Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers

by Wilbur Smith

  Levoisin on La Mouette had been able to take only one hundred and twenty supernumeraries on board his little tug. The oldest and weakest of them had gone and Christy Marine was negotiating for a charter from Cape Town to Shackleton Bay to take off the rest of them. Now that charter was unnecessary, but the cost of it would form part of Nick's claim for salvage award.

  ‘I won't take more of your time.’ Reilly drained his glass and stood. ‘You have much to do.’ There were another four days and nights of hard work.

  Nick went aboard Golden Adventurer and saw the cavernous engine room lit by the eye-scorching blue glare of the electric welding flames, as Baker placed his steel over the wound and welded it into place. Even then, neither he nor Nick was satisfied until the new patches had been shored and stiffened with baulks of heavy timber. There was a hard passage through the roaring forties ahead of them, and until they had Golden Adventurer safely moored in Cape Town docks, the salvage was incomplete.

  They sat side by side among the greasy machinery and the stink of the anti-corrosives, and drank steaming Thermos coffee laced with Bundaberg rum.

  ‘We get this beauty into Duncan Docks - and you are going to be a rich man,’ Nick said.

  ‘I've been rich before. With me it never lasts long - and it's always a relief when I've spent the stuff.’ Beauty gargled the rum and coffee appreciatively, before he went on, shrewdly. ‘So you don't have to worry about losing the best goddamned engineer afloat.’

  Nick laughed with delight. Baker had read him accurately. He did not want to lose him.

  With this Nick left him and went to see to the trim of the liner, studying her carefully and using the experience of the last days to determine her best points of tow, before giving his orders to David Allen to raise her slightly by the head.

  Then there was the transfer from the liner's bunkers of sufficient bunker oil to top up Warlock's own tanks against the long tow ahead, and Bach Wackie in Bermuda kept the telex clattering with relays from underwriters and Lloyd's, with the first tentative advances from Christy Marine; already Duncan Alexander was trying out the angles, manoeuvring for a liberal settlement of Nick's claims, without, as he put it, the expense of the arbitration court.

  ‘Tell him I'm going to roast him,’ Nick answered with grim relish. ‘Remind him that as Chairman of Christy Marine I advised against underwriting our own bottoms and now I'm going to rub his nose in it.’

  The days and nights blurred together, the illusion made complete by the imbalance of time down here in the high latitudes, so that Nick could often believe neither his senses nor his watch when he had been working eighteen hours straight and yet the sun still burned, and his watch told him it was three o'clock in the morning.

  Then again, it did not seem part of reality when his senior officers, gathered around the mahogany table in his day cabin, reported that the work was completed - the repairs and preparation, the loading of fuel, the embarkation of passengers and the hundred other details had all been attended to, and Warlock was ready to drag her massive charge out into the unpredictable sea, thousands of miles to the southernmost tip of Africa.

  Nick passed the cheroot-box around the circle and while the blue smoke clouded the cabin, he allowed them all a few minutes to luxuriate in the feeling of work done, and done well.

  ‘We'll rest the ship's company for twenty-four hours,’ he announced in a rush of generosity. ‘And take in tow at 0800 hours Monday. I'm hoping for a two speed of six knots - twenty-one days to Cape Town, gentlemen.’ When they rose to leave, David Allen lingered selfconsciously. ‘The wardroom is arranging a little Christmas celebration tonight, sir, and we would like you to be our guest.’

  The wardroom was the junior officers’ club from which, traditionally, the Master was excluded. He could enter the small panelled cabin only as an invited guest, but there was no doubt at all about the genuine warmth of the welcome they gave him. Even the Trog was there. They stood and applauded him when he entered, and it was clear that most of them had made an early start on the gin. David Allen made a speech which he read haltingly from a scrap of paper which he tried to conceal in the palm of one hand. It was a speech full of hyperbole, cliches and superlatives, and he was clearly mightily relieved once it was over.

  Then Angel brought in a cake he had baked for the occasion. It was iced in the shape of Golden Adventurer, a minor work of art, with the figures ‘12 ½ %’ picked out in gold on its hull, and they applauded him. That ‘12 ½ %’ had significance to set them all grinning and exclaiming.

