Sam saw no need for further secrecy over her affair with Quinn. She came to his room as soon as he turned in, and if young McCrea heard them making love, so what? After the second time she fell asleep, on her front, her face against his chest. He placed one hand on the nape of her neck and she murmured at the touch.
But despite his tiredness he could not sleep. He lay on his back, as on so many previous nights, and stared at the ceiling and thought. There was something about those men in the warehouse, something he had missed. It came to him in the small hours. The man behind him, holding the Skorpion with practiced casualness, not the careful tension of one unused to handguns; balanced, relaxed, self-confident, knowing he could bring the machine pistol to aim, and fire in a fraction of a second. His stance, his poise-Quinn had seen it before.
“He was a soldier,” he said quietly into the darkness. Sam murmured “Mmmmm” but went on sleeping. Something else, something as he passed the door of the Volvo to climb into the trunk. It eluded him and he fell asleep at last.
In the morning Sam rose first and went back to her own room to dress. Duncan McCrea may have seen her leave Quinn’s room but he made no mention. He was more concerned that his guests should have a good breakfast.
“Last night… I forgot eggs,” he called, and scampered off down the stairs to get some from an early dairy around the corner.
Sam brought Quinn his breakfast in bed. He was lost in thought. She had become accustomed to his reveries, and left him. Lou Collins’s cleaners had certainly not done any proper cleaning, she thought. The rooms were dusty after four weeks without attention.
Quinn was not concerned with the dust. He was watching a spider in the top far corner of his room. Laboriously the little creature laced up the last two strands of an otherwise perfect web, checked to see that every strand was in place, then scuttled to the center and sat there waiting. It was that last movement by the spider that recalled to Quinn the tiny detail that had eluded him last night.
The White House committee had the full reports of Drs. Barnard and Macdonald in front of them. It was the former they were studying. One by one they finished the summary and sat back.
“Goddam bastards,” said Michael Odell with feeling. He spoke for all of them. Ambassador Fairweather sat at the end of the table.
“Is there any possibility,” Secretary of State Donaldson asked, “that the British scientists could have gotten it wrong? About the origins?”
“They say no,” answered the ambassador. “They’ve invited us to send anyone we like over to double-check, but they’re good. I’m afraid they’ve got it right.”
As Sir Harry Marriott had said, the sting was in the tail, the summary. Every single component, Dr. Barnard had said with the full concurrence of his military colleagues at Fort Halstead-the copper wires, their plastic covering, the Semtex, the pulse-receiver, the battery, the brass, and the leather stitching-was of Soviet manufacture.
He conceded it was possible for such items, though manufactured in the Soviet Union, to fall into the hands of others outside the U.S.S.R. But the clincher was the mini-del. No larger than a paper clip, these miniature detonators are used, and only used, within the Soviet space program at Baikonur. They are employed to give infinitesimal steering changes to the Salyut and Soyuz vehicles as they maneuver to dock in space.
“But it doesn’t make sense,” protested Donaldson. “Why should they?”
“A whole lot in this mess doesn’t make sense,” said Odell. “If this is true, I don’t see how Quinn could have known about it. It looks like they duped him all along, duped all of us.”
“The question is, what do we do about it?” asked Reed of Treasury.
“The funeral’s tomorrow,” said Odell. “We’ll get that over with first. Then we’ll decide how we handle our Russian friends.”
Over four weeks Michael Odell had found that the authority of acting-President was sitting more and more lightly on him. The men around this table had come to accept his leadership also, more and more, he realized, as if he were the President.
“How is the President,” asked Walters, “since… the news?”
“According to the doctor, bad,” said Odell. “Very bad. If the kidnapping was bad enough, the death of his son, and done that way, has been like a bullet in his gut.”
At the word bullet each man around the table thought the same thought. No one dared say it.
Julian Hayman was the same age as Quinn and they had known each other when Quinn lived in London and worked for the underwriting firm affiliated with Lloyd’s, specializing in protection and hostage release. Their worlds had overlapped, for Hayman, a former major in the SAS, ran a company dedicated to the provision of anticrime alarm systems and personal protection, including bodyguards. His clientele was exclusive, wealthy, and careful. They were people who had reason to be suspicious, or they would not have paid so highly for Hayman’s services.
