Year of the Golden Ape (33 page)

^{On the bridge of the
Challenger
Mackay was having a violent argument with LeCat as the ship moved towards Alcatraz Island which was already clear on the radarscope.}

^{'LeCat, I will not take this ship near San Francisco. We're bound for Oleum - that's near Richmond on the east side of the Bay...'}

^{'Then we will shoot Bennett in front of you on this bridge.' Second Officer Brian Walsh gulped as LeCat gave an order in French for one of the guards to fetch Bennett. Then LeCat told the guard to wait as the captain protested. 'You cannot murder a man just like that. It's inhuman ...'}

^{'You will be murdering Bennett - you have it in your power to save him. Come into the chart-room with me . . .' LeCat led the way and inside the chart-room he pointed to a chart on the table. 'You will take the ship to this position - where the cross is . . .' He was indicating the mark Winter had made on the chart before he left the ship.}

^{'I must know what is going to happen before I agree,' Mackay said grimly.}

^{'I want to be close in so I can use the ship-to-shore to conduct negotiations with the authorities. When they have agreed to my demands we shall go ashore to this pier. There we shall board a bus they will have supplied and drive to the airport where a plane will be waiting to fly us to Damascus.' I have, LeCat thought, as he watched Mackay's face, made it sound convincing. 'Now you know what will happen,' LeCat continued, 'get on with it. I have no desire to shoot anyone - it would complicate matters.'}

^{'To this point?' Mackay put his finger on the cross LeCat had
indicated on the chart. 'That is barely half a mile from the San Francisco waterfront.'}

^{'That is correct. Now, will you do what I say or do I have Bennett brought to the bridge ? Time is not on my side so I have no patience left...'}

^{Without a word Mackay went back on to the bridge and gave instructions to the helmsman personally. Then he went to the front of the bridge and stood there with his hands behind his back, looking down the full length of the main deck where the fog cleared until he could see the distant fo'c'sle. He went on staring in the same direction, never giving a thought to the fact that under the fo'c'sle lay the carpenter's store.}

¹⁸

^{At 3am the
Challenger -
which had increased speed inside the Bay - was anchored half a mile from Pier 31 on the San Francisco waterfront. Ship-to-shore radio-telephone equipment had been set up in MacGowan's office in response to a signal from LeCat that he wished to establish direct contact with the Governor of California. Foreseeing long hours ahead of the action committee, MacGowan had brought in beds which now occupied adjoining rooms. It appeared that the three-man assault team had gone to ground - as Winter had warned might happen.}

^{Watchers along the waterfront and high up on the Bay bridge linking San Francisco with Oakland across the Bay had scanned the stationary vessel through powerful night-glasses. There were no lights aboard the vessel, no sign of movement anywhere. 'It must be the thinning of the fog which stopped them,' MacGowan told General Matthew Lepke of the Presidio. They dare not try and storm the bridge until the fog provides cover - there's six hundred feet of exposed deck between the fo'c'sle and the bridge at the stern. All the hostages would be murdered before they got
there - and they would probably be shot down before they ever reached the bridge structure...'}

^{Gen. Lepke, fifty-five years old and rumoured to be moving into the Pentagon over the heads of fifteen other generals, was a spare, wiry man with a bird-like face and restless eyes. 'Cassidy will know what he's doing,' he observed. 'Trouble is he may have to wait till tonight - another sixteen hours - before there's chance of more fog. You'll just have to spin out the negotiations with this terrorist chief, LeCat...'}

^{'Except that we're pretty certain that at some stage he's going to shoot the hostages anyway,' MacGowan commented.}

^{The first message came through on the ship-to-shore minutes later. The Frenchman sounded confident and decisive as his voice came through the speaker. He repeated his warning.}

^{'All the twenty-nine hostages - including the American girl -will be shot instantly if the
Challenger
is approached by any aircraft, surface vessel or underwater craft...'}

^{'What about the casualties?' MacGowan demanded. 'Your earlier signal said you had nine injured people aboard - including Miss Cordell...'}

^{'There have been no casualties yet,' the Frenchman shouted. 'That was a mistake. Now, no more interruptions. I will only say it once...'}

^{LeCat went on to say that his ultimate demand would be made in due course; in the meantime a Boeing 747 must be made ready to stand by at San Francisco International Airport with full fuel tanks; a Greyhound bus must be requisitioned, its windows painted over black, and then driven to Pier 31; finally, the sum of two hundred million dollars must be assembled at the Bank of America within five hours. 'You will be informed of where to take the money later,' LeCat ended.}

^{MacGowan tried to protest, then realised LeCat had switched off the ship-to-shore. He had tried to intervene while LeCat was speaking, only to be talked down by the Frenchman. 'When I want you to speak I will tell you. Now, you will listen! If you interrupt again First Officer Bennett will be shot...'}

^{A traumatic moment had followed. There was the sound of a
single shot being fired. MacGowan glanced at Lepke sitting alongside him. The general's mouth had tightened. LeCat came back on the ship-to-shore. That bullet went out of the window. The next one goes into Bennett...'}

^{'He's a bastard,' MacGowan said when he had switched off the speaker. 'Is it possible that Winter got it wrong? Is he really going to negotiate? He made it sound damned convincing - the demand for a Jumbo, for the bus...'}

^{'And what, I wonder,' Lepke said grimly, 'is the ultimate demand he's holding back on ?'}

^{MacGowan began using the phone at once, making arrangements about the bus, the Boeing 747, and enquiries about the money. It was important to appear to be cooperating at this stage - to keep LeCat in a state of suspension as long as he could, to buy time until the assault team aboard the ship could make a move. And still he was unsure about the genuineness of LeCat's demands, about whether Winter had been wrong.}

