"Alistair MacLean - Golden Rendezvous" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maclean Alistair)

"One of them is a cousin of senor carreras, who sails with you. Sefior miguel carreras. Sefior carreras, he is what you say, heartbroken.

Senor carreras is the most important man "be quiet," captain bullen said wearily. He made a gesture with the papers. "Yes, i'm accepting. Note from the ambassador. More pressure. I've had enough of cables flying across the atlantic. Too much grief. Just an old beaten man, first, just an old beaten man. He stood there for a moment, hands outspread on the guardrail, doing his best to look like an old beaten man and making a singularly unsuccessful job of it, then straightened abruptly as a procession of vehicles turned in through the dock gates and made for the campari. "A pound to a penny, mister, here comes still more grief." "praise be to god," the little agent murmured. The tone, no less than the words, was a prayer of thanksgiving. "Senor carreras himself!

Your passengers at last, captain." "that's what i said," bullen growled. "More grief." the little man looked at him in puzzlement, as well as might anyone who didn't understand bullen's attitude towards the passengers, then turned and hurried off towards the gangway. My attention was diverted for a few moments by another crate swinging aboard, then i heard captain bullen saying softly and feelingly, "like i said, mister, more grief." the procession, two big, chauffeur-driven prewar packards, one towed by a jeep, had just pulled up by the gangway and the passengers were climbing out. Those who could, that was-or very obviously there was one who could not. One of the chauffeurs, dressed in green tropical drills and a bush hat, had opened the boot of his car, pulled out a collapsible hand-propelled wheel chair, and, with the smooth efficiency of experience, had it assembled in ten seconds flat, while the other chauffeur, with the aid of a tall, thin nurse clad in over-all white from her smartly starched cap to the skirt that reached close down to her ankles, tenderly lifted a bent old man from the back seat of the second packard and set him gently in the wheel chair. The old boy-even at that distance i could see the face creased and trenched with the lines of age, the snowy whiteness of the still plentiful hairdid his best to help them, but his best wasn't very much. Captain bullen looked at me. I looked at captain bullen. There didn't seem to be any reason to say anything. Nobody in a crew likes having permanent invalids aboard ship: they cause trouble to the ship's doctor who has to look after their health, to the cabin stewards who have to clean their quarters, to the dining-room stewards who have to feed them, and to those members of the deck crew detailed for the duty of moving them around. And when the invalids are elderly and very infirmand if this one wasn't i sadly missed my guess-there was always the chance of a death at sea, the one thing sailors hate above all else. It was also very bad for the passenger trade. But as long as the illness was of neither a contagious nor infectious nature and that a certificate could be produced from the invalid's own doctor to the effect that the invalid was fit for the proposed voyage, there was nothing that could be done about it. "Well," captain bullen said heavily, "i suppose i'd better go and welcome our latest guests aboard. Finish it off as quickly as possible, mister." "i'll do that, sir." bullen nodded and left. I watched the two chauffeurs slide a couple of poles under the seat of the invalid chair, straighten and carry the chair easily up the sparred foot planks of the gangway. They were followed by the tall angular nurse and she in turn by another nurse, dressed exactly like the first, but shorter and stockier. The old boy was bringing his own medical corps along with him, which meant that he had more money than was good for him or was a hypochondriac or very far through indeed or a combination of any or all of those; on the credit side was the fact that both had that indefinable competent no-nonsense look of the professional nurse which would make the lot of our ship's surgeon, old dr. Marston, who sometimes had to work a whole hour in one day, all that much easier. But i was more interested in the last two people to climb out of the packards. The first was a man of about my own age and size, but the resemblance stopped there. He looked like a cross between ramon novarro and rudolph valentino, only handsomer. Tall, broad-shouldered, with deeply tanned, perfectly sculpted latin features, he had the classical long, thin moustache, strong, even teeth with that in-built neon phosphorescence that seems to shine in any light from high noon till dark, and a darkly gleaming froth of tight black curls on his head; he would have been a lost man if you'd let him loose on the campus of any girls' university.

