Frederick Forsyth - The Negotiator

He held his beer in his right hand, his left clutching a hand-rolled cigarette, and on the back was the black web and the spider. Quinn strolled down the length of the bar and sat down two barstools away from the man.

They both sat in silence for a while. The pug glanced at Quinn but took no other notice. Ten minutes went by. The man rolled another cigarette. Quinn gave him a light. The pug nodded but gave no verbal thanks. A surly, suspicious man, not easy to draw into conversation.

Quinn caught the barman’s eye and gestured to his glass. The barman brought another bottle. Quinn gestured to the empty glass of the man beside him and raised an eyebrow. The man shook his head, dug in his pocket, and paid for his own.

Quinn sighed inwardly. This was hard going. The man looked like a bar-brawler and a petty crook without even the brains to be a pimp, which does not need much. The chances that he spoke French were slim, and he was certainly surly enough. But his age was about right, late forties, and he had the tattoo. He would have to do.

Quinn left the bar and found Sam slumped in the car two corners away. He told her quietly what he wanted her to do.

“Are you out of your mind?” she said. “I can’t do that. I’d have you know, Mr. Quinn, I am a Rockcastle preacher’s daughter.” She was grinning as she said it.

Ten minutes later Quinn was back on his barstool when she came in. She had hiked her skirt so high the waistband must have been under her armpits, but covered by her polo-neck sweater. She had used the entire Kleenex box from the glove compartment to fill out her already full bosom to startling proportions. She swayed over to Quinn and took the barstool between him and the pug. The pug stared at her. So did everyone else. Quinn ignored her.

She reached up and kissed his cheek, then stuck her tongue in his ear. He still ignored her. The pug returned to staring at his glass, but darted an occasional glance at the bosom that jutted over the bar. The barman came up, smiled, and looked inquiring.

“Whisky,” she said. It is an international word, and uttering it does not betray country of origin. He asked her in Flemish if she wanted ice; she did not understand, but nodded brightly. She got the ice. She toasted Quinn, who ignored her. With a shrug she turned to the pug and toasted him instead. Surprised, the bar-brawler responded.

Quite deliberately Sam opened her mouth and ran her tongue along her lower lip, bright with gloss. She was vamping the pug unashamedly. He gave her a broken-toothed grin. Without waiting for more she leaned over and kissed the pug on the mouth.

With a backward sweep Quinn swept her off the bar-stool onto the floor, got up, and leaned toward the pug.

“What the shit do you think you’re up to, messing with my broad?” he snarled in drunken French. Without waiting for an answer he hauled off a left hook that took the pug squarely on the jaw and knocked him backwards into the sawdust.

The man fell well, blinked, rolled back on his feet, and came for Quinn. Sam, as instructed, left hastily by the door. The barman reached quickly for the phone beneath the counter, dialed 101 for the police, and, when they came on the line, muttered “Bar fight” and the address of his bar.

There are always prowl cars cruising that district, especially at night, and the first white Sierra with the word POLITIE along the side in blue was there in four minutes. It disgorged two uniformed officers, closely followed by two more from a second car twenty seconds afterward.

Still, it is surprising how much damage two good fighters can do to a bar in four minutes. Quinn knew he could outpace the pug, who was slowed by drink and cigarettes, and outpunch him. But he let the man land a couple of blows in the ribs, just for encouragement, then put a hard left hook under his heart to slow him a mite. When it looked as if the pug might call it a day, Quinn closed with him to help him a bit.

In a double bear hug the two men flattened most of the bar furniture, rolling through the sawdust in a melee of chair legs, tabletops, glasses, and bottles.

When the police arrived, the two brawlers were arrested on the spot. The police HQ for that area is Zone West P/1 and the nearest precinct house is in the Blindenstraat. The two squad cars deposited them there separately two minutes later and delivered them into the care of Duty Sergeant Van Maes. The barman totted up his damage and made a statement from behind his bar. No need to detain the man-he had a business to run. The officers divided his damage estimate by two and made him sign it.

Fighting prisoners are always separated at Blindenstraat. Sergeant Van Maes slung the pug, whom he knew well from previous encounters, into the bare and stained wachtkamer behind his desk; Quinn was made to sit on a hard bench in the reception area while his passport was examined.

“American, eh?” said Van Maes. “You should not get involved in fights, Mr. Quinn. This Kuyper we know; he is always in trouble. This time he does down. He hit you first, no?”

Quinn shook his head.

“Actually, I slugged him.”

Van Maes studied the barman’s statement.

“Hmm. Ja , the barman says you were both to blame. Pity. I must hold you both now. In the morning you go to the Magistraat. Because of the damage to the bar.”

The Magistraat would mean paperwork. When at 5:00 A.M. a very smart American lady in a severe business suit came into the precinct house with a roll of money to pay for the damage to the Montana, Sergeant Van Maes was relieved.

“You pay for the half this American caused, ja ?” he asked.

“Pay the lot,” said Quinn from his bench.

“You pay Kuyper’s share, too, Mr. Quinn? He is a thug, in and out of here since he was a boy. A long record, always small things.”

“Pay for him too,” said Quinn to Sam. She did so. “Since there’s now nothing owing, do you want to press charges, Sergeant?”

“Not really. You can leave.”

“Can he come too?” Quinn gestured to the wachtkamer and the snoring form of Kuyper, which could be seen through the door.

“You want him ?”

“Sure, we’re buddies.”

The sergeant raised an eyebrow, shook Kuyper awake, told him the stranger had paid his damages for him, and just as well or Kuyper would see a week inside jail, again. As it was, he could go. When Sergeant Van Maes looked up, the lady had gone. The American draped an arm around Kuyper and together they staggered down the steps of the precinct house. Much to the sergeant’s relief.

In London the two quiet men met during the lunch hour in a discreet restaurant whose waiters left them alone once their food had arrived. The men knew each other by sight, or more properly by photograph. Each knew what the other did for a living. A curious inquirer, had he had the impudence to ask, might have learned that the Englishman was a civil servant in the Foreign Office and the other the Assistant Cultural Attaché at the Soviet embassy.

He would never have learned, no matter how many records he checked, that the Foreign Office official was Deputy Head of Soviet Section at Century House, headquarters of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service; nor that the man who purported to arrange visits of the Georgian State Choir was the Deputy Rezident of the KGB within the mission. Both men knew they were there with the approval of their respective governments, that the meeting had been at the request of the Russians, and that the Chief of the SIS had reflected deeply before permitting it. The British had a fair idea what the Russian request would be.

As the remains of the lamb cutlets were cleared away and the waiter headed off for their coffee, the Russian asked his question.