The Negotiator

Andy Laing was surprised to be summoned back to the bank so quickly. The appointment was for 11:00 A.M. and he was there ten minutes early. When he was shown up, it was not to the office of the internal accountant, but to that of the general manager. The accountant was by the GM’s side. The senior officer gestured Laing to a seat opposite his desk without a word. The man then rose, walked to the window, stared out for a while over the pi

“Yesterday, Mr. Laing, you came to see my colleague here, having quit Saudi Arabia by whatever means you were able, and made serious allegations concerning the integrity of Mr. Steven Pyle.”

Laing was worried. Mr. Laing? Where was “Andy”? They always first-named each other in the bank, part of the family atmosphere New York insisted on.

“And I brought a mass of computer printout to back up what I had found,” he said carefully, but his stomach was churning. Something was wrong. The general manager waved dismissively at the mention of Laing’s evidence.

“Yesterday I also received a long letter from Steve Pyle. Today I had a lengthy phone call. It is perfectly clear to me, and to the internal accountant here, that you are a rogue, Laing, and an embezzler.”

Laing could not believe his ears. He shot a glance for support at the accountant. The man stared at the ceiling.

“I have the story,” said the GM. “The full story. The real story.”

In case Laing was unfamiliar with it, he told the young man what he now knew to be true. Laing had been embezzling money from a client’s account, the Ministry of Public Works. Not a large amount in Saudi terms, but enough; one percent of every invoice paid out to contractors by the Ministry. Mr. Amin had unfortunately missed spotting the figures but Mr. Al-Haroun had seen the flaws and alerted Mr. Pyle.

The general manager at Riyadh, in an excess of loyalty, had tried to protect Laing’s career by only insisting that every riyal be returned to the Ministry’s account, something that had now been done.

Laing’s response to this extraordinary solidarity from a colleague, and in outrage at losing his money, had been to spend the night in the Jiddah Branch falsifying the records to “prove” that a much larger sum had been embezzled with the cooperation of Steve Pyle himself.

“But the tape I brought back-” protested Laing.

“Forgeries, of course. We have the real records here. This morning I ordered our central computer here to hack into the Riyadh computer and do a check. The real records now lie there, on my desk. They show quite clearly what happened. The one percent you stole has been replaced. No other money is missing. The bank’s reputation in Saudi Arabia has been saved, thank God-or, rather, thank Steve Pyle.”

“But it’s not true,” protested Laing, too shrilly. “The skim Pyle and his unknown associate were perpetrating was ten percent of the Ministry accounts.”

The GM looked stonily at Laing and then at the evidence fresh in from Riyadh.

“Al,” he asked, “do you see any record of ten percent being skimmed?”

The accountant shook his head.

“That would be preposterous in any case,” he said. “With such sums washing around, one percent might be hidden in a big Ministry in those parts. But never ten percent. The a

The GM gave a wintry smile. That was too obvious.

“No. I’m afraid,” concluded the accountant, “that it’s an open-and-shut case. Steve Pyle has not only done us all a favor, he has done you one, Mr. Laing. He’s saved you from a long prison term.”

“Which I believe you probably deserve,” said the GM. “We can’t inflict that in any case. And we don’t relish the scandal. We supply contract officers to many Third World banks, and a scandal we do not need. But you, Mr. Laing, no longer constitute one of those bank officers. Your dismissal letter is in front of you. There will, of course, be no severance pay, and a reference is out of the question. Now please go.”

Laing knew it was a sentence: never to work in banking ever again, anywhere in the world. Sixty seconds later he was on the pavement of Lombard Street.

In Washington, Morton Sta

The news out of London that an exchange was imminent, whether true or false, had galvanized a resurgence of press frenzy in Washington. Since before dawn the White House had been deluged with calls for information and once again the press secretary was at his wits’ end.

When the tape finally ran out the eight members present were silent with shock.

“The diamonds,” growled Odell. “You keep promising and promising. Where the hell are they?”

“They’re ready,” said Sta

“Where are they?” asked Hubert Reed.

“In the safe of the head of the Pentagon office in New York, the office that handles our East Coast systems-purchasing. For obvious reasons, it’s a very secure safe.”

“What about shipment to London?” asked Brad Johnson. “I suggest we use one of our air bases in England. We don’t need problems with the press at Heathrow, or anything like that.”

“I am meeting in one hour with a senior Air Force expert,” said Sta

“We will need a Company car to meet them on arrival and get them to Qui

“No problem,” said Lee Alexander of the CIA.

“I’ll have Lou Collins pick them up himself at the air base on touchdown.”

“By dawn tomorrow, London time,” said the Vice President. “In London, in Kensington, by dawn. We know the details of the exchange yet?”

“No,” said the Director of the FBI. “No doubt Qui

The U. S. Air Force proposed the use of a single-seat jet fighter to make the Atlantic crossing, an F-15 Eagle.

“It has the range if we fit it with FAST packs,” the Air Force general told Morton Sta

The pilot selected for the mission was an experienced lieutenant colonel with more than seven thousand flying hours on the F-15. Through the late morning the Eagle at Trenton was serviced as seldom before in her existence, and the FAST packs were fitted to each of the port and starboard air-intake trunks. These packs, despite their name, would not increase the Eagle’s speed; the acronym stands for “fuel and sensor tactical,” and they are really long-range extra fuel tanks.

Stripped down, the Eagle carries 23,000 pounds of fuel, giving her a ferry range of 2,878 miles; the extra 5,000 pounds in each FAST pack boost that to 3,450 miles.

In the navigation room Colonel Bowers studied his flight plan over a sandwich lunch. From Trenton to the USAF base at Upper Heyford outside the city of Oxford was 3,063 miles. The meteorology men told him the wind strengths at his chosen altitude of 50,000 feet, and he worked out that he would make it in 5.4 hours flying at Mach.95 and would still have 4,300 pounds of fuel remaining.

At 2:00 P.M. a big KC-135 tanker lifted off from Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington and headed for a midair rendezvous at 45,000 feet over the eastern seaboard with the Eagle.