Year of the Golden Ape

15

^ Everyone along the Californian coast is familiar with the sight of a US Coast Guard helicopter – these machines make daily patrols up and down the foreshore, often flying low over the beaches. So who would think the appearance of Winter's Sikorsky strange?

^ It was deep dusk when Winter came in sight of the coast close to Carmel-by-the-Sea. From the chart spread out over his knees he identified Point Lobos, then he turned due north. There were lights down in Carmel, in Pacific Grove on the Monterey peninsula, and in Monterey itself. All the lights disappeared suddenly. Another power failure. Sheikh Gamal Tafak's oil weapon was biting deep.

^ The helicopter flew on over a dark and quiet ocean, flew on until vague clouds blotted out the sea. Fog. The moon rose and shone down on greyness, a shifting greyness of thick fog banks which made Winter feel he might be thirty thousand feet up in a Jumbo jet, speeding at five hundred miles an hour from Heathrow to Anchorage. That was only six days ago; to Winter it seemed a whole lifetime. Ahead he saw the twitch of a flashing light exploding through the fog.

^ One million dollars… Time to retire, to get out like a racing driver before the world caught up with you, detonated in your face with a blinding flash and billowing clouds of black smoke. He checked his chart. The twitching flash would be Mile Rocks lighthouse at the entrance to Golden Gate.

^ He flew past the lighthouse on his right as the moon shone on slow-rolling fog which revolved like steam in a cauldron, on coils of fog which filled the entrance channel. Soon the ^ Challenger ^ would have to move through that cauldron. For a few seconds the distant fog lifted; a chain of lights crawled over the fog, barely moving it seemed, then the blanket closed down and his glimpse of traffic crossing Golden Gate bridge vanished.

^ He turned inland, away from the ocean, over Stinson Beach, still flying at a thousand feet with the fog three hundred feet below. Over Marin County – north across the bridge from San Francisco – the fog thinned, and now he was moving at minimum speed, staring down into the night, searching. He circled the area north of Novato once and then he spotted lights-alternated and white flashes. He lost altitude and the lights came up to him amid a blur of dark trees and scrubby hill slopes. Walgren, the American who had shadowed Swan, the wireless operator in Anchorage, had not let him down.

^ Descending vertically towards the slope, he saw the lights were inside a tree-enclosed oval clearing, saw a small shadow which could be a parked car. The machine landed on hard earth inside a tangle of undergrowth, landed with a bump and then he cut the engine and the rotors slowed, stopped. It was 6.30pm. Walgren was waiting when he opened the door and dropped down on to the hill slope. 'Welcome to California,' Walgren said. Winter had arrived inside the United States.

^ They left the helicopter where he had landed it, concealed inside the copse of trees. And Winter had prepared for the possibility that it might be discovered within a few hours. Inside one of the seat pockets was a paid bill from a cheap hotel in Tijuana and a pack of Mexican cigarettes, some of the items Winter had instructed Walgren to obtain while he was in San Francisco the previous November. There was a thriving smuggling trade between Mexico and California, so when the FBI examined it they would conclude that this machine had come in from Mexico, probably with a haul of drugs.

^ Walgren, who had earlier obtained both hotel bill and the cigarettes, had also spilled a minute quantity of heroin on the floor of the pilot's cabin. The Drug Squad's Hoover would pick up these traces; their laboratory would analyse them. And these were extreme precautions Winter had suggested: the helicopter might well not be discovered for days.

^ At Winter's insistence, Walgren drove him first to Richardson Bay, where, under the treed lea of a headland, a small seaplane rode on the water. This was the escape vehicle. Later the terrorists would leave the ship under the cover of darkness or fog, speeding across the Bay inside the inflatable Zodiac, equipped with the outboard motor. The choice of this craft by Winter was deliberate. Made of rubber, it would not register on a radar screen, and he had foreseen the possibility that while the tanker was stationary in the Bay the harbour police might establish radar lookout posts onshore.

^ When the time came the terrorists inside the Zodiac would make for the seaplane and this machine would fly them either to the ^ Pecheur, ^ waiting out at sea, or across the border to Canada. And even if the seaplane was noticed in this remote spot there was little danger it would cause comment. Only a few miles further up Richardson Bay there was a seaplane base near Marin City. The wet-suits taken aboard the ^ Challenger ^ were for an emergency, so the terrorists could drop off the Zodiac close to the shore and swim the rest of the way. Winter hoped it wouldn't come to that – the currents out in the Bay can drown the strongest swimmer.

