The Negotiator (novel)
Encyclopedia
The Negotiator is a crime novel
by Frederick Forsyth
first published in 1989. The story includes a number of threads that are slowly woven together. The central thread concerns a kidnapping and the negotiator's attempts to solve the crime.
oil
tycoon Cyrus V. Miller reads a report he had commissioned into dwindling oil supplies in the free world
and concludes that the oil fields of the Middle East
must be brought under American control. Separately, a high-ranking General in the Soviet Army comes to a similarly depressing conclusion about oil access and plans a covert mission to invade Iran and take over the massive oil supplies there. Meanwhile, the President of the United States
, John Cormack, meets with his Soviet counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev
to draw up plans for a $100 billion arms reduction bill - the Nantucket Treaty.
With the help of a disaffected Arabist, Colonel Robert Easterhouse, Miller and his shipping tycoon counterpart Melvyn Scanlon devise a plan to inspire Islamic fundamentalists to massacre the six hundred ruling members of the Saudi royal family during jamboree celebrations; after that, American forces will go into Saudi Arabia
to restore the only surviving royal - a Westernized puppet named Prince Abdullah - to power and thus secure the oil for the United States - and for Miller and Scanlon's companies. However, Easterhouse warns that Cormack won't be prepared to jeopardize the Nantucket Treaty by sending troops into the Middle East; he must be ousted from power and replaced by his vice-president, Michael Odell, who opposes the treaty. Miller teams up with three disgruntled arms manufacturers who will be ruined financially by the treaty and hires a recently released from prison, hardcore sex criminal and ex-CIA-officer-turned-mercenary Irving Moss to devise a plan to destroy the President and therefore the treaty.
The plan begins when the President's son, Simon Cormack, is kidnapped while spending a year studying abroad at Oxford University. Cormack puts Odell in charge of the kidnapping case. Odell wants Quinn, the world's most successful hostage negotiator, to handle the case, but he has retired to Spain
and is not interested in working for the government. His old CIA friend David Weintraub coaxes him out of retirement, and Green Beret
Quinn agrees to come to London
if they allow him to handle the negotiations his way. He is joined, against his wishes, in his designated London flat by female FBI agent Sam Somerville and CIA officer Duncan McCrea.
The leader of the kidnappers, Zack, makes contact and demands a $5 million ransom for Simon's safe return. Quinn refuses, telling the police and FBI it is dangerous to agree to a kidnapper's first demand. After two weeks of negotiation, they agree on a $2 million ransom, in diamonds. Meanwhile, a maverick FBI agent does his own investigations and leads a raid on a house where he believes the President's son is held; but it turns out that all he has done is ruin an attempt by the British police to arrest a top international drug smuggler.
A fake news report that the police are closing in spooks the kidnappers; Quinn decides to steal the diamonds, evade the police and FBI and set up the ransom drop himself. He and Simon are released at different points of a deserted road. As Simon runs towards Quinn and the police, he is killed in an explosion.
President Cormack is devastated when he learns of his son's death. The possibility of the president being removed under the terms of the 25th Amendment is brought up. A postmortem shows that Simon was killed by a bomb hidden in the belt given to him by his kidnappers. The bomb was set off by a miniature detonator - minidet - found, and only found, in the Soviet space programme. The Russians are blamed and the Nantucket Treaty is effectively finished.
Quinn is arrested by the police but let go for lack of evidence. He decides to go after the kidnappers himself, and Sam - who has become Quinn's lover - is sent by the FBI to follow him. Quinn thinks one of the kidnappers was a Belgian mercenary
, due to his ease with a gun and the smell of his Bastos
cigarettes. He identifies him as “Big” Paul Marchais and finds him with a bullet in the head at a fairground in Belgium. He finds his partner, South African mercenary Jan Pretorius in bar in the Netherlands
, also with a bullet in his head. Returning to London, Quinn is contacted by Zack who arranges a meeting at a cafe in Paris
. He tells Quinn he was paid $500,000 to kidnap Simon - the ransom was a bonus. The man who hired him was a fat American who always stayed in darkness so he couldn't be identified. Zack brought in Marchais and Pretorius and was forced to take on a fourth man, Corsican Dominique Orsini. It was Orsini who gave Simon the belt that killed him. After that, he fled to Europe. Zack hands over the diamonds but is killed in a drive-by shooting which Quinn and Sam only narrowly escape from.
