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

no hurry to go-and aimless loitering was no part of captain Bullen's
life. He was always in a hurry. I recognised the signs; after three
years of sailing with him, it would have been impossible not to. There
was something he wanted to say; there was some steam he wanted to blow
off, and no better outlet than that tried and trusty relief valve, Chief
Officer Carter. Only whenever he wished to blow off steam it was a
matter of personal pride with him never to bring up the matter himself.
It was no great trick to guess what was troubling him, so I obliged. I
said, conversationally, "the cables we sent to London, sir." they had
been sent by the captain himself, but the "we" would spread the load if
things had gone wrong, as they almost certainly had. "Any reply to them
yet?"
"Just ten minutes ago." he turned round casually as if the matter
had really slipped his memory, but the slight purpling tinge in the red
face betrayed him, and there was nothing casual about his voice when he
went on: "slapped me down, Mister, that's what they did. Slapped me
down. My own company. And the Ministry of Transport. Both of them.
Told me to forget about it, said my protests were completely out of
order, warned me of the consequences of future lack of co-operation with
the appropriate authorities, whatever the hell appropriate authorities
might be. Me my own company! thirty-five years i've sailed with the
Blue Mail Line and now... And now..." his fists clenched and his voice
choked into fuming silence. "So there was someone bringing very heavy
pressure to bear, after all," I murmured. "There was, Mister, there
was." the cold blue eyes were very cold indeed and the big hands opened
wide, then closed, tight, till the ivory showed. Bullen was a captain,
but he was more than that: he was the Commodore of the Blue Mail Fleet,
and even the board of directors walk softly when the fleet commodore is
around; at least they don't treat him like an office boy. He went on
softly: "if ever I get my hands on Dr. Slingsby Caroline, i'll break his
bloody neck." captain Bullen would have loved to get his hands on the
oddly named Dr. slingsby Caroline. Tens of thousands of police,
government agents, and American service men engaged in the hunt for him
would also have loved to get their hands on him. So would millions of
ordinary citizens if for no other reason than the excellent one that
there was a reward of $50,000 for information leading to his capture.
But the interest of captain Bullen and the crew of the Campari was even
more personal: the missing man was very much the root of all our
troubles. Dr. Slingsby Caroline had vanished, appropriately enough, in
South Carolina. He had worked at a U. S. government's very hush-hush
weapons research establishment south of the town of Columbia, an
establishment concerned with the evolving, as had only become known in
the past week or so, of some sort of small fission weapon for use by
either fighter planes or mobile rocket launchers in local tactical
nuclear wars. As nuclear weapons went, it was the veriest bagatelle
compared to the five megaton monsters already developed by both the
United States and Russia, developing barely one-thousandth of the
explosive power of those and hardly capable of devastating more than a
square mile of territory. Still, with the explosive potential of five
thousand tons of T.N.T., it was no toy. Then, one day night, to be