The Negotiator (63 page)

Quinn slewed quickly off the avenue, over the curb, and into a clump of bushes, killing his engine and lights as he did so. He watched the taillights die on the Cadillac and the driver climb out. The man glanced around him, watched a taxi cruise past looking forlornly for a fare, noticed nothing else, and began to walk. Instead of coming down the pavement he stepped over the railing bordering the greensward of West Potomac Park and began to cross the grass in the direction of the Reflecting Pool.

Out of the range of the streetlamps the darkness enveloped the figure in the black overcoat and hat. To Quinn’s right the bright illumination of the Lincoln Memorial lit the bottom end of Twenty-third Street, but the light hardly reached across the grass and into the trees of the park. Quinn was able to close up to fifty yards and keep the moving shadow in vision.

The man skirted the western end of the Vietnam Memorial, then cut half-left to slant away toward the high ground, heavily studded with trees, between the Constitution Gardens lake and the bank of the Reflecting Pool.

Far to Quinn’s left he could make out the glimmer of light from the two bivouacs where veterans kept vigil for the Missing in Action of that sad and distant war. His quarry was using a diagonal route to avoid passing too close to this single sign of life in the park at that hour.

The Memorial is a long wall of black marble, ankle-high at each end but seven feet deep at the center, recessed into the ground of the Mall and shaped like a very shallow chevron. Quinn stepped over the wall in the path of his quarry at the point where it was only a foot high, then crouched low in the shadow of the stone as the man ahead of him turned, as if hearing some scrape of shoe on gravel. With his head above the level of the surrounding lawn, Quinn could see him scan the park and the Mall before moving on.

A pale sickle moon emerged from behind the clouds. By its light Quinn could see the length of the marble wall incised with the names of the fifty-eight thousand men who died in Vietnam. He stooped briefly to kiss the icy marble and moved on, crossing the further stretch of lawn to the grove of towering oaks where stand the life-size bronze statues of veterans of the war.

Ahead of Quinn, the man in the black coat stopped and turned again to survey the ground behind him. He saw nothing; the moonlight picked out the oaks, bare of leaf and stark against the glow from the now-distant Lincoln Memorial, and glinted on the figures of the four bronze soldiers.

Had he known or cared more, the man in the coat would have known there are only three soldiers on the plinth. As he turned to walk on, the fourth detached himself and followed.

Finally the man reached “the usual place.” At the height of the knoll between the lake in the gardens and the Reflecting Pool itself, surrounded by discreet trees, stands a public toilet, illuminated by a single lamp, still burning at that hour. The man in the black coat took up his station near the lamp and waited. Two minutes later Quinn emerged from the trees. The man looked at him. He probably went pale—it was too dim to see. But his hands shook; Quinn could see that. They looked at each other. The man in front of Quinn was fighting back a rising tide of panic.

“Quinn,” said the man. “You’re dead.”

“No,” said Quinn reasonably. “Moss is dead. And McCrea. And Orsini, Zack, Marchais, and Pretorius. And Simon Cormack—oh, yes, he’s dead. And you know why.”

“Easy, Quinn. Let’s behave like reasonable people. He had to go. He was going to ruin us all. Surely you can see that.” He knew he was talking for his life now.

“
Simon
? A college student?”

The surprise of the man in the dark coat overcame his nervousness. He had sat in the White House, heard the details of what Quinn could do.

“Not the boy. The father. He has to go.”

“The Nantucket Treaty?”

“Of course. Those terms will ruin thousands of men, hundreds of corporations.”

“But why you? From what I know, you’re an extremely wealthy man. Your private fortune is enormous.”

The man Quinn faced laughed shortly.

“So far,” he said. “When I inherited my family wealth I used my talents as a broker in New York to place the estate in a variety of stock portfolios. Good stocks, high-growth, high-yield portfolios. It’s still in them. The trustees of my blind trust haven’t moved them.”

“In the armaments industry.”

“Look, Quinn, I brought this for Moss. Now it could be for you. Have you ever seen one before?”

He brought a slip of paper out of his breast pocket and held it out. By the light of the single lantern and the moon Quinn looked at it. A bank draft, drawn on a Swiss bank of unimpeachable reputation, payable to the bearer. In the sum of 5 million U.S. dollars.

