The Golden Gate

FIVE

The centre section of the Golden Gate Bridge was fast assuming the appearance of an embryonic town, sprawling, inchoate and wholly disorganized as those burgeoning settlements tend to be, but none the less possessed of a vitality, a feverish restlessness that augured well for its expansive future. The fact that all the buildings were on wheels and that all the village elders, seated in solemn conclave, were immaculately dressed and had clearly never done a single day's physical toil in their collective lives, did little to detract from the curious impression that here were the pioneers pushing forwards the limits of the wild frontier.

There were three coaches and three police cars-the third had just brought Hendrix, Milton and Quarry. There were two large, glaze-windowed vehicles which bore the euphemistic legend 'Rest Room': painted in becoming red and yellow stripes they had been borrowed from an itinerant circus currently stopped-over in the city. There was an ambulance, which Branson had commandeered for purposes best known to himself, a large side-counter wagonette which had provided hot meals, a very large TV camera truck with its generator placed at a discreet hundred yards distance and, finally, a van that was unloading blankets, rugs and pillows to help ease the new settlers through the rigours of their first night.

There were, of course, the discordant, even jarring items. The helicopters, the tracked anti-aircraft guns, the patrolling aimed men, the army engineers at a distance on either side busily erecting steel barricades — those did tend to project a disturbing hint of violence to come. And yet they were not entirely alien there: so bizarre were the circumstances that the normal would have tended to look sadly out of place. The unreality of it all, when matched up against the outside world, had its own strange reality in this particular point in time and place. And for those participating in the scene, the reality of their situation was all too self-evident. No one smiled.

The cameras were in position, so were the hostages, the three newly arrived men and, behind them in the second row, sat the journalists. The photographers had taken up positions best suited to themselves, none of them more than a few feet distant from an armed guard. Facing them, in solitary splendour, sat Branson. Close by him on the ground lay a peculiar object, a length of heavy canvas with cone-shaped objects embedded in it: beside it lay a heavy metal box, its lid closed.

'I will not detain you unnecessarily, gentlemen,' Branson said. Whether or not he was enjoying his moment of glory, the knowledge that he held some of the most powerful men in the world at his complete mercy, the consciousness that a hundred million people were looking at and listening to him, was quite impossible to say. He was calm, relaxed, unnervingly confident of and in himself, but displaying no other visible emotion. 'You will have guessed why we all find ourselves here and why I am here.'

'The reason Why I'm here, I take it,' Quarry said.

'Exactly.'

'You will bear in mind that, unlike you, I am not a law unto myself. The final decision is not mine.'

'Appreciated.' Branson could have been conducting some urbane seminar in an Ivy college. 'That comes later. First things first, don't you think, Mr Quarry?'

'Money.'

'Money.'

'How much?' Quarry's reputation for disconcerting bluntness had been easily earned.

'One moment, Mr Secretary.' The President had his weaknesses no less than the two hundred million people for whom he was the elected head of state and high on the list was an almost pathological dislike of being upstaged. 'What do you want this money for, Branson?'

'What's that got to do with it — supposing it's any of your business?'

'It is my business. I must state categorically if you want it for any subversive activities, for any evil practices whatsoever, and especially for any anti-American activities — well, I tell you here and now that you can have my body first. Who am I compared to America?'

Branson nodded approval. 'Stoutly spoken, Mr President, especially considering the fact that you have left your speech-writers behind. I hear the voice of our founding fathers, the clarion call of the conscience that lies at the grass-roots of America. The Grand Old Party are going to love you for that. It should be worth another two million votes come November. However, quite apart from the fact that you don't mean a word you say, I have to reassure you that this money is required for purely apolitical purposes. It's for a private trust, in fact. Branson Enterprises, Inc. Me.'

The President wasn't a man to be easily knocked off stride — if he were he wouldn't have been President 'You have just mentioned the word "conscience". You have none?'

