“Time’s up,” said Zack. “I’m moving.”
“This happens to be a public phone in Marylebone,” said Quinn, “but you’re right not to trust it. Call me, same number, this evening with the details. I’ll come, alone, unarmed, with the stones, wherever. Because I’m on the lam, make it after dark. Say, eight o’clock.”
“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, Quinn walked back into Blandford Street and down to Blackwood’s Hotel. It was one of those old established inns tucked away into the side streets of London that have somehow avoided being bought and sanitized by the big chains, an ivy-covered twenty-room place with paneling and bay windows and a fire blazing in the brick hearth of a reception area furnished in rugs over uneven boards. Quinn approached the pleasant-looking girl behind the desk.
“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 cannot for the life of me recall where I am checked in. Spent an hour with that lady from the airline going over names of hotels in London—you know how many there are?—but no way can I recall it, not till my suitcase reaches me. So the bottom line is, I took a cab into town and the driver said this was a real nice place ... er ... would you by any chance have a room I could take for the night? By the way, I’m Harry Russell.”
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 funny bird-feather in his hat from Dallas. It never occurred to her not to believe him, or even to ask for identification. Blackwood’s did not normally take guests with neither luggage nor reservation, but losing one’s luggage, and forgetting one’s hotel, and because of a British airline ... She scanned the vacancy sheet; most of their guests were regulars up from the provinces, and a few permanent residents.
“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.”
Quinn went up the stairs with their uneven treads, found Number Eleven, and let himself in. Small, clean, and comfortable. More than adequate. He stripped to his shorts, set the alarm clock he had bought in the hardware store for 6:00 P.M., and slept.
“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 Quinn fellow could recover Simon Cormack alone, well and good. Britain could ship them both home to America as quickly as possible. But if the Americans were going to make a mess of it, let it be their mess, not his.
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 Quinn called in. The three phone lines would remain open to take his call, and tapped. The senior men returned to the embassy, Seymour to liaise with Scotland Yard on progress on what had now become two searches instead of one, the others to wait and listen.
Quinn woke at six, washed and shaved with the new toiletries he had bought in the High Street the previous day, had a light supper, and chanced the two-hundred-yard walk back to the phone booth in Chiltern Street at ten to eight. There was an old lady in it, but she left at five to eight. Quinn stood in the booth facing away from the street pretending to consult the telephone directories until the machine rang at two minutes after eight.
“Quinn?”
“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 direct
ion finders, no microphones. We’ll check you out. If you’re wired up, the boy gets it.”
“Just what I said, no tricks. Just me and the diamonds.”
“Be there in that phone box at nine.”
There was a click and the line buzzed. Quinn left the booth and walked back to his hotel. He watched television for a while, then emptied his grip and worked for two hours on his purchases of that afternoon. It was two in the morning when he was satisfied.
He showered again to get rid of the telltale smell, set the clock, then lay on his bed and stared at the ceiling, quite immobile, thinking. He never slept much before combat; that was why he had caught three hours’ rest during the afternoon. He catnapped just before dawn and rose when the alarm went off at seven.
The charming receptionist was on duty when he approached the desk at half past eight. He was dressed in his heavy-rimmed eyeglasses and tweed hat, and the Burberry was buttoned to the throat. He explained he had to go to Heathrow to collect his luggage, and he would like to settle up and check out.
At quarter to nine he sauntered up the street to the phone booth. There could be no old ladies this time. He stood in it for fifteen minutes, until it rang on the dot of nine. Zack’s voice was husky with his own tension.
“Jamaica Road, Rotherhithe,” he said.
Quinn did not know the area, but he knew of it. The old docks, partly converted to smart new houses and flats for the Yuppies who worked in the City, but with areas still near-derelict, abandoned wharves and warehouses.
“Go on.”
Zack gave the directions. Off Jamaica Road down a street leading to the Thames.
“It’s a single-story steel warehouse, open at both ends. The name Babbidge still written over the doors. Pay off the cab at the top of the street. Walk down alone. Go in the south entrance. Walk to the center of the floor and wait. Anyone follows, we don’t show.”
The phone went dead. Quinn left the booth and dropped his empty calfskin grip into a trash can. He looked around for a cab. Nothing, the morning rush hour. He caught one ten minutes later in Marylebone High Street and was dropped at Marble Arch underground station. At that hour a cab would be ages getting through the twisting streets of the old City and across the Thames to Rotherhithe.
He took the underground due east to the Bank, then the Northern Line under the Thames to London Bridge. It was a main-line railway station; there were cabs waiting in front. He was in Jamaica Road fifty-five minutes after Zack had hung up.
The street he had been told to walk down was narrow, dirty, and empty. To one side, derelict tea warehouses, ripe for development, fronted the river. To the other, abandoned factories and steel sheds. He knew he was being watched from somewhere. He walked along the center of the street. The steel hangar with the faded painted name of Babbidge above one door was at the end. He turned inside.
Two hundred feet long, eighty wide. Rusted chains hung from roof girders; the floor was concrete, fouled by the windswept detritus of years of abandonment. The door he had entered by would take a pedestrian but not a vehicle; the one at the far end was wide enough and high enough to take a truck. He walked to the middle of the floor and stopped. He took off the phony eyeglasses and tweed hat and stuffed them in his pocket. He would not need them again. Either he walked out of here with a deal for Simon Cormack, or he would need a police escort anyway.
