Remember to Kill Me

by Hugh Pentecost

  What I noticed at once was that Chambrun had found time, while I was away, to shave and change his clothes in the private dressing room he had off the office. He looked as fresh as he did on any morning of his life, and I knew for certain that he’d been on the go for better than twenty-four hours.

  I waited to make some sort of guess on how much The Man had told Guardino. Had he opened the can of peas represented by the situation in Twenty-two B? Apparently not.

  ‘We think we have a rather special problem on our hands,’ Guardino explained to me. He’d obviously already been into it with Chambrun. ‘We don’t think this attack on the Beaumont was connected with the concert in the park, but we’re going to have to prove it to satisfy the mayor.’ Guardino was a dark, bright-eyed youngish man—mid-thirties—plenty of energy.

  ‘They came as the concert broke up,’ I said.

  ‘I know. But we had nearly eleven hundred cops in the park, watching for just this kind of thing. There was no sign of any violence there, no one attacked or robbed. We were congratulating ourselves on having handled everything perfectly there when all hell broke loose here. We think it was well planned in advance, and these goons were waiting somewhere else to hit the hotel, waiting for the right time so it would seem it was another explosion from the park.’

  ‘But you don’t think it came from there?’

  ‘We’re positive it didn’t,’ Guardino said. ‘From all accounts so far, there were at least two hundred of them—maybe three hundred—moving together. They couldn’t have come unnoticed from the park. They struck at just the right time to create this uncertainty, confusion.’

  ‘Well, I guess we were an ideal target,’ I said. ‘Rich people’s home away from home.’

  ‘Quite so,’ Guardino said. ‘We have now taken sixty-one prisoners. Some of them have police records that suggest that this mob was made up of terrorists representing communist revolutionaries in Central America—anti-American. Whether they just chose a lush spot to raise money, or whether they were after some of the diplomatic personnel who stay here at the hotel, we don’t know yet.’

  I glanced at Chambrun. His face was an expressionless mask. He had the answer to Guardino’s question, located on the twenty-second floor of his hotel. He had been warned that if he told the police what the situation was, the four hostages the guy in Twenty-two B claimed to have would be dropped out the window, one by one.

  ‘So far we have had only one inquiry about someone who might be involved,’ Guardino said. ‘The State Department has asked us to find one of their men who’s staying here; a man named Sheldon Tranter. He’s an expert on the Central American situation. Mr. Chambrun tells me that Washington has asked you about Tranter, too.’

  ‘I also told you that Jerry Dodd, my security chief, is trying to track Tranter down,’ Chambrun said, in a flat, colorless voice. ‘The fact that he isn’t in his room doesn’t necessarily mean anything. He could have spent the night with friends, here in the city, somewhere in the suburbs. He couldn’t guess anyone could be concerned about him until he reads the morning paper or hears the news on the radio or the TV. When that happens he’ll be in touch with the department.’

  I knew he could also be one of the hostages in Twenty-two B.

  ‘It’s a little too much of a coincidence that an expert on Central America should turn up missing when Central American terrorists are involved,’ Guardino said.

  He was right, of course.

  ‘I hope it is a coincidence,’ Chambrun said.

  ‘Anyone else missing?’ Guardino asked.

  Max London would have spread the word about Hilary Foster, and it would get back to Guardino sooner or later.

  ‘Hilary Foster, who is starring in our nightclub, has turned up among the unaccounted for,’ Chambrun said. ‘Her manager has been asking for her. She was performing when the invasion began. She stayed behind to help one of the girls who’s been hurt. Haskell, here, saw her and talked to her.’

  ‘She was fine, not hurt,’ I said. ‘She said she was taking off to let friends know that she was okay.’

  ‘Probably stayed with those friends,’ Chambrun said. ‘Not surprising if she was suffering from shock, and needed comfort. Hasn’t thought to call everyone who might be concerned for her.’

  It was said so casually. Hilary, he knew, was on the twenty-second floor.

