Several nautical miles south of Tasmania are two islands, a few miles away from each other. One of these islands is uninhabited, and its name of Smiling Island is known only to its occasional visitors. It is so named, because of a rock structure jutting out like a large lower lip from the mountain at the centre of the island. The island was once inhabited by natives, although the last surviving tribesmen eventually migrated to the Tasmanian mainland several decades ago. The other island was originally known as Jungle Island, because - unlike Smiling Island, which was merely a mountain surrounded by small boulders - Jungle Island was richly blessed with plant life. Several things had been happening since Percy and Donna had rescued Ingrid from Smiling Island.
A collection of people - some of them scientists, others simply referred to as marine adventurers - had constructed a complex on the island, and effectively converted the entire island into a large headquarters for an organisation devoted to sea rescue. Most of these people were wealthy, and they were all interested and motivated. There were no major problems associated with the removal of large portions of plant life on Jungle Island; and work was also done on the outer reaches of the island in order to make it suitable for the production and construction of submarine housing areas and powerful surface boats. Within the complex, there were fifty staff members working various shifts in order to carry out the working operations of the organisation, which used the name of O.C.T.O.P.U.S. (Ocean Control Team Of Practicing Underwater Specialists).
There were supervisors making decisions, radio monitor officers monitoring transmissions from nearby ships and submarines, in case any of them required assistance; and crew members to operate the O.C.T.O.P.U.S. rescue boats and rescue submarines. O.C.T.O.P.U.S. would involve itself when necessary in deep sea and surface rescue, and did so merely because of the dedication and concern of its members. They also had a heliport, because a helicopter would occasionally be of valuable assistance in the rescuing of the victims of surface accidents.
Having heard of the existence of O.C.T.O.P.U.S., some people were fortunate to know that the island had been occupied by a special company of people. Smiling Island was ignored and seldom visited by anybody, if it was ever visited at all. O.C.T.O.P.U.S.'s founding members had chosen Jungle Island, because of the relative ease in adjusting it to suit their needs. Parts of the jungle remained, in order to retain some of the original beauty of the island, but the bulk of it was disposed of appropriately at the time of construction. Naturally the people of O.C.T.O.P.U.S. had the liberty to go ashore on occasions in a yacht, and the supplies were flown to Jungle Island by one of the helicopters.
The people of O.C.T.O.P.U.S. had saved and assisted many people. A child in a drifting rubber raft had been returned to his uncle's boat. The passengers of a sinking yacht had been rescued and flown to Tasmania; and there were many other times since the founding of O.C.T.O.P.U.S., when the organisation was involved in a rescue of some kind or another.
On one particular occasion, an Australian government naval exercise had gone badly wrong, and O.C.T.O.P.U.S. had surprised the commander of a navy rescue ship by going to the aid of the drowning naval officers before the naval commander had arrived on the scene with his rescue party. The fellow had swallowed his pride, spoken with his superiors, and rewarded O.C.T.O.P.U.S. with a financial token of the navy's gratitude. This left O.C.T.O.P.U.S. on good terms with the navy, and the two units had kept the periodic contact with each other maintained on a regular basis.
Naturally there were times when disagreements between the executives of O.C.T.O.P.U.S. and the officers in the navy. The politics of naval wargames contained enough issues in themselves to stir up discontent. O.C.T.O.P.U.S. agents were concerned about the safety in the southern seas, and the navy cherished its official freedom to do as they pleased with their treasured battleships. However, the relationship between O.C.T.O.P.U.S. and the Australian Navy was by no means antagonistic, given the way it began. Both parties merely voiced their viewpoints and chose to continue about their business.
In addition to its fifty staff members directly involved with the O.C.T.O.P.U.S. rescue operations, the organisation had twenty-two marine biologists and several other scientists. These people were usually pursuing their own interests, but were supported by O.C.T.O.P.U.S. funds, in return for the sharing of any knowledge which they acquired as they worked. The people of O.C.T.O.P.U.S. made no special effort to maintain the relative secrecy of the organisation's existence and location; but at the same time, they did not endeavour to broadcast these facts to the people of the world either. Their primary concerns were research and rescue. Some of the O.C.T.O.P.U.S. people were married and working with their O.C.T.O.P.U.S. wives and husbands. Others were single and either disinterested in romance or content to forego its pleasures in order to remain on Jungle Island.
