A Ravel of Waters

'The plane's last position was about six hundred nautical miles southsouthwest of Gough, about eight hundred and fifty from Tristan.'

Brockton paused. The only sound was Jetwind shrugging off the waves. I knew what was coming. "The Orion vanished.' ' Just like that?' Tideman asked. Brockton held my eyes. 'No, it wasn't just like that. We happen to have a taped in-flight recording of the Orion's last moments.' 'Was there a Mayday signal?' 'No Mayday. No time for it. I guess a missile got her.' There was a long silence. Brockton leaned towards me. It was an accusing pose. 'Missile?' I repeated. 'I'm asking you, Peter.' 'How should I know?'

He replied, choosing his words carefully, 'It's almost a month ago — doesn't that mean anything to you, Peter?'

'Should it? I was at sea in Albatros. I wasn't in touch with the daily news.'

'This story didn't reach the newspapers,' he said grimly, 'Never will, while Group Securities has any say.' 'Why ask me, then?' 'The time, the place, the distance — they're all right,' 'I don't follow.' But I did.

'Just before Werner went in, he had located a target with his Searchwater radar, Searchwater is newer than tomorrow's dawn. Werner went down to look. Very low, under the cloud. He made a visual sighting. He reported a yacht, moving fast, under full sail.' Tideman was staring at me now.

'So what? Some of the yachts in the Cape-Uruguay race returned from South America via Gough.'

'It wasn't an ordinary yacht, Peter. I've studied Werner's last words until I know 'em by heart. This is what he said: "They're not ordinary sails… they're sails with slits in 'em… looks like a kinda Venetian blind the wrong way up"…' The seas reverberated along Jetwind's hull.

'Well, Peter? There's only one boat afloat that tallies with that description — Albatros.’

There was another long silence. Jetwind's hull was starting to creak. I averted my eyes from Brockton'saccusing stare to the ship's speed repeater. The needle was nudging twenty knots. 'Albatros?’ Brockton prompted.

I didn't reply directly. 'Did the pilot say what conditions were like?'

'Yeah, like I said, I know every word Werner said: "The whole ocean's like a vast Shivering Liz pudding made of icebergs — it's all steaming with mist and fog."' Still I stalled. 'Shivering Liz?'

'It's a Navy phrase,' Brockton explained, still searching my face. 'Sort of gelatine pudding.'

'That's not a bad description,' I conceded. 'That's the way it was, Paul. All Shivering Liz.' 'I didn't ask about weather conditions,' he said.

'I saw the plane go in,' I answered. He gave a satisfied little sigh. 'Yet the weather and sea conditions are important to my story, Paul. It was like a dream, like the sort of hallucination you keep quizzing me about. I thought I was hallucinating. There couldn't be a plane, not there, I told myself at the time. It was thousands of miles from anywhere. There was ice all around. Mist. The sea was steaming. I couldn't distinguish what was ice and what was perhaps dream.'

'Bill Werner's Orion wasn't downed by a dream,' he retorted.

For a moment I relived that morning on the edge of sanity — that morning of the Shivering Liz ocean.

'The Orion was starting to circle — he must have spotted Albatros. Then a vapour trail sprang up out of the sea, from somewhere amongst the bergs. I remember how the missile's vapour trail ducked and weaved and then homed in on the plane. It hit a starboard inboard engine.'

Brockton nodded and repeated from the tape,' "Captain! Captain! There! Starboard! Coming up out of the sea!"' Hammering the point home, he asked, 'And then?' 'There was nothing.' 'Nothing? You must have seen the plane crash.' 'As I said before, I thought I was hallucinating. The plane, the missile — everything — was swallowed up by the mist and the bergs. I saw nothing, heard nothing.'

'You must have heard the noise of the crash or the explosion of the missile.'

'I repeat, there was no sound. The gale must have blown it away.' 'You didn't search for survivors?' 'You don't put a yacht about in that kind of sea to look for a figment of your imagination.' 'Albatros kept going?'

