The third, to a person who lived not too many miles away, was addressed to a certain Giuseppe Palermo, whose name sounded as if he might be a member of the Mafia, but who definitely wasn’t: the Mafia Palermo despised as a mollycoddling organization which had become so ludicrously gentle in its methods of persuasion as to be in imminent danger of becoming respectable. The next call was to Baton Rouge in Louisiana, where lived a person who called himself only “Conde” and whose main claim to fame lay in the fact that he was the highest-ranking naval officer to have been court-martialed and dishonorably discharged since World War II. He, like the others, received very explicit instructions. Not only was Lord Worth a master organizer, but the efficiency he displayed was matched only by his speed in operation.
3ft
Sea witch
The noble Lord, who would have stoutly maintained—if anyone had the temerity to accuse him, which no one ever had—that he was no criminal, was about to become just that. Even this he would have strongly denied, and that on three grounds. The Constitution upheld the right of every citizen to bear arms; every man had the right to defend himself and his property against criminal attack by whatever means lay to hand; and the only way to fight fire was with fire.
The final call Lord Worth put through, and this time with total confidence, was to his tried and trusted lieutenant, Commander Larsen.
Commander Larsen was the captain of the Seawitch.
Larsen—no one knew why he called himself “Commander,” and he wasn’t the kind of person you asked—was a rather different breed of man from his employer. Except in a public court or in the presence of a law officer, he would cheerfully admit to anyone that he was both a non-gentleman and a criminal. And he certainly bore no resemblance to any aristocrat, alive or dead. But there did exist a genuine rapport and mutual respect between Lord Worth and himself. In all likelihood they were simply brothers under the skin.
As a criminal and non-aristocrat—and casting no aspersions on honest unfortunates who may resemble him—he certainly looked the part. He
37
Alls lair MacLeam
Sea witch
had the general build and appearance of the more viciously daunting heavyweight wrestler, deep-set black eyes that peered out under the overhanging foliage of hugely bushy eyebrows, an equally bushy black beard, a hooked nose, and a face that looked as if it had been in regular contact with a series of heavy objects. No one, with the possible exception of Lord Worth, knew who he was, what he had been, or from where he had come. His voice, when he spoke, came as a positive shock: beneath that Neanderthalic facade was the voice and the mind of an educated man. It really ought not to have come as such a shock: beneath the facade of many an exquisite fop lies the mind of a retarded fourth-grader.
Larsen was in the radio room at that moment, listening attentively, nodding from tune to time; then he flicked a switch that put the incoming call on the loudspeaker.
He said: “All clear, sir. Everything understood. We’ll make the preparations. But haven’t you overlooked something, sir?”
“Overlooked what?” Lord Worth’s voice over the telephone carried the overtones of a man who couldn’t possibly have overlooked anything.
“You’ve suggested that armed surface vessels may be used against us. If they’re prepared to go to such lengths, isn’t it feasible that they’ll go to any lengths?”
“Get to the point, man.”
“The point is that it’s easy enough to keep an
38
eye on a couple of naval bases. But I suggest it’s a bit more difficult to keep an eye on a dozen, maybe two dozen, airfields.”
“Good God!” There was a long pause during which the rattle of cogs and the meshing of gear wheels in Lord Worth’s brain couldn’t be heard. “Do you really think—”
“If I were the Seawitch, Lord Worth, it would be six and half-a-dozen to me whether I was clobbered by shells or bombs. And planes could get away from the scene of the crime a damn sight faster than ships. They could get clean away, whereas the U. S. Navy or land-based bombers would have a good chance of intercepting surface vessels. And another thing, Lord Worth—a ship could stop at a distance of a hundred miles. No distance at all for the guided missile: I believe they have a range of four thousand miles these days. When the missile was, say, twenty miles from us, they could switch on its heat-source tracking device. God knows, we’re the only heat source for a hundred miles around.”
Another lengthy pause, then: “Any more encouraging thoughts occur to you, Commander Larsen?”
“Yes, sir. Just one. If I were the enemy—I may call them the enemy—”
“Call the devils what you want.”
“‘If I were the enemy Fd use a submarine. They don’t even have to break the surface to loose off a missile. Poof! No Seawitch. No signs
39
Alistalr MacLean
Seawlteh
of any attacker. Could well be put down to a massive explosion aboard the Seawitch. Far from impossible, sir.”
“You’ll be telling me next that they’ll be atomic-headed missiles.”
‘To be picked up by a dozen seismological stations? I should think it hardly likely, sir. But that may just be wishful thinking. I, personally, have no wish to be vaporized.”
“I’ll see you hi the morning.” The speaker went dead.
Larsen hung up his phone and smiled widely. One might have expected this action to reveal a set of yellowed fangs: instead, it revealed a perfect set of gleamingjy white teeth. He turned to look at Scoffield, his head driller and right-hand man.
Scoffield was a large, rubicund, smiling man, apparently the easygoing essence of good nature. To the fact that this was not precisely the case, any member of his drilling crews would have eagerly and blasphemously testified. Scoffield was a very tough citizen indeed, and one could assume that it was not innate modesty that made him conceal the fact: much more probably it was a permanent stricture of the facial muscles caused by the four long vertical scars on his cheeks, two on either side. Clearly he, like Larsen, was no great advocate of plastic surgery. He looked at Larsen with understandable “curiosity.
4O
“What was all that about?”
“The day of reckoning is at hand. Prepare to meet thy doom. More specifically, his lordship is beset by enemies.” Larsen outlined Lord Worth’s plight. “He’s sending what sounds like a battalion of hard men out here in the early morning, accompanied by suitable weaponry. Then in the afternoon we are to expect a boat of some sort, loaded with even heavier weaponry.”
“I wonder where he’s getting all those hard men and weaponry from.’*
“One wonders. One does not ask.”
“All this talk—your talk—about bombers and submarines and missiles. Do you believe that?”
“No. It’s just that it’s hard to pass up the opportunity to ruffle the aristocratic plumage.” He paused, then said thoughtfully: “At least I hope I don’t believe it. Come on, let us examine our defenses.”
“You’ve got a pistol. I’ve got a pistol. That’s defenses?”
“Well, where we’ll mount the defenses when they arrive. Fixed large-bore guns, I should imagine.”
“// they arrive.”
“Give the devil his due. Lord Worth delivers.”
“From his own private armory, I suppose.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me.”
“What do you really think, Commander?”
“I don’t know. All I know is that if Lord
AHstair MacLean
Worth is even halfway right, life aboard may become slightly less monotonous in the next few days.”
The two men moved out into the gathering dusk on the platform. The Seawitch was moored in a hundred and fifty fathoms of water-—nine hundred feet, which was well within the tension-ing cables* capacities—safely south of the U.S. mineral leasing blocks and the great east-west fairway, right on top of the biggest oil reservoir yet discovered around the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. The two men paused at the drilling derrick where a drill, at its maximum angled capacity, was trying to determine the extent of the oilfield. The crew looked at them without any particular affection but not with hostility. There was reason for the lack of warmth.
Before any laws were passed making such drilling illegal, Lord Worth wanted to scrape the bottom of this gigantic barrel of oil. Not that he was particularly worried, for government agencies are notoriously slow to act: but there was always the possibility that they might bestir themselves this time and that, horror of horrors, the bonanza might turn out to be vastly larger than estimated.
Hence the present attempt to discover the limits of the strike and hence the lack of warmth. Hence the reason why Larsen and Scoffield, both highly gifted slave drivers, born centuries out of their time, drove their men day and night. The