Colin Forbes - Year of the Golden Ape

^ ^ for Alaska by a different route. At 9.30am, London time, he left Heathrow aboard Flight BE 742 bound for Copenhagen. From the Danish capital Scandinavian Airlines Flight SK 989 was due to leave at 3.30pm. It would land at Anchorage at 1.15pm, Alaskan time.

^ This would mean Sullivan reaching Anchorage almost two hours before Swan was due to be kidnapped. He would undoubtedly have gone straight to see Mackay at the Westward; he would have been there when the phone call from Swan came through. Being Sullivan, his suspicions would certainly have been aroused. Unfortunately it was a normal day.

^ Due to shortage of aviation fuel, Flight SK 989 took off ten-and-a-half hours behind schedule. When Kinnaird arrived at the foot of the gangway leading on to the ^ Challenger, ^ Sullivan was still in mid-air, thirty thousand feet up, over seven hours flying time away from Anchorage.

^ Mackay handed the message he had received from the radio cabin to his first officer and stood at the front of the wide bridge with his hands clasped behind his back, staring at the persistent red glow of the fire growing in the dark. Bennett read the signal which had just come in from London office.

^ Please extend all courtesies to Betty Cordell American journalist Joining Challenger for voyage to Oleum commencing January 16. Cordell arriving Anchorage airport 1810 hours aboard North West Airlines flight from Seattle. Will make own way to ship. Harper.

^ 'I would assume so, sir,' Bennett replied, 'unless the Americans have gone in for some strange christening rites.'

^ 'Merely making an observation, sir,' Bennett replied respectfully. 'I'd better warn Wrigley to prepare a cabin…'

^ 'No frills,' Mackay snapped. 'She'll have to live like the rest of us and like it. Aren't there enough men journalists in the world to go round? If she wants breakfast in bed, she can't have it. You'd better go and tell Wrigley…'

"… way of expressing his feelings. It is not so unusual for a woman to travel aboard an oil tanker; many companies permit officers to have their wives on board occasionally, but Mackay, a widower, would not allow the practice. 'If a man has spent the night in bed with his wife enjoying the normal marital opportunities he is not fit for duty in a hurricane,' he was fond of saying. And he had not overlooked the phrasing of the signal which left nothing to his discretion. Harper had ordered him to take the damned woman aboard. Brian Walsh, the Second Officer, made the mistake of coming on to the bridge as soon as Bennett had gone in search of the steward.

^ 'We've got a woman with us on this trip,' Mackay snapped at his second officer.

^ Perhaps Walsh, a professional bachelor, allowed a little too much enthusiasm to enter his reaction to this damning statement. Mackay swung round slowly and eyed Walsh with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.

^ 'Yes, sir.' Walsh, twenty-six years old and boyishly good-looking, blinked at his captain's picture of the average woman journalist. 'Any special precautions, sir?'

^ 'Precautions?' Mackay's voice went up an octave. 'What the devil do you mean?'

^ 'Certain areas out of bounds?' Walsh's memory was going back to what his father had told him about life aboard a troopship which also carried WREN officers. 'Where will she eat, sir?'

^ 'In the saloon with the rest of us. She might, of course, miss the sailing,' Mackay went on with a hint of hope. He had already issued orders that the ^ Challenger ^ would sail at 2200 hours – two hours before her normal departure. 'London office has asked us to extend all courtesies,' Mackay added grimly. 'She's probably writing some damnfool article on life at sea.'

^ 'No! I'm not having my crew turned into a bunch of nancy boys just because a woman has come aboard. She'll have to take the ship as it is, warts and all.' Mackay checked the bridge clock. 'That is, if she gets here at all…'

^ 'I think she's just arriving,' Walsh observed, staring out of the port-side window. 'And, respectfully, sir, I don't think she has bandy legs…'

^ To keep under the low cloud ceiling Winter flew the Cessna light aircraft at only a few hundred feet above the Cook Inlet. It was dark, the time on the control panel clock registered 10.30pm, and navigation was not easy under these conditions. In the seat beside Winter, LeCat was leaning side-ways, staring downwards. 'That will be the fire,' he said into his headset microphone.

^ It was a heavily overcast night, but there was more illumination below the machine than might be imagined, flying as they were over the area where Alaska ended and the Pacific began its long surge towards Japan and Siberia. Gas burn-offs from the oil rigs glowed like fireballs in the night, like great torches held aloft by giants, and ahead an even fiercer glow lit the darkness. The refinery fire which Bazin's thermite bomb had started earlier in the day was spreading in the terminal where firemen from Anchorage were fighting to get it under control.

^ 'There's the ^ Challenger.. ^.'

^ Even below them in the night it looked enormous; 51,332 deadweight tons of ship, seven hundred and forty-three feet long, one hundred and two feet wide, a floating platform of steel with the island bridge close to the stern, the bridge which had been represented by Cosgrove Manor, over four thousand five hundred miles away.

^ Winter lost a little altitude and pointed the plane's nose so it would pass directly over the navigation lights moving down the main channel. Besides her navigation lights the tanker had her deck lights on and a cluster of lamps attached to the foremast spotlit the forepart of the ship – and it was the forepart Winter was interested in.

^ 'On the port side, yes,' Winter replied as he angled the plane downwards. 'You can just see the landing point – that white-painted circle with the dot in the middle…'

^ 'Big enough, and next time it will be daylight.' Winter leaned forward, putting the Cessna into a shallow dive. The lozenge-shaped platform of steel hardly seemed to move as he went down towards the tanker like a pilot on a bombing run-in. 'That's the catwalk down her middle,' Winter observed. That's important -so don't forget it. That takes us straight from the landing point to the bridge…'

^ LeCat said nothing, leaning well forward, his eyes taking in every detail, photographing it on his mind. Someone on deck near the foremast was looking up as the plane came in, shielding his eyes against the glare of the lights. 'There's the foremast with the crow's nest platform,' Winter pointed out.

^ LeCat was totally concentrated on his observation of the 50,000-ton tanker, like a soldier on reconnaissance assessing a fortress he would later have to storm. Winter lifted the nose of the machine so he was well clear of the radar mast, then he waggled his wings as the vessel vanished under them. Above the roar of the engine a faint sound came, the sound of the ship's siren. Mackay, a curious character, so remote in some ways, always acknowledged a salute, however bizarre.

^ Turning the plane in a wide arc over Cook Inlet, he headed back at speed for Anchorage. After they landed, he phoned the reopened United Arab Republic consulate in San Francisco from an airport booth, asking for Mr Talaal Ismail who was waiting for the call. Winter's message was simple: Case Orange has been delivered.

^ They left Alaska aboard a North West Airlines flight at 11.30 pm which would land them at Seattle in the United States. Walgren, sitting apart from them, travelled in the same plane; from Seattle he would proceed direct to San Francisco. At 11.45pm the much-delayed Scandinavian Airlines Flight SK 989 from Copenhagen arrived at Anchorage. Sullivan was the first passenger to alight from the aircraft.

^ The 50,000-ton ^ Challenger ^ was rolling gently as she proceeded through the night at seventeen knots. She was now clear of Cook Inlet, heading out into the Pacific Ocean on her way to distant San Francisco. It was six in the morning and most of the crew were asleep, except for those on duty in the engine-room, the officer of the watch and the helmsman.