Colin Forbes - Year of the Golden Ape

^ 'How many crew she carried, whether she sailed with one or two wireless operators. What sort of man was the captain? I know Mackay, so I gave him a thumbnail portrait. I got the funny idea he knew most of these things already and he was just checking. That ship is on the milk run, you know – from Alaska to San Francisco and back.'

^ 'And that's a piece of history – a British tanker taking oil from one American port to another…'

^ 'Well, they did repeal the Jones Act of 1920 which said only Yank vessels could move cargo from one American port to another. They found they had a terrible shortage of tankers on the West Coast. What's the matter with Mr X?'

^ 'Probably everything.' Sullivan stood up, collected his two prints of Winter off the desk. 'I've got a lot to do in the next hour – collect some money, check with the airlines…'

^ Somewhere about this time Sheikh Gamal Tafak had his second secret meeting with the terrorist chiefs in the Syrian desert. Again he arrived in a motorcade of three cars, riding in the rear vehicle alongside his driver. The two cars in front, both of them black Mercedes like his own, also carried a driver and one passenger in the front seat. The waiting terrorist chiefs thought they understood the reason for this precaution: anyone lying in ambush and waiting to throw a bomb at Tafak could never be sure which car he was riding in. The real reason for the motorcade was more sinister.

^ Tafak detested dealing with these people, but these were the men he feared, whom he was anxious for the moment to keep on his side. One day it might be necessary to lose them; on that day the motorcade of three cars would contain other passengers, men with automatic weapons who would eliminate the terrorist chiefs. Meantime, let them get used to the arrival of the motorcade.

^ Anxious to get away, he explained what was going to happen in as few words as possible. He had told them before the plan was to create an outrage that would so appal the West that its press, radio stations and TV networks would scream with furious indignation at the Arabs. This, in its turn, would create an atmosphere in which Tafak could pressure all the Arab oil-producing states to stop the oil flow completely. Then they could launch the final attack against Israel while the West was immobilised. Everything depended on what happened aboard the British oil tanker once it bad been seized.

^ 'Winter, who knows nothing about the final outcome,' Tafak explained, Ms necessary for the hi-jack of the tanker. He is a better planner than LeCat -and being British he will know how to handle the British crew. Later, he will be withdrawn from the operation. LeCat will control the last stage.'

^ 'The negotiations between LeCat and the American authorities will break down. There will be a fatal misunderstanding – it will be reported that American marines attempted to storm the ship.'

^ Tafak stood up, ready to go. 'It has happened so many times in history. For the sake of the multitude – our brethren who yearn to return to Palestine – the few must die. The hostages – the British crew – will all be killed.'

^ Part two The hi-jack

^ In the United States, as in Europe, the energy crisis was beginning to take on the character of a war – with oil in all forms as the ammunition dumps the enemy sought to destroy. The lights were starting to go out all over the continental mainland – in Texas where oil was moving away from the state to the hard-pressed north-east, so there was not enough oil left for home needs. The recent large-scale sabotage of the Venezuelan oilfields at Lake Maracaibo was turning a tense situation into near-disaster.

^ No one was sure who the saboteurs were – who had placed and detonated the charges at Maracaibo, who had blown up a section of the Alaskan North Slope pipeline being constructed to Valdez, who had blown up key refineries at Delaware and in Texas – in Britain and Germany and Italy. Arab terrorists were the obvious suspects; extremists employed by remote control by the sheikhs who wished to make their products even more valuable because it was daily becoming a scarcer commodity, already selling at fifty dollars a barrel, free on board Gulf ports.

^ Inside the States, the FBI worked on a theory that revived dissident groups like The Weathermen were behind the sabotage. Pamphlets were being distributed by the underground press -'Bring the Capitalist Colossus to its Knees! Burn Oil!' It was not a slogan appreciated by motorists searching for an extra two gallons to get them home. But whoever was responsible, the situation was becoming desperate. Europe – and America – were close to their knees.

^ The sabotage of the Maracaibo wells meant that, added to the other damage, the States needed ten per cent more oil from outside sources just to keep the machine turning over. The ten per cent was not available – except from Arab sources. As Sheikh Gamal Tafak well knew.

^ Oil became more valuable than gold – and was guarded with more security than gold. The Mafia was continuing to hi-jack tankers on highways and freeways. To counter this, Washington organised a convoy system not dissimilar to the Allied shipping convoys during the Second World War. It became normal to see ^ ^ huge fleets of petrol and oil tankers moving through the night with armed guards in the front and rear trucks. Freight trains transporting oil carried machine-gunners mounted on their roofs with searchlights playing over the surrounding countryside whenever a train was halted in the middle of nowhere. Like Europe, where similar precautions had to be taken, the United States was moving into siege conditions.

^ Refineries and pipelines became strategic points to be guarded night and day against the bombers. Bulldozers urgently scooped out tracks alongside pipelines – tracks along which jeeps carrying armed men could patrol. And still America was slowly grinding to a halt as the winter grew in severity, as blizzards swept down into the Middle West and as far south as northern Florida. 'Unprecedented temperatures in the north-east,' the US Weather Bureau reported.

^ In a locked file inside the White House rested a detailed forecast of the estimated gap between fuel requirements and fuel deliveries – assuming the Siberian weather continued. It was calculated the nation might just squeeze through to spring – with a lot of hardship-providing the Arabs maintained their oil cut at the savage fifty per cent. In the event of a fresh cut the forecast for the United States and Europe was summed up in one graphic word. Catastrophe.

^ Six thousand miles away in the Middle East terrorist teams waited for further instructions from Sheikh Carnal Tafak – to destroy the oil-wells if certain other sheikhs refused to cut their oil flow to zero when the moment came.

^ It was snowing when Winter arrived in Anchorage, Alaska, on board Flight BA 850. Because of the wide difference in time zones, although he had left London at 12.45pm he arrived in Anchorage at 11.45am, and it was still Wednesday January 15. In London it was 8.45pm on the evening of the same day and Sullivan had returned to his Battersea flat. He spent part of the evening packing, ready for his departure for Anchorage the following day.

^ At Anchorage International Airport. Winter presented his passport in the name of Robert Forrest. His profession was shown as geologist, but the Immigration official guessed he had something to do with North Slope oil before he even glanced at the false document Winter casually handed him.

^ There was the obvious clue: the folded copy of a British Petroleum house journal in the Englishman's sheepskin pocket. The passenger was also carrying looped over his shoulder a device which registers seismic shocks after explosives dropped into a hole have been detonated, a tool of the geologist's profession.