Year of the Golden Ape

8

^ At 3pm on Thursday January 16 Winter turned into the drive leading to the Swan homestead and drove slowly through the darkness toward the house; no rush, nothing to disturb the Swans if they noticed the car coming. Snow crust crackled under the wheels.

^ LeCat sat beside him, Pierre Goussin rode in the back, and when he reached the house he drove round the side where the parked vehicle would be hidden from the Thompson home in the distance. His headlights swept over a blue Rambler standing in front of the house with the power cable plugged into it; Walgren had told Winter that Swan drove a Rambler.

^ Winter left the car quickly, walked round to the front door, his right hand inside his sheepskin, gripping the Skorpion pistol in its holster. The unexpected happened immediately. The porch light came on and Swan, due to leave at 3.30pm, opened the front door before Winter could press the bell. He was wearing a British Gannex raincoat and carrying a bag.

^ 'Don't get excited and no one will get hurt.' Winter pointed the pistol at Swan's chest. 'We just want to use your phone and then we'll leave you in a locked room…' He was speaking rapidly, weighing up the slim, thirty-year-old who faced him, guessing his reactions, warning him with the gun, reassuring him with the reference to a phone call.

^ LeCat had pushed behind him, disappearing into the house as Winter went on talking, holding his attention. 'Let's go inside and find out… No! Don't hurry – no need for a nasty accident…' Winter followed him across a hall and into a large, L-shaped living-room. A dark-haired woman in her thirties had her hand up to her throat, her eyes wide with fear as LeCat held one arm round her back and a knife close to her breast. He pressed the knife tip to her throat as Swan started across the room and then stopped. 'Keep away or she's dead,' LeCat warned.

^ 'Take the knife away from her throat. That's better…' Winter could have knocked the Frenchman down. The stupid cretin! He could have caused a bloodbath. There was an atmosphere of shock, disbelief in the living-room which Winter had foreseen and was determined to exploit. To counter LeCat's blunder the Englishman became crisp, businesslike. Placing a hand on Swan's shoulder, he pressed him down into a chair; a man sitting down feels less aggressive, is less likely to do something violent. 'Let Mrs Swan sit down,' he told LeCat, 'and stop manhandling her…'

^ 'We're expecting friends any minute,' Swan warned. 'They could walk through that front door…'

^ 'Which is why you're dressed to go out,' Winter interjected coldly. 'You were leaving to go back to your ship, the ^ Challenger, ^ so stop making up fairy tales…' He had Swan's measure now: a quick-witted, determined man, he would try to outwit them, given half a chance. At the moment he was in a state of deep shock; pale-faced, he couldn't keep his eyes off his wife who was sitting down, hands clasped in her lap.

^ 'What do you want?' Mrs Swan asked quietly. She had, Winter realised, recovered her self-possession. Even quicker than her husband, she had asked the key question. What do you want?

^ 'Your husband's job for a week.' To create a calmer atmosphere Winter himself sat down in one of the Scandinavian-style chairs as Goussin came in from the rear of the house. 'All clear at the back? Good. Now, Swan, you mean nothing to us dead or alive -and heroes make widows in this awful world we live in. I want you to phone Captain Mackay at the Westward Hotel in Anchorage. Tell him you're sick – that you've caught a bad dose of flu. Tell him you have found a replacement wireless operator from the Marconi pool who is on holiday in Palmer. He's visiting his sister who is married to an American. Kinnaird is the replacement's name – he's taking your place on the next trip the ^ Challenger ^ makes to San Francisco.'

^ 'What happens to us?' Swan asked. He was still pale but his voice was steady.

^ 'You'll be kept in a place about fifty miles from here under guard for a week. By that time the ^ Challenger ^ will have reached San Francisco. Then you will be freed.'

^ 'Yes, he will,' Winter interrupted sharply. 'Within sixty minutes he'll be leaving the Westward to go back to his ship. When he hears you're sick he'll be appalled – when you tell him you've found a replacement he'll be relieved, more than ready to accept Kinnaird on your say-so. Do you want me to repeat what you have to say to him?'

^ 'No,' Swan looked anxious and uncertain. 'What happens if I.. .' He glanced at his wife and stopped. He looked at LeCat who was standing behind his wife's chair. He had been going to say what happens if I refuse, then he decided he didn't want his wife to hear the answer.

^ 'Charlie…' Julie leaned forward, her clasped hands bloodless with tension. 'Do as he says.' She looked at Winter. 'The man behind me won't be staying with us, will he?'

