Goodbye California

CHAPTER ELEVEN

‘One sometimes despairs of mankind,’ Professor Alec Benson said sadly. ‘Here we are, twenty miles from the ocean, and still they go marching steadily east — if cars moving at an average of a mile per hour can be said to be marching. They’re as safe from a tidal wave here as they would be if they lived in Colorado, but I don’t suppose any of them intend stopping until they pitch camp atop the San Gabriel Mountains.’ He turned away from the window, picked up a cane and pressed a switch to illuminate a nine-by-eight wall chart of the State of California.

‘Well, gentlemen, to our Earthquake Slip Prevention Programme — hereon, ESPP. Where we have selected certain locations for drilling and why. The “where” and the “why” are really one and the same. As I explained last time, the theory, in essence, is that by injecting lubricating fluid along certain fault lines we will ease the frictional resistance between the tectonic plates and so — hopefully — cause them to slide past each other with a minimum of fuss and bother — a series of tiny earthquakes at frequent intervals instead of major earthquakes at long intervals. If the frictional co-efficient is allowed to build up until the lateral stress becomes intolerable then something has to go and one plate jerks forward, perhaps anything up to twenty feet, in relation to the other. That’s when we have a big one. Our sole purpose — perhaps I should say our hope — is to release this frictional coefficient gradually.’ He tapped the chart with the cane. ‘I’ll start from the bottom — the south.

‘This is actually the first bore-hole we started digging, the first of what we call our trigger spots. It’s in the Imperial Valley, between Imperial and El Centra. We had an earthquake here in nineteen-fifteen, six-point-three on the Richter scale, another in nineteen-forty, a fairly big one of seven-point-six and a small one in nineteen-sixty-six. This is the only known section of the San Andreas Fault near the US-Mexican border.’ He moved his cane.

‘We’ve drilled this one here near Hemet. There was a heavy earthquake here in eighteen-ninety-nine — no seismological recordings of it — in the area of the Cajon Pass, another of six-point-eight in nineteen-eighteen in the same fracture area — this is the San Jacinto Fault.

‘This third drill-hole is the nearest to where we are now — in the San Bernadino area. Latest earthquake there was seventy years ago, and that was only six on the scale. We have a strong feeling here that this may be a sleeper with a slip overdue: but that may be because we are living so close to the damn thing.’

Barrow said: ‘What effects would such earthquakes have if they did occur? Big ones, I mean.’

‘Any one of the three would certainly make the citizens of San Diego unhappy, and the second and third would offer a direct threat to Los Angeles.’ He moved the pointer again. ‘The next bore-hole lies in a fault which was a sleeper — until nineteen-seventy-one. Six-point-six in the San Fernando Valley. We hope that easing the pressure here might take some of the strain of the Newport-Inglewood Fault which, as you know, lies directly under the city of Los Angeles and had its own earthquake, of six-point-three in nineteen-thirty-three. I say “hope”. We don’t know. We don’t know how the two faults are connected. We don’t even know if they’re connected. There’s an awful lot we don’t know and that’s guesswork, hopefully inspired, probably not. But it’s no guess that a big one there could hurt Los Angeles badly: after all, the community of Sylmar, the worst-hit area in the shock, actually lies inside the Los Angeles city boundaries.’ The point of the cane moved again.

‘Tejon Pass. This one has us worried. Long overdue activity here and the last one — a hundred-and-twenty years ago — was a beauty, the strongest in Southern Californian history. Well, it wasn’t as great as the massive earthquake that hit Owens Valley in eighteen-seventy-three — that was the biggest in recorded Californian history — but we’re a parochial lot hereabouts and don’t regard Owens Valley as being in Southern California. A big slip here would very definitely give the Los Angelinos something to think about: if I knew about it in advance I, personally, would get out of town. Tejon Pass is on the San Andreas Fault, and it’s close by here, at Frazier Park by Fort Tejon, that the San Andreas and Garlock Faults intersect. There’s been no major earthquake in the Garlock that is known of — whether that recent small shake was caused by our friend Morro or not we have no means of telling — and none is expected: but, then, no one expected the nineteen-seventy-one business in San Fernando.’ The cane moved on.

‘Here we have our — let me see — sixth drilling-hole. It’s on the White Wolf Fault. It was the scene —’

He broke off as the phone rang. One of his assistants answered, looked round the seated men. ‘Which one of you is Major Dunne, please?’