“Take it, Quinn. You’ve never seen money like that before. Never will again. Think what you can do with it, the life you can lead with it. Comfort, luxury even, for the rest of your life. Just the manuscript, and it’s yours.”

“It really was about money all along, wasn’t it?” said Quinn thoughtfully. He toyed with the check, thinking things over.

“Of course. Money and power. Same thing.”

“But you were his friend. He trusted you.”

“Please, Quinn, don’t be naïve. It always comes down to money. This entire nation is about money. No one can change that. Always has been, always will. We worship the almighty dollar. Everything and everyone in this land can be bought—bought and paid for.”

Quinn nodded. He thought of the fifty-eight thousand names on the black marble four hundred yards behind him. Bought and paid for. He sighed and reached inside his sheepskin bomber jacket. The smaller man jumped back, startled.

“No need for that, Quinn. You said, no guns.”

But when Quinn’s hand emerged it clutched two hundred sheets of white typescript. He held out the manuscript. The other man relaxed, took the sheaf.

“You won’t regret it, Quinn. The money is yours. Enjoy it.”

Quinn nodded again. “There is just one thing ...”

“Anything.”

“I paid off my cab on Constitution Avenue. Could you give me a ride back to the Circle?”

For the first time the other man smiled. With relief.

“No problem,” he said.

Chapter 19

The men in the long leather coats decided to discharge their duties during the weekend. There were fewer people about, and their instructions were to be very discreet. They had observers up the street from the Moscow office building who told them by radio when the quarry left the city that Friday evening.

The arrest party waited patiently on the long, narrow road by the curve of the Moskva River, just a mile short of the turning into Peredelkino village where the senior members of the Central Committee, the most prestigious academicians, and the military chiefs have their weekend
dachas
.

When the car they were awaiting came in sight, the lead vehicle of the arresting party pulled across the road, blocking it completely. The speeding Chaika slowed, then came to a halt. The driver and bodyguard, both men from the CRU and with Spetsnaz training, had no chance. Men with machine pistols came from both sides of the road, and the two soldiers found themselves staring through the glass straight into the muzzles.

The senior plainclothes officer approached the rear passenger door, jerked it open, and looked inside. The man within glanced up with indifference, a touch of testiness, from the dossier he was reading.

“Marshal Kozlov?” the leather-coated KGB man asked.

“Yes.”

“Please dismount. Make no attempt at resistance. Order your soldiers to do the same. You are under arrest.”

The burly marshal muttered an order to his driver and bodyguard and climbed out. His breath frosted in the icy air. He wondered when he would breathe the crisp air of winter again. If he was afraid he gave no sign.

“If you have no authority for this, you will answer to the Politburo,
Chekistl
.” He used the contemptuous Russian word for a secret policeman.

“We act on the Politburo’s orders,” said the KGB man with satisfaction. He was a full colonel of the Second Chief Directorate. That was when the old marshal knew he had just run out of ammunition for the last time.

Two days later the Saudi security police quietly surrounded a modest private house in Riyadh in the deep darkness before dawn. Not quietly enough. One of them kicked over a tin can and a dog barked. A Yemeni house servant, already awake to brew the first strong dark coffee of the day, looked out and went to inform his master.

Colonel Easterhouse had been very well trained with the U.S. Airborne units. He also knew his Saudi Arabia, and that the threat of betrayal for a conspirator was never to be disregarded. His defenses were strong and always ready. By the time the great timber gate to his courtyard had come crashing down and his two Yemeni protectors had died for him, he had taken his own road to avoid the agonies he knew must await him. The security police heard the single shot as they raced up the stairs to the upper-floor living quarters.

They found him sprawled facedown in his study, an airy room furnished in exquisite Arab taste, his blood ruining a beautiful Kochan rug. The colonel in charge of the arrest group glanced around the room; his eye fell on a single Arabic word that formed the motif of a silk wall-hanging behind the desk. It said,
Insh’Allah
. If it is the will of Allah.