He waited an hour, quite immobile. At eleven o’clock the big Volvo appeared at the far end of the hangar and drove slowly toward him, coming to a stop with its engine running forty feet away. There were two men in the front, both masked so that only their eyes showed through the slits.
He sensed more than heard the scuffle of running shoes on concrete behind him and threw a casual glance over his shoulder. A third man stood there; black track suit without insignia, ski mask covering the head. He was alert, poised on the balls of his feet, with the submachine carbine held easily, at the port but ready for use if need be.
The passenger door of the Volvo opened and a man got out. Medium height, medium build.
He called: “Quinn?”
Zack’s voice. Unmistakable.
“You got the diamonds?”
“Right here.”
“Hand them over.”
“You got the kid, Zack?”
“Don’t be a fool. Trade him for a sack of glass pebbles? We examine the stones first. Takes time. One piece of glass, one piece of paste—you’ve blown it. If they’re okay, then you get the boy.”
“That’s what I figured. Won’t work.”
“Don’t play games with me, Quinn.”
“No games, Zack. I have to see the kid. You could get pieces of glass—you won’t, but you want to be sure. I could get a corpse.”
“You won’t.”
“I need to be sure. That’s why I have to go with you.”
Behind the mask Zack stared at Quinn in disbelief. He gave a grating laugh.
“See that man behind you? One word and he blows you away. Then we take the stones anyway.”
“You could try,” admitted Quinn. “Ever seen one of these?”
He opened his raincoat all the way down, took something that hung free from near his waist and held it up.
Zack studied Quinn and the assembly strapped to his chest over his shirt, and swore softly but violently.
From below his sternum to his waist, Quinn’s front was occupied by the flat wooden box of what had once contained liqueur chocolates. The bonbons were gone, along with the box’s lid. The tray of the box formed a flat container strapped with surgical tape across his chest.
In the center was the velour package of diamonds, framed on each side by a half-pound block of tacky beige substance. Jammed into one of the blocks was a bright-green electrical wire, the other end of which ran to one of the spring-controlled jaws of the wooden clothespin Quinn held aloft in his left hand. It went through a tiny hole bored in the wood, to emerge inside the jaws of the peg.
Also in the chocolate box was a PP3 nine-volt battery, wired to another bright green cord. In one direction the green cord linked both blocks of beige substance to the battery; in the other direction the wire ran to the opposite jaw of the clothespin. The jaws of the pin were held apart by a stub of pencil. Quinn flexed the fingers of his hand; the stub of pencil fell to the floor.
“Phony,” said Zack without conviction. “That’s not real.”
With his right hand Quinn twisted off a blob of the light-brown substance, rolled it into a ball, and tossed it across the floor to Zack. The criminal stooped, picked it up, and sniffed. The odor of marzipan filled his nostrils.
“Semtex,” he said.
“That’s Czech,” said Quinn. “I prefer RDX.”
Zack knew enough to know all explosive gelatins both look and smell like the harmless confection marzipan. There the difference ends. If his man opened fire now they would all die. There was enough plastic explosive in that box to clear the floor of the warehouse clean, lift off the roof, and scatter the diamonds on the other side of the Thames.
“Knew you were a bastard,” said Zack. “What do you want?”
“I pick up the pencil, put it back, climb into the trunk of the car, and you drive me to see the boy. No one followed me. No one will. I can’t recognize you, now or ever. You’re safe enough. When I see the kid alive, I dismantle this and give you the stones. You check them through; when you’re satisfied, you leave. The kid and I stay imprisoned. Twenty-four hours later you make an anonymous phone call. The fuzz comes to release us. It’s clean, it’s simple, and you get away.”
Zack seemed undecided. It was not his plan, but he’d been outmaneuvered and he knew it. He reached into the side pocket of his track suit and pulled out a flat black box.
“Keep your hand up and those jaws open. I’m going to check you out for wiretaps.”
He approached and ran the circuit detector over Quinn’s body from head to foot. Any live electrical circuit, of the kind contained in an emitting direction f
inder or wiretap, would have caused the detector to give out a shrill whoop. The battery in the bomb Quinn wore was dormant. The original briefcase would have triggered the detector.
“All right,” said Zack. He stood back, a yard away. Quinn could smell the man’s sweat. “You’re clean. Put that pencil back, and climb in the trunk.”
Quinn did as he was bid. The last light he saw was before the large rectangular lid of the trunk came down on him. Air holes had already been punched in the floor to accommodate Simon Cormack three weeks earlier. It was stuffy but bearable and, despite his length, large enough, provided he remained crouched in fetal position—which meant he nearly gagged from the smell of almonds.
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. Quinn was stiff, and blinked in the electric light of the garage. He had removed the pencil from the jaws of the clothespin and held it in his teeth.
“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. Quinn nodded. Zack pulled it over Quinn’s head. There was a chance they would try to rush him, but it would take only a fraction of a second to release his grip on the open clothespin. They led him, left hand aloft, through into the house, down a short passage and then some cellar steps. He heard three loud knocks on a door of some kind, then a pause. He heard a door creak open and he was pushed into a room. He stood there alone, hearing the rasp of bolts.