Goodbye California (29 page)

‘No.’ Ryder gave a negative shake of the head in a very positive way. ‘I think I’m right; I could be wrong. Either way I wouldn’t give a damn about proof and legality, and I don’t think anyone else here would either. It’s the physical factor. You can’t storm the place. I told you it’s impregnable. If Morro’s there he’ll have it guarded like Fort Knox. If we did attack the place and there was armed resistance then we’d know for sure he’s there. What then? You can’t use tanks and artillery up a mountain-side. Planes with rockets, missiles, bombs? What a lovely idea with thirty-five megatons of hydrogen bombs in there.’

‘It would be a bang,’ Mitchell said. He seemed almost human. ‘And what a bang. How many dead? Tens of thousands? Hundreds? Millions?
With the radio-active fall-out all over the western States? Yes, millions.’

Ryder said: ‘Not to mention blasting a hole through the ozone layer.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘It’s out of the question, anyway,’ Barrow said. ‘Only the Commander-in-Chief could authorize such an attack, and whether he’s motivated by political cynicism or humanity no President is going to let himself go down in history as the man directly responsible for the deaths of millions of his fellow citizens.’

‘That apart,’ Ryder said, ‘I’m afraid we’re all missing the point, which is that those bombs will be triggered by radiowave and Morro will be sitting up there all the time with his thumb on the button. If he had the bombs sited – which he could well have by now – he has only to press that button. They could be in transit – and he has still only to press that button. Even if he’s sitting on top of the damn things he’d still do the same. It would be a splendid way to pay the Americans back for the billion or more dollars and military aid they’ve given Marcos’s government to use to crush the Muslims. American lives are nothing to them and, in a holy war, neither are theirs. They can’t lose: the gates of Paradise are standing wide.’

There was a long pause then Sassoon said: ‘It’s a bit chilly in here. Anyone join me in a Scotch or bourbon or something?’

Everyone, it seemed, was conscious of a drop in the temperature. There was another and equally long pause, then Mitchell said, almost plaintively: ‘How do we get at those damned bombs?’

‘You can’t.’ Ryder said. ‘I’ve had more time than you to think this out. Those bombs will be under constant surveillance all the time. Go anywhere near any of them and it’ll blow up in your face. I wouldn’t fancy having a three-and-a-half megaton bomb blow up in my face.’ He lit another cigarette. ‘Well, I don’t know. No worry, really. In my vaporized state I wouldn’t be likely to know much about it. Forget the bombs. We want to get to that button before Morro presses it.’

Barrow said: ‘Infiltration?’

‘How else?’

‘How?’

‘Using his over-confidence and colossal arrogance against him.’

‘How?’

‘How?’ Ryder showed his first irritation. ‘You forget that I’m just an unofficial interferer.’

‘As far as I’m concerned – and, in those United States of ours, I’m the only one who
is
concerned – you’re now a fully accredited, paid-up and charter member of the FBI.’

‘Well, thanks very much.’

‘How?’

‘I wish to God I knew.’

The silence was profound. By and by Barrow turned to Mitchell. ‘Well, what are we going to do?’

‘That’s the FBI all over.’ Mitchell was scowling heavily, but not at anyone in particular. ‘Always trying to beat us to it. I was about to ask you the same question.’

‘I know what I’m going to do.’ Ryder pushed back his chair. ‘Major Dunne, you will recall that you promised me a lift out to Pasadena.’

A knock came at the door and a girl entered, an envelope in her hand. She said: ‘Major Dunne?’ Dunne stretched out an arm, took the envelope, withdrew a sheet of paper and read it. He looked across at Ryder.

‘Cotabato,’ he said.

Ryder pulled his chair back in. Dunne rose, walked to the head of the table and handed the letter to Barrow, who read it, handed it across to Mitchell, waited until he had finished, took it back and began to read aloud.

‘Manila. Chief of Police, also countersigned by a General Huelva, whom I know. It says: “Description referring to person called Morro tallies exactly with that of a wanted criminal well known to us. Confirm he has two badly damaged hands and the sight of only one eye. Injuries sustained when one of group of three participating in aborted attempt to blow up Presidential holiday retreat. One accomplice – a man of enormous stature and known as
Dubois – unscathed. The third, small man, lost left hand. Shot way out”.’ He paused and looked at Ryder.

‘A small world. Our large friend again. The other is probably the lad with the prosthetic appliance who put the arm on my daughter in San Diego.’

