Frederick Forsyth - The Negotiator

“So far as we are aware, no,” said Cramer. “There have been calls, of course. Some obvious hoaxes, some not so obvious, a dozen really plausible. To the last, we asked for some element of proof they were really holding Simon Cormack-”

“How?” asked Quinn.

“A question to be answered. Something from his nine months at Oxford that it would be hard to discover. No one called back with a right answer.”

“Forty-eight hours is not unusual waiting time for the first contact,” said Quinn.

“Agreed,” said Cramer. “They may communicate by mail, with a letter or a tape recording, in which case the package may be on its way. Or by phone. If it’s the former, we’ll bring them ’round here, though I will want our forensic people to have first crack at the paper, envelope, wrappings, and letter for any prints, saliva, or other traces. Fair, I think? You have no laboratory facilities here.”

“Perfectly fair,” said Quinn.

“But if the first contact is by phone, how do you want to handle it, Mr. Quinn?”

Quinn spelled out his requirements. A public announcement on the News at Ten program, requiring anyone holding Simon Cormack to contact the American embassy and only the embassy on any of a series of given numbers. A line of switchboard operators in the embassy basement to filter out the obvious phonies and patch the serious possibilities through to him at the apartment.

Cramer looked up at Collins and Seymour, who nodded. They would set up the embassy first-filter multiline switchboard within the next hour and a half, in time for the newscast. Quinn went on.

“Your Telecom people can trace every call as it comes into the embassy, maybe make a few arrests of hoaxers stupid enough not to use a public phone booth or who stay on the line too long. I don’t think the real kidnappers will be that dumb.”

“Agreed,” said Cramer. “So far, they’re smarter than that.”

“The patch-through must be without a cutoff, and just to one of the phones in this flat. There are three, right?”

Collins nodded. One was a direct line to his office, which was in the embassy building anyway.

“Use that one,” said Quinn. “When I’ve established contact with the real kidnappers, assuming I do, I want to give them a new number, a designated line that reaches me and only me.”

“I’ll get you a flash line within ninety minutes,” said Cramer, “a number that has never been used before. We’ll have to tap it, of course, but you won’t hear a sound on the line. Finally, I’d like to have two detective chief inspectors living in here with you, Mr. Quinn. They’re good and experienced. One man can’t stay awake twenty-four hours a day.”

“I’m sorry, no,” said Quinn.

“They could be of great help,” Cramer persisted. “If the kidnappers are British, there will be the question of regional accents, slang words, hints of strain or desperation in the voice at the other end, tiny traces only another Britisher could spot. They wouldn’t say anything, just listen.”

“They can listen at the exchange,” said Quinn. “You will be recording everything anyway. Run it past the speech experts, add your own comments on how lousily I’m doing, and come knock on the door here with the results. But I work alone.”

Cramer’s mouth tightened slightly. But he had his orders. He rose to leave. Quinn rose too.

“Let me see you to your car,” he said. They all knew what that meant-the stairs were not bugged. At the door Quinn jerked his head at Seymour and Collins to stay behind. Reluctantly they did so. On the stairs he murmured in Cramer’s ear.

“I know you don’t like it this way. I’m not very happy about it myself. Try to trust me. I’m not about to lose this boy if I can help it. You’ll hear every damn syllable on the phone. My own people will even hear me on the can. It’s like a Radio Shack in there.”

“All right, Mr. Quinn. You’ll get everything I can offer you. That’s a promise.”

“One last thing…” They had reached the pavement; the police car waited. “Don’t spook them. If they phone, or stay on the line a mite too long, no squad cars roaring up to the phone booth…”

“We do know that, Mr. Quinn. But we’ll have to have plainclothes men heading for the source of the phone call. They’ll be very discreet, just about invisible. But if we just spot the car number… get a physical description… that could shorten the whole thing to a couple of days.”

“Don’t get seen,” warned Quinn. “The man in the phone booth will be under horrendous pressure. Neither of us wants contact to cease. That would probably mean they’ve cut and run for the tall timber, leaving a body behind them.”

Cramer nodded, shook hands, and climbed into his car.

Thirty minutes later the engineers arrived, none in Telecom uniform, all offering Telecom identification cards. Quinn nodded amiably, knowing they came from MI-5, the Security Service, and they set to work. They were good and they were fast. Most of the work was being done in the Kensington exchange, anyway.

One of the engineers, with the base off the sitting-room telephone, raised an eyebrow a fraction. Quinn pretended not to notice. Trying to insert a bug, the man had found one in there already. Orders are orders; he slotted his own in beside the American one, establishing a new and miniature Anglo-American relationship. By 9:30 P.M. Quinn had his flash line, the ultraprivate line to which he would pass the real kidnapper if he ever spoke to the man. The second line was patched through permanently to the embassy switchboard, for incoming “possibles.” The third was left for outgoing calls.

More work was going on in the basement at the embassy in Grosvenor Square. Ten lines already existed and they were all taken over. Ten young women, some American, some British, sat and waited.

The third operation was in the Kensington exchange, where the police set up an office to monitor incoming calls heading for Quinn’s flash line. As Kensington was one of the new electronic exchanges, tracing would be fast, eight to ten seconds. On their way out of the exchange, the flash-line calls would have two more taps, one to the MI-5 communications center in Cork Street, Mayfair, the other to the U.S. embassy basement which, after the isolation of the kidnappers, would change from a switchboard to a listening post.

Thirty seconds after the British group left, Lou Collins’s American engineer arrived to remove all the newly installed British bugs and tune their own. Thus, when Quinn spoke other than on the telephone, only his fellow Americans would be listening. “Nice try,” remarked Seymour to his MI-5 colleague a week later over a drink in Brooks’s Club.

At 10:00 P.M. ITN newscaster Sandy Gall stared into the camera as the booming chimes of the Big Ben theme died away, and made the announcement to the kidnappers. The numbers to call stayed on the screen throughout the update on the Simon Cormack kidnapping, which had little to say but said it anyway.

In the sitting room of a quiet house forty miles from London, four silent and tense men watched the broadcast. The leader rapidly translated into French for two of them. In fact one was Belgian, the other Corsican. The fourth needed no translation. His spoken English was good but heavily accented with the Afrikaner tones of his native South Africa.

The two from Europe spoke no English at all, and the leader had forbidden all of them to stray from the house until the affair was over. He alone left and returned, always out of the attached garage, always in the Volvo sedan, which now had new tires and license plates-the original and legitimate plates. He never left without his wig, beard, moustache, and tinted glasses. During his absences the others were instructed to stay out of sight, not even appearing at the windows and certainly not answering the door.