The Negotiator

“Since one week, I do believe.”

Laing left the canteen for his office. There was a message on his desk from the branch manager, Mr. Al-Haroun. Mr. Pyle would like to see him in Riyadh without delay.

He made the mid-afternoon Saudia commuter flight. On the journey he could have kicked himself. Hindsight is all very well, but if only he had sent his London package by regular mail ... He had addressed it to the chief accountant personally, and a letter so addressed, in his distinctive handwriting, would stand out a mile when the letters were spread across Steve Pyle’s desk. He was shown into Steve Pyle’s office just after the bank closed its doors for public business.

Nigel Cramer came around to see Quinn during the lunch hour, London time.

“You’ve closed your exchange at two million dollars,” he said. Quinn nodded.

“My congratulations,” said Cramer. “Thirteen days is fast for this sort of thing. By the way, my tame shrink has listened to this morning’s call. He takes the view the man is serious, under a lot of pressure to get out.”

“He’ll have to take a few more days,” said Quinn. “We all will. You heard him ask for diamonds instead of cash. They’ll take time to put together. Any leads on their hideout?”

Cramer shook his head.

“I’m afraid not. Every last conceivable property rental has been checked out. Either they’re not in residential quarters at all, or they’ve bought the damn thing. Or borrowed it.”

“No chance of checking outright purchases?” asked Quinn.

“I’m afraid not. The volume of properties being bought and sold in southeast England is enormous. There are thousands and thousands owned by foreigners, foreign corporations, or companies whose nominees—lawyers, banks, et cetera—acted for them in the sale. Like this place, for example.”

He got in a dig at Lou Collins and the CIA, who were listening.

“By the way, I talked with one of our men in the Hatton Garden district. He spoke to a contact in diamond trading. Whoever he is, your man knows his diamonds. Or one of his colleagues does. What he asked for is easily purchasable and easily disposable. And light. About a kilogram, perhaps a bit more. Have you thought about the exchange?”

“Of course,” said Quinn. “I’d like to handle it myself. But I want no concealed bugs—they’ll probably think of that. I don’t think they’ll bring Simon to the rendezvous, so he could still die if there were any tricks.”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Quinn. We’d obviously like to try and grab them, but I take your point. There’ll be no tricks from us, no heroics.”

“Thank you,” said Quinn. He shook hands with the Scotland Yard man, who left to report progress to the one o’clock COBRA committee.

Kevin Brown had spent the morning secluded in his office beneath the embassy. When the stores

opened he had sent out two of his men to buy him a list of items he needed: a very large-scale map of the area north of London, extending fifty miles in all directions; a matching sheet of clear plastic; map pins; wax pencils in different colors. He assembled his team of detectives and spread the plastic across the map.

“Okay, let’s just look at these phone booths the rat has been using. Chuck, read them out one by one.”

Chuck Moxon studied his list. “First call, Hitchin, county of Hertfordshire.”

“Okay, we have Hitchin right ... here.” A pin was stuck in Hitchin.

Zack had made eight calls in thirteen days; the ninth was about to come in. One by one, pins were stuck in the site of each call. Just before ten o’clock one of the two FBI men in the listening post stuck his head around the door.

“He just called again. Threatening to cut off Simon’s fingers with a chisel.”

“Hot damn,” swore Brown. “That fool Quinn’s going to blow it away. I knew he would. Where’d the call come from?”

“Place called Saffron Waiden,” said the young man.

When the nine pins were in place, Brown joined up the perimeter of the area they bounded. It was a jagged shape, involving pieces of five counties. Then he took a ruler and joined the extremities to their opposites on the other side of the pattern. In the approximate center a web of crisscross lines appeared. To the southeast the extremity was Great Dunmow, Essex; to the north was St. Neots, Cambridgeshire; and to the west, Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire.

“The densest area of the crossed lines lies right here,” Brown pointed out with his fingertip, “just east of Biggleswade, county of Bedfordshire. No calls from that area at all. Why?”

“Too close to base?” ventured one of the men.

“Could be, boy, could be. Look, I want you to take these two country towns, Biggleswade and Sandy, the two closest to the geographic center of the web. Get up there and visit all the realtors who have offices in those towns. Make like you are prospective clients, looking to rent a secluded house to write a book or something. Listen to what they say—maybe some place that’ll be free soon, maybe some place they could have let you have three months back but it went to someone else. You got it?”

They all nodded.