her. It's all right, Sam, You don't have to say it. I should have
moved on days ago, anyway. Thanks/ she said.
It was Nicholas, wasn't it?
She regretted having told him now, but at the time it had been vitally
necessary to speak to somebody.
She nodded, and his voice had a sting to it as he went on.
I'd like to bust that bastard in the mouth. We levelled the.
score, didn't we? she smiled, but it was an unconvincing smile, and she
didn't try to hold it.
Sam, I want you to know that for me it was not just another quick shack
job. I know that. Impulsively she reached out and squeezed his hand.
And thanks for understanding - but is it okay if we don't talk about it
any more?
Peter Berg had twisted round in his safety straps, so that he could
press his face to the round perspex window in the fuselage of the big
Sikorsky helicopter.
The night was completely, utterly black.
Across the cabin, the Flight Engineer stood in the open doorway, the
wind ripping at his bright orange overalls, fluttering them around his
body, and he turned and grinned across at the boy, then he made a
windmilling gesture with his hand and stabbed downwards with his thumb.
It was impossible to speak in the clattering, rushing roar of wind and
engine and rotor.
The helicopter banked gently and Peter gasped with excitement as the
ship came into view.
She was burning all her lights; tier upon tier, the brilliantly lit
floors of her stern quarters rose above the altitude at which the
Sikorsky was hovering, and, seeming to reach ahead to the black horizon,
the tank deck was outlined with the rows of hooded lamps, like the
street-lamps of a deserted city.
She was so huge that she looked like a city, there seemed to be no end
to her, stretched to the horizon and towering into the sky.
The helicopter sank in a controlled sweep towards the white circular
target on the heliport, guided down by the engineer in the open doorway.
Skilfully the pilot matched his descent to the forward motion of the
ultra-tanker, twenty-two knots at top economical, - Peter had swotted
the figures avidly - and the deck moved with grudging majesty to the
scend of the tall Cape rollers pushing in unchecked from across the
length of the Atlantic Ocean.
The pilot hovered, judging his approach against the brisk north-westerly
cross-wind, and from fifty feet Peter could see that the decks were
almost level with the surface of the sea, pressed down deeply by the
weight of her cargo.
Every few seconds, one of the rollers that raced down her length would
flip aboard and spread like spilled milk, white and frothy in the deck
lights, before cascading back over the side.
Made arrogant and unyielding by her vast bulk, the Golden Dawn did not
woo the ocean, as other ships do.
the swells, churning Instead, her great blunt bows crushed them under or
