Black Gold

by Paul Kenyon

  "Can't you do something about that?"

  "My dear Baroness, the powers of the laird are greatly exaggerated. I'm an anachronism. In reality, I'm just a glorified landlord."

  The Baroness looked around at the medieval grandeur of the great hall. From the other tables, envious eyes were staring at her and Tony. The other diners in their tweed costumes, gorging themselves on the laird's food, seemed out of place here.

  "Yes," she said. "Times do change, don't they?"

  He held himself splendidly in check, but she could see the pink blotches springing into bloom on his cheeks.

  "It's easy to believe in the past here," Tony put in smoothly. "Isn't there supposed to be a Bane ghost?"

  "Yes, indeed," Sir Angus laughed. "Slippery Donald. A great black tarry apparition who blunders about at night, bumping into things. There's someone every year who stays at the castle and swears that they've heard him or seen him. He's a proper, documented phantom — listed in the original edition of Ghosts of England, Scotland, and Wales."

  "Why do they call him Slippery Donald?" Penelope said.

  "You know about the left-handed spiral staircase?" Sir Angus asked.

  "Yes."

  "Well, Donald had heard about it, too. He'd lost a half-dozen kinsmen who'd been slaughtered on it after breaking into the castle. When it was his turn to try, he rushed the Bane laird at the top, as the others had done. But he had a little goatskin of oil with him. He threw it under the laird's feet, and the laird tumbled to his death. The Bane clansmen were incensed, as you can imagine. They caught Slippery Donald at the foot of the stairs and said, as he liked oil so much, they'd give him all he wanted. They took him down to the dungeons and lowered him head first into a barrel of oil with a fire under it. They were going to bring him to a slow boil, don't you see. But Slippery Donald lived up to his name. He got out of the barrel three times — the oil had lubricated his chains. They kept popping him back in, with the oil getting hotter and hotter, but on his last try he actually got as far as the outer castle walls. But he'd been blinded by the oil in his eyes, and they heard him bumping around and caught him again. This time they popped him into a boiling pot, like a lobster. According to the legend, he still wanders about the castle at night, rattling his lubricated chains and looking for a way out. Perhaps you'll be lucky and hear him."

  "Boiling people in oil used to be a favorite pastime in Scotland," Tony said. "Didn't they do it to the Brahan Seer?"

  Sir Angus nodded. "Yes. He made a few predictions that the Mackenzie clan didn't like. They all came true, by the way."

  Penelope said, "We're still waiting for some of them to happen, though. What's the one about the black rains?"

  Sir Angus acquired a faraway look. "…the people will emigrate to islands now unknown," he quoted, "but which shall yet be discovered in the boundless oceans, after which the deer and other wild animals in the huge wilderness shall be exterminated and drowned by horrid black rains…"

  "That's not the one I mean," Penelope said. "I was thinking of, 'When the black rain falls, Scotland shall be free.' "

  "Yes," Sir Angus frowned. "Some of our more extreme militants have taken that one up."

  Tony sipped his whiskey. "If the black rain's supposed to mean oil," he said lazily, "I'd rather be responsible for freeing Scotland than exterminating the animals."

  Penelope reached across and patted his hand. "That's a noble sentiment, darling."

  "But most of all, of course, I'd rather be rich."

  "You are rich, darling. We all are."

  "Richer, then."

  Sir Angus pushed his plate of salmon away. "Well, the oil is there in the North Sea, for a fact, and there're some who'll get rich from it and some who'll get richer."

  Penelope leaned across the table toward him. There was a tidal movement of her breasts within their triangular traps of nylon. Sir Angus' eyes flicked toward the movement, then snapped self-consciously back to her face.

  "And what would you do with the oil, Sir Angus?" she said.

  "Feed people with it," he said. His face had taken on that saintly cast the news pictures liked to capture.

  "It would buy a lot of food," she agreed.

  "No, no," he said impatiently, "feed people with it. Petroleum's made of hydrocarbons — the basic organic chemical. It can be processed to turn it into food. You'd need only three percent of the world's oil production to feed the entire human race."

  "Amazing!"

