Bargain with Death

by Hugh Pentecost

  The sweat trickling down my spine felt cold. “You’re planning to take me as well as Mrs. Brent?” I said.

  “At least as far as the sidewalk, Mr. Haskell. At least that far.”

  I took a last look at Valerie. The knuckles of her locked hands were white. Her eyes were level, unwavering.

  “You don’t have to do this for me, Mark,” she said.

  “Of course I will.”

  “Because, in the long run—”

  “That will be enough, Mrs. Brent. On your way, Mr. Haskell,” Treadway said. “As the saying goes, we haven’t got all night. And remember, don’t try to bargain with me. I won’t answer the phone.”

  I turned away from Valerie because I couldn’t bear to look at her. I thought I knew what she was trying to tell me. She didn’t expect to survive this no matter what we did.

  3

  IT SEEMED TO TAKE forever for the elevator to come up to the penthouse foyer. I’ve run up against some pretty tough guys in my time at the Beaumont, but I don’t think anyone had ever given me such a chill as Treadway. I could see that smiling bastard pointing his gun at Trudy Woodson, never giving her a chance. Then I could see him ripping off her clothes, dumping her in the bathtub and carving her to pieces. I had the feeling he took joy in violence. How did you stop such a man? I tried not to think ahead. He planned to go out of the hotel with Valerie and me walking ahead of his gun. As far as the sidewalk, he’d said. Would he leave me there to be scraped up in a basket?

  The elevator doors opened and I stepped in. Going down, I could feel my stomach churning. Mike Maggio was waiting just outside the doors when I stepped into the lobby.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “I’m still in one piece,” I said. “It’s Treadway. He has Mrs. Brent up there. If there’s anyone else, I didn’t see them.”

  This time I had the strength to make it up the stairs to the second floor. Chambrun’s office seemed crowded. Hardy was there along with his Sergeant Kramer. There was Jerry Dodd and the head of our engineering crew, a man named Moffet. Olin’s green glasses were fixed on me as I came into the room. Miss Ruysdale was standing at Chambrun’s elbow where he sat at his desk. But before I could cross the room, I was confronted by Emory Clarke. He grabbed me by the upper arms and I was surprised by the strength in his hands.

  “Val?” he said.

  “She’s there. She’s all right for now,” I said.

  Then it seemed as if everyone started asking questions at once. Chambrun shouted them down. “Let him tell it his way first! Questions later.”

  “It’s Treadway,” I told them. “The only other person I saw was Mrs. Brent. He’s armed with some kind of machine pistol. Mrs. Brent was sitting on your couch, boss, and he stood behind her the whole time—so that she was always between us. You were right about Carlson. He is supposed to arrange for a getaway car—maybe later a plane.”

  “He’s on Treadway’s team?” Clarke asked.

  “Not the way I got it,” I said. “He was ordered to help or Valerie would get it.”

  “She hasn’t been harmed yet?” Clarke asked.

  “Please, Mr. Clarke!” Chambrun said, his voice harsh. “What are his demands, Mark?”

  I laid it out for him. Alternate escape routes. Protection against Olin, Gamayel, and whoever. I saw Olin’s green glasses glitter in the light from the chandelier as I mentioned his name. I told Chambrun that Treadway would make the choice of the ways out after they were presented. Presumably he would coordinate with Carlson so that the escape car would be waiting. I was to take the ransom money intended for the kidnappers to him. Valerie and I would be hostages to make sure no one tried to double-cross him on the way out.

  Everybody started talking at once again after that. Chambrun had beckoned Jerry Dodd and Moffet, the engineer, to him. An interior plan of the hotel was spread out on the desk.

  Lieutenant Hardy cornered me, but we were surrounded by Sergeant Kramer, Olin, Emory Clarke, and Miss Ruysdale. Hardy had a folder in his hands and he opened it and took out a picture.

  “This Treadway?” he asked.

  It was—Treadway wearing riding clothes, standing beside a beautiful lean hunter. The horse was nibbling at Treadway’s sleeve as if he was looking for sugar.

