Hungry as the Sea (35 page)

“It’s good.” Chantelle sipped it and then set the glass aside. “I spoke to Peter last night, he is in the san with flu, but he will be up today, and he sent you his love.”

“Thank you,” he spoke stiffly, stilted by the curious glances from some of the other tables where they had been recognized. The scandal would fly around London like the plague.

“I want to take Peter to Bermuda with me for part of the Easter holidays,” Nicholas told her.

“I shall miss him – he’s such a delight.”

Before Nicholas waited for the main course to be served he asked bluntly, “What did you want to speak to me about?” Chantelle leaned towards him, and her perfume was light and subtle and evocative.

“Did you find out anything, Nicholas?”

“No,” he thought to himself. “That’s not what she wants.” It was the Persian in her blood, the love of secrecy, the intrigue. There was something else here.

“I have learned nothing,” he said. “If I had, I would have called you.” His eyes bored into hers, green and hard and searching. “That is not what you wanted,” he told her flatly. She smiled and dropped her eyes from his.

“No,” she admitted, “it wasn’t.” She had surprising breasts, they seemed small, but really they were too big for her dainty body. It was only their perfect proportions and the springy elasticity of the creamy flesh that created the illusion. She wore a flimsy silk blouse with a low lacey front, which exposed the deep cleft between them. Nicholas knew them so well, and he found himself staring at them now.

She looked up suddenly and caught his eyes, and the huge eyes slanted with a sly heart-stopping sexuality. Her lips pouted softly and she moistened them with the tip of her tongue. Nick felt himself sway in his seat, it was a tell-tale mannerism of hers. That set of lips and movement of tongue were the heralds of her arousal, and instantly he felt the response of his own body, too powerful to deny, although he tried desperately.

“What was it –” He did not hear the husk in his voice, but she did and recognized it as readily as he had the flicker of her tongue. She reached across the table and took his wrist, and she felt the leap of his pulse under her fingers.

“Duncan wants you to come back into Christy Marine,” she said.

“And so Duncan sent you to me.” And when she nodded, he asked, “Why does he want me back? God knows what pains the two of you took to get rid of me.” And he gently pulled his wrist from her fingers and dropped both hands into his lap.

“I don’t know why Duncan wants it. He says that he needs your expertise.” She shrugged, and her breasts moved under the silk. He felt the tense ache of his groin, it confused his thinking.

“It isn’t the true reason, I’m sure of that.”

“But he wants you.”

“Did he ask you to tell me that?”

“Of course not.” She fiddled with the stem of her glass; her fingers were long and perfectly tapered, the painted nails set upon them with the brilliance of butterflies wings. “It was to come from me alone.”

“Why do you think he wants me?”

“There are two possibilities that I can imagine.” She surprised him sometimes with her almost masculine appraisal. That was what made her lapse so amazing. As he listened to her now, Nicholas wondered again how she could ever have let control of Christy Marine pass to Duncan Alexander – then he remembered what a wild and passionate creature she could be. “The first possibility is that Christy Marine owes you six million dollars, and he has thought up some scheme to avoid having to pay you out.”

“Yes,” Nicholas nodded. “And the other possibility?”

“There are strange and exciting rumours in the City about you and Ocean Salvage – they say that you are on the brink of something big. Something in Saudi Arabia. Perhaps Duncan wants a share of that.”

Nicholas blinked. The iceberg project was something between the Sheikhs and himself, then he remembered that others knew. Bernard Wackie in Bermuda, Samantha Silver, James Teacher – there had been a leak somewhere then.

“And you? What are your reasons?”

“I have two reasons, Nicholas,” she answered. “I want control back from Duncan. I want the voting rights in my shares, and I want my rightful place on the Trust. I didn’t know what I was doing, it was madness when I made Duncan my nominee. I want it back now, and I want you to get it for me.”

Nicholas smiled, a bitter wintry smile. “You’re hiring yourself a gunman, just the way they do in the Western serials. Duncan and I alone on the deserted street, spurs clinking.” The smile turned to a chuckle, but he was thinking hard, watching her – was she lying? It was almost impossible to tell, she was so mysterious and unfathomable. Then he saw tears well in the depths of those huge eyes, and he stopped laughing. Were the tears genuine, or all part of the intrigue?

