Santorini

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An overhead broadcaster on the bridge of the frigate Ariadne crackled into life, a bell rang twice and then O'Rourke's voice came through, calm, modulated, precise and unmistakably Irish. O'Rourke was commonly referred to as the weatherman, which he wasn't at all.

'Just picked up an odd-looking customer. Forty miles out, bearing 222.'

Talbot pressed the reply button. 'The skies above us, Chief, are hotching with odd-looking customers. At least six airlines criss-cross this patch of the Aegean. NATO planes, as you know better than all of us, are all around us. And those pesky fighter-bombers and fighters from the pesky Sixth Fleet bloweth where the wind listeth. Me, I think they're lost half the time.'

'Ah! But this is a very odd odd-looking lad.' O'Rourke's voice was unruffled as ever, unmoved by the less than flattering reference to the Sixth Fleet, from which he was on temporary loan. 'No trans-Aegean airline uses the flight path this plane is on. There are no NATO planes in this particular sector on my display screen. And the Americans would have let us know. A very courteous lot, Captain. The Sixth Fleet, I mean.'

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