  “Ox Ridge Hunt Club a couple of years ago,” Hardy said. “He won the trophy. The horse was owned by an Egyptian diplomat who was being protected by the Department. He rode that horse over the jumps like he was being chased by the devil. A reckless rider.”

  “A reckless man,” I said. “I want to tell you he has the living hell scared out of me. I halfway accused him of killing Trudy Woodson and I thought he was going to blast me then and there.”

  “He is certainly the most dangerous operator in the Middle East,” Clarke said. “His kind of violence fits the terrorist climate over there. It’s believed he engineered the hijacking of an Israeli plane and personally shot several hostages when demands weren’t met. It’s rumored he masterminded the assassination of Israeli athletes at the nineteen seventy-two Olympics. I must admit I think he is given credit for things he had nothing to do with. But it’s expected of him because he’s that kind of man.”

  “He has no police record in this country,” Kramer said.

  “He’s got one now,” Hardy said.

  Chambrun broke up our huddle and we all crowded around his desk. “Jerry and Moffet and I have come up with three exit routes,” he said. “One: he takes the elevator from the penthouse down to the second basement. He bypasses the kitchens that way. The kitchens are staffed and active all night. He walks along the corridor there to the garbage elevators. They lift up right onto the sidewalk outside the hotel. Two: he goes down one flight to the thirtieth floor, walks down the corridor to the freight elevator. He takes that down to the mezzanine. From there he walks down the fire stairs to a fire door that opens out onto the street. Third: he takes that same freight elevator all the way down to the special kitchen off the ballroom. Neither the ballroom nor that kitchen are in use. He crosses the ballroom into the corridor that leads to the south exit on the lobby floor—past a row of shops that are closed.”

  “All three ways involve clearing short distances of people who just might be there,” Jerry said.”

  “Can be done?” Hardy asked.

  “Can be done,” Jerry said. “Take us maybe half an hour. We’ll have to clear all three areas because we don’t know which one he’ll choose.”

  “He needs time, too,” Chambrun said. “He has to let Carlson know where the getaway car is to be waiting, and the car has to get there. These are the only ways out where we won’t have to control a great many people.” He lifted his hooded eyes to James Olin. “Which one would you choose, Mr. Olin? You’re a professional.”

  “Number one,” Olin said promptly. “He doesn’t have to negotiate the thirtieth floor to get to the freight elevator. He goes straight down on the elevator that’s right at his door.”

  “That would be my choice,” Chambrun said. “Except for one thing.”

  The green glasses focused on him without comment.

  “That subbasement is a dark labyrinth,” Chambrun said. “We could have twenty men hidden down there he couldn’t see—no matter what we promised him. We have a better than even chance of getting him and saving the hostages if he chooses that. The other ways are brightly lighted, no hiding places for us. He could see anyone who might threaten him. So, not being a professional, Mr. Olin, I would choose either the second or third way. I think the second, because there might be parked cars, taxis, outside that ballroom exit. As a matter of fact, we could have someone there who could follow the escape car. So my amateur choice would be number two. Let us hope he chooses number one.”

  The thin mouth under the green glasses smiled. “Your amateur standing is in jeopardy, Chambrun. I think you’re in the big leagues.”

  Chambrun seemed to have lost interest in him. “Now we have other decisions to make,” he said. “First of all, do
we go through with any part of it at all?”

  “Valerie!” Clarke said, his voice husky.

  “Mrs. Brent’s chances of surviving this, no matter how we play it, are practically zero,” Chambrun said.

  “If he gets away safely, he has no need to harm her,” Clarke said.

  “She probably knows too much about him. Using the private line upstairs, he must have been in communication with his people. She will have overheard. And killing for him is a pleasure, like smoking or drinking for the rest of us. I think Mrs. Brent’s chances are almost nil.”

  “But we have to give her a chance, don’t we?” Jerry Dodd asked.

  Chambrun looked back at Olin. “What about it, Olin? What are the chances he’ll let Mrs. Brent go once he’s safely away from the hotel?”

