“But how the hell could they have done that to my bag?” she asked. “It’s been with me ever since I bought it.”
“That’s not your bag-that was a duplicate,” said Quinn. “Someone spotted it, made up the replica, and did the switch. How many people came to that apartment in Kensington?”
“After you ran out? The world and his mother. There was Cramer and the Brits, Brown, Collins, Seymour, another three or four FBI men. I was up at the embassy, down at that manor house in Surrey where they kept you for a while, over to the States, back again-hell, I’ve been everywhere with it.”
And it would take five minutes to empty the old bag, put the contents in the duplicate, and effect the switch.
“Where do you want to go, mate?” asked the driver.
The Hôtel du Colisée was out; the killers would know of that. But not the garage where he had parked the Opel. He had been there alone, without Sam and her lethal handbag.
“Place de la Madeleine,” he said, “corner of Chauveau-Lagarde.”
“Quinn, maybe I should head back to the States with what we just heard. I could go to our embassy here and insist on two U.S. marshals as escort. Washington’s got to hear what Zack told us.”
Quinn stared out at the passing streets. The cab was moving up the rue Royale. It skirted the Madeleine and dropped them at the entrance to the garage. Quinn tipped the friendly cabdriver heavily.
“Where are we going?” asked Sam when they were in the Opel and heading south across the Seine toward the Latin Quarter.
“You’re going to the airport,” said Quinn.
“For Washington?”
“Absolutely not for Washington. Listen, Sam, now more than ever you should not go back there unprotected. Whoever’s behind this, they’re much higher than a bunch of former mercenaries. They were just the hired hands. Everything that was happening on our side was being fed to Zack. He was forewarned of police progress, the dispositions in Scotland Yard, London, and Washington. Everything was choreographed, even the killing of Simon Cormack.
“When that kid ran along that roadside, someone had to be up in those trees with the detonator. How did he know to be there? Because Zack was told exactly what to do at every stage, including the release of both of us. The reason he didn’t kill me was because he wasn’t told to. He didn’t think he was going to kill anybody.”
“But he told us who,” protested Sam. “It was this American, the one who set it up and paid him, the one he called the fat man.”
“And who told the fat man?”
“Oh. There’s someone behind the fat man.”
“There has to be,” said Quinn. “And high-real high. ’Way up there. We know what happened and how, but not who or why. You go back to Washington now and you tell them what we heard from Zack. What have we got? The claims of a kidnapper, criminal, and mercenary, now conveniently dead. A man running scared at the aftermath of what he’s done, trying to buy his freedom by wasting his own colleagues and handing back the diamonds, with a cock-and-bull story that he was put up to it all.”
“So where do we go from here?”
“You go into hiding. I go after the Corsican. He’s the key. He’s the fat man’s employee, the one who provided the deadly belt and put it on Simon. Five will get you ten Zack was ordered to spin out the negotiations by an extra six days, switching his demand from cash to diamonds, because the new clothes were not ready. The schedule was being thrown out of kilter, moving too fast, had to be slowed down. If I can get to Orsini, take him alive, get him to talk, he probably knows the name of his employer. When we have the name of the fat man, then we can go to Washington.”
“Let me come with you, Quinn. That was the deal we made.”
“It was the deal Washington made. The deal’s off. Everything Zack told us was recorded by that bug in your purse. They know that we know. For them now the hunt is on for you and me. Unless we can deliver the fat man’s name. Then the hunters become the hunted. The FBI will see to that. And the CIA.”
“So where do I go to ground, and for how long?”
“Until I call you and tell you we’re in the clear, one way or the other. As to where-Málaga. I have friends in the South of Spain who’ll look after you.”
Paris, like London, is a two-airport city. Ninety percent of overseas flights leave from Charles de Gaulle to the north of the capital. But Spain and Portugal are still served from the older airport at Orly in the south. To add to the confusion, Paris also has two separate terminuses, each serving different airports. Buses for Orly depart from Maine-Montparnasse in the Latin Quarter. Quinn drew up there thirty minutes after leaving the Madeleine, parked, and led Sam inside the main hall.
“What about my clothes, my things at the hotel?” she complained.
“Forget them. If the hoods are not staking out the hotel by now, they’re stupid. And they’re not. You have your passport?”
“Yep. Always carry it on me.”
“Same here. And your credit cards?”
“Sure. Same thing.”
“Go over to that bank and get as much money as your credit card account can stand.”
While Sam was at the bank, Quinn used the last of his cash to buy her a single ticket from Paris to Málaga. She had missed the 12:45 flight but there was another at 5:35 P.M.
“Your friend has five hours to wait,” said the ticket-counter agent. “Coaches leave from Gate J every twelve minutes for Orly South terminal.”
Quinn thanked her, crossed the floor to the bank, and gave Sam her ticket. She had drawn $5,000, and Quinn took $4,000.
“I’m taking you to the bus right now,” said Quinn. “It’ll be safer at Orly than right here, just in case they’re checking flight departures. When you get there, go straight through passport control into the duty-free area. Harder to get at. Get yourself a new handbag, a suitcase, some clothes-you know what you’ll need. Then wait for the flight and don’t miss it. I’ll have people at Málaga to meet you.”
“Quinn, I don’t even speak Spanish.”
“Don’t worry. These people all speak English.”
At the steps of the bus Sam reached up and wrapped her arms around his neck.
“Quinn, I’m sorry. You’d have done better alone.”
“Not your fault, baby.” Quinn turned her face up and kissed her. A common enough scene at terminals-no one took any notice. “Besides, without you I wouldn’t have the Smith *amp; Wesson. I think I may need that.”
“Take care of yourself,” she whispered. A chill wind blew down the Boulevard de Vaugirard. The last heavy luggage was stacked underneath the bus and the last passengers boarded. Sam shivered in his arms. He smoothed the shining blond hair.
“I’ll be okay. Trust me. I’ll be in touch by phone in a couple of days. By then, either way, we’ll be able to go home in safety.”
He watched the bus head down the boulevard, waved at the small hand in the rear window. Then it turned the corner and was gone.
Two hundred yards from the terminus and across Vaugirard is a large post office. Quinn bought sheet cardboard and wrapping paper in a stationery shop and entered the post office. With penknife and gummed tape, paper and string, he made up a stout parcel of the diamonds and mailed it by registered post, express rate, to Ambassador Fairweather in London.
From the bank of international telephone booths he called Scotland Yard and left a message for Nigel Cramer. It consisted of an address near East Grinstead, Sussex. Finally he called a bar in Estepona. The man he spoke to was not Spanish, but a London Cockney.
“Yeah, all right, mate,” said the voice on the phone. “We’ll take care of the little lady for you.”
With his last loose ends tied up, Quinn retrieved his car, filled the tank to the brim at the nearest gasoline station, and headed through the lunchtime traffic for the orbital ring road. Sixty minutes after making his phone call to Spain he was on the A.6 autoroute heading south for Marseilles.