Goodbye California - Alistair [79]
Ryder said: ‘He tried to shoot me. Through the back, of course.’
‘Ryder.’ Lieutenant Mahler had a pair of handcuffs ready. ‘I’m placing you under arrest.’
‘Put those things away and don’t make more a fool of yourself than you can help if you don’t want to be charged with obstructing the course of justice. I am making, I have made, a perfectly legal citizen’s arrest. The charges are larceny, corruption, bribery, the acceptance of bribes, attempted murder and murder in the first degree. Donahure will admit to all of them and I can prove all of them. Also, he’s an accessory to the wounding of my daughter.’
‘Your daughter shot?’ Oddly, this seemed to affect Mahler more than the murder accusation. He had put his handcuffs away. A disciplinary martinet, he was nonetheless a fair man.
Ryder looked at Kramer. ‘He has a statement to make, but as he’s suffering from a minor speech impairment right now I’ll make it for him and he’ll sign it. Give the usual warnings, of course, about legal rights, that his statement can be used in evidence, you know the form.’ It took Ryder only four minutes to make the statement on Donahure’s behalf, and by the time he had finished the damning indictment there wasn’t a man in that room, Mahler included, who wouldn’t have testified that the statement had been voluntary.
Major Dunne took Ryder aside. ‘So fine, so you’ve cooked Donahure’s goose. It won’t have escaped your attention that you’ve also cooked your own goose. You can’t imprison a man without preferring charges and the law of the land says those charges must be made public’
‘There are times when I admire the Russian legal system.’
‘Quite. So Morro will know in a couple of hours. And he’s got Susan and Peggy.’
‘I don’t seem to have many options open. Somebody has to do something. I haven’t noticed that the police or the FBI or the CIA have been particularly active.’
‘Miracles take a little time.’ Dunne was impatient. ‘Meantime, they still have your family.’
‘Yes. I’m beginning to wonder about that. If they are in danger, I mean.’
‘Jesus! Danger? Course they are. God’s sake man, look at what happened to Peggy.’
‘An accident. They could have killed her if they came that close. A dead hostage is no good to anyone.’
‘I suppose I could call you a cold-blooded bastard but I don’t believe you are. You know something I don’t?’
‘No. You have all the facts that I have. Only I have this feeling that we’re being conned, that we’re following a line that they want us to follow. I told Jablonsky last night that I didn’t think the scientists had been taken in order to force them to make a bomb of some kind. They’ve been taken for some other purpose. And if I don’t think that then I no longer think that the women were taken to force them to build a bomb. And not for a lever on me either – why should they worry about me in advance?’
‘What’s bugging you, Ryder?’
I’d like to know why Donahure has – had – those Kalashnikovs in his possession. He doesn’t seem to know either.’
‘I don’t follow you.’
‘Unfortunately, I don’t follow myself.’
Dunne remained in silent thought for some time. Then he looked at Donahure, winced at the sight of the battered face and said: ‘Who’s next in line for your kindly ministrations? LeWinter?’
‘Not yet. We’ve got enough to pull him in for questioning but not enough to hold him on the uncorroborated word of an unconvicted man. And unlike Donahure he’s a wily bird who’ll give away nothing. I think I’ll call on his secretary after an hour or two’s sleep.’
The phone rang. Jeff answered and held it out to Dunne, who listened briefly, hung up and said to Ryder: ‘I think you’ll have to postpone your sleep for a little.