Lord Worth, with no little effort, composed himself and said: “It seems that Cor—” He broke off and corrected himself: it was one of his many axioms that the right hand shouldn’t know what the left hand doeth. “I was informed—all too reliably, as it now appears— that a couple of countries hostile to us might well be prepared to use naval force against us. One, it appears, is already prepared to do so. A destroyer has just cleared its Venezuelan home port and is heading in what is approximately our direction.”
“They wouldn’t dare,’* Palermo said.
“When people are power- and money-mad they’ll stop at nothing.” It apparently never oc-
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curred to Lord Worth that his description of people applied, in excelsis, to himself.
“Who’s the other power?” said Larsen.
“The Soviet Union.”
“Is it now?” Larsen seemed quite unmoved. “I don’t know if I like the sound of that.”
“We could do without them.” Lord Worth was back on balance again. He flipped out a notebook and consulted it. “I think Til have a talk with Washington.” His hand was just reaching out for the phone when it rang. He lifted the instrument, at the same time turning the switch that cut the incoming call into the bulkhead speaker.
“Worth.”
A vaguely disembodied voice came through the speaker. “You know who I am?” Disembodied or not, the voice was known to Worth. Corral.
“Yes.”
Tve checked my contact, sir. Tm afraid our guesses were only too accurate. Both X and Y are willing to commit themselves to naval support.”
“I know. One of them has just moved out and appears to be heading in our general direction.”
“Which one?”
“The one to the south. Any talk of air commitment?”
“None that I’ve heard, sir. But I don’t have to tell you that that doesn’t rule out its use.”
Seawitch
“Let me know if there is any more good news.”
“Naturally. Goodbye, sir.”
Lord Worth replaced the instrument, then lifted it again.
“I want a number in Washington.”
“Can you hold a moment, sir?”
“Why?”
“There’s another code message coming through. Looks like the same code as the last one, sir.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised.” Lord Worth’s tone was somber. “Bring it across as soon as possible.”
He replaced the phone, pressed a button on the small console before him, lifting the phone again as he did.
“Chambers?” Chambers was his senior pilot
“Sir?”
“Your chopper refueled?”
“Ready to go when you are, sir.**
“May be any second now. Stand by your phone.” He replaced the receiver.
Larsen said: “Washington beckons, sir?”
“I have the odd feeling that it’s about to. There are things that one can achieve in person that one can’t over the phone. Depends upon this next message.”
“If you go, anything to be done in your absence?”
“There’ll be dual-purpose antiaircraft guns arriving aboard the Roamer this afternoon. Secure them to the platform.”
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“To the north, south, east but not west?”
“As you wish.”
“We don’t want to start blowing holes in our own oil tank.”
“There’s that. There’ll -eAso be mines. Three piles, each halfway between a pair of legs.”
“An underwater explosion from a mine wouldn’t damage the legs?”
“I shouldn’t think so. We’ll just have to find out, won’t we? Keep in constant half-hourly touch with both the Torbetto and the Jupiter. Keep the radar and sonar stations constantly manned. Eternal vigilance, if you will. Hell, Commander, I don’t have to tell you what to do.” He wrote some figures on a piece of paper. “If I do have to go, contact this number in Washington. Tell them that Tm coming. Five hours or so.”
“This is the State Department?”
“Yes. Tell them that at least the Under Secretary must be there. Remind him, tactfully, of future campaign contributions. Then contact my aircraft pilot, Dawson. Tell him to be standing by with a filed flight plan for Washington.”
The radio operator knocked, entered, handed Lord Worth a message sheet and left. Lord Worth, hands steady and face now untroubled, decoded the message, reached for the phone and told Chambers to get to the helicopter at once.
He said to the two men: “A Russian-built Cuban submarine is on its way from Havana. It’s
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being followed by a Russian guided-missile destroyer. Both are heading this way.”
