Year of the Golden Ape

17

^ It was 9.30am when Ahmed Riad died. Winter had been very brief on the phone. 'I'm not waiting here while you trace this call,' he told MacGowan's assistant. 'You have exactly forty-five seconds to get the Governor on the line and then I'm breaking the connection. I can tell him the complete structure of the terrorist team aboard that tanker outside the Bay…' MacGowan's growling voice had come on the line within thirty seconds – Winter had timed it by his watch.

^ His call to MacGowan had been brief: Winter knew that if he was to carry any weight at all he had to get to the Governor as a free man, going to see him voluntarily. If they were able to arrest him first, they would never believe him.

^ Realising now that Riad was dead, Winter hung a 'Do Not Disturb' notice on the outside door handle before he left his bedroom. Riad's diplomatic passport – trade representative of some obscure Persian Gulf sheikhdom – was in his pocket as he hurried along Geary and found a cab just emptying itself of its passengers in Union Square. Arriving at the Transamerica building, the strange, pyramid-shaped edifice overlooking the Bay – if your floor was high enough – he went straight up to the Governor's floor. It was high enough for a view of the Bay, and plain-clothes detectives were waiting for him.

^ He had gambled on MacGowan's character, on the little he had heard about him, gambled on the independent-minded American wanting to see him. MacGowan came into the room while they were still searching him for weapons. They found nothing on him; ^ ^ Winter had dropped the Skorpion pistol and holster from the Golden Gate bridge while Walgren had waited with the car. You don't, if you are staying at a good hotel in a city, arrive with guns. MacGowan, who had been watching Winter while they searched him, ushered the Englishman into his private office and shooed the police away. 'Hell, you searched him. I can take care of myself…'

^ The interview between MacGowan and Winter behind closed doors went on for one hour – a long time for both men who were quick-witted and incisive, who went to the guts of a problem immediately. Part of that time was taken up by MacGowan, once a trial lawyer, grilling the Englishman. At the end of the hour MacGowan was convinced Winter was telling the truth. Others -when he held a full meeting of his action committee – were less easy to convince. Peretti, backed by Col Cassidy, was particularly sceptical. 'We have to be sure there are no explosives aboard that vessel,' he insisted. 'Winter should be subjected to a lie-detector test…'

^ 'Bloody waste of time,' MacGowan snapped. 'A scientist's toy for the enjoyment of idiots. Twenty years of criminal practice taught me to assess a man face to face. Anything that whirrs and flashes, Peretti, and you think it's God's answer to the human problem…'

^ They subjected Winter to the lie-detector and they were all there, firing questions at him. Karpis of the FBI, Police Commissioner Bolan, Garfield of Coast Guard, Col Cassidy… It was while he sat in the chair, with the electrodes on his arms, answering questions, that his almost hypnotic personality began to have an effect on the Americans. Sullivan, who had talked with him earlier at MacGowan's request, who had then agreed that Winter was telling the truth, watched the inquisition with growing fascination.

^ 'You need something to check your box of tricks,' Winter observed.

^ 'Did you intend to give yourself up when you arrived in San Francisco?'

^ After fifteen minutes Cassidy asked the question which was worrying them all. 'Winter, you led the hi-jack of this ship and now LeCat is in control. Are there any explosives aboard that vessel?'

^ Which, although no one knew it, exposed the limitations of a lie-detector. It may be able to tell when a man is telling the truth or lies – but it cannot tell when a man gives a reply which is a lie although he believes it to be the truth. It was not apparent at that moment, but the holding of this test probably made it inevitable -in view of what happened later – that the ^ Challenger ^ would be permitted to enter the Bay, bringing with it twenty-nine doomed hostages, thirteen ex-OAS terrorists, and one nuclear device.

^ By three in the afternoon they had still found no even half-safe way of storming the oil tanker. They considered every possible approach but each time they were defeated by the conditions LeCat had imposed if the hostages were not to be shot – that no aircraft, surface or underwater vessel must come near the oil tanker. And, as MacGowan pointed out, they were running out of time. So far he had managed to keep LeCat at arm's length with a series of delaying messages. This can't go on much longer,' the Governor warned. 'From what Winter has told me LeCat is going to lose patience – he is going to start shooting hostages to prove he means business…'

^ MacGowan was secretly planning his intervention very carefully. They had to have enough time to realise there was no apparent way of tackling the terrorist ship – because what he was going to propose was so outrageous they would reject it out of hand – unless they had reached the stage where they would grasp at any straw. Even Winter's straw.

