"I want proof. I want Mortensen."

Lord Worth said wearily: "Hold on. We'll get him/'

Mitch.e.l.l went to fetch him. By the time he returned, 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 249.

link went dead. Mitch.e.l.l removed the .38 from below Mortensen's ear and two of Palermo's men took him from the room. Mitch.e.l.l 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."

35O.

Chapter 9.

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, almost certainly metallic, is ia intermittent contact with the western leg.**

ar.i "There can be no doubt about this?" Simpson shook his head. "Seems d.a.m.nably odd that Cronkite would try to bring down the Seawitch with his own men on board."

Mitch.e.l.l 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 tilt the Seawitch so the drill and pump-hug mechanisms don't work. Maybe anything. Or maybe he would be prepared to sacrifice his own men to get you." He turned to Palermo. "I know you've got 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 d.a.m.ned well know it. I never thought Fd be ashamed of a daughter of mine."

Palermo had, in fact, two trained scuba divers with him, but Mitch.e.l.l chose only one to accompany him. Palermo was not a man to be easily impressed, but he had seen enough of Mitch.e.l.l not to question his judgment. In remarkably quick time Mitch.e.l.l 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.

252.

Seawitefe They were lowered to the water by the only available means on such a giant TLP-a wire-mesh cage attached to the boom of the derrick crane. 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 wraparound rolls of beehive amatol to the enormous leg. They had enough explosives there, Mitch.e.l.l 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 failed to notice the stealthy approach of Mitch.e.l.l 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 much given to squeamishness where potential killers were concerned, they harpooned the two saboteurs through their backs. In both cases, death was instantaneous. Mitch.e.l.l and Sawyers reloaded their compressed-air harpoons then, for 253.

Alistair Macl^an good measure, sliced their two victims* breathing tubes, which 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 imbedded in their backs, and as the corpses were being hauled over the gunwales two of the crew cried out in agony: Mitch.e.l.l 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 it was impossible for 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, can be 254.

very tricky and unpredictable. They consist of TNT, amatol, or some such conventional explosive as the main charge. 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 traveling 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 grayish color. She looked at Mitch.e.l.l, then averted her eyes as if she never wished to set eyes on him again, which, at the moment, she probably didn't. Cronkite was furious. "You murderous b.a.s.t.a.r.d, Worth." He was clearly unaware that he was talking in the presence of ladies. "Three of my men dead, harpooned through the back." Involuntarily, Marina looked at Mitch.e.l.l again. Mitch.e.l.l had the impression that he was either a monster from outer s.p.a.ce or from the nethermost depths: at any rate, a monster.

35S.

All stair MacLean Lord Worth was no less furious. "It would be a pleasure to repeat the process-with you as the central figure this time."

Cronkite choked, then said with what might have been truth: "My intention was just temporarily to incapacitate the Seawitch without harming anyone aboard. But if you want to play it rough you'll have to find a new Seawitch in twenty-four hours. That's if you're fortunate enough to survive: I'm going to blast you out of the water."

Lord Worth was calmer now. "It would be interesting to know how you're going to achieve that. My information is that your warships have been ordered back to base."

"There's more than one way of blasting you out of the water." Cronkite sounded very sure of himself. "In the meantime I'm going to offload the Torbello's oil, then sink it." In point of fact, Cronkite had no intention of sinking the tanker: the Torbello was a Panamanian registered tanker, and Cronkite was not lacking in Panamanian friends. A tanker could be easily disposed of for a very considerable sum. The conversation, if such an acrimonious exchange could be so called, ended abruptly.

Mitch.e.l.l said: "One thing's for sure. Cronkite is a fluent liar. He's nowhere near Central America. Not with that kind of reception. And we heard him talking to his friend Durand. He elected not to come on that helicopter flight- 356.

which lasted only fifteen minutes. He's lying out there somewhere just over the horizon."

Lord Worth said: "How did things go down there?"

"You heard what Cronkite said. There was no trouble on our part."