^ 'Now drive me to San Francisco,' Winter told Walgren as he came ashore from examining the seaplane. His main concern had been the fuel tanks, and these were full. 'No trouble getting gas for this car?' he asked Walgren as they approached Golden Gate bridge. 'Every trouble,' the American replied. 'Cost me two dollars fifty a gallon on the black market. Mafia premium grade…' Winter made him stop at the far end of Golden Gate bridge while he went back alone along the sidewalk.

^ He studied the bridge where within a few hours the ^ Challenger ^ would pass under the huge span, leaning over the rail to stare down into the fog. The highway span seemed to be floating on the fog, as did the seven-hundred foot high towers which, in the moonlight, looked like temples in a Chinese painting.

^ Carrying out Winter's instructions, Walgren dropped him at the Trans-Bay bus terminal in the city. Taking the bag which Walgren had brought for him off the back seat, Winter said goodnight, and walked inside the terminal. He spent only ten minutes there, then he ran out and grabbed a yellow cab which had just delivered passengers, and told the driver to take him to the Clift Hotel on Geary Street.

^ Precautions, precautions… Winter never stopped taking them. Hotel doormen have retentive memories and it would look just a shade more normal if he arrived in a cab. Giving the cab driver the usual fifteen per cent tip, he walked past the coloured doorman and followed the bell-boy across the lobby to reception. Keeping to his normal routine, he was booking in at one of the most exclusive hotels in San Francisco; the police always assume such visitors must be respectable.

^ 'You have a room reserved for me for one week. Mr Stanley Grant – from Australia…'

^ He would be staying for only three days, when he would pay the bill for one week, saying he had been called back urgently to Los Angeles. But if the hotel register were checked by the police there is a certain unhurriedness, a respectability about a one-week reservation. He followed the bell-boy into the elevator and went up to his room on the tenth floor. Alone in his room he felt a certain surprise. He was in California.

^… ^ Any non-cooperation will be treated as a hostile act. The Weathermen.

^ Mayor Aldo Peretti was not smiling as he looked round the table in his office at the men gathered there. Again, Sullivan was on his right and beyond him were the same men who had attended his previous meeting. No one was smiling. For over an hour they had been arguing about the threatening signal which had come in from the ^ Challenger. ^ It was 6.30pm.

^ 'I don't believe it,' Sullivan said. 'That reference to The Weathermen, I mean. This isn't a gang from the American underground. For some reason they just wish to hide their real identity from us. It's too much of a coincidence,' he went on. 'I traced Winter to Hamburg. Someone high up in France told me he was involved with LeCat, who had recruited a team of ex-OAS terrorists. I then traced Winter to Alaska just before the ^ Challenger ^ sailed again. I think that French terrorist team is aboard – and they were financed by Arab money according to my French contact…'

^ 'It sounds like a simple ransom demand,' Peretti pointed out. 'And in any case, what is at stake are the lives of twenty-eight British seamen – and one American girl. I'm not prepared to risk the lives of those innocent people.'

^ 'We're not going to let that terrorist ship into the Bay, I hope,' Col Cassidy protested.

^ 'We could negotiate with them in the Bay,' Peretti said firmly, 'Once they pass under Golden Gate bridge we have them at a disadvantage. They can't get out of the Bay again if we don't want them to – they're trapped…'

^ 'And I don't like risking twenty-nine people – including one American girl – getting shot,' Peretti replied forcefully. Aldo Peretti was a very humane man; something of his humanity had undoubtedly impressed enough voters at the previous election to make him mayor of San Francisco. He was, a lot of people agreed, a pleasant change from the tough and ruthless Governor of California, Alex MacGowan. The recent Grove Park scandal, involving corruption at a high level, had hammered the final nail into Alex MacGowan's political coffin.

^ The argument swayed backwards and forward for another hour; whether or not to let the terrorist ship inside the Bay. If he put it to the vote, Peretti calculated, they would split evenly down the middle, the humanitarians against the rest, as he privately put it to himself. He was on the verge of taking a decision when the phone rang. He listened, asked a few questions, then replaced the receiver, his face grave.

