The Negotiator

Quinn swept her up and carried her to the bed. She sat up for a second and slipped out of her silk nightgown. Quinn lay down beside her. Ten minutes later they became lovers.

  In the embassy basement the engineer and two FBI men listened idly to the sound coming from the baseboard outlet two miles away.

  “He’s gone,” said the engineer. The three listened to the steady, rhythmic breathing of a man fast asleep, recorded the previous night when Quinn had left the tape recorder on his pillow. Brown and Seymour wandered into the listening post. Nothing was expected that night; Zack had phoned during the six o’clock evening rush hour—Bedford railway station, no sighting possible.

  “I do not understand,” said Patrick Seymour, “how that man can sleep like that with the level of stress he’s under. Me, I’ve been catnapping for two weeks and wonder if I’ll ever sleep again. He must have piano wire for nerves.”

  The engineer yawned and nodded. Normally his work for the Company in Britain and Europe did not require much night work, certainly not back-to-back like this, night after night.

  “Yeah, well, I wish to hell I was doing what he’s doing.”

  Brown turned without a word and returned to the office that had been converted into his quarters. He had been nearly fourteen days in this damn city, becoming more and more convinced the British police were getting nowhere and Quinn was just playing footsie with a rat who ought not to be counted among the human race. Well, Quinn and his British pals might be prepared to sit on their collective butts till hell froze over; he had run out of patience. He resolved to get his team around him in the morning and see if a little old-fashioned detective work could produce a lead. It would not be the first time a mighty police force had overlooked some tiny detail.

  Chapter 8

  Quinn and Sam spent almost three hours in each other’s arms, alternately making love and talking in low whispers. She did most of the talking, of herself and her career in the Bureau. She also warned Quinn of the abrasive Kevin Brown, who had chosen her for this mission and had established himself in London with a team of eight to “keep an eye on things.”

  She had fallen into a deep and dreamless sleep, the first time in a fortnight she had slept so well, when Quinn nudged her awake.

  “It’s only a three-hour tape,” he whispered. “It’s going to run out in fifteen minutes.”

  She kissed him again, slipped into her nightgown, and tiptoed back to her room. Quinn eased the armchair away from the wall, grunted a few times for the benefit of the wall microphone, switched off the tape recorder, rolled onto the bed, and genuinely went to sleep. The sounds recorded in Grosvenor Square were of a sleeping man shifting position, rolling over, and resuming his slumbers. The engineer and two FBI men glanced at the console, then back to their cards.

  Zack called at half past nine. He seemed more brusque and hostile than on the previous day—a man whose nerves were beginning to fray, a man on whom the pressure was mounting and who had decided to exert some pressure of his own.

  “All right, you bastard, now listen. No more sweet talk. I’ve had enough. I’ll settle for your bloody two million dollars but that’s the lot. You ask for one more thing and I’ll send you a couple of fingers. I’ll take a hammer and chisel to the little prick’s right hand—see if Washington likes you after that.”

  “Zack, cool it,” pleaded Quinn earnestly. “You’ve got it. You win. Last night I told them over there to screw it up to two million dollars or I’m out. Jesus, you think you’re tired? I don’t even sleep at all, in case you call.”

  Zack seemed pacified by the thought that there was someone with nerves more ragged than his own.

  “One more thing,” he growled. “Not money. Not in cash. You bastards would try to bug the suitcase. Diamonds. This is how ...”

  He talked for ten more seconds, then hung up. Quinn took no notes. He did not need to. It was all on tape. The call had been traced to one of a bank of three public booths in Saffron Waiden, a market town in western Essex, just off the M.11 motorway from London to Cambridge. It took three minutes for a plainclothes policeman to wander past the booths, but all were empty. The caller had been swallowed in the crowds.

  At the time, Andy Laing was having lunch in the executive canteen of the Jiddah branch of the SAIB. His companion was his friend and colleague the Pakistani operations manager, Mr. Amin.

