Frederick Forsyth - The Negotiator

“What now?” asked Sam.

“Mr. Van Eyck, at his home,” said Quinn and asked for the local telephone directory.

The jovial face of the theme park’s director, Bertie Van Eyck, beamed out of the title page of the brochure, above his written welcome to all visitors. Being a Flemish name, and Wavre being deep in French-speaking country, there were only three Van Eycks listed. One was listed as Albert. Bertie. An address out of town. They lunched and drove out there, Quinn asking for directions several times.

It was a pleasant detached house on a long country road called the Chemin des Charrons. Mrs. Van Eyck answered the door and called for her husband, who soon appeared in cardigan and carpet slippers. From behind him came the sound of a sports program on the television.

Though Flemish-born, Bertie Van Eyck was in the tourist business and so was bilingual in French and Flemish. His English was also perfect. He summed up his visitors as Americans at a glance and said, “Yes, I am Van Eyck. Can I help you?”

“I sure hope you can, sir. Yes, I surely do,” said Quinn. He had dropped into his pose of folksy American innocence, which had fooled the receptionist at Blackwood’s Hotel. “Me and my lady wife here, we’re over in Belgium trying to look up relatives from the old country. See, my grandpa on my mother’s side, he came from Belgium, so I have cousins in these parts and I thought maybe if I could find one or two, that would be real nice to tell the family back Stateside…”

There was a roar from the television. Van Eyck looked visibly worried. The Belgian league leaders Tournai were playing French champions Sainte Étienne, a real needle match not to be missed by a football buff.

“I fear I am not related to any Americans,” he began.

“No, sir, you do not understand. I’ve been told up in Antwerp my mother’s nephew could be working in these parts, in a fun fair. Paul Marchais?”

Van Eyck’s brow furrowed and he shook his head.

“I know all my staff. We have no one of that name.”

“Great big guy. Big Paul, they call him. Six feet six, wide as this, tattoo on his left hand…”

“ Ja, ja , but he is not Marchais. Paul Lefort, you mean.”

“Well now, maybe I do mean that,” said Quinn. “I seem to recall his ma, my mom’s sister, did marry twice, so probably his name was changed. Would you by any chance know where he lives?”

“Wait, please,”

Bertie Van Eyck was back in two minutes with a slip of paper. Then he fled back to his football match. Tournai had scored and he had missed it.

“I have never,” said Sam as they drove back into Wavre town, “heard such an appalling caricature of an American meathead on a visit to Europe.”

Quinn grinned.

“Worked, didn’t it?”

They found the boardinghouse of Madame Garnier behind the railway station. It was already getting dark. She was a desiccated little widow who began by telling Quinn that she had no rooms vacant, but relented when he told her he sought none, but simply a chance to talk to his old friend Paul Lefort. His French was so fluent she took him for a Frenchman.

“But he is out, monsieur. He has gone to work.”

“At the Walibi?” asked Quinn.

“But of course. The Big Wheel. He overhauls the engine for the winter months.”

Quinn made a Gallic gesture of frustration.

“Always I miss my friend,” he complained. “Early last month I came by the fair, and he was on vacation.”

“Ah, not vacation, monsieur. His poor mother died. A long illness. He nursed her to the end. In Antwerp.”

So that was what he had told them. For the second half of September and all of October he had been away from his dwelling and his workplace. I bet he was, thought Quinn, but he beamed and thanked Madame Gamier, and they drove back the four kilometers to the fun fair.

It was as abandoned as it had been six hours earlier, but now in the darkness it seemed like a ghost town. Quinn scaled the outer fence and helped Sam over after him. Against the deep velvet of the night sky he could see the inky girders of the Ferris wheel, the highest structure in the park.

They walked past the dismantled carrousel, whose antique wooden horses would now be in storage, the shuttered hot-dog stand. The Ferris wheel towered above them in the night.

“Stay here,” murmured Quinn. Leaving Sam in the shadows, he walked forward to the base of the machine.

“Lefort,” he called softly. There was no reply.

The double seats, hanging on their steel bars, were canvas-shrouded to protect the interiors. There was no one in or under the bottommost seats. Perhaps the man was crouching in the shadows waiting for them. Quinn glanced behind him.

To one side of the structure was the machine house, a big green steel shed housing the electric motor, and on top of it the control cabin in yellow. The doors of both opened to the touch. There was not a sound from the generator. Quinn touched it lightly. The machine contained a residual warmth.

He climbed to the control booth, flicked on a pilot light above the console, studied the levers, and depressed a switch. Beneath him the engine purred into life. He engaged the gears and moved the forward lever to “slow.” Ahead of him the giant wheel began to turn through the darkness. He found a floodlight control, touched it, and the area around the base of the wheel was bathed in white light.

Quinn descended and stood by the boarding ramp as the bucket seats swung silently by him. Sam joined him.

“What are you doing?” she whispered.

“There was a spare canvas seat-cover in the engine house,” he said. To their right, the booth that had once been at the zenith of the wheel began to appear. The man in it was not enjoying the ride.

He lay on his back across the double seat, his huge frame filling most of the space destined for two passengers. The hand with the tattoo lay limply across his belly, his head lolled back against the seat, sightless eyes staring up at the girders and the sky. He passed slowly in front of them, a few feet away. His mouth was half open, the nicotine-stained teeth glinting wetly in the floodlight. In the center of his forehead was a drilled round hole, its edges darkened by scorch marks. He passed and began his climb back into the night sky.

Quinn returned to the control booth and stopped the Ferris wheel where it had been, the single occupied booth at the very top out of sight in the darkness. He closed down the motor, switched off the lights, and locked both doors; took the ignition key and both door keys and hurled them far into the ornamental lake. The spare canvas seat-cover was locked inside the engine room. He was very thoughtful; Sam, when he glanced at her, looked pale and shaken.

On the road out of Wavre and back to the motorway they passed down the Chemin des Charrons again, past the house of the fun-fair director who had just lost a worker. It began to rain again.

Half a mile farther on they spotted the Domaine des Champs hotel, its lights beaming a welcome through the wet darkness.

When they had checked in, Quinn suggested Sam take her bath first. She made no objection. While she was in the tub he went through her luggage. The garment bag was no problem; the suitcase was soft-sided and took him thirty seconds to check out.

The square, hard-framed vanity case was heavy. He tipped out the collection of hair spray, shampoo, perfume, makeup kit, mirrors, brushes, and combs. It was still heavy. He measured its depth from rim to base on the outside and again on the inside. There are reasons why people hate to fly, and X-ray machines can be one of them. There was a two-inch difference in height. Quinn took his penknife and found the crack in the interior floor of the case.