Year of the Golden Ape

12

^ When Sheikh Carnal Tafak moved to his secret headquarters on the first floor of a building on the outskirts of Baalbek in the Lebanon, it was partly considerations of policy which decided the Saudi Arabian oil minister to go to ground – he wanted to isolate himself until the San Francisco operation had been completed. A man who cannot be found cannot answer any questions, and there were certain statesmen in the Middle East who were already very worried by Tafak's extremist views.

^ But that was only part of the reason. The other part was more simple and human – Tafak was frightened that he might be assassinated. There had been too many rumours that Israeli gunmen were on the move; there had even been a whisper that British and American secret service men were cooperating with the Israeli intelligence service. In Baalbek, a place he had never visited before, he felt safe.

^ The first message he received at his new headquarters was from Winter. Within thirty minutes of seizing the ^ Challenger ^ a brief radio signal was transmitted anonymously to the United Arab Republic consulate in San Francisco. ^ Avocado consignment has been delivered. ^ Inside a locked room in the consulate Talaal Ismail reached for the phone and put in a call to a Paris number. From here the message was transmitted to Athens and on to Beirut. The man Ahmed Riad had placed in a flat in Beirut made one bad slip when he phoned Tafak. He referred to him as 'Excellency' while he was reporting the message confirming the tanker's seizure. 'No titles,' Tafak snapped and slammed down the phone as soon as he had heard the message. Not that he really believed the phone would be tapped.

^ The girl who worked as switchboard operator in the block of flats on Lafayette Street in Beirut waited until both receivers had been replaced before she turned down the switch. Then she started attending to the incoming calls she had kept waiting.

^ She was nervous. It was the first time she had listened in to calls for money. To pass the time of day, to listen to a woman making a furtive and erotic call to her lover while her husband was out; that was another thing. Most switchboard operators did that, or so Lucille Fahmy consoled herself. But this, she suspected, could be dangerous. And who was 'Excellency'?

^ 'Good evening, Lucille…' He greeted her like an old friend, leaning close to make himself heard above the racket of the juke box which was playing the latest Tom Jones record. At six in the evening the place was filling up with Lebanese teenagers. Despite the chill in the air outside it was hot and stuffy in the Cafe Leon. Plenty of oil for 'heating here; oil coming out of their ears. The mournful-faced man ordered coffee and cakes.

^ He patted his breast pocket. 'I have the fifty dollars with me. Was it a local call?'

^ She hesitated, then opened her bag and took out a folded banknote with the number written inside which she handed to him. Anyone watching would have assumed he was short of cash, that his girl friend was paying tonight. He slipped the folded note into his wallet, next to another note he had folded earlier. He would pay with that note – just in case someone was watching him.

^

^ Again it showed nervousness – she was talking for the sake of talking. Of course he could trace any number in the Lebanon, and find the address – because it was the address which interested him. She waited until the waiter had brought the coffee and cakes and then leaned towards him. 'It was about some avocados – he just said the avocado consignment has been delivered. Oh, and he called the man at the other end Excellency…'

^ 'He might…' The man who had told her his name was Albert appeared to know all about it – or this was the impression he deliberately gave her – and now he understood her nervousness. Like so many people in the Middle East she was frightened of the powerful. He went on sipping his coffee, hiding his shock, his hope. It looked as though they had found Tafak.

^ One Fleet Street newspaper in London caught a hint of a whisper of a rumour – and had a 'D' notice served on it – an edict it could not ignore, so the story went unpublished. As it happened, the story was true.

^ The British Prime Minister had driven secretly to Lyneham air base in Wiltshire, one of Britain's remoter airfields in the Salisbury Plain area. His timing was good: as his car sped towards the airfield buildings a Trident dropped out of the grey overcast and cruised along a nearby runway.

^ When the machine had stopped, the Prime Minister was driven close up to the aircraft, so close that it pulled up at the foot of the mobile staircase which had been hastily rushed into position. He waited inside the car as a man appeared at the top of the mobile staircase, ran briskly down the steps and climbed inside the rear of the waiting car.

