第 60 页

?Not the boy. The father. He has to go.?

?The Nantucket Treaty　

?Of course. Those terms will ruin thousands of men, hundreds of corporations.?

?But why you? From what I know, you?re an extremely wealthy man. Your private fortune is enormous.?

The man Quinn faced laughed shortly.

?So far,? he said. ?When I inherited my family wealth I used my talents as a broker in New York to place the estate in a variety of stock portfolios. Good stocks, high-growth, high-yield portfolios. It?s still in them. The trustees of my blind trust haven?t moved them.?

?In the armaments industry.?

?Look, Quinn, I brought this for Moss. Now it could be for you. Have you ever seen one before　

He brought a slip of paper out of his breast pocket and held it out. By the light of the single lantern and the moon Quinn looked at it. A bank draft, drawn on a Swiss bank of unimpeachable reputation, payable to the bearer. In the sum of 5 million U.S. dollars.

?Take it, Quinn. You?ve never seen money like that be-fore. Never will again. Think what you can do with it, the life you can lead with it. Comfort, luxury even, for the rest of your life. Just the manuscript, and it?s yours.?

?It really was about money all along, wasn?t it　 said Quinn thoughtfully. He toyed with the check, thinking things over.

?Of course. Money and power. Same thing.?

?But you were his friend. He trusted you.?

?Please, Quinn, don?t bena?ve. It always comes down to money. This entire nation is about money. No one can change that. Always has been, always will. We worship the almighty dollar. Everything and everyone in this land can be bought?bought and paid for.?

Quinn nodded. He thought of the fifty-eight thousand names on the black marble four hundred yards behind him. Bought and paid for. He sighed and reached inside his sheep-skin bomber jacket. The smaller man jumped back, startled.

?No need for that, Quinn. You said, no guns.?

But when Quinn?shand emerged it clutched two hun-dred sheets of white typescript. He held out the manuscript. The other man relaxed, took the sheaf.

?You won?t regret it, Quinn. The money is yours. En-joy it.?

Quinn nodded again. ?There is just one thing ...?

?Anything.?

?I paid off my cab on Constitution Avenue. Could you give me a ride back to the Circle　

For the first time the other man smiled. With relief.

?No problem,? he said.

Chapter 19

The men in the long leather coats decided to discharge their duties during the weekend. There were fewer people about, and their instructions were to be very discreet. They had observers up the street from the Moscow office building who told them by radio when the quarry left the city that Friday evening.

The arrest party waited patiently on the long, narrow road by the curve of the Moskva River, just a mile short of the turning into Peredelkino village where the senior mem-bers of the Central Committee, the most prestigious acade-micians, and the military chiefs have their weekend dachas.

When the car they were awaiting came in sight, the lead vehicle of the arresting party pulled across the road, block-ing it completely. The speeding Chaika slowed, then came to a halt. The driver and bodyguard, both men from theCRU and with Spetsnaz training, had no chance. Men with ma-chine pistols came from both sides of the road, and the two soldiers found themselves staring through the glass straight into the muzzles.

The senior plainclothes officer approached the rear pas-senger door, jerked it open, and looked inside. The man within glanced up with indifference, a touch of testiness, from the dossier he was reading.

?Marshal Kozlov　 the leather-coated KGB man asked.

?Yes.?

?Please dismount. Make no attempt at resistance. Or-der your soldiers to do the same. You are under arrest.?

The burly marshal muttered an order to his driver and bodyguard and climbed out. His breath frosted in the icy air. He wondered when he would breathe the crisp air of winter again. If he was afraid he gave no sign.

?If you have no authority for this, you will answer to the Politburo, Chekistl.? He used the contemptuous Russian word for a secret policeman.

?We act on the Politburo?s orders,? said the KGB man with satisfaction. He was a full colonel of the Second Chief Directorate. That was when the old marshal knew he had just run out of ammunition for the last time.

?

Two days later the Saudi security police quietly surrounded a modest private house in Riyadh in the deep darkness before dawn. Not quietly enough. One of them kicked over a tin can and a dog barked. A Yemeni house servant, already awake to brew the first strong dark coffee of the day, looked out and went to inform his master.

