Bargain with Death

by Hugh Pentecost

“You really think there’s anything to Coriander’s notion that there’ll be a lot of people sympathizing with his aims when the story breaks?” Treadway asked.

  “This country was split down the middle over Vietnam,” Gus Brand said. “The people who were opposed to the war made a hell of a lot more noise than the people who were for it. So even if it wasn’t an even split, it sounded like it. Split over Vietnam, over Watergate, over impeachment, over the economy. Properly sold, Coriander could have millions of very vocal supporters.”

  “But nobody will meet his demands,” Treadway said. “Horween was right, you know. They’d have to start a new war to get those prisoners free. And can you imagine the Pentagon sending their generals to jail?”

  “There is the money,” Gus Brand said quietly. His soft brown eyes were fixed on Terrence Cleaves. Constance Cleaves turned from the windows, waiting for her husband to speak. He was still the immovable, stone-faced Coldstream Guardsman, looking at a spot on the wall just above and beyond Chambrun’s head—a blank spot on the wall.

  “In most people’s terms I am a rich man,” he said finally. “I suppose I am worth, approximately, five million pounds.” I did some quick arithmetic and figured he was talking about ten to twelve million dollars. Only a small part of what Coriander was demanding.

  “Friends who will help?” Brand asked.

  A nerve twitched high up on Cleaves’s cheek. “A hundred million pounds?” He shook his head slowly from side to side.

  “You damn well better appear to be trying,” Chambrun said sharply. “We have to appear to be trying to meet at least one of Coriander’s demands to have any basis for negotiating with him. What would your first move be?”

  “I haven’t the faintest notion,” Cleaves said so softly it was almost inaudible.

  “You go, openly, to your banking affiliations here in New York,” Chambrun said. He sounded impatient. “You meet, publicly, with the British Ambassador in Washington. You talk to our State Department man when he gets here.”

  “Do you really think governments are going to help me raise the money?” Cleaves asked.

  “Who knows?” Chambrun said. “People will recognize that they can’t free the prisoners and that they won’t try their generals.” He glanced at Constance. “I have to be brutal, just this once, Mrs. Cleaves. Money is something the people know governments have. If money will keep the hostages from being mutilated, a great many people will think governments ought to get it up. You have to make a try for it, Cleaves—now, quickly. If you care.”

  That jolted Cleaves back into reality. “Just what the bloody hell do you mean—if I care?” He still didn’t look at his wife. For some mysterious reason they weren’t sharing this tragedy.

  “I mean, get off your butt—if you understand what that particular piece of American slang means,” Chambrun said.

  A private dining room on the main floor, opening off the Grand Ballroom, was designated as a place where Chambrun and I would take on the press and the media. The Assistant Commissioner had departed to talk things over with his immediate boss and the mayor. Gus Brand, the FBI man, was marshaling his forces, I assumed, and trying to run down and identify a Vietnam veteran who had lost his left arm in the service who might now be Colonel Coriander. Somewhere a computer should turn up any previous information that had been collected on the Army For Justice.

  There was a mass of detail to be organized in this emergency, but one of the best ways to be free to act was to get rid of the press, get them out of our hair.

  There was a little raised platform at one end of the private dining room. The speakers’ table. Chambrun and I approached it from the kitchen and found ourselves confronted by wall-to-wall faces. We hadn’t, of course, been listening to radio or television in the last hour and we discovered the minute we stepped into the room that Coriander had beaten us to the draw. The whole story was out: the hostages, the specifics of the demands, the threat to the Cleaves children and Katherine Horn, and the danger to the hotel and its guests.

  Everybody in the room shouted questions to us at the same time. Chambrun held up his hands for quiet and then said, “One at a time, please.” Of course they all began shouting in concert again.

  “Apparently we haven’t anything very new to tell you,” Chambrun said, when he had quieted them again. The Cleaves girls and their governess were prisoners in 15 A. I had been up there and seen the arms, ammunition, and explosives.

  A young man in the very front row whom I didn’t know raised his hand to be recognized and the crowd seemed to realize that was the only way it was going to work.

  “Colin Andrews of the London Times,” the young man said, identifying himself. He was a rather intense, pleasant-looking fellow with wire-rimmed glasses that were slightly tinted. His hands were jammed in the pockets of his pale gray tropical worsted suit. He wasn’t taking notes.

  “You talked with this Colonel Coriander?” he asked me.

  “Yes.”

