'Go ahead, Mike.'
'At the bottom of the oceans – particularly the Pacific -there is a fortune in metallic ores in the form of small lumps lying on the seabed.' I took the half-nodule from my pocket and put it on the table. 'Like this lump here. There's no secret about this. Every oceanographer knows about them.'
Geordie picked it up and examined it. 'What's this white bit in the middle?'
'A shark's tooth.'
'How the hell did that get in the middle of a piece of rock?'
'That comes later,' I said impatiently, 'in the second lesson. Now, these lumps are composed mainly of manganese dioxide, iron oxide and traces of nickel, cobalt and copper, but to save time they're usually referred to as manganese nodules. I won't tell you how they got onto the seabed – that comes later too – but the sheer quantity is incredible.'
I turned to the atlas and moved my forefinger from south to north off the shoreline of the Americas, starting at Chile and moving towards Alaska. 'Proved deposits here, at the average of one pound a square foot, cover an area of two million square miles and involve twenty-six billion tons of nodules.'
I swept my finger out to Hawaii. 'This is the mid-Pacific Rise. Four million square miles – fifty-seven billion tons of nodules.'
'Hell's teeth,' said Geordie. 'You were right about incredible figures.'
I ignored this and moved my finger south again, to Tahiti. 'Fourteen million square miles in central and south-eastern Pacific. Two hundred billion tons of nodules. Like grains of dust in the desert.'
'Why haven't I heard about this before? It sounds like front page news.'
There's no reason why you shouldn't have, but you won't find it in the newspapers. It's not very interesting. You'd have to read the right technical journals. There's been no secret made of it; they were first discovered as far back as 1870 during the Challenger expedition.'
There must be a snag. Otherwise somebody would have done something about it before this.'
I smiled. 'Oh yes, there are snags – as always. One of them is the depth of the water – the average depth at which these things lie is over fourteen thousand feet. That's a good deal of water to go through to scoop up nodules, and the pressure on the bottom is terrific. But it could be done. An American engineer called John Mero did a post-graduate thesis on it. He proposed dropping a thing like a giant vacuum-cleaner and sucking the nodules to the surface. The capitalization on a scheme like that would run into millions and the profit would be marginal at one pound a square foot of ocean bed. It's what we'd call a pretty lean ore if we found it on land.'
Geordie said, 'But you have a card up your sleeve.'
'Let me put it this way. The information I've given you is based on the IGY surveys, and the one pound a square foot is a crude approximation.'
I stabbed my finger at the eastern Pacific. 'Zenkevitch, of the Soviet Institute of Oceanology – the Russians are very interested, by the way – found 3.7 pounds a square foot right there. You see, the stuff lies in varying concentrations. Here they found five pounds a square foot, here they found eight, and here, seven.'
Geordie had been listening with keen interest. 'That sounds as though it brings it back in line as an economic proposition.'
I shook my head tiredly. 'No, it doesn't. Manganese isn't in short supply, and neither is iron. If you started picking up large quantities of nodules all that would happen is that you'd saturate the market, the price would slip accordingly, and you'd be back where you started – with a marginal profit. In fact, it would be worse than that. The big metals firms and mining houses – the only people with the massed capital to do anything about it – aren't interested. They already run manganese mines on land, and if they started anything like this they'd end up by wrecking their own land-based investments.'
'It seems that you're running in circles,' said Geordie acidly. 'Where is all this getting us?'
'Have patience. I'm making a point. Now, I said there are traces of other metals in these nodules – copper, nickel and cobalt. You can forget the copper. But here, in the south-east Pacific, the nodules run to about 1.6 per cent nickel and about. 3 per cent cobalt. The Mid-Pacific Rise gives as much as 2 per cent cobalt. Keep that in mind, because I'm going to switch to something else.'
'For God's sake, Mike, don't spin it out too long.'
I was and I knew it, and enjoyed teasing him. 'I'm coming to it,' I said. 'All the figures I've given you are based on the IGY surveys.' I leaned forward. 'Guess how many sites they surveyed.'
