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

these reasons that captain Bullen had insisted on having him aboard.
"How's it going?" I asked. "You can see for yourself." he waved a
complacent hand towards the pile of stacked crates on the quayside, now
diminished by a good third since I had seen it last. "Speed allied with
efficiency. When wilson is on the job let no man ever "the bo'sun's
name is macdonald, not wilson," I said. "So it is." he laughed,
glanced down to where the bo'sun, a big, tough, infinitely competent
hebridean islander was haranguing the bearded stevedores, and shook his
head admiringly. "I wish I could understand what he's saying."
"Translation would be superfluous," I said, drily. "I'll take
over. Old man wants you to go ashore."
"Ashore?" his face lit up; in two short years the second's
shore-going exploits had already passed into the realms of legend. "Let
no man ever say that wilson ignored duty's call. Twenty minutes for a
shower, shave and shake out the number ones "the agent's offices are
just beyond the dock gates," I interrupted. "You can go as you are.
Find out what's happened to our latest passengers. Captain's beginning
to worry about them; if they're not here by five o'clock he's sailing
without them. Way he's feeling now, he'd just as soon do that. If the
agent doesn't know, tell him to find out. Fast." wilson left. The sun
started westering, but the heat stayed as it was. Thanks to macdonald's
competence and uninhibited command of the spanish language, the cargo on
the quayside steadily and rapidly diminished. Wilson returned to report
no sign of our passengers. Their baggage had arrived two days
previously and, although only for five people, was enough, wilson said,
to fill a couple of railroad trucks. About the passengers, the agent
had been very nervous indeed. They were very important people, senor,
very, very important. One of them was the most important man in the
whole province of camafuegos. A jeep had already been dispatched
westwards along the coast road to look for them. It sometimes happened,
the senor understood, that a car spring would go or a shock absorber
snap. When wilson had innocently inquired if this was because the
revolutionary government had no money left to pay for the filling in of
the enormous potholes in the roads, the agent had become even more
nervous and said indignantly that it was entirely the fault of the
inferior metal those perfidious Americanos used in the construction of
their vehicles. Wilson said he had left with the impression that
detroit had a special assembly line exclusively devoted to turning out
deliberately inferior cars destined solely for this particular corner of
the caribbean. Wilson went away. The cargo continued to move steadily
into number four hold. About four o'clock in the afternoon I heard the
sound of the clashing of gears and the asthmatic wheezing of what
sounded like a very elderly engine indeed. This, I thought, would be
the passengers at last, but no; what clanked into view round the corner
of the dock gate was a dilapidated truck with hardly a shred of paint
left on the body work, white canvas showing on the tyres, and the engine
hood removed to reveal what looked, from my elevation, like a solid
block of rust. One of the special detroit jobs probably. On its
cracked and splintered platform it carried three medium-sized crates,
freshly boxed and metal-banded. Wrapped in a blue haze from the