Charlotte said to me: ‘I think you are the most devious and detestable and untrustworthy man I’ve ever met.’ Her eyes were shining, whether from tears or whatever I didn’t know. I felt acutely embarrassed and uncomfortable. She put her hand on my arm and said in a low-voice: ‘You fool, oh, you fool! That gun might have gone off. I – I might have killed you, Philip!’
I patted her hand and said: ‘You don’t even begin to believe that yourself.’ In the circumstances, I thought it better not to say if that gun had gone off I’d never have trusted a three-cornered file again.
The grey mist was slowly clearing away and the dawn coming up on the quiet dark sea when Tim Hutchinson eased the Firecrest in towards Eilean Oran.
There were only four of us on the boat, Hutchinson, myself, Mrs MacEachern and Charlotte. I’d told Charlotte to find a bed in Dubh Sgeir castle for the night, but she’d simply ignored me, helped Mrs MacEachern on to the Firecrest and had made no move to go ashore again. Very self-willed, she was, and I could see that this was going to cause a lot of trouble in the years to come.
Uncle Arthur wasn’t with us, a team of wild horses couldn’t have dragged Uncle Arthur aboard the Firecrest that night. Uncle Arthur was having his foretaste of Paradise, sitting in front of a log fire in the Dubh Sgeir castle drawing-room, knocking back old Kirkside’s superlative whisky and retailing his exploits to a breathless and spellbound aristocracy. If I were lucky, maybe he’d mention my name a couple of times in the course of his recounting of the epic. On the other hand, maybe he wouldn’t.
Mrs MacEachern wasn’t having her foretaste of Paradise, she was there already, a calm dark old lady with a wrinkled brown face who smiled and smiled and smiled all the way to her home on Eilean Oran. I hoped to God old Donald MacEachern had remembered to change his shirt.
MacLean Goes Everywhere You Do
If you enjoyed this book by Alistair MacLean,
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The Satan Bug 978-1-4027-9253-3
Behind the locked doors of E block in the fortress-like Mordon Research Centre, a scientist lies dead, and a new toxin of terrifying power has vanished. When the first letter is delivered threatening to unleash the virus, special agent Pierre Cavell is given just 24 hours to solve the mystery of the break-in and prevent a plagueborn apocalypse.
Where Eagles Dare 978-1-4027-9251-9
A team of British special forces parachutes onto a mountainside in wartime Germany. Their mission: To rescue a captured American general from the Castle of the Eagle before the Nazi interrogators can force him to reveal secret D-Day plans. As team members start to perish along the way, the true purpose of the rescue turns out to be infinitely more complicated.
Bear Island
978-1-4027-9255-7
As the Morning Rose ploughs through wintry Arctic seas toward Bear Island, the ship’s doctor Christopher Marlowe is kept busy attending to the seasick passengers, a film unit being sent to make a film so secret that none of them knows much about it. As passengers and crew begin dying, he realizes that the Morning Rose has a murderer on board. Once on the island, Marlowe must contend against weather, terrain, and ruthless adversaries as events build to a brutal climax in the darkness of the Polar night.
Caravan to Vaccares 978-1-4027-9247-2
From all over Europe, even from behind the Iron Curtain, gypsies make an annual pilgrimage to the shrine of their patron saint in Provence. But at this year’s gathering, people are mysteriously dying. Intrepid sleuths Cecile Dubois and Neil Bowman join the caravan in order to uncover the truth behind the deaths, in the process revealing an international plot that the sinister Gaiuse Strome will stop at nothing to keep secret.
Force 10 from Navarone
978-1-4027-9249-6
The thrilling sequel to The Guns of Navarone, this book reunites members of the Allied team that silenced the giant guns of Navarone and sends them on a desperate bid to assist a ragtag group of Partisan forces trapped by two armoured divisions of the German army in the rugged mountains of Yugoslavia.
When Eight Bells Toll Page 28