by Wilbur Smith
With a deep narcissistic pleasure she noticed in the mirrors how her whole body glowed with soft pink highlights from the hot waters of the bath.
Wrapping herself in the towel she went through into the dressing-room and picking up one of the silver-backed brushes began stroking it through her hair, moving across to the open wardrobe to select a dress for the occasion. It must be something special, perhaps the unworn full-length Louis Feraud of daffodil satin.
Still undecided she went back to seat herself at the dressing-table and began the complicated ritual of applying her make-up. She worked with meticulous care until at last she smiled at her reflection with satisfaction.
She dropped the towel, went back to the wardrobe, and stood slim and naked before it. Pouting slightly with concentration she decided against the Feraud. Then suddenly she smiled, and reached for
Benedict’s mink.
She wrapped herself in the pale cloud of fur, fluffing up the collar to frame her face. It was perfect. just the fur and a pair of golden slippers, pale gold, a perfect match for her hair.
Now suddenly she was eager to go. She ran from the house to where her car was parked in the driveway.
She switched off the headlights as she turned into the driveway that curved up to where the old house crouched on the top of Wynberg
Hill. The whisper of the engine was unobtrusive and blended with the whimper of the night breeze in the chestnut trees that flanked the driveway.
She parked in the courtyard, and saw that Benedict’s Rolls was still in the garage and a light burned in the window of the study, a yellow oblong behind the curtains.
The front door was open. Her skippered feet made no sound along the gloomy passages, and when she tried the door to the study it swung open readily. She stepped into the room, and closed the door behind her. She stood with her back to the dark panelled wood. A single shaded lamp lit the room dimly.
Benedict sat behind the desk. The room was heavy with the smell of cigar smoke and brandy fumes. He had been drinking. His face was flushed, and the top button of his shirt was undone. On the desk in front of him lay a shotgun.
Ruby was surprised at the presence of the weapon, it disconcerted her and the words she had prepared were forgotten.
Benedict looked up at her. His eyes were slightly unfocused and he blinked slowly. Then he grinned; it twisted his mouth and his voice when he spoke was slurred.
“So you’ve come back.” Instantly her hatred returned in full flood. But she kept her face impassive. “Yes,” she agreed. “I’ve come back.”
“Come here.” He swivelled his chair to the side of the desk. Ruby did not move, she leaned back against the door.
“Come here.” Benedict’s voice was stronger now, and suddenly Ruby smiled and obeyed.
She stood in front of him, huddled in the fur.
“Kneel down,” commanded Benedict, and she hesitated.
“Down!” his voice crackled. “Down, damn you!” Ruby sank to her knees in front of him, and he straightened up in the chair. She knelt in front of him in the attitude of submission, with her head forward so the golden hair hung like a curtain over her face.
“Say it,” he gloated. “Ask me to forgive you.” Slowly she lifted her face and looked up at him. She spoke softly.
“Tracey left for Cartridge Bay at five-thirty this evening, Benedict’s expression changed.
“She has a start of four hours - she is half-way there already.”
He stared at her with his lips parting, soft and red and slack.
“She is going to Johnny,” Ruby went on. “She knows about the thing in Kingfisher. She knows about the big blue diamond.” He began to shake his head in disbelief.
“By dawn tomorrow Johnny will know also. So you see, my darling, you have lost again - haven’t you? You can never beat him, can you, Benedict? Can you, my darling?” Her voice was rising, ringing with triumph.
“You?“he croaked. “You?” And she laughed, nodding her head in agreement, unable to speak through her laughter.
Benedict lunged clumsily out of the chair, his hands going for her throat. She went over backwards with him on top of her. Her laughter died gurgling in her throat.
They rolled together on the floor. Benedict’s hands locked on her neck, his voice rising in a scream of fury and despair. Her long legs kicking and thrashing, clawing at his face and hands, she fought him with the strength of a cornered animal.
