‘I didn’t think you would. What’s next for you, John?’ ‘I didn’t have much sleep last night. It’s quite possible I may lack some tonight. Now’s the time. Nothing I can do.’
‘An excellent idea. Same for me when I come back from the Kilcharran.’
When Talbot emerged from his day cabin and passed through to the bridge shortly after six o’clock in the evening it should still have been broad daylight, but so low was the level of light in the sky that it could well have been late twilight. He found Van Gelder and Denholm waiting for him.
‘In this weather,’ Talbot said, ‘I could almost say “Well, watchmen, what of the night?” Everything running smoothly and under control while Drake was in his hammock?’
‘We have not been idle,’ Van Gelder said. ‘Neither has Captain Montgomery. He’s got the bomber strung out about a cable length to the south-east. Riding quite badly — it’s either a Force 6 or 7 out there – but it seems to be holding together. He’s got a searchlight — well, a six-inch signalling lamp — on it, either to check that it doesn’t break away or to discourage the disaffected from snaffling it, although why there should be anyone around, or daft enough, to try that I can’t imagine. I’d advise against going out on the wing to have a look, sir. You might get washed away.’ Van Gelder’s advice was superfluous. The rain falling from the black and leaden skies was of the torrential or tropical downpour variety, the heavy warm drops rebounding six inches from the deck.
‘I take your point.’ He looked at the brown metal box lying on the deck. ‘What’s that?’
‘Voila!’ Denholm seized the handle let into the top and swept off the cover with all the panache of a stage magician unveiling his latest impossible trick. ‘The piece de resistance.’ What was presumably the control panel on the top of the box was singularly unimpressive and old-fashioned, reminiscent of a pre-war radio, with two calibrated dials, some knobs, a
press-button and two orange hemispherical glass domes let into the surface.
‘The krytron, I assume,’ Talbot said.
‘No less. Three cheers for presidents. This particular one has been as good as his word.’
‘Excellent. Really excellent. Let’s only hope we get the chance to use it under, let us say, optimal circumstances.’
‘ “Optimal” is the word,’ Denholm said. ‘Very simple device — as far as operating it is concerned, that is. Inside, it’s probably fiendishly complicated. This particular model -there may be others — runs off a twenty-four volt battery.’ He placed his forefinger on a button. ‘I depress this — and hey presto!’
‘If you’re trying to make me nervous, Jimmy, you’re succeeding. Take your finger off that damned button.’
Denholm depressed it several times. ‘No battery. We supply that. No problem. And under those two orange domes are two switches that have to be rotated through 180 degrees. Specially designed, you see, for careless clowns like me. As an added precaution, you can’t unscrew those domes. One sharp tap with a light metal object, the instructions say, and they disintegrate. Again, I should imagine, designed with people like me in mind, in case we remove the tops and start twiddling the switches around. Designed, if you follow me, to be a one-off operation. The only time those switches will ever be exposed is immediately before the firing button is depressed.’
‘When are you going to attach the battery?’
‘As an added precaution — this is my precaution — only immediately before use. These are positive and negative connections. We use spring-loaded crocodile clips. Two seconds to attach the clips. Three seconds to crack the domes and align the switches. One second to press the button. Nothing could be simpler. Only one other trifling requirement, sir — that we have that atom bomb, on its own and a long, long
way from anywhere and us at a very prudent distance when we detonate it.’
‘You ask for very little, Jimmy.’ Talbot looked out at the driving rain and the dark and now white-capped seas. ‘We nay have to wait a little — an hour or two as an optimistic guess, all night as a pessimistic one, before we can even begin 😮 move. Anything else?’
‘I repeat, we have not been idle,’ Van Gelder said. ‘We’ve heard from the Heraklion Air Base. There is – or was – a living vessel in the near vicinity, if you can call the western tip of Crete the near vicinity.’
‘Is — or was?’
‘Was. It was anchored off Souda Bay for a couple of days and apparently took off about one a.m. this morning. As you know, Souda Bay is a very hush-hush Greek naval base, and the area is very protected, very restricted, foreign vessels, even harmless cruising yachts, are definitely not welcomed. Souda bay naturally took an interest in this lad. It’s their business to re suspicious, especially at a time when NATO are operating a the area.’
‘What did they find out?’
‘Precious little. It was called the Taormina and registered in Panama.’
‘A Sicilian name? No significance. Panama – a convenience registry, some of the most successful ocean-going crooks in :he world are registered there. Anyway, you don’t have to be in artist to change both names in very short order — all you require is a couple of pots of paint and a set of stencils. Where had it come from?’
‘They didn’t know. As it had anchored off-shore it didn’t nave to register with either the customs or the port authorities. But they did know that it took off in a roughly north-easterly direction which, just coincidentally, is the course it would lave taken if it were heading for Santorini. And as Souda Bay is just under a hundred miles from here, even a slow ship
He could have been in this area well before the bomber came down. So your hunch could have been right, sir. Only problem is, we’ve seen no sign of him.’
‘Could have been a coincidence. Could have been that the Delos warned him off. Did Heraklion say anything about going to have a look for this ship?’
‘No. Jimmy and I discussed the idea but we didn’t think it important enough to disturb you when you were — ah — resting lightly. And the Admiral.’
‘Probably unimportant. We should have a go. Normally, that is. Where does Heraklion lie from here? About due south?’
‘Near enough.’
‘A couple of planes, one carrying out a sweep to the north, the other to the east, should locate this lad, if he is in the area, in half an hour, probably less. Part of an urgent NATO exercise, you understand. But conditions aren’t normal. A waste of time in near zero visibility. An option we’ll keep in mind for better weather. Anything else?’
‘Yes. We’ve heard from both the Washington bank and the FBI. Mixed results, you might say. Under the initials of KK, the bank says it has a certain Kyriakos Katzanevakis.’
‘Promising. You could hardly get anything more Grecian than that.’
‘Under TT, they have a Thomas Thompson. You can’t have anything more Anglo-Saxon than that. The FBI say there are no high-ranking officers in the Pentagon — by which I take it they mean admirals and Air Force generals or, at the outside, vice-admirals and lieutenant-generals — with those initials.’
‘On the face of it, disappointing, but it may equally well be just another step in the laundering cover-up, another step to distance themselves from their paymaster. The FBI hasn’t been in touch with the bank? Of course not. We didn’t even mention the bank to them. Remiss of us. No, remiss of me.
Montgomery sipped his drink, gazed gloomily through his cabin window, winced and looked away.
‘The weather has deteriorated in the past half-hour, Commander Talbot.’
‘It couldn’t possibly be any worse than it was half an hour ago.’
‘I’m an expert on such matters.’ Montgomery sighed. “Makes me quite homesick for the Mountains of Mourne. We get a lot of rainfall in the Mountains of Mourne. Do you see this lot clearing up in the near future?’
‘Not this side of midnight.’
‘And that would be an optimistic estimate, I’m thinking. By the time we haul this damn bomber back alongside, cut away the hole in the fuselage, hoist it out of the water and extract that bomb, it’ll be dawn. At least. Might possibly be well into the forenoon. You’ll understand if I turn down your kind offer to join you for dinner. An early snack for me, then bed. Might have to get up any time during the night. I’ll have a couple of boys on the poop all night, watching the plane and with orders to wake me as soon as they think the weather has moderated enough for us to start hauling it in.’
Dr Wickram said: ‘How’s that for a brief resume of the speech I shall so reluctantly make at the table tonight? Not too much,