The Negotiator

Chapter 17

When Quinn awoke he was in a bare white room, flat on his back on a cot. Without moving he looked around. A solid door, also white; a recessed bulb protected by a steel grille. Whoever had set the place up did not wish the inhabitant to smash the bulb and slice his wrists. He recalled the too-smooth English businessman, the sting in the rear of the calf, the slide into unconsciousness. Damn the Brits.

There was a peephole in the door. He heard it click. An eye stared at him. There was no more point in pretending to be unconscious or asleep. He pulled back the blanket that covered him and swung his legs to the floor. Only then did he realize he was naked but for his shorts.

There was a rasp as two bolts were pulled back and the door opened. The man who came in was short, chunky, with close-cropped hair and a white jacket, like a steward. He said nothing. Just marched in bearing a plain deal table, which he set down against the far wall. He went back out and reappeared with a large tin bowl and a pitcher from whose top a wisp of steam emerged. These he put on the table. Then he went out again, but only to the corridor. Quinn wondered if he should flatten the man and seek to escape. He decided against it. The lack of windows indicated he was below ground somewhere; he wore only shorts, the servant looked as though he could handle himself in a fight, and there would have to be other “heavies” out there somewhere.

When the man came back the second time he bore a fluffy towel, washcloth, soap, toothpaste, a new toothbrush still in its wrapper, safety razor and foam, and a self-standing shaving mirror. Like a perfect valet, he arranged these on the table, paused at the door, gestured to the table, and left. The bolts went home.

Well, thought Quinn, if the British undercover people who had snatched him wished him to look presentable for Her Majesty, he was prepared to oblige. Besides, he needed to freshen up.

He took his time. The hot water felt good and he sponged himself right down. He had showered on the ferry Napoléon, but that had been forty-eight hours ago. Or was it? His watch was gone. He knew he had been kidnapped about lunchtime, but was that four hours ago, twelve, or twenty-four? Whatever, the sharp mint of the toothpaste felt good in the mouth. It was when he took up the razor, lathered his chin, and gazed in the small round mirror that he got a shock. The bastards had given him a haircut.

Not a bad one, either. His brown hair was trimmed and barbered, but styled in a different way. There was no comb among the wash things; he could not push it the way he liked it except with his fingertips. Then it stood up in tufts, so he pushed it back the way the unknown barber had left it. He had hardly finished when the steward came back again.

“Well, thanks for that, pal,” said Quinn. The man gave no sign of having heard; just removed the wash things, left the table, and reappeared with a tray. On it was fresh orange juice, cereal, milk, sugar, a platter containing eggs and bacon, toast, butter, and orange marmalade, and coffee. The coffee was fresh and smelled great. The steward set a plain wooden chair by the table, gave a stiff bow, and left.

Quinn was reminded of an old British tradition: When they take you to the Tower to chop your head off, they always give you a hearty breakfast. He ate anyway. Everything.

Hardly had he finished than Rumpelstiltskin was back, this time with a pile of clothes, fresh-laundered and pressed. But not his. A crisp white shirt, tie, socks, shoes, and a two-piece suit. Everything fitted as if tailor-made for him. The servant gestured to the clothes and tapped his watch as if to say there was little time to lose.

When Quinn was dressed, the door opened again. This time it was the elegant businessman, and he at least could speak.

“My dear chap, you’re looking a hundred percent better, and feeling it, I hope. My sincere apologies for the unconventional invitation here. We felt that without it you might not care to join us.”

He still looked like a fashion plate and talked like an officer from one of the Guards regiments.

“I’ll give you assholes credit where it’s due,” said Quinn. “You have style.”

“How very kind,” murmured the businessman. “And now, if you would come with me, my superior officer would like a word with you.”

He led Quinn down a plain corridor to an elevator. As it hummed upward, Quinn asked what time it was.

“Ah, yes,” said the businessman. “The American obsession with the hour of the day. Actually it is close to midnight. I fear that breakfast was all our night-duty chef was very good at.”

They got out of the lift into another corridor, plushly carpeted this time, with several paneled wooden doors leading off it. But his guide led Quinn to the far end, opened the door, ushered Quinn inside, withdrew, and closed the door.

Quinn found himself in a room that might have been office or drawing room. Sofas and armchairs were grouped around a gas-log fire, but there was an imposing desk in the window bay. The man who rose from behind it and came to greet him was older than he, mid-fifties he guessed, in a Savile Row suit. He also wore an air of authority in his bearing and in his hard, no-nonsense face. But his tone was amiable enough.

“My dear Mr. Quinn, how good of you to join me.”

Quinn began to get annoyed. There was a limit to this game-playing.

“Okay, can we quit playing charades? You had me jabbed in a hotel lobby, drugged unconscious, brought here. Fine. Totally unnecessary. If you British spooks had wanted to talk to me, you could have had a couple of bobbies pick me up without need of hypodermic needles and all that crap.”

The man in front of him paused, seeming genuinely surprised.

“Oh, I see. You think you are in the hands of Mi-Five or Mi-Six? I fear not. The other side, so to speak. Allow me. I am General Vadim Kirpichenko, newly appointed head of the First Chief Directorate, KGB. Geographically you are still in London; technically you are on sovereign Soviet territory-our embassy in Kensington Park Gardens. Won’t you sit down?”

