The Golden Gate

by Alistair MacLean

‘Not usually. He goes on: “I want four hundred yards of blue or green thin cord, cylindrical waterfront containers for written messages and a variably hooded Morse-flashlight. Then I would like an aerosol, two pens – one white, one red – and a CAP air pistol. Please order those immediately. Without them, I cannot hope to operate.”’

  General Carter said: ‘Gobbledegook. What are those terms supposed to mean?’

  Hagenbach said: ‘I am not sure if I should tell you. That does not refer to you personally, General. Senior officers, cabinet ministers and, of course, senior police officers, are entitled to be privy to such information. But there are – ah-civilians present.’

  O’Hare said mildly: ‘Doctors don’t talk. What’s more, they don’t leak secret information to the press either.’

  Hagenbach favoured him with a very old-fashioned look then said to April: ‘And you, Miss Wednesday?’

  She said: ‘I’d talk my head off if you as much as showed me a pair of thumb-screws. You wouldn’t have to put them on, showing would be quite enough. Otherwise, no.’

  Hagenbach said to Hendrix: ‘How’s Branson with thumb-screws and young ladies?’

  ‘No way. Master criminal though he is he has a remarkable reputation for gallantry towards women. He has never carried out a robbery where a woman might be involved, far less hurt.’

  ‘But Mr Revson told me –’

  ‘I rather fancy,’ Hagenbach said, ‘that Revson wanted you to act scared. So he threw a scare into you.’

  April Wednesday was indignant: ‘Has he no scruples?’

  ‘In private life, a model of integrity. On business – well, if he has scruples he has so far hidden the fact very well. As to those objects he asked for, the aerosol contains exactly the same knockout nerve gas that Branson used with such effect on the bridge. No permanent damage whatsoever – the presence of Miss Wednesday testifies to that. The pens – they look like ordinary felt pens – fire tiny tipped needles that also knock out people.’

  Admiral Newson said: ‘Why two colours?’

  ‘The red knocks you out a bit more permanently’

  ‘One assumes that “a bit more permanently” means permanently’

  ‘Could happen. The air pistol – well, it has the advantage of almost complete silence.’

  ‘And the CAP bit?’

  Hagenbach’s hesitation betrayed a degree of reluctance.

  ‘It means the bullets are tipped.’

  ‘Tipped with what?’

  Hagenbach’s reluctance turned into something close to embarrassment.

  ‘Cyanide.’

  After a brief and understandable silence Richards said heavily: ‘This Revson of yours. Is he a direct descendant of Attila the Hun?’

  ‘He is an extremely effective operative, sir.’

  ‘Loaded down with a lethal armoury like that, I don’t for a moment doubt it. He has killed?’

  ‘So have thousands of police officers.’

  ‘And what’s his score to date?’

  ‘I really couldn’t say, sir. In his reports, Revson lists only the essentials.’

  ‘Only the essentials.’ Richards’s echo had a hollow ring to it. He shook his head and said no more.

  ‘If you will excuse me for a moment.’ Hagenbach wrote quickly on a notepad, opened the door and handed the note to a man outside. ‘Have those items here within the hour.’ He returned and picked up the transcript again.

  ‘To continue. “In what little time I’ve had I’ve tried to make an assessment of Branson’s character. In original concept, planning, organization and execution, the man is quite brilliant. He would have made an excellent general, for his appreciation of both strategy and tactics is masterly. But nobody can be that good. He has his failings, which I hope can be used to bring him down. He has a divine belief in his own infallibility. This belief carries with it the seeds of his own destruction. No one is infallible. Second, he is possessed of a colossal vanity. He could just as easily have held those TV interviews – I’ve only seen one of Branson’s love affairs with the public but there are bound to be more – at, say, the south tower – but, no, he had to have it smack in the middle, surrounded by his own private press corps. In his place I would have had the whole press corps off the bridge in five minutes. It seems it just has not occurred to him that the ranks of the press corps may have been infiltrated. Third, he should have searched the doctor and Miss Wednesday and then the ambulance, if necessary throwing every single item of medical equipment into the Golden Gate, before allowing it to leave the bridge: in other words, he is not security-conscious enough.

