'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 naive.' 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 Avgo 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 boat-hooks. 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.
