^ 'I'm a confident chap.' Winter grinned. 'Always have been.' He swung round as he heard a boot scrape behind him. LeCat was standing near the nose of the machine, his pistol dangling from his hand. He had come quietly down from the fo'c'sle, creeping round the far side of the machine, and now he stood watching.
^ ^ ^ said? Winter climbed up inside the machine, slammed the door shut, and the slam sounded like a death sentence to Mackay.
^ LeCat sent Mackay back to the distant bridge with an armed guard. The foremast lights were switched off as soon as Winter's machine had taken off. So it was almost dark when LeCat descended alone into the carpenter's store, beaming his torch over the stacked suitcases wedged behind the table. He was sweating several minutes later when he went back up the ladder, carrying the two hundred pound case by its reinforced handle, then he transported it down on to the main deck.
^ Opening up the hatch cover of one of the empty tanks which had remained unfilled since the ship left Nikisiki, he went carefully down the almost vertical ladder leading to the depths of the tank. He rested for a moment on a steel platform, then went down the next ladder. Once, he caught the case a glancing blow on the ladder. Its hollow echo reverberated inside the immense metal tomb. LeCat was sweating horribly as he continued his descent. He had almost dropped his burden, dropped it from a height of twenty feet to the floor of the tank below.
^ His expert knowledge of mechanisms told him that nothing would have happened, the hellish thing could not possibly have detonated – the timer device wasn't activated, the miniature receiver was useless until the radio signals reached it, but LeCat was still sweating horribly. Reaching the bottom, he lifted the case, activated the magnetic clamps, and the case was attached to the hull of the ship.
^ He spent more time down in the bowels of the tank, fixing up the boobytrap – the anti-lift devices – he had earlier left at the bottom of the tank. And before he climbed the ladder he once again wiped sweat off his hands. When he returned to the main deck he closed the hatch and looked towards the bridge. No one could possibly have seen him in the darkness. Now there was only one other man on board who knew his secret; Andre Dupont, the man who had helped him bring the atomic physicist, Antoine, to Canada; the man who had watched over Antoine while he worked in the house on Dusquesne Street in Vancouver. And the nuclear device was in position, ready to be activated when the time came.
^ Part three The San Francisco experience
15
^ Everyone along the Californian coast is familiar with the sight of a US Coast Guard helicopter – these machines make daily patrols up and down the foreshore, often flying low over the beaches. So who would think the appearance of Winter's Sikorsky strange?
^ It was deep dusk when Winter came in sight of the coast close to Carmel-by-the-Sea. From the chart spread out over his knees he identified Point Lobos, then he turned due north. There were lights down in Carmel, in Pacific Grove on the Monterey peninsula, and in Monterey itself. All the lights disappeared suddenly. Another power failure. Sheikh Gamal Tafak's oil weapon was biting deep.
^ The helicopter flew on over a dark and quiet ocean, flew on until vague clouds blotted out the sea. Fog. The moon rose and shone down on greyness, a shifting greyness of thick fog banks which made Winter feel he might be thirty thousand feet up in a Jumbo jet, speeding at five hundred miles an hour from Heathrow to Anchorage. That was only six days ago; to Winter it seemed a whole lifetime. Ahead he saw the twitch of a flashing light exploding through the fog.
^ One million dollars… Time to retire, to get out like a racing driver before the world caught up with you, detonated in your face with a blinding flash and billowing clouds of black smoke. He checked his chart. The twitching flash would be Mile Rocks lighthouse at the entrance to Golden Gate.
^ He flew past the lighthouse on his right as the moon shone on slow-rolling fog which revolved like steam in a cauldron, on coils of fog which filled the entrance channel. Soon the ^ Challenger ^ would have to move through that cauldron. For a few seconds the distant fog lifted; a chain of lights crawled over the fog, barely moving it seemed, then the blanket closed down and his glimpse of traffic crossing Golden Gate bridge vanished.
^ He turned inland, away from the ocean, over Stinson Beach, still flying at a thousand feet with the fog three hundred feet below. Over Marin County – north across the bridge from San Francisco – the fog thinned, and now he was moving at minimum speed, staring down into the night, searching. He circled the area north of Novato once and then he spotted lights-alternated and white flashes. He lost altitude and the lights came up to him amid a blur of dark trees and scrubby hill slopes. Walgren, the American who had shadowed Swan, the wireless operator in Anchorage, had not let him down.
^ Descending vertically towards the slope, he saw the lights were inside a tree-enclosed oval clearing, saw a small shadow which could be a parked car. The machine landed on hard earth inside a tangle of undergrowth, landed with a bump and then he cut the engine and the rotors slowed, stopped. It was 6.30pm. Walgren was waiting when he opened the door and dropped down on to the hill slope. 'Welcome to California,' Walgren said. Winter had arrived inside the United States.
^ They left the helicopter where he had landed it, concealed inside the copse of trees. And Winter had prepared for the possibility that it might be discovered within a few hours. Inside one of the seat pockets was a paid bill from a cheap hotel in Tijuana and a pack of Mexican cigarettes, some of the items Winter had instructed Walgren to obtain while he was in San Francisco the previous November. There was a thriving smuggling trade between Mexico and California, so when the FBI examined it they would conclude that this machine had come in from Mexico, probably with a haul of drugs.
^ Walgren, who had earlier obtained both hotel bill and the cigarettes, had also spilled a minute quantity of heroin on the floor of the pilot's cabin. The Drug Squad's Hoover would pick up these traces; their laboratory would analyse them. And these were extreme precautions Winter had suggested: the helicopter might well not be discovered for days.
^ At Winter's insistence, Walgren drove him first to Richardson Bay, where, under the treed lea of a headland, a small seaplane rode on the water. This was the escape vehicle. Later the terrorists would leave the ship under the cover of darkness or fog, speeding across the Bay inside the inflatable Zodiac, equipped with the outboard motor. The choice of this craft by Winter was deliberate. Made of rubber, it would not register on a radar screen, and he had foreseen the possibility that while the tanker was stationary in the Bay the harbour police might establish radar lookout posts onshore.
^ When the time came the terrorists inside the Zodiac would make for the seaplane and this machine would fly them either to the ^ Pecheur, ^ waiting out at sea, or across the border to Canada. And even if the seaplane was noticed in this remote spot there was little danger it would cause comment. Only a few miles further up Richardson Bay there was a seaplane base near Marin City. The wet-suits taken aboard the ^ Challenger ^ were for an emergency, so the terrorists could drop off the Zodiac close to the shore and swim the rest of the way. Winter hoped it wouldn't come to that – the currents out in the Bay can drown the strongest swimmer.
^ 'Now drive me to San Francisco,' Winter told Walgren as he came ashore from examining the seaplane. His main concern had been the fuel tanks, and these were full. 'No trouble getting gas for this car?' he asked Walgren as they approached Golden Gate bridge. 'Every trouble,' the American replied. 'Cost me two dollars fifty a gallon on the black market. Mafia premium grade…' Winter made him stop at the far end of Golden Gate bridge while he went back alone along the sidewalk.