‘The concert in the park.’
‘Just helped them set a date—a time to set their goons loose. I think we have to face an unpleasant fact. There’s someone ambling around the hotel whom we have no reason to suspect—a guest, a regular patron of one of our bars—who had all this information in advance, who can watch every move we make, and has means to communicate with Twenty-two B.’
‘So we look for a guy who’s carrying some kind of radio,’ Jerry Dodd said.
‘Don’t be foolish, Jerry. He won’t be carrying anything that could incriminate him. He watches, sees what’s important, and goes to his radio in an apartment down the block, or another hotel around the corner.’
‘Could be someone on your staff,’ Yardley said.
‘I’d bet my life against that,’ Chambrun said.
‘These people have access to staggering sums of money,’ Yardley said. ‘Enough to turn an honest man’s conscience into mush.’
Chambrun’s face was grim. ‘If that should be true, if someone I trust has sold us out, I’ll go up to Twenty-two B and take the first dive out the window,’ he said.
‘You trust your people that much?’ Yardley asked.
‘That much,’ Chambrun said.
Johnny Thacker came back with Jack Wilson, the IN reporter. Johnny must have been right. The reporters were just down the hall at the foot of the mezzanine stairs. Wilson is a sort of young Jack Lemmon type, with a sardonic smile that suggests he finds all the horrors he covers faintly amusing.
‘To what do I owe the honor of being chosen from the common herd?’ he asked. ‘The boys and girls downstairs will eat me alive when I go back.’
‘Mark trusts you,’ Chambrun said. ‘I need one set of clear answers and not a thousand questions. Are you willing? If not, we’ll pick someone else.’
‘I’ll answer what I can,’ Wilson said, ‘if you’ll answer one question for me.’
‘Which is?’
‘Do you have a plan of action?’
‘No,’ Chambrun said.
Wilson’s eyebrows lifted slightly. ‘You don’t believe they’ll do what they threaten to do?’
‘I believe they’ll do what they threaten to do, and more,’ Chambrun said.
‘And you have no plan?’
‘That’s three questions, Mr. Wilson. Now it’s my turn,’ Chambrun said. He touched the newspapers on his desk. ‘I haven’t read your story, but I suspect they’re all pretty much the same. Where did the information you have come from?’
‘The telephone,’ Wilson said.
‘You took the call?’
‘No. It came to our managing editor’s desk. I was already here. The news of the raid on the hotel had already come in and I got the assignment to cover it.’
‘So what you know is secondhand?’
‘Yes and no,’ Wilson said. ‘My boss taped the call when it came in. The caller laid it on the line—hostages, bomb, the works. He told us London and Washington had been informed. He told us you had complied with his first demand, clearing everyone off the twenty-second floor. He told us he’d given you twenty-four hours to free the eight political prisoners the government is holding, and then, if they weren’t freed, the hostages would begin to pay. My boss played me the tape over the phone. He thought it might be some crazy hoax by the people who’d raided the hotel. He checked with other papers, radio stations, TV. They’d all gotten the same message. Several of them had been sensible enough to tape the call, at least partway through. Same voice.’
‘Spanish?’
‘No, oddly enough. Rather cultivated English voice. I don’t mean British, but cultivated, well-educated.’
‘No name, of course.’
‘Of course.’ Wilson’s smile faded. ‘It still sounded pretty wild-eyed to me. I tried to find one or more of the alleged hostages—the girl singer, Sheldon Tranter, our State Department man, Sir George Brooks, who’d been involved in that crazy shooting up on the roof earlier, Ortiz, the OAS man. There wasn’t hide nor hair of any of them. That, I guess, made me a believer. I tried Washington and London. No luck. Like you, they claim not to have any plan. That, of course, is hooey! You’re all toying with a dozen plans. You really believe them when they tell you they’ll give you time?’
‘I have to believe,’ Chambrun said.
‘I believe,’ Sam Yardley said, ‘and not just because the heat’s on. I have some facts you may not have. The eight prisoners these terrorists want released—they aren’t all being held in one place. Several of them are in Central America, the rest in different jails in this country.’
‘So?’
‘My people got instructions on the telephone, too.’
‘The CIA?’
