Winter Kills
Winter Kills
Richard Condon
Copyright
Winter Kills
Copyright © 1974, 2013 by Richard Condon
Cover art, special contents, and Electronic Edition © 2013 by RosettaBooks LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
Cover jacket design by Terrence Tymon
ISBN e-Pub edition: 9780795335105
For
JOYCE ENGELSON,
The Smartest Girl in Town
Minutes trudge,
Hours run,
Years fly,
Decades stun.
Spring seduces,
Summer thrills,
Autumn sates,
Winter kills.
—
The Keeners’ Manual
Contents
SUNDAY, JANUARY 27, 1974—SOUTH CHINA SEA
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1959—DALLAS
12:34 A.M., MONDAY, JANUARY 28, 1974—BRUNEI
9:20 A.M., MONDAY, JANUARY 28 1974—SINGAPORE
10:05 A.M., MONDAY, JANUARY 28, 1974—ENROUTE TO GERMANY
TUESDAY MORNING, JANUARY 29, 1974—LONDON
JANUARY 29 AND 30, 1974—PHILADELPHIA
WEDNESDAY NIGHT, JANUARY 30, 1974—PALM SPRINGS
MONDAY, JANUARY 1, 1900—SAN FRANCISCO
THURSDAY, JANUARY 31, 1974—PALM SPRINGS
THURSDAY, JANUARY 31, 1974—NEW YORK
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1974—TULSA
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1974—MUSKOGEE ROAD
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 1974—PHILADELPHIA
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1959—PHILADELPHIA
FEBRUARY 17, 1960—AMALAUK, NEW JERSEY
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 1974—PHILADELPHIA
SATURDAY NIGHT, FEBRUARY 2, 1974—NEW YORK
SATURDAY NIGHT, FEBRUARY 2, 1974—NEW YORK
SUNDAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 3, 1974—NEW YORK
SUNDAY NIGHT, FEBRUARY 3, 1974—NEW YORK
SUNDAY NIGHT, FEBRUARY 3, 1974—CLEVELAND
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1959—TUCSON
JANUARY 8, 1960—ARIZONA AND PHILADELPHIA
SUNDAY NIGHT, FEBRUARY 3, 1974—CLEVELAND
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1974—NEW YORK
TUESDAY, JANUARY 29, 1974—BRUNEI
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1974—NEW YORK
MONDAY NIGHT, FEBRUARY 4, 1974—APOSTLE ISLANDS
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1955—HAVANA
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1974—NEW YORK
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1974—MUSKOGEE AND L.A.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1974—NEW YORK
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1960—PHILADELPHIA
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1974—NEW YORK
SUNDAY, AUGUST 7, 1955—WASHINGTON
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1974—NEW YORK
THURSDAY AFTERNOON FEBRUARY 7, 1974—APOSTLES
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1959—ROCKRIMMON
SUNDAY, JANUARY 27, 1974—PALM SPRINGS
THURSDAY AFTERNOON, FEBRUARY 7, 1974—NEW YORK
SUNDAY, JANUARY 27, 1974—SOUTH CHINA SEA
Nick Thirkield once told Keifetz that being in the same family with his father and his brother Tim was like living in the back leg of an all-glass piano. It was uncomfortable, it was noisy, and everyone could watch whatever he did; not that he could do much. Nick looked grim when he said it, but he could look grim when he said Merry Christmas, because he had strong, family-based reasons against showing his teeth when he smiled.
Nick got out of the glass leg of the family piano when he went into the oil business in Asia. Sixteen years later (on the day Keifetz called) he was doing another “favor” for Pa by sweating out the job of drilling superintendent on the shakedown cruise of Pa’s drilling ship
Teekay 60
. “There is two hundred million bucks sunk in that ship, kiddo,” Pa said on the phone from Palm Springs. “Don’t get any scratches on it.”
Nick had been twenty-eight days checking out the equipment on the ship at the Mitsui yards at Tamano in Japan. For a week he was afraid he just wasn’t going to catch on. He was really stuck and he knew it. And Pa had the kind of brass to give him a set of cuff links for neglecting his own business to take on the hideously responsible job of checking out the first satellite-controlled, deep-water oil-drilling ship ever built and never floated in all history before.
The Marine captain took charge only when the ship was in transit. Once Nick told him where to park it, Nick was handed the command. Wherever they were
became just another drilling site. His head almost came to a point. When Keifetz called, Nick was finishing deep-water tests in the South China Sea, about a hundred and two miles north of Borneo. They had been testing the ship in open ocean for seventy-four days, with Nick averaging fifteen hours every day, because everything had to come out right for Pa, because that was the way Pa felt about things. There were times when he wished he had gone into vaudeville or had just let Yvette Malone rub coconut oil onto his back on some Caribbean island. The
Teekay
was to oil rigs what the Apollo moon wagons were to piston-engine airplanes. The
Teekay
’s working position in heavy seas, which could be a mile and a half deep over the precise point where they would drill for oil, was fixed by signals from Pa’s own navigation satellite in orbit around the earth.
When the ship’s position for drilling had been fixed, all four hundred and forty feet of it slammed about by one-hundred-and-ten-foot-high waves, it had to hold that place for a month or more, without anchors, under automatic control of computers, while an oil well was drilled in the seabed six thousand feet below to a depth of twenty thousand feet. For every thrust of wind or shove of wave, eleven thruster propellers and six hydrophones were lowered through the hull in retractable turrets spread along the length of the ship’s bottom, fixed at right angles to the hull, providing the required counterthrust, moving the ship sideways or swinging it on its axis.