  Guardino got up from the chair he’d been occupying. ‘The Commissioner will be in touch if there’s anything new,’ he said. ‘If this man Tranter—and the Foster girl—show up, you might let us know.’ He stood there, frowning at us. ‘I find it hard to believe this was all just a case of robbery and vandalism? Something political—a threat, a warning? I’ll feel better when Sheldon Tranter shows up. He could be in big trouble.’

  ‘Aren’t we all?’ Chambrun said. He made it sound as though he was thinking about property damage.

  As soon as Chambrun and I and Betsy Ruysdale were alone, he asked me about Mrs. Haven.

  ‘You’d never know anything had happened to her if you weren’t told,’ I said.

  ‘She able to recall anything that might help?’

  I laughed. ‘An abduction forty-five years ago,’ I said, and told him her story of her Central American adventure.

  Chambrun sat very still, staring at the Picasso painting on the far wall. ‘“Remember to kill me”,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘There is a connection—Central America.’

  ‘Not very real,’ I said. ‘This Avilla character was in his sixties forty-five years ago. You visualize a guy over a hundred years old running around on the roof taking potshots at an ancient lady?’

  ‘Nor do I buy coincidences,’ Chambrun said.

  The phone rang and Betsy answered it. ‘Mrs. Veach,’ she said. ‘Urgent.’

  Chambrun switched on the squawk box again and Mrs. Veach was audible to all of us. ‘Room Twenty-two B is making a long-distance call to a number in London, England,’ our chief operator told us.

  ‘Splice us in,’ Chambrun said.

  We could hear the long-distance operator reporting. ‘I have Lord Huntingdon for you.’

  ‘Huntingdon here,’ a very British voice said. ‘Who is this calling?’

  Then the voice we knew from earlier took over. ‘Who I am doesn’t matter, Huntingdon. Just listen because I will only say it once. I’m in the Beaumont Hotel in New York City. It’s possible you’ve already heard what’s happened here during the night. I have taken some hostages here in the hotel, and one of them is Sir George Brooks.’

  The British voice was calm. ‘Have you harmed him?’

  ‘Not yet, but I promise you he will be very dead if you don’t do exactly what I tell you.’

  ‘I’m listening,’ Huntingdon said.

  ‘Your government will use its influence to procure the release of revolutionary prisoners who are being held in Guatemala. There are eight of them. You know their names. They will be set safely free within the next twenty-four hours or Brooks will pay for your failure to act with his life.’

  ‘You are surely aware that Her Majesty’s government is not in a position to act alone in this matter,’ the cool British voice said.

  ‘I know. The government of the United States is involved, and the Organization of American States. We have hostages that will help persuade them, too. They are about to be informed of that fact. You have just twenty-four hours to comply—or else.’

  ‘You’re not giving us enough time,’ Huntingdon said.

  ‘It’s all the time I’ve got to give,’ the man in Twenty-two B said. ‘I will not be calling you again. I cannot be bargained with, Huntingdon.’

  There was a clicking sound and we knew our friend from Twenty-Two B had hung up.

  ‘Hello! Hello! Are you still there?’ For the first time Huntingdon sounded concerned.

  ‘Your party has disconnected,’ the operator said.

  ‘Damn!’ Huntingdon said, and was gone. He’d obviously be calling back.

  ‘What will y
ou tell him?’ I asked Chambrun.

  ‘It depends on what he tells me,’ Chambrun said.

  ‘The cat’s out of the bag,’ I said. ‘You’ll have Mrs. Thatcher demanding that you do something.’

  ‘Or demanding that I do nothing!’ Chambrun said. ‘That madman’s next call will to be the State Department to inform them that he has their man Tranter. And then the OAS to let them know that he has their man Raul Ortiz, our guest in Twenty-two B.’

  ‘They will be telling you what they want done,’ I said.

  Chambrun gave me his hanging-judge look. ‘You forget we’ve been warned of explosives that could rip the hotel apart,’ he said. ‘I’ll do what I think best, no matter what kings and queens and ambassadors have to suggest.’

  ‘I don’t understand about Sir George Brooks,’ Betsy Ruysdale said. ‘He was there on the roof after Mrs. Haven was shot, and from then on there was no way anyone could have got to him up there.’

