Assignment Black Gold

by Edward S. Aarons

  But Brady Cotton had gone down among the people in the Pequah to establish contact. He had been assigned as K Section’s Central in Lubinda only three months ago, when it looked as it the shaky new democracy would go down in flames before the dissident Maoist Apgaks. Brady had come in with the Texas oilmen who hoped to strike offshore oil and make Lubinda and themselves rich. Nothing had happened yet, but Brady had sent in information. data, pithy comments that were angry, often obscene, and always to the point.

  Brady had disappeared a week ago, after the offshore rig was shut down. Durell had been sent to find him. General Dickinson McFee, at K Section’s headquarters in Washington, hadn’t made it seem important.

  “You can relax there, Samuel.” the little general had told him at the short briefing. “I understand the climate isn't too bad. You need a rest, it: any case."

  “I’d rather spend the time on the Chesapeake,” Durell had said.

  "But you know Brady Cotton. do you not?’

  "I've met him. He's good. But there’s nothing going on in Lubinda. We don't have to worry too much about the KGB or the Black House over there. It's not important enough.”

  “Still, Brady has disappeared,” McFee insisted. “He’s missed his last two analysis broadcasts. He never missed them before."

  “Maybe Brady is just bored.”

  “Well, go find out what’s boring him, then. I don’t like it when one of our Centrals shuts down and goes dead.”

  The house and shop looked like any of its neighbors in the Pequah. Built of red stone quarried in the desert to the south, with yellow Portuguese roof tiles, it was sturdy and solid in its two-storied height. Kitty Cotton parked the jeep with a vehement pull on the hand-brake and jumped out. There was no one in sight in the little lane. The shop that Brady had established as a cover for his Central was an import-export establishment; Brady was a historian with some knowledge of West African culture. The antiquities and objets d’art that his merchant scouts picked up in the interior toward Zaire and south toward Namibia made it a profitable concern. His business accounts, Durell discovered, were all in order, kept in Kitty Cotton’s neat, round hand.

  “They tell me you were in the Pequah this afternoon, straight from the airport.” Kitty had a pleasant, husky voice. The humid heat of the night didn‘t disturb her, however much she claimed to long for Cape Ann’s crisp breezes. She produced a key and grinned. “You didn’t get in, did you?”

  “Your neighbors are loyal enough,” Durell admitted. “I felt their beady eyes on rue all the tune. Had no chance to pick the lock.”

  "In you go,” she said.

  The shop was scented with sandalwood, filled with a pale gloom that filtered in through the steel louvers of the window shutters. There was a public lamp at the far end of the lane. The figure of a man startled hint; he almost drew his gun. Then he saw that it was an antique Apgak image carved in mahogany, a jungle king probably dating back four centuries. There were glass-covered eases of smaller objects, silver jewelry, carved figurines of ivory, antique hide shields and old iron spears, three Portuguese crossbows and crested helmets.

  “This way,” the girl said.

  She led him into a storeroom packed with eases that reached to the beamed ceiling. One corner had been cleared as an office of sorts, and contained a modern steel desk with a Formica top, a steel chair on rollers, and filing cabinets. The girl closed the door and reached for the light.

  It was the first time he had properly seen her.

  She was tall, coming a bit above his shoulder, with thick blond hair tied with a red ribbon at the nape of her neck. It should have made her look severe, but instead it gave her olive-tinted face—her Portuguese heritage, Durell guessed—a serene and classic look. Her eyes were pale blue, the whites clear and striking against her darker skin. There was a slight bump to her nose, perhaps from her amorous Yankee ancestor. She had a full mouth and a good chin; her skin was extraordinarily clear, almost limpid. She wore blue jeans, tight about her thighs, with a wide black leather belt studded with brass. Her long feet were in leather-thonged sandals, They looked clean. He could not see where she wore any makeup. A thick series of gold and silver chains hung about her neck, the pendants hanging down over her dark man's shirt between high, proud breasts.

  She grinned at him in the light of the gooseneck desk lamp, aware of his survey. “Hi, Cajun.”

