Alistair MacLean Sea Thrillers 4-Book Collection: San Andreas, The Golden Rendezvous, Seawitch, Santorini

‘And the seas breaking up?’ Even in the hospital the shuddering of the vessel was unmistakable.

‘They are a bit, sir.’

‘Any problems?’

‘Apart from Sister here seeming bent on suicide, none.’ Not, he thought, as long as the superstructure stayed in place.

Sister Morrison gasped in shock as they emerged on to the upper deck. However much she had mentally prepared herself, she could not have anticipated the savage power of that near hurricane force wind and the driving blizzard that accompanied it, could not even have imagined the lung-searing effect of the abrupt 80°F drop in temperature. McKinnon wasted no time. He grabbed Sister Morrison with one hand, the lifeline with the other, and allowed the two of them to be literally blown across the treacherous ice-sheathed deck into the shelter of the superstructure. Once under cover, she removed her duffel hood and stood there panting, tenderly massaging her ribs.

‘Next time, Mr McKinnon – if there is a next time – I’ll listen to you. My word! I never dreamt – well, I just never dreamt. And my ribs!’ She felt carefully as if to check they were still there. ‘I’ve got ordinary ribs, just like anyone else. I think you’ve broken them.’

‘I’m sorry about that,’ McKinnon said gravely. ‘But I don’t think you’d have much fancied going over the side. And there will be a next time, I’m afraid. We’ve got to go back again and against the wind, and that will be a great deal worse.’

‘At the moment, I’m in no hurry to go back, thank you very much.’

McKinnon led her up the companionway to the crew’s quarters. She stopped and looked at the twisted passageway, the buckled bulkheads, the shattered doors.

‘So this is where they died.’ Her voice was husky. ‘When you see it, it’s all too easy to understand how they died. But you have to see it first to understand. Ghastly – well, ghastly couldn’t have been the word for it. Thank God I never saw it. And you had to clear it all up.’

‘I had help.’

‘I know you did all the horrible bits. Mr Spenser, Mr Rawlings, Mr Batesman, those were the really shocking cases, weren’t they? I know you wouldn’t let anyone else touch them. Johnny Holbrook told Janet and she told me.’ She shuddered. ‘I don’t like this place. Where’s the Lieutenant?’

McKinnon led her up to the Captain’s cabin, where Naseby was keeping an eye on the recumbent Lieutenant.

‘Good morning again, Lieutenant. I’ve just had a taste of the kind of weather Mr McKinnon has been exposing you to. It was awful. How do you feel?’

‘Low, Sister. Very low. I think I’m in need of care and attention.’

She removed oilskins and duffel coat. ‘You don’t look very ill to me.’

‘Appearances, appearances. I feel very weak. Far be it from me to prescribe for myself, but what I need is a tonic, a restorative.’ He stretched out a languid hand. ‘Do you know what’s in that wall cupboard there?’

‘No.’ Her tone was severe. ‘I don’t know. I can guess, though.’

‘Well, I thought, perhaps – in the circumstances, you understand –’

‘Those are Captain Bowen’s private supplies.’

‘May I repeat what the Captain told me?’ McKinnon said. ‘As long as Lieutenant Ulbricht keeps navigating, he can keep on broaching my supplies. Words to that effect.’

‘I don’t see him doing any navigating at the moment. But very well. A small one.’

McKinnon poured and handed him a glass of Scotch: the expression on Sister Morrison’s face was indication enough she and the Bo’sun placed different interpretations on the word ‘small’.

‘Come on, George,’ McKinnon said. ‘This is no place for us.’

Sister Morrison looked faintly surprised. ‘You don’t have to go.’

‘We can’t stand the sight of blood. Or suffering, come to that.’

Ulbricht lowered his glass. ‘You would leave us to the mercy of Flannelfoot?’

‘George, if you wait outside I’ll go and give Trent a spell on the wheel. When you’re ready to go back, Sister, you’ll know where to find me.’

McKinnon would have expected that her ministrations might have taken ten minutes, fifteen at the most. Instead, almost forty minutes elapsed before she put in an appearance on the bridge. McKinnon looked at her sympathetically.

‘More trouble than you expected, Sister? He wasn’t just joking when he said he felt pretty low?’

‘There’s very little the matter with him. Especially not with his tongue. How that man can talk!’

‘He wasn’t talking to an empty bulkhead, was he?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well,’ McKinnon said reasonably, ‘he wouldn’t have kept on talking if you hadn’t kept on listening.’

Sister Morrison seemed to be in no hurry to depart. She was silent for some time, then said with a slight trace of a smile: ‘I find this – well, not infuriating but annoying. Most people would be interested in what we were saying.’

‘I am interested. I’m just not inquisitive. If you wanted to tell me, then you’d tell me. If I asked you to tell me and you didn’t want to, then you wouldn’t tell me. But, fine, I’d like you to tell me.’

‘I don’t know whether that’s infuriating or not.’ She paused. ‘Why did you tell Lieutenant Ulbricht that I’m half German?’

‘It’s not a secret, is it?’

‘No.’

‘And you’re not ashamed of it. You told me so yourself. So why – ah! Why didn’t I tell you that I’d told him? That’s what you’re asking. Just never occurred to me.’

‘You might at least have told me that he was half English.’

‘That didn’t occur to me either. It’s unimportant. I don’t care what nationality a person is. I told you about my brother-in-law. Like the Lieutenant, he’s a pilot. He’s also a lieutenant. If he thought it his duty to drop a bomb on me, he’d do it like a shot. But you couldn’t meet a finer man.’

‘You’re a very forgiving man, Mr McKinnon.’

‘Forgiving?’ He looked at her in surprise. ‘I’ve nothing to forgive. I mean, he hasn’t dropped a bomb on me yet.’

‘I didn’t mean that. Even if he did, it wouldn’t make any difference.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I know.’

McKinnon didn’t pursue the matter. ‘Doesn’t sound like a very interesting conversation to me. Not forty minutes’ worth, anyway.’

‘He also took great pleasure in pointing out that he’s more British than I am. From the point of view of blood, I mean. Fifty per cent British to start with plus two more British pints yesterday.’

McKinnon was polite. ‘Indeed.’