For the second time in her life Sam Somerville was shown into the Situation Room in the basement below the West Wing of the White House. She had barely been off the Madrid plane five hours. Whatever the men of power wanted to ask her, they did not wish to be kept waiting.

The Vice President was flanked by the four senior Cabinet members and Brad Johnson, the National Security Adviser. Also in attendance were the Director of the FBI and Philip Kelly. Lee Alexander of the CIA sat alone. The one other man was Kevin Brown, repatriated from London to report personally, something he had just finished doing when Sam was shown in. The atmosphere toward her was clearly hostile.

“Sit down, young lady,” said Vice President Odell. She took the chair at the end of the table, where they could all see her. Kevin Brown glowered at her; he would have preferred to conduct her debriefing personally, then reported to this committee. It was not pleasing to have his subordinate agents interrogated directly.

“Agent Somerville,” said the Vice President, “this committee let you return to London and released the man Quinn to your charge for one reason: your assertion that he might make some progress in identifying Simon Cormack’s abductors because he had actually seen them. You were also told to stay in touch, report back. Since then… nothing. Yet we’ve been getting a stream of reports about bodies being left all over Europe, and always you and Quinn a few yards away at the time. Now will you please tell us what the hell you’ve been doing?”

Sam told them. She started at the beginning, Quinn’s vague recall of a spider tattoo on the back of the hand of one of the men in the Babbidge warehouse; the trail via the Antwerp thug Kuyper to Marchais, already dead under a pseudonym in a Ferris wheel in Wavre. She told them of Quinn’s hunch that Marchais might have brought a long-time buddy into the operation, and the unearthing of Pretorius in his bar in Den Bosch. She told them of Zack, the mercenary commander Sidney Fielding. What he had had to say, minutes before he died, kept them in riveted silence. She finished with the bugged handbag and Quinn’s departure alone to Corsica to find and interrogate the fourth man, the mysterious Orsini, who, according to Zack, had actually provided the booby-trapped belt.

“Then he called me, twenty hours ago, and told me it was over, the trail cold, Orsini dead and never said a word about the fat man…”

There was silence when she finished.

“Jesus,” said Reed, “that is incredible. Do we have any evidence that might tend to support all this?”

Lee Alexander looked up.

“The Belgians report that the slug that killed Lefort, alias Marchais, was a forty-five, not a thirty-eight. Unless Quinn had another gun…”

“He didn’t,” said Sam quickly. “The only one we had between us was my thirty-eight, the one Mr. Brown gave me. And Quinn was never out of my sight for long enough to get from Antwerp to Wavre and back, or from Arnhem to Den Bosch and back. As for the Paris café, Zack was killed by a rifle fired from a car in the street.”

“That checks,” said Alexander. “The French have recovered the slugs fired at that café. Armalite rounds.”

“Quinn could have had a partner,” suggested Walters.

“Then there was no need to bug my handbag,” said Sam. “He could just have slipped away while I was in the bath, or the John, and made a phone call. I ask you to believe, gentlemen, Quinn is clean. He damn near got to the bottom of this thing. There was someone ahead of us all the way.”

“The fat man, referred to by Zack?”queried Stannard. “The one Zack swore set it all up, paid for it all? Maybe. But… an American!”

“May I make a suggestion?” asked Kevin Brown. “I may have been wrong in thinking that Quinn was involved here from the outset. And I admit that. But there is another scenario that makes even more sense.”

He had their undivided attention.

“Zack claimed the fat man was American. How? By his accent. What would a Britisher know about American accents? They mistake Canadians for Americans. Say the fat man was Russian. Then it all fits. The KGB has dozens of agents perfect in English and with impeccable American accents.”

There was a series of slow nods around the table.

“My colleague is right,” said Kelly. “We have motive. The destabilization and demoralization of the United States has long been Moscow’s top priority-no argument about that. Opportunity? No problem. There was publicity about Simon Cormack studying at Oxford, so the KGB mounts a major ‘wet’ operation to hurt us all. Financing? They have no problem there. Using the mercenaries-the employment of surrogates to do the dirty work is standard practice. Even the CIA does it. As for wasting the four mercenaries when the job is over-that’s standard for the Mob, and the KGB has similarities to the Mob over here.”

“If one accepts that the fat man was a Russian,” added Brown, “it all checks out. I’ll accept, on the basis of Agent Somerville’s report, that there was a man who paid, briefed, and ‘ran’ Zack and his thugs. But for me, that man is now back where he came from-in Moscow.”

“But why,” queried Jim Donaldson, “should Gorbachev first set up the Nantucket Treaty, then blow it away in this appalling manner?”

Lee Alexander coughed gently.

“Mr. Secretary, there are known to be powerful forces inside the Soviet Union opposed to glasnost, perestroika, the reforms, Gorbachev himself, and most particularly the Nantucket Treaty. Let us recall that the former chairman of the KGB, General Kryuchkov, has just been fired. Maybe what we have been discussing is the reason why.”