"Do you expect more?"

"Yeah. Cronkite sounds too d.a.m.n confident for me,"

"How do you think it'll come?"

"Your guess is as good as mine. He might even try the same thing again."

Lord Worth was incredulous. "After what happened to him?"

"He may be counting on the unexpected. One thing Tm sure of. If he does try the same again he'll" use different tactics. I'm sure he won't try an air or submarine approach, if for no other reason than that he doesn't-he can't-have skilled men. So I don't think you'll need your radar or sonar watchers tonight. In any case, your radio operator may need a rest-after all, he's got an alarm call-up in his cabin. Td keep Simpson on duty, though. Just in case our friends try for one of the legs again."

Palermo said: "But they'd be waiting this time. They'd be operating close to the surface. They'd have armed guards waiting to protect the divers, maybe even infrared searchlights that we couldn't see from the platform. You and Sawyers were lucky the first time, and luck depends on sur- 257.

All stair MacLean prise: but there wouldn't be any surprise this time."

"We don't need luck. Lord Worth wouldn't have had all those depth charges stolen and brought aboard unless one of your men is an expert in depth charges. You've got such a man?"

"Yeah." Palermo eyed him speculatively. "Cronin. Ex-petty officer. Why?"

"He could arrange the detonator setting so that the-depth charge would explode immediately or soon after hitting the water?"

"I guess so. Again, why?"

"We roll three depth charges along the platform to within, say, twenty-five yards of each of the legs. Your friend Cronin could advise us on this. My distance could be wrong. If Simpson detects anything on his sensors we just push one of the depth charges over the side. The blast effect should have no effect on the leg. I doubt if the boat with the divers would get anything more than a hard shaking. But for divers in the water the concussive shock effects could hardly miss being fatal."

Palermo looked at him with cold appraising eyes. "For a man supposed to be on the side of the law, Mitch.e.l.l, you're the most cold-blooded b.a.s.t.a.r.d Fve ever met.'*

"If you want to die just say so. You'd find it a bit uncomfortable nine hundred feet down in the Gulf. I suggest you get Cronin and a couple of your men and get going on the depth charges."

358.

Mitch.e.l.l followed to watch Palermo, Cronin and two of their men at work. Cronin agreed with MitchelTs estimate of placing the depth charges twenty-five yards from the legs. As he stood there Marina came up to him.

She said: "More men are going to die, aren't they, Michael?"

"I hope not."

"But you are getting ready to kill, aren't you?"

"I'm getting ready to survive. I'm getting ready for all of us to survive."

She took his arm. "Do you like killing?"

"No."

"Then how come you're so good at it?"

"Somebody has to be."

"For the good of mankind, I suppose?"

"Look, you don't have to talk to me." He paused and went on slowly. "Cops kill. Soldiers kill. Airmen kill. They don't have to like it. In the First World War a guy named Marshal Foch got to be the roost decorated soldier of the war for being responsible for the deaths of a million men. The fact that most of them were his own men would seem to be beside the point. I don't hunt, I don't shoot game, I don't even fish. I mean, I like lamb as much as the next man, but I wouldn't put a hook in one's throat and drag it around a field for half an hour before it dies from agony and exhaustion. All I do is exterminate vermin. To me, all crooks, armed or not, are vermin.**

259.

Alistalr MacLean "Is that why you and John got fired from the police?"

"Do I have to tell you that?"

"Have you ever killed what you, what I, would call a good person?"

"No. But unless you shut up-"

"In spite of everything, I think I might still marry you."

"I've never asked you."

"Well, what are you waiting for?"

Mitch.e.l.l sighed, then smiled. "Marina Worth, would you do me the honor-"

Behind them, Lord Worth coughed. Marina swung round. "Daddy," she said, "you have a genius for turning up at the wrong moment."

Lord Worth was mild. "The right moment I would have said. My unreserved congratulations." He looked at Mitch.e.l.l. "Well, you certainly took your time about it. Everything shipshape and secured for the night?"

