Seawitch (4 page)

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"What was all that about?"

"The day of reckoning is at hand. Prepare to meet thy doom. More specifically, his lordship is beset by enemies." Larsen outlined Lord Worth's plight. "He's sending what sounds like a battalion of hard men out here in the early morning, accompanied by suitable weaponry. Then in the afternoon we are to expect a boat of some sort, loaded with even heavier weaponry."

"I wonder where he's getting all those hard men and weaponry from.'*

"One wonders. One does not ask."

"All this talk—your talk—about bombers and submarines and missiles. Do you believe that?"

"No. It's just that it's hard to pass up the opportunity to ruffle the aristocratic plumage." He paused, then said thoughtfully: "At least I hope I don't believe it. Come on, let us examine our defenses."

"You've got a pistol. I've got a pistol. That's defenses?"

"Well, where we'll mount the defenses when they arrive. Fixed large-bore guns, I should imagine."

"// they arrive."

"Give the devil his due. Lord Worth delivers."

"From his own private armory, I suppose."

"It wouldn't surprise me."

"What do you really think, Commander?"

"I don't know. All I know is that if Lord

AHstair MacLean

Worth is even halfway right, life aboard may become slightly less monotonous in the next few days."

The two men moved out into the gathering dusk on the platform. The Seawitch was moored in a hundred and fifty fathoms of water-—nine hundred feet, which was well within the tension-ing cables* capacities—safely south of the U.S. mineral leasing blocks and the great east-west fairway, right on top of the biggest oil reservoir yet discovered around the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. The two men paused at the drilling derrick where a drill, at its maximum angled capacity, was trying to determine the extent of the oilfield. The crew looked at them without any particular affection but not with hostility. There was reason for the lack of warmth.

Before any laws were passed making such drilling illegal, Lord Worth wanted to scrape the bottom of this gigantic barrel of oil. Not that he was particularly worried, for government agencies are notoriously slow to act: but there was always the possibility that they might bestir themselves this time and that, horror of horrors, the bonanza might turn out to be vastly larger than estimated.

Hence the present attempt to discover the limits of the strike and hence the lack of warmth. Hence the reason why Larsen and Scoffield, both highly gifted slave drivers, born centuries out of their time, drove their men day and night. The

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men disliked it, but not to the point of rebellion. They were highly paid, well-housed and well-fed. True, there was little enough in the way of wine, women and song, but then, after an exhausting twelve-hour shift, those frivolities couldn't hope to compete with the attractions of a massive meal, then a long, deep sleep. More importantly and most unusually, the men were paid a bonus on every thousand barrels of oil.

Larsen and Scoffield made their way to the western apex of the platform and gazed out at the massive bulk of the storage tank, its topsides festooned with warning lights. They gazed at this for some tune, then turned and walked back toward the accommodation quarters.

Scoffield said: "Decided on your gun emplacements yet, Commander—if there are any guns?"

"There'll be guns." Larsen was confident. "But we won't need any in this quarter."

"Why?"

"Work it out for yourself. As for the rest, Fm not too sure. It'll come to me in my sleep. My turn for an early night. See you at four."

The oil was not stored aboard the rig—it is forbidden by a law based strictly on common sense to store hydrocarbons at or near the working platform of an oil rig. Instead, Lord Worth, on Larsen's instructions—which had prudently come in the form of suggestions—had had built

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a huge floating tank which was anchored, on a basis precisely similar to that of the Seawitch herself, at a distance of about three hundred yards. Cleaned oil was pumped into this after it came up from the ocean floor, or, more precisely, from a massive limestone reef deep down below the ocean floor, a reef caused by tiny marine creatures of a now long-covered shallow sea of some half a billion years ago.