^ The Governor was now convinced that Winter was genuine. He had said as much privately to Cassidy. 'You mean he's undergone some kind of recantation – that he's sorry for what he's done?' the Marine colonel asked sceptically.

^ 'No! He's out for blood. First, he's been double-crossed, and that kind of man you don't cross with impunity. Second, he's not a killer. The death of that couple in Alaska has hit him hard, I think, but he doesn't say much about it.'

^ And there were certain hard facts which reinforced MacGowan's conviction. Winter had handed over Riad's diplomatic passport to the Governor, warning him there could be one hell of an international incident over the obscure death of an Arab diplomat. Winter's solution to this problem was simple: lose the passport. It was still locked away in MacGowan's drawer and he had not yet informed Washington of its existence.

^ More than that, an emergency autopsy had been rushed through on the body of Ahmed Riad. The bruises on the neck and the condition of the corpse had confirmed Winter's story of the incident at the Clift. Riad had died of a massive coronary. It was five in the afternoon when MacGowan decided to take the plunge.

^ 'We're not getting anywhere,' he announced, 'and I can't hold LeCat off much longer. I think it's time we took a look at a plan for getting aboard that ship – Winter's plan.'

^ Waiting until the protests had subsided, MacGowan began talking forcefully, making no concessions to anyone, staring at them grimly from under his thick eyebrows as he pointed out that after hours of discussion they hadn't come up with even the ghost of a plan to tackle the situation. 'The one man who knows the real position aboard that ship is Winter, the one man who knows how the terrorists are liable to react is Winter, and…' he lifted his voice, 'the one man who might just get an assault team aboard the ^ Challenger ^ is Winter, whether you like it or not. In fact, I don't give a damn what you like -I want results…'

^ 'Having talked to him,' Sullivan intervened, 'I think the Governor is right. Winter managed to seize that ship, to get it right under the coast of California. Now, because he was tricked, he's ready to put the same energy and brain power into reverse -into getting the ship back.' Looking round the table where twenty men sat in a state of indecision, he smiled bleakly. 'You know, gentlemen, there is no more dedicated man than the convert to the opposing side. Winter, as an anti-terrorist, could be very formidable indeed…'

^ Winter was brought into the meeting, escorted by the police lieutenant who had become his permanent shadow. There was no humility in his manner, Cassidy noted as the Englishman sat down on MacGowan's left. His face was as cold and distant as when he had been subjected to the lie-detector test. He looked critically round the table, as though assessing each man, wondering whether he was any good. He's a cool bastard, this one, Cassidy was thinking; maybe a good man to go into the jungle with. But, as yet, the Marine colonel wasn't sure. The mayor immediately expressed his disapproval of the whole idea.

^ 'I propose he's sent out of here under armed guard,' Peretti snapped. Sitting on MacGowan's right, he faced Winter who studied him with interest. 'You are the guy who sicked this thing on to us,' Peretti went on. 'I don't agree with your even being in the same room with us…'

^ 'You want the hostages – including one American girl – to die?' Winter enquired. 'Because I'm sure now that LeCat will kill every hostage aboard that ship…'

^ 'You knew that when you started this thing?' Col Cassidy demanded, testing his reaction. 'Because if you did my vote is we put you in a cell and throw away the key…'

^ 'Belt up – and listen. I know these terrorists – which is more than you do. When I was flying in over Marin County I saw a way to get men on to the ship – I was trying to look at it the other way round, to see how we might be stopped. You have to drop on to the tanker from the air…'

^ 'Hopeless.' Cassidy sounded disappointed. 'We've thought of that – and rejected it. The chopper would have to land on -the main deck. It would get shot to pieces from the island bridge -and so would anyone coming out of the machine…'

^ 'We don't use a chopper,' Winter explained. 'A small team of heavily armed men waits on Golden Gate bridge. We give LeCat permission to enter the Bay – to pass under the bridge at night. As the tanker sails under Golden Gate the assault team drops on to her in the dark. If the fog lasts, the chance of success is that much greater.'

