‘You know, Pierre, it’s possible we haven’t heard a single word of truth in the last half hour,’ he said.
‘I trust Eddie Walsh and Mrs. Haven,’ Chambrun said.
‘Mrs. Haven didn’t tell us anything except something that happened forty-five years ago and what she feels in her bones,’ Hardy said. ‘Eddie Walsh didn’t see Avilla in the Trapeze the night before last, but if the place was crowded as it usually is, he could have missed him if he was only there for a few minutes.’
‘The girl?’
‘From the information she gave the police artist, she had to have seen Avilla somewhere. But let me ask you something, Pierre. She’s close to hysterical over the danger her father is in. Maybe her father had pointed out Avilla to her some other time. Night before last, he may have been talking about Avilla in the Trapeze, reminding her of a man he’d pointed out to her some other time. She could be a little off her rocker right now, you know?’
Chambrun didn’t answer. He just sat staring straight ahead of him, his eyes buried deep in their heavy pouches. Finally he spoke.
‘If Avilla is on the level, he could be our only hope,’ he said.
‘If Guardino will stay off his back,’ Hardy said.
‘Doing his job.’
‘Upstairs in Twenty-two B is a man with a gun who murdered Inspector Brooks,’ Hardy said. ‘I want him. Cop killers I really want.’
‘I want the four hostages safe much more than I want your killer, Walter,’ Chambrun said.
‘If there are four hostages,’ Hardy said.
Chambrun turned his head in a quick jerk. ‘Meaning what, Walter?’
‘This Raul Ortiz,’ the lieutenant said. ‘It’s his suite, right? He’s out of a world where a man could be on either side. He could have had plenty of time to arrange for using his quarters for a hostage-taking. The others are his friends and co-workers. He knew and admired the Foster girl. He could actually have persuaded them all to come to his suite to escape the raiders. They could have walked in, innocent as lambs to the slaughter. What do you know about him, Pierre?’
‘A man of peace,’ Chambrun said.
‘Aren’t we all?’ Hardy said, ‘until war will make us rich, or powerful, or both. You have to be a history student to understand these guys.’
‘Yardley should be able to tell us about Ortiz,’ Chambrun said, as the CIA man came back from the outer office.
‘Raul Ortiz?’ Yardley asked. ‘A clever negotiator, solidly on our side. Could be head of his country’s government if we ever get him off the twenty-second floor.’
‘The lieutenant’s been suggesting he may be the villain up there,’ Chambrun said.
‘It’s an idea that’s been tossed around in my shop,’ Yardley said. ‘Only because he’s native to the area, I think. I’ve had occasion to sit down with him, talk about his world with him, and I don’t buy it.’
‘Avilla?’ Chambrun asked. It was Avilla’s alibis Yardley had been checking on the outside phone.
‘I got lucky and located David Romberg,’ Yardley said. ‘He backs up Avilla all the way. The phone number Eddie had is a ship-to-shore from the yacht.’
‘His very good customer,’ Chambrun said.
‘Romberg gave me the names of other guests present, their bridge partners on the night of the raid. They don’t live in isolation out on that yacht. It’s fun time, round the clock. I think the alibis will check out. Everybody won’t be lying.’
Chambrun glanced at his watch. ‘Three hours and a quarter,’ he said.
Yardley fished a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. He glanced at a comfortable armchair and decided to remain standing. Like the rest of us, I think he knew that to relax for a moment could result in being overpowered by fatigue and sleep. I remember thinking I might last for three hours and after that, blackout, no matter what happened to the hostages.
‘We can only wait for a final decision from Washington and London,’ Yardley said. ‘I can only say I’m grateful not to be the one who has to make it.’
‘It doesn’t matter what they decide,’ Chambrun said. ‘They let the prisoners go or they don’t. Either way, the hostages aren’t going to make it unless we, here in the hotel, come up with a plan of action.’
‘Make a guess what their demands will be,’ Yardley said.
‘Washington and London decide to let the prisoners go,’ Chambrun said. ‘The people in Twenty-two B will demand a hotel limousine, probably two, to be readied in the basement garage. They’ll demand safe conduct to those cars, insist on having their own drivers. The cars are not to be followed. If they are, a dead hostage will be dumped out on the street, just to let us know they mean business.’
