Seawitch. Alistair MacLean

two men moved out into the gathering dusk on to the platform. The Seawitch was moored in 150 fathoms of water – 900 feet – which was well within the tensioning cables’ capacities – safely south of the US’s mineral leasing blocks and the great east-west fairway, straight on top of the biggest oil reservoir yet discovered round 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 men disliked it, but not to the point of rebellion. They were highly paid, well housed and well fed. True, there was little enough in the way of wine, women and song but then, after an exhausting twelve-hour shift, those frivolities couldn’t hope to compete with the attractions of a massive meal then a long, deep sleep. More importantly and most unusually, the men were paid a bonus on every thousand barrels of oil.

      Larsen and Scoffield made their way to the western apex of the platform and gazed out at the massive bulk of the storage tank, its topsides festooned with warning lights. They gazed at this for some time, than turned and walked back towards the accommodation quarters.

      Scoffield said: ‘Decided upon your gun emplacements yet, Commander – if there are any guns?’

      ‘There’ll be guns.’ Larsen was confident. ‘But we won’t need any in this quarter.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Work it out for yourself. As for the rest, I’m not too sure. It’ll come to me in my sleep. My turn for an early night. See you at four.’

      The oil was not stored aboard the rig – it is forbidden by a law based strictly on common sense to store hydrocarbons at or near the working platform of an oil rig. Instead, Lord Worth, on Larsen’s instructions – which had prudently come in the form of suggestions – had had built a huge floating tank which was anchored, on a basis exactly similar to that of the Seawitch herself, at a distance of about three hundred yards. Cleansed oil was pumped into this after it came up from the ocean floor, or, more precisely, from a massive limestone reef deep down below the ocean floor, a reef caused by tiny marine creatures of a now long-covered shallow sea of anything up to half a billion years ago.

      Once, sometimes twice a day, a 50,000 dw tanker would stop by and empty the huge tank. There were three of those tankers employed on the criss-cross run to the southern US. The Worth Hudson Oil Company did, in fact, have supertankers, but the use of them in this case did not serve Lord Worth’s purpose. Even the entire contents of the Seawitch tank would not have filled a quarter of the super-tanker’s carrying capacity, and the possibility of a super-tanker running at a loss, however small, would have been the source of waking nightmares for the Worth Hudson: equally important, the more isolated ports which Lord Worth favoured for the delivery of his oil were unable to offer deep-water berth-side facilities for anything in excess of 50,000 dw.

      It might in passing be explained that Lord Worth’s choice of those obscure ports was not entirely fortuitous. Among those who were a party to the gentlemen’s agreement against offshore drilling – some of the most vociferous of those who roundly condemned Worth Hudson’s nefarious practices – were regrettably Worth Hudson’s best customers. They were the smaller companies who operated on marginal profits and lacked the resources to engage in research and exploration, which the larger companies did, investing allegedly vast sums in those projects and then, to the continuous fury of the Internal Revenue Service and the anger of numerous Congressional investigation committees, claiming even vaster tax exemptions.

      But to the smaller companies the lure of cheaper oil was irresistible. The Seawitch, which probably produced as much oil as all the government official leasing areas combined, seemed a sure and perpetual source of cheap oil until, that was, the government stepped in, which might or might not happen in the next decade: the big companies had already demonstrated their capacity to deal with inept Congressional enquiries and, as long as the energy crisis continued, nobody was going to worry very much about where oil came from, as long as it was there. In addition, the smaller companies felt, if the OPEC – the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries – could play ducks and drakes with oil prices whenever they felt like it, why couldn’t they?

      Less than two miles from Lord Worth’s estate were the adjacent homes and common office of Michael Mitchell and John Roomer. It was Mitchell who answered the door bell.

      The visitor was of medium height, slightly tubby, wore wire-rimmed glasses and alopecia had hit him hard. He said: ‘May I come in?’ in a clipped but courteous enough voice.

      ‘Sure.’ Mitchell let him in. ‘We don’t usually see people this late.’

      ‘Thank you. I come on unusual business. James Bentley.’ A little sleight of hand and a card appeared. ‘FBI.’

      Mitchell didn’t even look at it. ‘You can have those things made at any joke shop. Where you from?’

      ‘Miami.’

      ‘Phone number?’

      Bentley reversed the card which Mitchell handed to Roomer. ‘My memory man. Saves me from having to have a memory of my own.’

      Roomer didn’t glance at the card either. ‘It’s okay, Mike. I have him. You’re the boss man up there, aren’t you?’ A nod. ‘Please sit down, Mr Bentley.’

      ‘One thing clear, first,’ Mitchell said. ‘Are we under investigation?’

      ‘On the contrary. The State Department has asked me to ask you to help them.’

      ‘Status at last,’ Mitchell said. ‘We’ve got it made, John, but for one thing – the State Department don’t know who the hell we are.’

      ‘I do.’ Discussion closed. ‘I understand you gentlemen are friendly with Lord Worth.’

      Roomer was careful. ‘We know him slightly, socially – just as you seem to know a little about us.’

      ‘I know a lot about you, including the fact that you are a couple of ex-cops who never learned to look the right way at the right time and the wrong way at the wrong time. Bars the ladder to promotion. I want you to carry out a little investigation into Lord Worth.’

      ‘No deal,’ Mitchell said. ‘We know him slightly better than slightly.’

      ‘Hear me out, Mike.’ But Roomer’s face, too, had lost whatever little friendliness it may have held.

      ‘Lord Worth has been making loud noises – over the phone – to the State Department. He seems to be suffering from a persecution complex. This interests the State Department, for they see him more in the role of the persecutor than the persecuted.’

      ‘You mean the FBI does,’ Roomer said. ‘You’ll have had him on your files for years. Lord Worth always gives the impression of being eminently capable of looking after himself.’

      ‘That’s precisely what intrigues the State Department.’

      Mitchell said: ‘What kind of noises?’

      ‘Nonsense noises. You know he has an oil rig out in the Gulf of Mexico?’

      ‘The Seawitch? Yes.’

      ‘He appears to be under the impression that the Seawitch is in mortal danger. He wants protection. Very modest in his demands, as becomes a bulti-millionaire – the odd missile frigate, some