Santorini (17 page)

'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

I 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 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 ú 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.

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 cm 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.'