Once, sometimes twice, a day a 50,000-ton-capacity tanker would stop by and empty the huge tank. There were three of those tankers employed on the crisscross run to the southern United States. The North Hudson Oil Company did, in fact, have supertankers, but the use of them in this case did not serve Lord Worth's purpose. Even the entire contents of the Sea-witch's tank would not have filled a quarter of the supertanker's carrying capacity, and the possibility of a supertanker running at a loss, however small, would have been the source of waking nightmares for the North Hudson: equally importantly, the more isolated ports which Lord Worth favored for the delivery of his oil were unable to offer deep-water berthside facilities for anything in excess of fifty thousand tons.

It might be explained, in passing, that Lord Worth's choice of those obscure ports was not entirely fortuitous. Among the parties to the gentlemen's agreement against offshore drilling, some of the most vociferous of those who roundly

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condemned North Hudson's nefarious practices were, regrettably, North Hudson's best customers. They were the smaller companies who operated on marginal profits and lacked the resources to engage in research and exploration, which the larger companies did, investing allegedly vast sums in those projects and then, to the continuous fury of the Internal Revenue Service and the anger of numerous Congressional investigation committees, claiming even vaster tax exemptions. But to the smaller companies the lure of cheaper oil was irresistible. The Seawitch, which probably produced as much oil as all the government official leasing areas combined, seemed a sure and perpetual source of cheap oil—at least until the government stepped in, which might or might not happen in the next decade: the big companies had already demonstrated their capacity to deal with inept Congressional inquiries, and as long as the energy crisis continued nobody was going to worry very much about where oil came from, as long as it came. In addition, the smaller companies felt, if the OPEC—the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries— could play ducks and drakes with oil prices whenever they fe}t like it, why couldn't they?

Less than two miles from Lord Worth's estate were the adjacent homes and combined office of Michael Mitchell and John Roomer. It was Mitchell who answered the doorbell.  '

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The visitor was of medium height, slightly tubby, wore wire-rimmed glasses, and alopecia had hit him hard. He said: "May I come in?" in a clipped but courteous enough voice.

"Sure." Michael Mitchell let him in to their apartment. "We don't usually see people this late."

"Thank you. I come on unusual business. James Bentley." A little sleight of hand and a card appeared. "FBI."

Mitchell didn't even look at it. "You can have those things made at any joke shop. Where you from?"

"Miami."

"Phone number?"

Bentley reversed the card, which Mitchell handed to Roomer. "My memory man. Saves me from having to have a memory of my own."

Roomer didn't glance at the card either. "It's okay, Mike. I have him. You're the boss man up there, aren't you?" A nod. "Please sit down, Mr. Bentley."

"One thing clear, first," Mitchell said. "Are we under investigation?"

"On the contrary. The State Department has asked us to ask you to help them."

"Status at last," Mitchell said. "We've got it made, John—except for one thing: the State Department doesn't know who the hell we are."

"/ do." Discussion closed. "I understand you gentlemen are friendly with Lord Worth."

Seawiteh

Roomer was careful. "We know him slightly, socially—just as you seem to know a little about us."

"I know a lot about you, including the fact that you are a couple of ex-cops who never learned to look the right way at the right time and the wrong way at the wrong time. Bars the ladder to promotion. I want you to carry out a little investigation of Lord Worth."

"No deal," Mitchell said. "We know him slightly better than slightly."

"Hear him out, Mike." But Roomer's face, too, had lost whatever little friendliness it may have held.

"Lord Worth has been making loud noises— over the phone—to the State Department. He seems to be suffering from a persecution complex. This interests the State Department, because they see him more in the role of the persecutor than persecuted."

"You mean the FBI does," Roomer said. "You've had him in your files for years. Lord Worth always gives the impression of being very capable of looking out for himself."

- "Thaf s precisely what intrigues the State Department."

Mitchell said: "What kind of noises?"

"Nonsense noises. You know he has an oil rig out in the Gulf of Mexico?"

"The Seawiteh? Yes."

"He appears to be under the impression that

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the Seawitck is in mortal danger. He wants protection. Very modest in his demands, as becomes a multimillionaire—a missile frigate or two, some missile fighters standing by, just in case."

"In case of what?"

