The Golden Gate

by Alistair MacLean

  ‘A scale quite unprecedented in the annals of crime?’

  ‘Yes. On a scale quite – shut up! The death penalty can be invoked for treason – and this is high treason – and if it’s the last thing I do -’

  ‘That might be any moment. Rest assured, Mr President, that you won’t be around to pull the switch. You better believe me.’ He produced his pistol. ‘As a token of my intent, how would you like a hundred million viewers to see you being shot through the knee-cap – then you really would need that cane of yours. It’s a matter of indifference to me.’ And in his voice there was a chilling indifference that carried far more conviction than the words themselves. The President unclenched his fist and seemed not so much to sink into his chair as to deflate into it. The puce was assuming a greyish hue.

  ‘You people have to learn to think big,’ Branson went on. ‘This is the United States of America, the richest country in the world, not a banana republic. What’s three hundred million dollars? A couple of Polaris submarines? A tiny fraction of what it cost to send a man to the moon? A fraction of one per cent of the gross national product? If I take one drop from the American bucket who’s going to miss it – but if I’m not allowed to take it then a lot of people are going to miss you, Mr President, and your Arabian friends.

  ‘And to think what you are going to lose, you and America. Ten times that, a hundred times that? To start with the San Rafael refinery deal will fall through. Your hopes of becoming a most favoured nation receiving oil at rock-bottom prices are gone for ever. In fact, if their Highnesses fail to return to their homeland it is certain that a total oil embargo would be placed on the States which would send the country into a bottomless recession which would make 1929 look like a Sunday afternoon picnic’ He looked at Hansen, the energy czar. ‘You would agree, Mr Hansen?’

  Clearly, the last thing that Hansen wanted to do was to agree with anyone. His nervous tics were rapidly assuming the proportions of a St Vitus’s dance. Head darting, he looked around for succour in his hour of need. He swallowed, he coughed into his hands, he looked imploringly at the President and seemed almost on the point of breaking down when the Secretary of the Treasury came to his rescue.

  Quarry said: ‘I would read the future the same way.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  The King raised his hand. ‘A word, if you will.’ The King was a man of a very different calibre to the President. As one who had to remove, permanently more often than not, quite a number of his closest relatives in order to get his crown, the rough and tumble of life was hardly a new experience for him: he had lived with violence all his life and would very probably die with it or because of it.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Only the blind have their eyes closed to reality. I am not blind. The President will pay.’ The President had no comment to make on this generous offer: he was staring down at the roadway like a fortune teller peering into his crystal ball and not wanting to tell his client what he sees there.

  ‘Thank you, your Highness.’

  ‘You will of course be hunted down and killed afterwards no matter where you may seek to hide in the world. Even if you were to kill me now your death is already as certain as tomorrow’s sun.’

  Branson was unconcerned. ‘As long as I have you, your Highness, I have no worries on that score. I should imagine that any of your subjects who as much as endangered your life far less being responsible for your losing it would find himself rather precipitately in paradise – if regicides go to paradise, which I don’t think should be allowed. And I hardly think you’re the type of man to run to the side of the bridge now and jump over in order to incite the faithful to come after me with their long knives.’

  ‘Indeed.’ The hooded eyes were unblinking. ‘And what if I were not the sort of person you think I am?’

  ‘If you were to jump – or try to?’ Again the chilling indifference. ‘Why do you think I have a doctor and ambulance here? Van Effen, if anyone is as misguided as to make a break for it – what are your instructions?’

  Van Effen matched the indifference. ‘Chop his foot off with my machine-pistol. The doctor will fix him up.’

  ‘We might even – eventually – provide you with an artificial foot. You’re worth nothing to me dead, your Highness.’ The hooded eyes had closed. ‘Well, the ransom figure? Agreed? No objectors? Splendid. Well, that’s for starters.’

  ‘Starters?’ It was General Cartland speaking and one could almost see the firing squad mirrored in his eyes.

