‘It’s not only bloody high-handed, it’s piracy! Hijack. That sort of illegal behaviour you’re sworn to destroy. You are, of course, prepared to resort to force in order to restrain me.’
‘If we have to, yes.’ Talbot nodded to the opened, darkened doorway. Wotherspoon turned, caught sight of three large figures half-hidden in the gloom. When he turned back, he was literally speechless with fury. ‘It’s the last thing we wan; to do,’ Talbot said, ‘and it’s totally unnecessary.’ He let an element of coldness creep into his voice. ‘Quite frankly. Wotherspoon, my primary concern is not your welfare. I think you’re being most extraordinarily selfish and totally inconsiderate. How long have you been married, Mrs Wotherspoon?’
‘How long have -‘ She tried to smile but her heart wasn’t
in it. ‘Almost six months.’
‘Less than six months.’ Talbot looked at Wotherspoor without enthusiasm. ‘And yet you’re willing to expose her to danger and — the chance is very real — to send her to her death because your stiff-necked pride has been wounded. You must be proud of yourself. Do you really want to go, Mrs Wotherspoon?’
‘Angelina.’ The correction was automatic and this time she did smile almost certainly because of the incongruity of it in the circumstances. ‘You put me in an impossible situation.’ She paused, then went on quickly: ‘No. No, you don’t. I don’t want to go. I don’t want James to go either. Delving around m antiquities is our business, not violence and death. Heaven knows I’m no latter-day Amazon and if there are any dragons waiting around to be killed I don’t want my husband to be St George. Please, James.’
Hawkins spoke for the first time. ‘I make no appeal to your emotions, Professor. All I ask you is to put yourself in Commander Talbot’s position. I think you would agree it is a pretty impossible one.’
‘Yes.’ Wotherspoon had unclenched his fists. ‘I see that.’
‘I think three signals are in order, John,’ Hawkins said. The Wotherspoons had left. ‘One to the White House, one to General Carson in Rome and one to Rear-Admiral Blyth. The same signal, coded of course, to each. How about “Settled weather with favourable north-west wind. Angelina about to sail with armed mine. Transfer of hydrogen missiles from plane to Kilcharran continuing smoothly.” That should fit the bill?’
‘Admirably. It should come as quite a shock to them all. We haven’t of late, I must admit, been sending them much in the way of good news.’
A small knot of interested spectators were gathered round the head of the gangway, the foot of which offered easy access to both the stern of the Angelina, whose sails were already
hoisted, and the bows of the Ariadne’s launch. Among the more interested of the spectators was Andropulos.
He turned to Talbot and said: ‘How much longer now, Captain?’
‘Ten minutes. Thereabouts.’
Andropulos shook his head as if in disbelief. ‘And then all our troubles will be over?’
‘It’s beginning to look that way, isn’t it?’
‘It is indeed. Tell me, why is the launch there?’
‘Simple. It’s coming with us.’
‘Going with you? I don’t understand. Won’t the sound of its engines — ‘
‘Maybe trigger off the mine? The launch won’t start up until we’re at least three miles clear. It will then proceed to circle us, again at a distance of three miles, to warn off any vessels — powered vessels, that is — that threaten to come too close to us. We haven’t come this far, Mr Andropulos, to take any chances.’
‘The thought, the precaution, never occurred to me. Alas, I fear I will never make a man of action.’
Talbot gave him what Andropulos misinterpreted as a kindly smile. ‘One cannot be all things to all men, sir.’
‘You are ready to go, Captain?’ Hawkins said. He had just joined them.
‘A few minutes, sir. Sails are filling rather nicely, aren’t they?’
‘You are going, Captain?’ Andropulos seemed a trifle disconcerted.
‘Certainly. I’ve always rather fancied myself as the skipper of an Aegean lugger. You seem rather surprised, Mr Andropulos?’
‘I am. Rather, I was. But not now.’ He looked down to the deck of the Angelina where Van Gelder was adjusting a halyard on the foresail. ‘And of course, inevitably, Lieutenant-Commander Van Gelder. Hand-picked men, eh,
Captain? Hand-picked by yourself, of course. I congratulate you. I also salute you. I suspect that this is a much more dangerous mission than you have led us to understand, a mission so perilous that you have chosen not to delegate some members of your crew to carry it out.’
