Seawitch (18 page)

"They have radar aboard.**

"So they have radar. What difference does it make? You're hi command."

"Yeah, Mr. Cronkite. But your own golden rule—never take a chance."

"When you hear our helicopter has taken off, neutralize it"

"Destroy the radar cabin?"

"No. We're going to want to use it when we've completely taken over. The scanner will be on top of the drilling derrick. Right?"

"Right."

"It's a simple mechanical job to stop it from turning. All you need is someone with a wrench

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and a head for heights. Now tell me exactly where Worth's men are quartered. Gregson will need this information."

Durand told him what he wanted to know and hung up.

The dispensary-sick bay and the laboratory were next to each other. Mitchell and Roomer were helping Dr. Greenshaw unpack his very considerable amount of medical equipment. They were, understandably, not unguarded, but Aaron and his Schmeisser were on watch on the two outside doors, and Aaron was hardly in an alert or trigger-ready state of mind. In fact, he regarded his vigil as being close to pointless. He had been present when the three men disembarked from the helicopter and had formed the same opinion of them as Durand.

In the sick bay Dr. Greenshaw up-ended and removed the false bottom of one of his medical supply boxes. With a gingerly and patently nervous apprehension, he took out two belt holsters, two Smith & Wesson .38s, two silencers and two spare magazines. Wordlessly, Mitchell and Roomer buckled on the weaponry. Dr. Greenshaw, a man, as they were discovering, of a genuinely devout turn of mind, said: "I only hope no one discovers you wearing those pistols."

Roomer said: "We appreciate your concern, Doctor. But don't worry about us."

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"I wasn't worrying about you." Dr. Greenshaw assumed his most somber expression. "A good Christian can also pray for the souls of the ungodly."

A long distance away the meeting of ten was again assembled at Lake Tahoe. At the former meeting the atmosphere had been hopeful, forceful and determined, the participants confident that things would go their way, spuriously motivated by their expressed intent to avert a third world war. On this evening the spirit—if that was the word—of the meeting had changed about by 180 degrees. They were depressed, vacillating, uncertain and wholly lacking in confidence, especially in view of the fact that their allegedly humanitarian attempts to prevent the outbreak of war seemed to be having precisely the opposite effect.

Again, as it was his holiday home, Benson was hosting the meeting. But this time Benson was also undoubtedly the man in charge. Opening the discussion, he said: "Gentlemen, we are in trouble. Not just simple, plain trouble, but enormous trouble that could bring us all down. It stems from two facts—we underestimated Lord Worth's extraordinary power and we overestimated Cronkite's ability to handle the situation with a suitable degree of discretion and tact. I admit I was responsible for introducing Cronkite to you, but on the other hand, you were unani-

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mous in your belief that Cronkite was the only man to handle the job. And we were not aware that Cronkite's detestation of Lord Worth ran to the extent of a virulent and irresponsible hatred.

"I have friends in the Pentagon, not important ones but ones that matter. The Pentagon, normally, like any other department of government, leaks secrets like a broken sieve. This time I had to pay twenty thousand dollars to a stenographer and the same to a cipher clerk which, for a pair of comparatively lowly paid government employees, represents a pretty fair return for a few hours' work.

"First, everything is known about our previous meeting here, every word and sentiment that was expressed and the identities of all of us." Benson paused and looked round the room, partly to allow time for the damning enormity of this information to sink in, partly to make it clear that he expected to be recompensed for his very considerable outlay.

Mr. A, one of the vastly powerful Arabian Gulf potentates, said: "I thought our security was one hundred per cent. How could anyone have known of our presence?"

"No external agency was involved, I have good friends in California intelligence. Their interest in us is zero. Nor was the FBI involved. For that to have happened we'd have had to commit some crime and then cross state lines.

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Neither of those have we done. And before we met last time I had an electronics expert in to check not only this room but the entire house for bugs. There were none."

Mr. A said: 'Terhaps he planted a bug?"

"Impossible. Apart from the fact that he's an old friend of immaculate reputation, I was with him all the time, a fact that did not prevent me from calling in a second expert."

