“Yes?”
He had heard the man speak before, but that one word was not enough to identify the voice.
Quinn spoke in the quiet, almost whispering voice of Moss, the words punctuated by the occasional whistle of breath through the damaged nose.
“It’s Moss,” he said.
There was a pause.
“You should never call me here, except in an emergency. I told you that.”
Pay dirt. Quinn let out a deep sigh.
“It is,” he said softly. “Quinn has been taken care of. The girl too. And McCrea, he’s been… terminated.”
“I don’t think I want to know these things,” said the voice.
“You should,” said Quinn before the man could cut the connection. “He left a manuscript behind. Quinn. I have it now, right here.”
“Manuscript?”
“That’s right. I don’t know where he got the details, how he worked them out, but it’s all here. The five names-you know, the men in back. Me, McCrea, Orsini, Zack, Marchais, Pretorius. Everything. Names, dates, places, times. What happened and why… and who.”
There was a long pause.
“That include me?” asked the voice.
“I said, everything.”
Quinn could hear the breathing.
“How many copies?”
“Just the one. He was in a cabin up in northern Vermont. No Xerox machines up there. I have the only copy right here.”
“I see. Where are you?”
“In Washington.”
“I think you had better hand it over to me.”
“Sure,” said Quinn. “No problem. It names me too. I’d destroy it myself, except…”
“Except what, Mr. Moss?”
“Except they still owe me.”
There was another long pause. The man at the other end of the line was swallowing saliva, several times.
“I understand you have been handsomely rewarded,” he said. “If there is more due you, it will be provided.”
“No good,” said Quinn. “There was a whole mess of things I had to clear up that were not foreseen. Those three guys in Europe, Quinn, the girl… All that caused a deal of extra… work.”
“What do you want, Mr. Moss?”
“I figure I ought to get what was offered to me originally, all over again. And doubled.”
Quinn could hear the intake of breath. Doubtless the man was learning the hard way that if you mess with killers, you may end up being blackmailed.
“I will have to consult on this,” said the man in Georgetown. “If… er… paperwork has to be prepared, it will take time. Don’t do anything rash. I’m sure things can be worked out.”
“Twenty-four hours,” said Quinn. “I call you back this time tomorrow. Tell those five down there you had better be ready. I get my fee-you get the manuscript. Then I’ll be gone, and you’ll all be safe… forever.”
He hung up the phone, leaving the other man to calculate the choice of paying up or facing ruin.
For transportation Quinn rented a motorcycle, and bought himself a chunky sheepskin bomber jacket to keep out the cold.
His call the next evening was picked up at the first ring.
“Well?” Quinn snuffled.
“Your… terms, excessive though they are, have been accepted,” said the owner of the Georgetown house.
“You have the paperwork?” asked Quinn.
“I do. In my hand. You have the manuscript?”
“In mine. Let’s swap and get it over with.”
“I agree. Not here. The usual place, two in the morning.”
“Alone. Unarmed. You get some hired muscle to try and jump me, you end up in a box.”
“No tricks-you have my word on it. Since we are prepared to pay, there’s no need. And none from your side either. A straight commercial deal, please.”
“Suits me. I just want the money,” said Quinn.
The other man cut off the call.
At five minutes to eleven John Cormack sat at his desk and surveyed the handwritten letter to the American people. It was gracious and regretful. Others would have to read it aloud, reproduce it in their newspapers and magazines, on their radio programs and TV shows. After he was gone. It was eight days to Christmas. But this year another man would celebrate the festive season in the Mansion. A good man, a man he trusted. Michael Odell, forty-first President of the United States. The phone rang. He glanced at it with some irritation. It was his personal and private number, the one he gave only to close and trusted friends who might call him without introduction at any hour.
“Yes?”
“Mr. President?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Quinn. The negotiator.”
“Ah… yes, Mr. Quinn.”
“I don’t know what you think of me, Mr. President. It matters little now. I failed to get your son back to you. But I have discovered why. And who killed him. Please, sir, just listen. I have little time.
“At five tomorrow morning a motorcyclist will stop at the Secret Service post at the public entrance to the White House on Alexander Hamilton Place. He will hand over a package, a flat cardboard box. It will contain a manuscript. It is for your eyes and yours only. There are no copies. Please give orders for it to be brought to you personally when it arrives. When you have read it, you will make the dispositions you see fit. Trust me, Mr. President. This one last time. Good night, sir.”
John Cormack stared at the buzzing phone. Still perplexed, he put it down, lifted another, and gave the order to the Secret Service duty officer.
Quinn had a small problem. He did not know “the usual place,” and to have admitted that would have blown away his chances of the meeting. At midnight he found the Georgetown address Sam had given him, parked the big Honda down the street, and took up his station in the deep shadow of a gap between two other houses across the street and twenty yards up.
The house he watched was an elegant five-story redbrick mansion at the western end of N Street, a quiet avenue that terminates there with the campus of Georgetown University. Quinn calculated such a place would have to cost over $2 million.
Beside the house were the electronically operated doors of a double garage. Lights burned in the house on three floors. Just after midnight those in the topmost floor, the staff quarters, went out. At one o’clock only one floor remained illuminated. Someone was still awake.
At twenty past one the last lights above the ground floor went out; others downstairs came on. Ten minutes later a crack of yellow appeared behind the garage doors-someone was getting into a car. The light went out and the doors began to rise. A long black Cadillac limousine emerged, turned slowly into the street, and the doors closed. As the car headed away from the university Quinn saw there was just one man at the wheel, driving carefully. He walked unobtrusively to his Honda, started up, and cruised down the street in the wake of the limousine.
It turned south on Wisconsin Avenue. The usually bustling heart of Georgetown, with its bars, bistros, and late shops, was quiet at that hour of a deep mid-December night. Quinn stayed back as far as he dared, watching the taillights of the Cadillac swing east onto M Street and then right on Pennsylvania Avenue. He followed it around the Washington Circle and then due south on Twenty-third Street, until it turned left into Constitution Avenue and pulled to a halt by the curb under the trees just beyond Henry Bacon Drive.
Quinn slewed quickly off the avenue, over the curb, and into a clump of bushes, killing his engine and lights as he did so. He watched the taillights die on the Cadillac and the driver climb out. The man glanced around him, watched a taxi cruise past looking forlornly for a fare, noticed nothing else, and began to walk. Instead of coming down the pavement he stepped over the railing bordering the greensward of West Potomac Park and began to cross the grass in the direction of the Reflecting Pool.
Out of the range of the streetlamps the darkness enveloped the figure in the black overcoat and hat. To Quinn’s right the bright illumination of the Lincoln Memorial lit the bottom end of Twenty-third Street, but the light hardly reached across the grass and into the trees of the park. Quinn was able to close up to fifty yards and keep the moving shadow in vision.