Mayhem in Greece

As Robbie and Stephanie came into the lounge, the Jacksons were sitting near the door. Glancing up from a newspaper, Mr. Jackson said: 'Things don't look too good, do they?'

Stephanie caught sight of the banner headline of the copy of the New York Herald Tribune that he had just lowered and, pausing at their table, said: 'I suppose you mean about the submarine?'

'Why, yes,' Mr. Jackson replied with a somewhat hesitant smile. 'I don't know of any other international headache at the moment; but this seems a really nasty one.'

'To tell the truth,' Robbie admitted, 'I've hardly given it a thought. We heard about it last week in Navplion, but English papers are not easy to come by in these places, and I haven't seen one for days; so I got the impression that the trouble had blown over.'

'It will,' declared Mrs. Jackson optimistically. 'Come and sit down and join us for a drink. Frank here has been indulging in such a fit of the blues since he got that paper that I badly need cheering up.'

Chairs were pulled round from another table, a waiter summoned and the order given; then Robbie said: 'I must confess that I don't even know how the trouble started.'

'Well, there are two versions about that,' Frank Jackson told him. 'The Americans say their sub. was making an under-ice cruise for scientific purposes. She left Honolulu in mid-March, came up through the Bering Straits, went west well inside the edge of the Arctic Circle, cruising some way north of Russia, and should have come down south of Greenland to New York. But, when passing between Franz Joseph Land and Novaya

Zemblya, something went wrong with her steering apparatus; so her course was deflected too far south and she found herself in very shallow water, which turned out to be off the Russian coast near Murmansk.'

'I know nothing about such things,' Robbie remarked, 'and my geography is not too good. But it seems extraordinary that, with all those wonderful scientific gadgets they have now, she should have got so far off her course.'

That's just the point. Both Franz Joseph Land and Novaya Zemblya are Soviet territory, and the captain of the sub. states that in the ice-free passage-between them there was a number of Soviet warships. In the coded radio report he made, extracts from which have since been published by the American Government, he puts up the theory that the Russians have some new scientific device by which the ships of theirs that he passed, and which followed him down, were able to throw his compass out by several degrees. In fact, that they deliberately drove him on to their coast; and that, on learning where he was, he took refuge under the nearest ice.'

'And what do the Soviets say?' Stephanie asked.

'Oh, they naturally deny that. They say that, following normal procedure, they tracked the sub. down from Novaya Zemblya to see that it did not enter their territorial waters. But it did, and began to snoop round the defences in the neighbourhood of Murmansk. It was only then that they took action and sent out everything they had to head it into the bay, where it is now lying virtually captive.'

'I gathered from an American I met at Navplion,' Robbie said, 'that the Russians had demanded that it should come out and that its captain should surrender the ship and her crew to them.'

'That's right. Of course, the Americans firmly denied that it had been sent on a spying mission and refused. The Russians then did the correct thing and put the question to the United Nations. That eased the tension, as most people thought that, after a lot of talk, some solution would be arrived at. There was plenty of talk all right and yesterday the United Nations gave its verdict. Most of the Afro-Asian countries ganged up against the West, and that gave the Soviet bloc a majority. They say that there is no evidence to show that the sub. was forced into Soviet waters, but the fact is that it is there, and got there under its own power. Therefore, the Russians are in the right in demanding that it should be handed over.'

'Looked at fairly,' Stephanie remarked, 'I don't see how they could have come to any other decision.'

Mrs. Jackson nodded. 'That's just what I say. But Frank gets all worked up and says that is absolutely out of the question.'

'Of course it is, Ursula,' her husband took her up a trifle shortly. 'That submarine must contain the fruit of years of nuclear research by the Americans, ai.J by British and Canadian scientists, too. In addition, it almost certainly has in it all sorts of other secret devices for under-water navigation, air-conditioning, guiding missiles to their targets, and so on. To surrender her would be to hand the Russians on a plate the key to all our latest methods of defence. The West would be left naked in the breeze.'

Robbie fully agreed with him, but the two women stuck to their opinion that the Americans had once again asked for trouble which, whether it was or was not true, was neither here nor there; so, over further drinks, they argued round the subject until it was time to freshen up for dinner.

Next morning, while Robbie was having his coffee, rolls, Hymettus honey and the little, sweet buns that were always sent up in Greek hotels on the breakfast trays, he again thought over the question of the trapped submarine. He still could not believe that it would lead to war; but there could be no doubt that the two Great Power blocs were still giving the highest possible priority to every activity which might put either one ahead of its enemy, if things did blow up.

That led his thoughts again to the Czechs and the conclusion to which he had come just on a month ago—that if there were no oil in Greece, their operations could only be a cover for some other project that boded no good to the N.A.T.O. countries. In view of the crisis that was now developing, he began to wonder if he had been justified in wasting the past few days. The site near Pirgos having been completely deserted on the previous Sunday had led him, on learning that the photographs he had taken had been ruined, to decide to wait until the coming Sunday before going there again to take another set. Had he attempted to do so earlier, it seemed certain that some of the Czechs would be about, and, mindful of his escape from serious injury in Corinth, he had naturally been averse to risking another encounter with them. But now, in view of a possible emergency, to find out quickly what they were up to assumed a new importance. By the time he had had his bath, he had decided that, when he went down for a bathe with Stephanie that morning, he would tell her the full truth about his self-imposed mission; so that, if anything happened to him, she could let Luke Beecham know. Then he would tell her that he meant to try to take another set of photographs at Pirgos during the siesta hours that afternoon.

Half an hour later, carrying his bathing things, he was on his way to the lounge to wait for her. As he passed the office, the porter held out a letter to him and said: 'This is for Miss Stephanopoulos, sir. Perhaps you will give it to her?'

As he took the letter, Robbie wondered how anyone could have found out that she was staying at the Spap Hotel, Olympia. Then he remembered that, on their last night in Navplion, she had written and posted a letter that she had told him was to her closest girl friend, asking aer to let her mother know, without disclosing her whereabouts, that she was well and happy. In the letter she had evidently said that she was going on to Olympia and this was a reply.

Glancing at the letter, as he turned into the lounge, he saw that it had an Athens postmark, and was addressed in a bold, vigorous hand. The writing did not look like that of a girl, and it struck him that there was something familiar about it. Sitting down, he turned it over, striving to remember where he had seen that heavy, rather old-fashioned writing before.