'I don't honestly know,' Branson said frankly. 'Where money is concerned, none. Most of the really wealthy men in the world are moral cripples, basically criminally-minded types who maintain a facade of spurious legality by hiring lawyers as morally crippled as they are themselves.' Branson appeared to muse. 'Multi-millionaires, politicians, lawyers — which of them lies furthest beyond the moral pale? But don't answer that — I may unintentionally be putting you in an invidious position. We're all rogues, whether under the hypocritical cover of legalism or out in the noon-day sun, like me. I just want some fast money fast and I reckon this is as good a way as any of getting it.'

Quarry said: 'We accept that you are an honest thief. Let us come to cases.'

'My reasonable demands?'

'The point, Mr Branson.'

Branson surveyed the Arabian oil barons-now without Iman who was in hospita — and the President. 'For this lot, on the hoof, in prime condition and no haggling about pennies — three hundred million dollars. That's a three followed by eight nothings.'

To the many million viewers throughout America it was immediately obvious that there had been a sound transmission breakdown. The silence, however, was more than compensated for by the wide and interesting variety of expressions registered on the faces of those on the screen, which ranged from total outrage through total incomprehension through total incredulity to total shock: indeed, in those few imperishable moments, sound would have been an unforgiveable intrusion. Predictably, in view of the fact that he was accustomed to dealing with figures which contained large numbers of zeros. Secretary of the Treasury Quarry was the first to recover.

'You did say what I thought I heard you say?'

'Three zero zero, comma, zero zero zero, comma, zero zero zero period. If you give me a blackboard and some chalk I'll write it out for you.'

'Preposterous! Lunatic! The man's mad, mad, mad.' The President, whose now puce colour showed up rather well on colour television, clenched his fist and looked round in vain for a table to bang it on. 'You know the penalty for this, Branson — kidnapping, blackmail, extortion under threats on a scale — '

'A scale quite unprecedented in the annals of crime?'

'Yes. On a scale quite — shut up! The death penalty can be invoked for treason — and this is high treason — and if it's the last thing I do — '

'That might be any moment. Rest assured, Mr President, that you won't be around to pull the switch. You better believe me.' He produced his pistol. 'As a token of my intent, how would you like a hundred million viewers to see you being shot through the knee-cap — then you really would need that cane of yours. It's a matter of indifference to me.' And in his voice there was a chilling indifference that carried far more conviction than the words themselves. The President unclenched his fist and seemed not so much to sink into his chair as to deflate into it. The puce was assuming a greyish hue.

'You people have to learn to think big,' Branson went on. 'This is the United States of America, the richest country in the world, not a banana republic. What's three hundred million dollars? A couple of Polaris submarines? A tiny fraction of what it cost to send a man to the moon? A fraction of one per cent of the gross national product? If I take one drop from the American bucket who's going to miss it — but if I'm not allowed to take it then a lot of people are going to miss you, Mr President, and your Arabian friends.'

'And to think what you are going to lose, you and America. Ten times that, a hundred times that? To start with the San Rafael refinery deal will fall through. Your hopes of becoming a most favoured nation receiving oil at rock-bottom prices are gone for ever. In fact, if their Highnesses fail to return to their homeland it is certain that a total oil embargo would be placed on the States which would send the country into a bottomless recession which would make 1929 look like a Sunday afternoon picnic.' He looked at Hansen, the energy czar 'You would agree, Mr Hansen?'

Clearly, the last thing that Haosen wanted to do was to agree with anyone. His nervous tics were rapidly assuming the proportions of a St Vitus's Dance. Head darting, he looked around for succour in his hour of need. He swallowed, he coughed into his hands, he looked imploringly at the President and seemed almost on the point of breaking down when the Secretary of the Treasury came to his rescue.

Quarry said: 'I would read the future the same way.'

'Thank you.'

The King raised his hand. 'A word, if you will.' The King was a man of a very different calibre to the President. As one who had to remove, permanently more often than not, quite a number of his closest relatives in order to get his crown, the rough and tumble of life was hardly a new experience for him: he had lived with violence all his life and would very probably die with or because of it.

'Of course.'