  ‘“How to deal with them? I have no idea yet. I would like some guidance. I have suggestions but I don’t think any of them is practical.

  ‘“No one can cope with seventeen heavily armed men. But of those seventeen only two matter. Some of the other fifteen are bright but only Branson and Van Effen are natural killers. Those two I could kill.”’

  ‘Kill!’ April Wednesday’s shocked green eyes stared out of her pale face. ‘The man’s a monster.’

  Hagenbach was dry. ‘At least, he’s a realistic monster.’ He read on. ‘“It’s feasible, but unwise. The others would then almost certainly overreact and I wouldn’t care to be responsible for the health of the President and his friends. This is a second last resort.

  ‘“Would it be possible to have a submarine standing by under the bridge during the hours of darkness, with only the top of the conning tower showing? I could certainly pass messages and pick up anything I wanted that way. What else, I don’t know. I can’t for instance, visualize the President descending two hundred feet of rope ladder. He’d fall off after ten feet.

  ‘“When Branson’s men are fixing the charges would it be possible to send a two-thousand-volt jolt through the cables? I know this would electrify the entire bridge but those standing on the roadway or inside the coaches should be safe enough.”’

  Richards said: ‘Why two thousand volts?’

  Hagenbach sounded almost apologetic. ‘Electric chair voltage.’

  ‘I owe an apology to the shade of Attila.’

  ‘Yes. “One drawback to this is that someone, say the President, might be leaning his elbows on the side of the bridge or sitting on a crash barrier. That would mean a new Presidential election. I need expert advice. Or could we aim a laser beam at the charges when in position? The beam would certainly cut through the canvas. If the charge were to fall on to the bridge it would certainly detonate on impact but as most of the explosive force would be dissipated in thin air, damage to the roadway would not be severe. It is sure that it wouldn’t bring the bridge down. Trouble is, the laser beam might detonate the charge instead. Please advise.

  ‘“Under suitable cover would it be possible to introduce men into the tower? Natural fog would be fine. Phoney oil fire depending on the direction of the wind? I don’t know. But the thing is to get men to the top, return the lift and then cut off the power to the elevators. Any person who gets to the top after five hundred odd feet of ladders isn’t going to be in much shape to do anything.

  ‘“Is it possible to introduce some form of knockout drugs in the food? Something that would lay them out for half an hour, maybe an hour and not too fast-acting? If anyone were to keel over with the first bite you can imagine Branson’s reaction. The individual food trays would have to be marked so that seventeen of them would go to the seventeen for whom they were intended.”’

  Hagenbach looked at O’Hare. ‘There are such drugs?’

  ‘I’m sure of it. The concoction of Mickey Finns is not my speciality, but Dr Isaacs – he’s the chief of the Drugs and Narcotics Section – knows as much about those brews as anyone in the country. Catherine de Medici could never have coped with him.’

  ‘That’s useful.’ Hagenbach returned his attention to the final brief section of the transcript.

  ‘“Please let me have your suggestions. All I myself can really do at the moment is to try to deactivate the radio trigge
r that sets off the charges without leaving any signs that it has been tampered with. That in itself should be simple. It’s getting at the damned thing that’s difficult. It has, of course, to be in one of the helicopters and those are bathed in light both night and day and are heavily guarded. I’ll try.” That’s all.’

  Newson said: ‘You mentioned a second last resort. What’s the last resort?’

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine. If he has a last resort, he’s keeping it to himself. Now, sooner than pass those notes around I’ll have them Xeroxed. Minutes only and you’ll each have a copy.’ He left the room, approached Jacobs, the man who had handed him the typescript, and said quietly: ‘Have this Xeroxed. Ten copies.’ He pointed to the last paragraph. ‘Blank this off. And for God’s sake make sure that this original gets back to me and not anyone else.’

  Jacobs was back in the promised few moments. He distributed six and handed the remaining copies and the original to Hagenbach, who folded the original and stuck it in an inside pocket. Then all seven carefully studied the report. And again. And again.

