Goodbye California

CHAPTER TEN

‘You used us!’ Burnett’s face was white and bitter and he was shaking with such uncontrollable anger that his Glenfiddich was slopping over on to the floor of Morro’s study, a shocking waste of which he was uncharacteristically oblivious. ‘You double-crossed us. You evil, wicked bastard! A beautiful job, wasn’t it, the way you spliced together our recordings and your own recording?’

Morro raised an admonitory finger. ‘Come now, Professor. This helps no one. You really must learn to control yourself.’

‘Why the hell should he?’ Schmidt’s fury was as great as Burnett’s, but he had it under better control. All five physicists were there, together with Morro, Dubois and two guards. ‘We’re not thinking just about our good names, our reputations. We’re thinking about lives, maybe thousands of them, and if those lives are lost we’re going to be held responsible. Morally at least. Every viewer, every listener, every reader in the State is going to be convinced that the hydrogen device you left off the coast is in the one-and-a-half range. We know damn well it’s in the three-and-a-half. But because people will believe — they can’t help believing — that it was all part of the same recording they’re going to imagine that what you said was said with our tacit approval. You — you monster! Why did you do it?’

‘Effect.’ Morro was unruffled. ‘Very elementary psychology. The detonation of this three-and-a-half megaton device is going to have rather spectacular consequences, and I want people to say to themselves: if this is the effect of a mere one-and-a-half megaton what in the name of heaven will the cataclysmic effects of thirty-five megatons be like? It will lend persuasive weights to my demands, don’t you think? In the climate of terror all things are possible.’

‘I can believe anything of you,’ Burnett said. He looked at the shattered wreck of what had once been Willi Aachen. ‘Anything. Even that you are prepared to put thousands of lives at risk in order to achieve a psychological effect. You can have no idea what this tsunamai will be like, what height it will reach, whether or not the Newport-Inglewood Fault will trigger an earthquake. And you don’t care. The effect is all.’

‘I think you exaggerate, Professor. I think that, where height is concerned, people will leave a very considerable margin of safety between the water levels I suggested and the worst they can fear. As for the Newport-Inglewood Fault, only a madman would remain in the area at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. I do not visualize throngs of people heading for the Hollywood Park Race Track — if they head there, at that time of the morning, which I don’t know. I think your fears are mainly groundless.’

‘Mainly! Mainly! You mean only a few thousand may drown?’

‘I have no cause to love American people.’ Morro still maintained his monolithic calm. ‘They have not exactly been kind to mine.’

There was a brief silence then Healey said in a low voice: ‘This is even worse than I feared. Race, religion, politics, I don’t know. The man’s a zealot, a fanatic’

‘He’s nuts.’ Burnett reached for the bottle.

‘Judge LeWinter wishes to make a voluntary statement,’ Ryder said.

‘Does he now?’ Dunne peered at the trembling, fearful figure, a pale and almost unimaginable shadow of the imposing figure who had so long dominated the Centre Court. ‘Is that the case, Judge?’

Ryder was impatient. ‘Sure it is.’

‘Look, Sergeant, I was asking the judge.’

‘We were there,’ Parker said. ‘Jeff and I. There was no coercion, no force, the only time Sergeant Ryder touched him was to put on handcuffs. We wouldn’t perjure ourselves, Major Dunne.’

‘You wouldn’t.’ He turned to Delage. ‘Next door. I’ll take his statement in a minute.’

‘One moment before he goes,’ Ryder said. ‘Any word about Hartman?’

Dunne permitted himself his first smile. ‘For once, some luck. Just come in. Hartman, it seems, has been living out there for some years. With his widowed sister, which accounts for the fact that his name was not in the phone book. Didn’t spend much time there until a year or so ago. Travelled a lot. You’d never guess what his business is — well, was, till last year.’

‘Oil rigs.’

Dunne said without heat: ‘Damn you, Ryder, you spoil a man’s simplest pleasures. Yes. Boss roustabout. First-class record. How did you know?’

‘I didn’t. Who were his sponsors — you know, character referees?’

‘Two prominent local business men and — well?’

‘Donahure and LeWinter.’

‘Indeed.’

Ryder looked at LeWinter. ‘You and Hartman made up that list of drillers and engineers together, you from your court cases and extensive briefs from the oil companies, Hartman from his field experience?’

LeWinter said nothing.

‘Well, at least he doesn’t deny it. Tell me, LeWinter, was it his job to recruit those men?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘To kidnap them?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, then, to contact them, one way or another?’

‘Yes.’

‘And deliver them?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Yes or no.’

LeWinter gathered together the shreds of his dignity and turned to Dunne. ‘I am being subjected to harassment.’

‘If that’s what you choose to call it,’ Dunne said unsympathetically. ‘Proceed, Sergeant.’

‘Yes or no?’

‘Yes, damn you, yes.’

‘So, to be obvious, he must have known where to deliver those men after recruitment, voluntary or not So, assuming it was Morro who was responsible for their disappearance, Hartman had a direct line to Morro or knew how to contact him. You must agree with that.’

LeWinter sat down in a chair. He looked more like a cadaver than ever. ‘If you say so.’

‘And, of course, you and Donahure had the same line.’

‘No!’ The denial was immediate and almost vehement.

‘Well.’ Ryder was approving. ‘That’s more like it.’

Dunne said: ‘You believe him? That he’s no line on Morro?’

