Time of Terror

by Hugh Pentecost

  Colin Andrews of the London Times showed no inclination to leave.

  “I’d like to talk to you privately,” he said.

  “There’s nothing new,” I said.

  “Not as a reporter for the Times,” he said. “It’s just possible I might be useful.”

  Instinct told me he wasn’t conning me. I took him into my private office.

  “Like two minutes,” I told him.

  He sat down in the chair beside my desk and lit a cigarette, very carefully, as though it was a scientific experiment.

  “Only two minutes to save a human life?” he asked.

  “What human life?”

  “I should have said ‘lives,’” he said. “Katie and the children.”

  He had a nickname for the sultry Katherine Horn. “So you’re another hero,” I said.

  “Another?” he asked, frowning.

  “Douglas Horween,” I said. “The spy who came out of the woodwork.” I knew I shouldn’t have said it the minute it slipped out. If Horween was to try anything, it had to be a secret. And, come to think of it, how did I know that Mr. Colin Andrews wasn’t a member of the Army For Justice, working for Coriander on the outside?

  “What’s his plan?” Andrews asked. His eyes were unblinking behind his wire-rimmed glasses.

  “Just big talk—maybe to reassure Mrs. Cleaves,” I said.

  “Poor Connie,” he said.

  A friend of the family, I thought. I’d already talked too much, so I glanced at my watch to let him know his two minutes was running out. He didn’t seem to notice.

  “Do you know what an investigative reporter is?” he asked.

  His British accent, rather pleasant, very precise, made him sound patronizing. “I don’t have time for word games,” I said.

  “I want to make the point that I’m not here in the United States on any sort of general assignment,” he said. “I’m in the process of preparing some material that will be an expose of people in very high places in England’s politics.”

  “Don’t tell me there’s a new call-girl scandal,” I said.

  “Nothing so amusing,” he said. “The story I’m working on is going to blow the lid off in a very big way. I can’t talk about it in any detail, but in view of what’s happening here I think someone should be made aware of certain facts. It’s my feeling that your Mr. Chambrun is the man who would know how to use those facts.”

  “Your time is about up, Mr. Andrews,” I said.

  He took a deep drag on his cigarette and let the smoke out in a long sigh. “So I will give you facts,” he said. “The Right Honorable Terrence Cleaves is supposed to be a very wealthy man. The fact is that he’s on the verge of colossal bankruptcy. It will be one of the great financial scandals of our time. At this moment, for his own purposes, Terrence Cleaves couldn’t raise a shilling to make a telephone call.”

  “That makes it rough for him,” I said.

  “To hell with him,” Andrews said. “The children are the ones who matter. The fact is that Terrence Cleaves needs to raise a huge sum of money to cover his tracks and keep from spending the rest of his life in prison.”

  “And now he has to raise a second huge sum of money to save his children,” I said.

  He looked at me, unblinking, from behind his faintly tinted glasses. “Think of the possibilities,” he said. “He needs to raise millions of pounds to save himself from disgrace and disaster—prison for the rest of his natural life. No one will lend him the money. He has no security left to guarantee a loan of any sort. His property in England is mortgaged to the hilt. Now he has to raise money to ransom his children, and for this, and under the circumstances, he may find people, even governments, willing to help him.”

  “But that money, if he can raise it, will go to Coriander and his army,” I said.

  “Quite so,” Andrews said. “You’re not quite as quick on the trigger as I’d hoped you might be, Haskell.”

  I felt my jaw going slack. “Are you suggesting that Cleaves kidnapped his own children? That he is Coriander?”

  “One thing is certain,” Andrews said. “Cleaves isn’t the one-armed man in the fright wig and mask who told you he was Coriander. Cleaves was at the United Nations while that was going on. I know, because I was covering the meeting of the General Assembly when he got the word from Chambrun. Your Coriander was someone else. But ‘Coriander’ isn’t anyone’s real name. Cleaves isn’t in this alone, obviously. But fifty million dollars leaves a nice little packet for everyone.”

  “You’re dreaming,” I said.

