Hungry as the Sea (47 page)

“There is always a way and a means.”

“Yes, and the way is to fill
Golden Dawn’s
pod tanks with crude.”

“He’s frightened you by–”

“Yes,” she agreed, “I am frightened. I have never been so frightened in my life, Nicky. I could lose everything – I am terrified. I could lose it all.” She shivered with the horror of it. “I would kill myself if that happened.”

“I am still going to stop Duncan.”

“No, Nicky. Please leave it, for my sake – for Peter’s sake, it’s Peter’s inheritance that we are talking about. Let
Golden Dawn
make one voyage, just one voyage and I will be safe.

“It’s the risk to an ocean, to God alone knows how many human lives, we are talking about.”

“Don’t shout, Nicky. People are looking.”

“Let them look. I’m going to stop that monster.”

“No, Nicholas. Without me, you cannot do a thing.”

“You best believe it. Darling.”

“I promise you, after her first voyage we will sell
Golden Dawn
. We’ll be safe then, and I can rid myself of Duncan. It will be you and I again, Nicky. A few short weeks, that’s all.”

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 –” Now 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.

Chapter 37

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 tricolor 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 Marseillaisel, the heroic strains watered down by wind and distance, while
Golden Dawn
gathered momentum.

It 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 throwing 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.”

Chapter 38

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 anchorman 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. it 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.

There had been enough fuss to excite the interest of
The Today and Tomorrow Show.
They had invited the parties and both Christy Marine and Orient to meet their accuser.

Amex had fielded their first teams. Duncan Alexander with all his charisma had come to speak for Christy Marine, and Orient Amex had selected one of their directors who looked like Gary Cooper. With his craggy honest face and the silver hairs at his temple he looked like the kind of man you wanted flying your airliner or looking after your money.

The make-up girl dusted Nicholas face with powder.

“I’m going to invite you to speak first. Tell us about this stuff – what is it, cadmium?” the interviewer checked his script.

Nicholas nodded, he could not speak for he was suffering the ultimate indignity. The girl was painting his lips.

The television studio was the size of an aircraft hangar, the concrete floor strewn with thick black cables and the roof lost in the gloomy heights, but they had created the illusion of intimacy in the small shell of the stage around which the big mobile cameras cluttered like mechanical crabs around the carcass of a dead fish. The egg-shaped chairs made it impossible either to loll or to sit upright, and the merciless white glare of the arc lamps fried the thick layer of greasy make-up on Nicholas’ skin. It was small consolation that across the table Duncan looked like a Japanese Kabuki dancer in make-up too white for his coppery hair.

An assistant director in a sweatshirt and jeans clipped the small microphone into Nicholas’ lapel and whispered, “Give them hell, ducky.”

Somebody else in the darkness beyond the lights was intoning solemnly, “Four, three, two, one – you’re on!” and the red light lit on the middle camera.

“Welcome to
The Today and Tomorrow Show
,” the anchor-man’s voice was suddenly warm and intimate and mellifluous. “Last week in the French ship-building port of St Nazaire, the largest ship in the world was launched.” In a dozen sentences he sketched out the facts, while on the repeating screens beyond the cameras Nicholas saw that they were running newsreel footage of
Golden Dawn’s
launching. He remembered the helicopter hovering over the dockyard, and he was so fascinated by the aerial views of the enormous vessel taking to the water that when the cameras switched suddenly to him, he was taken by surprise and saw himself start on the little screen as the interviewer began introducing him, swiftly running a thumbnail portrait and then going on: “Mr. Berg has some very definite views on this ship.”