The Negotiator Page 9

  August

  The heat hung over the Costa del Sol like a blanket. Down on the beaches the million tourists were turning themselves over and over like steaks on a griddle, oiling and basting courageously as they tried to acquire a deep mahogany tan in their two precious weeks and too often simply achieving lobster-red. The sky was such a pale blue it was almost white, and even the usual breeze off the sea had sagged to a zephyr.

  To the west the great molar of the Rock of Gibraltar jutted into the heat haze, shimmering at its range of fifteen miles; the pale slopes of the concrete rain-catchment system built by the Royal Engineers to feed the underground cisterns stuck out like a leprous scar on the flank of the rock.

  In the hills behind Casares beach the air was a mite cooler but not much; relief really came only at dawn and just before sunset, so the vineyard workers of Alcántara del Rio were rising at four in the morning to put in six hours before the sun drove them into the shade. After lunch they would snooze through the traditional Spanish siesta behind their thick, cool, lime-washed walls until five, then put in more labor till the light faded around eight.

  Under the sun the grapes ripened and became fat. The harvest would not come yet, but it would be good this year. In his bar Antonio brought the carafe of wine to the foreigner as usual and beamed.

  “¿Sera bien, la cosecha?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said the tall man with a smile. “This year the harvest will be very good. We shall all be able to pay our bar bills.”

  Antonio roared with laughter. Everyone knew the foreigner owned his own land outright and always paid cash on the spot.

  Two weeks later Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev was in no mood to joke. Though often a genial man, with a reputation for a good sense of humor and a light touch with subordinates, he could also show a hair-trigger temper, as when preached at by Westerners over civil rights issues or when he felt badly let down by a subordinate. He sat at his desk on the seventh and top floor of the Central Committee Building in Novaya Ploshchad and stared angrily at the reports spread all over the table.

  It’s a long narrow room, sixty feet by twenty, with the General Secretary’s desk at the end opposite the door. He sits with his back to the wall, all the windows onto the square being ranged to his left behind their net curtains and buff velour drapes. Running down the center of the room is the habitual conference table, of which the desk formed the head of the letter T.

  Unlike many of his predecessors, he had preferred a light and airy decor; the table is of pale beech, like his desk, and surrounded by upright but comfortable chairs, eight on each side. It was on this table he had spread the reports collected by his friend and colleague, the Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, whose plea had brought him unwillingly back from his seaside holiday at Yalta in the Crimea. He would, he thought savagely, have preferred to be splashing in the sea with his granddaughter Aksaina than sitting in Moscow reading this sort of trash.

  It had been more than six years since that freezing March day in 1985 when Chernenko had finally dropped off his perch and he had been raised with almost bewildering speed—even though he had schemed and prepared for it—into the top slot. Six years he had sought to take the country he loved by the scruff of the neck and hurl it into the last decade of the twentieth century in a state fit to face, match, and triumph on equal terms over the capitalist West.

  Like all devoted Russians he was half admiring and wholly resentful of the West; of her prosperity, her financial power, her almost contemptuous self-assurance. Unlike most Russians he had for years not been prepared to accept that things could never change in his homeland, that corruption, laziness, bureaucracy, and lethargy were part of the system, always had been and always would be. Even as a young man he had known he had the energy and the dynamism to change things, given the chance. That had been his mainspring, his driving force, through all those years of study and party work in Stavropol, the conviction that one day he would get his chance.

  For six years he had had the chance, and realized even he had underestimated the opposition and the inertia. The first years had been touch-and-go; he had walked a very fine tightrope indeed, almost come to grief a dozen times.

  The cleansing of the Party had come first, cutting out the die-hards and the deadwood—well, almost all of them. Now he knew he ruled the Politburo and the Central Committee; knew his appointees controlled the scattered Party secretaryships throughout the republics of the Union, shared his conviction that the U.S.S.R. could really compete with the West only if she was economically strong. That was why most of his reforms dealt with economic and not moral matters.

