The Golden Gate

FOUR

Paul Revson surfaced slowly, almost reluctandy, to a state of consciousness. His eyelids felt leaden, his head fuzzy and he thought that he had gone slightly deaf. Otherwise he felt no after-effects from having been gassed — he knew he must have been gassed but everything had happened so quickly after the explosion under the driver's feet that he had no clear recollection of what had happened. As his eyesight cleared he looked around him. By his side a girl with a mop of blonde hair was huddled forward against the back of the seat before her, her neck twisted at an uncomfortable angle. Some people, he saw, were lying in the aisle, apparently asleep. A score of others were still in their seats, all resting at the moat uncomfortable angles: some of them, like himself, were just beginning to stir. He peered through the coach window, blinked unbelievingly, then stared again. As a born and bred San Franciscan it took him nothing flat to realize that their coach was halted almost squarely in the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge. It was a circumstance, he felt, which called for some explanation.

He turned his immediate attention to the girl at his side. She was worth anyone's attention. She was possessed of a slight figure, hardly strong enough, one would have thought, to lug around the heavy ciné camera which, shoulder-slung, accompanied her everywhere. Her blonde hair was so bleached — naturally, Revson thought-that it almost qualified for the description of platinum, and she was quite beautiful with a very pale skin that the sun never appeared to touch. She was, she had given him to understand, a fashion photographer for one of the major TV companies and as the official party of this Presidential trip was exclusively male it was rather difficult to understand just why she was there. It didn't make sense, but then, again, neither did most Presidential trips. Her name was equally preposterous. April Wednesday, she called herself, and her press card bore this out Revson could only assume that she had been born of singularly unimaginative parents who, as christening day approached, had seized upon the birth date as the easy way out.

He put his hands on her shoulders and gently pulled her upright. The blonde head lolled against his shoulder. He had no idea how to revive people who had suffered from some form of gas poisoning. Should he shake her, slap her cheek gently or just let her sleep it off? He was spared the resolution of this problem when she stirred, shivered for some reason or other — although she was clad in only a thin and markedly abbreviated green silk dress, the temperature in the bus must have been in the eighties — then opened her eyes and gazed unblinkingly at Revson's.

In a face not noticeably lacking other commendable features, those eyes were by far the most remarkable feature. They were huge, clear, of a startling deep sea-green and were possessed of an odd quality of purity and innocence. Revson wondered idly just how devious she was: any young woman who toted a camera for a TV company must have lost her innocence quite some time ago, assuming she was possessed of any in the first place.

She said, not taking her eyes from his: 'What happened?'

'At a guess, some joker must have let off a gas bomb. The instant effect variety. How do you feel?'

'Punch-drunk. Hung-over. You know what I mean?' He nodded. 'Why would anyone want to do a thing like that?'

'Why a lot of things.' He looked at his watch. 'Why after an hour and ten minutes, are we still stranded in the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge?'

'What!'

'Look around you.'

She looked around her, slowly acknowledging the reality of the surroundings. Suddenly she stiffened and caught hold of the hand that was still around her shoulders.

'Those two men across the aisle.' Her voice had dropped to a whisper. 'They're wearing handcuffs.'

Revson bent forward and looked. The two large and still sleeping men were undoubtedly wearing handcuffs.

'Why?' Again the whisper.

'How should I know why? I've just come to myself.'

'Well, then, why aren't we wearing them?'

'How should-we are among the blessed.' He looked over his shoulder and saw the Presidential coach parked just behind them. 'Excuse me. As a good journalist I think the odd probing question is in order.'

'I'm coming with you.'

'Sure.' She stepped into the aisle and he followed. Instead of moving directly after her he lifted the coat lapel of the nearest of the sleeping men. An empty shoulder holster was much in evidence. He followed the girl. At the front door he noticed that the driver, still sound asleep, was propped against the right-band front door, quite some distance from his seat: obviously, he hadn't made it there under his own steam.