The office in Victoria, to which Quinn guided Sam in the middle of the morning after leaving the flat and saying a final goodbye to Duncan McCrea, was as well-protected as it was discreet.
Quinn told Sam to sit in the window of a café down the street and wait for him.
“Why can’t I come with you?” she asked.
“Because he wouldn’t receive you. He may not even see me. But I hope he will-we go back a long way. Strangers he doesn’t like, unless they are paying heavily, and we aren’t. When it comes to women from the FBI, he’d be like shy game.”
Quinn announced himself through the door phone, aware he was being scanned by the overhead video camera. When the door clicked he walked right through to the back, past two secretaries who did not even look up. Julian Hayman was in his office at the far end of the ground floor. The room was as elegant as its occupant. It had no windows; neither did Hayman.
“Well, well, well,” he drawled. “Long time, soldier.” He held out a languid hand. “What brings you to my humble shop?”
“Information,” said Quinn. He told Hayman what he wanted.
“In earlier times, dear boy, no problem. But things change, don’t you see? Fact is, the word’s out on you, Quinn. Persona non grata, they’re saying at the club. Not the flavor of the month exactly, especially with your own people. Sorry, old boy, you’re bad news. Can’t help.”
Quinn lifted the phone off the desk and hit several buttons. It began to ring at the other end.
“What are you doing?” asked Hayman. The drawl had gone.
“No one saw me come in here, but half Fleet Street’s going to see me leave,” said Quinn.
“Daily Mail,” said a voice on the phone. Hayman reached forward and killed the call. Many of his best-paying clients were American corporations in Europe, the sort to whom he would prefer to avoid making laborious explanations.
“You’re a bastard, Quinn,” he said thinly. “Always were. All right, a couple of hours in the files, but I lock you in. Nothing is to be missing.”
“Would I do that to you?” asked Quinn amiably. Hayman led him downstairs to the basement archive.
Partly in the course of his business, partly out of a personal interest, Julian Hayman had amassed over the years a remarkably comprehensive archive of criminals of every kind. Murderers, bank robbers, gangsters, swindlers, dope peddlers, arms traffickers, terrorists, kidnappers, shifty bankers, accountants, lawyers, politicians, and policemen; dead, alive, in jail, or simply missing-if they had appeared in print, and often if they had not, he had them filed. The archive ran right under the building.
“Any particular section?” asked Hayman as he switched on the lights. The file cabinets ran in all directions, and these were only the cards and the photographs. The main data was on computer.
“Mercenaries,” said Quinn.
“As in Congo?” asked Hayman.
“As in Congo, Yemen, South Sudan, Biafra, Rhodesia.”
“From here to here,” said Hayman, gesturing to ten yards of chin-high steel filing cabinets. “The table’s at the end.”
It took Quinn four hours, but no one disturbed him. The photograph showed four men, all white. They were grouped around the front end of a Jeep, on a thin and dusty road edged by the bush vegetation of what looked like Africa. Several black soldiers could be discerned behind them. They were all in camouflage combat uniform and calf boots. Three had bush hats. All carried Belgian FLN automatic rifles. Their camouflage was of the leopard-spot type favored by Europeans rather than the streaked variety used by the British and Americans.
Quinn took the photo to the table, put it under the spot lamp, and found a powerful magnifying glass in the drawer. Under its gaze, the design on the hand of one of the men showed up more clearly, despite the sepia tint of the old photo. A spider’s web motif, on the back of the left hand, the spider crouching at the center of the web.
He went on through the files but found nothing else of interest. Nothing that rang a bell. He pressed the buzzer to be let out.
In his office Julian Hayman held out his hand for the photograph.
“Who?” said Quinn. Hayman studied the rear of the picture. Like every other card entry and photo in his collection, it bore a seven-figure number on the back. He tapped the number into the console of his desk-top computer. The full file flashed up on the screen.
“Hmm, you have picked some charmers, old boy.” He read off the screen. “Picture almost certainly taken in Maniema Province, eastern Congo, now Zaire, some time in the winter of 1964. The man on the left is Jacques Schramme, Black Jack Schramme, the Belgian mercenary.”
He warmed to his narration. It was his specialty.
