SEA WITCH.

Alistair MacLean.

Prologue.

NORMALLY there are only two types of marine machines concerned with the discovery and recovery of oil from under the ocean floor. The first, mainly engaged in the discovery of oil, is a self-propelled vessel, sometimes of very considerable size. Apart from its towering drilling derrick, it is indistinguishable from any oceangoing cargo vessel; its purpose is to drill boreholes in areas where seismological and geological studies suggest oil may exist. The technical operation of this activity is highly complex, yet these vessels have achieved a remarkable level of success. However, they suffer from two major drawbacks. Although they are equipped with the most advanced and sophisticated navigational equipment, including bowthrust propellers, for them to maintain position in running seas, strong tides and winds when boring can be extremely difficult, and in really heavy weather operations have to be suspended.

For the actual drilling of oil and its recovery- princ.i.p.ally its recovery-the so-called "jack-up system" is in almost universal use. This system has to be towed into position, and consists basically of a platform which carries the drilling rig, cranes, helipads and all essential services, including living accommodations, and is attached to the seabed by firmly anch.o.r.ed legs. In normal conditions it is extremely effective, but like the discovery ships it has drawbacks. It is not mobile. It has to suspend operations in even moderately heavy weather. And it can be used only in comparatively shallow water: the deepest is in the North Sea, where most of those rigs are to be found. This North Sea rig stands in about 450 feet of water, and the cost of increasing the length of those legs would be so prohibitive as to make oil recovery quite uneconomical, even though Americans have plans to construct a rig with 800-foot legs off the California Coast. There is also the unknown safety factor. Two such rigs have already been lost in the North Sea. The cause of those disasters has not been clearly evaluated, although it is suspected, obviously not without basis, that there may have been design, structural or metallic faults in one or more of the legs.

And then there is the third type of oil rig- the TLP-technically, the tension leg drilling/ production platform. At the time of this story there was only one of its type in the world. The platform, the working area, was about the size of a football field-if, that is, one can imagine a triangular football field, for the platform was, in fact, an equilateral triangle. The deck was not made of steel but of a uniquely designed ferroconcrete, specially developed by a Dutch shipbuilding company. The supports for this ma.s.sive platform had been designed and built in England and consisted of three enormous steel legs, each at one corner of the structure, the three being joined together by a variety of horizontal and diagonal hollow cylinders, the total combination offering such tremendous buoyancy that the working platform they supported was out of reach of even the highest waves.

From each of the bases of the three legs, three ma.s.sive steel cables extended to the base of the ocean floor, where each triple set was attached to large sea-floor anchors. Powerful motors could raise or lower these cables, so that the anchors could be lowered to a depth two or three times that of most modern fixed oil derricks, which meant that this rig could operate at depths far out on the continental shelf.

The TLP had other very considerable advantages.

Its great buoyancy put the anchor cables under constant tension, and this tension practically eliminated the heaving, pitching and rolling of the platform. Thus the rig could continue operating in very severe storms, storms that would automatically stop production on any other type of derrick.

It was also virtually immune to the effects ot an undersea earthquake.

It was also mobile. It had only to up anchors and move to potentially more productive areas.

And compared to standard oil rigs, its cost of establishing position in any given spot was so negligible as to be worth no more than a pa.s.sing mention.

The name of the TLP was Seawitch.

JO.

Chapter 1.

.*N certain places and among certain people, the Seawitch was a very bad name indeed. But, overwhelmingly, their venom was reserved for a certain Lord Worth, a multi-some said bulti- millionaire, chairman and sole owner of North Hudson Oil Company and, incidentally, owner of the Seawitch. When his name was mentioned by any of the ten men present at that sh.o.r.eside house on Lake Tahoe, it was in tones of less than hushed reverence.

Their meeting was announced in neither the national nor local press. This was due to two factors. The delegates arrived and departed either singly or in couples, and among the heterogeneous summer population of Lake Tahoe such comings and goings went unremarked or were ignored. More importantly, the delegates to the meeting were understandably reluctant that their a.s.sembly become common knowledge. The day was Friday the thirteenth, a date that boded no good for someone.

There were nine delegates present, plus their host. Four of them mattered, but only two seriously-Corral, who represented the oil and mineral leases in the Florida area, and Benson, who represented the rigs off Southern California.

Of the other six, only two mattered. One was Patinos of Venezuela; the other, known as Borosoff, of Russia, whose interest in American oil supplies could only be regarded as minimal. It was widely a.s.sumed among the others that his only interest in attending the meeting was to stir up as much trouble as possible, an a.s.sumption that was probably correct.

