The Golden Gate

‘I see.’ Nimitz indicated the keys on the board.

‘The cells.’

Nimitz led the way, taking keys with him. They were only a few feet away but round a corner out of sight of the more sensitive citizens who had reluctant occasion to enter the front office. Nimitz entered and Giscard unholstered his pistol and stuck it against his back. ‘A dead policeman,’ Giscard observed, ‘is no good to anyone.’ Parker joined them in ten seconds pushing a furious and flabbergasted Mahoney in front of him.

Both captives were gagged and left sitting on the floor, backs to the bars, arms thrust uncomfortably through them and wrists handcuffed. From the baleful expressions on their faces it was as well that they were so securely gagged. Giscard put the keys in his pocket, picked up two other sets from the board, ushered Parker out before him, locked the entrance door, pocketed that key too then went round and opened up the garage. He and Parker backed the cars out and while Giscard locked the doors – and, inevitably, pocketed the keys – Parker went to fetch the other four men from the station-wagon. When they appeared they were not, surprisingly, any longer overalled working men but gleaming advertisements for the California State Patrol.

They drove north on the US 101, took the cutoff west to State I, passed by Muir Woods and its pre-Christian stands of two-hundred-and-fifty-feet-high redwoods and finally stopped in the Mount Tamalpais State Park. Giscard brought out the walkie-talkie that went so well with his uniform and said: ‘PI?’

Branson was still patiently waiting in the bus in the abandoned garage. ‘Yes?’ ‘Okay.’ ‘Good. Stay.’

The forecourt and street outside the luxurious caravanserai atop Nob Hill were, understandably at that hour of the morning, practically deserted. There were, in fact, only seven people in sight. Six of those stood on the steps of the hotel which was that night housing more dollars on the hoof than it ever had remotely had in its long and illustrious career. The seventh of those, a tall, handsome man, aquiline-faced, youthful-looking despite his grey hair and clad in immaculate hound’s-tooth, was pacing slowly up and down on the roadway. From the looks exchanged among the six men – two doorkeepers, two policemen and two men in plain clothes whose coats fitted awkwardly under their left armpits – his presence appeared to be giving rise to an increasing degree of vexation. Finally, after a low-murmured conversation among them, one of the uniformed men came down the steps and approached him.

He said: ‘Morning, sir. No offence, sir, but do you mind moving on. We have a job to do.’

‘How do you know I have not?’

‘Sir. Please. You must understand we have some very important people in there.’

‘Don’t I know it. Don’t I just know it.’ The man sighed, reached inside his coat, produced and opened a wallet. The policeman looked at it, stiffened, unmistakably swallowed and deepened his complexion by two shades.

‘I’m very sorry, sir. Mr Jensen, sir.’

‘I’m sorry, too. Sorry for all of us. They can keep their damned oil as far as I’m concerned. Dear lord, what a circus.’ He talked until the officer relaxed, then carried on his to-and-fro strolling. The policeman returned to the steps.

One of the plain-clothes men looked at him without a great deal of enthusiasm. He said: ‘A great crowd mover-on you are.’

‘Like to try?’

‘If I must give you a demonstration,’ he said wearily. He walked down three steps, paused, looked back up. ‘He flashed a card at you, didn’t he?’

‘Sort of.’ The policeman was enjoying himself.

‘Who?’

‘Don’t you recognize your own deputy director when you see him?’

‘Jesus!’ The FBI man’s miraculous return to the top step could have been attributed to nothing other than sheer levitation.

‘Are you not,’ the policeman asked innocently, ‘going to move him on?’

The plain-clothes man scowled then smiled. ‘From now on, I think I’ll leave those menial tasks to the uniformed branch.’

A bell-boy of great age appeared on the top step, hesitated, then went down to the street as Jensen gave him an encouraging wave. As he approached his wizened face was further creased in worry. He said: ‘Aren’t you taking a helluva chance, sir? FBI man up there.’