‘Sure. If he had, he’d be dead by now. A sweet lad, this Morro. Even playing the cards close to the chest he never lets his left hand know what the right is doing. Only Hartman knew. Morro thought that Hartman was totally in the clear. How was he to know, how was anyone to guess that I’d trace him because of the alarm linking LeWinter’s safe and Hartman’s office? Morro certainly knew nothing about that. If he did, he’d never have exposed LeWinter and Donahure by planting misleading evidence on them. But Morro had taken no chances He’d given strict orders to both LeWinter and Donahure that if anyone got a line on Hartman, the only man who had a line to him, then Hartman was to be eliminated. It’s really all so simple, isn’t it?’ He looked consideringly at LeWinter, then back at Dunne. ‘Remove that pillar of justice, will you? He makes me sick.’

When he’d gone, Dunne said: ‘A fair morning’s work. I under-estimated you, Sergeant Ryder. Not breaking his neck, I mean. I’m beginning to wonder if I could have done the same.’

‘You’re either born with a heart of gold or you aren’t. Any word from the boss-man — Barrow, isn’t it? — about what kind of bombs this Professor Aachen was designing when Morro snatched him?’

‘I phoned him. He said he’d contact the AEC and call back. He’s not a man to waste time. No reply from him yet. He was curious why we wanted to find out.’

‘Don’t rightly know myself. I said I thought Morro was trying to mislead us, that’s all. What you call an outside chance of nothing. And speaking of Morro — there wouldn’t be any word from Manila?’

Dunne looked at his watch, then in a quietly exasperated patience at Ryder. ‘You’ve been gone exactly one hour and five minutes. Manila, I would remind you, is not just a couple of blocks down the road. Would there be anything else?’

‘Well, as you’re offering.’ Dunne momentarily closed his eyes. ‘Carlton’s friend back in Illinois mentioned a very big man in the group of weirdos Carlton was flirting with. LeWinter has just mentioned, in a very scared voice, a similar person who’s threatened to break his back. Could be one and the same man. There can’t be many eighty-inchers around.’

‘Eighty-inchers?’

‘Six foot eight. That’s what Carlton’s pal said. Shouldn’t be difficult to check whether anyone of that size has been charged or convicted at some time in this State. Nor should it be very difficult to find if such a character is a member of any of the oddball organisations in California. You can’t hide a man that size, and apparently this person doesn’t go to much trouble to keep hidden. And then there’s the question of helicopters.’

‘Ah.’

‘Not just any helicopter. A special helicopter. It would be nice if you could trace it.’

‘A trifle.’ Dunne was being heavily sarcastic. ‘First, there are more helicopters in this State than there are in any comparable region on earth. Second, the FBI is stretched to its limits —’

‘Stretched to its limits! Look, Major, I’m in no mood for light humour this morning. Eight thousand agents stretched to their limits and what have they achieved? Zero. I could even ask what they are doing and the answer could be the same. When I said a special helicopter I meant a very, very special helicopter. The one that delivered this atom bomb to Yucca Flat. Or have your eight thousand agents already got that little matter in hand?’

‘Explain.’

Ryder turned to his son. ‘Jeff, you’ve said you know that area. Yucca and Frenchman Flats.’

‘I’ve been there.’

‘Would a vehicle leave tracks up there?’

‘Sure. Not everywhere. There’s a lot of rock. But there’s also shingle and rubble and sand. Chances are good, yes.’

‘Now then, Major. Would any of the eight thousand have been checking on tracks — trucks, cars, dune buggies — in the area of the crater: those, that is, that they didn’t obliterate in their mad dash to the scene of the crime?’

‘I wasn’t there myself. Delage?’ Delage picked up a phone. ‘Helicopters? An interesting speculation?’

‘I think so. And I also think that that, if I were Morro, is the way I’d have dumped that hydrogen bomb in the Pacific. Cuts out all this tricky — and maybe attention-catching — business of trucking the bomb to the coast and then transferring it to a boat.’

Dunne was doubtful. ‘There’s still an awful lot of helicopters in the State.’

‘Let’s limit it to the communes, the oddballs, the disenchanted.’

‘With a road transport system like we’ve got, who would want —’

‘Let’s limit it to the mountains. Remember, we’d more or less decided that Morro and his friends have sought out high ground.’

‘Well, the more extreme the group the higher they tend to go. I suppose some would require a chopper to get any place. But helicopters come expensive. They’d be hired on an hourly basis, and you could hardly persuade a hired pilot to carry a hydrogen bomb —’

‘Maybe the pilot isn’t hired. Nor the helicopter. Then there’s the matter of a truck. Trucks. For the transport of weapons-grade material — the stuff taken from San Ruffino.’

Dunne said: ‘You have that, Leroy?’ Leroy nodded and, like Delage, reached for a telephone.

‘Thanks.’ Ryder pondered briefly. ‘That’s all. See you around — some time this afternoon.’

Jeff looked at his watch. ‘Don’t forget. Forty-five minutes. Morro will be on the air with his terms or demands or blackmail or whatever.’

‘Probably not worth listening to. Anyway, you can tell me all about it.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Public library. The study of contemporary history. I’ve fallen way behind in my reading.’

‘I see.’ Jeff watched the door swing to behind Ryder, then looked at Dunne. ‘I don’t see. He’s all right?’

Dunne was thoughtful. ‘If he isn’t, what do you make of us?’

