In Kensington, McCrea gagged and skittered away to the bathroom. He hit a coffee table on the way.

“Who’s with you?” snarled Zack.

“A spook,” said Quinn. “You know the way it is. These assholes are not going to leave me alone, now are they?”

“I meant what I said.”

“Come on, Zack, there’s no need for that. We’re both pros. Right? Let’s keep it like that, eh? We do what we have to do, nothing more or less. Now time’s up. Get off the line.”

“Just get the money, Quinn.”

“I have to deal with the father on this one. Call me back in twenty-four hours. By the way, how is the kid?”

“Fine. So far.” Zack cut the call and left the booth. He had been on-line for thirty-one seconds. Quinn replaced the receiver. McCrea came back into the room.

“If you ever do that again,” said Quinn softly, “I will have you both out of here instantly, and screw the Agency and the Bureau.”

McCrea was so apologetic he looked ready to cry.

In the basement of the embassy Brown looked at Collins.

“Your man fouled up,” he said. “What was that bang on the line anyway?”

Without waiting for an answer he picked up the direct line from the basement to the apartment. Sam Somerville took it and explained about the threat of severed fingers, and McCrea’s knee hitting the coffee table.

When she put the phone down, Quinn asked, “Who was that?”

“Mr. Brown,” she said formally. “Mr. Kevin Brown.”

“Who’s he?” asked Quinn. Sam glanced nervously at the walls.

“The Deputy Assistant Director of the C.I. Division at the Bureau,” she said formally, knowing Brown was listening.

Quinn made a gesture of exasperation. Sam shrugged.

There was a conference at noon, in the apartment. The feeling was that Zack would not phone back until the next morning, allowing the Americans to think over his demand.

Kevin Brown came, with Collins and Seymour. So did Nigel Cramer, who brought Commander Williams. Quinn had met all but Brown and Williams.

“You can tell Zack that Washington agrees,” said Brown. “It came through twenty minutes ago. I hate it myself, but it’s been agreed. Five million dollars.”

“But I don’t agree,” said Quinn.

Brown stared at him as if unable to believe his ears.

“Oh, you don’t agree, Quinn. You don’t agree. The government of the U.S.A. agrees, but Mr. Quinn doesn’t agree. May we ask why?”

“Because it is highly dangerous to agree to a kidnapper’s first demand,” said Quinn quietly. “Do that, and he thinks he should have asked for more. A man who thinks that, thinks he has been fooled in some way. If he’s a psychopath, that makes him angry. He has no one on whom to vent that anger but the hostage.”

“You think Zack is a psychopath?” asked Seymour.

“Maybe. Maybe not,” said Quinn. “But one of his sidekicks may be. Even if Zack’s the one in charge-and he may not be-psychos can go out of control.”

“Then what do you advise?” asked Collins. Brown snorted.

“It’s still early days,” said Quinn. “Simon Cormack’s best chance of surviving unhurt lies in the kidnappers’ believing two things: that they have finally screwed out of the family the absolute maximum they can pay; and that they will see that money only if they produce Simon alive and unharmed. They won’t come to those conclusions in a few seconds. On top of that, the police may yet get a break and find them.”

“I agree with Mr. Quinn,” said Cramer. “It may take a couple of weeks. It sounds harsh, but it’s better than a rushed and botched case resulting in an error of judgment and a dead boy.”

“Any more time you can give me I’d appreciate,” said Commander Williams.

“So what do I tell Washington?” demanded Brown.

“You tell them,” said Quinn calmly, “that they asked me to negotiate Simon’s return, and I am trying to do that. If they want to pull me off the case, that’s fine. They just have to tell the President that.”

Collins coughed. Seymour stared at the floor. The meeting ended.

When Zack phoned again, Quinn was apologetic.

“Look, I tried to get through to President Cormack personally. No way. The man’s under sedation much of the time. I mean, he’s going through hell-”

“So cut it short and get me the money,” snapped Zack.

“I tried, I swear to God. Look, five million is over the top. He doesn’t have that kind of cash-it’s all tied up in blind trust funds that will take weeks to unlock. The word is, I can get you nine hundred thousand dollars, and I can get it fast-”

“Naff off,” snarled the voice on the phone. “You Yanks can get it from somewhere else. I can wait.”

“Yeah, sure, I know,” said Quinn earnestly. “You’re safe. The fuzz are getting nowhere, that’s for sure-so far. If you could just come down a bit… The boy all right?”

“Yeah.”

Quinn could tell Zack was thinking.

“I have to ask this, Zack. Those bastards in back of me are leaning real hard. Ask the boy what his pet dog’s name was-the one he had from a toddler up through the age of ten. Just so we know he’s okay. Won’t cost you anything. Helps me a lot.”

“Four million,” snapped Zack. “And that’s bloody it.”

The phone cut off. The call had come from St. Neots, a town in the south of Cambridge, just east of the county line with Bedfordshire. No one was spotted leaving the booth, one of a row outside the main post office.

“What are you doing?” asked Sam curiously.

“Putting the pressure on,” said Quinn, and would explain no more.

What Quinn had realized days before was that in this case he had one good ace not always available to negotiators. Bandits in the mountains of Sardinia or Central America could hold out for months or years if they wished. No army sweep, no police patrol would ever find them in those hills riddled with caves and undergrowth. Their only real hazard might be from helicopters, but that was it.

In the densely populated southeast corner of England, Zack and his men were in law-abiding-that is, hostile-territory. The longer they hid, the greater by the law of averages the chance of their being identified and located. So the pressure on them would be to settle and clear out. The trick would be to get them to think they had won, had got the best deal they could, and had no need to kill the hostage as they fled.

Quinn was counting on the rest of Zack’s team-the police knew from the ambush site that there were at least four in the gang-being confined to the hideout. They would get impatient, claustrophobic, eventually urging their leader to settle up and be done with it, precisely the same argument Quinn would be using. Assailed from both sides, Zack would be tempted to take what he could get and seek escape. But that would not happen until the pressure on the kidnappers had built up a lot more.

Quinn had deliberately sown two seeds in Zack’s mind: that Quinn was the good guy, trying to do his best for a fast deal and being obstructed by the Establishment-he recalled the face of Kevin Brown and wondered if that was wholly a lie-and that Zack was quite safe… so far. Meaning the opposite. The more Zack’s sleep was disturbed by nightmares of a police breakthrough, the better.

The professor of linguistics had now decided that Zack was almost certainly in his mid-forties to early fifties, and probably the leader of the gang. There was no hesitation to indicate he would have to consult someone else before agreeing to terms. He was born of working-class people, did not have a very good formal education, and almost certainly stemmed from the Birmingham area. But his native accent had been muted over the years by long periods away from Birmingham, possibly abroad.

A psychiatrist tried to build up a portrait of the man. He was certainly under strain, and it was growing as the conversations were prolonged. His animosity toward Quinn was decreasing with the passage of time. He was accustomed to violence-there had been no hesitation or qualm in his voice when he mentioned the severing of Simon Cormack’s fingers. On the other hand he was logical and shrewd, wary but not afraid. A dangerous man but not crazy. Not a psycho and not “political.”