Colonel Easterhouse had been very well trained with the U.S. Airborne units. He also knew his Saudi Arabia, and that the threat of betrayal for a conspirator was never to be disregarded. His defenses were strong and always ready. By the time the great timber gate to his courtyard had come crashing down and his two Yemeni protectors had died for him, he had taken his own road to avoid the agonies he knew must await him. The security police heard the single shot as they raced up the stairs to the upper-floor living quarters.

They found him sprawled facedown in his study, an airy room furnished in exquisite Arab taste, his blood ruining a beautiful Kochan rug. The colonel in charge of the arrest group glanced around the room; his eye fell on a single Ara-bic word that formed the motif of a silk wall-hanging behind the desk. It said, Insh?Allah. If it is the will of Allah.

?

The following day Philip Kelly himself led the FBI team that surrounded the estate in the foothills outside Austin. Cyrus Miller received Kelly courteously and listened to the reading of his rights. When told he was under arrest he began to pray loudly and earnestly, calling down the divine vengeance of his personal Friend upon the idolaters and Antichrists who so clearly failed to comprehend the will of the Almighty as expressed through the actions of His chosen vessel.

Kevin Brown was in charge of the team that took Melville Scanlon into custody almost at the same minute at his palatial home outside Houston. Different FBI teams visited Lionel Moir in Dallas, and sought to arrest Ben Salkind at Palo Alto and Peter Cobb at Pasadena. Whether by intuition or coinci-dence, Salkind had boarded a flight the previous day for Mexico City. Cobb was believed to be at his desk in his office at the hour scheduled for the arrest. In fact a head cold had detained him at home that morning. It was one of those chances that stultify the best-planned operations. Policemen and soldiers know them well. A loyal secretary phoned him as the FBI team sped to his private house. He rose from his bed, kissed his wife and children, and went into the garage that adjoined his house. The FBI men found him there twenty minutes later.

?

Four days later President John Cormack walked into the Cabinet Room and took his seat at the center of the table, the place reserved for the Chief Executive. His inner circle of Cabinet members and advisers was already in place, flank-ing him. They noticed that his back was straight, his head high, his eyes clear.

Across the table were ranged Lee Alexander and David Weintraub of the CIA, beside Don Edmonds, Philip Kelly, and Kevin Brown from the FBI. John Cormack nodded to them as he took his seat.

?Your reports, if you please, gentlemen.?

Kevin Brown spoke first, at a glance from his Director.

?Mr. President, the log cabin in Vermont. We recov-ered an Armalite rifle and a Colt forty-five automatic, as described. Along with the bodies of Irving Moss and Duncan McCrea, both formerly of the CIA. They have been identi-fied.?

David Weintraub nodded in agreement. ?We have tested the Colt at Quantico. The Belgian police sent usblow-?p prints of the lands on the forty-five bullet they dug out of the upholstery of a Ferris wheel seat in Wavre. They check out: The Colt fired the bullet that killed the mercenaryMarchais, alias Lefort. The Dutch police found a slug in the woodwork of an old barrel in the cellar beneath a bar in Den Bosch. Slightly distorted, but the lands were still visible. Same Colt forty-five. Finally, the Paris police recovered six intact bul-lets from the plaster of a bar in the Passagede Vautrin. We have identified these as having come from the Armalite. Both weapons were bought, under a false name, from a gun shop in Galveston,Texas. The owner has identified the buyer, from his photograph, as Irving Moss.?

?So it checks.?

?Yes, Mr. President, everything.?

?Mr. Weintraub　

?I regret I have to confirm that Duncan McCrea was indeed hired locally in Central America on the recommenda-tion of Irving Moss. He was used as a gofer down there for two years, then brought to America and sent to Camp Peary for training. After Moss was fired, any of hisprot?g?s should have been checked out. They weren?t. A lapse. I?m sorry.?

?You were not Deputy Director of Operations in those years, Mr. Weintraub. Please go on.?

?Thank you, Mr. President. We have learned from ... sources ... enough to confirm what the KGB rezident in New York told us unofficially. A certain Marshal Kozlov has been detained for interrogation concerning the supplying of the belt that killed your son. Officially, he has resigned on grounds of health.?

?He will confess, do you think　

?At Lefortovo prison, sir, the KGB has its little ways,? Weintraub admitted.

?Mr. Kelly　

?Some things, Mr. President, will never be provable. There is no trace of the body of Dominique Orsini, but the Corsican police have established that two rounds of buckshot were indeed fired into a rear bedroom above a bar in Castelblanc. The Smith & Wesson pistol we issued to Special Agent Somerville must be presumed lost forever in the Prunelli River. But everything that is provable, has been proved. The whole lot. The manuscript is accurate to the last detail, sir.?

