Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers Read online

He jumped feet first, throwing himself far out to miss the rail below him, and as the water closed over his head he experienced a terrified sense of disbelief at the cold.

  It seized his chest in a vice that choked the air from his lungs, it drove needles of agony deep into his forehead, and blinded him with the pain as he rose to the surface The cold rushed through his light clothing, it crushed his testicles and his stomach was filled with nausea. The marrow in the bones of his legs and arms ached so that he found it difficult to force his limbs to respond, but he struck out for the floating figure.

  It was only forty feet, but halfway there he was seized by a panic that he was not going to make it. He clenched his teeth and fought the icy water as though it was a mortal enemy, but it sapped away his strength with the heat of his body.

  He struck the floating figure with one outflung arm before he realized he had reached him, and he clung desperately to him, peering up at Warlock's deck.

  David Allen had retrieved the ring by its line and he threw it again. The cold had slowed Nick down so that he could not avoid the ring and it struck him on the forehead, but he felt no pain, there was no feeling in his face or feet or hands.

  The fleeting seconds counted out the life left to them as he struggled with the inert figure, slowly losing command of his own limbs as he tried to fit the ring over the boy's body. He did not accomplish it. He got the boy's head and one arm through, and he knew he could do no more.

  ‘Pull,’ he screamed in rising panic, and his voice was remote and echoed strangely in his own ears.

  He took a twist of line around his arm, for his fingers could no longer hold, and he clung with the remains of his strength as they dragged them in.

  jagged ice brushed and snatched at them, but he held the boy with his free arm.

  ‘Pull,’ he whispered. ‘Oh, for God's sake, pull!’ And then they were bumping against Warlock's steel side, were being lifted free of the water, the twist of line smearing the wet skin from his forearm, staining his sleeve with blood that was instantly dissolved to pink by sea water. He felt no pain.

  With the other arm, he hung on to the boy, holding him from slipping out of the life-ring. He did not feel the hands that grabbed at him. There was no feeling in his legs and he collapsed face forward, but David caught him before he struck the deck and they hustled him into the steaming warmth of Angel's galley, his legs dragging behind him.

  ‘Are you okay, Skipper?’ David kept demanding, and when Nick tried to reply, his jaw was locked in a frozen rictus and great shuddering spasms shook his whole body.

  ‘Get their clothes off,’ grated Angel, and, with an easy swing of his heavily muscled shoulders lifted the boy's body on to the galley table and laid it out face upwards. With a single sweep of a Solingen steel butcher's knife he split the crimson anorak from neck to crutch and stripped it away.

  Nick found his voice, it was ragged and broken by the convulsions of frozen muscles.

  ‘What the hell are you doing, David? Get your arse on deck and get this ship on course for Golden Adventurer,’ he grated, and would have added something a little more forceful, but the next convulsion caught him, and anyway David Allen had already left.

  ‘You'll be all right.’ Angel did not even glance up at Nick as he worked with the knife, ripping away layer after layer of the boy's clothing. A tough old dog like you - but I think we've got a ripe case of hypothermia here. Two of the seamen were helping Nick out of his sodden clothing, the cloth crackled with the thin film of ice that had already formed. Nick winced with the pain of returning circulation to half-frozen hands and feet.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, standing naked in the middle of the galley and scrubbing at himself with a rough towel. ‘I'll be all right now, return to your stations.’ He crossed to the kitchen range, tottering like a drunk, and welcomed the blast of heat from it, rubbing warmth into himself, still shaking and shuddering, his body mottled puce and purple with cold and his genitals shrunken and drawn up into the dense black bush at his crotch.

  ‘Coffee's boiling. Get yourself a hot drink, Skip,’ Angel told him, glancing up at Nick from his work. He ran a quick appreciative glance over Nick's body, taking in the wide rangy shoulders, the dark curls of damp hair that covered his chest, and the trim lines of hard muscle that moulded his belly and waist.

  ‘Put lots of sugar in it - it will warm you the best possible way,’ Angel instructed him, and returned his attention to the slim young body on the table.

  Angel had put aside his camp airs, and worked with the brusque efficiency of a man who had been trained at his task.

  Then suddenly he stopped and stood back for a moment.

  ‘Would you believe! No fun gun!’ Angel sighed.

