Beyond the Poseidon Adventure Read Free

reach, genoa and mainsails full, at a good six knots. The sun picked out the laundered whiteness of the patches around the batten holes and the bits of peeling varnish, but nothing could conceal the fact that his was a classic boat of beautiful performance and design, the perfect reflection of a man with taste and spirit. And if such a man should not really have his dinghy inflated and skimming behind the stern, well, it was a relaxed sort of day, everything was going well. As it turned out, his laziness in not bringing the dinghy on board and deflating it saved his life.
    Then the wave had hit, and in that moment of atavistic instinct, all he could hope was that his body did the right things. It was exactly the same when he boxed at college. He would see the right cross coming over and, almost as a theoretical exercise, wonder if his left arm would rise to block it and his own right swing over. It was true, too, out there in those jungle-strewn hills. The black leaves against the piercing blue of the sky. One patch would be too black, too solid, and he would drop to one knee and feel the shudder of the automatic in his arms, and after he fell there would be another of those faces, brown and meaningless as the face on a coin.
    He had been beating to windward under the clear night sky and watching the bow. In this tideless sea, wind and weather came together. He had heard the noise, turned, and caught a glimpse of that white-capped avalanche roaring through the darkness. Quickly he had thrown the tiller to starboard and brought her through the eye of the wind so that she took the wave across the bow. Even as he did, and felt the sloop tossed like a scrap of paper, he knew it was no use. Not even his yacht could weather that one. Then he was flying over the water and dragged in a great gulp of air before he felt himself rolled and tumbled powerlessly in the all-engulfing dark of the wild waters. He struck upwards through the tumult and his lungs strained when it seemed he would never see the sky again. Then, just as inexplicably, it had gone. He paddled on the rapidly calming surface. The dinghy was there, waiting like a well-trained dog.
    He was alive. He had a boat under him. But The Golden Fleece , his home, his office, and his love, had gone. With it the highly refined radio equipment that was by no means standard on a sloop of that size, the documents entitling him to collect a shipment of oranges, and the Navy .45 automatic hidden in the cabin sole.
    The wooden oars squeaked in the plastic rowlocks. It was a long way to Athens. At this rate, he told himself, he might just make it by next New Year’s Eve. In the meantime, any dockside worker who fancied stealing an orange was in for a considerable surprise.
    Across the black water, he thought he saw faint lights. He reached for the flare pistol and muttered three cheering words to himself.
    “Happy New Year.”
    The fifteen-hundred-ton workhorse freighter Magt van Leiden, out of Amsterdam sailing on a course of north by northwest which would take her to Athens, split the extraordinary mirror surface of the Mediterranean with her chugging, even progress. Only the almost negligible waves from her stubby bow disturbed the reflection of her own lights on that plate-glass calm.
    She was a typical small coaster, with the usual central island from which protruded a short, nondescript buff-colored funnel, double derrick arms fore and aft, a forward well giving access to the crew’s quarters, and a single deck encompassing the island and the bridge.
    Tramp she may have been, but only by name. She was as neat as a liner, her hull painted black, her superstructure the same buff color as her funnel and the housing of the bridge and quarters an immaculate white. At her stern flew the horizontal red, white, and blue tricolor of the Netherlands.
    Everything about the Magt suggested decency and probity. The same was true of the chunky, powerful man in his mid-fifties who leaned on the