^ 'I don't understand what's happening, gentlemen, but it just became a political matter. A fresh signal has come in from the ^ Challenger ^ – and for some reason I also don't understand, the people aboard her seem to want maximum publicity. They radioed the signal to the United Press wire service. The news will race round the world within hours. Now they are demanding two hundred million dollars – yes, Col Cassidy, I did say two hundred million – to be paid into the account of a bank in Beirut. The signal was signed the Free Palestine Movement. Sullivan was right – we are dealing with the Arabs, maybe by remote control with the Golden Apes themselves…'

^ At ten o'clock at night inside the Clift Hotel Winter sat in front of the colour TV set holding a glass of Scotch. He was reading the newspaper, not listening to the FBI thriller, not looking at it. His role now was to remain inside the city as a one-man Trojan horse, checking on the authorities' reactions to the terrorists' demands, then warning LeCat if he considered a change of tactics was called for.

^ His means of communicating with the tanker had been organised by Walgren; a mobile transmitter had been set up inside a truck which at the moment was hidden inside a nearby garage. The moment Winter wished to get in touch with LeCat, he only had to phone Walgren at the number the American had given him. The truck would then be driven to a remote part of Marin County across Golden Gate bridge, Winter would transmit his instructions, and the truck would be driven away before it could be located by any radio-detection equipment the Americans might be operating.

^ The news flash came through at 10.5pm. 'Terrorists have seized a British oil tanker off San Francisco… demand two hundred million dollars for the lives of the twenty-nine hostages aboard, one of them an American girl…'

^ Winter drank some more Scotch and waited for the comment. LeCat was working exactly to the plan he had devised – to keep the Americans off balance with a series of alarming and confusing messages. The real demand would come later – after the next subterfuge, after the Americans had let the tanker enter the Bay…

^ It was ten o'clock at night in San Francisco when Winter heard the news flash. In Baalbek, seven thousand miles away, a fresh day was dawning where it was seven in the morning. Sheikh Gamal Tafak lit another American cigarette and switched off the radio, then walked over to the lattice-work window which looked out over the anti-Lebanon mountains. In January there was snow along the crests.

^ It was the news item which had rattled him: the Americans were still discussing whether to let the tanker inside the Bay. It was time LeCat played his next card. He had to get the timing right, to hit them before they took a final decision. With his eyes ^ half-closed, Tafak recalled the personal briefing Ahmed Riad -who would shortly land in San Francisco – had given LeCat.

^ They will not decide to let you in at once. There is bound to be a delay while they think about it. But they are a sentimental people, the Americans. So, choose your moment, then play the big card…'

^ By now Tafak had completely forgotten that it was Winter who had fashioned the big card, the incident which would persuade the Americans to let the ship pass through the Golden Gate narrows. Taking his cigarette out of his mouth, Tafak looked at his hand. He was sweating. He would go out and get a breath of fresh morning air. It was not the atmosphere which was making him sweat. To bring about the final catastrophe it was vital that the Americans let the tanker inside the Bay.

^ As Sheikh Gamal Tafak stood in the front doorway, breathing in the morning air, his head and shoulders filled the telescopic sight, the vertical crosshair split him down the middle, the horizontal crosshair guillotined his neck. The target was in view, thirty metres from where the Israeli marksman lay sprawled out on a table inside a first floor room.

^ The rifle was propped on a sack filled with sand and the muzzle pointed through an open window. The room was in shadow because the sun was aimed in the same direction as the rifle barrel. The marksman, Chaim Borgheim, took the first pressure. A second squeeze and Tafak was dead.

^ Albert Meyer, the man who had quietly intimidated Lucille Fahmy, the switchboard operator who had provided a telephone number in Beirut, sat at the back of the room with an automatic weapon across his lap. He jumped when the phone rang, jumped because it could have disturbed his colleague's aim. He moved very quickly, scooping up the phone by his side. 'Albert here…' His eyes widened as he listened, then he said 'understood,' put down the receiver and moved swiftly and quietly across the room. Albert was sweating.

^ 'No, Chaim…' He extended one finger carefully across the top of the rifle barrel, being very careful indeed not to touch the ^ ^ weapon. He could feel sweat dribbling down his back. 'Jesus Christ.. .'Chaim released the first pressure, looked up with a blank expression.

^ 'I thought I was too late. They just phoned through – not yet. Not yet, they said.'