'Only the blind have their eyes closed to reality. I am not blind. The President will pay.' The President had no comment to make on this generous offer: he was staring down at the roadway like a fortune teller peering into his crystal ball and not wanting to tell his client what he sees there.

'Thank you, your Highness.'

'You will of course be hunted down and killed afterwards no matter where you may seek to hide in the world. Even if you were to kill me now your death is already as certain as tomorrow's sun.'

Branson was unconcerned. 'As long as I have you, your Highness, I have no worries on that score. I should imagine that any of your subjects who as much as endangered your life far less being responsible for your losing it would find himself rather precipitately in paradise — if regicides go to paradise, which I don't think should be allowed. And I hardly think you're the type of man to run to the side of the bridge now and jump over in order to incite the faithful to come after me with their long knives.'

'Indeed.' The hooded eyes were unblinking. 'And what if I were not the sort of person you think I am?'

'If you were to jump — or try to?' Again the chilling indifference. 'Why do you think I have a doctor and ambulance here? Van Effen, if anyone is as misguided as to make a break for it — what are your instructions?'

Van Effen matched the indifference. 'Chop his foot off with my machine-pistol. The doctor will fix him up.'

'We might even — eventually — provide you with an artificial foot. You're worth nothing to me dead, your Highness.' The hooded eyes had closed. 'Well, the ransom figure? Agreed? No objectors? Splendid. Well, that's for starters.'

'Starters?' It was General Cartland speaking and one could almost see the firing squad mirrored in his eyes. 'To begin with, that means. There's more. Two hundred million dollars more. That's what I want for the Golden Gate Bridge.'

This time the state of traumatic shock did not last quite so long — there is a limit to how much the human mind can take. The President raised his eyes from the depths of the bottomless pit he was scanning and said dully: 'Two hundred million dollars for the Golden Gate Bridge?'

'It's a bargain. At the price, practically a give-away. True, it cost only forty million to build and the asking price of two hundred million just exactly represents the five-fold inflation over the past forty years. But, money apart, think of the fearful cost of replacing it. Think of the noise, the dust, the pollution, the disruption to all the city traffic as all those thousands of tons of steel have to be brought in, of the tourists who will cripple the city's economy by staying away in their tens of thousands. Beautiful though San Francisco is, without the Golden Gate it would be like Mona Lisa without her smile. Think — and this is for a period of at least one year, perhaps two — of all those Marin County motorists who couldn't get to the city — it's a long long way round by the San Rafael bridge — or, come to that, the city motorists who couldn't get to Marin County. The hardship would be intolerable for everyone — except for the owners of the ferry-boat companies who would become millionaires. And who am I to grudge the entrepreneur the making of an honest dollar? Two hundred million dollars? Philanthropy, that's what it is.'

Quarry, the man accustomed to thinking in rows of noughts, said: 'If we do not accede to this monstrous request, what do you intend to do with the bridge? Take it away and pawn it somewhere?'

'I'm going to blow it up. A two-hundred-foot drop — it should be the most almighty splash the West Coast has ever seen.'

'Blow it up! Blow up the Golden Gate Bridge!' Mayor Morrison, whose normal boiling point was just above freezing, was on his feet, his face suffused with ungovernable anger and had launched himself at Branson before anyone realized what was happening, certainly before Branson had realized. In tens of millions of American homes they saw Branson being knocked backwards off his seat, his head striking heavily against the roadway as Morrison, all two hundred and twenty pounds of him, followed him down and struck at his face with berserker fury. Van Efien stepped forward and brought the butt of his machine-pistol down on Morrison's neck. He immediately swung round to cover the seated men with his gun but the precaution was superfluous, no one was showing any inclination to follow Morrison's example.

It was a full twenty seconds before Branson could sit up, and then only groggily. He accepted a pad of medical gauze and dabbed — at a smashed lip and a very bloody nose. He looked at Morrison, then at the doctor. 'How is he?'

The doctor carried out a brief examination. 'He'll be all right, he's not even concussed.' The doctor glanced at Van Effen without enthusiasm. 'Your friend seems to be able to judge those things to a nicety.'