^ 'The fog thinned this morning,' MacGowan interjected, 'but it could come back again tonight.'

^ 'That's a crazy idea,' Commissioner Bolan objected, 'that tanker will be moving…'

^ 'Very slowly, if we box clever,' Winter said. 'I understand the tide will be flowing out to sea strongly in the early hours. Can someone tell me what its flow-rate will be?'

^ 'Seven-and-a-half knots until ten in the morning,' Garfield, the Coast Guard chief, said promptly.

^ 'So, we radio Mackay to come in at eight knots – which means moving against the tide, his actual speed will be only half a knot.'

^ 'The main problem is dropping three or four heavily armed men off the bridge span – off the highway level – down on to the ship as it passes under the bridge. We have to lower them ahead of the tanker coming in…'

^ 'Exactly,' Winter agreed. 'Or a cargo net – whatever we can grab hold of. Something men can cling on to during the long drop.' He looked round the table. 'How long a drop is it from the highway span ?'

^ 'Two hundred feet…' O'Hara, the Port Authority chief sounded dubious.

^ 'It can be done,' Winter said emphatically. 'For lowering the net we need a mobile crane – with a foot counter…'

^ 'Foot counter,' Cassidy repeated. He had been whispering to an aide by his side who was making notes. 'The guy operating the crane has to know how far he's dropped them – so he holds them just above deck level as the tanker comes in…'

^ 'So he knows when the men have dropped off,' Cassidy explained. 'Three men in the net weighing a hundred and sixty pounds apiece – makes four hundred and eighty pounds of man-load. The indicator loses that amount, the crane operator knows they're down, he whips the net back up out of sight. That way, if they get aboard unseen in the fog, they have time to assemble on the fo'c'sle and reconnoitre the ground before they go in to the attack.'

^ MacGowan, who was unusually silent, sat with his chin in his hand, carefully saying nothing as the technical side of the plan was worked out. Earlier, Winter had privately outlined this plan to the Governor, who found it possible – just possible if the fog was thick enough. It was a wild, audacious plan, but so had been Winter's previous plan to hi-jack the ^ Challenger – ^ a plan which succeeded because it had been so totally unexpected. And it was unlikely that LeCat and the other terrorists would foresee men dropping down on top of them like spiders suspended from threads.

^ Its greatest virtue, as MacGowan saw it, was that it got round LeCat's insistence that no aircraft, no surface or underwater craft must approach the tanker, on pain of shooting the hostages. The tanker itself would sail up to the airdrop point. And there was no other possible plan – God knows they had chewed that over long enough.

^ MacGowan found it fascinating as the discussion of the plan continued – the way Winter was gradually dominating the meeting. Personality, he decided, of a rare order. A man who was so sure of himself, so compelling, that they were all, reluctantly, falling under his spell. MacGowan had once known another man like this in his early days as state prosecutor, a man he had known as guilty of the charge brought against him. MacGowan had lost this case, the defendant had gone free-because of his cold, clinical personality, the way he had swayed the jury.

^ 'How will you know where to place that mobile crane?' the Governor asked ultimately. 'It has to be positioned exactly over the tanker's deck ^ before ^ she reaches the bridge?'

^ 'Radar,' Winter said. 'We need mobile radar positioned on the bridge to track the ^ Challenger's ^ approach. When Mackay sets a course he keeps it – and he won't start weaving about inside that channel…'

^ MacGowan leaned forward, his hairy hands clenched on the table. 'As we work it out, we should start setting it up. We can't keep LeCat outside for ever.'

^… ^ Golden Gate channel will be clear within a few hours. Await next signal which may well authorise your entry into San Francisco Bay. Arrangements have been made to take off your wounded.

^ It was the fifth signal LeCat had received which was signed MacGowan, Governor of the State of California. This did something to soothe his irritation at the constant delay in permitting the tanker to proceed. And when daylight had come earlier on the morning of Wednesday January 22, when the sun had dissolved the fog in the channel, LeCat had reluctantly accepted the idea that there had been a collision.