Dunne took the phone, listened briefly, thanked the caller and hung up. He said: ‘The Adlerheim has quite a transport fleet. Not one but two helicopters, two unmarked plain vans and a jeep.’ He smiled at Ryder. ‘Two more pointers you can tick off, Sergeant.’ Ryder nodded. If he experienced any satisfaction he didn’t show it — more probably, he had been so convinced in advance of what Dunne had just said that the confirmation hardly called for comment.

Benson said: ‘What’s all this about pointers?’

‘Routine investigative checks, Professor.’

‘Ah. Ah, well, I suppose it’s none of my business. I was saying — yes, the White Wolf. Seven-point-seven, nineteen-fifty-two, the biggest in Southern California since eighteen-fifty-seven. The epicentre was somewhere between Arvin and Tehachapi here.’ He paused and looked at Ryder. ‘You frown, Sergeant? Quite heavily, if I may say so.’

‘Nothing, really, Professor. Passing thoughts. Please carry on.’

‘Well. This is a very tricky area. It’s all conjecture, really. Anything happening in the White Wolf could affect both the Garlock Fault and the San Andreas at Tejon. We don’t know. There could be a link with the Santa Ynez, Mesa and Channel Islands Faults. Very attractive earthquake area, reports going back to the beginning of the nineteenth century, last big one at Lompoc in nineteen-twenty-seven. It’s all so uncertain. Any major disturbance in the Santa Ynez area would certainly cause a major disturbance in Los Angeles.’ He shook his head. ‘Poor old Los Angeles.’ Benson wasn’t smiling. ‘It’s ringed by earthquake centres — apart from having its own private and personal one at Long Beach. Last time I saw you I talked about the monster earthquake. If it were to hit San Jacinto, San Bemadino, San Fernando, the White Wolf, Tejon Pass, Santa Ynez — or, of course, Long Beach itself — the western hemisphere would be one major city less. If our civilization vanishes and another arises then that new one will be talking about Los Angeles as we today talk about the lost city of Atlantis.’

Barrow said: ‘You are in a jovial mood today, Professor.’

‘Alas, events happening around me and people asking me the questions do tend to make me less than my optimistic sunny self. Forgive me. Next, up here in the central San Andreas, we are digging an interesting hole between Cholame and Parkfield. We know we’re smack on the San Andreas there. Very active area, lots of shaking and banging going on most of the time but, again ominously, no great earthquake has ever been recorded in this area. There was a pretty big one some way to the west, back in the ‘eighties, at San Luis Obispo which could have been caused by the San Andreas or the Nacimiento Fault which parallels the coast west of the San Andreas.’ He smiled without any particular mirth. ‘A monster striking in either fault would almost certainly dump the Morro Bay nuclear reactor station into the sea.

‘Further north, we’ve drilled deep down between Hollister and San Juan Bautista, a few miles to the west, partly because this is another dormant area — again there have only been comparatively minor shakes in this area — and because it’s just south of Hollister that the Hayward Fault branches off to the right to go to the east of San Francisco Bay, cutting up through or close by Hayward, Oakland, Berkeley and Richmond then out under the San Pablo Bay. In Berkeley the fault actually runs under the university football stadium, which can’t be a very nice thought for the crowds of people who attend there regularly. There have been two very big earthquakes along this fault, in eighteen-thirty-six and eighteen-sixty-eight — until nineteen-o-six San Franciscans always referred to the latter as “the great earthquake” — and it’s there that we’ve drilled our ninth hole by Lake Temescal.

‘The tenth one we put down at Walnut Creek in the Calaveras Fault, which parallels the Hayward. Our suspicions about this fault are in the inverse proportion to what we know about it, which is almost zero.’

Barrow said: ‘That makes ten and that, I take it, is all. You spoke a few minutes ago about poor old Los Angeles. How about poor old San Francisco?’

‘To be thrown to the wolves, it would seem, the orphan left out in the snow. San Francisco is, geologically and seismologically, a city that waits to die. Frankly, we are terrified to tamper with anything up there. The Los Angeles area has had seven what you might call historic ‘quakes that we know of: the Bay area has had sixteen, and we have no idea in the world where the next, the monster, may hit. There was a suggestion — frankly, it was mine — that we sink a bore-hole near Searsville Lake. This is close by Stanford University which had a bad time of it during the nineteen-o-six earthquake, and, more importantly, just where the Pilarcitos Fault branches off from the San Andreas. The Pilarcitos, which runs into the Pacific some six miles south of the San Andreas may, for all we know, be the true line of the San Andreas and certainly was some millions of years ago. Anyway, the nineteen-o-six shake ran through many miles of unpopulated hill regions. Since then, unscrupulous property developers have built cities along both fault lines and the consequences of another eight-plus earthquake are too awful to contemplate. I suggested a possible easement there, but certain vested interests in nearby Menlo Park were appalled at the very idea.’

