Seawitch

by Alistair MacLean

  After Bentley’s departure the two men sat for a couple of minutes in silence, then Mitchell said: ‘We play it both ways?’

  ‘We play it every way.’ Roomer reached for a phone, dialled a number and asked for Lord Worth. He had to identify himself before he was put through–Lord Worth was a man who respected his privacy.

  Roomer said: ‘Lord Worth? Mitchell and Roomer here. Something to discuss with you, sir, which may or may not be of urgency and importance. We would prefer not to discuss it over the phone.’ He paused, listened for a few moments, murmured a thank you and hung up.

  ‘He’ll see us right away. Park the car in the lane. Side door. Study. Says the girls have gone upstairs.’

  ‘Think our friend Bentley will already have our phone tapped?’

  ‘Not worth his FBI salt if he hasn’t.’

  Five minutes later, car parked in the lane, they were making their way through the trees to the side door. Their progress was observed with interest by Marina, standing by the window in her upstairs bedroom. She looked thoughtful for a moment, then turned and unhurriedly left the room.

  Lord Worth welcomed the two men in his study and securely closed the padded door behind them. He swung open the doors of a concealed bar and poured three brandies. There were times when one rang for Jenkins and there were times when one didn’t. He lifted his glass.

  ‘Health. An unexpected pleasure.’

  ‘It’s no pleasure for us,’ Roomer said gloomily.

  ‘Then you haven’t come to ask me for my daughters’ hands in marriage?’

  ‘No, sir.’ Mitchell said. ‘No such luck. John here is better at explaining these things.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘We’ve just had a visit from a senior FBI agent.’ Roomer handed over Bentley’s card. ‘There’s a number on the back that we’re to ring when we’ve extracted some information from you.’

  ‘How very interesting.’ There was a long pause then Lord Worth looked at each man in turn. ‘What kind of information?’

  ‘In Bentley’s words, you have been making “loud noises” to the State Department. According to them, you seem to think that the Seawitch is under threat. They want to know where you got this secret information, and what your proposed movements are.’

  ‘Why didn’t the FBI come directly to me?’

  ‘Because you wouldn’t have told them any more than you told the State Department. If, that is to say, you’d even let them over the threshold of your house. But they know–Bentley told us this–that we come across here now and again, so I suppose they figured you’d be less off your guard with us.’

  ‘So Bentley figures that you’d craftily wring some careless talk from me without my being aware that I was talking carelessly.’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘But doesn’t this put you in a somewhat invidious position?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘But you’re supposed to uphold the law, no?’

  ‘Yes.’ Mitchell spoke with some feeling. ‘But not organized law. Or have you forgotten, Lord Worth, that we’re a couple of ex-cops because we wouldn’t go along with your so-called organized law? Our only responsibility is to our clients.’

  ‘I’m not your client.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Would you like me to be your client?’

  Roomer said: ‘What on earth for?’

  ‘It’s never something for nothing in this world, John. Services have to be rewarded.’

  ‘Failure of a mission.’ Mitchell was on his feet. ‘It was kind of you to see us, Lord Worth.’

  ‘I apologize.’ Lord Worth sounded genuinely contrite. ‘I’m afraid I rather stepped out of line there.’ He paused ruminatively, then smiled. ‘Just trying to recall when last I apologized to anybody. I seem to have a short memory. Bless my lovely daughters. Information for our friends of the FBI? First, I received my information in context of several anonymous threats–telephone calls–on the lives of my daughters. A double-barrelled threat, if you will–against the girls if I didn’t stop the flow of oil–as they pointed out I can’t hide them for ever and there’s nothing one can do against a sniper’s bullet–and if I were too difficult they’d have the Seawitch blown out of the water. As for my future movements. I’m going out to the Seawitch tomorrow afternoon and will remain there for twenty-four hours, perhaps forty-eight.’

  Roomer said: ‘Any truth in either of those two statements?’

  ‘Don’t be preposterous. Of course not. I am going out to the rig–but before dawn. I don’t want those beady-eyed bandits watching me from the undergrowth at my heliport as I take off.’

