The crude would act as a transporting medium/ she was struggling to
project a scenario through her sleepiness, it would spread out on the
surface to a thickness of quarter of an inch or so, so you'd end up with
a slick of a few thousand miles long and four or five hundred wide, and
it would keep going. What would be the results? It would wipe out most
of the marine life on the Bahamas and on the eastern seaboard of the
States, no, correct that - it would wipe out all marine life, that
includes the spawning grounds of the tuna, the freshwater eels and the
sperm whale, and it would contaminate - she was coming fully awake now,
and a stirring horror altered her tone -'You're macabre, Nicholas, what
a sick thing to think about, especially at three in the morning. Human
life? the asked.
Yes, there would be heavy loss, she said. As sulphide, it would be
readily absorbed and in that concentration it would be poisonous on
contact, fishermen, vacationers, anybody who walked on a contaminated
beach. She was truly beginning to realize the enormity of it. A large
part of the population of the cities on the east coast - Nicholas, it
could amount to hundreds of thousands of human beings, and if it was
carried beyond America on the Gulf Stream, the Newfoundland Banks,
Iceland, the North Sea, it would poison the cod fisheries, it would kill
everything, man, fish, bird and animal. Then the tail of the Gulf
Stream twists around the British Isles and the north continent of Europe
- but why are you asking me this, what kind of crazy guessing game is
this, Nicholas? Christy Marine has signed a ten-year contract to carry
one million ton loads of crude from the El Barras field on the South
Arabian Gulf to the Orient Amex refinery in Galveston. The El Barras
crude has a cadmium sulphide constituent of between 2,000 and 40,000
parts per million. Now there was trembling outrage in her voice as she
whispered, A million tons! That's some sort of genocide, Nicholas,
there has probably never been a more deadly cargo in the history of
seafaring. In a few weeks time Golden Dawn will run down her and when
she does, the seeds of ways at St Nazaite catastrophe will be sewn upon
the oceans., Her route from the Arabian Gulf takes her around Good Hope.
One of the most dangerous seas in the world, the home of the
hundred-year wave/ Nicholas agreed.
Then across the southern Atlantic and into the bottle-neck of the Guff
Stream between Key West and Cuba, into the Devil's Triangle, the
breeding ground of the hurricanes You can't let them do it, Nicholas,
she said quietly.
You just have to stop them. It won't be easy, but I'll be working hard
on it this side, there are a dozen tricks I am going to try, but you
have to take over on your side, he told her. Samantha, you go get Tom
Parker. Get him out of bed, if necessary. He has, to hit Washington
with the news, hit all the media - television, radio and the press. A
confrontation with Orient Amex, challenge them to make a statement.
Samantha picked up the line he was taking.
We'll get the Green-Peacers to picket the Orient Amex refinery in
Galveston, the one which will process the cadmium crudes. We'll have
every environmental agency in the country at work - we'll raise a stink
like that of a million corpses/ she promised.
