Fear is the Key

Fear is the Key
Alistair MacLean

A classic novel of ruthless revenge set in the steel jungle of an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico – and on the sea bed below it. Now reissued in a new cover style.A sunken DC-3 lying on the Caribbean floor. Its cargo: ten million, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in gold ingots, emeralds and uncut diamonds guarded by the remains of two men, one woman and a very small boy.The fortune was there for the taking, and ready to grab it were a blue-blooded oilman with his own offshore rig, a gangster so cold and independent that even the Mafia couldn’t do business with him and a psychopathic hired assassin.Against them stood one man, and those were his people, those skeletons in their watery coffin. His name was Talbot, and he would bury his dead – but only after he had avenged their murders.

ALISTAIR MACLEAN

Fear is the Key

Copyright (#ulink_a6bd87b1-8a6c-5bb6-89fe-9294591c4960)

HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/)

Previously published in paperback by Fontana 1963

First published in Great Britain by Collins 1961

Copyright © Devoran Trustees Ltd 1961

Alistair MacLean asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780006159919

Ebook Edition SEPTEMBER 2008 ISBN: 9780007289264

Version: 2016-08-24

Dedication (#ulink_04fd2a7b-7716-5050-9be6-7b177eef2615)

To W.A. Murray

Contents

Cover Page (#u05fa98e2-fed0-5f67-99ef-4c10e46096a6)

Title Page (#uae70d28e-98e0-5e54-93c9-41ab352c40fb)

Copyright (#u83ec3030-13d8-52c2-ac4e-4033fd9a60e7)

Dedication (#ud42a55e6-895e-57e7-b658-c1d576a8820e)

Prologue (#u51f80ced-4564-550f-9864-36332b307ab9)

Chapter 1 (#uf4e98a8e-8a69-51f9-8e1b-71a1958a21ea)

Chapter 2 (#u56a806f4-2a55-5cec-a1eb-97215cf914da)

Chapter 3 (#u503519c6-e5e3-5917-a871-e7da7610c5df)

Chapter 4 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#u51f80ced-4564-550f-9864-36332b307ab9)

Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

By Alistair Maclean (#u51f80ced-4564-550f-9864-36332b307ab9)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

PROLOGUE (#ulink_b81f9a26-3319-5d3f-a57e-3f26dacc3f8b)

May 3rd, 1958.

If you could call a ten by six wooden box mounted on a four-wheel trailer an office, then I was sitting in my office. I’d been sitting there for four hours, the earphones were beginning to hurt and the darkness was coming in from the swamps and the sea. But if I had to sit there all night, then I was going to do just that: those earphones were the most important thing in the world. They were the only remaining contact between me and all the world held for me.

Peter should have been within radio range three hours ago. It was a long haul north from Barranquilla, but we’d made that haul a score of times before. Our three DCs were old but as mechanically perfect as unceasing care and meticulous attention could make them. Pete was a fine pilot, Barry a crack navigator, the West Caribbean forecast had been good and it was far too early in the season for hurricanes.

There was no conceivable reason why they shouldn’t have been on the air hours ago. As it was, they must have already passed the point of nearest approach and be drawing away to the north, towards Tampa, their destination. Could they have disobeyed my instructions to make the long dog-leg by the Yucatan Strait and flown the direct route over Cuba instead? All sorts of unpleasant things could happen to planes flying over war-torn Cuba those days. It seemed unlikely, and when I thought of the cargo they were carrying it seemed impossible. Where any element of risk was concerned, Pete was even more cautious and far-seeing than myself.

Over in the corner of my office on wheels a radio was playing softly. It was tuned in to some English-speaking station and for the second time that evening some hill-billy guitar-player was singing softly of the death of mother or wife or sweetheart, I wasn’t sure which. ‘My Red Rose Has Turned to White’ it was called. Red for life and white for death. Red and white – the colours of the three planes of our Trans-Carib Air Charter service. I was glad when the song stopped.

There was nothing much else in the office. A desk, two chairs, a filing cabinet and the big RCA receiver-transmitter powered by a heavy TRS cable that ran through the hole in the door and snaked across the grass and mud and one corner of the tarmac to the main terminal buildings. And there was a mirror. Elizabeth had put that up the only time she’d ever been here and I’d never got around to taking it down.

I looked in the mirror and that was a mistake. Black hair, black brows, dark blue eyes and a white strained haggard face to remind me how desperately worried I was. As if I needed reminding. I looked away and stared out of the window.