“I think you’ve got it,” said Odell. “Those covert KGB bastards mount the operation to shaft America and the treaty in one. Gorbachev personally doesn’t need to have been responsible.”

“Doesn’t change a damn thing,” said Walters. “The American public is never going to believe that. And that includes Congress. If this was Moscow’s doing, Mr. Gorbachev stands indicted, aware or not. Remember Irangate?”

Yes, they all remembered Irangate. Sam looked up.

“What about my handbag?” she asked. “If the KGB set it all up, why would they need us to lead them to the mercenaries?”

“No problem,” suggested Brown. “The mercenaries didn’t know the boy was going to die. When he did, they panicked, hid out. Maybe they never showed up someplace where the KGB was waiting for them. Besides, attempts were made to implicate you and Quinn, the American negotiator and an agent of the FBI, in two of the killings. Again, standard practice: Throw dust in the eyes of world opinion; make it look like the American Establishment silencing the killers before they can talk.”

“But my handbag was switched for a replica with the bug inside,” protested Sam. “Somewhere in London.”

“How do you know that, Agent Somerville?” asked Brown. “Could have been at the airport, or on the ferry to Ostende. Hell, it could have been one of the Brits-they came to the apartment after Quinn quit. And the manor house in Surrey. Quite a number have worked for Moscow in the past. Remember Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Vassall, Blunt, Blake-they were all traitors who worked for Moscow. Maybe they have a new one.”

Lee Alexander studied his fingertips. He deemed it undiplomatic to mention Mitchell, Marshall, Lee, Boyce, Harper, Walker, Lonetree, Conrad, Howard, or any of the other twenty Americans who had betrayed Uncle Sam for money.

“Okay, gentlemen,” said Odell an hour later, “we commission the report. A through Z. The findings have to be clear. The belt was Soviet-made. The suspicion will remain unproved but indelible for all that-this was a KGB operation and it ends with the vanished agent known only as the fat man, now presumably back behind the Iron Curtain. We know the ‘what’ of it, and the ‘how.’ We think we know the ‘who,’ and the ‘why’ is pretty clear. The Nantucket Treaty is belly-up for all time, and we have a President sick with grief. Jesus, I never thought I’d say it, even though I’m not known as a liberal, but right now I almost wish we could nuke those Commie bastards back to the Stone Age.”

Ten minutes later the meeting was in closed session. It was only in her car on her way back to her apartment in Alexandria that Sam spotted the flaw in their beautiful solution. How did the KGB know to copy a Harrods-bought crocodile-skin handbag?

Philip Kelly and Kevin Brown shared a car back to the Hoover Building.

“That young lady got closer to Quinn, a lot closer, than I had intended,” said Kelly.

“I smelled that in London, all through the negotiations,” Brown agreed. “She fought in his corner all the way, and in my book we still want to talk to Quinn himself-I mean, really talk. Have the French or the British traced him yet?”

“No. I was going to tell you. The French tagged him out of Ajaccio airport on a London-bound plane. He abandoned his car, full of bullet holes, in the parking lot. The Brits traced him in London to a hotel, but when they got there he had vanished-never even checked in.”

“Damn, that man’s like an eel,” Brown swore.

“Exactly,” said Kelly. “But if you’re right, there could be one person he’ll contact. Somerville; the only one. I don’t like doing this to one of our own people, but I want her apartment bugged, her phone tapped, and mail intercepted. As of tonight.”

“Right away,” said Brown.

When they were alone, the Vice President and the inner five members of the Cabinet again raised the issue of the Twenty-fifth Amendment.

It was the Attorney General who brought it up. Quietly and regretfully. Odell was on the defensive. He saw more of their reclusive President than the others. He had to admit John Cormack appeared as lackluster as ever.

“Not yet,” he said. “Give him time.”

“How much?” asked Morton Stannard. “It’s been three weeks since the funeral.”

“Next year is election year,” Bill Walters pointed out. “If it’s to be you, Michael, you will need a clear run from January.”

“Jesus,” exploded Odell. “That man in the White House is stricken and you talk of elections.”

“Just being practical, Michael,” said Donaldson.

“We all know that after Irangate, Ronald Reagan was so badly confused for a while that the Twenty-fifth was almost invoked then,” Walters pointed out. “The Cannon Report at the time makes plain it was touch-and-go. But this crisis is worse.”

“President Reagan recovered,” pointed out Hubert Reed. “He resumed his functions.”

“Yes, just in time,” said Stannard.

“That’s the issue,” suggested Donaldson. “How much time do we have?”

“Not a lot,” admitted Odell. “The media have been patient so far. He’s a damn popular man. But it’s cracking, fast.”

“Deadline?” asked Walters quietly.

They held a vote. Odell abstained. Walters raised his silver pencil. Stannard nodded. Brad Johnson shook his head. Walters agreed. Jim Donaldson reflected and joined Johnson in refusing. It was locked, two and two. Hubert Reed looked around at the other five men with a worried frown. Then he shrugged.

“I’m sorry, but if it must be, it must.”

He joined the ayes. Odell exhaled noisily.