  “Maybe you ought to ask Mr. Clarke,” Olin said. “He’s a close friend and confidante. Mrs. Brent was working against J. W. Sassoon from the inside, pretending she no longer suspected him of being responsible for her husband’s murder. How much did she get to know about J.W.’s operation? How much did he brag to her? He was a vain old bastard, vain about his power. My guess is that it was enough to make her more than an attractive woman hostage to Treadway. I think he may be killing two birds with one stone. He uses her to get away, and then he silences a dangerous person to his employers.”

  “Mr. Clarke?” Chambrun said.

  Clarke shook his shaggy head. “Val never told me anything that would confirm that idea,” he said. “She wasn’t interested in J.W.’s power plays. She was only interested in tracking down her husband’s killer.”

  “And isn’t she sitting with that killer in my apartment this very moment? Didn’t she see him react to Mark’s question? Let her go and Treadway knows she will keep trying to get him. Simpler to eliminate her now, while he’s got her.”

  “You still have to give her a chance,” Clarke said.

  “Let’s be realists and not sentimentalists,” Chambrun said. “We have a brutal killer in our power. He can’t get away without our help. We help him because he threatens to kill Mrs. Brent. But we know that after we’ve helped him, he will kill her anyway.”

  “We have to risk that,” Clarke insisted.

  Chambrun’s eyes turned to me. “Does Mark have to risk his life against those odds? ‘As far as the sidewalk’ Treadway said. What then? ‘Thanks, old boy,’ and take off? No, gentlemen, I say if we are realists we get an army of cops up on the roof, bulletproof vests, helmets—tear gas. We smoke him out, and if he turns his little machine pistol on us, we let him have it.”

  “Valerie’s chances?” I asked.

  “Just as good that way as they are the other. Zero,” Chambrun said, his voice flat and hard. “So do we help a killer escape, or do we take him?”

  “Mr. Chambrun?” It was Betsy Ruysdale. “If I were up there instead of Mrs. Brent, would you—would you write me off so easily?”

  “I would probably be sentimental about you, God help me,” Chambrun said, not looking at her.

  “So we have to give Valerie a chance,” Clarke said. “You’re playing tough, Chambrun, but I know that at heart you’re a decent person.”

  “So I hear,” Chambrun said. “So we let Mark risk his life for the nonexistent chance Mrs. Brent has?”

  I could feel my heart pounding against my ribs. It was not that I hoped they’d tell me I couldn’t go. I was beginning to realize what it meant. My chance was about zero, too. What am I saying? Of course I hoped I wouldn’t have to go! But I would go if I had to.

  Chambrun looked at me, and in those buried eyes of his I saw that this tough, irascible man cared what happened to me. “Ruysdale chose to put this on a personal level,” he said. “She and I have been—been very close for a long time.” It was the nearest I’d ever heard him come to admitting that there was more than an employer-secretary relationship there. “I guess I would give her the chance to live a little while longer, since living is the only thing we really cherish. Mrs. Brent is a beautiful, desirable, electric woman. You wouldn’t be a man if she hadn’t stirred you physically. But in the long run she doesn’t mean a damn thing to you, Mark. Would you risk your life for any woman who was in trouble? If you would, you’re an idiot!”

  “I think there may be an out from this dilemma, Mr. Chambrun,” Clarke said. We all turned to look at him. His face was twisted into an expression of almost wry humor. “I have known Valerie for a long time. I care for her. If I were younger, I would long ago have tried to persuade her to share her life with me. Let me go in Mark’s place. Let me be the second hostage. Oh, I want to go on living just as much as Mark does, but he has the best of a lifetime ahead of him. I have a relatively short time. And—and I care for Valerie.”

  “My God, how noble everybody is,” Chambrun said, not as moved as I was. “Wouldn’t I be the best hostage, when it comes to that? The whole staff would be sure not to interfere with him then. I’ve wondered why he didn’t suggest it.”

  “Because you are the only person he can be sure will protect him—if you say you will,” Olin said.

  “Call him and ask him if he will accept me in Mark’s place,” Clarke said.

  “He won’t answer the phone. He told me that,” I said.

  “If someone unexpected walks in on him, he may not wait to ask why,” Olin said.

