LITMIR.BIZ

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boss. Your ready bag, it is equipped for cold weather?”

      We all kept a bag at the office, just in case. “Of course! Ski hat, pith helmet – I never know what you’ll spring on me.” I bowed in Three Musketeers’ style. “À vôtre service!”

      “It’s not the North Pole but close enough.”

      “Actually, I’ve learned Newfoundland is about the same latitude as us but the North Atlantic adds a frisky dimension.”

      “That’s what happened. Gale winds blew the thing over, more than a hundred knots, according to the wire. You’d think something like that would be built strong enough.”

      “You realize, of course, this means you owe me one. D’accord?”

      “D’accord.”

      “I’d better call Diane. We had plans but what else is new?”

      “Just had a nice chat with her. She says bring her back some native jewelry.”

      The back side of the big storm had struck Mobil Oil’s Ocean Ranger drilling rig a hundred-eighty miles east of Newfoundland, and was still pummeling eastern Canada when I arrived in Montreal. After a three-hour delay it was two a.m. when I checked into my hotel which, interestingly, was called the Albatross. The room was fine, though after eighteen hours en route anything soft and reasonably horizontal would have been acceptable. I hadn’t been able to focus on my new le Carré paperback, wearing out my Gazette credit card on the airplane phone, getting up to speed and briefing Edouard. On with Fred I told him they needed to assign somebody to put the event in context. “Update offshore oil, what it means for supply, past disasters.”

      “We’re already on it. Did you know drilling platforms have drowned more than two hundred people? Stay warm, amigo.”

      I also picked up some skinny, definitely not for attribution, from a Mobil friend in New York. A week before, the Ocean Ranger had a problem with ballast control, an inadvertent shutdown that caused the rig to list severely. The company chalked it up to operator error. Its U.S. Coast Guard certificate had recently expired and ironically, officials were headed there for an inspection as the storm came on. In high seas and heavy wind, the Ocean Ranger reported more ballast control problems, valves opening and closing on their own.

      St. John’s authorities told me their first warning was a Mayday picked up by Halifax at 0052 hours. The rig was listing severely and desperately needed assistance. At 0130, Ocean Ranger’s final transmission – “Abandoning ship.” An hour later the first rescue helicopter found the Ocean Ranger barely afloat, and in half an hour it went under. All that remained were overturned lifeboats, a few bodies, debris. As vessels continued searching for survivors another disaster began to unfold. A Russian freighter bound for Leningrad was taking on water nearby and soon went down. Of all things, the Mikhanik Tarasov had originated in the port of Trois Rivières. Dad. Madeleine.

      Courtesy of Roger Oakes, its Editor, I set up shop in the St. John’s Express newsroom, made a bunch of calls, then got over to the Coast Guard building where I interviewed officials and, as day broke, sat in on an improvised press conference. CBC was there, of course, and a CBS crew from New York headed by a newsman I knew fairly well, Marty Keller, who covered oil for CBS. CNN also, Montreal and Toronto papers. I seemed to be the only U.S. print reporter, and sitting beside a Times stringer out of St. John’s, my yawns made me wonder why we hadn’t gone local. I figured it was expertise they were after so I’d better reach deep and put some of it in play. From the briefing we learned that of the Ocean Ranger’s eighty four-man crew, none had been found alive, and given the freezing water, none would be. So far eleven bodies recovered. From the Soviet ship five had been rescued.

      After spending time with a Mobil VP, I tried to hook a ride out to the scene on a Coast Guard chopper but nothing doing, some nonsense about security. Marty, overhearing me, said CBS had chartered a plane, there was an extra seat and I was welcome to it. “You okay with my taking pictures?” I asked.

      “‘Long as you don’t try to scoop us.”

      “I’m shooting for tomorrow’s early edition.”

      “Not a problem.”

      At nine o’clock we clambered aboard the Twin Otter and headed east over the Atlantic toward the Grand Banks and the Hibernia oilfield. “Supposedly the biggest movable offshore rig anywhere,” I observed to Marty across the aisle. “Basically it’s a catamaran with pontoons and heavy anchors.”

      “Not heavy enough. A hundred-twenty million bucks, eighty-four men and all of it gone. Our oil habit makes us do funny things, doesn’t it?” He lit a cigarette. “So tell me, how does it feel to win a Pulitzer? If you hadn’t noticed I’m still waiting for mine.”

      “It makes you a lot of new friends, if you know what I mean.”

      “I have a hunch there’ll be more to come.”

      After ninety minutes bumping through the clouds I could feel the plane descend and the pilot came over the intercom. “Sorry about the choppy air but it’s no better where we’re sitting. Cloud base reported thirty-one hundred feet, so when we’re in the clear I’ll level off and make a pass then drop down for your filming. We’ll be making left turns to avoid other aircraft – lot of flies at this picnic today. Set up at the left door, you can buckle your cameraman in now to save time.”

      The CBS cameraman positioned himself at the door, someone securing him with a canvas harness bolted to the floor and ceiling. I broke out the Leica, fitting a telephoto lens to it. I’d attempt a few through the window until my turn at the door. We broke out to a sullen yellow-gray horizon and foam-flecked waves. With the turbulence I decided to use 1/1000th, though because of the dim light some slower ones too. I peered through the long lens at the ships, the scattered lifeboats. The co-pilot came back and muscled the door open against the wind. A blast of cold air swept through the cabin. As we began our descent I stuffed my notebook in my pocket and snapped some shots out the window. After a while the co-pilot came back again to shut the door and unbuckle the cameraman. I got up awkwardly. One of those times Mr. Stumpy becomes Mr. Grumpy.

      “Give you a hand?” Marty asked.

      I slipped and slid over to the door, the cameraman’s assistant stuck a plastic crate under me, buckled me in, and I positioned myself, my good foot wedged in the door frame. “Ready when you are,” I yelled.

      The copilot unlatched the door and forced it open, the onrushing wind pressing me against the harness. In the steep bank centrifugal force pressed me against the crate and I leaned out, pointing the camera toward the ocean. On our second pass, I got a couple through the spinning prop, the scene framed by the wing strut and the nacelle’s underside. After two passes I signaled them to reel me in.

      The story basically wrote itself – I’d been rehearsing it in my head all day. Roger had his photo lab develop the film and make a set of contact prints. He pointed to the shot of the boats through the prop disc. “Sure you’re not a photographer by trade?”

      “At heart, maybe, not by trade.”

      We selected a half dozen to enlarge then scanned them into a computer and sent them off via satellite. Such technology way out here, I marveled, then I realized – of course. How else could they function? Everything was in Fred’s hands by five-thirty New York time, beating deadline by a couple of hours. Special Report by Paul Bernard. Pretty neat.

      That night a few of us assembled in the bar to drink to our day and anything else we could think of. Over excellent Porterhouses preceded by shrimp from the icy Atlantic waters we swapped lies and stories, no big difference most of the time. “I was concerned, you in that open door,” Marty said, “the leg and all. But you managed okay.”

      “Not a problem. It felt like the gunners in Vietnam, the guys who rode in our choppers. They were crazy brave.”

      “What outfit were you in?”

      “The Twenty-Fifth. In the Central Highlands.”

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