North Star (25 page)

Through the glasses I could see men standing around the winches on the corner of the platform nearest to us. I kept on sending as we lay hove-to, keeping station on the buoy and watching for any further movement. But it seemed to be holding, and finally Stewart came through, his voice quieter now, a note of relief. ‘We’ve full tension again. How’s it looking out there?’

‘Okay, I think. Out of position, but not by much. I’ve been trying to call you. No. 3 can doesn’t seem to have moved much since the rain stopped and we got sight of the two of them.’

‘Thank Christ!’ he murmured. ‘We’ve definitely got a shift of wind. If we hadn’t got that, the riser casing would have snapped under the strain. A hell of a mess. But we’re holding on 3 and 4 now, tension constant. Stay on top of those two buoys. Beam your spotlight on us if you think either of them is shifting position. I’ll have somebody keep watch on you
from up here. I daren’t rely on the tension dials only. So watch it.’

We stayed patrolling between those two buoys the rest of the night, the wind gradually steadying in the north-west. Around 04.00 it blew very strong from that quarter, but the two anchors held and by dawn the wind was dropping and the sea with it. The night of panic was over, and
North Star
almost back in position above the drill hole.

Now the hustle was on to clear up the mess and get the rig operational again. Divers were down at first light and the radio traffic was incessant as scrambled FAX reports were transmitted and Ken Stewart called for
Rattler
to bring out new cable and re-lay anchors 1 and 2. And then, just after 09.00, he called the
Duchess
and ordered me to report on board at 10.30. ‘Ed’s holding a meeting to establish just what happened, and what needs to be done, so bring the ship’s log with you.’

It took three days to get new cables sent out and wound on to the winch drums. Some of the big oil companies had established a supply base at Lyness in Orkney and were beginning to move back-up facilities to Lerwick, but Star-Trion was an independent and had to get supplies where it could. Mostly that meant Aberdeen, which was a long haul. Another day was lost in retrieving the anchors and re-laying them, so that it wasn’t until late on 12th June that the drilling string was connected up again and the rig operational.

The meeting in Ed Wiseberg’s office had established nothing. Both the cables had parted at their extremities, close to the length of chain shackled to the anchor. This was confirmed later when
Rattler
winched in both buoys and the anchors at the end of their pennant wires. No. 1 had 15 feet of cable still attached to the chain, No. 2, 7 feet. This seemed to support the conclusion reached at the meeting that the cables were old and suffering from fatigue and that replacement of all anchor cables was essential for the safety of the rig.

Since the discussion had centred on the condition of the cables, I was not involved, except to the extent of justifying my departure from Ken Stewart’s instructions in order to identify the fishing boat
Island Girl.
My action was accepted as being reasonable in the circumstances, Ed Wiseberg merely insisting that in future I adhere strictly to the barge engineer’s orders. I made no reference to that moment when I thought I had felt an explosion under water. In view of what was discovered later it would have been better if I had, but with everybody convinced that cable fatigue was the cause, it would have introduced a new dimension. I did, however, point out
that the fishing boat,
Island Girl
, had been steaming without lights, but they merely put that down to the determination of Shetland’s fishermen to shoot their nets close in to the rig. They thought it was a political move, since the purse-seiners normally worked closer inshore, and the absence of lights was attributed to a natural desire to avoid being sighted by the guard boat.

Immediately following that conference I had arranged to get Gertrude ashore. I had never had a woman on board a trawler before and the fact that the crew were so accustomed to her presence that, almost unconsciously, they looked to her for decisions, made my own position considerably more difficult than it would otherwise have been. Johan, in particular, had a great fondness for her, as though she were a close relative as well as the owner. In any case, we needed her back at base to organize supplies. There was no room for her on the helicopter, but when the new cables came out I got her away
on Rattler
. After that I was able to re-establish my authority and get a grip on the ship and her crew.

