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

THE GOLDEN RENDEZVOUS
BY ALLISTER MCLEAN
All of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance
to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Chapter 1
[Tuesday noon-5 P.M.]
My shirt was no longer a shirt but just a limp and sticky rag
soaked with sweat. My feet ached from the fierce heat of the steel deck
plates. My forehead, under the peaked white cap, ached from the
ever-increasing constriction of the leather band that made scalping only
a matter of time. My eyes ached from the steely glitter of reflected
sunlight from metal, water, and whitewashed harbour buildings. And my
throat ached, from pure thirst. I was acutely unhappy. I was unhappy.
The crew was unhappy. The passengers were unhappy. Captain Bullen was
unhappy and this last made me doubly unhappy, not because of any
tenderness of feeling that I entertained towards the captain, but
because when things went wrong with captain Bullen he invariably took it
out of his chief officer. I was his chief officer. I was bending over
the rail, listening to the creak of wire and wood and watching our after
jumbo derrick take the strain as it lifted a particularly large crate
from the quayside, when a hand touched my arm. Captain Bullen again, I
thought drearily; it had been at least half an hour since he'd been
around last to talk to me about my shortcomings, and then I realised
that, whatever the captain's caprices, wearing Chanel no. He wasn't one
of them. This would be Miss Beresford. And it was. In addition to the
Chanel she was wearing a white silk dress and that quizzical,
half-amused smile that made most of the other officers turn mental
cartwheels and handsprings but served only to irritate me. I have my
weaknesses, but tall, cool, sophisticated, and worldly young women with
a slightly malicious sense of humour is not one of them. "Good
afternoon, Mr. First Officer," she said sweetly. She had a soft,
musical voice with hardly a hint of superiority or condescension when
talking to the lower orders like myself, just enough to show that she
had been to the best school and college in the east and I hadn't.
"We've been wondering where you were. You are not usually an absentee
at aperitif time."
"I know, Miss Beresford. I'm sorry." what she said was true
enough; what she didn't know was that I turned up for aperitifs with the
passengers more or less at the point of a gun. Standing company orders
stated that it was as much a part of the ship's officers' duties to
entertain the passengers as to sail the ship, and as captain Bullen
loathed all passengers with a fierce and total loathing, he saw to it
that most of the entertaining fell to me. I nodded at the big crate now
hovering over the hatchway of number four hold, then at the piled-up
crates at the quayside. "I'm afraid I have work to do. Four or five
hours at least. Can't even manage lunch to-day, far less an aperitif."
"Not Miss Beresford. Susan." it was as if she had heard only my
first few words. "How often do I have to ask you?" until we reach New
York, I said to myself, and even then it will be no use. Aloud I said,
smiling, "you mustn't make things difficult for me. Regulations require