“... is the name of that book? You answer me that and call me right back. I’ll be waiting, pal. Bye now.”
Collins and Seymour joined him, and all three listened to the playback.
Then they switched to wall speaker and heard Sam Somerville make her point.
“Right,” growled Brown.
They heard Quinn’s reply.
“Asshole,” said Brown. “Another couple of minutes and they could have caught that bastard.”
“They get one,” pointed out Seymour. “The others still have the boy.”
“So get the one and persuade him to reveal the hideout,” said Brown. He smacked one beefy fist into the palm of his other hand.
“They probably have a deadline. It’s something we use if a member of one of our networks gets taken. If he doesn’t show back at the hideout in, say, ninety minutes, allowing for traffic, the others know he’s been taken. They waste the kid and vaporize.”
“Look, sir, these men have nothing to lose,” added Seymour, to Brown’s irritation. “Even if they walk in and hand Simon back, they’re going to do life anyway. They killed two Secret Service men and a British cop.”
“That Quinn just better know what he’s doing,” said Brown as he walked out.
There were three loud knocks on the door of Simon Cormack’s cellar prison at 10:15. He pulled on his hood. When he took it off, a card was propped against the wall by the door.
WHEN YOU WERE A KID ON HOLIDAY AT NANTUCKET,
YOUR AUNT EMILY USED TO READ TO YOU FROM HER
FAVOURITE BOOK. WHICH BOOK WAS IT?
He stared at the card. A wave of relief swept over him. Someone was in contact. Someone had spoken to his father in Washington. Someone was out there trying to get him back. He tried to fight back the tears, but they kept welling up into his eyes. Someone was watching through the peephole. He snuffled; he had no handkerchief. He thought back to Aunt Emily, his father’s elder sister, prim in her high-necked cotton dresses, taking him for walks along the beach, sitting him on a tussock and reading about little animals who talked and acted like humans. He sniffed again and shouted the answer at the peephole. It closed. The door opened a fraction; a black-gloved hand came around the corner and withdrew the card.
* * *
The man with the gruff voice came through again at 1:30 P.M. The patch-through from the embassy was immediate. The call was traced in eleven seconds—to a booth in a shopping mall at Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire. By the time a plainclothes officer from the Milton Keynes force reached the booth and looked around, the caller had been gone for ninety seconds. On the line he had wasted no time
.
“The book,” he rasped. “Called The Wind in the Willows.”
“Okay, friend, you’re the man I’ve been waiting to speak to. Now take this number, get off the line, and call me from a fresh booth. It’s a line that reaches me, and me only. Three-seven-oh; zero-zero-four-zero. Please stay in touch. Bye now.”
Again he replaced the receiver. This time he raised his head and addressed the wall.
“Collins, you can tell Washington we have our man. Simon is alive. They want to talk. You can dismantle the telephone exchange in the embassy.”
They heard it all right. They all heard it. Collins used his encoded flash line to Weintraub in Langley, and he told Odell, who told the President. Within minutes the switchboard operators in Grosvenor Square were being sent away. There was one last call, a plaintive, whining voice.
“We are the Proletarian Liberation Army. We are holding Simon Cormack. Unless America destroys all her nuclear weapons—”
The switchboard girl’s voice was like running molasses.
“Honeychild,” she said, “go screw yourself.”
“You did it again,” said McCrea. “You hung up on him.”
“He has a point,” said Sam. “These people can be unbalanced. Couldn’t that kind of treatment annoy him to the point of hurting Simon Cormack?”
“Possible,” said Quinn. “But I hope I’m right, and I think I am. Doesn’t sound like political terrorists. I’m praying he’s just a professional killer.”