  ‘You are referring to the FBI, sir?’

  ‘Who else? Will that do for the moment?’

  ‘Splendidly.’

  They walked back to the lane in silence. Roomer got in behind the wheel of the car, Mitchell beside him.

  Roomer said: ‘Well, well, well.’

  ‘Well, as you say, well, well, well. Crafty old devil.’

  Marina’s voice came from the back. ‘Crafty he may be, but–’

  She broke off in a gasp as Mitchell whirled in his seat and Roomer switched on the interior lights. The barrel of Mitchell’s .38 was lined up between her eyes, eyes at the moment wide with shock and fear.

  Mitchell said in a soft voice: ‘Don’t ever do that to me again. Next time it may be too late.’

  She licked her lips. She was normally as high-spirited and independent as she was beautiful, but it is a rather disconcerting thing to look down the muzzle of a pistol for the first time in your life. ‘I was just going to say that he may be crafty but he’s neither old nor a devil. Will you please put that gun away? You don’t point guns at people you love.’

  Mitchell’s gun disappeared. He said: ‘I’m not much given to falling in love with crazy young fools.’

  ‘Or spies.’ Roomer was looking at Melinda. ‘What are you two doing here?’

  Melinda was more composed than her sister. After all, she hadn’t had to look down the barrel of a pistol. She said: ‘And you, John Roomer, are a crafty young devil. You’re just stalling for time.’ Which was quite true.

  ‘What’s that meant to mean?’

  ‘It means you’re thinking furiously of the answer to the same question we’re about to ask you. What are you two doing here?’

  ‘That’s none of your concern.’ Roomer’s normally soft-spoken voice was unaccustomedly and deliberately harsh.

  There was a silence from the back seat, both girls realizing that there was more to the men than they had thought, and the gap between their social and professional lives wider than they had thought.

  Mitchell sighed. ‘Let’s cool it, John. Sharper than a serpent’s tooth is an ungrateful child.’

  ‘Jesus!’ Roomer shook his head. ‘That you can say again.’ He hadn’t the faintest idea What Mitchell was talking about.

  Mitchell said: ‘Why don’t you go to your father and ask him? I’m sure he’ll tell you–at the cost of the biggest shellacking you’ve ever had in your lives for interfering in his private business.’ He got out, opened the rear door, waited until the sisters got out, closed the rear door, said ‘Good night’ and returned to his seat, leaving the sisters standing uncertainly at the side of the road.

  Roomer drove off. He said: ‘Very masterful, though I didn’t like doing it. God knows, they meant no harm. Never mind, it may stand us in good stead in the future.’

  ‘It’ll stand us in even better stead if we get to the phone box just round the corner as soon as we can.’

  They reached the booth in fifteen seconds and one minute later Mitchell emerged from it. As he took his seat Roomer said: ‘What was all that about?’

  ‘Sorry, private matter.’ Mitchell handed Roomer a piece of paper. Roomer switched on the overhead light. On the paper Mitchell had scrawled. ‘This car bugged?’

  Roomer said: ‘Okay by me.’ They drove home in silence. Standing in his carport Roomer said: ‘
What makes you think my car’s bugged?’

  ‘Nothing. How far do you trust Bentley?’

  ‘You know how far. But he–or one of his men–wouldn’t have had time.’

  ‘Five seconds isn’t a long time. That’s all the time it takes to attach a magnetic clamp.’

  They searched the car, then Mitchell’s. Both were clean. In Mitchell’s kitchen Roomer said: ‘Your phone call?’

  ‘The old boy, of course. Got to him before the girls did. Told him what had happened and that he was to tell them he’d received threats against their lives, that he knew the source, that he didn’t trust the local law and so had sent for us to deal with the matter. Caught on at once. Also to give them hell for interfering.’

