Алистер Маклин - Seawitch

For once in his life Lord Worth appeared to be at a loss. Life, it appeared, could hold no more for him. But Lord Worth was discovering that, upon occasion, he could be as fallible as the next man: for seconds later he was at an utter and total loss.

A voice-over call came through. It was, as Mitchell had predicted it would be, Cronkite. He was glad to inform Lord Worth that there was no cause for concern over the Torbello as she was in safe hands.

‘Where?’ Had his daughter not been present Lord Worth would undoubtedly have qualified his question with a few choice adjectives.

‘I prefer not to specify exactly. Enough to say that she is securely anchored in the territorial waters of a Central American country. It is my intention to dispose of the oil to this very poor and oil-deficient country–’ he did not mention that it was his intention to sell it at half-price, which would bring in a few acceptable hundred thousand dollars ‘–then take the tanker out to sea and sink it in a hundred fathoms. Unless, of course–’

‘Unless what?’ Lord Worth asked. His voice had assumed a peculiar hoarseness.

‘Unless you close down the Christmas tree on the Seawitch and immediately stop all pumping and drilling.’

‘Fool.’

‘You said what?’

‘Your thugs have already attended to that. Haven’t they told you?’

‘I want proof. I want Mortensen.’

Lord Worth said wearily: ‘Hold on. We’ll get him.’

Mitchell went to fetch him. By the time he returned, again overalled and masked, Mortensen had been thoroughly briefed. He confirmed to Cronkite that all pumping and drilling had stopped. Cronkite expressed his satisfaction and the radio link went dead. Mitchell removed the .38 from the base of Mortensen’s skull and two of Palermo’s men took him from the room. Mitchell took off his hood and Marina looked at him with a mixture of horror and incredulity.

She whispered: ‘You were ready to kill him.’

‘Not at all. I was going to pat him on the head and tell him what a good boy he was. I asked you to get off this rig.’

Lord Worth had barely begun to wipe his brow when two men hurried into the room. One was Palermo and the other was one of the rig crew, Simpson, whose duty it was to monitor the sensory instruments attached to the platform’s legs and the tensioning anchor cables. He was obviously in a state of considerable agitation.

Lord Worth said: ‘What fresh horror does fate hold in store for us now?’

‘Somebody below the rig, sir. My instruments have gone a bit haywire. Some object, something almost certainly metallic, sir, is in intermittent contact with the western leg.’

‘There can be no doubt about this?’ Simpson shook his head. ‘Seems damnably odd that Cronkite would try to bring down the Seawitch with his own men on board.’

Mitchell said ‘Maybe he doesn’t want to bring it down, just damage the leg enough to destroy the buoyancy in the leg and the adjacent members and to tilt the Seawitch so that the drill and the pumping mechanism are rendered useless Maybe anything. Or maybe he would be prepared to sacrifice his own men to get you.’ He turned to Palermo ‘I know you have scuba equipment aboard. Show me.’ They left.

Marina said: ‘I suppose he’s off to murder someone else. He’s not really human, is he?’

Lord Worth looked at her without enthusiasm. ‘If you call being inhuman wanting to see that you don’t die, then he’s inhuman. There’s only one person aboard this rig he really cares for and you damned well know it. I never thought, I’d be ashamed of a daughter of mine.’

Palermo had in fact, two trained scuba divers with him, but Mitchell chose only one to accompany him. Palermo was not a man to be easily impressed but he had seen enough of Mitchell not to question his judgment. In remarkably quick time Mitchell and the other man, who went by the name of Sawyers, were dressed in scuba outfits, and were equipped with reloadable compressed air harpoon guns and sheath knives. They were lowered to the water by the only available means in such a giant TLP – in a wire mesh cage attached to the boom of the derrick crane. Once at water level they opened the hinged door, dived and swam to the giant western leg.

Simpson had made no mistake. They were indeed at work down there, two of them, attached by airlines and cables to the shadowy outline of a vessel some twenty feet above them. Both wore powerful headlamps. They were energetically engaged in attaching limpet mines, conventional magnetic mines and wrap round rolls of beehive amatol to the enormous leg. They had enough explosives there, Mitchell figured, to bring down the Eiffel Tower. Maybe Cronkite did intend to destroy the leg. That Cronkite was unhinged seemed more probable than not.

The two saboteurs were not only energetically engaged in their task, they were so exclusively preoccupied with it that they quite failed to notice the stealthy approach of Mitchell and Sawyers. The two scuba divers pressed their masks together, looked into each other’s eyes – there was sufficient reflected light from the other divers to allow them to do this – and nodded simultaneously. Not being much given to squeamishness where potential killers were concerned, they harpooned the two saboteurs through their backs. In both cases death must have been instantaneous. Mitchell and Sawyers reloaded their compressed air harpoons then, for good measure, they sliced their two victims’ breathing tubes which, as was standard, also contained the communication wires.

On the Starlight Easton and his crew were instantly aware that something had gone drastically wrong. The dead men were pulled up, the harpoons still embedded in their backs, and as they were being hauled over the gunwales two of the crew cried out in agony: Mitchell and Sawyers had surfaced and picked off two more targets. Whether either had been mortally or grievously injured was impossible to say, but far more than enough had happened for Easton to take off at speed, this time on his much faster diesels: the engines were admittedly noisy but the darkness was so intense that only a near-miracle would have enabled the alerted gunners on the platform to obtain an accurate fix on them.

The two scuba divers, their own headlights now switched on, swam down to the spot where the mines and explosives had been attached to the legs. There were time fuses attached to both mines and explosives. Those they detached and let fall to the bottom of the ocean. For good measure they also removed the detonators. The explosives, now harmless, they unwound and let them follow the time fuses. The mines they prudently left where they were. Both men were explosives experts but not deep water explosives experts. Mines, as many ghosts can attest to, can be very tricky and unpredictable. They consist of, as the main charge, TNT, amatol or some such conventional explosive. In their central tube they have a primer, which may consist of one of a variety of slow-burning explosives, and fitted to the top of the primer is a travelling detonator, activated by sea pressure, which usually consists of seventy-seven grains of fulminate of mercury. Even with this detonator removed the primer can still detonate under immense pressure. Neither diver had any wish to blow up the pile-driven anchors or the tensioning cables attached to the anchors. Via the derrick crane they made their way back to the platform and reported to the radio room. They had to wait for some time before making their report, for Lord Worth was in a far from amicable telephone conversation with Cronkite. Marina sat apart, her hands clenched and her normally tanned face a greyish colour. She looked at Mitchell then averted her eyes as if she never wished to set eyes on him again which, at the moment, she probably didn’t.