For all that, he looked as far from being a sissy as any man i'd ever met: he had the strong chin, the balanced carriage, the light, springy boxer's step of a man well aware that he can get through this world without any help from a nursemaid. If nothing else, i thought sourly, he would at least take miss beresford out of my hair. The other man was a slightly smaller edition of the first, same features, same teeth, same moustache and hair, only those were greying. He would be about fifty-five. He had about him that indefinable look of authority and assurance which can come from power, money, or a carefully cultivated phoneyness. This, i guessed, would be the sefior miguel carreras who inspired such fear in our local carracio agent. I wondered why. Ten minutes later the last of our cargo was aboard and all that remained were the three boxed coffins on the back of the old truck. I was watching the bo'sun readying a sling round the first of those when a well-detested voice said behind me: "this is mr. Carreras, sir. Captain bullen sent me." i turned round and gave fourth officer dexter the look i specially reserved for fourth officer dexter. Dexter was the exception to the rule that the fleet commodore always got the best available in the company as far as officers and men were concerned, but that was hardly the old man's fault: there were some men that even a fleet commodore has to accept and dexter was one of them. A personable enough youngster of twenty-one, with fair hair, slightly prominent blue eyes, an excruciatingly genuine public-school accent, and limited intelligence, dexter was the son-and, unfortunately, heir of lord dexter, chairman and managing director of the blue mail. Lord dexter, who had inherited about ten millions at the age of fifteen and, understandably enough, had never looked back, had the quaint idea that his own son should start from the bottom up and had sent him to sea as a cadet some five years previously. Dexter took a poor view of this arrangement: every man in the ship, from bullen downwards, took a poor view both of the arrangement and dexter, but there was nothing we could do about it. "How do you do, sir?" i accepted carreras' outstretched hand and took a good look at him. The steady dark eyes, the courteous smile couldn't obscure the fact that there were many more lines about his eyes and mouth at two feet than at fifty; but it also couldn't obscure the compensatory fact that the air of authority and command was now redoubled in force, and i put out of my mind any idea that this air originated in phoneyness; it was the genuine article, and that was that.

"Mr. Carter? My pleasure." the hand was firm, the bow more than a perfunctory nod, the cultured english the product of some stateside ivy league college. "I have some interest in the cargo being loaded, and if you would permit "but certainly, senor carreras." carter, that rough-hewn anglo-saxon diamond, not to be outdone in latin courtesy. I waved towards the hatch. "If you would be so kind as to keep to the starboard-the right hand of the hatch "'starboard' will do, mr. Carter." he smiled. "I have commanded vessels of my own. It was not a life that ever appealed to me." he stood there for a moment, watching macdonald tightening the sling, while i turned to dexter, who had made no move to go. Dexter was seldom in a hurry to do anything; he had a remarkably thick skin. "What are you on now, fourth?" i enquired. "Assisting mr." that meant he was unemployed. Cummings, the purser, was an extraordinarily competent officer who never required help. He had only one fault, brought on by years of dealing with passengers-he was far too polite. Especially with dexter. I said, "those charts we picked up in kingston. You might get on with the corrections, will you?" which meant that he would probably land us on a reef off the great bahamas in a couple of days' time. "But mr. Cummings is expecting "the charts, dexter." he looked at me for a long moment, his face slowly darkening, then spun on his heel and left. I let him go three paces, then said, not loudly, "dexter." he stopped, then turned slowly. "The charts, dexter," i repeated. He stood there for maybe five seconds, eyes locked on mine, then broke his gaze. "Aye, aye, sir." the accent on the "sir" was faint but unmistakable. He turned again and walked away, and now the flush was round to the back of his neck, his back ramrod stiff.