  Nick turned just as Angel spread a thick woollen blanket over the pale naked body on the table and began to massage it vigorously.

  ‘You better leave us girls alone together, Skipper,’ said Angel with a sweet smile and a twinkle of his diamond earrings, and Nick was left with the memory of a single fleeting glimpse of the stunningly lovely body of a young woman below the pale face and the thick sodden head of copper and gold hair.

  Nick Berg was swaddled in a grey woollen blanket, over the boiler suit and bulk jerseys. His feet were in thick Norwegian trawlerman's socks and heavy rubber working boots. He held a china mug of almost boiling coffee in both hands, bending over it to savour the aroma of the steam. It was the third cup he had drunk in the last hour - and yet the shivering spasms still shook him every few minutes.

  David Allen had moved his canvas chair across the bridge so he could watch the Trog and work the ship at the same time. Nick could see the loom of the black rock cliffs of Cape Alarm close on their port beam.

  The morse beam squealed suddenly, a long sequence of code to which every man on the bridge listened with complete attention, but it needed the Trog to say it for them.

  ‘La Mouette has reached the prize.’ He seemed to take a perverse relish in seeing their expressions. ‘She's beaten us to it, lads. 12 ½ % salvage to her crew–‘

  ‘I want it word for word,’ snapped Nick irritably, and the Trog grinned spitefully at him before bowing over his pad.

  ‘La Mouette to Christy Marine. Golden Adventurer is hard aground, held by ice and receding tides. Stop. Ice damage to plating appears to be below surface. Stop. Hull is flooded and open to sea. Stop. Under no circumstances will Lloyd's Open Form be acceptable. Emphasize importance of beginning salvage work immediately. Stop. Worsening weather and sea conditions. My final hire offer of $8000 per diem plus 2½ % of salvaged value open until 1435 GMT. Standing by.’

  Nick lit one of his cheroots and irrelevantly decided he must conserve them in future. He had opened his last box that morning. He frowned through the blue smoke and pulled the blanket closer around his shoulders.

  Jules Levoisin was playing it tough and hard now. He was dictating terms and setting ultimatums. Nick's own policy of silence was paying off . Probably by now, Jules felt completely safe that he was the only salvage tug within two thousand miles, and he was holding a big-calibre gun to Christy Marine's head.

  Jules had seen the situation of the Golden Adventurer's hull. If he had been certain of effecting salvage - no, even if there had been a fifty-fifty chance of a good salvage, Jules would have gone Open Form.

  So Jules was not happy with his chances, and he had the shrewdest and most appraising eye in the salvage business. It was a tough one then. Golden Adventurer was probably held fast by the quicksand effect of beach and ice, and La Mouette could build up a mere nine thousand horse-power. It would mean throwing out ground-tackle, putting power on Adventurer's pumps - the problems and solutions passed in review through Nick's mind. It was going to be a tough one, but Warlock had twenty-two thousand rated horse-power and a dozen other high cards.

  He glanced at his gold Rolex Oyster, and he saw that Jules had set a two-hour ultimatum.

  ‘Radio Officer,’ he said quietly, and every man on the bridge stiffened
and swayed closer, so as not to miss a word.

  ‘Open the telex line direct to Christy Marine, London, and send quote "Personal for Duncan Alexander from Nicholas Berg Master of Warlock. Stop. I will be alongside Golden Adventurer in one hour forty minutes. Stop. I make firm offer Lloyd's Open Form Contract Salvage. Stop. Offer closes 1300 GMT".

  The Trog looked up at him startled, and blinked his pink eyes swiftly.

  ‘Read it back,’ snapped Nick, and the Trog did it in a high penetrating voice and when he finished, waited quizzically, as if expecting Nick to cancel.

  ‘Send it,’ said Nick, and rose to his feet. ‘Mr. Allen,’ he turned to David, ‘I want you and the Chief Engineer in my day cabin right away.’

  The buzz of excitement and speculation began before Nick had closed the door behind him.

  David knocked and followed him three minutes later, and Nick looked up from the notes he was making.

  ‘What are they saying?’ Nick asked. ‘That I am crazy?’

  ‘They're just kids,’ shrugged David. ‘What do they know?’