^ 'No,' said Winter, his face expressionless. 'I do have some feelings…'

^ 'Go over by the window,' Winter told LeCat. He pointed his pistol at Swan while he spoke to Julie. 'Tell him, Mrs Swan, not to try and warn Mackay about what is happening – for the sake of everyone…'

^ 'You're sick,' Winter repeated, 'so you'll want to get off the phone. You've got to convince Mackay in as few words as possible that Kinnaird is all right, that you've known him in the past, that he'll find his papers in order – because he will…'

^ This man is a good wireless op.?' Swan asked unhappily. 'A ship's survival can depend on the wireless operator…'

^ 'He's absolutely competent and he did once work for the Marconi pool. Mackay will be in a spot,' Winter repeated. 'He sails at midnight and he'll be ready to be convinced.' Part of the problem, Winter had realised beforehand, would be to convince Swan that he could get away with the deception. He repeated his earlier warning. 'In case you've thought of some clever little phrasing to help Mackay catch on, remember we'll have both yourself and your wife for one week after you make that call.'

^ 'What ships has this Kinnaird been on? He's bound to ask me that…'

^ 'Ellesmere-Luckman Line,' Winter said promptly. 'He spent three years on the tanker ^ Maltese Cross, ^ two years aboard the ^ White Cross ^ before that. That was a few years ago but make it sound recent. They're on the Persian Gulf to West Coast run.'

^ 'I know.' Swan stared directly at Winter. 'What is Kinnaird going to do?'

^ 'A reasonable question,' Winter replied. 'We have to get a man into the States, a man already known to the American police. The safest way is to put him on a ship as a crewman and let him walk off at the other end. Kinnaird is not his real name, of course…'

^ 'Get on with it!' Winter checked his watch. 'Dial the Westward now. And make it work – for Julie's sake.'

^ It was less than five minutes since they had entered the house when Swan made the phone call: enough time for Winter to persuade Swan, not enough time for Swan to think too much. Winter wanted the call made while the wireless operator was still in a state of shock.

^ Swan handled the call to Mackay well. He even talked through his nose to fake an impression of flu. The call lasted less than three minutes. Swan put the phone down and turned to Winter. 'He swallowed it – hook, line and sinker…'

^ 'Excuse me…' Winter carried the phone across the room to a sideboard, stood with his back to Swan and dialled a number. 'Forrest here. Make the call. Now!' He broke the connection, dialled a fresh number. Again the phone at the other end was answered immediately. 'Forrest here. Get moving – it's all right…'

^ ^ gren would then wait for five minutes before he put in a call to Captain Mackay at the Westward. The second call had been to Kinnaird, already outside Anchorage and well on his way to Nikisiki. Winter put down the phone and saw that Swan was standing up with LeCat close to him, his pistol aimed at the wireless operator's heart. The Frenchman was showing sense: with the gun aimed at her husband there was no need to watch Julie Swan.

^ 'Leave my wife here,' Swan pleaded with Winter. 'She won't say anything to anyone – not if I come with you…'

^ 'Not possible.' Winter shook his head. 'It would be too much of a strain on her – wondering what was happening to you.'

^ 'I'd sooner go with him.' Julie Swan was standing up now, a plucky woman Winter had come to admire during the short time he had been with her. 'Can I get a few things – for my face and…'

^ 'You'll never meet him,' Winter observed. 'Go with her and check what she takes – no nail files. Take Swan with you, too.' He waited until he was alone with Pierre Goussin, who had remained silent at the back of the room. He didn't like either Goussin or Bazin, the two men who would stay with the Swans, but both had lived in Quebec after the Algerian debacle and had the advantage of speaking good English. He stared at the Frenchman, a grim-looking man of the same age as LeCat. 'Let me remind you, with LeCat you will take them to the barn in Swan's Rambler outside…'

^ 'You're going to hear it again. You use the Rambler – it would look funny if it was found here by some nosey neighbour when Swan is supposed to have driven back to the airport. One week from today you leave them locked up inside the barn. You fly to Canada and phone the police here telling them where to find the Swans. If anything happens to them I'll come and find you myself…'

^ 'What could happen to them…' Goussin couldn't hold Winter's gaze and the Englishman was troubled by a flicker of doubt, then LeCat returned with the Swans and Winter was distracted by the next thing to do.

^ '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.

^ ^ 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.