Over the hill. Then there'd be a ritual burst of anger and the rest of my life tied by one leg to a desk. Scown himself could, would and had walked through walls chasing stories. There'd been wounds as a war correspondent, arraignment at the bar of the House of Commons for well justified contempt, and all the time the steady upward climb. Finally the thought of telling Scown I'd been scared off by a bright lonely morning and a trick phone call actually made me grin to myself and I walked across to the boat and got in while the mood held.
For a few minutes the unfamiliar mechanics of handling the boat in a confined space kept my mind off everything else. There were some large and expensive toys parked in the marina and I have a phobia about damaged paint and insurance companies and negligence, but finally I was nosing out on to Lake Mead with the engine burbling happily and the water swishing beneath. There wasn't a cloud or a breath of wind. All that was missing from the whole adman's set-up was the blonde and the long cool drink, and both were waiting twenty miles up the lake. If I knew that particular blonde the long, cool drink would already be in her hand, and it wouldn't be the first of the day. Susannah Rhodes breakfasted off Bloody Marys.
A bit more throttle and the boat tucked her tail down determinedly. I glanced round. I was still alone on the water. More throttle still;, the engine snarled happily, the bow lifted and quite suddenly I was enjoying myself. It's funny how the mind changes gear; the thoughts of a few minutes
before had been blasted away by nothing more concrete than the roar of a healthy engine and the hiss of flying water. No wonder supermarkets use sweet sounds to sell groceries. I sat back, consciously straightening my arms against the steering wheel like a grand prix driver. If Alsa'd been there she'd have said, 'Your great baby!' and laughed at me. I'd have purred like a kitten and asked her to marry me and she'd have refused again and said, like someone reciting Tennyson, that her heart belonged to another. She'd said it so many times I was beginning to believe it, in spite of the mock nineteenth century earnestness.
•
The sheer exhilaration of driving that speedboat was inducing its own kind of weird optimism and it occurred to me suddenly that she might have phoned from Gothenburg to say yes. But it wasn't true and I knew it. If Alsa'd intended to say yes, she'd have spent the money the phone call cost on a table cloth for her bottom drawer and written a quiet, letter.
So why had she phoned? To, let me know she'd actually reached Gothenburg, perhaps. A feminine cry of triumph —I've done it, and you didn't! Well, if she was in Gothenburg, it. must be true; she'd worked Scown's little deal for him without being slung out of Russia the way they'd heaved me out. Two hours to pack and an escort to the plane, because I'd got a little tight and made a few mildly uncomplimentary remarks. Scown's Russian scheme was typical of him. He wasn't content that the Daily News sold four million in Britain; he had his eye on larger horizons: Common Market editions, electronic print-out news eventually and a curious little quirk of ambition that made him want his to be the first Western newspaper on open sale in Russia. You could tell him the Russians wouldn't allow it in a million years, and he'd say, like a stockbroker, that it was a matter of confidence. As a start, he'd cornered some visiting Soviet Minister and offered to publish a magazine about Russia in Britain, using Russian material. Naturally enough they liked the idea and made very faintly encouraging hum-and-ha noises about the Daily News going on sale in Russia. One of these days. Eventually. So I'
d gone out to rifle the files at the Moscow Number One State Magazine Publishing House for suitable stories and pictures. The scheme looked like lapsing when they threw me out, but Scown had breathed fire and life back into it and sent Alsa to pick up. where I'd left off, in the certain knowledge that the Russians, like everybody else, would lay down their coats in icy puddles so Alsa could keep her feet dry. Well, good for her! And if I were the woman's editor of the Daily News, I'd start watching my back. Alsa wouldn't stick a knife in anybody, but Scown would see Alsa as deserving of reward and he was as quick with a blade as D'Artagnan, without the same fine line in scruple.
I also felt a sharp stab of envy for whichever slick young Swede at the Gothenburg printers was assigned to look after her while the magazine was produced. No, on second thoughts, I felt no envy at all, because in a few days he'd find himself waving goodbye at the airport and wondering why the world was so empty and forlorn all of a sudden. I returned my attention to my own empty world, feeling the need for a cigarette, and crouched behind the windscreen to light it. Then I straightened and looked around. A couple of big concrete towers had come into view behind me, presumably part of the works at the Hoover Dam, which banks up the water to form Lake Mead. Over on my right, what looked like a sheer rock wall rose away from the lake shore, but I didn't look that way too long because the sunlight flashed more dazzingly by the minute off the shiny water. And still there was nobody on the lake. The only sign of man was a high white contrail rigid as a ruler in the substratosphere.
After about another twenty minutes, the lake began to marrow and the high walls marched towards me. I seemed to be heading directly for the end of the lake, but the chart told me the water swung to the right into the neck of Boulder Canyon a few miles ahead. I began to keep my eyes skinned, feeling a reluctant admiration for Spinetti for choosing to hide Susannah Rhodes here on the lake, where comfort, privacy and a first-class means of escape could exist in the single convenient shape of a big, fast boat. Soon there was a giant rearing rock bluff to my right and I swung the boat around it, waiting for Susannah's floating hide-out to come into view. My course seemed to make the bluff move aside like a curtain, unveiling ever more of the shadowed water behind, and it kept coming until there was no new water to see. There was no sign of a cruiser either, or any other boat for that matter; just the vast, precipitous gorge of Boulder Canyon reaching emptily to the northeast, with sunlight high on one rock wall and the other darkly shaded.
I throttled well back until my boat was barely nudging ahead and looked around, but there was nothing ahead, nothing behind. I hadn't passed the cruiser on the way, so maybe she was coming from the other direction, down the canyon from the upper part of the lake. If so, perhaps I should go ahead and rendezvous in the canyon. I set the boat moving fast ahead and slid rapidly in between the towering walls, leaving the vee of my wake to wash against them.
Ten minutes later I was still going fast, the canyon was funnelling wider and the great sweep of the upper lake was spreading before me. But no cruiser. I shrugged. This wasn't where we were supposed to rendezvous. She was late, that's all, and I'd better go back to the right place.
I spun the steering wheel to bring the bow round, and five yards ahead of me something plucked at the water. A fish, probably, rising for a fly. But a second later the same thing happened again and it was no fish. Above the engine's burble I heard sharp cracks echoing between the rock walls. Christ, was it an avalanche? I looked upward scanning the cliffs anxiously, and saw a man's coloured shirt way up high. Then there was another crack. Something smacked my bow and there was a sudden tiny hole in the white paint. Bewildered, I looked upward again and saw the figure on the cliff extend an arm to point up the lake. His other hand held the rifle.
CHAPTER THREE
I gunned the throttle and spun the wheel to try and get in beneath the cliff, but rifle bullets are faster than speedboats and another one smacked into the superstructure warningly. I glanced up at him again. The distance wasn't much more than eighty yards and I was worried the boat would already be taking water. Maybe that was what he intended: to sink the boat and let me drown. But no, he was pointing again, pointing up to the huge sheet of the upper lake.