‘Nonsense, Mr Andropulos. You exaggerate. Well, Admiral, we’re off. Taking a median estimate on Dr Wick-ram’s time limits we should be disposing of this mine in nine hours’ time – six a.m. tomorrow. If the wind holds – there’s no guarantee that it will, of course — we’ll be well on our way to the Kasos Strait by then.’
Hawkins nodded. ‘And with luck — although I don’t see why the factor luck should enter into it — we should be picking you up in the early afternoon tomorrow. We shall remain with Captain Montgomery until he has finished loading the hydrogen missiles and until the destroyer I’ve radioed for comes to pick him up and escort him to Thessalonika. That should be between nine and ten in the morning. Then we’ll come looking for you.’ He turned his head. ‘You’re off, Mr Andropulos? I should have thought you would have remained to witness this rather historic moment.’
‘I intend to do just that. I also intended to record this historic moment. I go to fetch my trusty Leica. Well, Lieutenant Denholm’s trusty Leica. He lent it to me less than an hour ago.’
Talbot chatted briefly with Hawkins, said his goodbye, climbed down the gangway, had a brief word with Denholm on the launch and then boarded the Angelina. Van Gelder had already pulled in and coiled the bow rope. Talbot stooped over the cleat on the poop-deck to do the same with the stern rope when he became aware of a certain commotion and exclamations about his head. He straightened and looked up.
Andropulos had made his reappearance not with his trusty Leica but with what was probably an equally trusty and much more unpleasant Navy Colt .44, the muzzle of which was pressed against the temple of a plainly terrified Angelina Wotherspoon. Behind him loomed Alexander and Aristotle, both men similarly armed and both with the muzzles of their pistols similarly pointed at temples, those of Irene Charial and her friend Eugenia, neither of whom looked any happier than Angelina, which was to say that they looked very unhappy indeed. Having a pistol grinding into one’s temple is an unpleasant sensation for even the most hardened: for three young ladies whose nearest previous approach to violence must have been the printed page or some of the less-regarded TV psycho-dramas the effect must have been traumatic.
‘Don’t cast off quite yet, Captain,’ Andropulos said. ‘We’re coming with you.’
‘What in God’s name is the meaning of this devilry?’ Hawkins’s expression reflected an equal degree of shock and anger. ‘Have you taken leave of your senses?’
‘We have not taken leave of our senses. We are just taking leave of you.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Hawkins said. ‘I just don’t understand. This is the way you repay us for having saved your lives and offered you every hospitality?’
‘We thank you both for your care and your kindness. However, we have no wish to overstay our welcome or impose upon you further.’ He jabbed Angelina’s temple with a force that made her gasp with pain. ‘After you, Mrs Wotherspoon.’
The six of them descended the gangway in succession and boarded the Angelina. Andropulos transferred the attention of his Colt from Angelina to Talbot and Van Gelder.
‘Nothing rash or heroic or gallant, if you please,’ Andropulos said. ‘Especially gallant. It could only have the most distressing consequences, both for you and the three young ladies.’
‘Is this a joke?’ Talbot said.
‘Ah! Do I detect a certain loss of composure, a crack in the monolithic calm? If I were you, Captain, I would not take me for a joker.’
‘I don’t.’ Talbot made no attempt to conceal his bitterness. ‘I took you for a wealthy businessman and a man of honour. I took you at your face value. I suppose we all learn from our mistakes.’
‘You are too late to learn from this mistake. You are correct in one respect – I freely confess to being a wealthy businessman. A very wealthy one. As to the second charge?’ He shrugged his indifference. ‘Honour is in the eye of the beholder. Let us not waste time. Instruct this young man — ‘ Denholm standing in the bows of the launch was less than six feet away ‘ — to follow his orders precisely. The orders, I understand, that you have given him, Captain. That is, not to start his engines until we have put three miles away from him and then to circle us, at that same distance, to fend off unwanted intruders.’