“All right,” he said. “We agree by a majority. By Christmas Eve, without a major turnaround, I’ll have to go and tell him we’re invoking the Twenty-fifth on New Year’s Day.”

He had only risen halfway when the others reached their feet in deference. He found he enjoyed it.

“I don’t believe you,” said Quinn.

“Please,” said the man in the Savile Row suit. He gestured toward the curtained windows. Quinn glanced around the room. Above the mantel shelf, Lenin addressed the masses. Quinn walked to the window and peered out.

Across the gardens of bare trees and over the wall, the top section of a red London double-decker bus ran along Bayswater Road. Quinn resumed his seat.

“Well, if you’re lying, it’s a hell of a film set,” he said.

“No film set,” replied the KGB general. “I prefer to leave that to your people in Hollywood.”

“So what brings me here?”

“You interest us, Mr. Quinn. Please don’t be so defensive. Strange though it may sound, I believe we are for the moment on the same side.”

“It does sound strange,” said Quinn. “Too damn strange.”

“All right, so let me talk it through. For some time we have known that you were the man chosen to negotiate the release of Simon Cormack from his abductors. We also know that after his death you have spent a month in Europe trying to track them down-with some success, it would appear.”

“That puts us on the same side?”

“Maybe, Mr. Quinn, maybe. My job isn’t to protect young Americans who insist on going for country runs with inadequate protection. But it is to try to protect my country from hostile conspiracies that do her huge damage. And this… this Cormack business… is a conspiracy by persons unknown to damage and discredit my country in the eyes of the entire world. We don’t like it, Mr. Quinn. We don’t like it at all. So let me, as you Americans say, level with you.

“The abduction and murder of Simon Cormack was not a Soviet conspiracy. But we are getting the blame for it. Ever since that belt was analyzed, we have been in the dock of world opinion. Relations with your country, which our leader was genuinely trying to improve, have been poisoned; a treaty to reduce weapons levels, on which we placed great store, is in ruins.”

“It looks as though you don’t appreciate disinformation when it works against the U.S.S.R., even though you’re pretty good at it yourselves,” said Quinn.

The general had the grace to shrug in acceptance of the barb.

“All right, we indulge in disinformatsya from time to time. So does the CIA. It goes with the territory. And I admit it’s bad enough to get the blame for something we have done. But it is intolerable for us to be blamed for this affair, which we did not instigate.”

“If I were a more generous man I might feel sorry for you,” said Quinn. “But the fact is, there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. Not anymore.”

“Possibly.” The general nodded. “Let us see. I happen to believe you are smart enough to have worked out already that this conspiracy is not ours. If I had put this together, why the hell would I have Cormack killed by a device so provably Soviet?”

Quinn nodded. “All right. I happen to think you were not behind it.”

“Thank you. Now, have you any ideas as to who might have been?”

“I think it came out of America. Maybe the ultra-right. If the aim was to kill off the Nantucket Treaty’s chance of Senate ratification, it certainly succeeded.”

“Precisely.”

General Kirpichenko went behind the desk and returned with five enlarged photographs. He put them in front of Quinn.

“Have you ever seen these men before, Mr. Quinn?”

Quinn studied the passport photographs of Cyrus Miller, Melville Scanlon, Lionel Moir, Peter Cobb, and Ben Salkind. He shook his head.

“No, never seen them.”

“Pity. Their names are on the reverse side. They visited my country several months ago. The man they conferred with-the man I believe they conferred with-would have been in a position to supply that belt. He happens to be a marshal.”

“Have you arrested him? Interrogated him?”

General Kirpichenko smiled for the first time.

“Mr. Quinn, your Western novelists and journalists are happy to suggest that the organization I work for has limitless powers. Not quite. Even for us, to arrest a Soviet marshal without a shred of proof is way off base. Now, I’ve been frank with you. Would you return the compliment? Would you tell me what you managed to discover these past thirty days?”

Quinn considered the request. He could see no reason not to; the affair was over so far as any trail he would ever be able to follow was concerned. He told the general the story from the moment he ran out of the Kensington apartment to make his private rendezvous with Zack. Kirpichenko listened attentively, nodding several times, as if what he heard coincided with something he already knew. Quinn ended his tale with the death of Orsini.

“By the way,” he added, “may I ask how you tracked me to Ajaccio airport?”

“Oh, I see. Well, my department has obviously been keenly interested in this whole affair from the start. After the boy’s death and the deliberate leak of the details of the belt, we went into overdrive. You weren’t exactly low-profile as you went through the Low Countries. The shoot-out in Paris made all the evening papers. The description of the man the barman described as fleeing the scene matched yours.

“A check on airline departure and passenger lists-yes, we do have assets working for us in Paris-showed your FBI lady friend heading for Spain, but nothing on you. I assumed you might be armed, would wish to avoid airport security procedures, and checked ferry bookings. My man in Marseilles got lucky, tagged you on the ferry to Corsica. The man you saw at the airport flew in the same morning you arrived, but missed you. Now I knew you had gone up into the mountains. He took up station at the point where the airport road and the road to the docks meet each other, saw your car take the airport road just after sunup. By the way, did you know four men with guns came into the terminal while you were in the men’s room?”