  ‘To begin with, that means. There’s more. Two hundred million dollars more. That’s what I want for the Golden Gate Bridge.’

  This time the state of traumatic shock did not last quite so long – there is a limit to how much the human mind can take. The President raised his eyes from the depths of the bottomless pit he was scanning and said dully: ‘Two hundred million dollars for the Golden Gate Bridge?’

  ‘It’s a bargain. At the price, practically a giveaway. True, it cost only forty million to build and the asking price of two hundred million just exactly represents the five-fold inflation over the past forty years. But, money apart, think of the fearful cost of replacing it. Think of the noise, the dust, the pollution, the disruption to all the city traffic as all those thousands of tons of steel have to be brought in, of the tourists who will cripple the city’s economy by staying away in their tens of thousands. Beautiful though San Francisco is, without the Golden Gate it would be like Mona Lisa without her smile. Think – and this is for a period of at least one year, perhaps two – of all those Marin County motorists who couldn’t get to the city – it’s a long long way round by the San Rafael bridge – or, come to that, the city motorists who couldn’t get to Marin County. The hardship would be intolerable for everyone – except for the owners of the ferry-boat companies who would become millionaires. And who am I to grudge the entrepreneur the making of an honest dollar? Two hundred million dollars? Philanthropy, that’s what it is.’

  Quarry, the man accustomed to thinking in rows of noughts, said: ‘If we do not accede to this monstrous request, what do you intend to do with the bridge? Take it away and pawn it somewhere?’

  ‘I’m going to blow it up. A two-hundred-foot drop – it should be the most almighty splash the West Coast has ever seen.’

  ‘Blow it up! Blow up the Golden Gate Bridge!’ Mayor Morrison, whose normal boiling point was just above freezing, was on his feet, his face suffused with ungovernable anger and had launched himself at Branson before anyone realized what was happening, certainly before Branson had realized. In tens of millions of American homes they saw Branson being knocked backwards off his seat, his head striking heavily against the roadway as Morrison, all two hundred and twenty pounds of him, followed him down and struck at his face with berserker fury. Van Effen stepped forward and brought the butt of his machine-pistol down on Morrison’s neck. He immediately swung round to cover the seated men with his gun but the precaution was superfluous, no one was showing any inclination to follow Morrison’s example.

  It was a full twenty seconds before Branson could sit up, and then only groggily. He accepted a pad of medical gauze and dabbed at a smashed lip and a very bloody nose. He looked at Morrison, then at the doctor.

  ‘How is he?’

  The doctor carried out a brief examination. ‘He’ll be all right, he’s not even concussed.’ The doctor glanced at Van Effen without enthusiasm. ‘Your friend seems to be able to judge those things to a nicety.’

  ‘Practice,’ Branson explained thickly. He accepted another gauze pad in place of the already blood-saturated one and rose unsteadily to his feet. ‘Mayor Morrison doesn’t know his own strength.’

  Van Effen said: ‘What shall I do with him?’

  ‘Leave him be. It’s his city, it’s his bridge. My fault – I just trod on a man’s dreams.’ He looked at Morrison consideringly. ‘On second thoughts you’d better handcuff him – behind the back. Next time he might knock my head off my shoulders.’<
br />
  General Cartland came to his feet and walked towards Branson. Van Effen levelled his gun menacingly but Cartland ignored him. He said to Branson: ‘You fit to talk?’

  ‘I’m fit to listen, anyway. He didn’t get round to my ears.’

  ‘I may be Chief of Staff but to trade I’m an army engineer. That means I know explosives. You can’t blow up the bridge and you should know it. You’d require a wagon-load of explosives to bring down those towers. I don’t see any wagon-load of explosives.’

  ‘We don’t need them.’ He pointed to the thick canvas strap with the conical mounds embedded in it. ‘You’re the expert.’

  Cartland looked at the strap, then at Branson, then at the seated watchers, then back at the strap again. Branson said: ‘Suppose you tell them. My mouth hurts, I can’t imagine why.’