Barrow said: ‘Vested interests?’

‘Indeed.’ Benson sighed. ‘It was in nineteen-sixty-six that the US Geological Survey’s National Center for Earthquake Research was established there. Very touchy about earthquakes, I’m afraid.’

‘Those bore-holes,’ Ryder said. ‘What diameter drills do you use?’

Benson looked at him for a long moment then sighed again. ‘That had to be the next question. That’s why you’re all here, isn’t it?’

‘Well?’

‘You can use any size within reason. Down in Antarctica they use a twelve-inch drill to bore through the Ross Ice Shelf, but here we get by with a good deal less — five, perhaps six inches. I don’t know. Find out easy enough. So you think the ESPP drillings are a double-edged weapon that’s going to turn in our hands? Limit to what you can achieve by tidal waves, isn’t there? But this is earthquake country, so why not harness the latent powers of nature and trigger off immense earthquakes and where better to pull the triggers than in the very ESPP sites we’ve chosen?’

Barrow said: ‘It’s feasible?’

‘Eminently.’

‘And if —’ He broke off. ‘Ten bombs, ten sites. Matches up a damn sight too well. If this were to happen?’

‘Let’s think about something else, shall we?’

‘If it were?’

‘There are so many unknown factors —’

‘An educated guess, Professor.’

‘Goodbye California. That’s what I would guess. Or a sizeable part of it — bound to affect more than half of the population. Maybe it will fall into the Pacific. Maybe just shattered by a series of monster earthquakes — and if you set off hydrogen bombs in the faults monster earthquakes are what you are going to have. And radiation, of course, would get those the sea and earthquakes didn’t. An immediate trip back east — and I mean immediate — suddenly seems a very attractive prospect.’

‘You’d have to walk,’ Sassoon said. ‘The roads are jammed and the airport is besieged. The airlines are sending in every plane they can lay hands on but it’s hardly helping: they’re stacked heaven knows how many deep just waiting for a chance to land. And, of course, when a plane does land there’s a hundred passengers for every seat available.’

‘Things will be better tomorrow. It’s not in human nature to stay permanently panic-stricken.’

‘And it’s not in an aircraft’s nature to take off in twenty feet of water, which is what the airport might be under tomorrow.’ He broke off as the phone rang again. This time Sassoon took it. He listened briefly, thanked the caller and hung up.

‘Two things,’ he said. ‘The Adlerheim does have a radio telephone. All quite legal. The Post Office doesn’t know the name or the address of the person who answers it. They assume that we wouldn’t want to make enquiries. Secondly, there is a very big man up in the Adlerheim.’ He looked at Ryder. ‘It seems you were not only right but right about their arrogant self-confidence. He hasn’t even bothered to change his name. Dubois.’

‘Well, that’s it, then,’ Ryder said. If he was surprised or gratified no trace of those feelings showed. ‘Morro has kidnapped twenty-six drillers, engineers — anyway, oil men. Six are being used as forced labour in the Adlerheim. Then he’ll have a couple of men at each of the drilling rigs — they’ll have guns on them, but he has to have experienced men to lower those damn things. I don’t think we need bother the AEC any more to find out about Professor Aachen’s design: whatever nuclear device he’s constructed it’s not going to be more than five inches in diameter.’ He turned to Benson. ‘Do the crews on those rigs work at weekends?’

‘I don’t know.’

I’ll bet Morro does.’

Benson turned to one of his assistants. ‘You heard. Find out, please.’

Barrow said: ‘Well, we know for sure now that Morro lied about the dimensions of the bomb. You can’t stick something twenty inches in diameter down a five- or six-inch bore-hole. I think I have to agree that this man is dangerously overconfident.’

Mitchell was glum. ‘He’s got plenty to be confident about. All right, we know he’s up in his fancy castle, and we know, or are as certain as can be, that he has those nuclear devices up there. And a lot of good that knowledge does us. How do we get to him or them?’

An assistant spoke to Benson. ‘The drilling crew, sir. They don’t work weekends. A guard at nights. Just one. Gentleman says no one’s likely to wheel away a derrick on a wheelbarrow.’

