Bargain with Death

by Hugh Pentecost

  Chapter 1

  IT BEGAN LIKE ANY other day. To an outsider an ordinary day at the Hotel Beaumont, New York’s top luxury hotel, might have seemed thoroughly hysterical. There are hundreds of different activities that cross and recross each other like the strands in a spider’s web, but to those of us in the know they all mesh together and work with the preciseness of a Swiss watch. The moment anything is slightly out of order, from the lateness of one member of the cleaning crew that takes over the lower floors in the early hours of the morning to the faint fuzziness on the telephone line into one of the thousand or more rooms a report is made and an answer found. Complaints from guests are handled quickly and efficiently; hundreds of mechanical functions from elevators, to hot water boilers, to air conditioners, down to a leaky faucet are checked and double-checked. All of this mass of minutiae is funneled into an office on the second floor, presided over by Pierre Chambrun, the legendary manager of the Beaumont. Hopefully the problems have all been solved when they reach him. If they haven’t, someone is in for a tough time.

  Chambrun is a short, square man with the brightest black eyes you ever saw, eyes that can be compassionate or as relentless as a hanging judge’s. The hundreds of people who work for him in the Beaumont love him and respect him because they know he will always be fair and just. If you don’t know how to solve a problem you go to him and ask him, but if you don’t know how to solve it and you muck it up, then you are in trouble. I’ve sometimes thought he has a secret radar system that alerts him to troubles he couldn’t possibly know about, but the truth is he knows every detail of the operation so thoroughly that so small a thing as a frown on the night bell captain’s face tells him that there is something wrong. He doesn’t pass it by, wondering. He inquires, and there isn’t a man or woman on the staff who will hide anything from him.

  The Beaumont is Chambrun’s world, a city within a city. It has its own restaurants and bars and shops and hospital. It has its own maintenance crews, its sanitation crews, its security force, its press and public relations department, its accountants, its bank vaults, its lock boxes, its travel agency, its areas for banquets and balls and private business conferences, its gymnasium and sauna baths. Name it, and it exists in the Beaumont. And Chambrun, the mayor, the city manager, the king, has his finger on every item of the operation and that finger is as sensitive as a doctor’s on a patient’s pulse. Let there be the slightest flutter in that pulse and Chambrun is instantly on the spot, surrounded by the right people to solve the problem.

  There was a day, however, when Chambrun’s interlocking systems broke down a little and he was late in dealing with a problem that launched a time of terror that will not soon be forgotten.

  My name is Mark Haskell, and I am the Beaumont’s public relations director. I like to think that I am one of the three people in whom Chambrun places complete confidence. The others are Miss Betsy Ruysdale, his fabulous secretary, who reads his mind, anticipates his needs, protects him from a thousand minor irritations, and Jerry Dodd, head of the hotel’s security force, a wiry little man with the face of a fox and the guts of a burglar, who runs the tightest ship imaginable in a world of the very rich, who are always targets for the very greedy.

  My routines are different in detail every day and yet pretty much the same. It is my job to see that fashion shows, banquets, coming-out balls, conventions and other special events are given the right publicity and promotion and to see to it that no one in any department dealing with any one of these events falls short of what is required.

  I have an office down the hall from Chambrun’s on the second floor. I get up at eight o’clock after a normal five to six hours of sleep. I check over the schedule of events for the day. At exactly nine o’clock I report to Chambrun’s office. On his desk are the registration cards from the night before and a list of guests who are expected to check in that day. Some of the guests might be a little distressed if they knew the information we had on those cards: credit ratings, is the guest an alcoholic, a woman or a man chaser, a married man double-crossing his wife, or a wife two-timing her husband, home town information of any use to us. My job is to know what guests want publicity and those who don’t. A movie star from the West Coast may want a flag run up or may want complete privacy. The same goes for bank presidents or foreign diplomats. The Beaumont’s proximity to the United Nations results in its being a home-away-from-home for a great many important people from other parts of the world. Local gossip columnists are on my back every day to find out who is new in the world of the Beaumont, and it’s my responsibility to leak only the information that our guests want me to leak.