He joined me girl on the bridge. A very large and extremely ugly policeman — Yonnie had the kind of face that would have given any force a bad name — was pointing a machine-pistol at them. That a policeman should be pointing a gun at them was peculiar enough. That a policeman should be armed with a machine-gun was even more peculiar. Most peculiar of all, however, was the spectacle of six scowling and clearly unhappy policemen standing in a line, each attached to the other by a pair of handcuffs.

April Wednesday stared at them in astonishment, then looked at Revson. He said: 'I agree. This would seem to call for some kind of explanation.'

'You'll have it.' Branson, walking easily, talking easily, had just appeared round the front of the Presidential bus. 'What's your name?'

'Revson.'

'Sorry about this. You too, young lady.'

'Helicopters!' she said.

'Yes, they are, arent they? Explanations will be forthcoming but not severally. When your friends have all come to then we'll have a little talk.' Branson walked away towards the rear coach. His step was almost jaunty and he did not seem too displeased with life. He looked at the bank of cloud moving in slowly, very slowly, from the west. If it troubled him he did not show it. He reached the crashed police car and spoke to the man standing guard. 'Have our four friends recovered, Chrysler?'

'Yes, sir. I wouldn't say they're in very high spirits, though.' Chrysler was a lean, dark, intelligent-looking young man and it only required the addition of a brief case to see him as an up-and-coming attorney. He was indeed, as Branson had told Boyann, a tele-communications expert. He was also very good with combination locks and frightening people with guns.

'I dare say. Let them stay in the car. Easier than getting them out and handcuffing them. When the four FBI men — at least from the fact that they were armed I assume they were FBI men — in the lead coach have come to take a couple of the boys and escort them, along with the six cops up front, the four here and the two inside our coach half-way towards the south tower. Sixteen in all and any one a potential menace if we keep them here. Half-way there take off whatever handcuffs there are — very useful things, handcuffs, you never know when we may need them again — then let them walk off the bridge under their own steam. Okay?'

'It's done.' He pointed to the west, to the slowly advancing bank of cloud. 'Do you like that, Mr Branson?'

'Could have done without it. We'll cope when it comes. Looks as if it may well pass under the bridge anyway.'

'Mr Branson.' It was Jensen, beckoning urgently from the front door of the rear coach. 'Mount Tamalpais. Urgent.'

Branson ran into the coach, seated himself in front of the console and lifted the microphone. 'Branson.'

'Giscard. We've picked up a blip. Coming from the south — well, a bit east of south. Light plane, looks like. Maybe eight miles out.'

'Thank you.' Branson made another switch. South and a little east. That could only be San Francisco International Airport. 'Chief of Police Hendrix. At once.'

Hendrix was on the phone in seconds. 'What now?'

'I told you to keep a clear air-space. Our radar's picked up a blip, airport direction — '

Hendrix interrupted. His voice was sour. 'You wanted to see Messrs Milton and Quarry, didn't you?' Milton was the Secretary for State, Quarry the Secretary of the Treasury. 'They came in from Los Angeles fifteen minutes ago and are flying up direct by helicopter.'

'Where are they landing?'

'In the Military Reservation in the Presidio. Two, three minutes by car.'

'Thanks.' Branson made the switch to Mount Tamalpais. Giscard acknowledged. Branson said: 'No sweat. Friends. But watch that scanner — the next one may not be a friend.'

'Will do. Mr Branson.'

Branson rose, made to leave the coach then stopped and looked at the bound man in the rear of the aisle. He said to Jensen, who had taken the place of the bound man: 'You can get back to calling yourself Harriman again. Untie Jensen here.'

'Sending him off the bridge?'

For once Branson hesitated and didn't like the feeling at all. Hesitation was not in his nature. Whether he arrived at decisions intellectually or instinctively he almost invariably did so immediately: the few mistakes he'd made in his life had invariably been associated with hesitation. He made up his mind.

'Well keep him. He might come in useful, I don't know how yet, but he just might. And he is deputy director of the FBI. He's no minnow to have in our net. Tell him the score but keep him here until I give the word.'

He left and walked towards the lead coach. At least a score of people were lined up outside the coach under the watchful eyes and guns of Yonnie and his two colleagues. They had, understandably, a general air of bafflement about them. Branson saw that included among them were four handcuffed men. He looked inside the coach, saw that it was empty, and turned to Peters.