'Practice,' Branson explained thickly. He accepted another gauze pad in place of the already blood-saturated one and rose unsteadily to his feet. 'Mayor Morrison doesn't knew his own strength.'

Van Effen said: 'What shall I do with him?'

'Leave him be. It's his city, it's his bridge. My fault — I just trod on a man's dreams.' He looked at Morrison consideringly. 'On second thoughts you'd better handcuff him — behind the back. Next time he might knock my head off my shoulders.'

General Cartland came to his feet and walked towards Branson. Van Effen levelled his gun menasingly but Cartland ignored him. He said to Branson: 'You fit to talk?'

'I'm fit to listen, anyway. He didn't get round to my ears.'

'I may be Chief of Staff but to trade I'm an army engineer. That means I know explosives. You can't blow up the bridge and you should know it. You'd require a wagon-load of explosives to bring down those towers. I don't see any wagon-load of explosives.'

'We don't need them.' He pointed to the thick canvas strap with the conical mounds embedded in it. 'You're the expert.'

Cartland looked at the strap, then at Branson, then at the seated watchers, then back at the strap again. Branson said: 'Suppose you tell them. My mouth hurts, I can't imagine why.'

Cartland took a long look at the massive towers and the cables suspended from them. He said to Branson: 'You have experimented?' Branson nodded. 'Successfully — or you wouldn't be here?' Branson nodded again.

Reluctantly, almost, Cartland turned to the seated hostages and journalists. 'I was wrong. I'm afraid Branson can indeed bring the bridge down. Those cones you see embedded in the canvas strap contain some conventional explosives — TNT amatol, anyway something of the requisite power. Those cones are called "bee-hives", and because of their concave bases are designed to direct at least eighty per cent of their explosive value inwards. The idea, I should imagine, is to wrap one of those canvas straps with its hundredweight or whatever of high explosive round one of the suspension cables, probably high up near the top of a tower.' He looked at Branson again. 'I should imagine you have four of those.' Branson nodded. 'And designed to fire simultaneously.' He turned back to the others. 'I'm afraid that would be it. Down it all comes.'

There was a brief silence, which must have been very nail-biting for TV watchers, a silence caused by the fact that Branson understandably didn't feel very much like speaking and the others couldn't think of very much to say. Cartland said eventually: 'How can you be sure they all go off together?'

'Simple. Radio wave that activates an electric cell that burns the wire in a mercury fulminate detonator. Up goes the primer and up goes the bee-hive. One's enough. The others go up by sympathetic detonation.'

Quarry said heavily: 'I suppose that ends your demands for the day?'

'Not quite.' Branson turned a palm up in an apologetic gesture. 'But it's only a trifle.'

'One wonders what you might consider a trifle.'

'A quarter of a million dollars.'

'Astonishing. By your standards, a grain of sand. And what might that be for?'

'My expenses.'

'Your expenses.' Quarry breathed deeply, twice. 'My God Branson, you are the piker to end all pikers.'

'I'm used to people calling me names.' He shrugged. 'I don't hurt so easily any more and one learns to take the rough with the smooth. Now, as to payment — you are going to pay me, aren't you?'

No one said whether they were going to pay him or not.

'I have to make arrangements with a friend in New York who has friends in certain European banks.' He looked at his watch. 'It's noon now so it's either eight or nine o'clock in Central Europe and all good Central European bankers knock off at six precisely. So I'd be greatly obliged if you'd let me have your decision by seven o'clock in the morning.'

Quarry said cautiously: 'What decision?'

'As to the availability of the funds and the form that they will take. Not that I care very much what they are, anything from Euro-dollars to stock in suitably selected off-shore funds. You, of all people, should find little problem in handling such things with a certain amount of discretion — witness, for instance, the hundreds of millions of dollars you've funded such organizations as the CIA for subversive activities overseas without the poor taxpayer being any the wiser. A childishly simple routine for your Treasury. Not that I care whether those funds are traceable or not: just as long as they are convertible.