‘No chance.’ Jensen was unperturbed. ‘He’s California FBI. I’m Washington. Chalk and cheese. I doubt if he’d know the Director-General if he came and sat on his lap. What’s the word, Willie?’

‘They’re all having breakfast in their rooms. No sleepers-in, all on schedule.’

‘Let me know every ten minutes.’

‘Yes, sir. Gee, Mr Jensen, aren’t you taking one godawful chance? The place is swarming with fuzz and not only just inside. Those windows across there – there’s a rifle behind a dozen of them and a man behind each rifle.’

‘I know, Willie. I’m the man in the eye of the storm. Dead safe.’

‘If you’re caught -’

‘I won’t be. Even if I were, you’re clear.’

‘Clear! Everybody sees me talking to you -’

‘Why? Because I’m FBI. I told you that. You’ve no reason to doubt it. There are six men on the top of the steps who believe the same thing. Anyway, Willie, you can always plead the Fifth Amendment.’

Willie departed. In full view of the six watchers Jensen pulled out his walkie-talkie. ‘PI?’

‘Yes?’ Branson was as calm as ever.

‘On schedule.’

‘Fine. Pl’s moving now. Every ten minutes. Right?’

‘Of course. How’s my twin?’

Branson looked towards the rear of the coach. The bound and gagged man between the aisles bore an uncanny resemblance to Jensen.

‘He’ll live.’

TWO

Van Effen eased the big coach on to the 280 and headed her north-east up the Southern Freeway. Van Effen was a short, stocky man, with close-cropped blond hair and a head that was almost a perfect cube. His ears were so close to his head that they appeared to have been pasted there, his nose had clearly been at odds with some heavy object in the past, he tended to wear a vacuous smile as if he’d decided it was the safest expression to cope with the numerous uncertain things that were going on in the uncertain world around him and the dreamy light blue eyes, which would never be accused of being possessed of any powers of penetration, served only to reinforce the overall impression of one overwhelmed by the insoluble complexities of life. Van Effen was a very very intelligent person whose knife-like intelligence could cope with an extremely wide variety of the world’s problems and, although they had known each other for only two years, he had indisputably become Peter Branson’s indispensable lieutenant.

Both men sat together in the front of the coach, both, for the nonce, dressed in long white coats which lent them, as drivers, a very professional appearance indeed: the State Department frowned on Presidential motorcade drivers who opted for lumber-jackets or rolled up sleeves. Branson himself generally drove and was good at it but, apart from the fact that he was not a San Franciscan and Van Effen had been born there, he wished that morning to concentrate his exclusive attention on his side of the coach’s fascia which looked like a cross between the miniaturized flight instrumentation of a Boeing and those of a Hammond organ. As a communications system it could not compare to those aboard the Presidential coach, but everything was there that Branson wanted. Moreover, it had one or two refinements that the Presidential coach lacked. The President would not have considered them refinements.

Branson turned to the man in the seat behind him. Yonnie, a dark, swarthy and incredibly hirsute person who, on the rare occasions he could be persuaded to remove his shirt and approach a shower, looked more like a bear than a human being, had about him the general appearance – it was impossible to particularize – of an ex-pugilist who had taken not one but several hundred punches too many. Unlike many of Branson’s associates Yonnie, who had been with Branson since he’d embarked upon his particular mode of life all of thirteen years ago, could not be classed among the intellectually gifted, but his patience, invariable good humour and total loyalty to Branson were beyond dispute.

Branson said: ‘Got the plates, Yonnie?’

‘The plates?’ Yonnie wrinkled the negligible clearance between hairline and eyebrows, his customary indication of immense concentration, then smiled happily. ‘Yeah, yeah, I got them.’ He reached under his seat and brought up a pair of spring-clipped number plates. Branson’s coach was, externally, exactly the same as the three in the Presidential motorcade except for the fact that those were Washington DC plates while his were Californian. The plates that Yonnie held in his hands were Washington DC and, even better, exactly duplicated the numbers of one of the three waiting coaches in the garage.

