Commentary on ‘The Perils of Hector’
Spoiler Alert!
PLEASE read the story first, before reading this. You’ll find it on Hunter Graham’s Prose page:
https://www.theprose.com/post/749640/max-rush-the-perils-of-hector
Commentary
As my good friend Hunter says of me, in his understated way: ‘He likes to explain things’. So: time for some elucidation on the subject of our Forties thriller Max Rush: The Perils of Hector. Because like any good spy drama, our adventure includes a mix of the historically factual, the fantastically improbable and the intriguingly speculative.
Just as Hitler himself was the subject of various assassination attempts (most famously the Wolf’s Lair bomb plot of July 1944), so there really were a number of Nazi schemes to assassinate the Allied leaders during the Second World War. One of these was Operation Long Jump, an alleged plan to kill Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill at the Tehran Conference in November/December 1943 (I say ‘alleged’, because some believe the whole plot to have been a Soviet contrivance. But for the purposes of our tale, we’re assuming it was true).
In reality, the RMS Olympic (twin ship to the ill-fated RMS Titanic) was scrapped in 1935. In 1947 (the year in which the main plot of The Perils of Hector is set), some of the surviving ocean liners were still serving as troop carriers. Others had returned to their pre-War service, such as the Cunard White Star liner RMS Queen Elizabeth. Perhaps we should have set the Atlantic crossing scene on board this vessel. Then again, we already had another royal Elizabeth playing a role in our tale. But I’m getting ahead of myself...
As for the famed Orient Express, that most renowned and opulent of continent-spanning train services had resumed operations in 1945 after being suspended throughout the War. No Murder on the Orient Express this time, though: just a couple of sexual conquests on the part of our plucky young hero. Kaboom.
Talking of which: to the best of our knowledge, the destruction of Thera (Santorini) in around 1600 BC was not triggered by the premature detonation of some ancient Greek weapon of mass destruction. Rather more prosaically, it was the result of the cataclysmic explosion of the volcano that sat at the heart of the island (the evidence for which is clearly identifiable when you look at a satellite image of Santorini today). It was one of the most devastating natural events in historic times, and it has, indeed, been long-speculated that the downfall of Minoan Crete was at least partially caused by it. Hittite King Mursili I (ruler of much of Anatolia at the time) is known to have led an expedition to Babylon, sacking the city in around 1595 BC. What caused Mursili to undertake an unprecedented march of some 2,000 kilometres into the heartland of Mesopotamia, for no apparent strategic advantage? It’s been speculated that he was simply desperate to ransack Babylon’s rich grain reserves, following several years of failed harvests in the Hittite kingdom: a likely consequence of the devastating climate change visited upon the environs of the Aegean following Thera’s explosion.
For a century and a half, Homer’s Troy has been identified with the archaeological ruins at Hisarlik first excavated by Heinrich Schliemann (commonly regarded as one of the founding fathers of archaeology, even if his methods left an awful lot to be desired). For hundreds of years, Troy was a vassal-state of the Hittite kingdom, before becoming embroiled in the famous conflict at the end of the Bronze Age we know today as the Trojan War. We can imagine that in our ‘Maxiverse’ (hey, if you can have the View Askewniverse, the Buffyverse and the Snyderverse, then why not?), the wondrous invention that eventually became known as the ‘Perils of Hector’ had somehow passed from Minoan Crete to the Hittite kingdom and then on to Troy. In our story, it’s hinted that the Greeks had good reason to fear the ‘Perils’ during their War with Troy. Perhaps the mysterious plague that afflicted the Greek camp in the final year of the War was caused by some kind of radiation sickness emanating from the Device?
Aeneas, a second cousin of Hector and Paris, and the last scion of the Royal House of Troy, was the eponymous hero of Virgil’s epic The Aeneid. According to legend, after escaping the fallen city he seduced Queen Dido of Carthage, before eventually settling in Italy. His descendants included Romulus and Remus, the traditional founders of Rome, in 753 BC. It’s perfectly plausible that while on his long journey westward, Aeneas stopped off for a time at the island of Icaria. It’s also quite apt, given the mythological association between the island and the ill-fated son of Daedalus, Icarus.
According to the Greek myths, Daedalus was the most brilliant engineer of all time. The tale of the Labyrinth, home to the Minotaur, is probably inspired by the palace of Knossos, one of the archaeological wonders of the world. Knossos was excavated a generation after Schliemann’s pioneering exploits at Hisarlik by the British archaeologist, Sir Arthur Evans. Evans claimed to have found the very throne of King Minos himself (a claim as ludicrous and hyperbolic as Schliemann’s earlier assertion to have found the funeral mask of King Agamemnon in the ruins of ancient Mycenae!). And talking of archaeological artefacts of dodgy provenance…
The Disc of Phaistos is an actual Minoan artefact. Maybe. (I say maybe, because some still maintain that it was an elaborate hoax). Be it genuine or not, I saw the Disc for myself, back in the 1980s, on a visit to the Heraklion Archaeological Museum in Crete. However, other than the name, and its being inscribed with a baffling script (still untranslated today in the real world), the Maxiverse’s version of the artefact bears as much relation to the real thing as Indiana Jones’ Dial of Destiny™ does to the Antikythera Mechanism, the remarkable hand-powered orrery that - at more than two thousand years old - has been described as the oldest example of an analogue computer (clever guys, those ancient Greeks). The fascinating true stories of both the Disc of Phaistos and the Antikythera Mechanism are well worth googling.