Ryder arrived home some ninety minutes later to find Jeff and Parker drinking beer in front of the television. Ryder seemed in remarkably good spirits. He wasn’t smiling broadly, far less laughing, nor was he cracking any jokes, for that was not his way. But for a man with two of his family held hostage and the threat of being drowned and vaporized far from being an impossibility, he was composed and relaxed. He looked at the TV screen where literally hundreds of small craft, some with sails raised, were milling about in hopeless confusion, apparently travelling at random and ramming each other with a frequency that was matched only by a blind determination. It was an enclosed harbour with half a dozen quays thrusting out towards a central channel: the room to manoeuvre was minimal, the chaos absolute.

‘My word,’ Ryder said. ‘This is something. Just, I imagine, like Trafalgar or Jutland. Those were very confused sea battles too.’

‘Dad.’ Jeff was heroically patient. ‘That’s Marina del Rey in Los Angeles. The yachtsmen are trying to leave.’

‘I know the place. The lads of the California Yacht Club and the Del Rey Yacht Club displaying their usual nautical composure, not to say stoicism. At this rate they’ll take a week to sort themselves out. What’s the great rush? Incidentally this will pose a problem for Morro. This must be happening at every harbour in Los Angeles. He said any vessel moving into the area between Santa Cruz Island and Santa Catalina would result in the detonation of the bomb. A couple of hours and there will be a couple of thousand craft in those waters. Careless of Morro. Anybody could have foreseen this.’

Parker said: ‘According to the announcer, nobody intends to go anywhere near there. They’re going to use the Santa Barbara and San Pedro Channels and go as far north and south up the coast as possible.’

‘Lemmings. Even a small boat can ride out a tidal wave at sea. Not much more than a fast-travelling ripple, really. It’s only when it reaches shallow water or estuaries that it starts to pile up into what people regard as a tidal wave. Why all this confusion, anyway?’

‘Panic,’ Parker said. ‘The owners of smaller craft are trying to lift them out of the water and trail them away but there are facilities available for only a few per cent at a time, and those are so overloaded that they keep breaking down. Diesel and petrol supplies are almost exhausted, and those that have been fuelled are so hemmed in by craft looking for fuel that they can’t get out. And then, of course, there are craft taking off under full power with their mooring ropes still attached.’ Parker shook his head sadly. ‘I don’t think urban Californians are really a sea-going race.’

‘Doesn’t signify,’ Jeff said. ‘We’re supposed to be the automobile race. You’d never know it. They’ve just been showing us street scenes in Santa Monica and Venice. Just a landbased version of what we’re seeing here. Biggest traffic jams ever. Cars being used like tanks to batter a way through. Drivers jumping from their cars and knocking one another silly. Incredible.’

‘It would be the same the world over,’ Ryder said. I’ll bet Morro’s glued to his screen in ecstasy. And everybody heading east, of course. City fathers issued any instructions yet?’

‘Not that we’ve heard of.’

‘They will. Give them time. They’re like all politicians. They’ll wait to see what the majority of the people are doing then go ahead and tell them to do what they’re already doing. Any food in this house?’

‘What?’ Jeff, understandably, was momentarily off-balance. ‘Yes. Sandwiches in the kitchen.’

‘Thanks.’ Ryder turned to go then stopped abruptly as something on the screen caught his eye. ‘What an extraordinary coincidence. We can only hope that if it is a good omen then it’s for us and not for Morro.’

Jeff said: ‘We can wait for ever.’

‘See that quay at the lower right of your screen? South-east, it is. The broad one. Unless I’m totally wrong, that’s the source of all our troubles.’

‘That quay?’ Jeff stared incredulously.

‘The name of it. Mindanao.’

A minute later Ryder was taking his ease in an armchair, sandwich in one hand, beer in the other, half an eye on the screen. He focused both eyes and said: ‘That’s interesting.’

The picture was not without its interest. Three private planes, all twin-engined, had clearly been engaged in a multiple collision. The broken wing-tip of one rested on the ground. The undercarriage of a second had crumpled while a lazy plume of smoke arose from the third.

‘Land, sea and air.’ Ryder shook his head. ‘Know that place. Clover Field in Santa Monica. One can only assume the air traffic controller has high-tailed it for the Sierras.’

‘Honest to God, Dad!’ Jeff was trying to contain himself. ‘You’re the most infuriating, exasperating character that’s ever walked. Have you got nothing to say about Morro’s ultimatum?’

‘Well, no.’

‘Jesus!’

‘Be reasonable. I’ve seen, heard and read nothing about it.’

‘Jesus!’ Jeff repeated and fell into silence. Ryder looked enquiringly at Parker who clearly steeled himself for the task.

‘Morro was on time. As always. This time he really was economical with his words. I’ll make it even more economical. His ultimatum was simply this. Give me the locations and all the operating wavebands of all your radar stations on both the east and west coasts, your cruising radar bombers both here and in Nato and in all your spy satellites or I’ll pull the plug.’

‘He said that, did he?’

‘Well, quite a bit more, but that was the gist of it.’

‘Rubbish. I told you he wouldn’t be worth listening to. I’d thought better of Morro than that. Babies along the Potomac and the Pentagon spinning around like a high-speed centrifuge.’

‘You don’t believe it?’

‘If that’s what you gather from my reactions, you’re right.’

