LITMIR.BIZ

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that’s Jim Brady’s term for it – was formed six years ago. There are fourteen of us in it. At first it was as a purely investigative agency. We went to a place after the deed had been done and the fire put out – as often as not it was Jim who put it out – and tried to find out who had done it, why, and what his modus operandi had been. Frankly, we had very limited success: usually the horse had gone, and all we were doing was locking the empty stable door.

      “Now the emphasis has changed – we try to lock the damned door in such a fashion that no-one can open it. In other words, prevention: the maximum tightening of both mechanical and human security. The response to this service has been remarkable – we’re now the most profitable side of Jim’s operations. By far. Capping off runaway wells, putting fires out, can’t hold a candle, if you’ll pardon the expression, to our security work. Such is the demand for our services that we could triple our division and still not cope with all the calls being made upon us.”

      “Well, why don’t you? Triple the business, I mean.”

      “Trained personnel,” Mackenzie said. “Just not there. More accurately, there are next to no experienced operatives and there’s an almost total dearth of people qualified to be trained for the job. The combination of qualifications is difficult to come by. You have to have an investigative mind, and that in turn is based on an inborn instinct for detection – the Sherlock Holmes genes, shall we say. You’ve either got it or not: it can’t be inculcated. You have to have an eye and a nose for security, an obsession, almost – and this can only come from field experience; you have to have a pretty detailed knowledge of the oil industry world-wide: and, above all, you have to be an oilman.”

      “And you gentlemen are oilmen.” It was a statement, not a question.

      “All our working lives,” Dermott said. “We’ve both been field operations managers.”

      “If your services are in such demand, how come we should be so lucky as to jump to the head of the queue?”

      Dermott said: “As far as we know this is the first time that any oil company has received notification of intent to sabotage. First real chance we’ve had to try out our preventive medicine. We’re just slightly puzzled on one point, Mr Finlayson. You say you never heard of us until a couple of days ago. How come that we’re here, then? I mean, we knew of this three days ago when we arrived back from the Mid East. We spent a day resting up, another day studying the layout and security measures of the Alaskan pipeline and – ”

      “You did that, eh? Isn’t it classified information?”

      Dermott was patient. “We could have sent for it immediately on receiving the request for assistance. We didn’t have to. The information, Mr Finlayson, is not classified. It’s in the public domain. Big companies tend to be incredibly careless about such matters. Whether to reassure the public or burnish their own image by taking thoroughgoing precautions, they not only release large chunks of information about their activities but positively bombard the public with them. The information, of course, comes in disparate and apparently unrelated lumps: it requires only a moderately intelligent fella to piece them all together.

      “Not that those big companies, such as Alyeska, who built your pipeline, have much to reproach themselves about. They don’t even begin to operate in the same league of indiscretion as the all-time champs, the U.S. Government. Take the classic example of the de-classification of the secret of the atom bomb. When the Russians got the bomb, the Government thought there was no point in being secretive any more and proceeded to tell all. You want to know how to make an atom bomb? Just send a pittance to the A.E.C. in Washington and you’ll have the necessary information by return mail. That this information could be used by Americans against Americans apparently never occurred to the towering intellects of Capitol Hill and the Pentagon, who seem to have been under the impression that the American criminal classes voluntarily retired en masse on the day of declassification.”

      Finlayson raised a defensive hand. “Hold. Enough. I accept that you haven’t infiltrated Prudhoe Bay with a battalion of spies. Answer’s simple. When I received this unpleasant letter – it was sent to me, not to our H.Q. in Anchorage – I talked to the general manager, Alaska. We both agreed that it was almost certainly a hoax. Still, I regret to say that many Alaskans aren’t all that kindly disposed towards us. We also agreed that if it was not a hoax, it could be something very serious indeed. People like us, although we’re well enough up the ladder in our own fields, don’t take final decisions on the safety and future of a ten-billion-dollar investment. So we notified the grand panjandrums. Your directive came from London. Informing me of their decision must have come as an afterthought.”

      “Head offices being what they are,” Dermott said. “Got this threatening note here?”

      Finlayson retrieved a single sheet of notepaper from a drawer and passed it across.

      “‘My dear Mr Finlayson’,” Dermott read. “Well, that’s civil enough. ‘I have to inform you that you will be incurring a slight spillage of oil in the near future. Not much, I assure you, just sufficient to convince you that we can interrupt oil flow whenever and wherever we please. Please notify ARCO.’”

      Dermott shoved the letter across to Mackenzie. “Understandably unsigned. No demands. If this is genuine, it’s intended as a softening-up demonstration in preparation for the big threat and big demand that will follow. A morale-sapper, if you will, designed to scare the pants off you.”

      Finlayson’s gaze was on the middle distance. “I’m not so sure he hasn’t done that already.”

      “You notified ARCO?”

      “Yup. Oilfield’s split more or less half-and-half. We run the western sector. ARCO – Atlantic Richfield, Exxon, some smaller groups – they run the eastern sector.”

      “What’s their reaction?”

      “Like mine. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.”

      “Your security chief. What’s his reaction?”

      “Downright pessimistic. It’s his baby, after all. If I were in his shoes I’d feel the same way. He’s convinced of the genuineness of this threat.”

      “Me too,” Dermott said. “This came in an envelope? Ah, thank you.” He read the address. “‘Mr John Finlayson, B.Sc., A.M.I.M.E.’. Not only punctilious, but they’ve done their homework on you. ‘B.P./Sohio, Prudhoe Bay, Alaska’. Postmarked Edmonton, Alberta. That mean anything to you?”

      “Nary a thing. I have neither friends nor acquaintances there, and certainly no business contacts.”

      “Your security chief’s reaction?”

      “Same as mine. Zero.”

      “What’s his name?”

      “Bronowski. Sam Bronowski.”

      “Let’s have him in, shall we?”

      “You’ll have to wait, I’m afraid. He’s down in Fairbanks. Back tonight, if the weather holds up. Depends on visibility.”

      “Blizzard season?”

      “We don’t have one. Precipitation on the North Slope is very low, maybe six inches in a winter. High winds are the bugaboo. They blow up the surface snow so that the air can be completely opaque for thirty or forty feet above the ground. Just before Christmas a few years ago a Hercules, normally the safest of aircraft, tried to land in those conditions. Didn’t make it. Two of the crew of four killed. Pilots have become a bit leery since – if a Hercules can buy it, any aircraft can. These high winds and the surface snowstorms they generate – that snow can be driving along at 70 miles an hour – are the bane of our existence up here. That’s why this operations centre is built on pilings seven feet above ground – let the snow blow right underneath. Otherwise we’d end the winter season buried under a massive drift. The pilings, of course, also virtually eliminate heat transfer to the permafrost, but that’s secondary.”

      “What’s

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