第 21 页

A variation on the racket was to take a van like the Tran-sit, in good shape apart from its twisted chassis, cut out the distorted section, bridge the gap with a length of girder, and put it back on the road. Illegal and dangerous, but such cars and vans could probably run for several thousand more miles before falling apart.

Confronted by the statements of the Leicester builder, the recovery firm that had sold him the Transit as scrap for ?20, and the imprints of the old, real chassis and engine numbers; and informed what deed the truck had been used for, Sykes realized he was in very deep trouble indeed, and came clean.

The man who had bought the Transit, he recalled after racking his memory, had been wandering around the yard one day six weeks back, and on being questioned had said he was looking for a low-priced van. By chance, Sykes had just finished recycling the chassis of the blue Transit and spraying it green. It had left his yard within the hour for ?300 cash. He had never seen the man again. The fifteen ?20 notes were long gone.

?Description　 asked Commander Williams.

?I?m trying, I?m trying,? pleaded Sykes.

?Do that,? said Williams. ?It will make the rest of your life so much easier.?

Medium height, medium build. Late forties. Rough face and manner. Not a posh voice, and not a Londoner by birth. Ginger hair?could have been a wig, but a good one. Anyway, he wore a hat, despite the heat of late August. Moustache, darker than the hair?could have been a stick-on, but a good one. And tinted glasses. Not sunglasses, just blue-tinted, with horn frames.

The three men spent two more hours with the police artist. Commander Williams brought the picture back to Scotland Yard just before the breakfast hour and showed it to Nigel Cramer. He took it to the COBRA committee at nine that morning. The trouble was, the picture could have been anyone. And there the trail ran out.

?We know the van was worked on by another and better mechanic after Sykes,? Cramer told the committee. ?And a sign painter created the Barlow fruit company logo on each side. It must have been stored somewhere, a garage with welding facilities. But if we issue a public appeal, the kid-nappers will see it and could lose their nerve, cut and run, and leave Simon Cormack dead.?

It was agreed to issue the description to every police station in the country, but not to bring in the press and the public.

?

Andrew ?Andy? Laing spent the night poring over the records of bank transactions, becoming more and more puz-zled, until just before dawn his bemusement gave way to the growing certainty that he was right and there was no other explanation.

Andy Laing was the head of the Credit and Marketing team in the Jiddah branch of the Saudi Arabian Investment Bank, an institution established by the Saudi government to handle most of the astronomical sums of money that washed around those parts.

Although Saudi-owned and with a mainly Saudi board of directors, the SAIB was principally staffed by foreign contract officers, and the biggest single contributor of staff was New York?s Rockman-Queens Bank, from which Laing had been seconded.

He was young, keen, conscientious, and ambitious, ea-ger to make a good career in banking and enjoying his term in Saudi Arabia. The pay was better than in New York, he had an attractive apartment, several girlfriends among the large expatriate community in Jiddah, was not worried by the no-liquor restrictions, and got on with his colleagues.

Although the Riyadh branch was the head office of SAIB, the busiest branch was in Jiddah, the business and commercial capital of Saudi Arabia. Normally, Laing would have left the crenellated white building?looking more like a Foreign Legion fort than a bank?and walked up the street to the Hyatt Regency for a drink before six o?clock the previous evening. But he had two more files to close, and rather than leave them till the next morning, he stayed on for an extra hour.

So he was still at his desk when the old Arab messenger wheeled ?round the cart stacked with printout sheets torn from the bank?s computer, leaving the appropriate sheets in each executive?s office for attention the next day. These sheets bore the records of the day?s transactions undertaken by the bank?s several departments. Patiently the old man placed a sheaf of printouts on Laing?sdesk, bobbed his head, and withdrew. Laing called a cheerful? Shukran?after him?he prided himself on being courteous to the Saudi menialstaff?and went on working.

When he had finished he glanced at the papers by his side and uttered a sound of annoyance. He had been given the wrong papers. The ones beside him were the in-and-out records of deposits and withdrawals from all the major ac-counts lodged with the bank. These were the business of theOperations manager, not Credit and Marketing. He took them and strolled down the corridor to the empty office of the Ops manager, Mr. Amin, his colleague from Pakistan.