The complex had been designed in a logical manner, after considerable thought. In the centre of the concrete structure was a large tower, with transport walls for the room close to the top of its structure. They had the visual effect of windows, as well as the necessary requirement that they act as powerfully constructed walls. The open view room surrounded by these window walls was the highest room in the tower, and was equipped with radar, radio transmitters, monitoring devices, and powerful telescopes. It was in this tower that the monitoring was performed. The officials who made decisions and administered instructions were also working regularly in this monitoring room.
In the other parts of the complex there were laboratories, training and exercise rooms, sleeping quarters, eating areas, a swimming pool, a gymnasium, a tennis court, and various other miscellaneous concrete enclosures. O.C.T.O.P.U.S. employees were also Jungle Island residents, and the complex together with the remaining jungle areas of the large island were as tempting as many a popular holiday resort area.
O.C.T.O.P.U.S. was a peaceful organisation, and Jungle Island was a calm and tranquil place, where fights and tensions were seldom seen at all. So it was perfectly natural, that two special people would be suited to an exciting string of scenarios in the area monitored by O.C.T.O.P.U.S. One of these two was a girl who felt and immediate sense of disharmony, whenever a human being's innocent existence was threatened or disturbed. The other was a man who had a passion for finding and demolishing any threats or disturbances to the innocent existences of peaceful people. The girl's name was Ingrid Castlecove (also known as Ingrid or Princess Jentil). The man had been christened Percy Dale, and called himself the Sneaky Spy.
* * * *
One would think that any person who had been saved by an unselfish organisation such as O.C.T.O.P.U.S. would feel inclined to support that organisation; or would at least feel grateful and disinclined to hinder the activities of such an organisation.
(One would also think that people would stop electing unworthy governments into office; that salesmen would stop deceiving their customers; that schools would not employ careless demoralising teachers; that people would accept and respect each other; that drug merchants would develop a conscience about the abominable living conditions of their victims; that statutory bodies would not pass safety laws banning the use of fireworks while simultaneously condoning immorality; and that many further injustices would fail to vex and destroy the people of the world in which we live).
However, one's hopes are not always satisfied by future realities, and it is history that one certain sailor was far from grateful to the people of O.C.T.O.P.U.S. after they had preserved his life, which was threatened with possible extinction when he met with a certain aquatic misadventure.
The man was a member of Association B.L.A.D.E. (Blackmail, Larceny And Diabolical Exterminations), and he reported the incident to his superiors, with every aspiration to initiate a crime at the expense of his rescuers. It was soon after his rescue, that a meeting was held in the North Sydney headquarters of Association B.L.A.D.E. The place was actually the top floor of the Herch Tower building in Miller Street, two blocks north of Victoria Cross. Agent Number One of B.L.A.D.E. was addressing the members of the organisation.
"Our latest plan will provide a new means of operation for our organisation in the future. It was made possible by our own Agent Fourteen, who proved his true loyalty to this organisation, by reporting the location of an island headquarters to me. This headquarters is the base of operations for a privately owned sea rescue service known as O.C.T.O.P.U.S., which stands for Ocean Control Team Of Practicing Underwater Specialists, located on Jungle Island several nautical miles south of Tasmania. We are going to attack O.C.T.O.P.U.S., kill all of its staff members and scientists, and take over the running of O.C.T.O.P.U.S., pretending to be the staff members of that association. We will use their rescue equipment, and their identity in order to go to the apparent rescue of endangered aquatic vessels in the area.
"However, when we are welcomed aboard these vessels, it will not be so that we can save the lives of the occupants. On the contrary, they will all be eliminated, and their bodies will lie dead in the vessels, until we have taken anything of value from the vessels and then blown them up."
"Does that mean we'll leave loads of loot at Jungle Island?"