  Cartland took a long look at the massive towers and the cables suspended from them. He said to Branson: ‘You have experimented?’ Branson nodded. ‘Successfully – or you wouldn’t be here?’ Branson nodded again.

  Reluctantly, almost, Cartland turned to the seated hostages and journalists. ‘I was wrong. I’m afraid Branson can indeed bring the bridge down. Those cones you see embedded in the canvas strap contain some conventional explosives – TNT amatol, anyway something of the requisite power. Those cones are called “beehives", and because of their concave bases are designed to direct at least eighty per cent of their explosive value inwards. The idea, I should imagine, is to wrap one of those canvas straps with its hundredweight or whatever of high explosive round one of the suspension cables, probably high up near the top of a tower.’ He looked at Branson again. ‘I should imagine you have four of those.’ Branson nodded. ‘And designed to fire simultaneously.’ He turned back to the others. ‘I’m afraid that would be it. Down it all comes.’

  There was a brief silence, which must have been very nail-biting for TV watchers, a silence caused by the fact that Branson understandably didn’t feel very much like speaking and the others couldn’t think of very much to say. Cartland said eventually: ‘How can you be sure they all go off together?’

  ‘Simple. Radio wave that activates an electric cell that burns the wire in a mercury fulminate detonator. Up goes the primer and up goes the beehive. One’s enough. The others go up by sympathetic detonation.’

  Quarry said heavily: ‘I suppose that ends your demands for the day?’

  ‘Not quite.’ Branson turned a palm up in an apologetic gesture. ‘But it’s only a trifle.’

  One wonders what you might consider a trifle.’

  ‘A quarter of a million dollars.’

  ‘Astonishing. By your standards, a grain of sand. And what might that be for?’

  ‘My expenses.’

  ‘Your expenses.’ Quarry breathed deeply, twice. ‘My God, Branson, you are the piker to end all pikers.’

  ‘I’m used to people calling me names.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t hurt so easily any more and one learns to take the rough with the smooth. Now, as to payment – you are going to pay me, aren’t you?’

  No one said whether they were going to pay him or not.

  ‘I have to make arrangements with a friend in New York who has friends in certain European banks.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s noon now so it’s either eight or nine o’clock in Central Europe and all good Central European bankers knock off at six precisely. So I’d be greatly obliged if you’d let me have your decision by seven o’clock in the morning.’

  Quarry said cautiously: ‘What decision?’

  ‘As to the availability of the funds and the form that they will take. Not that I care very much what they are, anything from Euro-dollars to stock in suitably selected offshore funds. You, of all people, should find little problem in handling such things with a certain amount of discretion – witness, for instance, the hundreds of millions of dollars you’ve funded such organizations as the CIA for subversive activities overseas without the poor taxpayer being any the wiser. A childishly simple routine for your Treasury. Not that I care whether those funds are traceable or not: just as long as they are convertible.

  ‘When my New York friend has informed us that those funds have all arrived at their several destinations – and that shouldn’t take more than another twenty-four hours, say until noon the same day – we shall take our farewells of you. Our hostages will, of course, accompany us.’

  ‘And where are you taking us?’ Cartland demanded.

  ‘You I’m not taking anywhere. The armed services may regard you as invaluable but your value to me as a bargaining counter is zero. Besides, you’re the only man here who could conceivably cause me trouble. Not only are you a man of action but you’re far too lean – let me have men about me that are fat and all that bit. The President and his three remaining oil friends. There’s no harm in telling you that I have a friend in the Caribbean who is the President of an island that doesn’t and never will have an extradition treaty with the United States. He’s willing to put us up, bed and breakfast, for a million dollars a night.’

  No one had anything to say to this. In terms of the sums of money that Branson had so recently been bandying about, it seemed a reasonable enough charge.

  One point,’ Branson said. ‘I did not mention that as from noon the following day – day after tomorrow that is – there will be a penalty clause, an escalation charge you might call it, for every hour’s delay in the reported lodgement of the funds. Two million dollars an hour.’