  “So you can describe him.”

  “No.” I explained why, and a rumble of voices started around the room again.

  “He gave you his demands?”

  “He’d already made them to Mr. Chambrun over the phone. I was sent up to make sure he wasn’t bluffing.”

  “And you’re convinced he isn’t?”

  “The Cleaves children and Miss Horn are there; the guns and ammunition are there; the explosives are there and set in place. I was convinced.”

  “What is being done about it?” This question was aimed at Chambrun.

  “The police have been notified and the bomb squad is on the premises,” Chambrun said. “The FBI, the State Department, and the Pentagon are aware of what’s going on.”

  “And what is the hotel doing, Mr. Chambrun?”

  “The fifteenth floor has been evacuated—left to these people. If the bomb squad advises it, we may evacuate a floor or two above and below Fifteen in the north wing. Otherwise we will function as usual.”

  “My God!” someone said.

  Young Mr. Andrews was persistent. “How are the Cleaveses taking it?” he asked.

  “How would you expect them to take it?” Chambrun said. “They’re in shock, but they are just as brave as the little girls are.”

  “Can Cleaves raise the money?” Andrews asked.

  “Naturally that’s his first concern,” Chambrun said.

  “But can he raise it?”

  “I have no way of answering that question, Mr. Andrews. But Ambassador Cleaves is a man of influence, with many friends who can be counted on to help him in every way possible.”

  A strange thing happened. Andrews laughed, a short, bitter little laugh. “Name three!” he said, turned around and began working his way toward the rear of the room.

  I don’t remember much about that press conference after that. It was pretty chaotic, with the same questions being asked over and over until Chambrun finally called a halt.

  “There is too much to be done for us to go on with this,” he said. “Mark Haskell will have a statement for you at nine o’clock each morning and five o’clock each afternoon, unless something breaks in between times.”

  An astonished reporter asked: “You expect this to go on for days, Mr. Chambrun?”

  “I expect there will be proposals and counterproposals,” Chambrun said. “Coriander expects it to take time. As long as the negotiations appear to be in good faith, I expect it to take time. We are going to be dealing with governments and government agencies, none of which move quickly.”

  “Do you seriously believe Coriander’s demands will be considered?”

  “It’s too soon for me to make an educated guess,” Chambrun said. “And now, ladies and gentlemen, that will be all for now.”

  Chambrun and I took off through the ballroom kitchens and walked up the fire stairs to the second floor. Jerry Dodd’s men had pretty well cleaned out the second floor corridor and we had no trouble bypassing the handful of hotel guests who were eager to ta
lk to the boss. He kept moving, mumbling apologies to these people, some of them old-timers who had lived at the Beaumont for years. Almost all of them were people who had been evacuated from the fifteenth floor. They had no place to go, their belongings were, in effect, in Coriander’s hands. Chambrun promised them, as he moved along, that arrangements would be made to take care of them in a very few minutes.

  At last we were in Miss Ruysdale’s office with the door to the outside world closed behind us. The handsome Ruysdale was standing with her back to the door of Chambrun’s office.

  “Mrs. Cleaves is still inside,” she told us. “I thought she needed time to get pulled together.”

  “Quite right,” Chambrun said. “The Ambassador?”

  “Gone to borrow a few million dollars from somewhere,” Ruysdale said.

  Chambrun hesitated, looking past his secretary at the closed door. “Is there gossip about the Cleaveses’ marriage?” he asked.

  “Nothing I could find on a quick check,” Ruysdale said. She was always ahead of the game. She’d known Chambrun would ask. “Mr. Priest of the State Department arrives at Kennedy in about a half hour,” she went on. She was checking her notebook. “He should be here by one o’clock. The word from Washington is do nothing till you’ve talked to him.”

  “Did they expect me to free the Vietnam prisoners?” Chambrun asked. I recognized his mood. He was bitter about the disruption of his precious hotel. I don’t mean to say he wasn’t concerned about the Cleaves children, but the two things were closely interlocked. “Get Jerry Dodd back up here when he can come,” he said. “Come with me, Mark.”

  We went into his office. Constance Cleaves was sitting in one of the deep, green leather armchairs, her head resting back against it, her eyes closed. The minute she heard us, she uncoiled like a spring and was on her feet.

  “Nothing new, Mrs. Cleaves,” Chambrun said. He walked around behind his desk, scowling.

