Santorini by Alistair MacLean

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.’

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