'I was clear of the thick ice by afternoon. At the time I thought it was my mind which had begun to clear. Yes, I kept going — hard.'

Tideman interrupted, with a curious intonation in his question. 'Where did all this take place, Peter?'

'I don't know. I hadn't had a position sight for days because of the storm. Night and day merged. I managed to obtain a radio fix from Gough a couple of days after the incident.'

Brockton persisted. 'Why didn't you report the Orion affair?'

'To whom? How did I know whose plane it was when I didn't even know whether I'd seen one? Imagine if I had radioed a report like that. The isolation has sent him round the bend, they'd have said. Rightly, under the circumstances.'

Brockton jumped up. 'If only you had! We would have picked up the message on Tristan — we were monitoring every wavelength! We could have nailed the bastard who did it! Now it's too late! Where did that missile come from, Peter?’

'Everything was shadowy and insubstantial,' I replied. 'I'm still not sure whether I saw it happen or not.'

'It happened all right,' Brockton retorted. 'That lost Orion and her crew were not a shadow.'

'Why,' I asked, 'if the Orion was in fact shot down by a Red missile, should there be any Russian naval interest in those waters — the area Jetwind is now heading for? It's utterly and totally unfrequented. The last ship recorded before Albatros was a British survey vessel which visited the South Sandwich Islands sixteen years earlier. And the South Sandwich group is a hell of a way south from where the Orion crashed’

Brockton's reaction surprised me. He rounded on Tideman. There was steel in his voice. 'John, you've done a hell of a lot of close listening. You haven't spoken much. I said earlier, a man could die for what he has heard in this cabin today. I don't buy your Royal Navy Adventure School story. The Royal Navy doesn't send its officers and men on pleasure cruises on yachts round the world just for them to catch a suntan. By your own admission, you've been three times round the Horn. You've also got some tough cookies here with you in Jetwind. You're not aboard Jetwind simply in order to sky-shoot your reputation as a sailor. What's the name of your game?'

Chapter 18

Tideman reached into a pocket and threw on the desk what looked like a metal-cased slide-rule.

'As you say, Paul, men could die for what they heard in this cabin today.'

He leaned forward and fiddled with the instrument. The brass casing snapped open on a spring. A steel blade nearly the length of a man's hand shot out. Tideman clinched the brass casing between his fingers. Now it doubled as a handle for a hellish weapon. He smiled at me, a microwave smile that had no warmth in it. 'Like your plane crash, it makes no sound,' he said.

He addressed Brockton. 'Sound, or the lack of sound, is the name of my game. A yacht makes no sound. It hasn't any engines to be picked up by a sonar buoy, or by any other electronic marvel you drop from an Orion. Even with every latest listening gadget you can't hear a yacht off Cape Horn from under the water.' Brockton said, 'I think I get it.' 'I don't,' I interjected sharply.

Tideman gestured at Brockton. 'We're in the same game. Our approach is different. Paul uses the latest sophisticated electronic techniques; I use man's oldest friend, the sail.' 'Tracking… what?'

'My function is to monitor the passage of Red submarines rounding Cape Horn via the Drake passage,' he replied levelly. 'The Royal Navy yachts I've sailed there have been a cover. Sonar buoys are planted in advance by R.N. ships — you remember HMS Endurance, which sheep-dogged the passage of the Whitbread Round the World yachts in those waters? It was given out that she was there in case the yachts ran into trouble. It was a bluff. Endurance and three other Navy ships belong — officially — to the British Antarctic Survey. So they have a legitimate purpose in hanging round the Drake Passage and Cape Horn. Their true function, however, is to plant secret sonar buoys which detect Red subs negotiating the Horn and relay their movements to monitoring instruments aboard Services yachts such as mine. The yacht is the perfect vehicle for the job — silent, immune from counter-detection by Red subs' underwater listening devices. Every one of the boats I have commanded has had enough secret equipment on board to make a Russian spy's mouth water. I and four sailor-paratroopers are a top secret team.' He toyed with the dagger. 'I intend to see we remain top secret.'