All ten were, in various degrees, suppliers of oil to the United States and had one common interest: to see that the price of those supplies did not drop. The last thing they ah* wanted to see was an oil-value depreciation.

Benson, whose holiday home this was and who was nominally hosting the meeting, opened the discussion.

"Gentlemen, does anyone have any objections if I bring a third party-that is, a man who rep- resents neither ourselves nor Lord Worth-into this meeting?"

Practically everyone had, and there were some moments of bedlamic confusion: they had not only objections but very strong ones at that.

Borosoff, the Russian, said: "No, It is too dangerous." He glanced around the group with calculated suspiciousness. "There are already too many of us privy to these discussions."

Benson, who had not become head of one of Europe's biggest oil companies, a British-based one, just because someone had handed him the job as a birthday present, could be disconcertingly blunt.

"You, Borosoff, are the one with the slenderest claims to be present at this meeting. You might well bear that in mind. Name your suspect." Borosoff remained silent. "Remember, gentlemen, the objective of this meeting-to maintain, at least, the present oil-price levels. The OPEC is now actively considering hiking the oil prices. .That doesn't hurt us much here hi the U.S.- we'll just hike our own prices and pa.s.s them on to the public."

Patinos said: "You're every bit as unscrupulous and ruthless as you claim us to be."

"Realism is not the same as rathlessness. n.o.body's going to hike anything while North Hudson is around. They are already undercutting us, the majors. A slight pinch, but we feel it. If we raise our prices more and his remain steady, 13.the slight pinch is going to increase. And if he gets some more TLPs into operation, then the pinch will begin to hurt. It will also hurt the OPEC, for the demand for your products will undoubtedly fall off.

"We all subscribe to the gentlemen's agreement among major oil companies that they will not prospect for oil in international waters-that is to say, outside their own legally and internationally recognized territorial limits. Without observance of this agreement, the possibilities of legal, diplomatic, political and international strife, ranging from scenes of political violence to outright armed confrontation, are only too real. Let us suppose that Nation A-as some countries have already done-claims all rights for all waters a hundred miles offsh.o.r.e from its coasts. Let us further suppose that Nation B comes along and starts drilling thirty miles outside those limits. Then let us suppose that Nation A makes a unilateral decision to extend its offsh.o.r.e limits to a hundred and fifty miles-and don't forget that Peru has claimed two hundred miles as its limits: the subsequent possibilities are too awesome to contemplate.

"Alas, not all are gentlemen. The chairman of the North Hudson Oil Company, Lord Worth, and his entire pestiferous board of directors would have been the first to vehemently deny any suggestion that they were gentlemen, a fact held in almost universal acceptance by their 14.compet.i.tors in oil. They would also have denied equally vehemently that they were criminals, a fact that may or may not have been true, but it most certainly is not true now.

"He has, in short, committed two of what should be indictable offenses. 'Should,' I say. The first is unprovable; the second, although an of-fense in moral terms, is not, as yet, strictly illegal.

"The facts of the first-and what I consider much the minor offense-concerns the building of Lord Worth's TLP in Houston. It is no secret in the industry that the plans were stolen-those for the platform from the Mobil Oil Company, those for the legs and anchoring systems from the Chevron Oilfield Research Company. But, as I say, unprovable. It is commonplace for new inventions and developments to occur at two or more places simultaneously, and he can always claim that his design team, working in secret, beat the others to the punch."

Benson was perfectly correct. In the design of the Seawitch Lord Worth had adopted shortcuts which the narrow-minded could have regarded as unscrupulous, if not illegal. Like all oil companies, North Hudson had its own design team. They were all cronies of Lord Worth, employed solely for tax-deduction purposes; their combined talents would have been incapable of designing a rowboat.

This did not worry Lord Worth. He had no need for a design team. He was a vastly wealthy man, had powerful friends-none of them, needless to say, among the oil companies-and was a master of industrial espionage. With these resources at his disposal, he found little trouble in obtaining those two secret advance plans, which he pa.s.sed on to a firm of highly competent marine designers, whose exorbitant fees were matched only by then1 extreme discretion. The designers found little difficulty in marrying the two sets of plans, adding just sufficient modifications and improvements to discourage those with a penchant for patent-rights litigation.

Benson went on: "But what really worries me, and what should worry all you gentlemen here, is Lord Worth's violation of the tacit agreement never to indulge in drilling in international waters." He paused, deliberately for effect, and looked slowly at each of the other nine in turn. "I say in all seriousness, gentlemen, that Lord Worth's foolhardiness and greed may well prove to be the spark that triggers a third world war. Apart from protecting our own interests, I maintain that for the good of mankind-and I speak from no motive of spurious self-justification-if the governments of the world do not intervene, then it is imperative that we should. As the governments show no sign of intervention, then I suggest that the burden lies upon us. This madman must be stopped. I think you gentlemen would agree that only we realize the full implications of all of this and that only we have the technical expertise to stop him."

