The Golden Gate

isolated from the lower echelons. What happens if the captain considers it his duty to act upon his own initiative? Anyway, we'll soon find out. Here he comes now.'

The superstructure of the New Jersey had moved into view. All nine of the seated captives struggled to their feet and crowded close to the right-hand windows. One of them crowded very closely indeed on Branson who suddenly became aware of something, obviously metallic, jabbing painfully into his left kidney.

'Initiative, you said, Mr Branson.' It was Sheikh Iman, the one with the beard, and — he was still beaming. 'Your own gun. Tell your men to drop theirs.'

'Good man!' There was triumph in the President's voice and an element of vindictiveness that the voters wouldn't have liked at all.

Branson said patiently: 'Put that gun away. Don't you know when you're dealing with professionals?'

He turned around slowly and Iman proved Branson's implied point that he was not a professional by letting Branson hold his gaze for all of a second. A gun boomed, Iman shrieked in pain, dropped his gun and clutched a shattered shoulder. Sheikh Kharan stooped swiftly to retrieve the gun from the floor and cried out in agony as Branson's heel crushed his hand against the metal: a peculiar crackling splintering sound left no doubt that several of Kharan's fingers had been broken. Branson picked up his gun.

Van Effen was apologetic but not unduly so. Had to, I'm afraid, Mr Branson. If I'd warned him — well, I didn't want any gunfight in the OK corral with all those nasty ricochets from the bullet-proof glass. He might have done himself an injury.'

'Quite right' Branson looked through the window again. The New Jersey was now almost a half mile away and its captain was obviously not in a belligerent mood. Branson turned away and spoke to Bradford.

'Go to our coach and fetch the first-aid box. Bring Peters.'

'Peters, Mr Branson?'

'Used to be field corpsman. Take your seats, gentlemen.' Unhappily, they took their seats: the President, in particular, looked especially deflated. Branson wondered briefly just how hollow a man he might be then dismissed the line of thought as unprofitable. 'I dont think I have to warn you not to try anything so silly again.' He went to the communications console and picked up the phone. 'Hendrix?'

'Here. Satisfied now?'

'Yes. Warn the harbour-master or whoever the responsible official is that there is to be no more traffic under the bridge. Either way.'

'No more traffic? You'll bring the entire port to a standstill. And the fishing fleet — '

'The fishing fleet can go fish in the bay. Send an ambulance and a doctor and do it quickly. A couple of men here have gotten themselves hurt, one badly.'

'Who? How?'

'The oil ministers — Iman and Kharan. Self-inflicted injuries, you might say.' As he spoke Branson watched Peters hurry into me coach, approach Iman and start scissoring away the sleeve of his coat 'There will be a TV van coming to the bridge soon. Let it through. I also want some chairs brought on to the bridge — forty should do.'

'Chairs?'

'You dont have to buy them,' Branson said patiently. 'Confiscate them from the nearest restaurant. Forty.'

'Chairs?'

'Things you sit on. I'm going to hold a news conference in an hour or so. You don't stand around at news conferences. You sit around.'

Hendrix said carefully: 'You're going to hold a news conference and you're going to televise it live?'

'That's it. Natiton-wide.'

'You're out of your mind.'

'My mental health is my concern. Milton and Quarry there yet?'

'You mean the Secretary and the Secretary of the Treasury?'

'I mean Milton and Quarry.'

'They've just arrived and are with me now.'

Hendrix looked at the two men who were with him then inside the big mobile communications van. Milton, the Secretary of State, was a tall, thin, dyspeptic character with no hair, rimless steel-legged glasses and an enviable reputation in Foreign Offices around the world: Quarry, white-haired, plump and cheerful, had a kindly avuncular air about him which many men, even some very highly intelligent ones, had taken to be a reflection of the true personality of the man: his reputation as a banker and economist stood as high as that of Milton in his field.

Milton said: 'It would be easy to say 'he's quite crazy, of course'. Is he?'

Hendrix spread his hands. 'You know what they say. Crazy like a fox.'

'And violent, it would seem?'

'No. Violence he uses only as a last resort and even then only when pushed into a corner. Imasi and Kharan must have made the mistake of pushing him into a corner.'

Quarry said: 'You would seem to know a fair bit about him?'

Hendrix sighed. 'Every senior police officer in the States knows about him. And in Canada, Mexico and God knows how many South American countries.' Hendrix sounded bitter. 'So far he has spared Europe his attentions. It's only a matter of time, I'm sure.'

'What's his speciality?'

'Robbery. He robs trains, planes, armoured cars, banks and jewellers. Robbery, wherever possible, as I say, without violence.'

Quarry was dry. 'I gather he is quite successful?'

'Quite successful. To the best of our knowledge he has been operating for at least a dozen years and the lowest estimate of his takings in that time is twenty million dollars.'

'Twenty million!' For the first time there was a note of respect in Quarry's voice, the banker and economist in him surfacing. 'If he's got all that money, why does he want more?'

'Why do Niarchos and Getty and Hughes want more — after all, they too are comfortably off? Maybe he's just a businessman in the way that they are businessmen and he's hooked on his job. Maybe he finds it a stimulating intellectual exercise. Maybe it's sheer greed. Maybe anything.'

Milton said: 'Has he ever been convicted?'

Hendrix looked pained. 'He's never even been arrested.'

'And that has something to do with the fact that neither of us has ever heard of him?'

Hendrix gazed through the van window at the magnificent sweep of the Golden Gate Bridge. There was a far-off look of yearning in his eyes. He said: 'Let us say, sir, that we do not care to advertise our failures.'

Mitton smiled at him. 'John and I — he nodded at the Secretary of the Treasury — 'frequently suffer from the same bashfulness and for the same reasons. Infallibility is not the lot of mankind. Anything known about this man — apart from what is known about his criminal activities?'

Hendrix said sourly: 'It wouldn't be hard to know more about him than we do about his life of crime. Pretty well documented background, really. A WASP from out east. Comes from what they call a good family. Father a banker and when I say banker I mean he owned — still does, I believe — his own bank.'

'Branson,' the Treasury Secretary said. 'Of course. Know him. Not personally, though.'

'And something else that will interest you, sir — professionally. Branson took a degree in economics and went to work in his father's bank. While he was there he took a PhD — and no coffee-grinder diploma school either — genuine Ivy League. Then for his post-graduate course he took up the subject of crime — something to do with having worked in his old man's bank, maybe.' Hendrix looked gloomy. 'I suppose we could say that he has graduated in that subject now too — summa cum laude.'

Milton said: 'You seem to have almost a degree of admiration for this person, Hendrix?'

'I'd give my pension to see him behind bars. Both as a man and a policeman he outrages whatever passes for my sensibilities. But one can't help respecting sheer professionalism, no matter how misused.'

'My sentiments too, I'm afraid,' Milton said. 'He's not a particularly retiring person, this Branson of yours?'