  “I am being very puzzled, my friend,” said the young Pakistani. “What is going on?”

  “I don’t know,” said Laing. “You tell me.”

  “You know the daily mail bag from here to London? I had an urgent letter for London, with some documents included. I need a quick reply. When will I get it? I ask myself. Why has it not come? I asked the mailroom why there is no reply. They tell me something very strange.”

  Laing put down his knife and fork.

  “What is that, old pal?”

  “They tell me all is delayed. All packages from here for London are being diverted to the Riyadh office for a day before they go forward.”

  Laing lost his appetite. There was a feeling in the pit of his stomach and it was not hunger.

  “How long did they say this has been going on?”

  “Since one week, I do believe.”

  Laing left the canteen for his office. There was a message on his desk from the branch manager, Mr. Al-Haroun. Mr. Pyle would like to see him in Riyadh without delay.

  He made the mid-afternoon Saudia commuter flight. On the journey he could have kicked himself. Hindsight is all very well, but if only he had sent his London package by regular mail ... He had addressed it to the chief accountant personally, and a letter so addressed, in his distinctive handwriting, would stand out a mile when the letters were spread across Steve Pyle’s desk. He was shown into Steve Pyle’s office just after the bank closed its doors for public business.

  Nigel Cramer came around to see Quinn during the lunch hour, London time.

  “You’ve closed your exchange at two million dollars,” he said. Quinn nodded.

  “My congratulations,” said Cramer. “Thirteen days is fast for this sort of thing. By the way, my tame shrink has listened to this morning’s call. He takes the view the man is serious, under a lot of pressure to get out.”

  “He’ll have to take a few more days,” said Quinn. “We all will. You heard him ask for diamonds instead of cash. They’ll take time to put together. Any leads on their hideout?”

  Cramer shook his head.

  “I’m afraid not. Every last conceivable property rental has been checked out. Either they’re not in residential quarters at all, or they’ve bought the damn thing. Or borrowed it.”

  “No chance of checking outright purchases?” asked Quinn.

  “I’m afraid not. The volume of properties being bought and sold in southeast England is enormous. There are thousands and thousands owned by foreigners, foreign corporations, or companies whose nominees—lawyers, banks, et cetera—acted for them in the sale. Like this place, for example.”

  He got in a dig at Lou Collins and the CIA, who were listening.

  “By the way, I talked with one of our men in the Hatton Garden district. He spoke to a contact in diamond trading. Whoever he is, your man knows his diamonds. Or one of his colleagues does. What he asked for is easily purchasable and easily disposable. And light. About a kilogram, perhaps a bit more. Have you thought about the exchange?”

  “Of course,” said Quinn. “I’d like to handle it myself. But I want no concealed bugs—they’ll probably think of that. I don’t think they’ll bring Simon to the rendezvous, so he could still die if there were any tricks.”

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Quinn. We’d obviously like to try and grab them, but I take your point. There’ll be no tricks from us, no heroics.”

  “Thank you,” said Quinn. He shook hands with the Scotland Yard man, who left to report progress to the one o’clock COBRA committee.

  Kevin Brown had spent the morning secluded in his office beneath the embassy. When the stores
opened he had sent out two of his men to buy him a list of items he needed: a very large-scale map of the area north of London, extending fifty miles in all directions; a matching sheet of clear plastic; map pins; wax pencils in different colors. He assembled his team of detectives and spread the plastic across the map.

  “Okay, let’s just look at these phone booths the rat has been using. Chuck, read them out one by one.”

  Chuck Moxon studied his list. “First call, Hitchin, county of Hertfordshire.”

  “Okay, we have Hitchin right ... here.” A pin was stuck in Hitchin.

  Zack had made eight calls in thirteen days; the ninth was about to come in. One by one, pins were stuck in the site of each call. Just before ten o’clock one of the two FBI men in the listening post stuck his head around the door.

  “He just called again. Threatening to cut off Simon’s fingers with a chisel.”

