^ 'They will make the demand, the Americans will accept…' He choked on his own words as Winter grasped him by the throat, dragged him towards the open window. Riad, quick-witted, immediately understood. 'No! No! Please! I beg you…' Winter had both hands round his throat now, ignoring the frantic beat of Riad's fists, dragging him closer and closer to the wide-open window. The Arab obviously had a horror of heights. Winter stood Riad with his back to the window and bent him at the waist over and outwards, his own legs pressed hard against Riad's which were supported by the lower wail. Riad's upper half went further and further outwards over the ten-storey drop until his head was upside down and above the thump of blood pounding in his ears he heard the blare of traffic horns over a hundred feet below. He saw the sky, the drunken slant of buildings and felt Winter's hand on his throat pushing him down and down. Bile came into his mouth, the pain in his chest was appalling, the pounding in his ear-drums was like a drum-beat, then he felt Winter's other hand grasping his belt, lifting his feet off the bedroom floor and he knew he was going down into the chasm – hurtling through space – until his skull met the sidewalk and was crushed and he was dead for ever and ever.
^ Winter hauled him back inside, shook him like a child's doll while the doll drooled with terror, hardly sane at this moment as he saw Winter's bony face through a shimmering mist of near-faintness. 'What is going to happen aboard the ship?' the Englishman hissed through his teeth. He shook him with cold intensity. 'What is going to happen aboard the ^ Challenger ^ that I don't know about?'
^ Riad was now choking for breath like a drowning man as his heart pounded so fast and heavily it felt it would burst out of his rib cage. He tried to speak, tried to tell Winter to stop shaking and he would speak… He gasped, started taking in such violent, wheezing gasps of air that Winter was alarmed that he would faint so he held him still. The Arab looked up at him with a pathetic look of a child. They were both human beings, caught up in a plot of unimaginable violence planned by a man a third of the way across the world who thought nothing mattered but the freeing of sacred Jerusalem from the grip of the intruder.
^ Riad collapsed, went limp in Winter's grip, sagging while the Englishman still held him up, more of a weight than Winter would have imagined, but a dead man is always heavy.
^ Ahmed Riad had not been well when he alighted from the plane at Los Angeles after his eleven-hour flight from London. The tension in the United States did nothing to improve his condition. The ordeal of hanging out of the window brought on the final, massive coronary which killed him – before he had a chance to say a word about the nuclear device which LeCat had smuggled aboard the tanker now waiting to enter the Bay.
^ Believing that Riad had only fainted, in a great hurry to make a phone call, Winter left the unfortunate Arab lying on the carpet ^ while he lifted the receiver. The operator came on the line at once and Winter was mopping his forehead with a handkerchief when he spoke.
17
^ It was 9.30am when Ahmed Riad died. Winter had been very brief on the phone. 'I'm not waiting here while you trace this call,' he told MacGowan's assistant. 'You have exactly forty-five seconds to get the Governor on the line and then I'm breaking the connection. I can tell him the complete structure of the terrorist team aboard that tanker outside the Bay…' MacGowan's growling voice had come on the line within thirty seconds – Winter had timed it by his watch.
^ His call to MacGowan had been brief: Winter knew that if he was to carry any weight at all he had to get to the Governor as a free man, going to see him voluntarily. If they were able to arrest him first, they would never believe him.
^ Realising now that Riad was dead, Winter hung a 'Do Not Disturb' notice on the outside door handle before he left his bedroom. Riad's diplomatic passport – trade representative of some obscure Persian Gulf sheikhdom – was in his pocket as he hurried along Geary and found a cab just emptying itself of its passengers in Union Square. Arriving at the Transamerica building, the strange, pyramid-shaped edifice overlooking the Bay – if your floor was high enough – he went straight up to the Governor's floor. It was high enough for a view of the Bay, and plain-clothes detectives were waiting for him.
^ He had gambled on MacGowan's character, on the little he had heard about him, gambled on the independent-minded American wanting to see him. MacGowan came into the room while they were still searching him for weapons. They found nothing on him; ^ ^ Winter had dropped the Skorpion pistol and holster from the Golden Gate bridge while Walgren had waited with the car. You don't, if you are staying at a good hotel in a city, arrive with guns. MacGowan, who had been watching Winter while they searched him, ushered the Englishman into his private office and shooed the police away. 'Hell, you searched him. I can take care of myself…'
^ The interview between MacGowan and Winter behind closed doors went on for one hour – a long time for both men who were quick-witted and incisive, who went to the guts of a problem immediately. Part of that time was taken up by MacGowan, once a trial lawyer, grilling the Englishman. At the end of the hour MacGowan was convinced Winter was telling the truth. Others -when he held a full meeting of his action committee – were less easy to convince. Peretti, backed by Col Cassidy, was particularly sceptical. 'We have to be sure there are no explosives aboard that vessel,' he insisted. 'Winter should be subjected to a lie-detector test…'
^ 'Bloody waste of time,' MacGowan snapped. 'A scientist's toy for the enjoyment of idiots. Twenty years of criminal practice taught me to assess a man face to face. Anything that whirrs and flashes, Peretti, and you think it's God's answer to the human problem…'
^ They subjected Winter to the lie-detector and they were all there, firing questions at him. Karpis of the FBI, Police Commissioner Bolan, Garfield of Coast Guard, Col Cassidy… It was while he sat in the chair, with the electrodes on his arms, answering questions, that his almost hypnotic personality began to have an effect on the Americans. Sullivan, who had talked with him earlier at MacGowan's request, who had then agreed that Winter was telling the truth, watched the inquisition with growing fascination.
^ 'You need something to check your box of tricks,' Winter observed.
^ 'Did you intend to give yourself up when you arrived in San Francisco?'
^ After fifteen minutes Cassidy asked the question which was worrying them all. 'Winter, you led the hi-jack of this ship and now LeCat is in control. Are there any explosives aboard that vessel?'
^ Which, although no one knew it, exposed the limitations of a lie-detector. It may be able to tell when a man is telling the truth or lies – but it cannot tell when a man gives a reply which is a lie although he believes it to be the truth. It was not apparent at that moment, but the holding of this test probably made it inevitable -in view of what happened later – that the ^ Challenger ^ would be permitted to enter the Bay, bringing with it twenty-nine doomed hostages, thirteen ex-OAS terrorists, and one nuclear device.
^ By three in the afternoon they had still found no even half-safe way of storming the oil tanker. They considered every possible approach but each time they were defeated by the conditions LeCat had imposed if the hostages were not to be shot – that no aircraft, surface or underwater vessel must come near the oil tanker. And, as MacGowan pointed out, they were running out of time. So far he had managed to keep LeCat at arm's length with a series of delaying messages. This can't go on much longer,' the Governor warned. 'From what Winter has told me LeCat is going to lose patience – he is going to start shooting hostages to prove he means business…'