  On the morning that the terror began I was in Chambrun’s office going over the guest list with him. Chambrun’s office is more like a handsome living room than an office. The Armenian rug on the floor is priceless. The carved Florentine desk behind which the great man sits is a work of art. The blue-period Picasso that looks down on him from the opposite wall was a personal gift from the artist. There is a richness and luxury to all the furnishings. Chambrun, following a hearty breakfast of steak or chops, sits smoking a flat Egyptian cigarette and sipping the foul Turkish coffee that Ruysdale brews for him on the carved sideboard which also contains an elaborate bar.

  There was nothing very touchy on the guest list that morning and I was about to leave when Ruysdale came in from the outer office. She looked unnaturally tense.

  “There is a phone call I think you should take, Mr. Chambrun,” she said.

  “Later,” he said, frowning. He never takes phone calls during this period.

  “This one you must take,” Ruysdale said. “And turn on your tape recorder.”

  Chambrun trusted her judgment. He switched on the tape recorder and turned on the talk box so we could all hear the conversation.

  “Chambrun here,” he said.

  “Good morning, Mr. Chambrun,” a cheerful, cultivated voice said. “In order to hold your attention, I would like to spell out one dirty four-letter word to you. Don’t be upset. It won’t embarrass the beautiful Miss Ruysdale, whom I take it is listening. The word is B-O-M-B—bomb. Will that hold your interest, Mr. Chambrun?”

  Let me interrupt what was one of the strangest conversations I’ve ever heard to say that the word “bomb” turns your blood cold if you are involved in the operation of any kind of public place, like a hotel or an office or apartment building or a railroad terminal or an airport. Bombs are almost a way of life with a large segment of our society, beginning with the Irish Republican Army, the Palestinian guerrillas, and down through the various screwpot revolutionary groups that seem to operate in every country in the world. It is far from unusual to find yourself walking along a New York street and discover yourself in a crowd of people staring up at some building. When you ask, you hear the matter-of-fact words “bomb threat.” A lot of these are phony alarms turned in by malicious idiots who just want to make trouble, but too many of them are not. At the Beaumont we have never had a threat, but a couple of years ago a man was torn to pieces by a letter bomb. One thing is certain. You can’t ignore the threat when it comes.

  Chambrun had scribbled something on a desk pad and handed it to Miss Ruysdale. “Trace this call and get Jerry.”

  “Who are you?” Chambrun asked in a cold, hard voice.

  Miss Ruysdale hurried out into her office.

  The voice on the squawk box sounded amused. “I’ll save you the trouble of trying to trace this call, Chambrun. I’m calling from suite A on the fifteenth floor, normally occupied by Terrence Cleaves, the British Ambassador to the United Nations.”

  “Normally occupied?”

  “I am occupying it at this moment, Chambrun. Shall we get back to the word bomb?”

  “Who are you?” Chambrun insisted.

  “Must you have a name? Well, you can call me Colonel Coriander. I am the commanding officer for the Army For Justice. We have some demands to make of you, Chambrun; demands to make of you and through you.”

/>   “So I’m listening,” Chambrun said. A second light was blinking on his phone, and he signaled to me to tell Miss Ruysdale to take it in her office.

  “I must try to persuade you first not to send the troops charging up here to the fifteenth floor,” the voice said.

  Colonel Coriander! Coriander, I thought I knew, was some kind of flower.

  “Everyone on this floor has been evacuated from their rooms, Chambrun. Men who passed themselves off as members of your security force have told the guests there is a bomb threat. If someone is trying desperately to reach you on another phone, it’s because your lobby is swarming with frightened people, some of them still in their pajamas and nightgowns. Know this, Chambrun. We have enough men and arms and ammunition to hold off the United States Marine Corps. They could only come down the hallway four abreast. So a head-on attack is quite futile.”

  “Go on. What is it you want?”

