multi-millionaire. You envy a man who's made it to the very top. You couldn't wait to inherit his bank and his millions so you took the only other course open to you. Crime. And you haven't made it. And you haven't had recognition — except that of a few top policemen. So you're a failure. So you bear a grudge. So you take it out, symbolically, on America's leading citizen.'
Branson said wearily, 'You, Mr President, are a lousy diagnostician and an even lousier psychiatrist. Okay, okay, insults again, but this is private. You may fear no more the lash of my tongue. But to think that your decisions can affect over two hundred million Americans.'
'What do you mean?'
'It's how wrong you can get. Branson, senior, that model of integrity and propriety, is a double-dyed bastard. He was also — and still is — a double-dyed crook. A renowned investment banker, you understand, but it didn't do his investors much good. They were mainly people of modest means. I at least rob wealthy institutions. I found this out when I worked in his bank. I wouldn't have taken a lousy dollar from him. I didn't even give him the pleasure of disinheriting me. I just told him what I thought of him and his lousy bank and walked out. As for recognition — who wants it?'
'You certainly achieved more in the past eighteen hours than your father did in a lifetime.' The President was understandably sour.
'That's notoriety. Who wants that either? And for money — I already am a multi-millionaire.'
'And still you want more?'
'My motives are my business. Sorry to have interrupted your sleep, sir.' Branson left.
Muir, in the next armchair, said: 'Now, that was rather peculiar.'
'So you weren't asleep?'
'One hates to interrupt. The Branson in the still watches of the night is not the Branson of the daylight hours. Forthcoming, one might almost say. Polite. Almost as if he was seeking for some kind of self-justification. But obviously bitter as hell about something.'
'If he doesn't want recognition and doesn't need the money then what the hell are we doing stuck out on this damned bridge?'
'Ssh. Mayor Morrison might hear you. I don't know. With your permission, Mr President, I'm going back to sleep.'
When Carmody and Rogers reached the top of the south tower and stepped outside the lift, Carmody reached an arm in, pressed a button and withdrew his arm as the door began to close. Both men stepped outside and gazed down silently at the darkened and barely visible bridge some five hundred feet below them. After a minute Carmody withdrew the walkie-talkie from his canvas bag, extended the aerial and said: 'You can cut the power now. The lift's been down for thirty seconds.'
He replaced the walkie-talkie and removed his overalls. Over his purposely-chosen dark shirt he wore a leather harness with a heavy steel buckle at the back. A nylon rope spliced to the buckle was wound several times round his waist. He was in the process of unwinding this when the bridge lights and the aircraft warning lights on top of the towers came on again. Carmody said: 'A chance of our being spotted, you think?'
'Thinking of the aircraft lights?' Carmody nodded. 'No chance. Not from their angle. And I understand their south searchlight isn't working too well.'
Carmody unwound the rest of the rope and passed the end to Rogers. 'A couple of turns, if you would, Charles, then hang on real good.'
'Depend on it. If you take a dive that means I'll have to disarm the damned thing myself — with no one to hold me.'
'We should get danger money for this.'
'You're a disgrace to the Army bomb disposal squad.'
Carmody sighed, moved out on to the giant cable and began to remove the detonators from the explosives.
It was six-thirty in the morning when Revson stirred and woke. He looked at April and saw that her green eyes were on his. There were heavy shadows under her eyes and her normally pale skin was now even more unnaturally so.
He said: 'You don't look to me as if you've rested any too well'
'I didn't sleep all night'
'What? With me here to look after you?'
'It's not me I'm worried about. It's you.'
He said nothing.
'Do you feel hung-over? After your — your sleeping pill?'
'No. Guess I must have slipped into a natural sleep. That all you worried about?'
'No. Branson was here just before one o'clock. He examined your eyes with a torch to see if you were still asleep.'
'No sense of privacy, that man. You'd think — '
'I think he's again cast you in the role of prime suspect.'
'Suspected of what?'
'Van Effen's missing.'
'Is he now?'
'You don't seem much concerned.'
'What's Van Effen to me or me to Van Effen? No more alarms during the night?'
'At three o'clock the bridge lights went off again.'
'Ah!'
'Nothing surprises you much, does it?'
'Why should the lights going out surprise me? Could have been a dozen reasons for it'
'I think the reason is sitting right by me.'
'I was asleep.'
'You weren't asleep when you were out on the bridge at midnight. I'll bet your new little — ah — camera wasn't all that inactive either.' She leaned towards him, her eyes moving from one of his to the other. 'You didn't by any chance just happen to kill Van Effen last night?'
'What do you think I am? A murderer for hire?'
'I don't know what to think. You will not have forgotten that I heard the contents of the message you sent when I was taken to the hospital. I remember the exact words. 'Only Branson and Van Effen are natural leaders. Those two I could kill.''
'I did say that. I didn't kill Van Effen last night. My life on it. Van Effen, in my opinion, is alive and well, if not exactly flourishing.'
'That's not what Branson thinks.'
'How should you know that?'
'After Bartlett left — was relieved — '
'Bartlett didn't mention to Branson that he might just possibly have dozed off for a moment?'
'What do you think?'
'Okay, so he was alert and watchful as all hell. And then?'
'And then this — this gorilla came on.' Revson looked at the new guard. Hirsute, incredibly beetle-browed, with a negligible clearance between brows and hairline: April's description didn't flatter gorillas any.
'Yonnie,' Revson said. 'Branson's mobile think-tank.'
'Chrysler came by, more than once. I heard him saying to that man that he and Branson knew that Van Effen was at the bottom of the Golden Gate.'
'I'm looking forward to seeing his face when he finds out, just possibly for the first time in his life, how wrong he can be.'
'You don't want to tell me?'
'No. Neither do you.'
'You seem very sure of yourself.'