'When my New York friend has informed us that those funds have all arrived at their several destinations — and that shouldn't take more than another twenty-four hours, say until noon the same day — we shall take our farewells of you. Our hostages will, of course, accompany us.'

'And where are you taking us?' Cartland demanded.

'You I'm not taking anywhere. The armed services may regard you as invaluable but your value to me as a bargaining counter is zero. Besides, you're the only man here who could conceivably cause me trouble. Not only are you a man of action but you're far too lean — let me have men about me that are fat and all that bit. The President and his three remaining oil friends. There's no harm in telling you that I have a friend in the Caribbean who is the President of an island that doesn't and never will have an extradition treaty with the United States. He's willing to put us up, bed and breakfast, for a million dollars a night.'

No one had anything to say to this. In terms of the sums of money that Branson had so recently been bandying about, it seemed a reasonable enough charge.

'One point,' Branson said. 'I did not mention that as from noon the following day — day after, tomorrow that is — there will be a penalty clause, an escalation charge you might call it, for every hour's delay in the reported lodgment of the funds. Two million dollars an hour.'

'You do place a certain value on your time, don't you, Mr Branson,' Quarry said.

'If I don't, who will? Would there be any more questions?'

'Yes,' Cartland said. "How do you propose to get to this island paradise of yours?'

'Fly there. How else? A ten-minute flight in our helicopters to the International Airport and we board our plane there.'

'You have all this arranged? You have a plane standing by?'

'Well, it doesn't know it's standing by but it will soon enough.'

'What plane?'

'Air Force 1, I believe you call it'

Even Cartland was shaken out of his habitual reserve. 'You mean you're going to hi-jack the Presidential Boeing?'

'Be reasonable, General. You surely can't expect your President to judder his way down to the Caribbean in a clapped-out DC5? It's the logical, the only way of transporting world leaders who are accustomed to the ultimate in luxury travel. We'll show them the latest films. Brief though their incarceration may be we'll make it as comfortable as possible for them. We might even get some more new films when we fly them back to the States again.'

'We?' Cartland said carefully.

'My friends and I. I feel it only right — no, more than that, our bounden duty — that we should see them safely back again. How any man of any sensitivity can bear to live in that monstrosity they call the White House I don't know but, after all, there's no place like home.'

Milton was equally careful. 'You mean you're going to set foot on American soil again?'

'My own, my native land. Why ever not? You disappoint me, Mr Milton.'

'I do?'

'You do. Apart from the Supreme Court and the Attorney General I would have thought that the Secretary of State would know as much about our law and constitution as any other man in the land.' There was silence. Branson looked around but there was still silence so he addressed himself to the Secretary again. 'Or don't you know that bit where it says that no man who has been granted a full and free pardon by the State for any crime, actual or alleged, can ever again be arraigned on that same charge?'

It took at least ten seconds for the full implications to dawn and it was then that the Potomac, in the person of the Chief Executive, burst its banks. It was also then that the President lost twice the number of the putative votes he might have gained from his earlier statement that he would sacrifice himself for America. He oould hardly be blamed. Devious some politicians may be and others are armoured in pachydermal hides: but never had the President encountered such Machiavellian effrontery. Even Presidents may be forgiven the odd earthy turn of phrase within the privacy of their own four walls but they customarily abjure such phraseology when addressing the electorate. But, momentarily, the President had totally forgotten the fact that he was, in effect, addressing the electorate: he was appealing to a mindless heaven for justice. And it was in that direction that his anguished face was lifted as he stood there, arms rigidly outstretched and fists clenched, his face assuming a peculiarly purplish hue.

'Half a deleted billion dollars! And a deleted full and free pardon I God al-deleted-mighty!' He lowered his gaze from the cloudless sky and turned the full fury of his wrath on Branson who, disappointingly, had not been struck down by a bolt from heaven.

Branson murmured to the doctor: 'You have your cardiac arrest unit handy?'

'This is not funny.'