They rolled back suddenly and Benedict’s head struck the solid leg of the desk with a crack that jarred his whole body. His grip on her throat loosened and she tore herself free with fresh breath hissing into her open mouth. She rolled away from him and in one fluid movement gained her feet, reeling back from him with the front of the mink torn open and her hair tangled across her face.
Benedict dragged himself up the desk on to his knees.
He was still screaming, a high keening note without form or coherence, as Ruby spun away from him and stumbled to the door.
Blinded by her own hair, fighting for strangled breath, she fumbled for the door handle with her back turned to him.
Benedict reached up and lifted the shotgun off the desk.
Still kneeling beside the desk he held the weapon across his hip.
The recoil was a liquid pulsing jolt in his hands and the muzzle blast was thunderous in the confines of the room. the long yellow flame lighting the scene like a photographer’s flash-bulb.
The heavy charge caught Ruby in the small of her back.
At that range there was-no spread of shot and it went through spine and pelvis in a solid shattering ball. It tore out through the front of her belly, spinning her sideways along the wall. She slid down into a sitting position, facing him with the mink flared open about her.
On his knees Benedict swung the gun to follow her fall and he fired the second barrel; again the brief thunder and flame of the muzzle blast flashed across the room.
At even closer range than the first charge it struck her full in her beautiful golden face.
Benedict stood in the garage with his forehead pressed against the cold metal of the Rolls-Royce. The shotgun was still in his hands, and his pockets were full with cartridges that he had picked up from the floor before leaving the study.
He was shivering violently, like a man in high fever.
“No!” he moaned to himself, repeating the single negative over an dover again, leaning against the big car.
Abruptly he gagged, remembering the carnage he had created. Then he retched, still leaning against the Rolls, bringing up the brandy mingled with his horror.
It left him pale and weak, but steadier. Through the open window he threw the gun on to the back seat of the Rolls, and climbed shakily into the driver’s seat.
He sat there bowed over the steering wheel, and now his instinct of self-preservation took hold of him.
It seemed to him there was but one avenue of escape still open to him. Wild Goose had the range to take him across an ocean - South
America perhaps, and there was money in Switzerland.
He started the Rolls and reversed out of the garage, the spin of tyres against concrete burning blue smoke into the beams of the headlights.
The Mercedes crawled through the thick sand, the headlights probing ineffectually into the bright orange fog of dust that whipped endlessly over the track ahead. The hot gritty wind buffeted the car, rocking it on its suspension.
Tracey sat forward in the driver’s seat peering ahead through eyes that felt raw and swollen with fatigue and mica dust.
From the main road to the coast this jeep track was the only land access to Cartridge Bay. It was a hundred miles of tortuous trail, made up of deep sandy ruts and broken stone where it crossed one of the many rocky ridges.
The radiator of the Mercedes was boiling furiously, overheating in the searing wind and the slogging low-gear grind through thick sand.
In places Tracey followed the track only by driving through gaps in the
stunted knee-high growth of desert bush. Every few minutes a tumbleweed, driven by the wind, would bowl across the track like a frightened furry animal.
At times she was sure she had missed a turning and was now grinding aimlessly out into the desert, then reassuringly the twin ruts would show up in the lights ahead of her.
Once she did drive off the road, and immediately the Mercedes came to a gentle standstill with its rear wheels spinning helplessly in the soft sand. She had to climb out of the cab and, with her bare hands, scoop away the sand from behind the wheels and stuff bundles of turnbieweed into the depressions to give the wheels purchase. She almost wept with relief when the Mercedes pulled back sluggishly on to the trail again.
The slow dawn broke through the dust clouds and Tracey switched off the headlights and drove on until suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, she reached Cartridge Bay. The depot buildings loomed suddenly before her, and she left the Mercedes and ran to the living quarters. The foreman opened the door to her insistent hammering, and stared at her in astonishment before ushering her in. Tracey cut off his questions with her own.