  Then they called on Nick to speak, and his style was relaxed and easy. He had them hooting with glee within minutes - a mere mention of the prize money that would be due to them once they brought Golden Adventurer into Cape Town had them in ecstasy.

  The girl was wedged into a corner, almost swallowed in the knot of young officers who found it necessary to press as closely around her as was possible without actually smothering her.

  She laughed with a clear unaffected exuberance, her voice ringing high above the growl of masculine mirth, so that Nick found it difficult not to keep looking across at her.

  She wore a dress of green clinging material, and Nick wondered where it had come from, until he remembered that Golden Adventurer's passenger accommodation was intact and that earlier that morning, he had noticed the girl standing beside David Allen in the stern of the work boat as it returned from the liner, with a large suitcase at her feet. She had been to fetch her gear and she probably should have stayed aboard the liner. Nick was pleased she had not.

  Nick finished his little speech, having mentioned every one of his officers by name and given to each the praise they deserved, and David Allen pressed another large whisky into his one hand and an inelegant wedge of cake into the other, and then left hurriedly to join the tight circle around the girl. It opened reluctantly, yielding to his seniority and Nick found himself almost deserted.

  He watched with indulgence the open competition for her attention. She was shorter than any of them, so Nick saw only the top of that magnificent mane of sun-streaked hair, hair the colour of precious metal that shone as she nodded and tilted her head, catching the overhead lights.

  Beauty Baker was on one side of her, dressed in a readymade suit of shiny imitation sharkskin that made a startling contrast to his plaid shirt and acid-yellow tie; the trousers of the suit needed hoisting every few minutes and his spectacles glittered lustfully as he hung over the girl.

  David Allen was close on her other side, blushing pinkly every time she turned to speak to him, plying her with cake and liquor - and Nick found his indulgence turning to irritation.

  He was irritated by the presence of a tongue-tied fourth officer who had clearly been delegated to entertain him, and was completely awed by the responsibility. He was irritated by the antics of his senior officers. They were behaving like a troupe of performing seals in their competition for the girl's attention.

  For a few moments, the tight circle around her opened, and Nick was left with a few vivid impressions - The green of her dress matched exactly the brilliant sparkling green of her eyes. Her teeth were very white, and her tongue as pink as a cat's when she laughed. She was not the child he had imagined from their earlier encounters; with colour touched to her lips and pearls at her throat, he realized she was in her twenties, early twenties perhaps, but a full woman, nevertheless.

  She looked across the wardroom and their eyes met. The laughter stilled on her lips, and she returned his gaze. It was a solemn enigmatic gaze, and he found himself once again regretting his previous rudeness to her. He dropped his gaze from hers and saw now that under the clinging green material, her body was slim and beautifully formed, with a lithe athletic grace. He remembered vividly that one nude glimpse he had been given.

  Although the green dress was high-necked, he saw that her breasts were large and pointed, and that they were not trussed by any undergarments; the young shapely flesh was as strikingly arresting as if it had been naked.<
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  It made him angry to see her body displayed in this manner. It did not matter that every young girl in the streets of New York or London went so uncorseted, here it made him angry to see her do the same, and he looked back into her eyes. Something charged there, a challenge perhaps, his own anger reflected? He was not sure. She tilted her head slightly, now it was invitation - or was it? He had known and handled easily so many, many women. Yet this one left him with a feeling of uncertainty, perhaps it was merely her youth, or was it some special quality she possessed? Nicholas Berg was uncertain and he did not relish the feeling.

  David Allen hurried to her with another offering, and cut off the gaze that passed between them, and Nick found himself staring at the Chief Officer's slim, boyish back, and listening to the girl's laughter again, sweet and high.

  But somehow it seemed to be directed tauntingly at Nick, and he said to the young officer beside him, ‘Please ask Mr. Allen for a moment of his time.’ Patently relieved the officer went to fetch him.

  ‘Thank you for your hospitality, David,’ said Nick, when he came.