^ Had a photograph been taken of the man who stepped out of the plane he might well have been mistaken for Gen. Villiers; he was bearing a black eye-patch. But at that moment Gen. Villiers was many thousands of miles away from Britain. The secret visitor, therefore, had to be someone else. He did, in fact, look very like another general whose picture had often appeared in the pages of the world's press, a certain Israeli general.

^ It was the afternoon of Sunday January 19, the day when Winter seized control of the ^ Challenger.

^ Winter took his decision to let Betty Cordell move freely round the ship immediately after the incident with LeCat. He had been appalled to find a woman on board, knowing the character of some of the ex-OAS terrorists, and now it struck him she might be safer wandering round the ship rather than locked away in her cabin. He came to the cabin to tell her his decision. 'You can roam round the ship as much as you like, but you are to report to the officer of the watch on the bridge every hour. Understood?'

^ She stood quite still, studying his unusual face, the boniness of his hooked nose, the wide, firm mouth, the steady brown eyes which were so remote and disconcerting. 'Why are you doing this?' she asked quietly.

^ He left her abruptly and a few minutes later she started moving about the ship which was still proceeding through a gentle swell. It was a nerve-wracking experience which she never got used to -walking down an alleyway while a terrorist in the distance watched the fair-haired girl coming with a pistol in his hand; turning a corner into what she imagined was a deserted passageway beyond, only to find another terrorist guard just around the corner; being followed down another alleyway by a man with a gun, who, it turned out, was merely checking to see where she was going.

^ Her mind was working at two levels – noting everything that might be copy for the story she hoped to write one day – ^ Eye-Witness Account of Terrorists' Hi-Jack – ^ and noting the precise position of all the guards, information she intended to pass to Bennett at the first available opportunity. There were no signs that the British crew were planning any resistance; outwardly they seemed still stunned by what had happened. But she detected an odd atmosphere, particularly in the engine-room.

^ A guard with a blank expression stood aside to let her go inside the engine-room – Winter, with his usual efficiency, had passed the word to the entire terrorist team that she was allowed to move round the ship freely. Stepping over the coaming she stood on the high platform, already sweating a little in the steamy atmosphere as she gazed into the bowels of the ship. The noise was appalling, like the thunder of steam-hammers, and everywhere things moved; pistons chomping, machinery which meant nothing to her. She went down the vertical ladder.

^ The steep, thirty-foot drop behind her as she descended didn't worry her – she had climbed near-precipices in the Sierras – and then she was threading her way among the machinery, seeing men she had earlier met and chatted with before the seizure of the tanker. Monk, a burly, thirty-four year old engine-room artificer, a very tough-looking character indeed, his dark hair plastered down over his large skull, nodded to her as he wiped his hands on an oily rag but he seemed abstracted, as though his mind was on something important.

^ Bert Foley, a small, bald-headed man of forty, another artificer, did speak to her after glancing up to make sure the guard on the high platform couldn't see him. 'Things might turn out better than you imagine, Miss. Have patience…' Feeling better in the presence of the British seamen, she explored further. There was something here she couldn't put her finger on, a smell of conspiracy in the air. It didn't seem possible: Winter had severed all communication between one part of the ship and another. Then she saw Wrigley, the steward, coming down the ladder into the engine-room.

^ The steward, carrying a tray with one hand while he used the other to support himself, reached the floor, hurried to the control platform where Brady, the chief engineer, was directing operations. Brady, a stocky, grey-haired man in his early fifties, took a mug of tea from the tray, helped himself slowly to a ham sandwich. Nothing strange there that she could see. She checked her watch; soon it would be time to report to the officer of the watch, to tell him the present position of every terrorist guard aboard the ship. She still couldn't rid herself of the feeling that something was going on under the surface. She climbed up on to the platform beside Brady, then pointed to a black box embedded into the control panel. 'What does that do – or do you keep your sandwiches inside it?' She was smiling; it was something to say. A man in trousers and spotless white vest standing close to the chief swung round with a startled expression.

