Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers (62 page)

It
took all his self-control to prevent his anger showing.
He clenched his fists on the starched white tablecloth, but his voice
was cool and even.

‘
Just one more question, Chantelle. When did you phone Samantha Silver?
’

She looked puzzled for a moment as though she was trying to put a face
to a name.
‘
Samantha, oh, your little friend, Why should I want to
telephone her?
’
And then her expression changed.
"Oh, Nicky, you don't really believe I'd do that? You don't really
believe I would tell anybody about it, about that wonderful.
–‘ N
ow she
was stricken, again those huge eyes brimmed and she reached across and
stroked the fine black hairs on the back of Nicholas big square hand.
"You don't think that of me! I'm not that much of a bitch, I don't have
to cheat to get the things I want. I don't have to inflict unnecessary
hurt on people.
’

‘
No
,’
Nicholas agreed quietly.
‘
You'd not murder more
than a million or poison more than a single ocean at a time, would you?
’
He pushed back his chair.

‘
Sit down, Nicky. Eat your lobster.
’

‘
Suddenly I'm not hungry.
’
He
stripped two one-hundred-franc notes from his money clip and dropped
them beside his plate.

‘
I forbid you to leave
,’
she hissed angrily.
‘
You are humiliating me,
Nicholas.
’

‘
I'll send your car back,
’
he said, and walked out into the
sunlight. He found with surprise that he was trembling, and that his
jaws were clenched so tightly that his teeth ached.

The wind turned during the night, and the morning was cold with drifts
of low, grey, fast-flying cloud that threatened rain. Nicholas pulled
up his collar against the wind and the tails of his coat flogged about
his legs, for he was exposed on the highest point of the arched bridge
of St Nazaire.

Thousands of others had braved the wind, and the guardrail was lined two
and three deep, all the way across the curve of the northern span. The
traffic had backed up and half a dozen gendarmes were trying to get it
moving again; their whistles shrilled plaintively. Faintly the sound of
a band floated up to them, rising and falling in volume as the wind
caught it, and even with the naked eye Nicholas could make out the
wreaths of gaily coloured bunting which fluttered on the high cumbersome
stern tower of Golden Dawn
.

He glanced at his wristwatch, and saw it was
a few minutes before noon. A helicopter clattered noisily under the
grey belly of cloud, and hovered about the yards of Construction Navale
Atlantique on the gleaming silver coin of its rotor.

Nicholas lifted the binoculars and the eyepieces were painfully cold
against his skin. Through the lens, he could almost make out individual
features among the small gathering on the rostrum under the tanker's
stern.

The platform was decorated with a
T
ricolor and a Union Jack, and as he
watched the band fell silent and lowered their instruments.

Speech time, Nicholas murmured, and now he could make out Duncan
Alexander, his bared head catching one of the fleeting rays of sun, a
glimmer of coppery gold as he looked up at the towering stern of Golden
Dawn.

His bulk almost obscured the tiny feminine figure beside him.
Chantelle wore that particular shade of malachite green which she so
dearly loved. There was confused activity around Chantelle, half a
dozen gentlemen assisting in the ceremony she had performed so very
often.
Chantelle had broken the champagne on almost all of Christy Marine's
fleet; the first time had been when she was Arthur Christy's
fourteen-year-old darling - it was another of the company's many
traditions.

Nicholas blinked, believing for an instant that his eyes had tricked
him, for it seemed that the very earth had changed its shape and was
moving.

Then he saw that the great hull of Golden Dawn had begun to slide
forward. The band burst into the Marseillaise, the heroic strains
watered down by wind and distance, while Golden Dawn gathered momentum.

I
t was an incredible, even a stirring sight, and despite himself,
Nicholas felt the
goose-bumps rise upon his fore
arms and the hair lift
on the back of his neck. He was a sailor, and he was watching the
birthing of the mightiest vessel ever built.

She was grotesque, monstrous, but she was part of him.
No matter that others had bastardized and perverted his grand design -
still the original design was his and he found himself gripping the
binoculars with hands that shook.

He watched the massive wooden-wedged arresters kick out from under that
great sliding mass of steel as they served to control her stern-first
rush down the ways. Steel cable whipped and snaked upon itself like the
Medusa's hair, and Golden Dawn's stern struck the water.

The brown muddy water of the estuary opened before her, cleaved by the
irresistible rush and weight, and the hull drove deep, opening
white-capped rollers that spread out across the channel and broke upon
the shores with a dull roar that carried clearly to where Nicholas
stood.

The crowd that lined the bridge was cheering wildly.
Beside him, a mother held her infant up to watch, both of them screaming
with glee.

While Golden Dawn's bows were still on the dockyard's ways her stern was
thrusting irresistibly a mile out into the river; forced down by the
raised bows it must now be almost touching the muddy bottom for the wave
was breaking around her stern quarters.

