The Negotiator (60 page)

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.

Chapter 18

Sam Somerville arrived at Montpelier airport the following evening. She was accompanied by Duncan McCrea, the young CIA man who had first approached her with the Deputy Director of Operations’ request for a meeting with her.

They arrived on the PBA Beechcraft 1900 shuttle from Boston, rented an off-road Dodge Ram right at the airport, and checked into a motel on the outskirts of the state capital. Both had brought the warmest clothing Washington had to offer, at Quinn’s suggestion.

The DDO of the CIA, pleading a high-level planning meeting at Langley that he could not afford to miss, was due the next morning, well in time for the roadside rendezvous with Quinn.

He landed at 7:00
A.M
. in a ten-seater executive jet whose logo Sam did not recognize. McCrea explained it was a Company communications plane, and that the charter company listed on its fuselage was a CIA front.

He greeted them briefly but cordially as he came down the steps of the jet onto the tarmac, dressed in heavy snow boots, thick trousers, and quilted parka. He carried his suitcase in his hand. He climbed straight into the back of the Ram and they set off. McCrea drove, Sam directing him from her road map.

Out of Montpelier they took Route 2, up through the small township of East Montpelier and onto the road for Plainfield. Just after Plainmont Cemetery, but before the gates of Goddard College, there is a place where the Winooski River leaves the roadside to make a sweep to the south. In this half-moon of land between the road and the river is a stand of tall trees, at that time of year silent and caked with snow. Among the trees stand several picnic tables provided for summer vacationers, and a pull-off and parking area for camper vehicles. This was where Quinn had said he would be at 8:00
A.M
.

Sam saw him first. He emerged from behind a tree twenty yards away as the Ram crunched to a halt. Without waiting for her companions she jumped down, ran to him, and threw her arms ’round his neck.

“You all right, kid?”

“I’m fine. Oh, Quinn, thank God you’re safe.”

Quinn was staring beyond her, over the top of her head. She felt him stiffen.

“Who did you bring?” he asked quietly.

“Oh, silly of me ...” She turned. “You remember Duncan McCrea? He was the one who got me to Mr. Weintraub.”

McCrea was standing ten yards away, having approached from the truck. He wore his shy smile.

“Hello, Mr. Quinn.” The greeting was diffident, deferential as always. There was nothing diffident about the Colt .45 automatic in his right hand. It pointed unwaveringly at Sam and Quinn.

From the side door of the Ram the second man descended. He carried the folding-stock rifle he had taken from his suitcase, just after passing McCrea the Colt.

“Who’s he?” asked Quinn.

Sam’s voice was very small and very frightened.

“David Weintraub,” she said. “Oh, God, Quinn, what have I done?”

“You’ve been tricked, darling.”

It was his own fault, he realized. He could have kicked himself. Talking to her on the phone, it had not occurred to him to ask whether she had ever seen the Deputy Director of Operations of the CIA. She had twice been summoned to the White House committee to report. He assumed David Weintraub had been present on both, or at least one, of those occasions. In fact the secretive DDO, doing one of the most covert jobs in America, disliked coming into Washington very often and had been away on both occasions. In combat, as Quinn well knew, assuming things can present a serious hazard to health.

The short, chunky man with the rifle, made to look even plumper by his heavy clothes, walked up to take his place beside McCrea.

“So, Sergeant Quinn, we meet again. Remember me?”

Quinn shook his head. The man tapped the bridge of his flattened nose.

“You gave me this, you bastard. Now that’s going to cost you, Quinn.”

Quinn squinted in recollection, saw once again a clearing in Vietnam, a long time ago: a Vietnamese peasant, or what was left of him, still alive, pegged to the ground.

“I remember,” he said.

“Good,” said Moss. “Now, let’s get moving. Where you been living?”

“Log cabin, up in the hills.”

“Writing a little manuscript, I understand. That, I think, we have to have a look at. No tricks, Quinn. Duncan’s handgun might miss you, but then the girl gets it. And as for you, you’ll never outrun this.”

He jerked the barrel of the rifle to indicate there was no chance of making ten yards toward the trees before being cut down.

