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.
“Quinn, where the hell have you been? I’ve been desperate with worry. I woke at five ... you weren’t there. ... For God’s sake, we’ve missed the rendezvous.”
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. Quinn dismissed the taxi on the corner of the rue de Chalón and the Passage de Gatbois. He decided to walk the rest.
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, connected up to the bustling Avenue Daumesnil. One block down from where he had paid off the cab Quinn found the street he sought, the Passage de Vautrin. He turned into it.
“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. Quinn pushed open the door. The bar counter was to his left; to his right, two tables near the street window, which was masked by thick lace curtains. Both tables were empty. The whole bar was empty except for the unshaven proprietor, who tended his espresso machine behind the counter. With the open door behind him and Sam standing there, Quinn was visible, and he knew it. Anyone in the dark recesses at the rear would be hard to see. Then he saw the bar’s only customer. Right at the back, alone at a table, a coffee in front of him, staring at Quinn.
Quinn walked the length of the room, followed by Sam. The man made no move. His eyes never left Quinn, except to flicker once over Sam. Eventually Quinn stood above him. He wore a corduroy jacket and open-necked shirt. Thinning sandy hair, late forties, a thin, mean face, badly pockmarked.
“Zack?” said Quinn.
“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. Quinn knew he had seen the face before, thought back to Hayman’s files, and those of Hamburg. Then he got it. Sidney Fielding, one of John Peters’s section commanders in the Fifth Commando at Paulis, ex-Belgian Congo. The man trembled with a barely controlled emotion. After several seconds Quinn realized it was rage, but mixed with something else. Quinn had seen the look in the eyes many times, in Vietnam and elsewhere. The man was afraid, bitter and angry but also very badly frightened. Zack could contain himself no longer.
“Quinn, you’re a bastard. You and your people are lying bastards. You promised no manhunt, said we’d just have to disappear and after a couple of weeks the heat would be off. Some shit. Now I hear Big Paul’s gone missing and Janni’s in a morgue in Holland. No manhunt, hell. We’re being wasted.”
“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 beginning? Why did you kidnap Simon Cormack?”
Zack looked at Quinn as if he had just asked if the sun was hot or cold.
“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 dunno his name. Never did. He was American, that’s all I know. Short, fat man. Contacted me here. God knows how he found me—must have had contacts. We always met in hotel rooms. I’d come there and he would always be masked. But the money was up front and in cash.”
“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. Quinn noted it. Nigel Cramer and the forensic scientists from the labs of the Metropolitan Police would later visit the place and take it apart in their search for clues. Records would show it was not rented at all. It had been bought quite legitimately for £200,000 through a firm of British lawyers acting for a Luxembourg-registered company.
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.
The house, moreover, was not north of London at all; it was in Sussex to the south, near East Grinstead. Zack had simply been motoring around the orbital M.25 to make his phone calls from the northern side of the capital.
Cramer’s men would scour the place from top to bottom; despite the cleaning-up efforts by the four mercenaries, there were some overlooked fingerprints, but they belonged to Marchais and Pretorius.
“What about the Volvo?” asked Quinn. “You paid for that?”
“Yeah, and the van, and most of the other gear. Only the Skorpion was given us by the fat man. In London.”
Unknown to Quinn, the Volvo had already been found outside London. It had overstayed its time in a multistory parking lot at London’s Heathrow Airport. The mercenaries, after driving through Buckingham on the morning of the murder, had turned south again and back to London. From Heathrow they had taken the airport shuttle bus to London’s other air terminus at Gatwick, ignored the airport, and boarded the train for Hastings and the coast. Separate taxis had brought them to Newhaven to catch the noon ferry to Dieppe. Once in France they had split up and gone to earth.
The Volvo, examined by the Heathrow Airport police, was seen to have breathing holes punctured in the floor of the trunk, and a lingering smell of almonds. Scotland Yard was called in, the original owner traced. But it had been bought for cash, the change-of-owner documentation had never been completed, and the description of the buyer matched that of the ginger-haired man who had bought the Ford Transit.
“It was the fat man who was giving you all the inside information?” asked Quinn.
“What inside information?” said Sam suddenly.
“How did you know about that?” asked Zack suspiciously. He evidently still suspected that Quinn might be one of his employers-turned-persecutors.
“You were too good,” said Quinn. “You knew to wait until I was in place, then ask for the negotiator in person. I’ve never known that
before. You knew when to throw a rage and when to back off. You changed from dollars to diamonds, knowing it would cause a delay when we were ready to exchange.”
