The Negotiator

“Should we let Mr. Seymour know we’re on our way?” asked Moxon. “I mean, maybe Scotland Yard has been in that area.”

“You leave Mr. Seymour to me,” said Brown reassuringly. “We get along just fine. And the bobbies may have been up there and they may just have overlooked something. Maybe so, maybe not. Let’s just check it out.”

Steve Pyle greeted Laing with an attempt at his usual geniality.

“I ... ah ... called you up here, Andy, because I just got a request from London that you go visit with them. Seems this could be the start of a career move for you.”

“Sure,” said Laing. “Would this request from London have anything to do with the package and report I sent them, which never arrived because it was intercepted right here in this office?”

Pyle dropped all semblance of bonhomie.

“All right. You’re smart, maybe too smart. But you’ve been dabbling in things that don’t concern you. I tried to warn you off, but no, you had to go playing private detective. Okay, now I’ll level with you. I’m transferring you back to London. You don’t fit in down here, Laing. I’m not happy with your work. You’re going back. That’s it. You have seven days to put your desk in order. Your ticket’s been booked. Seven days from now.”

Had he been older, more mature, Andy Laing would probably have played his cards more coolly. But he was angry that a man of Pyle’s eminence in the bank could be ripping off client money for his own enrichment. And he had the naïveté of the young and eager, the conviction that Right would triumph. He turned at the door.

“Seven days? Time enough for you to fix things with London? No way. I’m going back all right, but I’m going back tomorrow.”

He was in time for the last flight of the night back to Jiddah. When he got there he went straight to the bank. He kept his passport in the top drawer of his desk, along with any other valuable papers—burglaries of European-owned apartments in Jiddah are not unheard-of, and the bank was safer. At least, it was supposed to be. The passport was missing.

* * *

That night there was a stand-up row among the four kidnappers.

“Keep your bloody voices down,” hissed Zack on several occasions. “Baissez les voix, merde.”

He knew his men were running to the limit of their patience. It was always a risk, using this kind of human material. After the screaming adrenaline of the snatch outside Oxford, they had been penned up day and night in a single house, drinking beer from cans he had bought at a supermarket, keeping out of sight all the time, hearing callers at the door ring and ring before finally going away without an answer. The nervous strain had been bad, and these were not men with the mental resources to immerse themselves in books or thought. The Corsican listened to his French-language pop programs all day, interspersed with news flashes. The South African whistled tunelessly for hours on end, and always the same tune, “Marie Marais.” The Belgian watched the television, of which he could not understand a word. He liked the cartoons best.

The argument was over Zack’s decision to close with the negotiator called Quinn and have done with the whole thing at $2 million ransom.

The Corsican objected, and because they both spoke French, the Belgian tended to agree with him. The South African was fed up, wanted to get home, and agreed with Zack. The main argument from the Corsican was that they could hold out forever. Zack knew this was not true, but he was aware he could have a very dangerous situation on his hands if he told them they were beginning to show cracks, and could not take more than another six days of numbing boredom and inactivity.

So he appeased them, placated them, told them they had done brilliantly and would all be very rich men in just a few more days. The thought of all that money calmed them down and they subsided. Zack was relieved it had ended without blows. Unlike the three men in the house, his problem was not boredom but stress. Every time he drove the big Volvo along the crowded motorways he knew that one random police check, one brush with another car, one moment of inattention, would have a blue-capped officer leaning in his window, wondering why he wore a wig and false moustache. His disguise would pass in a crowded street, but not at six inches’ range.

Every time he went into one of those phone booths, he had a mental image of something going wrong, of a faster-than-usual trace, of a plainclothes policeman being only a few yards away, taking the alarm on his personal radio and walking up to the phone booth. Zack carried a gun, and knew he would use it to get away. If he did, he would have to abandon the Volvo, always parked a few hundred yards away, and escape on foot. Some idiot member of the public might even try to tackle him. It was getting to the point that whenever he saw a policeman sauntering along the crowded streets he chose for his phone calls, his stomach turned over.

“Go give the kid his supper,” he told the South African.

Simon Cormack had been fifteen days in his underground cell, and thirteen since he had answered the question about Aunt Emily and known that his father was trying to get him out. He realized now what solitary confinement must be like and wondered how people could survive months, even years of it. At least in the prisons he had heard of, inmates in solitary had writing materials, books, sometimes television, something to occupy the mind. He had nothing. But he was a tough boy and he determined not to go to pieces.

He exercised regularly, forcing himself to overcome the prisoner’s lethargy, doing his push-ups ten times a day, jogging in place a dozen times. He still wore his same running shoes, socks, shorts, and T-shirt, and was aware he must smell awful. He used the toilet bucket carefully, so as not to soil the floor, and was grateful it was removed every second day.

The food was boring, mainly fried or cold, but it was enough. He had no razor, of course

, so he sported a straggly beard and moustache. His hair had grown; he tried to comb it with his fingers. He had asked for, and eventually been given, a plastic bucket of cold water and a sponge. He never realized how grateful a man could be for the chance to wash. He had stripped naked, running his shorts halfway up the ankle-chain to keep them dry, and sponged himself from head to foot, scouring his skin with the sponge to try to keep clean. After it he felt transformed. But he tried no escape maneuvers. The chain was impossible to break; the door solid and bolted from the outside.

Between exercises he tried to keep his mind occupied in a number of ways: reciting every poem he could remember, pretending to dictate his autobiography to an invisible stenographer so that he could go over everything that had ever happened to him in his twenty-one years. And he thought of home, of New Haven and Nantucket and Yale and the White House. He thought of his mom and dad and how they were; he hoped they weren’t worried about him, but expected they were. If only he could tell them he was all right, in good shape, considering ...

There were three loud knocks on the cellar door. He reached for his black hood and put it on. Supper time—or was it breakfast ...?

That same evening, but after Simon Cormack had fallen asleep, and Sam Somerville lay in Quinn’s arms while the tape recorder breathed into the wall outlet, five time zones farther west, the White House committee met in the late evening. Apart from the usual Cabinet members and department heads, Philip Kelly of the FBI and David Weintraub of the CIA also attended.

They heard the tapes of Zack on the phone to Quinn, the rasping tones of the British criminal and the reassuring drawl of the American trying to appease him, as they had done almost every day for two weeks.

When Zack had finished, Hubert Reed was pale with shock.

“My God,” he said, “cold chisel and hammer. The man’s an animal.”

“We know that,” said Odell. “But at least now we have an agreed ransom. Two million dollars. In diamonds. Any objections?”