A Ravel of Waters

'Navy Underwater Sound Reference Laboratory. To try and track the origin of the signals, the Navy fitted an Orion with special electronic gear – everything the latest, the most top secret. We filled her up with gas until it ran out of her wing tips. Every man aboard was a specialist -twelve of them. It constituted a top secret maximum range search, acoustic intelligence. And when I say maximum range, I mean maximum range. The Orion could stay airborne for eighteen hours, maybe even a little more. I myself spoke to the pilot. Captain Bill Werner, as the plane passed over Tristan. He gave me the okay – no problems. The Orion kept going. It entered the Southern Ocean Air-Launched Acoustical Reconnaissance Zone SSI…' 'What in hell's that?' I demanded.

Brockton was speaking fast and became agitated. 'That's the secret zone where we suspected a Red concentration. Werner ran into bad weather but he wasn't worried. An Orion is built to stand up to that sort of thing.'

As if to emphasize what he was saying, Jetwind gave a sudden pitch. I heard the crash of tons of water sluice along her deck. 'Then?'

'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.'