The Golden Gate

In mock seriousness the King said: ‘So we are safe?’

The President regained his smiling composure. ‘As in the vaults of Fort Knox.’

It was at this point, just after the lead coach had passed the halfway mark across the bridge, that five things happened in almost bewilderingly rapid succession. In the rear coach Branson pressed a button on the console in front of him. Two seconds later a small explosion occurred in the front of the lead coach, almost beneath the driver’s feet. Although unhurt, the driver was momentarily shocked, then swore, recovered quickly and jammed his foot on the brake pedal. Nothing happened.

‘Sweet Jesus!’ It took him all of another second to realize that his hydraulic lines were gone. He jammed his handbrake into the locked position and changed down into first gear. The coach began to slow.

Branson abruptly lifted his right arm, as abruptly lowered it again to reinforce the left in bracing himself against the fascia. Behind him his men did the same, outstretched arms, slightly bent at the elbows as they had learnt in frequent practices, braced against the backs of the seats in front: nobody sat in the front seats. Van Effen slipped the gear into neutral and kicked down on the brake pedal as if he were trying to thrust it through the floor.

The fact that Van Effen had recently and with malice aforethought seen fit to deactivate his rear brake lights did little to help the plight of the hapless driver of the police car behind. The motorcade was travelling slowly, about twenty-five miles an hour, and the rear police car was trailing the coach by about the same number of feet. The driver had no reason to suspect that anything might be amiss, for the bridge was closed to all traffic except the motorcade: there was no earthly reason to expect anything should interfere with the smooth and even tempo of their progress. He may even have spared a momentary side glance to admire the view. However it was, when he first realized that all was not what it should have been the distance between them had halved. An incredulous double-take cost him another few feet and, skilled police driver though he was, his reactions were no faster than those of the next man and by the time his foot had hit the brake the gap between himself and the now stationary coach had lessened to not more than five feet. The effect of a car’s striking a solid and immovable object at twenty miles an hour has a less than humorous effect on the occupants of that car: the four officers in the car were no exception.

At the moment of impact Branson touched a second button on the fascia. The lead coach, slowing only by its handbrake, was now doing no more than ten miles an hour when another small explosion occurred in the drinks cabinet at the rear, an explosion followed immediately by a pronounced hissing as if caused by compressed air escaping under very high pressure. Within seconds the entire compartment was filled with a dense, grey, obnoxious and noxious gas. The coach, almost immediately out of control as the driver slumped forward over the wheel, slewed slowly to the right and came to a rest less than two feet from the side of the road. Not that it would have mattered particularly if it had struck the safety barriers on the side of the bridge which were of a nature to withstand the assaults of anything less than a Chieftain tank.

The Presidential coach came to no harm. The driver had seen the lead coach’s brake warning lights come on, braked, pulled left to avoid the slewing coach ahead and came to a rest beside it. The expressions of the twelve occupants of the coach expressed varying degrees of unhappiness but not, as yet, of alarm.

The police car and two motor-cycle outriders leading the motorcade had been curiously slow to observe the confusion behind them. Only now had they spotted the slewed coach and were beginning to turn.

In the rear coach everything was taking place with the clockwork precision that stemmed from a score of practice runs that had covered all conceivable potentialities. Van Effen jumped down from the left-hand door, Yonnie from the right, just as the two motor-cycle outriders pulled up almost alongside. Van Effen said: ‘You better get in there fast. Looks like we got a stiff on our hands.’

The two patrolmen propped their machines and jumped aboard the coach. They could now no longer be seen by the returning lead police car and outriders so it was safe to take swift and efficient action against them, which was done with considerable ease not least because their attention had immediately been caught up by the sight of the bound figure lying sprawled on the floor in the rear aisle.

Seven men emerged swiftly from the doors of the coach. Five of those joined Van Effen and Yonnie and ran towards the other coaches. Two more ran back towards the crashed police car. Two others inside the coach swung wide the rear door and mounted what appeared to be a relatively harmless length of steel tubing on a tripod stand. Branson and Jensen remained where they were: the bound man on the floor, whose identity Jensen had taken over, regarded them all severally with a baleful expression but, beyond that, the options open to him were rather limited.

The two men who had run back towards the crashed police car were called Kowalski and Peters. They didn’t look like criminals, unless a couple of prosperous young commuters from the stockbroker belt could be called criminals. Yonnie apart, none of Branson’s associates bore any resemblance whatever to the popular concept of those who habitually stepped outside the law. Both men, in fact, had killed a number of times, but then only legally – as far as the term ‘legal’ could be interpreted – as members of a highly specialized Marine commando unit in Vietnam. Disillusioned with civilian life they’d found their next best panacea with Branson, who had a splendid eye for the recruitment of such men. They had not killed since. Branson approved of violence if and when necessary: killing was not permitted except as a last resort. In his thirteen years of upsetting law officers in the United States, Canada and Mexico, Branson had not yet had to have recourse to the last resort. Whether this was due to moral scruples or not was unclear: what was clear was that Branson regarded it as bad business. The degree of intensity of police efforts to catch robbers as opposed to murderers differed quite appreciably.