As he did so he glanced at the sheets and something caught his attention. He stopped, turned back, and began to go through the records page by page. On each the same pat-tern emerged. He switched on his computer and asked it to go back into the records of two client accounts. Always the same pattern.

By the small hours of the morning he was certain there could be no doubt. What he was looking at had to be a major fraud. The coincidences were just too bizarre. He replaced the printouts on the desk of Mr. Amin and resolved to fly to Riyadh at the first opportunity for a personal interview with his fellow American, the general manager, Steve Pyle.

?

As Laing was going home through the darkened streets of Jiddah, eight time zones to the west the White House com-mittee was listening to Dr. Nicholas Armitage, an experi-enced psychiatrist who had just come across to the West Wing from the Executive Mansion.

?Gentlemen, so far I have to tell you that the shock has affected the First Lady to a greater degree than the Presi-dent. She is still taking medication under the supervision of her physician. The President has, no doubt, the tougher tem-perament, though I?m afraid the strain is already beginning to become noticeable, and the telltale signs of post-abduction parental trauma are beginning to show in him too.?

?What signs, Doctor　 asked Odell without ceremony. The psychiatrist?who did not like to be interrupted, and never was when he lectured students?cleared his throat.

?You have to understand that in these cases the mother acceptably has the release of tears, even hysteria. The male parent often suffers in a greater way, experiencing, apart from the normal anxiety for the abducted child, a profound sense of guilt, of self-blame, of conviction that he was re-sponsible in some way, should have done more, should have taken more precautions, should have been more careful.?

?That?s not logical,? protested Morton Stannard.

?We?re not talking about logic here,? said the doctor. ?We?re talking about the symptoms of trauma, made worse by the fact the President was? is?extremely close to his son, loves him very deeply indeed. Add to that the feeling of helplessness, the inability to do anything. So far, of course, with no contact from the kidnappers, he does not even know if the boy is alive or dead. It?s still early, of course, but it won?t get better.?

?These kidnappings can go on for weeks,? said Jim Donaldson. ?This man is our Chief Executive. What changes can we expect　

?The strain will be eased slightly when and if the first contact is made and proof obtained that Simon is still alive,? said Dr. Armitage. ?But the relief will not last long. As time drags on, the deterioration will deepen. There will be stress at a very high level, leading to irritability. There will be insomnia?that can be helped with medication. Finally there will be listlessness in matters concerning the father?s profes-sion　

?In this case running the damn country,? said Odell.

?... and lack of concentration, loss of memory in mat-ters of government. In a word, gentlemen, half or more of the President?s mind until further notice will be devoted to thinking about his son, and a further part to concern for his wife. In some cases, even after the successful release of a child kidnap victim, it has been the parents who needed months, even years, of post-trauma therapy.?

?In other words,? said Attorney General Bill Walters, ?we have half a President, maybe less.?

?Oh, come now,? Treasury Secretary Reed interjected. ?This country has had Presidents on the operating table, wholly incapacitated in the hospital, before now. We must just take over, run things as he would wish, disturb our friend as little as possible.?

His optimism evoked little matching response. Brad Johnson rose.

?Why the hell won?t those bastards get in touch　 he asked. ?It?s been nearly forty-eight hours.?

?At least we have our negotiator set up and waiting for their first call,? said Reed.

?And we have a strong presence in London,? added Walters. ?Mr. Brown and his team from the Bureau arrived two hours ago.?

?What the hell are the British police doing　 muttered Stannard. ?Why can?t they find those bastards　

?We have to remember it?s been only forty-eight hours?not even,? observed Secretary of State Donaldson. ?Britain?s not as big as the U.S., but with fifty-four million people there are a lot of places to hide. You recall how long the Symbionese Liberation Army kept Patty Hearst, with the whole FBI hunting them? Months.?

?Let?s face it, gentlemen,? drawled Odell, ?the prob-lem is, there?s nothing more we can do.?

That was the problem; there was nothing anybody could do.

?

