Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers (29 page)

‘
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
fl
ights 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
o
f 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
h
as 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 fa
de 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.
’

‘I
n 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
-‘

‘
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.