Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘You. are speaking a foreign language,’ Nick cut him off. ‘We are so far apart that we are wasting each other's time.’

  ‘Nicholas, I know how you feel about Christy Marine, you know the company is underwriting its own.’

  ‘Now you are really wasting my time. '

  ‘Nicholas, it's not a third party, it's not some big insurance consortium it's Christy Marine-‘

  He used his name again, though it scalded his tongue.

  ‘Duncan, you're breaking my heart. I'll see you on the 27th of next month, at the arbitration court.’ He dropped the receiver on to its bracket, and moved across to the mirror, swiftly combing his hair and composing his features, startled to see how hard and bleak his expression was, and how fierce his eyes.

  However, when he went through to the lounge of the suite, he was relaxed and urbane and smiling.

  ‘All right, ladies and gentlemen. I'm all yours,’ and one of the ladies of the press, blonde, pretty and not yet thirty but with eyes as old as life itself, took another sip of her whisky as she studied him, then murmured huskily, I wouldn't mind at all, duckie.’

  Golden Adventurer stood tall and very beautiful against the wharf of Cape Town harbour, waiting her turn to go into the dry dock.

  Globe Engineering, the contractors who had been appointed to repair her, had signed for her and legally taken over responsibility from Warlock's First Officer. But David Allen still felt an immense proprietary pride in her.

  From Warlock's navigation bridge, he could look across the main harbour basin and see the tall, snowy superstructure glistening in the bright hot summer sunshine, towering as high as the giraffe-necked steel wharf cranes; and in gloating self-indulgence, David dwelt on a picture of the liner, wreathed in snow, half obscured by driving sleet and sea fume, staggering in the mountainous black seas off Antarctica. It gave him a solid feeling of achievement, and he thrust his hands deeply into his pockets and whistled softly to himself, smiling and watching the liner.

  The Trog thrust his wrinkled head from the radio room.

  ‘There's a call for you on the land-line,’ he said, and David picked up the handset.

  ‘David?’

  ‘Yessir.’ He drew himself to his full height as he recognized Nicholas Berg's voice.

  ‘Are you ready for sea?’

  David gulped, then glanced at the bulkhead clock. ‘We discharged tow an hour and ten minutes ago.’

  ‘Yes, I know. How soon?’

  David was tempted to lie, estimate short, and then fake it for the extra time he needed. Instinct warned him against lying deliberately to Nicholas Berg.

  ‘Twelve hours,’ he said.

  ‘It's an oil-rig tow, Rio to the North Sea, a semi-submersible rig.’

  ‘Yessir,’ David adjusted quickly, thank God he had not yet let any of his crew ashore. He had arranged for bunkering at 1300, hours. He could make it.’When are you coming aboard, sir?’

  ‘I'm not,’said Nick. ‘You're the new Master. I'm leaving for London on the five o'clock flight. I won't even get down to shout at you. She's all yours, David.’

  ‘Thank you, sir!’ David stuttered, feeling himself flush hot scarlet.

  ‘Bach Wackie will telex you full details of the tow at sea, and you and I will work out your own contract later. But I want you running at top economic power for Rio by dawn tomorrow.’

  ‘Yessir.’

  ‘I've watched you carefully, David.’ Nick's voice changed, becoming personal, warmer. ‘You're a damn good tug-man. Just keep telling yourself that.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr. Berg.’

  Samantha had spent half the afternoon helping with the arrangements for taking off the remaining passengers from Golden Adventurer and embarking them in the waiting fleet of tourist buses which would distribute them to hotels throughout the city while they waited for the London charter flight.

  It had been a sad occasion, farewell to many who had become friends and remembering those who had not come back from Cape Alarm with them - Ken, who might have been her lover, and the crew of raft Number 16 who had been her special charges.

  Once the final bus had left, with the occupants waving for the last time to Samantha, ‘Take care, honey!’ ‘You come and visit with us now, hear!’ she was as lonely and forlorn as the silent ship. She stood for a long time staring up the liner's high side, the damage where sea and ice had battered her - then she turned and picked her way dejectedly along the edge of the basin, ignoring the occasional whistle or ribald invitation from the fishermen and crew members of the freighters on their moorings.

