Goodbye California

the mandatory five miles distance almost ridiculously easy.

Among the spectators present were most of the ranking scientists in the State, especially and understandably those who specialized in the nuclear and earthquake fields. Why, precisely, they were there was difficult to see, for the blast, shock and radiation effects of an eighteen-kiloton atomic device had been known with sufficient precision for over thirty years. Most of them, admittedly, had never seen an atomic explosion before, but the reason lay elsewhere. Blessed or cursed by that insatiable curiosity that had been the driving force or bane of scientists since recorded history, they just wanted to see where the bomb would go off. They too could, of course, have stayed at home: but your true scientist is in the field or he is nothing.

Among those who stayed at home were Major Dunne in his office and Sergeant Ryder at his house. Even by helicopter the round trip was over five hundred miles, and that, for Dunne, represented a waste of valuable investigative time: for Ryder it represented a waste of thinking time which he no longer regarded as being necessarily valuable but was better than not thinking at all. Jeff Ryder had originally wanted to go, but when coldly asked by his father how he hoped to help his family by spending what could be irreplaceable hours rubber-necking, he had readily agreed not to go, especially when Ryder had said that he wanted Jeff to help him. His father, Jeff thought, had a peculiar idea of what ‘helping’ meant for, as far as he could see, his parent was doing absolutely nothing. Jeff had been asked to type out every detail, however apparently insignificant, of the investigations that had been carried out till then, including, as far as possible, verbatim recollections of all conversations, and to this end he was employing his memory as best he could. From time to time he glanced resentfully at Ryder who appeared to be doing nothing other than leafing idly through the pile of earthquake literature he’d picked up from Professor Benson.

About ten minutes before ten Jeff switched on the TV. The screen showed a bluish-tinged stretch of extremely unprepossessing desert, so unattractive a spectacle that the commentator was trying — and making extremely heavy weather of it — to compensate by an intense and breathless account of what was taking place, a gallant and foredoomed effort as nothing whatsoever was taking place. He informed the watchers that the camera was stationed in Frenchman’s Flat at a distance of five miles south-west from the estimated point of explosion, as if anyone cared from what direction his camera was pointing. He said that as the device was almost certainly buried to a considerable depth there wasn’t expected to be much in the way of a fireball, which everyone had been reminded of for hours past. They were, he said, using a colour filter, which everyone who wasn’t colour-blind could readily see. Finally, he told them that the time was nine minutes to ten, as if he were the only person in California who owned a watch. He had, of course, to say something, but it was an extremely mundane run-up to something that might prove to be of lunatic significance. Jeff looked at his father in some exasperation: Ryder was certainly not looking and very probably not listening to anything that was going on. He was no longer leafing through the pages but was gazing, apparently unseeing, at one particular page. He laid down the literature and headed for the telephone.

Jeff said: ‘Dad, do you mind? There’s just thirty seconds to go.’

‘Ah!’ Ryder returned to his seat and gazed placidly at the screen.

The commentator was now speaking in that tense, breathless, near-hysterical voice which commonly afflicts race-track commentators when they endeavour to generate some spurious excitement towards the end of a race. In this particular instance the tone was quite misplaced: a calm relaxed voice would have been much more appropriate — the imminent event carried in itself all the excitement that could be generated. The commentator had now started a count-down, starting at thirty, the numbers decreasing as the dramatic impact of his voice decreased. The effect was rather spoilt because either his watch was wrong or Morro’s was. The device exploded fourteen seconds ahead of time.

To a people who had long become accustomed to seeing atomic explosions on the screen, whether at home or in the cinema, to a people who had become blase about and bored with the spectacle of moon-rockets blasting off from Cape Canaveral, the visual effect of this latest demonstration of science’s resolute retrograde march was curiously — or perhaps not so curiously — anti-climactic. True, the fireball was considerably greater than predicted — the searing blue-white flash was of an intensity that caused many viewers to wince or even momentarily shut their eyes — but the column of smoke, fire and desert dust that streaked up into the blue Nevada sky, a blueness dramatically intensified by the camera filters, culminating in the mushrooming of the deadly radio-active cloud, faithfully followed the accustomed scenario. To the inhabitants of the central Amazon basin such a titanic convulsion would presumably have heralded the end of the world: to the more sophisticated peoples of the world it was passe, old hat, and had it occurred on some remote Pacific atoll the great majority of people wouldn’t even have bothered to watch it.

But it hadn’t happened on any remote Pacific atoll, nor had it been Morro’s purpose to provide the Californians with a diversionary spectacle to relieve the ennui of their daily lives. It had been intended, instead, to provide them with a chilling warning, an ominous threat, all the more frightening because unspecified, of impending evil, of some unimagined disaster that would strike at the whim of whoever had planted and triggered the atomic device: on a more mundane level it was intended to show that here was a man who meant what he said, who was not just there to play around and who had both the desire and ability to carry out whatever he had threatened. Had that been Morro’s intention — and there obviously had been none other — then he had succeeded to a degree which perhaps even he had not realized was possible. He had struck fear into the heart of the great majority of rational Californians, and from that time on there was practically only one topic of conversation in the State: when and where this unpredictable madman would strike again and what in the name of all that was holy — it wasn’t expressed in quite that way — were his motivations. This topic, to be precise, was to last for only ninety minutes: then they were to be given something definite and concrete about which to worry or, more accurately, to reduce that part of California most directly concerned to a state of not unreasoning terror that was swiftly to shade off into panic.

Ryder rose. ‘Well, we never doubted that he was a man of his word. Aren’t you glad you didn’t waste your time going up to see that side-show? For that’s all it was. Ah, well, it should at least keep people’s minds off taxes and the latest shenanigans in Washington for a little.’

Jeff didn’t answer. It was doubtful if he’d even heard. He was still looking at the ever-expanding mushroom over the Nevada desert, still listening to the suitably awe-stricken voice of the commentator describing in great and wholly unnecessary detail what anyone with half an eye could see perfectly well for himself. Ryder shook his head and picked up the telephone. Dunne answered.

Ryder said: ‘Anything? You know this line is bugged.’

‘Something’s coming in.’

‘Interpol?’

‘Something’s coming in.’

‘How long?’

‘Half an hour.’

He hung up, called Parker, arranged to have them meet in Dunne’s office in half an hour, hung up, sat, briefly ruminated on the fact that both Dunne and Parker had taken the reality of Morro’s threat so much for granted that neither of them had thought fit to comment on it, then resumed his reading. Fully five minutes passed before Jeff switched off the TV, glanced with some irritation at his father, sat down at his table, typed a few words and said acidly: ‘I hope I’m not disturbing you.’

‘Not at all. How many pages have you got down?’

‘Six.’

Ryder stretched out his hand and took them. ‘We’re leaving in fifteen minutes to see Dunne. Something’s come up — or is coming up.’

‘What?’

‘You have forgotten, perhaps, that one of Morro’s henchmen is wearing a headset tied in to our phone?’

A chagrined Jeff resumed his typing while Ryder began a placid reading of Jeff’s notes.

A much refreshed Dunne, who had obviously a good night’s rest behind him, was waiting with Delage and Leroy when Ryder, Jeff and Parker arrived. Delage and Leroy were looking a good deal less rested: the assumption was that they did not have a good night’s rest behind them. Dunne confirmed this, nodding at Delage and Leroy.

‘A couple of devoted agents who think their boss is past it. Quite right too.’ He tapped a sheaf of papers in