There was a great deal of activity during the days it took to get the rig fully operational again. But once they had resumed drilling, everything settled down to normal, and the dullness of our patrol, the steady routine of watch-and-watch about, made things considerably easier for me. Throughout this period the Shetlanders gave us no trouble. Indeed, for the better part of a week we never saw a single fishing boat. Johan thought they would be fishing either west of Sumburgh or out by Fair Isle, for the weather was fine and clear. It was midsummer now, the days so long there was almost no night, only a weird pinkish twilight before the sun edged up over the horizon again.

Twenty-third June and another clear, silky morning. I was just coming off watch when the rig called us. I was to report on board immediately – Ed Wiseberg’s orders. I found him alone in the toolpusher’s office, his hard, leathery face even more craggy than usual. ‘You’ve seen this, have you?’ It was a copy
of the Shetland paper with a headline –
Dragging Rig a Danger to Lives.

‘No, we haven’t had any papers sent out yet.’

He grunted. ‘Then you won’t have seen the stories in your national press. The
Morning Star
is the worst, of course, accusing Villiers of gambling with men’s lives. But they’re all on to it –
The Times
,
Express
,
Telegraph
, the whole goddam lot, all screaming for our blood.’ He flung the pile down in front of me, staring at me angrily as though I personally had leaked the story. The intercom phone rang, and while he answered it, I picked up one of the papers, my eye caught by several lines of print underlined in red:
It is not the first time things have gone wrong for this 51-year-old American driller
.
In the past six years he has had a fire
,
a blowout and an accident in which two men were killed
.
Regarded as something of a Jonah by his fellow toolpushers
,
it is hardly surprising that he now finds himself in charge of the oldest rig in the North Sea operating west of Shetland in the most dangerous sea area of all.

No wonder he was angry. I turned to the
Telegraph
. Here, too, the story was front page news, but at that point I suddenly became interested in what he was saying over the phone – something about fishing boats and he had mentioned Gertrude Petersen’s name. He reached for a pad, made a note and then looked across at me. ‘Okay, George. I think that’s a pretty smart deal … Yeah, I guess that should cool the whole thing down, locally at any rate. When d’you reckon it’ll be on station? … That’s fine.
Rattler
can stand by till it arrives. Yeah, I’ll tell him. He’s here with me right now.’ And he put the phone down. ‘That was George Fuller,’ he said. For a moment he didn’t say anything more, just stood there facing me, his brows drawn down and his face grim. He was looking older than when I had last seen him, the lines of his face deeper, the shoulders sagging. The effect was to make him seem less than life size, as though the weight of responsibility had diminished his stature.

The silence hung heavy. ‘What was it about?’ I asked him.

‘You.’ He paused, still frowning. Then he straightened up, squaring his shoulders. ‘First, I’d better tell you the results of the laboratory tests on Nos. 1 and 2 cables. We sent the whole lot ashore, including the broken ends from both anchor chains. It wasn’t what we thought. No indication of cable fatigue. Know what it was?’ He was suddenly leaning on the desk, his head thrust aggressively forward. ‘Sabotage.’

I was so shocked by the boldness of his statement that all I could think of was that moment on the bridge when something, some force, had slammed against the soles of my feet. So I’d been right. It had been an underwater explosion.

‘That surprise you?’ He glowered at me. ‘No, I bet it doesn’t. I can see it in your face. You know damn well they were ripped apart by a bomb.’

‘Are you accusing me?’

‘I’m not accusing you of anything. All I know is that your political record stinks, and yours was the only boat with the opportunity –’

‘What about that purse-seiner I reported steaming without lights?’ But I knew
Island Girl
hadn’t had time to undertake what would have been a very tricky operation. He knew it, too.

‘That fishing vessel’s got nothing to do with it. Mebbe you haven’t either. God knows how it was done. But there it is. There’s the laboratory report.’ He picked up a telex and tossed it across to me. ‘Read it if you want to. The frayed ends of those cables all showed indications of heat metamorphosis. Traces of carbon, other more technical details. It all adds up, the findings conclusive. And something else you should read.’ He reached for the local paper and handed it to me, his finger pointing to the second column of the front page story. ‘That boat you saw. It wasn’t fishing. It was tailing you. Read it.’