  “All in good time. Some weeks ago we acquired the architect’s plans for this building, Chambrun. The result is that we have placed bombs in strategic places all along this floor level. They are attached to one detonator. One false move and we blow out your elevator shafts, your fire stairs, and every room on this floor. We will, of course, kill ourselves in the process, but it will be a little like sawing the lady in half—the lady being your hotel. Perhaps the ten stories above us will remain standing, perhaps they will go tumbling down into the street. At best they will be useless for a long, long time, and a great many people will die along with us.”

  “Let’s assume, for the moment, that I believe you,” Chambrun said.

  “Oh, you’ll believe me before I’m done with you,” Colonel Coriander said. “Maybe no one but you will care whether your hotel is destroyed or not. So to make sure that our demands are met, we have some rather important hostages.”

  At that moment Jerry Dodd, our security chief, came barging into the office followed by Miss Ruysdale. Chambrun signaled for silence. Miss Ruysdale passed a pad to me to hand on to Chambrun. On it she had written: “Call coming from 15 A. Guests on that floor told there is a bomb threat. Panic in the lobby.”

  Colonel Coriander went on in his faintly mocking voice: “Our hostages consist of two little girls, aged ten and twelve. They are Miss Elizabeth Cleaves and Miss Mariella Cleaves, daughters of the Ambassador. There is also Miss Katherine Horn, their governess, a rather cold and unresponsive, if glamorous, chick.”

  “So it is a kidnapping,” Chambrun said.

  “Only in a semantic sense,” Coriander said. “Don’t you want Miss Ruysdale to pour you a fresh cup of Turkish coffee? We’ve got a long way to go, Chambrun.”

  The sonofabitch knew the details of this very private office. As if she was in a trance, Miss Ruysdale took Chambrun’s cup over to the sideboard and refilled it.

  “Have you ever heard of the Army For Justice, Chambrun?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you will after today. The whole world will after today. Let me tell you a little about us. Some of us are veterans of the war in Vietnam, some of us were war prisoners, some of us were deserters, some of us skipped the country rather than fight in an immoral war and have been denied amnesty by the men who play God. All of us are linked together by the conviction that it is time for justice for the people who were sold down the river by a phony peace.”

  “So you have a cause,” Chambrun said. “I’m more interested in your demands. What is the ransom you want?”

  “Don’t hurry me, Chambrun. I expect to be with you for quite a while. I don’t mean this conversation. I expect to be here on the fifteenth floor for days—unless you trigger us into action. It will take some time for our demands to be met.”

  “Get to the demands,” Chambrun said. I had never heard his voice so cold and flat.

  “You’re going to be shocked, Chambrun, so brace yourself. There are thousands of political prisoners in South Vietnam, arrested and held by what is laughingly called the democratic government there, which our government supports. Our first demand is that those prisoners be released.”

  “You’re joking,” Chambrun said.

  “Far from it. Our second demand is that fifty million dollars be turned over to us to help rehabilitate those prisoners—a small amount for what they have suffered.”

  Jerry Dodd, his eyes wide, made a circular gesture with his finger beside his head, indicating that Coriander was a lunatic.

  “Our final demand may seem rather petty to you, Chambrun,” Coriander said. “There are several veterans, none above the rank of lieutenant so far as I know, who are serving jail sentences for the massacre of North Vietnamese civilians. We want them released and we want the men really responsible for the crimes placed on trial—the colonels, the generals, perhaps even the Commander-in-Chief. The men who gave the orders, who sanctioned the actions, should be punished, not the stupid pawns who carried them out.”

  “And if the President, the State Department, the Army, tell you to go fly a kite?” Chambrun asked.

  “Then we will send these people the left ear of little Miss Elizabeth Cleaves. If they are unmoved by this, we might send them the right hand of Miss Mariella Cleaves. And so on, Chambrun, and so on. I count on your being persuasive.” Coriander chuckled. “You may not be moved by an ear or a hand—or eventually a nose or a foot—but you are certain to go to great lengths to keep your own precious lady, the Beaumont, from being mutilated. And she will be, so help me God, if we come to an impasse.”

  “There is no chance anyone will meet these demands,” Chambrun said.