  "They're already doing it in a small way in France. Experimental plants that produce a few thousand tons of protein from petroleum through yeast processing."

  His face was shining with a fanatical light. The cloud of spun-glass hair surrounded his head like a halo. There was no doubt that one was in the presence of a great man.

  "Sir Angus is being modest," Tony said. "His own work in that area got him the Nobel Prize."

  The saint came back down to earth. The glow was replaced by a look of caution. "Oh, I've made some small contribution," Sir Angus said. "It's all there in the literature. Better men than 1 have taken up the work."

  He was looking around the hall at the roistering guests. He seemed to have lost interest in the conversation.

  "But this is fascinating," Penelope said. "Do go on."

  She moved her bare shoulders. The diamond necklace glittered. His eyes returned to her.

  "The thought was," he said, "that a — modified — bacteria might be able to convert oil into protein somewhat more efficiently than yeast could."

  "You mean, sort of give the oil a disease?" she said brightly.

  He gave her a severe look. "That is not quite the way I would put it, young lady," he said. "In any event, my work was highly theoretical. I'll leave it to others to find a practical application. I'm old and I'm tired, and I want to devote my declining years to enjoying my retirement here at Crombie."

  "You're too modest, Sir Angus!" Penelope gushed. "But, then, you've always had a reputation for modesty."

  Sir Angus sat like a crag, the very picture of lofty humility.

  Tony looked amused. "In any event," he said, "oil's become much too precious a commodity to turn it into food. One might as well work on a way to make gold edible, eh, Sir Angus?"

  There was a ceremonial flurry of bagpipes at that point, and a solemn procession of servants paraded in with steaming trays, heading for Sir Angus' table.

  "Piping in the haggis, eh?" Tony said. He still looked amused.

  Sir Angus stood up. "I must do the honors," he said. He took the little dagger, the skean dhu, from his stocking top, and sliced open the sheep's stomach bag on the tray. The mixture of oatmeal and minced heart and liver spilled out. The bagpiper played a pentatonic flourish. The servants began bearing away small portions and serving them with turnips and potatoes to the Germans.

  The Germans poked doubtfully at the stuff, and then began dutifully to eat it. Penelope could hear a murmured, Es ist genug, or, "Nur eine kleine portion;" here and there.

  "Everybody always expects it," Sir Angus sighed. "One can't disappoint them." His own portion of haggis, Penelope noticed, remained untouched.

  She turned her attention to the bagpiper. He stood at attention, his cheeks puffed out, the mouthpiece of the chanter between his lips. He was a solid-looking man of medium height, with freckles and a quizzical look.

  He had the bag tucked under his right arm. He was left-handed.

  Sir Angus followed her gaze. "That's Sawney MacCaig," he said, "my gamekeeper. You'll be meeting him later on when we arrange the grand grouse drive. Sawney's a great traditionalist. Steeped in Highlands lore. Student of Ceol Mhor, the classic method of bagpiping."

  "He seems to be missing a sporran," Penelope said.

  "Yes, says he lost it somewhere. Hasn't had a chance to replace it yet." He laughed. "Luckily there was nothing much in it but a practice chanter."

  "He's missing that little dagger that you wear in the top of the stocking, too."

  "He doesn
't need one. That's a weapon he's playing."

  "Fancy stabbing someone with a bagpipe," Tony said.

  Sir Angus smiled. "It's quite true, you know. The English outlawed the bagpipe a couple of hundred years ago. A man could be put to death for treason for playing it. It was banned, along with swords and spears, because it stirred the Scots up too much."

  "I can't imagine why," Penelope said, shuddering at a particular highpitched squealing passage.

  "But MacCaig is an expert with the claymore, too. One of the few swordsmen in Scotland who can handle the damned heavy thing properly. He'll be giving a demonstration at the Highlands Gatherings. He'll be representing the Bane clan."

  "Bagpipes or sword?"

  "Both."

  The Baroness looked at MacCaig with new interest. A left-handed swordsman, like the one who'd attacked her in Tony's office. And missing his sporran. He was about the right size, too. She couldn't be absolutely sure, of course. It had been too dark for her to get a look at his face.

