“Patrick, we’ve always had a damn good relationship, but this is outrageous. Who the hell does he think he is? Where the hell does he think he is?”
Seymour was in an impossible position. He had spent three years building on the excellent cooperation between the Bureau and the Yard which he had inherited from his predecessor, Darrell Mills. He had attended courses in England and arranged visits by senior Metropolitan officers to the Hoover Building to form those one-on-one relationships that in a crisis can cut through miles of red tape.
“What exactly was going on at the farm?” he asked. Cramer calmed down and told him. The Yard had had a tip months before that a big drug ring was setting up a new and major operation in England. After patient investigation the farm had been identified as the base. Covert Squad men from his own S.O. Department had mounted surveillance week after week, in liaison with the Bedford police. The man they wanted was a New Zealand-born heroin czar, sought in a dozen countries but slippery as an eel. The good news was, he was expected to show up with a large coke consignment for processing, cutting, and distributing; the bad news was, he would now not come near the place.
“I’m sorry, Patrick, but I’m going to have to ask the Home Secretary to have Washington send for him.”
“Well, if you must, you must,” said Seymour. As he put the phone down he thought: You go right ahead.
Cramer also had another task, even more urgent. That was to stop the story appearing in any publication, or on radio or TV. That morning he had to call on a lot of good will from the proprietors and editors of the media.
The Washington committee got Seymour’s report at their first—7:00 A.M.—meeting of the day.
“Look, he got a first-class lead and he followed it up,” protested Philip Kelly. Don Edmonds shot him a warning glance.
“He should have cooperated with Scotland Yard,” said the Secretary of State. “What we don’t need is to foul relations with the British authorities at this point. What the hell am I to say to Sir Harry Marriott when he asks for Brown’s ouster?”
“Look,” said Treasury Secretary Reed, “why not propose a compromise? Brown was overzealous and we’re sorry. But we believe Quinn and the British will secure Simon Cormack’s release momentarily. When that happens, we need a strong group to escort the boy home. Brown and his team should be given a few days’ extension to accomplish that. Say, end of the week?”
Jim Donaldson nodded.
“Yes, Sir Harry might accept that. By the way, how is the President?”
“Bucking up,” said Odell. “Almost optimistic. I told him an hour ago Quinn had secured further proof Simon was alive and apparently well—the sixth time Quinn’s got the kidnappers to prove that. How about the diamonds, Morton?”
“Ready by sundown,” said Stannard.
“Get a fast bird standing by and ready,” said Vice President Odell. Stannard nodded and made a note.
* * *
Andy Laing finally got his interview with the internal accountant just after lunch that day. The man was a fellow-American and had been on a tour of European branches for the previous three days.
He listened soberly and with growing dismay to what the young bank officer from Jiddah had to say, and scanned the computer printouts across his desk with a practiced eye. When he had finished he leaned back in his chair, puffed out his cheeks, and exhaled noisily.
“Dear God, these are very serious accusations indeed. And yes, they appear to be substantiated. Where are you staying in London?”
“I still have an apartment in Chelsea,” said Laing. “I’ve been there since I arrived. Luckily my tenants moved out two weeks back.”
The accountant noted its address and phone number.
“I’m going to have to consult with the general manager here, maybe the president in New York. Before we face Steve Pyle with this. Stay close to the phone for a couple of days.”
What neither of them knew was that the morning pouch from Riyadh contained a confidential letter from Steve Pyle to the London-based general manager for Overseas Operations.
The British press was as good as its word, but Radio Luxembourg is based in Paris and for French listeners the story of a first-class row between their Anglo-Saxon neighbors to the west is too good to miss.
Where the tip-off really came from could never be later established, except that it was a phone-in and anonymous. But the London office checked it out and confirmed that the sheer secrecy of the Bedford police gave credence to the story. It was a thin day and they ran it on the four o’clock news.
Hardly anybody in England heard it, but the Corsican did. He whistled in amazement and went to find Zack. The Englishman listened carefully, asked several supplementary questions in French, and went pale with anger.
Quinn knew already, and that was a saving grace because he had time to prepare an answer in the event Zack called. He did, just after 7:00 P.M. and in a towering rage.
“You lying bastard. You said there’d be no cowboy antics from the police or anyone else. You bloody lied to me—”
Quinn protested that he did not know what Zack was talking about—it would have been too phony to know all the details without a reminder. Zack told him in three angry sentences.