Yardley nodded. ‘The eight prisoners are all to be flown to an airport in Georgia. A plane must be waiting to fly them overseas—Middle East somewhere. The pilot will get his instructions when the men are on the plane.’
‘Which gets us where?’ Jerry Dodd asked.
‘It gets us the time they promised you. It will take at least twenty-four hours to assemble those eight men in one spot and have them airborne.’
‘Why not just turn them all loose wherever they are?’ I asked.
‘Because they don’t trust us, like we don’t trust them,’ Yardley said. ‘We are to deliver all eight of them, safe and sound, to some place where they’ll be welcomed by friends who are our enemies. The four hostages upstairs will guarantee, they hope, that we’ll give in to their demands. They know that it will take at least a day for us to comply.’
‘And three hours of that day are gone,’ Chambrun said. ‘Are they doing anything to move those eight prisoners to an airport in Georgia?’
‘I assume they are,’ Yardley said. ‘That’s just the first step. Since they have means of communicating, they’ll know if we are, and they haven’t warned you, Mr. Chambrun, to get things moving.’
‘So you are giving in,’ Jack Wilson said.
Yardley gave him a tight little smile. ‘I think we are taking the first steps. We are making it look as though we’re giving in. But when they get those eight men to the airport in Georgia, there has to be a final decision. Do we provide them with a plane? Do we fly them to freedom?’ He glanced at Chambrun. ‘You have time to figure out how to save your hotel, Mr. Chambrun. Our people have time to decide whether those four people upstairs are too big a price to pay for turning eight terrorists with a huge following loose to attack us somewhere else.’
‘You’re saying those four people upstairs may not be worth paying their price?’ Wilson asked. He sounded as if he couldn’t believe it.
‘Could be,’ Yardley said.
‘Who makes the decision?’ I asked.
Yardley shrugged. ‘The President, the Prime Minister, the Joint Chiefs, the security experts—everyone who is supposed to be able to make such an evaluation. They’re at it now. They may have decided by now.’
‘Can you find out?’ Chambrun asked.
‘I doubt it,’ Yardley said. ‘Too big a decision to trust to one of their foot soldiers.’
Chambrun stood up behind his desk. ‘So if they won’t trust us with answers, we have to make our own decisions.’
‘Such as?’ Jack Wilson asked.
‘I’m not going to let those four hostages upstairs be killed in my hotel,’ Chambrun said.
‘How?’ Wilson asked.
‘When I have the answer to that, Mr. Wilson, I just may let you know,’ Chambrun said.
Buy Remember to Kill Me Now!
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
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, living or dead, businesses, companies,
events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1982 by Judson Philips
Cover design by Biel Parklee
978-1-4804-4643-4
This 2013 edition published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.mysteriouspress.com
www.openroadmedia.com
EBOOKS BY HUGH PENTECOST
FROM MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM
AND OPEN ROAD MEDIA
Available wherever ebooks are sold
Otto Penzler, owner of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan, founded the Mysterious Press in 1975. Penzler quickly became known for his outstanding selection of mystery, crime, and suspense books, both from his imprint and in his store. The imprint was devoted to printing the best books in these genres, using fine paper and top dust-jacket artists, as well as offering many limited, signed editions.
Now the Mysterious Press has gone digital, publishing ebooks through MysteriousPress.com.
MysteriousPress.com offers readers essential noir and suspense fiction, hard-boiled crime novels, and the latest thrillers from both debut authors and mystery masters. Discover classics and new voices, all from one legendary source.
FIND OUT MORE AT
WWW.MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM
FOLLOW US:
@emysteries and Facebook.com/MysteriousPressCom
MysteriousPress.com is one of a select group of publishing partners of Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
Open Road Integrated Media is a digital publisher and multimedia content company. Open Road creates connections between authors and their audiences by marketing its ebooks through a new proprietary online platform, which uses premium video content and social media.
Videos, Archival Documents, and New Releases
Sign up for the Open Road Media newsletter and get news delivered straight to your inbox.
Sign up now at
www.openroadmedia.com/newsletters
FIND OUT MORE AT
WWW.OPENROADMEDIA.COM
FOLLOW US:
@openroadmedia and
Facebook.com/OpenRoadMedia
With Intent to Kill Page 24