Quinn sends Sam to his home in Spain while he travels to Corsica. He confronts Orsini but is forced to kill him in self-defense. He flies back to London where he is drugged and kidnapped by a Russian agent, Andrei the Cossack
. He is taken to the Russian embassy where KGB
chief General Kirpicenko shows Quinn photos of Miller, Scanlon and the three arms manufactures who had been identified after paying an unexpected trip to a Russian air base. It is believed they met with General Koslov, head of Soviet Southern High Command, and he gave them the minidet. Kirpicenko tells Quinn to return to Washington, D.C. to flush out the conspirators.
Sam flies back to Washington and Quinn sends her a letter, knowing that the White House has her phones tapped and her mail on intercept. Quinn by then is in Vermont, after entering the U.S. via Canada with help of forged travel documents, and renting a secluded cabin in the wilderness. In the intercepted letter to Sam, the White House committee read that Quinn knows who Simon's killers were and is holed up some place safe writing it all down. One of the members of the committee, in cahoots with Miller from the start, panics. Quinn soon finds Sam and tells her to be on the lookout. Sam soon tells Quinn that David Weintraub has been in touch, and Quinn agrees to meet him.
The 'David Weintraub' who appears is actually Irving Moss impersonating him. He has brought with him Duncan McCrea, who turns out to be a fellow sadist and a former protege of Moss. Moss also has a score to settle with Quinn, who responded to one of Moss' gruesome torture interrogations in Vietnam by caving in the front of Moss' face with a single punch. It was McCrea who pushed the remote control that set off the bomb that killed Simon. Quinn and Sam are taken at gunpoint back to Quinn's cabin where Moss reads Quinn's report. He tells Quinn that he and Duncan followed Quinn and Sam across Europe, spying on them (for a time) via a bug in Sam's handbag, and killing the mercenaries before Quinn could reach them. Moss, finding out that the report is fake, takes Quinn outside to shoot him, but Andrei, who has been bivouacking
in the snow for several days observing Quinn, shoots him before he could execute Quinn. Quinn then takes Moss's gun, returns to the cabin and shoots McCrea as he is about to rape/torture Sam.
Searching the corpses reveals Moss's address book, which eventually yielded a coded telephone number which Quinn identifies (with Sam's help) as belonging to a very senior politician. Mimicking Moss's voice, he demands a bonus payment for all the 'unforeseen trouble' he had to deal with, and arranges a meeting with the man at the 'usual place', which turns out to be near the Vietnam War Memorial. It turns out to Hubert Reed, the Secretary of the Treasury, who publicly supported the Nantucket Treaty, but secretly opposed it as he had invested his fortune in armament companies. He offers Quinn the $5 million check he had brought for Moss, and Quinn hands over the report he has written. But the real report is sent to the President, who then chooses not to resign and tells the world in a special broadcast the next evening what really happened to his son and why. The conspirators are later arrested by American and Soviet authorities or commit suicide, and the President orders the FBI manhunt for Quinn to be permanently called off. By then, Quinn flies off to Spain with Sam, who has accepted his marriage proposal. A newspaper he briefly reads, made redundant earlier by the President's speech, mentions a $5 million anonymous donation to the Vietnam Veterans Paraplegic Hospital, and the “accidental” death of Treasury Secretary Reed, by drowning.
had been a regular writer for The Sun-Herald
when the newspaper announced that Jones' column would no longer appear following a petition by staff calling for his removal as a contributor. This followed Jones' publication of a column predicting an oil crisis, in which a large amount of the material had been taken directly from Forsyth's novel 'The Negotiator' without any attribution or indication that the source was a work of fiction.
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by Frederick Forsyth
Frederick Forsyth
Frederick Forsyth, CBE is an English author and occasional political commentator. He is best known for thrillers such as The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File, The Fourth Protocol, The Dogs of War, The Devil's Alternative, The Fist of God, Icon, The Veteran, Avenger, The Afghan and The Cobra.-...
first published in 1989. The story includes a number of threads that are slowly woven together. The central thread concerns a kidnapping and the negotiator's attempts to solve the crime.
