Lord Worth did find out in minutes. He said: «So you're right.» He was too dumbfounded even to apologize. «And this of course was the Tiburon that Cronkite sailed from Galveston. God only knows what name it goes under now. What next, I wonder?»
Mitchell said: «A call from Cronkite, I'd guess.»
«What would he call me for?»
«Some tough demands, I'd say. I don't know.»
Lord Worth was nothing if not resilient. He had powerful and influential friends. He called an admiral in naval headquarters in Washington and demanded that an air-sea search unit be dispatched immediately to the scene. The Navy apologetically said that they would have to obtain the permission of the Commander-in-Chief —that is, the President. The President, he knew, would profess a profound if polite degree of disinterest. Neither he nor Congress had any reason to love the oil companies who had so frequently flouted them—which was less than fair to Lord Worth, who had never flouted anyone in Wash-247
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ington in his life. More, the search almost certainly lay outside their jurisdictional waters. Besides, it was raining in the Gulf and black as the pit, and though their radar might well pick up a hundred ships in the area, visual identification would be impossible.
He tried the CIA. Then- disinterest was even more profound. In the several years past they had had their fingers badly burned in public and all their spare time was devoted to licking their wounds.
The FBI curtly reminded him that their activities were purely internal and that anyway they got seasick whenever they ventured on water.
Lord Worth considered making an appeal to the UN, but was dissuaded by Larsen and Miteh-elL Not only would the Arab states, Venezuela, Nigeria, every Communist country, and what now went by the name of the Third World—and they held the vast majority of votes hi the UN— veto any such suggestion: the UN had no legal power to initiate any such action. Apart from that, by that time the entire UN complex were probably hi bed anyway.
For once in his life, Lord Worth appeared to be at a loss. Life, it appeared, could hold no more for him. Lord Worth was discovering that, upon occasion, he could be as fallible as the next man.
A voice-over call came through. It was, as Mitchell had predicted it would be, Cronkite. He was glad to inform Lord Worth that there was no cause for concern over the Torbello, as she was in safe and sound hands.
«Where?» Had his daughter not been present, Lord Worth would undoubtedly have qualified his question with a few choice adjectives.
«I prefer not to specify exactly. Enough to say that she is securely anchored in the territorial waters of a Central American country. It is my intention to dispose of this oil to this very poor and oil-deficient country»—he did not mention that it was his intention to sell it at half price, which would bring in a few acceptable hundred thousands of dollars—»then take the tanker out to sea and sink it. Unless, of course—»
«Unless what?» Lord Worth asked. His voice had assumed a peculiar hoarseness.
«Unless you close down the Christmas tree on the Seawiteh and immediately stop all pumping and drilling.»
«Fool.»
«How's that?»
«Your thugs have already attended to that Haven't they told you?»
«I want proof. I want Mortensen.»
Lord Worth said wearily: «Hold on. We'll get him/'
Mitchell 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 link went dead. Mitchell removed the .38 from below Mortensen's ear and two of Palermo's men took him from the room. Mitchell 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.»
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.»
«There can be no doubt about this?» Simpson shook his head. «Seems damnably odd that Cronkite would try to bring down the Seawitch with his own men on board.»
Mitchell 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 damned 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 Mitchell chose only one to accompany him. Palermo was not a man to be easily impressed, but he had seen enough of Mitchell not to question his judgment. In remarkably quick time Mitchell 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.
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, Mitchell 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 Mitchell 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. Mitchell and Sawyers reloaded their compressed-air harpoons then, for 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: Mitchell 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.