‘So we guarantee them safe conduct and the hostages get it at the other end of the line,’ Yardley said.
Chambrun nodded. ‘Washington and London decide against freeing the prisoners and we start seeing hostages go tumbling past those windows to the street.’
‘And when they’re all gone they blow up the hotel and themselves,’ Yardley said. ‘Do you have any choice but to empty the hotel and pray?’
‘Yes, damn it!’ Chambrun brought his fist down on the desk. ‘There has to be an alternative!’
‘Then you are a genius,’ Yardley said.
‘My hotel, my guests who chose this as a safe place to stay. I don’t just let it happen.’
‘You lead a charge and you’ll be one of the first people dead,’ Yardley said.
‘If that was the price of winning, I would pay it,’ Chambrun said.
I believed he meant it.
‘Those are brave words, Pierre,’ Lieutenant Hardy said. ‘But making a dead hero of yourself isn’t going to save anyone.’
‘And you are the one person they’re contacting here,’ Yardley said. ‘You wouldn’t be much use to us dead.’
‘So we keep our fingers crossed and hope that Avilla is on the level and comes up with something,’ Chambrun said.
‘Like what?’ Hardy asked.
‘Some way to apply pressure from our end,’ Chambrun said.
‘I wish I thought that was more than a hopeful dream,’ Yardley said.
Depending on Ricardo Avilla to save our collective necks was not exactly a cheerful prospect. All charm, a record of toughness and a planner of violence, with probably no real concern for any human life on earth except his own, no concern for anything outside his own world and his own causes. And then I found myself wondering how different that was from any other man in today’s power structures all around the globe. The men toying with the destinies of the hostages in Washington and London were probably no different. They were thinking of the best course for their own purposes, politely regretting what might happen to Sheldon Tranter, Sir George Brooks, Raul Ortiz, and Hilary Foster. Nice people, the three men, devoted workers on their side, but two great nations were not going to knuckle under to threats. That would be a sign of weakness, wouldn’t it? Too bad that people had to die, but you don’t become spineless in the face of that. The hostages would be remembered as heroes; there would be church services attended by top dignitaries; there would be an outcry in the United Nations about atrocities committed by the left. Would we, Chambrun and the rest of us in the Beaumont, ever forget that we had sat here for twenty-four hours doing nothing, because we couldn’t think of anything to do?
The red light blinked on Chambrun’s phone. Betsy answered, and once again she pointed to the ceiling. Suite Twenty-two B was on the line again.
‘Good evening, Mr. Chambrun,’ the now-familiar voice said. The squawk box was on and we could all hear.
‘You’ve called to give me instructions,’ Chambrun said.
‘What else, Mr. Chambrun? We are waiting, of course, to hear from the Georgia airport. When we know our friends are safely underway there, we will be halfway home.’
‘Getting out of here with the hostages is the other half,’ Chambrun said.
‘Precisely. We will want—’
&nb
sp; ‘You will want two hotel limousines ready in the basement garage. There will be two Lincolns with automatic drive. You will provide the drivers. You will use the service elevator to get to the cars. If the police attempt to follow you, Fifth Avenue will be littered with bodies. You will want helicopters that might follow you kept out of the air. Have I omitted something?’
‘It’s a pleasure to deal with you, Mr. Chambrun. There is one thing. On the way from here to the waiting cars there will be a gun at each hostage’s head. One false move—’
‘A question,’ Chambrun said. ‘What happens to the hostages after you get to where you’re planning to go?’
‘They will be released, of course.’
‘Up to now I have believed everything you’ve told me,’ Chambrun said. ‘That I don’t believe.’
The voice made a chuckling sound. ‘You are wasting your talents running a hotel, Mr. Chambrun. You have the gift for thinking just as I think. I will give you one more call at exactly eleven-thirty. You will confirm then that you have made all the arrangements, and I will let you know that I’ve had the right word from Georgia. If I haven’t, Mr. Chambrun, I suggest you head for the nearest bomb shelter.’
The phone clicked off.
