«God above!» The expression and tone of the 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 ineludes 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.
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, 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.
Within ten minutes the helicopter was on its way back to the mainland. Five minutes after that, the Georgia's own helicopter had returned and ail the helipad lights were switched off.
Chapter 8
JIT was due only to cruel ill luck and the extremely jittery state of Durand's nerves that John Roomer and Melinda Worth found themselves the first patients in Dr. Greenshaw's sick bay.
Durand was in a highly apprehensive state of mind, a mood that transferred itself all too easily to his four subordinates. Although he held control of the Seawitch, he knew that his hold was a tenuous one: he had not bargained on finding Palermo and his cutthroats on board, and even though he held the master keys to both the occidental and oriental quarters in his pocket— the drilling crew was in the former quarters, Palermo and his men in the latter—he was acutely aware that there were far too many windows in both quarters and he didn't have the men to cover every possible exit. He had broadcast a message over the external loud-speaker that anyone found on the platform would be shot on sight and had two men on constant patrol round the oriental quarters—he had no fear of the unarmed drilling-rig crew—and another two constantly patrolling the platform. He had no fear of Lord Worth, his seismologists and the girls—as sources of danger he held them in contempt. Besides, they were unarmed. Even so, the two men patrolling the platform had been instructed to do so in such a fashion as to make sure that at least one had an eye on the doors to the suite of Lord Worth, the laboratory and the sick bay, all three of which had intercommunicating doors.
No one inside those three places had heard the warning broadcast—and this, ironically, because Lord Worth was not above indulging in what he regarded as the bare minimum of basic creature comforts. Oil rigs can be uncommonly noisy places, and those quarters he had heavily insulated.
Mitchell had been in his tiny cubicle of the laboratory at the time, reading the complete plan of the layout of the Seawitch over and over until he was certain that he could have found his way around the rig blindfolded. This had taken him about twenty minutes. It was in the fifth minute of his studying that the shots had been fired, but again, because of the soundproofing, the sound had not reached him. He had just put the plans away in a drawer when his door opened and Marina entered. She was white-faced and shaking and her face was streaked with tears. He put his arms round her and she grabbed him tightly.
«Why weren't you there?» she sobbed. «Why weren't you there? You could have stopped them. You could have saved them!»
Mitchell took no time out to dwell upon the injustices of life. He said gently: «Stopped what? Saved who?»
«Melinda and John. They've been terribly hurt.»
«How?»
«Shot.»
«Shot? I didn't hear anything.»
«Of course you didn't. This area is all soundproofed. That's why Melinda and John didn't hear the broadcast warning.»
«Broadcast warning? Tell it to me slowly.»
So she told him as slowly and coherently as she could. There had been such a warning but it had gone unheard in Lord Worth's suite. The rain had stopped, at least temporarily, and when Mitchell had retired to study the plans, Melinda and Roomer had elected to go for a stroll. They had been wandering around the foot of the drillinig rig, where most of the lights had been turned off since Durand had ordered the abandonment of drilling, and it was there that they had been gunned down without warning.