  Warlock seemed as welcoming as home, rakish and gallant, wearing her new scars with high panache, already thrusting and impatient at the restraint of her mooring lines. And then Samantha remembered that Nicholas Berg was no longer aboard her, and her spirits sagged again.

  ‘God!’ Tim Graham met her at the gangplank. ‘I'm glad you got back. I didn't know what to do with your gear.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Samantha demanded. ‘Are you throwing me off the ship?’

  ‘Unless you want to come with us to Rio.’ He thought about that for a moment, and then he grinned, ‘Hey, that's not a bad idea, how about it, old girl? Rio in Carnival time, you and me.’

  ‘Don't get carried away, Timothy,’ she warned him. Why Rio?’

  ‘The Captain-‘

  ‘Captain Berg?’

  ‘No, David Allen, he's the new skipper,’ and she lost interest.

  ‘When are you sailing?’

  ‘Midnight.’

  ‘I'd best go pack up.’ She left him on the quarter-deck, and Angel pounced on her as she passed the galley.

  ‘Where have you been?’ He was in a flutter, all wrists and tossing hair, ‘I've been beside myself, darling.’

  ‘What is it, Angel?’

  ‘It's probably too late already.’

  ‘What is it?’ She caught his urgency. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘He's still in town.’

  ‘Who?’ But she knew, they spoke of only one person in these emotional terms.

  ‘Don't be dense, luv. Your crumpet.’ She hated it when he referred to Nick like that, but now she let him go on. ‘But he won't be very much longer. His plane leaves at five o'clock, he is making the local flight to Johannesburg, and connecting there for London.’

  She stared at him.

  ‘Well what are you waiting for?’ Angel keened. ‘It's almost four o'clock now, and it will take you at least half an hour to reach the airport.’

  She did not move. ‘But, Angel,’ she almost wrung her hands in anguish, ‘but what do I do when I get there?’

  Angel shook his head and twinkled his diamonds in exasperation. ‘Sweet merciful heavens, duckie.’ Then he sighed. ‘When I was a boy I had two guinea pigs, and they also refused to get it on. I think they were retarded, or something. I tried everything, even hormones, but neither of them survived the shots. Alas, their love was never consummated.’

  ‘Be serious, Angel.’

  ‘You could hold him down while I give him a hormone shot-’

  ‘I hate you, Angel.’ She had to laugh, even in her anxiety.

  ‘Dearie, every night for the past month you have tried to set him on fire with your dulcet silvery voice - and we haven't even passed "GO" and collected our first $200.’

  ‘I know, Angel. I know.’

  ‘It seems to me, sweetie, that it's time now to cut out the jawing and to ignite him with that magic little tinderbox of yours.’

  ‘You mean right there in the departure lounge of the airport?’ She clapped her hands with delight, then struck a lascivious pose. 'I'm Sam - fly me!’

  ‘Hop, poppet there is a taxi on the wharf - he's been waiting an hour, with his meter running.’

  There is no first-class lounge in Cape Town's DF Malan Airport, so Nicholas sat in the snake-pit, amongst the distraught mothers and their whining, sticky offspring, the harassed tourists loaded like camels with souvenirs and the florid-faced commercial
travellers, but he was alone in a multitude; with unconscious deference they allowed him a little circle of privacy and he used the Louis Vuitton briefcase on his knee as a desk.

  It occurred to him suddenly how dramatically the balance had swung in the last mere forty days, since he had recognized his wave peaking, but had almost not been able to find the strength for it.

  A shadow passed across his eyes, and the little creased crows foot appeared between them as he remembered the physical and emotional effort that it had taken to make the Go decision on Golden Adventurer, and he shivered slightly in fear of what might have happened if he had not gone. He would have missed his wave, and there would never have been another.

  With a small firm movement of his head, he pushed that memory of fear behind him. He had caught his wave, and he was riding high and fast. Now it seemed that the fates were intent on smothering him with largesse: the oil-rig for Warlock, Rio to the Bravo Sierra field off Norway - then a back-to-back tow from the North Sea through Suez to the to the new South Australian field, would keep Warlock fully employed for the next six months. That was not all, the threatening dockyard strike at Construction Navale Atlantique had been smoothed over and the delivery date for the new tug had come forward by two months - At midnight the night before, a telephone call from Bach Wackie had awakened him to let him know Kuwait and Qatar were now also studying the iceberg-to-water project with a view to commissioning similar schemes; he would have to build himself another two vessels if they decided to go.

