The Negotiator

All four men changed back to their black track suits and black woolen ski masks before they opened the trunk. Simon Cormack was groggy, with unfocused vision, and he screwed his eyes tight against the flashlight that blinded him. Before he could adjust, a hood of black serge was thrown over his head. He saw nothing of his abductors.

He was led through the door into the house and down the stairs to the basement. It had been prepared; clean, white, concrete floor, recessed ceiling light behind shatterproof glass, a steel-frame bed screwed to the floor, toilet bucket with plastic lid. There was a peephole in the door; the shutter was on the outside, as were two steel bolts.

The men were not brutal; they just hefted the youth onto the bed and the giant held him still while one of the others slipped a steel handcuff around one ankle, not tight enough to cause gangrene but so as to ensure that no foot would ever slip through it. The other cuff was locked tight. Through it went a ten-foot steel chain, which was then padlocked to itself. The other end of the chain was already padlocked around one leg of the bed. Then they left him. They never said a word to him and never would.

He waited half an hour before he dared take the hood off. He did not know if they were still there, though he had heard a door close and the rasp of sliding bolts. His hands were free, but he took the hood off very slowly. There were no blows, no shouts. At last it was off. He blinked against the light, then adjusted and stared around. His memory was hazy. He recalled ru

He remembered the open van doors, trying to shout, flailing limbs, the mattresses inside the van, the big man holding him down, something sweet and aromatic across his mouth, and then nothing. Until now. Until this. Then it hit him. With the realization came the fear. And the loneliness, the utter isolation.

He tried to be brave, but tears of fear welled up and trickled down.

“Oh, Dad,” he whispered. “Dad, I’m sorry. Help me.”

If Whitehall was having problems from the tidal wave of telephone calls and press inquiries, the pressure on the White House was trebled. The first statement on the affair out of London had been issued at 7:00 P.M.London time and the White House had been warned an hour before that it would have to come. But that was only 2:00 P.M. Washington time, and the American media reaction had been frenzied.

Craig Lipton; the White House press secretary, had spent an hour in the Cabinet Room with the committee, being briefed on what to say. The trouble was, there was so little. The fact of the abduction could be confirmed, along with the death of two accompanying Secret Service men. Plus the fact that the President’s son was a fine athlete, specializing in cross-country ru

It would not help, of course. There is no hindsight as brilliantly perceptive as that of an outraged journalist. Creighton Burbank, while agreeing he would not actually criticize the President nor blame Simon himself, made plain he was not having his Secret Service crucified for falling down on protection when he had specifically asked for more men. A compromise was worked out that would fool no one.

Jim Donaldson pointed out that, as Secretary of State, he still had to maintain relations with London and in any case angry friction between the two capitals would not help and might do real harm; he insisted Lipton stress that a British police sergeant had been murdered as well. This was agreed, though the White House press corps eventually took little notice.

Lipton faced a baying press just after 4:00 P.M. and made his statement. He was on live TV and radio. The moment he finished, the uproar started. He pleaded he could answer no further questions. A victim in the Roman Coliseum might as well have told the lions he was really only a very thin Christian. The uproar increased. Many questions were drowned out but some came through to 100 million Americans, sowing the seeds. Did the White House blame the British? Er, well, no… Why not? Were they not in charge of security over there? Well, yes, but… Did the White House blame the Secret Service then? Not exactly… Why were there only two men guarding the son of the President? What was he doing ru

Lipton finally retreated behind the scene, bathed in sweat and determined to go back to Grand Rapids. The glamour of work in the White House was wearing off fast. The newscasters and editorial writers would say what they wanted, regardless of his answers to questions. By nightfall the press tone was becoming markedly hostile to Britain.

Up at the British embassy on Massachusetts Avenue the press attaché, who had also heard of CYA, made a statement. While expressing his country’s dismay and shock at what had happened, he slipped in two points. That the Thames Valley Police had taken a very low-profile role specifically at American request, and that Sergeant Du

The Crisis Management Group, the professionals, met through the day in the basement Situation Room, monitoring the information flow out of COBRA in London and reporting upstairs as and when necessary. The National Security Agency had stepped up its monitoring of all telephone communications into and out of Britain in case the kidnappers made a call via satellite. The FBI’s behavioral scientists at Quantico had come up with a list of psycho-portraits of previous kidnappers and a menu of things the Cormack kidnappers might or might not do, along with lists of do’s and don’ts for the Anglo-American authorities. Quantico firmly expected to be called in and flown to London en masse, and were perplexed at the delay, although none of them had ever operated in Europe.

In the Cabinet Room the committee was living on nerves, coffee, and antacid tablets. This was the first major crisis of the incumbency and the middle-aged politicians were learning the hard way the first rule of crisis management: It is going to cost a lot of sleep, so get what you can while you can. Having risen at 4:00 A.M., the Cabinet members were still awake at midnight.

At that hour the VC20A was over the Atlantic, well west of the Azores, three and a half hours short of landfall and four hours short of touchdown. In the spacious rear compartment the two veterans, Weintraub and Qui

The men in the Cabinet Room browsed over the dossier on the man called Qui

“He never seems to use his first name,” complained Hubert Reed. “Says here even his intimates call him Qui

“He is odd,” observed Bill Walters, who had read further along. “It also says here he hates violence.”