‘We live in troubled times,’ Grierson said. Grierson, in fact, lived a singularly carefree and untroubled existence but Talbot thought it was hardly the time to point this out to him.
‘The plane’s silent, sir,’ Cousteau said. ‘The engines have been shut off.’
‘Survivors, you think? I’m afraid not. The explosion may have destroyed the controls in which case, I imagine, the engines shut off automatically.’
‘Disintegrate or dive?’ Grierson said. ‘Daft question. We’ll know all too soon.’
Van Gelder joined them. ‘I make it eighty fathoms here, sir. Sonar says seventy. They’re probably right. Doesn’t matter, it’s shallowing anyway.’
Talbot nodded and said nothing. Nobody said anything, nobody felt like saying anything. The plane, or the source of the dense column of smoke, was now less than a hundred feet above the water. Suddenly, the source of the smoke and flame dipped and then was abruptly extinguished. Even then they failed to catch a glimpse of the plane, it had been immediately engulfed in a fifty-foot-high curtain of water and spray. There was no sound of impact and certainly no disintegration for when the water and the spray cleared away there was only the empty sea and curiously small waves, little more than ripples, radiating outwards from the point of impact.
Talbot touched Cousteau on the arm. ‘Your cue, Henri. How’s the whaler’s radio?’
‘Tested yesterday, sir. Okay.’
‘If you find anything, anybody, let us know. I have a feeling you won’t need that radio. When we stop, lower away then keep circling around. We should be back in half an hour or so.’ Cousteau left and Talbot turned to Van Gelder. ‘When we stop, tell sonar I want the exact depth.’
Five minutes later the whaler was in the water and moving away from the side of Ae. Ariadne. Talbot rang for full power and headed east.
Van Gelder hung up a phone. ‘Thirty fathoms, sonar says. Give or take a fathom.’
‘Thanks. Doctor?’
‘Hundred and eighty feet,’ Grierson said. ‘I don’t even have to rub my chin over that one. The answer is no. Even if anyone could escape from the fuselage – which I think would be impossible in the first place – they’d die soon after surfacing. Diver’s bends. Burst lungs. They wouldn’t know that they’d have to breathe out all the way up. A trained, fit submariner, possibly with breathing apparatus, might do it. There would be no fit, trained submariners aboard that plane. Question’s academic, anyway. I agree with you, Captain. The only men aboard that plane are dead men.’
Talbot nodded and reached for a phone.
‘Myers? Signal to General Carson. Unidentified four-engined plane crashed in sea two miles south of Cape Akrotiri, Thera Island. 1415 hours. Impossible to determine whether military or civilian. First located altitude 43,000 feet. Apparent cause internal explosion. No further details available at present. No NATO planes reported in vicinity. Have you any information? Sylvester. Send Code B.’
‘Wilco, sir. Where do I send it?’
‘Rome. Wherever he is he’ll have it two minutes later.’
Grierson said: ‘Well, yes, if anyone knows he should.’ Carson was the C-in-C Southern European NATO. He lifted his binoculars and looked at the vertical column of smoke, now no more than four miles to the east. ‘A yacht, as you say, and making quite a bonfire. If there’s anyone still aboard, they’re going to be very warm indeed. Are you going alongside, Captain?’
‘Alongside.’ Talbot looked at Denholm. ‘What’s your estimate of the value of the electronic gear we have aboard?’
‘Twenty million. Maybe twenty-five. A lot, anyway.’
‘There’s your answer, Doctor. That thing’s gone bang once already. It can go bang once again. I am not going alongside. You are. In the launch. That’s expendable. The Ariadne’s not.’
‘Well, thank you very much. And what intrepid soul — ‘
‘I’m sure Number One here will be delighted to ferry you across.’
‘Ah. Number One, have your men wear overalls, gloves and flash-masks. Injuries from burning diesel can be very unpleasant indeed. And you. I go to prepare myself for self-immolation.’
‘And don’t forget your lifebelts.’
Grierson didn’t deign to answer.
They had halved the remaining distance to the burning yacht when Talbot got through to the radio-room again.
‘Message dispatched?’
‘Dispatched and acknowledged.’