“But that was nothing to do with you,” Quinn shouted back. “The Frogs got it wrong, as usual. It was a DEA drug-bust that went wrong. You know these Rambos from the Drug Enforcement Agency—they did it. They weren’t looking for you—they were looking for cocaine. I had a Scotland Yard man here an hour ago and he was puking about it. For chrissake, Zack, you know the media. If you believe them, Simon’s been sighted eight hundred different places and you’ve been caught fifty times.”
It was plausible. Quinn counted on Zack’s having spent three weeks reading miles of inaccurate nonsense in the tabloid papers and having a healthy contempt for the press. In a booth in Linslade bus depot, he calmed down. His phone time was running out.
“Better not be true, Quinn. Just better not,” he said, and hung up.
Sam Somerville and Duncan McCrea were pale with fear by the time the call ended.
“Where are those damn diamonds?” asked Sam.
There was worse to come. Like most countries, Britain has a range of breakfast-hour radio programs, a mix of mindless chitchat from the show host, pop music, news flashes, and phone-in trivia. The news is up-to-the-minute snippets torn from the wire service printers, hastily rewritten by junior subeditors, and thrust under the disc jockey’s nose. The pace of the programs is such that the careful checking and rechecking practiced by the investigative reporters of the Sunday “heavies” just does not take place.
When an American voice rang the busy news desk of City Radio’s Good Morning show, the call was taken by a girl trainee who later tearfully admitted she had not thought to query the claim that the speaker was the press counselor from the U.S. embassy with a genuine news bulletin. It went on the air in the excited tones of the D.J. seventy seconds later.
Nigel Cramer did not hear it but his teenage daughter did.
“Dad,” she called from the kitchen, “you going to catch them today?”
“Catch who?” said her father, pulling on his coat in the hall. His official car was at the curb.
“The kidnappers—you know.”
“I doubt it. Why do you ask?”
“Says so on the radio.”
Something hit Cramer hard in the stomach. He turned back from the door and into the kitchen. His daughter was buttering toast.
“What, exactly, did it say on the radio?” he asked in a very tight voice. She told him. That an exchange of the ransom for Simon Cormack would be set up within the day, and that the authorities were confident all the kidnappers would be caught in the process. Cramer ran out to his car, took the handset from the dashboard, and began to make a series of frantic calls as the car rolled.
It was too late. Zack had not heard the program, but the South African had.
Chapter 9
&nbs
p; The call from Zack was later than usual—10:20 A.M. If he had been angry the previous day over the matter of the raid on the Bedfordshire farm, he was by now almost hysterical with rage.
Nigel Cramer had had time to warn Quinn, speaking from his car as it sped toward Scotland Yard. When Quinn put down the phone, it was the first time Sam had seen him appear visibly shaken. He paced the apartment in silence; the other two sat and watched in fear. They had heard the gist of Cramer’s call and sensed that it was all going to fail, somehow, somewhere.
Just waiting for the flash line to ring, not even knowing whether the kidnappers would have heard the radio show at all, or how they would react if they had, made Sam nauseous from stress. When the phone finally rang, Quinn answered it with his usual calm good humor. Zack did not even bother with preambles.
“Right, this time you’ve bloody blown it, you Yankee bastard. You take me for some kind of fool, do you? Well, you’re the fool, mate. ’Cos you’re going to look a right fool when you bury Simon Cormack’s body.”
Quinn’s shock and amazement were convincingly feigned.
“Zack, what the hell are you talking about? What’s gone wrong?”
“Don’t give me that,” screamed the kidnapper, his gruff voice rising. “If you didn’t hear the news, then ask your police mates about it. And don’t pretend it was a lie—it came from your own sodding embassy.”
Quinn persuaded Zack to tell him what he had heard, even though he knew. The telling caused Zack to calm down slightly; and his time was running out.
“Zack, it’s a lie, a phony. Any exchange would be just you and me, pal. Alone and unarmed. No direction-finder devices, no tricks, no police, no soldiers. Your terms, your place, your time. That’s the only way I’d have it.”
“Yeah, well, it’s too late. Your people want a body, that’s what they’re going to get.”
He was about to hang up. For the last time. Quinn knew if that happened it would be over. Days, weeks later, someone somewhere would enter a house or a flat, a cleaner, a caretaker, a real estate agent, and there he’d be. The President’s only son, shot through the head, or strangled, half decomposed ...
“Zack, please, stay there just a few more seconds.”
Sweat was running off Quinn’s face, the first time he had ever shown the massive strain inside himself these past twenty days. He knew just how close it was to disaster.
In the Kensington exchange a group of Telecom engineers and police officers stared at the monitors and listened to the rage coming down the line; at Cork Street, beneath the pavements of smart Mayfair, four men from MI-5 were rooted in their chairs, motionless as the anger poured out of the speaker into the room and the tape deck wound silently around and around.