'I couldn't begin to make a guess.'
I took a sip of whisky. They dredged and photographed sixty sites. A lousy sixty sites in sixty-four million square miles of Pacific.'
Geordie stared at me. 'Is that all? I wouldn't hang a dog on evidence like that.'
'The orthodox oceanographer says, "The ocean bed is pretty much of a piece – it doesn't vary greatly from place to place – so what you find at site X, which you've checked, you're pretty certain to find at site Y, which you haven't checked." '
I tapped the atlas. 'I've always been suspicious of that kind of reasoning. Admittedly, the ocean bed is pretty much of a piece, but I don't think we should rely on it sight unseen. And neither did Mark.'
'Did Mark work together with you on this?'
'We never worked together,' I said shortly. To continue. In 1955 the Scripps expedition fished up a nodule from about-here.' I pointed to the spot. 'It was two feet long, twenty inches thick and weighed a hundred and twenty-five pounds. In the same year a British cable ship was grappling for a broken cable here, in the Philippines Trench. They got the cable up, all right, from 17,000 feet, and in a loop of cable they found a nodule 4 feet long and 3 feet in diameter. That one weighed 1700 pounds.'
'I begin to see what you're getting at.'
'I'm trying to put it plainly. The orthodox boys have sampled sixty spots in sixty-four million square miles and have the nerve to think they know all about it. I'm banking that there are places where nodules lie fifty pounds to the square foot – and Mark knew of such places, if I read enough of his notes correctly.'
'I think you had a point to make about cobalt, Mike. Come across with it.'
I let my excitement show. This is the clincher. The highest assay for cobalt in any nodule has been just over 2 per cent.' I pushed the half-nodule on the table with my finger. 'I assayed this one today. It checked out at ten per cent cobalt – and cobalt, Geordie, is worth more than all the rest put together and the rocket metallurgists can't get enough of it!'
We ate Geordie's stew and very good it was, and by midnight we had just about talked the subject to death. At one stage I said, returning to a sore point, 'I wish I still had those notebooks. They were only rough working notes and Mark seemed to have gone up a lot of false trails – some of the assumptions seemed completely cockeyed – but I wish they hadn't been pinched.' '
Geordie sucked on his pipe, which gurgled. 'I could do with knowing why they were pinched – and who pinched them.'
'Then you agree that it has something to do with Mark's death?'
'It must do, boy. He got hold of something valuable…'
'And was murdered for it,' I finished. 'But who killed him? Kane? That's unlikely – it's an odd murderer who travels halfway round the world to inform the family.'
That was a good conversation-stopper. We were quiet for some time, then I said tentatively, 'If only we could get hold of Schouten.'
'He's on the other side of the world.'
I said softly, 'I think Mark came across a hell of a big deposit of high-cobalt nodules. He wasn't a bad scientist but, being Mark, he was probably more interested in the worth of his discovery – to himself. His theories were a bit startling though, and they intrigue me.'
'So?'
'So I'd like to do something about it.'
'You mean – organize an expedition?'
'That's right.' Saying it aloud began to jell all the ideas that had been bubbling up in me since the assay.
Geordie knocked the dottle out of his pipe. Tell me, Mike, what's your interest in this – scientific or personal? You weren't particularly friendly towards Mark. Is it that you feel that Trevelyans should be free to go about their business without being murdered, or is it something else?'
'It's that and a lot more. For one thing, someone is pushing me around and I don't like it. I don't like having my home burgled, being knifed, or having my friends shot at. And I don't appreciate having my brother murdered, if that's really what happened, no matter what I thought of him as a person. Then, of course, there's the scientific interest – I'm fascinated. A find like this would hit oceanography like evolution hit biology. And then there's the money.'
'Yes,' said Geordie. 'I suppose there would be money in it.'
'You suppose damn right. And if you're thinking in millions, stop it, because you're thinking small – it could be billions.'
He wasn't ready to be enthusiastic. 'So you think it's as good as that?'
'As good as that,' I said firmly. 'There's enough at stake for quite a few murders.'
