Алистер Маклин - Goodbye California

‘You are a clever woman, Mrs Ryder.’ He touched her once on the shoulder, very gently. ‘We shall see.’

At 11 a.m. a Lear jet touched down at Las Vegas. Two men emerged and were escorted to one of five waiting police cars. Within fifteen minutes four other planes arrived and eight men were transferred to the four other police cars. The police convoy moved off. The route to their destination was sealed off to all traffic.

At 4 p.m. in the afternoon three gentlemen arrived at Sassoon’s office from Culver City. They were warned upon arrival that they would not be allowed to leave until midnight. They accepted the news with equanimity.

At 4.15 p.m. Air Force One, the Presidential jet, touched down at Las Vegas.

At 5.30 p.m. Culver, Barrow, Mitchell and Sassoon entered the small ante-room off Sassoon’s office. The three gentlemen from Culver City were smoking, drinking and had about them an air of justifiable pride. Culver said: ‘I’ve just learned about this. Nobody ever tells me anything.’

Ryder said: ‘If my young daughter saw me do you think there’s any power on earth that would stop her from crying out “Daddy”?’

Ryder now had brown hair, brown moustache, brown eyebrows and even brown eyelashes. The well-filled cheeks now had pouches in them, and there were slight traces of a long-healed double scar on the right cheek. His nose was not the one he’d had that morning. Susan Ryder would have brushed by him in the street without a second glance. Nor would her son or Parker have merited a second glance either.

At 5.50 p.m. Air Force One touched down at Los Angeles International airport. Even a tidal wave has no effect on the massively reinforced concrete of a runway.

At 6 p.m. Morro and Dubois were seated before a voice-box. Morro said: ‘There can be no mistake?’ It was a question, but there was no question in his voice.

‘Presidential seal, sir. They were met by two unmarked police cars and an ambulance. Seven men disembarked. Five of them were the men we saw on TV last night. My life on that. Mr Muldoon seems to be in very poor shape. He was helped down the steps by two men who took him to the ambulance. One was carrying what I took to be a medicine bag.’

‘Describe them.’

The observer, obviously highly trained, described them. Down to the last detail his description tallied exactly with the way both Jeff and Parker looked at that moment.

Morro said: ‘Thank you. Return.’ He switched off, smiled and looked at Dubois. ‘Mumain is the best in the business.’

‘He has no equal.’

Morro picked up a microphone and began to dictate.

Sassoon switched off the wall-box and looked around the room. ‘He does seem quite gratified at the prompt arrival of his guests, doesn’t he?’

At 7.30 p.m. the next and last message came through from Morro. He said: ‘It is to be hoped that there was no loss of life this morning. As I have said, if there were the fault was not mine. One regrets the considerable physical damage inevitable in the circumstances. I trust that the display was sufficiently impressive to convince everyone that I have in my power the means to implement my promises.

‘It will come as a surprise to no one to know that I am aware that the presidential party landed at ten minutes to six this evening. They will be picked up by helicopter at exactly nine o’clock. The helicopter will land in the precise centre of Los Angeles airport which will be fully illuminated by searchlights or whatever means you care to employ. No attempt will be made to trace or follow the helicopter after take-off. We will have the President of the United States aboard. That is all.’

At 9 p.m. the presidential party duly boarded the helicopter. Considerable difficulty was experienced in hoisting Muldoon aboard, but it was finally achieved without precipitating another heart seizure. For air hostesses they had two guards, each equipped with an Ingram machine-gun. One of them went around and fitted each of the seven men with a black hood, which was secured at the neck by draw-strings. The President protested furiously and was ignored.

The President was Vincent Hillary, widely regarded as the best character actor Hollywood had ever produced. Even without make-up he had borne a remarkable resemblance to the President. By the time the make-up artist had finished with him in Las Vegas the President himself would have stood in front of a plate of transparent glass and gone on oath that he was looking into a mirror. He had a remarkable capacity for modulating his voice so as to imitate a remarkably wide range of people. Hillary was expendable and was cheerfully prepared to acknowledge the fact.

The Chief of Staff was a certain Colonel Greenshaw, lately retired from the Green Berets. Nobody knew the number of deaths that lay at his door, and he had never cared to enumerate. It was widely said that the only thing he really cared about was killing people: and he was unquestionably very good at this.

The Defense Secretary was one Harlinson, a man tipped to be one of the choices to succeed Barrow as head of the FBI. He looked almost more like the Defense Secretary than the Defense Secretary did. He was said to be very good at looking after himself.

The Secretary of State was, of all things, a remarkably successful attorney-at-law who had once been an Ivy League professor. Johannsen had nothing in particular to recommend him – he wouldn’t even have known how to load a gun – except the intense patriotism of a first-generation American and his uncanny resemblance to the real Secretary. But his own private make-up men had improved even on that.

The Assistant Treasury Secretary, one Myron Bonn, had also some pretensions towards being a scholar, and uncannily bore out a statement earlier made by Ryder. He was at present in the throes about writing a thesis for his external Ph.D., and remarkably erudite it was, but then the thesis was about prison conditions and the suggested ameliorations thereof upon which he was an undoubted expert: the thesis was being written in a cell in Death Row, where he was awaiting execution. He had three things going for him. Being a criminal does not necessarily make a man less a patriot. His original resemblance, now perfected, to the Assistant Secretary, had been astonishing. And he was widely regarded by the police as being the most lethal man in the United States, behind bars or outside them. He was a multiple murderer. Oddly, he was an honest man.

Muldoon, the Treasury Secretary, was unquestionably the pièce de résistance. Like Hillary – both of whom were to put up performances that night worth platinum Oscars – he was an actor. It had taken the unremitting efforts of no less than three of the best special-effects make-up men in Hollywood – it had taken them six hours – to transfer him into what he was. Ludwig Johnson had suffered in the process and was still suffering, for even a man weighing two hundred pounds to begin with does not care to carry another unnecessary sixty pounds around with him. On the other hand, the make-up men had made that sixty pounds look like one hundred and thirty, and for that he was reasonably grateful.

So, purely by chance and not from necessity, three of them were men of unquestionable action while three would not have said boo to the proverbial goose. Ryder would not have cared if all six were in the latter category. But so the cards had fallen.

The helicopter hedge-hopped its way due east, no doubt to fly under the radar which the pilot may have mistakenly imagined was following him. After a certain distance he turned sharply to the north-west and set his craft down near the town of Gorman. At this point they were transferred to a minibus which stopped just south of Greenfield. Here they were transferred to another helicopter. Throughout Muldoon’s sufferings were heart-wrenching to behold. At eleven o’clock precisely the helicopter set them down in the courtyard of the Adlerheim. Not that any of the visitors was to know that. Their blindfolds were not removed until they were inside the refectory-cum-prayer-hall of the castle.