'Take those four gentlemen with the handcuffs and the six policemen down to Chrysler. He'll know what to do with them.'

He turned to look at the oncoming fog. Close-up, it was coming in a deal faster than it had seemed at a distance. But it was a low bank: with luck it would pass under the bridge. Even if it didn't, he imagined that they could cope by using suitable threats against the President and his friends, but he wouldn't feel really happy about those intermittent fogs until the steel barriers were in position at either end of the bridge.

He turned and looked at the correspondents. There were four women among them but only one of them, the green-eyed blonde with Revson, could truthfully have claimed to have been a post-war baby — World War Two, that was.

'You can all relax,' Branson said. 'No harm is going to come to any of you. In fact, when I have finished you'll be given a free choice-to walk off the bridge in safety or stay aboard the bridge, equally in safety.' He smiled his generous empty smile. 'I somehow fancy that most of you will elect to stay. When I have finished you will realize, I hope, that a story like this does not fall into your laps every week.'

When he had finished, not one of those frantically scribbling and furiously camera-clicking journalists and photographers was under any doubt whatsoever: a story like this fell into their laps once in a lifetime, if they had the luck to have a very long life, that was. Physical violence would have been required to remove any of them from the Golden Gate Bridge. They were slap bang in the middle of an unprecedented episode in criminal history and one that bade fair to become part of the more general history of their times.

The fog had reached the bridge now, but not enveloped it. Thin wisps of it drifted over the top but the main body of the fog rolled by twenty feet below the bridge: the effect was to produce an odd feeling of weightlessness, of suspension in space, as if the bridge was afloat on the insubstantial bedrock of water vapour.

Branson said: 'You have elected to remain so you must accept some guide rules. In the rear coach there are three telephone lines to town. Those are for my own personal and emergency use but you will be allowed to use them once — to contact your photographic services, newspapers, wire services or whatever to arrange for a representative to be stationed at the southern end of the bridge to pick up your dispatches and photographs. This can be done three times a day at times yet to be arranged. Markers will be arranged in an oblong around the Presidential coach and no one will cross those without permission. No one will interview any person inside the Presidential coach without my permission or the consent of the party concerned: it would be more satisfactory all round and fairer to all concerned if, say, the President were to hold a press conference out here, but that I cannot and will not force anyone to do. The helicopters will be similarly cordoned off and that will also be forbidden territory. Twenty yards south of my coach and twenty yards north of yours white lines will be painted across the bridge. Those will be your demarcation limits. Five yards beyond those lines will be a guard with a machine-pistol and his orders will be not to warn but to shoot anyone who steps over those lines. Finally, you will be confined to your coach during the hours of darkness: this rule will only be relaxed if some particularly newsworthy happening occurs. I will be the judge of what is newsworthy. Anyone unwilling to abide by those ground rules may leave now.'

Nobody left.

'Any questions?' Branson watched the fog roll eastwards, obscuring Alcatraz Island, as the newsmen conferred among themselves. Two men took a step forward. Both were middle-aged, dressed in well-cut, conservative suits, one almost completely bald, the other with grizzled hair and beard, both inordinately bushy. The bald man said: 'We have.'

'Your names?'

'I'm Grafton — AP. This is Dougan — Reuters.'

Branson regarded them with an interest that was pointless to conceal. Those two could reach more newspapers worldwide than all the rest put together. 'And the question?'

'We would be right in saying, Mr Branson, that you didn't exactly get up this morning and say "This would be a fine day for kidnapping the President of the United States"?'

'You would.'

Dougan said: 'This operation bears all the hallmarks of long and meticulous planning. Without condoning your actions one has to admit that you appear to have left nothing to chance and have foreseen every eventuality. How long did the planning take?'

'Three months.'

'That's not possible. The details of this itinerary were released only four days ago.'

'The details were known in Washington three months ago.'

Grafton said: 'On the evidence before us we have to believe you. Why do you think this was kept under wraps so long?'