‘But look, Dad —’

‘Look nothing. Balderdash. Maybe I’d better revise that snap judgement on Morro. Maybe he was well aware that he was making an impossible demand. Maybe he was well aware that it wouldn’t be met. Maybe he didn’t want it to be met. But just try convincing the American public — especially that section of it represented by this State — of that. It will take a long, long time and a long, long time is the one thing we don’t have.’

‘Impossible demand?’ Jeff said carefully.

‘Let me think.’ Ryder chewed some more and drank some more while he thought. ‘Three things occur and none of them makes sense and wouldn’t to the Pentagon who can’t possibly be as retarded as the New York and Washington columnists say they are. First off, what’s to prevent the Pentagon feeding him a long and highly convincing rigmarole of completely misleading information? What would lead him to suspect that it was misleading? And even if he did, how on earth could he possibly set about checking on the accuracy of the information? It’s impossible. Second, the Pentagon would probably and quite cheerfully see California being wiped out rather than give away our first defence against nuclear attack. Third, if he’s in a position to wipe out Los Angeles and San Francisco — and we must assume that he is — what’s to prevent him repeating the dose to New York, Chicago, Washington itself and so on until he achieved by direct means what he would achieve by indirect means by blinding our radar? It makes no kind of sense at all. But it all fits in.’

Jeff digested this in silence. Parker said slowly: ‘It’s all very well for you to sit there in — what kind of judgement do you call it?’

‘Olympian?’ Ryder said helpfully.

‘That’s it. It’s all very well for you to sit there in Olympian judgement, but you’d made up that crafty mind in advance that you weren’t going to believe a word Morro said and you were also certain that he wouldn’t say what you were convinced he couldn’t say.’

‘Very shrewd, Sergeant Parker. Confusing, mind you, but shrewd.’

‘And you’ve just said it all fits in.’

‘I did say that.’

‘You know something we don’t know?’

‘I don’t know any facts that you don’t know, except for those I get from reading about earthquakes and contemporary history, a practice for which Jeff here thinks I need the services of a head-shrinker.’

‘I never said —’

‘You don’t have to speak to say something.’

‘I have it,’ Parker said. ‘All good detectives come up with a theory. You have a theory?’

‘Well, in all due modesty —’

‘Modesty? So now the sun sets in the east. I don’t even have to take time out for a reflective pause. Mindanao?’

‘Mindanao.’

When Ryder had finished, Parker said to Jeff: ‘Well, what do you make of that?’

‘I’m still trying to assimilate it all.’ Jeff spoke in a kind of dazed protest. ‘I mean, I’ve just come to it. You’ve got to give me time to think.’

‘Come, come, boy. First impressions.’

‘Well, I don’t see any holes in it. And the more I think — and if you would give me more time I could think more — the fewer holes I can see. I think it could be right.’

‘Look at your old man,’ Parker said. ‘Can you see any sign of “could” in his face?’

‘That’s just smirking. Well, I can’t see any way in which it must be wrong.’ Jeff thought some more then took the plunge. ‘It makes sense to me.’

‘There you are now, John.’ Parker sounded positively jovial. ‘As near a compliment as you’ll ever be likely to extract from your son. It makes a lot of sense to me. Come, gentlemen, let’s try it out for size on Major Dunne.’

Dunne didn’t even bother saying it made sense. He turned to Leroy and said: ‘Get me Mr Barrow. And have the helicopter stand by.’ He rubbed his hands briskly. ‘Well, well. Looks as if you’re going to ruffle a few feathers in Los Angeles, Sergeant.’

‘You go and ruffle them. Top brass rub me the wrong way. Your boss seems almost human, but that’s more than I can say for Mitchell. You know as much about it now as I do, and I’m only guessing anyway. The person I would like to see is Professor Benson. If you could fix that I’d be grateful.’

‘Delighted. If you fly north.’

‘Blackmail.’ Ryder didn’t sound too heated.

‘Of course.’ Dunne regarded him over steepled fingers. ‘Seriously. Several things. First off, we could kill two birds with one stone — Pasadena is only ten minutes’ helicopter hop from our offices up there. Again, if you don’t turn up both Barrow and Mitchell will automatically assume that you lack the courage of your own convictions. You can talk to them in a way that would get me fired on the spot. They can probe more deeply than I’ve done and ask questions that I couldn’t answer — I know you’ve told me all what you regard as the essentials, but there must be details that you consider irrelevant at the moment. What’s the point in staying here? There’s nothing more you can accomplish here, and you know it: to convince the mandarins of your belief would be a major accomplishment.’ Dunne smiled. ‘Would you be so heartless as to deprive me of the pleasure of this — ah — encounter?’

‘He’s just scared of the big bad wolves,’ Jeff said.

Like all such rooms designed to give its occupants a proper sense of their own importance, the conference room was suitably impressive. It had the only mahogany-panelled walls in the building, behung with pictures of individuals who looked like the Ten Most Wanted Men but were, in fact, past and present directors and senior administrators of the FBI. It held the only mahogany oval table in the building, one that gleamed with that refulgent splendour rarely found among tables that had seen an honest day’s work. Round it were grouped the only twelve leather- and brass-studded chairs in the building. Before each chair was a leather-cornered blotter, indispensable for doodling but otherwise wholly superfluous, a brass tray for pens and pencils, a water-jug and glass: the comprehensively stocked bar lay behind a sliding wooden panel. The overall effect was slightly dimmed by the two stenographers’ chairs that faced a battery of red, white and black telephones: the chairs were covered in plastic leather. There were no stenographers there that afternoon; this was a top-secret meeting of the gravest national importance, and the faces of most of the twelve seated men accurately reflected their awareness of this.

