There was only Captain Thompson and an idle helmsman on the bridge. Cronkite shook the captain's hand.
«Good morning. Sorry to disturb you when you are proceeding about your lawful business and all that, but you may be glad we stopped you. First, where is your radio room?» Captain Thompson nodded to a door set in back of the bridge. «Fd like my lieutenant to check on the radio silence. This is imperative.» Again, Captain Thompson, now feeling distinctly uneasy, nodded. Cronkite looked at Mulhooney. «Go check, Dixon, will you?»
Mulhooney passed through into the radio room, closing the door behind him. The radio operator looked up from his transceiver with an air of mild surprise.
«Sorry to disturb.» Mulhooney sounded almost genial, a remarkable feat for a man totally devoid of geniality. «I'm from the Coast Guard cutter alongside. The captain told you to keep radio silence?»
«That's just what I'm doing.»
«Made any radio calls since leaving the Sea-witch?»
«Only the routine half-hourly on-course, on-time calls.'*
«Do they acknowledge those? I have my reasons for asking.» Mulhooney carefully refrained from saying what his reasons were.
«No. Well, just the usual 'roger and out' business.»
Allstair
«What's the call-up frequency?»
The operator pointed to the console. «Preset.»
Mulhooney nodded and walked casually behind the operator. Just to make sure that the operator kept on maintaining radio silence, Mulhooney clipped him over the right ear with his pistol. He then returned to the bridge, where he found Captain Thompson in a state of considerable and understandable perturbation.
Captain Thompson, a deep anxiety compounded by a self-defensive disbelief, said: «What you're telling me in effect is that the Torbello is a floating time bomb.»
«A bomb, certainly. Maybe lots of bombs. Not only possible but almost certain. Our sources of information—sorry, Fm not at liberty to divulge those—are as nearly perfect as can be.»
«God's sake, man, no one would be so crazy as to cause a huge oil slick in the Gulf.»
Cronkite said: «It's your assumption, not mine, that we're dealing with sane minds. Who but a crazy man would have endangered Galveston by blowing up your sister tanker there?»
The captain fell silent and pondered the question gloomily.
Cronkite went on: «Anyway, it's my intention—with your consent, of course—to search the engine room, living accommodations and every storage space on the ship. With the kind of search crew I have it shouldn't take more than half an hour.»
Seawitch
«What kind of preset time bomb do you think it might be?»
«I don't think it's a time bomb—or bombs— at all. I think that the detonator—or detonators —will be a certain radioactivated device that can be triggered by any nearby craft, plane or helicopter. But I don't think it's fixing to happen till you're close to the U.S. coast.»
«Why?»
«So we'll have maximum pollution along the shores. There'll be a national holler against Lord Worth and the safety standards aboard Ms— ah—rather superannuated tankers, maybe resulting in closing down the Seawitch or the seizing of any of Worth's tankers that might enter American territorial waters.» In addition to his many other specialized qualifications, Cronkite was a consummate liar. «Okay if I call my men?» Captain Thompson nodded without any noticeable enthusiasm.
Cronkite lifted the loud-hailer and ordered the search party aboard. They came immediately, fourteen of them, all of them wearing stocking masks, all of them carrying machine pistols. Captain Thompson stared at them in stupefaction, then turned and stared some more at Cronkite and Mulhooney, both of whom had pistols leveled at him. Cronkite may have been looking satisfied or even triumphant, but such was the abundance of his ersatz facial foliage that it was impossible to tell.
Captain Thompson, in a stupefaction that was slowly turning into a slow burn, said: «What the hell goes?»
«You can see what goes. Hijack. A very popular pastime nowadays. I agree that nobody's ever hijacked a tanker before, but there always has to be a first time. Besides, it's not really something new. Piracy on the high seas. They've been at it for thousands of years. Don't try anything rash, Captain, and please don't try to be a hero. If you all behave, no harm will come to you. Anyway, what could you possibly do with fourteen submachine guns lined up against you?»
Within five minutes all the crew, officers and men, including the recovered radio operator but with one other exception, were herded into the crew's mess under armed guard. Nobody had even as much as contemplated offering resistance. The exception was an unhappy-looking duty engineer in the engine room. There are few people who don't look slightly unhappy when staring at the muzzle of a Schmeisser from a distance of five feet.
Cronkite was on the bridge giving Mulhooney his final instructions.
«Keep on sending the Seawitch its half-hour on-time, on-course reports. Then report a minor breakdown in two or three hours—a fractured fuel line or something of the sort—enough that would keep the Torbello immobilized for a few
Seawitch
hours. You're due in Galveston tonight and I need time and room to maneuver. Rather, you need time and room to maneuver. When it gets dark keep every navigational light extinguished —in fact, every light extinguished. Let's don't underestimate Lord Worth.» Cronkite was speaking with an unaccustomed degree of bitterness, doubtless recalling the day Lord Worth had taken him to the cleaners in court. «He's a very powerful man, and it's quite in the cards that he can have an air-and-sea search mounted for his missing tanker.»
Cronkite rejoined the Georgia, cast off and pulled away. Mulhooney, too, got under way, but altered course ninety degrees to port so that he was heading southwest instead of northwest. On the first half hour he sent the reassuring report to the Seawitch—»on course, on time.»
Cronkite waited for the Starlight to join him, then both vessels proceeded together in a generally southeasterly direction until they were about thirty-five nautical miles from the Seawitch, safely over the horizon and out of reach of the Seawitch's radar and sonar. They stopped their engines and settled down to wait.
The big Boeing had almost halved the distance between Florida and Washington. Lord Worth, in his luxurious stateroom immediately abaft the flight deck, was making up for time lost during the previous night and, blissfully unaware of the slings and arrows that were coming at him from all sides, was soundly asleep.
Mitchell had been unusually but perhaps not unexpectedly late in waking that morning. He showered, shaved and dressed while the coffee percolated, all the time conscious of a peculiar and unaccustomed sense of unease. He paced up and down the kitchen, drinking his coffee, then abruptly decided to put his unease at rest. He lifted the phone and dialed Lord Worth's mansion. The other end rang, rang again and kept on ringing. Mitchell replaced the receiver, then tried again with the same result. He finished his coffee, went across to Roomer's house and let himself in with his passkey. He went into the bedroom to find Roomer still asleep. He woke him up. Roomer regarded him with disfavor.
«What do you mean by waking up a man in the middle of the night?»
«It's not the middle of the night.» He pulled open the drapes and the bright summer sunlight flooded the room. «It's broad daylight, as you will be able to see when you open your eyes.» '
«Your house on fire or something, then?»
«I wish it were something as trivial as that. Fm worried, John. I woke up feeling bugged by something, and the feeling got worse and worse. Five minutes ago I called up Lord Worth's house. I tried twice. There was no reply. Must have been at least eight or ten people in that house, but there was no reply.»
«What do you think—»
«You're supposed to be the man with the intuition. Get ready. Til go make some coffee.»