'So ice worms don't need jaws.'
'Well, they might need them for grinding tiny quantities of hydrate or filtering out bacteria – and, like I said, they've got jaws. But not like the ones on Tina's worms.'
Sverdrup seemed to be getting into the discussion. 'But if Tina's worms live symbiotically with bacteria…'
'We need to figure out why they have such killer teeth and jaws.' Johanson nodded. 'And that's where it gets interesting. The taxonomists have found a second worm with that jaw structure. It's called Nereis and it's a predator found in ocean depths all over the world. Tina's worms have Nereis's teeth and jaws but in other respects they resemble its prehistoric forebears – a kind of Tyran-nereis rex!
'Sounds ominous.'
'I'd say it sounds like a hybrid. We'll have to wait for the results of the microscopy and the DNA analysis.'
'There's no end of methane hydrate on the continental slope…,' said Lund, playing with her lip '. . . so that would fit.'
'Let's wait and see.' Johanson cleared his throat. 'What do you do, Kare? Are you in oil too?'
Sverdrup shook his head. 'No,' he said. 'I'm a chef.
'He's an amazing cook,' said Lund.
That's probably not the only thing he's good at, thought Johanson ruefully. Sometimes he found Tina Lund hard to resist, but deep down, he knew she would be too demanding. Now she was off-limits.
'How did you two meet?' he asked, not that he cared.
'I took over the Fiskehuset last year,' said Sverdrup. 'Tina was here a few times, but we only ever said hello.' He put his arm round her shoulders. 'Until last week, that is.'
'A real coup de foudre,' said Lund.
'Yes,' said Johanson, looking up at the sky. The helicopter was approaching. 'I can tell.'
HALF AN HOUR LATER they were sitting in the aircraft with a dozen oil workers. The dull grey surface of the choppy sea stretched out beneath them, littered with gas and oil tankers, freighters and ferries as far as the eye could see. Then the platforms came into view. One stormy winter's night in 1969 an American company had found oil in the North Sea, and since then the area had taken on the appearance of an industrial landscape. Factories on stilts extended all the way from Holland to Haltenbank off the coast of Trondheim.
Fierce gusts buffeted the helicopter, and Johanson straightened his headphones. They were all wearing ear-protectors and heavy clothing, and were packed in so tightly that their knees touched. The noise made talk impossible. Lund had closed her eyes.
The helicopter wheeled and proceeded south-west. They were heading for Gullfaks, a group of production platforms belonging to Statoil. Gullfaks C was one of the largest structures in the northern reaches of the North Sea. With 280 workers, it was practically a community in its own right and Johanson shouldn't have been allowed to disembark there. It was years since he'd taken the compulsory safety course for visitors to the platforms. Since then, the regulations had been tightened, but Lund's contacts had cleared the way. In any case, they were only landing in order to board the Thorvaldson, which was anchored off Gullfaks.
A sudden gust caused the helicopter to drop. Johanson clutched his armrests but nobody else stirred: the passengers were used to stronger gales than this. Lund opened her eyes and winked at him.
Kare Sverdrup was a lucky man, thought Johanson, but he'd need more than luck to keep up with Tina Lund.
After a while the helicopter dipped and started to bank. The sea tilted up towards Johanson, then a white building came into view. The pilot prepared to land. For a moment the helicopter's side window showed the whole of Gullfaks C, a colossus supported by four steel-reinforced pillars, weighing 1.5 million tonnes altogether, and with a total height of nearly four hundred metres. Over half of the construction lay under water, its pillars extending from the seabed surrounded by a forest of storage tanks. The white tower block where the workers slept was only a small section of the platform. Bundles of pipes, each a metre or more in diameter, connected the layers of decks, which were flanked by cranes and crowned with the derrick – the cathedral of the oil world. A flame shot over the sea from the tip of an enormous steel boom, burning natural gas that had separated from the oil.
Touch-down was surprisingly gentle. Lund yawned and stretched as far as she could. 'Well, that was pleasant,' she said, and someone laughed.
The hatch opened and they clambered out. Johanson walked to the edge of the helipad and looked down. A hundred and fifty metres below, the waves rose and fell. A biting wind cut through his overalls. 'Is anything capable of knocking this thing over?'
'There's nothing on earth that can't be toppled. Get a move on, will you? We don't have time to hang about.' Lund grabbed him by the arm and pulled him after the other passengers, who were disappearing over the side of the helipad. A small, stocky man with a white moustache was standing at the top of the steel steps, waving at them.
'Tina!' he shouted. 'Have you been missing the oil?'
'That's Lars Jörensen,' said Lund. 'He's responsible for monitoring the helicopter and seagoing traffic on Gullfaks C. He's an excellent chess player too.'
Jörensen was wearing a Statoil T-shirt and reminded Johanson of a petrol-pump attendant. He clasped Lund to his chest, then shook hands with Johanson. 'You've picked an inhospitable day,' he said. 'In good weather you can see the full pride of the Norwegian oil industry from here, every last platform.'
'Are you busy at the moment?' asked Johanson, as they climbed down the spiral steps.
'No more so than usual. Your first time on a platform, is it?'
'It's been a while. How much are you producing these days?'
'Less and less. Production on Gullfaks has been stable for a while now, with two hundred thousand barrels coming from twenty-one wellheads. We should be pleased with that, but we're not' He pointed to a tanker moored to a loading buoy a few hundred metres away. 'We're filling her up. There'll be another along later, and that's it for today. Soon we'll start running out.'
The wellheads weren't directly below the platform but were scattered a fair distance away. The oil was extracted, separated from the natural gas and water, then stored in the tanks on the seabed. From there it was pumped to the loading buoys. A safety zone stretched five hundred metres around the platform and only its maintenance vessels were allowed to cross it.
Johanson peered over the iron railings. 'Hasn't the Thorvaldson arrived?' he asked.
'She's at the other loading buoy, just out of sight.'
'So, you don't even let research vessels come close?'
'The Thorvaldson doesn't belong to Gullfaks and she's too big for our liking. It's enough trouble trying to persuade the fishermen to steer clear.'
'Do you have much trouble with them?'
'Last week we had to chase away a couple of guys after they'd followed a shoal right under the platform, and at Gullfaks A recently a tanker drifted loose – engine problems. We sent a few people to help, but the crew got it sorted just in time.'
Jörensen spoke casually, but he had described the catastrophe that everyone prayed would never happen: a loaded tanker heading straight for a platform. The impact would send shudders through some of the smaller structures, but, worse still, the tanker might explode. Every platform was equipped with sprinklers that would release several tonnes of water at the least sign of fire, but an exploding tanker could tear a platform to pieces. Such accidents were rare, and usually happened in South America where safety regulations weren't as strictly observed.