The profound silence that followed was sufficient comment. Mitchell, whose splendid self-confidence had vanished off the bottom of the chart, said in a plaintive voice: ‘Well, what in hell are we going to do?’

Barrow broke the next silence. ‘I don’t think that there’s anything else that we can do. By that, I mean the people in this room. Apart from the fact that our function is primarily investigative, we don’t have the authority to make any decisions on a national level.’

‘International, you mean,’ Mitchell said. ‘If they can do it to us they can also do it to London or Paris or Rome.’ He almost brightened. ‘They might even do it to Moscow. But I agree. It’s a matter for the White House, Congress, the Pentagon. Personally, I prefer the Pentagon. I’m convinced that the threat of force — and if this isn’t a threat of force I’ve never known of one — can be met only by force. I’m further convinced that we should choose the lesser of two evils, that we should consider the greatest good of the greatest number. I think an attack should be launched on the Adlerheim. At least the damage, though catastrophic, would be localized. I mean, we wouldn’t have half of the damn State being devastated.’ He paused, thought, then struck his fist on a convenient table.

‘By God, I believe I have it! We’re not thinking. What we require is a nuclear physicist here, an expert on hydrogen bombs and missiles. We’re laymen. What do we know about the triggering mechanisms of those devices? For all we know they may be immune to — what’s it called? — sympathetic detonation. If that were the case, a fighter-bomber or two with tactical nuclear missiles — and poof! — all life would be immediately extinct. Instant annihilation for everyone in the Adlerheim.’ Archimedes in his bath or Newton with his apple couldn’t have shown more revelationary enthusiasm.

Ryder said: ‘Well, thank you very much.’

‘What do you mean?’

Dunne answered him. ‘Mr Ryder’s lack of enthusiasm is understandable, sir. Or have you forgotten that his wife and daughter are being held hostage there, not to mention eight others, including five of the country’s outstanding nuclear physicists?’

‘Ah! Oh!’ Much of the missionary zeal vanished. ‘I’m sorry, no, I’m afraid I’d forgotten that. Nevertheless —’

‘Nevertheless, you were going to say, the greatest good of the greatest number. Your proposal would almost certainly achieve the opposite — the greatest destruction of the greatest number.’

‘Justify that, Mr Ryder.’ Mitchell cherished his brain-children and no one was going to take his baby away if he could help it.

‘Easily. You are going to use atomic missiles. The southern end of the San Joaquin Valley is quite heavily populated. It is your intention to wipe those people out?’

‘Of course not. We evacuate them.’

‘Heaven send me strength,’ Ryder said wearily. ‘Has it not occurred to you that from the Adlerheim Morro has an excellent view of the valley, and you may be sure that he has more than a scattering of spies and informants actually down there? What do you think he is going to think when he sees the citizens of the plain disappearing en masse over the northern and southern horizons? He’s going to say to himself: “Ha! I’ve been rumbled” — and apart from anything else that’s the last thing we want him to know — “I must teach those people a lesson for they’re clearly preparing to make an atomic attack on me.” So he sends one of his helicopters down south to the Los Angeles area and another up north to the Bay area. Six million dead. I should think that’s a conservative estimate. Is that your idea of military tactics, of reducing casualties to a minimum?’

From the crestfallen expression on his face it didn’t seem to be. Clearly, it wasn’t anybody else’s either.

Ryder went on: ‘A personal opinion, gentlemen, and offered for what it’s worth, but this is what I think. I don’t think there are going to be any nuclear casualties — not unless we’re stupid enough to provoke them ourselves.’ He looked at Barrow. ‘Back in your office some little time ago I said that I believed Morro is going to trigger off this bomb in the bay tomorrow. I still do. I also said I believed he would set off or would be prepared to set off the other ten devices on Saturday night. I’ve modified that thinking a bit. I still think that if he’s given sufficient provocation he’d be prepared to trigger his devices: but I now don’t believe that he’ll do it on Saturday night. In fact, I would take odds that he won’t.’

‘It’s odd.’ Barrow was thoughtful. ‘I could almost believe that myself. Because of his kidnapping of nuclear physicists, his theft of weapons-grade material, our knowledge that he does have those damned nuclear devices, his constant nuclear threats, his display in Yucca Flat and our conviction that he is going to explode this device in the bay tomorrow morning, we have been hypnotized, mesmerized, conditioned into the inevitability of further nuclear blasts. God knows, we have every reason to believe what this monster says. And yet —’

‘It’s a brain-wash job. A top-flight propagandist can make you believe anything. Our friend should have met Goebbels in his hey-day: they would have been blood-brothers.’