  ‘All I need now is to hear that I have won the football pools,’ he thought, and turned his head, started and caught his breath with a hiss, as though he had been punched in the ribs.

  She stood by the automatic doors, and the wind had caught her hair and torn it loose from its thick twisted knot so that fine gold tendrils floated down on to her cheeks - cheeks that were flushed as though she had run fast, and her chest heaved so that she held one hand upon it, fingers spread like a star between those fine pointed breasts. She was poised like a forest animal that has scented the leopard, fearful, tremulous, but not yet certain in which direction to run. Her agitation was so apparent that he thrust aside his briefcase and stood up.

  She saw him instantly, and her face lit with an expression of such unutterable joy, that he was halted in his intention of going towards her, while she in contrast wheeled and started to run towards him.

  She collided with a portly, sweating tourist, nearly flooring him and shaking loose a rain of carved native curios and anonymous packets which clattered to the floor around her like ripe fruit.

  He snarled angrily, then his expression changed as he looked at her. ‘Sorry!’ She stooped swiftly, picked up a packet, thrust it into his arms, hit him with her smile, and left him beaming bemusedly after her.

  However, now she was more restrained, her precipitous rush calmed to that long-legged thrusting hip-swinging walk of hers, and the smile was a little uncertain as she pushed vainly at the loose streamers of golden hair, trying to tuck them up into the twisted rope on top of her head.

  ‘I thought I'd missed you.’ She stopped a little in front of him.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ he asked quickly, still alarmed by her behaviour.

  ‘Oh no!’ she assured him hurriedly.’ Not any more,’ and suddenly she was awkward and coltish again. ‘I thought,’ her voice hushed, ‘it was just that I thought I'd missed you.’ And her eyes slid away from him. ‘You didn't say goodbye.-‘

  ‘I thought it was better that way.’ And now her eyes flew back to his face, sparking with green fire.

  ‘Why?’ she demanded, and he had no answer to give her.

  ‘I didn't want to –‘ How could he say it to her, without making the kind of statement that would embarrass them both?

  Above them, the public address system squawked into life.

  ‘South African Airways announces the departure of their Airbus flight 235 to Johannesburg. Will passengers please board at Gate Number Two.’

  She had run out of time. ‘I'm Sam - Fly Me! Please!’ she thought, and felt the urge to giggle, but instead she said: ‘Nicholas, tomorrow you'll be in London - in midwinter.’

  ‘It's a sobering thought,’he agreed, and for the first time smiled; his smile closed like a fist around her heart and her legs felt suddenly weak.

  ‘Tomorrow or at least the day after, I'll be riding the long sea at Cape St Francis,’ she said. They had spoken of that, on those enchanted nights. He had told her how he had first ridden the surf at Waikiki Beach long ago before the sport had become a craze, and it had been part of their shared experience, part of their love of the sea, drawing them closer together.

  ‘I hope the surf's up for you,’ he said. Cape St Francis was three hundred and fifty miles north of Cape Town, simply another beach and headland in a shoreline that stretched in unbroken splendour for six thousand miles, and yet it was unique in all the world. The young and the young-at-heart came in almost religious pilgrimage to ride the long sea at Cape St Francis. They came from Hawaii and California, from Tahiti and Queensland, for there was no other wave quite like it.

  At the departure gate, the shuffling queue was shortening, and Nick stooped to pick up his briefcase, but she reached out and laid her hand on his biceps, and he froze.

  It was the first time she had deliberately touched him, and the shock of it spread through his body like ripples on a quiet lake. All the emotions and passions which he had so strenuously denied came tumbling back upon him, and it seemed that their strength had grown a hundred-fold while under restraint. He ached for her, with a deep, yearning wanting ache.

  ‘Come with me, Nicholas,’ she whispered, and his own throat closed so he could not answer. He stared at her, and already the ground hostesses at the gate were peering around irritably for their missing passenger.