^ It was unfortunate. The black box she had pointed to was the only outward evidence that Ephraim existed, and by now the chief had realised that the mechanical man was their only outside contact with the world – even if the communication was purely one-way.

^ 'It's like being back in my old prisoner-of-war camp,' Mackay murmured to Bennett in the chart-room. 'My own ship has become the cage. At least we've set up a communications system -the first thing to do when you're inside the cage…'

^ The system of communication between Mackay and his crew hinged on Wrigley, the steward, who was being kept constantly on the move supplying food and coffee to both the British crew and their terrorist guards. Winter had foreseen this nutriment problem; he had placed a permanent guard outside the galley to escort Wrigley as he trotted all over the ship.

^ What Winter had not foreseen was that Bennett would exploit Wrigley as a means of passing messages to anyone Mackay wished to communicate with. The messages were scribbled on small pieces of paper which Wrigley concealed under plates of sandwiches, under pots of coffee, under anything he happened to be carrying on his tray. Another development Winter neither foresaw nor noticed was the increase in the thirst of the man on the bridge; drinking far more coffee than ever before, they provided Wrigley with more opportunities to pass messages.

^ Another change in the ship's routine which went unnoticed was the frequent discussions on navigation Mackay and Bennett felt compelled to indulge in during visits to the chart-room behind the bridge. The first time this happened the guard was suspicious.

^ 'We are going to the chart-room,' Mackay informed the guard, a man called Dupont, who understood English. 'We have to check our future course…'

^ He walked off the bridge with Bennett and Dupont followed them into the chart-room. Mackay stood by the chart-table and stared at the Frenchman. 'Look, plotting a ship's course is a complex business – it calls for concentration. I can't work while you stand there pointing that gun at me. If you want us to get this ship to San Francisco you'll have to wait outside…'

^ 'You've searched this place,' Bennett pointed out, 'and you've locked the other door. Our only way out is back on to the bridge. If you don't leave us alone we're not taking this ship anywhere.'

^ Dupont, who had been with Winter on the ^ Pecheur ^ in the Mediterranean, who had been with LeCat in Paris when they tracked Sullivan up the French coast, hesitated as Mackay picked up a pair of dividers while Bennett concentrated on studying a chart. It was intimidating: both men were acting as though he were no longer there. He went back on to the bridge and took up a position where he could watch the open doorway.

^ 'Mr Bennett,' Mackay said quietly, 'the system of communication is working well. I'm not so sure about your idea of arranging for a man to go missing.'

^ 'We can't just stand around and let them get away with it,' the first officer murmured. 'Ultimately I want to organise a mass break-out. Subtracting the man who flew off in the chopper, there are fourteen terrorists and twenty-eight crew-we outnumber them two-to-one…'

^ 'So we need to cut down the odds – by getting rid of one or two key terrorists. I don't think we'll aim to tackle Winter yet – he's the only one you can talk to, and I don't think he'd be an easy man to catch off guard. My plan is to go for LeCat – he's a very nasty piece of work and seems to be second-in-command.' Bennett unrolled a fresh chart as Dupont peered inside the chart-room, then disappeared. 'I had a word with the chief down in the engine-room while the guard was boozing wine. Brady says Monk would be more than happy to go after LeCat – if Monk can go missing and stay missing without Winter knowing …'

^ 'The ship was seized with violence,' Bennett argued. 'LeCat was close to assaulting the American girl when Wrigley turned up in time. Some of these men are killers, LeCat certainly, I'm sure. And men do go overboard frequently at sea…'

^ 'My bet is it won't, sir. Typhoons have a nasty habit of changing direction. I think we ought to be prepared – which means we must organise Monk's disappearance if we can.'

^ 'You could be right…' The captain stared down at the chart, weighing pro's and con's. If something happened to Winter and LeCat assumed control, he wouldn't give twopence for the lives of his crew. 'All right,' Mackay said, 'we'll give it a try – but warn Monk to be very careful…'

^ At ten o'clock at night the ^ Challenger ^ was still proceeding through calm seas. Within two hours it would be Monday January 20.

