Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘It will work,’ he told her.’ I've sold the idea to the Saudis already. They are already building the dock and the dams. We'll give them water at one hundredth the cost of us nuclear condensers on sea water, and without the risk of radio-active contamination.’ She was absorbed with his vision, and he with hers. As they talked deep into the long watches of the night, they drew closer in spirit only.

  Although each of them treasured those shared hours, somehow neither could bridge the narrow chasm between friendliness and real intimacy. She was instinctively aware of his reserves, that he was a man who had considered life and established his code by which to live it. She guessed that he did nothing unless it was deeply felt, and that a casual physical relationship would offer no attraction to him; she knew of the turmoil to which his life had so recently been reduced, and that he was pulling himself out of that by main strength, but that he was now wary of further hurt. There was time, she told herself, plenty of time - but Warlock bore steadily north by north-east, dragging her crippled ward up through the roaring forties; those notorious winds treated her kindly and she made good the six knots that Nick had hoped for.

  On board Warlock, the attitude of the officers towards Samantha Silver changed from fawning adulation to wistful respect. Every one of them knew of the nightly ritual of the eight-to-midnight watch.

  ‘Bloody cradle-snatcher!’ groused Tim Graham.

  ‘Mr. Graham, it is fortunate I did not hear that remark,’ David Allen warned him with glacial coldness - but they all resented Nicholas Berg, it was unfair competition, yet they kept a new respectful distance from the girl, not one of them daring to challenge the herd bull.

  The time that Samantha had looked upon as endless was running out now, and she closed her mind to it. Even when David Allen showed her the fuzzy luminescence of the African continent on the extreme range of the radar-screen, she pretended to herself that it would go on like this - if not for ever, at least until something special happened.

  During the long voyage up from Shackleton Bay, Samantha had streamed a very fine-meshed net from Warlock's stern, collecting an incredible variety of krill and plankton and other microscopic marine life. Angel had grudgingly given her a small corner of his scullery in return for her services as honorary assistant under-chef and unpaid waitress, and she spent many absorbed hours there each day, identifying and preserving her specimens.

  She was working there when the helicopter came out to Warlock. She looked up at the buffeting of the machine's rotors as they changed into fine pitch for the landing on Warlock's high-deck, and she was tempted to go up like every idle and curious hand on board, but she was in the middle of staining a slide, and somehow she resented the encroachment on this little island of her happiness. She worked on, but now her pleasure was spoiled, and she cocked her head when she heard the roar of the rotors as the helicopter rose from the deck again and she was left with a sense of foreboding.

  Angel came in from the deck, wiping his hands on his apron and he paused in the doorway.

  ‘You didn't tell me he was going, dearie.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Samantha looked up at him, startled.

  ‘Your boyfriend, darling. Socks and toothbrush and all.’ Angel watched her shrewdly. ‘Don't tell me he didn't even kiss you goodbye.’ She dropped the glass slide into the stainless steel sink and it snapped in half. She was panting as she gripped the rail of the upper deck and stared after the cumbersome yellow machine.

  It flew low across the green wind-chopped sea, humpbacked and nose low, still close enough to read the operating company's name ‘COURTLINE’ emblazoned on its fuselage, but it dwindled swiftly towards the far blue line of mountains.

  Nick Berg sat in the jump seat between the two pilots of the big S. 58T Sikorsky and looked ahead towards the flat silhouette of Table Mountain. It was overlaid by a thick mattress of snowy cloud, at the south-easterly wind swirled across its summit.

  From their altitude of a mere thousand feet, there were still five big tankers in sight, ploughing stolidly through the green sea on their endless odyssey, seeming to be alien to their element not designed to live in harmony with it, but to oppose every movement of the waters. Even in this low sea, they wore thick garlands of white at their stubby rounded bows, and Nick watched one of them dip suddenly and take spray as high as her foremast. In any sort of blow, she would be like a pier with pylons set on solid ground.

  The seas would break right over her. It was not the way a ship should be, and now he twisted in his seat and looked back.

