Mystery in the Deep

What happened to the frogman? All over Britain the question was being asked last week, but the answer was shrouded in a watery mystery that suggested a Jules Verne fantasy rewritten by Eric Ambler.

Despite his nickname, Commander Lionel Kenneth ("Buster") Crabb was no great shakes as a surface swimmer; but given a pair of rubber flippers, some goggles and an oxygen tank, he was at home in the murky depths. In 1942 when Italian divers were busily attaching lethal limpet mines to the bottoms of Royal Navy ships at anchor off Gibraltar, Buster Crabb was even busier at the far more dangerous job of removing them. Mustered out of the navy at war's end with the George Medal for heroism, Crabb returned to civilian life as a salesman.

Three weeks ago Frogman Crabb was once again plying his old trade in Britain's home waters, but no one, or practically no one, knew it until last week when, after an admitted delay of ten days, the British Admiralty announced tersely that Commander Crabb was "missing and presumed drowned." What had happened? All the Admiralty would say in amplification was that Frogman Crabb had been called back for special assignment and was "employed in connection with trials of certain underwater apparatus."

Buster Crabb and an unidentified male companion had checked into Portsmouth's Sally Port Hotel on April 17. On the following day, the Russian cruiser Ordzhonikidze steamed into Portsmouth harbor bearing Visitors Khrushchev and Bulganin. Crabb was absent from his hotel room all that day. The next day he checked out and was never seen again. The day before the announcement of his disappearance, operatives from Britain's top-secret Criminal Investigation Division tore all records of his stay out of the hotel register. If Portsmouth's police were hunting for clues, they were not admitting it. "Our inquiries," they said, "are governed by the Official Secrets Act."

The Russians themselves were less reticent but only slightly more informative. "A watchman on our ship saw the frogman come to the surface in Portsmouth harbor," said an assistant naval attache at the Soviet embassy, but "we were in a British port and there was nothing we could do." It was nevertheless true that soon after anchoring, the Ordzhffuikidze had taken the precaution of putting a crew of its own frogmen over the side.

P:Had the Russian frogmen met their British counterpart in the quiet deep? Had Buster Crabb been killed then and there, or kidnaped and carried off to Russia? At week's end, the mystery of Frogman Crabb's fate remained as deep and impenetrable as the waters that surrounded so much of his life.

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