“Go screw yourself,” said Quinn. In answer Moss chuckled, his breath wheezing through the distorted nose.

“Cold must have frozen your brain, Quinn. Tell you what I have in mind. We take you and the girl down to the riverbank. No one to disturb us—no one within miles. You, we tie to a tree, and you watch, Quinn, you watch. I swear it will take two hours for that girl to die, and every second of it she’ll be praying for death. Now, you want to drive?”

Quinn thought of the clearing in the jungle, the peasant with wrist, elbow, knee, and ankle joints shattered by the soft lead slugs, whimpering that he was just a peasant, knew nothing. It was when Quinn realized that the dumpy interrogator knew that already, had known it for hours, that he had turned and knocked him into the orthopedic ward.

Alone, he would have tried to fight it out, against all the odds, died cleanly with a bullet in the heart. But with Sam ... He nodded.

McCrea separated them, handcuffed Quinn’s wrists behind his back, Sam’s also. McCrea drove the Renegade with Quinn beside him. Moss followed behind in the Ram, Sam lying in the back.

In West Danville, people were stirring but no one thought anything of two off-road vehicles heading toward St. Johnsbury. One man raised a hand in greeting, the salutation of fellow survivors of the bitter cold. McCrea responded, flashing his friendly grin, and turned north at Danville toward Lost Ridge. At Pope Cemetery, Quinn signaled another left turn, in the direction of Bear Mountain. Behind them the Ram, without snow chains, was having trouble.

Where the paved road ran out, Moss abandoned the Ram and clambered into the back of the Renegade, pushing Sam ahead of him. She was white-faced and shaking with fear.

“You sure wanted to get lost,” said Moss when they arrived at the log cabin.

Outside, it was thirty below zero, but the interior of the cabin was still snug and warm, as Quinn had left it. He and Sam were forced to sit several feet apart on a bunk bed at one end of the open-plan living area that formed the principal room of the cabin. McCrea still kept them covered while Moss made a quick check of the other rooms to ensure they were alone.

“Nice,” he said at last and with satisfaction. “Nice and private. You couldn’t have done it better for me, Quinn.”

Quinn’s manuscript was stacked in a drawer of the writing desk. Moss stripped off his parka, seated himself in an armchair, and began to read. McCrea, despite the fact that his prisoners were manacled, sat in an upright chair facing Sam and Quinn. He still wore his boy-next-door grin. Too late Quinn realized it was a mask, something the younger man had developed over the years to cover his inner self.

“You’ve won out,” said Quinn after a while. “I’d still be interested to know how you did it.”

“No problem,” said Moss, still reading. “It’s not going to change anything, either way.”

Quinn started with a small and unimportant question. “How did McCrea get picked for the job in London?”

“That was a lucky break,” said Moss. “Just a fluke. I never thought I’d have my boy in there to help me. A bonus, courtesy of the goddam Company.”

“How did you two get together?”

Moss looked up.

“Central America,” he said simply. “I spent years down there. Duncan was raised in those parts. Met him when he was just a kid. Realized we shared the same tastes. Dammit, I recruited him into the Company.”

“Same tastes?” queried Quinn. He knew what Moss’s tastes were. He wanted to keep them talking. Psychopaths love to talk about themselves when they feel they are safe.

“Well, almost,” said Moss. “Except Duncan here prefers the ladies and I don’t. Of course, he likes to mess ’em around a bit first—don’t you, boy?”

He resumed reading. McCrea flashed a happy grin.

“Sure do, Mr. Moss. You know, these two were balling during those days in London? Thought I hadn’t heard. Guess I’ve got some catching up to do.”

“Whatever you say, boy,” said Moss. “But Quinn is mine. You’re going to go slow, Quinn. I’m going to have me some fun.”

He went on reading. Sam suddenly leaned her head forward and retched. Nothing came up. Quinn had seen recruits in ’Nam do that. The fear generated a flood of acid in the stomach which irritated the sensitive membranes and produced dry retching.

“How did you stay in touch in London?” he asked.

“No problem,” said Moss. “Duncan used to go out to buy things, food and so forth. Remember? We used to meet in the food stores. If you’d been smarter, Quinn, you’d have noticed he always went food-shopping at the same hour.”

