President who had ever lived. Morro did not leave his side. Even an inhuman monster — and it was not proven that he was — had his human side: it is not given to every man to present a President to his people.
Ryder, glass in hand, wandered around, spending an inconsequential word with those whom he met. He approached a person, who was perhaps the fifth or sixth person he’d chatted to, and said: ‘You’re Dr Healey.’
‘Yes. How did you know?’
Ryder didn’t tell him how he knew. He’d studied too many photographs too long. ‘Can you maintain a deadpan face?’
Healey looked at him and maintained a deadpan face.
‘Yes.’
‘My name is Ryder.’
‘Oh yes?’ Healey smiled at the waiter who refilled his glass.
‘Where’s the button? The switch?’
‘To the right. Elevator. Four rooms, fourth along.’
Ryder wandered away, spoke to one or two others, then accidentally ran into Healey again.
‘Tell no one. Not even Susan.’ The reference, he knew, would establish his credibility beyond any doubt. ‘In the fourth room?’
‘Small booth. Steel door inside. He has the key. The button’s inside.’
‘Guards?’
‘Four. Six. Courtyard.’
Ryder wandered away and sat down. Healey happened by. ‘There are steps beyond the elevator.’ Ryder didn’t even look up.
Ryder observed, without observing, that his son was doing magnificently. The dedicated physician, he did not once leave Muldoon’s side, didn’t once glance at his mother or his sister. He was due, Ryder reflected, for promotion to sergeant, at least. It never occurred to Ryder to think about his own future.
Two minutes later Morro courteously called a halt to the proceedings. Obediently, the hostages filed out. Neither Susan nor Peggy had as much as given a second glance to either Ryder or his son.
Morro rose. ‘You will excuse me, gentlemen. I am going to have a brief and private talk with the President. A few minutes only, I assure you.’ He looked around the room. Three armed guards, each with an Ingram, two waiters, each with a concealed pistol. Carrying security to ridiculous lengths: but that was how he survived, had survived all those long and hazardous years. ‘Come, Abraham.’
The three men left and moved along the corridor to the second door on the right. It was a small room, bare to the point of bleakness, with only a table and few chairs. Morro said: ‘We have come to discuss high finance, Mr President.’
Hillary sighed. ‘You are refreshingly — if disconcertingly — blunt. Do you mean to tell me you have no more of that splendid Scotch left?’
‘Heaven send — or should I say Allah send — that we should show any discourtesy to the leader of — well, never mind. You mentioned the inevitable. It takes a great mind to accept the inevitable.’ He sat in silence while Dubois brought a glass and a bottle of what appeared to be the inevitable Glenfiddich to the small desk before Morro. He watched in silence while Dubois poured then raised his glass. It was not to be in a toast. He said: ‘The negotiating point?’
‘You will understand why I wished to talk in private. I, the President of the United States, feel that I am selling out the United States. Ten billion dollars.’
‘We shall drink to that.’
Ryder, glass in hand, wandered slowly, aimlessly, round the room. In his overcoat pocket he had, as instructed, pressed the button of his ball-point six times and, as promised, the writing tip had fallen off at the sixth time. Harlinson was standing close to one of the waiters. Greenshaw had just ordered another drink.
Muldoon — Ludwig Johnson — had his back to the company. He shuddered and made a peculiar moaning noise. Instantly Jeff bent over him, hand on his pulse and stethoscope to his heart. Jeff’s face could be seen to tighten. Jeff pulled back his coat, undid the massive waistcoat and proceeded to do something that none of the guards could see.
One of them said: ‘What is wrong?’
‘Shut up!’ Jeff was very curt indeed. ‘He is extremely ill. Heart massage.’ He looked at Bonn. ‘Lift his back up.’
Bonn bent to do so, and as he did there came a faint zipping noise. Ryder cursed inwardly. Plastic zips were meant to be noiseless. The guard who had spoken took a step forward. His face was a blend of suspicion and uncertainty. ‘What was that?’
The nearest guard was only three feet from Ryder. Even with a pen it was impossible to miss at that range. The guard made a weird sighing noise, crumpled and fell sideways to the floor. The two other guards turned and stared in disbelief. They stared for almost three seconds, a ludicrously long time for Myron Bonn, the legal luminary from Donnemara, to shoot them both through the heart with a silenced Smith & Wesson. At the same instant Greenshaw chopped the man bending over him and Harlinson did the same for the other waiter standing in front of him.
Johnson had worn a double-thickness zipped bodice under his shirt. Below that he had worn a cover of sorbo rubber, almost a foot thick, where the lower part of his stomach ought to have been. Next to his skin he had worn another sheet of sorbo rubber, almost but not quite as thick, which was why it had taken three special make-up men six man-hours to fit him out to Muldoon’s physical specifications. Between the two layers of sorbo rubber had lain three rubber-wrapped pistols and the disassembled parts of two Kalashnikov machine-guns. It took Ryder and his son less than a minute to reassemble the Kalashnikovs.
Ryder said: ‘Bonn, you’re the marksman. Stay outside the door. Anybody comes along the corridor, either side, you know what to do.’
‘I get to finish my thesis? A doctorate, no less?’
‘I’ll come to your graduation ceremony. Jeff, Colonel Greenshaw, Mr Harlinson: there are armed guards out in the courtyard. I don’t care how much noise you make. Kill them.’
‘Dad!’ Jeff’s face was white and shocked and beseeching.
‘Give that Kalashnikov to Bonn. Those people would have killed a million, millions, of your fellow Californians.’
‘But God! Dad!’
‘Your mother…’
Jeff left. Greenshaw and Harlinson followed. Bonn and Ryder moved out after them into the corridor, and it was then that Ryder made his first mistake since his grouchy lieutenant had called him at home to inform him of the San Ruffino break-in. It wasn’t a mistake, really; he had no idea where Morro and Dubois had taken Hillary. It was just that he was extremely tired. He normally would have taken into account the possibility that Morro had gone to a room between where he stood and the elevator to the caverns below. But he was very, very tired. To all the world he looked like a man of indestructible iron. But no man is indestructible. No man is made of iron.
He listened to the stuttering bark of the Kalashnikovs and wondered whether Jeff would ever forgive him. Probably not, he thought, probably not, and it was little consolation to know that millions of Californians would. If. Not yet. The time was not yet.
Fifteen feet down the corridor to his right Dubois, gun in hand, came out, followed by Morro dragging Hillary with him. Ryder lifted his Kalashnikov and Dubois died. It was impossible to see where the bullet had struck and Ryder had not pressed the trigger. The future doctor of philosophy was still earning his degree.
Morro was moving away, dragging his human shield with him. The elevator gate was less than fifteen feet away.
‘Stay here,’ Ryder said. His voice was strangely quiet. ‘Watch out to the left.’ He switched the Kalashnikov to single-shot and squeezed the trigger. He didn’t want to do it, he hated to do it. Hillary had cheerfully admitted that he was expendable, but he still remained, as he had proved that night, a strangely likeable human being. Brave, cheerful, courageous and human: but so were millions of Californians.
The bullet hit Morro’s left shoulder. He didn’t shriek or cry, he just grunted and kept on dragging Hillary to the elevator. The gate was open. He thrust Hillary in and was disappearing himself when the second bullet struck him in
