The Secret Servant

bad all Americans weren’t so sublime, he thought. The world would be a much better place.

46
     
    G ROSVENOR S QUARE, L ONDON : 2:10 P.M. , F RIDAY
     
    T he first calls arrived at the embassy switchboard before Ambassador Halton disappeared through the doorway of Winfield House. FBI hostage negotiator John O’Donnell, who had been given just five minutes’ warning of the pending statement, had hastily broken the staff of the ops center into two teams: one to dispense with obvious charlatans and criminal conmen, another to conduct additional screening of any call that sounded remotely legitimate. It was O’Donnell himself who assigned the calls to the appropriate teams. He did so after a brief conversation, usually thirty seconds in length or less. His instincts told him that none of the callers he had spoken to thus far were the real kidnappers, even the callers he had passed along to the second team for additional vetting. He did not share this belief with any of the exhausted men and women gathered around him in the embassy basement.
    Two hours after Robert Halton’s appearance before the cameras, O’Donnell picked up a separate line and dialed the switchboard. “How many do you have on hold?”
    “Thirty-eight,” the operator said. “Wait…make that forty-two…forty-four…forty-seven. You see my point.”
    “Keep them coming.”
    O’Donnell hung up and quickly worked his way through ten more calls. He assigned seven to team number one, the team that dealt with obvious cranks, and three to the second team, though he knew that none of the callers represented the real captors of Elizabeth Halton. He was about pick up another call when his private line rang. He answered that line instead and heard the voice of the switchboard operator.
    “I think I’ve got the call you’re looking for.”
    “Voice modifier?”
    “Yep.”
    “Send him down on this line after I hang up.”
    “Got it.”
    O’Donnell hung up the phone. When it rang ten seconds later, he brought the receiver swiftly to his ear.
    “This is John O’Donnell of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. How can I help you?”
    “I’ve been trying to get through to you for a half hour,” said the electronically modified voice.
    “We’re doing the best we can, but when twenty million is on the table, the nutcases tend to come out of the woodwork.”
    “I’m not a nutcase. I’m the one you want to talk to.”
    “Prove it to me. Tell me where you left the DVD of Elizabeth Halton.”
    “We left it under the rowboat on the beach at Beacon Point.”
    O’Donnell covered the mouthpiece of the receiver and pleaded for quiet. Then he looked at Kevin Barnett of the CIA and motioned for him to pick up the extension.
    “I take it you’re interested in taking the deal,” O’Donnell said to the caller.
    “I wouldn’t be calling otherwise.”
    “You have our girl?”
    “We have her.”
    “I’m going to need proof.”
    “There isn’t time.”
    “So we’ll have to make some time. Just answer one question for me. It will just take a minute.”
    Silence, then: “Give me the question.”
    “When Elizabeth was a little girl, she had a favorite stuffed animal. I need you to tell me what kind of animal it was and what she called it. I’m going to give you a separate number. You call me back when you’ve got the answer. Then we’ll discuss how to make the exchange.”
    “Make sure you pick up the phone. Otherwise, your girl dies.”
    The line went dead. O’Donnell hung up the phone and looked at Barnett.
    “I’m almost certain that was our boy.”
    “Thank God,” said Barnett. “Let’s just hope he has our girl.”
     
     
     
    She woke with the knock, startled and damp with sweat, and stared at the blinding white lamp over her cot. She had been dreaming, the same dream she always had whenever she managed to sleep. Men in black hoods. A video camera. A knife. She raised her cuffed hands to her throat and found that the tissue of her neck was still intact. Then she looked at the cement floor and saw the note. An eye was glaring at her through the spy hole as if willing her to move. It was dark and brutal: the eye of Cain.
    She sat up and swung her shackled feet to the floor, then stood and shuffled stiffly toward the door. The note lay faceup and was composed in a font large enough for her to read without bending down to pick it up. It was a question, as all their communications were, but different from any other they had put to