The Golden Gate

ago and are flying up direct by helicopter.'

'Where are they landing?'

'In the Military Reservation in the Presidio. Two, three minutes by car.'

'Thanks.' Branson made the switch to Mount Tamalpais. Giscard acknowledged. Branson said: 'No sweat. Friends. But watch that scanner — the next one may not be a friend.'

'Will do. Mr Branson.'

Branson rose, made to leave the coach then stopped and looked at the bound man in the rear of the aisle. He said to Jensen, who had taken the place of the bound man: 'You can get back to calling yourself Harriman again. Untie Jensen here.'

'Sending him off the bridge?'

For once Branson hesitated and didn't like the feeling at all. Hesitation was not in his nature. Whether he arrived at decisions intellectually or instinctively he almost invariably did so immediately: the few mistakes he'd made in his life had invariably been associated with hesitation. He made up his mind.

'Well keep him. He might come in useful, I don't know how yet, but he just might. And he is deputy director of the FBI. He's no minnow to have in our net. Tell him the score but keep him here until I give the word.'

He left and walked towards the lead coach. At least a score of people were lined up outside the coach under the watchful eyes and guns of Yonnie and his two colleagues. They had, understandably, a general air of bafflement about them. Branson saw that included among them were four handcuffed men. He looked inside the coach, saw that it was empty, and turned to Peters.

'Take those four gentlemen with the handcuffs and the six policemen down to Chrysler. He'll know what to do with them.'

He turned to look at the oncoming fog. Close-up, it was coming in a deal faster than it had seemed at a distance. But it was a low bank: with luck it would pass under the bridge. Even if it didn't, he imagined that they could cope by using suitable threats against the President and his friends, but he wouldn't feel really happy about those intermittent fogs until the steel barriers were in position at either end of the bridge.

He turned and looked at the correspondents. There were four women among them but only one of them, the green-eyed blonde with Revson, could truthfully have claimed to have been a post-war baby — World War Two, that was.

'You can all relax,' Branson said. 'No harm is going to come to any of you. In fact, when I have finished you'll be given a free choice-to walk off the bridge in safety or stay aboard the bridge, equally in safety.' He smiled his generous empty smile. 'I somehow fancy that most of you will elect to stay. When I have finished you will realize, I hope, that a story like this does not fall into your laps every week.'

When he had finished, not one of those frantically scribbling and furiously camera-clicking journalists and photographers was under any doubt whatsoever: a story like this fell into their laps once in a lifetime, if they had the luck to have a very long life, that was. Physical violence would have been required to remove any of them from the Golden Gate Bridge. They were slap bang in the middle of an unprecedented episode in criminal history and one that bade fair to become part of the more general history of their times.

The fog had reached the bridge now, but not enveloped it. Thin wisps of it drifted over the top but the main body of the fog rolled by twenty feet below the bridge: the effect was to produce an odd feeling of weightlessness, of suspension in space, as if the bridge was afloat on the insubstantial bedrock of water vapour.

Branson said: 'You have elected to remain so you must accept some guide rules. In the rear coach there are three telephone lines to town. Those are for my own personal and emergency use but you will be allowed to use them once — to contact your photographic services, newspapers, wire services or whatever to arrange for a representative to be stationed at the southern end of the bridge to pick up your dispatches and photographs. This can be done three times a day at times yet to be arranged. Markers will be arranged in an oblong around the Presidential coach and no one will cross those without permission. No one will interview any person inside the Presidential coach without my permission or the consent of the party concerned: it would be more satisfactory all round and fairer to all concerned if, say, the President were to hold a press conference out here, but that I cannot and will not force anyone to do. The helicopters will be similarly cordoned off and that will also be forbidden territory. Twenty yards south of my coach and twenty yards north of yours white lines will be painted across the bridge. Those will be your demarcation limits. Five yards beyond those lines will be a guard with a machine-pistol and his orders will be not to warn but to shoot anyone who steps over those lines. Finally, you will be confined to your coach during the hours of darkness: this rule will only be relaxed if some particularly newsworthy happening occurs. I will be the judge of what is newsworthy. Anyone unwilling to abide by those ground rules may leave now.'

Nobody left.

'Any questions?' Branson watched the fog roll eastwards, obscuring Alcatraz Island, as the newsmen conferred among themselves. Two men took a step forward. Both were middle-aged, dressed in well-cut, conservative suits, one almost completely bald, the other with grizzled hair and beard, both inordinately bushy. The bald man said: 'We have.'

'Your names?'

'I'm Grafton — AP. This is Dougan — Reuters.'

Branson regarded them with an interest that was pointless to conceal. Those two could reach more newspapers worldwide than all the rest put together. 'And the question?'

'We would be right in saying, Mr Branson, that you didn't exactly get up this morning and say 'This would be a fine day for kidnapping the President of the United States'?'

'You would.'

Dougan said: 'This operation bears all the hallmarks of long and meticulous planning. Without condoning your actions one has to admit that you appear to have left nothing to chance and have foreseen every eventuality. How long did the planning take?'

'Three months.'

'That's not possible. The details of this itinerary were released only four days ago.'

'The details were known in Washington three months ago.'

Grafton said: 'On the evidence before us we have to believe you. Why do you think this was kept under wraps so long?'

'In order to obviate the possibility of people like me doing exactly what I have done.'

'How did you get the advance information?'

'I bought it.'

'How? Where?'

'In Washington, as in many other places, thirty thousand dollars buys a lot of information.'

Dougan said: 'Would you care to name names?'

'That's a stupid question. Any others?'

A dark-suited lady of indeterminate years said: 'Yes. Here we have all the signs of a highly experienced professionalism. We can assume that this is not your first foray outside the law?'

Branson smiled. 'You may assume what you like. What's past is prologue.'

She persisted. 'Do you have a criminal record, Mr Branson?'

'I have never been in court in my life. Anything else?'

'Of course.' It was Dougan. 'The thing that we all want to know. Why?'

'That you will find out in the course of a press conference I shall be holding within two hours. At the conference will be a TV camera and crew representing the three main companies. Also present will be the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Treasury. Vice-President Richards we expect later but not in time for the conference.'

Experienced newsmen and newswomen though they were they appeared to be at a temporary loss for words. Finally Dougan said carefully: 'Would it be true to say of you that you subscribe to the belief that if a thing is worth doing it's worth doing well?'

'A pragmatic philosophy, but it works. You may now use the telephones in my coach. Three at a time.'

Branson turned away and took a step towards the Presidential coach when Yonnie's voice stopped him.

'Jesus!' Yonnie, mouth inelegantly agape, was staring out to the west. 'You see what I see, Mr