The Negotiator

“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.”