  Far behind them, Warlock was still visible. Even at this distance, and despite the fact that she was dwarfed by her charge, her lines pleased the seaman in him. She looked good, but that backward glance invoked a pang of regret that he had been so stubbornly trying to ignore - and he had a vivid image of green eyes and hair of platinum and gold.

  His regret was spiced by the persistent notion that he had been cowardly. He had left Warlock without being able to bring himself to say goodbye to the girl, and he knew why he had done so. He would not take the chance of making a fool of himself. He grimaced with distaste, as he remembered her exact words, ‘You really are old-fashioned, aren't you?’ There was something vaguely repulsive in a middle-aged man lusting after young flesh - and he supposed he must now look upon himself as middle-aged. In six months he would be forty years of age, and he did not really expect to live to eighty. So he was in the middle of the road.

  He had always scorned those grey, lined, balding, unattractive little men with big cigars, sitting in expensive restaurants with pretty young girls beside them, the young thing pretending to hang on every pearl-like word, while her eyes focused beyond his shoulder - on some younger man

  But still, it had been cowardice. She had become a friend during those weeks, and she could hardly have been aware of the emotions that she had aroused in him during those long dark hours on Warlock's bridge. She was not to blame for his unruly passions, in no way had she encouraged him to believe that he was more than just an older man, not even a father figure, but just someone with whom to pass an otherwise empty hour. She had been as friendly and cheerful to everyone else on board Warlock, from the Mate to the cook.

  He really had owed her the common courtesy of a handshake and an assurance of the pleasure he had taken from her company, but he had not been certain he could restrict it to that.

  He winced again as he imagined her horror as he blurted out some sort of declaration, some proposal to prolong their relationship or alter its structure into something more intimate, her disenchantment when she realized that behind the facade of the mature and cultured man, he was just as grimy an old lecher as the furtive drooling browsers in the porno-shops of Times Square.

  Let it go, he had decided. No matter that he was probably in better physical shape now than he had been at twenty-five, to Dr. Samantha Silver he was an old man and he had a frightening vision of an episode from his own youth.

  A woman, a friend of his mother's, had trapped the nineteen-year-old Nicholas alone one rainy day in the old beach house at Martha's Vineyard. He remembered his own revulsion at the sagging white flesh, the wrinkles, the lines of strain across her belly and breasts, and the oldness of her.

  She would then have been a woman of forty, the same as he was now, and he had done her the service she required out of some obligation of pity, but afterwards he had scrubbed his teeth until the gums bled and he had stood under the shower for almost an hour.

  it was one of the cruel deceits of life that a person aged from the outside. He had thought of himself in the fullness of his physical and mental powers, especially now after bringing in Golden Adventurer. He was ready for them to lead on the dragons and he would tear out their jugulars with his bare hands - then she had called him an old-fashioned thing, and he had realized that the sexual fantasy which was slowly becoming an obsession must be associated with the male menopause, a sorry symptom of the ageing process of which he had not been conscious until th
en. He grinned wryly at the thought.

  The girl would probably hardly notice that he had left the ship, at the worst might be a little piqued by his lack of manners, but in a week would have forgotten his name. As for himself, there was enough, and more than enough to fill the days ahead, so that the image of a slim young body and that precious mane of silver and gold would fade until it became the fairy tale it really was.

  Resolutely he turned in the jump seat and looked ahead. Always look ahead, there are never regrets in that direction.

  They clattered in over False Bay, crossing the narrow isthmus of the Cape Peninsula under the bulk of the cloud-capped mountain, from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic in under ten minutes.

  He saw the gathering, like vultures at the lion kill, as the Sikorsky lowered to her roost on the helipad within the main harbour area of Table Bay.

  As Nick jumped down, ducking instinctively under the still-turning rotors, they surged forward, ignoring the efforts of the Courtline dispatcher to keep the pad clear; they were led by a big red-faced man with a scorched looking bald head and the furry arms of a tame bear.

  ‘Larry Fry, Mr. Berg,’ he growled. ‘You remember me?’