The President warmed to his theme. 'You evil twisted deleted bastard! If you imagine — '

Cartland, belatedly, reached his side, touched his arm and whispered urgently: 'You're on television, sir.'

The President, cut off in mid-expletive, looked at him, screwed his eyes shut in sudden comprehension, opened them again, looked the camera squarely in the eye and addressed it in measured tones.

'I, as the elected representative and Chief Executive of the American people, will not stand for this vile blackmail, the machinations of this evil and amoral man. The American people will not stand for it Democracy will not stand for it. Come what may we shall fight this cancer in our midst — '

'How?' Branson asked.

'How?' The President tried manfully to control his blood pressure at the thought of this but full rationality had not yet returned to him. 'The entire resources of every investigative agency in those United States of ours, the entire weight of the armed forces the full majesty of law and order will be brought to bear — '

'You're not up for re-election for six months yet. How?'

'When I have consulted with the senior members of my cabinet — '

'You're through with consulting anyone, except on my say-so. A full and free pardon. If not, your stay on this tropical island may be indefinitely extended. Most of the island, as I say, is pretty close to paradise: but there's a small stockaded section in one corner of the island that's been modelled rather closely on the Devil's Island that used to be. The Generalissimo has to have some place for his political dissidents, and as he doesn't care for them overly much the majority of them never emerge again. It's a combination of hard labour, fever and starvation. I somehow don't see the King here with a pickaxe in his hand. Nor yourself for that matter.'

'And instead of waffling on about the nation's moral rectitude, you might give thought to another possible predicament of your guests here. It is no secret that both the King and Prince have trusted Government ministers and relatives who are just yearning to try their thrones for size. If your friends' stay in the Caribbean were to be unduly prolonged, one rather suspects that they would have neither kingdom nor sheikhdom to return to. You appreciate, of course, that American opinion would never let you deal with their usurpers — especially as you would be the one held to blame for it. Bang goes November. Bang goes San Rafael. Here comes either redoubled oil prices or a total embargo and, in either case, a disastrous recession. You won't even rate a footnote in history. At best, if they ever get round to compiling a list of history's most stupid and disastrous national leaders, then you have a fair chance of making the Guinness Book of Records. But history itself? No.'

'You have quite finished?' The President's anger had seemingly evaporated and he had attained a curious sort of resigned dignity.

'For the moment.' Branson motioned to the TV cameramen that the performance was over.

'May I have a word with the King, Prince, my governmental colleagues and the Chief of Police?'

'Why not? Especially if it helps you to arrive at your decision more quickly.'

'In privacy?'

'Certainly. Your coach.'

'In the strictest privacy?'

The guard will remain outside. As you know, the coach is sound-proof. The strictest privacy, I promise you.'

They moved away, leaving Branson alone. He beckoned Chrysler, his tele-communications expert.

'Is the bug in the Presidential coach activated?'

'Permanently.'

'Our friends are having a top-level secret discussion in there. Wouldn't you care to have a rest in our coach? You must be tired.'

'Very tired, Mr Branson.'

Chrysler made his way to the rear coach and sat by the driver's seat in front of the console. He made a switch and lifted a single ear-phone. Apparently satisfied with what he heard he replaced the ear-phone and made another switch. A tape recorder started humming.

April Wednesday said to Revson: 'Well, what did you make of that?'

'I'd love to see the Nielsen ratings when they re-run that later in the day.' They were walking to and fro along the western or deserted side of the bridge. 'What a cast. Rehearsals would have ruined it.'

'You know I don't mean that'

'I know. He's quite a boy, our Peter Branson. Highly intelligent — but we know that already — all the angles figured, every eventuality taken care of far in advance, he'd have made an excellent general. You could — at least I could — almost like and admire the guy, except for the fact that, the odd half billion apart, he plainly does this for kicks, he's a moral vacuum and the ordinary standards of right and wrong just do not hold good for him, they simply don't exist. There's something strangely empty about him.'

'His bank-book isn't going to be. But I didn't mean that either.'

'I know that too. In answer to your unspoken question, yes he has us helpless.'