  “I should thank you,” he said. “Where did you get to be so handy with grenades?”

  “Brady taught me about them. And guns, too. And a bit about his work for you people. None of the details —he was tight-mouthed about what he really did. But, of course, I couldn't be living with him and not know he had irons in the fire for K Section.”

  “Are you really married to him?”

  She stood spread-legged, challenging, her hands thrust into the tight pockets of her jeans. “Sure I am. He’s kind of attractive in a rough western way—-he was. at least, when I met him in Gloucester last summer. I have ambitions, you see. I’m an artist. Not bad, not good yet. I was looking for a gimmick, and when he said he was coming here to Africa, I thought it might be a good chance to study Lubindan art work. Something new, you see. So we were married at Rocky Neck. All my friends were there, envious as hell. Besides, I thought I loved him.”

  “But you discovered you didn’t?"

  She shrugged. “I discovered I have no talent for anything. Not tor art. And not for love.”

  “You don’t seem worried about Brady.”

  “At first I figured he was away on a job for you people, or looking for more merchandise.” She waved negligently at the crates of African souvenirs in the dimly lit storeroom. “We weren’t speaking to each other when he left.”

  “He gave you no hint of anything special in the wind?”

  “No. And short of breaking down that locked door to his room upstairs, I’ve no idea what he might be doing.”

  “Let’s see that door."

  She led him up a flight of wooden steps to the second-floor living quarters. Her round bottom in the tight jeans was suggestive, but he didn‘t think she was deliberately tempting him. Durell followed her with care. There was a living room, a bedroom, and a small and very tidy kitchen. Everything was neat and tidy—a heritage from her New England forebears, he thought. She had been a good homemaker for Brady Cotton, whose habits were like those of it bear. Sloppy and disheveled, he dropped his clothes wherever he happened to be. He had eternally muddy boots and a habit of disrupting the orderliness of any room he occupied. Perhaps that was one of their marital difficulties, Durell thought.

  “Don't put on the lights,” he said as she reached for a switch again. “Have you a flashlight?”

  “Sure.”

  A place for everything. and everything in its place. The torch hung on a nail in the doorway casing. She put it in his hand in the gloom; her fingers were warn and dry. She said, “'That’s the door. He has a radio in there, you know."

  ”Yes.”

  “One of yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “How much was he paid for spying on Lubinda?” Her tone was suddenly but mildly hostile.

  “Not very much. A hundred a month. Lubinda doesn’t rate ‘with the State Department." He paused. “It’s not a matter of spying on the new republic. It’s more a question of relaying social and economic data. Like the progress LMO is making in their exploratory offshore drilling.”

  “Oh. Brady was interested in the Lady.”

  “The Lady?”

  “Lubinda Lady No. 1. The offshore drilling platform.”

  “I see. How was he interested?"

  “Well, I just thought it was because he came from Texas, and I figured everybody from Texas is interested in oil. Dumb of me, I reckon. Brady was really just a businessman. We’re doing real well in the export business, although President Kumashaga took a hefty whack at our revenue for licenses to ship out what he claims to be Lubinda’s cultural heritage.”

  Durell took a pic
klock from his pocket and worked at the Smith-Hawes lock on the door. He wasn’t sure what he would find. He didn’t think Brady Cotton’s big body was lying dead behind the door. In this climate, such a fact would have become self-evident.

  “Can I go in with you?” Kitty asked.

  “He’s not in there.”

  “I know. But I’ve never been in before.”

  “No.”

  “You owe it to me. I helped you get away from the Apgaks. That Lopes Fuentes Madragata is a real son of a bitch, you know. He’d have sliced you up, but good. I’d feel better if the local fuzz finally put him in the slammer.”

  He shrugged. “All right.”

  The room had no windows, and it still held the pent-up, explosive heat of past days. Since there were no outlets, Durell put on the light after closing the door behind the girl. The heat poured over him like a wave, and sweat popped out through his shirt. The girl said, “Shall I put on the air conditioner?”

