The Golden Gate

by Alistair MacLean

  ‘No deal.’

  Hagenbach sighed. ‘I rather thought that might be your attitude. Admirable but misguided.’ He looked at Hendrix. ‘You would agree?’

  Hendrix said to the policemen: ‘Handcuff him and take him to the maximum security wing of the military hospital. Tell the doctors that Mr Hagenbach will be along in a few minutes. Make sure the recorders are working.’

  Van Effen said: ‘Hospital? Recorders? You mean drugs.’

  ‘If you won’t co-operate with us we’ll just have to settle for your unwilling co-operation. Unconscious co-operation, if you wish.’

  Van Effen cracked his moonface in an almost contemptuous smile. ‘You know that no court will accept a confession made under duress.’

  ‘We don’t need any confession from you. We already have enough on you to put you away for as long as we wish. We just want a little helpful information from you. A judicious mixture of sodium pentothal and a few other choice herbs will make you sing like a lark.’

  ‘That’s as maybe.’ The contempt was still in Van Effen’s face. ‘Even you have to obey the law of the land. Lawmen who extract information by illegal means are subject to automatic prosecution and automatic imprisonment.’

  Hagenbach was almost genial. ‘Dear me, dear me. I thought even you, Van Effen, would have heard of a Presidential pardon. Or have you forgotten that you kidnapped a President?’

  At ten minutes to three that morning an Air Force lieutenant on the south shore twirled two knobs on a highly sophisticated piece of equipment until the cross-hairs on his ultraviolet telescopic sights were lined up dead centre on the centre of Branson’s southern-facing searchlight. He jabbed a button, just once.

  At five minutes to three, three men climbed into a strangely shaped low-slung vehicle which was concealed from the bridge by the communications truck. A rather nondescript individual in a grey coat climbed behind the wheel while the other two sat in the back seat. They were clad in grey overalls and looked curiously alike. Their names were Carmody and Rogers. They were both in their mid-thirties and looked tough and competent in a rather gentlemanly way. Whether they were gentlemen or not was not known: whether they were tough and competent was beyond dispute. They didn’t look like explosives experts but they were that too. Both carried pistols and both carried silencers for those pistols. Carmody carried a canvas bag containing a toolkit, two aerosol gas cans, a ball of heavy cord, adhesive tape and a torch. Rogers had a similar bag with a walkie-talkie, Thermos and sandwiches. They were obviously well-equipped for whatever task they had in mind and prepared for a stay of some duration.

  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?’

  ‘Why should the lights going out surprise me? Could have been a dozen reasons for it.’

  ‘I think the reason is sitting right by me.’

  ‘I was asleep.’

  ‘You weren’t asleep when you were out on the bridge at midnight. I’ll bet your new little – ah-camera wasn’t all that inactive either.’ She leaned towards him, her eyes moving from one of his to the other. ‘You didn’t by any chance just happen to kill Van Effen last night?’

  ‘What do you think I am? A murderer for hire?’

  ‘I don’t know what to think. You will not have forgotten that I heard the contents of the message you sent when I was taken to the hospital. I remember the exact words. “Only Branson and Van Effen are natural leaders. Those two I could kill.'”

  ‘I did say that. I didn’t kill Van Effen last night. My life on it. Van Effen, in my opinion, is alive and well, if not exactly flourishing.’

  ‘That’s not what Branson thinks.’

  ‘How should you know that?’

  ‘After Bartlett left – was relieved -’

  ‘Bartlett didn’t mention to Branson that he might just possibly have dozed off for a moment?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Okay, so he was alert and watchful as all hell. And then?’

  ‘And then this – this gorilla came on.’ Revson looked at the new guard. Hirsute, incredibly beetle-browed, with a negligible clearance between brows and hairline: April’s description didn’t flatter gorillas any.

  ‘Yonnie,’ Revson said. ‘Branson’s mobile think-tank.’

  ‘Chrysler came by, more than once. I heard him saying to that man that he and Branson knew that Van Effen was at the bottom of the Golden Gate.’

  ‘I’m looking forward to seeing his face when he finds out, just possibly for the first time in his life, how wrong he can be.’

  ‘You don’t want to tell me?’ ‘No. Neither do you.’ ‘You seem very sure of yourself.’ ‘About that, yes.’

  ‘Can you make an end to all this?’

  ‘That, I’m afraid, is another matter.’ He thought and smiled. ‘If I try very hard, can I take you out for dinner tonight?’

  ‘Tonight!’

  ‘You heard.’

  ‘You can take me to Timbuktu if you want.’

  ‘Hussies. You can always tell them.’

  The phone call-up in the communications centre in the Presidential coach buzzed at exactly seven o’clock. Branson picked it up. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Quarry here. We have acceded to your preposterous demands and made the necessary arrangements. We’re waiting to hear from your contact in New York.’

  ‘Waiting to hear – you should have heard two hours ago.’