'In order to obviate the possibility of people like me doing exactly what I have done.'

'How did you get the advance information?'

'I bought it.'

'How? Where?'

'In Washington, as in many other places, thirty thousand dollars buys a lot of information.'

Dougan said: 'Would you care to name names?'

'That's a stupid question. Any others?'

A dark-suited lady of indeterminate years said: 'Yes. Here we have all the signs of a highly experienced professionalism. We can assume that this is not your first foray outside the law?'

Branson smiled. 'You may assume what you like. What's past is prologue.'

She persisted. 'Do you have a criminal record, Mr Branson?'

'I have never been in court in my life. Anything else?'

'Of course.' It was Dougan. 'The thing that we all want to know. Why?'

'That you will find out in the course of a press conference I shall be holding within two hours. At the conference will be a TV camera and crew representing the three main companies. Also present will be the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Treasury. Vice-President Richards we expect later but not in time for the conference.'

Experienced newsmen and newswomen though they were they appeared to be at a temporary loss for words. Finally Dougan said carefully: 'Would it be true to say of you that you subscribe to the belief that if a thing is worth doing it's worth doing well?'

'A pragmatic philosophy, but it works. You may now use the telephones in my coach. Three at a time.'

Branson turned away and took a step towards the Presidential coach when Yonnie's voice stopped him.

'Jesus!' Yonnie, mouth inelegantly agape, was staring out to the west. 'You see what I see, Mr Branson?'

Branson saw what he saw. Not much more than half a mile away the fog-bank came to an abrupt end as if it had been sliced off by a cleaver. Less than a mile beyond that again could be seen the superstructure of a very large vessel indeed. Although the hull of the vessel was still hidden by the fog-bank there was, from what could be seen of it, very little doubt as to its identity. Branson stood still for a second or two, ran for the Presidential coach, entered, hurried down the aisle oblivious to curious stares of the seated men and said quickly to Boyann: 'Hendrix. Hurry!' He indicated a phone in a recess beside the console. 'That one.'

Hendrix was on the line immediately. When Branson spoke his voice was cold, almost savage, a marked departure from the norm: even Branson had defences that could be breached.

'Hendrix. Want I should send the President's ears now?'

'What the hell do you mean?'

'What do you mean? Or is that little paddleboat just out there by happenstance? Call it off.'

'God's sake, call what off?'

Branson spoke his words clearly and spaced them distinctly.

'There is a very large battleship approaching the Golden Gate Bridge. I don't want it to approach. I don't know what you have in mind but I don't think I would like it. Call it off!'

'I just don't know what you're talking about. Hold on.' While the line was silent Branson beckoned to Van Effen, who approached down the aisle.

Branson said quickly: 'There's a battleship approaching the bridge. Trouble? I don't know. What I do know is I want everybody under cover at once, the press in their own coach, our men in ours. Doors to be closed. Then come back at once.'

Van Effen nodded to where a red-haired young man was standing by the driver's seat, his hand resting on a pistol that was stuck in his belt Think Bradford can manage?'

Branson pulled out his own pistol and laid it in the telephone recess. 'I'm here too. Hurry.' He was vaguely disappointed in Van Effen. Bradford could have carried out his warder duties just as effectively by going outside and standing near the door but for the creation of the properly threatening climate of menace and intimidation it was better that he remain in the full view of the captives. Then Hendrix was on the phone again.

'That is the battleship USS New Jersey. San Francisco is her home base for several months of the year. This is one of her regular fuel and food reprovisioning returns to base. She's coming at this particular time because she can only get under the bridge at low tide.'

That much, Branson knew, was true. The tide, he had observed, was out and it seemed highly unlikely that the authorities could whistle up a battleship at such short notice — less than two hours. And it was difficult to see what use could be made of it — certainly they were unlikely to blow up the bridge with the President on it. But Branson had a profound distrust of his fellow man, which was one of the reasons he had survived so long. He said: 'Stop it. It's not to come under the bridge. Want I should throw one of your oil boys on to its bridge as it passes beneath?'