"Not at all. We'll transport it to other countries, and sell it, even if some of it needs to go out on the black market."
"When do we start all this?" questioned a member of B.L.A.D.E. known only to most of the others as Agent Fifteen.
"Sunday night," said Agent Number One, "which is just three short days away. I promise you, my loyal emissaries, that this operation will make our own past activities look like a string of barely successful attempts to steal the two cent coins in your nextdoor neighbours' piggybanks. That is why it is most important that we do not make any slip-ups that would throw away this opportunity and probably land some of us in graves and others in prison cells.
"Sunday night will be relaxed enough, even at an out-of-the-way place like Jungle Island. The members of O.C.T.O.P.U.S. will probably be taking it pretty light and easy. Well, most of them will anyway. I cannot say much for those ever vigilant men and women in the monitor tower. So they won't even be in the mood to respond to an unprecedented attack. We will be in a submarine, which will have a certain spot of trouble - not really, my friends - in an area close to Jungle Island. We will send out a message requesting immediate help. Naturally, the people of O.C.T.O.P.U.S. will come to our rescue in a submarine of their own. The rest is simple, but I will spell it out anyway, in order to be sure that you all know what to do. Agents Sixteen and Twenty-One will swim out and hide themselves somewhere underwater, when the O.C.T.O.P.U.S. submarine approaches.
"We will eliminate the O.C.T.O.P.U.S. members who enter our ship to help us with a so-called radiation leak; and Agents Sixteen and Twenty-One will do the same to the people in the O.C.T.O.P.U.S. submarine. It will be absolutely essential to kill them fast and as quietly as possible. Then they will sabotage the communications link with Jungle Island. By sabotage, I mean turn it off. Don't destroy it. We may want to make good use of it later."
Agent Number One paused, and let his eyes wander, meeting those of his various agents. His men were trained to fight like men, and his women were trained to fight against men. He checked their glances of affirmation and comprehension, and then outlined some further details of his plan.
"Naturally, we will eventually leave all the dead O.C.T.O.P.U.S.agents in our own submarine, and blow it up. The trouble is that we will need their uniforms. So you will have to kill them in places where the blood won't be easily spotted on their clothes afterwards. Even their wetsuits have a special aquamarine colour scheme, similar to that of their uniforms."
"Question, Sir," said Agent Thirteen.
"Go ahead."
"More of a suggestion actually, Agent One. Wouldn't it make it a lot easier for us to get onto Jungle Island, if you keep the caption of the O.C.T.O.P.U.S. submarine alive just long enough to have him tell the O.C.T.O.P.U.S. headquarters people that he's successfully saved us, and is now bringing his team home? Then we could wear their uniforms and waltz right in."
"A good suggestion, Agent Thirteen, but one that I myself rejected when I first thought of it. O.C.T.O.P.U.S. members are obviously noble, and the captain would sacrifice himself before betraying his friends. We will be returning long before monday sunrise anyway. When they see their own submarine arriving, and we step out of it in their uniforms in the dark, we'll have the chance to kill the whole lot of them, before we give too much away."
Another agent voiced a certain concern.
"Agent One, will we have to live on Jungle Island for a long time, once we've established ourselves as a phony crew of O.C.T.O.P.U.S. staff members?"
"Of course not! We couldn't keep that sort of a ruse forever. I've heard rumours that O.C.T.O.P.U.S. officials are on close terms with the Australian Navy! We will stay there long enough to sack a good many ships and submarines of all the wealth that they have. We will also be doing something about the world's population explosion, because not one witness will ever live, after we've done our work. We will do many things as O.C.T.O.P.U.S., my friends, but word will eventually get out, that people are not being saved anymore. They're not returning home with the stories of heroic efforts of the magnificent rescue team. Instead they are disappearing.
"By this time we will have accumulated enough wealth to justify a suitable retirement for us all, and then we will abandon Jungle Island, and disband. I won't need to keep tabs on you all after that. You will all have committed so many thefts and murders, that a breach of the old B.L.A.D.E. secrecy rules will bring about your own misfortune.... Well, out of your seats, folks. The gymnasium downstairs is empty, and you've all got some preliminary exercises to do, before we start things off on Saturday morning, with a trip to Jungle Island's surrounding waters. Oh, yes, people. We'll be there to stop anyone from doing unpleasant things to the people of O.C.T.O.P.U.S. - except us, of course!"