‘Very likely. “Morro’s real name is Amarak. Enquiry confirms our belief that he is in your country. Enforced exile. There is one million US dollars on his head. Native of Cotabato, focal point for Muslim insurgents in Mindanao.

‘“Amarak is the head of the MNLF – Moro National Liberation Front”.’

‘One sometimes despairs of mankind,’ Professor Alec Benson said sadly. ‘Here we are, twenty miles from the ocean, and still they go marching steadily east – if cars moving at an average of a mile per hour can be said to be marching. They’re as safe from a tidal wave here as they would be if they lived in Colorado, but I don’t suppose any of them intend stopping until they pitch camp atop the San Gabriel Mountains.’ He turned away from the window, picked up a cane and pressed a switch to illuminate a nine-by-eight wall chart of the State of California.

‘Well, gentlemen, to our Earthquake Slip Prevention Programme – hereon, ESPP. Where we have selected certain locations for drilling and why. The “where” and the “why” are really one and the same. As I explained last time, the theory, in essence, is that by injecting lubricating fluid along certain fault lines we will ease the frictional resistance between the tectonic plates and
so – hopefully – cause them to slide past each other with a minimum of fuss and bother – a series of tiny earthquakes at frequent intervals instead of major earthquakes at long intervals. If the frictional co-efficient is allowed to build up until the lateral stress becomes intolerable then something has to go and one plate jerks forward, perhaps anything up to twenty feet, in relation to the other. That’s when we have a big one. Our sole purpose – perhaps I should say our hope – is to release this frictional coefficient gradually.’ He tapped the chart with the cane. ‘I’ll start from the bottom – the south.

‘This is actually the first bore-hole we started digging, the first of what we call our trigger spots. It’s in the Imperial Valley, between Imperial and El Centra. We had an earthquake here in nineteen-fifteen, six-point-three on the Richter scale, another in nineteen-forty, a fairly big one of seven-point-six and a small one in nineteen-sixty-six. This is the only known section of the San Andreas Fault near the US-Mexican border.’ He moved his cane.

‘We’ve drilled this one here near Hemet. There was a heavy earthquake here in eighteen-ninety-nine – no seismological recordings of it – in the area of the Cajon Pass, another of six-point-eight in nineteen-eighteen in the same fracture area – this is the San Jacinto Fault.

‘This third drill-hole is the nearest to where we are now – in the San Bernadino area. Latest
earthquake there was seventy years ago, and that was only six on the scale. We have a strong feeling here that this may be a sleeper with a slip overdue: but that may be because we are living so close to the damn thing.’

Barrow said: ‘What effects would such earthquakes have if they did occur? Big ones, I mean.’

‘Any one of the three would certainly make the citizens of San Diego unhappy, and the second and third would offer a direct threat to Los Angeles.’ He moved the pointer again. ‘The next bore-hole lies in a fault which was a sleeper – until nineteen-seventy-one. Six-point-six in the San Fernando Valley. We hope that easing the pressure here might take some of the strain of the Newport-Inglewood Fault which, as you know, lies directly under the city of Los Angeles and had its own earthquake, of six-point-three in nineteen-thirty-three. I say “hope”. We don’t know. We don’t know how the two faults are connected. We don’t even know
if
they’re connected. There’s an awful lot we don’t know and that’s guesswork, hopefully inspired, probably not. But it’s no guess that a big one there could hurt Los Angeles badly: after all, the community of Sylmar, the worst-hit area in the shock, actually lies inside the Los Angeles city boundaries.’ The point of the cane moved again.

‘Tejon Pass. This one has us worried. Long overdue activity here and the last one – a hundred-and-twenty years ago – was a beauty, the strongest in
Southern Californian history. Well, it wasn’t as great as the massive earthquake that hit Owens Valley in eighteen-seventy-three – that was the biggest in recorded Californian history – but we’re a parochial lot hereabouts and don’t regard Owens Valley as being in Southern California. A big slip here would very definitely give the Los Angelinos something to think about: if I knew about it in advance I, personally, would get out of town. Tejon Pass is on the San Andreas Fault, and it’s close by here, at Frazier Park by Fort Tejon, that the San Andreas and Garlock Faults intersect. There’s been no major earthquake in the Garlock that is known of – whether that recent small shake was caused by our friend Morro or not we have no means of telling – and none is expected: but, then, no one expected the nineteen-seventy-one business in San Fernando.’ The cane moved on.

