Year of the Golden Ape Read Online Free PDF

people are Sicilians - kill them and you start a vendetta. They'll have enough trouble getting home as it is.' He started walking off the bridge, then turned at the doorway to speak to the captain. 'If you don't maintain course,' he said pleasantly, 'I'll break your arm . ,.'
    The incident was significant on two counts. It set a precedent Winter was later to utilise on a far vaster scale, and it pointed up the vast chasm that opened between LeCat and Winter where human life was concerned. To the Englishman, killing was abhorrent, to be avoided at all costs unless absolutely unavoidable. To the Frenchman it was a way of life, something you did with as little compunction as cleaning your teeth.
     
    A few months later, sensing that so much success could not continue for ever, Winter withdrew from the smuggling operation. Settling himself in Tangier, he proceeded to enjoy the profits he had made; staying at one of the two best hotels, he shared his luxury suite with first an English girl, later with a Canadian girl. To both of them he explained at the outset that marriage was an excellent arrangement for other people, and it was while he was relaxing that the first oil crisis burst on the world in 1973.
    Winter observed with some cynicism the way the Arab sheikhs ordered Europe about, telling foreign ministers what they could and could not have, and he admired their gall. What he did not admire was world reaction, the scramble for oil at any price, and personally he would have dealt with the new overlords in a very different manner.
    His judgement that the smuggling operation could not last for ever was vindicated when LeCat, having extended the operation to the south coast of France, was caught with a consignment in Marseilles. He was arrested, but only after a flying chase through the streets of the city when he managed to break the leg of one gendarme and fracture the skull of another. He was tried, given a long prison sentence and incarcerated in the Sant é in Paris. Later, Winter heard the Frenchman had been released in mysterious circumstances. He shrugged his shoulders, never expecting to see LeCat again.
    Winter, who knew his Mediterranean, did hear that the Pêcheur which put out to sea before LeCat's arrest, later sailed through the Straits of Gibraltar for an unknown destination. What he did not know was that LeCat, using Arab funds this time, had bought the vessel off the French Syndicate. The trawler made the long Atlantic crossing to the Caribbean, passed through the Panama Canal, and then made its way up the Californian coast to the port of Victoria in Canada. It had been anchored in Canadian waters less than a month when the approach was made to Winter.
     
    For several weeks Winter had known he was being watched. He made a few discreet enquiries, a little money changed hands. He learned that the men who shadowed him were Arabs, and since he had never done anything to arouse Arab hostility, he assumed someone was considering making him a proposition. The name of Ahmed Riad was mentioned.
    Riad, he had heard, had some link with Sheikh Gamal Tafak, although they had never been seen together in public. By this time Winter's opinion of the West was simple and brutal: it had lost the will to survive. When the sheikhs first cut off the oil the West depended on for its very existence, the European so-called leaders had panicked, scuttling round like headless chickens in a desperate attempt to scoop up all the oil they could find, paying any price the sheikhs cared to fix at their OAPEC (Organisation of Arab Petrol-Exporting Countries) meetings, receiving the sheikhs in their various capitals like Lords of Creation. Seeing the writing on the wall, Winter took his decision - he must make one great financial killing and get to hell out of it.
    One million dollars was the sum he had decided on - even with inflation it should last out for the rest of his life. And in the 1970's that kind of money could come from only one