Santorini Page 5

  '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 betes noires, my fatal flaws. Till this evening, then.'

  'What betes 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 die 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 as 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 C141 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 ore.'

  '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 antiaircraft 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 41 Sheffield-class destroyers and the new Type 2.3 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 lie-detector 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 ans
wers, 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 super-sensitive, 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.'