The Negotiator

“All right,” growled Zack. “Be there.”

It was the moment Sergeant Kidd took his car’s radio mike to talk to Nigel Cramer. Minutes later every police station in the metropolitan area was receiving a description of a man and instructions for every beat officer to keep an eye open, to spot but not approach, to radio back to the police station, and tail the suspect but not intervene. There was no name appended to the all-points, nor a reason why the man was wanted.

Leaving the phone booth, Qui

“Hi, there,” he said, with his widest grin.

She looked up and smiled back. Tall, stooping, tweed hat, Burberry, and calfskin grip-an all-American tourist.

“Good afternoon, sir. Can I help you?”

“Well, now, I hope so, miss. Yes, I surely do. You see, I just flew in from the States and I took your British Airways-my all-time favorite airline-and you know what they did? They lost my luggage. Yes, ma’am, sent it all the way to Frankfurt by mistake.”

Her face puckered with concern.

“Now, see here, they’re going to get it back for me, twenty-four hours tops. Only my problem is, all my package-tour details were in my small suitcase, and would you believe it, I ca

She was quite entranced. The tall man looked so bereft at the loss of his luggage, his inability to recall where he was supposed to be staying. She watched a lot of movies and thought he looked a bit like that gentleman who was always asking people to make his day, but he talked like the man with the fu

“There’s just the one, Mr. Russell-a small one at the back, I’m afraid…”

“That will suit me just fine, young lady. Oh, I can pay cash-changed me some dollars right in the airport.”

“Tomorrow morning, Mr. Russell.” She reached for an old brass key. “Up the stairs, on the second floor.”

Qui

“Well, what on earth did he do it for?” asked the Home Secretary, Sir Harry Marriott. He had just heard the full story from Nigel Cramer in his office atop the Home Office building. He had had ten minutes on the telephone with Downing Street, and the lady resident there was not very pleased.

“I suspect he did not feel he could trust someone,” said Cramer delicately.

“Not us, I hope,” said the Minister. “We’ve done everything we can.”

“No, not us,” said Cramer. “He was moving close to an exchange with this man Zack. In a kidnap case, that is always the most dangerous phase. It has to be handled with extreme delicacy. After those two leaks of privy information on radio programs, one French and one British, he seems to feel he’d prefer to handle it himself. We can’t allow that, of course. We have to find him, Home Secretary.”

Cramer still smarted from having the primacy in the handling of the negotiation process removed from his control at all, and being confined to the investigation.

“Can’t think how he escaped in the first place,” complained the Home Secretary.

“If I’d had two of my men inside that apartment, he wouldn’t have done,” Cramer reminded him.

“Yes, well, that’s water over the dam. Find the man, but quietly, discreetly.”

The Home Secretary’s private views were that if this Qui

At the same hour, Irving Moss received a telephone call from Houston. He jotted down the list of produce prices on offer from the vegetable gardens of Texas, put down the phone, and decoded the message. Then he whistled in amazement. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that only a slight change would need to be made to his own plans.

After the fiasco on the road outside Mill Hill, Kevin Brown had descended on the Kensington apartment in high temper. Patrick Seymour and Lou Collins came with him. Together the three senior men debriefed their two junior colleagues for several hours.

Sam Somerville and Duncan McCrea explained at length what had happened that morning, how it had happened, and why they had not foreseen it. McCrea, as ever, was disarmingly apologetic.

“If he has reestablished phone contact with Zack, he’s totally out of control,” said Brown. “If they’re using a phone-booth-to-phone-booth system, there’s no way the British can get a tap on it. We don’t know what they’re up to.”

“Maybe they’re arranging to exchange Simon Cormack for the diamonds,” said Seymour.

Brown growled.

“When this thing’s over, I’m going to have that smartass.”

“If he returns with Simon Cormack,” Collins pointed out, “we’re all going to be happy to carry his bags to the airport.”

It was agreed that Somerville and McCrea would stay on at the apartment in case Qui

Qui

“Qui

“Yeah.”

“You may be on the level about having quit them, or maybe not. If it’s a trick, you’ll pay for it.”

“No trick. Tell me where and when to show up.”

“Ten tomorrow morning. I’ll call you on this number at nine and tell you where. You’ll have just enough time to get there by ten. My men will have had the place staked out since dawn. If the fuzz shows up, or the SAS; if there’s any movement around the place at all, we’ll spot it and pull out. Simon Cormack will die a phone call later. You’ll never see us; we’ll see you, or anyone else that shows up. If you’re trying to trick me, tell your pals that. They might get one of us, or two, but it’ll be too late for the boy.”

“You got it, Zack. I come alone. No tricks.”

“No electronic devices, no direction finders, no microphones. We’ll check you out. If you’re wired up, the boy gets it.”