  “How were guns and ammunition and explosives smuggled into Cleaves’s suite? They couldn’t have been brought in overnight by some outside group. They would have been seen by your security people. I suggest they were brought in by Cleaves and his people over a period of time—a box here, a suitcase there. No one would have been suspicious of Cleaves or his people.”

  “What people?”

  “Horween, three male clerks, Katie,” Andrews said.

  “You’re suggesting Miss Horn is in on this?”

  “Why not?” Andrews said. His voice was bitter. “He’s been screwing her for months.”

  I leaned back in my chair because I felt weak. “Is that gossip or a fact?”

  “Fact,” he said. “She was my girl, God help me. She wangled a job taking care of the Cleaves girls so she could get information for me on the inside. Instead of that she wound up in bed with him.”

  “So you hate him for that,” I said.

  “I hate him for that,” Andrews said, his voice flat and hard. “But I’m out to get him because I think of myself as a decent British subject and this man is planning to sell out his country in order to recoup his private losses.”

  “So don’t hold back your story. Come out in the open with it,” I said. “The children aren’t in danger if they’ve been kidnapped by their own father.”

  “You don’t know Terrence Cleaves,” Andrews said. He ground out his cigarette in the ash tray beside his chair. “I can’t prove my theory—yet—that he is the big man behind all this, the real Coriander. If I hinted at it in public, I don’t think he’d stop at anything to get the money and escape to some sanctuary. He doesn’t give a damn for the children, or for Connie. If I blast him publicly, I’d have to live the rest of my bloody life with whatever he does to the girls or his wife or to Katie on my conscience.”

  “And what do you expect Chambrun to do?”

  “Check out on the sketch I’ve drawn for you,” Andrews said. “He has top-level contacts all over the world. He’ll come across other people who have doubts and suspicions about Terrence Cleaves.”

  “Suppose he does. What can he do about it? He can’t risk the lives of those children and Miss Horn, or the guests in his hotel, or the hotel itself. He’s handcuffed. Everybody is handcuffed. So we all sit around and chew on your little bit of gossip and wait for the negotiations with Coriander to begin. We can’t act on anything, even if you’re right about Cleaves. Tell me something, will you?”

  “If I can.”

  “Is it Cleaves’s affair with your Miss Horn that has wrecked his marriage to Connie?”

  “His affair with Katie and God knows how many others,” Andrews said.

  “Why does she stay with him?” I asked. “The children?”

  “I doubt that,” he said, as though it was something he’d thought about before. “If she walked out on him, the courts would surely give her custody of the children. Cleaves’s woman chasing is one thing that’s public knowledge. I think he’s got some other kind of hold on her. I’ve tried to dig out what it might be, but I’ve had no luck.”

  I stood up. “I’ll pass along your story to Chambrun,” I said.

  He didn’t move. It was as if the telling of his story had exhausted him. “You saw Katie when you had your session with Coriander?” he asked.

  “I saw her. She seemed quite cool.”

  He brought his hand down hard on the arm of his chair
. “Why not?” he said, his voice harsh. “She knows she’s in no danger!”

  Mr. James Priest from the State Department was in Chambrun’s office when I got back there. I knew him, slightly, as a frequent guest at the Beaumont. He always stayed with us when he came to New York, quite often on United Nations business. He was a big, easy-going man, who made you feel comfortable with a quick humor and a sense of relaxed control of himself and complete self-confidence in his ability to handle his specialty, diplomatic maneuvering. You had the feeling he was thoroughly familiar with every highway and byway and side street and cul-de-sac in his business.

  He was relaxed in one of Chambrun’s big green leather armchairs, a pipe held between his strong white teeth, the light from the north windows shining on his sun-tanned bald head. He gave me a little wave of a hand as I came in.

  “It looks as though this Coriander fellow has taken over your job, Mark,” he said. “He seems to be keeping the press informed. I just walked through the picket lines and the crowds out on the street.”

  “He’s certainly well organized,” I said. I glanced at Chambrun, who was sipping his inevitable Turkish coffee. “Things are pretty well under control,” I told him. “We haven’t had a single cancellation of any special events.”

