Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers Read online

  Carefully he filled his lungs, and his nostrils flared as he smelt the ice. It was that un mistakeable dank smell he remembered so well from the northern Arctic seas. It was like the body smell of some gigantic reptilian sea monster and it struck the mariner's chill into his soul.

  He could endure only a few seconds more of the gale, but when he stepped back into the cosy green-lit warmth of the bridge, his mind was clear, and he was thinking crisply.

  ‘ Mr. Allen, there is ice ahead. ’

  ‘ I have a watch on the radar, sir. ’

  ‘ Very good ,’ Nick nodded, ‘ but we'll reduce to fifty per cent of power. He hesitated, and then went on, ‘ and maintain radio silence. ’ The decision was hard made, and Nick saw the accusation in David Allen's eyes before he turned away to give the orders for the reduction in power. Nick felt a sudden and uncharacteristic urge to explain the decision to him. He did not know why - perhaps he needed the Mate's understanding and sympathy. Instantly Nick saw that as a symptom of his weakness and vulnerability. He had never needed sympathy before, and he steeled himself against it now.

  His decision to maintain radio silence was correct. He was dealing with two hard men. He knew he could not afford to give an inch of sea room to Jules Levoisin. He would force him to open radio contact first. He needed that advantage.

  The other man with whom he had to deal was Duncan Alexander, and he was a hating man, dangerous and vindictive. He had tried once to destroy Nick - and perhaps he had already succeeded. Nick had to guard himself now, he must pick with care his moment to open negotiations with Christy Marine and the man who had displaced him at its head. Nick must be in a position of utmost strength when he did so.

  Jules Levoisin must be forced to declare himself first, Nick decided. The Captain of the Golden Adventurer would have to be left in the agonies of doubt a little longer, and Nick consoled himself with the thought that any further drastic change in the liner's circumstances or a decision by the Master to abandon his ship and commit his company to the lifeboats would be announced on the open radio channels and would give him a chance to intervene.

  Nick was about to caution the Trog to keep a particular watch on Channel 16 for La Mouette's first transmission, then he checked himself. That was another thing he never did - issue unnecessary orders. The Trog's grey wrinkled head was wreathed in clouds of reeking cigar smoke but was bowed to his mass of electronic equipment, and he adjusted a dial with careful lover's fingers; his little eyes were bright and sleepless as those of an ancient sea turtle.

  Nick went to his chair and settled down to wait out the few remaining hours of the short Antarctic summer night.

  The radar screen had shown strange and alien capes and headlands above the sea clutter of the storm, strange islands, anomalies which did not relate to the Admiralty charts. Between these alien masses shone myriad other smaller contacts, bright as fireflies, any one of which could have been the echo of a stricken ocean liner - but which was not.

  As Warlock nosed cautiously down into this enchanted sea, the dawn that had never been far from the horizon flushed out, timorous as a bride, decked in colours of gold and pink that struck splendorous splinters of light off the icebergs.

  The horizon ahead of them was cluttered with ice, some of the fragments were but the size of a billiard table and they bumped and scraped down the Warlock's side, then swung and bobbed in her wake as she passed. There were others the size of a city block, weird and fanciful structures of honeycombed white ice, that stood as tall as Warlock's upperworks as she passed.

  ‘ White ice is soft ice ,’ Nick murmured to David Allen beside him, and then caught himself. it was an unnecessary speech, inviting familiarity, and before the Mate could answer, Nick turned quickly away to the radar-repeater and lowered his face to the eye-piece in the coned hood.

  For a minute he studied the images of the surrounding ice in the darkened body of the instrument, then went back to his seat and stared ahead impatiently.

  Warlock was running too fast, Nick knew it; he was relying on the vigilance of his deck officers to carry her through the ice. Yet still this speed was too slow for his seething impatience.

  Above their horizon rose another shoreline, a great unbroken sweep of towering cliff which caught the low sun, and glowed in emerald and amethyst, a drifting tableland of solid hard ice, forty miles across and two hundred feet high.

