hoist it out of the water and extract that bomb, it’ll be dawn. At least. Might possibly be well into the forenoon. You’ll understand if I turn down your kind offer to join you for dinner. An early snack for me, then bed. Might have to get up any time during the night. I’ll have a couple of boys on the poop all night, watching the plane and with orders to wake me as soon as they think the weather has moderated enough for us to start hauling it in.’

Dr Wickram said: ‘How’s that for a brief résumé of the speech I shall so reluctantly make at the table tonight? Not too much, I would have thought, and not too little?’

‘Perfect. Perhaps the tone a thought more doom-laden?’

‘A half octave deeper, you think? Odd, isn’t it, how easily this mendacity comes to one?’

‘Aboard the Ariadne, it’s become positively endemic. Very catching.’

‘I’ve just had a word with Eugenia,’ Denholm said. ‘I thought you ought to know.’

‘That you’ve been neglecting your duty? Not lurking, I mean.’

‘A man gets tired of lurking. I meant what she had to say.’

‘You spoke to her privately, I take it?’

‘Yes, sir. In her cabin. Number One’s cabin, that is to say.’

‘You surprise me, Jimmy.’

‘If I may say so, sir, with some dignity, we had been discussing matters on a purely intellectual level. Very bright girl. Going for a double first at University. Language and literature, Greek ancient and modern.’

‘Ah! Deep calling unto deep.’

‘I wouldn’t call it that, because I spoke only in English. I was under the impression that she was convinced that I didn’t speak a word of Greek.’

‘She’s no longer convinced? A close observer, the young lady? Perhaps you registered a flicker of expression when something was said in Greek when you should have registered nothing. I suspect you were trapped in your innocent youth by some fiendish feminine wile.’

‘How would you react, sir, if you were told that a scorpion was crawling up your shoe?’

Talbot smiled. ‘She spoke in Greek, of course. You immediately carried out a hurried check to locate this loathsome monster. Anybody would have fallen for it. You have not suffered too much chagrin and mortification, I hope?’

‘Not really, sir. She’s too nice. And too worried. Wanted to confide in me.’

‘Alas, the days when lovely young ladies wanted to confide in me appear to be over.’

‘I think she’s a little scared of you, sir. So is Irene. She wanted to talk about Andropulos. Girl talk, of course, and I suppose there’s no one else really on the ship they can talk to. That’s not quite fair, I suppose, they’re clearly very close friends. Seems that Irene repeated to her, more or less verbatim, the conversation she had with Number One this morning and told her she’d told Vincent everything she knew about her Uncle Adam. It would appear that Eugenia knows something about Uncle Adam that his niece doesn’t know. May I have a drink, sir? I’ve been awash since dawn in tonic and lemon.’

‘Help yourself. Revelations, is that it?’

‘I don’t know how you’d classify it, sir, but I know you’ll find it very interesting. Eugenia’s father has quite a lot in common with Irene’s father – apparently they’re good friends – they’re both wealthy businessmen, they both know Andropulos and both think he’s a crook. Well, nothing new in that so far. We all think he’s a crook. But Eugenia’s father, unlike Irene’s, is willing to talk freely and at length about Andropulos and Eugenia hasn’t talked about it to Irene, because she doesn’t wish to hurt her feelings.’ Denholm sampled his drink and sighed in satisfaction. ‘It would seem that Adamantios Spyros Andropulos has a pathological hatred of Americans. Who would suspect such a charming, courteous, urbane and civilized gentleman to have a pathological hatred of anyone?’

‘I would. Well, we all know he’s intelligent so he had to have a reason.’

‘He had. Two. His son and only nephew. Apparently, he doted on them. Eugenia quite believes this, because she says that Andropulos is unquestionably fond of Irene and herself, a feeling, I’m glad to say, that they don’t reciprocate.’

‘What about his son and nephew?’

‘Disappeared in most mysterious circumstances. Never to be seen again. Andropulos is convinced that they were done in by the American CIA.’

‘The CIA has a reputation, justified or not, for eliminating people they regard as undesirables. But they usually have a reason, again whether that is justifiable or not. Does Eugenia’s old man know the reason?’

‘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 the world why you shouldn’t know as much as we do.’ As Dr Wickram had said, Talbot reflected, mendacity required little practice to become second nature: there was every reason in 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 or 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 plane. 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 least, 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 one: even in the élite 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 is further convinced that Jenkins stumbled across something 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, I 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 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 cooperation 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, gentlemen. 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 eyes 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, H_2SO_4 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 tough meal to digest. Patience and diligence, of course, and I’m 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 torches.’ Van Gelder hoisted the big stilson in his hand. ‘This.’

Talbot looked at the clamps and their mountings, then nodded. ‘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 the four retaining arms of the clamps was fitted over two bolts 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?’

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 gauged the width of the hole that had been cut overhead. ‘What’s not so simple is getting the bomb up through the hole. 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 Gelder’s view about taking zero chances. I want as much water as possible in this compartment to dissipate the heat of the torches. It’ll take a couple of hours, maybe longer, to do 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 of 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 informed them, had just finished enlarging the opening on the top 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 the 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 Meltemi 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 Kásos 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 Kásos 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 call 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 instead?’ 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 –’ this to his chief officer ‘– detail half-a-dozen men, a dozen, to haul the Angelina round to our port quarter. Once the bomb has been removed we can pull the fuselage for’ard and the 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 the 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 in length, the other perhaps four times as long. Van Gelder and Carrington lowered themselves into the cargo bay and slipped 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 manœuvre 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 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.

‘Bradshaw provided our agent with the names and addresses of the banks concerned. We checked those against two lists regarding Andropulos’s banking activities that we had just received from the Ariadne and Greek Intelligence – a third, if you count Interpol. Skepertzis had made enquiries about banks in five cities and, lo and behold and to nobody’s surprise, all five also appeared on the lists concerning Andropulos.

‘We instituted immediate enquiries. Bankers – especially senior banking officials – have profound objections to being woken in the middle of the night but among our eight thousand FBI agents in those United States we have some very tough and persistent individuals who are also very good at putting the fear of God into even the most law-abiding citizens. And we have some very good friends in Mexico. It turns out that friend Skepertzis has bank accounts in all five cities. All under his own name.’

‘You’re ahead of me here,’ the President said. ‘This is news to me. When did you find this out?’

‘Just over half an hour ago. I’m sorry, Mr President, but there just hasn’t been the time to confirm everything and tell you until now. In two of those banks – in Mexico City and San Diego – we struck gold. In each of those banks close on three-quarters of a million dollars have been transferred to the accounts of a certain Thomas Thompson and a certain Kyriakos Katzanevakis. It’s a measure of those two gentlemen’s belief in their immunity to investigation that they hadn’t even bothered to change their names. Not that that would have mattered in the long run – not after we had got around to circulating photographs. One final point of interest. Two weeks ago the bank in Mexico City received a draft of two million dollars in favour of George Skepertzis from a reputable or supposedly reputable, bank in Damascus, Syria. A week later exactly the same amount was transferred to a certain Philip Trypanis in Greece. We have the name of the Athens bank and have asked Greek Intelligence to find out who or what Trypanis is or for whom he is fronting. A cent gets a hundred dollars that it is a pal of Andropulos.’

A silence ensued, a silence that was long and profound and more than a little gloomy. It was the President himself who finally broke it.

‘A stirring tale, is it not, Sir John?’

‘Stirring, indeed. Richard had the right term for it – shattering.’

‘But – well, have you no questions?’

‘No.’

The President looked at him in near disbelief. ‘Not even one little question?’

‘Not even one, Mr President.’

‘But surely you must want to know the identities of Thompson and Katzanevakis?’

‘I don’t want to know. If we must refer to them at all I’d rather just refer to them as the general and the admiral.’ He looked at Hollison. ‘That would be about right, Richard?’

‘I’m afraid so. A general and an admiral. Your Admiral Hawkins, Sir John, is smarter than your average bear.’

‘I would agree. But you have to be fair to yourselves. He had access to information that you hadn’t had until now. I, too, have an advantage that you people lack. You’re deep in the middle of the wood. I’m on the outside looking in.

‘Two things, gentlemen. As a representative of Her Majesty’s Government I am bound to report any developments of significance to the Foreign Office and Cabinet. But if I specifically lack certain information, such as specific names, then I can’t very well report them, can I? We ambassadors have the power to exercise a very wide range of discretion. In this particular instance, I choose to exercise that discretion.

‘The second point is that you all seem convinced – there appears to be a certain doom-laden certainty about this – that this affair, this top-level treason, if you will, is bound to become public knowledge. I have one simple question. Why?’

‘Why? Why?’ The President shook his head as if bemused or stunned by the naïveté of the question. ‘God damn it, Sir John, it’s bound to come out. It’s inevitable. How else are we going to explain things away? If we are at fault, if we are the guilty party, we must in all honesty openly confess to that guilt. We must stand up and be counted.’

‘We have been friends for some years now, Mr President. Friends are allowed to speak openly?’

‘Of course, of course.’

