The Negotiator (19 page)

“Would you negotiate with them?” asked Reed.

“If possible. If they get in touch, someone has to.”

“It sticks in my craw to pay money to scum like these,” said Philip Kelly of the FBI’s Criminal Investigations Division. People come to the Bureau from a variety of backgrounds; Kelly’s route was via the New York Police Department.

“Do professional criminals show more mercy than fanatics?” asked Brad Johnson.

“No kidnappers show mercy,” said Quinn shortly. “It’s the filthiest crime in the book. Just hope for greed.”

Michael Odell looked around at his colleagues. There was a series of slow nods.

“Mr. Quinn,
will
you attempt to negotiate this boy’s release?”

“Assuming the abductors get in touch, yes. There are conditions.”

“Of course. Name them.”

“I don’t work for the U.S. government. I have its cooperation in all things, but I work for the parents. Just them.”

“Agreed.”

“I operate out of London, not here. It’s too far away. I have no profile at all, no publicity, nothing. I get my own apartment, the phone lines I need. And I get primacy in the negotiation process—that needs clearing with London. I don’t need a feud with Scotland Yard.”

Odell glanced at the Secretary of State.

“I think we can prevail on the British government to concede that,” said Donaldson. “They have primacy in the criminal investigation, which will continue in parallel with any direct negotiation. Anything else?”

“I operate my own way, make my own decisions how to handle these people. There may have to be money exchanged. It’s made available. My job is to get the boy returned. That’s all. After he’s free you can hunt them down to the ends of the earth.”

“Oh, we will,” said Kelly with quiet menace.

“Money is not the problem,” said Hubert Reed. “You may understand there is no financial limit to what we’ll pay.”

Quinn kept silent, though he realized that telling the kidnappers that would be the worst route to go.

“I want no crowding, no bird-dogging, no private initiatives. And before I leave, I want to see President Cormack. In private.”

“This is the President of the United States you’re talking about,” said Lee Alexander of the CIA.

“He’s also the father of the hostage,” said Quinn. “There are things I need to know about Simon Cormack that only he can tell me.”

“He’s terribly distressed,” said Odell. “Can’t you spare him that?”

“My experience is that fathers often want to talk to someone, even a stranger. Maybe especially a stranger. Trust me.”

Even as he said it, Quinn knew there was no hope of that. Odell sighed.

“I’ll see what I can do. Jim, would you clear it with London? Tell them Quinn is coming. Tell them this is what we want. Someone has to get him some fresh clothes. Mr. Quinn, would you care to use the washroom down the hall to freshen up? I’ll call the President. What’s the fastest way to London?”

“The Concorde out of Dulles in three hours,” said Weintraub without hesitation.

“Hold space on it,” said Odell, and rose. They all did.

Nigel Cramer had news for the COBRA committee under Whitehall at 10:00
A.M
. The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Center in Swansea had come up with a lead. A man with the same name as the missing former owner of the Transit van had purchased and registered another van, a Sherpa, a month earlier. There was now an address, in Leicester. Commander Williams, the head of S.O. 13 and the official investigating officer, was on his way there by police helicopter. If the man no longer owned it, he must have sold it to somebody. It had never been reported stolen.

After the conference Sir Harry Marriott took Cramer to one side.

“Washington wants to handle the negotiations, if there are any,” he said. “They’re sending their own man over.”

“Home Secretary, I must insist that the Met. has primacy in all areas,” said Cramer. “I want to use two men from Criminal Intelligence Branch as negotiators. This is not American territory.”

“I’m sorry,” said Sir Harry. “I have to overrule you on this one. I’ve cleared it with Downing Street. If they want it that way, the view is we have to let them have it.”

Cramer was affronted, but he had made his protest. The loss of his primacy in negotiation simply made him more determined than ever to end the abduction by finding the kidnappers through police detective work.

“May I ask who their man is, Home Secretary?”

“Apparently he’s called Quinn.”

“Quinn?”

“Yes. Have you heard of him?”

“Certainly, Home Secretary. He used to work for a firm in Lloyd’s. I thought he’d retired.”

“Well, Washington tells us he’s back. Is he any good?”

“Extremely good. Excellent record in five countries, including Ireland years ago. I met him on that one. The victim was a British citizen, a businessman snatched by some renegade I.R.A. men.”

