The Negotiator

“Right. The red highlights mean territorial United States, but outside this area. In the District and the two states there are forty-one numbers. I checked them all. By the ink analysis, most go back years, probably to when he was with the Company. They include banks, lobbyists, several CIA staffers at their private homes, a brokerage firm. I had to call in a big favor with a guy I know in the lab to get this stuff.”

“What did your technician say about the dates of the entries?”

“All over seven years old.”

“Before Moss was busted. No, this has to be a more recent entry.”

“I said ‘most,’ ” she reminded him. “There are four that were written in the past twelve months. A travel agency, two airline ticket offices, and a cab-call number.”

“Damn.”

“There’s one other number, entered about three to six months ago. Problem is, it doesn’t exist.”

“Disconnected? Out of service?”

“No, I mean it never did exist. The area code is two-oh-two for Washington, but the remaining seven figures don’t form a telephone number and never did.”

Quinn took the number home with him and worked on it for two days and nights. If it was coded, there could be enough variations to give a computer headaches, let alone the human brain. It would depend how secretive Moss had wanted to be, how safe he thought his contacts book would stay. He began to run through the easier codes, writing the new numbers yielded by the process in a column for Sam to check out later.

He started with the obvious, the children’s code; just reversing the order of the numbers from front to back. Then he transposed the first and last figures, the second-first and second-last, and third-from-first and third-from-last, leaving the middle number of the seven in place. He ran through ten variations of transposition. Then he moved into additions and subtractions.

He deducted one from every figure, then two, and so forth. Then one from the first figure, two from the second, three from the third, down the line to the seventh. Then repeated the process by adding numbers. After the first night he sat back and looked at his columns. Moss, he realized, could have added or subtracted his own birth date, or even his mother’s birth date, his car registration number or his inseam measurement. When he had a list of 107 of the most obvious possibilities, he gave his list to Sam. She called him back in the late afternoon of the next day, sounding tired. The Bureau’s phone bill must have gone up a smidgen.

“Okay, forty-one of the numbers still don’t exist. The remaining sixty-six include laundromats, a senior citizens’ center, a massage parlor, four restaurants, a hamburger joint, two hookers, and a military air base. Add to that fifty private citizens who seem to have nothing to do with anything. But there is one that might be paydirt. Number forty-four on your list.”

He glanced at his own copy. Forty-four. He had reached it by reversing the order of the phone number, then subtracting 1,2,3,4,5,6,7, in that order.

“What is it?” he asked.

“It’s a private unlisted number carrying a classified tag,” she said. “I had to call in a few favors to get it identified. It belongs to a large town house in Georgetown. Guess who it belongs to?”

She told him. Quinn let out a deep breath. It could be a coincidence. Play around with a seven-figure number long enough and it is possible to come up with the private number of a very important person just by fluke.

“Thanks, Sam. It’s all I have. I’ll try it—let you know.”

At half past eight that evening Senator Bennett Hapgood sat in the makeup room of a major television station in New York as a pretty girl dabbed a bit more ocher makeup onto his face. He lifted his chin to draw in a mite more of the sag beneath the jawbone.

“Just a little more hair spray here, honey,” he told her, pointing out a strand of the blow-dried white locks that hung boyishly over one side of his forehead, but which might slip out of place if not attended to.

She had done a good job. The fine tracery of veins around the nose had vanished; the blue eyes glittered from the drops that had been applied; the cattleman’s suntan, acquired in long hours toiling under a sunlamp, glowed with rugged health. An assistant stage manager popped her head around the door, clipboard like an insignia.

“We’re ready for you, Senator,” she said.

Bennett Hapgood rose, stood while the makeup girl removed the bib and dusted any last specks of powder off the pearl-gray suit, and followed the stage manager down the corridor to the studio. He was seated to the left of the host of the show, and a soundman expertly clipped a button-sized microphone to his lapel. The host, anchoring one of the country’s most important prime-time current affairs programs, was busy going down his running order; the monitor showed a dog-food commercial. He looked up and flashed a pearly grin at Hapgood.

“Good to see you, Senator.”

Hapgood responded with the obligatory yard-wide smile.

“Good to be here, Tom.”

“We have just two more messages after this. Then we’re on.”

“Fine, fine. I’ll just follow your lead.”

Will you, hell, thought the anchorman, who came from the East Coast liberal tradition of journalism and thought the Oklahoma senator a menace to society. The dog food was replaced by a pickup truck and then a breakfast cereal. As the last image faded of a deliriously happy family tucking into a product that looked and tasted like straw, the stage manager point

ed a finger directly at Tom. The red light above camera one lit up and the host gazed into the lens, his face etched with public concern.