Nobody occupied the rounded head of the table: Barrow and Mitchell each sat an equidistant foot from the centre line so that there could be no claimant for the chairman’s position. The heavens might be falling in but that would have to wait until protocol had been served. Each had three senior aides at the table — none of the six had been introduced — and all of them had briefcases and important-looking papers on the blotters before them. The fact that it had been deemed necessary to call the meeting clearly indicated that the contents of those papers were worthless: but, at the conference table, one has to have papers to shuffle or one is nothing. Mitchell opened the meeting: a toss of a coin had decided that.

He said: ‘To begin with, I must request, in the politest possible way, that Sergeant Parker and Patrolman Ryder withdraw.’

Ryder said: ‘Why?’

Nobody queried Mitchell’s orders. He bent a cold eye on Ryder. ‘Given the opportunity, Sergeant, I was about to explain. This meeting is on the highest level of national security, and those are not sworn men. Moreover, they are junior police officers both of whom have resigned their positions and therefore have no official capacity: they have not even been assigned to this investigation. That, I think, is a reasonable attitude.’

Ryder considered Mitchell for a few moments, then looked across at Dunne, who sat opposite him. He said, in a tone of exaggerated disbelief: ‘You brought me all the way up here just to listen to this pompous and arrogant rubbish?’

Dunne looked at his fingernails. Jeff looked at the roof. Barrow looked at the roof. Mitchell looked mad. His tone would have frozen mercury.

‘I don’t think I can be hearing properly, Sergeant.’

‘Then why don’t you vacate your position to someone who can? I spoke clearly enough. I didn’t want to come here. I know your reputation. I don’t give a damn about it. If you throw Mr Parker and my son out then, by the same token, you have to throw me out. You say they have no official capacity: neither have you. You just muscled your way in. They have as much right to order you out as you have to order them out: you have no official jurisdiction inside the United States. If you can’t understand that and stop antagonizing people who are doing an honest job of work then it’s time you yielded your chair to someone who can.’

Ryder looked leisurely round the table. No one appeared disposed to make any comment. Mitchell’s face was frozen. Barrow’s was set in an expression of calmly judicial impartiality, a remarkable tribute to the man’s self-control: had he been eavesdropping and alone he would unquestionably have been falling about and holding his sides.

‘So, having established the fact that there are no fewer than seven of us here in an unofficial capacity, let’s look at the investigation. Mr Parker and my son have already achieved a very considerable amount, as Major Dunne will confirm. They have helped solve the murder of a county sheriff, put a corrupt police chief behind bars on a charge of murder and also put behind bars, on a charge of accessory to murder, a judge widely regarded as Chairman-elect of the State Supreme Court. All three, including the murdered man, were deeply involved in the business on hand: this has provided us with extremely valuable information.’

Mitchell had the grace to part his lips about half an inch. Barrow remained without expression. Clearly he’d been briefed by Dunne: equally clear was the fact that he hadn’t bothered to pass on his information.

‘And what has the CIA achieved? I’ll tell you. It has succeeded in making a laughing-stock of itself in general and its director in particular, not to mention uselessly wasting the taxpayers’ money by sending its agents to pussyfoot around Geneva in search of so-called secret information that has been in the public domain for two years. Apart from that, what? An educated guess would say zero.’

Barrow coughed. ‘You wouldn’t say you are being needlessly intransigent?’ He could have put more reproof into his voice if he’d tried, even a little.

‘Needless intransigence is the only language some people seem to understand.’

Mitchell’s voice surfaced through layers of cracked ice. ‘Your point is taken, Sergeant. You have come to teach us how to do our jobs.’

Ryder wasn’t quite through with being intransigent or letting Mitchell off the hook. ‘I am not a Sergeant. I’m a private citizen and as such beholden to no one. I can’t teach the CIA anything — I wouldn’t know how to go about subverting foreign governments or assassinating their presidents. I can’t teach the FBI anything. All I want is a fair hearing, but it’s really a matter of indifference whether I get it or not.’ His eyes were looking at Mitchell’s. ‘You can shut up and let me say what I’ve been brought here to say, against my better judgement, or not. I’d as soon leave. I find the atmosphere here uncomfortable, not to say hostile, and Major Dunne has all the essentials.’

Mitchell said in a toneless voice: ‘We will hear you out.’

‘I don’t like that expression either.’ Barrow winced. Despite his antipathy towards Mitchell it was not hard to guess that, even although momentarily, he was putting himself in the other’s position. ‘It’s the term used by the chairman of the board when he’s giving a carpeted executive the chance to justify himself before being fired.’

‘Please.’ Barrow turned the palms of his hands upwards. ‘We take the point that you’re a plain speaker. Please take our point that you haven’t been brought here for nothing. We will listen carefully.’

‘Thank you.’ Ryder wasted no time on preamble. ‘You’ve all seen the streets round this block. As we came into your pad on the roof we saw a hundred streets like it. Blocked. Choked. Nothing like it since the retreat from Mons. The people are running scared. I don’t blame them. If I lived here I’d be running scared too. They believe that Morro is going to trigger off this bomb at ten tomorrow morning. So do I. I also believe that he will set off or is quite prepared to set off the other ten nuclear devices he claims to have. What I don’t for a moment believe in is his demand. It’s utter foolishness, he must know it is and we should recognize it for what it is: an empty threat, a meaningless demand that can’t be met.’

