The Negotiator
“Goodbye, son,” he said.
He placed the photograph facedown in the drawer, closed it, and depressed a switch on his intercom.
“Send Craig Lipton in to see me, please.”
When his Press Secretary arrived, the President told him he wanted one hour of prime-time television on the major channels the following evening for an address to the nation.
* * *
The landlady of the rooming house in Alexandria was sorry to lose her Canadian guest, Mr. Roger Lefevre. He was so quiet and well-behaved; no trouble at all. Not like some she could mention.
The evening he came down to settle his account and say goodbye she noticed he had shaved off his beard. She approved; it made him look much younger.
The television in her living room was on, as always. The tall man stood in the door to make his farewell. On the screen a serious-faced anchorman announced: “Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.”
“Are you sure you can’t stay a little longer?” asked the landlady. “The President’s going to speak. They say the poor man’s bound to resign.”
“My cab’s at the door,” said Quinn. “I have to go.”
On the screen the face of President Cormack flashed up. He was sitting foursquare behind his desk in the Oval Office, beneath the Great Seal. He had scarcely been seen for eighty days, and viewers knew he looked older, more drawn, more lined than three months earlier. But that beaten look in the photograph that had been flashed around the world, his face as he stood beside the grave in Nantucket, was gone. He held himself erect and looked straight into the camera lens, establishing direct, if electronic, eye contact with more than 100 million Americans and many more millions around a world linked by satellite into the transmission. There was nothing weary or defeated about his posture; his voice was measured, grave but firm.
“My fellow Americans ...” he began.
Quinn closed the front door and went down the steps to his cab.
“Dulles,” he said.
Along the sidewalks the lights were bright with Christmas decorations, the store Santas ho-ho-ho-ing as best they could with a transistor radio slapped to one ear. The driver headed southwest on the Henry Shirley Memorial Highway to take a right onto River Turnpike and another to the Capital Beltway.
After several minutes Quinn noticed an increasing number of drivers pulling over to the curb to concentrate on the broadcast coming over their car radios. On the sidewalks, groups began to form, clustered around a radio. The driver of the blue-and-white cab had a pair of earphones over his head. Just onto the turnpike he yelled, “Sheeee-yit, man, I don’t believe what I’m hearing.”
He turned his head around, ignoring the road.
“You want me to put this on the speaker?”
“I’ll catch the repeat later,” said Quinn.
“I could pull over, man.”
“Drive on,” said Quinn.
At Dulles International, Quinn paid off the cab and strode through the doors toward British Airways check-in. Across the concourse most of the passengers and half the staff were gathered around a TV set mounted on a wall. Quinn found one clerk behind the check-in desk.
“Flight Two-ten for London,” he said, and put down his ticket. The clerk dragged her eyes away from the TV set and studied the ticket, punching her desktop terminal to confirm the booking.
“You’re changing at London for Málaga?” she asked.
“That’s right.”
The voice of John Cormack came across the unusually silent hall.
“In order to destroy the Nantucket Treaty, these men believed they must first destroy me. ...”
The clerk issued his boarding pass, staring at the screen.
“I can go through to departure?” asked Quinn.
“Oh ... yes, sure ... have a nice day.”