Time of Terror Read Online Free Page A

or drink, let them know that the little girls will taste everything first. It will be necessary for some of us to come and go from time to time. We are not to be interfered with. If any one of my people is stopped, questioned, held, you will instantly receive evidence that one of the girls has paid a price for it. Clear?”
    “Quite clear,” I said.
    He laughed. “I wonder how you will describe me to Chambrun.”
    I tried not to look at his empty sleeve. “You’ve made that impossible,” I said.
    “Perhaps we’ll meet again,” he said. “I shall insist on your being my contact with Chambrun. Good-bye, Haskell. Be persuasive.”
    And then I was out in the hall and literally running toward the west wing.
    I suppose different people react in different ways to moments of high tension. I find myself suddenly aware of absurd details, enlarged and magnified. Standing outside the elevator door on 15 West I noticed that a tiny piece of the brass number on the door had been chipped away; down the hall the door to the linen room stood open, a violation of the rules. Then I remembered that everyone had been ordered off the floor by Coriander, probably in panic. Then I remembered the elevator wasn’t going to stop at 15 no matter how long I rang the bell. Chambrun’s orders.
    I ran for the fire stairs, breathing as hard as if I’d covered an Olympic mile. I’d only gone a few steps down when I was confronted by two of Jerry Dodd’s men. They had instructions to check on anyone who came to or left the fifteenth floor, but to let them go. Of course they knew me. How bad was it up there? What about the little girls? I told them the danger was very real and that, so far, the girls and Miss Horn were still in one piece. I thought of Coriander threatening to send the President of the United States something for his lunch break in the Oval Office. Tomato surprise! You lift the cover and there is a little girl’s ear. Jesus!
    An elevator stopped for me at 14. I was instantly conscious of a wart on the back of the operator’s neck. I wondered if the poor sonofabitch knew he might be dying of cancer.
    I was let out at the second floor and into bedlam. The corridor, all the way from the elevator to Chambrun’s office, was jammed with people, all talking and some shouting at once. Most of them were hotel guests. There was a sprinkling of reporters I recognized, and they set up a roadblock for me. Was it true I’d been up to 15? Was there any real danger? Evidently nothing had leaked yet about Coriander or his hostages, because nobody asked me about them. It wouldn’t be long before the whole story broke, and then God help us all.
    I edged my way through protesting people to the door of Chambrun’s office. Two more of Jerry’s men were holding back the crowd. They let me through into Miss Ruysdale’s outer sanctum. Miss Ruysdale’s telephones were being manned by a girl from the business office, which meant that Miss Ruysdale was inside with the boss. I went through into Chambrun’s office, where I found him surrounded by people, most of them strangers to me except, of course, Miss Ruysdale, and the handsome, copper-haired woman I knew to be Constance Cleaves, the mother of the two little girls I’d just left upstairs.
    Animated conversation ended abruptly and everyone in the room was focused on me. I looked at Chambrun for instructions, but his blank stare told me nothing. Constance Cleaves came at me, almost running across the thick rug.
    I had seen this woman around the hotel but we’d never had any conversation together. She was strikingly beautiful, with high cheekbones, wide mouth, and dark blue eyes set off by that coppery hair. She must have married Cleaves and had her children when she was very young, for I took her to be not much more than thirty. The Ambassador had to be in his early fifties. She had a gorgeous figure set off by clothes that had been designed for her by a genius. She had gone shopping that morning