16.There were murmurs of approval from around the room. A sincere and disinterested concern for the good of mankind was a much more morally justifiable reason for action than the protection of one's own selfish interest. Patinos, the man from Venezuela, looked at Benson with a smile of mild cynicism on his face. The smile signified nothing. Patinos, a sincere and devout Catholic, wore the same expression when he pa.s.sed through the doors of his church.

"You seem very sure of this, Mr. Benson?"

*Tve given quite some thought to it."

Borosoff said: "And just how do you propose to stop this madman, Mr. Benson?"

A'l don't know."

"You don't know?" One of the others at the table lifted his eyebrows a millimeter-for him a sign of complete disapproval. "Then why did you summon us all this distance?"

"I didn't summon you. I asked you. I asked you to approve whatever course of action we might take."

'This course of action being-"

"Again, I don't know."

The eyebrows returned to normal. A twitch of the man's lip showed that he was contemplating smiling.

"This-ah-third party?"

"Yes."

"He has a name?"

"Cronkite. John Cronkite."

A hush descended upon the company. The open objections had turned into pensive hesitation which in turn gave way to a nodding acceptance. Benson apart, no one there had ever met Cronkite, but his name was a household word to all of them. In the oil business that name had long been a legend, although at times a far from savory one. They all knew that any of them might require his incomparable services at any time, while at the same time hoping that that day would never come.

When it came to the capping of blazing gushers, Cronkite was without peer. Wherever in the world a gusher blew fire no one even considered putting it out themselves, they just sent for Cronkite. To wincing observers his modus operandi seemed nothing short of Draconian, but Cronkite would blasphemously brook no interference. Despite the extortionate fees he charged, it was more common than not for a four-engined jet to be put at his disposal to get him to the scene of the disaster as quickly as possible. Cronkite always delivered. He also knew all there was to know about the oil business. And he was, hardly surprisingly, extremely tough and utterly ruthless.

Henderson, who represented oil interests in Honduras, said: "Why should a man with his extraordinary qualifications, the world's number, one, as we all know, choose to engage himself in-ah-an enterprise of this nature? From his reputation I would hardly have thought that he 18.was one to be concerned about the woes of suffering mankind."

"He isn't. Money. Cronkite comes very high. A fresh challenge-the man's a born adventurer. But, basically, it's because he hates Lord Worth's guts."

Henderson said: "Not an uncommon sentiment, it seems. Why?"

"Lord Worth sent his own private Boeing for him to come cap a blazing gusher in the Middle East. By the time Cronkite arrived, Lord Worth's own men had capped it. This, alone, Cronkite regarded as a mortal insult. He then made the mistake of demanding the full fee for his services. Lord Worth has a reputation for notorious Scottish meanness, which, while an insult to the Scots, is more than justified in his case. He refused, and said that he would pay him for his time, no more. Cronkite then compounded his error by taking him to court. With the kind of lawyers Lord Worth can afford, Cronkite never had a chance. Not only did he lose but he had to pay the costs."

"Which wouldn't be low?" Henderson said.

"Medium-high to ma.s.sive. I don't know. All J know is that Cronkite has done quite a bit of brooding about it ever since."

"Such a man would not have to be sworn to secrecy?"

"A man can swear a hundred different oaths and break them all. Besides, because of the 19.exorbitant fees Cronkite charges, his feelings toward Lord Worth and the fact that he might just have to step outside the law, his silence is ensured."

It was the turn of another of those grouped round the table to raise his eyebrows. "Outside the law? We cannot risk being involved-"

" 'Might,' I said. For us, the element of risk does not exist."

"May we see this man?" Benson nodded, rose, went to a door and admitted Cronkite.

Cronkite was a Texan. In height, build and cragginess of features he bore a remarkable resemblance to John Wayne. Unlike Wayne, he never smiled. His face was of a peculiarly yellow complexion, typical of those who have had an overdose of antimalarial tablets, which was just what had happened to Cronkite. Mepacrine does not make for a peaches-and-cream complexion- not that Cronkite's had ever remotely resembled that. He was newly returned from Indonesia, where he had inevitably maintained his 100 per cent record.

"Mr. Cronkite,** Benson said. "Mr. Cronkite, this is-"

Cronkite was brusque. In a gravelly voice he said: "I don't want to know their names."

In spite of the abruptness of his tone, several of the oilmen round the table almost beamed.

Here was a man of discretion, a man after their own hearts.