  “Jim would like to hear a detailed account of your visit with Coriander,” Chambrun said. “It seems there are no records in any official departments—the FBI, the CIA, anywhere else—of an Army For Justice. It could almost have been invented for this purpose.”

  “Those pickets outside the hotel didn’t just grow like Topsy,” I said. “They were ready the minute Coriander let the news out.”

  Priest nodded, puffing gently on his pipe. “This Army can have been in existence for some time,” he said. “The reason there are no reports or records on them is that this is the first time they’ve made any sort of public display. They’ve undoubtedly been preparing for the big one and keeping under cover so that there was no chance we could anticipate them. Tell me about Coriander, Mark.”

  “Before I do that I’d like to pass on a theory that’s just been given to me,” I said. “Do you know of an English newspaperman named Colin Andrews, Mr. Priest?”

  “Oh, yes,” Priest said. “One of the top political reporters in his country.”

  “He’s for real?”

  “Very much for real,” Priest said. “British politicos keep their fingers well out of the cookie jar when Andrews is on the horizon. He has a very keen nose for secret shenanigans.”

  “You remember him?” I said to Chambrun. “He’s the one who suggested Cleaves didn’t have three friends. Well, he’s got another theory about Cleaves.”

  I gave it to them from top to bottom. Neither one of them spoke till I had finished. They were a couple of dead-pan artists, those two.

  Chambrun looked at Priest, an eyebrow raised, when I’d finished. That look was a question.

  Priest’s pipe had gone out and he lit it with a jet-flame lighter. “It’s a pretty bizarre notion,” he said. “But there is a little smoke to justify the suggestion of a hidden fire. I don’t think it’s any great secret that Cleaves has had some financial problems. I imagine that you both know he was—is—something of a sports hero in Britain: cricketer, international polo player, crack amateur golfer. He was also a fighter pilot, a top ace, in the R.A.F. in World War Two. A hero figure in both areas. His name would sell almost any product he chose to lend it to. A few years ago he went into the manufacture of high-priced sports cars. I believe he actually drove one of the prototypes at Le Mans. It was called the T.C. 4, his initials. Most, if not all, of the seed money came from him. The T.C. 4 came on the market at just the wrong time—inflation, fuel shortages, tight money. It was a complete bust. It was no secret that Terry Cleaves lost several million pounds—a hell of a lot of money. But that kind of loss is relative in a very rich man. If I lost ten million dollars, assuming I’d ever had any such amount, I’d be dead broke. In Cleaves’s case he was said to have lost about that much and found himself left with only five million! Not exactly broke, if you see what I mean. Everybody bought him drinks and said ‘Bad luck, old chap,’ but, secretly, nobody felt too sorry for him. He was still stinking rich.”

  “The losses could have been greater than anybody knew,” Chambrun said.

  “Possibly,” Priest said. “I said there was a little smoke.” His pipe had gone out again and he relit it. “The other smoky area is a little odd in view of what Andrews told you, Mark. I’ve never heard a whisper about Cleaves’s sex life. Would I if he was screwing around? I think I would, under the circumstances. When the British Government wanted to send him to the United Nations as their ambassador, they discussed it with us. That wasn’t an unusual procedure. We work very closely with the British at the U.N. There was one reason to make us hesitate. It was rumored that Constance Cleaves, the proposed ambassador’s wife, was scandalously indiscreet in her sex habits. Not Cleaves, you understand, but the lady.”

  I was astonished to discover that I wanted to do battle for the lady with the copper-colored hair, but I kept my mouth shut.

  “Constance Cleaves comes from a pretty colorful background herself,” Priest said. “She’s American, the daughter of Walter Ames. Buck Ames, they call him, and the Buck is a contraction of Buccaneer. Pirate.”

  “He’s some sort of lobbyist, isn’t he?” Chambrun asked.