‘But it couldn’t possibly –’

‘Read it. Then I’ll tell you what we’ve decided.’

It was a statement by Ian Sandford:

The rig’s only stand-by boat is the
Duchess of Norfolk,
manned partly by foreigners. This is not the sort of boat that should be permitted to harry our fishing boats, which have an age-old right to fish those waters. Nor should a man with a police record be in command of the one boat with the right to come and go around the rig. This should be a Shetland responsibility. My own boat was
,
in fact, present in the neighbourhood of the rig at the time it began to drag. The man on watch saw the
Duchess
out by the windward buoys
,
but then she forced
Island Girl
to leave the area.

The implication was obvious, and it went on:
Mr Sandford
,
who was recently elected to the Zetland County Council
,
drew a hair-raising picture of what could happen if this rig were to break adrift at the moment when the drill bit had penetrated an underwater oil reservoir. ‘It could mean,’ he told our reporter
,
‘vast quantities of crude oil gushing out into the waters west of Shetland. Every fisherman knows the effect this would have on his livelihood. But it’s not just the fishing that would be hit. With the prevailing winds, all the west of Shetland could be totally polluted, the whole coastline black with crude oil. The beauty of our islands, the bird life, everything that attracts the tourist
,
would be ruined.
’

His solution: A modern, self-positioning drilling ship in place of the obsolete
North Star.
And in the interim, proper surveillance with two Shetland boats sharing the guard duties
,
and manned by Shetlanders.

So that was it. The man had turned politician and was using his new position to get us out and his own boats in. I looked across at the big toolpusher and knew by the look on his face I hadn’t a hope of changing his mind. ‘You’re ditching us, is that it?’

‘Call it that if you like. I told you, when I first met you, I didn’t want you on my rig. Now I don’t want you anywhere near it – or your ship. Nor does George. You’re a political liability, and to my way of thinking a potential danger to the rig.’
He was looking down at the paper again, his voice thick with anger as he said, ‘A dynamic stationed drill ship! That shows their goddam ignorance. A dynamic stationed ship in these waters! There’s no heave compensator invented could cope with the pitch and movement of a drill ship in the waves we’ll be getting out here later in the year.’

But I wasn’t interested. To hell with drill ships and technicalities. All I cared about in that moment was the
Duchess
and Gertrude. Myself, too. ‘We’ve a contract,’ I said. ‘And provided we can keep on station –’

His fist came down, hammering at the desk. ‘I don’t give a damn about your contract. No doubt you’ll get compensation, if that’s what you’re worrying about. George can sort that one out with the Petersen woman. Now get back to your ship and get it out of here. Okay?
Rattler
takes over from the
Duchess
as of now.’

I was so angry I had to push my hands down into my pockets to stop myself doing something stupid. ‘Have you thought about how an explosive device could have been attached to the cables – close to the anchor stocks in 500 feet of water?’ I was holding myself in, my voice tight and controlled. ‘You think about that. A bomb slid down the pennant wire from buoy to anchor would cut the buoy adrift and mark the anchor when it exploded. I saw those anchors as
Rattler
hauled them up. They were undamaged. And the buoys didn’t break adrift. Both pennant wires were intact. And if you think somebody could slide a device down the cable from the rig end of it on a snap block, then you just try it, see whether it gets anywhere near as close as the point of break on those two cables.’

I had his attention then. ‘Okay. How do you think it was done then?’

It was a matter I had given some thought to, but I hesitated, suspecting a trap. When a man has virtually accused you of sabotaging his anchor cables, you don’t expect him to enquire about the method used without some ulterior motive. But Ed
Wiseberg wasn’t built that way. He was a rugged, straightforward drill operator and there was no guile in the grey eyes waiting upon my answer. Their expression was one of puzzlement, and it came as a shock to realize that the man was out of his depth and profoundly worried. He really was seeking my advice. ‘Christ! You expect me to tell you?’

‘Not if you had a hand in it. No.’ He shrugged, and then suddenly that craggy face broke into a smile. ‘But I’m asking you all the same. You know about the sea. I don’t.’