Time of Terror

by Hugh Pentecost

  “Before you start thinking of an obvious one,” Chambrun said, “let me tell you that the one thing we know for certain is that it wasn’t Cleaves. He was being watched at the time.”

  “I—I’d better go to Connie,” Buck said. I had a feeling he was thinking less about her than something else that had come as a shock to him.

  “She’s asleep,” I said. “She needs whatever rest she can get.”

  “My secretary’s with her,” Chambrun said. “Far more important, Buck, is that we’re going to need answers for Coriander within a couple of hours. What luck have you had with the money side of this thing?”

  Buck actually moved around the chair he’d been hanging onto and sat down. “It’s a squeeze,” he said.

  “What kind of a squeeze?”

  “My people will get up the money if—and it’s an almost impossible if.”

  “‘Impossible’ is a big word under the conditions,” Chambrun said.

  “It’s a long list,” Buck said. “Certain oil leases, access to raw materials, guarantees that certain contracts will come their way.”

  “Who has to say yes to those demands?”

  “The government,” Buck said. “They’re no more likely to go for that than they are for Coriander’s political demands. The goddamned money is right there, could be had today. But we’re not going to get it.” He drew a deep breath and squared his shoulders. “I told you there’s just one way to fight an army, Chambrun, and that’s with an army. I can supply the troops.”

  “What kind of contact does Cleaves have with your people?” Chambrun asked.

  “They wouldn’t give him a peanut-stand concession,” Buck said. “He’s been to the well once, when he had his big trouble, and they laughed at him.”

  “If Cleaves and Coriander are in this together—” Chambrun said thoughtfully. “Is it possible they made an advance deal with ITC knowing that you’d go to ITC for the money? I gather two hundred and fifty million would not be an inflated price for ITC to pay for what it wants.”

  “Jesus!” Buck said. He didn’t say “yes” or “no” or “maybe.”

  Chambrun ground out his cigarette in the ash tray on his desk. I could always tell when he was going to start on a new line.

  “What has Cleaves got on you, Buck?” he asked.

  The Buccaneer’s head jerked up. “What the hell are you talking about?” he said.

  “Your daughter has been a puzzle to me from the start, Buck,” Chambrun said. “Her marriage is no good. She has been publicly humiliated by Cleaves. But she stays with him.”

  “The children,” Buck said. “And being a damn fool woman she probably still has a yen for him.”

  “Not good enough,” Chambrun said. “Cleaves’s position in politics makes a scandal something he would avoid. A noisy divorce would do him real damage. For the early part of the marriage he seems to have behaved himself. Suddenly he starts running wild, chasing every skirt in sight, bringing women home to his house and flaunting them in front of his wife, humiliating and degrading her.

  “Because she was having herself a fling,” Buck said.

  “I don’t think so,” Chambrun said. “She was driven into someone’s bed, finally, but I think that was after Cleaves had blown his stack. I have tried to imagine what possible reason she could have for staying with Cleaves and I’ve come to a conclusion about it. You are the closest and dearest person to Constance in the whole world. I think Cleaves has something on you, Buck, and she knows it. She’s stayed with him, put up with it all, because she knows if she doesn’t, Cleaves has it in his power to ruin you. He holds it over her head, and she’ll protect you no matter what the pain. He beats her cruelly and she won’t bring charges against him—because of you, Buck.”

  The Buccaneer stood up, and his lithe body shook like a man with the ague. “That is pure bullshit, Chambrun!” he said. He turned to me. “Please take me to Connie, Haskell. I don’t intend to listen to any more of this kind of crap.”

  I glanced at Chambrun and his shoulders rose in a slight shrug. Wondering, I took Buck Ames down the hall to my apartment.

  Connie was up and dressed and sipping some coffee Ruysdale had made for her in the kitchenette. She was wearing a large pair of black glasses that hid her eyes. Good old Ruysdale.

  When she saw Buck, Connie sprang up out of her chair and ran into his arms. He held her, gently, while she cried a little, her face buried against his shoulder. He kept saying “Baby, Baby,” over and over. There could be no doubt these two people loved each other very much.