'For God's sake, are you a nut, a complete madman?' Branson smiled to himself, the sharp edge of anxiety in Hendrix's voice was unmistakable. 'We're trying to raise him.'

Correspondents and guards alike were crowding the western side of the bridge fascinated by the approach of the giant battleship. Although reason said that there was no danger in the battleship's passing under the bridge there was a growing degree of tension among the spectators. The superstructure towered so high that it seemed certain that some sections of it must inevitably strike the bridge and this feeling existed in spite of the elementary reasoning which would have reassured them that the ship must have made the same passage many times in the past and the Navy was not in the habit of putting at risk some hundred million dollar battleship in a let's-try-it-and-see effort.

One person showed no apparent interest in the approach of the New Jersey. Revson, alone in the front coach, was intent on securing a considerable length of green cord, so slender as to be hardly more than the thickness of a stout thread, to a black cylinder about eight inches in length and one in diameter. He thrust both cylinder and cord into the capacious pocket of his bush jacket, left the bus, took a bearing on the approaching superstructure of the battleship and wandered casually round to the right-hand side of the coach. As he did so he could see Van Effen hurrying across to the far side of the bridge where the spectators were grouped. What Van Effen's purpose was he couldn't be sure but there was an urgency behind his half-trot that told Revson that the time at his own disposal might be very short.

He forced himself not to hurry but sauntered towards the east side of the bridge. No one took any notice of him because there was no one there to do so. He leant casually against the side and as casually withdrew cylinder and cord from his pocket. He glanced, seemingly aimlessly, around him, but if he were arousing cause for suspicion no one was giving any indication of this. Swiftly, without moving either hands or elbows, he let some hundred feet slide through his fingers then secured the cord to a strut. He trusted his estimate of length was reasonably accurate then dismissed the thought: what was done was done. He returned leisurely to the coach, took his seat and transferred what was left of the green cord to the bottom of April Wednesday's carry-all. If his dangling cord were discovered and a search of their personal belongings carried out he would rather that the cord be discovered elsewhere than in his possession. Even if it were found in her bag he doubted whether she would come to any harm. She'd been on the other side of the bridge since the New Jersey had first appeared behind the bank of cloud and there would be sufficient witnesses to attest to that: April Wednesday was the sort of person whose absence would not go lightly unremarked. Even if she were to find herself in trouble that he could bear with fortitude: he didn't care who came under suspicion as long as it was not himself,

'You have to believe me, Branson.' Hendrix's voice could hardly have been said to carry a note of pleading, an alien exercise to a man of his nature, but there was no questioning the earnestness, the total sincerity in the tone. 'The New Jersey's captain has heard no news of what happened and he thinks it all an elaborate joke at his expense. You can't blame him. He sees the damned bridge standing safe and sound as it's stood for forty years. Why should anything be wrong?'

'Keep trying.'

Van Effen entered and closed the door of the Presidential coach securely behind him. He approached Branson.

'All safely corralled. Why?'

'I wish I knew. Almost certainly Hendrix is right and this is just sheer coincidence. But on the one chance in a hundred that it isn't? What would they use? Not shells, no kind of high explosive. Gas Shells.'

'No such things.'

'Wrong. There are. They wouldn't mind temporarily knocking out the President and a few oil sheiks if they could saturate the centre of the bridge with some knock-out gas and lay us all low. Then the troops and police, like enough with gas-masks, could come and take us at their leisure. But the insulation is tight in those air-conditioned coaches.'

'It's pretty far-fetched.'

'And what we are doing is not? Wait' Hendrix was on the phone again.

'We've tried, Branson, and at last he agrees with us. But he refuses to do anything. Says he has too much way on and to try to take turning or reversing action at this stage would endanger both the battleship and the bridge. And he says his money would be on the New Jersey if it hit a tower. A forty-five-thousand-ton battering ram takes a lot of stopping.'

'You'd better pray, Hendrix.' Branson hung up and moved towards the centre of the coach, Van Effen behind him, and peered through the right-hand windows, waiting for the battleship's superstructure to reappear from under the bridge.

The President's voice was nothing if not testy. 'Just what is happening, Branson?'