"As far as I can guess at what goes on in Cronkite's mind."

"My confidence in you, my boy, is total. Well, it's bed for me-I feel, perhaps not unaccountably, extremely tired."

Marina said: "Me, too. Well, goodnight, fiance"." She kissed him lightly and left with her father.

For once, Lord Worth's confidence in Mitch.e.l.l was slightly misplaced. The latter had made a mistake, though a completely unwitting one, in Seawftch sending the radio officer off duty. For had that officer remained on duty he would undoubtedly have picked up the news flash about the theft of the nuclear weapons from the Netley Rowan a.r.s.enal: Mitch.e.l.l could not have failed to put two and two together.

During the third hour of Lord Worth's conscience-untroubled sleep Mulhooney had been extremely active. He had discharged his fifty thousand tons of oil and taken the Torbello well out-to sea, far over the horizon. He returned later with two companions in the ship's only motorized lifeboat with the sad news that, in the sinking of the tanker, a shattering explosion had occurred which had decimated his crew. They three were the only survivors. The decimated crew were, at that moment, taking the Torbello south to Panama. The official condolences were widespread, apparently sincere and wholly hypocritical: when a tanker blows up its motorized lifeboat does not survive intact. The republic had no diplomatic relations with the United States, and the only things they would cheerfully have extradited to that country were cholera and the bubonic plague. A private jet awaited the three at the tiny airport. Pa.s.sports duly stamped, Mulhooney and his friends filed a flight plan for Guatemala.

Some hours later they arrived at the Houston International Airport. With much of the ten mil- Allstair Mad-ean lion dollars still remaining at his disposal, Cron-kite was not the man to worry about incidental expenses. Mulhooney and his friends immediately hired a long-range helicopter and set out for the Gulf.

In the fourth hour of his sleep, which had remained undisturbed by the sound of a considerable underwater explosion, Lord Worth was unpleasantly awakened by a call from a seethingly mad Cronkite, who accused him of killing two more of his men and warned that he was going to extract a fearful vengeance. Lord Worth hung up without bothering to reply, sent for Mitch.e.l.l and learned that Cronkite had indeed made another attempt to sabotage the western leg. The depth charge had apparently done everything expected of it, for their searchlights had picked up the bodies of two divers floating on the surface. The craft that had been carrying them could not have been seriously damaged for they had heard the sound of its diesels starting up. Instead of making a straight escape, it had disappeared under the rig, and by the time they had crossed to the other side of the Seawitch it was long gone into the darkness and rain. Lord Worth smiled happily and went back to sleep.

In the fifth hour of his sleep he would not have been smiling quite so happily if he had been aware of certain strange activities that were tak- a ing place in a remote Louisiana motel, one exclusively owned by Lord Worth himself. Here it was that the Seawitch's relief crews spent their time off in the strictest seclusion. In addition to abundant food, drink, films, TV and a high-cla.s.s bordello, it offered every amenity off-duty oil-rig men could ever have wished for. Not that any of them would have wanted to leave the compound gates anyway: nine out of ten of them were wanted by the law, and total privacy was a paramount requirement.

The intruders, some twenty in all, arrived in the middle of the night. They were led by a man named Gregson: of all Cronkite's a.s.sociates, he was by far the most dangerous and lethal and was possessed of the morality and instincts of a fer-de-lance with a toothache. The motel staff were all asleep and were chloroformed before they had any opportunity of regaining consciousness.

The rig relief crew, also, were all asleep but in a somewhat different fashion and for different reasons. Liquor is forbidden on oil rigs, and the relief crews on the night before returning to duty generally made the best of their last chance. Their dormant states ranged from the merely befuddled to the paralytic. The rounding up of them, most of whom remained still asleep on their feet, took no more than five minutes. The only two relatively sober members of the relief crew tried to offer resistance. Gregson, with a 363.

Aliatalr MaeLean Seawitefa silenced Beretta, gunned them down as if they had been wild dogs.