  As they closed with that massive translucent island, so the colours that glowed through it became more hauntingly beautiful. The cliffs were rent by deep bays, and split by crevasses whose shadowy depths were dark sapphire, blue and mysterious, paling out to a thousand shades of green.

  ‘ My God, it's beautiful, ’ said David Allen with the reverence of a men kneeling in a cathedral.

  The crests of the ice cliffs blazed in clearest ruby; to windward, the big sea piled in and crashed against those cliffs, surging up them in explosive bursts of white spray. Yet the iceberg did not dip nor swing or work, even in that murderous sea.

  ‘ Look at the lee she is making ,’ Dave Allen pointed. ‘ You could ride out a force twelve behind her. ’

  On the leeward side, the waters were protected from the wind by that mountain of sheer ice. Green and docile, they lapped those mysterious blue cliffs, and Warlock went into the lee, passing in a ship's length from the plunging rearing action of a wild horse into the tranquillity of a mountain lake, calm, windless and unnatural.

  I n the calm, Angel brought trays piled with crisp brown baked Cornish pasties and steaming mugs of thick creamy cocoa, and they ate breakfast at three in the morning, marvelling at the fine pale sunlight and the towers of incredible beauty, the younger officers shouting and laughing when a school of five black killer whales passed so close that they could see their white cheek patterns and wide grinning mouths through the icy clear waters.

  The great mammals circled the ship, then ducked beneath her hull, surging up on the far side with their huge black triangular fins shearing the surface as they blew through the vents in the top of their heads. The fishy stink of their breath pervaded the bridge, and then they were gone, and Warlock motored calmly along in the lee of the ice, like a holiday launch of day-trippers.

  Nicholas Berg did not join the spontaneous gaiety. He munched one of Angel's delicious pies full of meat and thick gravy, but he could not finish it. His stomach was too tense. He found himself resenting the high spirits of his officers. The laughter offended him, now when his whole life hung in precarious balance. He felt the temptation to quell them with a few harsh words, conscious of the power he had to plunge them into instant consternation.

  Nick listened to their carefree banter and felt old enough to be their father, despite the few years difference in their ages. He was impatient with them, irritated that they should be able to laugh like this when so much was at stake - six hundred human lives, a great ship, tens of millions of dollars, his whole future. They would probably never themselves know what it felt like to put a lifetime's work at risk on a single flip of the coin - and then suddenly, unaccountably, he envied them.

  He could not understand the sensation, could not fathom why suddenly he longed to laugh with them, to share the companionship of the moment, to be free of pressure for just a little while. For fifteen years, he had not known that sort of hiatus, had never wanted it.

  He stood up abruptly, and immediately the bridge was silent. Every officer concentrating on his appointed task, not one of them glancing at him as he paced once, slowly, across the wide bridge. It did not need a word to change the mood, and suddenly Nick felt guilty. it was too easy, too cheap.

  Carefully Nick steeled himself, shutting out the weakness, building up his resolve and determination, bringing all his concentration to bear on the Herculean task ahead of him, and he paused at the door of the radio room. The Trog looked up from his machines, and they exchanged a single glance of understanding. Two completely dedicated men, with no time for frivolity.

  Nick nodded and paced
on, the strong handsome face stern and uncompromising his step firm and measured but when he stopped again by the side windows of the bridge and looked up at the magnificent cliff of ice, he felt the doubts surging up again within him.

  How much had he sacrificed for what he had gained, how much joy and laughter had he spurned to follow the high road of challenge, how much beauty had he passed along the way without seeing it in his haste, how much love and warmth and companionship? He thought with a fierce pang of the wom a n who had been his wife, and who had gone now with the child who was his son. Why had they gone, and what had they left him with - after all his strivings?

  Behind him, the radio crackled and hummed as the carrier beam opened Channel 16, then it pitched higher as a human voice came through in clear.

  ‘ Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. This is the Golden Adventurer! ’

  Nick spun and ran to the radio room as the calm masculine voice read out the coordinates of the ship's position.