'How much would such an expedition cost?'
I had already been thinking about that. 'A ship- plus about fifty thousand for special equipment – plus stores and running expenses.'
'Running expenses for how long?'
I smiled wryly. 'That's one of the jokers – who knows in a thing like this?'
'It's a lot of money. And there's over sixty million square miles of Pacific, you said.'
'I know my job,' I said. 'I wouldn't be going entirely blindfold. I know a hell of a lot of places where there aren't any high-cobalt nodules. And there's what I can recall of Mark's theories – perhaps they're not so fantastic after all. Plus there's this – I'm sure we can make something of it.' I held up Mark's little diary, which I was keeping on my person.
Geordie slapped his hands together suddenly. 'All right, boy. If you can find the capital and the running expenses – and God knows where you'll find money like that – I can provide the ship. Would old Esmerelda do?'
'My God, she'd be perfect for running on a small budget.' I looked at him closely, trying not to show my excitement too much. 'But why should you come into this? It's a chancy business, you know.'
He laughed. 'Well, you did mention a few billions of money. Besides, some little bastard shot off the top of my little finger. I'm not particularly interested in him, but I would like to get my hands round the neck of the man who paid him. And chartering tourists isn't very much fun after a bit. I suppose you have some ideas about finance? I mean, without a tame banker it's a non-starter.'
I had been thinking about it, for the last hour or two in between our bouts of conversation. The pieces seemed to be dropping into place nicely, so far.
I said musingly, 'I saw Clare Campbell the other day – she's in town with her father, attending some conference or other. He's my goal.'
'Who is Campbell?'
'Jonathan Campbell – never known as J.C. A Scottish Canadian mining man. Mark worked for him for a while after the IGY – something to do with a mining venture in South America…' I trailed off and Geordie cocked his head enquiringly. Something about that statement teased at me but I couldn't identify it and let it go with a shake of my head.
'So he's got money.'
'He's loaded with it,' I said, back on the track. 'He's got the reputation of being a bit of a plunger, and this thing might appeal to him. He lost a packet in the South American business not long ago – something to do with mines being nationalized – but I think he's got enough left to take a gamble on something new.'
'How do you know all this about Campbell, Mike? I didn't know you studied the financial pages.'
'I was thinking of getting out of pure research after the IGY. The pay's small compared with industry, so I thought I'd look about for a job compatible with my expensive tastes.' I waved a hand around my modest flat. 'Lots of other chaps did it – Mark was one – so I did a bit of investigating and Campbell cropped up.'
'But you didn't take the job.'
I shook my head. 'He'd already signed Mark on, you see, and I didn't fancy having Mark as a colleague. Anyway, I was asked to go to the Institute about that time – less pay, but a more interesting job. Mark left the IGY programme early and got out of pure research. I never actually met Campbell but I did once meet his daughter – in Vancouver. Mark had her in tow. They seemed to be pretty close – they would, she being the boss's daughter.'
Geordie's voice had become as cold as mine. 'Poor stupid cow.'
I thought that she didn't look like his description at all, and wondered how long it had taken for her to read Mark's character. She hadn't struck me then as the sort of girl to be taken in for long. But I hoped that nothing much had happened between them, lest it colour Campbell's attitude towards me when I came to approach him.
'How long did Mark work for Campbell?'
'Not very long- about a year and a half. Then he pushed off into the South Pacific and teamed up with Norgaard, last I heard of it. I don't know exactly what they were doing – they had neither a decent boat nor the right equipment for proper research, as far as I could tell.'
'But if Campbell's a mining man, what makes you think he'll finance a deep sea adventure?'
'I think he might,' I said. 'Metals are his business. Never gold or silver, nor the other end of the scale, the base metals. He's dabbled in tin and copper and had a go at platinum once. Now it seems he's concentrating on alloy metals – titanium, cobalt, vanadium and stuff like that. Now that rocketry is big business there's a boom in these metals.'
Geordie asked curiously, 'How does he go about it – his investing, I mean?'
