^ 'The negotiations between LeCat and the American authorities will break down. There will be a fatal misunderstanding – it will be reported that American marines attempted to storm the ship.'
^ Tafak stood up, ready to go. 'It has happened so many times in history. For the sake of the multitude – our brethren who yearn to return to Palestine – the few must die. The hostages – the British crew – will all be killed.'
^ Part two The hi-jack
7
^ In the United States, as in Europe, the energy crisis was beginning to take on the character of a war – with oil in all forms as the ammunition dumps the enemy sought to destroy. The lights were starting to go out all over the continental mainland – in Texas where oil was moving away from the state to the hard-pressed north-east, so there was not enough oil left for home needs. The recent large-scale sabotage of the Venezuelan oilfields at Lake Maracaibo was turning a tense situation into near-disaster.
^ No one was sure who the saboteurs were – who had placed and detonated the charges at Maracaibo, who had blown up a section of the Alaskan North Slope pipeline being constructed to Valdez, who had blown up key refineries at Delaware and in Texas – in Britain and Germany and Italy. Arab terrorists were the obvious suspects; extremists employed by remote control by the sheikhs who wished to make their products even more valuable because it was daily becoming a scarcer commodity, already selling at fifty dollars a barrel, free on board Gulf ports.
^ Inside the States, the FBI worked on a theory that revived dissident groups like The Weathermen were behind the sabotage. Pamphlets were being distributed by the underground press -'Bring the Capitalist Colossus to its Knees! Burn Oil!' It was not a slogan appreciated by motorists searching for an extra two gallons to get them home. But whoever was responsible, the situation was becoming desperate. Europe – and America – were close to their knees.
^ The sabotage of the Maracaibo wells meant that, added to the other damage, the States needed ten per cent more oil from outside sources just to keep the machine turning over. The ten per cent was not available – except from Arab sources. As Sheikh Gamal Tafak well knew.
^ Oil became more valuable than gold – and was guarded with more security than gold. The Mafia was continuing to hi-jack tankers on highways and freeways. To counter this, Washington organised a convoy system not dissimilar to the Allied shipping convoys during the Second World War. It became normal to see ^ ^ huge fleets of petrol and oil tankers moving through the night with armed guards in the front and rear trucks. Freight trains transporting oil carried machine-gunners mounted on their roofs with searchlights playing over the surrounding countryside whenever a train was halted in the middle of nowhere. Like Europe, where similar precautions had to be taken, the United States was moving into siege conditions.
^ Refineries and pipelines became strategic points to be guarded night and day against the bombers. Bulldozers urgently scooped out tracks alongside pipelines – tracks along which jeeps carrying armed men could patrol. And still America was slowly grinding to a halt as the winter grew in severity, as blizzards swept down into the Middle West and as far south as northern Florida. 'Unprecedented temperatures in the north-east,' the US Weather Bureau reported.
^ In a locked file inside the White House rested a detailed forecast of the estimated gap between fuel requirements and fuel deliveries – assuming the Siberian weather continued. It was calculated the nation might just squeeze through to spring – with a lot of hardship-providing the Arabs maintained their oil cut at the savage fifty per cent. In the event of a fresh cut the forecast for the United States and Europe was summed up in one graphic word. Catastrophe.
^ Six thousand miles away in the Middle East terrorist teams waited for further instructions from Sheikh Carnal Tafak – to destroy the oil-wells if certain other sheikhs refused to cut their oil flow to zero when the moment came.
^ It was snowing when Winter arrived in Anchorage, Alaska, on board Flight BA 850. Because of the wide difference in time zones, although he had left London at 12.45pm he arrived in Anchorage at 11.45am, and it was still Wednesday January 15. In London it was 8.45pm on the evening of the same day and Sullivan had returned to his Battersea flat. He spent part of the evening packing, ready for his departure for Anchorage the following day.
^ At Anchorage International Airport. Winter presented his passport in the name of Robert Forrest. His profession was shown as geologist, but the Immigration official guessed he had something to do with North Slope oil before he even glanced at the false document Winter casually handed him.
^ There was the obvious clue: the folded copy of a British Petroleum house journal in the Englishman's sheepskin pocket. The passenger was also carrying looped over his shoulder a device which registers seismic shocks after explosives dropped into a hole have been detonated, a tool of the geologist's profession.
^ 'North Slope?' the Immigration man enquired with a grin. 'We need you guys to checkmate those A-rab bastards.'
^ 'Take more than North Slope to do that,' Winter replied non-committally. 'Is there a cab outside?'
^ 'If you run – after you get through Customs. Cabs are in short supply these days – you'll have to share…'
^ Winter was passed through Customs with equal good humour and speed. His case was chalked without anyone checking it, as though they were unwilling to hold him up a moment longer than was necessary. He shared a cab with LeCat and two other people, and the Frenchman gave no sign that he had ever met Winter before. Behind them the other two Frenchmen followed in a separate cab.
^ The Westward was a typical American hotel; tall, shaped like an upended shoe-box, it had a rooftop restaurant. Only half the lights were on in the lobby even though outside it was almost dark; a heavy cloud bank hung over the city whose streets were ankle-deep in slush. Nor, in this state which would one day be knee-deep in oil, was it very warm inside the lobby. Obeying government regulations, the manager had the thermostat turned down to sixty-two degrees.
^ Winter booked accommodation in the name of Forrest, dumped his bag in his sixth-floor room, and by the time he walked out of the hotel a hired Chevrolet was waiting for him at the kerb. Behind the wheel sat Joseph Walgren, the American Winter had last met in San Francisco two months earlier. In the back was LeCat, whom Walgren had picked up from another hotel.
^ 'Drive me to the Swan home,' Winter said abruptly. 'I want to check the timing…'
^ 'I checked it,' the fifty-year-old Walgren objected. 'You got the timing in the letter I sent to Cosgrove Manor…'
^ The first stage of the operation was the most difficult, the most likely to go wrong. The key man aboard any ship is the wireless operator, the man who communicates with the shore, however distant; Charlie Swan, the radio operator aboard the ^ Challenger, ^ had to be kidnapped so Winter could put his own man, Kinnaird, in his place before the tanker made its next trip to San Francisco.
^ 'The ^ Challenger ^ docks at the Nikisiki oil terminal at six this evening,' Walgren said as he drove out of the city, 'like I told you in the coded letter. Captain Mackay will come and stay overnight at your hotel, the Westward. Swan, the radio guy, drives home and stays there overnight. He'll drive back to the airport tomorrow, leaving home at 3.30 in the afternoon. He links up there with Mackay-who takes a cab from the hotel to the airport. Then they both get flown back to the oil terminal in the Cessna piloted by Mackay's buddy.'
^ 'I've been up here a month watching them.' Walgren switched off the windscreen wipers: it had stopped snowing. 'That makes three trips for the ^ Challenger – ^ in and out. Those two have schedules like a railroad timetable – never varies. They get so little time ashore they do the same thing. It's become a habit. Kinnaird is shacked up at the Madison downtown – this piece of paper gives you the phone number, and the Swan number.' Walgren gripped the wheel a little tighter. 'I'm glad the hanging around is over. So we make the Swan snatch tomorrow and we're in business…'