Patinos, the Venezuelan, said: "We give you full marks for security. That leaves only one possibility. One of us here is a traitor."

"Yes."

"Who?"

"I have no idea. We shall probably never know."

Mr. A stroked his beard. "Mr. Corral here lives very close to Lord Worth, no?"

Corral said: "Thank you very much.**

Benson said: "Intelligent men don't make so obvious a link."

"As you said at our previous meeting, Fm the only person who had no declared interest in being here." Borosoff seemed quietly relaxed. "I could be your man."

"It's a point, but one which I don't accept. Whether you are here to stir up trouble between the United States and Russia may or may not be the case. Again it comes down to the factor of intelligence." Benson was being disarmingly frank. "You could be, and probably are, a Soviet agent

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But top agents are never caught in the role of agent provocateur. I am not complimenting you on your unquestioned intelligence. I prefer to rely on simple common sense." Benson, who appeared to have developed a new maturity and authority, looked around the company. "Every word spoken here will doubtless be relayed to either Lord Worth or the State Department, It no longer matters. We are here to set right any wrongs for which we may have been—however unwittingly, I may say—responsible.

"We know that a Russian missile naval craft and a Russian-built Cuban submarine are closing in on the Seawitch. We also know that a Venezuelan destroyer is doing the same. What you don't know is that countermeasures are being taken. My information—and the source is impeccable—is that Lord Worth was today closeted with Benton, the Secretary of State, in Washington. My further information is that Benton was only partially convinced by Lord Worth's suspicions. He was, unfortunately, wholly convinced when the news came through of Cron-kite's irresponsible folly in kidnaping Lord Worth's two daughters. As a result, a United States cruiser and destroyer, both armed with the most sophisticated weaponry, have moved out into the Gulf of Mexico. An American nuclear submarine is already patrolling those waters. Another American vessel is already shadowing your destroyer, Mr. Patinos: your destroyer, with its

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vastly inferior detecting equipment, is wholly unaware of this. Additionally, at a Louisiana air base, a squadron of supersonic fighter-bombers is on instant alert.

"The Americans are no longer in any mood to play around. My information is that they are prepared for a showdown and are prepared for the eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation which John Kennedy had with Khrushchev over Cuba. The Russians, clearly, would never risk a local nuclear confrontation where the home-territory advantages are so overwhelmingly American. Neither side would dream of mounting a pre-emptive strike over the issue of a few pennies on a barrel of oil. But if the hot line between Washington and Moscow begins to burn, national prestige will make it difficult for either side to back down until they arrive at a face-saving formula, which could take quite some time and would, much worse, generate overwhelming worldwide publicity.  This would inevitably involve us.  So I would advise you, Mr. Borosoff and Mr. Patinos, to call off your dogs of war before that hot line starts burning. That way, and only in that way, can we survive with our good names left un-besmirched. I blame neither of you gentlemen. You may have given the nod to Cronkite, but you did not reckon on the possibility that Cronkite   would   carry   matters   to   such   ridiculous lengths. Please, please believe me that the Ameri-

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cans will not hesitate to blast your ships out of the water."

Oil ministers do not become oil ministers because they are mentally retarded. Patinos smiled a smile of wry resignation. "I do not relish the thought of personal ruin. Nor do I relish the thought of becoming a scapegoat for my government." He looked across at Borosoff. "We call off the dogs of war?"

Borosoff nodded. "Back to their kennels and no alas. I wish to return to my Russia and this will give me great face, for they will not have to lose face in the world."

Mr. A leaned back in his chair. His relief was manifest. "Well, that would seem to cover that."

"It covers most of it," Benson said. "But not all. Another very unpleasant and potentially terrifying crime occurred this afternoon. I heard of it only an hour ago and it will be the hottest topic in the nation tonight. I only hope to God that, although we were in no way responsible for it, we won't be implicated in it A place called Netley Rowan Arsenal was broken into this afternoon. It's supposed to be just another arms depot insofar as the public is concerned— and so, mainly, it is. But it's also a TNW arsenal. TNW means 'tactical nuclear weapons.* Two of them were stolen in the break-in and appear to have vanished without trace."

