Time of Terror (2 page)

“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.

I
T 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 leave.

“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.”

“And so?”

“And so you go up and observe as you’ve never observed in your life. And, Mark, if you have any chance to reassure those little girls, do what you can, even if you don’t believe in it. What a God-awful thing to do to two children!”

“The whole thing is right out of a corny melodrama,” I said.

“I have the unpleasant feeling we’re going to have to develop an appetite for corn,” Chambrun said. “It’s time for you to move, friend.”

The Beaumont, as you may have guessed, is built in the shape of a large L, one arm pointing north, the other west. There are two banks of elevators, one for each wing, but if you are located in the west wing and you take the north elevators, all you have to do is walk around the L to your room.

When I left Chambrun’s office, I realized I had wanted to ask him a dozen questions, all of which would have delayed my going—which was exactly what I wanted. Should I go directly to Fifteen, or should I go to Fourteen and walk up or Sixteen and walk down? If I suddenly appeared on Fifteen North, would some crazy bastard start taking shots at me? I made what I told myself was a bold decision. I would get my instructions from Colonel Coriander himself.

I walked down the flight of stairs to the lobby and found myself on the fringes of a madhouse. Dozens of people were crowded around the front desk, some of them, as Coriander had reported, in their nightclothes. Voices were high and shrill and you could smell fear.

I went over to the row of house phones near the north bank of elevators and called 15 A. The phone rang only once and then I heard Coriander’s sardonic voice.

“This is Mark Haskell,” I told him.

“I was beginning to wonder about you,” Coriander said.

“How do I come up?” I asked.

“By elevator, unless you’re on a weight reducing program and want to walk,” he said.

“Is there a sentry or someone I have to get past?”

“Just walk to the door of Fifteen A and knock,” Coriander said.

I decided to take the west elevators and I walked over to that bank. There were operators on each car and one of Jerry’s men was standing guard. I told him that despite instructions I wanted out at Fifteen. He asked me if I didn’t think that was risky.

“I’ve been invited by the head man,” I said.

“You armed?” the man asked me.

“No.”

“Want to borrow my special?”

“No chance,” I said. “I’ll probably be searched the first thing.”

The elevator operator took me to Fifteen West. I got out, and the elevator went down, and I was alone. There wasn’t a soul in sight, not a maid, not the housekeeper, not anyone. I walked slowly around the L to the north wing. No one, no guard or sentry, no sign of anyone. The entire wing was still, silent, almost as if it was deserted. I walked slowly down the corridor to the door of 15 A. I hesitated a moment. My mouth felt full of ashes.

I lifted my hand and knocked on the door. Almost before I could lower my hand, the door opened inward and I was confronted by something so unreal I had to clamp my teeth together to keep from crying out.

A man faced me, a man as tall as I am, which is just over six feet. He was unbelievable. His face was hidden by a child’s Halloween mask, the kind of cardboard job you can buy in any novelty shop. It was a pirate’s face, with a black patch over one eye and a fierce, handlebar mustache on the upper lip. On top of that was a black fright wig, coarse hair straggling down to his shoulders. Observe, Chambrun had said; describe him so that a police artist can make a drawing of him. Jesus! I did observe one thing. He was wearing a red satin dressing gown, and the left sleeve was empty. One thing you can’t disguise is a missing arm.

“Come in, Mr. Haskell.” The voice was unmistakable. Colonel Coriander was hidden behind all that childish jazz.

I walked into the living room of the suite. It was a familiar room, the furnishings Victorian. No two suites in the Beaumont were furnished alike. The paintings on the wall, one a Turner I knew, were genuine, not reproductions. Only a few days ago I’d had a chat with Terrence Cleaves in this room. There was actually one of Cleaves’s pipes resting in an ash tray on the stretcher table behind the couch. The Ambassador was a chain pipe smoker.

“You will have to forgive my infantile makeup, Mr. Haskell, but I’m sure Chambrun instructed you to be able to describe me accurately for a police artist. I’m not ready for that yet. Shall we get right down to business?”

“What business?” I asked.

“First you are to be convinced.”

After fifteen minutes I was convinced that Colonel Coriander and his people had enough machine pistols, machine guns, rifles and handguns to do just about what he had said—hold off the United States Marine Corps. I saw only two other men during what Coriander called my “guided tour.” Both of them wore stocking masks over their heads. He had said thirty people, but I only saw those two. One of them was in the room which was occupied by one of Cleaves’s staff next to the suite. He sat by some kind of electrified box on a table.

“One wrong move,” Coriander told me, “and my friend here touches a button and—boom! Elevators, fire stairs, maybe the whole building above us comes tumbling down. And all the king’s horses and all the king’s men—Would you like to see where the explosives are planted?”

I was shown whether I wanted to see or not. Sticks of dynamite, or some other substance, wrapped together, wired to each other. They were located in every room I was shown, along the hall, in the service area, the linen closets, outside the elevator shaft and, I was assured, inside the shaft, too. There were crates and crates of ammunition for the guns. How this had all gotten in here, I couldn’t guess.

When we finally got back to the sitting room in 15 A, my undershirt and shirt were wet with sweat, sticking to me.

“Satisfied?” Coriander asked.

“Satisfied,” I said.

“I wanted to be sure that Chambrun didn’t assume I was overstating my case.”

“I’ll make certain he knows that,” I said.

“What has he done so far?”

“He’s trying to contact the Cleaves family and staff, to begin with.”

“He should have asked me. I could have told him where they were,” Coriander said. “The Ambassador is at the United Nations, along with the three male members of his staff and his two female secretaries. Mrs. Cleaves has gone shopping—Saks Fifth Avenue, she said. I suspect she’ll be coming back pretty soon.”