Privately, Cramer was relieved. He had feared some behavioral theorist who would be amazed to find that the British drove on the left.

“Splendid,” said Sir Harry. “Then I think we should concede the point with good grace. Our complete cooperation, all right?”

The Home Secretary, who had also heard of CYA—though he would have pronounced and spelled the last word “arse”—was not displeased by Washington’s demand. After all, if anything went wrong ...

Quinn was shown into the private study on the second floor of the Executive Mansion an hour after leaving the Cabinet Room. Odell had led him personally, not via the holly and box hedges of the Rose Garden, but through the basement corridor that emerged to a set of stairs giving onto the Mansion’s ground-floor corridor. Long Tom cameras were now ranged on the garden from half a mile away.

President Cormack was fully dressed in a dark suit, but he looked pale and tired, the lines of strain showing around his mouth, smudges of insomnia beneath his eyes. He shook hands and nodded at the Vice President, who withdrew.

Gesturing Quinn to a chair, he took his own seat behind his desk. A defense mechanism, creating a barrier, not wanting to unbend. He was about to speak when Quinn got in first.

“How is Mrs. Cormack?”

Not “the First Lady.” Just Mrs. Cormack, his wife. He was startled.

“Oh, she’s sleeping. It has been a terrible shock. She’s under sedation.” He paused. “You have been through this before, Mr. Quinn.”

“Many times, sir.”

“Well, as you see, behind the pomp and the circumstance is just a man, a very worried man.”

“Yes, sir. I know. Tell me about Simon, please.”

“Simon? What about him?”

“What he is like. How he will react to ... to this. Why did you have him so late in life?”

There was no one in the White House who would have dared ask that. John Cormack looked across the desk. He was tall himself, but this man matched him at six feet two inches. Neat gray suit, striped tie, white shirt—all borrowed, though he did not know that. Clean-shaven, deeply suntanned. A craggy face, calm gray eyes, an impression of strength and patience.

“So late? Well, I don’t know. I married when I was thirty; Myra was twenty-one. I was a young professor then. We thought we would start a family in two or three years. But it didn’t happen. We waited. The doctors said there was no reason ... Then, after ten years of marriage, Simon came. I was forty by then, Myra thirty-one. There was only ever the one child ... just Simon.”

“You love him very much, don’t you?”

President Cormack stared at Quinn in surprise. The question was so unexpected. He knew Odell was completely estranged from his own two grown-up offspring, but it had never occurred to him how much he loved his only son. He rose, came around the desk, and seated himself on the edge of an upright chair, much closer to Quinn.

“Mr. Quinn, he is the sun and the moon to me—to us both. Get him back for us.”

“Tell me about his childhood, when he was very young.”

The President jumped up.

“I have a picture,” he said triumphantly. He walked to a cabinet and returned with a framed snapshot. It showed a sturdy toddler of four or five, in swim trunks on a beach, holding a pail and shovel. A proud father was crouched behind him, grinning.

“That was taken at Nantucket in ’75. I had just been elected congressman from New Haven.”

“Tell me about Nantucket,” said Quinn gently.

President Cormack talked for an hour. It seemed to help him. When Quinn rose to leave, Cormack scribbled a number on a pad and handed it to Quinn.

“This is my private number. Very few people have it. It will reach me directly, night or day.” He held out his hand. “Good luck, Mr. Quinn. God go with you.” He was trying to control himself. Quinn nodded and left quickly. He had seen it before, the effect, the dreadful effect.

While Quinn was still in the washroom, Philip Kelly had driven back to the J. Edgar Hoover Building, where he knew his Deputy Assistant Director, CID, would be waiting for him. He and Kevin Brown had a lot in common, which was why he had pressed for Brown’s appointment.

When he entered his office his deputy was there, reading Quinn’s file. Kelly nodded toward it as he took his seat.

“So, that’s our hotshot. What do you think?”

“He was brave enough in combat,” conceded Brown. “Otherwise a smartass. About the only thing I like about the guy is his name.”

“Well,” said Kelly, “they’ve put him in there over the Bureau’s head. Don Edmonds didn’t object. Maybe he figures if it all turns out badly ... Still and all, the sleazeballs who did this thing have contravened at least three U.S. statutes. The Bureau still has jurisdiction, even though it happened on British territory. And I don’t want this yo-yo operating out on his own with no supervision, no matter who says so.”