‘Your sentiments, Mr President, do you the greatest possible credit but hardly reflect what, fortunately or unfortunately, goes on in the more rarefied strata of international diplomacy. I am not speaking of deception and deviousness, I am referring to what is practical and politic. It’s bound to come out, you say. Certainly it will – but only if the President of the United States decides that it must. How, you ask, are we going to explain things away? Simple. We don’t. You give me one valid reason why we should move this matter into the realm of the public domain or, as you appear to suggest, make a clean breast of things, and I’ll give you half a dozen reasons – reasons equally valid if not more so – why we shouldn’t.’ Sir John paused as if to marshal his facts but was, in fact, merely waiting for one of the four intent listeners to voice an objection: he had already marshalled his facts.

‘I think, Mr President, that it might do us no harm to hear what Sir John as to say.’ Hollison smiled. ‘Who knows, we might even learn something. As the senior ambassador of a vastly experienced Foreign Office, it seems likely that Sir John must have gained some little expertise along the way.’

‘Thank you, Richard. Bluntly and undiplomatically, Mr President, you have a duty not to speak out. There is nothing whatsoever to be gained, and a very great deal to be lost. At best you will be hanging out a great deal of dirty washing in public and all to no avail, to no purpose: at worst, you will be providing invaluable ammunition for your enemies. Such open and, if I may say so, ill-advised confession will achieve at best an absolute zero and at worst a big black minus for you, the Pentagon and the citizens of America. The Pentagon, I am sure, is composed of honourable men. Sure, it may have its quota of the misguided, the incompetent, even the downright stupid: name me any large and powerful bureaucratic élite that has never had such a quota. All that matters, finally and basically, is that they are honourable men and I see no earthly justification for dragging the reputations of honourable men through the dust because we have discovered two rotten apples at the bottom of the barrel.

‘You yourself, Mr President, are in an even worse position. You have devoted a considerable deal of your presidential time to combating terrorism in every shape and form. How will it look to the world if it comes out that two senior members of your armed forces have been actively engaged in promoting terrorism for material gain? You may hardly know the two gentlemen concerned but they will, of course, be elevated to the status of highly trusted aides, and that’s just looking on the bright side. On the dark side, you will not only be accused of harbouring men who are engaged in terrorism but of aiding, abetting and inciting them to new levels of terrorism. Can’t you just see the headlines smeared across the front pages of the tabloids and yellow press throughout the world? By the time they have finished with you, you will be remembered in history for one thing and one thing only, the ultimate byword for hypocrisy, the allegedly noble and high-principled president who had spent his life in encouraging and promoting the one evil he had sworn to destroy. Throughout the countries of the world that dislike or fear America because of its power, authority and wealth – and that, like it or not, means most countries – your reputation would lie in tatters. Because of your exceptionally high level of popularity in your own country you will survive but I hardly think that that consideration would affect you: what would and should affect you is that your campaign against terrorism would be irrevocably destroyed. No phoenix would arise from those particular ashes. As a world force for justice and decency you would be a spent man. To put it in the most undiplomatic terms, sir, to go ahead as you propose to do you’d have to be more than slightly off your rocker.’

The President stared into the middle distance for quite some time, then said in a voice that was almost plaintive: ‘Does anyone else think I’m off my rocker?’

‘Nobody thinks you’re off your rocker, Mr President,’ the General said. ‘Least of all, I would say, Sir John here. He is merely saying what our unfortunately absent Secretary of State would advocate if he were here. Both gentlemen are high on pragmatism and cold logic and low on unconsidered and precipitate action. Maybe I’m not the ideal person to be passing judgement on this issue. I would obviously be delighted if whatever reputation the Pentagon has survives intact, but I do feel most strongly that, before jumping off the top of the Empire State or whatever one should give some thought to the fatal and irrevocable consequences.’

‘I can only nod emphatic agreement,’ John Heiman, the Defense Secretary said. ‘If I may mix up two metaphors – if I am mixing them – we have only two options. We can let sleeping dogs lie or let slip the dogs of war. Sleeping dogs never harmed anyone but the dogs of war are an unpredictable bunch. Instead of biting the enemy they may well turn, in this case almost certainly would turn, and savage us.’

The President looked at Hollison. ‘Richard?’

‘You’re in the card-game of your life, Mr President. You’ve got only one trump and it’s marked “Silence”.’

‘So it’s four to one, is it?’

‘No, Mr President,’ Heiman said, ‘it’s not and you know it. It’s five to zero.’

‘I suppose, I suppose.’ The President ran a weary hand across his face. ‘And how do we propose to mount this massive display of silence, Sir John?’

‘Sorry, Mr President, but not me. If I am asked for my opinions I am not, as you have seen, slow to give them. But I know the rules and one of them is that I cannot be a party to formulating the policy of a sovereign state. Decisions are for you and for what is, in effect, your war cabinet here.’

A messenger entered and handed a slip of paper to the president. ‘Dispatch from the Ariadne, Mr President.’

‘I don’t have to brace myself for this,’ the President said. ‘As far as dispatches from the Ariadne are concerned, I am permanently braced. Some day I’ll get some good news from that ship.’ He read the message. ‘But not, of course, this time. “Atomic mine removed from cargo bay of bomber and safely transferred to sailing vessel Angelina.” Excellent news as far as it goes, but then: “Unexpected 180 degree change in wind course makes sailing departure impossible. Anticipated delay three to six hours. Hydrogen weapons from plane’s cargo bay being transferred to diving ship Kilcharran. Expect to complete transfer by nightfall.” End of message. Well, where does that leave us?’

Sir John Travers said: ‘It leaves you, Mr President, with a few hours’ breathing space.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Masterly inactivity. Nothing that can be profitably done at the moment. I am merely thinking out loud.’ He looked at the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. ‘Tell me, General, do those two gentlemen in the Pentagon know they are under suspicion? Correction. Do they know that you have proof of their treason?’

‘No. And I agree with what you are about to say. No point will be served by acquainting them with that fact at the present moment.’

‘None. With the President’s permission, I would like to retire and ponder the problems of state and international diplomacy. With the aid of a pillow.’

The President smiled one of his increasingly rare smiles.

‘What a splendid suggestion. I also shall do exactly that. It’s close on six now, gentlemen. May I suggest that we foregather again at ten-thirty a.m.?’

At 2.30 that afternoon Van Gelder, message sheet in hand, joined Talbot on the bridge of the Ariadne.

‘Radio from Heraklion, sir. Seems that a Phantom of the Greek Air Force located the diving ship Taormina less than ten minutes after taking off from base. It was just east of Avgó Island, which the chart tells me is about forty miles north-east of Heraklion. Very conveniently positioned to break through the Kásos Strait.’

‘What direction was it headed?’

‘No direction. Having no wish to raise any suspicion the Greek pilot didn’t hang around but he reports that the Taormina was stopped in the water.’

‘Lurking. Lurking, one wonders, for what. Speaking of lurking, what’s Jimmy doing at the moment?’

‘Last seen, he was lurking with two young ladies in the wardroom. No dereliction of duty, I assure you. The three A’s have retired, to their cabins, presumably for the afternoon. The girls report a far from subtle change in their behaviour. They have stopped discussing the predicament they find themselves in, in fact they have stopped discussing anything. They appear unusually calm, relaxed and not very concerned about anything, which may mean that they have philosophically resigned themselves to whatever fate may hold in store or they may have made up their minds about some plan of action, although what that could be I couldn’t even begin to imagine.’

‘What would your guess be, Vincent?’

‘A plan of action. I know it’s only the slenderest of clues but it’s just possible that they may be resting up this afternoon because they don’t expect to be doing much resting during the coming night.’

‘I have the oddest feeling that we won’t be doing much resting ourselves tonight.’

‘Aha! The second sight, sir? Your non-existent Scottish blood clamouring for recognition.’

‘When it clamours a bit more, I’ll let you know. I just keep wondering about Jenkins’s disappearance.’ A phone rang and Talbot picked it up. ‘A message for the Admiral from the Pentagon? Bring it here.’ Talbot hung up and gazed out through the for’ard screens of the bridge. The Angelina, to protect it from the buffeting of the four-foot-high waves generated by the now very brisk Euros wind from the south-east, had been moved to a position where it lay snugly in the still waters between the bows of the Ariadne and the stern of the Kilcharran.

‘Speaking of the Pentagon, it’s only an hour since we told them that we expected the unloading of the hydrogen missiles to be completed by nightfall. And what do we have? A Force 6 and the plane’s fuselage streamed out a cable length to the north-west. Lord only knows when the unloading will be finished now. Do you think we should so inform them?’

‘I should think not, sir. The President of the United States is a much older man than we are and the kind of cheery communications he has been receiving from the Ariadne of late can’t be doing his heart any good.’

‘I suppose you’re right. Ah, thank you, Myers.’

‘Bloody funny signal if you ask me, sir. Can’t make head nor tail of it.’

‘These things are sent to try us.’ Talbot waited till Myers had left, then read out the signal.

‘“Identity of cuckoos in the nest established. Irrefutable proof that they are linked to your generous benefactor friend. Sincerest congratulations to Admiral Hawkins and the officers of the Ariadne.”’

‘Recognition at last,’ Van Gelder said.

‘You are the last to arrive, Sir John,’ the President said. ‘I have to advise you that we have already made up our minds what to do.’

‘A very difficult decision, I assume, Mr President. Probably the most difficult you have ever been called upon to make.’