  As a dedicated Communist he already believed his country had moral superiority—there was for him no need to prove it. But he was not fool enough to deceive himself over the economic strengths of the two camps. Now with the oil crisis, of which he was perfectly well aware, he needed massive resources to pump into Siberia and the Arctic, and that meant cutting back somewhere else. Which led to Nantucket and his unavoidable head-to-head with his own military establishment.

  The three pillars of power were the Party, the Army, and the KGB, and he knew no one could take on two at the same time. It was bad enough to be at loggerheads with his generals; to be back-stabbed by the KGB was intolerable. The reports on his table, culled by the Foreign Minister from the Western media and translated, he did not need, least of all when American public opinion might still cause the Senate to reject the Nantucket Treaty and insist on the building and deployment of the (for Russia) disastrous Stealth bomber.

  Personally he had no particular sympathy with Jews who wanted to quit the Motherland that had given them everything. There was nothing un-Russian in Mikhail Gorbachev so far as turds and dissidents were concerned. But what angered him was that what had been done was deliberate, no accident, and he knew who was behind it. He still resented the vicious video tape attacking his wife’s London spending spree years before and circulated on the Moscow circuit. He knew who had been behind that too. The same people. The predecessor of the one who had been summoned and whom he now awaited.

  There was a knock on the door to the right of the bookcase at the far end of the room. His private secretary popped his head in and simply nodded. Gorbachev raised a hand to indicate “wait a minute.”

  He returned to his desk and sat down behind the spare, clear top with its three telephones and cream onyx pen set. Then he nodded. The secretary swung the door wide open.

  “The Comrade Chairman, Comrade General Secretary,” the young man announced, then withdrew.

  He was in full uniform—he would be, of course—and Gorbachev let him walk the full length of the room without salutation. Then he rose and gestured at the spread-out papers.

  General Vladimir Kryuchkov, Chairman of the KGB, had been a close friend, protégé, and like-thinker of his own predecessor, the die-hard ultraconservative Viktor Chebrikov. The General Secretary had secured the ouster of Chebrikov in the great purge he had conducted in the fall of 1988, thus ridding himself of his last powerful opponent on the Politburo. But he had had no choice but to appoint the First Deputy Chairman, Kryuchkov, as successor. One ouster was enough; two would have been a massacre. There are limits, even in Moscow.

  Kryuchkov glanced at the papers and raised an eyebrow. Bastard, thought Gorbachev.

  “There was no need to beat the shit out of them on camera,” said Gorbachev, as usual coming to the nub without preamble. “Six Western TV camera units, eight radio reporters, and twenty newspaper and magazine hacks, half of them American. We got less coverage for the Olympics in ’80.”

  Kryuchkov raised an eyebrow. “The Jews were conducting an illegal demonstration, my dear Mikhail Sergeevich. Personally, I was on vacation at the time. But my officers in the Second Chief Directorate acted properly, I believe. These people refused to disperse when commanded and my men used the usual methods.”

  “It was on the street. That’s a Militia matter.”

  “These people are
subversives. They were spreading anti-Soviet propaganda. Look at the placards. That’s a KGB matter.”

  “And the full turnout of foreign press?”

  The KGB chief shrugged. “These weasels get everywhere.”

  Yes, if they are rung up and tipped off, thought Gorbachev. He wondered whether this might be the issue over which he could secure the ouster of Kryuchkov, and dismissed it. It would take the full Politburo to fire the Chairman of the KGB, and never for beating up a bunch of Jews. Still, he was angry and prepared to speak his mind. He did so for five minutes. Kryuchkov’s mouth tightened in silence. He did not appreciate being ticked off by the younger but senior man. Gorbachev had come around the desk; the two men were of the same height, short and stocky. Gorbachev’s eye contact was, as usual, unflinching. That was when Kryuchkov made a mistake.

  He had in his pocket a report from the KGB’s man in Belgrade, amplified with some stunning information gleaned by Kirpichenko at the First Chief Directorate. It was certainly important enough to bring to the General Secretary himself. Screw it, thought the bitter KGB chief; he can wait. And so the Belgrade report was suppressed.

