The Negotiator

“Qui

“Not here,” he said. There were other tourists having a late breakfast. “In our room.”

“It’s a hotel room,” he told her when they were upstairs. “Tomorrow at eight in the morning. His room at the Hôtel Roblin. Reserved in the name of-would you believe it?-Smith.”

“I have to be there, Qui

“Sure,” said Qui

Several minutes later Sam made an excuse and went down to the bar. She was back after ten minutes. Qui

She was asleep when he left at midnight, the bedside alarm clock set for six in the morning. He moved through the bedroom like a shadow, picking up his shoes, socks, trousers, shorts, sweater, jacket, and gun as he went. There was no one in the corridor. He dressed there, stuck the pistol in his belt, adjusted the windbreaker to cover it, and went silently downstairs.

He found a cab on the Champs-Elysées and was at the Hôtel Roblin ten minutes later.

“La chambre de Monsieur Smith, s’il vous plaît,” he told the night porter. The man checked a list and gave him the key. Number 10. Second floor. He mounted the stairs and let himself in.

The bathroom was the best place for the ambush. The door was in the corner of the bedroom and from it he could cover every angle, especially the door to the corridor. He removed the bulb from the main light in the bedroom, took an upright chair and placed it inside the bathroom. With the bathroom door open just enough to give him a two-inch crack, he began his vigil. When his night-sight came he could clearly make out the empty bedroom, dimly lit by the light from the street coming through the windows, whose curtains he had left open.

By six no one had come; he had heard no footsteps in the corridor. At half past six the night porter brought coffee to an early riser down the corridor; he heard the footsteps passing the door, then returning to the stairs to the lobby. No one came in; no one tried to come in.

At eight he felt the sense of relief washing over him. At twenty past the hour he left, paid his bill, and took a cab back to the Hôtel du Colisée. She was in the bedroom and nearly frantic.

“Qui

He could have lied, but he was genuinely remorseful. He told her what he had done. She looked as if he had hit her in the face.

“You thought it was me?” she whispered.

“Yes,” he admitted. After Marchais and Pretorius he had become obsessed with the idea that someone was tipping off the killer or killers; how else could they twice get to the vanished mercenaries before he and Sam did? She swallowed hard, composed herself, hid the hurt inside her.

“Okay, so when is the real rendezvous, may I ask? That is, if you trust me enough now.”

“It’s in an hour, at ten o’clock,” he said. “A bar off the rue de Chalón, right behind the Gare de Lyon. It’s a long haul-let’s go now.”

It was another cab ride. Sam sat silently reproachful as they rode down the quays along the north bank of the Seine from the northwest to the southeast of the city. Qui

The rue de Chalón ran parallel to the railway tracks heading out of the station toward the south of France. From beyond the wall they could hear the clang of trains moving over the numerous points outside the terminus. It was a dingy street.

Off the rue de Chalón a number of narrow streets, each called Passage, co

“It’s a hell of a dingy place,” remarked Sam.

“Yeah, well, he picked it. The meeting is in a bar.”

There were two bars in the street and neither was any threat to the Ritz.

Chez Hugo was the second one, across the street and fifty yards up from the first. Qui

Qui

“Zack?”said Qui

“Yeah. Siddown. Who’s she?”

“My partner. I stay, she stays. You wanted this. Let’s talk.”

He sat down opposite Zack, hands on the table. No tricks. The man stared at him malevolently. Qui

“Qui

“Hey, ease up, Zack. I’m not one of the ones who told you that. I’m on the other side. Why don’t we start at the begi

Zack looked at Qui

“Because we was paid to,” he said.

“You were paid up front? Not for the ransom?”

“No, that was extra. Half a million dollars was the fee. I took two hundred for me, one hundred each for the other three. We was told the ransom was extra-we could get as much as we could, and keep it.”

“All right. Who paid you to do it? I swear I wasn’t one of them. I was called in the day after the snatch, to try and get the kid back. Who set it up?”

“I du

“What about expenses? Kidnappings come expensive.”

“On top of the fee. In cash. Another hundred thousand dollars I had to spend.”

“Did that include the house you hid in?”

“No, that was provided. We met in London a month before the job. He gave me the keys, told me where it was, told me to get it ready as a bunk-hole.”

“Give me the address.”

Zack gave it to him. Qui

The company would prove to be a bearer-share shell corporation represented quite legally by a Luxembourg bank acting as nominee, and who had never met the owner of the shell company. The money used to buy the house had come to Luxembourg in the form of a draft issued by a Swiss bank. The Swiss would declare that the draft had been bought for cash in U.S. dollars at their Geneva branch, but no one could recall the buyer.