The Negotiator (39 page)

Buried within the plastic explosive had been a miniature detonator, or mini-del, later extracted from within a fragment of vertebra that had itself been buried in the spleen. It was distorted but still recognizable—and identifiable.

From the explosive and detonator, a wire ran around the belt to the side, where it connected with a lithium battery similar to and no larger than the sort used to power digital watches. This had been inside a hollow, sculpted within the thickness of the double leather. The same wire then ran on to the pulse-receiver hidden inside the buckle. From the receiver a further wire, the aerial, ran right around the belt, between the layers of leather.

The pulse receiver would have been no larger than a small matchbox, probably receiving, on something like 72.15 megahertz, a signal sent from a small transmitter. This was not, of course, found at the scene, but it was probably a flat plastic box pack, smaller than a crush-proof cigarette pack, with a single flush button depressed by the ball of the thumb to effect detonation. Range: something over three hundred yards.

Al Fairweather was visibly shaken. “God, Harry, this is ... satanic.”

“And complex technology,” agreed the Home Secretary. “The sting is in the tail. Read the summary.”

“But why?” asked the ambassador when he looked up at last. “In God’s name, why, Harry? And how did they do it?”

“As to how, there’s only one explanation. Those animals pretended to let Simon Cormack go free. They must have driven on awhile, circled back, and approached the stretch of road from the direction of the fields on foot. Probably hidden in one of those clumps of trees standing two hundred yards away from the road across the fields. That would be within range. We have men scouring the woods now for possible footprints.

“As to why, I don’t know, Al. We none of us know. But the scientists are adamant. They have not got it wrong. For the moment I would suggest that report remain extremely confidential. Until we know more. We are trying to find out. I’m sure your own people will want to try also, before anything goes public.”

Fairweather rose, taking his copies of the reports.

“I’m not sending these by courier,” he said. “I’m flying home with them this afternoon.”

The Home Secretary escorted him down to the ground level.

“You do realize what this could do if it gets out?” he asked.

“No need to underline it,” said Fairweather. “There’d be riots. I have to take this to Jim Donaldson and maybe Michael Odell.
They’ll
have to tell the President. God, what a thing.”

Sam Somerville’s rental car had been where she left it in the short-stay parking lot at Heathrow. She drove straight to the manor house in Surrey. Kevin Brown read the letter she brought and glowered.

“You’re making a mistake, Agent Somerville,” he said. “Director Edmonds is making a mistake. That man down there knows more than he lets on—always has, always will. Letting him run sticks in my craw. He should be on a flight Stateside—in handcuffs.”

But the signature on the letter was clear. Brown sent Moxon down to the cellars to bring Quinn up. He was still in cuffs; they had to remove those. And unwashed, unshaven, and hungry. The FBI team began to clear out and hand the building back to their hosts. At the door Brown turned to Quinn.

“I don’t want to see you again, Quinn. Except behind a row of steel bars. And I think one day I will.”

On the drive back to London, Quinn was silent as Sam told him the outcome of her trip to Washington and the decision of the White House to let him have his head so long as she went with him.

“Quinn, just be careful. Those men have to be animals. What they did to that boy was savage.”

“It was worse,” said Quinn. “It was illogical. That’s what I can’t get over. It doesn’t make sense. They had it all. They were away clean and clear. Why come back to kill him?”

“Because they were sadists,” said Sam. “You know these people—you’ve dealt with their type for years. They have no mercy, no pity. They relish inflicting pain. They intended to kill him from the start.”

“Then why not in the cellar? Why not me too? Why not with a gun, knife, or rope? Why at all?”

“We’ll never know. Unless
they
can be found. And they’ve got the whole world to disappear into. Where do you want to go?”

“The apartment,” said Quinn. “I have my things there.”

“Me too,” said Sam. “I went to Washington with only the clothes on my back.”

She was driving north up Warwick Road.

“You’ve gone too far,” said Quinn, who knew London like a cabdriver. “Take a right at Cromwell Road, the next intersection.”

The lights were red. Across in front of them cruised a long black Cadillac bearing the fluttering pennant of the Stars and Stripes. Ambassador Fairweather was in the back, studying a report, heading for the airport. He looked up, glanced at the pair of them without recognition, and went on his way.

Duncan McCrea was still in residence, as if overlooked in the mayhem of the past few days. He greeted Quinn like a Labrador puppy reunited with his master.

Earlier that day, he reported, Lou Collins had sent in the cleaners. These were not men who wielded feather dusters. They had cleaned out the bugs and wiretaps. The apartment was “burned” as far as the Company was concerned and they had no further use for it. McCrea had been told to stay on, pack, tidy up, and return the keys to the landlord when he left the next morning. He was about to pack Sam’s and Quinn’s clothes when they arrived.

“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.”

“Would I do that to you?” asked Quinn amiably. Hayman led him downstairs to the basement archive.

Partly in the course of his business, partly out of a personal interest, Julian Hayman had amassed over the years a remarkably comprehensive archive of criminals of every kind. Murderers, bank robbers, gangsters, swindlers, dope peddlers, arms traffickers, terrorists, kidnappers, shifty bankers, accountants, lawyers, politicians, and policemen; dead, alive, in jail, or simply missing—if they had appeared in print, and often if they had not, he had them filed. The archive ran right under the building.

“Any particular section?” asked Hayman as he switched on the lights. The file cabinets ran in all directions, and these were only the cards and the photographs. The main data was on computer.

“Mercenaries,” said Quinn.

“As in Congo?” asked Hayman.

“As in Congo, Yemen, South Sudan, Biafra, Rhodesia.”

“From here to here,” said Hayman, gesturing to ten yards of chin-high steel filing cabinets. “The table’s at the end.”