piles of underclothing until once again it had the innocent look of a woman's travelling bag.
^ Since late childhood she had owned her own gun. At her home near Pear Blossom in the southern Californian desert her father, a strange and independent character like his daughter, had trained the girl to use a weapon. 'It's a violent world we live in, pet,' he used to say. 'Look how your mother died in San Diego – and all that murdering thief got was her billfold. Twenty-five lousy dollars…'
^ From the age of eight she was brought up by her father, a farmer, and as the years went by Betty Cordell became skilled to the point of marksmanship with a rifle. She never hunted with it, never went in for competitions, but at twenty-seven she still carried it with her everywhere away from home. Sometimes, driving in the desert, she would stop, set up a line of tin cans as targets and blaze away, working off frustration. Every can was always punctured.
^ She lit a rare cigarette and stood in the middle of the cabin smoking. The huge tanker was swaying gently as it went on through the swell towards San Francisco, now less than thirty-six hours away. She was thinking that with the mags and the package of spare rounds she had enough ammunition to kill every terrorist on board. The trouble was Betty Cordell had never even shot a bird. She hated the thought of killing live things. Hearing the door open, she turned. LeCat stood in the doorway.
^ LeCat stood in the doorway holding a full bottle of red wine and behind him the armed guard was leering. LeCat shut the door in his face by leaning against it. Betty Cordell remained standing in the middle of the cabin, staring back at the terrorist with a cold expression which verged on arrogance. She had a constricted feeling in her throat. She was scared and furious with herself at the same time – furious because her heart was thumping and her legs felt weak.
^ 'There is nothing to fear,' LeCat said roughly. 'We did not expect to find a woman on board. Bui it will only be for a few days, so you might as well make the best of it. The best of it,' he repeated, looking at her closely.
^ At least her voice sounded steady, almost insolent. Hearing herself speak, she was surprised that her voice sounded so normal, thank God. I've got to deal with this, she told herself, get rid of him. Quickly. He put the bottle down on a table near the door and walked towards her. There were blobs of moisture on his upper lip below the curved moustache.
^ 'I am a bachelor,' he remarked as he stood close to her. 'My name is LeCat. I have known a lot of women – many beautiful women …'
^ His approach was so ridiculous, so ham-handed, that for one wild moment she wanted to laugh in his face. Waterfront whores, she thought cynically, that's about his taste and experience. With me he doesn't quite know how to go about it, but his bashfulness won't last for long. Then she caught a whiff of his breath. My God, he's drunk…
^ Even though he had consumed a third of a bottle of cognac, LeCat was not drunk. It was simply that his movements were a shade more deliberate than usual. Cognac he could take in generous quantities; he was still capable of hitting a moving target at a hundred yards. She moved casually sideways and stood with her back to the steward's bell. 'I was thinking of taking a bath,' she said. 'Could you please leave the cabin. Now!'
^ 'Get out of this cabin, LeCat. Get out now or I'll ask the guard to fetch Winter…'
^ 'Like myself, the guard is French. He takes his orders from me,' LeCat replied equably.
^ The longer-term significance of this remark did not strike Betty Cordell – her mind was fixed on only one objective. Survival. She lifted her head and clasped her hands behind her back, assuming a most arrogant posture. The animal likes that, she noted: a peculiar gleam came into LeCat's eyes and he wiped his lip dry with a ringer. While he was distracted her own index finger moved towards the bell-push on the wall. 'I think Winter will probably kill you,' she said.
^ ^ look of fury in his eyes, an undertone in his voice not far from hatred. Shaken by his ferocity, she felt her control going. She took a step away from him and pressed the bell hard. 'Go and get your bath,' he told her viciously. 'Do not bother to dress when you have had it…'
^ He was still standing close to her so she couldn't move towards the bathroom when the cabin door opened and Wrigley, the steward, came bustling in. A tall, stooped, middle-aged man with brisk movements, he carried a tray with a pot of coffee, cream, a cup and saucer. He stopped for a moment and frowned as LeCat glared at him over his shoulder, then, apparently noticing nothing wrong, he began chattering.