(And in case you’re wondering - the fact that Faust does not have possession of the Disc, but is still capable, with the help of the unseen Professor Economides, of translating the inscription upon it, is not a plot hole. The Disc was discovered by Luigi Pernier in 1908 (unless it was a hoax - see above), and (in our story, though not in fact) was spirited away during the German occupation of Crete. But - of course - scholars would have had ample time to make copies of the puzzling inscription engraved upon it during the decades prior to its disappearance. Just thought I should clear that up - before any of you accuse Hunter and I of inconsistent plotting!)
The climactic confrontation in the story, as Faust tries to recover the Disc from Max, fittingly takes place on Icaria. The reference to wartime German artillery emplacements on the island, guarding the neighbouring sea approaches, is a small homage to Alistair Maclean’s 1957 thriller The Guns of Navarone. If you haven’t read the book (or watched the excellent film adaptation), check them out.
Rather like policemen, all good plot devices come in twos: hence the idea that there were actually not one, but two, ancient Greek uber-bombs. Named by their inventor, of course, in honour of himself and his son Icarus. The ‘Icarus Device’ is the one exploded on Thera (and, implicitly, is responsible for the myth of the death of Icarus, flying too close to the sun - in my book, a pretty good definition of atomic hubris). The ‘Daedalus Device’ is the surviving weapon that eventually ends up in Troy, renamed as the ‘Perils of Hector,’ or simply the ‘Hector Device’.
And Atlantis? Well, we have the Greek philosopher Plato to thank (or blame) for the tale of this wondrous lost civilisation. Many scholars have hypothesised that there is a kernel of truth underlying the fable: i.e. that the dramatic downfall of Atlantis was inspired by a folk-memory of the calamitous destruction of Thera. Plato’s Atlantis, incidentally, also inspired J.R.R. Tolkien’s account of the Fall of Númenor in The Silmarillion. In his mythology of Middle-earth, Númenor is the lost island of the Men of Westernesse, destroyed because of an act of hubris as foolish as that of Icarus in our tale.
Of course, the idea of Daedalus, however gifted, being a sufficient genius to contribute (one presumes) to a super-advanced pre-Classical civilisation, as well as to devise an (almost literally) Earth-shattering weapon, is fanciful in the extreme: but no more so than some of the over-the-top plans and machinations of the villains in the Bond universe (‘Bondiverse’? No, that sounds very silly). The technobabble Agent Mandrake at one point spouts about the iron and nickel composite cobalt casing of the ‘Hector Device’ isn’t that far removed from the idea (first scientifically postulated in 1950) of a cobalt bomb, a mega-weapon capable of ending all human life on earth. The concepts of ‘doomsday devices’ and ‘Armageddon by cobalt bombs’ were further explored in Nevil Shute’s grim 1957 novel On the Beach, and later to darkly comedic effect by Stanley Kubrick in his 1964 film Dr Strangelove.
Talking of Agent Mandrake (and his companion Agent Marigold): the identification of their London boss, the director of MI6, as ‘C’ is quite correct (as also the fact that he is the third overseer of the Secret Intelligence Service in its history). ‘Control’ in John Le Carré’s thrillers, and ‘M’ in Ian Fleming’s Bond novels, and their respective adaptations, were directly inspired by ‘C’. Then there’s the mysterious operative in Washington, referred to as ‘Homer’. This is none other than Donald Maclean, one of the infamous Cambridge Spy Ring that for years passed British intelligence to the Soviets. The ‘Guy’ he recalls (obliquely) is Guy Burgess, another member of the Ring. Maclean was well-placed, as First Secretary in the British Embassy in Washington at the time of our story, to carry on his work as a double-agent. Burgess later followed him into that post, before they both defected to the USSR in 1951. And yes: I know that ‘Homer’ was actually the cypher that the Soviets gave to Maclean, not MI6’s own alias for him. But a spy code-named Homer was a perfect addition to a story inspired (in part) by the forefather of Western literature. So purists can give us that one, surely. And, who knows, Homer may even return one day as a foil for Max in a future adventure.
We trust that you, the reader, will also forgive the most outrageous subplot of the narrative: our young hero’s dalliance with a certain English rose (and British heir apparent). Hopefully, the Royal Family will not sue us for defamation! The Maxiverse is fictional, dammit…
And finally - on the subject of passionate liaisons - some of you will recognise the quotation (in reference to Helen of Troy) that Dr Faust recalls to Max from playwright Christopher Marlowe, a contemporary of Will Shakespeare: ‘Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, and burned the topless towers of Ilium?’ Well - it’s very appropriate that our villain should find himself quoting this. After all, Marlowe’s play is called Doctor Faustus, and is based on German legends about a character called Faust who - quite literally - makes a pact with the devil. Rather a nice touch, that.
Anyway, that’s quite enough from me: else Hunter will complain that the Commentary is in danger of overshadowing the story. Perish the thought.
Just remember: MAX RUSH WILL RETURN…