The Negotiator

“You were not Deputy Director of Operations in those years, Mr. Weintraub. Please go on.”

“Thank you, Mr. President. We have learned from… sources… enough to confirm what the KGB rezident in New York told us unofficially. A certain Marshal Kozlov has been detained for interrogation concerning the supplying of the belt that killed your son. Officially, he has resigned on grounds of health.”

“He will confess, do you think?”

“At Lefortovo prison, sir, the KGB has its little ways,” Weintraub admitted.

“Mr. Kelly?”

“Some things, Mr. President, will never be provable. There is no trace of the body of Dominique Orsini, but the Corsican police have established that two rounds of buckshot were indeed fired into a rear bedroom above a bar in Castelblanc. The Smith & Wesson pistol we issued to Special Agent Somerville must be presumed lost forever in the Prunelli River. But everything that is provable, has been proved. The whole lot. The manuscript is accurate to the last detail, sir.”

“And the five men, the so-called Alamo Five?”

“We have three in custody, Mr. President. Cyrus Miller can almost certainly never stand trial. He is deemed to be clinically insane. Melville Scanlon has confessed everything, including the details of a further conspiracy to topple the monarchy of Saudi Arabia. I believe the State Department has already taken care of that side of things.”

“It has,” said the President. “The Saudi government has been informed and has taken appropriate measures. And the other men of the Alamo Five?”

“Salkind appears to have vanished-we believe to Latin America. Cobb was found hanged in his garage, by his own hand. Moir confirms everything admitted by Scanlon.”

“No details still adrift, Mr. Kelly?”

“None that we can discern, Mr. President. In the time allowed we have checked everything in Mr. Qui

President Cormack glanced briefly toward the empty chair on his side of the table.

“And my… my former colleague?”

The Director of the FBI nodded toward Philip Kelly.

“The last three pages of the manuscript make claims to a conversation between the two men on the night in question of which there is no confirmation, Mr. President. We still have no trace of Mr. Qui

“We have checked all the stock portfolios in his blind trusts, and there are huge holdings in a number of defense contractors whose share values would undoubtedly be affected by the terms of the Nantucket Treaty. It’s true-what Qui

President Cormack rose.

“Then I do, gentlemen. I do. Call off the manhunt for him, please. That is an executive order. Thank you for your efforts.”

He left by the door opposite the fireplace, crossed the office of his personal secretary, asking that he not be disturbed, entered the Oval Office, and closed the door behind him.

He took his seat behind the great desk under the green-tinted windows of five-inch bulletproof glass that give onto the Rose Garden, and leaned back in the high swivel chair. It had been seventy-three days since he had last taken this seat.

On his desk was a silver-framed photograph. It showed Simon, a picture taken at Yale in the fall before he left for England. He was twenty then, his young face full of vitality and zest for life and great expectations.

The President took the picture in both hands and gazed at it a long time. Finally he opened a drawer on his left.

“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 cha

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 a

“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 Qui

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.

Qui

“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 Qui

He turned his head around, ignoring the road.

“You want me to put this on the speaker?”

“I’ll catch the repeat later,” said Qui

“I could pull over, man.”

“Drive on,” said Qui

At Dulles International, Qui

“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…”