^ About three miles from where the tanker stood off the coast, close to the distant Golden Gate bridge, two cargo ships were apparently locked together in mid-channel while another ship with a crane was close by. MacGowan had arranged for this tableau to be set up before dawn and O'Hara of the Port Authority had organised the 'collision'. Any doubts LeCat might have had about the genuineness of this scene were dispelled when he asked Kinnaird to tune him in to mainland news bulletins.

^ Peretti had issued a statement, reporting the 'collision', and this had been broadcast across the world as an adjunct to the reports of the hi-jack. For LeCat it was a satisfying day, receiving signals from the Governor of California, listening to bulletins from as far away as London, England, where always the main and lengthy news item was the terrorists' hi-jack. For the first time in his life, Jean Jules LeCat was world news.

^ 'I think they are now taking me seriously,' he told Mackay, after showing him the fifth signal late in the day. 'If, however, ^ ^ we do not start moving soon, I will shoot two of your crew and throw them overboard. You understand?'

^ 'I only understand that there has been a collision which you can see with your own eyes…' Mackay stared out of the smashed bridge window. It looked as though the fog wouldn't be coming back this evening, which was just as well if he had to take his ship through Golden Gate tonight.

^ It was dark in San Francisco at six o'clock, it was chilly inside MacGowan's office where the thermostat was fixed at the obligatory sixty-two degrees. And it had been decided that a three-man assault team would be dropped from Golden Gate bridge, a figure both Winter and Cassidy agreed on. 'Send down more men on to a fogbound deck and they'll end up shooting each other,' Cassidy warned.

^ They had been meticulous about the weapons the three men would carry. 'A gun with great stopping power,' Winter had insisted, 'the terrorists on board have to be picked off one by one as they are found. And a silent weapon, too. The DeLisle carbine would be ideal, but you don't have it over here…' Karpis of the FBI had found three DeLisles – by checking with the Alcohol and Tax Division which had registered four of these guns in Hollywood, of all places. A firm supplying the film and TV industry with weapons had the guns in stock. MacGowan had phoned a police chief in Los Angeles, a patrol car had sped to the firm on Hollywood Boulevard, and within one hour the carbines were aboard a plane for San Francisco.

^ Over at Fort Baker on the far side of Golden Gate bridge, a mobile crane was already on the move – in response to a call from Cassidy's aide. The Coast Guard people were bringing in radar, two scramble nets were already stored near the bridge, Commissioner Bolan had warned a number of patrol car drivers they would be needed that night, and a detachment of Marines were engaged in last-minute firing practice. At six-fifteen Cassidy looked round the table and asked the big question.

^ There was silence for a moment and then Cassidy spoke again. 'I'm making the trip. I need two more people who know that ship – I don't.'

^ 'You'll be taking me,' Sullivan said quietly. 'I've come all the way from Bordeaux to sit in on this meeting. But I'd like a little practice with the DeLisle gun when it arrives.'

^ 'Ex-naval intelligence,' Cassidy said. 'You qualify. That leaves one more volunteer…'

^ Winter for once said nothing, feeling he would be excluded if he pushed himself forward. He lit a cigarette and stared at the Marine colonel with a blank expression. Cassidy smiled unpleasantly. 'You started this thing, so it's up to you to help finish it…'

^ 'That I won't sanction,' Peretti protested violently. 'He could still be tricking us…'

^ 'How, for God's sake?' MacGowan burst out. 'Or do you want him to have another session with your bloody lie-detector? This is a job for somebody who knows that ship well – for Christ's sake, Peretti, we're not going down the rope into the fog…'

^ 'There isn't any fog,' the mayor pointed out. 'Do they go down it if it's a clear night – with the moon shining down on them like a spotlight?'

^ 'We've already decided,' Cassidy snapped. 'If there's no fog we can't make it. But we have to send the signal bringing the tanker in soon – it will take it hours to get there, moving at only half a knot.' He looked back at Winter. 'As I was saying, it's up to you to help us finish this thing. Have you any objections?'

^ 'Yes,' Winter said, 'we're wasting time. I want to get out to Golden Gate to take a closer look at that bridge…'

^ It came in a great solid bank, sliding down the channel towards Golden Gate bridge like a siege train, sending out long fingers of grey vapour across the silent ocean surface. Rolling in from the Pacific, the fingers wrapped themselves round Mile Rocks lighthouse, enveloped it, then stretched themselves towards the bridge. Standing on the sidewalk of the six-lane highway span Winter saw it coming by the light of the moon. It reached the bridge, rolled underneath Winter, spread north along the Marin County shore, south towards the city. It was a very heavy fog indeed.