“You said you had two reasons.” And now his voice was gentler. She did not answer immediately, but he could see her agitation, the rapid rise and fall of those lovely breasts under the silk, then she caught her breath with a little hiss of decision and she spoke so softly that he barely caught the words.

“I want you back. That’s the other reason, Nicholas.” And he stared at her while she went on. “It was all part of the madness. I didn’t realize what I was doing. But the madness is over now. Sweet merciful god, you’ll never know how much I’ve missed you. You’ll never know how I’ve suffered.” She stopped and fluttered one small hand. “I’ll make it up to you, Nicholas, I swear it to you. But Peter and I need you, we both need you desperately.”

He could not answer for a moment, she had taken him if by surprise and he felt his whole life shaken again and the separate parts of it tumbled like dice from the cup of chance.

“There is no road back, Chantelle. We can only go forward.”

“I always get what I want, Nicholas, you know that,” she warned him.

“Not this time, Chantelle.” He shook his head, but he knew her words would wear away at him.

Chapter 22

Duncan Alexander slumped on the luxurious calf-hide seat of the Rolls, and he spoke into the telephone extension that connected him directly with his office in Leadenhall Street. “Were you able to reach Kurt Streicher?” he asked.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Alexander. His office was unable to contact him. He is in Africa on a hunting safari. They did not know when to expect him back in Geneva.”

“Thank you, Myrtle.” Duncan’s smile was completely lacking in humour. Streicher was suddenly one of the world’s most industrious sportsmen – last week he had been skiing and was out of contact, this week he was in Africa slaughtering elephant, perhaps next week he would be chasing polar bears in the Arctic. And by then, it would be too late, of course.

Streicher was not alone. Since the salvage award on
Golden Adventurer
, so many of his financial contacts had become elusive, veritable will-o’-the-wisps skipping ahead of him with their cheque books firmly buttoned into their pockets.

“I shall not be back at the office again today,” he told his secretary. “Please have my pending tray sent round to Eaton Square. I will work on it tonight, and do you think you could get in an hour earlier tomorrow morning?”

“Of course, Mr. Alexander.”

He replaced the handset and glanced out of the window. The Rolls was passing Regent’s Park, heading in the direction of St John’s Wood; three times in the last six months he had taken this route, and suddenly Duncan felt that hot scalding lump deep under his ribs, He straightened up in his seat but the pain persisted, and he sighed and opened the rosewood liquor cabinet, spilled a spoonful of the powder into a glass and topped it with soda-water.

He considered the turbid draught with distaste, then drank it at a gulp. It left an after-taste of peppermint on his tongue, but the relief was almost immediate. He felt the acid burn subside, and he belched softly. He did not need a doctor to tell him that it was a duodenal ulcer, probably a whole bunch of them – or was that the correct collective noun, a tribe of ulcers, a convocation? He smiled again, and carefully combed his brazen waves of hair, watching himself in the mirror.

The strain did not show on his face, he was sure of that. The facade was intact, devoid of cracks. He had always had the strength, the courage to ride with his decisions. This had been a hard ride, however, the hardest of his life.

He closed his eyes briefly, and saw
Golden Dawn
standing on her ways. Like a mountain. The vision gave him strength, he felt it rising deep within him, welling up to fill his soul.

They thought of him only as a money-man, a paper man. There was no salt in his blood nor steel in his guts – that was what they said of him in the City. When he had ousted Berg from Christy marine, they had shied off, watching him shrewdly, standing aside and waiting for him to show his guts, forcing him to live upon the fat of Christy Marine, devouring himself like a camel in the desert, running him thin.

The bastards, he thought, but it was without rancour. They had done merely what he would have done, they had played by the hard rules which Duncan knew and respected, and by those same rules, once he had shown his guts to be of steel, they would ply him with largesse. This was the testing time. It was so close now, two months still to live through – yet those sixty days seemed as daunting as the hard year through which he had lived already.