^ 'Fresh-made coffee, Miss Cordell – nice and strong the way you Americans drink it…' He began laying the things on the table. 'Better come and get it now while it's hot. Helps to keep up your strength under trying circumstances…' He glanced at LeCat. 'You may have a visitor any minute, Miss Cordell – Mr Winter was in the galley and said he'd be coming along here to see how you are getting along. Funny chap…'
^ Wrigley paused as LeCat turned his back and left the cabin. The steward glowered and made a forked, two- fingered gesture towards the empty doorway. 'Sorry about that, Miss,' he apologised, 'sometimes my feelings run away with me…'
^ 'Thank you, Wrigley,' she murmured as she picked up the pot. 'You were just in time…'
^ Winter heard about the incident within five minutes of its happening. Wrigley met him in the alleyway while he was returning to his galley, escorted by an armed guard, and had no hesitation in telling him about the near- rape. Winter reacted instantly. He summoned LeCat to his cabin.
^ Winter took three strides across the cabin and LeCat, seeing his expression, grabbed for the pistol in his shoulder holster. Winter's hand closed on the wrist, digging into the nerve centre. LeCat's hand, still holding the pistol butt he had no time to extract, felt paralysed. His limp fingers released the butt as Winter twisted the hand violently and spun the Frenchman round by the shoulder hinge until he was half-crouched with his back to the Englishman. The pain in his shoulder was acute and he dared not move for fear of breaking his arm.
^ Winter trundled the bent man forward until he was close to the edge of the bunk. Releasing his grip a little, he allowed LeCat to lift his head a few inches, then he used his other hand to press the Frenchman's head down over the bunk with his throat rested on the hard wooden edge. The hard edge of the bunk rasped his victim's Adam's apple. 'One sharp movement and your neck is broken, LeCat,' Winter said softly. 'You know that, don't you?'
^ LeCat was terrified. He knew exactly what could happen, what he had done to a man in a similar position in Algeria once. A movement, one horrendous jerk, and his neck would snap. He was almost sick with terror.
^ 'If you even go near that woman again for the rest of the trip, I'll kill you.' Winter's tone was detached, almost conversational.
^ Grasping a handful of hair, he lifted LeCat's head clear of the bunk, swung his body round and shoved him forward. Off-balance, the Frenchman cannoned hard against a bulkhead and fell on the floor. Getting up slowly, dazed by the impact, LeCat left the cabin. It hadn't made him love Winter any the more, but he felt the cause of his humiliation was the American girl. Added to his crude desire for her was a bitter hatred.
^ Less than an hour before night fell on the Pacific, the helicopter was flown away from the ^ Challenger ^ by the only terrorist – other than Winter – who could fly the machine. Guided by continuous radio signals from the ^ Pecheur, ^ he reached the trawler which was sailing a hundred miles south of the ^ Challenger. ^ The moment the plane landed its insignia were covered with canvas flaps specially prepared for the purpose. It didn't matter if a ship or a plane saw the machine sitting on the deck of the trawler, but it would have seemed very strange had it been spotted aboard the 50,000-ton tanker.
^ ^ Andre Dupont. The escape apparatus – the Zodiac inflatable boat, the outboard motor, and the wet-suits – were all stored away in the carpenter's store under the forecastle. And during this work, carried out many hundreds of feet away from the distant island bridge, there was also unloaded a steel case weighing almost two hundred pounds which was transported with some difficulty and carried down the ladder into the cramped compartment.
12
^ When Sheikh Carnal Tafak moved to his secret headquarters on the first floor of a building on the outskirts of Baalbek in the Lebanon, it was partly considerations of policy which decided the Saudi Arabian oil minister to go to ground – he wanted to isolate himself until the San Francisco operation had been completed. A man who cannot be found cannot answer any questions, and there were certain statesmen in the Middle East who were already very