When the ship was holding, Pa’s satellite rechecked the ship’s position over the oil stored under tremendous pressure six miles beneath it—more than four hundred miles beneath the satellite. When Nick was ready to drill, part of the ship’s bottom slid away, and a thirty-five-foot, ninety-ton blowout-preventer stack went down through the hull, through the moonpool at the middle of the ship.
The whole ship revolved around the framework of
this ninety-ton stack, so that the drill could always remain stationary whichever way the sea was running. The drill string was run down the middle of the stack to make the strike. In time an oil field would be pumping out of the seabed at a mile and a half under the ocean. Every wellhead would be piped. All the oil from every well would be run to four-hundred-and-fifty-foot-tall vertical floating spars that could hold three hundred thousand gallons of oil each and feed it into Pa’s tankers while they were anchored to the spars hundreds of miles out at sea. People back home would still be able to drive to the movies in the old eight-thousand-dollar family jalopy, and sometimes get killed driving home by having to breathe the air so many cars had polluted, because
Teekay
was going to make a continuing supply of gasoline possible—at about triple the cost per gallon, if Pa had anything to say about it.
When Keifetz called from Brunei, two of the thrusters weren’t responding, so the ship wasn’t steady enough over the well. That was no good, and Nick was chewing out two computer mechanics.
Nick had two oil rigs working off Brunei. He leased the rigs from Pa. One of Pa’s companies had ninety-three semisubmersible rigs out on long-term lease. Pa ran a fleet of seventy-one tankers called the Hatch Farm fleet. Now he had
Teekay 60
, but he insisted he wasn’t in the oil business. “I got myself some exposure in there, certainly,” Pa said to Nick. “Oil is money. But there’s gunna be a switchover one of these days and I’m not getting stuck with a lotta iron.”
The
Teekay
was one hundred and three miles north of Brunei when the Keifetz call came in.
“Listen, Nicholas,” Keifetz said, “my crane-hoist operator on the Number Two rig just fell off the ladder.”
“What the hell can I do about that?” Nick asked. “I have problems out here, fahcrissake.”
“He’s dying in the DeJongg Hospital.”
“What am I—the chaplain?”
“He wanted to talk to me, so I went in. It’s wild.
Listen, Nicholas, he says he was the second rifleman when they killed your brother. He wants to tell you about it.”
“Tell him to go to a health farm with a telephone and to call Horse Pickering,” Nick said. “I’m going to get a call from Pa any minute now, and the electronic abacus he installed on this ship is acting like a half-wit.”
“The chopper from the
Teekay
is here now picking up pipe valves,” Keifetz said. “I’ll get it right back there to bring you in.”
“What the hell is the matter with you? I’m sorry about your crane operator, but he doesn’t have half the troubles I have.
His
father is probably
dead
.”
Keifetz said, “Nicholas, you don’t think I’d get you into a flap over nothing, do you? I mean, talking loose about your brother has made about sixteen people dead.”
“I’m running very important tests out here!” Nick yelled into the telephone.
“Baby, you can be back there in about three hours. How long can this guy talk? He’s dying.”
“Fuck him,” Nick said.
“Listen, Nicholas, the people have a right to know. They’re the ones who took the big screwing when it happened. I’m sending the chopper back. I think you should come in here. Make up your own mind.” Keifetz hung up.
Nick knew he would have to do what the vast television audience expected of him. If your brother was President of the United States and he was assassinated, the viewers like to think you will avenge him. Or at least take an interest.
***
Nick Thirkield was a man of moderation in food, drink, and friends. He worked, as much as possible, at hard manual labor that kept him out in the sun. His brown, violet and white eyes lay like Easter eggs in a
basket of squint lines. His body was as dark as a cinnamon stick. He was a blocky, strong-looking man, neither tall nor short. He had blond hair, and he wished he had the nerve to dye it any dark color. People could spot him too easily—people like Pa—unless he wore a hat. All his physical characteristics separated him still further from Pa and Tim. They were both very tall, red-haired men who walked as though they were trying to hold a bowling ball between their thighs. Pa was covered with freckles, a disgusting thing, and he had the diction of a street urchin. Nick’s cinnamon tan made his teeth look neon white. They were exceptionally good teeth, but few people (his dentist, Yvette Malone and certain members of the Glee Club at Cornell) knew about that, because he refused to show them when he smiled. When he did smile he conveyed rue. He was ruing Pa’s marble teeth, which looked as if they could have been ripped out of a merry-go-round horse. Pa flashed the teeth on and off as if they were traffic lights, increasing the pace when he was cheating someone, which was most of the time.
Tim had been all teeth and hair. Take away everything on Tim’s face except those finger-length incisors and that half kilo of hair and everybody from Pennsylvania Avenue to the high Himalayas would still recognize him. A buffet dinner for fourteen could be served on Tim’s dinner-plate front teeth, but Tim’s inner life rarely had any relationship to his toothy smile. He was a politician-grinner. Nick told him, “I don’t know how you and Pa can grin so much. You’re both supposed to have a lot on your minds. I mean, they keep saying you’re the most powerful man on earth. How can you grin all the time—maybe even when you’re asleep—knowing that?” Tim answered frankly for once. He said, “Toothy smiles are an announcement. They proclaim: ‘Observe my genuine equine boyishness, the charm you jes’ have to trust.’”
“My mother met Hermann Goering once. She said
he was the most charming man she had ever met,” Nick said. “Most people who trusted that charm got their arms broken.”
“That’s what people’s arms are for,” Tim kidded. But was he kidding?
Tim had to be cynical, hard and shifty because he was a real politician. He had had a minimal education and he had never worked for a living; he had worked at getting elected. Nobody was better at that than Tim—unless it was Pa for Tim.