  “I had no place to go,” Constance Cleaves said. “All my things, my family, my life is up there on the fifteenth floor. I thought if I went out there I’d be torn to pieces by questions I can’t answer. And if there’s any news, it will come here, won’t it?”

  “Yes, it will come here,” Chambrun said. He looked at me. “Care to be a Good Samaritan, Mark?”

  I knew what he was asking. This second floor West was occupied by his offices, the business and accounting offices, the hotel telephone switchboard, and at the far end of the hall my office. Also, next to my office, was the two-room apartment in which I live—a sitting room, bedroom, bath, and a tiny kitchenette. Constance Cleaves could be private there and, at the same time, only a few yards from the center of the action, Chambrun’s office.

  “I’d be pleased to have Mrs. Cleaves hole up in my place,” I said.

  Chambrun nodded and explained the setup to the woman.

  “I can’t invade your place, Mr. Haskell,” she said.

  “Of course you can,” I said. “I may have to pop in from time to time for a clean shirt or a change of clothes.”

  “We can set you up somewhere else, Mark, when there’s time for you to move a few things,” Chambrun said. “Now, if you’ll take Mrs. Cleaves down the hall—” Everything he said made it clear he expected this situation to go on and on. “Mrs. Cleaves will need some personal things—toothbrush, other toilet articles, a change of clothes, night things. You will call the boutique on the main floor, Mrs. Cleaves, and have them send up everything you need, at our expense. It’s the least we can do to make up for your discomfort.”

  “I couldn’t think of—”

  “See to it, Mark,” Chambrun said. “And now I’m afraid I must ask you to leave. We are buried under things to do. Get back as soon as Mrs. Cleaves is settled, Mark.”

  I took Constance Cleaves down the hall to my apartment. The few people who were still clustered along the way would have stopped her to talk if I had allowed it. I wondered if the floor maid had been to my place or if it would be the usual mess I left it in.

  My living room is lined with bookshelves and there are a few nice small paintings I’d acquired from artists who owed me something for services rendered.

  “It’s so charming,” my guest said. “I simply can’t allow you to be forced out of here.”

  “It’s really a pleasure to be able to help, Mrs. Cleaves,” I said.

  She turned to me and there was the hint of tears in her dark blue eyes. “At a time like this one so desperately needs friends,” she said, “and this is such a very friendly thing for you to do. I’d like it if you’d call me Connie, Mark. It would help me to feel that I’m not surrounded by strangers and policemen. Oh, God, Mark, do you think there’s any real chance of getting the girls back from these lunatics?”

  “Your husband will find the money,” I said.

  “If that was all! Their other demands—”

  “We’ll negotiate,” I said. “That’s the most active verb in the English language today—negotiate.”

  “No one is going to care about us,” she said, her voice breaking. “Their own positions, their own politics, is all that will matter to them. Too bad about two little girls, but they won’t turn the world upside-down for them. Doesn’t this Coriander creature know that?”

  “Money is an important part of his demands,” I said. “A hell of a lot of money. That may buy freedom for the girls and Miss Horn. The politics of it are a whole other maneuver.” I tried to sound cheerful. “My bed is queen-sized. You and your husband should be able to manage there, and you’ll be right next door to any news.”

  Her lips trembled. “You don’t imagine that Terrence will share this place with me—or any place, do you?”

  There it was, out in the open.

  “Well, I assumed—” I said, or something equally senseless.

  “Don’t assume anything about Terrence and me, Mark.” Suddenly she was hanging onto me, her face buried against my shoulder, her whole body shaken by a struggle against tears. “Can you imagine such a situation—a situation where Liz and Mariella are in the hands of—of a bloody killer—and their parents can’t comfort each other or help each other?”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  She pulled back from me and lifted her eyes. “Because,” she said in a kind of intense whisper, “we loathe each other.”

  It was not the moment to go into it with her, and she helped make that clear by walking away from me and taking a little tour of the apartment. I showed her where the coffeepot was—and the liquor—and the clean towels.

  “I’ve got to get moving,” I said. “If there’s anything you need, call my office. It’s just next door. And I promise you, if there’s any news from upstairs, good or bad, you’ll have it the minute after we do.”

  She was standing beside me near the door, and she reached up and kissed me on the cheek—just a friendly kiss. The subtle scent of her perfume, the closeness of her, tempted me to take my mind off the problems at hand. Some other time, Dad, I told myself. Some other goddamned time.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons

  Copyright © 1974 by Judson Philips

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