Chambrun took a white linen handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped his face with it. In spite of the air conditioning in the office, he was sweating.
‘The worst of our guesses spelled out for us,’ Sam Yardley said.
The door at the far end of the office opened and Guardino came back with Ricardo Avilla. Avilla looked somehow changed to me. There was no smile and the lines in his face seemed to be more deeply etched.
‘No luck, if Luis Sanchez is to be believed,’ Guardino said. ‘He hasn’t seen anyone around the hotel whom Avilla thinks might be involved.’
‘That’s all?’ Chambrun asked.
‘They did some talking in Spanish until I stopped them,’ Guardino said. He gave Avilla a hostile look. ‘No way to be sure this character didn’t pull something on me.’
‘Tell them what you did hear,’ Avilla said in a flat voice.
‘How they got to Twenty-two B?’ Guardino said. ‘They played right into their hands. Made to order for them.’
‘You like to make that clear?’ Chambrun asked.
‘This Sanchez was in the lobby after the worst of the riot was over, talking to Sir George Brooks, who had come down from the roof to see what was happening. Sheldon Tranter joined them. They all know each other from the negotiations that are going on at the United Nations. Tranter said he’d just had a phone call in his room from Raul Ortiz in Twenty-two B, suggesting they all come up to his suite where they’d be safe and comfortable. Sanchez refused because he wanted to stay with his staff. But Brooks and Tranter took off. Walked right into it!’
‘So it is Ortiz!’ Yardley said. ‘He suckered them up there and had them cold!’
Avilla spoke for the first time. ‘I have known Raul Ortiz most of his life,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe that for a moment. Can I ask you a question, Chambrun?’
‘Of course.’
‘The voice that has been communicating with you from Twenty-two B; is there a Spanish accent?’
‘No’
‘Avilla, you come from a Spanish-speaking country,’ Guardino said, ‘and you don’t have an accent.’
‘Thanks to Mrs. Haven, forty-five years ago,’ Avilla said. ‘A British accent, Mr. Chambrun?’
‘No. Cultivated but not British,’ Chambrun said. We’d all heard the voice and he was right.
Avilla, his artificial hand jammed deep in his coat pocket, nodded slowly. ‘You have been looking for a man on the outside who has been communicating with the hostage-takers.’
‘You,’ Guardino said. ‘I think—’
‘Has it occurred to any of you that it might be a woman?’ Avilla interrupted. ‘A woman who has heard all your plans, knows exactly how you’re thinking?’
Chambrun’s face tightened. ‘There is only one such woman,’ he said, glancing at Betsy Ruysdale. ‘I can assure you—’
‘There is another,’ Avilla said. ‘Miss Lois Tranter!’
‘You have to be kidding!’ Guardino said.
‘I am from Central America,’ Avilla said, ‘so you are ready to suspect me of anything. Miss Tranter is an American girl and the daughter of a respected American diplomat so you cannot suspect her of anything.’
Chambrun leaned forward in his chair. ‘I apologize to you, Avilla,’ he said. ‘Miss Tranter has been in and out a great deal in the last hours. She’s spent some time with Haskell. Has she tried to pry any sort of information out of you, Mark?’
‘Of course,’ I said. Avilla’s suggestion was absurd. ‘Her father is being held up there. She’s out of her mind with fear for him. Of course she’s asked me what you planned to do.’
‘Are you making the cockeyed suggestion, Avilla, that Miss Tranter is working for the people who are holding her father?’ Guardino asked.
Avilla looked him straight in the eye. ‘I’m suggesting that she is working for her father and that he has engineered this whole disaster,’ he said.
Guardino laughed. He was the only one who did.
‘That’s pretty farfetched,’ Yardley said, but he sounded like a man who wanted to hear more.
‘Farfetched because he is an American being accused by a spick?’ Avilla said.
‘I haven’t been able to accept from the start that the four hostages were all taken at gunpoint up to Twenty-two B. Tranter and Brooks could not have been taken that easily. The Foster girl might have. Raul Ortiz was already up there. When Sanchez told me about the invitation to go up to Twenty-two B, I began to see how it had been managed.’
‘The invitation came from Raul Ortiz,’ Guardino said.
