Алистер Маклин - Goodbye California

Jeff explained. It took him no more than three minutes. When he had finished the expressions round the table ranged from the stunned, through incredulity, then intense consideration and finally, in Barrow’s case, the tentative dawning of hope where all hope had been abandoned.

Barrow whispered: ‘My God! I believe it could be done.’

‘It has to be done,’ Ryder said. ‘It means the instant and total co-operation of every police officer, every FBI officer, every CIA officer in the country. It means the scouring of every prison in the country and even if the man we require is a multiple murderer awaiting execution in Death Row he gets a free pardon. How long would it take?’

Barrow looked at Mitchell. ‘The hell with the hatchets. Bury them. Agreed?’ There was a fierce urgency in his voice. Mitchell didn’t answer: but he did nod. Barrow went on: ‘Organization is the name of the game. This is what we were born for.’

‘How long?’ Ryder repeated.

‘A day?’

‘Six hours Meantime, we can get the preliminaries under way.’

‘Six hours?’ Barrow smiled faintly. ‘It used to be the wartime motto of the Seabees that the impossible takes a little longer. Here, it would appear, it has to take a little shorter. You know, of course, that Muldoon has just had his third heart attack and is in Bethsheba hospital?’

‘I don’t care if you have to raise him from the dead. Without Muldoon we are nothing.’

At eight o’clock that evening it was announced over every TV and radio station in the country that at ten o’clock Western standard time – the times for the other zones were given – the President would be addressing the nation on a matter of the utmost national gravity which concerned an emergency unprecedented in the history of the Republic. As instructed, the announcement gave no further details. The brief and cryptic message was guaranteed to ensure the obsessive interest and compulsory viewing of every citizen in the Republic who was neither blind nor deaf nor both.

In the Adlerheim Morro and Dubois looked at each other and smiled. Morro reached out a hand for his bottle of Glenlivet.

In Los Angeles Ryder showed no reaction whatsoever, which was hardly surprising in view of the fact that he had helped draft the message himself. He asked Major Dunne for permission to borrow his helicopter and dispatched Jeff to pick up some specified articles from his, Ryder’s, home. Then he gave Sassoon a short list of other specified articles he required. Sassoon looked at him and said nothing. He just lifted a phone.

Exactly on ten the President appeared on TV screens throughout the country. Not even the first landing on the moon had attracted so vast a viewing – and listening – audience.

He had four men with him in the studio, and those he introduced as his Chief of Staff and the Secretaries of State, Defense and Treasury, which seemed largely superfluous as all of them were nationally- and indeed internationally-known figures. Muldoon, the Secretary of the Treasury, was the one who caught the attention of everyone. Colour TV showed him for what he was, a very sick man indeed. His face was ashen and, surprisingly, almost haggard – surprisingly because, although not particularly tall, he was a man of enormous girth and, as he sat, his great stomach seemed almost to touch his knees. He was said to weigh 330 lbs, but his precise weight was irrelevant. What was truly remarkable about him was not that he had had three heart attacks but the fact that he had managed to survive any of them.

‘Citizens of America.’ The President’s deep, resonant voice was trembling, not with fear but with an outraged fury that he made no attempt to suppress. ‘You all know the great misfortune that has befallen, or is about to befall, our beloved State of California. Although the Government of these United States will never yield to coercion, threats or blackmail it is clear that we must employ every means in our power – and in this, the greatest country in the world, our resources are almost infinite – to avert the impending doom, the threatened holocaust that looms over the West.’ Even in the moments of the greatest stress he was incapable of talking in other than presidential language.

‘I hope the villainous architect of this monstrous scheme is listening to me, for, despite the best efforts – and those have been immense and indefatigable – of hundreds of our best law enforcement officers, his whereabouts remain a complete secret and I know of no other means whereby I can contact him. I trust, Morro, you are either watching or listening. I know I am in no position to bargain with you or threaten you’ – here the President’s voice broke off on an oddly strangled note and he was forced to have recourse to several gulps of water – ‘because you would appear to be an utterly ruthless criminal wholly devoid of even the slightest trace of humanitarian scruples.

‘But I suggest that it might be to our mutual advantage and that we might arrive at some mutually satisfactory arrangement if I, and my four senior government colleagues with me here, were to parlay with you and try to arrive at some solution to this unparalleled problem. Although it goes violently against the grain, against every principle dear to me and every citizen of this great nation, I suggest we meet at a time and a place, under whatever conditions you care to impose, at the earliest possible moment.’ The President had quite a bit more to say, most of it couched in ringingly patriotic terms which could have only deceived those mentally retarded beyond any hopes of recovery: but he had, in fact, said all that he had needed to.

In the Adlerheim the normally impassive and unemotional Dubois wiped tears from his eyes.

‘Never yield to coercion, threats or blackmail! No position to bargain or treat with us. Mutually satisfactory arrangement! Five billion dollars to begin with, perhaps? And then, of course, we proceed with our original plan?’ He poured out two more glasses of Glenlivet, handed one to Morro.

Morro sipped some of the whisky. He, too, was smiling but his voice, when he spoke, held an almost reverent tone.

‘We must have the helicopter camouflaged. Think of it, Abraham, my dear friend. The dream of a life-time come true. America on its knees.’ He sipped some more of his drink then, with his free hand, reached out for a microphone and began to dictate a message.

Barrow said to no one in particular: ‘I’ve always maintained that to be a successful politician you have to be a good actor. But to be a President you must be a superlative one. We must find some way to bend the rules of the world of the cinema. The man must have an Oscar.’

Sassoon said: ‘With a bar and crossed leaves.’

At eleven o’clock it was announced over TV and radio that a further message from Morro would be broadcast in an hour’s time.

At midnight Morro was on the air again. He tried to speak in his customary calm and authoritative voice, but beneath it were the overtones of a man aware that the world lay at his feet. The message was singularly brief.

‘I address this to the President of the United States. We’ – that ‘we’ had more of the royal than the editorial about it – ‘accede to your request. The conditions of the meeting, which will be imposed entirely by us, will be announced tomorrow morning. We shall see what can be accomplished when two reasonable men meet and talk together.’ He sounded genuinely aware of his incredibly mendacious effrontery.

He went on in a portentous voice: ‘This proposed meeting in no way affects my intention to detonate the hydrogen device in the ocean tomorrow morning. Everybody – and that includes you, Mr President – must be convinced beyond all doubt that I have the indisputable power to carry out my promises.