Frederick Forsyth - The Negotiator

“Well, Duncan, it’s here or a hotel. Mind if we stay one last night?”

“Oh, of course, no problem. Be the Agency’s guest. I’m awfully sorry, but in the morning we have to vacate.”

“The morning will do fine,” said Quinn. He was tempted to ruffle the younger man’s hair in a paternal gesture. McCrea’s smile was infectious. “I need a bath, shave, food, and about ten hours’ sleep.”

McCrea went out to Mr. Patel’s across the road and came back with two large grocery bags. He made steak, fries, and salad, with two bottles of red wine. Quinn was touched to note he had picked a Spanish Rioja-not from Andalusia, but the nearest he could get.

Sam saw no need for further secrecy over her affair with Quinn. She came to his room as soon as he turned in, and if young McCrea heard them making love, so what? After the second time she fell asleep, on her front, her face against his chest. He placed one hand on the nape of her neck and she murmured at the touch.

But despite his tiredness he could not sleep. He lay on his back, as on so many previous nights, and stared at the ceiling and thought. There was something about those men in the warehouse, something he had missed. It came to him in the small hours. The man behind him, holding the Skorpion with practiced casualness, not the careful tension of one unused to handguns; balanced, relaxed, self-confident, knowing he could bring the machine pistol to aim, and fire in a fraction of a second. His stance, his poise-Quinn had seen it before.

“He was a soldier,” he said quietly into the darkness. Sam murmured “Mmmmm” but went on sleeping. Something else, something as he passed the door of the Volvo to climb into the trunk. It eluded him and he fell asleep at last.

In the morning Sam rose first and went back to her own room to dress. Duncan McCrea may have seen her leave Quinn’s room but he made no mention. He was more concerned that his guests should have a good breakfast.

“Last night… I forgot eggs,” he called, and scampered off down the stairs to get some from an early dairy around the corner.

Sam brought Quinn his breakfast in bed. He was lost in thought. She had become accustomed to his reveries, and left him. Lou Collins’s cleaners had certainly not done any proper cleaning, she thought. The rooms were dusty after four weeks without attention.

Quinn was not concerned with the dust. He was watching a spider in the top far corner of his room. Laboriously the little creature laced up the last two strands of an otherwise perfect web, checked to see that every strand was in place, then scuttled to the center and sat there waiting. It was that last movement by the spider that recalled to Quinn the tiny detail that had eluded him last night.

The White House committee had the full reports of Drs. Barnard and Macdonald in front of them. It was the former they were studying. One by one they finished the summary and sat back.

“Goddam bastards,” said Michael Odell with feeling. He spoke for all of them. Ambassador Fairweather sat at the end of the table.

“Is there any possibility,” Secretary of State Donaldson asked, “that the British scientists could have gotten it wrong? About the origins?”

“They say no,” answered the ambassador. “They’ve invited us to send anyone we like over to double-check, but they’re good. I’m afraid they’ve got it right.”

As Sir Harry Marriott had said, the sting was in the tail, the summary. Every single component, Dr. Barnard had said with the full concurrence of his military colleagues at Fort Halstead-the copper wires, their plastic covering, the Semtex, the pulse-receiver, the battery, the brass, and the leather stitching-was of Soviet manufacture.

He conceded it was possible for such items, though manufactured in the Soviet Union, to fall into the hands of others outside the U.S.S.R. But the clincher was the mini-del. No larger than a paper clip, these miniature detonators are used, and only used, within the Soviet space program at Baikonur. They are employed to give infinitesimal steering changes to the Salyut and Soyuz vehicles as they maneuver to dock in space.

“But it doesn’t make sense,” protested Donaldson. “Why should they?”

“A whole lot in this mess doesn’t make sense,” said Odell. “If this is true, I don’t see how Quinn could have known about it. It looks like they duped him all along, duped all of us.”

“The question is, what do we do about it?” asked Reed of Treasury.

“The funeral’s tomorrow,” said Odell. “We’ll get that over with first. Then we’ll decide how we handle our Russian friends.”

Over four weeks Michael Odell had found that the authority of acting-President was sitting more and more lightly on him. The men around this table had come to accept his leadership also, more and more, he realized, as if he were the President.

“How is the President,” asked Walters, “since… the news?”

“According to the doctor, bad,” said Odell. “Very bad. If the kidnapping was bad enough, the death of his son, and done that way, has been like a bullet in his gut.”

At the word bullet each man around the table thought the same thought. No one dared say it.

Julian Hayman was the same age as Quinn and they had known each other when Quinn lived in London and worked for the underwriting firm affiliated with Lloyd’s, specializing in protection and hostage release. Their worlds had overlapped, for Hayman, a former major in the SAS, ran a company dedicated to the provision of anticrime alarm systems and personal protection, including bodyguards. His clientele was exclusive, wealthy, and careful. They were people who had reason to be suspicious, or they would not have paid so highly for Hayman’s services.

The office in Victoria, to which Quinn guided Sam in the middle of the morning after leaving the flat and saying a final goodbye to Duncan McCrea, was as well-protected as it was discreet.

Quinn told Sam to sit in the window of a café down the street and wait for him.

“Why can’t I come with you?” she asked.

“Because he wouldn’t receive you. He may not even see me. But I hope he will-we go back a long way. Strangers he doesn’t like, unless they are paying heavily, and we aren’t. When it comes to women from the FBI, he’d be like shy game.”

Quinn announced himself through the door phone, aware he was being scanned by the overhead video camera. When the door clicked he walked right through to the back, past two secretaries who did not even look up. Julian Hayman was in his office at the far end of the ground floor. The room was as elegant as its occupant. It had no windows; neither did Hayman.

“Well, well, well,” he drawled. “Long time, soldier.” He held out a languid hand. “What brings you to my humble shop?”

“Information,” said Quinn. He told Hayman what he wanted.

“In earlier times, dear boy, no problem. But things change, don’t you see? Fact is, the word’s out on you, Quinn. Persona non grata, they’re saying at the club. Not the flavor of the month exactly, especially with your own people. Sorry, old boy, you’re bad news. Can’t help.”

Quinn lifted the phone off the desk and hit several buttons. It began to ring at the other end.

“What are you doing?” asked Hayman. The drawl had gone.

“No one saw me come in here, but half Fleet Street’s going to see me leave,” said Quinn.

“ Daily Mail ,” said a voice on the phone. Hayman reached forward and killed the call. Many of his best-paying clients were American corporations in Europe, the sort to whom he would prefer to avoid making laborious explanations.

“You’re a bastard, Quinn,” he said thinly. “Always were. All right, a couple of hours in the files, but I lock you in. Nothing is to be missing.”