Little i cared; by the time he sat in the chairman's seat i'd have long since quit. I watched him go, then turned to see carreras looking at me with a slow, still speculation in the steady eyes. He was putting chief officer carter in the balance and weighing him, but whatever figures he came up with he kept to himself, for he turned away without any haste and made his way to the starboard side of number four hold. As he turned, i noticed for the first time the very thin ribbon of black silk stitched across the left lapel of his grey tropical suit. It didn't seem to go any too well with the white rose he wore in his buttonhole, but maybe the two of them together were recognised as a sign of mourning in those parts. And it seemed very likely, for he stood there perfectly straight, almost at attention, his hands loosely by his sides, as the three crated coffins were hoisted inboard. When the third crate came swinging in over the rail he removed his hat casually, as if to get the benefit of the light breeze that had just sprung up from the north, the direction of the open sea, and then, looking round him almost furtively, lifted his right hand under the cover of the hat held in his left hand and made a quick abbreviated sign of the cross. Even in that heat i could feel the cold cat's-paw of a shiver brush lightly across my shoulders. I don't know why; not even by the furthest stretch of imagination could i visualise that prosaic hatchway giving on number four hold as an open grave. One of my grandmothers was scots; maybe i was psychic or had the second sight or whatever it was they called it up in the highlands, or maybe i had just lunched too well. Whatever might have upset me, it didn't seem to have upset senor carreras. He replaced his hat as the last of the crates touched lightly on the floor of the hold, stared down at it for a few seconds, then turned and made his way forward, lifting his hat again and giving me a clear, untroubled smile as he came by. For want of anything better to do, i smiled back at him.

Five minutes later the ancient truck, the two packards, the jeep, and the last of the stevedores were gone and macdonald was busy supervising the placing of the battens on number four hold. By five o'clock, a whole hour before deadline and exactly on the top of the tide, the s.s.

Campari was steaming slowly over the bar to the north of the harbour, then northwest into the setting sun, carrying with it its cargo of crates and machinery and dead men, its fuming captain, disgruntled crew, and thoroughly outraged passengers. At five o'clock on that brilliant june evening it was not what one might have called a happy ship.
CHAPTER 2

Tuesday 8 p.m.-9.30 p.m.

By eight o'clock that night cargo, crates, and coffins were, presumably, just as they had been at five o'clock; but among the living cargo the change for the better, from deep discontent to something closely approaching lighthearted satisfaction, was marked and profound.

There were reasons for this, of course. In captain bullen's case-he twice called me "johnny-me-boy" as he sent me down for dinner-it was because he was clear of what he was pleased to regard as the pestiferous port of carracio, because he was at sea again, because he was on his bridge again, and because he had thought up an excellent reason for sending me below while he remained on the bridge, thus avoiding the social torture of having to dine with the passengers. In the crew's case it was because the captain had seen fit, partly out of a sense of justice and partly to repay the head office for the indignities they had heaped on him, to award them all many more hours' overtime than they were actually entitled to for their off-duty labours in the past three days. And in the case of the officers and passengers it was simply because there are certain well-defined fundamental laws of human nature and one of them was that it was impossible to be miserable for long aboard the s.s. Campari. As a vessel with no regular ports of call, with only very limited passenger accommodation and capacious cargo holds that were seldom far from full, the s.s. Campari could properly be classed as a tramp ship and indeed was so classed in the blue mail's brochures. But-as the brochures pointed out with a properly delicate restraint in keeping with the presumably refined sensibilities of the extraordinarily wellheeled clientele it was addressing-the s.s. Campari was no ordinary tramp ship. Indeed, it was no ordinary ship in any sense at all. It was, as the brochure said simply, without any pretentiousness and in exactly those words, "a medium-sized cargo vessel offering the most luxurious accommodation and finest cuisine of any ship in the world to-day." it was the chairman of the blue mail, lord dexter, who had obviously kept all his brains to himself and refrained from passing any on to his son, our current fourth officer, who had thought it up. It was, as all his competitors who were now exerting themselves strenuously to get into the act admitted, a stroke of pure genius. Lord dexter concurred. It had started off simply enough in the early fifties with an earlier blue mail vessel, the s.s. Brandywine.