?And the five men, the so-called Alamo Five　

?We have three in custody, Mr. President. Cyrus Miller can almost certainly never stand trial. He is deemed to be clinically insane. Melville Scanlon has confessed everything, including the details of a further conspiracy to topple the monarchy of Saudi Arabia. I believe the State Department has already taken care of that side of things.?

?It has,? said the President. ?The Saudi government has been informed and has taken appropriate measures. And the other men of the Alamo Five　

?Salkind appears to have vanished?we believe to Latin America. Cobb was found hanged in his garage, by his own hand. Moir confirms everything admitted by Scanlon.?

?No details still adrift, Mr. Kelly　

?None that we can discern, Mr. President. In the time allowed we have checked everything in Mr. Quinn?s manu-script. Names, dates, times, places, car rentals, airline tick-ets, apartment rentals, hotel bookings, the vehicles used, the weapons?everything. The police and immigration authori-ties in Ireland, Britain, Belgium, Holland, and France have sent us every record. It all checks.?

President Cormack glanced briefly toward the empty chair on his side of the table.

?And my ... my former colleague　

The Director of the FBI nodded toward Philip Kelly.

?The last three pages of the manuscript make claims to a conversation between the two men on the night in question of which there is no confirmation, Mr. President. We still have no trace of Mr. Quinn. But we have checked the staff at the house in Georgetown. The official chauffeur was sent home on the grounds that the car would not be used again that night. Two of the staff recall being awakened around half past one by the sound of the garage doors opening. One looked out and saw the car going down the street. He thought it might have been stolen, so he went to rouse his master. He was gone?with the car.

?We have checked all the stock portfolios in his blind trusts, and there are huge holdings in a number of defense contractors whose share values would undoubtedly be af-fected by the terms of the Nantucket Treaty. It?s true?what Quinn claims. As to what the man said, we will never know for sure. One can either believe Quinn or not.?

President Cormack rose.

?Then I do, gentlemen. I do. Call off the manhunt for him, please. That is an executive order. Thank you for your efforts.?

He left by the door opposite the fireplace, crossed the office of his personal secretary, asking that he not be dis-turbed, entered the Oval Office, and closed the door behind him.

He took his seat behind the great desk under the green-tinted windows of five-inch bulletproof glass that give onto the Rose Garden, and leaned back in the high swivel chair. It had been seventy-three days since he had last taken this seat.

On his desk was a silver-framed photograph. It showed Simon, a picture taken at Yale in the fall before he left for England. He was twenty then, his young face full of vitality and zest for life and great expectations.

The President took the picture in both hands and gazed at it a long time. Finally he opened a drawer on his left.

?Goodbye, son,? he said.

He placed the photograph facedown in the drawer, closed it, and depressed a switch on his intercom.

?Send Craig Lipton in to see me, please.?

When his Press Secretary arrived, the President told him he wanted one hour of prime-time television on the major channels the following evening for an address to the nation.

* * *

The landlady of the rooming house in Alexandria was sorry to lose her Canadian guest, Mr. Roger Lefevre. He was so quiet and well-behaved; no trouble at all. Not like some she could mention.

The evening he came down to settle his account and say goodbye she noticed he had shaved off his beard. She ap-proved; it made him look much younger.

The television in her living room was on, as always. The tall man stood in the door to make his farewell. On the screen a serious-faced anchorman announced: ?Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.?

?Are you sure you can?t stay a little longer　 asked the landlady. ?The President?s going to speak. They say the poor man?s bound to resign.?

?My cab?s at the door,? said Quinn. ?I have to go.?

On the screen the face of President Cormack flashed up. He was sitting foursquare behind his desk in the Oval Office, beneath the Great Seal. He had scarcely been seen for eighty days, and viewers knew he looked older, more drawn, more lined than three months earlier. But that beaten look in the photograph that had been flashed around the world, his face as he stood beside the grave in Nantucket, was gone. He held himself erect and looked straight into the camera lens, establishing direct, if electronic, eye contact with more than 100 million Americans and many more mil-lions around a world linked by satellite into the transmission. There was nothing weary or defeated about his posture; his voice was measured, grave but firm.