  “Your advice is invaluable, Mr. Olin,” Chambrun said, anger in his voice again. “I don’t ask you to go, Mark. I advise against it on the grounds that it is sheer madness. But since the consensus seems to be that Mrs. Brent should be given a chance, the decision is yours.”

  “I’ll go,” I said.

  Chambrun looked away, and he never looked at me again until a long time later. “There is a third element to this that we haven’t discussed,” he said. “How can we protect him from people we don’t control? He mentioned Olin, Gamayel, and a possible third party. We can keep Mr. Olin out of circulation, but we don’t know who may be working for him. We don’t know where Gamayel is. A thorough search of the hotel hasn’t turned him up. We don’t know who may be working for him. We have no leads at all to who a third party may be. Any suggestions, Olin?”

  “J.W. had so many enemies,” Olin said. He shrugged.

  Chambrun drew a deep breath. “Then we prepare the three avenues of escape. That’s for you, Jerry. He’ll need help from your people, Hardy.”

  The Lieutenant nodded. “The whole world today seems to operate on blackmail through hostages,” he said. “It’s probably happening in a dozen other places around the globe at exactly this moment. We’re getting used to it in the Department. I stand by and let a killer slip through my fingers like water.”

  “I don’t have too much hope that Treadway will take our subbasement route,” Chambrun said. “That’s the place where we station a few men who can do better than hit a barn door with a gun. We just might take him there. The other two routes we simply clear away people and let him go. That means the thirtieth floor, the fire stairs on the mezzanine, the ballroom kitchen, and the ballroom, and the passage past the shops to the side exit. I think you’d better get moving, gentlemen.”

  Jerry, Hardy, and Sergeant Kramer started out. At the door Jerry turned back. We were old friends. “Good luck, man,” he said.

  “Thanks,” I said. I noticed that my hands felt cold.

  Chambrun turned to Miss Ruysdale. “Mark had better take these floor plans with him,” he said. He was deliberately not talking to me. “He should tell Treadway that it will take us at least a half hour to set things up. And he should not forget to take the money.”

  He got up from his desk and walked out of the office after Jerry and the others. Not a word or a look.

  “You matter to him, Mark,” Miss Ruysdale said.

  I have to confess my head was swimming a little. It’s one thing to talk about a problem: what you should do, who you should give a chance to, how you handle a wild animal. But when you suddenly decide to be a hero and walk into a cage with that an
imal, it’s something else again. I remember when they sent me to fight in the war in Vietnam I was pretty damned bitter. The people in the government, from the President on down, were being pretty damned free with my life, my body. I didn’t believe in the war, but I had no choice, and the bastards who were sending me didn’t have to sit up to their armpits in a jungle swamp waiting for a sniper to blow off their heads.

  Now I was walking into something I didn’t have to walk into. All I had to do was turn to Chambrun and Hardy and tell them to work it out. It wasn’t my problem; it wasn’t my obligation. And then I thought how outraged I’d been when I’d read in the paper about dozens of people standing around watching a woman being beaten to death by a mugger, not one of them lifting a finger to help or even bothering to call the police. They didn’t want to get involved. I remember thinking at that time that being involved was all there was to living.

  There was a chance for Valerie, I told myself. It wasn’t going to come in the subbasement where Hardy would have his hidden snipers. It wasn’t going to come on the thirtieth floor, or in the freight elevator, or on the fire stairs or the ballroom exit. Treadway would be a hundred percent ready in all those places. The chance could come in the half hour we waited to take off from the penthouse. I was an errand boy, I wasn’t armed, I was laughably concerned for Valerie. I wasn’t dangerous! There could be ten seconds of carelessness, ten seconds when Treadway would turn his back on me. In that ten seconds I would have to be dangerous as all hell. No hesitation because I was a decent guy. That, I told myself, was going to be my only chance and Valerie’s—ten seconds of carelessness by Treadway before we actually moved out into the danger areas as he saw them.

  I became aware of Ruysdale standing next to me. She had the floor plans rolled up with a rubber band around them.

  “You may not believe it, but I know him better than you do, Mark.” I knew she was talking about Chambrun. “He isn’t going to let you down without a struggle.”