Frederick Forsyth - The Negotiator

He hung up, cutting off her stream of questions.

Drifting silently in space, a National Security Agency satellite heard the phone call, along with a million others that morning, and beamed the words down to the computers at Fort Meade. It took time to process them, work out what to keep and what to throw away, but Sam’s use of the name Quinn ensured that this message was filed. It was studied in the early afternoon, Washington time, and passed to Langley.

Passengers for the London flight were being called when the truck drew up in the forecourt of the departures building. The four men who descended and marched through the front doors did not look like passengers for London, but no one took any notice. Except the elegant businessman. He looked up, folded his magazine, stood with his coat over his arm and his umbrella in his other hand, and watched them.

The leader of the four, in the black suit with open-necked shirt, had been playing cards the previous afternoon in a bar in Castelblanc. The other three were in the blue shirts and trousers of men who worked the vineyards and olive groves. The shirts were worn outside the trousers, a detail that was not lost on the businessman. They looked around the concourse, ignored the businessman, studied the other passengers filing through the embarkation doors. Quinn was out of sight in the men’s washroom. The public address system repeated the final call for boarding. Quinn emerged.

He turned sharp right, toward the doors, pulling his ticket from his breast pocket, failing to see the four from Castelblanc. They began to move toward Quinn’s back. A porter pushing a long line of interlinked baggage carts began to traverse the floor of the hall.

The businessman crossed to the porter and eased him to one side. He paused until the moment was right and gave the column of carts an almighty shove. On the smooth marble floor the column gathered speed and momentum and bore down on the four walking men. One saw them in time, threw himself to one side, tripped, and sprawled. The column hit the second man in the hip, knocked him over, split into several sections, and rattled in three directions. The black-suited capu collected a section of eight trolleys in the midriff and doubled over. The fourth man went to his help. They recovered and regrouped, in time to see Quinn’s back disappearing into the departure lounge.

The four men from the village ran to the glass door. The waiting hostess gave her professional smile and suggested there could be no more fond farewells-departure had been called long since. Through the glass they could see the tall American go through passport control and onto the tarmac. A polite hand eased them aside.

“I say, excuse me, old boy,” said the businessman, and he passed through as well.

On the flight he sat in the smoking section, ten rows behind Quinn, took orange juice and coffee for breakfast, and smoked two filter kings through a silver holder. Like Quinn, he had no luggage. At Heathrow he was four passengers behind Quinn at passport control and ten paces behind as they crossed the customs hall where others waited for their suitcases. He watched Quinn take a cab as his turn came, then nodded to a long black car across the road. He climbed in it on the move, and as they entered the tunnel from the airport to the M.4 motorway and London, the limousine was three vehicles behind Quinn’s cab.

When Philip Kelly said he would ask the British for a port watch on Quinn’s passport in the morning, he meant a Washington morning. Because of the time difference, the British received the request at 11:00 A.M. London time. Half an hour later the port-watch notice was brought by a colleague to the passport officer at Heathrow who had seen Quinn pass in front of him-half an hour earlier. He handed over his post to the colleague and told his superior.

Two Special Branch officers, on duty behind the immigration desk, queried the men in the customs hall. One customs man in the “Green” channel recalled a tall American whom he had briefly stopped because he had no luggage at all. Shown a photograph, he identified it.

Out on the taxi rank the traffic wardens who allocate taxis to prevent line-crashing did the same. But they had not noted the number of the cab he took.

Cabdrivers are sometimes sources of vital information to the police, and as the cabbies are a law-abiding breed, save for an occasional lapse in the declaring of income tax, which does not concern the Met., relations are good and kept that way. Moreover, the cabbies plying the lucrative Heathrow run do so according to a strict and jealously guarded rotation system. It took another hour to trace and contact the one who had carried Quinn, but he too recognized his passenger.

“Yerse,” he said. “I took him to Blackwood’s Hotel in Marylebone.”

In fact he dropped Quinn at the base of the hotel steps at twenty to one. Neither noticed the black limousine that drew up behind. Quinn paid off the cab and mounted the steps. By this time a dark-suited London businessman was beside him. They reached the revolving doors at the same time. It was a question of who should pass first. Quinn’s eyes narrowed when he saw the man beside him. The businessman preempted him.

“I say, weren’t you the chap on the plane from Corsica this morning? By Jove, so was I. Small world, what? After you, m’dear fellow.”

He gestured to Quinn to pass ahead of him. The needle tip jutting from the ferrule of the umbrella was already bared. Quinn hardly felt the sting of the jab as it entered the calf of his left leg. It remained for half a second and was withdrawn. Then Quinn was inside the revolving doors. They jammed when he was halfway through; trapped in the segment between the portico and the lobby. He was stuck there for only five seconds. As he emerged he had the impression of feeling slightly dizzy. The heat, no doubt.

The Englishman was beside him, still chattering.

“Damn door, never did like them. I say, old boy, are you feeling all right?”

Quinn’s vision blurred again and he swayed. A uniformed porter approached, concern on his face.

“You all right, sir?”

The businessman took over with smooth efficiency. He leaned toward the porter, holding Quinn under one armpit with a grip of surprising strength, and slipped a £10 note into the porter’s hand.

“Touch of the pre-lunch martinis, I’m afraid. That and jet lag. Look, my car’s outside… If you’d be so kind… Come on, Clive. Let’s get you home, old son.”

Quinn tried to resist but his limbs seemed to be made of Jell-O. The porter knew his duty to his hotel, and a real gentleman when he saw one. The real gentleman took Quinn at one side, the porter at the other. They eased him through the baggage door, which did not revolve, and down the three steps to the curb. There, two of the real gentleman’s colleagues climbed out of the car and helped Quinn into the rear seat. The businessman nodded his thanks to the porter, who turned to attend to other arriving guests, and the limousine drew away.

As it did so, two police cars came around the corner of Blandford Street and headed for the hotel. Quinn leaned back against the upholstery of the car, his mind still aware but his body helpless and his tongue a soggy lump. Then the blackness swam up and over him in waves and he passed out.

When Quinn awoke he was in a bare white room, flat on his back on a cot. Without moving he looked around. A solid door, also white; a recessed bulb protected by a steel grille. Whoever had set the place up did not wish the inhabitant to smash the bulb and slice his wrists. He recalled the too-smooth English businessman, the sting in the rear of the calf, the slide into unconsciousness. Damn the Brits.

There was a peephole in the door. He heard it click. An eye stared at him. There was no more point in pretending to be unconscious or asleep. He pulled back the blanket that covered him and swung his legs to the floor. Only then did he realize he was naked but for his shorts.