  ‘Nothing to stop him from going down into the hotel to see what was going on,’ Chambrun said. He reached for the cup of Turkish coffee which Betsy always kept hot on his desk. ‘“Remember to kill me,”’ he muttered. ‘Only Victoria could dream up such a line!’

  The phone rang. It was Mrs. Veach to tell us that Twenty-two B was calling a number in Washington.

  ‘Here we go again,’ Chambrun said. He glanced at his watch. ‘We have until this time tomorrow—ten-thirty A.M.’

  We live in a world that poses a constant threat of violence, and yet we don’t pay very much attention to it. We have been told over and over that Russia and the United States have enough nuclear weapons to destroy each other ten times over. But it surely won’t happen, will it? The President tells us that naval maneuvers off Central America have been standard practice for years. Nothing to worry about. Yet revolutionary forces in that part of the world are armed and supported by Communist Russia. Somebody pulls a nuclear trigger and our world could be blown to pieces. But it won’t happen, will it? Not to us—not to me! We are told our hotel is threatened with destruction, but it won’t happen, will it. Or will it? The streets of our city are filled with thugs who could attack you, rob you, beat you. Yet I walk those streets every day, certain that nothing like that could ever happen to me. But could it? The safest place in my world was this hotel where I live and work, run like a Swiss watch, guarded by professionals, and yet, now, it had been turned upside down. What couldn’t possibly happen to us had happened to us. Twenty-four hours and then …

  One thing was certain now. We were going to have a second invasion, this time by representatives of governments and political groups. The police would be coming back in force, probably the FBI, the CIA, and God knew who else. Chambrun was going to have to admit that he, too, had been threatened by the hostage-takers and given into them for the time being. Ten to one he was going to lose control of his own precious world.

  He seemed immobilized by the prospect. I expected to see him in action, but instead he just sat there in his office, staring at the wall opposite his desk. He was wrestling, I thought, with possible courses of action to take, and finding none that would work.

  I had thought of a swarm of people coming our way but it didn’t happen quite like that. Jerry Dodd appeared, and with him a stranger—a tall man with red hair and very cold blue eyes, a little red mustache shading a tight slit of a mouth.

  ‘I’m sorry to break in, Boss, but Mr. Yardley didn’t give me any choice,’ Jerry said.

  Yardley stepped forward and put down a small wallet on Chambrun’s desk. ‘My credentials, Mr. Chambrun,’ he said. His voice was cold and colorless.

  Chambrun looked at the wallet and handed it back. ‘CIA,’ he said. He seemed to make an effort to pull himself together. ‘This is Mark Haskell, my public relations man, and Miss Ruysdale, my private secretary.’

  Yardley gave us a curt nod. ‘I’m stationed in New York,’ he said. ‘Half an hour ago I got a call from my chief in Washington telling me what was going on here.’

  ‘It’s not a secret,’ Chambrun said. ‘It’s been all over the radio, the TV, the newspapers. We had a sizeable riot.’

  ‘I’m not talking about what everyone knows, Chambrun. I’m talking about what you know. Frank Laughton of the State Department got a call from someone who is holding hostages. He managed to trace the call and it came from here in your hotel, through your switchboard. Are the hostages being held here?’

  Chambrun hesitated. He didn’t really have any choice.

  ‘Mr. Laughton isn’t the only person who got a call from here,’ Chambrun said.

  ‘I know. British security got on to Laughton before he talked to me.’

  ‘And you came alone?’ Chambrun asked.

  ‘To find out what the situation is before we act,’ Yardley said. ‘I assume you can tell us, and without any stalling, Mr. Chambrun. This isn’t just some kind of hoodlum kidnapping. It’s far bigger and more sensitive than that.’

  ‘So I have guessed,’ Chambrun said. He had to lay it on the table. He gave it to Yardley without holding anything back, the raid on the hotel, the attack on Victoria Haven, the involvement of Sir George Brooks, and then the phone call from Twenty-two B informing him of the hostage-taking and the demand that Twenty-two West be cleared of guests.

  ‘And you gave up without a murmur?’ Yardley asked.

  ‘What would you have done, Mr. Yardley? They claimed they had four hostages, one of them the star of our nightclub show. They claimed to have explosives enough to blow my hotel to pieces. My security force was in disarray as a result of the raid. The demand to clear the floor of guests was all he asked of me. I needed time to figure a way to handle it.’

