One Night Of Love

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Reassured?’

‘If I were in your position I’d do some checking, too.’

‘I told him I’d as soon sail under your command as any other expedition leader in the company,’ Russ said brusquely.

She smiled her thanks at him and stood up. ‘If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen.’

Russ only nodded, but Oliver stood up politely. Dyan glanced at him as she went by, but his eyes were on her legs, which didn’t altogether displease her.

Dyan went to the ops room to carry out the daily checks, mark up the logs. Her first concern was to see what other craft were in the area, to make sure that they weren’t being followed. But they were still too near the islands and there were too many blips on the screen to be certain one way or the other. It wouldn’t be until they’d left Antigua behind and were out of the main traffic lanes that they could check for sure.

A beeper sounded and Dyan went into the office to answer the phone. Without waiting for the caller to speak, she said, ‘Hi, Barney. Have you got any nails left?’

‘No nails, no fingers,’ he replied cheerfully. ‘What happened; didn’t Balfour show?’

‘There are some people, Barney, who believe in the equality of the sexes.’

‘Yeah—mostly women. You talk him into it yourself?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Define “something”.’

‘We were already at sea before he realised,’ Dyan admitted.

Barney gave a shout of laughter. ‘Nice one, Logan. But if you have any trouble, put him on to me.’

‘I don’t somehow think that will be necessary.’

‘Is that so? Balfour’s fallen for that luscious body of yours, has he?’

Glancing through the glass partition, Dyan saw that Oliver had come into the ops room in search of her, and was profoundly grateful that the partition was soundproof. ‘He appreciates my mind,’ she said primly.

That brought another roar of laughter. Barney was a tease and enjoyed trying to discomfit her, although she’d long ago got his measure. He might make chauvinistic remarks but she knew that he was proud of her in his way and would give her all the protection she might need. He gave the impression of being tough, a rough diamond, but she knew that he was just a marshmallow below a hard crust.

‘The guy must be a nut, then,’ he told her. ‘Or is he one of those?’

Dyan knew what he meant and said with certainty, ‘Oh, no, he definitely isn’t like that.’

‘He’s not, huh? Now how come you’re so sure, I wonder?’ Dyan didn’t reply and he chuckled richly. ‘Well, just remember, kid; if you’re going to mix business with pleasure, then business comes first. OK?’

‘OK, boss. I’ll remember.’ And Dyan put down the phone to go to join Oliver.

But as she stood up he came into the office. ‘I’ve brought you the co-ordinates you wanted. And a report from the captain of the Xanadu on the sinking.’

Dyan glanced at the latitude and longitude figures he handed her and she gave a small frown. ‘Would you like to see where this is on the chart?’

‘Yes, I’d be interested.’

She opened the safe, put in the papers he’d given her, including the lat. and long. figures, carefully closed it again, and took him into the ops room.

‘Take a break for ten minutes, Ed,’ she said to the man bending over the radar screen.

The seaman left and she went over to the central chart table, sorted through the rolled charts beneath it, selected one, and laid it out on the table. ‘The position you’ve given me is to the west of the Windward Islands, in the Lesser Antilles. The sea there isn’t the deepest in the Caribbean, but it can be quite deep. We’ll just have to hope the Xanadu is in shallow water. The boat was on its way to Jamaica, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, but the pop star stopped off to live it up for a few days in Barbados, then got caught in a hurricane. When is the hurricane season out here, by the way?’

‘From May to November.’

‘Now, then?’

‘Yes.’ Dyan glanced at him, wondering if he was afraid. ‘But we’ll get plenty of warning from the National Hurricane Centre if there’s one due,’ she said reassuringly, testing him.

Oliver looked surprised so she knew she had been wrong. ‘Then surely the captain of the Xanadu would have been warned?’ he observed.

‘Yes. But your pop star might have decided he was bored in Barbados and wanted to head for home.’

‘But couldn’t the captain have refused if he thought it was dangerous?’

‘That might have depended on whether he wanted to keep his job,’ Dyan said drily. ‘Boat captains are at the whim of the owners. And he might have thought it was worth taking the risk. Late hurricanes are sometimes not much worse than a bad storm, and it could have gone in a different direction. Hurricanes are often capricious. They were unlucky to hit it. And having that heavy safe full of cargo aboard would have made it difficult for them to outrun the storm.’

‘Do you think you’ll be able to raise the boat?’

‘That depends on whether we can find it.’

‘But you have its last position.’

‘That’s not really much help,’ Dyan told him. ‘That could have been the Xanadu’s last known position before it hit the hurricane, and it could have been blown a long way from there before it sank. I’ll have to read the captain’s report to find out. Then again, the captain might have deliberately given us the wrong co-ordinates.’

Oliver’s eyebrows rose, his mind working fast. ‘You mean he might be indulging in some private enterprise?’

She nodded, pleased by his quickness. ‘Yes. Your pop star might have blamed him for the sinking and dismissed him without a reference. The captain could be out here right now, with another salvage vessel.’

‘He isn’t my pop star,’ Oliver pointed out, then shuddered. ‘God forbid.’

‘As bad as that?’ Dyan asked with a laugh.

‘Worse,’ he said with feeling. Then frowned as he said, ‘So we might not find the Xanadu at all.’

‘Or we might find it with the cargo already taken.’

‘You paint a grim prospect,’ Oliver said wryly.

‘It might not be that bad. It rather depends on the pop star’s intelligence and the crew’s loyalty. If he kept on the captain and crew, is employing them on another boat, then everything will probably be fine. But it might be worth checking on that point.’

‘I’ll see to it,’ Oliver said decisively.

She straightened up and found herself very close to him. His aftershave, fresh and tangy, filled her senses. For a moment she drank it in, but then their bare arms touched, and it so disturbed her that Dyan quickly moved away. She went to roll up the chart, but Oliver said, ‘Just a moment. You had a rough idea of where we were heading so why did you start the voyage at Nassau and not somewhere nearer?’