‘Perhaps you should know,’ Barrow said. ‘Just before you arrived word came through that protests have been lodged by the Kremlin and Peking, and by their embassies in Washington, crying to high heaven that they are as innocent as the driven snow of this monstrous accusation against them — no one has accused them of anything but one takes their point — and that it’s all part of a warmongering capitalist plot. First time in living memory that they’ve totally agreed with each other on anything.’

‘Not just the usual standard denial?’

‘No. They’re hopping mad.’

‘Don’t blame them. The suggestion is ludicrous.’

‘You’re sure the fact that you already seem to have discounted evidence pointing to some Communist connection has not influenced your thinking in this?’

‘I’m sure. So are you.’

Mitchell said: ‘I’m not so sure.’

‘You wouldn’t be. Last thing you do every night is look under your bed.’

Mitchell just stopped short of grinding his teeth. ‘If not that, what?’ The words were innocuous enough but their tone left no doubt that he was prepared to fight to the death for his disbelief of every word Ryder was about to say.

‘Bear with me. It all seems to start with the Philippines. I’m sure you all know how it is out there, and I’m sure the last thing I am is a specialist in foreign affairs, but I’ve been reading all about it in the library just a couple of hours ago. I’ll briefly recap what I read, as much for my own sake as anybody else’s.

‘The Philippines are in a financial mess. Hugely ambitious development plans, mounting internal and external debts, heavy military expenditures — they’re strapped. But like a good many other countries they know what to do when the kitty’s empty — put the arm on Uncle Sam. And they’re in an excellent position to apply pressure.

‘The Philippines are the keystone of America’s Pacific military strategy and the huge Seventh Fleet anchorage at Subic Bay and the strategically crucial Air Force Base are regarded by the Pentagon as being indispensable and well worth the rent — many people regard it as a cross between ransom and extortion money — that is demanded.

‘The south of the Philippines — the island of Mindanao — is inhabited by Muslims. You all know that. Unlike Christianity, the Muslim religion has no moral laws against the killing of mankind in general — just against the killing of Muslims, period. The concept of a holy war is an integral part of their lives and this is what they’re doing right now — carrying out a holy crusade against President Marcos and his predominantly Catholic government. They regard it as a religious war being waged by an oppressed people. Whether it’s a justifiable war or not is — well, it’s none of my business. In any event, it is an intensely bitter war. I think all this is well known.

‘What is, perhaps, not quite so well known is that they feel almost equally bitter towards the United States. It’s not hard to understand. Although Congress raises its hand in holier-than-thou horror at Marcos’s long-term track record on civil liberties, they still cheerfully, as I said, ante up the rent for our bases to the tune of several hundred million dollars a year in military aid, no small amount of which is put to what the Philippine government regards as being perfectly good use in crushing the Muslims.

‘Even less known is the fact that the Muslims aren’t all that much fonder of Russia, China and Vietnam. Not, as far as is known, that those countries have caused them any harm: it’s just that the Philippine government has established cordial — and diplomatic — relations with those three countries and countries that reciprocate the Philippine government’s overtures are automatically classified by the Mindanaon Muslims as belonging to the enemy camp.

‘What the Muslims desperately lack is arms. Provided that they were armed to the same standards as the government’s well-equipped eighty field battalions — well-equipped, mainly, by the courtesy of Uncle Sam — they could give a good account of themselves. Until last year what little supplies they received came from Libya — until Imelda Marcos went there and sweet-talked Colonel Gadhafi and his foreign minister Ali Tureiki into cutting off the Mindanaon Muslims’ last lifeline.

‘So what were they to do? They couldn’t obtain or manufacture their own arms in the Philippines. Even if they didn’t hate America there was no way the Americans would supply arms to insurgents against the Philippine government. They weren’t even speaking to the Communists, and their own fellow Muslims had turned against them. So the Muslim rebels came up with the only answer. Any big armament firm in the world will supply arms to anyone — if the money is right and on the barrel-head — irrespective of race, creed and politics. Why shouldn’t they? Governments do it all the time — America, Britain and France are the worst offenders. So, all they had to do was to find the cash to put on the barrel-head.

‘The solution was simple. Let the enemy provide. In this case the unfortunate provider was to be Uncle Sam. All the better if you can wound him in the process. Rob him blind, hurt him and — to kill two birds with one stone — discredit the USSR and China by using them as a smokescreen. That’s what I believe is happening in California here and now. And the frightening thing about it is that we have to remember that the Koran gives a Muslim a conscience-free hand to knock off anyone who isn’t a Muslim. And if your conscience is free, what’s the difference between one and one million? If all’s free in love and war what’s it like in a holy war?’

‘It’s an interesting hypothesis,’ Mitchell said. His tone implied that he was a courteous man tolerantly listening to another theorizing about how the moon is made of green cheese. ‘You have evidence to back this up, of course?’

‘Nothing that you would regard as positive evidence. Elimination, circumstantial evidence, all perhaps better than nothing. In the first place it’s the only theory that explains the situation in which we find ourselves now.’

‘But you said they’re after cash. If that’s so, why didn’t they blackmail the government for cash?’