(For some strange whimsy, explicable only on a psychoanalyst's couch, lord dexter, himself a rabid teetotaller, had elected to name his various ships after divers wines and other spirituous liquors.) the brandywine had been one of two blue mail vessels engaged on a regular run between new york and various british possessions in the west indies, and lord dexter, eying the luxury cruise liners which plied regularly between new york and the caribbean and seeing no good reason why he shouldn't elbow his way into this lucrative dollar-earning market, had some extra cabins fitted on the brandywine and advertised them in a few very select american newspapers and magazines, making it quite plain that he was interested only in top people. Among the attractions offered had been a complete absence of bands, dances, concerts, fancy-dress balls, swimming pools, tombola, deck games, sight-seeing and parties. A genius could have made such desirable and splendidly resounding virtues out of things he didn't have anyway. All he offered on the positive side was the mystery and romance of a tramp ship which sailed to unknown destinations-this didn't make any alterations to regular schedules; all it meant was that the captain kept the names of the various ports of call to himself until shortly before he arrived there and the resources and comfort of a telegraph lounge which remained in continuous touch with the new york, london, and paris stock exchanges. The initial success of the scheme was fantastic. In stock exchange parlance, the issue was oversubscribed a hundred times. This was intolerable to lord dexter; he was obviously attracting far too many of the not quite top people, aspiring would-he's on the lower-middle rungs of the ladder who had not yet got past their first few million, people with whom top people would not care to associate. He doubled his prices. It made no difference. He trebled them and in the process made the gratifying discovery that there were many people in the world who would pay literally almost anything not only to be different and exclusive but to be known to be different and exclusive. Lord dexter held up the building of his latest ship, the campari, had designed and built into her a dozen of the most luxurious cabin suites ever seen, and sent her to new york, confident that she would soon recoup the outlay of a quarter of a million pounds extra cost incurred through the building of those cabins. As usual, his confidence was not misplaced. There were imitators, of course, but one might as well have tried to imitate buckingham palace, the grand canyon, or the cullinan diamond. Lord dexter left them all at the starting date. He had found his formula and he stuck to it unswervingly: comfort, convenience, quiet, good food, and good company. Where comfort was concerned, the fabulous luxury of the staterooms had to be seen to be believed; convenience, as far as the vast majority of the male passengers was concerned, found its ultimate in the juxtaposition, in the campari's unique telegraph lounge, of the stock-exchange tickers and one of the most superbly stocked bars in the world. Quiet was achieved by an advanced degree of insulation both in cabin suites and engine room, by imitating the royal yacht britannia inasmuch as that no orders were ever shouted and the deck crew and stewards invariably wore rubber-soled sandals and by eliminating all the bands, parties, games, and dances which lesser cruise passengers believed essential for the enjoyment of shipboard life. The magnificent cuisine had been achieved by luring away, at vast cost and the expense of even more bad feeling, the chefs from one of the biggest embassies in london and one of the finest hotels in paris; those masters of the culinary world operated on alternate days, and the paradisical results of their efforts to outdo one another was the envious talk of the western ocean. Other ship owners might, perhaps, have succeeded in imitating some or all of those features, although almost certainly to a lesser degree. But lord dexter was no ordinary ship owner. He was, as said, a genius, and he showed it in his insistence, above all, on having the right people aboard. Never a single trip passed but the campari had a personage on its passenger list, a personage varying from notable to world-famous. A special suite was reserved for personages. Well-known politicians, cabinet ministers, top stars of the stage and screen, the odd famous writer or artist-if he was clean enough and used a razor-and the lower echelons of the english nobility travelled in this suite at vastly reduced prices; royalty, ex-presidents, ex-premiers, ranking dukes and above travelled free. It was said that if all the british peerage on the campari's waiting list could be accommodated simultaneously, the house of lords could close its doors. It need hardly be added that there was nothing philanthropic in lord dexter's offer of free hospitality: he merely jacked up his prices to the wealthy occupants of the other eleven suites, who would have paid the earth anyway for the privilege of voyaging in such close contact with such exalted company. After several years on this run our passengers consisted almost entirely of repeaters. Many came as often as three times a year, fair enough indication of the size of their bank roll. By now the passenger list on the campari had become the most exclusive club in the world. Not to put too fine a point on it, lord dexter had distilled the aggregate elements of social and financial snobbery and found in its purest quintessence an inexhaustible supply of gold. I adjusted my napkin and looked over the current gold mine. Five hundred million dollars on the hoof on the dove-grey velvet of the armchair seats in that opulent and air-conditioned dining room; perhaps nearer a thousand million dollars, and old man beresford would account for a good third of it. Julius beresford, president and chief stockholder of the hart-mccormick mining federation, sat where he nearly always sat, not only now but on half a dozen previous cruises, at the top right-hand side of the captain's table, next to captain bullen himself. He sat there, in the most coveted position in the ship, not because he insisted on it through sheer weight of wealth, but because captain bullen himself insisted on it. There are exceptions to every rule, and julius beresford was the exception to bullen's rule that he couldn't abide any passenger, period. Beresford, a tall, thin, relaxed man with tufted black eyebrows, a horseshoe ring of greying hair fringing the sunburnt baldness of his head, and lively hazel eyes twiligh in the lined brown leather of his face, came along only for the peace, comfort, and food: the company of the great left him cold, a fact vastly appreciated by captain bullen, who shared his sentiments exactly. Beresford, sitting diagonally across from my table, caught my eye. "Evening, mr. Carter." unlike his daughter, he didn't make me feel that he was conferring an earldom upon me every time he spoke to me. "Splendid to be at sea again, isn't it? And where's our captain tonight?" "working, i'm afraid, mr. Beresford. I have to present his apologies to his table. He couldn't leave the bridge." "on the bridge?" mrs. Beresford, seated opposite her husband, twisted round to look at me. "I thought you were usually on watch at this hour, mr. Carter?" "i am." i smiled at her. I kept a special sort of smile for mrs.

