Jack Higgins Read Online Free PDF

“Every golden moment.”
    I laughed out loud, unable to contain it. “They broke the mould when they made you.”
    â€œSeven hundred and twenty-three years of breeding,” she said. “You can always tell.”
    â€œYou were the nearest thing to kick.”
    â€œI know. Are things that bad?”
    â€œJust about. Maybe they’ll be satisfied if they lay hands on Guyon.”
    â€œAnd if not?”
    â€œEight years of sweat down the slot.”
    I moved a few paces away, ears strained as I heard an engine start up down in the harbour.
    â€œTell me about your wife,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice.
    â€œYou’ve been talking to Morgan?”
    â€œI truly believe he’d do anything for me.”
    Curiously enough I didn’t feel annoyed. Was even prepared to speak the name itself for the first time in years, a thing I’d had a superstitious dread of doing.
    â€œIt’s soon told. I met Grace just after the end of the Palestine troubles in 1948. I was a lieutenant then, commissioned from the ranks at the end of the war. Gallant record, decorated, lots of promise. On paper, anyway.”
    â€œWhat went wrong?”
    â€œI made captain and that was it. Eight years later after Malaya, Korea, Cyprus, I was still the same rank.”
    â€œAny particular reason?”
    â€œI wasn’t at my best when dealing with my superiors and I’d hung on to my Irish passport. They didn’t care for that. Grace and I only saw each other about twice a year anyway and there were no children which didn’t help. She dropped me in fifty-seven and married again the following year. An American.”
    â€œHas it worked out?”
    â€œAs far as I know. He’s got shares in Fort Knox.”
    â€œSo you decided to prove yourself by becoming salvage king of the Mediterranean?”
    â€œSomething like that.” I grinned. “All by accident, mind you. I resigned my commission and bought the Gentle Jane , which took about everything I had. I’d fancy ideas about making a living as a sponge diver in the Aegean and doing a bit of archaeological diving on the side. There can be real money in that if you know what you’re doing. They have every kind of ship from the Bronze Age onwards at the bottom in those parts if you know where to look. I could take you to a reef off the Turkish coast near the Dodecanese where they’ve found traces of eleven different wrecks starting with the Bronze Age and ending with a Turkish transport of the Crimean War period.”
    â€œDid any of this work out?”
    â€œNot really. There isn’t the demand for real sponges that there used to be. Oh, there was a living, but a damned poor one and finding new Bronze Age wrecks turned out to be rather more difficult than I had imagined.”
    â€œWhat happened next?”
    â€œYanni Kytros,” I said simply. “I started running American cigarettes into Italy for him. Amongst other things.”
    â€œSpare me the details. The salvage work came later?”
    â€œIt was what I wanted to do. I’d had a lot of experience at that kind of thing in the Marines. It’s another world down there, you know. Something you can’t really describe.”
    â€œI had a brother who felt the same way about flying.”
    â€œThat’s it exactly. There was just Morgan and myself back in fifty-nine when we started. I had a crew of Egyptian deckhands, but we did all the diving. Raised a Lebanese coaster that had gone down in fifteen fathoms and cleared twenty thousand pounds.”
    â€œAnd never looked back. Tell me something. Why did you dive on your own today? Isn’t that considered dangerous?”
    â€œHakim was in a hurry and it pays to keep in with the Ministry crowd. And there was no one else available.”
    â€œWhat about Morgan?”
    â€œBut I told you,” I said. “He’s had it. Oh, there was a time when he was good.