The stranding of
Golden Adventurer
had been a disaster. Her hull value had formed part of the collateral on which he had borrowed; the cash she generated with her luxury cruises was budgeted carefully to carry him through the dangerous times before
Golden Dawn
was launched. Now all that had altered drastically. The flow of cash had been switched off, and he had to find six million in real hard money – and find it before the 10th of the month. Today was the 6th, and time was running through his fingers like quicksilver.

If only he had been able to stall Berg. He felt a corrosive welling up of hatred again; if only he had been able to stall him. The bogus offer of partnership might have held him just long enough, but Berg had brushed it aside contemptuously. Duncan had been forced to scurry about in undignified haste, trying to pull together the money.

Kurt Streicher was not the only one suddenly unavailable, it was strange how they could smell it on a man, he had the same gift of detecting vulnerability or weakness in others so he understood how it worked. It was almost as though the silver blotches showed on his hands and face and he walked the city pavements chanting the old leper’s cry, Unclean, Beware, Unclean. With so much at stake, it was a piddling amount, six million for two months, the insignificance of it was an insult, and he felt the tension in his belly muscles again and the rising hot acid sting of his digestive juices. He forced himself to relax, glancing again from the window to find that the Rolls was turning into the cul-de-sac of yellow-face brick apartments piled upon each other like hen-coops, angular and unimaginatively lower middle class.

He squared his shoulders and watched himself in the mirror, practising the smile. It was only six million, and for only two months, he reminded himself, as the Rolls slid to a halt before one of the anonymous buildings. Duncan nodded to his chauffeur as he held the door open and handed duncan the pigskin briefcase. “Thank you, Edward. I should not be very long.”

Duncan took the case and he crossed the pavement with the long, confident stride of an athlete, his shoulders thrown back, wearing his top coat like an opera cloak, the sleeves empty and the tails swirling about his legs, and even in the grey overcast of a March afternoon, his head shone like a beacon fire.

The man who opened the door to him seemed only half Duncan’s height, despite the tall black Homburg hat that he wore squarely over his ears.

“Mr. Alexander, shalom, shalom.” His beard was so dense and bushy black that it covered the starched white collar and white tie, regulation dress of the strict Hasidic Jew.

“Even though you come to me last, you still bring honour on my house,” and his eyes twinkled, a mischievous sparkling black under thick brows.

“That is because you have a heart of stone and blood like iced water,” said Duncan, and the man laughed delightedly, as though he had been paid the highest compliment.

“Come,” he said, taking Duncan’s arm. “Come in, let us drink a little tea together and let us talk.” He led Duncan down the narrow corridor, and halfway they collided with two boys wearing yamulka on their curly heads coming at speed in the opposite direction.

“Ruffians,” cried the man, stooping to embrace them briefly and then send them on their way with a fond slap on their backsides. Still beaming and shaking the ringlets that dangled out from under the black Homburg, he ushered Duncan into a small crowded bedroom that had been converted to an office. A tall old-fashioned pigeon-holed desk filled one wall and against the other stood an overstuffed horse-hair sofa on which were piled ledgers and box files.

The man swept the books aside, making room for Duncan. “Be seated,” he ordered, and stood aside while a jolly little woman his size brought in the teatray.

“I saw the award court’s arbitration on
Golden Adventurer
in Lloyd’s list,” the Jew said when they were alone.

“Nicholas Berg is an amazing man, a hard act to follow – I think that is the expression.” He pondered, watching the sudden bloom of anger on Duncan’s cheeks and the murderous expression in the pale eyes.

Duncan controlled his anger with an effort, but each time that somebody spoke that way of Nicholas Berg, he found it more difficult. There was always the comparison, the snide remarks, and Duncan wanted to stand up and leave this cluttered little room and the veiled taunts, but he knew he could not afford to, nor could he speak just yet for his anger was very close to the surface. They sat in silence for what seemed a long time.

“How much?” The man broke the silence at last, and Duncan could not bring himself to name the figure for it was too closely related to the subject that had just infuriated him.