A Woman Involved by John Gordon Davis Read Free Book Online

schools at boxing tournaments, extravaganzas of bloodshed and brain-damage which the mothers attended with great pride. By the time he left school he had been unbeaten champion for two years, had hated every minute of it, and he vowed never to fight again. But he brought the same bull-at-a-gate strategy to his university days. Jack Morgan was not a born sportsman, but he earned his rugby blue with suicidal tackling and fanatical fitness, and his cricket blue with sledge-hammer batting. He was brighter than most, certainly, but not sufficiently so to explain his sparkling results: he earned his Bachelor of Science degree cum laude only by unrelenting hard, hard work. And when he chose the Royal Navy as his career, he tackled the gruelling Marine training courses with the same grim determination, and passed with flying colours; but when it came to settling down in the service he knew that he was not a warrior at heart: he was anacademic, and he applied to join Submarines. It is more restful down there. It was nice to use just his head, and no brawn. And when, at the age of thirty-five, he was thrown out of the Royal Navy, or ‘compulsorily retired’, as a result of The Cocaine Affair, he had refused a commission in the Sultan of Oman’s navy and declined to join the lucrative company of former SAS and Special Boat boys who undertake contracts for highly paid derring-do for which they have been so well trained by Her Majesty, even though he badly needed the money. Instead he sold his house, commuted his pension, bought a second-hand freight-ship and doggedly began a precarious civilian career in merchant shipping.
    It was a small freighter, only six thousand tons, in good condition but only profitable because Jack Morgan was both owner and master and he lived permanently aboard, ate from the ship’s stores and had no wife. The only other asset he owned was a little farm in the mountains of France which he had never even seen and which he had been forced to accept as payment of Makepeace’s debts when that scatterbrain had decided that being a shipping tycoon was dead boring after the Special Boat Service and decided to join the shady company of the ex-SAS and SBS boys. ‘They make such good money, ’ Makepeace had cajoled, his triangular face all plaintive. ‘Let’s sell the ship and both go.’
    ‘No way.’
    ‘But it’s not necessarily killing people,’ Makepeace appealed ‘– it’s looking after people. Like bodyguard work for these Arab guys. There’s a fortune to be made in security work in Europe – all these high-ups coming here. And training their armies. And arranging arms and ammunition, all that good stuff – pay a fortune, they do. It’s mostly official, you know.’
    ‘I’m a seaman, Makepeace, not a hired gun. If you don’t like the merchant marine, pay your debts and go.’
    ‘But how do I pay the money I owe you?’
    ‘In cash.’
    ‘That’s the difficulty,’ Makepeace mused. ‘Look, there’s this little place I’ve got in France. Lovely spot, bought it from my brother-in-law for my old age …’
    ‘Sell it. If you’re joining Danziger and the boys, you’re not going to have any old age.’
    ‘I wondered if you’d take it as payment –’
    ‘No way.’
    So he took the rock-farm in France, because that was the only way he’d ever get anything from Makepeace, and he had not seen it to this day because he was so busy surviving, He was doing carpentry on his bridge when the Navy car drew up on the quay in Plymouth and the ensign scrambled out. He came clattering up the companionway to the bridge. He was a red-headed young man with a white, earnest face. He saluted and panted:
    ‘Captain S/M’s compliments, sir, he wants to see you immediately, this moment, sir.’
    Morgan looked at him angrily. Ensign Phillips, who thought he dined with kings because he was a four-ring captain’s flunky …  ‘The Captain of Submarines wants to see me immediately, does he,