  “Who knows?” Coriander said. “There are millions of people in this country who are as indignant about the war in Indochina and the so-called peace as we are. Their voices may be heard when our demands are made public. They may think that two innocent little girls are worth more than the fascist pigs who fake democracy, and the army pigs who pass the buck for their own indecent and immoral outrages. Who knows?”

  “And you want me to pass on your demands?”

  “With your customary eloquence.”

  “Even you must know there can be no instant decisions.”

  “Oh, I know. It will take time. So let me make some things clear to you. There are thirty of us here on the fifteenth floor. We want round-the-clock room service, meals, drinks, whatever we may fancy. We want telephone service. We know you will be listening, but shut off the service for five minutes and you may get the first piece of little girl flesh as a reminder.”

  “Anything more?”

  “Yes. I want you to believe that we have the arms, the weapons, the bombs that we say we have. For example, some big brain on the police force, or in the FBI, may decide to hell with Elizabeth and Mariella and the coldly pretty Miss Horn, and decide to tear-gas us out. One whiff of tear gas and the man on the detonator lets go the works.”

  “I believe,” Chambrun said.

  “Not good enough,” Coriander said. “I want you to send someone up here to see and report back to you. To my knowledge there are just three people you would trust. Don’t send your house detective Dodd. He might decide to be heroic and then he’d never be able to report back. With regret, I say don’t send Miss Ruysdale. A lovely and mature woman of thirty-five—an age at which women are at their very best—might be too much for me to resist. I must keep my mind on the proper priorities. So I suggest you send Mark Haskell. After all, this is a sort of public relations matter, isn’t it? I’ll be expecting him in the next fifteen minutes. Nice to have talked to you, Chambrun.”

  There was a clicking noise and silence.

  Chapter 2

  IT WAS TYPICAL OF Chambrun that when that incredible conversation ended he made no comment. He turned to Miss Ruysdale with a series of quick orders.

  “Contact the British staff at the U.N. and have Terrence Cleaves get in touch with me at once. Try to find out where Mrs. Cleaves and the rest of the staff who live on Fifteen are.”

  “At once,” Miss Ruysdale said, and started to lea
ve.

  “Wait, Ruysdale.” He calls her Ruysdale, never Miss Ruysdale or Betsy. Some of us imagine that there is a good deal more between them than a business relationship, but nothing in his office manner to her would support such a notion. “This is not a one-order morning. I want to talk to the Police Commissioner, to the local man in charge of the FBI, to my friend James Priest in the State Department in Washington. In that order, Ruysdale.”

  She was gone.

  Chambrun’s cold eyes turned to Jerry Dodd. “Do what you can to quell the panic in the lobby, after you have taken all the self-service elevators out of action. Every elevator must have an operator. No elevator in the north wing shall go above Fourteen. The elevators in the west wing will skip Fifteen, and people located in the north wing above Fifteen will have to walk around to the west side. Alert your entire staff. Those that are off duty will report at once.”

  “You believe what that cockamany jerk told you?” Jerry asked.

  “I have to until I can prove he’s lying. Move, Jerry.”

  I heard all these orders, but there was a little trickle of cold sweat running down my back. I was about to visit Colonel Coriander and his Army For Justice, and I wasn’t happy about it.

  “Nothing to be afraid of,” Chambrun said. “He wants you to see and convince me. Most important of all, Mark. I want a detailed description of him, so detailed that a police artist can draw a perfect picture of him. Of course Coriander isn’t his name. If he’s telling half the truth, he has an army or draft board record. He may have a police record.”

  “Or a medical history out of an asylum,” I said.

  “One thing we know about him,” Chambrun said, “is that he doesn’t bother to be original.”

  “I thought he was about as original as anything I ever heard,” I said. “Crazy original!”

  “The child’s ear, right out of the Getty kidnapping in Europe,” Chambrun said. “Money for afflicted people and not himself, right out of the Hearst kidnapping. The release of political prisoners is from hundreds of terrorist forays here and abroad. The only fresh idea he had is to try the Pentagon generals for crimes they ordered. I had the feeling he could be talked out of that. Window dressing.”