^ Typhoon Tara came out of the spawning ground of the most hellish and violent weather in the world – out of the north Pacific. A US weather satellite first spotted her menacing growth; a US weather plane confirmed that something enormous was building up north-east of Hawaii.

^ Winter was the first man on board to receive all weather reports coming in from the mainland; receiving them from Kinnaird, he read them and promptly passed them to Mackay. After all, Mackay had to get the tanker to San Francisco. When the captain had absorbed this new signal reporting on Typhoon Tara, Winter took it back to the radio cabin where Kinnaird, increasingly nervous about the job he had undertaken to lay his hands on his dream bonanza – ten thousand pounds – sat in front of the transmitter. It was five o'clock on the morning of Monday January 20.

^ 'When does the next routine report go off to Harper in London?' Winter demanded.

^ 'Submit this weather report…' Winter was writing out the report in a quick, neat hand. 'Alter it to conform to technical jargon, but this is the gist of it.'

^ 'Because you can't think ahead – like so many people. Our great problem may be to persuade the authorities at San Francisco to let this ship enter the Bay as soon as we reach the entrance. There could be a delay for any number of reasons – a lot of shipping in the channel, fog… The port authority is far more likely to let us steam straight in if they think we're in trouble – if we have men aboard injured while we were fighting the typhoon.'

^ 'I have to be right – ninety per cent of the time – if we are to survive.'

^ The signal Winter had written out was simple and graphic. ^ Moving through typhoon conditions. Two seamen injured and out of commission. Main deck awash. Speed reduced to eight knots effective. Wind strength one hundred and ten miles per hour. Mackay.

^ Deep down in the engine-room, not one hundred feet from where Winter stood as he handed the signal to Kinnaird, the mechanical man, Ephraim, went on flashing out radio signals to the master computer a third of the way across the world in The Hague, diligently reporting on present conditions. ^ Speed seventeen knots…

^ Just as the similarity with a prisoner-of-war camp had occurred to Mackay, so it occurred to Winter to reinforce security on the ship by checking the numbers of the British crew at frequent intervals. He had put this idea into operation within thirty minutes of coming aboard, and it was the engine-room which most concerned him. While at sea, and including the chief, Brady, there were seven men on duty inside the vast and cavernous engine-room. So easy for a man to go missing.

^ It was six in the morning – the tanker was less than twenty-four hours' sailing time away from San Francisco – when Brady made a gesture to Monk, the engine-room artificer, and Monk dis-appeared behind a steel maintenance door flush with the wall. On his platform Brady wore his normal grim expression: he was taking a calculated gamble. This time it was LeCat who was going to check the seven men.

^ The gamble lay in the fact that the Frenchman had spent little time in the engine-room; he was quite unfamiliar with the crew who worked there. The risk lay in the fact that it was LeCat himself who would personally count the crew. Brady watched him descending the vertical ladder backwards, hopeful that the terrorist might slip and plunge down to land crushed on the steel grilles below. It was an empty hope: LeCat descended swiftly and agilely, then gestured to one of the armed guards to come with him.

^ 'We will count the crew,' LeCat announced as he reached the control platform and stood looking up at the chief. 'Everyone will stay exactly where he is…' He had his Skorpion pistol in his hand and it amused him to point it at the chief's large stomach. 'If anyone moves, he will be shot.'

^ Brady exploded, shouting to make himself heard above the din of the machinery. 'If you want this ship to reach San Francisco you will get your bloody count over with and get to hell out of my engine-room.'

^ 'So?' LeCat climbed very deliberately up on to the platform and beside Brady his assistant Wilkins was sweating. Not that it showed particularly; in the engine-room everyone sweats. LeCat himself was sweating enjoyably with the heat – it reminded him of summer in Algeria. He touched the chief's stomach with the tip of his Skorpion. 'One twitch of my finger and you are meat for the sharks…'

^ Brady stood quite still, looking down at the pistol. 'One twitch of your finger and you'll never reach the mainland. I keep this ship moving – not even the captain can do that.'