  ‘You aren't going yet, sir? Nick took a small sadistic pleasure in the Mate's obvious dismay.

  He sat at the desk in his day cabin and tried to concentrate. It was the first opportunity he had had to consider the paperwork that awaited him. The muted sounds of revelry from the deck below distracted him, and he found himself listening for the sounds of her laughter while he should have been composing his submissions to his London attorneys, which would be taken to the arbitrators of Lloyd's, a document and record of vital importance, the whole basis of his claim against Golden Adventurer's underwriters. And yet he could not concentrate.

  He swung his chair away from the desk and began to pace the thick, sound-deadening carpet, stopping once to listen again as he heard the girl's voice calling gaily, the words unintelligible, but the tone unmistakable. They were dancing, or playing some raucous game which consisted of a great deal of bumping and thumping and shrieks of laughter.

  He began to pace again, and suddenly Nick realized he was lonely. The thought stopped him dead again. He was lonely, and completely alone. It was a disturbing realization, especially for a man who had travelled much of life's journey as a loner. Before it had never troubled him, but now he felt desperately the need for somebody to share his triumph. Triumph it was, of course. Against the most improbable odds he had snatched spectacular victory, and he crossed slowly to the cabin portholes and looked across the darkened bay to where Golden Adventurer lay at anchor, all her lights burning, a gay and festive air about her.

  He had been knocked off his perch at the top of the tree, deprived of a life's work, a wife and a son - yet it had taken him only a few short months to clamber back to the top.

  With this simple operation, he had transformed Ocean Salvage from a dangerously insecure venture, a tottering cash-starved, problem-hounded long chance, into something of real value. He was off and running again now, with a place to go and the means of getting there. Then why did it suddenly seem of so little worth? He toyed with the idea of returning to the revelry in the wardroom, and grimaced as he imagined the dismay of his officers at the Master's inhibiting intrusion.

  He turned away from the porthole and poured whisky into a glass, lit a cheroot and dropped into the chair. The whisky tasted like toothpaste and the cheroot was bitter.

  He left the glass on his desk and stubbed the cheroot before he went through on to the navigation bridge.

  The night lights were so dim after his brightly lit cabin that he did not notice Graham, the Third Officer, until his eyes adjusted to the ruby glow.

  ‘Good evening, Mr. Graham.’ He moved to the chart table and checked the log. Graham was hovering anxiously, and Nick searched for something to say.

  ‘Missing the party?’ he asked at last.

  ‘Sir.’ It was not a promising conversational opening, and despite his loneliness of a few minutes previously, Nick suddenly wanted to be alone again.

  ‘I will stand the rest of your watch. Go off and enjoy yourself.’ The Third Officer gawped at him.

  ‘You've got three seconds before I change my mind.’

  ‘That's jolly decent of you, sir,’ called Graham over his shoulder as he fled.

  The party in the wardroom had by now degenerated into open competition for Samantha's attention and approbation.

  David Allen, wearing a lampshade on his head and, for some unaccountable reason, with his right hand thrust into his jacket in a Napoleonic gesture, was standing on the wardroom bar counter and declaiming Henry's speech before Agincourt, glossing over the passages which he had forgotten with a ‘durn-de-dum.’ However, when Tim Graham entered, he became immediately the First Officer. He removed the lampshade and inquired frostily.

  ‘Mr. Graham, am I correct in believing that you are officer of the watch? Your station at this moment is on the bridge!’

  The old man came and offered to stand my watch,’ said Tim Graham.

  ‘Good Lord!’ David replaced his lampshade, and poured a large gin for his Third Officer. ‘The old bastard must have come over all soft suddenly.’

  Beauty Baker, who was hanging off the wall like a gibbon ape, dropped to his feet and drew himself up with rather unsteady dignity, hitched his trousers and announced ominously,

  ‘If anybody calls the old bastard a bastard, I will personally kick his teeth down his throat.’ He swept the wardroom with an eye that was belligerent and truculent, until it halted on Samantha. Immediately it softened. ‘That one doesn't count, Sammy!’ he said.