Branson said: ‘Don’t forget. When I jump out the front door you jump out the back. And fix the back one first.’

‘Leave it to me, Chief.’ Yonnie exuded confidence.

A buzzer on the fascia rang briefly. Branson made a switch. It was Jensen, the Nob Hill stakeout.

‘P1?’

‘Yes?’

‘On schedule. Forty minutes.’

‘Thanks.’

Branson closed the switch and flipped another.

‘P4?’

‘P4.’

‘Move in.’

Giscard started up the stolen police car and moved up the Panoramic Highway followed by the second car. They didn’t drive sufficiently quickly to attract attention but they didn’t linger either and had reached the Mount Tamalpais radar stations in a matter of minutes. Those stations dominated the mountainous countryside for miles around and looked like nothing in the world as much as a couple of gigantic white golf balls. Giscard and his men had the entire layout committed to heart and memory and no trouble was envisaged.

Giscard said: ‘There’ll be no need to lean. We’re cops, aren’t we? The guardians of the people. You don’t attack your guardians. No shooting, the boss says.’

One of them said: ‘What if I have to shoot?’

‘You’ll lose half your cut.’ ‘No shooting.’

Branson flipped another switch.

‘P3?’ P3 was the code of the two men who had recently booby-trapped one of the motorcade buses.

‘P3.’

‘Anything?’

‘Two drivers, is all.’

‘Guards?’

‘Okay. No suspicions.’ ‘Wait.’

Branson flipped a switch as another buzzer rang.

‘P5,’ the speaker said. ‘On schedule. Thirty minutes.’

‘Thank you.’

Branson made another switch.

‘P2?’ The code for Johnson and Bradley.

‘Yes?’

‘You can go now.’

‘We go now.’ The voice was Johnson’s. He and Bradley, immaculate in their naval air uniforms, were sauntering casually along in the direction of the US Naval Air Station Alameda. Both men were carrying smooth shiny flight bags into which they had transferred the contents of the valise. As they approached the entrance they increased their pace. By the time they reached the two guards at the entrance they were giving the impression of two men who were in a considerable hurry. They showed their cards to one of the guards.

‘Lieutenant Ashbridge, Lieutenant Martinez. Of course. You’re very late, sir.’

‘I know. We’ll go straight to the choppers.’

‘I’m afraid you can’t do that, sir. Commander Eysenck wants you to report to his office at once.’ The sailor lowered his voice confidentially. ‘The Commander doesn’t sound very happy to me, sir.’

‘Damn!’ Johnson said, and meant it. ‘Where’s his office?’

‘Second door on the left, sir.’

Johnson and Bradley hurried there, knocked and entered. A young petty officer seated behind his desk pursed his lips and nodded silently towards the door to his right. His demeanour indicated that he had no desire whatsoever to participate in the painful scene that was about to follow. Johnson knocked and entered, head down and apparently searching for something in his flight bag. The precaution was needless. In the well-known demoralization ploy of senior officers deepening their intimidation of apprehensive junior officers, Eysenck kept on making notes on a pad before him. Bradley closed the door. Johnson placed the flight bag on the edge of the desk. His right hand was concealed behind it. So was the aerosol gas can.

‘So kind of you to turn up.’ Eysenck spoke in a flat drawling accent: Annapolis had clearly failed to have any effect on his Boston upbringing. ‘You had your strict orders.’ He raised his head in what would normally have been a slow and effective gesture. ‘Your explanations -’ He broke off, eyes widening, but still not suspecting anything untoward. ‘You’re not Ashbridge and Martinez.’

‘No, we’re not, are we?’

It was clear that Eysenck had become suddenly aware that there was something very very far untoward. His hand stretched out for a desk button but Johnson already had his thumb on his. Eysenck slumped forward against his desk. Johnson nodded to Bradley who opened the door to the outer office and as he closed it behind him it could be seen that his hand was fumbling in the depths of his bag. Johnson moved behind the desk, studied the buttons below the phone, pressed one as he lifted the phone.

‘Tower?’

‘Sir?’