  But, then, he couldn't possibly have recognized her, either.

  * * *

  The body had no head. Just a sort of tattered stem continuing on above the neck, all that had been left by two barrels of a twelve-gauge shotgun fired at point-blank range.

  Mrs. MacEwan was hysterical. "They said he was a poacher," she sobbed, "him that would na' have a gun in the hoose! And what kind o' poacher is it that would be out in the broad daylight?"

  "Shut that coffin, you bloody fool!" Fiona snapped at the undertaker.

  One of the women led Mrs. MacEwan out, weeping. The coffin with MacEwan's body seemed to fill The Room. Someone had made a pathetic attempt to deck the mantle and bier with wild flowers. A few of the neighbors stood awkwardly around.

  "It was Black Tom wha' done it," Maxwell said. "Fergus pulled the trigger, but he is naught but a creature of Black Tom."

  "Aye, well, Sir Angus has the MacEwan croft back now, as he wished," Jennie said.

  "And nane who'll dispute it," Maxwell said. "An accident, the magistrate will say, and him a Bane."

  Fiona set her jaw firmly. "They won't get away with it," she said. "When's the next SIP meeting?"

  "Hush, lassie," Maxwell said. "Now's not the time."

  "Tell her," Jennie said.

  Maxwell nodded. "Aye. You've earned the right, Fiona, girl. You're in, all the way. There's strange an' eldritch things going on at Crombie Loch. There be some as would like to keep the black rain from falling. Come around tomorrow after dark, and we'll tell you everything."

  * * *

  The Baroness lifted her head and listened. Was that a faint rattle of chains in the walls? Nothing, she finally decided. She smiled at herself. The story of Slippery Donald, the Bane household ghost, must really have been at work on her imagination.

  She bent over her work again, piecing together the electronic components that would put her in touch with John Farnsworth, a thousand miles away in Germany. She'd been out of communication since she'd broken her watch in the accident. In her line of work, that could be fatal.

  She was sitting cross-legged on top of her bed, wearing just a pair of pantyhose, plugging a Lady Sunbeam underarm shaver into her portable hair dryer. Both the shaver and the hair dryer really worked, too. She threaded the high-speed scrambler into the circuit. This was the only component that looked as if it had anything to do with electronics: it was a tiny cassette player. For snoopy people, she also had packed an assortment of tapes — Bobby Short playing Cole Porter, the new album by the Falling Rock Zone, and Julian Bream's collection of Elizabethan lute airs. The cassette player would have done justice to them all.

  Finished, she padded over to the window. A couple of centuries ago, one of the Bane lairds had fitted it with the newfangled iron casement frames and the rare luxury of glass panes, but you could see the ancient thickness of the stone walls. The space was at least nine feet deep. She pushed the window wide open and looked out. It was quiet at three in the morning, one of those hazy blue nights of summer in the northern latitudes. Tony had gone back to his own room after a quick, thirsty bout of love-making, saying that the helicopter would be there to pick him up early in the morning. There was a bright silver shilling of a moon casting a shimmering avenue across the waters of the loch. She could hear water lapping gently at the base of the castle's rocky footing. Across the narrow stone causeway that served as drawbridge she could see the twin square towers guarding the approach. Fergus or some other guard was there, invisible. If he were straining his eyes in her direction, he might be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of a bare-breasted woman, set in a deep stone frame and glistening with moonlight.

  She peeled off her pantyhose and hung it out the window. The nylon legs stirred in the faint night breeze. The guard would have gotten a glimpse of her pendant breasts as she leaned out. He might have assumed that she was drying her lingerie.

  There was a needle threaded through the waistband. She unreeled the spool of thread, carrying it over to the hair dryer. The spool fit nicely into a concavity in the case. Now she had her antenna plugged in.

  She put the plastic bonnet of the dryer over her head and turned the thing on. There was a faint hum. She picked up the electric shaver and thumbed the switch. "Hello, John," she whispered into it. "Are you there?"

  There was a five-second wait while her words imprinted themselves on a tape in the cassette machine. The unit spat the words out again at high speed, spraying them into the sky through the pantyhose antenna. The half-second burst of energy couldn't have been intercepted by anyone.