  General Carter said, almost complainingly: ‘Revson certainly doesn’t leave me very much for my imagination to work on. Candidly, he doesn’t leave anything. Maybe it’s just not one of my days.’

  ‘Then it’s not one of mine either,’ Newson said. ‘Your man seems to have covered the ground pretty comprehensively, Hagenbach. Sounds like a very useful man to have on our side.’

  ‘He is. But even Revson requires room to manoeuvre. He has none.’

  Quarry said, tentatively: ‘I know this is not my field but it occurs to me that the key lies in the helicopters. We have the means to destroy those?’

  Carter said: ‘That’s no problem. Planes, guns, rockets, wire-guided anti-tank missiles. Why?’

  ‘That’s the only way Branson and his men can leave. And as long as he remains on the bridge he can’t detonate his charges. So what happens then?’

  Carter looked at the Secretary of the Treasury without admiration.

  ‘I can think of three things. First, Branson would call for a mobile crane, have it dump the choppers into the Golden Gate and demand two replacements within the hour or he’d send us a neat little parcel containing the President’s ears. Second, whether it’s a shell, rocket or missile, it’s impossible to localize or contain the blast effect and some innocent bystanders might end up in the same condition as the choppers. Third, has it occurred to you that though the blast might well destroy the radio-activating device for the explosive charge, it might equally well trigger it off? Even with only one end of one cable gone that bridge is going to sag and assume a crazy angle in nothing flat, and nothing that is not nailed down would have a hope of remaining on that bridge. If that were to happen, Mr Secretary, and the President and his guests knew you were the man responsible, I don’t think that their last thoughts of you, as they sat there in their coach at the bottom of the Golden Gate, would be very charitable ones.’

  Quarry sighed. ‘I’d better stick to counting my pennies. I told you this wasn’t my field.’

  Richards said: ‘I suggest we all have twenty minutes’ silent meditation and see what we come up with.’

  They did just that and when the twenty minutes were up Hagenbach said: ‘Well?’

  All, apparently, was not well. The silence was profound.

  ‘In that case, I suggest we start considering which are the less awful of Revson’s options.’

  The return of the ambulance to the centre of the bridge at about six o’clock was greeted with warmth and interest. Even being in the spotlight of the eyes of the world loses its dramatic effect if one has nothing to do. Branson’s TV broadcasts apart, the middle of the bridge offered little in the way of entertainment.

  When April, pale-faced and still apparently shaken, stepped from the ambulance, Branson was the first to greet her.

  ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘I feel such a fool.’ She rolled up a sleeve to exhibit the punctures O’Hare had inflicted upon her earlier in the day. ‘Two little pricks and I’m as right as rain.’

  She walked away and sat down rather heavily on one of the many chairs scattered around her. Her colleagues gathered round.

  Branson said to O’Hare: ‘She doesn’t look as right as rain to me.’

  ‘If you mean she’s still not back to normal, I agree. Same appearance, different causes. Last time you saw her she was on a high: now it’s a low. My guess was right, it seems – just an emotional trauma. She’s been sound asleep for the past two hours under heavy sedation. Dopey, that’s all. Dr Huron, the psychiatrist, didn’t want her to return, but she made such a damned noise about not getting back and this being her last chance or whatever that he decided that it might be better for her to return. No worry. I’ve brought back enough of the same sedative to last us for a week out here.’

  ‘For the sake of all of us, let’s hope you won’t need a quarter of it.’

  Revson waited until the last of April’s welcomers had left her for the TV, a show of peculiar interest to all as the programme was devoted exclusively to a rerun of Branson’s early afternoon broadcast. Nobody, Revson was unsurprised to observe, was more interested than Branson himself. But then Branson had no more to occupy his time than anyone else. The only person who seemed remotely active was Chrysler, who visited the rear coach at regular intervals. He wondered why.

  Revson sat beside the girl. She looked at him coldly.

  He said: ‘What’s the matter with you?’ She remained silent. ‘Don’t tell me. Somebody’s been turning you against me.’

  ‘Yes. You. I don’t like killers. Especially I don’t like killers who plan their next murders coldbloodedly in advance.’

  ‘Come, come. That’s putting it a bit strongly.’