^ LeCat smiled unpleasantly, withdrew his weapon. 'You are right, of course,' he agreed. 'But when we do reach California we shall no longer need you, shall we?' Leaving Brady with this unsettling thought, he began counting the crew.

^ They were scattered round the engine-room and LeCat had to thread his way among the machinery to find them. He didn't mind; he was convinced that his threat to shoot any man who moved would keep the British motionless. He counted three men and then found Foley round a corner, bent over a machine-guard, wearing vest and trousers, his bald head gleaming with sweat as he stood with his back to the Frenchman. 'Four…'

^ LeCat moved on with the guard, went round another corner, and Foley moved. Hauling off his vest so he was naked to the waist, he grabbed a soiled cap from behind the machine, jammed it on his head, then he crawled on his hands and knees along the gratings until he was under the control panel. On the platform Brady, who was watching the catwalk guard above, made a signal. Foley stood up, walked five paces to stand beside Lanky Miller. Pulling a pair of large horn-rimmed spectacles out of his pocket, he put them on.

^ Thirty seconds later LeCat came round a corner and stopped to look at the two men carefully. 'Six… seven.' The full complement of engine-room staff. Lighting a cigarette, LeCat continued studying the two seamen. Lanky Miller was the tallest member of the crew, six foot two inches tall. Beside him Foley's height seemed to have shrunk. LeCat stared at him, frowning.

^ Up on the control platform Brady's hand moved so swiftly no one saw the slight movement. Above the pounding of the machinery hammering at LeCat's ear-drums the Frenchman heard a sudden, hissing shriek. Steam billowed into the engine-room. 'Emergency!' Brady roared. 'Boiler overheating!' There was a clatter of feet across the gratings as the crew dispersed all over the engine-room. Miller and Foley rushed past LeCat and disappeared. The Frenchman looked round irritably, shrugged, went to the ladder and climbed up out of the hideous bedlam.

^ The chief, a resourceful and determined man, noticing that LeCat had left the engine-room, that the guard above was still on the catwalk, increased the volume of steam until soon the entire engine-room was filled with a gaseous white mist which blotted out everything. He sent Wilkins to the storage compartment where Monk, who had missed the count, was hiding.

^ Looking down from the catwalk above the guard could see nothing and it worried him. Anything could be happening below inside that seething white cauldron. Were they on the edge of disaster? Was the ship about to blow up? Should he warn Winter immediately? Then he heard a horrible scream just underneath him, a scream so penetrating it travelled up to him above the hammering of the machinery and the hissing of the escaping steam.

^ He went down the ladder quickly, found himself at the bottom, enveloped in steam, but he was also resourceful. A seaman loomed up out of the mist and the guard grabbed him, forced the man to walk ahead of him with the Skorpion pistol pressed into his back. If anyone attempted to attack him as they moved through the steam clouds the seaman would be shot. He guided the man to the control platform and yelled up at Brady. 'What is this that happens?'

^ 'Just getting it under control,' Brady roared. 'Boiler got badly overheated… Nothing to worry about.'

^ And it seemed that Brady knew what he was doing. The steam was beginning to thin out, the sinister hissing sound had stopped. The guard made his way back to the ladder and climbed up to the catwalk he had left unguarded.

^ On the platform Brady wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as he watched the guard leaving with grim satisfaction. The trial run had worked: they could fool the terrorists when the next man-count came. They had to fool them, in fact. Because next time there would only be six men in the engine-room. While the ladder was smothered in steam Monk had gone up it and was now hiding in a storage cupboard well clear of the engine-room.

^ On the mainland some people took a swim each day even in January. Les Cord, a student at Stamford University near San Francisco, parked his car and went down on to Ocean Beach. The Pacific was grey, the heavy overcast hanging close above it was grey, and the combers coming in were large. It was the morning of Monday January 20.