  Roomer said: ‘He’ll convince them.’ ‘More importantly, did he convince you?’ ‘No. He thinks fast on his feet and lies even faster. He wanted to find out how seriously he would be taken in the case of a real emergency. He now has the preliminary evidence that he is being taken seriously. You have to hand it to him–as craftily devious as they come. Not that we haven’t always known that. I suppose we tell Bentley exactly what he told us to tell him?’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Do you believe what he told us to be truth?’ ‘That he has his own private intelligence corps? I wouldn’t question it for a moment. That he’s going out to the Seawitch? I believe that, too. I’m not so sure about his timing, though. We’re to tell Bentley that he’s leaving in the afternoon. He told us he’s leaving about dawn. If he can lie to Bentley he can lie to us. I don’t know why he should think it necessary to lie to us, probably just his lordship’s second nature. I think he’s going to leave much sooner than that.’

  Roomer said: ‘Me, too, I’m afraid. If I intended to be up by dawn’s early light I’d be in bed by now or heading that way. He shows no signs of going to bed, from which I can only conclude that he has no intentions of going to bed, because it wouldn’t be worth his while.’ He paused. ‘So. A double stake-out?’

  ‘I thought so. Up by Lord Worth’s house and down by his heliport. You for the heliport, me for the tail job?’

  ‘What else?’ Mitchell was possessed of phenomenal night-sight. Except on the very blackest of nights he could drive without any lights at all, an extraordinarily rare quality which, in wartime, made generals scour an army for such men as chauffeurs. ’I’ll ‘hole up behind the west spinney. You know it?’

  ‘I know it. How about you feeding the story to Bentley while I make a couple of flasks of coffee and some sandwiches?’

  ‘Fine.’ Roomer reached for the phone, then paused. ‘Tell me, why are we doing all this? We owe nothing to the FBI. We have no authority from anyone to do anything. As you said yourself, we and organized law walk in different directions. I feel under no obligation to save my country from a non-existent threat. We have no client, no commission, no prospect of fees. Why should we care if Lord Worth sticks his head into a noose?’

  Mitchell paused in slicing bread. ‘As to your last question, why don’t you ring up Melinda and ask her?’

  Roomer gave him a long, old-fashioned look, sighed and reached for the telephone.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Scoffield had been wrong in his guess. Lord Worth was possessed of no private armoury. But the United States armed services were, and in their dozens, at that.

  The two break-ins were accomplished with the professional expertise born of a long and arduous practice that precluded any possibility of mistakes. The targets in both cases were government armouries, one army and one naval. Both, naturally, were manned by round-the-clock guards, none of whom was killed or even injured if one were to disregard the cranial contusions–and those were few–caused by sandbagging and sapping: Lord Worth had been very explicit on the use of minimal violence.

  Giuseppe Palermo, who looked and dressed like a successful Wall Street broker, had the more difficult task of the two, although, as a man who held the Mafia in tolerant contempt, he regarded the exercise as almost childishly easy.

  Accompanied by nine almost equally respectable men–sartorially respectable, that was–three of whom were dressed as army majors, he arrived at the Florida armoury at fifteen minutes to midnight. The six young guards, none of whom had even seen or heard a shot fired in anger, were at their drowsiest and expecting nothing but their midnight reliefs. Only two were really fully awake–the other four had dozed away–and those two, responding to a heavy and peremptory hammering on the main entrance door, were disturbed, not to say highly alarmed, by the appearance of three army officers who announced that they were making a snap inspection to test security and alertness. Five minutes later all six were bound and gagged–two of them unconscious and due to wake up with very sore heads because of their misguided attempts to put up a show of resistance–and safely locked up in one of the many so-called secure rooms in the armoury.

  During this period and the next twenty minutes one of Palermo’s men, an electronics expert called Jamieson, made a thorough and totally comprehensive search for all the external alarm signals to both the police and nearest military HQ. He either defused or disconnected them all.

  It was when he was engaged in this that the relief guard, almost as drowsy as those whom they had been expecting to find, made their appearance and were highly disconcerted to find themselves looking at the muzzles of three machine-carbines. Within minutes, securely bound but not gagged, they had joined the previous guards, whose gags were now removed. They could safely shout until doomsday as the nearest place of habitation was over a mile away: the temporary gagging of the first six guards had been merely for the purpose of preventing their making loud noises and warning off their reliefs.