^ For the first time since the great bridge had been opened in 1937 no traffic flowed across it – it had been closed at both ends. A huge mobile crane was positioned close to where Winter stood near the centre of the span. He could see the radar operator a few feet away. A telephone link had been set up between the radar operator and the crane driver, and the crane, normally bright orange, had been converted to a neutral grey with quick-drying paint.

^ Because there had to be traffic moving across the highway span as the tanker approached Golden Gate bridge – a deserted bridge might strike LeCat as abnormal, and if he saw it above the fog there must be nothing to attract his attention to the span. Winter walked over to the crane and leaned over the sidewalk rail. Suspended from the crane a large scramble net hung over the invisible drop – invisible because there was nothing below but fog. This was the transport which would carry them one hundred and eighty feet down into the depths until they were suspended just above ^ Challenger's ^ deck height.

^ 'The way that tanker will be crawling in towards us,' MacGowan said, 'she should pass under this point at about one in the morning.'

^ 'You realise, don't you,' Winter warned, 'that when we land on the fo'c'sle we may have to hide for some time – to wait for the right moment to attack the bridge?'

^ 'I just pray it won't be too long,' the Governor commented. 'The longer it is, the more time for something to go wrong.'

^ Wearing the same grey combat fatigues as Winter and Cassidy Sullivan came back from the Marin County end of the bridge at a brisk trot. Limbering up, stiff with sitting in on so many meetings, he had plenty of space for his exercise – the bridge is over a mile-and-a-half long from shore to shore. Leaning over the rail, he peered down where he was going. 'Like pea soup,' he remarked. 'Let's hope to God it stays that way.'

^ ^ ^ Cassidy, checking everything, asking questions, repeating the performance he had carried out when he had gone on board the ^ Pecheur ^ in Victoria, Canada. The ^ Pecheur, ^ waiting out in the Pacific, would soon be under observation from a submarine which had been despatched from San Diego. The seaplane moored in Richardson Bay was also under observation by a concealed detachment of Marines and a small artillery piece was trained on the aircraft. All escape hatches which LeCat and the others might use had now been closed.

^ 'Something will go wrong, of course,' Winter remarked at one stage to Cassidy. 'There's always something you didn't foresee no matter how carefully you plan an operation…'

^ 'So, we change our minds fast – maybe while we're hanging in mid-air.'

^ And they had planned it carefully. Two cars without lights were parked close to the crane and inside were six Marines, marksmen with their rifles who had been hand-picked by Cassidy. MacGowan had insisted on the precaution: if the fog cleared suddenly as the tanker came up to the bridge the men inside the scramble net – suspended in mid-air – would be sitting ducks for any armed terrorists on the main deck. If this happened the Marines would dive out of their cars, hang over the rail and pick off as many terrorists as they could.

^ At either end of the bridge a man waited with a cine-camera equipped with a telephoto lens. If the fog cleared even for a moment they would take as much film as they could of the tanker – they might just photograph something vital. Other men had gone up inside the elevators which ran up the towers and now they were perched five hundred feet up above the highway span, just below the airway beacons, men with powerful night-glasses and walkie-talkies through which they could communicate with O'Brien, the bridge superintendent. They had, Winter decided at the end of his inspection tour, done everything possible. Until one o'clock…

^ 'The whole thing could blow up in our faces unless ^ York ^ and ^ Chester ^ reach the Persian Gulf in time… And I'm not happy ^ ^ about that British tanker ^ Challenger ^ at San Francisco. Our military analysts think there could be a connection – between the massing of Syrian and Egyptian troops and the outrageous demands of the terrorists aboard that tanker…'

^ Extract from Minister of Defence's comments to British Inner Cabinet, Wednesday January 22.

^ Nine hours away across the world from where Winter and Cassidy had just completed their inspection of the bridge, Sheikh Gamal Tafak was pacing about restlessly inside the room he was beginning to regard as his prison. Baggy-eyed, he had stayed up all night, listening to the news bulletins, waiting for the report which would tell him the Americans had allowed the tanker inside the Bay.