The following day Philip Kelly himself led the FBI team that surrounded the estate in the foothills outside Austin. Cyrus Miller received Kelly courteously and listened to the reading of his rights. When told he was under arrest he began to pray loudly and earnestly, calling down the divine vengeance of his personal Friend upon the idolaters and Antichrists who so clearly failed to comprehend the will of the Almighty as expressed through the actions of His chosen vessel.

Kevin Brown was in charge of the team that took Melville Scanlon into custody almost at the same minute at his palatial home outside Houston. Different FBI teams visited Lionel Moir in Dallas, and sought to arrest Ben Salkind at Palo Alto and Peter Cobb at Pasadena. Whether by intuition or coincidence, Salkind had boarded a flight the previous day for Mexico City. Cobb was believed to be at his desk in his office at the hour scheduled for the arrest. In fact a head cold had detained him at home that morning. It was one of those chances that stultify the best-planned operations. Policemen and soldiers know them well. A loyal secretary phoned him as the FBI team sped to his private house. He rose from his bed, kissed his wife and children, and went into the garage that adjoined his house. The FBI men found him there twenty minutes later.

Four days later President John Cormack walked into the Cabinet Room and took his seat at the center of the table, the place reserved for the Chief Executive. His inner circle of Cabinet members and advisers was already in place, flanking him. They noticed that his back was straight, his head high, his eyes clear.

Across the table were ranged Lee Alexander and David Weintraub of the CIA, beside Don Edmonds, Philip Kelly, and Kevin Brown from the FBI. John Cormack nodded to them as he took his seat.

“Your reports, if you please, gentlemen.”

Kevin Brown spoke first, at a glance from his Director.

“Mr. President, the log cabin in Vermont. We recovered an Armalite rifle and a Colt forty-five automatic, as described. Along with the bodies of Irving Moss and Duncan McCrea, both formerly of the CIA. They have been identified.”

David Weintraub nodded in agreement. “We have tested the Colt at Quantico. The Belgian police sent us blow-üp prints of the lands on the forty-five bullet they dug out of the upholstery of a Ferris wheel seat in Wavre. They check out: The Colt fired the bullet that killed the mercenary Marchais, alias Lefort. The Dutch police found a slug in the woodwork of an old barrel in the cellar beneath a bar in Den Bosch. Slightly distorted, but the lands were still visible. Same Colt forty-five. Finally, the Paris police recovered six intact bullets from the plaster of a bar in the Passage de Vautrin. We have identified these as having come from the Armalite. Both weapons were bought, under a false name, from a gun shop in Galveston, Texas. The owner has identified the buyer, from his photograph, as Irving Moss.”

“So it checks.”

“Yes, Mr. President, everything.”

“Mr. Weintraub?”

“I regret I have to confirm that Duncan McCrea was indeed hired locally in Central America on the recommendation of Irving Moss. He was used as a gofer down there for two years, then brought to America and sent to Camp Peary for training. After Moss was fired, any of his protégés should have been checked out. They weren’t. A lapse. I’m sorry.”

“You were not Deputy Director of Operations in those years, Mr. Weintraub. Please go on.”

“Thank you, Mr. President. We have learned from ... sources ... enough to confirm what the KGB
rezident
in New York told us unofficially. A certain Marshal Kozlov has been detained for interrogation concerning the supplying of the belt that killed your son. Officially, he has resigned on grounds of health.”

“He will confess, do you think?”

“At Lefortovo prison, sir, the KGB has its little ways,” Weintraub admitted.

“Mr. Kelly?”

“Some things, Mr. President, will never be provable. There is no trace of the body of Dominique Orsini, but the Corsican police have established that two rounds of buckshot were indeed fired into a rear bedroom above a bar in Castelblanc. The Smith & Wesson pistol we issued to Special Agent Somerville must be presumed lost forever in the Prunelli River. But everything that is provable, has been proved. The whole lot. The manuscript is accurate to the last detail, sir.”

“And the five men, the so-called Alamo Five?”

“We have three in custody, Mr. President. Cyrus Miller can almost certainly never stand trial. He is deemed to be clinically insane. Melville Scanlon has confessed everything, including the details of a further conspiracy to topple the monarchy of Saudi Arabia. I believe the State Department has already taken care of that side of things.”