They already had a lock on the number Zack had used first, but when he changed booths, even though the kiosks were side by side in Dunstable, they lost him. Worse, he was now ringing another London number into which they were not tapped. The only saving grace was that the number Quinn had dictated on the line to Zack was still on the Kensington exchange. Still, the tracers had to start at the beginning, their call-finder mechanism racing frantically through the twenty thousand numbers on the exchange. They tapped into Mr. Patel’s phone fifty-eight seconds after Quinn had dictated the number, then got a lock on the second number in Dunstable.
“Take this number, Zack,”said Quinn without preamble.
“What the hell’s going on?” snarled Zack.
“Nine-three-five; three-two-one-five,” said Quinn remorselessly. “Got it?”
There was a pause as Zack scribbled.
“Now we’ll do it ourselves, Zack. I’ve walked out on the lot of them. Just you and me; the diamonds against the boy. No tricks-my word on it. Call me on that number in sixty minutes, and ninety minutes if there’s no reply first time. It’s not on trace.”
He put the phone down. In the exchange the listeners heard the words “… minutes, and ninety minutes if there’s no reply first time. It’s not on trace.”
“Bastard’s given him another number,” said the engineer in Kensington to the two Metropolitan officers with him. One of them was already on the phone to the Yard.
Quinn came out of the shop to see Duncan McCrea across the road trying to push his way through the jammed street door. Sam was behind him, waving and gesticulating. The porter joined them, scratching his thinning hair. Two cars went down the street on the opposite side; on Quinn’s side a motorcyclist was approaching. Quinn stepped into the road, right in the man’s path, his arms raised, attaché case swinging from his left hand. The motorcyclist braked, swerved, skidded, and slithered to a stop.
“ ’Ere, wot on erf…”
Quinn gave him a disarming smile as he ducked around the handlebars. The short, hard kidney punch completed the job. As the youth in the crash helmet doubled over, Quinn hoisted him off his machine, swung his own right leg over it, engaged gear, and gunned the engine. He went off down the street just as McCrea’s flailing hand missed his jacket by six inches.
McCrea stood in the street, dejected. Sam joined him. They looked at each other, then ran back into the apartment building. The fastest way to talk to Grosvenor Square was to get back to the third floor.
“Right, that’s it,” said Brown five minutes later, after listening to both McCrea and Somerville on the line from Kensington. “We find that bastard. That’s the job.”
Another phone rang. It was Nigel Cramer from Scotland Yard.
“Your negotiator has done a bunk,” he said flatly. “Can you tell me how? I’ve tried the apartment-the usual number is engaged.”
Brown told him in thirty seconds. Cramer grunted. He still resented the Green Meadow Farm affair, and always would, but events had now overtaken his desire to see Brown and the FBI team off his patch.
“Did your people get the number of that motorcycle?” he asked. “I can put out an all-points on it.”
“Better than that,” said Brown with satisfaction. “That attaché case he’s carrying. It contains a direction finder.”
“It what?”
“Built in, undetectable, state-of-the-art,” said Brown. “We had it fitted out in the States, changed it for the case provided by the Pentagon just before takeoff last night.”
“I see,” said Cramer thoughtfully. “And the receiver?”
“Right here,” said Brown. “Came in on the morning commercial flight at dawn. One of my boys went out to Heathrow to pick it up. Range two miles, so we have to move. I mean right now.”
“This time, Mr. Brown, will you please stay in touch with the Met.’s squad cars? You do not make arrests in this City. I do. Your car has radio?”
“Sure.”
“Stay on open line, please. We’ll patch in on you and join you if you tell us where you are.”
“No problem. You have my word on it.”
The embassy limousine swept out of Grosvenor Square sixty seconds later. Chuck Moxon drove; his colleague beside him operated the D/F receiver, a small box like a miniature television set, save that on the screen in place of a picture was a single glowing dot. When the antenna now clipped to the metal rim above the passenger door heard the blip emitted from the D/F transmitter in Quinn’s attaché case, a line would race out from the glowing dot to the perimeter of the screen. The car’s driver would have to maneuver so that the line on the screen pointed dead ahead of his car’s nose. He would then be following the direction finder. The device in the attaché case would be activated by remote control from inside the limousine.
They drove fast down Park Lane, through Knightsbridge, and into Kensington.
“Activate,” said Brown. The operator depressed a switch. The screen did not respond.
“Keep activating every thirty seconds until we get lock-on,” said Brown. “Chuck, start to sweep around Kensington.”
Moxon took the Cromwell Road, then headed south down Gloucester Road toward Old Brompton Road. The antenna got a lock.
“He’s behind us, heading north,” said Moxon’s colleague. “Range, about a mile and a quarter.”
Thirty seconds later Moxon was back across the Cromwell Road, heading north up Exhibition Road toward Hyde Park.
“Dead ahead, running north,” said the operator.
“Tell the boys in blue we have him,” said Brown. Moxon informed the embassy by radio, and halfway up Edgware Road a Metropolitan Police Rover closed up behind them.
In the back with Brown were Collins and Seymour.
“Should have known,” said Collins regretfully. “Should have spotted the time gap.”
“What time gap?” asked Seymour.
“You recall that snarl-up in the Winfield House driveway three weeks back? Quinn set off fifteen minutes before me but arrived in Kensington three minutes ahead. I can’t beat a London cabbie in rush-hour traffic. He paused somewhere, made some preparations.”
“He couldn’t have planned this three weeks ago,” objected Seymour. “He didn’t know how things would pan out.”
“Didn’t have to,” said Collins. “You’ve read his file. Been in combat long enough to know about fallback positions in case things go wrong.”
“He’s pulled a right into St. John’s Wood,” said the operator.
At Lord’s roundabout the police car came alongside, its window down.
“He’s heading north up there,” said Moxon, pointing up the Finchley Road. The two cars were joined by another squad car and headed north through Swiss Cottage, Hendon, and Mill Hill. The range decreased to three hundred yards and they scanned the traffic ahead for a tall man wearing no crash helmet, on a small motorcycle.
They went through Mill Hill Circus just a hundred yards behind the bleeper and up the slope to Five Ways Corner. Then they realized Quinn must have changed vehicles again. They passed two motorcyclists who emitted no bleep, and two powerful motorbikes overtook them, but the D/F finder they sought was still proceeding steadily ahead of them. When the bleep turned around Five Ways Corner onto the A.1 to Hertfordshire, they saw that their target was now an open-topped Volkswagen Golf GTi whose driver wore a thick fur hat to cover his head and ears.
The first thing Cyprian Fothergill recalled about the events of that day was that as he headed toward his charming little cottage in the countryside behind Borehamwood he was suddenly overtaken by a huge black car that swerved violently in front of him, forcing him to scream to a stop in a lay-by. Within seconds three big men, he would later tell his open-mouthed friends at the club, had leaped out, surrounded his car, and were pointing enormous guns at him. Then a police car pulled in behind, then another one, and four lovely bobbies got out and told the Americans-well, they must have been Americans, and huge, they were-to put their guns away or be disarmed.