CHAPTER ONE

The brochure offered the chance of twelve days of Caribbean sun and seven ports of call, departing on the second of the next month. Max took it. On reflection, maybe he shouldn’t have. As it is said, on such moments of impulse your life can turn. He hadn’t been able to take a holiday for nearly five years and his doctor, after Max’s latest medical, said he needed one badly. His blood pressure was worryingly high, and the grey hue to his pale parchment-like skin reinforced the doctor’s comments. Having now managed to keep his irascible publisher happy, by meeting the deadline to complete his latest book, Max was free to take the break. The ship, the Silver Clipper, just a year old, was illustrated in the richly-coloured glossy pamphlet, laying at anchor in the ubiquitous silver sand and palm-fringed lagoon with a couple of small atolls awash with gently foaming sea in the background. Robinson Crusoe would have confused it with home. Designed to accommodate just fifty people in single status opulence it appeared to be more like the private yacht of an oil sheik than a commercial cruiser. The thrusting bow was scimitar sharp with an arc to match which contrasted with the steeply raked forecastle and superstructure. Pristine whiteness somehow fails to convey the full brilliance of the colour displayed in the leaflet. Diamond white would be closer. This was all offset by the canary yellow sunshades dotted around the stern-end swimming pool and water sports staging. This, it seemed, slid from the hull at the turn of a switch and unfolded into a complete on-water facility. Guests were depicted wind sailing and water skiing amid flying spray, from the device. Utopia defined. The embarkation port was San Juan in Puerto Rico and on arriving from Heathrow, Max made his way, as instructed, to the ship’s reception desk, set up in a small conference room off the arrival hall. Along with his tickets and itinerary and the usual wad of information that accompanies them, Max had been sent a rather smart blue leather document case, emblazoned on which was the company’s silver logo. He had seen the same document cases stuffed under the arms of some of his fellow passengers in and around the check-in desk at Heathrow. Not wanting become too overly involved on a long flight with a forthcoming potential shipmate, who may insist on my company throughout, he had discreetly transferred the essentials to the inside pocket of his linen jacket and stuffed the case inside his holdall. He was now incognito, albeit temporarily. It was to the end of the dribble of blue document cases, arcing around a dusty corner of the arrival hall and into the reception room, that Max attached myself. The airport was one short stop from bedlam. At 2 p.m. the place was stacked to the gunwales. Although built in the not too distant past it was obvious that it was totally inadequate for the demands being placed upon it. With the enormous increase in cruise holidays and Puerto Rico’s ideal location in the Caribbean basin as a staging post, the capital city’s facilities were being stretched way past the agreeable. Adding to the troops of transients moving through the glazed canyons were the unauthorized local services filling any available space: gold neck laced but toothless, cigarette sprouting shoe shine boys, taxi drivers and importuning suppliers of all things tawdry. It was more a greenhouse than an airport terminal, with hectares of glass being the main building material. As he stood in the queue, gently evaporating behind a smart late middle aged couple, Max tried to find a reason why the architect had decided that air-conditioning wasn’t a necessary feature of the edifice. Considering its location in the Caribbean, where temperatures seldom fall below the mid-eighties and the humidity rivals the inside of a Chinese laundry, he found it a conundrum. He gave up and supposed that they must have just run out of money. ‘Hi, there.’ The voice was high pitched, lilting and very American. It was the lady of the couple in front. A milky brown, well-manicured and bejewelled hand, with a few liver spots, was stabbed in Max’s direction. He took it and gently gave it the regulation couple of shakes. ‘I guess us guys are to be fellow mariners,’ she gushed, with little regard for grammar, in a girly giggle. ‘Yes, I suppose we are.’ Max smiled rather uncomfortably, hoping that he wouldn’t be splicing too many main braces with her. ‘I’m Christine and this is my husband, Dr Allen Smith.’ Allen was, like his wife, in his middle to late fifties, around five ten in height, slim to the point of looking pinched and with more than his share of liver spots around his forehead. The brass buttoned, double breasted blazer, open necked shirt and cravat were without flaw. The crease in his pale yellow slacks must have been sewn in. ‘Pleased to meet you, Christine, Allen.’ Max shook Allen’s hand and nodded his head alternately. ‘Max Porter,’ he informed them, as convention dictates.