  ‘ We are in imminent danger of striking. We are preparing to abandon ship. Can any vessel render assistance? Repeat, can any vessel render assistance? ’

  ‘ Good God ,’ David Allen's voice was harsh with anxiety, ’ the current's got them, they're going down on Cape Alarm at nine knots - she's only fifty miles offshore and we are still two hundred and twenty miles from that position.

  ‘ Where is La Mouette? ’ growled Nick Berg. ‘ Where the hell is she?

  ‘ We'll have to open contact now, sir ,’ David Allen looked up from the chart. ‘ You cannot let them go down into the boats - not in this weather, sir. It would be murder. ’

  ‘ Thank you, Number One ,’ said Nick quietly. ‘Your advice is always welcome.’ David flushed, but there was anger and not embarrassment beneath the colour. Even in the stress of the moment, Nick noted that, and adjusted his opinion of his First Officer. He had guts as well as brains.

  The Mate was right, of course. There was only one thing to consider now, the conservation of human life.

  Nick looked up at the top of the ice cliff and saw the low cloud tearing off it, rolling and swirling in the wind, pouring down over the edge like boiling milk frothing from the lip of a great pot.

  He had to send now. La Mouette had won the contest of silence. Nick stared up at the cloud and composed the message he would send. He must reassure the Master, urge him to delay his decision to abandon ship and give Warlock the time to close the gap, perhaps even reach her before she struck on Cape Alarm.

  The silence on the bridge was deepened by the absence of wind. They were all watching him now, waiting for the decision, and in that silence the carrier beam of Channel 16 hummed and throbbed.

  Then suddenly a rich Gallic accent poured into the silent bridge, a full fruity voice that Nick remembered so clearly, even after all the years.

  ‘ Master of Golden Adventurer this is the Master of salvage tug La Mouette. I am proceeding at best speed your assistance. Do you accept Lloyd's Open Form "No cure no pay ”?’

  Nick kept his face from showing any emotion, but his heart barged wildly against his ribs. Jules Levoisin had broken silence.

  ‘ Plot his position report ,’ he said quietly.

  ‘ God! She's inside us ,’ David Allen's face was stricken as he marked La Mouette's reported position on the chart. ‘ She's a hundred miles ahead of us. ’

  ‘ No ,’ Nick shook his head, ‘ He's lying. ’

  ‘ Sir? ’

  ‘ He's lying. He always lies. ’ Nick lit a cheroot and when it was drawing evenly, h e spoke again to his radio officer.

  ‘ Did you get a bearing? ’ and the Trog looked up from his radio direction-finding compass on which he was tracing La Mouette's transmissions.

  ‘ I have only one coordinate, you won't get a fix –‘

  But Nick interrupted him, ‘ We'll use his best course from Golfo San Jorge for a fix. ’ He turned back to David Allen. ‘ Plot that. ’

  ‘ There's a difference of over three hundred nautical miles. ’

  ‘ Yes .’ Nick nodded . ‘ That old pirate wouldn't broadcast an accurate position to all the world. We are inside him and running five knots better, we'll put a line over Golden Adventurer before he's in radar contact. ’

  ‘ Are you going to open contact with Christy Marine now, sir? ’

  ‘ No, Mr. Allen. ’

  ‘ But they will do a deal with La Mouette - unless we bid now. ’

  ‘ I don't think so ,’ Nick murmured, and almost went on to say, ‘ Duncan Alexander won't settle for Lloyd's Open Form while he is the underwriter, and his ship is free and floating. He'll fight for daily hire and bonus, and Jules Levoisin won't buy that package. He'll hold out for the big plum. They won't do a deal until the two ships are in visual contact - and by that time I'll have her in tow and I'll fight the bastard in the awards court for twenty-five per cent of her value -‘ But he did not say it. ‘ Steady as she goes, Mr. Allen ,’ was all he said, as he left the bridge.

  He closed the door of his day cabin and leaned back against it, shutting his eyes tightly as he gathered himself.

  It had been so very close, a matter of seconds and he would have declared himself and given the advantage to La Mouette.

  Through the door behind him, he heard David Allen s voice. ‘ Did you see him? He didn't feel a thing - not a bloody thing. He was going to let those poor bastards go into the boats. He must piss ice-water. ’ The voice was muffled, but the outrage in it was tempered by awe.

