The Golden Gate (9 page)

One person showed no apparent interest in the approach of the New Jersey. Revson, alone in the front coach, was intent on securing a considerable length of green cord, so slender as to be hardly more than the thickness of a stout thread, to a black cylinder about eight inches in length and one in diameter. He thrust both cylinder and cord into the capacious pocket of his bush jacket, left the bus, took a bearing on the approaching superstructure of the battleship and wandered casually round to the right-hand side of the coach. As he did so he could see Van Effen hurrying across to the far side of the bridge where the spectators were grouped." What Van Effen's purpose was he couldn't be sure but there was an urgency behind his half-trot mat told Revson (hat the time at his own disposal might be very short.
He forced himself not to hurry but sauntered towards the east side of the bridge. No one took any notice of him because there was no one there to do so. He leant casually against the side and as casually withdrew cylinder and cord from his pocket. He glanced, seemingly aimlessly, around him, but if he were arousing cause for suspicion no one was giving any indication of this. Swiftly, without moving either hands or elbows, he let some hundred feet slide through his fingers then secured the cord to a strut. He trusted his estimate of length was reasonably accurate then dismissed the thought: what was done was done. He returned leisurely to the coach, took his seat and transferred what was left of the green cord to the bottom of April Wednesday's carry-all. If his dangling cord were discovered and a search of their personal belongings carried out he would rather that the cord be discovered elsewhere than in his possession. Even if it were found in her bag he doubted whether she would come to any harm. She'd been on the other side of the bridge since the New Jersey had first appeared behind the bank of cloud and there would be sufficient witnesses to attest to that: April Wednesday was the sort of person whose absence would not go lightly unremarked. Even if she were to find herself in trouble that he could bear with fortitude: he didn't care who came under suspicion as long as it was not himself, 'You have to believe me, Branson.' Hendrix's voice could hardly have been said to carry a note of pleading, an alien exercise to a man of his nature, but there was no questioning the earnestness, the total sincerity in the tone. The New Jersey's captain has heard no news of what happened and he thinks it all an elaborate joke at 'his expense. You can't blame him. He sees the damned bridge standing safe and sound as it's stood for forty years. Why should anything be wrong?'
'Keep trying.'
Van Effen entered and closed the door of the Presidential coach securely behind him. He approached Branson.
'All safely corralled. Why?'
4I wish I knew. Almost certainly Hendrix is right and this is just sheer coincidence. But on the one chance in a hundred that it isn't? What would they use? Not shells, no kind of high explosive. Gas Shells.'
'No such things.'
"Wrong. There are. They wouldn't mind temporarily knocking out the President and a few oil sheikhs if they could saturate the centre of the bridge with some knock-out gas and lay us all low. Then the troops and police, like enough with gas-masks, could come and take us at their leisure. But the insulation is tight in those air-conditioned coaches.'
It's pretty far-fetched.'
'And what we are doing is not? Wait' Hendrix was on the phone again.
'We've tried, Branson, and at last he agrees with us. But he refuses to do anything. Says he has too much way on and to try to take turning or reversing action at this stage would endanger both the battleship and the bridge. And he says his money would be on the New Jersey if it hit a tower. A forty-five-thousand-ton battering ram takes a lot of stopping.'
'You'd better pray, Hendrix.' Branson hung up and moved towards the centre of the coach, Van Effen behind him, and peered through the right-hand windows, waiting for the battleship's superstructure to reappear from under the bridge.
The President's voice was nothing if not testy. 'Just what is happening, Branson?'
'You know. The USS New Jersey K passing beneath us.'
'So? Doubtless going about its lawful occasions.'
'You'd better hope so. You'd better hope the captain doesn't start throwing things at us.'
'At us?' The President paused and pondered the possibility of an awful lese-majesty. 'At me?'
'We all know you're the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. At the moment, 'however, you're a bit isolated from the lower echelons. What happens if the captain considers it his duty to act upon his own initiative? Anyway, we'll soon find out Here he comes now.'
The superstructure of the New Jersey had moved into view. All nine of the seated captives struggled to their feet and crowded close to the right-hand windows. One of them crowded very closely indeed on Branson who suddenly became aware of something, obviously metallic, jabbing painfully into his left kidney.
'Initiative, you said, Mr Branson.' It was Sheikh Iman, the one with the beard, and -he was still beaming. 'Your own gun. Tell your men to drop theirs.'