  ‘You do place a certain value on your time, don’t you, Mr Branson,’ Quarry said.

  ‘If I don’t, who will? Would there be any more questions?’

  ‘Yes,’ Cartland said. ‘How do you propose to get to this island paradise of yours?’

  ‘Fly there. How else? A ten-minute flight in our helicopters to the International Airport and we board our plane there.’

  ‘You have all this arranged? You have a plane standing by?’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t know it’s standing by but it will soon enough.’

  ‘What plane?’

  ‘Air Force 1, I believe you call it.’

  Even Cartland was shaken out of his habitual reserve. ‘You mean you’re going to hijack the Presidential Boeing?’

  ‘Be reasonable, General. You surely can’t expect your President to judder his way down to the Caribbean in a clapped-out DC3? It’s the logical, the only way of transporting world leaders who are accustomed to the ultimate in luxury travel. We’ll show them the latest films. Brief though their incarceration may be we’ll make it as comfortable as possible for them. We might even get some more new films when we fly them back to the States again.’

  ‘We?’ Cartland said carefully.

  ‘My friends and 1.1 feel it only right – no, more than that, our bounden duty – that we should see them safely back again. How any man of any sensitivity can bear to live in that monstrosity they call the White House I don’t know but, after all, there’s no place like home.’

  Milton was equally careful. ‘You mean you’re going to set foot on American soil again?’

  ‘My own, my native land. Why ever not? You disappoint me, Mr Milton.’

  ‘I do?’

  ‘You do. Apart from the Supreme Court and the Attorney General I would have thought that the Secretary of State would know as much about our law and constitution as any other man in the land.’ There was silence. Branson looked around but there was still silence so he addressed himself to the Secretary again. ‘Or don’t you know that bit where it says that no man who has been granted a full and free pardon by the State for any crime, actual or alleged, can ever again be arraigned on that same charge?’

  It took at least ten seconds for the full implications to dawn and it was then that the Potomac, in the person of the Chief Executive, burst its banks. It was also then that the President lost twice the number of the putative votes he might have gained from his earlier statement that he would sacrifice himself for America. He could hardly be blamed. Devious some
politicians may be and others are armoured in pachydermal hides: but never had the President encountered such Machiavellian effrontery. Even Presidents may be forgiven the odd earthy turn of phrase within the privacy of their own four walls but they customarily abjure such phraseology when addressing the electorate. But, momentarily, the President had totally forgotten the fact that he was, in effect, addressing the electorate: he was appealing to a mindless heaven for justice. And it was in that direction that his anguished face was lifted as he stood there, arms rigidly outstretched and fists clenched, his face assuming a peculiarly purplish hue.

  ‘Half a deleted billion dollars! And a deleted full and free pardon! God Al-deleted-mighty!’ He lowered his gaze from the cloudless sky and turned the full fury of his wrath on Branson who, disappointingly, had not been struck down by a bolt from heaven.

  Branson murmured to the doctor: ‘You have your cardiac arrest unit handy?’

  ‘This is not funny’

  The President warmed to his theme. ‘You evil twisted deleted bastard! If you imagine -’

  Cartland, belatedly, reached his side, touched his arm and whispered urgently: ‘You’re on television, sir.’

  The President, cut off in mid-expletive, looked at him, screwed his eyes shut in sudden comprehension, opened them again, looked the camera squarely in the eye and addressed it in measured tones.

  ‘I, as the elected representative and Chief Executive of the American people, will not stand for this vile blackmail, the machinations of this evil and amoral man. The American people will not stand for it. Democracy will not stand for it. Come what may we shall fight this cancer in our midst -’

  ‘How?’ Branson asked.

  ‘How?’ The President tried manfully to control his blood pressure at the thought of this but full rationality had not yet returned to him. ‘The entire resources of every investigative agency in those United States of ours, the entire weight of the armed forces, the full majesty of law and order will be brought to bear -’

  ‘You’re not up for re-election for six months yet. How?’