  Quarry said wearily: ‘We’re waiting to hear from him again.’

  ‘When did he call?’

  ‘As you said, two hours ago. He’s making some arrangements with what he calls “European friends”.’

  ‘He was to have given you a password.’

  ‘He did. Hardly original, I thought. “Peter Branson”.’

  Branson smiled broadly and replaced the receiver. He was still smiling when he stepped out into the early morning sunshine. Chrysler was there and he wasn’t smiling at all. Chrysler was exhausted, he’d temporarily taken over the roles of both Van Effen and Kowalski. But the reason for his worry lay elsewhere. Branson said: ‘Money side is all fixed up.’

  ‘That’s splendid, Mr Branson.’

  Branson’s smile disappeared. ‘You seem less than overjoyed.’

  ‘There are a couple of things I’d like to show you.’

  Chrysler led them to the south-facing searchlight. ‘You probably know that a searchlight is not like an ordinary torch or flashlight. I mean it doesn’t use lamps. It comes from an electric arm that jumps between two electrodes. Something like the sparking plug in a car except that there the spark is intermittent. Here the arc is continuous. Look at the electrode on the left.’

  Branson looked. ‘It looks as if it’s been melted or bent or something like that. And one must assume that those electrodes are designed to withstand the tremendous heat generated by the arc’

  ‘Precisely. And something you haven’t seen. This tiny hole here in the glass.’

  ‘What are you trying to tell me, Chrysler?’

  ‘There’s something else.’ Chrysler, walking slowly back with Branson, pointed to the roof of the rear coach. ‘The radio-wave scanner. It’s kaput, knocked out. Since we checked and double-checked that there are no transceivers – apart from ours – on the bridge, we haven’t bothered using it. I just happened to check by accident this morning. I went up and had a look. There’s a scorch mark on the base of the revolving spindle.’

  ‘Could have been caused by lightning? Both cases? After all, God knows there was plenty of it around last night.’

  ‘I would point out, Mr Branson, that neither the radio-wave scanner or the searchlight are earthed: both are mounted on rubber wheels.’

  ‘The scanner -’

  Chrysler said patiently: ‘The coach’s rubber wheels.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘I think they’re using a laser beam on us.’

  Even at that early hour all seven of the decisionmakers ashore were gathered round the table in the communications centre when the phone rang. The duty policeman picked it up.

  ‘Branson here. Get me General Carter.’

  ‘He can’t be far away. Hang on, please.’ The policeman covered the mouthpiece. ‘It’s Branson for you, Ge
neral.’

  ‘Switch on the speaker so that we can all hear what he has to say. Tell him I’ve just come in.’

  ‘The General has just arrived.’

  Carter took the phone. ‘Branson?’

  ‘Carter, use that laser beam on us just once again and we’ll throw, say, Mr Muir over the side. For starters.’

  The other six at the table looked at one another with quick apprehension and, possibly, the relieved thought in their minds that it was Carter who had to field this one.

  ‘Explain yourself.’

  One of our searchlights and radio-wave scanner have been knocked out. All signs point to a laser beam.’

  ‘You’re a fool.’

  There was a brief silence. Branson, clearly, had been taken momentarily aback. Then he said: ‘Muir won’t think so when he’s on his way down to the Golden Gate.’

  ‘I repeat you’re a fool and if you can listen I’ll tell you why. In the first place you’re not an expert and wouldn’t recognize the signs of laser damage if it was on your breakfast plate. In the second place, there are no such units in the Bay area – if there were I’d be the first person to know. In the third place, if we had laser beams we could have picked off every one of your villains as they walked about the bridge – or don’t you know how accurate and deadly a laser beam is? With the proper telescopic sights you can puncture a football at ten thousand yards.’

  ‘You seem to know a suspiciously great deal about lasers, General.’ It was a negative remark and Branson could have been either thinking or stalling for time.

  ‘I don’t deny it. I’ve been trained in them, I even helped in the development of them. Every general has his own trade or speciality. General Cartland is an explosives expert. I’m an electronics engineer. Where was I? Yes. In the fourth place we could have immobilized your helicopters without your knowing anything about it until you tried to take off. You’re putting ideas into my head, Branson. Lastly, the probable cause was an electrical discharge – lightning.’

  ‘Neither the searchlight nor scanner was earthed. They’re mounted on rubber wheels.’

  Carter let irritation creep into his voice. ‘I’d stick to robbing banks if I were you. You don’t have to be earthed to be struck by lightning. It happens to planes hundreds of times a year at altitudes up to twenty-five thousand feet. Would you call those earthed? Lightning has also quite an affinity for metal.’ He paused. ‘Of course, you have a generator for your searchlight, almost certainly a petrol generator and as you wouldn’t want to be asphyxiated by carbon monoxide fumes you wouldn’t have it inside a coach. Tell me, do you also use the generator to recharge your coach batteries – through a transformer, I mean?’