“No, I never saw them.”

“Mmmm. They didn’t seem to like you. From what you have just told me about Orsini, I can understand why. No matter. My colleague… took care of them.”

“Your tame Englishman?”

“Andrei? He’s not English. As a matter of fact, he’s not even Russian. Ethnically, he’s a Cossack. I don’t underestimate your ability to handle yourself, Mr. Quinn, but please don’t ever try to mix with Andrei. He really is one of my best men.”

“Thank him for me,” said Quinn. “Look, General, it’s been a nice chat. But that’s it. There’s nowhere for me to go but back to my vineyard in Spain and try to start over.”

“I disagree, Mr. Quinn. I think you should go back to America. The key lies there, somewhere in America. You should return.”

“I’d be picked up within the hour,” said Quinn. “The FBI doesn’t like me-some of them think I was involved.”

General Kirpichenko went back to his desk and beckoned Quinn across. He handed him a passport, a Canadian passport, not new, suitably thumbed, with a dozen exit and entry stamps. His own face, hardly recognizable with its different haircut, horn-rimmed glasses, and stubble of beard, stared at him.

“I’m afraid it was taken while you were drugged,” said the general. “But then, aren’t they all? The passport is quite genuine, one of our better efforts. You will need clothes with Canadian maker’s labels, luggage-that sort of thing. Andrei has them all ready for you. And, of course, these.”

He put three credit cards, a valid Canadian driver’s license, and a wad of 20,000 Canadian dollars on the desk top. The passport, license, and credit cards were all in the name of Roger Lefevre. A French-Canadian; the accent for an American who spoke French would be no problem.

“I suggest Andrei drive you to Birmingham for the first morning flight to Dublin. From there you can connect to Toronto. In a rented car the border crossing into America should present no problem. Are you ready to go, Mr. Quinn?”

“General, I don’t seem to be making myself clear. Orsini never said a word before he died. If he knew who the fat man was, and I think he did, he never let it out. I don’t know where to start. The trail’s cold. The fat man is safe, and the paymasters behind him, and the renegade I believe is somewhere high in the Establishment-the information source. They’re all safe because Orsini stayed silent. I have no aces, no kings, queens, or jacks. I have nothing in my hand.”

“Ah, the analogy of cards. Always you Americans refer to aces of spades. Do you play chess, Mr. Quinn?”

“A bit, not well,” said Quinn. The Soviet general walked to a shelf of books on one wall and ran his finger along the row, as if looking for a particular one.

“You should,” he said. “Like my profession, it is a game of cunning and guile, not brute force. All the pieces are visible, and yet… there is more deception in chess than in poker. Ah, here we are.”

He offered the book to Quinn. The author was Russian, the text in English. A translation, private edition. The Great Grand Masters: A Study.

“You are in check, Mr. Quinn, but perhaps not yet checkmate. Go back to America, Mr. Quinn. Read the book on the flight. May I recommend you pay particular attention to the chapter on Tigran Petrosian. An Armenian, long dead now, but perhaps the greatest chess tactician who ever lived. Good luck, Mr. Quinn.”

General Kirpichenko summoned his operative Andrei and issued a stream of orders in Russian. Then Andrei took Quinn to another room and fitted him out with a suitcase of new clothes, all Canadian; plus luggage and airline tickets. They drove together to Birmingham and Quinn caught the first British Midland flight of the day to Dublin. Andrei saw him off, then drove back to London.

Quinn connected out of Dublin to Shannon, waited several hours, and caught the Air Canada flight to Toronto.

As promised, he read the book in the departure lounge in Shannon and again on the flight across the Atlantic. He read the chapter on Petrosian six times. Before he touched down at Toronto he realized why so many rueful opponents had dubbed the wily Armenian grandmaster the Great Deceiver.

At Toronto his passport was no more queried than it had been at Birmingham or Dublin or Shannon. He took his luggage off the carrousel in the customs hall and passed through with a cursory check. There was no reason why he should notice the quiet man who observed him emerge from the customs hall, followed him to the main railway station, and joined him on the train northeast to Montreal.

At a used-car lot in Quebec’s first city, Quinn bought a used Jeep Renegade with heavy-duty winter tires and, from a camping store nearby, the boots, trousers, and down parka needed for the time of year in that climate. When the Jeep was tanked up he drove southeast, through St. Jean to Bedford, then due south for the American border.

At the border post on the shores of Lake Champlain, where State Highway 89 passes from Canada into Vermont, Quinn crossed into the United States.

There is a land in the northern fringes of the state of Vermont known to locals simply as the Northeast Kingdom. It takes in most of Essex County, with pieces of Orleans and Caledonia, a wild, mountainous place of lakes and rivers, hills and gorges, with here and there a bumpy track and a small village. In winter a cold descends on the Northeast Kingdom so terrible it is as if the land had been subjected to a state of freeze-frame-literally. The lakes become ice, the trees rigid with frost; the ground crackles beneath the feet. In winter nothing lives up there, save in hibernation, apart from the occasional lonely elk moving through the creaking forest. Wits from the South say there are only two seasons in the Kingdom-August and winter. Those who know the place say this is nonsense; it is August 15thand winter.