  ‘Is it? Cyanide guns? Lethal pens? Shot through the back, I should imagine.’

  ‘My, my, we are bitter. Three things. First, those weapons are used only in acute emergency and then only to save lives, to stop bad people killing good people, although perhaps you would rather have it the other way round. Second, it doesn’t matter to a dead man where he has been shot. Third, you have been eavesdropping.’

  ‘I was invited to listen.’

  ‘People make mistakes. Clearly, they invited the wrong person. I could be flippant and say I owe a duty to the taxpayer, but I’m not in the mood.’ April looked at the hard face, listened to the voice from which all trace of the normal bantering warmth had vanished and realized with apprehension that indeed he was not in the mood. ‘I have a job to do, you don’t know what you’re talking about, so we’ll dispense with your moral strictures. I assume you brought the equipment I asked for. Where is it?’

  ‘I don’t know. Dr O’Hare does. For some reason he didn’t want me to know in case we were questioned and the ambulance searched.’

  ‘For some reason! For an obvious and excellent reason. O’Hare is no fool.’ A flush touched the pale cheeks but he ignored it. ‘All of it?’

  ‘So I believe.’ She tried to speak stiffly.

  ‘Never mind your wounded pride. And don’t forget you’re in this up to your lovely neck. Hagenbach have any instructions for me?’

  ‘Yes. But he didn’t tell me. He told Dr O’Hare.’ Her voice was acid or bitter or both. ‘I suppose that makes Mr Hagenbach no fool either.’

  ‘Don’t take those things so much to heart.’ He patted her hand and smiled warmly. ‘You’ve done an excellent job. Thank you.’

  She tried a tentative smile. ‘Maybe you are a little bit human after all, Mr Revson.’

  ‘Paul. One never knows.’ He smiled again, rose and left. At least, he thought, he was semi-human enough not to inflict further damage upon her amour propre by telling her that the last little bit of by-play had been purely for the benefit of Branson who had momentarily lost interest in the screen – he was not then on camera – and was casting a speculative look at them. Not that that necessarily meant anything suspicious or sinister. Branson was
much given to casting speculative looks at everybody. April was beautiful and he may well have thought that she was wasting this beauty on the wrong company.

  Revson sat on a seat not far from Branson and watched the last twenty minutes of the broadcast. The intercutting between the Presidential group and the top of the south tower had been most skilfully done and the overall impact was all that Branson could ever have wished. Branson watched it intently. His face betrayed no particular sign of satisfaction, but then Branson’s face registered precisely what he wanted it to and was no mirror of his inner thoughts and feelings. When the broadcast finished Branson rose and stopped briefly by Revson’s chair.

  ‘Revson, isn’t it?’ Revson nodded. ‘And how does all this strike you?’

  ‘Just the same as it strikes a million other people, I guess.’ This was it, Revson thought, this is one part of his Achilles heel. Branson knew he was a genius but he had no objection to people saying so. ‘A feeling of total unreality. This just can’t be happening.’

  ‘But it is, isn’t it? A very satisfactory beginning, don’t you think?’

  ‘I can quote?’

  ‘Certainly. Call it an exclusive if you want. How do you see the scenario developing?’

  ‘Just as you have programmed it. I can’t see anything to stop you. You have them, most unfortunately, at your total mercy.’

  ‘Most unfortunately?’

  ‘What else? I don’t want to overdo the American citizen bit and although you may be a master criminal, a genius in your own immoral fashion, to me you’re still a crook, a crook so bent as to make a spiral staircase look like a fireman’s ladder.’

  ‘I rather like that. I may quote you in turn?’ Branson seemed genuinely gratified. One could hardly have called him thin-skinned.

  ‘There’s no verbal copyright.’

  ‘Alas, universal disapproval, not to say disapprobation, would seem to be my lot.’ Branson didn’t sound too unhappy about it. ‘That’s a most unusual camera you have there.’

  ‘Almost, but not quite unique.’

  ‘May I have a look at it?’

  ‘If you wish. But if you want to examine it for the reasons I imagine you want to examine it then you’re about four hours too late.’