‘Anything more from the Delos?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Delos,’ Denholm said. ‘That’s about eighty miles north of here. Alas, the Cyclades will never be the same for me again.’ Denholm sighed. Electronics specialist or not, he regarded himself primarily as a classicist and, indeed, he was totally fluent in reading and writing both Latin and Greek. He was deeply immersed in their ancient cultures as the considerable library in his cabin bore testimony. He was also much given to quotations and he quoted now.
‘The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!’
Where burning Sappho loved and sung, Where grew the arts of war and peace,
Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung, Eternal summer — ‘
‘Your point is taken, Lieutenant,’ Talbot said. ‘We’ll cry tomorrow. In the meantime, let us address ourselves to the problem of those poor souls on the fo’c’s’le. I count five of them.’
‘So do I.’ Denholm lowered his glasses. ‘What’s all the frantic waving for? Surely to God they can’t imagine we haven’t seen them?’
‘They’ve seen us all right. Relief, Lieutenant. Expectation of rescue. But there’s more to it than that. A certain urgency in their waving. A primitive form of semaphoring. What
they’re saying is “get us the hell out of here and be quick about it”.’
‘Maybe they’re expecting another explosion?’
‘Could be that. Harrison, I want to come to a stop on their starboard beam. At, you understand, a prudent distance.’
‘A hundred yards, sir?’
‘Fine.’
The Delos was – or had been – a rather splendid yacht. A streamlined eighty-footer, it was obvious that it had been, until very, very recently, a dazzling white. Now, because of a combination of smoke and diesel oil, it was mainly black. A rather elaborate superstructure consisted of a bridge, saloon, a dining-room and what may or may not have been a galley. The still dense smoke and flames rising six feet above the poop deck indicated the source of the fire – almost certainly the engine-room. Just aft of the fire a small motorboat was still secured to its davits: it wasn’t difficult to guess that either the explosion or the fire had rendered it inoperable.
Talbot said: ‘Rather odd, don’t you think, Lieutenant?’
‘Odd?’ Denholm said carefully.
‘Yes. You can see that the flames are dying away. One would have thought that would reduce the danger of further explosion.’ Talbot moved out on the port wing. ‘And you will have observed that the water level is almost up to the deck.’
‘I can see she’s sinking.’
‘Indeed. If you were aboard a vessel that was either going to go up or drag you down when it sank, what would your natural reaction be?’
‘To be elsewhere, sir. But I can see that their motorboat has been damaged.’
‘Agreed. But a craft that size would carry alternative life-saving equipment. If not a Carley float, then certainly an inflatable rubber dinghy. And any prudent owner would carry a sufficiency of lifebelts and life-jackets for the passengers and crew. I can even see two lifebelts in front of the bridge. But they haven’t done the obvious thing and abandoned ship. I wonder why.’
‘I’ve no idea, sir. But it is damned odd.’
‘When we’ve rescued those distressed mariners and brought them aboard, you, Jimmy, will have forgotten how to speak Greek.’
‘But I will not have forgotten how to listen in Greek?’
‘Precisely.’
‘Commander Talbot, you have a devious and suspicious mind.’
‘It goes with the job, Jimmy. It goes with the job.’
Harrison brought the Ariadne to a stop off the starboard beam of the Delos at the agreed hundred yards distance. Van Gelder was away at once and was very quickly alongside the fo’c’s’le of the Delos. Two boat-hooks around the guard-rail stanchions held them in position. As the launch and the bows of the sinking yacht were now almost level it took only a few seconds to transfer the six survivors — another had joined the group of five that Talbot had seen – aboard the launch. They were, indeed, a sorry and sadly bedraggled lot, so covered in diesel and smoke that it was quite impossible to discriminate among them on the basis of age, sex or nationality.
Van Gelder said: ‘Any of you here speak English?’
‘We all do.’ The speaker was short and stocky and that was all that could be said of him in the way of description. ‘Some of us just a little. But enough.’ The voice was heavily accented but readily understood. Van Gelder looked at Grierson.
‘Any of you injured, any of you burnt?’ Grierson said. All shook their heads or mumbled a negative. ‘Nothing here for me, Number One. Hot showers, detergents, soap. Not to mention a change of clothing.’