  ‘They know plenty, and they're right. I am crazy to go Open Form on a site unseen! But it's the craziness of a man with no other option. Sit down, David.’

  ‘When I made the decision to leave Cape Town on the chance of this job - that was when I did the crazy thing.’ Nick could no longer keep the steely silence. He had to say it, to talk it out. ‘I was throwing dice for my whole bundle. When I turned down the Esso tow, that was when I went on the line for the whole company, Warlock and her sister the whole thing depended on the cash from the Esso tow.’

  ‘I see,’ muttered David, and his colour was pink and high, embarrassed by this confidence from Nick Berg.

  ‘What I am doing now is risking nothing. If I lose now, if I fail to pull Golden Adventurer out of there, I have lost nothing that is not already forfeit.’

  ‘We could have offered daily hire at a better rate than La Mouette,’ David suggested.

  ‘No. Duncan Alexander is my enemy. The only way I can get the contract is to make it so attractive, that he has no alternative. If he refuses my offer of Open Form, I will take him up before Lloyd's Committee and his own shareholders. I will make a rope of his own guts and hoist it around his neck. He has to go with me - whereas, if I had offered daily hire at a few thousand dollars less than La Mouette-‘ Nick broke off, reached for the box of cheroots on the corner of his desk, then arrested the gesture and swivelled in his chair at the heavy knock on the cabin door.

  ‘Come!’

  Vin Baker's overalls were pristine blue, but the bandage around his head was smeared with engine grease, and he had recovered all the bounce and swagger that Nick had banged out of him against the engine-room windows.

  ‘Jesus!’ he said. ‘I hear you just flipped. I hear you blew your mind and jumped overboard - and when they fished you out, you up and went Open Form on a bomber that's beating herself to death on Cape Alarm.’

  ‘I'd explain it to you,’ offered Nick solemnly, ‘only I don't know enough words of one syllable.’ The Chief Engineer grinned wickedly at that and Nick went on quickly, ‘Just believe me when I tell you that I'm playing with someone else's chips. I'm not risking anything I haven't lost already.’

  ‘That's good business,’ the Australian agreed handsomely, and helped himself to one of Nick's precious cheroots.

  ‘Your share of 12 ½ % of daily hire is peanuts and apple jelly,’ Nick went on.

  ‘Too right,’ Vin Baker agreed, and hoisted at his waistline with his elbows.

  ‘But if we snatch Golden Adventurer and if we can plug her and pump her out, and if we can keep her afloat for three thousand miles, there will be a couple of big “M’s” - and that's beef and potatoes.’

  ‘You know something,’ Vin Baker grunted.’ For a Pommy, I'm beginning to like the sound of your voice.’ He said it reluctantly and shook his head, as if he didn't really believe it.

  ‘All I want from you now,’ Nick told him, ‘are your plans for getting power on to Golden Adventurer's pumps and anchor-winch. If she's up on the beach, we will have to kedge her off and we won't have much time.’

  Kedging off was the technique of using a ship's own anchor and power winch to assist the pull of the tug dragging her off a stranding.

  Vin Baker waved the cheroot airily. ‘Don't worry about that, I'm here.’ And at that moment the Trog put his head through the doorway again, this time without knocking.

  ‘I have an urgent and personal for you, Skipper.’ He brandished the telex flimsy like a royal flush in spades.

  Nick glanced through it once, then read it aloud:

  ‘Master of Warlock from Christy Marine. Your offer Lloyd's Open Form "No cure no pay" accepted. Stop. You are hereby appointed main salvage contractor for wreck of Golden Adventurer. ENDS.’

  Nick grinned with that rare wide irresistible flash of very white teeth. ‘And so, gentlemen, it looks as though we are still in business - but the devil knows for just how much longer.’

  Warlock rounded the headland, where the three black pillars of serpentine rock stood into a lazy green sea, across which low oily swells marched in orderly ranks to push in gently against the black cliffs.

  They came round to the sudden vista of the wide, ice-choked bay. The abandoned hulk of Golden Adventurer was so majestic, so tall and beautiful that not even the savage mountains could belittle her. She looked like an illustration from a child's book of fairy tales, a lovely ice ship, glistening and glittering in the yellow sunlight.