  She had to convince him and she shook his arm urgently, startled at the hardness of the muscle under her fingers.

  ‘Nicholas, I really want,’ she began, intending to finish, ‘you to,’ but her tongue played a Freudian trick on her, and she said, ‘I really want you., Oh God,’ she thought, as she heard herself say it, ‘I sound like a whore,’ and in panic she corrected herself.

  ‘I really want you to,’ and she flushed, the blood came up from her neck, dark under the peach of her tan so the freckles glowed on her skin like flakes of gold-dust.

  ‘Which one is it?’ he asked, and then smiled again.

  ‘There isn't time to argue.’ She stamped her foot, feigning impatience, hiding her confusion, then added, ‘Damn you!’ for no good reason.

  ‘Who is arguing?’ he asked quietly, and suddenly, like magic, she was in his arms, trying to burrow herself deeper and deeper into his embrace, trying to draw all the man smell of him into her lungs, amazed at the softness and warmth of his mouth and the hard rasp of new beard on his chin and cheek, making little soft mewing sounds of comfort deep in her throat as she clung to him.

  ‘Passenger Berg. Will passenger Berg please report to the departure gate,’ chanted the public address.

  ‘They're calling me,’ Nicholas murmured.

  ‘They can go right to the back of the queue,’ she mumbled into his lips.

  Sunlight was made for Samantha. She wore it like a cloak that had been woven especially for her. She wore it in her hair, sparkling like jewellery, she used it to paint her face and body in lustrous shades of burnt honey and polished amber, she wore it glowing in golden freckles on her cheeks and nose.

  She moved in sunlight with wondrous grace, barefooted in the white sand, so that her hips and buttocks roistered brazenly under the thin green stuff of her bikini, She sprawled in the sunlight like a sleeping cat, offering her face and her naked belly to it, so he felt that if he laid his hands against her throat he would feel her purr deep inside her chest.

  She ran in the sunlight, light as a gull in flight, along the hard wet sand at the water's edge, and he ran beside her, tirelessly, mile after mile, the two of the
m alone in a world of green sea and sun and tall pale hot skies. The beach curved away in both directions to the limit of the eye, smooth and white as the snows of Antarctica, devoid of human life or the scars of man's petty endeavours, and she laughed beside him in the sunlight, holding his hand as they ran together.

  They found a deep, clear rock pool in a far and secret place. The sunlight off the water dappled her body, exploding silently upon it like the reflections of light from a gigantic diamond, as she cast aside the two green wisps of her bikini, let down the thick rope of her hair and stepped into the pool, turning, knee-deep, to look back at him. Her hair hung almost to her waist, springing and thick and trying to curl in the salt and wind, it cloaked her shoulders and her breasts peeped through the thick curtains of it. Her breasts, untouched by the sun, were rich as cream and tipped in rose, so big and full and exuberant that he wondered that he had ever thought her a child; they bounced and swung as she moved, and she pulled back her shoulders and laughed at him shamelessly when she saw the direction of his eyes.

  She turned back to the pool and her buttocks were white with the pinkish sheen of a deep-sea pearl, round and tight and deeply divided, and, as she bent forward to dive, a tiny twist of copper gold curls peeped briefly and coyly from the wedge where the deep cleft split into her tanned smooth thighs.

  Through the cool water, her body was warm as bread fresh from the oven, cold and heat together, and when he told her this, she entwined her arms around his neck.

  ‘I'm Sam the baked Alaska, eat me!’ she laughed, and the droplets clung to her eyelashes like diamond chips in the sunlight.

  Even in the presence of others, they walked alone; for them, nobody else really existed. Among those who had come from all over the world to ride the long sea at Cape St Francis were many who knew Samantha, from Florida and California, from Australia and Hawaii, where her field trips and her preoccupation with the sea and the life of the sea had taken her.

  ‘Hey, Sam!’ they shouted, dropping their boards in the sand and running to her, tall muscular men, burned dark as chestnuts in the sun. She smiled at them vaguely, holding Nicholas hand a little tighter, and replied to their chatter absentmindedly, drifting away at the first opportunity.