^ 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…'
^ He stopped talking when he saw Winter's expression. Jesus, the Britisher was an iceberg, unlike the Frenchie behind who would sit and drink brandy with a guy like any other normal human being. Walgren tightened his thick lips and concentrated on his driving. For thirty grand he could put up even with Winter…
^ Heavy grey clouds hung over the Matanuska valley as they sped north-east along the highway and there was snow on the hills. More snow up in those clouds too, Walgren thought. 'You're exceeding the speed limit,' Winter said icily. Swearing inwardly, Walgren dropped down to fifty-five. Everybody exceeded the speed limit if they thought there was no patrol car ahead. It began to rain, a steady, depressing drizzle which blotted out the surrounding countryside. Walgren switched on the wipers, hunched over the wheel, hating the silence inside the car. He drove for almost an hour.
^ 'That's the Swan home coming up,' Walgren told Winter. 'You're almost ten minutes out on your timing,' the Englishman snapped.
^ 'So, I beat the limit a couple of times. Swan keeps the needle on fifty-five the whole way. At least he did the three times I followed him out here from the airport.'
^ Winter said nothing, hiding his annoyance. British, American or French, it seemed impossible to find people who were precise. He had the same trouble with LeCat. So he had to check every damned thing himself.
^ Walgren turned off the lonely highway down a track leading through a copse of snow-covered fir trees. Inside the copse he backed the car in a half-circle until it faced the way they had come. Through a gap in the snow-hung trees the Swan home was clearly visible, an isolated two-storey homestead three or four hundred yards back from the highway with a drive leading up to it. Behind the house stood an old Alaskan barn and a red Ford was parked at the front. In the bleak, snowbound landscape there was only one other house to be seen.
^ 'Won't that car freeze up?' Winter asked as he lowered the window and focused a pair of field glasses.
^ They got it plugged into a power cable,' Walgren replied. That keeps the immersion heater under the hood going. You forget to plug in your cable and inside two hours you got a block of ice instead of a motor…'
^ It was already getting cold inside Walgren's car; to save gas he had switched off the motor while he parked. From a chimney in the Swan household blue smoke drifted, spiralling up in a vertical column. The rain had stopped and the leaden overcast was like a plague cloud covering the Matanuska valley.
^ That house in the distance beyond the Swan place – know anything about it?' Winter enquired.
^ 'Belongs to some people called Thompson, friends of the Swans.' Walgren lit a cigarette. 'Sometimes when Charlie Swan is home the two couples get together – they did on the last trip.'
^ 'No, visit each other's homes. The Swans went over to the Thompson's. When you're home only once in ten days like Charlie Swan is you don't drive into town. You meet up with the folks next door.'
^ 'Used to be a private dick. There are ways. And,' Walgren said aggressively, 'I can't see why we came out here – the snatch is set up for tomorrow…'
^ 'Trial run,' Winter said brusquely. There was no point in explaining that this was another rehearsal, just as Cosgrove Manor had been a rehearsal for the ship hi-jack. He studied the house for a minute or two longer, then told Walgren, 'Drive back into town.'
^ On January 15 it was dark in Anchorage at three in the afternoon. Walgren dropped Winter near the Westward and the Englishman had a late lunch at a coffee shop. So that he was remembered as little as possible he would eat only one meal in the hotel restaurant. Walgren, who ate very little – he was badly overweight and had been reading the health ads – dropped LeCat at his own hotel. Next, he picked up Armand Bazin and started the long drive to Nikisiki oil terminal on the Kenai ^ ^ peninsula.
^ It was six o'clock in the evening when Walgren collected Winter again from the Westward after returning Bazin to his hotel. He drove the Englishman out of the city to an isolated spot where an old barn stood amid a clearing surrounded by evergreens. 'Everything is OK,' he told Winter as they pulled up in front of the building. 'You didn't really have to make the trip…'
^ Winter inspected the barn where Swan and his wife would be kept prisoner for a week. Everything, as Walgren had said, seemed OK. The place was secure, new padlocks had been put on all the windows and doors, and there was a Primus stove for cooking and an adequate supply of canned food, milk and fruit juices. The Swans should be as comfortable as it was possible to make them – including the provision of five oil-heaters and enough