  Ruysdale discreetly headed for the door and I started to follow her.

  “Wait, please, Haskell,” Buck said.

  He took Connie toward the couch and they sat down together, his arm around her. I waited, standing across the room by the door. I might as well have been a piece of furniture for all the attention they paid to me.

  “Cleaves did this to you, Baby?” Buck asked.

  “It doesn’t matter, Buck,” she said.

  “I am going to kill him,” Buck said as matter-of-factly as though he were saying he was going to the supermarket for a pound of butter. Maybe she was used to his extravaganzas, because she didn’t react.

  “Mark told me you were trying to find the money,” she said. “Is it possible, Buck?”

  “Possible,” he said, not telling her the whole truth.

  “Thank God,” she said. The dark glasses turned my way. “Is there any news from—from upstairs, Mark?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “The President is going to make a statement of some sort at nine o’clock. After that perhaps.”

  Buck spoke very casually. “Chambrun thinks you are staying with that louse because he has something on me and is forcing you to stay to protect me. Anything to it?”

  She turned her head sharply to look at him. “Of course not,” she said in a very small voice.

  I knew, right then, that she was lying. Was it possible that she had kept whatever it was from Buck? That he really didn’t know? It was that, or he was a superb actor.

  “You tell your boss he’s full of it,” Buck said to me.

  “Mark has been so very kind to me,” Connie said. “Would you like me to clear out, Mark?”

  “Just give me five minutes in the bedroom for a clean shirt and a pressed suit,” I said.

  While I was changing in the bedroom, I thought we were dealing with a very neat double blackmail. Cleaves had something on Buck and was using it to maneuver Connie. And Connie had something on her husband and was prepared to use it if it came to a showdown—something so important Cleaves had turned violent to stop her.

  It was all part of this time of terror that threatened the lives of two children, Katherine Horn, and the hotel itself. Horween and Andrews had died violently as the wheels turned. The big payoff was still ahead of us and it appeared we had no way of meeting it on any sort of equal ground.

  I checked with Room Service and learned that Mr. Lu-Feng, in room 1122, had ordered breakfast about ten minutes ago. The room service waiter was just backing out of Mr. Lu’s room when I arrived there.

  Martha Blodgett had called Mr. Lu “attractive,” and he was. He was medium height, lean and hard physically. He received me with what seemed to be a perpetual smile. There was nothing of the Oriental mystique about him. His speech was entirely American and quite colloquial.

  He invited me to join him for coffee while he had his very American breakfast of ham and eggs and hard rolls. He had ordered a double coffee for himself and Room Service had sent him two cups.

  “I’m not usually up at this time of day,” he told me. “But the excitement you’ve provided here in the hotel has us all a little jumpy, I guess. What can I do for you, Mr. Haskell?”

  “Information about a man named Colin Andrews,” I said.

  “London Times,” he said. “One of the better political journalists. I saw him quite often when I was stationed in London.”

  “He was murdered here in the
hotel in the early hours of this morning,” I said.

  The smile remained frozen on Mr. Lu’s mouth, but it had left his slanted brown eyes. “You’re kidding,” he said. “Who? How?”

  “He was beaten to death,” I said. “‘Who’ is what we need help with. Mr. Chambrun guessed that you had known Andrews in London and hoped you might be able to tell us something about his friends. Perhaps I should say his enemies.”

  Mr. Lu seemed to have lost interest in what remained of his ham and eggs. He lifted a napkin to his mouth and held it there for a moment. “I don’t like to dish out any dirt about someone who’s already got enough trouble,” he said. “And it is just dirt—nothing factual.”

  I waited for him to go on.

  “I happen to know,” he said, “Andrews was working on a story about Terrence Cleaves. What I think newspapermen call an ‘in depth’ story. If he had turned up anything damaging to Cleaves—”

  “Maybe I can make it easier for you,” I said. “The one thing we do know about Andrews’ murder is that Terrence Cleaves didn’t kill him. He was being watched by our security people at the important time.”