  Nick kept his eyes shut a moment longer, then he straightened up and pushed himself away from the door. He wanted it to begin now. It was in the waiting and the uncertainty which was eroding what was left of his strength.

  ‘ Please God, let me reach them in time. ’ And he was not certain whether it was for the lives or for the salvage award that he was praying.

  Captain Basil Reilly, the Master of the Golden Adventurer, was a tall man, with a lean and wiry frame that promised reserves of strength and endurance. His face was very darkly tanned and splotched with the dark patches of benign sun cancer. His heavy m o ustache was silvered like the pelt of a snow fox, and though his eyes were set in webs of finely wrinkled and pouchy skin, they were bright and calm and intelligent.

  He stood on the windward wing of his navigation bridge and watched the huge black seas tumbling in to batter his helpless ship. He was taking them broadside now, and each time they struck, the hull shuddered and heeled with a sick dead motion, giving reluctantly to the swells that rose up and broke over her rails, sweeping her decks from side to side, and then cascading off her again in a tumble of white that smoked in the wind.

  He adjusted the life-jacket he wore, settling the rough canvas more comfortably around his shoulders as he reviewed his position once more.

  Golden Adventurer had taken the ice in that eight-to-midnight watch traditionally allotted to the most junior of the navigating officers. The impact had hardly been noticeable, yet it had awoken the Master from deep sleep - just a slight check and jar that had touched some deep chord in the mariner's instinct.

  The ice had been a growler, one of the most deadly of all hazards. The big bergs standing high and solid to catch the radar beams, or the eye of even the most inattentive deck watch, were easily avoided. However, the low ice lying awash, with its great bulk and weight almost completely hidden by the dark and turbulent waters, was as deadly as a predator in ambush.

  The growler showed itself only in the depths of each wave trough, or in the swirl of the current around it, as though a massive sea-monster lurked there. At night, these indications would pass unnoticed by even the sharpest eyes, and below the surface, the wave action eroded the body of the growler, turning it into a horizontal blade that lay ten feet or more below the water level and reached out two or three hundred feet from the visible surface indications.

  With the Third Officer on watch, and steaming at cautionary speed of a mere twelve knots, the Golden Adventurer had brushed against one of these monsters, and although the act
ual impact had gone almost unnoticed on board, the ice had opened her like the knife stroke which splits a herring for the smoking rack.

  It was classic Titanic damage, a fourteen-foot rent through her side, twelve feet below the Pli m soll line, shearing two of her watertight compartments, one of which was her main engine room section.

  They had held the water easily until the electrical explosion, and since then, the Master had battled to keep her afloat. Slowly, step by step, fighting all the way, he had yielded to the sea. All the bilge pumps were running still, but the water was steadily gaining.

  Three days ago he had brought all his passengers up from below the main deck, and he had battened down all the watertight bulkheads. The crew and passengers were accommodated now in the lounges and smoking rooms.

  The ship's luxury and opulence had been transformed into the crowded, unhygienic and deteriorating conditions of a city under siege.

  It reminded him of the catacombs of the London underground converted to air-raid shelters during the blitz. He had been a lieutenant on shore-leave and he had passed one night there that he would remember for the rest of his life.

  There was the same atmosphere on board now. The sanitary arrangements were inadequate. Fourteen toilet bowls for six hundred, many of them seasick and suffering from diarrhoea. There were no baths nor showers, and insufficient power for the heating of water in the hand basins. The emergency generators delivered barely sufficient power to work the ship, to run the pumps, to supply minimal lighting, and to keep the communicational and navigational equipment running. There was no heating in the ship and the outside air temperature had fallen to minus twenty degrees now.

  The cold in the spacious public lounges was brutal. The passengers huddled in their fur coats and bulky life-jackets under mounds of blankets. There were limited cooking facilities on the gas stoves usually reserved for adventure tours ashore. There was no baking or grilling, and most of the food was eaten cold and congealed from cans; only the soup and beverages steamed in the cold clammy air, like the breaths of the waiting and helpless multitude.