The Negotiator

“All right,” said Zack. He stood back, a yard away. Qui

Qui

Though he could not see it, the car swung in a U-turn, and the gunman ran forward and climbed into the backseat. All three men removed their masks and track-suit tops, revealing shirts, ties, and jackets. The track-suit tops went into the back, on top of the Skorpion machine pistol. When they were ready, the car glided out of the warehouse, Zack himself now back behind the wheel, and headed toward their hideaway.

It took an hour and a half to reach the attached garage of the house forty miles out of London. Zack drove always at the proper speed, his companions upright and silent in their seats. For both these men it had been their first time out of the house in three weeks.

When the garage door was closed, all three men pulled on their track suits and masks, and one went into the house to warn the fourth. Only when they were ready did Zack open the trunk of the Volvo. Qui

“All right, all right,” said Zack. “No need for that. We’re going to show you the kid. But when you go through the house you wear this.”

He held up a cowled hood. Qui

“You can take the hood off,” said Zack’s voice. He was speaking through the peephole in the cellar door. Qui

Simon Cormack stared in amazement at the tall man near the door, his raincoat half open, holding up a clothespin in his left hand. Qui

“Hi there, Simon. You okay, kid?” A voice from home.

“Who are you?” he whispered.

“Well, the negotiator. We’ve been worried about you. You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m… fine.”

There were three knocks on the door. The young man pulled on his hood. The door opened. Zack stood there. Masked. Armed.

“Well, there he is. Now, the diamonds.”

“Sure,” said Qui

He replaced the pencil in the jaws of the clothespin, and let it hang from its wires to his waist. He slipped off the raincoat and ripped the wooden box from his chest. From the center he took the flat velour package of gems and held them out. Zack took them and passed them to a man in the passage behind him. His gun was still on Qui

“I’ll take the bomb, too,” he said. “You’re not blowing your way out of here with it.”

Qui

“Never could develop a taste for marzipan,” he said. “Too sweet for me.”

Zack stared at the assembly of household items lying in the box in his free hand.

“Marzipan?”

“The best that Marylebone High Street can offer.”

“I should bloody kill you, Qui

“You could, but I hope you won’t. No need, Zack. You got what you want. Like I said, pros kill when they have to. Examine the diamonds in peace, make your escape, let the kid and me stay here till you phone the police.”

Zack closed the door and bolted it behind him. He spoke through the peephole.

“I’ll say this for you, Yank. You got balls.”

Then the peephole closed. Qui

“Now, I’d better bring you up to date a bit. A few more hours, if all goes well, and we should be out of here and heading for home. By the way, your mom and dad send their love.”

He ruffled the young man’s tangled hair. Simon Cormack’s eyes filled with tears and he began to cry uncontrollably. He tried to wipe them away on the sleeve of his plaid shirt, but it was no good. Qui

When Simon stopped and began to bombard him with questions about home, Qui

There seemed to be some kind of a row going on upstairs. Qui

In fact that was not the reason for the dispute. After several minutes it calmed down. In an upstairs bedroom-the kidnappers tended to avoid the downstairs rooms during daylight hours, despite the thick net curtains that screened them-the South African was seated at a table brought up there for the purpose. The table was covered by a bed sheet, the slit velvet packet lay empty on the bed, and all four men gazed in awe at a small mountain of uncut diamonds.

Using a spatula, the South African began to divide the pile into smaller ones, then smaller again, until he had separated the mountain into twenty-five small hillocks. He gestured to Zack to choose one mound. Zack shrugged, picked one in the middle-approximately a thousand stones out of the twenty-five thousand on the table.

Without a word the South African began to scoop up the other twenty-four piles and tip them one by one into a stout canvas bag with a drawstring at the top. When the selected pile alone remained, he switched on a powerful reading lamp above the table, took a jeweler’s loupe from his pocket, a pair of tweezers in his right hand, and held up the first stone to the light.

After several seconds he grunted and nodded, dropping the diamond into the open-topped canvas bag. It would take six hours to examine all thousand stones.

The kidnappers had chosen well. Top quality diamonds, even small ones, are normally “sourced” with a certificate when released to the trade by the Central Selling Organization, which dominates the world diamond trade, handling over 85 percent of stones passing from the mines to the trade. Even the U.S.S.R. with its Siberian extractions is smart enough not to break this lucrative cartel. Large stones of lesser quality are also usually sold with a certificate of provenance.