'Good man!" There was triumph in the President's voice and an element of vindictiveness that the voters wouldn't have liked at all.
Branson said patiently: 'Put that gun away. Don't you know when you're dealing with professionals?'
He turned around slowly and Iman proved Branson's implied point that he was not a professional by letting Branson hold his gaze for all of a second. A gun boomed, Iman shrieked in pain, dropped his gun and clutched a shattered shoulder. Sheikh Kharan stooped swiftly to retrieve the gun from the floor and cried out in agony as Branson's heel crushed his hand against the metal: a peculiar crackling splintering sound left no doubt that several of Kharan's fingers had been broken. Branson picked up his gun.
Van Effen was apologetic but not unduly so. Had to, I'm afraid, Mr Branson. If I'd warned him - well, I didn't want any gunfight in the OK corral with all those nasty ricochets from the bullet-proof glass. He might have done himself an injury.'
'Quite right' Branson looked through the window again. The New Jersey was now almost a half mile away and its captain was obviously not in a belligerent mood. Branson turned away and spoke to Bradford.
'Go to our coach and fetch the first-aid box. Bring Peters.'
'Peters, Mr Branson?'
'Used to be field corpsman. Take your seats, gentlemen.' Unhappily, they took their seats: the President, in particular, looked especially deflated. Branson wondered briefly just how hollow a man he might be then dismissed the line of thought as unprofitable. 'I don't think I have to warn you not to try anything so silly again.' He went to the communications console and picked up the phone. 'Hendrix?'
'Here. Satisfied now?'
'Yes. Warn the harbour-master or whoever the responsible official is that there 'is to be no more traffic under the bridge. Either way.'
'No more traffic? You'll bring the entire port to a standstill. And the fishing fleet -'
'The fishing fleet can go fish in the bay. Send an ambulance and a doctor and do it quickly. A couple of men here have gotten themselves hurt, one badly.'
'Who? How?'
'The oil ministers - Iman and Kharan. Self-inflicted injuries, you might say.' As he spoke Branson watched Peters hurry into me coach, approach Iman and start scissoring away the sleeve of his coat There will be a TV van coming to the bridge soon. Let it through. I also want some chairs brought on to the bridge - forty should do.'
'Chairs?'
'You don't have to buy them,' Branson said patiently. 'Confiscate them from the nearest restaurant Forty.'
'Chairs?'
Things you afc on. I'm going to hold a news conference in an hour or so. You don't stand around at news conferences. You sit around.'
Hendrix said carefully: 'You're going to hold a news conference and you're going to televise it live?'
'That's it. Nation-wide.'
'You're out of your mind.'
'My mental 'health is my concern. Milton and Quarry there yet?'
'You mean the Secretary and the Secretary of the Treasury?'
'I mean Milton and Quarry.'
They've just arrived and are with me now.'
Hendrix looked at the two men who were with him then inside the big mobile communications van. Milton, the Secretary of State, was a tall, thin, dyspeptic character with no hair, rimless steel-legged glasses and an enviable reputation in Foreign Offices around the world: Quarry, white-haired, plump and cheerful, had a kindly avuncular air about him which many men, even some very highly intelligent ones, had taken to be a reflection of the true personality of the man: his reputation as a banker and economist stood as high as that of Milton in his field.
Milton said: 'It would be easy to say "he's quite crazy, of course". Is he?'
Hendrix spread his hands. 'You know what they say. Crazy like a fox.'
'And violent, it would seem?'
'No. Violence 'he uses only as a last resort and even then only when pushed into a corner. Imasi and Kharan must have made the mistake of pushing him into a corner.'
Quarry said: 'You would seem to know a fair bit about him?'
Hendrix sighed. 'Every senior police officer in the States knows about him. And in Canada, Mexico and God knows how many South American countries.' Hendrix sounded bitter. 'So far he has spared Europe his attentions. It's only a matter of time, I'm sure.'
'What's his speciality?'
'Robbery. He robs trains, planes, armoured cars, banks and jewellers. Robbery, wherever possible, as I say, without violence.'
Quarry was dry. 'I gather he is quite successful?"
'Quite successful 1 To the best of our knowledge he has been operating for at least a dozen years and the lowest estimate of his takings in that time is twenty million dollars.'