‘It has been. Now that the decision is made and is irrevocable, you can no longer be accused of meddling with the affairs of a sovereign state. What would you have done, Sir John?’

‘Perfectly straightforward. Exactly what you have done. No one is to be informed except two people and those two people are to be informed that the President has suspended them indefinitely from duty, pending the investigation of allegations and statements that have been laid against them.’

‘Well, damn your eyes, Sir John.’ The President spoke without heat. ‘Instead of sleeping all the time I spent a couple of hours wrestling with my conscience to arrive at the same conclusion.’

‘It was inevitable, sir. You had no option. And I would point out that it’s easy enough for us to arrive at decisions. You, and only you, can give the executive order.’

‘I will not insult your intelligence by asking if you are aware what this executive order means.’

‘I am perfectly aware of what it means. Now that my opinion is no longer called for I have no hesitation in saying that I would have done exactly the same thing. It is a death sentence and it can be no consolation at all that you will not be called upon to carry out, or to order to be carried out, the execution of that death sentence.’

Chapter 9

‘Manhattan Project?’ Admiral Hawkins said. ‘What on earth does she mean by “Manhattan Project”?’

‘I don’t know, sir,’ Denholm said. ‘Eugenia doesn’t know either. She just caught the words as she walked into the wardroom. Only Andropulos, Alexander and Aristotle were there. The phrase was repeated twice and she thought it odd enough – I think it’s very odd, too – to pass it on to me. When they became aware of her presence the subject was switched. She said that whatever the nature of the subject was they seemed to find it rather amusing.’

Talbot said: ‘Even Alexander was amused?’

‘Humour, sir, is not Alexander’s forte. Nobody’s seen him smile since he came aboard the Ariadne, I would doubt if anyone has ever seen him smile. Besides, it was Alexander who was discussing the subject. Maybe he doesn’t laugh at his own jokes.’

‘I know you know something about those things, Denholm,’ Hawkins said. ‘Doesn’t it suggest anything to you?’

‘Zero, sir. The immediate and obvious – far too obvious – connection is the atom bomb. The Manhattan Project, of course, was that immensely long, immensely complicated and immensely expensive project that led to the invention of the atom bomb. “Manhattan” was only a code word. The actual research was carried out in New Mexico and Nevada or thereabouts. I’m sorry, sir, but the significance, the relevance of the phrase in our present situation, quite escapes me.’

‘At least I’ve got company,’ Hawkins said. He picked up two slips of paper from his table in the admiral’s cabin. ‘Those two messages have come in since last we saw you. In this case, I don’t think their significance will escape you.’

‘Ah! This one from the White House itself. “Two of your philanthropist’s beneficiaries are no longer with us. Beneficiary A has been involved in a fatal automobile accident.”’ Denholm looked up from the paper. ‘Has he now? For Beneficiary A I take it we can read either Admiral X or General Y. Did he fall, did he jump or was he pushed?’ He looked at the paper again. ‘And I see that Beneficiary B has just disappeared. Again I assume that Beneficiary B was either X or Y. How very inconvenient for them, how very convenient for us.’ Denholm looked from Hawkins to Talbot. ‘From the very restrained wording I take it that this news is not to be broadcast from the house-tops.’

‘I shouldn’t have thought so,’ Hawkins said. ‘We have already arranged for the coded original to be destroyed.’

‘I take it then, sir, that speculation about their abrupt departure is pointless.’

‘Indeed. Not only pointless but needless. They have fallen upon their swords. One does not wish to sound cynical nor stand in condemnation but it’s probably the only faintly honourable thing they have done for a long time. The second signal, Denholm?’

‘The one from Heraklion. Interesting, sir. It seems that the Taormina’s last port of call was Tobruk. Furthermore, although it’s registered in Panama, it appears to be permanently based in Tobruk. It’s more than interesting, it’s intriguing, especially considering that that well-known philanthropist sitting in our wardroom seems to have considerable business interests in Tripoli. It’s most damnably frustrating, sir.’

‘What is?’

‘That we haven’t a single shred of evidence to adduce against him, far less proof.’

‘I have this feeling,’ Talbot said, ‘that neither evidence nor proof will ever be required. Andropulos will never come to trial.’

Hawkins looked at him for a few thoughtful moments. ‘That’s the second time you’ve said that, Captain. You have access to some information that we lack?’

‘Not at all, sir. Maybe I’ve just got blind faith in this blindfolded goddess of justice. You know, the lady who holds the scales in her hands.’ Talbot smiled. ‘Or maybe, as Van Gelder keeps on hinting, I have some traces of Highland blood in me. Says I’m fey, the second sight or some nonsense like that. Ah, the man himself.’

‘A radio message from Greek Intelligence,’ Van Gelder said. He proffered the paper he held in hand.

‘Just tell me,’ Hawkins said. ‘Gently. I’m becoming allergic to bad news.’

‘Not all that bad, sir. Not for us, at any rate. Says that someone attached to the department for Middle East and North African affairs – they carefully don’t give his name, I suppose he’s a minister of some sort, I suppose we could find out easily enough but it seems unimportant – took off by government plane on a routine visit to Canea, the town close by the Souda Bay air base. Never got there. But at exactly the time he should have got there a patrolling Greek Mirage spotted a plane very like the one he was flying in – too much of a coincidence for it not to have been the same plane – passing directly over Heraklion.’

‘So, of course,’ Talbot said, ‘you consulted the chart and arrived at the conclusion that he was heading for some place. What place?’

‘Tobruk.’

‘And you also arrived at the conclusion that he wouldn’t be coming back from there?’

‘Allowing for the vagaries of human nature, sir, I would not have thought so. Greek Intelligence have also established the fact that the vanishing minister, if minister he was, held an account at the same Athens bank that Philip Trypanis honours with his custom. It would appear, to coin a phrase, that they are now hot on the trail of Mr Trypanis. Whether they nab Mr Trypanis or not hardly seems a matter of concern for us.’

‘I would think,’ Hawkins said, ‘if our philanthropist friend in the wardroom knew of the fate of his pal in government here and those of A and B – or X and Y – in Washington his humour might be in marked abeyance by now. And if he knew that we knew of the Taormina and that its home base was Tobruk, he would be downright thoughtful. Was that all, Van Gelder?’

‘On that subject, sir, yes. Captain Montgomery, Professor Wotherspoon and I have been discussing the weather.’

‘You have?’ Hawkins looked at him suspiciously. ‘Don’t tell me that Cassandra has you in her clutches again?’

‘Certainly not, sir. The Euros has died away. Completely. We suspect it will only be a matter of time before the weather returns to normal. A very short time. Latest met. reports confirm that. The Angelina, at the present moment, is lying between our ship and the Kilcharran, facing north-west. If the Meltemi starts up – also from the north-west, of course – we won’t be able to sail her out of her present position. It might be wise to tow her alongside us now.’

‘Of course,’ Talbot said. ‘See to it now, would you, Number One. After that, let us foregather for the last supper.’

Van Gelder looked through the opened doorway. ‘It’s already getting dark, sir. You don’t feel like waiting for the dawn before we take off?’

‘Nothing I’d like better than to wait for the dawn. But we have this duty to our fellow man.’

‘We have to be brave, noble and self-sacrificing?’

‘The sooner we take off, the easier will lie the heads along the Potomac. Not to mention, of course, those on the Kilcharran and Ariadne.’

Denholm looked from Talbot to Van Gelder. His face registered an expression of near incredulity.

‘Am I to understand, Captain, that you and Lieutenant-Commander Van Gelder are sailing on the Angelina?’

Talbot shook his head. ‘I suppose it had to come to this, Number One. Junior officers questioning our nautical expertise.’

‘I don’t understand, sir. Why on earth are you and Number One going along on the Angelina? I mean –’

‘We are not going along on the Angelina. We are taking the Angelina. Professor Wotherspoon and his wife are the people who are not going. They don’t know that yet, of course. The good Professor is going to be very wroth but it’s difficult to please everybody.’

‘I see, sir. Yes, I see. I should have guessed. I’d like to come along, sir.’

‘Yes and no. You shall come along, but not on the Angelina. You will take the launch. You won’t start up the engine until we’re at least three miles clear. We don’t want, you understand, to precipitate any premature big bangs.’

‘And then we follow you at that distance?’

‘Not so much follow us as circle us at, of course, the same prudent distance of three miles. Your purpose, again, of course, is to ward off and warn off any unsuspecting vessels that come too close.’

‘And then help tow you back here?’

‘When we’ve dumped the mine and sailed on a sufficiently safe distance, we’ll start the engine and head back. A tow would help. Or perhaps the Admiral will fetch us in the Ariadne. We haven’t decided yet and at the moment it’s not important. But what I’m about to say is important.

‘You will take along with you Chief Petty Officer McKenzie, Marine Sergeant Brown and Petty Officer Myers to operate the radio. Most importantly, you will also take with you, suitably wrapped in plastic, the krytron detonating device and conceal it well. I suggest under the floorboards of the wheelhouse. You will instruct Petty Officer Myers to take along the smallest portable transceiver he can lay hands on and conceal it in the same place. Make sure the floorboards are securely nailed down afterwards.’

‘May I ask the reason for this excessive secrecy, sir?’