  “No.”

  “You think somebody is outside watching?”

  “Possibly.”

  “It‘s torture in here.”

  “We won’t be long. Do you have any of Brady’s bourbon?”

  The girl‘s voice changed. “He doesn’t drink anymore.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since I asked him not to. Right after we were married.”

  One wall of the room was filled with the GK-12 radio transceiver with which Brady sent his reports to Luanda, in Angola, where they were relayed through the consulate to Washington. Everything here seemed to be in order. There were filing cabinets, a desk against the opposite wall. Durell went to the desk, pulled out the lower right-hand drawer, and lifted a square bottle of sour mash.

  The girl’s lips tightened.

  “The sneaking bastard,” she said.

  Durell took a short drink from the bottle, watching her. She didn’t say anything more. Then he carefully searched the desk. There was nothing incriminating there. The filing cabinets and the desk reflected Brady Cotton’s casual habits. Nothing seemed to be in its right place. It could be in character with Brady; or the place might have been searched by someone who hadn’t cared if the search was known, He couldn’t tell which it was. He felt frustration building up in him, along with the stifling heat in the airless room.

  He went to the long table against the opposite wall. There were geological charts of the ocean bottom similar to those he had seen in Hobe Tallman‘s office. And clipped to a sheaf of typewritten specifications was a data list on the drilling rig and a draftsman’s sketch of the offshore platform. He skimmed through the closely typed list of figures.

  The drawworks were driven by two 1200-HP GE 752-R electric motors, with Elmagco 6000 brakes. There were five Caterpillar D-398-TB diesels, each rated at 800 HP, connected to a 520-KW generator. There were two Continental mud pumps; and the drilling mast rose 142 feet with a 25-foot base rating a 900,000-pound static hookload, and provisions for stringing ten 1 3/8-inch lines. Durell skimmed details of the rotary table, blowout preventers, Byron mud-mixing pumps, mud tanks of 2000-barrel capacity with electric agitators, eight desanders, five dry-mud storage tanks with additional space for 8000 sacks of material, a Haliburton cementing unit.

  He noted that the personnel quarters could accommodate fifty-six men. Water was provided by a distilling unit. For handling supplies, the equipment consisted of a Clyde derrick rated at 41 tons capacity and a Link belt crawler crane with a 7.8-ton capacity and a 38-foot radius. He noted that the heliport was designed for use by a Sikorsky S-61N. He skimmed over the statistics for liquid storage capacity of drilling water, potable fuel, and diesel fuel, and checked the leg length of the platform at 220 feet from the sea bottom. The overall length of Lubinda Lady I was 215 feet by 135 feet, not including the projecting table of the heliport. The design criteria included a 79-foot wave with a 15 1/2-second wave period and a wind speed of 138 MPH. The platform should be able to ride out any storm that hit this coast, he decided.

  Behind him, the girl said restlessly, “l can make some coffee. Some scrambled eggs, maybe?”

  He did not look at her. “Did Brady ever go out to the rig?”

  “Sure, a couple of times. He was a great buddy of Matt Forchette. Cajun, like you. They call him the Fork. Matt is the rig boss, rough and tough, like Brady. Like all of them."

  He turned. “You sound bitter.”

  “I had problems with Brady. His pals didn’t help.”

  “Maybe you tried too hard."

  “I was brought up to live by certain rules and standards. l won't give them up."

  “And Brady wouldn't fall into line?”

  “No. What about the eggs?”

  “You shouldn’t have tried to change him.”

  She indicated the charts and specifications on the table. “What’s so important about the Lady?"

  “l don’t know.” Durell admitted. “Maybe nothing at all. I’d like to talk to Matt Forchette. I knew him once."

  “Yes, Brady said so. Brady admired you, you know. But you’re not the way he described you." She looked at the bourbon bottle Durell had put back on the desk. “Brady would have finished that after a run-in with Madragata’s killers like you had tonight."

  “You’re sure you don't know where Brady might be?"

  “No idea at all.”