We do not have time in our tale, to tell of the origin of the organisation known as B.L.A.D.E., to tell of its founding members, the process by which Agent Number One acquired his title to leadership, and the means by which the B.L.A.D.E. group acquired its many rescources and members. We will deem it wise, however, to say that B.L.A.D.E had sufficient resources to have its entire membership seated, or alternatively standing, at their posts within a submarine, en route from Tasmania to the designated nautical reference one nautical mile away from the Jungle Island headquarters of O.C.T.O.P.U.S.
This was achieved by ten-thirty on saturday morning. There were all of the B.L.A.D.E. members aboard, together with enough food provisions for four days if necessary; and there were also certain items of weaponery, which Agent Number One had decreed to be essential for the mission at hand, which was now referred to as Operation Octoplunder. Stage one of the operation included all tasks associated with gaining complete domination and control of Jungle Island, and Stage two comprised the ongoing developments associated with their use of O.C.T.O.P.U.S.'s identity and headquarters for the plunder and assassinations to follow in the coming months.
* * * *
Sunday morning.
"Agent Five, how far are we from the designated area of attack?"
"Seven nautical miles, Agent Two."
Agent Number One was in a secluded office in the after section of the submarine.
"If Agent Two doesn't allow any mistakes," he thought to himself, "then we should be there by half past three. They'll know we're there, with their monitoring systems on Jungle Island, but they'll have no idea what we are doing, not even when we send out that phony distress call. That gullible innocent collection of octopi will never know how I engineered all of this activity."
Agent One was a man who had overridden his conscience many times, even as a child. He had done it so often, that his conscience now had no effect at all on the iniquitous life that he led. He had found several dedicated people to assist him in his life of crime, and he asked for no more than their obedience of his every instruction. He allowed them to question him, but his final decisions were absolute, and he would deal out a frightening death to anybody who did not adhere to them.
He lived for himself, and he had never been taught any other ways to live. Nobody had ever sat him down with a Bible and shown him the value of living under the rule of God. Not a soul had ever been able to convince the man that human beings had been ruinously running their lives their own way, instead of the Lord's way ('sinning') since that dreadful day when Adam and Eve disobeyed the Lord's command not to eat from the tree of knowledge. Agent Number One was unaware of the fact that, when a person dies, his soul goes either to heaven (a state of being with God) or to an eternal death.
He did not know that God had sent his own Son to die on a wooden cross, and rise up from that death, in order to make it possible for people on earth to enter into a relationship with their creator God. Having never attended a church, he had never heard any appeals to give his life over to God, to pray (talk to God), to try to do what is right, to read the Bible, to care about other people, and most of all, to accept the fact that Christ had died and risen in order to let Agent One in on two deals of greater value than any of B.L.A.D.E.'s ill-acquired wealth. Firstly, Agent One could have had a relationship with God, while he was on earth. (This is known as Christianity). Secondly, Agent One would be able to go to heaven, because his sins were forgiven and paid for through Jesus Christ's efforts on the cross. (This concept of going to heaven after one's death is known as eternal life).
Agent One had no knowledge of these matters. So he had chosen a lifestyle that brought him to the current situation in his life. In several hours time, he would be carrying out a horrifying operation. His mind was so poorly developed - despite his better than average intelligence - that he was actually prepared to overlook the deaths of many innocent people - deaths which he himself had ordained necessary - in order to accomplish nothing more valuable than his own acquisition of great wealth. Neither did Agent One care for the members of B.L.A.D.E. They were merely human tools to be used in the operations that he contrived for his own benefit. He had considered killing them too, but decided that there was no need for doing so. He would derive an inward sense of security in the future, from knowing that there were still certain people alive in the world who were as guilty as he was of the murders and robberies to be committed in Operation Octoplunder.