The Negotiator

Chapter 19

The men in the long leather coatsdecided 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.”

“It has,” said the President. “The Saudi government has been informed and has taken appropriate measures. And the other men of the Alamo Five?”

“Salkind appears to have vanished-we believe to Latin America. Cobb was found hanged in his garage, by his own hand. Moir confirms everything admitted by Scanlon.”

“No details still adrift, Mr. Kelly?”

“None that we can discern, Mr. President. In the time allowed we have checked everything in Mr. Quinn’s manuscript. Names, dates, times, places, car rentals, airline tickets, apartment rentals, hotel bookings, the vehicles used, the weapons-everything. The police and immigration authorities in Ireland, Britain, Belgium, Holland, and France have sent us every record. It all checks.”

President Cormack glanced briefly toward the empty chair on his side of the table.

“And my… my former colleague?”

The Director of the FBI nodded toward Philip Kelly.

“The last three pages of the manuscript make claims to a conversation between the two men on the night in question of which there is no confirmation, Mr. President. We still have no trace of Mr. Quinn. But we have checked the staff at the house in Georgetown. The official chauffeur was sent home on the grounds that the car would not be used again that night. Two of the staff recall being awakened around half past one by the sound of the garage doors opening. One looked out and saw the car going down the street. He thought it might have been stolen, so he went to rouse his master. He was gone-with the car.

“We have checked all the stock portfolios in his blind trusts, and there are huge holdings in a number of defense contractors whose share values would undoubtedly be affected by the terms of the Nantucket Treaty. It’s true-what Quinn claims. As to what the man said, we will never know for sure. One can either believe Quinn or not.”

President Cormack rose.

“Then I do, gentlemen. I do. Call off the manhunt for him, please. That is an executive order. Thank you for your efforts.”

He left by the door opposite the fireplace, crossed the office of his personal secretary, asking that he not be disturbed, entered the Oval Office, and closed the door behind him.

He took his seat behind the great desk under the green-tinted windows of five-inch bulletproof glass that give onto the Rose Garden, and leaned back in the high swivel chair. It had been seventy-three days since he had last taken this seat.

On his desk was a silver-framed photograph. It showed Simon, a picture taken at Yale in the fall before he left for England. He was twenty then, his young face full of vitality and zest for life and great expectations.

The President took the picture in both hands and gazed at it a long time. Finally he opened a drawer on his left.

“Goodbye, son,” he said.

He placed the photograph facedown in the drawer, closed it, and depressed a switch on his intercom.

“Send Craig Lipton in to see me, please.”

When his Press Secretary arrived, the President told him he wanted one hour of prime-time television on the major channels the following evening for an address to the nation.

The landlady of the rooming house in Alexandria was sorry to lose her Canadian guest, Mr. Roger Lefevre. He was so quiet and well-behaved; no trouble at all. Not like some she could mention.

The evening he came down to settle his account and say goodbye she noticed he had shaved off his beard. She approved; it made him look much younger.

The television in her living room was on, as always. The tall man stood in the door to make his farewell. On the screen a serious-faced anchorman announced: “Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.”

“Are you sure you can’t stay a little longer?” asked the landlady. “The President’s going to speak. They say the poor man’s bound to resign.”

“My cab’s at the door,” said Quinn. “I have to go.”

On the screen the face of President Cormack flashed up. He was sitting foursquare behind his desk in the Oval Office, beneath the Great Seal. He had scarcely been seen for eighty days, and viewers knew he looked older, more drawn, more lined than three months earlier. But that beaten look in the photograph that had been flashed around the world, his face as he stood beside the grave in Nantucket, was gone. He held himself erect and looked straight into the camera lens, establishing direct, if electronic, eye contact with more than 100 million Americans and many more millions around a world linked by satellite into the transmission. There was nothing weary or defeated about his posture; his voice was measured, grave but firm.

“My fellow Americans…” he began.

Quinn closed the front door and went down the steps to his cab.

“Dulles,” he said.