  “Why?” Mr. Lu asked, his eyes very bright.

  That, I decided, was not for publication. “All the key people concerned with the kidnapping are being kept under surveillance.”

  “So that’s that,” Mr. Lu said.

  “How did you know about the story Andrews was preparing to write?” I asked him.

  “He interviewed me. Once in London, once here in New York about a week ago.”

  “What did he hope you could tell him?”

  Mr. Lu’s smile was back in working order. “I’ve known Terry Cleaves quite well for the last several years,” he said. “Before he was appointed Ambassador to the U.N. he was a special consultant to the Prime Minister on Far Eastern affairs. I was concerned with certain trade negotiations with the British government. Terry was the man I dealt with at that time, he and his chief aide, a guy named Horween. Horween is a former secret agent for the British and he knows my part of the world like the back of his hand.”

  I managed to keep my mouth shut about Horween.

  “Big business is rarely conducted in offices,” Mr. Lu said. “Terry and I lunched and dined together often. We played golf together.” The smile widened. “I lost more golf matches to him that I could easily have won than I can count. Beating me made him feel kindly.”

  “So Andrews knew you were Cleaves’s friend?”

  “It was no secret. Andrews was interested in Cleaves’s finances. You know that he was in trouble for a while?”

  “The T.C. 4,” I said.

  Mr. Lu laughed. “I bought one of those cars to keep Terry feeling cordial. I was one of a very few, I’m afraid. It’s a marvelous car, by the way, but too expensive for a mass success. Andrews thought I might be able to tell him how Terry got out of his jam.”

  “Could you?”

  Mr. Lu shrugged. “I gave Andrews my best guess,” he said. “Walter Ames—Buck Ames. Ames isn’t a very rich man, but he works for some of the richest and most powerful men in the world.”

  “International Trade Corporation.”

  “A powerhouse in the world of finance. My guess was that Buck Ames got up the dough for Terry in return for some undercover political favors for ITC.”

  “You think ITC bailed Cleaves out,” I said.

  “My very best guess,” Mr. Lu said.

  “You didn’t know that Buck Ames hates Cleaves’s guts?” I asked.

  “Business and personal likes and dislikes don’t have much to do with each other,” Mr. Lu said. “Business is business. If Buck Ames could make a good deal for his people, he wouldn’t let his feelings for his son-in-law stand in the way. Besides, he would have been helping to keep his daughter from going down with the ship.”

  “You know her—Mrs. Cleaves?”

  “I met her just once,” Mr. Lu said. “At a formal embassy party. A beautiful woman. Not one I would like to lose if she were mine.”

  “There was gossip about her, I’m told.”

  Mr. Lu gave me a wise look. “If I wanted to know about that, I’d ask the manager of the Beaumont to let me look at the records he keeps on his guests. I understand some of the shrewdest dossiers on important people are right in Mr. Chambrun’s files.”

  I dodged that needle. “I asked you about gossip, not what the truth is,” I said.

  “Oh, there was gossip,” Mr. Lu said. “She was seen around London, at the most posh clubs and hotel restaurants with a variety of escorts. People like to think that a glamor girl like Constance Cleaves is up to no good.” He chuckled. “People assumed that Cleaves’s job at Downing Street made it impossible to do much socializing. Beautiful wife left to her own devices choosing to live it up a little isn’t unheard of.”

  “But Cleaves’s job wasn’t keeping him occupied?”

  Mr. Lu sipped his coffee and made an unhappy face. It was cold. “I thought you came here to ask about Colin Andrews,” he said. “Poor bastard. Where did it happen?”

  I cleaned it up for him. “He was having a nightcap with a girl named Martha Blodgett in her room. Someone broke in. She was slugged before she got a look at the killer. When she came to, she found Andrews dead.”

  The slant eyes narrowed. “The Blodgett girl works on Terry’s staff, doesn’t she? Andrews was still digging for his story?”

  “That seems to have been it,” I said.

