Алистер Маклин - The Golden Gate

Johnson spoke into the walkie-talkie.

‘Bad trouble.’

‘Hold on as long as possible. Leave in emergency. Rendezvous remains.’

In coach P1 Van Effen looked at Branson. ‘Something wrong?’

‘Yes. Johnson and Bradley are in trouble, want to take off. Imagine what’s going to happen if they do, if they have to cruise around ten minutes waiting for us? A couple of hijacked helicopters with the President and half the oil in the Middle East in the city? Everybody’s going to be as jittery as hell. They’ll take no chances. Panic-stricken. They’ll stop at nothing. The choppers will be shot out of the sky. They have Phantoms in a state of instant readiness on that base.’

‘Well, now.’ Van Effen eased the coach to a stop at the back of the garage which held the motorcade. ‘Bad, but maybe not as bad as all that. If they have to take off before schedule, you could always instruct them to fly over the motorcade. It would take a pretty crazy air commander to instruct his pilots to fire machine-guns or rockets at a chopper hovering above the Presidential coach. Bingo – no President, no Arabian oil kings and sheikhs, no Chief of Staff, no Mayor Morrison. Chopper might even crash down on to the top of the Presidential coach. Not nice to be a sacked Rear Admiral without a pension. If, that is to say, he survives the court-martial.’

‘I hadn’t thought of it that way.’ Branson sounded half convinced, no more. ‘You’re assuming our air commander is as sane as you are, that he would react along your line of thinking. How are we to know that he is not certifiable? Extremely unlikely, I admit, but I have no option other than to accept your suggestion. And we’ve no option other than to go ahead.’

The buzzer rang. Branson made the appropriate switch.

‘P1?’

‘Yes?’

‘P3.’ It was Reston from the garage. ‘Lead coach has just moved out.’

‘Let me know when the Presidential coach moves.’

Branson gestured to Van Effen, who started up the engine and moved slowly round the side of the garage.

The buzzer rang again.

‘P5. On schedule. Ten minutes.’

‘Fine. Get down to the garage.’

Again the buzzer rang. It was Reston. He said: ‘Presidential coach is just moving out.’

‘Fine.’ Branson made another switch. ‘Rear coach?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Hold it for a couple of minutes. We’ve a traffic jam here. Some nut has just slewed his articulated truck across the street. Pure accident, I’d say. But no chances. No panic, no need for anyone to leave their seats. We’re coming back to the garage for a couple of minutes till they decide on a new route. Okay?’

‘Okay.’

Van Effen drove slowly round to the front of the garage, nosed it past the front door until the first third of the coach was visible to the occupants of the rear coach inside, still parked where it had been. Branson and Van Effen descended unhurriedly from the opposite front seats, walked into the garage: Yonnie, unobserved by those inside, exited via the back door and began to clamp the new number plate on top of the old.

The occupants of the rear coach watched the approach of the two white-coated figures curiously, but without suspicion, for endless frustrating delays were part and parcel of their lives. Branson walked round to the front door opposite the driver’s side, while Van Effen wandered, aimlessly as it seemed, towards the rear. Had there been any cause for concern on the part of the occupants, it would have been allayed by the sight of two blue-overalled figures busily doing nothing by the main doors. They were not to know they were Reston and his friend.

Branson opened the front left-hand door and climbed up two steps. He said to the driver: ‘Sorry about this. It happens. They’re picking out a new route, a safe route, for us to go up to Nob Hill.’

The driver looked puzzled, no more. He said: ‘Where’s Ernie?’

‘Ernie?’

‘Lead coach driver.’

‘Ah! That’s his name. Taken sick, I’m afraid.’

‘Taken sick?’ Suspicion flared. ‘Only two minutes ago–’

The driver twisted round in his seat as two minor explosions occurred in the rear of the coach, less explosions than soft plops of sound, to the accompanying sounds of breaking glass and a hiss as of air escaping under pressure. The rear of the coach was already enveloped in a dense, billowing and rapidly mushrooming cloud of grey smoke, so dense that it was impossible to see the now closed rear door and the figure of Van Effen leaning against it and making sure it stayed that way. Every man in the bus – or those who were still visible – had swung round in his seat, reaching for a gun in an automatic but useless reaction for there was nothing to be seen to fire at.

Branson held his breath, threw two of the grenade-shaped gas bombs in rapid succession – one in the front aisle, one at the driver’s feet – jumped to the garage floor, slammed the door and held the handle, a somewhat pointless precaution as he knew, for the first inhalation of that gas produced immediate unconsciousness. After ten seconds he left, walked round the front of the bus where he was joined by Van Effen. Reston and his companion had already closed and bolted the main entrance. Now they were stripping off their overalls to reveal the conservative and well-cut suits beneath.

Reston said: ‘Over? So soon? Just like that?’ Branson nodded. ‘But if one whiff of that can knock a man out, surely it’s going to kill them – if they keep on sitting there, I mean, inhaling the stuff all the time?’

They left via the side door, not too hurriedly, locking it behind them. Branson said: ‘Contact with oxygen neutralizes the gas inside fifteen seconds. You could walk inside that bus now and be entirely unaffected. But it will be at least an hour before anyone in that bus comes to.’

Harriman stepped out of a taxi as they came round to the garage front. They boarded the coach – now the new rear coach of the motorcade – and Van Effen headed for Nob Hill. Branson made a switch in the fascia.

‘P2?’

‘Yes.’

‘How are things?’

‘Quiet. Too damned quiet. I don’t like it.’

‘What do you think is happening?’

‘I don’t know. I can just see someone on the phone asking for permission to launch a couple of guided missiles at us.’

‘Permission from whom?’

‘The highest military authority in the country’

‘Could take time to contact Washington.’

‘Take damn-all time to contact Nob Hill.’

‘Oh, my God!’ Momentarily, even Branson’s habitual massive calm was disturbed. The highest military authority in the country was, indeed, in the next suite to the President in the Mark Hopkins hotel. General Cartland, Chief of Staff and adviser extraordinary to the President, was indeed participating in that day’s motorcade. ‘You know what happens if they do contact him?’

‘Yes. They’ll cancel the motorcade.’ Chief of the Armed Forces though the President might be, he could be overruled in matters of security by his Chief of Staff. ‘Hold it a minute.’ There was a pause then Johnson said: ‘One of the guards at the gate is on the telephone. This could mean anything or nothing.’

Branson was conscious of a slight dampness in the region of his neck collar. Although he had given up the habit of prayer even before he’d left his mother’s knee, he prayed it was nothing. Perhaps the call to the guard was perfectly innocuous: perhaps the outcome of the call might be innocuous: if it were not, the many months and the quarter million dollars he’d spent in preparation for this coup was so much irrecoverable water under the bridge.

‘P1?’

‘Yes?’ Branson was dimly aware that his teeth were clamped tightly together.