‘Any idea what he doesn’t want us to believe?’

‘I think so. I told Mr Mitchell an hour ago that I had a glimmering, but that I knew what he would do with a glimmering. It’s a pretty bright beacon now. Here’s what I think Morro will be doing — or what I would do if I were in Morro’s shoes.

‘First, I’d bring my submarine through the —’

‘Submarine!’ Mitchell had obviously — and instantly — reverted to his earlier opinion of Ryder.

‘Please. I’d bring it through the Golden Gate and park it alongside one of the piers in San Francisco.’

‘San Francisco?’ Mitchell again.

‘It has better and more piers, better loading facilities and calmer waters than, say, Los Angeles.’

‘Why a submarine?’

‘To take me back home.’ Ryder was being extremely patient. ‘Me and my faithful followers and my cargo.’

‘Cargo?’

‘God’s sake, shut up and listen. We’ll be able to move with complete safety and impunity in the deserted streets of San Francisco. No single soul will be there because no hour was specified as to when the hydrogen bombs will be detonated during the night, and there’ll be nobody within fifty miles. A gallant pilot six miles up will be able to see nothing because it’s night and even if it’s a completely suicidal low-flying pilot he’ll still be able to see nothing because we know where every breaker for every transformer and power station in the city is.

‘Then our pantechnicons will roll. I shall have three and shall lead them down California Street and stop outside the Bank of America which, as you know, is the largest single bank in the world containing loot as great as that of the Federal vaults. Other pantechnicons will go to the Trans-America Pyramid, Wells Fargo, and Federal Reserve Bank, Crockers and other interesting places. There will be ten hours of darkness that night. We estimate we will require six at the outset. Some big robberies, such as the famous break-in to a Nice bank a year or two ago, took a whole leisurely weekend, but gangs like those are severely handicapped because they have to operate in silence. We shall use as much high explosive as need be and for difficult cases will use a self-propelled one-twenty-millimetre-tank guns firing armour-piercing shells. We may even blow some buildings up, but this won’t worry us. We can make all the noise in the world and not care: there’ll be nobody there to hear us. Then we load up the pantechnicons, drive down to the piers, load the submarine and take off.’ Ryder paused. ‘As I said earlier, they’ve come for cash to buy their arms and there’s more cash lying in the vaults of San Francisco than all the kings of Saudi Arabia and maharajas of India have ever seen. As I said before, it takes a simple and unimaginative mind to see the obvious and in this case, for me at least, it’s so obvious that I can’t see any flaws in it. What do you think of my scenario?’

‘I think it’s bloody awful,’ Barrow said. ‘That’s to say, it’s awful because it’s so inevitable. That has to be it, first, because it’s so right and second, because it just can’t be anything else.’ He looked around at the company. ‘You agree?’

Everyone, with one exception, nodded. The exception, inevitably, was Mitchell. ‘And what if you’re wrong?’

‘Must you be so damnably pig-headed and cantankerous?’ Barrow was irritated to the point of exasperation.

Ryder didn’t react, just lifted his shoulders and said: ‘So I’m wrong.’

‘You must be mad! You would take the burden of the deaths of countless fellow Californians on your hands?’

‘You’re beginning to bore me, Mitchell. In fact, not to put it too politely, you do bore me and have done so for some time. I do think you should call your own sanity in question. Do you think I would breathe a word of our conclusions — with you being excepted from our conclusions — outside this room? Do you think I would try to persuade anybody to remain in their homes on Saturday night? When Morro knew that people had ignored the threat and had heard, as he inevitably would, the reason why — namely, that his scheme was known — the chances are very high that in his rage and frustration he’d just go ahead and press the button anyway.’

The singularly ill-named Café Cleopatra was a wateringhole of unmatched dinginess, but on that hectic, frenetic and stifling evening it possessed the singular charm of being the only such establishment open in the blocks around Sassoon’s office. There were dozens of others but their doors were rigorously barred by proprietors who, when the opportunity was open to them, were lugging their dearest possessions to higher levels or who, when such opportunity was denied them, had already joined the panic-stricken rush to the hills.