  September

  Irving Moss had established himself in London, but before leaving Houston he had agreed on a personal code with Cyrus Miller. He knew that the monitors of the National Security Agency at Fort Meade constantly scanned the ether, intercepting billions of words in foreign telephone calls, and that banks of computers sifted them for nuggets of interest. Not to mention the British GCHQ people, the Russians, and just about anyone else nowadays who could rustle up a listening post. But the volume of commercial traffic is so vast that unless something sticks out as suspicious, it will probably pass. Moss’s code was based on lists of salad produce prices, passing between sunny Texas and gloomy London. He took down the list of prices off the telephone, cut out the words, retained the numbers, and according to the date of the calendar, deciphered them from a one-time pad of which only he and Cyrus Miller had copies.

  That month he learned three things: that the piece of Soviet technology he needed was in the last stages of preparation and would be delivered within a fortnight; that the source he had asked for in the White House was in place, bought and paid for; and that he should now go ahead with Plan Travis on schedule. He burned the sheets and grinned. His fee was based on planning, activation, and success. Now he could claim the second installment.

  October

  There are eight weeks in the autumn term at Oxford University, and since scholars seek to abide by the precepts of logic, they are called First Week, Second Week, Third Week, and so on. A number of activities take place after the end of term—mainly athletic, theatrical, and debating events—in Ninth Week. And quite a few students appear before the start of term, either to prepare their studies, get settled in, or start training, in the period called Nought Week.

  On October 2, the first day of Nought Week, there was a scattering of early birds in Vincent’s Club, a bar and haunt of undergraduate athletes, among them the tall thin student called Simon, preparing for his third and last term at Oxford under the year-abroad program. He was hailed by a cheerful voice from behind.

  “Hallo, young Simon. Back early?”

  It was Air Commodore John De’Ath, Bursar of Jesus College and senior treasurer of the Athletics Club, which included the cross-country team.

  Simon grinned. “Yes, sir.”

  “Going to get the fat of the summer vacation off, are we?” The retired Air Force officer smiled. He tapped the student’s nonexistent stomach. “Good man. You’re our main hope to knock seven bells out of Cambridge in December in London.”

  Everyone knew that Oxford’s great sporting rival was Cambridge University, the needle match in any sporting contest.

  “I’m looking to start a series of morning runs and get back in shape, sir,” said Simon.

  He did indeed begin a series of punishing early-morning runs, starting at five miles and pushing up to twelve as the week progressed. On the morning of Wednesday the 9th he set off as usual by bicycle from his house off the Woodstock Road in the southern part of Summertown in north Oxford, and pedaled for the town center. He skirted the Martyrs’ Memorial and Saint Mary Magdalen Church, turned left into Broad Street, past the doors of his own college, Balliol, and on down Holywell and Longwall to join the High Street. A final left turn brought him to the railings outside Magdalen College.

  Here he dismounted, chained his bike to the railing for safety, and began to run. Over Magdalen Bridge across the Cherwell and down St. Clement’s at the Plain. Now he was heading due east. At six-thirty in the morning the sun would soon rise ahead of him and he had a straight four-mile run to get clear of the last suburbs of Oxford.

  He pounded through New Headington to cross the dual-carriageway Ring Road on the steel bridge leading to Shotover Hill. There were no other runners to join him. He was almost alone. At the end of Old Road he hit the incline of the hill and felt the pain of the long-distance runner. His sinewy legs drove him on up the hill and out into Shotover Plain. Here the paved road ran out and he was on the track, deeply potholed and with water from the overnight rain lying in the ruts. He swerved to the grass verge, delighting in the springy comfort of the grass underfoot, through the pain barrier, exulting in the freedom of the run.

  Behind him the unmarked sedan emerged from the trees of the hill, ran out of pavement, and began to jolt through the potholes. The men inside knew the route and were sick of it. Five hundred yards of track, lined with gray boulders, to the reservoir, then back to blacktop road for the downhill glide to Wheatley village via the hamlet of Littleworth.