'Do you intend to do anything about it?'

'Intentions are one thing, achievements another.'

'Well, you just can't walk up and down there doing nothing. After what you told me this morning — '

'I know what I told you this morning. A little respectful silence, if you please. Can't you see I'm thinking?'

After some little time he said: 'I've thought'

'I can't wait.'

'Have you ever been sick?'

She lifted her brows which had the effect of making the huge green eyes larger than ever. With those eyes, Revson reflected, she could wreck a cardinals' council in nothing flat. To keep his mind on the work on hand, he looked away. She said: 'Of course I've been sick. Everybody's been sick some time.'

'I mean really sick. Hospital. Like that.'

'No. Not ever.'

'You're going to be very soon. In hospital. Sick. If you're still prepared to help, that is.'

'I've told you that already.'

'Asperity ill becomes a lovely lady. There's quite an element of risk. If you're caught, Branson would make you talk. Half a billion dollars is a lot of money to have at stake. You'd talk very quickly.'

'Even more quickly than that. I'm not one of your wartime resistance heroines and I don't like pain. Caught at what?'

'Delivering a letter for me. Leave me alone for a few minutes, will you.'

Revson unshipped his camera and took some still shots, of the coaches, helicopters, anti-aircraft guns and guards, trying as much as possible to keep the southern tower and the San Franciscan skyline in the background, clearly a dedicated craftsman at work. He then turned his attention and lens towards the ambulance and the white-jacketed doctor leaning against it.

The doctor said: 'Instant fame for me, is it?'

'What else? Everyone wants to be immortalized.'

'Not this doctor. And an ambulance you can film anywhere.'

'You need psychiatric help.' Revson lowered his camera. 'Don't you know that it's positively anti-social in this country not to want to hog the camera lens? My name's Revson.'

'O'Hare.' O'Hare was youthful, cheerful, red-haired and his Irish ancestry lay no more than a generation behind him.

'And what do you think of this lovely little set-up?'

'For quotation?'

'I'm a cameraman.'

'Aw, hell, quote me if you want. I'd just love to belt smarty-pants's ears off.'

'It figures.'

'What?'

'The red hair.'

'I'd feel the same if I were black, blond or bald as a coot. Arrogant smoothies do something to me. And I don't like the way he needles the President and publicly humiliates him.'

'You're a President man, then?'

'Hell, he's a Californian, I'm a Californian, I voted for him last time and I'll do so next time. Okay, so he's stuffy and over-does the kindly uncle bit but he's the best we have. Not that that says a great deal-but, well, he's really a decent old stick.'

'Decent old stick?'

'Don't blame me, I was educated in England.'

'Would you like to help him?'

O'Hare looked at Revson thoughtfully. 'Funny question. Sure I would.'

'Would you help me to help him?'

'How can you help him?'

'I'll try and I'll tell you how — if you say "yes", that is.'

'And what makes you think you can help more than anyone else?'

'Special qualifications. I'm a Government employee.'

'So what's with the camera, then?'

'And I always thought it took a fair amount of intelligence to qualify as a doctor. What do you expect me to be carrying — a foot-wide plaque on my chest saying "I am an FBI agent"?'

O'Hare smiled, but only faintly. 'Well, no. But the story is that all the FBI men were left asleep in a down-town garage. Except for a few on the press coach who were rousted out and marched off the bridge.'

'We don't put all our eggs in one basket.'

'And agents don't usually disclose their identity either.'

'Not this agent. I'd disclose my identity to anyone if I were in trouble. And I'm in trouble now.'

'As long as it's not unethical — '

'I wouldn't bring a blush to the Hippocratic cheek. That guaranteed, would you consider it unethical to help put Branson behind bars?'

'Is that guaranteed too?

'No.'

'Count on me. What do you want done?'

'We have a lady photographer with us who is young, rather beautiful, by the unlikely name of April Wednesday.'

'Ha!' O'Hare brightened considerably. 'The green-eyed blonde.'