Fear was abroad that evening but the rush was purely in the mind and heart: it was not physical, for the cars and people who jammed the street were almost entirely static. It was an evening for selfishness, ill-temper, envy, argument, and antisocial behaviour ranging from the curmudgeonly to the downright bellicose: phlegmatic the citizens of the Queen of the Coast were not.

It was an evening for those who ranged the nether scale from the ill-intentioned to the criminally inclined as they displayed in various measure that sweet concern, Christian charity and brotherly love for their fellow man in the hour of crisis, by indulging in red-faced altercation, splendidly uninhibited swearing, bouts of fisticuffs, purse-snatching, wallet-removal, mugging and kicking in the plate-glass windows of the more prosperous-looking emporiums. They were free to indulge their peccadilloes unhindered: the police were powerless as they, too, were immobilized. It was a night for pyromaniacs as many small fires had broken out throughout the city — although, in fairness, many of those were caused by unseemly speed of the departure of householders who left on cookers, ovens and heating appliances: again, the fire brigades were powerless, their only consolation being the faint hope that significant numbers of the smaller conflagrations would be abruptly extinguished at ten o’clock the following morning. It was not a night for the sick and the infirm: elderly ladies, widows and orphans were crushed against walls or, more commonly, deposited in unbecoming positions in the gutter as their fitter brethren pressed on eagerly for the high land: unfortunates in wheelchairs knew what it was to share the emotions of the charioteer who observes his inner wheel coming adrift as he rounds the first bend of the Circus Maximus: especially distressing was the case of thoughtless pedestrians knocked down by cars, driven by owners concerned only by the welfare of their family, and which mounted the pavement in order to overtake the less enterprising who elected to remain on the highway: where they fell there they remained, for doctors and ambulances were as helpless as any. It was hardly an edifying spectacle

Ryder surveyed the scene with a jaundiced and justifiably misanthropic eye although, in truth, he had been in a particularly ill humour even before arriving to sample the sybaritic pleasures of the Café Cleopatra. In the group’s return from CalTech he had listened to, without participating in, the endless wrangling as to how best they should counter and hopefully terminate the evil machinations of Morro and his Muslims: finally, in frustration and disgust, he had announced that he would return within the hour and had left with Jeff and Parker There had been no attempt to dissuade him: there was something about Ryder, as Barrow, Mitchell and their associates had come to appreciate in a very brief period of time, that precluded the idea of dissuasion; besides, he owed neither allegiance nor obedience to any man.

‘Cattle,’ Luigi said with a splendid contempt. He had just brought fresh beers to the three men and was now surveying the pandemoniac scenes being enacted beyond his unwashed windows. Luigi, the proprietor, regarded himself as a cosmopolitan par excellence in a city of cosmopolitans. Neopolitan by birth, he claimed to be a Greek and did his undistinguished best to run what he regarded as an Egyptian establishment. From his slurred speech and unsteady gait it was clear that he had been his own best customer for the day. ‘Canaille!’ His few words of French served, as he fondly imagined, to enhance his cosmopolitan aura. ‘All for one and one for all. The spirit that won the west! How true. The California gold rush, the Klondyke. Every man for himself and the devil take the rest. Alas, I fear they lack the Athenian spirit.’ He swung a dramatic arm around him and almost fell over in the process. ‘Today, this beautiful establishment: tomorrow, the deluge And Luigi? Luigi laughs at the gods, for they are but manikins that masquerade as gods else they would not permit this catastrophe to overtake those mindless infants.’ He paused and reflected. ‘My ancestors fought at Thermopylae.’ Overcome by his own eloquence and the alcohol-accentuated effects of gravity, Luigi collapsed into the nearest chair.

Ryder looked around at the incredible dilapidation which was the outstanding characteristic of Luigi’s beautiful establishment, at the vanished patterns on the cracked linoleum, the stained Formica table-tops, the aged infirmity of the bent-wood chairs, the unwashed stuccoed walls behung with sepia daguerrotypes of pharaonic profiled bas-reliefs, each with two eyes on the same side of the face, portraits of so unbelievable an awfulness that the only charitable thing that could be said about them was that they tended to restore to a state of almost pristine purity the unlovely walls which they desecrated. He said: ‘Your sentiments do you great credit, Luigi. This country could do with more men like you. Now, please, may we be left alone? We have important matters to discuss.’