"That's the question. He refused to say. Just said he had secret information—which, in fact, wouldn't surprise me. The Lord Worths of this world have their secret agents everywhere."

"You'd better level with us," Mitchell said.

"I've told you all I know. The rest is surmise. Calling the State Department means that there are foreign countries involved. There are Soviet naval vessels in the Caribbean at present. The State Department smells an international incident or worse."

"What do you want us to do?"

"Not much. Just to find out Lord Worth's intended movements for the next day or two:"

Mitchell said: "And if we refuse? We have our licenses rescinded?"

"I am not a corrupt police chief. If you refuse, you can just forget that you ever saw me. But I thought you might care enough about Lord Worth to help protect him against himself or the consequences of any rash action he might take. I thought you might care even more about the reactions of his two daughters if anything were to happen to their father."

Mitchell stood up, jerked a thumb, "The door. You know too damn much."

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"Sit down." A sudden-chill asperity. "Don't be foolish: it's my job to know too damn much. But apart from Lord Worth and his family, I thought you might have some little concern for your country's welfare."

Roomer said: "Isn't that pitching it a little high?"

'*Very possibly. But it is the policy of the State Department, the Justice Department and the FBI not to take any chances."

Roomer said: "You're putting us in a damned awkward situation."

"Don't think I don't appreciate that. I know Tve put you on a spot and I'm sorry, but I'm afraid you'll have to resolve that particular dilemma yourselves."

Mitchell said: "Thanks for dropping this little problem in our laps. What do you expect us to do? Go to Lord Worth, ask him why he's been hollering to the State Department, ask him what he's up to and what his immediate plans are?"

Bentley smiled. "Nothing so crude. You have a reputation—except, of course, in the police department—of being, in the street phrase, a couple of slick operators. The approach is up to you." He stood. "Keep that card and let me know when you find out anything. How long would that take, do you think?"

Roomer said: "A couple of hours."

"A couple of hours?" Even Bentley seemed

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momentarily taken aback. "You don't, then, require an invitation to visit the baronial mansion?"

"No."

"Millionaires do."

"We aren't even thousandaires."

"It makes a difference. Well, thank you very much, gentlemen. Goodnight."

After Bentley's departure the two men sat for a couple of minutes in silence, then Mitchell said: "We play it both ways?"

"We play it every way." Roomer reached for a phone, dialed a number and asked for Lord Worth. He had to identify himself before he was put through—Lord Worth was a man who respected his privacy.

Roomer said: "Lord Worth? Roomer. Mitchell and I have something to discuss with you, sir, which may or may not be of urgency and importance. We would prefer not to discuss it over the phone." He paused, listened for a few moments, murmured a thank you and hung up.

"He'll see us right away. Says to park the car in the lane. Side door. Study. Says the girls have gone upstairs."

"Think our friend Bentley already has our phone tapped?"

"Not worth his FBI salt if he hasn't."

Five minutes later, car parked in the lane, they were making their way through the trees to

Sea witch

the side door. Their progress was observed with interest by Marina, standing by the window in .her upstairs bedroom. She looked thoughtful for a moment, then turned and unhurriedly left the room.

Lord Worth welcomed the two men in his study and securely closed the padded door behind them. He swung open the doors of a concealed bar and poured three brandies. There were times when one rang for Jenkins and there were times when one didn't. He lifted his glass.

"Health. An unexpected pleasure."

"It's no pleasure for us," Roomer said gloom-ay.

"Then you haven't come to ask me for my daughters' hands in marriage?"

"No, sir," Mitchell said. "No such luck. John here is better at explaining these things."

"What things?"

"We've just had a visit from a senior FBI agent." Roomer handed over Bentley's card. "There's a number on the back that we're to ring when we've extracted some information from you."

"How very interesting." There was a long pause, then Lord Worth looked at each man in turn. "What kind of information?"

"In Bentley's words, you have been making 'loud noises' to the State Department. According to them, you seem to think that the Seawitch