  After a moment, the cassette whirred. Farnsworth, in his hotel room in Munich, was speaking into his own electric shaver. Immediately, the transmission was played back to her at normal speed.

  "You had me worried," Farnsworth's voice said, filling the hair dryer bonnet. "I've been trying to reach you since yesterday."

  She told him about the accident, and about the strange mishap suffered by the Japanese expedition. He told her about the Biotikum directors.

  "Interesting," she said. "So Sir Angus has a business connection with BUG. Then why does he pretend they're just an annoyance, like any other party of vacationing businessmen?"

  "And why do they pretend they don't know him? The project he's working on for them is very hush-hush, according to my friend on the board."

  She thumbed the shaver switch again. "More important, why is Tony making believe he doesn't know them? Maybe it is just a coincidence that he was elected to the BUG board recently. He's into a lot of things, and he can't always choose his bedfellows. But he only told me about Schmidt and one other member of the board when he couldn't avoid it any longer. He never bothered to mention that the whole damned castle was filled with BUG people."

  "Maybe he's just ashamed of them."

  "Maybe."

  "One more thing," Farnsworth said. "Eric's reported in. You can scrub the Russians from your list of suspects.

  She fed him her remaining scraps of information: MacCaig and his missing sporran and Fiona and her rendezvous with SIP.

  She hesitated. The room suddenly felt damp and chilly.

  "Is anything wrong, Coin?" his voice said in her bonnet.

  "No, John, I'm just sitting here without anything on. The night air is getting to me."

  Ghosts were supposed to turn the atmosphere cold and clammy. That's how you could tell they were nearby — if you believed in ghosts.

  "Don't catch cold," he said. "I'm signing off. Skytop's turned in his report, and Wharton's working with the samples from Israel. I'll send Skytop up to help."

  "Do that, John," she said. She turned off the dryer and took off the plastic bonnet. She could definitely feel it now: a cool breeze.

  Somewhere inside the walls she heard a clinking sound. It was very faint, like a chain.

  The Baroness didn't believe in ghosts. But she believed in sex. And right now there was the unmistakable sensation you always had on your skin when a man looked at you.

&n
bsp; She yawned and stretched. Her breasts lifted and quivered. If Slippery Donald were about, he'd be getting an eyeful.

  There. She'd spotted a movement. The barest flutter of one of the tapestries hanging on the wall. She'd checked the hanging earlier for bugs, as she'd checked all of the room's furnishings. There had been nothing behind it but the bare stone wall.

  She stood up. If she was wrong, she was going to get a fractured skull.

  She whirled suddenly and charged the wall, head down, like a bull. There was a muffled rattling of chains. She left the floor and hit the tapestry head first. She found herself diving through the wall, dragging the tapestry after her.

  She hit something large and solid, then heard a grunt of surprise. There was a confused thrashing. The damned tapestry was draped over her head like a hood, and she couldn't see a thing. She grabbed for a flailing limb and felt it slip out of her grasp. Ghost or not, he was slippery. She was left sitting on cold stone and hearing footsteps slapping away.

  She untangled herself from the tapestry and sprang to her feet. She was in a narrow stone passageway between the inner and outer walls of the castle. The hole she'd dived through had been made by lowering a block of stone on a pulley arrangement with chains; that was the clanking sound she'd heard. The cold breeze had come from the damp space between the walls.

  A dim, oily figure was disappearing down the passageway — the ghostly Slippery Donald that so many guests had caught sight of over the years was one of Sir Angus Bane's spies. Bane's ancestors must have done the same thing.

  She ran barefoot after him, wishing she had a weapon. She couldn't let him get away. He'd heard every word she'd said to John Farnsworth.

  It wasn't quite pitch-black. Cracks in the outer walls admitted a thin wash of starlight. Her vision grew better as she moved along.

  The black figure disappeared around a corner. What was wrong with it? It looked as if it were made of tar. She could almost believe in a phantom.

  She rounded the corner at full speed, then stopped. The figure was gone. The passageway ahead was straight and at least fifty feet long. There was no way he could have reached the next corner.