  ‘Hello, Larry.’ He was the local manager for Bach Wackie & Co, Nick's agents.

  ‘I thought you might say a few words to the Press.’ But the journalists swarmed around Nick now, demanding, jostling each other, their cameras firing flash bulbs.

  Nick felt his irritation flare, and he needed a deep breath and a conscious effort to control his anger.

  ‘All right, lads and ladies.’ He held up both hands, and grinned that special boyish grin. They were doing a tough job, he reminded himself. It couldn't be easy to be forced daily into the company of rich and successful men, grabbing for titbits, and being grossly underpaid for your efforts with the long-term expectation of ulcers and cirrhosis of the liver.

  ‘Play the game with me and I'll play it with you,’ he promised, and thought for a moment how it would be if they didn't want to speak with him, how it would be if they didn't know who he was, and didn't care.

  ‘Where have you booked me?’ he asked Larry Fry now, and turned back to them. ‘In two hours’ time I'll be in my suite at the Mount Nelson Hotel. You're invited, and there'll be whisky.’ They laughed and tried a few more half-hearted questions, but they had accepted the compromise - at least they had got the pictures.

  As they went up the palm-lined drive to the gracious old hotel, built in the days when space included five acres of carefully groomed gardens, Nick felt the stir of memory, but he suppressed that and listened intently to the list of appointments and matters of urgency from which Larry Fry read. The change in the big man's attitude was dramatic. When Nick had first arrived to take command of Warlock, Larry Fry had given him ten minutes of his time and sent a deputy to complete the business.

  Then Nick had been touched by the mark of the beast, a man on his way down, with as much appeal as a leper.

  Larry Fry had accorded him the minimum courtesy due the master of a small vessel, but now he was treating him like visiting royalty, limousine and fawning attention.

  ‘We have chartered a 707 from South African Airways to fly Golden Adventurer's passengers to London, and they will take scheduled commercial flights to their separate destinations from there.’

  ‘What about berthing for Golden Adventurer?’

  ‘The Harbour Master is sending out an inspector to check the hull before he lets her enter harbour.’

  ‘You have made the arrangements?’ Nick asked sharply. He had not completed the salvage until the liner was officially handed over to the company commissioned to undertake the repairs.

  ‘Courtline are flying him out now,’ Larry Fry assured him. ‘We'll have a decision before nightfall.’

  ‘Have the underwriters appointed a contractor for the repairs?’

  ‘They've called for tenders.’

  The hotel manager himself met Nicholas under the entrance portico.

  ‘Good to see you again Mr. Berg.’ He waived the registration procedures. ‘We can do that when Mr. Berg has settled in.’ And then he assured Nick, ‘We have given you the same suite.’

  Nick would have protested, but already they were ushering him into the sitting-room. If it had been a room lacking completely in character or taste, the memories might not have been so poignant. However, unlike one of those soulless plastic and vinyl coops built by the big chains and so often offered to travellers under the misnomer of ‘inns', this room was furnished with antique furniture, oil-paintings and flowers. The memories were as fresh as those flowers, but not as pleasing.

  The telephone was ringing as they entered, and Larry Fry seized it immediately, while Nick stood in the centre of the room. It had been two years since last he stood here, but it seemed as many days, so clear was the memory.

  ‘The Harbour Master has given permission for Golden Adventurer to enter harbour.’ Larry Fry grinned triumphantly at Nick, and gave him the thumbs-up signal.

  Nick nodded, the news was an anti-climax after the draining endeavours of the last weeks. Nick walked through to the bedroom. The wallpaper was a quietly tasteful floral design with matching curtains.

  From the four-poster bed, Nick remembered, you could look out over the lawns. He remembered Chantelle sitting under that canopy, with a gossamer-sheer bed-robe over her creamy shoulders, eating thin strips of marmaladed toast and then delicately and carefully licking each slim tapered finger with a pink pointed tongue.

  Nicholas had come out to negotiate the transportation of South African coal from Richards Bay, and iron ore from Saldanha Bay to Japan. He had insisted that Chantelle accompany him. Perhaps he had the premonition of imminent loss, but he had overridden her objections.