“A visit to the State Department or the Pentagon would appear to be indicated,” Larsen said. “There isn’t too much we can do about guided missiles. Looks like there might be quite some activity hereabouts. That makes five vessels arrowing in on us—three naval vessels, the Jupiter and the Roomer.” Larsen might have been even more concerned had he known that the number of vessels was seven, not five: but, then, Larsen was not to know that the Tiburon and the Starlight were heading that way also.
Lord Worth rose. “Well, keep an eye on the shop. Back this evening sometime. I’ll be in frequent radio contact.”
Lord Worth was to fly four legs that day: by helicopter to the mainland, by his private Boeing to Washington, the return flight to Florida, and the final leg by helicopter out to the Seawitch. On each of those four legs something very unpleasant was going to happen—unpleasant for Lord Worth, that is. Fortunately for Lord Worth, he was not blessed with the alleged Scottish second sight—the ability to look into the future.
The first of those unpleasantnesses happened when Lord Worth was en route to the mainland. A large station wagon swept up to the
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front door of Lord Worth’s mansion, carrying five rather large men who would have been difficult later to identify, for aU five wore stocking masks. One of them carried what appeared to be a large coil of clothesline rope, another a roll of adhesive tape. All carried guns.
MacPherson, the elderly head gardener, was taking his customary prework dawn patrol to see what damage the fauna had wreaked on his flora during the night, when the men emerged from the station wagon. Even allowing for the fact that shock had temporarily paralyzed his vocal cords, he never had a chance. In just over a minute, bound hand and foot and with his lips sealed with adhesive tape, he had been dumped unceremoniously into a clump of bushes.
The leader of the group, a man by the name of Durand, pressed the front-door bell. Durand, a man who had a powerful affinity with banks and who was a three-time ex-convict, was by definition a man of dubious reputation, a reputation confirmed by the fact that he was a close and longtime term associate of Cronkite. Half a minute passed, then he rang again. By and by the door opened to reveal a robe-wrapped Jen-kins, tousle-haired and blinking the sleep from his eyes—it was still very early in the morning. His eyes stopped blinking and opened wide when he saw the pistol in Durand’s hand.
Durand touched the cylinder screwed onto the muzzle of Ms gun. As hooked a TV addict as the
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Sea witch
next man, Jenkins recognized a silencer when he saw one.
“You know what this is?”
A fully awake Jenkins nodded silently.
“We don’t want to harm anyone in the house. Especially, no harm will come to you if you do what you are told. Doing what you are told includes not telling lies. Understood?”
Jenkins understood.
“How many staff do you have here?”
There was a noticeable quaver in Jenkins’s voice. “Well, there’s me—I’m the butler—”
Durand was patient. “You we can see.”
“Two footmen, a chauffeur, a radio operator, a secretary, a cook and two housemaids. There’s a cleaning lady, but she doesn’t come until eight.”
“Tape him,” Durand said. Jenkins’s lips were taped. “Sorry about that, but people can be silly at times. Take us to those eight bedrooms.”
Jenkins reluctantly led the way. Ten minutes later, all eight of the staff were securely bound and silenced. Durand said: “And now, the two young ladies.”
Jenkins led them to a door. Durand picked out three of his men and said softly: “The butler will take you to the other girl. Check what she packs and especially her purse.”
Durand, followed by his men, entered the room, his gun in its concealed holster so as not to arouse too much alarm. That the bed was occupied was beyond doubt, although all that could
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be seen was a mop of black hair on the pillow. Durand said in a conversational voice: “I think you better get up, ma’am.” Durand was not normally given to gentleness, but he did not want a case of screaming hysterics on his hands.
A case of hysterics he did not have. Marina turned round in bed and looked at him with drowsy eyes. The drowsiness did not last long. The eyes opened wide, either in fear or shock, then returned to normal. She reached for a robe, arranged it strategically on the bed cover, then sat bolt upright, wrapping the robe round her.