God, she was huge! Nicholas shook his head in wonder.
If only he had been able to build her the right way, what a ship she
would have been. What a magnificent concept!

Now her bows left the end of the slips, and the waters burst about her,
seething and leaping into swirling vortices.

Her stern started to rise, gathering speed as her own buoyancy caught
her, and she burst out like a great whale rising to blow. The waters
spilled from her, creaming and cascading through the steelwork of her
open decks, boiling madly in the cavernous openings that would hold the
pod tanks when she was fully loaded.

Now she came up short on the hundreds of retaining cables that prevented
her from driving clear across the
river and throw
herself ashore on
the far bank.

She fought against this restraint, as though having felt the water she
was now eager to run. She rolled and dipped and swung with a ponderous
majesty that kept the crowds along the bridge cheering wildly. Then
slowly she settled and floated quietly, seeming to fill the Loire River
from bank to bank and to reach as high as the soaring spans of the
bridge itself.

The four attendant harbour tugs moved in quickly to assist the ship to
turn its prodigious length and to line up for the roads and the open
sea.

They butted and backed, working as a highly skilled team, and slowly
they coaxed Golden Dawn around. Her sideways motion left a mile-wide
sweep of disturbed water across the estuary. Then suddenly there was a
tremendous boil under her counter, and Nicholas saw the bronze flash of
her single screw sweeping slowly through the brown water. Faster and
still faster it turned, and despite himself Nicholas thrilled to see her
come alive. A ripple formed under her bows, and almost imperceptibly
she began to creep forward, overcoming the vast inertia of her weight,
gathering steerage way, under command at last.

The harbour tugs fell back respectfully, and as the mighty bows lined up
with the open sea she drove forward determinedly.

Silver spouts of steam from the sirens of the tugs shot high, and
moments later, the booming bellow of their salute crashed against the
skies.

The crowds had dispersed and Nicholas stood alone in the wind on the
high bridge and watched the structured steel towers of Golden Dawn
’
s
hull blending with the grey and misted horizon. He watched her turn,
coming around on to her great circle course that would carry her six
thousand miles southward to Good Hope, and even at this distance he
sensed her change in mood as she steadied and her single screw began to
push her up to top economic speed.

Nicholas checked his watch and murmured the age-old Master's command
that commenced every voyage.

‘
Full away at 1700 hours,
’
he said, and turned to trudge back along the
bridge to where he had left the hired Renault.

It was after six o'clock and the site was empty by the time Nicholas got
back to Sea Witch. He threw himself into a chair and lit a cheroot
while he thumbed quickly through his address book. He found what he
wanted, dialled the direct London code, and then the number.

‘
Good afternoon. This is the Sunday Times. May I help you?
’

‘
Is Mr.
Herbstein available?
’
Nicholas asked.

‘
Hold on, please.
’
While he waited, Nicholas checked his address book for
his next most likely contact, should the journalist be climbing the
Himalayas or visiting a guerrilla training camp in Central Africa,
either of which were highly likely - but within seconds he heard his
voice.

‘
Denis
,’
he said.
‘
This is Nicholas Berg, how are you? I've got a hell of
a story for you.
’

Nicholas tried to bear the indignity of it with
stoicism, but the thick coating of pancake make-up seemed to clog the
pores of his skin and he moved restlessly in the make-up chair.

‘
Please keep still, sir!
’
the make-up girl snapped irritably; there was a
line of unfortunates awaiting her ministrations along the bench at the
back of the narrow room. One of them was Duncan Alexander and he caught
Nicholas eye in the mirror and raised an eyebrow in a mocking salute.

In the chair beside him, the anchor
-
man of
‘
The Today and Tomorrow Show
’
lolled graciously; he was tall and elegant with dyed and permanently
waved hair, a carnation in his button-hole, a high camp manner and an
ostentatiously liberal image.

‘
I've given you the first slot. If it gets interesting, I'll run you
four minutes forty seconds, otherwise I'll cut it off at two.
’

Denis Herbstein's Sunday article had been done with high
professionalism, especially bearing in mind the very short time he had
to put it together.
I
t had included interviews with representatives of
Lloyd's of London, the oil companies, environmental experts both in
America and England, and even with the United States Coast Guard.

‘
Try to make it tight and hard
,’
advised the anchor-man.
‘
Let's not pussyfoot around.
’
He wanted sensation, not too many facts or
figures, good gory horror stuff - or a satisfying punch-up.
The Sunday Times article had flushed them out at Orient Amex and Christy
Marine; they had not been able to ignore the challenge for there was a
question tabled for Thursday by a Labour member in the Commons, and
ominous stirrings in the ranks of the American Coast Guard service.