^ Cord was sitting on the beach, taking off his shoes, when he first noticed it, a disturbing sensation as though some massive force were approaching. Slipping his shoes back on again, he stood up and stared at the sky. It had a stormy look, but he had seen stormy skies before. A few yards away the giant combers coming in hit the beach. He looked out to sea.

^ ^ almost lost itself in the ocean he saw an enormous swell building up, great windrows of endless width sweeping towards him. They had come in over vast distances, these windrows, and now he became more aware of the power of these combers crashing down on the beach. He felt their vibration through the soles of his shoes and the whole beach almost shuddered under the impact. Vaguely, he realised that this was what had first disturbed him, the massive thump of these great waves as they hammered down on the beach.

^ He changed his mind, still unsure of what precisely was so disturbing, went back to his car and drove away to the city. He had broken his record of a swim a day, but it didn't worry him -he was just glad to get away from that beach, from that unnerving sensation.

^ Les Cord didn't realise it, but what had shaken him was the rhythm of the incoming combers – they were advancing onshore at the rate of four waves to the minute instead of the normal seven. Nor did he know that at that moment seismographs as far away as Alaska were registering the massive shock of these waves, recording them as they would have recorded earth tremors. Typhoon Tara was coming, reaching out her fingers to tap a warning on the beaches of mainland America.

^ At about the same time as Les Cord decided not to take his daily swim from Ocean Beach, a few miles away on the other side of the peninsula Sullivan was putting in a call to the chairman of Harper Tankships.

^ Sullivan had arrived in San Francisco from Seattle late on Sunday afternoon, had waited one hour at the International airport for a yellow cab – owing to the gas shortage – and had been driven to the St Francis Hotel on Union Square. As the phone rang he was looking down from his bedroom window on the roof of a cable car heading up towards California Street.

^ 'Sullivan speaking. I'm at the St Francis in San Francisco…' He gave Harper the phone number. 'When does the ^ Challenger ^ get here?'

^ 'Estimated time of arrival at the moment is eight o'clock tomorrow morning – your time. Frankly, I wouldn't bet on it.'

^ 'I don't know, Sullivan…' Harper sounded perplexed. 'It probably doesn't mean anything, but Ephraim seems to have gone off his head…'

^ 'We have the usual bulletin from Kinnaird on the ship's position, etc. – plus the weather report. According to Kinnaird Typhoon Tara has got them -just a minute, you probably don't know but there's a typhoon coming in from the north Pacific…'

^ 'I do know – I picked up a weather bulletin in Seattle. I don't get the point…'

^ 'You would, if you listened to me. According to Kinnaird the ^ Challenger ^ at this minute is riding out this typhoon – there's been some damage and a couple of men injured…'

^ 'Why on earth not?' Impatience was creeping into Harper's voice.

^ 'I'm not sure why not – but don't, at least not yet. It's just a feeling,' Sullivan replied. 'How long ago was your mechanical friend put on board?'

^ 'What time lapse would there be between Ephraim's report and Kinnaird's?'

^ 'So the two reports are damned near synchronised? Harper, have you a number where I could call the International Marine Centre people at The Hague?'

^ 'Wait a minute.' Harper read out a number. 'You could get someone there now – or later. They run a twenty-four hour service. Typical Dutch efficiency. You'd really rather I held off contacting Mackay?'

^ 'Yes, I want to find out if there's a chance Ephraim has gone on the blink…'

^ 'Yes, there is. Ephraim hasn't got hiccups and the ship is still moving through nothing fiercer than a gentle swell. In which case Kinnaird is sitting in his tight little radio cabin drunk as a lord -but he thinks it's the ship that's drunk…'

^ A Miss Van der Ploeg, very precise and crisp, knew all about the master computer and Ephraim. No, there was no possibility of Ephraim transmitting misleading data. He might send a nonsense report, but it would be a nonsense report – a jumbled mess.

