The Negotiator (42 page)

Gorbachev walked back behind his desk and resumed his seat. He chose his words carefully.

“Could there ... under any circumstances ... be any part of truth in this accusation?”

Vladimir Kryuchkov was startled. Within his own organization there was a department that specifically designed, invented, and made in its laboratories the most devilish devices for the ending of life, or simply for incapacitation. But that was not the point; they had not assembled any bomb to be concealed in Simon Cormack’s belt.

“No, Comrade, no, surely not.”

Gorbachev leaned forward and tapped his blotter.

“Find out,” he ordered. “Once and for all, yes or no, find out.”

The general nodded and left. The General Secretary stared down the long room. He needed—perhaps he should say “had needed”—the Nantucket Treaty more than the Oval Office knew. Without it his country faced the specter of the invisible B-2 Stealth bomber, and he the nightmare of trying to find 300 billion rubles to rebuild the air-defense network. Until the oil ran out.

Quinn saw him on the third night. He was short and stocky, with the puffed ears and broadened nose of a pug, a knuckle-fighter. He sat alone at the end of the bar in the Montana, a grubby dive in Oude Mann Straat, the aptly named Old Man Street. There were another dozen people in the bar, but no one talked to him and he looked as if he did not wish them to.

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.

“I’m afraid it is, Vitali Ivanovich,” replied the Englishman gravely. He spoke for several minutes, summarizing the findings of the Barnard forensic report. The Russian looked shaken.

“This is impossible,” said the Russian at last. “My government’s denials are wholly truthful.”

The British intelligence man was silent. He might have said that if you tell enough lies, when you finally tell the truth it is hard to keep an audience. But he did not. From his breast pocket he withdrew a photograph. The Russian studied it.

It was blown up many times from its original paper-clip size. In the photograph it was four inches long. A mini-det from Baikonur.

“This was found in the body?”

The Englishman nodded.

“Embedded in a fragment of bone, driven into the spleen.”

“I am not technically qualified,” said the Russian. “May I keep this?”

“That’s why I brought it,” said the SIS man.

For answer the Russian sighed and produced a sheet of paper of his own. The Englishman glanced at it and raised an eyebrow. It was an address in London. The Russian shrugged.

“A small gesture,” he said. “Something that came to our notice.”

The men settled up and parted company. Four hours later the Special Branch and the Anti-Terrorist squad jointly raided a semidetached house in Mill Hill, arresting all four members of an I.R. A. Active Service Unit and taking possession of enough bomb-making equipment to have created a dozen major attacks in the capital.

* * *

Quinn proposed to Kuyper that they find a bar still open and have a drink to celebrate their release. This time there was no objection. Kuyper bore no grudge for the fight in the bar; in fact he had been bored and the scrap had lifted his spirits. Having his fine paid for him was an added bonus. Moreover, his hangover needed the solace of a further beer or two, and if the tall man was paying ...

Kuyper’s French was slow but passable. He seemed to understand more of the language than he could speak. Quinn introduced himself as Jacques Degueldre, a French national of Belgian parentage, departed these many years to work on ships in the French Merchant Navy.

By the second beer Kuyper noticed the tattoo on the back of Quinn’s hand, and proudly offered his own for comparison.

“Those were the days, eh?” Quinn grinned. Kuyper cackled at the memory.

“Broke a few heads in those days,” he recalled with satisfaction. “Where did you join?”

“Congo, 1962,” said Quinn.

Kuyper’s brow furrowed as he tried to work out how one could join the Spider organization in the Congo. Quinn leaned forward conspiràtorially.

“Fought there from ’62 to ’67,” he said. “With Schramme and Wauthier. They were all Belgians in those days down there. Mostly Flemings. Best fighters in the world.”

That pleased Kuyper. He nodded somberly at the truth of it all.

“Taught those black bastards a lesson, I can tell you.”

Kuyper liked that even more.

“I nearly went,” he said regretfully. He had evidently missed a major opportunity to kill a lot of Africans. “Only I was in jail.”

Quinn poured another beer, their seventh.

“My best mate down there came from here,” said Quinn. “There were four with the Spider tattoo. But he was the best. One night we all went into town, found a tattooist, and they initiated me, seeing as I’d already passed the tests, like. You might remember him from here. Big Paul.”

Kuyper let the name sink in slowly, thought for a while, furrowed his brow, and shook his head. “Paul who?”

“Damned if I can remember. We were both twenty then. Long time ago. We just called him Big Paul. Huge chap, over six feet six. Wide as a truck. Must have weighed two hundred fifty pounds. Damn ... what
was
his last name ...?”

Kuyper’s brow lightened.

“I remember him,” he said. “Yeah, useful puncher. He had to get out, you know. One step ahead of the fuzz. That’s why he went to Africa. The bastards wanted him on a rape charge. Hold on ... Marchais. That was it, Paul Marchais.”

“Of course,” said Quinn. “Good old Paul.”

Steve Pyle, General Manager of the SAIB in Riyadh, got the letter from Andy Laing ten days after it was posted. He read it in the privacy of his office and when he put it down his hand was shaking. This whole thing was becoming a nightmare.

He knew the new records in the bank computer would stand up to electronic check—the colonel’s work at erasing one set and substituting another had been at near-genius level—but ... Supposing anything happened to the Minister, Prince Abdul? Suppose the Ministry did their April audit and the Prince declined to admit he had sanctioned the fund-raising? And he, Steve Pyle, had only the colonel’s word ...

He tried to reach Colonel Easterhouse by phone, but the man was away, unknown to Pyle, up in the mountainous North near Ha’il making plans with a Shi’ah Imam who believed that the hand of Allah was upon him and the shoes of the Prophet on his feet. It would be three days before Pyle could reach the colonel.