"MacLean, Alistar - Seawitch" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maclean Alistair)

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 precisely similar to that of the Seawitch herself, at a distance of about three hundred yards. Cleaned 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 some half a billion years ago.

Once, sometimes twice, a day a 50,000-ton-capacity tanker would stop by and empty the huge tank. There were three of those tankers employed on the crisscross run to the southern United States. The North 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 Sea-witch's tank would not have filled a quarter of the supertanker's carrying capacity, and the possibility of a supertanker running at a loss, however small, would have been the source of waking nightmares for the North Hudson: equally importantly, the more isolated ports which Lord Worth favored for the delivery of his oil were unable to offer deep-water berthside facilities for anything in excess of fifty thousand tons.

It might be explained, in passing, that Lord Worth's choice of those obscure ports was not entirely fortuitous. Among the parties to the gentlemen's agreement against offshore drilling, some of the most vociferous of those who roundly condemned North Hudson's nefarious practices were, regrettably, North 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 -- at least until 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 inquiries, and as long as the energy crisis continued nobody was going to worry very much about where oil came from, as long as it came. In addition, the smaller companies felt, if the OPEC -- the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries— could play ducks and drakes with oil prices whenever they fe}t like it, why couldn't they?

Less than two miles from Lord Worth's estate were the adjacent homes and combined office of Michael Mitchell and John Roomer. It was Mitchell who answered the doorbell. '

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." Michael Mitchell let him in to their apartment. "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 us to ask you to help them."

"Status at last," Mitchell said. "We've got it made, John -- except for one thing: the State Department doesn'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 of Lord Worth."

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

"Hear him 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, because they see him more in the role of the persecutor than persecuted."

"You mean the FBI does," Roomer said. "You've had him in your files for years. Lord Worth always gives the impression of being very capable of looking out for 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?"