They had, indeed, important matters to discuss, and their discussion led to a large and uncompromising zero. The problems of what to do with the apparently unassailable inhabitants of the Adlerheim seemed insuperable. In point of fact, the discussion was a dialogue between Ryder and Parker, for Jeff took no part in it. He just leaned back, his beer untouched, his eyes closed as if he were fast asleep or he had lost all interest in solving the unsolvable. He appeared to subscribe to the dictum laid down by the astronomer J. Allen Hynek: ‘In science it’s against the rules to ask questions when we have no way of approaching the answers.’ The problem on hand was not a scientific one: but the principle appeared to be the same.

Unexpectedly, Jeff stirred and said: ‘Good old Luigi.’

‘What?’ Parker stared at him. ‘What’s that?’

‘And Hollywood only a five-minute hop from here.’

Ryder said carefully: ‘Look, Jeff, I know you’ve been through a hard time. We’ve all been through —’

‘Dad?’

‘What?’

‘I have it. Manikins masquerading as gods.’

Five minutes later Ryder was on his third beer, but this time back in Sassoon’s office. The other nine men were still there and had indeed not stirred since Ryder, Jeff and Parker had left. The air was full of tobacco smoke, the powerful aroma of Scotch and, most disquietingly, an almost palpable aura of defeat.

Ryder said: ‘The scheme we have to propose is a highly dangerous one. It verges on the desperate, but there are degrees of desperation and it’s by no means as desperate as the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Success or failure depends entirely on the degree of co-operation we receive from every person in this nation whose duty is in any way concerned with the enforcement of the law, those not concerned directly with the law, even those, if need be, outside the law.’ He looked in turn at Barrow and Mitchell. ‘It’s of no consequence, gentlemen, but your jobs are on the line.’

Barrow said: ‘Let’s have it.’

‘My son will explain it to you. It is entirely his brainchild.’ Ryder smiled faintly. ‘To save you gentlemen any cerebral stress, he even has all the details worked out.’

Jeff explained. It took him no more than three minutes. When he had finished the expressions round the table ranged from the stunned, through incredulity, then intense consideration and finally, in Barrow’s case, the tentative dawning of hope where all hope had been abandoned.

Barrow whispered: ‘My God! I believe it could be done.’

‘It has to be done,’ Ryder said. ‘It means the instant and total co-operation of every police officer, every FBI officer, every CIA officer in the country. It means the scouring of every prison in the country and even if the man we require is a multiple murderer awaiting execution in Death Row he gets a free pardon. How long would it take?’

Barrow looked at Mitchell. ‘The hell with the hatchets. Bury them. Agreed?’ There was a fierce urgency in his voice. Mitchell didn’t answer: but he did nod. Barrow went on: ‘Organization is the name of the game. This is what we were born for.’

‘How long?’ Ryder repeated.

‘A day?’

‘Six hours Meantime, we can get the preliminaries under way.’

‘Six hours?’ Barrow smiled faintly. ‘It used to be the wartime motto of the Seabees that the impossible takes a little longer. Here, it would appear, it has to take a little shorter. You know, of course, that Muldoon has just had his third heart attack and is in Bethsheba hospital?’

‘I don’t care if you have to raise him from the dead. Without Muldoon we are nothing.’

At eight o’clock that evening it was announced over every TV and radio station in the country that at ten o’clock Western standard time — the times for the other zones were given — the President would be addressing the nation on a matter of the utmost national gravity which concerned an emergency unprecedented in the history of the Republic. As instructed, the announcement gave no further details. The brief and cryptic message was guaranteed to ensure the obsessive interest and compulsory viewing of every citizen in the Republic who was neither blind nor deaf nor both.

In the Adlerheim Morro and Dubois looked at each other and smiled. Morro reached out a hand for his bottle of Glenlivet.

In Los Angeles Ryder showed no reaction whatsoever, which was hardly surprising in view of the fact that he had helped draft the message himself. He asked Major Dunne for permission to borrow his helicopter and dispatched Jeff to pick up some specified articles from his, Ryder’s, home. Then he gave Sassoon a short list of other specified articles he required. Sassoon looked at him and said nothing. He just lifted a phone.

Exactly on ten the President appeared on TV screens throughout the country. Not even the first landing on the moon had attracted so vast a viewing — and listening — audience.