“And Simon’s clothing, the booby-trapped belt?”

“Took it all to the house in Sussex while you were with the other three at the warehouse. Gave it to Orsini, by appointment. Good man, Orsini. I used him a couple of times in Europe, when I was with the Company. And afterwards.”

Moss put the manuscript down; his tongue loosened.

“You spooked me, running out of the apartment like that. I’d have had you wasted then, but I couldn’t get Orsini to do it. Said the other three would have stopped him. So I let it go, figured when the boy died you’d come under suspicion anyway. But I was really surprised those yo-yos in the Bureau let you go afterwards. Thought they’d put you in the pen, just on suspicion alone.”

“That was when you needed to bug Sam’s handbag?”

“Sure. Duncan told me about it. I bought a duplicate, fixed it up. Gave it to Duncan the morning you left Kensington for the last time. Remember he went out for breakfast eggs? Brought it back with him, did the switch while you were eating in the kitchen.”

“Why not just waste the four mercenaries at a prearranged rendezvous?” asked Quinn. “Save you the trouble of trailing us all over.”

“Because three of them panicked,” said Moss with disgust. “They were supposed to show up in Europe for their bonuses. Orsini was going to take care of them, all three. I’d have silenced Orsini. But when they heard the boy was dead they split and disappeared. Happily, you were around to find them for me.”

“You couldn’t have handled it alone,” said Quinn. “McCrea had to be helping you.”

“Right. I was up ahead. Duncan was close to you all the time, even slept in the car. Didn’t like that, did you, Duncan? When he heard you pin down Marchais and Pretorius he called me on the car phone, gave me a few hours’ start.”

Quinn still had a couple more questions. Moss had resumed reading, his face becoming angrier and angrier.

“The kid, Simon Cormack. Who blew him away? It was you, McCrea, wasn’t it?”

“Sure. Carried the transmitter in my jacket pocket for two days.”

Quinn recalled the scene by the Buckinghamshire roadside—the Scotland Yard men, the FBI group, Brown, Collins, Seymour near the car, Sam with her face pressed to his back after the explosion; recalled McCrea, on his knees over a ditch, pretending to gag, in actuality pushing the transmitter ten inches deep into the mud beneath the water.

“Okay,” he said. “So you had Orsini keeping you abreast of what was going on inside the hideaway, baby Duncan here telling you about the Kensington end. What about the man in Washington?”

Sam looked up and stared at him in disbelief. Even McCrea looked startled. Moss glanced over and surveyed Quinn with curiosity.

On the drive up to the cabin Quinn had realized that Moss had taken a tremendous risk in approaching Sam and pretending to be David Weintraub. Or had he? There was only one way Moss could have known Sam had never actually seen the DDO.

Moss lifted the manuscript and dropped it in rage all over the floor.

“You’re a bastard, Quinn,” he said with quiet venom. “There’s nothing new in here. The word in Washington is, this whole thing was a Communist operation mounted by the KGB. Despite what that shit Zack said. You were supposed to have something
new
, something to disprove that. Names, dates, places ...
proof
, goddammit. And you know what you’ve got here? Nothing. Orsini never said a word, did he?”

He rose in his anger and paced up and down the cabin. He had wasted a lot of time and effort, a lot of worry. All for nothing.

“That Corsican should have wasted you, the way I asked him to. Even alive, you had nothing. That letter you sent the bitch here, it was a lie. Who put you up to this?”

“Petrosian,” said Quinn.

“Who?”

“Tigran Petrosian. An Armenian. He’s dead now.”

“Good. And that’s where you’re going, Quinn.”

“Another stage-managed scenario?”

“Yep. Seeing as it’ll do you no good, I’ll enjoy telling you. Sweat a little. That Dodge Ram we drove up in—it was rented by your lady friend here. The car-rental agent never saw Duncan at all. The police will find the cabin, after it’s been burned down, and her inside it. The Ram will give them a name; dental records will prove who the corpse was. Your Renegade will be driven back and dumped at the airport. Within a week there’ll be a murder rap on you, and the last ends will be tied up.