Beresford in the same way that i kept a special sort of look for young dexter. Plump, bejewelled, overdressed, with dyed blonde hair, but still beautiful at fifty, mrs. Beresford bubbled over with good humour and laughter and kindness, and to the sour remark that it is easy to be that way with 300 million dollars in the bank, i can only observe that, after several years on the millionaires' run, the misery quotient of our wealthy appeared to increase in direct proportion to the bullion in the bank; this was only her first trip, but mrs. Beresford was already my favourite passenger. I went on: "but there are so many chains of islets, reefs, and coral keys hereabouts that captain bullen prefers to see to the navigation himself." i didn't add, as i might have done, that had it been in the middle of the night and all the passengers safely in their beds captain bullen would have been in his also, untroubled by any thoughts about his chief officer's competence. "But i thought a chief officer was fully qualified to run a ship?" miss beresford, needling me again, sweet-smiling, the momentarily innocent clear green eyes almost too big for the delicately tanned face. "In case anything went wrong with the captain, i mean. You must hold a master's certificate, mustn't you?" "i do. I also hold a driver's licence, but you wouldn't catch me driving a bus in the rush hour in downtown manhattan." old man beresford grinned. His wife smiled. Miss beresford regarded me thoughtfully for a moment, then bent to examine her hors d'oeuvres, showing the gleaming auburn hair cut in a bouffant style that looked as if it had been achieved with a garden rake and a pair of secateurs but had probably cost a fortune. The man by her side wasn't going to let it go so easily, though. He laid down his fork, raised his thin dark head until he had me more or less sighted along his acquiline nose, and said in his clear high drawling voice, "oh, come now, chief officer. I don't think the comparison is very apt at all." the "chief officer" was to put me in my place. The duke of hartwell spent a great deal of his time aboard the campari in putting people in their places, which was pretty ungrateful of him, considering that he was getting it all for free. He had nothing against me personally; it was just that he was publicly lending miss beresford his support. Even the very considerable sums of money earned by inveigling the properly respectful lower classes into viewing his stately home at two and six a time were making only a slight dent on the crushing burden of death duties, whereas an alliance with miss beresford would solve his difficulties for ever and ever. Things were being complicated for the unfortunate duke by the fact that, though his intellect was bent on miss beresford, his attentions and eyes were for the most part on the extravagantly opulent charms-and undeniable beauty of the platinum blonde and often-divorced cinema actress who flanked him on the other side. "I don't suppose it is, sir," i acknowledged. Captain bullen refused to address him as "your grace," and i'd be damned if i'd do it either. "But the best i could think up on the spur of the moment." he nodded as though satisfied and returned to attack his hors d'oeuvre. Old beresford eyed him speculatively, mrs.