  “Hot damn,” swore Brown. “That fool Quinn’s going to blow it away. I knew he would. Where’d the call come from?”

  “Place called Saffron Waiden,” said the young man.

  When the nine pins were in place, Brown joined up the perimeter of the area they bounded. It was a jagged shape, involving pieces of five counties. Then he took a ruler and joined the extremities to their opposites on the other side of the pattern. In the approximate center a web of crisscross lines appeared. To the southeast the extremity was Great Dunmow, Essex; to the north was St. Neots, Cambridgeshire; and to the west, Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire.

  “The densest area of the crossed lines lies right here,” Brown pointed out with his fingertip, “just east of Biggleswade, county of Bedfordshire. No calls from that area at all. Why?”

  “Too close to base?” ventured one of the men.

  “Could be, boy, could be. Look, I want you to take these two country towns, Biggleswade and Sandy, the two closest to the geographic center of the web. Get up there and visit all the realtors who have offices in those towns. Make like you are prospective clients, looking to rent a secluded house to write a book or something. Listen to what they say—maybe some place that’ll be free soon, maybe some place they could have let you have three months back but it went to someone else. You got it?”

  They all nodded.

  “Should we let Mr. Seymour know we’re on our way?” asked Moxon. “I mean, maybe Scotland Yard has been in that area.”

  “You leave Mr. Seymour to me,” said Brown reassuringly. “We get along just fine. And the bobbies may have been up there and they may just have overlooked something. Maybe so, maybe not. Let’s just check it out.”

  Steve Pyle greeted Laing with an attempt at his usual geniality.

  “I ... ah ... called you up here, Andy, because I just got a request from London that you go visit with them. Seems this could be the start of a career move for you.”

  “Sure,” said Laing. “Would this request from London have anything to do with the package and report I sent them, which never arrived because it was intercepted right here in this office?”

  Pyle dropped all semblance of bonhomie.

  “All right. You’re smart, maybe too smart. But you’ve been dabbling in things that don’t concern you. I tried to warn you off, but no, you had to go playing private detective. Okay, now I’ll level with you. I’m transferring you back to London. You don’t fit in down here, Laing. I’m not happy with your work. You’re going back. That’s it. You have seven days to put your desk in order. Your ticket’s been booked. Seven days from now.”

  Had he been older, more mature, Andy Laing would probably have played his cards more coolly. But he was angry that a man of Pyle’s eminence in the bank could be ripping off client money for his own enrichment. And he had the naïveté of the young and eager, the conviction that Right would triumph. He turned at the door.

  “Seven days? Time enough for you to fix things with London? No way. I’m going back all right, but I’m going back tomorrow.”

  He was in time for the last flight of the night back to Jiddah. When he got there he went straight to the bank. He kept his passport in the top drawer of his desk, along with any other valuable papers—burglaries of European-owned apartments in Jiddah are not unheard-of, and the bank was safer. At least, it was supposed to be. The passport was missing.

  * * *

  That night there was a stand-up row among the four kidnappers.

  “Keep your bloody voices down,” hissed Zack on several occasions. “Baissez les voix, merde.”

  He knew his men were running to the limit of their patience. It was always a risk, using this kind of human material. After the screaming adrenaline of the snatch outside Oxford, they had been penned up day and night in a single house, drinking beer from cans he had bought at a supermarket, keeping out of sight all the time, hearing callers at the door ring and ring before finally going away without an answer. The nervous strain had been bad, and these were not men with the mental resources to immerse themselves in books or thought. The Corsican listened to his French-language pop programs all day, interspersed with news flashes. The South African whistled tunelessly for hours on end, and always the same tune, “Marie Marais.” The Belgian watched the television, of which he could not understand a word. He liked the cartoons best.

  The argument was over Zack’s decision to close with the negotiator called Quinn and have done with the whole thing at $2 million ransom.

