Seawitch by Alistair MacLean Read Free Book Online

seriously. You have to hand it to him—as devious as they come. I suppose we tell Bentley exactly what he told us to tell him?"
    "What else?"
    "Do you believe what he told us?"
    "That he has his own private intelligence corps? I wouldn't question it for a moment. That he's going out to the Seawitch? I believe that, too. I'm not so sure about his timing, though. We're to tell Bentley that he's leaving in the afternoon. He told us he's leaving about dawn. If he can lie to Bentley he can lie to us. I don't know why he should think it necessary to lie to us, probably just his second nature. I think he's going to leave much sooner than that."
    Roomer said: "Me, too, I'm afraid. If I intended to be up at dawn's early light I'd be in bed by now or heading that way. He showed no sign of going to bed, so I conclude he has no intention of going to bed, because it wouldn't be worth his while." He paused. "So. A double stake-out?"
    "I thought so. Up by Lord Worth's house and down by his heliport. You for the heliport, me for the tail job?"
    "What else?" Mitchell was possessed of phenomenal night-sight. Except on the very blackest of nights he could drive without any lights at all.
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    Alistair MacLean
    'Til hole up behind the west spinney. You know it?"
    "I know it. How about you feeding the story to Bentley while I make a couple of thermoses of coffee and some sandwiches?"
    "Fine." Roomer reached for the phone, then paused. "Listen, why are we doing all this? We don't owe the FBI anything. We have no authority from anyone to do anything. You said it yourself: we and organized law walk in different directions. I don't feel I'm under any obligation to save my country from a nonexistent threat. We've got no client, no commission, no prospect of fees. Why should we care if Lord Worth sticks his head into a noose?"
    Mitchell paused in slicing bread. "As far as your last question is concerned, why don't you call up Melinda and ask her?"
    Roomer gave him a long, quizzical look, sighed and reached for the telephone.
    ss
    Chapter 3
    &COFFIELD had been wrong in his guess. Lord Worth was possessed of no private arsenal. But the United States armed services were, and in their dozens, at that.
    The two break-ins were accomplished with the professional expertise born of a long and arduous practice that precluded any possibility of mistakes. The targets in both cases were government arsenals, one army and one naval. Both, naturally, were manned by round-the-clock guards, none of whom was killed or even injured if one were to disregard the cranial contusions—and those were few—caused by sandbagging and
    AHstair MacLean
    sapping: Lord Worth had been very explicit on the use of minimal violence.
    Giuseppe Palermo, who looked and dressed like a successful Wall Street broker, had the more difficult task of the two, although, as a man who held the Mafia in tolerant contempt, he regarded the exercise as almost childishly easy. Accompanied by nine almost equally respectable men—sartorially respectable, that is—three of whom were dressed as army majors, he arrived at the Florida arms depot at fifteen minutes to midnight. The six young guards, none of whom had even seen or heard a shot fired in anger, were at their drowsiest and expecting nothing but their midnight reliefs. Only two were really fully awake—the other four had dozed away—and those two, responding to a heavy and peremptory hammering on the main entrance door, were disturbed, not to say highly alarmed, by the appearance of three army officers who announced that they were making a snap inspection to test security and alertness. Five minutes later all six were bound and gagged—two of them uncon-cious and due to wake up with very sore heads because of their misguided attempts to put up a show of resistance—and safely locked up in one of the many so-called secure rooms in the depot.
    During this period and the next twenty minutes, one of Palermo's men, an electronics expert called