Goodbye California - Alistair [128]
Ryder said: ‘The scheme we have to propose is a highly dangerous one. It verges on the desperate, but there are degrees of desperation and it’s by no means as desperate as the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Success or failure depends entirely on the degree of co-operation we receive from every person in this nation whose duty is in any way concerned with the enforcement of the law, those not concerned directly with the law, even those, if need be, outside the law.’ He looked in turn at Barrow and Mitchell. ‘It’s of no consequence, gentlemen, but your jobs are on the line.’
Barrow said: ‘Let’s have it.’
‘My son will explain it to you. It is entirely his brainchild.’ Ryder smiled faintly. ‘To save you gentlemen any cerebral stress, he even has all the details worked out.’
Jeff explained. It took him no more than three minutes. When he had finished the expressions round the table ranged from the stunned, through incredulity, then intense consideration and finally, in Barrow’s case, the tentative dawning of hope where all hope had been abandoned.
Barrow whispered: ‘My God! I believe it could be done.’
‘It has to be done,’ Ryder said. ‘It means the instant and total co-operation of every police officer, every FBI officer, every CIA officer in the country. It means the scouring of every prison in the country and even if the man we require is a multiple murderer awaiting execution in Death Row he gets a free pardon. How long would it take?’
Barrow looked at Mitchell. ‘The hell with the hatchets. Bury them. Agreed?’ There was a fierce urgency in his voice. Mitchell didn’t answer: but he did nod. Barrow went on: ‘Organization is the name of the game. This is what we were born for.’
‘How long?’ Ryder repeated.
‘A day?’
‘Six hours Meantime, we can get the preliminaries under way.’
‘Six hours?’ Barrow smiled faintly. ‘It used to be the wartime motto of the Seabees that the impossible takes a little longer. Here, it would appear, it has to take a little shorter. You know, of course, that Muldoon has just had his third heart attack and is in Bethsheba hospital?’
‘I don’t care if you have to raise him from the dead. Without Muldoon we are nothing.’
At eight o’clock that evening it was announced over every TV and radio station in the country that at ten o’clock Western standard time – the times for the other zones were given – the President would be addressing the nation on a matter of the utmost national gravity which concerned an emergency unprecedented in the history of the Republic. As instructed, the announcement gave no further details. The brief and cryptic message was guaranteed to ensure the obsessive interest and compulsory viewing of every citizen in the Republic who was neither blind nor deaf nor both.
In the Adlerheim Morro and Dubois looked at each other and smiled. Morro reached out a hand for his bottle of Glenlivet.
In Los Angeles Ryder showed no reaction whatsoever, which was hardly surprising in view of the fact that he had helped draft the message himself. He asked Major Dunne for permission to borrow his helicopter and dispatched Jeff to pick up some specified articles from his, Ryder’s, home. Then he gave Sassoon a short list of other specified articles he required. Sassoon looked at him and said nothing. He just lifted a phone.
Exactly on ten the President appeared on TV screens throughout the country. Not even the first landing on the moon had attracted so vast a viewing – and listening – audience.
He had four men with him in the studio, and those he introduced as his Chief of Staff and the Secretaries of State, Defense and Treasury, which seemed largely superfluous as all of them were nationally- and indeed internationally-known figures. Muldoon, the Secretary of the Treasury, was the one who caught the attention of everyone. Colour TV showed him for what he was, a very sick man indeed. His face was ashen and, surprisingly, almost haggard – surprisingly because, although not particularly tall, he