Goodbye California - Alistair [130]
He went on in a portentous voice: ‘This proposed meeting in no way affects my intention to detonate the hydrogen device in the ocean tomorrow morning. Everybody – and that includes you, Mr President – must be convinced beyond all doubt that I have the indisputable power to carry out my promises.
‘With reference to my promises, I have to tell you that the devices I still intend to detonate on Saturday night will produce a series of enormous earthquakes that will have a cataclysmic effect beyond any natural disaster ever recorded in history. That is all.’
Barrow said. ‘Well, damn your eyes, Ryder, you were right again. About the earthquakes, I mean.’
Ryder said mildly: ‘That hardly seems to matter now.’ At 12.15 a.m. word came through from the AEC that the hydrogen bomb, code-named ‘Aunt Sally’, designed by Professors Burnett and Aachen, had a diameter of 4.73 inches.
That didn’t seem to matter at all.
CHAPTER TWELVE
At eight o’clock the next morning Morro made his next contact with the anxious and – such is mankind’s morbidly avid love of vicarious doom and disaster – vastly intrigued world.
His message he delivered with his now accustomed terseness.
He said: ‘My meeting with the President and his senior advisers will take place at eleven o’clock tonight. However, I insist that the presidential party arrives in Los Angeles – if the airport is functioning, if not, San Francisco – by six o’clock this evening. The meeting place I cannot and will not specify. The travel arrangements will be announced late this afternoon.
‘I trust the low-lying regions of Los Angeles, the coastal regions north to Point Arguello and south to the Mexican border, in addition to the Channel Islands, have been evacuated. If not I will accept no responsibility. As promised, I shall detonate this nuclear device in two hours’ time.’
Sassoon was closeted in his office with Brigadier-General Culver of the Army Air Force. Far below a deathly hush lay over the totally deserted streets. The low-lying regions of the city had indeed been evacuated, thanks in large part to Culver and over two thousand soldiers and national guardsmen under his command, who had been called in to help the hopelessly overworked police restore order. Culver was a ruthlessly efficient man and had not hesitated to call in tanks in number close to battalion strength, which had a marvellously chastening effect on citizens who, prior to their arrival, had seemed hell-bent not on self-preservation but on self-destruction. The deployment of the tanks had been co-ordinated by a fleet of police, coastguard and army helicopters, which had pinpointed the major traffic bottlenecks. The empty streets were littered with abandoned cars, many of which bore the appearance of having been involved in major crashes, a state of affairs for which the tanks had been in no way responsible: the citizens had done it all by themselves.
The evacuation had been completed by midnight, but long before that the fire brigades, ambulances and police cars had moved in. The fires, none of them major, had been extinguished, the injured had been removed to hospital and the police had made a record number of arrests of hoodlums whose greed in taking advantage of this unprecedented opportunity had quite overcome their sense of self-preservation and were still looting away with gay abandon when policemen with drawn guns had taken a rather less than paternal interest in their activities.
Sassoon switched off the TV set and said to Culver: ‘What do you make of that?’
‘One has to admire the man’s colossal arrogance.’
‘Over-confidence.’
‘If you like. Understandably, he wants to conduct his meeting with the President under cover of darkness. Obviously, the “travel arrangements”, as he calls them, are linked with the deadline for the arrival of the plane. He wants to make good and sure