Beresford half-smilingly, miss harcourtthe cinema actress -admiringly, while miss beresford herself just kept on treating us to an uninterrupted view of the auburn bouffant. There's little enough to do during off-duty hours at sea, and 1 watching developments at the captain's table would make a very entertaining pastime indeed. What promised to make it even more entertaining was the very considerable interest being taken in the captain's table by the young man seated at the foot of my own table. One of the passengers who had joined at caracio. Tony carreras-my guess that he was miguel carteras' son had been a correct and far from difficult on-was by any odds the most extraordinarily handsome man who'd ever passed through the dining-room door of the campari. In one way this might not have signified much as it takes many years to amass sufficient cash to sail on the campari even for a weekend and young men were in a tiny minority at any time, but nevertheless there was no denying his impact. Even at close-up range there was none of that weakness, that almost effeminate regularity of feature so often found in the faces of many very good-looking men. He looked for all the world like a slightly latinate reincarnation of a younger errol flynn, but harder, tougher, more enduring. The only flaw, if one could call it flaw, lay in the eyes. There seemed to be something ever so slightly wrong with them, as if the pupils were slightly flattened, giving a hard, bright glitter. Maybe it was just the lighting at the table. But there was nothing wrong with them as eyes; he had twenty-twenty vision all right and was using it all to study the captain's table. Miss beresford or miss harcourt, i couldn't be sure which; he didn't look the kind of man who would waste his time studying any of the others at that table. The courses came and went.

Antoine was on duty in the kitchen that night, and you could almost reach out and feel the blissful hush that descended on the company.

Velvet footed goanese waiters moved soundlessly on the dark grey pile of the persian carpet; food appeared and vanished as if in a dream; an arm always appeared at the precisely correct moment with the precisely correct wine. But never for me. I drank soda water. It was in my contract. The coffee appeared. This was the moment when i had to earn my money. When antoine was on duty and on top of his form, conversation was a desecration and a hallowed hush of appreciation, an almost cathedral ecstasy, was the correct form. But about forty minutes of this rapturous silence was about par for the course. It couldn't and never did go on. I never yet met a rich manor woman, for that matter of it who didn't list talking, chiefly and preferably about themselves, as among their favourite occupations. And the prime target for their observations was invariably the officer who sat at the head of the table. I looked round ours and wondered who would set the ball rolling.

Miss harrbrideher original central-european name was unpronounceable-thin, scrawny, sixtyish, and tough as whalebone, who had made a fortune out of highly expensive and utterly worthless cosmetic preparations which she wisely refrained from using on herself? Mr.

Greenstreet, her husband, a grey anonymity of a man with a grey sunken face, who had married her for heaven only knew what reason, for he was a very wealthy man in his own right? Tony carreras? His father, miguel carreras? There should have been a sixth at my table, to replace the curtis family of three who, along with the harrisons, had been so hurriedly called home from kingston, but the old man who had come aboard in his wheel chair was apparently to have his meals served in his cabin during the voyage, with his nurses in attendance. Four men and one woman; it made an ill-balanced table. Senor miguel carreras spoke first. "The campari's prices, mr. Carter, are quite atrocious," he said calmly. He puffed appreciatively at his cigar. "Robbery on the high seas would be a very fitting description. On the other hand, the cuisine is as claimed. You have a chef of divine gifts. It is perhaps not too much to pay for a foretaste of a better world." this made senor carreras very wealthy indeed and was old hat to me. Wealthy men never mentioned money, lest they be thought not to have enough of it. Very wealthy men, on the other hand, to whom money as such no longer mattered, had no such inhibitions. The passengers on the campari complained all the time about the prices. And they kept coming back.

"From all accounts, sir, 'divine' is just about right. Experienced travellers who have stayed in the best hotels on both sides of the atlantic maintain that antoine has no equal in either europe or america.

