The Negotiator

Chapter 15

Qui

“Won’t he play?”

“Mmmm?”

“Hayman. Won’t he let you go back into his files?”

“No. That’s out. And it’s final. But it appears someone else does want to play. Zack has been phoning.”

She was stu

“Zack? What does he want?”

“A meeting.”

“How the hell did he find you?”

Qui

“A long shot. Years ago there was an occasional mention of me when I worked for Broderick-Jones. All he had was my name and my job. Seems I’m not the only one who checks back through old newspaper clippings. By a fluke, Hayman was lunching with someone from my old company when the subject came up.”

He turned into Old Church Street and right again on the King’s Road.

“Qui

Qui

“If only he knew. I haven’t the faintest idea who he is or where he is.”

He decided not to tell her he no longer believed Zack was the killer of Marchais and Pretorius. Not that a man like Zack would balk at eliminating his own kind if the price was right. Back in the Congo several mercenaries had been wasted by their own kind. It was the coincidence of the timing that worried him.

He and Sam had got to Marchais a few hours after his death; fortunately for them, there were no police about. But for a fluke crash outside Arnhem they would have been in Pretorius’s bar with a loaded gun an hour after he died. They would have remained in detention for weeks while the Den Bosch police investigated the case.

He turned left off King’s Road into Beaufort Street, heading for Battersea Bridge, and ran straight into a traffic jam. London traffic is no stranger to snarls, but at that hour on a winter’s night the run south through London should have been clear enough.

The line of cars he was in edged forward and he saw a uniformed London policeman directing them around a series of cones that blocked off the nearside lane. Turn and turn about the cars heading north and those heading south had to use the single remaining lane in the street.

When they came abreast of the obstruction Qui

The traffic control policeman impatiently waved them on. Samsquinted up at the face of the building outside which the form on the pavement lay. The windows on the top floor were open and she saw a policeman’s head poking out as he gazed down.

“Someone seems to have fallen eight floors,” she remarked. “The police are looking out the open window up there.”

Qui

“Where are we going?” asked Sam.

“Paris,” said Qui

Coming back to Paris for Qui

He had wooed and won Jea

He knew bars in Paris, dozens of bars, where after the death of Jea

They spent the night at a motel just outside Ashford and caught the 9:00 A.M. Hovercraft from Folkestone to Calais, arriving in Paris in time for lunch.

Qui

After lunch Qui

“I’m afraid we can’t get it in tomorrow’s edition,” said the girl at the front desk. “It will have to be the day after. Insertions are only for the following day if entered by eleven-thirty A.M.”

“That’ll be fine,” said Qui

This time he did not miss the story, datelined out of Moscow, whose headline read: GEN. KRYUCHKOV OUSTER. There was a sub-headline: KGB CHIEF FIRED IN BIG SECURITY SHAKE-UP. He read the story out of interest but it signified nothing to him.

The agency correspondent reported that the Soviet Politburo had received “with regret” the resignation and retirement of KGB Chairman General Vladimir Kryuchkov. A deputy chairman would head the Committee pro tem, until the Politburo appointed a successor.

The report surmised that the changes appeared to have been in response to Politburo dissatisfaction, particularly with the performance of the First Chief Directorate, of which Kryuchkov himself had been a former head. The reporter finished his piece with the suggestion that the Politburo-a thinly veiled reference to Gorbachev himself- wished to see newer and younger blood moving into the top slot of the U.S.S.R.’s overseas espionage service.

That evening and through the following day, Qui

The ad appeared the following morning. Qui

“Qui

“Zack, before we go any further, this is a hotel. I don’t like hotel phones. Call me at this public booth in thirty minutes.”

He dictated the number of a phone booth just off the Place de la Madeleine. He left Sam behind, still in her nightgown, calling, “I’ll be back in an hour.”

The phone in the booth rang at exactly ten.

“Qui

“We are talking, Zack.”

“I mean face-to-face.”

“Sure, no problem. You say when and where.”

“No tricks, Qui

“You got it.”

Zack dictated the time and the place. Qui

“What did he want?”

“A meeting, face-to-face.”