“Schramme was one of the first. He fought against the United Nations troops in the attempted Katangan secession of 1960 to ’62. When they lost he had to quit and took refuge in neighboring Angola, which was then Portuguese and ultra-right wing. Returned on invitation in the autumn of 1964 to help put down the Simba revolt. Reconstituted his old Leopard Group and set about pacifying Maniema Province. That’s him all right. Any more?”
“The others,” said Quinn.
“Mmmm. The one on the extreme right is another Belgian, Commandant Wauthier. At the time he commanded a contingent of Katangan levies and about twenty white mercenaries at Watsa. Must have been on a visit. You interested in Belgians?”
“Maybe.” Quinn thought back to the Volvo in the warehouse. He was passing the open door, caught the odor of cigarette smoke. Not Marlboro, not Dunhill. More like French Gauloises. Or Bastos, the Belgian brand. Zack did not smoke; he had smelt his breath.
“The one without the hat in the middle is Roger Lagaillarde, also Belgian. Killed in a Simba ambush on the Punia road. No doubt about that.”
“And the big one?” said Quinn. “The giant?”
“Yes, he is big,” agreed Hayman. “Must be six feet six at least. Built like a barn door. Early twenties, by the look of him. Pity he’s turned his head away. With the shadow of his bush hat you can’t see much of his face. Probably why there’s no name for him. Just a nickname. Big Paul. That’s all it says.”
He flicked off the screen. Quinn had been doodling on a pad. He pushed his drawing across to Hayman.
“Ever seen that before?”
Hayman looked at the design of the spider’s web, the spider at its center. He shrugged.
“A tattoo? Worn by young hooligans, punks, football thugs. Quite common.”
“Think back,” said Quinn. “Belgium, say thirty years ago.”
“Ah, wait a minute. What the hell did they call it? Araignée-that was it. Can’t recall the Flemish word for spider, just the French.”
He tapped at his keys for several seconds.
“Black web, red spider at the center, worn on the back of the left hand?”
Quinn tried to recall. He was passing the open passenger door of the Volvo, on his way to climb into the trunk. Zack behind him. The man in the driver’s seat had leaned across to watch him through the hood slits. A big man, almost touched the roof in the sitting position. Leaning sideways, left hand supporting his weight. And in order to smoke he had removed his left glove.
“Yeah,” said Quinn. “That’s it.”
“Insignificant bunch,” said Hayman dismissively, reading from his screen. “Extreme right-wing organization formed in Belgium in the late fifties, early sixties. Opposed to decolonization of Belgium’s only colony, the Congo. Anti-black, of course, anti-Semitic-what else is new? Recruited young tearaways and hooligans, street thugs and riffraff. Specialized in throwing rocks through Jewish shop windows, heckling leftist speakers, beat up a couple of Liberal members of Parliament. Died out eventually. Of course, the dissolution of the colonial empires threw up all sorts of these groups.”
“Flemish movement or Walloon?” asked Quinn. He was referring to the two cultural groups within Belgium: the Flemings, mainly in the northern half near Holland, who speak Flemish, and the Walloons from the south, nearer France, who speak French. Belgium is a two-language country.
“Both, really,” said Hayman after consulting his screen. “But it says here it started and was always strongest in the city of Antwerp. So, Flemish, I suppose.”
Quinn left him and returned to the café. Any other woman would have been spitting angry at being kept waiting for four and a half hours. Fortunately for Quinn, Sam was a trained agent, and had been through her apprenticeship in stakeout duties, than which nothing is more boring. She was nursing her fifth cup of awful coffee.
“When do you check your car in?” he asked.
“Due tonight. I could extend it.”
“Can you hand it back at the airport?”
“Sure. Why?”
“We’re flying to Brussels.”
She looked unhappy.
“Please, Quinn, do we have to fly? I do it if I really have to, but if I can avoid it I chicken out, and I’ve had too much flying lately.”
“Okay,” he said. “Check the car in London. We’ll take the train and the hovercraft. We’ll have to rent a Belgian car anyway. Might as well be Ostende. And we’ll need money. I have no credit cards.”
“You what?” She had never heard anyone say that.
“I don’t need them in Alcántara del Rio.”
“Okay, we’ll go to the bank. I’ll use a check and hope I have enough in the account back home.”
On the way to the bank she turned on the radio. The music was somber. It was four on a London afternoon and getting dark. Far away across the Atlantic, the Cormack family was burying their son.