The windows of both front doors of the car were wound down – obviously they had been so at the moment of the crash. The four uniformed men seated inside had not been seriously injured but clearly had been badly shaken and had suffered minor damage, the worst of which appeared to be a broken nose sustained by the man in the front seat next to the driver. For the most part they were just dazed, too dazed, in any event, to offer any resistance to the removal of their weapons. Working in smooth unison Kowalski and Peters wound up the front windows. Peters closed his door while Kowalski threw in a gas bomb and closed his in turn.

None of any of this action had been witnessed by the returning police car’s crew or the motorcycle outriders. The policemen left their car and machines and were cautiously approaching the lead coach when Yonnie and Van Effen with the five others came running up. All had guns of one kind or another in their hands.

‘Quickly!’ Van Effen shouted. ‘Take cover! There are a couple of crazy bastards back in that coach there, one with a bazooka, the other with a Schmeisser. Get behind the bus!’

Given time to consider the matter the policemen might have queried Van Effen’s statements but they weren’t given the time and the instinct for immediate if irrational self-preservation remains always paramount. Van Effen checked quickly to see if they were hidden from the view of the Presidential coach. They were. Not that he feared anything from that source, he just wanted to be spared the chore of blasting open the lock of the door that would be surely locked against them if their actions were observed.

He nodded to Yonnie and walked away with another man towards the rear of the bus. Whatever might be said, and had unkindly been said, about Yonnie’s cerebral limitations, this was the situation he had been born for, a basically elemental one in which action took precedence over thoughts. Long training had even given the vocabulary appropriate to the occasion. He said: ‘Let’s kinda put our hands up, huh?’

The six men turned round. Their expressions ran through the gamut of astonishment, anger and then resignation. Resignation was all that was left them. They had, with reason enough, not yet thought it time to produce their own weapons, and when the wise man is confronted at point-blank range with a pair of submachine-pistols he does what he is told and just kinda puts his hands up. Yonnie kept them covered while another man relieved them of their pistols. The remaining two men began to run back towards the rear coach as soon as they saw Van Effen and another climb aboard the Presidential coach.

The reaction of those aboard this coach had, so far, amounted to no more than an amalgam of perplexity and annoyance, and even that was slight enough. One or two were making the customary laborious effort to rise when Van Effen mounted the steps.

‘Please relax, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Just a slight delay’ Such is the authority of even a white coat — in a street accident a crowd will make way for a man in a butcher’s apron – that everybody subsided. Van Effen produced an unpleasant-looking weapon, a double-barrelled 12-bore shotgun with most of the barrel and stock removed to make for easier transport, if not accuracy. ‘I am afraid this is what you might call a hold-up or hijack or kidnap. I don’t suppose it matters very much what you call it. Just please remain where you are.’

‘Good God in heaven!’ The President stared at Van Effen’s moonface as if he were a creature from outer space. His eyes, as if drawn magnetically, went to the King and the Prince, then he returned his incredulous, outraged gaze to Van Effen. ‘Are you insane? Don’t you know who I am? Don’t you know you’re pointing a gun at the President of the United States?’

‘I know. You can’t help being what you are any more than I can help being what I am. As for pointing guns at Presidents, it’s a long if not very honourable tradition in our country. Please do not give any trouble.’ Van Effen looked directly at General Cartland – he’d had him under indirect observation from the moment he had entered the coach. ‘General, it is known that you always carry a gun. Please let me have it. Please do not be clever. Your .22 can be nasty enough if it is accurate enough: this whippet will blast a hole the size of your hand through your chest. You are not the man, I know, to confuse courage with suicide.’

Cartland smiled faintly, nodded, produced a small, black, narrow automatic and handed it across.

Van Effen said: Thank you. I’m afraid you will have to remain seated for the moment at least. You have only my word for it, but if you offer no violence you will receive none.’

A profound silence descended. The King, eyes closed and hands folded across his chest, appeared to be communing either with himself or with the All-powerful. Suddenly he opened his eyes, looked at the President and said: ‘Just how safe are the vaults in Fort Knox?’

‘You’d better believe me, Hendrix,’ Branson said. He was talking into a hand-held microphone. ‘We have the President, the King and the Prince. If you will wait a minute or two I’ll have the President himself confirm that to you. Meantime, please don’t attempt anything so stupid or rash as to try to approach us. Let me give you a demonstration. I assume you have some patrol cars near the south entrance and you are in radio contact with them?’