  The Corsican objected, and because they both spoke French, the Belgian tended to agree with him. The South African was fed up, wanted to get home, and agreed with Zack. The main argument from the Corsican was that they could hold out forever. Zack knew this was not true, but he was aware he could have a very dangerous situation on his hands if he told them they were beginning to show cracks, and could not take more than another six days of numbing boredom and inactivity.

  So he appeased them, placated them, told them they had done brilliantly and would all be very rich men in just a few more days. The thought of all that money calmed them down and they subsided. Zack was relieved it had ended without blows. Unlike the three men in the house, his problem was not boredom but stress. Every time he drove the big Volvo along the crowded motorways he knew that one random police check, one brush with another car, one moment of inattention, would have a blue-capped officer leaning in his window, wondering why he wore a wig and false moustache. His disguise would pass in a crowded street, but not at six inches’ range.

  Every time he went into one of those phone booths, he had a mental image of something going wrong, of a faster-than-usual trace, of a plainclothes policeman being only a few yards away, taking the alarm on his personal radio and walking up to the phone booth. Zack carried a gun, and knew he would use it to get away. If he did, he would have to abandon the Volvo, always parked a few hundred yards away, and escape on foot. Some idiot member of the public might even try to tackle him. It was getting to the point that whenever he saw a policeman sauntering along the crowded streets he chose for his phone calls, his stomach turned over.

  “Go give the kid his supper,” he told the South African.

  Simon Cormack had been fifteen days in his underground cell, and thirteen since he had answered the question about Aunt Emily and known that his father was trying to get him out. He realized now what solitary confinement must be like and wondered how people could survive months, even years of it. At least in the prisons he had heard of, inmates in solitary had writing materials, books, sometimes television, something to occupy the mind. He had nothing. But he was a tough boy and he determined not to go to pieces.

  He exercised regularly, forcing himself to overcome the prisoner’s lethargy, doing his push-ups ten times a day, jogging in place a dozen times. He still wore his same running shoes, socks, shorts, and T-shirt, and was aware he must smell awful. He used the toilet bucket carefully, so as not to soil the floor, and was grateful it was removed every second day.

  The food was boring, mainly fried or cold, but it was enough. He had no razor, of course
, so he sported a straggly beard and moustache. His hair had grown; he tried to comb it with his fingers. He had asked for, and eventually been given, a plastic bucket of cold water and a sponge. He never realized how grateful a man could be for the chance to wash. He had stripped naked, running his shorts halfway up the ankle-chain to keep them dry, and sponged himself from head to foot, scouring his skin with the sponge to try to keep clean. After it he felt transformed. But he tried no escape maneuvers. The chain was impossible to break; the door solid and bolted from the outside.

  Between exercises he tried to keep his mind occupied in a number of ways: reciting every poem he could remember, pretending to dictate his autobiography to an invisible stenographer so that he could go over everything that had ever happened to him in his twenty-one years. And he thought of home, of New Haven and Nantucket and Yale and the White House. He thought of his mom and dad and how they were; he hoped they weren’t worried about him, but expected they were. If only he could tell them he was all right, in good shape, considering ...

  There were three loud knocks on the cellar door. He reached for his black hood and put it on. Supper time—or was it breakfast ...?

  That same evening, but after Simon Cormack had fallen asleep, and Sam Somerville lay in Quinn’s arms while the tape recorder breathed into the wall outlet, five time zones farther west, the White House committee met in the late evening. Apart from the usual Cabinet members and department heads, Philip Kelly of the FBI and David Weintraub of the CIA also attended.

  They heard the tapes of Zack on the phone to Quinn, the rasping tones of the British criminal and the reassuring drawl of the American trying to appease him, as they had done almost every day for two weeks.

  When Zack had finished, Hubert Reed was pale with shock.

  “My God,” he said, “cold chisel and hammer. The man’s an animal.”

  “We know that,” said Odell. “But at least now we have an agreed ransom. Two million dollars. In diamonds. Any objections?”