Twenty million!' For the first time there was a note of respect in Quarry's voice, the banker and economist in him surfacing. 'If he's got all that money, why does he want more?'
'Why do Niarchos and Getty and Hughes want more - after all, «hey too are comfortably off? Maybe he's just a businessman in the way that they are businessmen and he's hooked on his job. Maybe he finds it a stimulating intellectual exercise. Maybe it's sheer greed. Maybe anything.!'
Milton said: 'Has he ever been convicted?'
Hendrix looked pained. 'He's never even been arrested.'
'And that has something to do with the fact that neither of us 'has ever heard of him?'
Hendrix gazed through the van window at the magnificent sweep of (he Golden Gate Bridge. There was a far-off look of yearning in 'his eyes. He said: 'Let us say, sir, that we do not care to advertise our failures.'
Mitton smiled at him. 'John and I'-he nodded at the Secretary of the Treasury - 'frequently suffer from the same bashfulness and for the same reasons. Infallibility is not the lot of mankind. Anything known about this man - apart from what is known about his criminal activities?'
Hendrix said sourly: 'It wouldn't be hard to know more about him than we do about his life of crime. Pretty well documented background, really. A WASP from out east. Comes from what they call a good family. Father a banker and when I say banker I mean he owned - still does, I believe - his own bank.'
'Branson,' the Treasury Secretary said. 'Of course. Know him. Not personally, though.'
'And something else that will interest you, sir - professionally. Branson took a degree in economics and went to work in his father's bank. While he was there he took a PhD - and no coffee-grinder diploma school either - genuine Ivy League. Then for 'his post-graduate course he took up the subject of crime - something to do with having worked in his old man's bank, maybe.' Hendrix looked gloomy. 'I suppose we could say that he has graduated In that subject now too - summa cum laude.'
Milton said: 'You seem to have almost a degree of admiration for this person, Hendrix?'
'I'd give my pension to see him behind bars. Both as a man and a policeman he outrages whatever passes for my sensibilities. But one can't help respecting sheer professionalism, no matter how misused.'
'My sentiments too, I'm afraid,' Milton said. 'He's not a particularly retiring person, this Branson of yours?'
'I wish he were mine. If you mean does he suffer from our bouts of bashfulness, no, sir, he does not'
'Arrogant?'
'To the point, perhaps, of megalomania. At least, that's what General Cartland says, and I wouldn't care to dispute what the General says.'
'Few would.' Milton spoke with some feeling. 'Speaking of self-opinionated characters, where art thou at this hour, my lames?'
'Sir?'
'What other self-opinionated character is there? I refer to Mr Hagenbach, the self-opinionated head of our FBI. I would have thought he would have been the first man hot-foot to the scene.'
'Washington says they don't know where he is. They're trying every place they can think of. I'm afraid he's a very elusive man, sir.'
'Man's got a mania for secrecy.' Milton brightened. 'Well, if he's watching his TV in an hour or so he should be considerably enlightened. What a perfectly splendid thought -the head of our FBI the last man in America to know about this.' He thought for a moment. 'Branson's insistence on maximum publicity - TV, radio I'll be bound, newsmen, photographers - has he ever declared himself publicly like this before? I mean, before or during any of his criminal activities?'
'Never.'
'The man must be terribly sure of himself.'
'In his place, so would I.' Quarry appeared distracted. 'What can we do to the man? As I see it, he's in an impregnable, quite unassailable position.'
'I wouldn't give up hope, sir. We have one or two experts looking for an answer. Admiral Newson and General Carter are in our HQ now working on this.'
'Newson. Carter. Our twin geniuses of finesse.' Quarry seemed more discouraged than ever. 'Never use one hydrogen bomb where two will suffice. Someone should send our Arabian oil friends word that they're about to become involved in a nuclear holocaust' He gestured through his window towards the bridge. 'Just took at it. Just think of it. A totally impossible situation - if it weren't for the fact that we can see now that it's all too possible. Total, absolute isolation, completely cut off from the world - and in the full view of everybody in San Francisco - everybody in the world, for that matter, as soon as those TV cameras start turning. A figurative stone's throw away-acid they might as well be on the moon.' He sighed heavily. 'One must confess to a feeling of utter helplessness.'
'Come, come, John.' Milton was severe. 'Is this the spirit that won the West?'