  ‘Of course not,’ Samantha agreed. ‘You can start again.’ Beauty returned to the starting point of the obstacle course, fortified himself with a draught of rum, pushed up his spectacles with a thumb and spat on his palms.

  ‘One to get ready, two to get steady - and three to be off!’ sang out Samantha, and clicked the stopwatch. Beauty Baker swung dizzily from the roof, clawing his way around the wardroom without touching the deck, cheered on by the entire company.

  ‘Eight point six seconds!’ Samantha clicked the watch, as he ended up on the bar counter, the finishing post. ‘A new world record.’

  ‘A drink for the new world champion.’

  ‘I'm next, time me, Sammy!’

  They were like schoolboys. ‘Hey, watch me, Sammy!’ But after another ten minutes, she handed the stopwatch to Tim Graham, who as a late arrival was still sober.

  ‘I'll be back!’ she lied, picked up a plate with a large untouched hunk of Angel's cake upon it and was gone before any of them realized it was happening.

  Nick Berg was working over the chart-table, so intent that he was not aware of her for many seconds. In the dramatic lighting of the single overhead lamp, the strength of his features was emphasized. She saw the hard line of his jawbone, the heavy brow and the alert widely spaced set of his eyes. His nose was large and slightly hooked, like that of a plains Indian or a desert Bedouin, and there were lines at the corners of his mouth and around his eyes that were picked out in dark shadow. In his complete absorption with the charts and Admiralty Pilot, he had relaxed his mouth from its usual severe line. She saw now that the lips were full without being fleshy, and there was a certain sensitivity and voluptuousness there that she had not noticed before.

  She stood quietly, enchanted with him, until he looked up suddenly, catching the rapt expression upon her face.

  She tried not to appear flustered, but even in her own ears her voice was breathless.

  ‘I'm sorry to disturb you. I brought some cake for Timmy Graham.’

  ‘I sent him below to join the party.’

  ‘Oh, I didn't notice him. I thought he was here.’

  She made no move to leave, holding the plate in one hand, and they were silent a moment longer.

  ‘I don't suppose I could interest you in a slice? It's going begging.’

  ‘Share it,’ he suggested, and she came to the chart-table.

  ‘I owe you an apology,�
�� he said, and was immediately aware of the harshness in his own voice. He hated to apologize, and she sensed it.

  ‘I picked a bad moment,’ she said, and broke off a piece of the cake. ‘But this seems a better time. Thank you again, and I'm sorry for all the trouble I caused. I understand now that it nearly cost you the Golden Adventurer.’ They both turned to look out of the big armoured glass windows to where she lay.

  ‘She is beautiful, isn't she?’ said Nick, and his voice had lost its edge.

  ‘Yes, she's beautiful,’ Samantha agreed, and suddenly they were very close in the intimate ruddy glow of the night lights.

  He began to talk, stiffly and self-consciously at first, but she drew him on, and with secret joy, she sensed him warming and relaxing. Only then did she begin to put her own ideas forward.

  Nick was surprised and a little disconcerted at the depth of her view, and at her easy coherent expression of ideas, for he was still very much aware of her youth. He had expected the giddiness and the giggle, the shallowness, an uninformed self-interest of immaturity, but it was not there, and suddenly the difference in their ages was of no importance. They were very close in the night, touching only with their minds, but becoming each minute so much more closely involved in their ideas that time had no significance.

  They spoke about the sea, for they were both creatures of that element and as they discovered this, so their mutual delight in each other grew.

  From below came the faint unmelodious strains of Beauty Baker leading the ship's officers in a chorus of:

  ‘The working class can kiss my arse

  I've got my 12½% at last.’

  And at another stage in the evening, a very worried Tim Graham appeared on the bridge and blurted out, ‘Captain, sir, Doctor Silver is missing. She's not in her cabin and we have searched –‘ He saw her then, sitting in the Captain's chair and his worry turned to consternation. ‘Oh, I see. We didn't know - I mean we didn't expect - I'm sorry, sir. Excuse me, sir. Goodnight, sir!’ And again he fled the bridge.