Zack nodded. “Yeah, I was briefed before the kidnap on what to do, when and how to do it. While we were hiding, I had to make another series of phone calls. Always while out of the house, always from one phone booth to another, according to an arranged list. It was the fat man; I knew his voice by then. He occasionally made changes—fine-tuning, he called it. I just did what I was told.”
“All right,” said Quinn. “And the fat man told you there’d be no problem getting away afterward. Just a manhunt for a month or so, but with no clues to go on, it would all die down and you could live happily ever after. You really believed that? You really thought you could kidnap and kill the son of an American President and get away? Then why did you kill the kid? You didn’t have to.”
Zack’s facial muscles worked in something like a frenzy. His eyes bulged with anger.
“That’s the point, you shit. We didn’t kill him. We dumped him on the road like we was told. He was alive and well—we hadn’t hurt him at all. And we drove on. First we knew he was dead was when it was made public the next day. I couldn’t believe it. It was a lie. We didn’t do it.”
Outside in the street a car cruised around the corner from the rue de Chalón. One man drove; the other was in back, cradling the rifle. The car came up the street as if looking for someone, paused outside the first bar, advanced almost to the door of Chez Hugo, then backed up to come to rest halfway between the two. The engine was kept idling.
“The kid was killed by a bomb planted in the leather belt he wore around his waist,” said Quinn. “He wasn’t wearing that when he was snatched on Shotover Plain. You gave it to him to wear.”
“I didn’t,” shouted Zack. “I bloody didn’t. It was Orsini.”
“Okay, tell me about Orsini.”
“Corsican, a hit man. Younger than us. When the three of us left to meet you in the warehouse, the kid was wearing what he had always worn. When we got back he was in new clothes. I tore Orsini off a hell of a strip over that. The silly bastard had left the house, against orders, and gone and bought them.”
Quinn recalled the shouting row he had heard above his head when the mercenaries had retired to examine their diamonds. He had thought it was about the gems.
“Why did he do it?” asked Quinn.
“He said the kid had complained he was cold. Said he thought it would do no harm, so he walked into East Grin-stead, went to a camping shop, and bought the gear. I was angry because he speaks no English and would stand out like a sore thumb, the way he looks.”
“The clothes were almost certainly delivered in your absence,” said Quinn. “All right, what does he look like, this Orsini?”
“About thirty-three, a pro, but never been in combat. Very dark chin, black eyes, knife scar down one cheek.”
“Why did you hire him?”
“I didn’t. I contacted Big Paul and Janni ’cos I knew them from the old days and we’d stayed in touch. The Corsican was sicked on me by the fat man. Now I hear Janni’s dead and Big Paul has vanished.”
“And what do you want with this meeting?” asked Quinn. “What am I supposed to do for you?”
Zack leaned forward and gripped Quinn’s forearm.
“I want out,” he said. “If you’re with the people who set me up, tell ’em there’s no way they need to come after me. I’d never, never talk. Not to the fuzz anyway. So they’re safe.”
“But I’m not with them,” said Quinn.
“Then tell your people I never killed the kid,” said Zack. “That was never part of the deal. I swear on my life I never intended that boy to die.”
Quinn mused that if Nigel Cramer or Kevin Brown ever got their hands on Zack, “life” was exactly what he would be serving, as a guest either of Her Majesty or of Uncle Sam.
“A few last points, Zack. The diamonds. If you want to make a play for clemency, they’d better have the ransom back for starters. Have you spent them?”
“No,” said Zack abruptly. “No chance. They’re here. Every single bloody one.”
He dived a hand under the table and dumped a canvas bag on the table. Sam’s eyes popped.
“Orsini,” said Quinn impassively. “Where is he now?”
“God knows. Probably back in Corsica. He came from there ten years ago to work in the gangs of Marseilles, Nice, and later Paris. That was all I could get out of him. Oh, and he comes from a village called Castelblanc.”
Quinn rose, took the canvas bag, and looked down at Zack.
“You’re in it, mate. Right up to your ears. I’ll talk to the authorities. They might accept your turning state’s evidence. Even that’s a long shot. But I’ll tell them there were people behind you, and probably people behind them. If they believe that, and you tell all, they might leave you alive. The others, the ones you worked for ... no chance.”
He turned to go. Sam got up to follow. As if preferring the shelter the American gave him, Zack rose also and they headed for the door. Quinn paused.
“One last thing. Why the name Zack?”