'You know. The USS New Jersey is passing beneath us.'

'So? Doubtless going about its lawful occasions.'

'You'd better hope so. You'd better hope the captain doesn't start throwing things at us.'

'At us?' The President paused and pondered the possibility of an awful lese-majesty. 'At me?'

'We all know you're the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. At the moment, however, you're a bit isolated from the lower echelons. What happens if the captain considers it his duty to act upon his own initiative? Anyway, we'll soon find out. Here he comes now.'

The superstructure of the New Jersey had moved into view. All nine of the seated captives struggled to their feet and crowded close to the right-hand windows. One of them crowded very closely indeed on Branson who suddenly became aware of something, obviously metallic, jabbing painfully into his left kidney.

'Initiative, you said, Mr Branson.' It was Sheikh Iman, the one with the beard, and — he was still beaming. 'Your own gun. Tell your men to drop theirs.'

'Good man!' There was triumph in the President's voice and an element of vindictiveness that the voters wouldn't have liked at all.

Branson said patiently: 'Put that gun away. Don't you know when you're dealing with professionals?'

He turned around slowly and Iman proved Branson's implied point that he was not a professional by letting Branson hold his gaze for all of a second. A gun boomed, Iman shrieked in pain, dropped his gun and clutched a shattered shoulder. Sheikh Kharan stooped swiftly to retrieve the gun from the floor and cried out in agony as Branson's heel crushed his hand against the metal: a peculiar crackling splintering sound left no doubt that several of Kharan's fingers had been broken. Branson picked up his gun.

Van Effen was apologetic but not unduly so. Had to, I'm afraid, Mr Branson. If I'd warned him — well, I didn't want any gunfight in the OK corral with all those nasty ricochets from the bullet-proof glass. He might have done himself an injury.'

'Quite right' Branson looked through the window again. The New Jersey was now almost a half mile away and its captain was obviously not in a belligerent mood. Branson turned away and spoke to Bradford.

'Go to our coach and fetch the first-aid box. Bring Peters.'

'Peters, Mr Branson?'

'Used to be field corpsman. Take your seats, gentlemen.' Unhappily, they took their seats: the President, in particular, looked especially deflated. Branson wondered briefly just how hollow a man he might be then dismissed the line of thought as unprofitable. 'I dont think I have to warn you not to try anything so silly again.' He went to the communications console and picked up the phone. 'Hendrix?'

'Here. Satisfied now?'

'Yes. Warn the harbour-master or whoever the responsible official is that there is to be no more traffic under the bridge. Either way.'

'No more traffic? You'll bring the entire port to a standstill. And the fishing fleet — '

'The fishing fleet can go fish in the bay. Send an ambulance and a doctor and do it quickly. A couple of men here have gotten themselves hurt, one badly.'

'Who? How?'

'The oil ministers — Iman and Kharan. Self-inflicted injuries, you might say.' As he spoke Branson watched Peters hurry into me coach, approach Iman and start scissoring away the sleeve of his coat 'There will be a TV van coming to the bridge soon. Let it through. I also want some chairs brought on to the bridge — forty should do.'

'Chairs?'

'You dont have to buy them,' Branson said patiently. 'Confiscate them from the nearest restaurant. Forty.'

'Chairs?'

'Things you sit on. I'm going to hold a news conference in an hour or so. You don't stand around at news conferences. You sit around.'

Hendrix said carefully: 'You're going to hold a news conference and you're going to televise it live?'

'That's it. Natiton-wide.'

'You're out of your mind.'

'My mental health is my concern. Milton and Quarry there yet?'

'You mean the Secretary and the Secretary of the Treasury?'

'I mean Milton and Quarry.'

'They've just arrived and are with me now.'

Hendrix looked at the two men who were with him then inside the big mobile communications van. Milton, the Secretary of State, was a tall, thin, dyspeptic character with no hair, rimless steel-legged glasses and an enviable reputation in Foreign Offices around the world: Quarry, white-haired, plump and cheerful, had a kindly avuncular air about him which many men, even some very highly intelligent ones, had taken to be a reflection of the true personality of the man: his reputation as a banker and economist stood as high as that of Milton in his field.