“Where is Wild Goose?”
“She took Mr. Lance out to Kinesher, but she’s back now lying at the jetty.”
“Hugo Kramer - the Captain?”
“He’s aboard, holed up in his cabin.”
“Thanks.” Tracey left him, pushed the door open against the wind and ran out into the storm.
Wild Goose lay at her moorings, secured by heavy lines to the bollards, but fidgeting and fretting at the push of the wind. There was a gangplank laid to her deck, and lights showed at her portholes. Tracey went aboard.
Hugo Kramer came to the doorway of his cabin in a suit of rumpled striped pyjamas. Tracey pushed past him.
“You took Lance out to Kingfisher?” she accused him, her voice sharp and anxious.
“Yes.”
“You idiot, didn’t you realize there was something up?
Good God, why otherwise would he fly in through this weather?”
Hugo stared at her, and instinctively she knew that what Ruby had told her was true.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,“he blurted.
“You’ll know all right when we are all sitting behind bars we’ll have fifteen long years to think about it. Lance has tumbled to it, you fool, I’ve got to stop him. Take me out to Kingfisher.” He was confused - and afraid.
“I know nothing about-” Hugo started again.
“You’re wasting time.” Brusquely Tracey brushed his protests aside. “Take me out to Kingfisher.”
“Your brother - where is he? Why didn’t he came?” Tracey had anticipated the question. “Lance beat him up badly. He’s in hospital. He sent me.” Suddenly Hugo was convinced.
“Gatt!” he swore. “What are we going to do? This storm I may be able to get you out there, but I won’t be able to leave Wild Goose. My crew can’t handle her in this sea.
What can you do on your own?” “Get me out there,” said Tracey.
“Get me aboard Kingfisher and you can come back. The Italian, Caporetti, he and I will take care of Lance. In this storm a man can be washed overboard very easily.”
“ja.” Hugo’s face lit with relief.
“That’s it. The Italian!” And he reached for his oilskins hanging on the bulkhead.
As he pulled them on over his pyjamas he looked at Tracey with new respect.
“You,” he said. “I didn’t know you were in it.”
“Did you think my brother and I would stand by and let a stranger take our birthright from us?” Hugo grinned. “You’re a cool one, I’ll say that for you.
You had me fooled.” And he went out on to the bridge.
Johnny Lance and Sergio Caporetti stood shoulder to shoulder on
Kingfisher’s bridge. The ship was taking the big green seas over her bows, solid walls of water, and the wind whipped spray that spattered the armoured glass windows of the bridge house.
Kingfisher had slipped her moorings the previous evening, leaving the big yellow buoys floating on their anchor cables and she was
working free of her fetters. She was on computer navigation, holding her position over the ground against the swells and the wind by use of her engine and rudder.
“She is no good.” Sergio spoke morosely. “We come too close to the rocks. I get sick in my heart looking at them.” The dust clouds did not carry this far out to sea despite the vicious screeching of the wind. The visibility was a mile or more, quite enough to show the brooding twin hulks of Thunderbolt and Suicide. The storm-crazed swells burst against them, throwing white spray two hundred feet into the gloomy sky, then surging back to expose the gleaming white rock.
“Hold her,” growled Johnny. Twice during the night they had changed position, each time edging down closer on the gap between the two islands. Kingfisher was battling gamely to hold her ground against the insidious sucking current that added its pull to that of the swell and the wind.
Johnny was not attempting to work any one of the gullies extensively, he wanted only to sample as much of the field as possible in the time that was left to him. The storm would not stop him - for Kingfisher was constructed to work in worse weather than this. Her compensating hose section was keeping the dredge head on the bottom despite the lift and fall of her pull.
“Calm down, Sergio.” Johnny relented a little. “The computer is foolproof.”
“The god damned computer she no got eyes to see those rocks.