'Indeed. I want her to take a message ashore, if that's the word, for me and bring me back an answer within a couple of hours. I propose to code this message, film it and give you the spool. It's about half the size of a cigarette and I'm sure you can easily conceal it in one of the many tubes and cartons you must carry about with you. Anyway, no one questions a doctor's integrity.'

'Don't they, now?' O'Hare spoke with some feeling.

'There's no hurry. I'll have to wait till Messrs Milton, Quarry and Hendrix have been escorted off the bridge. By which time, too, I expect that the trusty Mr Hagenbach will have arrived from wherever he has been lurking.'

'Hagenbach? You mean this old twister — '

'You are referring to my respected employer. Now, this is just an ambulance. Apart from your usual medical kit, heart unit, oxygen kit to stitch together the misguided who step out of line, I don't suppose you carry anything much more sophisticated.' O'Hare shook his head.

'So you don't have any radiological gear or clinical investigative equipment and most certainly not operational facilities, even if you did have an anaesthetist, which you haven't. I suggest then that, when Miss Wednesday takes most painfully ill in about an hour or so, you diagnose something that may demand, or may not demand — doctors can't take chances — immediate hospital diagnosis and possible surgery. Something like a grumbling appendix or suspected peritonitis or such-like. Don't ask me.'

'I wouldn't.' O'Hare looked at Revson with some disfavour. 'You seem to be unaware that even the rawest intern, no matter how damp behind the ears, can diagnose appendicitis with his hands, figuratively, in his pockets.'

'I am aware. But I'm damned if I could do it. And I'm pretty certain that no one else on this bridge could do it either.'

'You have a point. Right. But you'll have to give me fifteen to twenty minutes' notice — before I call in Branson or whoever. The odd job or two to induce the proper symptoms. No danger.'

'Miss Wednesday has just informed me that she is allergic to pain.'

'She won't feel a thing,' O'Hare said in his best dentist's voice. 'Besides, it's for the homeland.' He looked at Revson consideringly. 'I believe you gentlemen of the press are handing your stuff over at the south barrier in two hours' time. Couldn't it wait till then?'

'And get my answer back by carrier pigeon next week. I want it this afternoon.'

'You are in a hurry.'

'During the war — World War Two, that is — Winston Churchill used to annotate all instructions to his military and governmental staff with just three scribbled words: "Action this day". I am a great admirer of Sir Winston.'

He left the slightly bemused O'Hare and returned to April Wednesday. He told her that O'Hare had okayed his request and her first question was: 'Want I should bring back a miniaturized transceiver radio?'

He gave her a kind look. 'Thoughtful, but no. Electronic surveillance of all kinds can hardly be your province. Such a transceiver I have, screwed into the base of my camera. But that little revolving disc above the villains' coach means only one thing — they have an automatic radio-wave scanner. They'd pick me up in five seconds. Now listen carefully and I'll tell you exactly what I want you to do and how I want you to behave.'

When he had finished she said: 'Understand. But I don't much care for the thought of the kindly healer there running amok with his hypodermic.'

'You won't feel a thing,' Revson said soothingly. 'Besides, it's for the fatherland.'

He left her and walked casually across to the press coach. The imperial conference in the Presidential coach was still in full plenary session, and though the speech inside was wholly inaudible from where Revson stood it was clear from the gestures and expressions of those inside that all they had succeeded in reaching so far was a marked degree of difference in opinion. Their problem, Revson reflected, was hardly one susceptible to the ready formation of a consensus of opinion. Branson and Chrysler were up front in the rear coach, apparently dozing, which they probably weren't — though it wouldn't have mattered very much if they were, for alert guards were very much in evidence patrolling between the freshly-painted boundary lines on the bridge. Members of the various news media stood around in groups, wearing an air of almost hushed anticipation as if expecting the next momentous occasion to happen along any second now, which seemed as likely as not.

Revson entered the press coach. It was deserted. He made his way to his own seat, unshipped his camera, produced a pad and felt pen and began, quickly and without hesitation, to write what was apparently pure gibberish. There were those who were lost without their code-books but Revson was not one of them.