He had four men with him in the studio, and those he introduced as his Chief of Staff and the Secretaries of State, Defense and Treasury, which seemed largely superfluous as all of them were nationally- and indeed internationally-known figures. Muldoon, the Secretary of the Treasury, was the one who caught the attention of everyone. Colour TV showed him for what he was, a very sick man indeed. His face was ashen and, surprisingly, almost haggard — surprisingly because, although not particularly tall, he was a man of enormous girth and, as he sat, his great stomach seemed almost to touch his knees. He was said to weigh 330 lbs, but his precise weight was irrelevant. What was truly remarkable about him was not that he had had three heart attacks but the fact that he had managed to survive any of them.

‘Citizens of America.’ The President’s deep, resonant voice was trembling, not with fear but with an outraged fury that he made no attempt to suppress. ‘You all know the great misfortune that has befallen, or is about to befall, our beloved State of California. Although the Government of these United States will never yield to coercion, threats or blackmail it is clear that we must employ every means in our power — and in this, the greatest country in the world, our resources are almost infinite — to avert the impending doom, the threatened holocaust that looms over the West.’ Even in the moments of the greatest stress he was incapable of talking in other than presidential language.

‘I hope the villainous architect of this monstrous scheme is listening to me, for, despite the best efforts — and those have been immense and indefatigable — of hundreds of our best law enforcement officers, his whereabouts remain a complete secret and I know of no other means whereby I can contact him. I trust, Morro, you are either watching or listening. I know I am in no position to bargain with you or threaten you’ — here the President’s voice broke off on an oddly strangled note and he was forced to have recourse to several gulps of water — ‘because you would appear to be an utterly ruthless criminal wholly devoid of even the slightest trace of humanitarian scruples.

‘But I suggest that it might be to our mutual advantage and that we might arrive at some mutually satisfactory arrangement if I, and my four senior government colleagues with me here, were to parlay with you and try to arrive at some solution to this unparalleled problem. Although it goes violently against the grain, against every principle dear to me and every citizen of this great nation, I suggest we meet at a time and a place, under whatever conditions you care to impose, at the earliest possible moment.’ The President had quite a bit more to say, most of it couched in ringingly patriotic terms which could have only deceived those mentally retarded beyond any hopes of recovery: but he had, in fact, said all that he had needed to.

In the Adlerheim the normally impassive and unemotional Dubois wiped tears from his eyes.

‘Never yield to coercion, threats or blackmail! No position to bargain or treat with us. Mutually satisfactory arrangement! Five billion dollars to begin with, perhaps? And then, of course, we proceed with our original plan?’ He poured out two more glasses of Glenlivet, handed one to Morro.

Morro sipped some of the whisky. He, too, was smiling but his voice, when he spoke, held an almost reverent tone.

‘We must have the helicopter camouflaged. Think of it, Abraham, my dear friend. The dream of a life-time come true. America on its knees.’ He sipped some more of his drink then, with his free hand, reached out for a microphone and began to dictate a message.

Barrow said to no one in particular: ‘I’ve always maintained that to be a successful politician you have to be a good actor. But to be a President you must be a superlative one. We must find some way to bend the rules of the world of the cinema. The man must have an Oscar.’

Sassoon said: ‘With a bar and crossed leaves.’

At eleven o’clock it was announced over TV and radio that a further message from Morro would be broadcast in an hour’s time.

At midnight Morro was on the air again. He tried to speak in his customary calm and authoritative voice, but beneath it were the overtones of a man aware that the world lay at his feet. The message was singularly brief.

‘I address this to the President of the United States. We’ — that ‘we’ had more of the royal than the editorial about it — ‘accede to your request. The conditions of the meeting, which will be imposed entirely by us, will be announced tomorrow morning. We shall see what can be accomplished when two reasonable men meet and talk together.’ He sounded genuinely aware of his incredibly mendacious effrontery.

He went on in a portentous voice: ‘This proposed meeting in no way affects my intention to detonate the hydrogen device in the ocean tomorrow morning. Everybody — and that includes you, Mr President — must be convinced beyond all doubt that I have the indisputable power to carry out my promises.

‘With reference to my promises, I have to tell you that the devices I still intend to detonate on Saturday night will produce a series of enormous earthquakes that will have a cataclysmic effect beyond any natural disaster ever recorded in history. That is all.’

Barrow said. ‘Well, damn your eyes, Ryder, you were right again. About the earthquakes, I mean.’

Ryder said mildly: ‘That hardly seems to matter now.’ At 12.15 a.m. word came through from the AEC that the hydrogen bomb, code-named ‘Aunt Sally’, designed by Professors Burnett and Aachen, had a diameter of 4.73 inches.

That didn’t seem to matter at all.