Warren Murphy - Hostile Takeover

Down in the lobby, Colonel Neville Upton-Downs listened to the voice of the prime minister as it came through the desk telephone.

"At once, ma'am," he said.

Hanging up, he nodded to a trio of soldiers crouched in the corridor, facing the elevator and stairs, their telescopic rifles at the ready.

"We're going in, lads," he told them. "Half of you hold the lift. The others go up the staircase. Third floor. End of hall. Look sharp. "

The men deployed. Three guarded the elevator while the others went up the steps, their boots making a frightful racket.

Colonel Upton-Downs was so confident in his men, noisy feet aside, that he did not feel compelled to lead them into battle. By all accounts, the two terrorists were unarmed. One was an ancient Chinese or some foreign sort. As he waited, he wondered why it had taken so long for the prime minister to give the green light.

Going outside, Colonel Upton-Downs signaled his men that the matter was about to be brought to a successful conclusion. They visibly relaxed at their posts. He strode around to the rear of the hotel and into the yard beneath the window they had pinpointed as belonging to the terrorists.

He borrowed a pair of field glasses from a spotter and trained them on the target window.

"Be over soon, chaps," he muttered.

It was. The window glass abruptly shattered under the force of an SAS soldier in full flight. He struck the concrete like a sack of potatoes. After a short time, he was joined by a second man and then a third. They made a neat pile on the pavement.

A man's face poked out of the broken window.

"Don't make that mistake again," an American voice shouted from the wrecked window.

"The ruddy bastard!" Colonel Upton-Downs shouted. "Take him out! Take the bounder out now!"

Rifle muzzles jumped to the ready. Fingers caressed triggers.

"Uh-uh," the American said. "Naughty, naughty." Colonel Upton-Downs abruptly changed his mind. "Hold fire! Drat it! Hold your damned fire!"

For the American was holding the Royal Sceptre in front of his face. He shook one finger at them as if at pranking children.

"Let's not make any messy mistakes," he said, withdrawing from the window.

Dejectedly the colonel trudged back to the hotel lobby. The prime minister was not going to take this in good humor.

The prime minister accepted the news with a flinty "Thank you, Colonel. Stand by." She laid the phone down without hanging up and faced her cabinet, who were arrayed around a conference table at Number Ten Downing Street.

"The assault has failed," she told them. "We must now consider other options."

"Such as?" the home secretary inquired.

"Such as, my dear man, that these terrorists are sincere in their belief. You all know the American situation. Our exchange has just closed after taking a tremendous beating. It can only get worse. The Far Eastern markets are bound to react badly to what is happening in Europe and America. And we will feel the brunt of the next wave of selling panic. It may never end."

"I fear if the American situation is as bad as they say," the minister of finance pointed out, "it will not matter. They are practically bankrupting their exchange in their frenzy to sell."

"Could someone be causing this?"

"Balderdash." The murmur of assent that followed the foreign minister's remark reminded the prime minister of Parliament during her heyday, when she used to ride roughshod over the simpering cowards.

"What manner of bloody fool would attempt such a thing, knowing it would ruin our own economy?" the finance minister remarked pointedly.

"Communist plant, possibly?" Sir Guy Phillistone blandly suggested between sucks on his broken pipe.

"It's a thought," the home secretary muttered. "Lord knows we've had enough of them."

No one joined in the home secretary's uncertain laughter.

The prime minister shook her head. "The Communist world looks to the West for economic salvation," she said. "This is not one of their operations. If we sink, they follow us to the bottom." She spanked the table with a palm. "Think, gentlemen. Think. If you have the knack for it."

Stung, the cabinet looked to one another in embarrassment. But the cutting remark cleared the air. They stopped talking and began thinking.

"You know," the chancellor of the exchequer began slowly, " I have been receiving these wildly incoherent letters of late. About one every fortnight, informing me that the signal has been received and something called the Grand Plan has commenced."

"And what do you do with these letters?" the prime minister inquired.

"Why, I dispose of them, of course. They are obviously the scrawling of a crackpot."

"And does this crackpot have a name?"

"Yes, a Sir Quincy, I believe."

"And have you none of these letters at all?"

"I fear the most recent of them has gone into the rubbish," the chancellor of the exchequer admitted.

The prime minister rose quickly. "Find that letter. Get down on your hands and knees in the rubbish, if you must. It is all we have. Gentlemen, let's get on this, shall we?"

As they filed from the room, the prime minister picked up the still-open telephone line and began issuing new instructions to a very surprised Colonel Upton-Downs.

The letter, smelling of old cigarette butts and loose tea, was on the prime minister's Downing Street desk within the hour.

She picked it up with sure fingers and an offended expression on her face. The letter was still in its crumpled envelope. The return address was smudged, but the bottom line was still legible, reading "Oxford, Oxfordshire, OX1 2LJ.

"This narrows it down," she murmured, extracting the letter. It did indeed read as if written by a crackpot. It rambled, dwelling on the fading glory of the British Empire, soon to flower again like a phoenix. A colorful if illiterate metaphor, the prime minister thought.

The final paragraph said, "Vide Royal Reclamation Charter." It was signed: "Faithfully yours, Sir Quincy Chiswick."

The prime minister looked up Sir Quincy Chiswick in her office copy of Burke's Peerage. She learned that he was Regius Professor of History at Nuffing College. A call to the college brought the news that the staff had all left for the day. There was no one competent to retrieve his address or telephone number.

The prime minister called for directory information and asked if there was a telephone subscriber known as Sir Quincy Chiswick in Oxford or Oxfordshire. The prime minister was assured, after a ten-minute delay, that there was none.

She thanked the operator and hung up. Ringing her secretary, she told him, "Have them go through Public Records for a document called the Royal Reclamation Charter. "

"That could take a bit of doing."

"Then I would begin now," the prime minister said sharply, giving her secretary the benefit of her piranha smile.

The man went away. The prime minister personally put her own call through to the Morton Court Hotel.

"Hello, desk? Could you kindly put me through to the terrorists in Room Twenty-eight? Thank you."

Remo Williams picked up the phone. The woman's voice sounded familiar, so when she identified herself as the prime minister of England, he didn't give her an argument.

"Pssst! Chiun, I got the prime minister on the line."

I only speak with royalty," Chiun curtly replied.

"Sorry," Remo told the prime minister. "He's indisposed. Your sexless soap operas have him enthralled." Remo listened for five minutes without getting in a word edgewise. Then he turned to the Master of Sinanju.

"She says they have the guy's name," he said. "They can't find him, but they think he lives in Oxford. Isn't that a shoe?"

"Inform the prime minister that I will allow you to search for this person in the town of Oxford."