Quinn drove his Jeep south past Swanton and St. Albans to the town of Burlington, then turned away from Lake Champlain to follow Route 89 to the state capital, Montpelier. Here he quit the main highway to take Route 2 up through East Montpelier, following the valley of the Winooski past Plainfield and Marshfield to West Danville.

Winter had come early to the Northeast Kingdom and the hills closed in, huddled against the cold; the occasional vehicle coming the other way was another anonymous bubble of warmth, with heater full on, containing a human being surviving with technology a cold that would kill the unprotected body in minutes.

The road narrowed again after West Danville, banked high with snow on both sides. After passing through the shuttered community of Danville itself, Quinn put the Jeep in four-wheel drive for the final stage to St. Johnsbury.

The little town on the Passumpsic River was like an oasis in the freezing mountains, with shops and bars and lights and warmth. Quinn found a real estate agent on Main Street and put his request. It was not the man’s busiest time of year. He considered the request with puzzlement.

“A cabin? Well, sure, we rent out cabins in the summer. Mostly the owners want to spend a month, maybe six weeks in their cabins, then rent out for the rest of the season. But now?”

“Now,” said Quinn.

“Anywhere special?” asked the man.

“In the Kingdom.”

“You really want to get lost, mister.”

But the man checked his list and scratched his head.

“There might be a place,” he said. “Belongs to a dentist from Barre, down in the warm country.”

The warm country was at that time of year only fifteen below zero, as opposed to twenty. The realtor rang the dentist, who agreed to a one-month rental. He peered out at the Jeep.

“You got snow chains on that Renegade, mister?”

“Not yet.”

“You’ll need ’em.”

Quinn bought and attached the chains, and they set off together. It was fifteen miles but the drive took more than an hour.

“It’s on Lost Ridge,” said the agent. “The owner only uses it in high summer for fishing and walking. You trying to avoid the wife’s lawyers or something?”

“I need the peace and quiet to write a book,” said Quinn.

“Oh, a writer,” said the agent, satisfied. People make allowances for writers, as for all other lunatics.

They headed back toward Danville, then branched north up an even smaller road. At North Danville the agent guided Quinn west into the wilderness. Ahead the Kittredge Hills reared up to the sky, impenetrable. The track led to the right of the range, toward Bear Mountain. On the slopes of the mountain the agent gestured to a snow-choked track. Quinn needed all the power of the engine, the four-wheel drive, and the chains to get there.

The cabin was of logs, great tree trunks laid horizontally under a low roof with a yard of snow on it. But it was well built, with an inner skin and triple glazing. The agent pointed out the attached garage-a car left unheated in that climate would be a solid lump of metal and frozen gasoline by morning-and the log-burning stove that would heat the water and the radiators.

“I’ll take it,” said Quinn.

“You’ll need oil for the lamps, butane bottles for cooking, an axe to split down the logs for the stove,” said the agent. “And food. And spare gasoline. No use running out of anything up here. And the right clothing. What you’re wearing’s a bit thin. Be sure and cover your face or you’ll get frostbite. No telephone. You sure you want it?”

“I’ll take it,” said Quinn again.

They drove back to St. Johnsbury. Quinn gave his name and nationality, and paid in advance.

The agent was either too courteous or too incurious to ask why a Quebecer should want to find sanctuary in Vermont when Quebec had so many tranquil places of her own.

Quinn located several public phone booths that he could use day or night, and spent the night in a local hotel. In the morning he stocked his Jeep with all he would need and set off back into the mountains.

Once, pausing on the road out of North Danville to check his bearings, he thought he heard the snarl of an engine down the mountain behind him, but deduced it must be a sound from the village or even his own echo.

He lit the stove and slowly the cabin thawed out. The stove was efficient, roaring behind its steel doors, and when he opened them it was like facing a blast furnace. The water tank defrosted and heated up, warming the radiators in the cabin’s four rooms and the secondary tank for washing and bathing. By midday he was down to his shirt sleeves and feeling the heat. After lunch he took his axe and cut a week’s supply of split timber from the cords of pine stacked in the back.

He had bought a transistor radio, but there was no television and no phone. When he was equipped with a week’s supplies, he sat down with his new portable typewriter and began to type. The next day he drove to Montpelier and flew to Boston and on to Washington.

His destination was Union Station, on Massachusetts Avenue at Second Street, one of the most elegant railway stations in America, still gleaming from its recent refurbishment. Some of the layout had been changed from what he remembered from years ago. But the tracks were still there, running out of the basement departure concourse below the main hall.

He found what he wanted opposite the Amtrak boarding gates H and J. Between the door of the Amtrak Police office and the ladies’ room was a row of eight public phone booths. All their numbers began with the 789 prefix; he noted all eight, mailed his letter, and left.

As his cab took him back across the Potomac to Washington National Airport it turned down 14thStreet, and to his right he caught a glimpse of the White House. He wondered how fared the man who lived in the Mansion, the man who had said, “Get him back for us,” and whom he had failed.

In the month since the burial of their son a change had come over the Cormacks, and their relationship to each other, which only a psychiatrist would be able to rationalize or explain.

