Frederick Forsyth - The Negotiator

Quinn grunted and concentrated on not hitting the tail-lights of the car in front of him, whose driver was also gawping at the accident. Seconds later the road cleared and Quinn gunned the Opel over the bridge across the Thames, leaving behind him the dead body of a man he had never heard of and never would: the body of Andy Laing.

“Where are we going?” asked Sam.

“Paris,” said Quinn.

Coming back to Paris for Quinn was like coming home. Though he had spent a longer time based in London, Paris held a special place in his life.

He had wooed and won Jeannette there, had married her there. For two blissful years they had lived in a small flat just off the rue de Grenelle; their daughter had been born at the American Hospital in Neuilly.

He knew bars in Paris, dozens of bars, where after the death of Jeannette and their baby Sophie on the Orléans highway he had tried to obliterate the pain with drink. He had been happy in Paris, been in heaven in Paris, known hell in Paris, waked up in gutters in Paris. He knew the place.

They spent the night at a motel just outside Ashford and caught the 9:00 A.M. Hovercraft from Folkestone to Calais, arriving in Paris in time for lunch.

Quinn checked them into a small hotel just off the Champs-Elysées and disappeared with the car to find a place to park it. The Eighth Arrondissement of Paris has many charms, but ample parking is not one of them. To have parked outside the Hôtel du Colisée in the street of the same name would have been to invite a wheel-clamp. Instead he used the twenty-four-hour underground parking lot in rue Chauveau-Lagarde, just behind the Madeleine, and took a cab back to the hotel. He intended to use cabs anyway. While in the area of the Madeleine he noted two other items he might need.

After lunch Quinn and Sam took a cab to the offices of the International Herald Tribune at 181 Avenue Charles-de-Gaulle in Neuilly.

“I’m afraid we can’t get it in tomorrow’s edition,” said the girl at the front desk. “It will have to be the day after. Insertions are only for the following day if entered by eleven-thirty A.M.”

“That’ll be fine,” said Quinn and paid cash. He took a complimentary copy of the paper and read it in the taxi back to the Champs-Elysées.

This time he did not miss the story, datelined out of Moscow, whose headline read: GEN. KRYUCHKOV OUSTER. There was a sub-headline: KGB CHIEF FIRED IN BIG SECURITY SHAKE-UP. He read the story out of interest but it signified nothing to him.

The agency correspondent reported that the Soviet Politburo had received “with regret” the resignation and retirement of KGB Chairman General Vladimir Kryuchkov. A deputy chairman would head the Committee pro tem, until the Politburo appointed a successor.

The report surmised that the changes appeared to have been in response to Politburo dissatisfaction, particularly with the performance of the First Chief Directorate, of which Kryuchkov himself had been a former head. The reporter finished his piece with the suggestion that the Politburo-a thinly veiled reference to Gorbachev himself- wished to see newer and younger blood moving into the top slot of the U.S.S.R.’s overseas espionage service.

That evening and through the following day, Quinn gave Sam, who had never seen Paris before, the tourist’s menu. They took in the Louvre, the Tuileries Gardens in the rain, the Arc de Triomphe, and the Eiffel Tower, rounding off their free day at the Lido cabaret.

The ad appeared the following morning. Quinn rose early and bought a copy from a vendor on the Champs-Elysées at seven to make sure it was in. It said simply: “Z. I’m here. Call me on… Q.” He had given the hotel number, and warned the operator in the small lobby that he expected a call. He waited for it in his room. It came at nine-thirty.

“Quinn?” The voice was unmistakable.

“Zack, before we go any further, this is a hotel. I don’t like hotel phones. Call me at this public booth in thirty minutes.”

He dictated the number of a phone booth just off the Place de la Madeleine. He left Sam behind, still in her nightgown, calling, “I’ll be back in an hour.”

The phone in the booth rang at exactly ten.

“Quinn, I want to talk to you.”

“We are talking, Zack.”

“I mean face-to-face.”

“Sure, no problem. You say when and where.”

“No tricks, Quinn. Unarmed, no backup.”

“You got it.”

Zack dictated the time and the place. Quinn made no notes-there was no need. He returned to the hotel. He found Sam in the lounge-cum-bar, with croissants and milky coffee before her. She looked up eagerly.

“What did he want?”

“A meeting, face-to-face.”

“Quinn, darling, be careful. He’s a killer. When and where?”

“Not here,” he said. There were other tourists having a late breakfast. “In our room.”

“It’s a hotel room,” he told her when they were upstairs. “Tomorrow at eight in the morning. His room at the Hôtel Roblin. Reserved in the name of-would you believe it?-Smith.”

“I have to be there, Quinn. I don’t like the sound of it. Don’t forget I’m weapon-trained too. And you are definitely carrying the Smith & Wesson.”

“Sure,” said Quinn.

Several minutes later Sam made an excuse and went down to the bar. She was back after ten minutes. Quinn recalled that there was a phone on the end of the bar.

She was asleep when he left at midnight, the bedside alarm clock set for six in the morning. He moved through the bedroom like a shadow, picking up his shoes, socks, trousers, shorts, sweater, jacket, and gun as he went. There was no one in the corridor. He dressed there, stuck the pistol in his belt, adjusted the windbreaker to cover it, and went silently downstairs.

He found a cab on the Champs-Elysées and was at the Hôtel Roblin ten minutes later.

“ La chambre de Monsieur Smith, s’il vous plaît ,” he told the night porter. The man checked a list and gave him the key. Number 10. Second floor. He mounted the stairs and let himself in.

The bathroom was the best place for the ambush. The door was in the corner of the bedroom and from it he could cover every angle, especially the door to the corridor. He removed the bulb from the main light in the bedroom, took an upright chair and placed it inside the bathroom. With the bathroom door open just enough to give him a two-inch crack, he began his vigil. When his night-sight came he could clearly make out the empty bedroom, dimly lit by the light from the street coming through the windows, whose curtains he had left open.

By six no one had come; he had heard no footsteps in the corridor. At half past six the night porter brought coffee to an early riser down the corridor; he heard the footsteps passing the door, then returning to the stairs to the lobby. No one came in; no one tried to come in.

At eight he felt the sense of relief washing over him. At twenty past the hour he left, paid his bill, and took a cab back to the Hôtel du Colisée. She was in the bedroom and nearly frantic.

“Quinn, where the hell have you been? I’ve been desperate with worry. I woke at five… you weren’t there… For God’s sake, we’ve missed the rendezvous.”

He could have lied, but he was genuinely remorseful. He told her what he had done. She looked as if he had hit her in the face.

“You thought it was me?” she whispered.

“Yes,” he admitted. After Marchais and Pretorius he had become obsessed with the idea that someone was tipping off the killer or killers; how else could they twice get to the vanished mercenaries before he and Sam did? She swallowed hard, composed herself, hid the hurt inside her.

“Okay, so when is the real rendezvous, may I ask? That is, if you trust me enough now.”