‘Immediate clearance Lieutenants Ashbridge and Martinez.’ It was a very creditable imitation of Eysenck’s Boston accent. Branson again called P3, the two watchers by the garage.

‘And now?’

‘Filling up.’

The three buses inside the garage were indeed filling up. Two of them, indeed, had their complements of passengers and were ready to go. The coach that had been booby-trapped was given over mainly to newspapermen, wire service men and cameramen, among them four women, three of indeterminate age, the other young. On a platform at the rear of the bus were three mounted ciné-cameras, for this was the coach that led the motorcade and the cameras would at all times have an excellent view of the Presidential coach which was to follow immediately behind. Among the passengers in this coach were three men who wouldn’t have recognized a typewriter or a camera if it had dropped on their toes but who would have had no difficulty whatsoever in differentiating between a Walther, Colt, Biretti, Smith & Wesson and other such paraphernalia generally regarded as superfluous to the needs of the communications media. This was known as the lead coach.

But there was one passenger in this coach who would have recognized a camera if he had seen it – he was, in fact, carrying a highly complicated apparatus – but who would also have had no difficulty at all in differentiating between a Walther, Colt, Biretti and Smith & Wesson, any of which he was legally entitled to carry and not infrequently did. On this occasion, however, he was unarmed – he considered it unnecessary; between them his colleagues constituted a veritable travelling arsenal – but he did carry a most unusual item of equipment, a beautifully miniaturized and transistorized transceiver radio concealed in the false bottom of his camera. His name was Revson and as he had repeatedly proved in the past, in the service of his country although his country knew nothing of this – a man of quite remarkable accomplishments.

The rear coach was also well occupied, again by newspapermen and men with no interest in newspapers, although in this case the ratio was inversed. The greatly outnumbered journalists, although they realized that the Presidential coach would soon, in terms of the realizable assets of its passengers, be nothing less than a rolling Fort Knox, wondered if it were necessary to have quite so many FBI agents around.

There were only three people aboard the Presidential coach, all crew members. The white-coated driver, his ‘receive’ switch depressed, was waiting for instructions to come through the fascia speaker. Behind the bar, an extraordinarily pretty brunette, who looked like an amalgam of all those ‘Fly me’ airline advertisements, was trying to look demure and inconspicuous and failing miserably. At the rear, the radio operator was already seated in front of his communications console.

A buzzer rang in Branson’s coach.

‘P5,’ the speaker said. ‘On schedule. Twenty minutes.’

A second buzzer rang.

‘P4,’ the speaker said. ‘All okay.’

‘Excellent.’ For once Branson permitted himself a slight feeling of relief. The take-over of the Tamalpais radar stations had been essential to his plans. ‘Scanners manned?’

‘Affirmative.’

A third buzzer rang.

‘P1?’ Johnson’s voice was hurried. ‘P2. Can we go now?’

‘No. Trouble?’

‘Some.’ Johnson, seated at the helicopter controls, engines still not started, watched a man emerge from Eysenck’s office and break into a run, rounding the corner of the building. That could only mean, Johnson realized, that he was going to look through Eysenck’s office window and that could only mean that he had failed to open the door which he and Bradley had locked behind them: the key was at that moment in Johnson’s pocket. Not that looking through Eysenck’s window was going to help him much because he and Bradley had dragged the unconscious Eysenck and petty officer into the windowless washroom leading off the Commander’s office. The key of the washroom door was also in his pocket.

The man came into sight round the corner of the building. He wasn’t running now. In fact, he stopped and looked around. It wasn’t too hard to read what was going on in his mind. Eysenck and the petty officer might well be going about their lawful occasions and he was going to look pretty sick if he started to cry wolf. On the other hand if something had happened and he didn’t report his suspicions he was going to make himself highly unpopular with his superiors. He turned and headed in the direction of the Station Commander’s office, obviously with the intent of asking a few discreet questions. Halfway towards the office it became clear that his questions weren’t going to be all that discreet: he had broken into a run.

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?’