^ Instead, they had cancelled the permission – something about a collision, which Tafak did not for a moment believe. Nor had he received a message from Ahmed Riad confirming that Winter was flying back to Paris, from where someone else would instruct him to fly on to Beirut. Patience, he told himself, there will be good news soon..,

^ The news of the hi-jack of the British tanker had captured the world headlines. It was the main item in all news bulletins from Washington to Tokyo. 'First major ship hi-jack…' And in Israel it had not gone unnoticed, where secretly the military chiefs suspected some link between this event and the disappearance from public view of Sheikh Gamal Tafak. It was a time of waiting – everywhere.

^ They were engulfed in damp, clammy fog, so dense they could hardly see one another as they clung to the large scramble net like men scaling a wall, their feet balanced on rope rungs, their hands gripping the net above them, their DeLisle carbines looped over their shoulders, their. 45 Colt revolvers tucked inside shoulder holsters, their knives tucked inside their belts. Winter also had a smoke pistol attached to his belt. When they were lowered inside the fog the temperature dropped and the net began swaying. They ^ ^ could see nothing above them, below them, ahead – nothing but dense grey fog.

^ The net was in front of them, pressed against their chests, and behind them there was nothing but space and fog and the ocean far below. The crane driver dropped them at a rate of one foot per second, sixty feet per minute. He had to hold them in mid-air precisely twenty feet above the ocean, which should mean they would just clear the oncoming forepeak of the vessel they couldn't see, couldn't hear. It had been pointed out to the crane driver that if he miscalculated by only a few feet, held them, say, sixteen feet above the water, then the oncoming steel bow would hit them like an express train – not in speed but in impact. They would be battered, torn from the net and dropped into the water while the 50,000-ton ship cruised over them.

^ The drop went on. It would take three minutes precisely. Providing the crane driver dropped them accurately. Pinned against the net, his face running with moisture, Winter tried to see the illuminated second-hand on his watch. Two minutes to go.

^ They went on dropping through the grisly fog, clinging to the net with numbed fingers. They seemed to be dropping at an alarming rate, plunging towards the ocean as though the crane mechanism was out of control, dropping, dropping, dropping… And the sway of the net was bad, worse than Winter had anticipated. Above them, attached to the hook which held the net, was a lead weight, a weight which was supposed to minimise the sway factor. It was like being on a swing, swaying backwards and forwards slowly through nothing, with nothing under them.

^ Attached to the net, close to Winter's mouth, was a walkie-talkie linked direct with the crane driver now far above them in the clouds. If he saw something going wrong he might have time to shout a brief warning, which might reach the crane driver before it was too late. So many 'might's' he preferred not to think about them. At least they would be over the tanker when it passed below – the pinpoint accuracy of the radar set, Mackay's seamanship in keeping a steady course, and the one-hundred-foot width of the tanker practically guaranteed this. But when the hell was the descent going to stop? Winter peered at the watch on his wrist.

^ Ten seconds left and they were still going down like a lift. Had the footage counter – the instrument which told the driver how far he had lowered them gone wrong? They went on dropping.

^ LeCat had taken two precautions the men on Golden Gate bridge knew nothing about. He had placed one man – with a walkie-talkie – at the top of the foremast. A second armed guard stood at the forepeak of the tanker. Both men were peering into the fog as ^ Challenger ^ approached the bridge.

^ Inside the wheelhouse it was no warmer than at the top of the foremast – the window smashed in the typhoon was letting in the fog. LeCat stood near the window, holding a walkie-talkie, irritated by everything – by the regulation blast of the siren sounding its fog warning every two minutes, by the vessel's incredibly slow movement. Obeying MacGowan's signalled instruction – which he didn't understand – Mackay was taking his ship through the channel at eight knots, which meant they were moving 'over the ground' at half a knot. 'We can hardly be moving at all,' LeCat snapped. 'I still do not see why we have to move like a snail…'

^ The reply did nothing to quieten LeCat's nerves. They were, he guessed, close to the point where the cargo ships had collided. He was even wondering whether the diabolical Americans had left the cargo ships in the channel – so the tanker would hit them, go down, and it could all be passed off as an accident, problem solved. LeCat need not have worried: at dusk the three 'collision' vessels had been withdrawn to the east side of the Bay.