He knew that during the kidnapping, the psychiatrists and code breakers had puzzled long over the name, seeking a possible clue to the real identity of the man who had chosen it. They had worked on variations of Zachary, Zachariah, looked for relatives of known criminals who had such names or initials.
“It was really Z-A-K,” said Zack. “The letters on the number plate of the first car I ever owned.”
Quinn raised a single eyebrow. So much for psychiatry. He stepped outside. Zack came next. Sam was still in the doorway when the crash of the rifle tore apart the quiet of the side street.
Quinn did not see the car or the gunman. But he heard the distinctive “whap” of a bullet going past his face and felt the breath of cool wind it made on his cheek. The bullet missed his ear by half an inch, but not Zack. The mercenary took it in the base of the throat.
It was Quinn’s quick reflexes that saved his life. He was no stranger to that sound, which gave him an edge. Zack’s body was thrown back into the doorpost, then forward on the rebound. Quinn was back in the door arch before Zack’s knees began to buckle. For the second that the mercenary’s body was still upright, it acted as a shield between Quinn and the car parked thirty yards away.
Quinn hurled himself backwards through the door, twisting, grabbing Sam, and pulling them both down to the floor in one movement. As they hit the grubby tiles a second bullet passed through the closing door above them and tore plaster off the side wall of the café. Then the spring-loaded door closed.
Quinn went across the bar’s floor at a fast crawl, elbows and toes, dragging Sam behind him. The car moved up the alley to straighten the rifleman’s angle, and a volley of shots shattered the plate-glass window and riddled the door. The barman, presumably Hugo, was slower. He stood open-mouthed behind his bar until a shower of splinters from his disintegrating stock of bottles sent him to the floor.
The shots stopped—change of magazine. Quinn was up and racing for the rear exit, his left hand pulling Sam by the wrist, his right still clutching the bag of diamonds. The door at the back of the bar gave onto a corridor, with the toilets on each side. Straight ahead was a grubby kitchen. Quinn raced through the kitchen, kicked open the door at the end, and they found themselves in a rear yard.
Crates of beer bottles were stacked, awaiting collection. Using them as steps, Quinn and Sam went over the back wall of the yard and dropped into another backyard, which itself belonged to a butcher shop on the parallel street, the Passage de Gatbois. Three seconds later they emerged from the establishment of the astounded butcher and into the street. By good luck there was a taxi, thirty yards up. From its rear an old lady was climbing unsteadily, reaching into her bag for small change as she did so. Quinn got there first, swung the lady physically onto the pavement, and told her: “C’est payé, madame.”
He d
ived into the rear seat of the cab, still clutching Sam by the wrist, dropped the canvas bag on the seat, reached for a bundle of French banknotes, and held them under the driver’s nose.
“Let’s get out of here, fast,” he said. “My girl’s husband has just showed up with some hired muscle.”
Marcel Dupont was an old man with a walrus moustache who had driven a cab on the streets of Paris for forty-five years. Before that he had fought with the Free French. He had bailed out of a few places in his time, one step ahead of the hard squad. He was also a Frenchman and the blond girl being dragged into his cab was quite an eyeful. He was also a Parisian and knew a fat bundle of banknotes when he saw one. It had been a long time since Americans gave $10 tips. Nowadays most of them seemed to be in Paris on a $10-a-day budget. He left a stream of black rubber smoke as he went up the passage and into Avenue Daumesnil.
Quinn had reached across Sam to give the swinging door a hard tug. It hit some impediment, closed at the second slam. Sam leaned back in the seat, white as a sheet. Then she noticed her treasured crocodile-skin handbag from Harrods. The force of the closing door had shattered the frame near the base, splitting the stitching. She examined the damage and her brow furrowed in puzzlement.
“Quinn, what the hell’s this?”
“This” was the jutting end of a black-and-orange wafer-thin battery, of the type used to power Polaroid cameras. Quinn’s penknife slit the rest of the stitching along the base of the bag’s frame to reveal the battery was one of a linked set of three, two and a half inches wide, four inches long. The transmitter and bleeper were in a printed circuit board, also in the base, with a wire leading to a microphone in the stud that formed the bottom of the hinge. The aerial was in the shoulder strap. It was a miniature, professional, state-of-the-art device and voice-activated to save power.
Quinn looked at the components on the rear seat between them. Even if it still worked, it would now be impossible to pass disinformation through it. Sam’s exclamation would have alerted the listeners to its discovery. He emptied all her effects from the upturned handbag, asked the driver to pause by the curb, and threw the handbag and electronic bug into a garbage bin.