Colin Forbes - Year of the Golden Ape

^ 'One more phone call,' he told Julie Swan, 'and this time you make it. You're in a rush – Charlie has just told you Mackay has softened on his rule that no women must travel aboard his ship. So you're travelling aboard the ^ Challenger ^ on her next trip to San Francisco. That will explain your absence from the house. I'm referring to your neighbours, the Thompsons…'

^ 'So now you're phoning to say you won't be able to make it.' Winter looked at LeCat. 'Take Swan out to the car – we'll be with you.' He waited until they had gone. 'Mrs Swan,' he said quietly, 'you just have to get this right – for your husband's sake.'

^ He watched her dialling the number with a steady finger. She had nerve, this American girl. Why was it that so often women grasped a spine-chilling situation faster than men, realised that the only way to survive was to cooperate?

^ Julie Swan handled the call perfectly; she even managed to get a hint of excitement into her voice as she talked about the prospect of her trip aboard the tanker with her husband. So far as Winter could see, Mrs Thompson suspected nothing. 'That was fine,' he assured her as she put down the phone. 'If you carry on like that everything will be all right.'

^ 'Will it?' She looked at him over her shoulder as she put on her heavy coat. 'You're British, aren't you? Or shouldn't I ask?'

^ 'You shouldn't ask.' He took her by the shoulders as she prepared to leave and saw her mouth tighten. 'It's going to be all right – just so long as your husband does nothing stupid. Another guard will arrive later today and replace the man you dislike. But remember, the men who stay with you will be armed.'

^ 'My husband thinks too much of me to do anything stupid as you put it,' she snapped. Her voice wavered. 'It's no good – I'm scared…'

^ Captain James Mackay, wearing a parka he had hurriedly put on, carrying the overnight bag he had thrown his few things inside, left the Westward Hotel and went out into the night at 3.30pm.

^ The street lamps were blurred with mist as he ran to where his car was parked by a meter.

^ Within less than five minutes of receiving the phone call from his wireless operator, Swan, warning him that he was ill, telling Mackay that he had found a replacement called Kinnaird, the phone had rung again. This was in response to the first urgent call Winter had made from the Swans' home.

^ Walgren's American-sounding voice had complained of a bad connection, saying he could hardly hear Mackay, and the caller had been in one hell of a hurry. A fire had broken out at the oil terminal, close to the ^ Challenger. ^ 'You'd better get down here fast,' the man on the phone had warned Mackay, then he had rung off before the captain could ask any questions.

^ Mackay did not realise it, but he was being subjected to shock treatment by Winter to keep him off balance – to get him moving out of Anchorage, to stop him thinking too much about the substitute wireless operator who was also on his way to the terminal.

^ Mackay reached his parked car, then swore. 'Bloody kids…' The power cable from the meter he had plugged into the immersion heater under his bonnet had been hauled out from the socket, lay useless amid the frozen slush. Useless, quite useless. The radiator and sump would be frozen, the battery dead. Swearing again, he climbed out, locking the vehicle as a car cruised towards him. Walgren pulled up and stuck his head out of the window. 'Trouble?'

^ 'It happens,' Walgren commented sympathetically. 'All part of the good neighbour policy. Where to?'

^ 'We're already there – fasten your seat-belt, we're about to take off…'

^ Mackay settled himself in the back seat as Walgren took him at speed through the city and the darkness, well above the regulation fifty-five. He had only one thought on his mind – to get back to his ship, to find out how bad the situation was. He was due to sail at midnight and he had to meet the tanker's deadline for arrival at San Francisco.

^ ^ gave up when all he got was one-word replies. It suited Walgren: he had no particular desire to talk to the passenger Winter had arranged for him to pick up when he found the car Walgren had immobilised was dead. From the moment Swan made his phone call to Mackay, it was important for Winter to keep the captain under his control. And it had worked – Mackay was thinking about nothing except his ship – and leaving Alaska.

^ The fire at the oil terminal was gushing out vast clouds of black smoke, the fire caused by the thermite bomb Armand Bazin had ignited close to the new refinery. He had put this act of sabotage into operation the moment Walgren's phone call came through to a nearby pay booth. The authorities were appalled but not surprised. For them it was simply another outrage in the pattern of bombings taking place all over Europe and America at this time.

^ During the last few hours before sailing, a ship's captain is absorbed in making sure he will get away on time. He is likely to be even more absorbed if a fire is raging within a quarter of a mile of where his ship is moored – far too absorbed to take much interest in a replacement wireless operator.

^ As Mackay hurried along the jetty towards the gangway a thin-faced man in his late thirties, alert, competent-looking, neatly dressed – Mackay noted this swift impression in the few steps it took him to reach the gangway – walked up to him. The deckhand at the foot of the gangway had identified Mackay to Kinnaird, who carried a suitcase and wore a parka and a Russian-style fur hat.

^ In his day cabin, Mackay listened while First Officer Sandy Bennett gave him a brief report on the present position. 'The tanks should be full within seven hours. I estimate we'll be away by midnight…'

^ 'We may be away earlier if we can manage it. Better warn the harbour master. I may leave with a couple of tanks empty if that thing spreads…' Mackay was looking out of the portside window across a maze of pipes and jetties to where a red glow was break-ing through the pall of dark smoke drifting upwards. It was misleading, he hoped, but he had the impression the whole terminal was going up in flames. 'How did it start?' Mackay asked.

^ 'Too early to say yet, sir. We were lucky to get this replacement for Swan so quickly.' Bennett paused. 'How was it we were so lucky, sir?'

^ 'Chap Swan knows. He's just come aboard, by the way. He's from the Marconi pool – happened to be on leave visiting his sister in Anchorage…' Mackay sounded impatient, anxious to move on to other topics.

^ First Officer Sandy Bennett was twenty-eight years old; a man of medium height and medium build, his sand-coloured hair was cut short and reappeared again in his thick eyebrows; under the brows were a pair of shrewd, watchful eyes which rarely took anything or anyone at face value. Mackay thought he overdid things a bit with his habit of questioning everything.

^ 'You saw Swan, sir?' Bennett enquired. 'He introduced you to this Kinnaird?'

^ 'No, he didn't.' Mackay let go of the curtain and turned away from the disquieting view. 'He phoned me from his home out near Palmer while I was at the Westward. Is something bothering you?'

^ 'Not really, sir. It's just such a happy coincidence – Swan falls ill and there's a replacement at hand, here in Alaska of all places. I'll check his papers before we sail…'

^ 'Walsh is already doing that. Repeat the process, if you must. And now, Mr Bennett, maybe we can get on with the business of running a ship…'

^ It was still Thursday January 16 when Captain Mackay went aboard his ship in Alaska. On the previous day everything had gone smoothly at Heathrow Airport, London. Flights had arrived and taken off exactly as scheduled in the airline timetables. But this was a fluke; in the days of the Second Energy Crisis timetables were printed merely for propaganda purposes, bearing little or no relationship to what actually happened. For Sullivan things returned to normal.