Synopsis
Late 1989: TexanTexas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
oil
Oil
An oil is any substance that is liquid at ambient temperatures and does not mix with water but may mix with other oils and organic solvents. This general definition includes vegetable oils, volatile essential oils, petrochemical oils, and synthetic oils....
tycoon Cyrus V. Miller reads a report he had commissioned into dwindling oil supplies in the free world
Free World
The Free World is a Cold War-era term often used to describe states not under the rule of the Soviet Union, its Eastern European allies, China, Vietnam, Cuba, and other communist nations. The term often referred to states such as the United States, Canada, and Western European states such as the...
and concludes that the oil fields of the Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
must be brought under American control. Separately, a high-ranking General in the Soviet Army comes to a similarly depressing conclusion about oil access and plans a covert mission to invade Iran and take over the massive oil supplies there. Meanwhile, the President of the United States
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
, John Cormack, meets with his Soviet counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...
to draw up plans for a $100 billion arms reduction bill - the Nantucket Treaty.
With the help of a disaffected Arabist, Colonel Robert Easterhouse, Miller and his shipping tycoon counterpart Melvyn Scanlon devise a plan to inspire Islamic fundamentalists to massacre the six hundred ruling members of the Saudi royal family during jamboree celebrations; after that, American forces will go into Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
to restore the only surviving royal - a Westernized puppet named Prince Abdullah - to power and thus secure the oil for the United States - and for Miller and Scanlon's companies. However, Easterhouse warns that Cormack won't be prepared to jeopardize the Nantucket Treaty by sending troops into the Middle East; he must be ousted from power and replaced by his vice-president, Michael Odell, who opposes the treaty. Miller teams up with three disgruntled arms manufacturers who will be ruined financially by the treaty and hires a recently released from prison, hardcore sex criminal and ex-CIA-officer-turned-mercenary Irving Moss to devise a plan to destroy the President and therefore the treaty.
The plan begins when the President's son, Simon Cormack, is kidnapped while spending a year studying abroad at Oxford University. Cormack puts Odell in charge of the kidnapping case. Odell wants Quinn, the world's most successful hostage negotiator, to handle the case, but he has retired to Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
and is not interested in working for the government. His old CIA friend David Weintraub coaxes him out of retirement, and Green Beret
United States Army Special Forces
The United States Army Special Forces, also known as the Green Berets because of their distinctive service headgear, are a special operations force tasked with six primary missions: unconventional warfare, foreign internal defense, special reconnaissance, direct action, hostage rescue, and...
Quinn agrees to come to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
if they allow him to handle the negotiations his way. He is joined, against his wishes, in his designated London flat by female FBI agent Sam Somerville and CIA officer Duncan McCrea.
The leader of the kidnappers, Zack, makes contact and demands a $5 million ransom for Simon's safe return. Quinn refuses, telling the police and FBI it is dangerous to agree to a kidnapper's first demand. After two weeks of negotiation, they agree on a $2 million ransom, in diamonds. Meanwhile, a maverick FBI agent does his own investigations and leads a raid on a house where he believes the President's son is held; but it turns out that all he has done is ruin an attempt by the British police to arrest a top international drug smuggler.
A fake news report that the police are closing in spooks the kidnappers; Quinn decides to steal the diamonds, evade the police and FBI and set up the ransom drop himself. He and Simon are released at different points of a deserted road. As Simon runs towards Quinn and the police, he is killed in an explosion.
President Cormack is devastated when he learns of his son's death. The possibility of the president being removed under the terms of the 25th Amendment is brought up. A postmortem shows that Simon was killed by a bomb hidden in the belt given to him by his kidnappers. The bomb was set off by a miniature detonator - minidet - found, and only found, in the Soviet space programme. The Russians are blamed and the Nantucket Treaty is effectively finished.
Quinn is arrested by the police but let go for lack of evidence. He decides to go after the kidnappers himself, and Sam - who has become Quinn's lover - is sent by the FBI to follow him. Quinn thinks one of the kidnappers was a Belgian mercenary
Mercenary
A mercenary, is a person who takes part in an armed conflict based on the promise of material compensation rather than having a direct interest in, or a legal obligation to, the conflict itself. A non-conscript professional member of a regular army is not considered to be a mercenary although he...