  ‘But Africa is such a primitive place, Nicky, they have things that bite.’

  And she had in the end gone with him. He had been rewarded with four days of rare happiness. The last four days ever, for though he did not then even suspect it, he was already sharing her bed and body with Duncan Alexander. He had never tired in thirteen years of that lovely smooth creamy body; rather, he had delighted in its slow luscious ripening into full womanhood, believing without question that it belonged to him.

  Chantelle was one of those unusual women who grew more beautiful with time; it had always been one of his pleasures to watch her enter a room filled with other internationally acclaimed beauties, and see them pale beside his wife. And suddenly, for no good reason, he imagined Samantha Silver beside Chantelle - the girl's coltish grace would be transmuted to gawkiness beside Chantelle's poise, her manner as gauche as a schoolgirl's beside Chantelle's mature control, a warm lovable little bunny beside the sleekly beautiful mink-

  ‘Mr. Berg, London.’ Larry Fry called from the sitting-room interrupting him, and with relief Nick picked up the telephone. ‘Just keep going forward,’he reminded himself, and before he spoke, he thought again of the two women, and wondered suddenly how much that thick rich golden mane of Samantha's hair would pale beside Chantelle's lustrous sable, and just how much of the mother-of-pearl glow would fade from that young, clear skin.

  ‘Berg,’ he said abruptly into the telephone.

  ‘Mr. Berg, good morning. Will you speak to Mr. Duncan Alexander of Christy Marine?’

  Nick was silent for five full seconds. He needed that long to adjust to the name, but Duncan Alexander was the natural extension of his previous thoughts. In the silence he heard the banging of doors and rising clamour of voices, as the journalists converged on the liquor-cabinet next door.

  ‘Mr. Berg, are you there?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and his voice was steady and cool.’ Put him on.’

  ‘Nicholas, my dear fellow.’ The voice was glossy as satin, slow as honey, Eton and King's College, a hundred thousand pound accent, impossible to imitate, not quite foppish nor indolent, razor steel in a scabbard of velvet encrusted with golden filigree and precious stones - and Nicholas had seen
the steel bared. 'It seems that it is impossible to hold a good men down.’

  ‘But you tried, young Duncan,’ Nick answered lightly. ‘Don't feel bad about it, indeed you tried.’

  ‘Come, Nicholas. Life is too short for recriminations. This is a new deck of cards, we start equal again.’ Duncan chuckled softly. ‘At least be gracious enough to accept my congratulations.’

  ‘Accepted,’ Nicholas agreed. ‘Now what do we talk about?’

  ‘Is Golden Adventurer in dock yet?’

  ‘She has been cleared to enter. She'll be tied up within twenty-four hours - and you'd better have your cheque book ready.’

  ‘I hoped that we might avoid going up before the Committee. There has been too much bitterness already. Let's try and keep it in the family, Nicholas.’

  ‘The family?’

  ‘Christy Marine is the family - you, Chantelle, old Arthur Christy - and Peter.’

  It was the very dirtiest form of fighting, and Nick found suddenly that he was shaking like a man in fever and that his fist around the receiver was white with the force of his grip. It was the mention of his son that had affected him so.

  ‘I'm not in that family any more.’

  ‘In a way you will always be part of it, It is as much your achievement as any man's, and your son-‘

  Nick cut across him brusquely, his voice gravelly.

  ‘You and Chantelle made me a stranger. Now treat me like one.’

  ‘Nicholas-‘

  ‘Ocean Salvage as main contractor for the recovery of Golden Adventurer is open to an offer.’

  ‘Nicholas –‘

  ‘Make an offer.’

  ‘As bluntly as that.’

  ‘I'm waiting.’

  ‘Well now. My Board has considered the whole operation in depth, and I am empowered to make you an outright settlement of three-quarters of a million dollars.’

  Nick's tone did not alter. ‘We have been set down for a hearing at Lloyd's on the 27th of next month.’

  ‘Nicholas, the offer is negotiable within reasonable limits-‘