‘That’s what Tranter said. He meant to lure Sanchez up there, too. It didn’t matter when that didn’t work because he had enough to work with—Brooks, Ortiz, and the girl—and of course Tranter himself.’
‘It won’t wash,’ Yardley said. ‘Tranter has an impeccable reputation, all the way up to the Oval Office.’
‘Which is why it has worked and will work to the bitter end,’ Avilla said. ‘Let me tell you about Sheldon Tranter.’
‘Oh, brother!’ Guardino said. He wasn’t even close to buying.
‘He has spent the last twenty years of his life in my world,’ Avilla said. ‘He raised his daughter there. One of his great values to your government is that he was able to talk to both sides, the left and the right. He is one of the few Americans, except perhaps for some of Mr. Yardley’s covert operators, who’s had contact with the left. He could come and go at will to negotiate with them.’
‘So?’ Guardino said.
‘There comes a time when the price is high enough, when a man cannot resist temptation. Whatever his assignment was down there, Tranter must have had his own opinions about who is right and who is wrong. The price got high enough and he took it.’
‘Not for a minute,’ Guardino said.
‘Someone has known exactly the right people to contact,’ Avilla said. ‘Lord Huntingdon in London, your boss in the CIA, Mr. Yardley, the top people in your State Department. No crazy revolutionary terrorist could have handled things so expertly.’
‘What do you suggest, Mr. Avilla?’ Chambrun said.
‘Something you won’t agree to,’ Avilla said.
‘Try us.’
‘Turn Miss Tranter over to me, let Tranter know that I’ve got her, and that he has to bargain with me.’
‘And what would you do with her?’ Chambrun asked.
Avilla gave him a grim smile. ‘Just what he intends to do with the hostages. If Tranter won’t bargain for his own daughter, then there’s no way to turn him off course.’
‘He will know that we won’t harm her,’ Guardino said.
‘He will know that you won’t,’ Avilla said. ‘He will also know that I would!’
I realize now how absurd we can be
. I simply couldn’t believe that a nice-looking man wearing a three-button Brooks Brothers summer suit could be seriously considering a cold-blooded murder. Let him grow a beard for a couple of days, put him in blue jeans and a dirty work shirt and you might have a different set of thoughts about him. That shows how silly our judgment about people can be. Avilla had cut his teeth on terror. No matter how civilized he looked and sounded he wouldn’t hesitate a moment to take a life if it would promote his own interests.
‘You would harm her?’ Guardino asked, believing, yet not believing.
‘I have spent a lifetime, Guardino, building a reputation. If Tranter doesn’t buy it, then it doesn’t matter much what I would be willing to do.’
‘You’re not prepared to get into the act on our side because you love us, Avilla,’ Chambrun said.
The smile returned, but now it was tight and cold. ‘You’re right, Mr. Chambrun. I have never had any reason to love or trust money and power. But there is a man upstairs who has devoted his life to the cause of peace and freedom for what you call “the common man.” Lose Raul Ortiz and my world loses one of its few champions. I would go to any lengths to get him out of this trap.’
‘Of course we can’t turn the girl over to you, Avilla,’ Sam Yardley said.
Chambrun reached for the cup of coffee on his desk which, by now, must have been stone-cold. He sipped, made a wry face, and put it down. ‘Would you turn her over to me, Yardley?’ he asked.
‘Meaning just what?’ Yardley asked.
‘I don’t know if you have bought Avilla’s theory about Tranter or not, Mr. Yardley,’ Chambrun said. ‘I think, personally, that it is good enough to test out. Bring the girl here and leave her with me and Ruysdale and Mark, who is her friend. I will set the rest of you up in the next room with the intercom turned on so that you can hear.’
‘What can you possibly accomplish?’ Guardino asked.
‘If I had to deal with a hyped-up, psychotic terrorist with a cause for which he’d give his life, I’d have to say “nothing.” But if Tranter is at the center of this, with his daughter as an ally, I’m dealing with people who want to live to enjoy the money and the power they’ve been promised to do the job. If I can convince Lois Tranter that neither she nor her father can get out of this alive, that may be the bargaining chip we need.’
Remember to Kill Me Page 16