Milton said: 'It would be easy to say "he's quite crazy, of course". Is he?'

Hendrix spread his hands. 'You know what they say. Crazy like a fox.'

'And violent, it would seem?'

'No. Violence he uses only as a last resort and even then only when pushed into a corner. Imasi and Kharan must have made the mistake of pushing him into a corner.'

Quarry said: 'You would seem to know a fair bit about him?'

Hendrix sighed. 'Every senior police officer in the States knows about him. And in Canada, Mexico and God knows how many South American countries.' Hendrix sounded bitter. 'So far he has spared Europe his attentions. It's only a matter of time, I'm sure.'

'What's his speciality?'

'Robbery. He robs trains, planes, armoured cars, banks and jewellers. Robbery, wherever possible, as I say, without violence.'

Quarry was dry. 'I gather he is quite successful?'

'Quite successful. To the best of our knowledge he has been operating for at least a dozen years and the lowest estimate of his takings in that time is twenty million dollars.'

'Twenty million!' For the first time there was a note of respect in Quarry's voice, the banker and economist in him surfacing. 'If he's got all that money, why does he want more?'

'Why do Niarchos and Getty and Hughes want more — after all, they too are comfortably off? Maybe he's just a businessman in the way that they are businessmen and he's hooked on his job. Maybe he finds it a stimulating intellectual exercise. Maybe it's sheer greed. Maybe anything.'

Milton said: 'Has he ever been convicted?'

Hendrix looked pained. 'He's never even been arrested.'

'And that has something to do with the fact that neither of us has ever heard of him?'

Hendrix gazed through the van window at the magnificent sweep of the Golden Gate Bridge. There was a far-off look of yearning in his eyes. He said: 'Let us say, sir, that we do not care to advertise our failures.'

Mitton smiled at him. 'John and I — he nodded at the Secretary of the Treasury — 'frequently suffer from the same bashfulness and for the same reasons. Infallibility is not the lot of mankind. Anything known about this man — apart from what is known about his criminal activities?'

Hendrix said sourly: 'It wouldn't be hard to know more about him than we do about his life of crime. Pretty well documented background, really. A WASP from out east. Comes from what they call a good family. Father a banker and when I say banker I mean he owned — still does, I believe — his own bank.'

'Branson,' the Treasury Secretary said. 'Of course. Know him. Not personally, though.'

'And something else that will interest you, sir — professionally. Branson took a degree in economics and went to work in his father's bank. While he was there he took a PhD — and no coffee-grinder diploma school either — genuine Ivy League. Then for his post-graduate course he took up the subject of crime — something to do with having worked in his old man's bank, maybe.' Hendrix looked gloomy. 'I suppose we could say that he has graduated in that subject now too — summa cum laude.'

Milton said: 'You seem to have almost a degree of admiration for this person, Hendrix?'

'I'd give my pension to see him behind bars. Both as a man and a policeman he outrages whatever passes for my sensibilities. But one can't help respecting sheer professionalism, no matter how misused.'

'My sentiments too, I'm afraid,' Milton said. 'He's not a particularly retiring person, this Branson of yours?'

'I wish he were mine. If you mean does he suffer from our bouts of bashfulness, no, sir, he does not.'

'Arrogant?'

'To the point, perhaps, of megalomania. At least, that's what General Cartland says, and I wouldn't care to dispute what the General says.'

'Few would.' Milton spoke with some feeling. 'Speaking of self-opinionated characters, where art thou at this hour, my James?'

'Sir?'

'What other self-opinionated character is there? I refer to Mr Hagenbach, the self-opinionated head of our FBI. I would have thought he would have been the first man hot-foot to the scene.'

'Washington says they don't know where he is. They're trying every place they can think of. I'm afraid he's a very elusive man, sir.'

'Man's got a mania for secrecy.' Milton brightened. 'Well, if he's watching his TV in an hour or so he should be considerably enlightened. What a perfectly splendid thought — the head of our FBI the last man in America to know about this.' He thought for a moment. 'Branson's insistence on maximum publicity — TV, radio I'll be bound, newsmen, photographers — has he ever declared himself publicly like this before? I mean, before or during any of his criminal activities?'

