Алистер Маклин - Seawitch

Captain Thompson, in a stupefaction that was slowly turning into a slow burn, said: ‘What the hell goes?’

‘You can see what goes. Hijack. A very popular pastime nowadays. I agree that nobody’s ever hijacked a tanker before, but there always has to be someone to start a new trend. Besides, it’s not really something new. Piracy on the high seas. They’ve been at it for thousands of years. Don’t try anything rash, Captain, and please don’t try to be a hero. If you all behave no harm will come to you. Anyway, what could you possibly do with fourteen submachine-guns lined up against you?’

Within five minutes all the crew, officers and men, with one exception, were herded in the crew’s mess under armed guard. Nobody had even as much as contemplated offering resistance. The exception was an unhappy-looking duty engineer in the engine room. There are few people who don’t look slightly unhappy, when staring at the muzzle of a Schmeisser from a distance of five feet.

Cronkite was on the bridge giving Mulhooney his final instructions.

‘Continue sending the Seawitch its half-hourly on time, on course reports. Then report a minor breakdown in two or three hours – a fractured fuel line or something of the sort – enough that would keep the Torbello immobilized for a few hours. You’re due in Galveston tonight and I need time and room to manoeuvre. Rather, you need time and room to manoeuvre. When darkness comes keep every navigational light extinguished – indeed, every light extinguished. Don’t let’s underestimate Lord Worth.’ Cronkite was speaking with an unaccustomed degree of bitterness, doubtless recalling the day Lord Worth had taken him to the cleaner’s in court. ‘He’s an exceptionally powerful man, and it’s quite on the cards that he can have an air and sea search mounted for his missing tanker.’

Cronkite rejoined the Georgia , cast off and pulled away. Mulhooney, too, got under way, but altered course ninety degrees to port so that he was heading south-west instead of north-west. On the first half-hour he sent the reassuring report to the Seawitch – ‘on course, on time.’

Cronkite waited for the Starlight to join him, then both vessels proceeded together in a generally south-eastern direction until they were about thirty-five nautical miles from the Seawitch , safely over the horizon and out of reach of the Seawitch ’s radar and sonar. They stopped their engines and settled down to wait.

The big Boeing had almost halved the distance between Florida and Washington. Lord Worth, in his luxurious state-room immediately abaft the flight deck, was making up for time lost during the previous night and, blissfully unaware of the slings and arrows that were coming at him from all sides, was soundly asleep.

Mitchell had been unusually but perhaps not unexpectedly late in waking that morning. He showered, shaved and dressed while the coffee percolated, all the time conscious of a peculiar and unaccustomed sense of unease. He paced up and down the kitchen, drinking coffee, then abruptly decided to put his unease at rest. He lifted the phone and dialled Lord Worth’s mansion. The other end rang, rang again and kept on ringing. Mitchell replaced the receiver, then tried again with the same result. He finished his coffee, went across to Roomer’s house and let himself in with his pass-key. He went into the bedroom to find Roomer still asleep. He woke him up. Roomer regarded him with disfavour.

‘What do you mean by waking up a man in the middle of the night?’

‘It’s not the middle of the night.’ He pulled open the drapes and the bright summer sunlight flooded the room. ‘It’s broad daylight, as you will be able to see when you open your eyes.’

‘Is your house on fire or something, then?’

‘I wish it were something as trivial as that. I’m worried, John. I woke up feeling bugged by something, and the feeling got worse and worse. Five minutes ago I called up Lord Worth’s house. I tried twice. There was no reply. Must have been at least eight or ten people in that house, but there was no reply.’

‘What on earth do you suppose–’

‘You’re supposed to be the man with the intuition. Get yourself ready. I’ll go make some coffee.’

Long before the coffee was ready, in fact less than ninety seconds later, Roomer was in the kitchen. He had neither showered nor shaved but had had the time and the grace to run a comb through his hair. He was looking the same way as the expressionless Mitchell was feeling.

‘Never mind the coffee.’ Roomer was looking at him with an almost savage expression on his face, but Mitchell knew that it wasn’t directed at him. ‘Let’s get up to the house.’

Roomer drove his own car, which was the nearer.

Mitchell said: ‘God, we’re a bright lot. Hit us over the head often enough and then maybe – I only say maybe – we’ll begin to see the obvious. But we’re far too smart to see the obvious, aren’t we?’ He held on to his seat as Roomer, tyres screeching, rounded a blind corner. ‘Easy, boy, easy. Too late to bolt the stable door now.’

With what was clearly a conscious effort of will Roomer slowed down. He said: ‘Yes, we’re the clever ones, Lord Worth offered as an excuse for his actions a threat of the girls’ abduction. You told him to offer the threat of the girls’ abduction as an excuse for our presence there last night. And it never occurred to either of our staggering intellects that their abduction was both logical and inevitable. Lord Worth was not exaggerating – he has enemies, and vicious enemies, who are out to get him, come what may. Two trump cards – and what trumps. All the aces in the pack. He’s powerless now. He pretends to be loftily indulgent towards the two girls. He’ll give away half his money to get them back. Just half. He’ll use the other half to hunt them down. Money can buy any co-operation in the world, and the old boy has all the money in the world.’

Mitchell now seemed relaxed, comfortable, even calm. He said: ‘But we’ll get to them first, won’t we, John?’

Roomer stirred uncomfortably in his seat as they swung into the mansion’s driveway. He said: ‘I’m just as sick and mad as you are. But I don’t like it when you start to talk that way. You know that.’

‘I should say I’m expressing an intention or at least a hope.’ He smiled. ‘Let’s see.’

Roomer stopped his car in a fashion that did little good to Lord Worth’s immaculately raked gravel. The first thing that caught Mitchell’s eye as he left the car was an odd movement by the side of the driveway in a clump of bushes. He took out his gun and went to investigate, then put his gun away, opened his clasp-knife and sliced through MacPherson’s bonds. The head gardener, after forty years in Florida, had never lost a trace of a very pronounced Scottish accent, an accent that tended to thicken according to the degree of mental stress he was undergoing. On this occasion, with the adhesive removed, his language was wholly indecipherable – which, in view of what he was almost certainly trying to say, was probably just as well in the circumstances.

They went through the front doorway. Jenkins, apparently taking his ease in a comfortable armchair, greeted them with a baleful glare, a glare that was in no way directed at them. He was just in a baleful mood, a mood that was scarcely bettered when Mitchell swiftly, painfully, and with scant regard for Jenkins’s physical and mental feelings, yanked away the adhesive from his lips. Jenkins took a deep breath, doubtless preparatory to lodging some form of protest, but Mitchell cut in before he could speak.

‘Where does Jim sleep?’ Jim was the radio operator.