«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 Mitchell was slightly misplaced. The latter had made a mistake, though a completely unwitting one, in 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 Arsenaclass="underline" Mitchell 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 hypocriticaclass="underline" 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. Passports 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 million 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 Mitchell 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 taking 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-class 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 associates, 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 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 passengers, 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 passenger and pilot emerged. The passenger 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 Larsen and Palermo, he knew that the man to contact in an emergency was Mitchelclass="underline" the thought of alerting Lord Worth never entered his head.
He found Mitchell shaving. Mitchell looked tired—less than surprising, as he had spent most of the night awake. Mitchell said: «No more trouble, I hope?»
«I don't know.» He handed Mitchell a strip of teletype. It read: «Two tactical nuclear weapons stolen from the Netley Rowan Arsenal 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 arsenal any way you can. Use Lord Worth's name. Be with you in a minute.»
Mitchell 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 Mitchell 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 damned 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.»