^ Yes. Mr Sullivan, she had made a check while she kept him waiting on the line. The system was functioning perfectly. If Ephraim said the ship was proceeding at seventeen knots through a gentle swell, then that was what the ship was doing. Sullivan got the impression that she was slightly incredulous that he might think a mere human wireless operator could be superior to Ephraim…

^ Sullivan thanked Miss Van der Ploeg, put down the phone and lit a cigarette. It was the first time he had been on the West Coast and he had no contacts out here. He'd better phone Bill Berridge of the New York Port Authority to get some local names. Alone in a strange city, Sullivan was in his element now he had one tiny indication suggesting that something weird was happening aboard the ^ Challenger. ^ The trouble would be to convince other people.

^ By three o'clock in the afternoon Sullivan had tried everything he could think of. Using the introduction from Bill Berridge of the New York Port Authority had got him in to see Chandler of the San Francisco Port Authority, and that was all it had got him. Chandler, a large, friendly man, had listened to his story and had then pointed out that he hadn't one solid piece of evidence that anything was wrong aboard the incoming British oil tanker.

^ 'Except that the wireless operator aboard reported they were caught up inside a typhoon while the monitor, Ephraim, said the ship was in a gentle swell…'

^ 'There is a typhoon and it's just changed course. These mechanical devices can go wrong, Mr Sullivan,' Chandler pointed out politely as he lit his pipe. 'Now, my bank has a computer…'

^ 'I told you, I checked with the Dutch people at The Hague,' Sullivan said obstinately.

^ After all, Holland was a long way from San Francisco. And Chandler wanted more to go on before he pressed any panic buttons. 'Give me a real emergency and I'll report it fast enough,' he explained. 'In a real emergency I could escalate.'

^ Chandler counted it off on his fingers. 'First, O'Hara, my boss. The next step would be the mayor. He might contact the FBI. The Coast Guard would come in early, of course. If it was very big we might contact the Governor – of California. That's Alex MacGowan. He's due back from vacation in Switzerland soon…'

^ The next step Sullivan took was to call the FBI. Rather to his surprise two men called to see him at the St Francis within half an hour. Special Agent Foster – Sullivan didn't catch the other man's name – was very polite and listened without interruption. Then he used almost the same words Chandler had used. 'If you could provide us with any real evidence…'

^ It was four o'clock in the afternoon when the FBI men left the St Francis and Sullivan knew he still hadn't lit a fire under anyone. And the ^ Challenger ^ was due to arrive in sixteen hours' time.

^ 'Intelligence reports from Beirut indicate that the Gulf states are on the verge of drastically reducing oil output below the present fifty per cent cut. The reports, emanating from a source close to Sheikh Gamal Tafak, say this decision will be put into effect one ^ week from today…'

^ The report was delivered to the British Inner Cabinet on Monday January 20. 'We need four more days,' the Minister of Defence commented. 'So long as they don't advance their decision we may ^ ^ be just in time. I think there is a danger they will not only shut down the oil wells – they may dynamite them. The other report is highly worrying…'

^ The 'other report' was a message received from the British military attache in Ankara. 'New attack on Israel appears imminent. Syrian tank forces have moved up overnight close to the Golan Heights. There is intense radio activity behind the Egyptian lines in Sinai…'

^ In Israel at this time the population was depressed. In the streets of Tel Aviv and Haifa and Jerusalem men and women openly wondered how much longer they had left to live. And in the higher echelons of Israeli leadership there were bitter recriminations. ^ We should never have withdrawn from the December 1973 frontiers.

^ Because now – yielding to pressure from the western nations -the Israeli army was well east of the Suez Canal. And the Egyptian army commanded by the fanatical General (self-promoted) Sherif was closer to Tel Aviv.

^ As Tafak had said during a secret meeting with Gen. Sherif and the president of Syria in Damascus, 'Diplomacy squeezed the Israelis far enough back for the last strike to be launched. But first the stage must be set to guarantee that this time no reinforcements reach Israel at the final moment of truth. This is the operation I have already set in motion. The Israeli state will be destroyed on the West Coast of America – in San Francisco…'