Along the sidewalks the lights were bright with Christmas decorations, the store Santas ho-ho-ho-ing as best they could with a transistor radio slapped to one ear. The driver headed southwest on the Henry Shirley Memorial Highway to take a right onto River Turnpike and another to the Capital Beltway.

After several minutes Quinn noticed an increasing number of drivers pulling over to the curb to concentrate on the broadcast coming over their car radios. On the sidewalks, groups began to form, clustered around a radio. The driver of the blue-and-white cab had a pair of earphones over his head. Just onto the turnpike he yelled, “Sheeee-yit, man, I don’t believe what I’m hearing.”

He turned his head around, ignoring the road.

“You want me to put this on the speaker?”

“I’ll catch the repeat later,” said Quinn.

“I could pull over, man.”

“Drive on,” said Quinn.

At Dulles International, Quinn paid off the cab and strode through the doors toward British Airways check-in. Across the concourse most of the passengers and half the staff were gathered around a TV set mounted on a wall. Quinn found one clerk behind the check-in desk.

“Flight Two-ten for London,” he said, and put down his ticket. The clerk dragged her eyes away from the TV set and studied the ticket, punching her desktop terminal to confirm the booking.

“You’re changing at London for Málaga?” she asked.

“That’s right.”

The voice of John Cormack came across the unusually silent hall.

“In order to destroy the Nantucket Treaty, these men believed they must first destroy me…”

The clerk issued his boarding pass, staring at the screen.

“I can go through to departure?” asked Quinn.

“Oh… yes, sure… have a nice day.”

Past immigration control there was a waiting area with a duty-free bar. Another television set was behind the bar. All the passengers were grouped together, staring at it.

“Because they could not get at me, they took my son, my only and much-loved son, and they killed him.”

In the mobile lounge rolling out to the waiting Boeing, in the red-white-and-blue livery of British Airways, there was a man with a transistor. No one spoke. At the entrance to the airplane Quinn offered his boarding pass to a steward, who gestured him toward first class. Quinn was allowing himself the luxury by using up the last of his Russian money. He heard the President’s voice coming from the mobile lounge behind him as he ducked his head into the cabin.

“That is what happened. Now it is over. But of this I give you my word. Fellow Americans, you have a President again…”

Quinn buckled himself into the window seat, declined a glass of champagne, and asked for red wine instead. He accepted a copy of the Washington Post and began to read. The aisle seat beside him remained empty at takeoff.

The 747 lifted off and turned her nose toward the Atlantic and Europe. All around Quinn there was an excited buzz as incredulous passengers discussed the presidential speech, which had lasted almost an hour. Quinn sat in silence and read his newspaper.

The lead article on the front page announced the broadcast the world had just heard, assuring readers that the President would use the occasion to inform the world of his departure from office.

“Is there anything else I can offer you, sir, anything at all?” drawled a honeyed voice in his ear.

He turned and grinned with relief. Sam stood in the aisle, leaning over him.

“Just you, baby.”

He folded the paper on his lap. On the back page was a story neither of them noticed. It said, in the strange code of headline writers: VIET VETS XMAS WINDFALL. The subhead amplified the code: PARAPLEGIC HOSPITAL GETS NO-NAME $5M.

Sam sat down in the aisle seat.

“Got your message, Mr. Quinn. And yes, I will come to Spain with you. And yes, I will marry you.”

“Good,” he said. “I hate indecision.”

“This place where you live… what’s it like?”

“Small place, little white houses, little old church, little old priest…”

“Just so long as he recalls the words of the marriage ceremony.”

She reached her arms behind his head and pulled it down to her own for a long lingering kiss. The newspaper slipped off his lap and fell to the floor, back page upward. A stewardess, smiling indulgently, retrieved it. She failed to notice, nor would she have cared if she had, the lead story on the page. It was headed:

PRIVATE FUNERAL FOR TREASURY SECRETARY

HUBERT REED:

CONTINUING MYSTERY OF LATE-NIGHT DRIVE

INTO POTOMAC.