'He takes advantage of us scientific types. He employs a few good men – people like Mark, for instance – and the number varies from time to time. Most of them are geologists, of course. He organizes field expeditions into remote parts, spots a body of ore, puts a million or so into proving and development, then pulls out and sells to the real big boys at a profit. I heard that in one of his recent ventures he put in two million dollars and a year of his time, then sold out at a net profit of a million and a quarter. Not bad for a year's work, eh, Geordie?'
'Not bad at all. But I'd say it needs experience and a hell of a lot of cold nerve.'
'Oh, he's a canny Scot, all right. I hope he's still in town -I'll find out tomorrow.'
'What about Kane – why not put the coppers on to him?'
I shook my head vigorously. 'Not now. All they'd do would be to pass on a query to Tahiti and I've no positive faith in the activities of the French Colonial Police, especially when there's a convenient legal death certificate handy. The delays would be awful, for one thing. No, I'll see for myself – if I can get Campbell interested. I would dearly like to talk to Dr Schouten.'
Geordie rubbed his chin meditatively. 'I'm thinking of making one or two changes in the crew if we go on this caper. I'd like a couple of blokes I know from the old days. I wonder what Ian Lewis is doing now? When I met him a few months ago he said he found life a little tedious.'
I vaguely remembered a tall, gangling Highlander. 'What was he doing?'
'Oh, he had a place in the Scottish wilderness that he said he'd be glad to leave. You know, I reckon I could get you half a dozen good chaps, all trained fighters and some of them seamen. I've got a couple anyway that I'd keep on for this trip.'
I had a dawning suspicion of what was in Geordie's mind. 'Hold on – what's the idea?'
He said, 'I'd like to see the bunch of thugs who'd stand up against some of your dad's old mob. They may be getting older, but they're not that old and they're all trained commandoes. They're not all settled down and married, you know.'
'What do you think you're doing – setting up a private army?'
'Might not be a bad idea,' he said. 'If the other night is a sample of what to expect we might need a bloody army.'
I sighed. 'All right, Sergeant Wilkins. But no one who's married
or has other responsibilities, and you'd better hold your hand until we get Campbell tied up. We can't do anything without money.'
'Ah yes, the money,' said Geordie, and looked very sad.
The following morning, quite early, I had a visit from the Inspector and one of his men. Geordie was already out and I was impatient to begin my search for Kane, but tried not to show it. The Inspector was cagey and suspicious, but very casual. I think his trouble was that he didn't really know what to be suspicious of.
He asked, 'Know anyone in South America?'
'Not off hand. No, I don't,' I said.
'Um. The man you killed may have been a South American. His clothes were labelled from Lima, Rio and Montevideo. He could be from almost anywhere except Brazil.'
'I think that answers one question. I couldn't place the accent. What was his name?'
The Inspector shook his head. 'That we don't know, Mr Trevelyan. Or anything else about him, yet. Are you quite sure you don't know any South Americans?'
'Positive.'
He changed tack. 'Wonderful thing, this science; I've found out everything there is to know about manganese nodules.'
I said dryly, 'then you know more than I do – they're not really my line. Did you find it interesting?'
He smiled sourly. 'Not very – they're about as valuable as road gravel. Are you sure there wasn't anything else in that suitcase that might have been of value?'
'Inspector, it was just junk. The kind of stuff that anyone might carry in a case, apart from the nodules, that is.'
'Looks as though Mr Wilkins might have been right, after all. You surprised the burglars before they could pinch anything else.'
I didn't fall for that one – the Inspector didn't for one moment believe it was an ordinary break-in. I said non-committally, 'I think you're right.'
'The inquest will be next Wednesday,' he said. 'You'll get an official notification, both of you.'
'I'll be there.'
Then they were gone and I thought about South America. That was nearer the Pacific than Spain, but apart from that it made no particular sense to me. And then, belatedly, I thought of Mark's connection with Jonathan Campbell, and Campbell's reputed connection with some South American mining venture, and I had something else to chew on. But it still made no sense, and for the time being I gave up.
Night Of Error Page 4