Frederick Forsyth - The Negotiator

It was too late. Zack had not heard the program, but the South African had.

The call from Zack was later than usual-10:20 A.M. If he had been angry the previous day over the matter of the raid on the Bedfordshire farm, he was by now almost hysterical with rage.

Nigel Cramer had had time to warn Quinn, speaking from his car as it sped toward Scotland Yard. When Quinn put down the phone, it was the first time Sam had seen him appear visibly shaken. He paced the apartment in silence; the other two sat and watched in fear. They had heard the gist of Cramer’s call and sensed that it was all going to fail, somehow, somewhere.

Just waiting for the flash line to ring, not even knowing whether the kidnappers would have heard the radio show at all, or how they would react if they had, made Sam nauseous from stress. When the phone finally rang, Quinn answered it with his usual calm good humor. Zack did not even bother with preambles.

“Right, this time you’ve bloody blown it, you Yankee bastard. You take me for some kind of fool, do you? Well, you’re the fool, mate. ’Cos you’re going to look a right fool when you bury Simon Cormack’s body.”

Quinn’s shock and amazement were convincingly feigned.

“Zack, what the hell are you talking about? What’s gone wrong?”

“Don’t give me that,” screamed the kidnapper, his gruff voice rising. “If you didn’t hear the news, then ask your police mates about it. And don’t pretend it was a lie-it came from your own sodding embassy.”

Quinn persuaded Zack to tell him what he had heard, even though he knew. The telling caused Zack to calm down slightly; and his time was running out.

“Zack, it’s a lie, a phony. Any exchange would be just you and me, pal. Alone and unarmed. No direction-finder devices, no tricks, no police, no soldiers. Your terms, your place, your time. That’s the only way I’d have it.”

“Yeah, well, it’s too late. Your people want a body, that’s what they’re going to get.”

He was about to hang up. For the last time. Quinn knew if that happened it would be over. Days, weeks later, someone somewhere would enter a house or a flat, a cleaner, a caretaker, a real estate agent, and there he’d be. The President’s only son, shot through the head, or strangled, half decomposed…

“Zack, please, stay there just a few more seconds.”

Sweat was running off Quinn’s face, the first time he had ever shown the massive strain inside himself these past twenty days. He knew just how close it was to disaster.

In the Kensington exchange a group of Telecom engineers and police officers stared at the monitors and listened to the rage coming down the line; at Cork Street, beneath the pavements of smart Mayfair, four men from MI-5 were rooted in their chairs, motionless as the anger poured out of the speaker into the room and the tape deck wound silently around and around.

Below the U.S. embassy in Grosvenor Square there were two ELINT engineers and three FBI agents, plus Lou Collins of the CIA and FBI representative Patrick Seymour. The news of the morning broadcast had brought them all to this place, anticipating something like what they were now hearing-which did not make it any better.

The fact that all the nation’s radio stations, including City Radio, had spent two hours denouncing the hoax call of the breakfast hour was irrelevant. They all knew that; leaks can be repudiated for the rest of time-it changes nothing. As Hitler said, the big lie is the one they believe.

“Please, Zack, let me get on to President Cormack personally. Just twenty-four hours more. After all this time, don’t throw it away now. The President’s got the authority to tell these assholes to get out of here and leave it to you and me. Just the two of us-we’re the only ones who can be trusted to get it right. All I ask, after twenty days, is just one more. Twenty-four hours, Zack, give me just that.”

There was a pause on the line. Somewhere along the streets of Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, a young detective constable was moving casually toward the bank of phone booths.

“This time tomorrow,” said Zack finally, and put the phone down. He quit the booth and had just turned the corner when the plainclothes policeman emerged from an alley and glanced at the bank of phone booths. All were empty. He had missed spotting Zack by eight seconds.

Quinn replaced the phone, walked to the long couch, lay on his back with his hands clasped behind his head, and stared at the ceiling.

“Mr. Quinn,” said McCrea hesitantly. Despite repeated assurances that he could drop the “Mister,” the shy young CIA man insisted on treating Quinn like his grade-school teacher.

“Shut up,” said Quinn clearly. The crestfallen McCrea, who had been about to ask if Quinn wanted coffee, went to the kitchen and made it anyway. The third, the “ordinary,” telephone rang. It was Cramer.

“Well, we all heard that,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

“Beat,” said Quinn. “Any news on the source of the broadcast?”

“Not yet,” said Cramer. “The girl subeditor who took the call is still at Holborn police station. She swears it was an American voice, but what would she know? She swears the man made it sound convincingly official, knew what to say. You want a transcript of the broadcast?”

“Bit late now,” said Quinn.

“What are you going to do?” asked Cramer.

“Pray a bit. I’ll think of something.”

“Good luck. I have to go ’round to Whitehall now. I’ll stay in touch.”

The embassy came next. Seymour. Congratulations on the way Quinn had handled it… If there’s anything we can do… That’s the trouble, thought Quinn. Someone is doing too damn much. But he did not say it.

He was halfway through his coffee when he swung his legs off the couch and picked up the phone to the embassy. It was answered at once in the basement. Seymour again.

“I want a patch-through on a secure line to Vice President Odell,” he said, “and I want it now.”

“Er, look, Quinn, Washington is being alerted about what just happened here. They’ll have the tapes themselves momentarily. I figure we should let them hear what happened and discuss-”

“I speak with Michael Odell inside ten minutes, or I raise him on the open line,” said Quinn carefully.

Seymour thought it over. The open line was insecure. NSA would pick up the call with their satellites; the British GCHQ would get it. So would the Russians…

“I’ll get to him and ask him to take your call,” said Seymour.

Ten minutes later Michael Odell came on the line. It was 6:15 A.M. in Washington; he was still at his residence at the Naval Observatory. But he had been awakened half an hour earlier.

“Quinn, what the hell’s going on over there? I just heard some horse shit about a hoax call to a radio show-”

“Mr. Vice President,” said Quinn levelly, “have you a mirror nearby?”

There was a stunned pause.

“Yes, I guess so.”

“If you look in it, you will see the nose on your face, right?”

“Look, what is this? Yeah, okay, I can see the nose on my face.”

“As surely as what you are looking at, Simon Cormack is going to be murdered in twenty-four hours…”

He let the words sink in to the shocked man sitting on the edge of his bed in Washington.

“… unless…”

“Okay, Quinn, lay it on the line.”

“Unless I have that package of diamonds, market value two million dollars, here in my hands by sunrise, London time, tomorrow. This call has been taped, for the record. Good day, Mr. Vice President.”

He put the phone down. At the other end, for several minutes the Vice President of the United States of America used language that would have lost him the votes of the Moral Majority, had those good citizens had the opportunity to hear him. When he was done, he called the telephone operator.