The boy they were talking about was getting through his sec-ond night of captivity. Though he did not know it, there was someone on duty in the corridor outside his cell throughout the night. The cellar of the suburban house might be made of poured concrete, but if he decided to scream and shout, the abductors were quite prepared to subdue him and gag him. He made no such mistake. Resolving to quell his fear and behave with as much dignity as possible, he did two dozen push-ups and toe-touching calisthenics, while a skeptical eye watched through the peephole. He had no wristwatch?he had been running without one on?and was losing track of time. The light burned constantly but at what he judged to be around midnight?he was two hours off?he curled up on the bed, drew the thin blanket over his head to shut out most of the light, and slept. As he did so, the last dozen of the hoax calls were coming in at his country?s embassy forty miles away in Grosvenor Square.

?

Kevin Brown and his eight-strong team did not feel like sleep. Jet-lagged from the flight across the Atlantic, their body clocks were still on Washington time, five hours ear-lier than London.

Brown insisted that Seymour and Collins show him around the basement telephone exchange and listening post at the embassy, where in an office at the end of the complex, American engineers?the British had not been given access?had set up wall speakers to bring in the sounds re-corded by the various bugs in the Kensington apartment.

?There are two taps in the sitting room,? explained Col-lins reluctantly. He saw no reason why he should explain Company techniques to the man from the Bureau, but he had his orders, and the Kensington apartment was ?burned? from an operational point of view anyway.

?If a senior officer from Langley was using the place as a base, they would of course be deactivated. But if we were debriefing a Soviet there, we find invisible bugs less inhibit-ing than having a tape recorder turning away on the table. The sitting room would be the main debriefing area. But there are two more in the master bedroom?Quinn?s sleeping in there, but not at the moment, as you will hear?and others in the remaining two bedrooms and the kitchen.

?Out of respect for Miss Somerville and our own man McCrea, we have deactivated the two smaller bedrooms. But if Quinn went into one of them to talk confidentially, we could reactivate them by switching here and here.?

Collins indicated two switches on the master console.

Brown asked, ?In any case, if he talked to either of them out of range of any speakers, we would expect them to report back to us, right　

Collins and Seymour nodded.

?That?s what they?re there for,? added Seymour.

?Then we have three telephones in there,? Collins went on. ?One is the new flash line. Quinn will use that only when he is convinced he is talking to the genuine abductors, and for no other purpose at all. All conversations on that line will be intercepted in the Kensington exchange by the British and piped through on this speaker here. Second, he has a direct patch-through from this room, which he is using now to talk to one of the callers we believe to be a hoaxer, but maybe not. That connection also passes through the Kensing-ton exchange. And there is the third line, an ordinary outgo-ing and incoming line, also on intercept but probably not to be used unless he wants to call out.?

?You mean the British are listening to all this as well　 asked Brown dourly.

?Only the phone lines,? said Seymour. ?We have to have their cooperation on telephones?they own the ex-changes. Besides, they could have a good input on voice pat-terns, speech defects, regional accents. And of course the call-tracing has got to be done by them, right out of the Ken-sington exchange. We don?t have an untappable line from the apartment to this basement.?

Collins coughed.

?Yes, we do,? he said, ?but it only works for the room bugs. We have two apartments in that building. All the stuff on all the room bugs is fed on internal wires down to our second and smaller apartment in the basement. I have a man down there now. In the basement the speech is scrambled, transmitted on ultrashort-wave radio up here, received, descrambled, and piped down here.?

?You radio it for just a mile　 asked Brown.

?Sir, my Agency gets on very well with the British. But no secret service in the world will ever pipe classified infor-mation through the land lines running under a city they do not control.?

Brown enjoyed that. ?So the Brits can hear the phone conversations but not the room talk.?

He was wrong, actually. Once MI-5 knew of the Ken-sington apartment, that the two Metropolitan chief inspec-tors were not being allowed to live in, and that their own bugs had been removed, they calculated there must be a second American apartment in there to relay Soviet debriefings to CIA Control somewhere else. Within an hour the apartment-building records had pinpointed the small bed-sitter in the basement. By midnight a team of plumbers had found the connecter wires running through the central heating system, and did an intercept from a ground-floor apartment, whose tenant was courteously urged to take a brief vacation and thus assist Her Majesty. By sunrise everyone was listening to everyone.