Except, perhaps, henriques." "henriques?" "our alternate chef. He's on to-morrow." "do i detect a certain immodesty, mr. Carter, in advancing the claims of the campari?" there was no offence meant, not with that smile. "I don't think so, sir. But the next twenty-four hours will speak for themselves-and henriques-better than i can." "touche!" he smiled again and reached for the bottle of remy martin-the waiters vanished at coffee time. "And the prices?" "they're terrible," i agreed. I told that to all the passengers and it seemed to please them. "We offer what no other ship in the world offers, but the prices are still scandalous. At least a dozen people in this room at this very moment have told me that-and most of them are here for at least their third trip." "you make your point, mr. Carter." it was tony carreras speaking and his voice was as one might have expected slow, controlled, with a deep resonant timbre. He looked at his father. "Remember the waiting list at the blue mail's offices?" "indeed. We were pretty far down the list and what a list. Half the millionaires in central and south america. I suppose we may consider ourselves fortunate, mr. Carter, in that we were the only ones able to accept at such short notice after the sudden departure of our predecessors in jamaica. But don't forget that to catch the boat we had to make a hurried four-hundred-mile dash from the capital to carracio by air and road. And what roads!" sefior carreras obviously didn't share the carracio agent's respectful terror of the revolutionary government.

I wondered how a man of carreras' obviously aristocratic background had been able to retain his obvious wealth in the face of the forces of change that had overcome and completely wiped out the old order-and why, if money was so desperately short on the island, he was allowed to convert very large sums of it into dollars to pay for this cruise, or how and why he had been able to leave the island at all. But i kept my wonderings to myself. Instead i said, "you're still a long way off the record, sefior carreras. Last trip we had a family from santiago and two men from beirut, both of whom had flown to new york specially for the round voyage." "and they can't all be wrong, eh? Don't worry, mr. Carter, i intend to enjoy myself. Can you give us any idea of our itinerary?" "that's supposed to be one of the attractions, sir. No set itinerary. Our schedule largely depends on the availability and destination of cargoes. One thing certain, we're going to new york.

Most of our passengers boarded there and passengers like to be returned to where they came from." he knew this anyway, knew that we had coffins consigned to new york. "We may stop off at nassau. Depends how the captain feels-the company gives him a lot of leeway in adjusting local schedules to suit the best needs of the passengers -and the weather reports. This is the hurricane season, mr. Carreras, or pretty close to it. If the reports are bad captain bullen will want all the sea room he can get and give nassau a byez." i smiled. "Among the other attractions of the s.s. Campari is that we do not make our passengers seasick unless it is absolutely essential." "considerate, very considerate," carreras murmured. He looked at me speculatively. "But we'll be making one or two calls on the east coast, i take it?" "no idea, sir. Normally, yes. Again it's up to the captain, and how the captain behaves depends on a certain dr. Slingsby caroline." "they haven't caught him yet," miss harrbride declared in her rough gravelly voice. She scowled with all the fierce patriotism of a first-generation american, looked round the table, and gave us all the impartial benefit of her scowl. "It's incredible, frankly incredible.

I still don't believe it. A thirteenth-generation american!" i could imagine how unthinkably remote thirteen generations of american ancestors must be to miss hatrbride; she'd have traded her million-dollar cosmetic empire for even a couple of them. "I was reading all about him in the tribune two days ago. Did you know that the 5lingsbys came to the potomac in 1662, just five years after the washingtons. Three hundred years! Imagine, american for three hundred years, and now a renegade! A traitor! Thirteen generations!" "don't take it too hard, miss harrbride," i said encouragingly.

"When it comes to skipping with the family silver, dr. Caroline just doesn't begin to be in the same class as my countrymen. The last englishman who deflected to the communist world had an ancestor in the doomsday book. Thirty solid generations. Yet he took off and lit out at the drop of a hat." "faugh!" said miss harrbride. "We heard about this character." tony carreras, like his father, had had his education in some ivy league college; he was rather less formal in his attitude towards the english language. "Slingsby caroline, i mean. Makes very little sense to me.