Hendrix didn’t look like anyone’s conception of a Chief of Police. He looked like a professorial refugee from the campus of the nearby university. He was tall, slender, dark, slightly stooped and invariably immaculately groomed and conservatively dressed. A great number of people temporarily or permanently deprived of their freedom would have freely if blasphemously attested to the fact that he was very very intelligent indeed. There was no more brilliant or brilliantly effective policeman in the country. At that moment, however, that fine intelligence was in temporary abeyance. He felt stunned and had about him the look of a man who has just seen all his nightmares come true.

He said: ‘I am.’

‘Very well. Wait.’

Branson turned and made a signal to the two men at the rear of the coach. There was a sudden explosive whoosh from the recoilless missile weapon mounted at the rear. Three seconds later a cloud of dense grey smoke erupted between the pylons of the south tower. Branson spoke into the microphone. ‘Well?’

‘Some kind of explosion,’ Hendrix said. His voice was remarkably steady. ‘Lots of smoke, if it is smoke.’

‘A nerve gas. Not permanently damaging, but incapacitating. Takes about ten minutes’ time before it oxidizes. If we have to use it and a breeze comes up from the north-west, north or northeast – well, it will be your responsibility, you understand.’

‘I understand.’

‘Conventional gas-masks are useless against it. Do you understand that also?’

‘I understand.’

‘We have a similar weapon covering the northern end of the bridge. You will inform police squads and units of the armed forces of the inadvisability of attempting to move out on to the bridge. You understand that too?’ ‘Yes.’

‘You will have been informed of the presence of two naval helicopters hovering over the bridge?’

‘Yes.’ The rather hunted look had left Hendrix’s face and his mind was clearly back into top gear. ‘I find it rather puzzling, I must say.’

‘It needn’t be. They are in our hands. Have an immediate alarm put through to all local army and naval air commanders. Tell them if any attempt is made to dispatch fighters to shoot down those helicopters they will have very unpleasant effects on the President and his friends. Tell them that we shall know immediately whenever any such plane does lift off. The Mount Tamalpais radar stations are in our hands.’

‘Good God!’ Hendrix was back to square one.

‘He won’t help. They are manned by competent radar operators. No attempt will be made to retake those stations whether by land or airborne assault. If such an assault is made we are aware that we have no means of preventing it. However, I do not think that the President, King or Prince would look kindly upon any individual who was responsible for depriving them of, say, their right ears. Please do not think that I am not serious. We shall deliver them, by hand, in a sealed plastic bag.’

‘No such attempt will be made.’ Captain Campbell, a burly, sandy-haired, red-faced and normally jovial character whom Hendrix regarded as his right-hand man, regarded Hendrix with some surprise, not because of what he had just said but because it was the first time he had ever seen Hendrix with beads of sweat on his brow. In an unconscious gesture Campbell reached up and touched his own forehead, then looked with a feeling of grave disquiet at the dampened back of his hand.

Branson said: ‘I hope you mean what you say. I will contact you shortly.’

‘It will be in order if I come down to the bridge? It would appear that I have to set up some kind of communications headquarters and that seems the most logical place for it to be.’

‘That will be in order. But do not move out on to the bridge. And please prevent any private cars from entering the Presidio. Violence is the very last thing we want but if some arises I do not wish innocent people to suffer.’

‘You are very considerate.’ Hendrix sounded, perhaps justifiably, more than a little bitter.

Branson smiled and replaced the microphone.

The gas inside the lead coach had vanished but the effect it had had on the occupants had not. All were still profoundly unconscious. Some two or three had fallen into the aisle without, apparently, having sustained any injuries in the process. For the most part, however, they just remained slumped in their seats or had fallen forward against the backs of the seats in front of them.

Yonnie and Bartlett moved among them but not in the capacity of ministering angels. Bartlett, at twenty-six, was the youngest of Branson’s men, and looked every inch a fresh-faced college boy which he every inch was not. They were searching every person in the coach, and searching them very thoroughly indeed, those who were being subjected to this indignity being in no position to object. The lady journalists were spared this but their handbags were meticulously examined. It said much for the standards that Branson imposed that none of the several thousand dollars that passed through the hands of Yonnie and Bartlett found its way into either of their pockets. Robbery on a grand scale was big business: robbery on a small scale was petty larceny and not to be tolerated. In any event, they weren’t looking for money, they were looking for guns. Branson had reasoned, and correctly as it turned out, that there would be several special agents in the journalists’ coach, whose assignment would be not the direct protection of the President and his guests but the surveillance of the journalists themselves. Because of the worldwide interest aroused by the visit of the Arabian oil princes to the United States, at least ten of those journalists aboard were from abroad – four from Europe, the same from the Gulf States and one each from Nigeria and Venezuela, countries which might well be regarded as having a pressing interest in any transactions between the major oil states and the United States.