Cronkite went on: "All I understand from Mr. Benson is that I am required to attend to a matter involving Lord Worth and the Seawitch, Mr. Benson has given me a pretty full briefing. I know the background. I would like, first of all, to hear any suggestions you gentlemen may have to offer." Cronkite sat down, lit what proved to be a very foul-smelling cigar, and waited expectantly.

He kept silent during the following half-hour discussion. For ten of the world's top businessmen, they proved to be an extraordinarily inept, not to say inane, lot. They talked in an ever-narrowing series of concentric circles.

Henderson said: "First of all, there must be no violence used. Is that agreed?"

Everybody nodded agreement. Each of them was a pillar of business respectability who could not afford to have his reputation besmirched in any way. No one appeared to notice that, except for lifting a hand to his cigar and puffing out increasingly vile clouds of smoke, Cronkite did not move throughout the discussion. He also remained totally silent.

After agreeing that there should be no violence, the meeting of ten agreed on nothing.

Finally Patinos spoke up. "Why don't you- one of you four Americans, I mean-approach 21.your Congress to pa.s.s an emergency law banning offsh.o.r.e drilling in extraterritorial waters?"

Benson looked at him with something akin to pity. "I am afraid, sir, that you do not quite understand the relations between the American majors and Congress. On the few occasions we have met with them-something to do with too much profits and too little tax-I'm afraid we have treated them in so-ah-cavalier a fashion that nothing would give them greater pleasure than to refuse any request we might make."

One of the others, known simply as "Mr. A," said: "How about an approach to that international legal ombudsman, The Hague? After all, this is an international matter."

Henderson shook his head. "Forget it. The dilatoriness of that august body is so legendary that all present would be long retired-or worse-before a decision is made. The decision would just as likely be negative anyway." "United Nations?" Mr. A said. "That talk-shop!" Benson obviously had a low and not uncommon view of the UN. "They haven't even got the power to order New York to install a new parking meter outside their front door."

The next revolutionary idea came from one of the Americans.

"Why shouldn't we all agree, for an unspecified time-let's see how it goes-to lower our 2*

price below that of North Hudson? In that case no one would want to buy their oil."

This proposal was met with stunned disbelief.

Corral spoke in a kind voice. "Not only would that lead to vast losses to the major oil companies, but would almost certainly and immediately lead Lord Worth to lower his prices fractionally below their new ones. The man has sufficient working capital to keep him going for a hundred years at a loss--in the unlikely event, that is, of his running at a loss at all."

A lengthy silence followed. Cronkite was not quite as immobile as he had been; The granitic expression on his face remained unchanged, but the fingers of his nonsmoking hand had begun to drum gently on the armrest of his chair. For Cronkite, this was equivalent to throwing a fit of hysterics.

It was during this period that all thoughts of maintaining high, gentlemanly and ethical standards against drilling hi international waters were forgotten by the ten.

"Why not," Mr. A said, "buy him out?" In fairness it has to be said that Mr. A did not appreciate just how wealthy Lord Worth was and that, immensely wealthy though he, Mr. A, was, Lord Worth could have bought him out lock, stock and barrel. "The Seawitch rights, I mean. A hundred million dollars. Let's be generous, two hundred million dollars. Why not?"

23.Corral looked depressed. 'The answer to "Why not?' is easy. By the latest reckoning, Lord Worth is one of the world's five richest men, and even two hundred million dollars would be pennies as far as he was concerned."

Now Mr. A looked depressed.

Benson said: "Sure he'd sell."

Mr. A visibly brightened.

"For two reasons only. In the first place he'd make a quick and splendid profit. In the second place, for less than half the selling price, he could build another Seawitch, anchor it a couple of miles away from the present Seawitch-there are no leasehold rights in extraterritorial waters- and start sending oil ash.o.r.e at his same old price."

A temporarily deflated Mr. A slumped back in his armchair.

"A partnership, then,*' Mr. B said. His tone was that of a man in a state of quiet despair.

"Out of the question." Henderson was very positive. "Like all very rich men, Lord Worth is a born loner. He wouldn't have a combined partnership with the King of Saudi Arabia and the Shah of Iran, even if it were offered him free."

In the gloom of baffled and exhausted silence thoroughly bored and hitherto near-wordless, John Cronkite rose.

He said without preamble: "My personal fee will be one million dollars. I will require ten million dollars for operating expenses. Every 24.cent of this will be accounted for and any unspent balance returned. I demand a completely free hand and no interference from any of you. If I do encounter interference I'll retain the balance of the expenses and abandon the mission. I refuse to disclose what my plans are-or will be when I have made them. Finally, I would prefer to have no further contact with any of you, now or at any time."