‘I don’t know. I have the glimmerings of an idea but I know what you would do with a glimmering. Second, speech experts place his area of origin as south-east Asia — which includes the Philippines. Third, it is certain — there is no question about this — that he is in criminal association with Carlton, the supposedly kidnapped San Ruffino deputy of security, and there is also no question that Carlton has been in Manila several times. Fourth, if Morro has a weakness it seems to be that it tickles his ironic fancy to give himself an alias associated with the operation he is conducting. The first stage of his operation here was concerned with nuclear fuel so he may well have purposely chosen to call himself after the nuclear station at Morro Bay. Fifth, that’s not the only name pronounced that way — there’s another in the Philippines, called Moro Bay. Sixth, this is in Mindanao and is the focus of the Muslim insurgent movement. Seventh, last year Moro Bay was the scene of the greatest natural disaster in Philippine history. An earthquake at the mouth of the bay — it’s crescent-shaped — caused a gigantic tidal wave that took over five thousand lives and left seventy thousand homeless, all along the shores of the bay. A tidal wave we’re promised for tomorrow. I’ll take long odds that we’ll be promised an earthquake on Saturday. I think that this may be Morro’s Achilles’ heel. I think it would mightily tickle his fancy to have his name associated with nuclear weapons, tidal waves and earthquakes.’

‘You call this evidence?’ Mitchell’s tone was nasty, but it could have been nastier.

‘No proof, I agree. Indicators, that’s all. But they’re all-important. In police work you can’t look anywhere until you have some indication of where to look. You start hunting where the hound-dog points. Put it another way. I’m looking for a lodestone and I set down a compass. The needle swings and steadies. That might indicate the direction of the lodestone. I put down a second compass and it points in the same direction. That could be coincidence although a remarkable one. I put down five more and they all point the same way. I stop thinking about coincidences. I have seven needles here and they all point towards Mindanao.’ Ryder paused. ‘I’m convinced. I understand, of course, that you gentlemen would require some sort of proof.’

Barrow said: ‘I think I’m convinced if only for the reason that I can’t see any needle pointing any other damned way. But some proof would be nice. What would you call proof, Mr Ryder?’

‘For me, any one answer to any one of, oddly, seven questions.’ He took a sheet of paper from his pocket. ‘What is Morro’s place of origin? Where can we locate a six-foot-eight giant who must be a senior lieutenant of Morro’s? What kind of bomb did this Professor Aachen design? I think Morro lied about its dimensions for the simple reason that he didn’t have to mention it at all.’ He looked reproachfully at Barrow and Mitchell. ‘I understand the AEC have put up the shutters on this one. If you two gentlemen can’t make them open up who can? Then I want to know if there are any private organizations up in the mountains using their own helicopters. Any using their own private vans. Major Dunne is working on those two. After that I’d like to know if Morro is going to threaten us with an earthquake on Saturday. I’ve said I’m sure he is. Lastly, I’d like to know if the Post Office can discover whether there’s a radio-phone link between Bakersfield and a place called the Adlerheim.’

‘Adlerheim?’ Mitchell had lost some of his intransigence. It was reasonable to assume that he hadn’t become director because his aunt’s cousin knew some stenographer in a CIA typing pool. ‘What’s that?’

‘I know it,’ Barrow said. ‘Up in the Sierra Nevada. Von Streicher’s Folly, they call it, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. I think that’s where we’ll find Morro. Anyone mind if I smoke?’

Not only did nobody object; nobody even seemed to have heard his request. They were busy. They were busy studying the insides of their closed eyelids, or the papers before them or infinity. Ryder was almost an inch down on his Gauloise before Barrow spoke.

‘That’s quite a thought, Mr Ryder. Having heard what you’ve had to say so far I don’t think anyone is going to dismiss it out of hand.’ He made a point of not looking at Mitchell. ‘Wouldn’t you agree, Sassoon?’

Sassoon spoke for the first time. ‘I’ve heard enough not to make a clown of myself. You will, of course, have your pointers, Mr Ryder.’ He smiled as he said it.

‘None that you don’t all have. In that rather cryptic note my wife left when she was kidnapped she said that Morro referred to their destination as having bracing air and a place where they wouldn’t get their feet wet. Mountains. It’s been taken over by a group of Muslims, quite openly: this would be typical of Morro’s effrontery — and his over-confidence. It’s called the “Temple of Allah” or some such name. It’s got official police protection to ensure its privacy — a fact which would again appeal to Morro’s ironic — if warped — sense of humour. It’s virtually impregnable to outside assault. It’s close to Bakersfield, where LeWinter had a telephone contact. I should think the chances are high that they have a helicopter — we’ll soon know. A guess you might say, and too damned obvious. The clever investigator overlooks the obvious. Me, I’m stupid — I’d go for the obvious which is the last thing that Morro would expect us to do.’

Barrow said: ‘You don’t actually know this Morro?’

‘Unfortunately, no.’

‘You seem to have got inside his mind pretty well. I only hope you haven’t taken any wrong turnings.’

Parker said in a mild tone: ‘He’s quite good at getting inside minds, actually. No pun intended, but ask anyone inside. Ryder’s put away more felons than any intelligence officer in this State.’

‘Let’s hope his luck doesn’t run out. That’s all, Mr Ryder?’

‘Yes. Two thoughts. When this is all over you might make out a citation to my wife. If she hadn’t thought she’d seen a black eye-patch and suspected there was something wrong with his hands we’d still be back in square one. We still don’t know for certain if she was right. The second thought is just amusing and irrelevant except that it probably again has a bearing on Morro’s twisted sense of humour. Anyone know why Von Streicher built the Adlerheim where he did?’