^ Mackay turned his back on LeCat, went to stand by the helmsman. The steering was on manual, the engine beat was slow and regular, and for all they could see they might have been in mid-Pacific. Mackay went to the radar screen and stared down at the sweep as LeCat called up to the man at the foremast on his walkie-talkie.

^ 'Nothing but fog.' The voice sounded sullen. 'Wait a minute -I can see something moving…'

^ ^ the grey curtain. Andre pressed his glasses hard against his eyes. The fog swirled, the hole grew larger and his night-glasses picked it up, something moving – the blur of moving lights, car headlights. He adjusted the focus and saw the silhouette of a car.

^ 'I can see the bridge!' Andre sounded excited. 'I can see the bridge! We are close…'

^ Three hundred feet…' It was Mackay who had answered as he came away from the radarscope. 'We shall pass under the bridge within a matter of minutes…'

^ On the bridge thin traffic proceeded steadily in both directions, traffic composed of cars driven by police patrolmen in plain clothes. They were moving along an elongated ellipse, driving off the bridge at either end, turning round and coming back again. There was even a Greyhound bus appearing at intervals, a bus with a handful of passengers who were Marines out of uniform and with their rifles lying on the floor. They were proceeding along the four inner lanes, leaving the outer lanes clear for the cars parked close to the sidewalks without lights.

^ Mayor Peretti, muffled in a topcoat against the night chill, leaned over the rail, straining to catch a glimpse of the huge tanker somewhere below. The moonlight shone down on the rolling fog and he couldn't see anything – except the crane's cable dropping into the vapour.

^ A Marine threw open the door of his parked car and ran along the bridge to where MacGowan was standing close to the mobile crane. 'Guy on the Marin tower just came through on the radio. The fog broke and he thinks there's a lookout top of the foremast…'

^ MacGowan climbed up to the crane driver's cab. 'Warn them,' he shouted. 'There's a lookout at the top of the foremast…'

^ One hundred and seventy feet… one hundred and seventy-five feet. The driver heard MacGowan without replying, his eyes fixed on the footage counter, the instrument which warned him how low the net had gone. One hundred and eighty feet. He stopped the descent, spoke into his walkie-talkie. 'Winter, you're twenty feet above the ocean. From now on I'll be listening for any ^ ^ instructions to drop you further. And Winter, I've just been informed they have a lookout top of the foremast…'

^ The driver switched his walkie-talkie to 'receive'. He had one more vital operation to perform. He sat in his cab, staring at the weight indicator gauge. When that lost about five hundred pounds, the approximate weight of the three men, he would whip the net back up through the fog. The assault team would have gone aboard. Or into the ocean.

^ Which is what we didn't foresee Winter thought grimly. He was in the middle of the net with Cassidy on his right, Sullivan on his left, the three of them pressed together shoulder to shoulder, like men stretched on a multiple rack. The net was swaying gently, stopped in mid-air, enveloped in fog so like porridge that they couldn't see anything, let alone the ocean twenty feet or so below. They turned slowly below the invisible hook above them. The distant dirge of a foghorn was the only sound as they hung and twisted on the net. There was not a breath of wind, only the clammy feel of the all-pervading fog, the clammy sweat of fear.

^ They have a lookout on the foremast,' Winter whispered to Cassidy. 'Which is too damned close to where we'll land for comfort…'

^ 'Can't shoot him,' Cassidy said, 'that would alert them on the bridge before we could get anywhere near it…' Cassidy's voice sounded strained and unnatural in the fog. Winter was just about able to see him. How the hell was he ever going to see the ship's forepeak if it did pass below them?

^ 'Carpenter's store,' Winter said. 'We may have to wait in there a bit – it's on the fo'c'sle. Did you hear that, Sullivan?'

^ Winter peered up at his watch. Bloody thing should arrive any second now, all 50,000 tons of it, gliding across the water like a moving wall of steel… He tensed, he couldn't help it. The fog warning, one prolonged blast, sounded to be in his ear, going on and on and on. He gazed down. Porridge, nothing but porridge. Any second now and they would feel the ship – as it slammed against them. It was close enough, dear God – the ship's fog ^ ^ warning blast was still deafening him. Where the hell was the bloody tanker –

^ The fog was not as dense as it had seemed. Less than six feet below a grey, blurred platform had started to glide past under them. Like a huge revolving platform. Winter thought he saw a man. Then he was gone. And Winter was gone. Dropping. With the others.