‘You may not for the excellent reason that I have no reason to give you. The best I can do is to wave a vague hand and say that I am preparing for unforeseen eventualities. The trouble with the unforeseen is that it is unforeseeable. You understand?’

‘I think so, sir.’

‘I suggest you go now and alert your crew. And for God’s sake don’t let anyone see you wandering around with the krytron under your arm.’

Lieutenant Denholm left. Hawkins said: ‘There are times, Captain, when I feel I have to say, with regret of course, that the truth is not always with you. I mean the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.’

‘I agree, sir,’ Van Gelder said. ‘Sets a very bad example for junior officers.’

Talbot smiled. ‘Be ye as pure as snow ye shall not escape calumny. Something like that. We captains become inured to such injustices. I have the odd feeling – all right, all right, Vincent, let’s settle for just a few microscopic traces of Highland blood – that Andropulos is going to be asking the odd casual question at table tonight. I suggest we have Dr Wickram up here.’

Andropulos did indeed have the odd casual question to ask at table that night but he was in no hurry to introduce them. It was not until after they had finished the main course that he said: ‘We do not wish to pry, Captain, nor ask questions about purely naval matters which should be none of our concern. But whatever is happening surely does concern us, whether directly or indirectly, and we are but human and very, very curious. We can all see that the Angelina is alongside with that highly suspect atomic mine lashed down in its cradle on the deck. I thought the intention was to sail it away with all possible speed?’

‘We shall be doing just that, Mr Andropulos. In the fullness of time, by which I mean after we’ve finished dinner. You will not be happy until it is gone?’

‘I confess I will feel a considerable degree of relief when I see the Angelina disappearing over the horizon, and with a clear sky and an almost full moon we should be able to see just that. Selfish? Cowardly? Maybe, maybe not.’ Andropulos sighed. ‘I do not see myself in the role of hero.’

‘I don’t see myself as such. No sensible person does.’

‘But, surely – well, that atomic mine is still highly unstable, is it not?’

‘I don’t think it’s quite so highly dangerous as it was. But why ask me? You’re sitting next to the expert.’

‘Of course. Dr Wickram. How do you see things now, sir?’

‘The Captain is right, or I hope he is. The radioactive emanations of the hydrogen missiles, from which of course the atomic mine is now separated, have an extremely limited range. They are no longer affecting the mine which should be now slowly beginning to stabilize itself. But I have to emphasize that it’s a slow process.’

‘How long will it be before it has fully stabilized itself? By which I mean when will it reach a condition when a passing vessel’s engines will have no effect on it?’

‘Ah. Well, now.’ Wickram’s tone was the verbal equivalent of a shrug. ‘As I’ve said, we’re in the realms of the unknown, the untested, but I have been making some calculations. Difficult calculations involving some rather advanced mathematics so I won’t bother you with those, but my estimate is that the mine should be quite safe in twelve hours at the most. Possibly even in six hours. At a lesser time than that – well, the risk would be unacceptably high.’

‘Damn you to hell, Talbot,’ Wotherspoon said. His voice was low and controlled but the ivory-knuckled fists showed the depths of his anger. ‘It’s my boat you’re talking about. It’s not the property of your damned Navy!’

‘I am aware of that, Professor, and I’m most damnably sorry about it.’ Talbot was with Hawkins, Wotherspoon and his wife in the admiral’s cabin. ‘But you are not coming along. Did you honestly imagine that the Royal Navy would idly stand by and let you, civilians, risk your lives for us?’ Talbot smiled. ‘It’s not only our duty but we’re getting paid for it.’

‘It’s not only bloody high-handed, it’s piracy! Hijack. That sort of illegal behaviour you’re sworn to destroy. You are, of course, prepared to resort to force in order to restrain me.’

‘If we have to, yes.’ Talbot nodded to the opened, darkened doorway. Wotherspoon turned, caught sight of three large figures half-hidden in the gloom. When he turned back, he was literally speechless with fury. ‘It’s the last thing we want to do,’ Talbot said, ‘and it’s totally unnecessary.’ He let an element of coldness creep into his voice. ‘Quite frankly, Wotherspoon, my primary concern is not your welfare. I think you’re being most extraordinarily selfish and totally inconsiderate. How long have you been married, Mrs Wotherspoon?’

‘How long have –’ She tried to smile but her heart wasn’t in it. ‘Almost six months.’

‘Less than six months.’ Talbot looked at Wotherspoon without enthusiasm. ‘And yet you’re willing to expose her to danger and – the chance is very real – to send her to her death because your stiff-necked pride has been wounded. You must be proud of yourself. Do you really want to go, Mrs Wotherspoon?’

‘Angelina.’ The correction was automatic and this time she did smile almost certainly because of the incongruity of it in the circumstances. ‘You put me in an impossible situation.’ She paused, then went on quickly: ‘No. No, you don’t. I don’t want to go. I don’t want James to go either. Delving around in antiquities is our business, not violence and death. Heaven knows I’m no latter-day Amazon and if there are any dragons waiting around to be killed I don’t want my husband to be St George. Please, James.’

Hawkins spoke for the first time. ‘I make no appeal to your emotions, Professor. All I ask you is to put yourself in Commander Talbot’s position. I think you would agree it is a pretty impossible one.’

‘Yes.’ Wotherspoon had unclenched his fists. ‘I see that.’

‘I think three signals are in order, John,’ Hawkins said. The Wotherspoons had left. ‘One to the White House, one to General Carson in Rome and one to Rear-Admiral Blyth. The same signal, coded of course, to each. How about “Settled weather with favourable north-west wind. Angelina about to sail with armed mine. Transfer of hydrogen missiles from plane to Kilcharran continuing smoothly.” That should fit the bill?’

‘Admirably. It should come as quite a shock to them all.’

‘We haven’t of late, I must admit, been sending them much in the way of good news.’

A small knot of interested spectators were gathered round the head of the gangway, the foot of which offered easy access to both the stern of the Angelina, whose sails were already hoisted, and the bows of the Ariadne’s launch. Among the more interested of the spectators was Andropulos.

He turned to Talbot and said: ‘How much longer now, Captain?’

‘Ten minutes. Thereabouts.’

Andropulos shook his head as if in disbelief. ‘And then all our troubles will be over?’

‘It’s beginning to look that way, isn’t it?’

‘It is indeed. Tell me, why is the launch there?’

‘Simple. It’s coming with us.’

‘Going with you? I don’t understand. Won’t the sound of its engines –’

‘Maybe trigger off the mine? The launch won’t start up until we’re at least three miles clear. It will then proceed to circle us, again at a distance of three miles, to warn off any vessels – powered vessels, that is – that threaten to come too close to us. We haven’t come this far, Mr Andropulos, to take any chances.’

‘The thought, the precaution, never occurred to me. Alas, I fear I will never make a man of action.’

Talbot gave him what Andropulos misinterpreted as a kindly smile. ‘One cannot be all things to all men, sir.’

‘You are ready to go, Captain?’ Hawkins said. He had just joined them.

‘A few minutes, sir. Sails are filling rather nicely, aren’t they?’

‘You are going, Captain?’ Andropulos seemed a trifle disconcerted.

‘Certainly. I’ve always rather fancied myself as the skipper of an Aegean lugger. You seem rather surprised, Mr Andropulos?’

‘I am. Rather, I was. But not now.’ He looked down to the deck of the Angelina where Van Gelder was adjusting a halyard on the foresail. ‘And of course, inevitably, Lieutenant-Commander Van Gelder. Hand-picked men, eh, Captain? Hand-picked by yourself, of course. I congratulate you. I also salute you. I suspect that this is a much more dangerous mission than you have led us to understand, a mission so perilous that you have chosen not to delegate some members of your crew to carry it out.’

‘Nonsense, Mr Andropulos. You exaggerate. Well, Admiral, we’re off. Taking a median estimate on Dr Wickram’s time limits we should be disposing of this mine in nine hours’ time – six a.m. tomorrow. If the wind holds – there’s no guarantee that it will, of course – we’ll be well on our way to the Kásos Strait by then.’

Hawkins nodded. ‘And with luck – although I don’t see why the factor luck should enter into it – we should be picking you up in the early afternoon tomorrow. We shall remain with Captain Montgomery until he has finished loading the hydrogen missiles and until the destroyer I’ve radioed for comes to pick him up and escort him to Thessalonika. That should be between nine and ten in the morning. Then we’ll come looking for you.’ He turned his head. ‘You’re off, Mr Andropulos? I should have thought you would have remained to witness this rather historic moment.’

‘I intend to do just that. I also intended to record this historic moment. I go to fetch my trusty Leica. Well, Lieutenant Denholm’s trusty Leica. He lent it to me less than an hour ago.’

Talbot chatted briefly with Hawkins, said his goodbye, climbed down the gangway, had a brief word with Denholm on the launch and then boarded the Angelina. Van Gelder had already pulled in and coiled the bow rope. Talbot stooped over the cleat on the poop-deck to do the same with the stern rope when he became aware of a certain commotion and exclamations about his head. He straightened and looked up.