The captives were transported in a completely standard, albeit temporarily purloined, moving van to an abandoned and very isolated warehouse on the outskirts of town. Somewhat less than salubrious, it was perfectly fitted for Gregson's purpose. The prisoners were neither bound nor gagged, which would have been pointless in the presence of two armed guards who carried the customary intimidating machine carbines. In point of fact, the carbines too were superfluous: the besotted captives had already drifted off into a dreamless slumber.

It was in the sixth hour of Lord Worth's equally dreamless slumber that Gregson and his men lifted off in one of Lord Worth's helicopters. The two pilots had been reluctant to accept them as pa.s.sengers, but Schmeissers are powerfully persuasive agents.

It was in the seventh hour of Lord Worth's slumber that Mulhooney and his two colleagues touched down on the empty helipad of the Georgia. As Cronkite's own helicopter was temporarily marooned on the Seawitch, he had no compunction in impounding both the helicopter and its hapless pilot.

At almost exactly the same moment another helicopter touched down on the Seawitch and a solitary pa.s.senger and pilot emerged. The pa.s.senger was Dr. Greenshaw, and he looked, and was, a very tired elderly man. He went straight to the sick bay and, without even trying to remove his clothes, lay down on one of the cots and composed himself for sleep. He should, he supposed, have reported to Lord Worth that his daughter Melinda and John Roomer were in good hands and good shape, but good news could wait.

On the eighth hour, with the dawn in the sky, Lord Worth, a man who enjoyed his sleep, awoke, stretched himself luxuriously, pulled on his splendidly embroidered dressing gown and strolled out onto the platform. The rain had stopped, the sun was tipping the horizon and there was every promise of a beautiful day to come. Privately congratulating himself on his prescience that no trouble would occur during the night, he retired to his quarters to perform his customary and leisurely morning ablutions.

Lord Worth's self-congratulations on his prescience were entirely premature. Fifteen minutes earlier the radio operator, newly returned to duty, had picked up a news broadcast that he didn't like at all and gone straight to MitchelTs room. Like every man on board, even including La.r.s.en 2O4.

265.

Alistair MaciLean and Palermo, he knew that the man to contact in an emergency was Mitch.e.l.l: the thought of alerting Lord Worth never entered his head.

He found Mitch.e.l.l shaving. Mitch.e.l.l looked tired-less than surprising, as he had spent most of the night awake. Mitch.e.l.l said: "No more trouble, I hope?"

"I don't know." He handed Mitch.e.l.l a strip of teletype. It read: "Two tactical nuclear weapons stolen from the Netley Rowan a.r.s.enal yesterday afternoon. Intelligence suspects they are being flown or helicoptered south over Gulf of Mexico to an unknown destination. A worldwide alert has been issued. Anyone able to provide information should-"

"Jesus! Get hold of this a.r.s.enal any way you can. Use Lord Worth's name. Be with you in a minute."

Mitch.e.l.l was with him in half a minute. The operator said: "I'm through already. Not much co-operation, though."

"Give me that phone. My name's Mitch.e.l.l Who's speaking, please?"

"Colonel Pryce." The tone wasn't exactly distant, just a senior officer talking to a civilian.

"I work for Lord Worth. You can check that with the Fort Lauderdale Police, the Pentagon or the Secretary of State." He said to the operator but loudly enough that Pryce could hear: "Get Lord Worth here. I don't care if he's in Ms 26.

d.a.m.ned bath, just get him here now." Back on the phone, he said: "Colonel Pryce, an officer of your grade should know that Lord Worth's daughters have been kidnaped. I was hired to recover them and I did so. More important, this oil rig, the Seawitch, is now under threat of destruction. Two attempts have already been made. They were unsuccessful. The Pentagon will confirm that they've stopped three foreign warships headed here for the purpose of destroying the Seawitch. I believe those nukes weapons are heading this way. I want full information about them and Til warn you that Worth will interpret any failure to provide this information as a gross dereliction of duty. And you know the clout that Lord Worth has."