^ Two hundred feet above, the weight indicator needle flashed back over the gauge. Four hundred and ninety pounds. Gone! The driver pressed a lever. Full speed. The scramble net whipped upwards, out of sight. 'They've gone!' he shouted to MacGowan.

^ Winter hit the deck like a paratrooper, rolling, taking the impact on his shoulders as he slammed against the port rail. He came to his feet with a knife in his hand. A blurred figure came out of the fog, wearing a parka. Terrorist… The figure stopped, his head bent over backwards as Cassidy, behind him, clamped a hand over his mouth. Winter rammed in the knife, high up in the struggling man's chest. Still holding the knife handle, he felt the terrorist's last-convulsive spasm, then the man slumped in Cassidy's arms. Sullivan helped the American carry the body to the rail where they heaved it over the side. They heard no splash, only the steady beat of the ship's engines as ^ Challenger ^ glided in towards the Bay under Golden Gate bridge. Winter left the Skorpion which had fallen from the Frenchman's hand close to the rail – it would help convey the impression the man had fallen overboard.

^ 'Follow me,' he whispered, 'and keep close. The fog's thinner already…'

^ 'Too thin to risk moving past that foremast yet,' Cassidy agreed, 'and that lookout may have walkie-talkie communication with the bridge…'

^ Winter found the hatch, began unfastening it while Cassidy looked aft, watching anxiously for the foremast. The fog was thinning – as it so often did east of Golden Gate. He swore under his breath as he saw the lower part of the foremast coming into view, but the top was still blotted out. What the hell was Winter playing at?

^ ^ ^ made no noise. It was well-oiled, thank God, but this was a British tanker, not one of your Liberian efforts. He opened the hatch and let the others go down the ladder first, then he followed them, pausing when the hatch was almost closed, peering out through the inch-gap. The fog was still too thick to see the breakwater, let alone the bridge, but it was drifting away from the top of the foremast. Winter, peering through the narrow gap, saw the lookout clearly, staring south with night-glasses pressed to his eyes. Winter closed the hatch cover very slowly.

^ On the bridge of the ^ Challenger ^ Mackay was having a violent argument with LeCat as the ship moved towards Alcatraz Island which was already clear on the radarscope.

^ 'LeCat, I will not take this ship near San Francisco. We're bound for Oleum – that's near Richmond on the east side of the Bay…'

^ 'Then we will shoot Bennett in front of you on this bridge.' Second Officer Brian Walsh gulped as LeCat gave an order in French for one of the guards to fetch Bennett. Then LeCat told the guard to wait as the captain protested. 'You cannot murder a man just like that. It's inhuman…'

^ 'You will be murdering Bennett – you have it in your power to save him. Come into the chart-room with me…' LeCat led the way and inside the chart-room he pointed to a chart on the table. 'You will take the ship to this position – where the cross is…' He was indicating the mark Winter had made on the chart before he left the ship.

^ 'I must know what is going to happen before I agree,' Mackay said grimly.

^ 'I want to be close in so I can use the ship-to-shore to conduct negotiations with the authorities. When they have agreed to my demands we shall go ashore to this pier. There we shall board a bus they will have supplied and drive to the airport where a plane will be waiting to fly us to Damascus.' I have, LeCat thought, as he watched Mackay's face, made it sound convincing. 'Now you know what will happen,' LeCat continued, 'get on with it. I have no desire to shoot anyone – it would complicate matters.'

^ ^ indicated on the chart. 'That is barely half a mile from the San Francisco waterfront.'

^ 'That is correct. Now, will you do what I say or do I have Bennett brought to the bridge? Time is not on my side so I have no patience left…'

^ Without a word Mackay went back on to the bridge and gave instructions to the helmsman personally. Then he went to the front of the bridge and stood there with his hands behind his back, looking down the full length of the main deck where the fog cleared until he could see the distant fo'c'sle. He went on staring in the same direction, never giving a thought to the fact that under the fo'c'sle lay the carpenter's store.