During the kidnapping the President, though he had deteriorated through stress, worry, anxiety, and insomnia, had still managed to retain control of himself. Toward the end of the abduction of his son, when reports from London seemed to indicate an exchange was near, he had even seemed to recover. It was his wife, less intellectual and without administrative responsibilities to distract her mind, who had abandoned herself to grief and sedation.

But since that awful day at Nantucket when they had consigned their only son to the cold ground, the roles of the parents had subtly reversed. Myra Cormack had wept against the chest of the Secret Service man by the graveside, and on the flight back to Washington. But as the days went by she seemed to recover. It might be she recognized that, having lost one dependent child, she had inherited another, the husband who had never been dependent on her before.

Her maternal and protective instincts seemed to have given her an inner strength denied to the man whose intelligence and willpower she had never before doubted. As Quinn’s cab passed the White House that winter afternoon, John Cormack was sitting at his desk in his private study between the Yellow Oval Room and the bedroom. Myra Cormack stood at his side. She cradled the head of her devastated husband against her body and rocked him slowly and gently.

She knew her man was mortally stricken, unable to carry on for much longer. She knew that what had destroyed him as much as, if not more than, the actual death of his son was the bewilderment of not knowing who had done it, or why. Had the boy died in a car crash, she believed, John Cormack could have accepted the logic even of the illogic of death. It was the manner of his death that had destroyed the father as surely as if that demonic bomb had exploded against his own body.

She believed there would never be an answer now, and that her husband could not go on like this. She had come to hate the White House, and the job she had once been so proud to see her husband hold. All she wanted now was for him to lay down the burden of that office and retire with her, back to New Haven, so that she could nurse him.

The letter Quinn had mailed to Sam Somerville at her Alexandria condominium address was duly intercepted before she saw it and brought in triumph to the White House committee, which convened to hear it and discuss its implications. Philip Kelly and Kevin Brown bore it to their superiors’ attention like a trophy.

“I have to admit, gentlemen,” said Kelly, “that it was with the gravest reservations that I asked for one of my own trusted agents to be put under this kind of surveillance. But I think you will agree, it paid dividends.”

He placed the letter on the table in front of him.

“This letter, gentlemen, was mailed yesterday, right here in Washington. That does not necessarily prove Quinn is here in the city, or even in the States; it would be possible for someone else to have mailed it on his behalf. But I take the view that Quinn is a loner, has no accomplices. How he disappeared from London and showed up here, we do not know. Yet my colleagues and I are of the opinion he mailed this letter himself.”

“Read it,” commanded Odell.

“It’s… er… fairly dramatic,” said Kelly. He adjusted his glasses and began to read.

“ ‘My darling Sam…’ This form of address would seem to indicate that my colleague Kevin Brown was right-there was a relationship beyond the professional one required, between Miss Somerville and Quinn.”

“So your hound dog fell in love with the wolf,” said Odell. “Well done, very smart. What does he say?”

Kelly resumed.

“ ‘Here I am at last, back in the United States. I would very much love to see you again, but am afraid that for the moment it would not be safe.

“ ‘The point of my writing is to set the record straight over what really took place in Corsica. The fact is, when I called you out of Ajaccio airport, I lied to you. I decided that if I told you what really happened down there, you might not feel it would be safe for you to return. But the more I think about it, the more I feel you have the right to know. Make me only one promise: whatever you read in this letter you keep to yourself. No one else must know, at least not yet. Not until I have finished what I am doing.

“ ‘The truth is, Orsini and I fought it out. I had no choice; someone had called him and said I was on my way to Corsica to kill him, when I only wanted to talk to him. He did take a bullet from my gun-yours, actually-but it did not kill him. When he learned he had been tricked, he realized his code of the vow of silence no longer bound him. He told me everything he knew, and it turned out to be a lot.

“ ‘First, it was not the Russians who were behind this thing-at least, not the Soviet government. The conspiracy began right here in the United States. The real paymasters are still clothed in secrecy, but the man they employed to arrange the abduction and murder of Simon Cormack, the one Zack called the fat man, is known to me. Orsini had recognized him and gave me his name. When he is captured, as he will be, I have no doubt he will deliver the names of the men who paid him to do this thing.

“ ‘For the moment, Sam, I am holed up writing everything down, chapter and verse: names, dates, places, events. The whole story from start to finish. When I am done I will mail copies of the manuscript to a dozen different authorities: the Vice President, the FBI, the CIA, et cetera. Then, if anything happens to me after that, it will be too late to stop the wheels of justice from rolling into motion.

“ ‘I will not be in touch with you again until I have finished. Please understand-if I do not tell you where I am, it is only for your own protection.

“ ‘All my love, Quinn.’ ”

There was a minute of stunned silence. One of those present was sweating profusely.

“Jesus,” breathed Michael Odell. “Is this guy for real?”

“If what he says is true,” suggested Morton Stannard, the former lawyer, “he should certainly not be at large. He should say what he has to say to us, right here.”

“I agree,” said the Attorney General. “Apart from anything else, he has just constituted himself a material witness. We have a witness protection program. He should be taken into protective custody.”