“Right,” agreed Brown.

“The Bureau’s man in London, Patrick Seymour—do you know him?”

“Know of him,” grunted Brown. “Hear he’s very pally with the Brits. Maybe too much so.”

Kevin Brown had come out of the Boston police force, an Irishman like Kelly, whose admiration for Britain and the British could be written on the back of a postage stamp with room left over. Not that he was soft on the I.R.A.; he had pulled in two arms dealers trading with the I.R.A., who would have gone to jail but for the courts.

He was an old-style law-enforcement officer who had no truck with criminals of any ilk. He also remembered as a small boy in the slums of Boston listening wide-eyed to his grandmother’s tales of people dying with mouths green from grass-eating during the famine of 1848, and of the hangings and the shootings of 1916. He thought of Ireland, a place he had never visited, as a land of mists and gentle green hills, enlivened by the fiddle and the chaunter, where poets like Yeats and O’Faolain wandered and composed. He knew Dublin was full of friendly bars where peaceable folk sat over a stout in front of peat fires, immersed in the works of Joyce and O’Casey.

He had been told that Dublin had the worst teenage drug problem in Europe but knew it was just London’s propaganda. He had heard Irish Prime Ministers on American soil pleading for no more money to be sent to the I.R.A. Well, people were entitled to their views. And he had his. Being a crime-buster did not require him to like the people he saw as the timeless persecutors of the land of his forefathers. Across the desk, Kelly came to a decision.

“Seymour is close to Buck Revell, but Revell’s away sick. The Director has put me in charge of this from the Bureau’s point of view. And I don’t want this Quinn getting out of hand. I want you to get together a good team and take the midday flight and get over there. You’ll be behind the Concorde by a few hours, but no matter. Base yourself at the embassy—I’ll tell Seymour you’re in charge, just for the emergency.”

Brown rose, pleased.

“One more thing, Kevin. I want one special agent in close on Quinn. All the time, day and night. If that guy burps, we want to know.”

“I know just the one,” said Brown grimly. “A good operative, tenacious and clever. Also personable. Agent Sam Somerville. I’ll do the briefing myself. Now.”

Out at Langley, David Weintraub was wondering when he would ever sleep again. During his absence the work had piled up in a mountain. Much of it had to do with the files on all the known terrorist groups in Europe—latest updates, penetration agents inside the groups, known locations of the leading members, possible incursions into Britain over the previous forty days ... the list of headings alone was almost endless. So it was the Chief of the European Section who briefed Duncan McCrea.

“You’ll meet Lou Collins from our embassy,” he said, “but he’ll be keeping us posted from outside the inner circle. We have to have somebody close in on this man Quinn. We need to identify those abductors and I wouldn’t be displeased if we could do it before the Brits. And especially before the Bureau. Okay, the British are pals, but I’d like this one for the Agency. If the abductors are foreigners, that gives us an edge; we have better files on foreigners than the Bureau, maybe than the Brits. If Quinn gets any smell, any instinct about them, and lets anything slip, you pass it on to us.”

Operative McCrea was awestruck. A GS-12 with ten years in the Agency since recruitment abroad—his father had been a businessman in Central America—he had had two foreign postings but never London. The responsibility was enormous, but matched by the opportunity.

“You can rely on m—m—me, sir.”

Quinn had insisted that no one known to the media accompany him to Dulles International Airport. He had left the White House in a plain compact car, driven by his escort, an officer of the Secret Service in plain clothes. Quinn had ducked into the backseat, down near the floor, as they passed the knot of press grouped at Alexander Hamilton Place at the extreme east end of the White House complex and farthest away from the West Wing. The press glanced at the car, saw nothing of importance, and took no notice.

At Dulles, Quinn checked in with his escort, who refused to leave him until he actually walked onto the Concorde and who raised eyebrows by flashing his White House ID card to get past passport control. He did at least serve one purpose; Quinn went to the duty-free shop and bought a number of items: toiletries, shirts, ties, underwear, socks, shoes, a raincoat, a valise, and a small tape recorder with a dozen batteries and spools. When the time came to pay he jerked a thumb at the Secret Service man.