Nobody knew.

‘I’ll bet Morro did. Von Streicher had a phobia about tidal waves.’

Nobody said anything because, for the moment, they had nothing to say. After some time, Barrow stirred and pressed a bell twice. The door opened, two girls entered and Barrow said: ‘We’re thirsty.’ The girls moved to one wall and slid back a wooden panel.

A few minutes later Barrow laid down his glass. ‘I wasn’t really thirsty. I just wanted time to think. Neither the time nor the Scotch has helped any.’

‘We go for the Adlerheim?’ Mitchell’s aggression was in abeyance: this was just a doubtful suggestion put up for discussion.

‘No.’ Ryder gave a negative shake of the head in a very positive way. ‘I think I’m right; I could be wrong. Either way I wouldn’t give a damn about proof and legality, and I don’t think anyone else here would either. It’s the physical factor. You can’t storm the place. I told you it’s impregnable. If Morro’s there he’ll have it guarded like Fort Knox. If we did attack the place and there was armed resistance then we’d know for sure he’s there. What then? You can’t use tanks and artillery up a mountain-side. Planes with rockets, missiles, bombs? What a lovely idea with thirty-five megatons of hydrogen bombs in there.’

‘It would be a bang,’ Mitchell said. He seemed almost human. ‘And what a bang. How many dead? Tens of thousands? Hundreds? Millions? With the radio-active fall-out all over the western States? Yes, millions.’

Ryder said: ‘Not to mention blasting a hole through the ozone layer.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘It’s out of the question, anyway,’ Barrow said. ‘Only the Commander-in-Chief could authorize such an attack, and whether he’s motivated by political cynicism or humanity no President is going to let himself go down in history as the man directly responsible for the deaths of millions of his fellow citizens.’

‘That apart,’ Ryder said, ‘I’m afraid we’re all missing the point, which is that those bombs will be triggered by radiowave and Morro will be sitting up there all the time with his thumb on the button. If he had the bombs sited — which he could well have by now — he has only to press that button. They could be in transit — and he has still only to press that button. Even if he’s sitting on top of the damn things he’d still do the same. It would be a splendid way to pay the Americans back for the billion or more dollars and military aid they’ve given Marcos’s government to use to crush the Muslims. American lives are nothing to them and, in a holy war, neither are theirs. They can’t lose: the gates of Paradise are standing wide.’

There was a long pause then Sassoon said: ‘It’s a bit chilly in here. Anyone join me in a Scotch or bourbon or something?’

Everyone, it seemed, was conscious of a drop in the temperature. There was another and equally long pause, then Mitchell said, almost plaintively: ‘How do we get at those damned bombs?’

‘You can’t.’ Ryder said. ‘I’ve had more time than you to think this out. Those bombs will be under constant surveillance all the time. Go anywhere near any of them and it’ll blow up in your face. I wouldn’t fancy having a three-and-a-half megaton bomb blow up in my face.’ He lit another cigarette. ‘Well, I don’t know. No worry, really. In my vaporized state I wouldn’t be likely to know much about it. Forget the bombs. We want to get to that button before Morro presses it.’

Barrow said: ‘Infiltration?’

‘How else?’

‘How?’

‘Using his over-confidence and colossal arrogance against him.’

‘How?’

‘How?’ Ryder showed his first irritation. ‘You forget that I’m just an unofficial interferer.’

‘As far as I’m concerned — and, in those United States of ours, I’m the only one who is concerned — you’re now a fully accredited, paid-up and charter member of the FBI.’

‘Well, thanks very much.’

‘How?’

‘I wish to God I knew.’

The silence was profound. By and by Barrow turned to Mitchell. ‘Well, what are we going to do?’

‘That’s the FBI all over.’ Mitchell was scowling heavily, but not at anyone in particular. ‘Always trying to beat us to it. I was about to ask you the same question.’

‘I know what I’m going to do.’ Ryder pushed back his chair. ‘Major Dunne, you will recall that you promised me a lift out to Pasadena.’

A knock came at the door and a girl entered, an envelope in her hand. She said: ‘Major Dunne?’ Dunne stretched out an arm, took the envelope, withdrew a sheet of paper and read it. He looked across at Ryder.

‘Cotabato,’ he said.

Ryder pulled his chair back in. Dunne rose, walked to the head of the table and handed the letter to Barrow, who read it, handed it across to Mitchell, waited until he had finished, took it back and began to read aloud.

‘Manila. Chief of Police, also countersigned by a General Huelva, whom I know. It says: “Description referring to person called Morro tallies exactly with that of a wanted criminal well known to us. Confirm he has two badly damaged hands and the sight of only one eye. Injuries sustained when one of group of three participating in aborted attempt to blow up Presidential holiday retreat. One accomplice — a man of enormous stature and known as Dubois — unscathed. The third, small man, lost left hand. Shot way out”.’ He paused and looked at Ryder.

‘A small world. Our large friend again. The other is probably the lad with the prosthetic appliance who put the arm on my daughter in San Diego.’

‘Very likely. “Morro’s real name is Amarak. Enquiry confirms our belief that he is in your country. Enforced exile. There is one million US dollars on his head. Native of Cotabato, focal point for Muslim insurgents in Mindanao.

‘“Amarak is the head of the MNLF — Moro National Liberation Front”.’