The agreement was unanimous. By nightfall the Department of Justice had authorized a material-witness warrant for the arrest and detention of Quinn. The FBI operated all the resources of the National Crime Information System to alert every FBI bureau in the country to be on the lookout for him. To back this up, messages went out on the National Law Enforcement Teletype System to all other enforcement arms: city police departments, sheriffs’ offices, U.S. marshals, and highway patrols. Quinn’s picture accompanied them all. The “cover” used was that he was wanted in connection with a major jewel heist.

An all-points bulletin is one thing; America is a very big country with a lot of places to hide. Wanted felons have stayed at large for years despite a national alert for them. Moreover, the alert was out for Quinn, an American citizen, of known passport number and driving license. It was not an alert for a French-Canadian called Lefevre with perfect IDs, a different hairstyle, horn-rimmed glasses, and a light beard. Quinn had let his beard grow since shaving in the Soviet embassy in London, and though not long, it now covered his lower face.

Back in his mountain cabin, he gave the White House committee three days to simmer over his deliberate letter to Sam Somerville, then set about contacting her covertly. The clue was in something she had told him in Antwerp. “A Rockcastle preacher’s daughter,” she had called herself.

A bookshop in St. Johnsbury yielded an atlas that showed three Rockcastles in the United States. But one was in the Deep South, another the Far West. Sam’s accent was nearer to the East Coast. The third Rockcastle was in Goochland County, Virginia.

Telephone inquiries clinched it. They showed a Reverend Brian Somerville of Rockcastle, Virginia. There was just the one listing-the comparatively unusual spelling of the name kept it apart from the Summervilles and Sommervilles.

Quinn left his hideout again, flew from Montpelier to Boston and on to Richmond, landing at Byrd Field, now renamed with glorious optimism Richmond International Airport. The Richmond directory right in the airport had the usual yellow pages at the back, showing that the reverend was incumbent at the Smyrna Church of St. Mary’s at Three Square Road, but resident at 290 Rockcastle Road. Quinn rented a compact and drove the thirty-five miles west on Route 6 to Rockcastle. It was Reverend Somerville who came to the door himself when Quinn rang the bell.

In the front parlor the quiet, silver-haired preacher served tea and confirmed that his daughter was indeed Samantha and worked for the FBI. Then he listened to what Quinn had to say. As he did so, he became grave.

“Why do you think my daughter is in danger, Mr. Quinn?” he asked.

Quinn told him.

“But under surveillance? By the Bureau itself? Has she done anything wrong?”

“No, sir, she has not. But there are those who suspect her, unjustly. And she does not know it. What I want to do is warn her.”

The kindly old man surveyed the letter in his hands and sighed. Quinn had just lifted a corner of a curtain to reveal a world unknown to him. He wondered what his late wife would have done; she was always the dynamic one. He decided she would have taken the message to her child in trouble.

“Very well,” he said. “I will go and see her.”

He was as good as his word. He took his elderly car, drove sedately up to Washington, and visited his daughter at her apartment without announcement. As briefed, he kept the conversation to small talk and handed her the single sheet first. It said simply: “Keep talking naturally. Open the envelope and read it at your leisure. Then burn it and obey the instructions. Quinn.”

She nearly choked when she saw the words and realized Quinn meant her apartment was bugged. It was something she had done in the course of duty to others, but never expected for herself. She gazed into the worried eyes of her father, kept talking naturally, and took the proffered envelope. When he left to drive back to Rockcastle she escorted him to his car and gave him a long kiss.

The paper in the envelope was just as brief. At midnight she should stand next to the phone booths opposite Amtrak boarding platforms H and J in Union Station and wait. One phone would ring; it would be Quinn.

She took his call from a booth in St. Johnsbury exactly at midnight. He told her about Corsica, and London, and the phony letter he had sent her, convinced it would be redirected to the White House committee.

“But, Quinn,” she protested, “if Orsini really gave you nothing, it’s over, just as you said. Why pretend he talked when he didn’t?”

He told her about Petrosian, who even when he was down, with his opponents staring at the chessboard, could persuade them he had some master stroke in preparation and force them into error.

“I think they, whoever they are, will break cover because of that letter,” he said. “Despite what I said about not contacting you anymore, you’re still the only possible link if the police can’t find me. As the days pass they ought to get more and more frantic. I want you to keep your eyes and ears open. I’ll call you every second day, at midnight, on one of these numbers.”

It took six days.

“Quinn, do you know a man called David Weintraub?”

“Yes, I do.”

“He’s the Company, right?”

“Yeah, he’s the DDO. Why?”

“He asked to meet me. He said something’s breaking. Fast. He doesn’t understand it, thought you would.”

“You met at Langley?”

“No, he said that would be too exposed. We met by appointment in the back of a Company car at a spot near the Tidal Basin. We talked as we drove around.”

“Did he tell you what?”

“No. He said he didn’t feel he could trust anybody, not anymore. Only you. He wants to meet you-your terms, any time or place. Can you trust him. Quinn?”

Quinn thought. If David Weintraub was crooked, there was no hope for the human race anyway.

“Yes,” he said, “I do.” He gave her the time and place of the rendezvous.