with the newcomers picking up at the point they had been an hour
previously.
James Teacher showed no impatience, and he smiled and nodded and went
through the ritual like an Arab born, sipping the little thimbles of
treacly coffee and watching patiently for the interminable whisperings
to be translated into English before making a measured counter proposal.
We are doing fine, Mr. Berg, he assured Nicholas quietly.
A few more days.
Nicholas had a headache from the strong coffee and he found it difficult
to concentrate.
He kept worrying about Samantha, For four days he had tried to contact
her. He had to get out for a while and he excused himself to the
Prince, and went down to the Enquiries Desk in the Bank's entrance hall
and the girl told him, I'm sorry, sir, there there is no reply to either
of those numbers.
There must be, Nicholas told her. One number was Samantha's shack at
Key Biscayne and the other was her private number in her laboratory.
She shook her head. I've tried every hour.
Can you send a cable for me? Of course, sir.
She gave him a pad of forms and he wrote out the message. Please phone
me urgently, reverse charges to, He gave the Queens Gate flat and James
Teacher's rooms, then thought with the pen poised, trying to find the
words to express his concern, but there were none. I love you he wrote.
I really do.
Since Nicholas's midnight call to tell her of the carriage of cad-rich
crude petroleum, Samantha Silver had been caught up in a kaleidoscope
whirl of time and events.
After a series of meetings with the leaders of the Green-Peacers, and
other conservation bodies in an effort to publicize and oppose this new
threat to the oceans, she and Tom Parker had flown to Washington and met
with a deputy director of the Environmental Protection Agency and with
two young senators who spearheaded the conservation lobby but their
efforts to go further had been frustrated by the granite walls of big
oil interest. Even usually cooperative sources had been wary of
condemning or speaking out against Orient Amex's new carbon-cracking
technology. As one thirty-year-old Democrat senator had pointed out,
It's tough to try and take a shot at something that's going to increase
the fossil fuel yield by fifty percent.
That's not what we are shooting at, Samantha had flared, bitter with
fatigue and frustration. It's this irresponsible method of carrying the
cad-rich through sensitive and highly vulnerable seaways we are trying
to prevent. But when she presented the scenario she had worked out,
picturing the effects on the North Atlantic deluged with a million tons
of toxic crude, she saw the disbelief in the man's eyes and the
condescending smile of the sane for the slightly demented.
,oh God, why is common sense the hardest thing in the world to sell? she
had lamented.
She and Tom had gone on to meet the leaders of Green-Peace in the north,
and in the west, and they had given advice and promises of support. The
Californian Chapter counselled physical intervention as a last resort,