Andropulos had made his reappearance not with his trusty Leica but with what was probably an equally trusty and much more unpleasant Navy Colt .44, the muzzle of which was pressed against the temple of a plainly terrified Angelina Wotherspoon. Behind him loomed Alexander and Aristotle, both men similarly armed and both with the muzzles of their pistols similarly pointed at temples, those of Irene Charial and her friend Eugenia, neither of whom looked any happier than Angelina, which was to say that they looked very unhappy indeed. Having a pistol grinding into one’s temple is an unpleasant sensation for even the most hardened: for three young ladies whose nearest previous approach to violence must have been the printed page or some of the less-regarded TV psycho-dramas the effect must have been traumatic.

‘Don’t cast off quite yet, Captain,’ Andropulos said. ‘We’re coming with you.’

‘What in God’s name is the meaning of this devilry?’ Hawkins’s expression reflected an equal degree of shock and anger. ‘Have you taken leave of your senses?’

‘We have not taken leave of our senses. We are just taking leave of you.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Hawkins said, ‘I just don’t understand. This is the way you repay us for having saved your lives and offered you every hospitality?’

‘We thank you both for your care and your kindness. However, we have no wish to overstay our welcome or impose upon you further.’ He jabbed Angelina’s temple with a force that made her gasp with pain. ‘After you, Mrs Wotherspoon.’

The six of them descended the gangway in succession and boarded the Angelina. Andropulos transferred the attention of his Colt from Angelina to Talbot and Van Gelder.

‘Nothing rash or heroic or gallant, if you please,’ Andropulos said. ‘Especially gallant. It could only have the most distressing consequences, both for you and the three young ladies.’

‘Is this a joke?’ Talbot said.

‘Ah! Do I detect a certain loss of composure, a crack in the monolithic calm? If I were you, Captain, I would not take me for a joker.’

‘I don’t.’ Talbot made no attempt to conceal his bitterness. ‘I took you for a wealthy businessman and a man of honour. I took you at your face value. I suppose we all learn from our mistakes.’

‘You are too late to learn from this mistake. You are correct in one respect – I freely confess to being a wealthy businessman. A very wealthy one. As to the second charge?’ He shrugged his indifference. ‘Honour is in the eye of the beholder. Let us not waste time. Instruct this young man –’ Denholm standing in the bows of the launch was less than six feet away ‘– to follow his orders precisely. The orders, I understand, that you have given him, Captain. That is, not to start his engines until we have put three miles away from him and then to circle us, at that same distance, to fend off unwanted intruders.’

‘Lieutenant Denholm understands his orders perfectly clearly.’

‘In which case, cast off.’

The wind was fresh, but not strong, and it took the Angelina quite some time to overcome its initial inertia and reach a speed of three or four knots. Slowly the Ariadne dropped astern and after fifteen minutes it was at least a mile distant.

‘Excellent,’ Andropulos said. ‘Rather gratifying, is it not, when things go exactly according to plan.’ There was no hint of undue satisfaction in his voice. ‘Tell me, Commander Talbot, would you believe me when I say that I am genuinely fond, very fond, of my niece and her friend Eugenia and might even come to regard Mrs Wotherspoon in the same light?’

‘I don’t know why I should believe you and I don’t see why it should concern me. It could be.’

‘And would you believe me when I say I wouldn’t harm a hair of their heads.’

‘I’m afraid I do.’

‘Afraid?’

‘Others wouldn’t believe it, or wouldn’t know whether to believe it or not. Which makes them perfect hostages.’

‘Exactly. I don’t need to say that they will come to no harm in my hands.’ He looked thoughtfully at Talbot. ‘You are singularly incurious as to the reasons for my conduct.’

‘I am very curious. But one does not become a wealthy businessman by engaging in idle tittle-tattle. If I were to ask you, you would tell me exactly what you wanted to tell me. No more, no less.’

‘How very true. Now, a different point entirely. The three young ladies pose absolutely no threat to me. You and Van Gelder are a very different kettle of fish. My two friends and I regard you as highly dangerous individuals. We think you are capable of concocting devious and cunning plans and using a great deal of violence in putting those plans to the test – if, that is, you thought there was the slightest chance of success. You will understand, therefore, that we will have to immobilize you. I will remain by the wheel here. You two gentlemen, accompanied by the three ladies, will proceed to the saloon where Aristotle who, as you will readily understand, is very good at knots, will tie you hand and foot, while Alexander, who is every bit as proficient with a gun as Aristotle is with ropes, will ensure that proceedings are conducted in a peaceful fashion.’

Hawkins was bent over Professor Wotherspoon who was lying half propped-up on a sofa in the wardroom. Wotherspoon, dazed and making odd choking noises that were part way between moans and curses, was struggling to open his eyes. Finally, with the aid of his fingers, he managed to do just that.

‘What the hell has happened?’ The watchers had to strain to catch his words, which were no more than an asthmatic croak. ‘Where am I?’

‘Take this.’ Hawkins put an arm around his shoulders and a glass of brandy to his lips. Wotherspoon sipped, gagged, then drained the contents.

‘What has happened?’

‘You’ve been banged over the back of the head,’ Grierson said, ‘and not lightly, either. “Sapped”, I believe, is the current term. By the butt of the revolver, I should guess.’

Wotherspoon struggled to a sitting position. ‘Who?’

‘Andropulos,’ Hawkins said. ‘Or one of his criminal friends. Some more brandy is in order, Doctor?’

‘Normally, no,’ Grierson said. ‘In this case, yes. I know the back of your head must hurt badly, Professor, but don’t touch it. Bruised, bleeding, puffy but no fracture.’

‘Andropulos has hijacked your vessel,’ Hawkins said. ‘Along, of course, with the atomic mine. He has also taken hostages.’

Wotherspoon nodded and winced at the pain it caused him. ‘My wife, of course, is one of them.’

‘I am sorry. Along with Irene Charial and her friend Eugenia. There was no way we could stop them.’

‘Did you try?’

‘Would you have tried if you saw the barrel of a Colt screwing into your wife’s temple? And two other guns screwed into the temples of the two other ladies?’

‘I hardly think so.’ Wotherspoon shook his head. ‘I’m trying to come to terms with the situation. With a head like an over-ripe pumpkin about to burst, it’s not easy. Talbot and Van Gelder. What’s happened to them?’

‘We don’t know, of course. Clapped in irons, handcuffed or some such, I should imagine.’

‘Or permanently disposed of. What in God’s name is behind all this, Admiral? Do you think this fellow Andropulos has gone off his rocker?’

‘By his own standards, he’s probably under the impression that he’s perfectly sane. We have every reason to believe that he is a long-term and highly professional criminal operating on a hitherto unprecedented international scale. Terrorism and drugs would appear to be his forte. There is no time to go into that at the moment. The immediate point is that Lieutenant Denholm is very shortly leaving in the launch to follow them. Do you feel up to accompanying him?’

‘Follow them? Board and capture them? I should say.’

‘As you as much as said yourself, Professor, your mind isn’t yet firing on all cylinders. If the launch were to go within a couple of miles of the Angelina its engine beat would probably detonate the atomic mine.’

‘As you say, I’m not at my best. But if you have any spare rifles or pistols there would be no harm in taking them along. Just in case.’

‘There will be no firearms. If there were to be any exchange of fire you know where the first bullet would lodge, don’t you?’

‘Yes. You do put things so nicely. Less than an hour ago you were prepared to restrain me at all costs. You seem to have changed your mind, Admiral.’

‘It’s not my mind that has changed. It’s the circumstances.’

‘A rapid change in circumstances,’ the President said, ‘does give one a rather more balanced view of life. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I enjoyed that lunch, but then, a couple of hours ago I didn’t expect or wish to have any today. Although the memory of the treachery will be with us for a long time one has to admit that the discreet if tragic settlement of the Pentagon question removes a major burden of worry. But that was only a local and, let us confess it, a basically selfish concern.’ He waved the paper he held in his hand. ‘This, of course, is what matters. The good ship Angelina, with this damned bomb aboard, is heading steadily south-east and with every second that passes it is putting another yard – or is it two? – between itself and all the horrors of Santorini. It is not too much to say, gentlemen, that a holocaust of unimaginable proportions has been averted.’ He raised his glass. ‘I give you a toast, Sir John. The Royal Navy.’

The President had barely returned his glass to the table when a messenger entered. The President glanced at him briefly, looked away, then looked at him again. All traces of satisfaction drained from his face.

‘Bad news, Johnson?’

‘I’m afraid so, Mr President.’

‘The worst? The very worst?’

‘Not the very worst. But bad enough.’

The President took the message, read it in silence, then looked up and said: ‘I’m afraid our celebrations have been rather premature. The Angelina has been hijacked.’

Nobody repeated the word ‘hijacked’. Nobody said anything. There didn’t seem to be anything to say.

‘Message reads: “Angelina and armed mine hijacked by Andropulos and two criminal associates. Five hostages taken – Commander Talbot, Lieutenant-Commander Van Gelder and three ladies, one of whom is Andropulos’s niece. Physically impossible for Angelina to return to area so major danger no longer exists. Will keep you posted hourly. Our major and only concern now recovery of hostages.”’