‘Here we have our – let me see – sixth drilling-hole. It’s on the White Wolf Fault. It was the scene –’

He broke off as the phone rang. One of his assistants answered, looked round the seated men. ‘Which one of you is Major Dunne, please?’

Dunne took the phone, listened briefly, thanked the caller and hung up. He said: ‘The Adlerheim has quite a transport fleet. Not one but two helicopters, two unmarked plain vans and a jeep.’ He smiled at Ryder. ‘Two more pointers you can tick off, Sergeant.’ Ryder nodded. If he experienced any satisfaction he didn’t show it – more
probably, he had been so convinced in advance of what Dunne had just said that the confirmation hardly called for comment.

Benson said: ‘What’s all this about pointers?’

‘Routine investigative checks, Professor.’

‘Ah. Ah, well, I suppose it’s none of my business. I was saying – yes, the White Wolf. Seven-point-seven, nineteen-fifty-two, the biggest in Southern California since eighteen-fifty-seven. The epicentre was somewhere between Arvin and Tehachapi here.’ He paused and looked at Ryder. ‘You frown, Sergeant? Quite heavily, if I may say so.’

‘Nothing, really, Professor. Passing thoughts. Please carry on.’

‘Well. This is a very tricky area. It’s all conjecture, really. Anything happening in the White Wolf could affect both the Garlock Fault and the San Andreas at Tejon. We don’t know. There could be a link with the Santa Ynez, Mesa and Channel Islands Faults. Very attractive earthquake area, reports going back to the beginning of the nineteenth century, last big one at Lompoc in nineteen-twenty-seven. It’s all so uncertain. Any major disturbance in the Santa Ynez area would certainly cause a major disturbance in Los Angeles.’ He shook his head. ‘Poor old Los Angeles.’ Benson wasn’t smiling. ‘It’s ringed by earthquake centres – apart from having its own private and personal one at Long Beach. Last time I saw you I talked about the monster
earthquake. If it were to hit San Jacinto, San Bemadino, San Fernando, the White Wolf, Tejon Pass, Santa Ynez – or, of course, Long Beach itself – the western hemisphere would be one major city less. If our civilization vanishes and another arises then that new one will be talking about Los Angeles as we today talk about the lost city of Atlantis.’

Barrow said: ‘You are in a jovial mood today, Professor.’

‘Alas, events happening around me and people asking me the questions do tend to make me less than my optimistic sunny self. Forgive me. Next, up here in the central San Andreas, we are digging an interesting hole between Cholame and Parkfield. We know we’re smack on the San Andreas there. Very active area, lots of shaking and banging going on most of the time but, again ominously, no great earthquake has ever been recorded in this area. There was a pretty big one some way to the west, back in the ‘eighties, at San Luis Obispo which could have been caused by the San Andreas or the Nacimiento Fault which parallels the coast west of the San Andreas.’ He smiled without any particular mirth. ‘A monster striking in either fault would almost certainly dump the Morro Bay nuclear reactor station into the sea.

‘Further north, we’ve drilled deep down between Hollister and San Juan Bautista, a few miles to the west, partly because this is another dormant area – again there have only been
comparatively minor shakes in this area – and because it’s just south of Hollister that the Hayward Fault branches off to the right to go to the east of San Francisco Bay, cutting up through or close by Hayward, Oakland, Berkeley and Richmond then out under the San Pablo Bay. In Berkeley the fault actually runs under the university football stadium, which can’t be a very nice thought for the crowds of people who attend there regularly. There have been two very big earthquakes along this fault, in eighteen-thirty-six and eighteen-sixty-eight – until nineteen-o-six San Franciscans always referred to the latter as “the great earthquake” – and it’s there that we’ve drilled our ninth hole by Lake Temescal.

‘The tenth one we put down at Walnut Creek in the Calaveras Fault, which parallels the Hayward. Our suspicions about this fault are in the inverse proportion to what we know about it, which is almost zero.’

Barrow said: ‘That makes ten and that, I take it, is all. You spoke a few minutes ago about poor old Los Angeles. How about poor old San Francisco?’