  Palermo now had almost eight hours before the break-in could be discovered.

  He next sent one of his men, Watkins, to bring round to the front the concealed mini-bus in which they had arrived. All of them, Watkins excepted, changed from their conservative clothing and military uniforms into rough work clothes, which resulted in the effecting of rather remarkable changes in their appearance and character. While they were doing this Watkins went to the armoury garage, picked a surprisingly ineffectual lock, selected a two-ton truck, wired up the ignition–the keys were, understandably, missing–and drove out to the already open main loading doors of the armoury.

  Palermo had brought along with him one by the name of Jacobson who, between sojourns in various penitentiaries, had developed to a remarkable degree the fine art of opening any type of lock, combination or otherwise. Fortunately, his services were not needed, for nobody, curiously enough, had taken the trouble to conceal some score of keys hanging on the wall in the main office.

  In less than half an hour Palermo and his men had loaded aboard the truck–chosen because it was a covered-van type–a staggering variety of weaponry, ranging from bazookas to machine-pistols, together with sufficient ammunition for a battalion and a considerable amount of high explosives. This done, they locked all the doors they had unlocked and took the keys with them–when the next relief arrived at eight in the morning it would take them all that much longer to discover what had actually happened. After that, they locked the loading and main entrance doors.

  Watkins drove the mini-bus, with its load of discarded clothes, back to its place of concealment, returned to the truck and drove off. The other nine sat or lay in varying degrees of discomfort among the weaponry in the back. It was as well for them that it was only twenty minutes’ drive to Lord Worth’s private, isolated and deserted heliport–deserted, that was, except for two helicopters, their pilots and co-pilots.

  The truck, using only its sidelights, came through the gates of the heliport and drew up alongside one of the helicopters. Discreet portable loading lights were switched on, casting hardly more than a dull glow, but sufficient for a man only 80 yards away and equipped with a pair of night-glasses to distinguish clearly what was going on. And Roomer, prone in the spinney and with the binoculars to his eyes, was only 80 yards a
way. No attempt had been made to wrap or in any way disguise the nature of the cargo. It took only twenty minutes to unload the truck and stow its contents away in the helicopter under the watchful eye of a pilot with a keen regard for weight distribution.

  Palermo and his men, with the exception of Watkins, boarded the other helicopter and sat back to await promised reinforcements. The pilot of this helicopter had already, as was customary, radio-filed his flight plan to the nearest airport, accurately giving their destination as the Seawitch. To have done otherwise would have been foolish indeed. The radar tracking systems along the Gulf states are as efficient as any in the world, and any deviation of course from a falsely declared destination would have meant that, in very short order, two highly suspicious pilots in supersonic jets would be flying alongside and asking some very unpleasant questions.

  Watkins drove the truck back to the armoury garage, de-wired the ignition, locked the door, retrieved the mini-bus and left. Before dawn all his friends’ clothes would have been returned to their apartments and the mini-bus, which had, inevitably, been stolen, to its parking lot.

  Roomer was getting bored and his elbows were becoming sore. Since the mini-bus had driven away some half hour ago he had remained in the same prone position, his night-glasses seldom far from his eyes. His sandwiches were gone as was all his coffee, and he would have given much for a cigarette but decided it would be unwise. Clearly those aboard the helicopters were waiting for something and that something could only be the arrival of Lord Worth.

  He heard the sound of an approaching engine and saw another vehicle with only sidelights on turn through the gateway. It was another minibus. Whoever was inside was not the man he was waiting for, he knew: Lord Worth was not much given to travelling in mini-buses. The vehicle drew up alongside the passenger helicopter and its passengers disembarked and climbed aboard the helicopter. Roomer counted twelve in all.

  The last was just disappearing inside the helicopter when another vehicle arrived. This one didn’t pass through the gateway, it swept through it, headlights on but dipped. A Rolls-Royce. Lord Worth for a certainty. As if to redouble his certainty, there came to his ears the soft swish of tyres on the grass. He twisted round to see a car, both lights and engine off, coasting to a soundless stop beside his own.