Алистер Маклин - The Golden Gate

At three o’clock all the lights on the Golden Gate Bridge and the adjacent parts of the city blacked out. The man in the grey coat started up his flat truck and the electric vehicle whirred almost silently towards the south tower.

The duty policeman picked up the phone in the communications wagon. It was Branson and he wasn’t in a jovial mood. ‘Hendrix?’

‘The Chief is not here.’

‘Then get him.’

‘If you could tell me what the matter–’

‘The bridge lights have gone again. Get him.’

The policeman laid down his phone and walked to the rear of the wagon. Hendrix sat on a stool by the open door, a walkie-talkie in his hand, a cup of coffee in the other. The walkie-talkie crackled.

‘Carmody here, Chief. We’re inside the tower and Hopkins is halfway back with the electric cart already’

‘Thank you.’ Hendrix put down the walkie-talkie. ‘Branson? A mite anxious?’

Hendrix finishing off his coffee in a leisurely fashion, crossed the wagon, picked up the phone and yawned.

‘I was asleep. Don’t tell me. The lights are out again. We’ve been having blackouts all over the city tonight. Hold on.’

In the Presidential coach, Branson held on. Chrysler came running down the aisle. The President looked at him blearily. The oil barons snored steadily on. Branson, phone still in hand, looked round. Chrysler said quickly: ‘South searchlight is out of action.’

‘It’s not possible.’ Branson’s face was beginning to show deeper lines of strain. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘God knows. It’s black out there. Generator seems fine.’

‘Then run for the north one and turn it round. No. Wait.’ Hendrix was on the phone. ‘One minute you say?’ He turned to Chrysler. ‘Forget it. The lights are coming on again.’ Branson spoke into the phone again. ‘Don’t forget. I want Quarry on this phone at seven sharp.’

Branson replaced the phone and walked up the aisle. The President stopped him.

‘When is this nightmare going to stop?’

‘That’s up to your Government.’

‘I’ve no doubt the Government will accede to your requests. You interest me, Branson, you interest all of us here. Why this bitter grudge against society?’

Branson smiled his empty smile. ‘Society I can take or leave.’

‘Then why the grudge against me? Why the public humiliation? You’ve been invariably polite to everyone else. Isn’t it enough to hold the nation to ransom without making a fool of me at the same time?’

Branson made no answer.

‘You don’t like my politics, perhaps?’

‘Politics bore me.’

‘I was speaking to Hendrix today. He tells me your father is an extremely wealthy banker back east. A multi-millionaire. You envy a man who’s made it to the very top. You couldn’t wait to inherit his bank and his millions so you took the only other course open to you. Crime. And you haven’t made it. And you haven’t had recognition – except that of a few top policemen. So you’re a failure. So you bear a grudge. So you take it out, symbolically, on America’s leading citizen.’

Branson said wearily: ‘You, Mr President, are a lousy diagnostician and an even lousier psychiatrist. Okay, okay, insults again, but this is private. You may fear no more the lash of my tongue. But to think that your decisions can affect over two hundred million Americans.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s how wrong you can get. Branson, senior, that model of integrity and propriety, is a double-dyed bastard. He was also – and still is – a double-dyed crook. A renowned investment banker, you understand, but it didn’t do his investors much good. They were mainly people of modest means. I at least rob wealthy institutions. I found this out when I worked in his bank. I wouldn’t have taken a lousy dollar from him. I didn’t even give him the pleasure of disinheriting me. I just told him what I thought of him and his lousy bank and walked out. As for recognition – who wants it?’

‘You certainly achieved more in the past eighteen hours than your father did in a lifetime.’ The President was understandably sour.

‘That’s notoriety. Who wants that either? And for money – I already am a multi-millionaire.’

‘And still you want more?’

‘My motives are my business. Sorry to have interrupted your sleep, sir.’ Branson left.

Muir, in the next armchair, said: ‘Now, that was rather peculiar.’

‘So you weren’t asleep?’

‘One hates to interrupt. The Branson in the still watches of the night is not the Branson of the daylight hours. Forthcoming, one might almost say. Polite. Almost as if he was seeking for some kind of self-justification. But obviously bitter as hell about something.’

‘If he doesn’t want recognition and doesn’t need the money then what the hell are we doing stuck out on this damned bridge?’

‘Ssh. Mayor Morrison might hear you. I don’t know. With your permission, Mr President, I’m going back to sleep.’

When Carmody and Rogers reached the top of the south tower and stepped outside the lift, Carmody reached an arm in, pressed a button and withdrew his arm as the door began to close. Both men stepped outside and gazed down silently at the darkened and barely visible bridge some five hundred feet below them. After a minute Rogers withdrew the walkie-talkie from his canvas bag, extended the aerial and said: ‘You can cut the power now. The lift’s been down for thirty seconds.’

He replaced the walkie-talkie and removed his overalls. Over his purposely chosen dark shirt he wore a leather harness with a heavy steel buckle at the back. A nylon rope spliced to the buckle was wound several times round his waist. He was in the process of unwinding this when the bridge lights and the aircraft warning lights on top of the towers came on again. Carmody said: ‘A chance of our being spotted, you think?’

‘Thinking of the aircraft lights?’ Carmody nodded. ‘No chance. Not from their angle. And I understand their south searchlight isn’t working too well.’

Carmody unwound the rest of the rope and passed the end to Rogers. ‘A couple of turns, if you would, Charles, then hang on real good.’

‘Depend on it. If you take a dive that means I’ll have to disarm the damned thing myself – with no one to hold me.’

‘We should get danger money for this.’

‘You’re a disgrace to the Army bomb disposal squad.’

Carmody sighed, moved out on to the giant cable and began to remove the detonators from the explosives.

It was six thirty in the morning when Revson stirred and woke. He looked at April and saw that her green eyes were on his. There were heavy shadows under her eyes and her normally pale skin was now even more unnaturally so.

He said: ‘You don’t look to me as if you’ve rested any too well.’

‘I didn’t sleep all night.’

‘What? With me here to look after you?’

‘It’s not me I’m worried about. It’s you.’

He said nothing.

‘Do you feel hung over? After your – your sleeping pill?’

‘No. Guess I must have slipped into a natural sleep. That all you worried about?’

‘No. Branson was here just before one o’clock. He examined your eyes with a torch to see if you were still asleep.’

‘No sense of privacy, that man. You’d think–’

‘I think he’s again cast you in the role of prime suspect.’

‘Suspected of what?’

‘Van Effen’s missing.’

‘Is he now?’

‘You don’t seem much concerned.’

‘What’s Van Effen to me or me to Van Effen? No more alarms during the night?’

‘At three o’clock the bridge lights went off again.’

‘Ah!’

‘Nothing surprises you much, does it?’