‘To be thrown to the wolves, it would seem, the orphan left out in the snow. San Francisco is, geologically and seismologically, a city that waits to die. Frankly, we are terrified to tamper with anything up there. The Los Angeles area has had seven what you might call historic ‘quakes that we know of: the Bay area has had sixteen, and we have no idea in the world where the next, the monster, may
hit. There was a suggestion – frankly, it was mine – that we sink a bore-hole near Searsville Lake. This is close by Stanford University which had a bad time of it during the nineteen-o-six earthquake, and, more importantly, just where the Pilarcitos Fault branches off from the San Andreas. The Pilarcitos, which runs into the Pacific some six miles south of the San Andreas may, for all we know, be the true line of the San Andreas and certainly was some millions of years ago. Anyway, the nineteen-o-six shake ran through many miles of unpopulated hill regions. Since then, unscrupulous property developers have built cities along both fault lines and the consequences of another eight-plus earthquake are too awful to contemplate. I suggested a possible easement there, but certain vested interests in nearby Menlo Park were appalled at the very idea.’

Barrow said: ‘Vested interests?’

‘Indeed.’ Benson sighed. ‘It was in nineteen-sixty-six that the US Geological Survey’s National Center for Earthquake Research was established there. Very touchy about earthquakes, I’m afraid.’

‘Those bore-holes,’ Ryder said. ‘What diameter drills do you use?’

Benson looked at him for a long moment then sighed again. ‘That had to be the next question. That’s why you’re all here, isn’t it?’

‘Well?’

‘You can use any size within reason. Down in Antarctica they use a twelve-inch drill to bore
through the Ross Ice Shelf, but here we get by with a good deal less – five, perhaps six inches. I don’t know. Find out easy enough. So you think the ESPP drillings are a double-edged weapon that’s going to turn in our hands? Limit to what you can achieve by tidal waves, isn’t there? But this is earthquake country, so why not harness the latent powers of nature and trigger off immense earthquakes and where better to pull the triggers than in the very ESPP sites we’ve chosen?’

Barrow said: ‘It’s feasible?’

‘Eminently.’

‘And if –’ He broke off. ‘Ten bombs, ten sites. Matches up a damn sight too well. If this were to happen?’

‘Let’s think about something else, shall we?’

‘If it
were?’

‘There are so many unknown factors –’

‘An educated guess, Professor.’

‘Goodbye California. That’s what I would guess. Or a sizeable part of it – bound to affect more than half of the population. Maybe it will fall into the Pacific. Maybe just shattered by a series of monster earthquakes – and if you set off hydrogen bombs in the faults monster earthquakes are what you are going to have. And radiation, of course, would get those the sea and earthquakes didn’t. An immediate trip back east – and I mean immediate – suddenly seems a very attractive prospect.’

‘You’d have to walk,’ Sassoon said. ‘The roads are jammed and the airport is besieged. The
airlines are sending in every plane they can lay hands on but it’s hardly helping: they’re stacked heaven knows how many deep just waiting for a chance to land. And, of course, when a plane does land there’s a hundred passengers for every seat available.’

‘Things will be better tomorrow. It’s not in human nature to stay permanently panic-stricken.’

‘And it’s not in an aircraft’s nature to take off in twenty feet of water, which is what the airport might be under tomorrow.’ He broke off as the phone rang again. This time Sassoon took it. He listened briefly, thanked the caller and hung up.

‘Two things,’ he said. ‘The Adlerheim does have a radio telephone. All quite legal. The Post Office doesn’t know the name or the address of the person who answers it. They assume that we wouldn’t want to make enquiries. Secondly, there
is
a very big man up in the Adlerheim.’ He looked at Ryder. ‘It seems you were not only right but right about their arrogant self-confidence. He hasn’t even bothered to change his name. Dubois.’

‘Well, that’s it, then,’ Ryder said. If he was surprised or gratified no trace of those feelings showed. ‘Morro has kidnapped twenty-six drillers, engineers – anyway, oil men. Six are being used as forced labour in the Adlerheim. Then he’ll have a couple of men at each of the drilling rigs – they’ll have guns on them, but he has to have experienced men to lower those damn things. I don’t
think we need bother the AEC any more to find out about Professor Aachen’s design: whatever nuclear device he’s constructed it’s not going to be more than five inches in diameter.’ He turned to Benson. ‘Do the crews on those rigs work at weekends?’

‘I don’t know.’

I’ll bet Morro does.’

Benson turned to one of his assistants. ‘You heard. Find out, please.’

Barrow said: ‘Well, we know for sure now that Morro lied about the dimensions of the bomb. You can’t stick something twenty inches in diameter down a five- or six-inch bore-hole. I think I have to agree that this man is dangerously overconfident.’

Mitchell was glum. ‘He’s got plenty to be confident about. All right, we know he’s up in his fancy castle, and we know, or are as certain as can be, that he has those nuclear devices up there. And a lot of good that knowledge does us. How do we get to him or them?’