  “But you know something. Maybe not directly related to him—but something.“

  “Come on, I'll make the coffee. Louisiana coffee, with lots of chicory in it, the way Matt and Brady like it. You, too, I presume. Ugh."

  He followed her into the spotless kitchen, carefully locking the door to Brady Cotton’s Central office before he left.

  Kitty Cotton made a face over the rim of the steaming mug she lifted to her lips. “There are the accidents, of course.”

  “What accidents?”

  “Didn’t Brady report them?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe he was saving them up to see if anything connected. Hobe Tallman could have told you about them. The Fork will rave and rant about them and call the local security people every kind of sons of bitches under the sun.”

  “Tell me." Durell said.

  It was quiet in the Pequah, almost midnight now, and a low moon hung over the Atlantic, west of the port. The kitchen was cozy. it seemed to Durell that Brady Cotton had had it made with this Yankee-Portuguese girl, whose gaze was as honest and direct as a child’s, but also as that of a woman whose first attempt at love had ended in failure. He almost envied Brady’s chance, although this sort of life was not for him; he knew it could never be his; it would make him vulnerable to being reached through the one he loved. He shook his head slightly.

  “What accidents, Kitty?”

  She shrugged her square shoulders and sighed. “One of the derrickmen was killed on the rig. They were making a hole and had a pinchout due to an overlap—hit some unconformity leading to a basal conglomerate. That didn’t do it, of course. They were running triple lengths of pipe, and the man was up on the mast at the third platform—the thribble—when he simply fell. Nobody saw it happen. The floormen and roustabouts were busy shaking shale for cuttings removal.”

  He watched her. “What else?”

  “Another man, the tong man, was decapitated, caught in a bight of cable from the Clyde crane, near the jack-house. Then three others—two drillers and a motorman just quit and flew back to the States, sore at the Fork about something. I don’t know what. He'll tell you, if you ask about it. And then Brady . . ." She paused.

  He asked, “What did Brady have to do with it?”

  “Matt Forchette caught him snooping, I guess. Again, I don’t know. Brady wouldn’t talk about. They had a pretty bad fight. Brady was banged up in the worst way. I had to nurse him for a week, right here. Wouldn’t let him go into the local hospital.”

  “You don’t know what they fought about?”

  “As I said, Brady was just snooping.”

  “Did he think anyth
ing was wrong with the rig?”

  “Oh, everybody knows there’s something wrong with the Lady. They all started out with such high hopes. You ought to look at the geologists‘ reports and the sample cores fished out of the hole. Terrific. Sweet oil, they said. Then all of a sudden, Hobe Tallman called it quits and they stopped drilling hole and shut down. Everything. Last week.”

  “Because of the accidents?”

  “Because. the way I heard it, Hobe decided there was no offshore oil after all.”

  Kitty Cotton made a delicate snorting sound in her fine nose.

  The sound became magnified into a tremendous, rolling, crackling, thunderous explosion.

  Chapter 5.

  The window blew in, showering them with broken glass. Durell noted that the girl did not scream. She sat very still for a moment, holding her coffee mug, her pale eyes staring wide and round at him. Then she put the cup down very carefully on the glittering layer of glass that covered the kitchen table.

  “Take it easy," Durell said softly.

  "I’m all right. Sam."

  "It came from the LMO docks. Nothing aimed at us directly. We just felt the blast wave.”

  “You’ve got a cut on your face," she told him.

  “And your kitchen is a mess.”

  The china and glassware had all tumbled from the cabinets around her, directly in the path of the concussion. Durell went to the broken window. There were flames down m the small rail terminal on the docks owned by the Lubinda Marine. Over the roof of the Pequah shops, the red glare burst skyward, showering sparks into the black sky. From far off in the distance, a siren sounded. He heard dim shouting, heard a secondary burst of explosives, saw more flames. The market quarter came awake to the catastrophe.

  He pushed away from the window and saw Kitty Cotton heading for the door.

  “You stay here,” he said. “Lock your doors. Don’t let anyone in until l come back.”