Алистер Маклин - Seawitch

Marina said accusingly: ‘I heard shots being fired out there.’

‘Just warning shots in the air,’ Mitchell said. ‘Frightens the hell out of people.’

‘You made them all prisoner.’

Lord Worth said irritably: ‘Don’t talk nonsense. Now do be quiet. The Commander and I have important matters to discuss.’

‘We’ll leave,’ Mitchell said. He looked at Marina. ‘Come and let’s see the patients off.’

They followed the two stretchers out to the helicopter. They were accompanied by Durand and Aaron – both with their hands lashed behind their backs and on a nine-inch hobble – Dr Greenshaw and one of Palermo’s men, a menacing individual with a sawn-off shot-gun who was to ride guard on the captives until they reached the mainland.

Mitchell said to Marina: ‘Last chance.’

‘No.’

‘We’re going to make a great couple,’ Mitchell said gloomily. ‘Monosyllabic is what I mean.’

They said their goodbyes, watched the helicopter lift off and made their way back to Lord Worth’s quarters. Both he and Larsen were on separate lines, and from the expressions on their faces it was clear that they were less happy with life than they might have been. Both men were trying, with zero effect, to obtain some additional tankerage. There were, in fact, some half-dozen idle tankers on the south and east coast in the 50,000 dw range, but all belonged to the major oil companies who would have gone to the stake sooner than charter any of their vessels to the Worth Hudson Oil Company. The nearest tankers of the required tonnage were either in Britain, Norway or the Mediterranean, and to have brought them across would have involved an intolerable loss of time, not to say money, which last matter lay very close to Lord Worth’s heart. He and Larsen had even considered bringing one of their super-tankers into service, but had decided against it. Because of the tankers’ huge carrying capacity, the loss in revenue would have been unbearably high. And what had happened to the Crusader might even happen to a super-tanker. True, they were insured at Lloyd’s, but that august firm’s marine accident investigators were notoriously, if justifiably, cagey, prudent and thoroughly cautious men, and although they invariably settled any genuine claim they tended to deliberate at length before making any final decision.

Another call came through from the Torbello. On course, its estimated time of arrival in Galveston was one hour. Lord Worth said gloomily that they had at least two tankers in operation: they would just have to step up their already crowded schedules.

One half-hour later another message came through from the tanker. One half-hour to Galveston. Lord Worth might have felt less assured had he known that now that dark had fallen the Starlight , leaving the Georgia where it was, had already moved away in the direction of the Seawitch , its engines running on its electrical batteries. Its chances of sonar detection by the Seawitch were regarded as extremely small. It carried with it highly skilled divers and an unpleasant assortment of mines, limpet mines and amatol beehives, all of which could be controlled by long-distance radio.

Yet another half-hour passed before the welcome news came through that the tanker Torbello was safely berthed in Galveston. Lord Worth said to Larsen that he intended to make an immediate voice-link call to the port authorities in Galveston to ensure the fastest turn-round ever, money no object.

He got his voice-link in just one minute – the Lord Worths of this world are never kept waiting. When he made his customary peremptory demands the harbour-master expressed a considerable degree of surprise.

‘I really can’t imagine what you are talking about, sir.’

‘God damn it, I always know what I’m talking about.’

‘Not in this case, Lord Worth. I’m afraid you’ve been misinformed or hoaxed. The Torbello has not arrived.’

‘But damn it, I’ve just heard–’

‘One moment, please.’

The moment passed into about thirty, during which Mitchell thoughtfully brought Lord Worth a glass of scotch, which he half-consumed at one gulp. Then the voice came through again.

‘Disturbing news. Not only is there no sign of your tanker, but our radar scanners show no signs of any vessel of that size being within a radius of forty miles.’

‘Then what the devil can have happened to her? I was speaking to her only two or three minutes ago.’

‘On her own call-sign?’

‘Yes. damn it.’

‘Then obviously she’s come to no harm.’

Lord Worth hung up without as much as a courtesy thank-you. He glowered at Larsen and Mitchell as if what had happened had been their fault. He said at length: ‘I can only conclude that the captain of the Torbello has gone off his rocker.’

Mitchell said: ‘And I conclude that he’s safely under lock and key aboard his own ship.’

Lord Worth was heavily ironic. ‘In addition to your many other accomplishments you’ve now become psychic.’

‘Your Torbello has been hijacked.’

‘Hijacked! Hijacked! Now you’ve gone off your rocker. Whoever heard of a tanker being hijacked?’

‘Whoever heard of a jumbo-jet being hijacked until the first one was? After what happened to the Crusader in Galveston the captain of the Torbello would have been extremely wary of being approached, far less boarded, by any other vessel unless it were a craft with respectability beyond question. The only two such types of craft are naval or coastguard. We’ve heard that the Marine Gulf Corporation’s survey vessel has been stolen. Many of those survey vessels are ex-coastguard with a helipad for a helicopter to carry out seismological pattern bombing. The ship was called the Hammond. With your connections you could find out in minutes.’

Lord Worth did find out in minutes. He said: ‘So you’re right.’ He was too dumbfounded even to apologize. ‘And this of course was the Questar that Cronkite sailed from Galveston. God only knows what name it goes under now. What next, I wonder?’

Mitchell said: ‘A call from Cronkite, I should think.’

‘What would he call me for?’

‘Some outrageous demands, I should imagine. I don’t know.’

Lord Worth was nothing if not resilient. He had powerful and influential friends. He called an admiral friend in the naval headquarters in Washington and demanded that an air-sea search unit be despatched immediately to the scene. The navy apologetically said that they would have to obtain the permission of their Commander-in-Chief – in effect, the President. The President, apparently, professed a profound if polite degree of disinterest. Neither he nor Congress had any reason to love the oil companies who had so frequently flouted them, which was less than fair to Lord Worth who had never flouted anyone in Washington in his life. More, the search almost certainly lay outside their jurisdictional waters. Besides, it was raining in the Gulf and black as the Earl of Hell’s waistcoat, and though their radar might well pick up a hundred ships in the area visual identification would be impossible.

He tried the CIA. Their disinterest was even more profound. In the several years past they had had their fingers badly burnt in public and all their spare time was devoted to licking their wounds.

The FBI curtly reminded him that their activities were purely internal and that anyway they got sea-sick whenever they ventured on water.

Lord Worth considered making an appeal to the UNO, but was dissuaded by Larsen and Mitchell. Not only would the Gulf states, Venezuela, Nigeria, every Communist country and what now went by the name of the Third World – and they held the vast majority of votes in the UNO – veto any such suggestion: the UNO had no legal power to initiate any such action. Apart from that, by that time the entire UNO were probably in bed anyway.