'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 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.
'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 .445. 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.'
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