Алистер Маклин - The Golden Gate

‘My sentiments too, I’m afraid,’ Milton said. ‘He’s not a particularly retiring person, this Branson of yours?’

‘I wish he were mine. If you mean does he suffer from our bouts of bashfulness, no, sir, he does not.’

‘Arrogant?’

‘To the point, perhaps, of megalomania. At least, that’s what General Cartland says, and I wouldn’t care to dispute what the General says.’

‘Few would.’ Milton spoke with some feeling. ‘Speaking of self-opinionated characters, where art thou at this hour, my James?’

‘Sir?’

“What other self-opinionated character is there? I refer to Mr Hagenbach, the self-opinionated head of our FBI. I would have thought he would have been the first man hot-foot to the scene.’

‘Washington says they don’t know where he is. They’re trying every place they can think of. I’m afraid he’s a very elusive man, sir.’

‘Man’s got a mania for secrecy’ Milton brightened. ‘Well, if he’s watching his TV in an hour or so he should be considerably enlightened. What a perfectly splendid thought – the head of our FBI the last man in America to know about this.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Branson’s insistence on maximum publicity – TV, radio I’ll be bound, newsmen, photographers – has he ever declared himself publicly like this before? I mean, before or during any of his criminal activities?’

‘Never.’

‘The man must be terribly sure of himself.’

‘In his place, so would I.’ Quarry appeared distracted. ‘What can we do to the man? As I see it, he’s in an impregnable, quite unassailable position.’

‘I wouldn’t give up hope, sir. We have one or two experts looking for an answer. Admiral Newson and General Carter are in our HQ now working on this.’

‘Newson. Carter. Our twin geniuses of finesse.’ Quarry seemed more discouraged than ever. ‘Never use one hydrogen bomb where two will suffice. Someone should send our Arabian oil friends word that they’re about to become involved in a nuclear holocaust.’ He gestured through his window towards the bridge. ‘Just look at it. Just think of it. A totally impossible situation – if it weren’t for the fact that we can see now that it’s all too possible. Total, absolute isolation, completely cut off from the world – and in the full view of everybody in San Francisco – everybody in the world, for that matter, as soon as those TV cameras start turning. A figurative stone’s throw away – and they might as well be on the moon.’ He sighed heavily. ‘One must confess to a feeling of utter helplessness.’

‘Come, come, John.’ Milton was severe. ‘Is this the spirit that won the West?’

‘The hell with the West. I’m thinking about me. I don’t have to be very clever to know beyond any doubt that I am going to be the man in the middle.’

Hendrix said: ‘Sir?’

‘Why else do you think this ruffian had summoned the Secretary of the Treasury to his royal presence?’

Hands in pockets, as if deep in thought, Revson wandered along the east side of the bridge, stopping frequently to gaze at, and presumably admire the panorama stretched out before him – to his left the tip of Belvedere beyond Fort Baker, Tiburon and Angel Island, the largest in the Bay; to his right the city itself and straight ahead Alcatraz Island and beyond it Treasure Island: between the two the rapidly diminishing shape of the New Jersey was heading for its berth at Alameda. He made frequent stops, as if peering over the side. On one of those occasions he reached casually for the green cord he’d attached to the strut and hefted it. It was weightless.

‘What are you doing?’

He turned unhurriedly. April Wednesday’s big green eyes, if not exactly alive with curiosity, held a certain puzzlement.

‘You do have flannel feet. I thought I was the only person within miles – well, yards.’

‘What are you doing?’

‘When I look at this marvellous view here and then at you I really don’t know which I prefer. I think you. Have any people ever told you that you’re really rather beautiful?’

‘Lots.’ She caught the green cord between finger and thumb and started to lift it then made a muffled sound of pain as his hand closed none too gently over hers.

‘Leave that alone.’

She rubbed her hand, looked around and said: ‘Well?’

‘I’m fishing.’

‘Not for compliments, that’s for sure.’ She massaged her knuckles tenderly, then looked at him with some uncertainty. ‘Fishermen tell tall tales, don’t they?’

‘I’ve done it myself.’

‘Tell me one.’

‘Are you as trustworthy as you’re beautiful?’

‘Am I beautiful? And I’m not fishing. Honest.’

‘You are.’

‘Then I’m trustworthy too.’ They smiled at each other and he took her arm. ‘A really tall one?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘Why ever not?’ They walked slowly away together.

Hendrix replaced the receiver in its cradle. He looked at Milton and Quarry. ‘You are ready, gentlemen?’

‘Act One, Scene One, and all the world’s a stage. That’s wrong somehow.’ Milton rose and looked critically at Quarry. ‘The shirt’s wrong too, John. White shows up badly on TV. Should be blue – like me – or the President. Blue shirts are all he has: you never know when a TV camera is lurking round the next corner.’

‘Oh, shut up.’ Quarry turned morosely towards the rear door of the van then stopped as a motorcycle policeman drew up with a suitably dramatic screeching of tyre and smell of burning rubber, dismounted, propped his machine and hurried to the rear steps of the van. He held up his hand to Hendrix. ‘For you, sir.’

Hendrix took the eight-inch-long narrow cylinder. ‘It’s got my name on it, all right. Where did you get it from?’

‘The pilot boat brought it in from the New Jersey. The captain – of the New Jersey, that is – thought it might be very urgent.’

The centre section of the Golden Gate Bridge was fast assuming the appearance of an embryonic town, sprawling, inchoate and wholly disorganized as those burgeoning settlements tend to be, but none the less possessed of a vitality, a feverish restlessness that augured well for its expansive future. The fact that all the buildings were on wheels and that all the village elders, seated in solemn conclave, were immaculately dressed and had clearly never done a single day’s physical toil in their collective lives, did little to detract from the curious impression that here were the pioneers pushing forward the limits of the wild frontier.

There were three coaches and three police cars – the third had just brought Hendrix, Milton and Quarry. There were two large, glaze-windowed vehicles which bore the euphemistic legend ‘Rest Room’: painted in becoming red and yellow stripes they had been borrowed from an itinerant circus currently stopped-over in the city. There was an ambulance, which Branson had commandeered for purposes best known to himself, a large side-counter wagonette which had provided hot meals, a very large TV camera truck with its generator placed at a discreet hundred yards distance and, finally, a van that was unloading blankets, rugs and pillows to help ease the new settlers through the rigours of their first night.

There were, of course, the discordant, even jarring items. The helicopters, the tracked antiaircraft guns, the patrolling armed men, the army engineers at a distance on either side busily erecting steel barricades – those did tend to project a disturbing hint of violence to come. And yet they were not entirely alien there: so bizarre were the circumstances that the normal would have tended to look sadly out of place. The unreality of it all, when matched up against the outside world, had its own strange reality in this particular point in time and place. And for those participating in the scene, the reality of their situation was all too self-evident. No one smiled.