Алистер Маклин - Seawitch

‘And it was worth it to lose Daddy’s pride and joy?’

‘Listen, stupid. My father-in-law-to-be is–’

‘That he’ll never be.’

‘So okay. That old geezer is almost as big a crook as any of them. He associated with and hired for lethal purposes known and convicted criminals. He broke into two federal armouries and mounted the equipment on the Seawitch. Had the Seawitch survived, federal investigators would have been aboard within the hour. He’d have got at least fifteen to twenty years in prison, and he’d probably have died in prison.’ Her eyes were wide, partly with fear, partly with understanding. ‘But now every last tiny shred of evidence lies vaporized at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. A little in radiation clouds, maybe, but that’s not the point. Nothing can ever be traced against him.’

‘That’s really why you vaporized the Seawitch?’

‘Why should I admit anything to an ex-fiancée?’

‘Mrs Michael Mitchell,’ she mused. ‘I suppose I could go through life with a worse name.’

Alistair MacLean, the son of a Scots minister, was born in 1922 and brought up in the Scottish Highlands. In 1941 at the age of eighteen he joined the Royal Navy; two-and-a-half years spent aboard a cruiser was later to give him the background for HMS Ulysses , his first novel, the outstanding documentary novel on the war at sea. After the war, he gained an English Honours degree at Glasgow University, and became a schoolmaster. In 1983 he was awarded a D.Litt from the same university.

By the early 1970s he was one of the top 10 bestselling authors in the world, and the biggest-selling Briton. He wrote twenty-nine worldwide bestsellers that have sold more than 30 million copies, and many of which have been filmed, including The Guns of Navarone, Where Eagles Dare, Fear is the Key and Ice Station Zebra. He is now recognized as one of the outstanding popular writers of the 20th century. Alistair MacLean died in 1987 at his home in Switzerland.