  ‘She's a beauty,’ whispered the Chief Engineer, and his voice captured the sorrow they all felt for a great ship in mortal distress. To every single man on the bridge of Warlock, a ship was a living thing for which at best they could feel love and admiration; even the dirtiest old tramp roused a grudging affection. But Golden Adventurer was like a lovely woman. She was something rare and special, and all of them felt it.

  For Nick Berg, the bond was much more deeply felt. She was child of his inspiration, he had watched her lines take shape on the naval architect's drawing-board, he had seen her keel laid and her bare skeleton fleshed out with lovingly worked steel, and he had watched the woman who had once been his wife speak the blessing and then smash the bottle against her bows, laughing in the sunlight while the wine spurted and frothed.

  She was his ship, and now, as he would never have believed possible, his destiny depended upon her.

  He looked away from her at last to where La Mouette waited in the mouth of the bay at the edge of the ice. In contrast to the liner, she was small and squat and ugly, like a wrestler with all the weight in his shoulders. Greasy black smoke rose straight into the pale sky from her single stack, and her hull seemed to be painted the same greasy black.

  Through his glasses, Nick saw the sudden bustle of activity on her bridge as Warlock burst into view. The headland would have blanketed La Mouette's radar and, with Nicks strict radio silence this would be the first time Jules Levoisin knew of Warlock's presence. Nick could imagine the consternation on her navigation bridge, and he noted wryly that Jules Levoisin had not even gone through the motions of putting a line on to Golden Adventurer. He must have been completely sure of himself, of his unopposed presence. In maritime law, a line on to a prize's hull bestowed certain rights, and Jules should have made the gesture.

  ‘Get La Mouette in clear,’ he instructed, and picked up the hand microphone as the Trog nodded to him.

  ‘Salut Jules, ca va? You pot-bellied little pirate, haven't they caught and hung you yet?’ Nick asked kindly in French, and there was a long disbelieving silence on Channel 16 before the fruity Gallic tones boomed from the overhead speaker.

  ‘Admiral James Bond, I think?’ and Jules chuckled, but unconvincingly. ‘Is that a battle-ship or a floating whorehouse? You always were a fancy boy, Nicholas, but what kept you so long? I expected to get a better run for my money.’

  ‘Three things you taught me, mon brave: the first was to take nothing for gran
ted; the second was to keep your big yap shut tight when running for a prize; and the third was to put a line on it when you got there - you've broken your own rules, Jules.’

  ‘The line is nothing. I am arrived.’

  ‘And I old friend, am arrived also. But the difference is that I am Christy Marine's contractor.’

  ‘Tu rigoles! You are joking!’ Jules was shocked. ‘I heard nothing of this!’

  ‘I am not joking!’ Nick told him. ‘My James Bond equipment lets me talk in private. But go ahead, call Christy Marine and ask them - and while you are doing it, move that dirty old greaser of yours out the way. I've got work to do.’ Nick tossed the microphone back to the Trog. ‘Tape everything he sends,’ he instructed, and then to David Allen, ‘We are going to smash up that ice before it grabs too tight a hold on Golden Adventurer. Put your best man on the wheel.’

  Nick was a man transformed, no longer the brooding, moody recluse, agonizing over each decision, uncertain of himself and reacting to each check with frustrated and undirected anger.

  ‘When he starts moving - he really burns it up,’ thought David Allen, as he listened to Nick on the engine-room intercom.

  ‘I want flank power on both, Chief. We are going to break ice. Then I want you in full immersion with helmet, we are going on board her to take a peek at her engine room.’ He swung back to David Allen. ‘Number One, you can stand by to take command.’ The man of action glorying in the end to inactivity, he almost seemed to dance upon his two feet, like a fighter at the first bell. ‘Tell Angel I want a hot meal for us before we go into the cold, plenty of sugar in it.’

  ‘I'll ask the steward,’ said David, ‘Angel is no good at the moment. He's playing dolls with the lass you pulled out the water. God, he'll be dressing her up and wheeling her around in a pram-‘

  ‘You tell Angel, I want food - and good food,’ growled Nick, and turned away to the window to study the ice that blocked the bay, ‘or I'll go down personally and kick his backside.’

  ‘He'd probably enjoy that,’ muttered David, and Nick rounded on him.