'Never.'

'The man must be terribly sure of himself.'

'In his place, so would I.' Quarry appeared distracted. 'What can we do to the man? As I see it, he's in an impregnable, quite unassailable position.'

'I wouldn't give up hope, sir. We have one or two experts looking for an answer. Admiral Newson and General Carter are in our HQ now working on this.'

'Newson. Carter. Our twin geniuses of finesse.' Quarry seemed more discouraged than ever. 'Never use one hydrogen bomb where two will suffice. Someone should send our Arabian oil friends word that they're about to become involved in a nuclear holocaust.' He gestured through his window towards the bridge. 'Just look at it. Just think of it. A totally impossible situation — if it weren't for the fact that we can see now that it's all too possible. Total, absolute isolation, completely cut off from the world — and in the full view of everybody in San Francisco — everybody in the world, for that matter, as soon as those TV cameras start turning. A figurative stone's throw away — and they might as well be on the moon.' He sighed heavily. 'One must confess to a feeling of utter helplessness.'

'Come, come, John.' Milton was severe. 'Is this the spirit that won the West?'

'The hell with the West. I'm thinking about me. I don't have to be very clever to know beyond any doubt that I am going to be the man in the middle.'

Hendrix said: 'Sir?'

'Why else do you think this ruffian had summoned the Secretary of the Treasury to his royal presence?'

Hands in pockets, as if deep in thought, Revson wandered along the east side of the bridge, stopping frequently to gaze at, and presumably admire the panorama stretched out before him — to his left the tip of Belvedere beyond Fort Baker, Titouron and Angel Island, the largest in the Bay, to his right the city itself and straight ahead Alcatraz Island and beyond it Treasure Island: between the two the rapidly diminishing shape of the New Jersey was heading for its berth at Alameda. He made frequent stops, as if peering over the side. On one of those occasions he reached casually for the green cord he'd attached to the strut and hefted it. It was weightless.

'What are you doing?'

He turned unhurriedly. April Wednesday's big green eyes, if not exactly alive with curiosity, held a certain puzzlement.

'You do have flannel feet. I thought I was the only person within miles — well, yards.'

'What are you doing?'

'When I look at this marvellous view here and then at you I really don't know which I prefer. I think you. Have any people ever told you that you're really rather beautiful?'

'Lots.' She caught the green cord between finger and thumb and started to lift it then made a muffled sound of pain as his hand closed none too gently over hers.

'Leave that alone.'

She rubbed her hand, looked around her and said: 'Well?'

'I'm fishing.'

'Not for compliments, that's for sure.' She massaged her knuckles tenderly, then looked at him with some uncertainty. 'Fishermen tell tall tales, don't they?'

'I've done it myself.'

'Tell me one.'

'Are you as trustworthy as you're beautiful?'

'Am I beautiful? And I'm not fishing. Honest'

'You are.'

'Then I'm trustworthy too.' They smiled at each other and he took her arm. 'A really tall one?'

'Yes, please.'

'Why ever not?' They walked slowly away together.

Hendrix replaced the receiver in its cradle. He looked at Milton and Quarry. 'You are ready, gentlemen?'

'Act One, Scene One, and all the world's a stage. That's wrong somehow.' Milton rose and looked critically at Quarry. 'The shirt's wrong too, John. White shows up badly on TV. Should be blue — like me — or the President. Blue shirts are all he has: you never know when a TV camera is lurking round the next corner.'

'Oh, shut up.' Quarry turned morosely towards the rear door of the van then stopped as a motor-cycle policeman drew up with a suitably dramatic screeching of tyre and smell of burning rubber, dismounted, propped his machine and hurried to the rear steps of the van. He held up his hand to Hendrix. 'For you, sir.'

Hendrix took the eight-inch-long narrow cylinder. 'It's got my name on it, all right. Where did you get it from?'

'The pilot boat brought it in from the New Jersey. The captain — of the New Jersey, that is — thought it might be very urgent'