  ‘You didn’t tell the police?’

  ‘I needed time, damn it! I didn’t want an army barging in here and find myself watching bodies go by my window there on the way to the sidewalk!’

  Yardley seemed to relax. ‘Let’s start over,’ he said. ‘I think you did what you had to do. You have any idea what they really want?’

  ‘I listened in on their phone call to Lord Huntingdon in London,’ Chambrun said. ‘And on the call to Laughton in Washington. Political prisoners must be released.’

  ‘We know from those calls who two of the hostages are,’ Yardley said. ‘Sheldon Tranter, one of our people, and Sir George Brooks, the Britisher. You mentioned a girl entertainer. Is she Hispanic?’

  ‘No. I think they took her to bring special pressure on me,’ Chambrun said.

  ‘And the fourth hostage?’

  ‘It’s a guess. I think it is Raul Ortiz, who is registered in Twenty-two B. He’s a member of the Organization of American States.’

  ‘But no phone call to his people?’

  ‘Probably not necessary,’ Chambrun said. ‘Or the call made from somewhere else, by someone else.’

  ‘Our problem is to coordinate our efforts,’ Yardley said. ‘We don’t want the police trying one approach, the British trying another, our people trying still another, Central American people trying still another, and you trying to save your hotel and your girl singer.’

  ‘I’d like to think you know that I’m concerned with all four hostages,’ Chambrun said. ‘I want to see all of them safe and my hotel in one piece. I wish I could be as sure of you and the others.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning that what’s at stake for you isn’t nearly as clear as what’s at stake for me,’ Chambrun said. ‘I want to save four lives—and possibly many more if we get down to setting off explosives. But what are the value of those lives as against freedom for eight political prisoners? Would freeing those prisoners be a political defeat of consequence? Would failure to free them lead to a confrontation with an enemy, backed by Russian arms and technology? After the four hostages in Twenty-two B are dead I can hear piously expressed regrets of people in high places. After all, we couldn’t knuckle under to terror tactics, could we? The loss of four lives and the gutting of a hotel is tragic, but setting free those
eight prisoners could have cost us thousands of lives in a war! It’s all right for us to hold hostages—because that’s what those eight prisoners are—but it’s monstrous for the enemy to hold hostages, but we have to consider what giving into them might cost.’

  ‘Something like that,’ Yardley said very quietly.

  ‘I am in charge of a little city of my own,’ Chambrun said. ‘I am concerned with my people, my guests who are under my protection, my property. Your big-time operators and their covert ball games don’t concern me, Mr. Yardley.’

  ‘But you can’t prevent it if the decision is to move in on you with a large force of men,’ Yardley said.

  ‘I can give it one hell of a try,’ Chambrun said.

  For the first time Yardley seemed to become something like human. He took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, lit the cigarette he took from it with a lighter, and sat down on the arm of the chair next to Chambrun’s desk. He smiled, and it was friendly, not threatening.

  ‘I find myself deciding that you’re my kind of guy, Mr. Chambrun,’ he said. ‘You didn’t ask for this mess but you’re not backing away from it. I wonder if we can talk to each other—off the record?’

  ‘Unless I need to use what you tell me to save those hostages and my hotel,’ Chambrun said.

  ‘Fair enough,’ Yardley said. He glanced at me and then at Betsy Ruysdale, who was standing behind Chambrun’s chair, and then at Jerry Dodd, who hadn’t spoken a word.

  ‘My right arm and my left arm,’ Chambrun said, ‘and my chief of staff. No secrets from them, but silence if I ask for it.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Yardley said. He took a deep drag on his cigarette and let the smoke out in a long sigh. ‘I can’t decide the tactics my people will use. I can only advise. I can’t promise you anything because I haven’t got the power to deliver. But I can certainly urge my people to consult with you before they move on their own. When you invade a strange country, you need help from people who know the terrain. Your hotel is a strange country to us. We need your help. According to the man on the phone, we now have a little less than twenty-four hours in which to decide to give in or to attack.’