Me, I got eyes - and it gives me a sick heart.” Twice during the night
Johnny had gone down into the control room and ordered the computer to report its recovery of diamonds. Each time the reply had been consistent - not a single stone over four carats, and a very precious few of any others.
“I’m going through to the plot. Watch her,” Johnny told Sergio, and staggering against the pitch and roll he went through the door behind the bridge.
He paused behind the repeater screen of the computer, and at a glance saw that Kingfisher was holding her primary operation and all departments were running normally. He passed the screen and leaned over the chart table.
The large-scale chart of the South West African coast between
Luderitz and Walvis Bay was pinned down on the board. The Wild Goose soundings were pencilled in, and the pattern of Kingfisher’s sweeps were carefully plotted around the islands of Thunderbolt and Suicide.
Johnny picked up a pair of dividers and stared moodily at the chart. Suddenly a surge of anger rose in him against those two names.
They had promised so much and delivered so little.
He stared at the names Thunderbolt and Suicide printed in italics among the maze of soundings, and his anger turned to blind red hatred.
With the points of the dividers he slashed at the chart, ripping the thick linen paper once, and twice, in a ragged cross-shaped tear.
This small act of violence dissipated his anger. He felt embarrassed, it had been a petty childish gesture. He tried to smooth the edges of the tear, and through the gap he felt another loose scrap of paper which someone had slipped under the chart. He probed a finger through the tear in the chart and wormed the scrap out. He glanced at the scribbled title and the lines of figures and numbers that followed.
The sheet was headed: KAMINIKOTO SECONDARY RECOVERY PROGRAMME.
He studied it, puzzled by the title but recognizing the numbers as a computer programme. The writing was in Sergio Caporetti’s pointed continental style. The easiest way to resolve the mystery was to ask
Sergio. Johnny started back for the bridge.
“Boss,” Sergio called anxiously, as Johnny stepped through the door. “Look!” He was pointing ahead into the eye of the wind. Johnny hurried to his side, the paper crumpled and forgotten in his hand.
“Wild Goose.” Sergio-identified the small craft that was staggering and plunging towards them out of the gloom.
“What the hell is he doing here?” Johnny
wondered aloud. Wild
Goose was lost for long seconds behind the walls of green sea, then again she was lifted high into unnatural prominence, showing the red lead of her bottom as she rode the crests; water poured from her scuppers, before she shot down the steep slope of the next wave to bury her nose deep in frothing water. She came down swiftly on the wind, rounding to and beginning to edge in under Kingfisher’s counter.
“What the hell is he playing at?” Johnny protested, and then in disbelief he saw a slim figure dart from Wild Goose’s wheelhouse and run to the side nearest Kingfisher.
“It’s Tracey,” shouted Johnny.
She reached the rail just as another swell burst over the bows and smothered her. Johnny expected to see her washed away, but she was still there clinging to the rail.
Thrusting the page of paper into his pocket, Johnny went out through the wing of the bridge and swarmed down the steel ladder to the deck, jumping the last ten feet and running the instant he landed.
He reached the side and looked down on the drowned-kitten figure of
Tracey.
“Go back,” he yelled. “Go back. Don’t try it.” She shouted something that was lost in the next smother of spray, and when it cleared he saw her poising herself to jump the gap of surging water between the two vessels.
He flung himself over Kingfisher’s side and climbed swiftly down the steel rungs.
He was still ten feet above her as she gathered herself for the leap.
“Go back,” he shouted desperately.
She jumped, missed her hold and fell into the murderous stretch of water between the hulls. Her head bobbed below Johnny, and he was aware of the next swell bearing down on them. It would throw Wild
Goose against the steel cliff of Kingfisher, crushing Tracey between them.
Johnny went down those last ten feet and hanging outwards by one arm he got his other arm around her, and with a heave that crackled in his muscles and joints he plucked her from the water just as the two vessels dashed together with a crunching impact that tore splinters from Wild Goose’s planking, and left a smear of alien paint on