^ He studied the bridge where within a few hours the ^ Challenger ^ would pass under the huge span, leaning over the rail to stare down into the fog. The highway span seemed to be floating on the fog, as did the seven-hundred foot high towers which, in the moonlight, looked like temples in a Chinese painting.
^ Carrying out Winter's instructions, Walgren dropped him at the Trans-Bay bus terminal in the city. Taking the bag which Walgren had brought for him off the back seat, Winter said goodnight, and walked inside the terminal. He spent only ten minutes there, then he ran out and grabbed a yellow cab which had just delivered passengers, and told the driver to take him to the Clift Hotel on Geary Street.
^ Precautions, precautions… Winter never stopped taking them. Hotel doormen have retentive memories and it would look just a shade more normal if he arrived in a cab. Giving the cab driver the usual fifteen per cent tip, he walked past the coloured doorman and followed the bell-boy across the lobby to reception. Keeping to his normal routine, he was booking in at one of the most exclusive hotels in San Francisco; the police always assume such visitors must be respectable.
^ 'You have a room reserved for me for one week. Mr Stanley Grant – from Australia…'
^ He would be staying for only three days, when he would pay the bill for one week, saying he had been called back urgently to Los Angeles. But if the hotel register were checked by the police there is a certain unhurriedness, a respectability about a one-week reservation. He followed the bell-boy into the elevator and went up to his room on the tenth floor. Alone in his room he felt a certain surprise. He was in California.
^… ^ Any non-cooperation will be treated as a hostile act. The Weathermen.
^ Mayor Aldo Peretti was not smiling as he looked round the table in his office at the men gathered there. Again, Sullivan was on his right and beyond him were the same men who had attended his previous meeting. No one was smiling. For over an hour they had been arguing about the threatening signal which had come in from the ^ Challenger. ^ It was 6.30pm.
^ 'I don't believe it,' Sullivan said. 'That reference to The Weathermen, I mean. This isn't a gang from the American underground. For some reason they just wish to hide their real identity from us. It's too much of a coincidence,' he went on. 'I traced Winter to Hamburg. Someone high up in France told me he was involved with LeCat, who had recruited a team of ex-OAS terrorists. I then traced Winter to Alaska just before the ^ Challenger ^ sailed again. I think that French terrorist team is aboard – and they were financed by Arab money according to my French contact…'
^ 'It sounds like a simple ransom demand,' Peretti pointed out. 'And in any case, what is at stake are the lives of twenty-eight British seamen – and one American girl. I'm not prepared to risk the lives of those innocent people.'
^ 'We're not going to let that terrorist ship into the Bay, I hope,' Col Cassidy protested.
^ 'We could negotiate with them in the Bay,' Peretti said firmly, 'Once they pass under Golden Gate bridge we have them at a disadvantage. They can't get out of the Bay again if we don't want them to – they're trapped…'
^ 'And I don't like risking twenty-nine people – including one American girl – getting shot,' Peretti replied forcefully. Aldo Peretti was a very humane man; something of his humanity had undoubtedly impressed enough voters at the previous election to make him mayor of San Francisco. He was, a lot of people agreed, a pleasant change from the tough and ruthless Governor of California, Alex MacGowan. The recent Grove Park scandal, involving corruption at a high level, had hammered the final nail into Alex MacGowan's political coffin.
^ The argument swayed backwards and forward for another hour; whether or not to let the terrorist ship inside the Bay. If he put it to the vote, Peretti calculated, they would split evenly down the middle, the humanitarians against the rest, as he privately put it to himself. He was on the verge of taking a decision when the phone rang. He listened, asked a few questions, then replaced the receiver, his face grave.
^ 'I don't understand what's happening, gentlemen, but it just became a political matter. A fresh signal has come in from the ^ Challenger ^ – and for some reason I also don't understand, the people aboard her seem to want maximum publicity. They radioed the signal to the United Press wire service. The news will race round the world within hours. Now they are demanding two hundred million dollars – yes, Col Cassidy, I did say two hundred million – to be paid into the account of a bank in Beirut. The signal was signed the Free Palestine Movement. Sullivan was right – we are dealing with the Arabs, maybe by remote control with the Golden Apes themselves…'
^ At ten o'clock at night inside the Clift Hotel Winter sat in front of the colour TV set holding a glass of Scotch. He was reading the newspaper, not listening to the FBI thriller, not looking at it. His role now was to remain inside the city as a one-man Trojan horse, checking on the authorities' reactions to the terrorists' demands, then warning LeCat if he considered a change of tactics was called for.
^ His means of communicating with the tanker had been organised by Walgren; a mobile transmitter had been set up inside a truck which at the moment was hidden inside a nearby garage. The moment Winter wished to get in touch with LeCat, he only had to phone Walgren at the number the American had given him. The truck would then be driven to a remote part of Marin County across Golden Gate bridge, Winter would transmit his instructions, and the truck would be driven away before it could be located by any radio-detection equipment the Americans might be operating.
^ The news flash came through at 10.5pm. 'Terrorists have seized a British oil tanker off San Francisco… demand two hundred million dollars for the lives of the twenty-nine hostages aboard, one of them an American girl…'
^ Winter drank some more Scotch and waited for the comment. LeCat was working exactly to the plan he had devised – to keep the Americans off balance with a series of alarming and confusing messages. The real demand would come later – after the next subterfuge, after the Americans had let the tanker enter the Bay…
^ It was ten o'clock at night in San Francisco when Winter heard the news flash. In Baalbek, seven thousand miles away, a fresh day was dawning where it was seven in the morning. Sheikh Gamal Tafak lit another American cigarette and switched off the radio, then walked over to the lattice-work window which looked out over the anti-Lebanon mountains. In January there was snow along the crests.
^ It was the news item which had rattled him: the Americans were still discussing whether to let the tanker inside the Bay. It was time LeCat played his next card. He had to get the timing right, to hit them before they took a final decision. With his eyes ^ half-closed, Tafak recalled the personal briefing Ahmed Riad -who would shortly land in San Francisco – had given LeCat.
^ They will not decide to let you in at once. There is bound to be a delay while they think about it. But they are a sentimental people, the Americans. So, choose your moment, then play the big card…'
^ By now Tafak had completely forgotten that it was Winter who had fashioned the big card, the incident which would persuade the Americans to let the ship pass through the Golden Gate narrows. Taking his cigarette out of his mouth, Tafak looked at his hand. He was sweating. He would go out and get a breath of fresh morning air. It was not the atmosphere which was making him sweat. To bring about the final catastrophe it was vital that the Americans let the tanker inside the Bay.
^ As Sheikh Gamal Tafak stood in the front doorway, breathing in the morning air, his head and shoulders filled the telescopic sight, the vertical crosshair split him down the middle, the horizontal crosshair guillotined his neck. The target was in view, thirty metres from where the Israeli marksman lay sprawled out on a table inside a first floor room.