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.
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