‘Dear me, dear me,’ Sir John said. ‘This is distressing. Both ominous and confusing. Here we have this madman – or genius, who knows how much truth there is in the old maxim that they are the two sides of the same coin – loose in the Levant with an armed atomic mine aboard. Does he know that it’s armed? One rather suspects he doesn’t. Where have the three ladies suddenly appeared from and what were they doing aboard one of Her Majesty’s frigates in the first place? Why, of all improbabilities, should this villain elect to kidnap his own niece? And why, not to mention how, did this same villain kidnap the captain of the frigate and one of his senior officers? And where, in the name of all that’s holy, does he hope to sail his ship, cargo and prisoners, when he must know that every ship and plane in NATO will be searching for him? But he does so hope. That is obvious. His long and spectacularly successful criminal career, undetected until now, proves that he is a devious, cunning and brilliant operator. He has another scheme in mind. Not a man, as we have now learnt to our cost and should have known from his record, to be underestimated. A villain, indeed, but a very resourceful villain.’

‘Indeed,’ the President said. ‘One can only hope that Commander Talbot proves to be even more resourceful.’

‘I have the uncomfortable feeling,’ Sir John said, ‘that at the present moment Talbot is in no position to prove anything.’

Chapter 10

On the hour of midnight, Eastern Mediterranean time, Commander Talbot was in no position to prove anything and, judging from his uncomfortable position on a sofa in the Angelina’s saloon, with his ankles lashed together and his hands bound behind his back, it didn’t seem that he would be in a position to prove anything for quite some time to come. Van Gelder, equally uncomfortable at the other end of the sofa, was in no better case. Aristotle, with a wholly unnecessary pistol held loosely across his knee, was seated very comfortably indeed in a large armchair facing the sofa. The three ladies were in smaller armchairs towards the after end of the saloon and didn’t look at all comfortable. They hadn’t exchanged a word for upwards of two hours. There didn’t seem to be much to talk about and all three, understandably enough, were preoccupied with their own thoughts.

Talbot said: ‘Tell Andropulos I want to speak to him.’

‘Do you now?’ Aristotle lowered the glass from which he had been sipping. ‘You are not in a position, Captain, to give orders to anyone.’

‘Would you kindly present my compliments to the captain and say I would like to talk to him.’

‘That is better.’ Aristotle rose, crossed to the short flight of steps leading up to the wheelhouse and said something in Greek. Andropulos appeared almost at once. He, too, was needlessly armed. There was a relaxed and confident, even cheerful, air about him.

‘When you were aboard my ship,’ Talbot said, ‘we catered for your every desire. Whatever you wanted, you had but to ask. I wish I could say the same for Greek hospitality. Well, your version of it.’

‘I think I take your point. It can’t be easy for you to lie there and watch Aristotle steadily lowering the level in a bottle of retsina. You are thirsty?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s easily remedied.’

In very short order, Aristotle had their bonds quickly and skilfully re-arranged, with Talbot’s left wrist and Van Gelder’s right loosely but securely attached to each other. Their free hands now held a glass apiece.

‘I am becoming suspicious, Captain,’ Andropulos said. He neither looked nor sounded suspicious. ‘You seem totally unconcerned as to the immediate past and the immediate future. I find it very curious indeed.’

‘There’s nothing curious about it. It’s your behaviour that I find extraordinarily curious although I have to admit that that is based entirely on my complete ignorance of what is going on. I fail to understand why you, a very wealthy and, I assume, highly respected businessman, should suddenly decide to put yourself outside the bounds of law. I don’t have to tell you that, by hijacking the Angelina, you have done just that. I can’t even begin to understand why you should jeopardize your career, perhaps even risk a prison sentence, although I have no doubt that with the kind of money you must possess you wouldn’t have too much trouble in bending the law in your direction. Most of all, I don’t understand how you can possibly hope to get away with it. By six o’clock, possibly seven, tomorrow morning every ship and plane in NATO will be looking for you and you must know that it will take very little time to locate you.’

‘You have this famous Royal Navy signal, locate, engage and destroy. Locate, yes. Destroy, no.’ Andropulos was quite undisturbed. ‘Not with the kind of cargo and very select group of hostages I have on board. As for jeopardizing my career, well, I think the time comes in many people’s lives when they should abandon the old ways and strike out in a fresh direction. Don’t you, Captain?’

‘Not where I’m concerned. And perhaps, where you are concerned, it’s not a choice but a necessity. You appear to have taken a fresh step along the road to crime. It’s just possible – it’s difficult to imagine but it is possible – that many of your past steps have led along that same road and that your past is catching up with you. But that’s just empty speculation. I really don’t know and, to be honest, I no longer care. Could I have some more wine?’

‘What are you going to do with us?’ Irene Charial was trying to keep her voice steady but the undercurrent of strain was there. ‘What is going to happen to us?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, my dear. Nothing is going to happen to you. You heard me saying that to Commander Talbot when we came aboard. Unthinkable that you should come to any harm at my hands.’

‘Where are you taking us?’

‘I’m not taking you anywhere. Oh dear, that does sound ominous. To what will probably be my lifelong regret, I shall be parting company with you. Dear, dear, that doesn’t sound much better. Within a very short time I shall be transferring you aboard the Ariadne’s launch and bidding you farewell.’

‘And the two officers here? Do you shoot them or just tie their hands up again and throw them overboard?’

‘I must protest, Irene,’ Van Gelder said. ‘Don’t go around putting ideas into the man’s head.’

‘I had looked for more intelligence from my niece,’ Andropulos said. ‘If it had been my intention to dispose of them, I should have done so immediately we came aboard.’

‘What’s to stop them from coming after you? You know they can call for help.’

‘The Lord help us,’ Van Gelder said. ‘One shudders to think of the minimal levels of university entrance these days.’

‘I’m afraid I have to agree with both Van Gelder and your uncle,’ Talbot said. ‘You are naïve.’ He cocked his fingers, pistol fashion. ‘Poof! Exit engine. Poof! Exit radio.’

Andropulos smiled. ‘As you say, a double poof should do it nicely.’

Denholm looked out at the light flickering from the north. ‘What does the Angelina say, Myers?’

‘“Stop two miles south-east of us and cut engines.” How shall I answer, sir?’

‘We don’t have any option. “Wilco.”’ He waited until Myers had triggered the reply, then said: ‘What’s the latest news about the Taormina?’ The Ariadne had been monitoring the radio traffic between the Angelina and the Taormina for almost three hours and had the position of the Taormina – and themselves – pinpointed to within a few hundred yards.

‘Just ten miles north of Avgó Island and moving, pretty slowly, north.’

‘Proceeding, in what one might say in happier circumstances, with admirable caution.’ The Ariadne had picked up Andropulos’s warning to the Taormina of the danger of their coming together too soon. ‘How long before they make contact?’

‘Three hours, give or take. A bit longer, I should think, if the Angelina stops off alongside for a bit.’

‘Do you think,’ Wotherspoon said, ‘that they might have in mind to sink us, Lieutenant?’

‘I would be grateful, Professor, if you didn’t even think of such things.’

Under the watchful eyes of three men with three guns McKenzie and Brown took and secured the ropes of the Angelina as it came alongside. First aboard was Andropulos himself, followed by Angelina Wotherspoon, who immediately seemed bent on strangling the Professor, then the two girls, Talbot and Van Gelder with their hands still bound behind their backs and finally Alexander and Aristotle, the last carrying a bag.

‘We will not stay long,’ Andropulos said. ‘One or two small things to attend to first, then we shall be on our way.’

‘May one ask what is in that bag?’ Wotherspoon said. ‘A delayed action bomb?’

‘Mankind has so little trust in one another these days,’ Andropulos said. He shook the bag gently and a slight tinkling noise resulted. ‘To while away the time while you await rescue. Commander Talbot’s idea, really. After all, it’s your liquor, Wotherspoon. This, I take it, is the radio.’

‘Do me a last favour,’ Talbot said. ‘A favour to all of us. Don’t blow it apart with a bullet. Just tap it gently with the butt of your revolver. Similarly with the engine. It requires very little effort to destroy the distributor and the plugs.’ He nodded towards the armed mine lying in its cradle. ‘I’m not at all sure how our friend here would react to the explosive crack of a pistol shot.’

‘A well taken point,’ Andropulos said. ‘We just don’t know how temperamental that mine is.’ He reversed his grip on the pistol, levered open the face-plate of the radio and swept the butt across the transistors. It took him scarcely more time to attend to the engine. He next turned his attention to the signalling lamp, smashed it thoroughly and turned to Myers. ‘Is there a spare?’

Myers swore at him softly, and Andropulos raised his gun. Talbot said: ‘Don’t be a fool, Myers. Give it to him.’

Myers, tight-lipped, handed over a small hand-signalling lamp. Andropulos broke the face and threw it into the water. He then turned his attention to a small metal box attached to the deck just outside the wheelhouse and jerked his gun in McKenzie’s direction. ‘The distress flares there. Over the side with them, if you please.’ He was silent for a moment, as if considering. ‘Engine, radio, signalling lamps, distress flares. No, I don’t think there’s any other way you can communicate with anyone. Not that there’s anyone around to communicate with. I trust you do not have too long and uncomfortable a wait before you are picked up.’ He turned to Irene Charial. ‘Well, then, my dear, I will say goodbye.’

