Free The Golden Gate by Alistair MacLean Page B

seated himself in front of the console and lifted the microphone. 'Branson.'

'Giscard. We've picked up a blip. Coming from the south -well, a bit east of south. Light plane, looks like. Maybe eight miles out.'

'Thank you.' Branson made another switch. South and a little east. That could only be San Francisco International Airport. 'Chief of Police Hendrix. At once.'

Hendrix was on the phone in seconds. 'What now?'

'I told you to keep a clear air-space. Our radar's picked up a blip, airport direction -'

Hendrix interrupted. His voice was sour. 'You wanted to see Messrs Milton and Quarry, didn't you?' Milton was the Secretary for State, Quarry the Secretary of the Treasury. "They came in from Los Angeles fifteen minutes 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 (he 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 Eke 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 tunes.

The fog had reached the bridge^ow,