^{Winter raised the hatch cover slowly, then held it open a few inches and peered along the main deck. The ship had stopped, his watch showed the time as 3am, a transparent trail of fog drifted across the fo'c'sle, but the main deck was clear. His night vision was good - he had switched off the light in the carpenter's store a few minutes earlier to get his eyes used to the dark. And the foremast was highly visible.}

^{Something moved on the circular platform at the top of the foremast; a man was walking round it slowly, his back turned to Winter for a moment. The Englishman thought he recognised the man's movements, that it was probably Andre Dupont. He pressed the pair of miniature field-glasses he had brought with him to his eyes, adjusting the focus with one hand. The lookout was holding a box-like object in his right hand, probably a walkie-talkie. Cassidy had been right; there was communication between Dupont and the distant bridge.}

^{He closed the hatch while the lookout was staring in the opposite direction, felt his way down the ladder in the dark, switched on the light. Sitting on the floor with their backs against a bulkhead, Sullivan and Cassidy looked up at him anxiously, a question in their eyes. 'No good,' Winter said. The deck is still practically free from fog - and the lookout is still on the foremast. He's carrying a walkie-talkie, I'm sure. He'd be reporting our presence before we even got off the fo'c'sle. Every hostage would be dead before we were half-way to the bridge...'}

^{'Where are we?' Sullivan asked. 'Where have they stopped?'}

^{'I can't be sure - there's a heavy belt of fog obscuring the shore, which means the people on the mainland won't be able to see the tanker. My guess is LeCat has stopped where I told him to - half a mile off Pier 31.'}

^{'Jesus!' Cassidy stretched a leg which was stiffening up. 'Looks as though we could be here for hours.' He looked round their cramped quarters. 'You say the escape apparatus was in here?'}

^{'Was ...' The inflatable Zodiac was no longer in the store. The outboard motor had gone. The cases containing the wet-suits were no longer there. Everything pointed to LeCat opening up the planned escape route. It also destroyed Winter's first plan - to wait inside the carpenter's store until one or two of the terrorists arrived to collect the equipment. They could have eliminated the men quietly below deck, taken their outer clothes and then marched openly along the main deck in the dark. Now they would have to wait. It was an unnerving prospect and already tension was building up inside the carpenter's store.}

^{On the bridge of the
Challenger
LeCat had let Mackay hear him talking to MacGowan over the ship-to-shore. Now he was in control, it seemed sensible to the Frenchman to keep the British crew quiet, especially its captain. As he ended his dictatorial monologue with the Governor and switched off, he thought he saw relief in Mackay's face at the reference to providing a bus, a plane. He checked his watch, noting when he must call up MacGowan again: the timing was important.}

^{Earlier, as the tanker was passing Alcatraz Island, Dupont had reported to LeCat that the lookout on the forepeak was missing. LeCat had hurried to the fo'c'sle as the fog was thinning out. He had found the Skorpion pistol lying near the rail, and near that
he had found an empty wine bottle. Cursing the lookout for drinking on duty, he had concluded the feeble-minded idiot must have toppled overboard. He had forgotten him as he went to his cabin to collect the miniature transmitter with an extendable aerial. From now on this instrument would accompany him everywhere he went.}

^{Attached to the nuclear device now planted deep inside the empty oil tank was a tinier mechanism - also a miniature receiver of the type used by aircraft model-makers. The receiver, which would set the timer mechanism going, could only be activated when a radio signal reached it. The radio signal would come from the miniature transmitter LeCat was now carrying with him. One turn of a switch and nothing on God's earth could stop the nuclear device detonating at the pre-set timing.}

^{There was tension also in Paris, over five thousand miles away, where it was eleven in the morning, where an emergency meeting of the Cabinet had been called at the Elysee Palace. Earlier, Karpis of the FBI, after obtaining agreement from Washington, had phoned through direct to Paris, asking for information on a certain Jean Jules LeCat. The request - because of the world news bulletins - travelled like an electric shock through the upper echelons of the French government.}

^{At first ministers considered telling Karpis that there must be some mistake, that LeCat was still in the Santé prison, that the San Francisco terrorist was clearly an impostor. French logic, however, prevailed - this was far too big an issue to risk any kind of deception. They argued about it for some time - the record shows that the meeting went on for over two hours - and then a realistic decision was taken.}

^{The Sûreté Nationale transmitted to Inspector Karpis a detailed technical report on LeCat's known criminal activities-the political side was omitted. Reading this report in San Francisco, Karpis found it illuminating and not a little frightening. The man they faced was no common thug; he was a man of enormous experience in the more violent aspects of human activity, obviously had some skill as an organiser, and had at one time lived in the United States. The FBI man skipped some of the technical data, so he saw no particular significance at that moment in the reference at the end. 'Also expert in the remote control of explosives, that is, detonation by radio signals...'}

^{The next communication from LeCat over the ship-to-shore came at 4am. Again, MacGowan was warned not to interrupt. 'You will warn the American ambassador to the United Nations that he should stand by to receive a message from you later. There will be a time limit for you to decide whether or not you will agree to my demand. If you do not agree, all the hostages will be shot at the expiry of the deadline ...'}

^{Theentire action committee was assembled inside the Governor's office as LeCat began talking. They watched MacGowan as he sat grim-faced in front of the speaker, knowing that he just had to sit there and take it while the French terrorist lectured him, told him what he had to do, that he must not interrupt. MacGowan interrupted.}

^{'If you shoot them now you won't have any cannon fodder left for the deadline,' he said brutally. 'I've listened to you - now you damn well listen to me. I'm providing a bus ...'}

^{Peretti winced, certain that this was not the way to handle it, that there was going to be a disaster, that MacGowan had the wrong approach altogether. LeCat's voice burst in, filled with venom.}