^ 'Some crisis – in another part of the world. They cannot yet assess its implications. We must wait.'

^ Through the fog the men on Mile Rocks lighthouse at the entrance to Golden Gate channel saw the ^ Challenger ^ burning.

^ It was dark, it was foggy, but the glare of the flames broke through both darkness and fog, a hideous half-seen conflagration which chilled them even more than the night air round the exposed lighthouse. They immediately signalled the Port Authority, which transmitted their signal to the mayor's office, and this signal arrived at almost the same moment as a message from the tanker.

^ The meeting in the mayor's office, which had gone on for hours, with a brief break for refreshments, was breaking up. Peretti listened on the phone, said wait a minute, then called out to the men leaving the room. 'Hold it! Something else is just coming through…'

^ They waited while he went on listening, scribbling notes on his desk pad. They were tired, worn out with arguing, and Cassidy, by sheer force of character, had persuaded the mayor to wait until morning before he finally decided – whether or not to let the terrorist ship inside the Bay. There had been more threats from the ship, now signed by LeCat, and Peretti was wracked with anxiety that he might be responsible for the violent deaths of twenty-nine innocent human beings, one of them a woman. Reluctantly, he had given way to Cassidy.

^ In his shirtsleeves despite the low room temperature – to save fuel the thermostat was turned down to sixty-two degrees -Peretti felt soiled and rumpled and badly in need of a shower. That was, before the phone rang. Now he had become alert again, staring at Cassidy while he listened on the phone. He put down the receiver, glanced at his notes. 'Get back to your seats, gentlemen, this thing isn't finished for tonight. It's only just beginning.' 'What's happened?' Cassidy demanded crisply. 'Two more signals – one from Mile Rocks lighthouse, one from the ^ Challenger ^ herself. There's been a serious explosion aboard the tanker, then a bad fire. Nine people have been very seriously hurt – five of them hostages, and one of them is Miss Codrell. They're asking for immediate permission to steam into the Bay so the casualties can be taken ^ off. ^ Four of them are terrorists

…' 'That's the signal from the ^ Challenger? ^ Cassidy asked. 'Yes.'

^ 'It could easily be a trick. I don't believe it…' Peretti exploded. How like the goddamn military… 'You may not believe it – or want to believe it – but I have a message here from Mile Rocks lighthouse confirming that they have seen the tanker ablaze,' he rasped. 'The fire has gone out now, thank God. And I'm giving permission for that ship to enter the Bay…'

^ 'We could lift the casualties off the tanker by chopper maybe,' Garfield, the Coast Guard chief suggested.

^ 'The message repeats the earlier threat – if any aircraft, surface or underwater vessel approaches the tanker all the hostages will immediately be killed…' 'I still don't like it,' Cassidy said.

^ 'Colonel, no one is asking you to like it,' Peretti snapped. 'You just haven't thought this thing through. One wrong move on my part and those people on that tanker may die. I have to think of the British crew, helpless men with guns pointing at them. When we take off the casualties we shall have four terrorists in our hands for questioning. Some human contact even with terrorists is better than…'

^ Even while Peretti was speaking they were hauling up the side of the hull of the ^ Challenger ^ the remnants of the two Carley floats which had been attached to her with cables. The floats, crammed with petrol-soaked rags, had earlier been lowered over the side, each with a tiny thermite bomb and a timer device aboard, so when they drifted with the current they were well clear of the tanker as they exploded and ignited the floats, creating the two separate blazes which had been seen from Mile Rocks lighthouse.

^ '… human contact even with terrorists is better than trying to communicate across a void through the medium of radio signals,' Peretti continued. 'These misguided men are not necessarily all wild beasts…'

^ 'You could have fooled me,' Cassidy said, then regretted the remark. It had sounded damned rude.

^ Peretti sat up straight at the head of the table and spoke without rancour. 'You are a soldier, Colonel Cassidy. You have been trained to shoot at the enemy. Sometimes that is necessary, but here we have hostages from another country – from Britain – to think of. I am not putting this to the vote, I am taking the decision myself. The tanker ^ Challenger ^ will be given permission to enter the Bay…'

^ It was close to midnight when Governor Alex MacGowan's Boeing 707 approached the runway at San Francisco International airport, his flight much delayed owing to a petrol shortage which had kept him waiting for seven hours at Heathrow Airport, London.