  “I can only tell you this, Haskell. Terry was involved in a lot of top hush-hush diplomatic maneuverings. If Andrews was getting close to something that would embarrass the British government, the big boys wouldn’t hesitate to get rid of him. Beating him to death in front of a possible witness is a little crude, but governments, out of the public view, don’t hesitate to silence people who may be dangerous to them. The British government, your government, mine; secret agents, CIA people, our terror groups. I’d have to guess Andrews was about to strike oil and someone had to stop him.” He looked at me steadily for a moment. “Your Mr. Chambrun must be wondering if Andrews’ murder has anything to do with what’s going on with this Army For Justice.”

  “Your guess?”

  He grinned at me. “In my opinion everything in the world is related to everything else in the world. This is closer than any such broad generalization. Andrews was hunting down Cleaves’s history; Cleaves’s children are kidnapped. That’s a connection. Where it leads, who knows?” He glanced at his watch. “But the wheels are about to start turning, Haskell. Your President will speak in about an hour. After that your Mr. Coriander will laugh himself sick at the obvious attempt to deceive him. Then he will act, unpleasantly for the children, I’m afraid, unless you have some way to stop him.”

  “How would you handle it if you had the decision to make?” I asked him.

  The smile was entirely gone for the first time now. He took a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it with a jade lighter. “I would recruit the strongest force of specialists I could,” he said. “Experts with handguns, machine pistols, explosives—even electronics to deal with that detonator that was described in the press. I would go in on a prearranged signal and hope that the few seconds of time surprise might give me would make it possible to disconnect that detonator.”

  “And save the children and Miss Horn,” I said. “You’d be gambling on a few seconds, as you say.”

  He shook his head. “If I had the decision to make, Haskell, I would have some kind of sympathetic person on hand to console the children’s grief-stricken mother. I’m afraid I don’t think you’ll ever get them out in one piece—I mean, alive.”

  Chapter 2

  IT WAS A QUARTER to nine.

  A strange group of people were waiting in Chambrun’s office for the words of the President of the United States. Law and Order was represented by Gus Brand of the FBI, Assistant Commissioner Treadway, Captain Valentine of the bomb squad, Lieutenant Hardy of Homicide, and our own Jerry Dodd. There was Jim Pr
iest of the State Department. The victims—the Cleaveses and Buck Ames—waited on opposite sides of the room, Buck with his arm around Connie, whose eyes were hidden by those black glasses, Cleaves playing that detached and expressionless Coldstream Guardsman. Miss Ruysdale stood behind Chambrun’s desk, ready for any orders that might come. Chambrun was in his desk chair, apparently shut away inside himself. I knew him well enough to be certain that failure was eating away at his gut. All the people around him, with all their skills, with courage to spare, were helpless. Not one of them had the authority to meet any one of Coriander’s demands. Buck Ames, looking drawn and pale, might find the money, but with unacceptable conditions attached.

  At a couple of minutes to nine, Miss Ruysdale turned on the portable TV set that had been brought into the office and placed it against the far wall. Commercials for some underarm spray were on. And then, from the Oval Office of the White House, the chief executive’s press secretary introduced the President.

  His speech was short, delivered in a low, concerned voice. His listeners, he was certain, were all aware of the kidnapping of the Cleaves children and Miss Horn, and of the ransom demands being made by a man who called himself Colonel Coriander and the Army For Justice. The President said he felt certain the money demands could be met. But, he said, the other demands were far more difficult to meet in any reasonably short period of time. They involved diplomatic negotiations that must take place halfway round the world. He urged Coriander to give him the necessary time to carry out those negotiations. He urged the “thousands of demonstrators” who were expressing their sympathy with Coriander’s political demands to recognize their complexity and to be patient while he gave the problem his “best efforts.” He suggested prayers for the children and for their parents and relatives, “sick with anxiety.” Time and patience were the key to the problem, he told his audience.

  That was it.

  There was an instant babble of conversation in the room, interrupted by the blinking red eye on Chambrun’s telephone. Miss Ruysdale switched off the TV set on which some news analyst was paraphrasing the President’s speech.