She did not answer him, did not even look at him. Andropulos shrugged, stepped across the gunwales and disappeared inside the Angelina’s wheelhouse. Alexander and Aristotle followed him aboard, retrieved the lines that had secured them to the launch and pushed off with boathooks. The Angelina got slowly under way and headed off once more towards the south-east.

McKenzie used his seaman’s knife to slice through the ropes that bound the wrists of Talbot and Van Gelder. ‘Someone,’ he said, ‘certainly used a lot of enthusiasm to tie those knots.’

‘That they did.’ Talbot flexed painful and swollen wrists and hands and looked at the bag Aristotle had brought aboard. ‘However, using two hands, I might just be able to hold something in them.’

Irene Charial looked at him. ‘Is that all you have to say?’

‘Make it a generous measure.’

She stared some more at him, looked away and reached for the bag. Wotherspoon said: ‘Are you sure you’re all right, Captain? How can you be so abnormally calm? You’ve lost out, haven’t you? Lost out all along the line.’

‘That’s one way of putting it.’ The wind was fresh, the sky cloudless and the full moon, abnormally large and bright, laid a golden bar across the Sea of Crete. Even at the distance of half a mile every detail of the Angelina was startlingly clear. ‘The world, of course, will say that Andropulos has lost out. Andropulos and his two murderous friends.’ Irene was still staring at him, her expression blank and uncomprehending. ‘Things never quite work out the way you want them to.’

‘I’m sure you know what you’re talking about.’ Wotherspoon’s tone of voice left no doubt that he was quite sure that Talbot didn’t know what he was talking about. ‘And you took a hell of a chance there, if I may say so, Captain. He could have killed you and Van Gelder.’

‘He could have tried. Then he would have died himself. Himself, Alexander and Aristotle.’

‘You had your hands tied behind your back. And Van Gelder.’ Wotherspoon was openly incredulous. ‘How could you –’

‘Chief Petty Officer McKenzie and Marine Sergeant Brown are highly trained and highly qualified marksmen. The only two on the Ariadne. With hand-guns, they are quite deadly. That is why they are along. Andropulos and his friends would have died without knowing what had hit them. Show the Professor, Chief.’

McKenzie reached under the small chart table, brought out two Navy Colts and handed them without a word to Wotherspoon. Quite some seconds passed in silence, then he looked up from the guns and said in a quiet voice: ‘You knew those guns were there.’

‘I put them there.’

‘You put them there.’ He shook his head as if in disbelief. ‘You could have used those guns.’

‘Killed them, you mean?’

‘Well, no. That wouldn’t have been necessary. Wounded them, perhaps. Or just taken them prisoner.’

‘What were your orders, Chief?’

‘Shoot to kill.’

‘Shoot to kill.’ It was a night for silences. ‘But you didn’t, did you?’

‘I elected not to.’

Irene Charial clutched her arms and shivered, as if a sudden chill had fallen on the evening air. Nor was she alone in sensing the sudden and almost tangible drop in temperature. Both Eugenia and Angela Wotherspoon were staring at him, their eyes wide with uncertainty, then with fear and then with a sudden sick foreknowledge. Talbot’s words still hung in the air, the fading echo of a sentence of execution.

Talbot said to Myers: ‘The radio, if you would, Chief.’

‘Two minutes, sir.’ Myers moved aft, returned with a hammer and chisel and began to attack the floorboards of the wheelhouse. He pulled up a creaking plank, reached under and brought out a small compact radio with speaker attached. ‘You talk in here, sir. Reply comes from the box. After, that is, you’ve cranked the handle.’ Talbot nodded and spun the handle.

‘HMS Ariadne here.’ The voice was very distinct, very clear and unquestionably the voice of Admiral Hawkins.

‘Talbot, sir. The three ladies, Van Gelder and I have been returned to the launch. Well and unharmed. Andropulos and his two friends are on their way again, moving south-east.’

‘Well, thank God for that, anyway. Damn your eyes, Talbot, you’ve guessed right again. You’ve made up your mind what to do?’

‘I have, sir.’

‘For the record, do you want a direct order?’

‘Off or on the record, no order will be necessary. But thank you. Do you have an estimate of their meeting time, sir.’

‘Yes, I do. At their current speeds – the Taormina is still drifting along – and on their converging courses, about two hours. Three-thirty.’

‘Thank you, sir. I’ll call again in one hour.’

‘The Taormina?’ Wotherspoon said. ‘Who or what the hell is the Taormina?’

‘A diving ship, in which Andropulos has an interest. By interest, I mean that he probably owns the damn thing.’

‘Commander Talbot?’ Irene Charial’s voice was very low.

‘Yes?’

‘Admiral Hawkins said “you’ve guessed right again”. What did he mean by that?’

‘Just what he meant, I suppose.’

‘Please.’ She essayed a smile but gave up. ‘You all seem to think that I’m not very bright, but I don’t deserve that.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I’m beginning to think that you’re not much given to guessing.’ She looked at the two guns. ‘You didn’t guess that those were here. I don’t think you guessed, I think you knew, that my uncle and the other two were armed.’

‘I knew.’

‘How?’

‘Jenkins, our wardroom steward, had been writing a letter to his family. For some reason, maybe he’d forgotten something, he went back up to the wardroom. He came across your uncle, or his associates, opening up a box in the passageway outside the wardroom. That box – it’s a standard fitting on most naval ships – contained Colt .44s. So they killed Jenkins and threw him over the side. I am sorry, Irene, really and truly sorry. I know how terrible all this must be for you.’

This time she did manage a smile although it was a pretty wan attempt.

‘Terrible, yes, but not as terrible as I thought it might be. Did you guess that my uncle would try to hijack the Angelina?’

‘Yes.’

‘And take the two of you hostages?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you guess he would take three young ladies as hostages?’

‘No. I make guesses and I take chances, but I would never have taken a chance like that. If I’d even dreamed of the possibility, I’d have killed them there and then. On the Ariadne.’

‘I made a mistake about you, Captain. You talk a lot about killing but I think you’re a very kind man.’

‘I wouldn’t go as far as to say that.’ Talbot smiled. ‘You made a mistake?’

‘Irene is a pretty fair judge of character, sir,’ Van Gelder said. ‘She had you down as a cruel and inhuman monster.’

‘I said nothing of the kind! When you talked to my uncle on the Angelina you said you knew nothing about what was going on. That wasn’t true, was it? You knew all along.’

‘Well, it’s as you say. I’m a pretty fair old guesser. I have to admit that I had a lot of help from Lieutenant-Commander Van Gelder and Lieutenant Denholm is no slouch at the guessing game either. I’m afraid you’ll have to know about your uncle some time, and you may as well know now. It sounds an exaggeration, but it is not, to say that he’s a criminal in the world class, if not in a class of his own, and a totally ruthless killer. He specializes in, organizes and dominates international drug-smuggling and international terrorism. God only knows how many hundreds, more likely thousands, lie dead at his hands. We know, and know beyond any doubt, that he is as guilty as any man can be, but it might take months, even years, to amass the necessary proof. By that time, he would have disappeared. That’s what he’s doing now – disappearing. Even in the past couple of days he’s been doing not too badly. He murdered the engineer, cook and steward on the Delos. They found out too much. What, we shall probably never know.’

‘How on earth can you know this?’ All the colour had left her face and her face registered pure shock. Not grief or horror, just shock. ‘How on earth can you guess that, far less prove it?’

‘Because Van Gelder and I went down to examine the hull on the bottom. He also blew up his own yacht in order to get aboard the Ariadne. You weren’t to know this, of course. Neither, unfortunately for your uncle, did he. For good measure, he’s also been responsible for the suicides of a very senior general and a very senior admiral, both Americans, in the past few hours. He doesn’t know that, but if he did I’m sure it might cost him anything up to a minute’s sleep.’ He looked at McKenzie. ‘Chief, this retsina is dreadful. Can you do no better than this for your long-suffering captain?’

‘It is pretty awful, sir. I’ve tried it. All respects to Professor Wotherspoon, but I’m afraid Greek plonk is very much an acquired taste. There seems to be a bottle of scotch and one of gin in a locker in the wheelhouse. Don’t know how it got there. Sergeant Brown appears to think that it’s marked up in your Mess bill.’

‘I’ll court-martial you both later. Meantime, don’t just hang around.’

‘He’s going to die, isn’t he, sir?’ Brown said, ‘I’m sorry, miss, but if half of what the Captain says is true, then he’s an inhuman man who doesn’t belong in a human world. And I believe everything the Captain has said is true.’

‘I know Jenkins was your best friend, Sergeant, and I cannot say how sorry I am. He will die and by his own hand. He is his own executioner.’ Talbot turned to Eugenia. ‘You heard him mention the words “Manhattan Project”?’

‘Yes, I did. I didn’t know what he meant.’

‘Neither did we, at first. But we worked it out. Andropulos wasn’t interested in the hydrogen bombs. There’s no way you can use a hydrogen bomb as a terrorist weapon. It’s too final, it would achieve nothing and no terrorist would dare admit the responsibility of using it. It would have been impossible for any terrorist to transport anyway. But he was interested in atomic mines and he knew there were three of those aboard this plane. His original plan, we think, was to dump those in the sea approaches to some of the world’s greatest seaports, like San Francisco, New York, London or Rotterdam and let the respective countries know of it. He would inform those countries that he had the means to detonate those mines by means of a long-range, pre-set radio signal and that any attempt to locate, remove or neutralize them might or might not activate the mine and, of course, destroy the investigating vessel.

