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 Na zaire, 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