Below the U.S. embassy in Grosvenor Square there were two ELINT engineers and three FBI agents, plus Lou Collins of the CIA and FBI representative Patrick Seymour. The news of the morning broadcast had brought them all to this place, anticipating something like what they were now hearing—which did not make it any better.
The fact that all the nation’s radio stations, including City Radio, had spent two hours denouncing the hoax call of the breakfast hour was irrelevant. They all knew that; leaks can be repudiated for the rest of time—it changes nothing. As Hitler said, the big lie is the one they believe.
“Please, Zack, let me get on to President Cormack personally. Just twenty-four hours more. After all this time, don’t throw it away now. The President’s got the authority to tell these assholes to get out of here and leave it to you and me. Just the two of us—we’re the only ones who can be trusted to get it right. All I ask, after twenty days, is just one more. Twenty-four hours, Zack, give me just that.”
There was a pause on the line. Somewhere along the streets of Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, a young detective constable was moving casually toward the bank of phone booths.
“This time tomorrow,” said Zack finally, and put the phone down. He quit the booth and had just turned the corner when the plainclothes policeman emerged from an alley and glanced at the bank of phone booths. All were empty. He had missed spotting Zack by eight seconds.
Quinn replaced the phone, walked to the long couch, lay on his back with his hands clasped behind his head, and stared at the ceiling.
“Mr. Quinn,” said McCrea hesitantly. Despite repeated assurances that he could drop the “Mister,” the shy young CIA man insisted on treating Quinn like his grade-school teacher.
“Shut up,” said Quinn clearly. The crestfallen McCrea, who had been about to ask if Quinn wanted coffee, went to the kitchen and made it anyway. The third, the “ordinary,” telephone rang. It was Cramer.
“Well, we all heard that,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
“Beat,” said Quinn. “Any news on the source of the broadcast?”
“Not yet,” said Cramer. “The girl subeditor who took the call is still at Holborn police station. She swears it was an American voice, but what would she know? She swears the man made it sound convincingly official, knew what to say. You want a transcript of the broadcast?”
“Bit late now,” said Quinn.
“What are you going to do?” asked Cramer.
“Pray a bit. I’ll think of something.”
“Good luck. I have to go ’round to Whitehall now. I’ll stay in touch.”
The embassy came next. Seymour. Congratulations on the way Quinn had handled it ... If there’s anything we can do ... That’s the trouble, thought Quinn. Someone is doing too damn much. But he did not say it.
He was halfway through his coffee when he swung his legs off the couch and picked up the phone to the embassy. It was answered at once in the basement. Seymour again.
“I want a patch-through on a secure line to Vice President Odell,” he said, “and I want it now.”
“Er, look, Quinn, Washington is being alerted about what just happened here. They’ll have the tapes themselves momentarily. I figure we should let them hear what happened and discuss—”
“I speak with Michael Odell inside ten minutes, or I raise him on the open line,” said Quinn carefully.
Seymour thought it over. The open line was insecure. NSA would pick up the call with their satellites; the British GCHQ would get it. So would the Russians. ...
“I’ll get to him and ask him to take your call,” said Seymour.
Ten minutes later Michael Odell came on the line. It was 6:15 A.M. in Washington; he was still at his residence at the Naval Observatory. But he had been awakened half an hour earlier.
“Quinn, what the hell’s going on over there? I just heard some horse shit about a hoax call to a radio show—”
“Mr. Vice President,” said Quinn levelly, “have you a mirror nearby?”
There was a stunned pause.
“Yes, I guess so.”
“If you look in it, you will see the nose on your face, right?”
“Look, what is this? Yeah, okay, I can see the nose on my face.”
“As surely as what you are looking at, Simon Cormack is going to be murdered in twenty-four hours ...”
He let the words sink in to the shocked man sitting on the edge of his bed in Washington.
“... unless ...”
“Okay, Quinn, lay it on the line.”
“Unless I have that package of diamonds, market value two million dollars, here in my hands by sunrise, London time, tomorrow. This call has been taped, for the record. Good day, Mr. Vice President.”
He put the phone down. At the other end, for several minutes the Vice President of the United States of America used language that would have lost him the votes of the Moral Majority, had those good citizens had the opportunity to hear him. When he was done, he called the telephone operator.
“Get me Morton Stannard,” he said. “At his home, wherever. Just get him!”
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 pinnacles of the City, turned and spoke. His tone was grave and frosty.
“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.