  A hundred yards short of the reservoir the track narrowed and a giant ash tree overhung the lane. It was here the van was parked, drawn well onto the verge. It was a well-used green Ford Transit bearing on its side the logo BARLOW’S ORCHARD PRODUCE. Nothing unusual about it. In early October, Barlow vans were all over the county delivering the sweet apples of Oxfordshire to the greengrocers. Anyone looking at the back of the van—invisible to the men in the car, for the van was facing them—would have seen stacked apple crates. That same person would not have realized the crates were really two cunning paintings stuck to the inside of the twin windows.

  The van had had a puncture, front offside tire. A man crouched beside it with a wrench, seeking to free the wheel which was raised on a jack. He bowed over his work. The youth called Simon was on the verge across the rutted track from the van and he kept running.

  As he passed the front end of the van two things happened with bewildering speed. The rear doors flew open and two men, identical in black track suits and ski masks, leaped out, hurled themselves on the startled runner, and bore him to the ground. The man with the wrench turned and straightened up. Beneath his slouch hat he, too, was masked, and the wrench was not a wrench but a Czech Skorpion submachine gun. Without a pause he opened fire and raked the windshield of the sedan sixty feet away.

  The man behind the wheel died instantly, hit in the face. The car swerved and stalled as he died. The man in the backseat reacted like a cat, opening his door, bailing out, rolling twice, and coming up in the “fire” position. He got off two shots with his short-nosed Smith & Wesson 9mm. The first was wide by a foot, the second ten feet short, for as he fired it the continuing burst from the Skorpion hit him in the chest. He never stood a chance.

  The man in the passenger seat got free of the car a second after the man in the back. The passenger door was wide open and he was trying to fire through the open window at the machine gunner when three slugs punched straight through the fabric and hit him in the stomach, bowling him backwards. In five more seconds the gunman was back beside the driver of the van; the other two had hurled the student into the rear of the Transit and slammed the doors, the van had rolled off its jack, done a fast-reverse into the entrance of the reservoir, hauled a three-point turn, and was headed back down the lane toward Wheatley.

  The Secret Service agent was dying, b
ut he had a lot of courage. Inch by agonizing inch he pulled himself back to the open car door, scrabbled for the microphone beneath the dash, and croaked out his last message. He did not bother with call signs or codes or radio procedure; he was too far gone. By the time help came five minutes later, he was dead. What he said was: “Help ... we need help here. Someone has just kidnapped Simon Cormack.”

  Chapter 4

  In the wake of the dying American Secret Service man’s radio call many things began to happen exceedingly fast and at a rising tempo. The snatch of the President’s only son had taken place at 7:05 A.M. The radio call was logged at 7:07. Although the caller was using a dedicated waveband, he was speaking in clear. It was fortunate no unauthorized person was listening to police frequencies at that hour. The call was heard in three places.

  At the rented house off the Woodstock Road were the other ten men of the Secret Service team tasked to guard the President’s son during his year at Oxford. Eight were still abed, but two were up, including the night-watch officer, who was listening on the dedicated frequency.

  The Director of the Secret Service, Creighton Burbank, had from the outset protested that the President’s son should not be studying abroad at all during the incumbency. He had been overruled by President Cormack, who saw no good reason to deprive his son of his longed-for chance to spend a year at Oxford. Swallowing his objections, Burbank had asked for a fifty-man team at Oxford.

  Again, John Cormack had yielded to his son’s pleading—“Give me a break, Dad, I’ll look like an exhibit at a cattle show with fifty goons all around me”—and they had settled on a team of twelve. The American embassy in London had rented a large detached villa in north Oxford, collaborated for months with the British authorities, and engaged three thoroughly vetted British staff: a male gardener, a cook, and a woman for the cleaning and laundry. The aim had been to give Simon Cormack a chance at a perfectly normal enjoyment of his student days.