‘It would have effectively paralysed all seaborne trade and passenger traffic in and out of those ports. It would also have had the additional holier-than-thou advantage that if any such atomic explosion did occur the fault would lie squarely at the door of the country responsible for the explosion and not at the door of the terrorists. The Manhattan Project mine would have been laid somewhere in the Ambrose Channel on the approaches to the Lower New York Bay. It was a brilliant scheme, typical of a brilliant but twisted mind. It had one drawback. It wouldn’t have worked. Andropulos had no means of knowing that. But we did.’

‘How in the world could you know that?’ Wotherspoon said.

‘I’ll come to that. So, Andropulos gets his bomb. Perfect for his purposes, or so he thinks. But there was something else he didn’t know. When the plane crashed it activated a timing mechanism inside the mine. When that mechanism ran out the mine was armed and ready to explode at the first sound of a ship’s engines. Any kind of engine, in fact. That mine aboard the Angelina is armed. But Andropulos fell for that gobbledygook that Wickram fed him about its being temporarily unstable because of the radioactive emanations from the hydrogen bombs. It’s permanently unstable and just waiting to go. Chief, you are being strangely remiss.’

‘Sorry, sir.’ McKenzie handed over a glass of scotch. ‘You can hardly blame me, sir. A man doesn’t often get a chance to listen to a story like this.’

Talbot sampled his drink, ‘It is to be hoped that you will never hear another like it again.’

‘So what’s going to happen?’ Wotherspoon asked.

‘One of two things could happen. He could try to transfer the mine to the Taormina, the sound of whose engines would blow them all to a better world. Well, in the case of Andropulos and his friends, we would hope a much worse world. The crew of the Taormina may be a relatively innocent bunch. Or he could elect to sail it to Tobruk, his final destination. Don’t forget, he would think it perfectly safe to do so because, as far as he knows, the world would still think that he has five hostages aboard. At the sound of the first ship’s or industrial engine in Tobruk, the mine is activated. How many guiltless people dead? Ten thousand? A minimum estimate. Lieutenant Denholm, I grow tired of my own voice. You are alleged to be the Ariadne’s electronics officer. Would you show them this device and explain its purpose.’

‘It’s called the krytron,’ Denholm said. ‘Looks like a small and rather old-fashioned portable radio, doesn’t it? This is what the Captain meant when he said that if Andropulos knew of the existence of this instrument he wouldn’t have gone to all the vast trouble of obtaining an atomic mine. By carrying out a very few simple actions – it is in fact an extraordinarily complex mechanism and I know practically nothing about it – you can send an electronic impulse on a selected wave-length and detonate an atomic bomb. If Andropulos were to have laid this mine in the Ambrose Channel it could have been destroyed from almost any given distance without a ship or a plane going anywhere near it.’

Wotherspoon said: ‘Is one allowed to ask how you so conveniently came by this lethal instrument?’

‘We sent to America for it. It arrived yesterday.’

‘That implies two things. You had prior knowledge of the existence of this device and you’ve known for quite some time about exactly what Andropulos was up to. Did anyone else know?’

‘The Captain disapproves of his officers gossiping.’

Wotherspoon turned to Talbot. ‘You’re going to blow up the Angelina? My Angelina!’

‘Well, yes. I dare say there will be some form of compensation.’

‘What compensation?’

‘How should I know? I’m not sufficiently senior to make any offers. I’ll have to ask the Admiral.’

‘Does it have to be done this way?’ Irene said. ‘You do have a radio. Couldn’t you just tell him to drop the bomb over the side and then have him picked up later?’

‘Apart from the fact that he wouldn’t believe me, I wouldn’t do it anyway. I have told you that obtaining proof against him might take months, even years. I suggest that you and Eugenia ask your respective fathers about him. You will find that they will totally agree with what I am about to do, and that is not to let a mad dog run loose in the world.’

Van Gelder said: ‘This is what you meant by saying, not once but many times, that Andropulos would never come to trial?’

‘He has been tried.’

At 2.30 a.m. Talbot called up the Ariadne and was through to the Admiral immediately.

‘It’s two-thirty, sir. Has the Kilcharran brought all the hydrogen missiles aboard?’

‘It has.’

‘So we go. Two small points, sir. Professor Wotherspoon seems somewhat peeved by the imminent – ah – demise of the Angelina.’

‘Tell him it’s all in a good cause.’

‘Yes, sir. Do you think the Ministry of Defence could run to a replacement?’

‘Guaranteed.’

‘He also mentioned something about gold-plated taps in his bathroom.’

‘Good God! The other small point? A mercifully small point, one trusts.’

‘A bagatelle, sir. How do you view the suggestion that, after all their harrowing experiences, the crew of the Ariadne deserves some leave?’

‘Precisely the same thought had occurred to me. A week, I think. Where do you suggest?’

‘Piræus, sir. I thought it would be rather a nice gesture to take the two girls back home. It would also be an excellent centre for Professor Wotherspoon and his lady to start looking round for gold-plated taps. We will call again in five minutes.’

Talbot replaced the telephone and said to McKenzie and Brown: ‘A couple of sweeps out, if you please, and have the bows lined up to the south-east. Well, Professor, what do you think of the Admiral’s generous offer?’

‘I’m staggered.’

‘So you might well be, as the Admiralty was under no obligation whatsoever to replace it. You must be well aware that Andropulos intended to sink it anyway. Lieutenant Denholm, pass me the krytron.’

‘It’s my job, sir. You can’t have forgotten that I’m your electronics officer.’

‘It’s also your job to call to mind the rules and regulations about seniority,’ Van Gelder said. ‘Pass it to me.’

Talbot reached out and took the krytron, already connected to a battery, from Denholm. ‘Neither of you. When we get to Piraeus, I think that those two young ladies will feel under a moral obligation to show you around the University precincts and indulge in other such-like cultural activities. I don’t think, somehow, that they would feel entirely comfortable in the presence of whoever pressed this button.’

Talbot cracked both orange domes with the hammer, rotated the switches through 180° and pressed the button.

‘“Commander Talbot has elected to destroy and has destroyed the Angelina by detonating the atomic mine. He had my one hundred per cent encouragement and support. Andropulos and his two friends were aboard the Angelina.”’

The President shook his head in disbelief and laid the message down. ‘This Commander Talbot. A totally ruthless and highly resourceful man.’

‘Not ruthless, sir,’ Sir John said. ‘A kind and thoughtful man. If he were ruthless, he could have permitted the destruction of a ship or a city. But resourceful? Yes, I rather think he is.’

Now read the classic tale of war at sea by Alistair MacLean

HMS Ulysses is one of the fastest and most well-armed cruisers in the British Royal Navy, but her crew have been pushed beyond the limits of endurance and the Ulysses must put to sea again to escort a vital convoy heading for Murmansk. An unusually fierce arctic storm, the German ships and U-boats, as well as airborne attacks, all slowly decimate the convoy from 32 ships to only 5. With safety almost in reach, but with all her weapons destroyed, the journey becomes an unbearably tense and deadly game of cat and mouse between the crippled cruiser and her pursuers.

Buy HMS Ulysses

About the Author

Alistair MacLean, the son of a Scots minister, was born in 1922 and brought up in the Scottish Highlands. In 1941 at the age of eighteen he joined the Royal Navy; two-and-a-half years spent aboard a cruiser was later to give him the background for HMS Ulysses, his first novel, the outstanding documentary novel on the war at sea. After the war, he gained an English Honours degree at Glasgow University, and became a school master. In 1983 he was awarded a D.Litt from the same university.

He is now recognized as one of the outstanding popular writers of the 20th century. By the early 1970s he was one of the top 10 bestselling authors in the world, and the biggest-selling Briton. He wrote twenty-nine worldwide bestsellers that have sold more than 30 million copies, and many of which have been filmed, including The Guns of Navarone, Where Eagles Dare, Fear is the Key and Ice Station Zebra. Alistair MacLean died in 1987 at his home in Switzerland.

Also by the Author

HMS Ulysses

The Guns of Navarone

South by Java Head

The Last Frontier

Night Without End

Fear is the Key

The Dark Crusader

The Satan Bug

The Golden Rendezvous

Ice Station Zebra

When Eight Bells Toll

Where Eagles Dare

Force 10 from Navarone

Puppet on a Chain

Caravan to Vaccarès

Bear Island

The Way to Dusty Death

Breakheart Pass

Circus

The Golden Gate

Seawitch

Goodbye California

Athabasca

River of Death

Partisans

Floodgate

San Andreas

The Lonely Sea (stories)

Santorini

Copyright

Harper

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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San Andreas first published in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1984

The Golden Rendezvous first published in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1962

Seawitch first published in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1977 under the pseudonym ‘Ian Stuart’

Santorini first published in Great Britain by Collins 1986

Copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1962, 1977, 1984, 1986

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2008, 2009

Alistair MacLean asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780006170266; 9780006162599; 9780006164746; 9780006174530

Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2013 ISBN: 9780007536238

Version: 2013–07–18

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