"God above!" The expression and tone of the

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man from Honduras accurately reflected the shocked feelings of all around the table. "Cron-kite?"

"I'd bet on it. No proof, naturally, but who the hell else?"

Henderson said: "No disrespect to Mr. Boro-soff here, but couldn't the Russians, say, have been seeking a prototype?"

Benson looked as weary as his voice sounded. "The Russians already have God knows how many of those things. It's public knowledge that they have thousands of them deployed along the border between the Warsaw pact and NATO countries—many of them, it is suspected, more sophisticated than ours. The Russians need our TNWs the way they need bows and arrows." Borosoff, despite the anxiety he shared with the others, permitted himself the ghost of a smile of complacency, "Cronkite. The man's running wild."

Mr. A said: "You think he's so totally crazy as to use a nuclear device against the Seawitch?"

"I do not profess to understand the workings of an obviously diseased mind," Benson said. "He's capable of anything."

Patinos said: "What's this weapon like?"

"I don't know. I phoned the Pentagon, a very senior official there, but although he's an old friend of mine, he refused to release highly classified information. All I know is that it can be used as a land-based time bomb—I suppose that in-

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eludes the sea as well—or as an aircraft bomb. It can only be used in a limited number of supersonic fighter-bombers, which will already, I suppose, be under the heaviest security guard ever, which would strike me as a superfluous precaution as there is no chance that Cronkite, even with his obviously wide range of contacts, could know anyone who could fly one of those planes."

"So what happens?"

"I think we'd better consult an astrologer on that one. All I know is that Cronkite has gone stark raving mad."

Cronkite, aboard the Georgia, would have thought the same of them. He had a job to do and he was doing it to the best of his ability. Had he known of the possible withdrawal of the warships that had sailed from Cuba and Venezuela, he would not have been unduly concerned. He had had some vague idea that they might have been useful to him in some way, but he had primarily wished to have them as a cover and a smokescreen. Cronkite's vendetta against Lord Worth was a highly personal and extremely vindictive one and he wanted no other than himself to administer the coup de grace. Retribution exacted through the medium of other hands would not do at all.

Meantime, he was well content. He was convinced that the Seawitch was in his hands.

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Come the dawn it would be doubly in his hands. He knew of their defenses and radar. The Starlight, under Easton, was waiting until full darkness before it moved hi for the initial attack, and as rain had been falling steadily for some time now and the lowering sky blotted out the quarter-moon, it promised to be as nearly dark as it ever becomes at sea.

A message was brought to him from the radio office. Cronkite glanced at it briefly, picked up the phone to the helipad and reached the pilot in his shelter. "Ready to go, Wilson?"

"Whenever you say, Mr. Cronkite."

"Then, now." Cronkite closed a rheostat switch and a dull glow of light outlined the helipad, just enough to let Wilson make a clean takeoff. The helicopter made a half-circle, switched on its landing light and made a smooth landing on the calm waters less than a hundred yards from the stationary Georgia.  -

Cronkite called the radar1 room. "You have him on the screen?"

"Yes, sir. He's making an instrument approach on our radar."

"Let me know when he's about three miles out."

Less than a minute later the operator gave him the word. Cronkite turned the rheostat to full and the helipad became brilliantly illuminated.

A minute later a helicopter, landing lights on,

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appeared from the north through the driving rain. Just over another minute later it touched down as delicately as a moth, an understandable precaution by the pilot, in view of the cargo he was carrying. The fueling hoses were connected immediately. The door opened and three men descended—the alleged Colonel Farquharson, Lieutenant Colonel Dewings and Major Breck-ley, who had been responsible for the Netley Rowan Arsenal break-in. They helped unload two large, double-handed and obviously very heavy suitcases. Cronkite, with suitable admonitions as to delicacy in handling, showed crew members where to stow the cases in shelter.