  “Duly registered, perfectly legitimate lobbyist for ITC, the International Trade Corporation,” Priest said. “He’s a big, jovial, delightful, outrageous wheeler and dealer. He’s welcomed in the best homes in the capital cities all over the world. When Buck Ames is at a party, it is a party. His wife died giving birth to Constance, and Constance is the apple of his eye, to coin a cliché. As a young girl she was just as wildly outrageous as her father. She chased all over the map of the globe, involved as a teen-ager with all the young and middle-aged eligible bachelors on the scene. She was said to have been in the hay with most of them. Cleaves, the national hero of Great Britain, was her climax, and one worthy of her. She married him and settled down to bear him two children. Her life style changed but the gossip lingered on.”

  “Buck Ames has money, no?” Chambrun asked.

  “And spends it like water,” Priest said. “But I should have thought he would have been the first person Cleaves would go to for help. Buck’s contacts are the best in the world.”

  I could hear Connie’s husky voice saying, “We loathe each other.” If she hated her husband, that probably meant her adoring father hated him, too. But Elizabeth and Mariella were his grandchildren. Surely the buccaneer would come to bat for them.

  “You want to make a guess on Andrews’ theory, Jim?” Chambrun asked.

  Priest knocked his pipe out in the ash tray beside his chair. “It’s an ingenious one,” he said. “It’s the kind of theory I’d expect to come out of the kind of mind Colin Andrews has. Complex, devious. He could be working out a grudge if Cleaves stole his girl from him. He would like it to be Cleaves.”

  “He could be working for Coriander on the outside, throwing dust in our faces,” I said.

  “I’d have vouched for Andrews’ honesty,” Priest said.

  “Fifty million bucks can buy a hell of a lot of honesty,” I said. “I can’t buy the idea that Cleaves, no matter how cold his guts are, would consider mutilating his own children.”

  “Nobody has mutilated them yet,” Chambrun said. “So far it’s only a threat.” He pushed away his coffee cup with a kind of decisive gesture. “It’s rather fun to sit here playing guessing games, but let’s get down to the hard core of the problem. Coriander, whoever he is, has made demands. He knows it will take a little while for any sort of answers to come his way. The money has to be raised, and that, despite the amount, is the easiest part of it. Cleaves can raise it or he can’t. He’ll get offers of help whether he has friends or not. If he can’t raise it all, he makes a counterproposal. But unless Coriander is playing games with us,
the far more important answer for him is whether the political prisoners in Vietnam can be released.”

  Priest laughed, a mirthless sound. “Do I have to tell you the answer to that, Pierre?”

  “Horween was right,” Chambrun said. “We’d have to send the United States Army back there to make that happen.”

  “If you have lived in the world of bargaining, as I have most of my life,” Priest said, “you know that the most elementary technique is to ask for more than you expect to get. Coriander has to know there is no way we can free thousands of prisoners. But in the end it might be possible to get certain key people freed. Those key people may be what he’s interested in. As for trying higher-ups for war crimes—” Priest shrugged. “It would take months and months for any such trials to take place, and Coriander isn’t going to sit up there on the fifteenth floor waiting for that to happen. No, my guess is he has some special friends in those tiger cages in Vietnam—politicians, newspaper editors, genuine revolutionaries—who will satisfy him. The money will help to finance his total cause. Those two things are what it’s all about.”

  “You don’t buy the idea that the whole thing is a hoax and that it’s all a scheme of Terrence Cleaves’s to refinance himself?” I asked.

  Priest gave me a benign, paternal smile. “I don’t really buy it, Mark,” he said, “but I don’t intend to ignore it as a possibility. Ask your friend Andrews if he’d care to talk to me—in confidence. We’ll do some checking out with our connections in Britain.”

  “We can’t touch him in the process,” Chambrun said. “He isn’t the one-armed man you saw upstairs, Mark. We know where he was when you were talking to Coriander. We can’t play a ponderous chess game with this situation. We’re sitting, quite literally, on a time bomb. That bastard upstairs may choose at any minute to lop off a little girl’s ear just to show us he means business. What we need, Jim, is a big statement from the government that they’re trying to work out something on his demands. We need a public statement from Cleaves that he’s working to raise the money. Meanwhile, God help us, we’ve got to decide what we’re going to do if none of the demands can be met. We’ve got to plan some kind of a one-shot strike that has a possibility of getting those children out of there in one piece. It has to work, because we’ll never get a second chance.”