Santorini

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 MountElias 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