Алистер Маклин - Goodbye California

Extending from each end of the auxiliary building were the two wings, each about half the size of the main building. These in their own ways were areas as delicate and sensitive as the reactor units themselves, for it was here that all the nuclear fuels were handled and stored. In all, the building of the complex had called for something like a third of a million cubic yards of concrete and some fifty thousand tons of steel. What was equally remarkable was that it required only eighty people, including a good proportion of security staff, to run this massive complex twenty-four hours a day.

Twenty yards beyond the gate Ryder was stopped by a security guard wearing an indeterminate uniform and a machine-carbine that was far from menacing inasmuch as the guard had made no move to unsling it from his shoulder. Ryder leaned out.

‘What’s this, then? Open house day? Public free to come and go?’

‘Sergeant Ryder.’ The little man with the strong Irish accent tried to smile and succeeded only in looking morose. ‘Fine time now to lock the stable door. Besides, we’re expecting lawmen. Droves of them.’

‘And all of them asking the same stupid questions over and over again just as I’m going to do. Cheer up, John. I’ll see they don’t get you for high treason. On duty at the time, were you?’

‘For my sins. Sorry about your wife, Sergeant. This’ll be your son?’ Ryder nodded. ‘My sympathies. For what they’re worth. But don’t waste any sympathy on me. I broke regulations. If it’s the old cottonwood tree for me, I’ve got it coming. I shouldn’t have left my box.’

Jeff said: ‘Why?’

‘See that glass there. Not even the Bank of America has armoured plate like that. Maybe a Magnum forty-four could get through – I doubt it. There’s a two-way speaker system. There’s an alarm buzzer by my hand and a foot switch to trigger off a ten-pound charge of gelignite that would discourage anything short of a tank. It’s buried under the asphalt just where the vehicles pull up. But no, old smarty-pants McCafferty had to unlock the door and go outside.’

‘Why?’

‘No fool like an old fool. The van was expected at just that time – I had the note on my desk. Standard fuel pick-up from San Diego. Same colour, same letters, driver and guard with the same uniforms, even the same licence plates.’

‘Same van, in other words. Hi-jack. If they could hi-jack it when it was empty why not on the return journey when it was full?’

‘They came for more than the fuel.’

‘That’s so. Recognize the driver?’

‘No. But the pass was in order, so was the photograph.’

‘Well, would you recognize that driver again?’

McCafferty scowled in bitter recollection. ‘I’d recognize that damned great black beard and moustache again. Probably lying in some ditch by this time.

‘Didn’t have time even to see the old shotgun, just the one glance and then the van gate – they’re side loaders – fell down. The only uniform the lot inside were wearing were stocking masks. God knows how many of them there were; I was too busy looking at what they were carrying – pistols, sawn-off twelve-bores, even one guy with a bazooka.’

‘For blasting open any electronically-locked steel doors, I suppose.’

‘I suppose. Fact of the matter is, there wasn’t one shot fired from beginning to end. Professionals, if ever I saw any. Knew exactly what they were doing, where to go, where to look. Anyway, I was plucked into that van and had hand and leg cuffs on before I had time to close my mouth.’

Ryder was sympathetic. ‘I can see it must have been a bit of a shock. Then?’

‘One of them jumped down and went into the box. Bastard had an Irish accent: I could have been listening to myself talking. He picked up the phone, got through to Carlton – he’s the number-two man in security, if you recollect: Ferguson was off today – told him the transport van was here and asked for permission to open the gate. He pressed the button, the gates opened, he waited until the van had passed through, closed the door, came out through the other door and climbed into the van that had stopped for him.’

‘And that’s all?’

‘All I know. I stayed in there – I didn’t have much option, did I? – until the raid was over, then they locked me up with the others.’

‘Where’s Ferguson?’

‘In the north wing.’

‘Checking on missing articles, shall we say? Tell him I’m here.’

McCafferty went to his guard box, spoke briefly on the phone and returned. ‘It’s okay.’

‘No comments?’

‘Funny you should ask that. He said: “Dear God, as if we haven’t got enough trouble here.” ’

Ryder half-smiled a very rare half-smile and drove off.

Ferguson, the security chief, greeted them in his office with civility but a marked lack of enthusiasm. Although it was some months since he had read Ryder’s acerbic report on the state of security at San Ruffino Ferguson had a long memory.

The fact that Ryder had been all too accurate in his report and that he, Ferguson, had neither the authority nor the available funds to carry out all the report’s recommendations hadn’t helped matters any. He was a short stocky man with wary eyes and a habitually worried expression. He replaced a telephone and made no attempt to rise from behind his desk.

‘Come to write another report, Sergeant?’ He tried to sound acid but all he did was sound defensive. ‘Create a little more trouble for me?’

Ryder was mild. ‘Neither. If you don’t get support from your blinkered superiors with their rose-coloured glasses then the fault is theirs, not yours.’

‘Ah.’ The tone was surprised but the face still wary.

Jeff said: ‘We have a personal interest in this, Mr Ferguson.’

‘You the sergeant’s son?’ Jeff nodded. ‘Sorry about your mother. I guess saying that doesn’t help very much.’

‘You were thirty miles away at the time,’ Ryder said reasonably. Jeff looked at his father in some apprehension: he knew that a mild-mannered Ryder was potentially the most dangerous Ryder of all, but in this case there seemed no undue cause for alarm. Ryder went on: ‘I’d looked to find you down in the vaults assessing the amount of loot our friends have made off with.’

‘Not my job at all. Never go near their damned storage facilities except to check the alarm systems. I wouldn’t even begin to know what to look for. The Director himself is down there with a couple of assistants finding what the score is.’

‘Could we see him?’

‘Why? Two of your men, I forget their names–’

‘Parker and Davidson.’

‘Whatever. They’ve already talked to him.’

‘My point. He was still making his count then.’

Ferguson reached a grudging hand for the telephone, spoke to someone in tones of quiet respect, then said to Ryder: ‘He’s just finishing. Here in a moment, he says.’

‘Thanks. Any way this could have been an inside job?’

‘An inside job? You mean, one of my men involved?’ Ferguson looked at him suspiciously. He himself had been thirty miles away at the time, which should have put himself, personally, beyond suspicion: but equally well, if he had been involved he’d have made good and certain that he was thirty miles away on the day that the break-in had occurred. ‘I don’t follow. Ten heavily armed men don’t need assistance from inside.’

‘How come they could have walked through your electronically-controlled doors and crisscross of electric eyes undetected?’

Ferguson sighed. He was on safer ground here. ‘The pickup was expected and on schedule. When Carlton heard from the gate guard about its arrival he would automatically have turned them off.’