, due to his ease with a gun and the smell of his Bastos
Bastos
For the Brazilian footballer who plays for Olympique Lyonnais, see Michel Bastos.Bastos is a municipality in the state of São Paulo in Brazil. The population in 2003 is 21,343 and the area is 170.93 km². The elevation is 445 m. It is also a Portuguese surname.-History:The name originated from...
cigarettes. He identifies him as “Big” Paul Marchais and finds him with a bullet in the head at a fairground in Belgium. He finds his partner, South African mercenary Jan Pretorius in bar in the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, also with a bullet in his head. Returning to London, Quinn is contacted by Zack who arranges a meeting at a cafe in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. He tells Quinn he was paid $500,000 to kidnap Simon - the ransom was a bonus. The man who hired him was a fat American who always stayed in darkness so he couldn't be identified. Zack brought in Marchais and Pretorius and was forced to take on a fourth man, Corsican Dominique Orsini. It was Orsini who gave Simon the belt that killed him. After that, he fled to Europe. Zack hands over the diamonds but is killed in a drive-by shooting which Quinn and Sam only narrowly escape from.
Quinn sends Sam to his home in Spain while he travels to Corsica. He confronts Orsini but is forced to kill him in self-defense. He flies back to London where he is drugged and kidnapped by a Russian agent, Andrei the Cossack
Cossack
Cossacks are a group of predominantly East Slavic people who originally were members of democratic, semi-military communities in what is today Ukraine and Southern Russia inhabiting sparsely populated areas and islands in the lower Dnieper and Don basins and who played an important role in the...
. He is taken to the Russian embassy where KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
chief General Kirpicenko shows Quinn photos of Miller, Scanlon and the three arms manufactures who had been identified after paying an unexpected trip to a Russian air base. It is believed they met with General Koslov, head of Soviet Southern High Command, and he gave them the minidet. Kirpicenko tells Quinn to return to Washington, D.C. to flush out the conspirators.
Sam flies back to Washington and Quinn sends her a letter, knowing that the White House has her phones tapped and her mail on intercept. Quinn by then is in Vermont, after entering the U.S. via Canada with help of forged travel documents, and renting a secluded cabin in the wilderness. In the intercepted letter to Sam, the White House committee read that Quinn knows who Simon's killers were and is holed up some place safe writing it all down. One of the members of the committee, in cahoots with Miller from the start, panics. Quinn soon finds Sam and tells her to be on the lookout. Sam soon tells Quinn that David Weintraub has been in touch, and Quinn agrees to meet him.
The 'David Weintraub' who appears is actually Irving Moss impersonating him. He has brought with him Duncan McCrea, who turns out to be a fellow sadist and a former protege of Moss. Moss also has a score to settle with Quinn, who responded to one of Moss' gruesome torture interrogations in Vietnam by caving in the front of Moss' face with a single punch. It was McCrea who pushed the remote control that set off the bomb that killed Simon. Quinn and Sam are taken at gunpoint back to Quinn's cabin where Moss reads Quinn's report. He tells Quinn that he and Duncan followed Quinn and Sam across Europe, spying on them (for a time) via a bug in Sam's handbag, and killing the mercenaries before Quinn could reach them. Moss, finding out that the report is fake, takes Quinn outside to shoot him, but Andrei, who has been bivouacking
Bivouac shelter
A bivouac traditionally refers to a military encampment made with tents or improvised shelters, usually without shelter or protection from enemy fire or such a site where a camp may be built. It is also commonly used to describe a variety of improvised camp sites such as those used in scouting and...
in the snow for several days observing Quinn, shoots him before he could execute Quinn. Quinn then takes Moss's gun, returns to the cabin and shoots McCrea as he is about to rape/torture Sam.
Searching the corpses reveals Moss's address book, which eventually yielded a coded telephone number which Quinn identifies (with Sam's help) as belonging to a very senior politician. Mimicking Moss's voice, he demands a bonus payment for all the 'unforeseen trouble' he had to deal with, and arranges a meeting with the man at the 'usual place', which turns out to be near the Vietnam War Memorial. It turns out to Hubert Reed, the Secretary of the Treasury, who publicly supported the Nantucket Treaty, but secretly opposed it as he had invested his fortune in armament companies. He offers Quinn the $5 million check he had brought for Moss, and Quinn hands over the report he has written. But the real report is sent to the President, who then chooses not to resign and tells the world in a special broadcast the next evening what really happened to his son and why. The conspirators are later arrested by American and Soviet authorities or commit suicide, and the President orders the FBI manhunt for Quinn to be permanently called off. By then, Quinn flies off to Spain with Sam, who has accepted his marriage proposal. A newspaper he briefly reads, made redundant earlier by the President's speech, mentions a $5 million anonymous donation to the Vietnam Veterans Paraplegic Hospital, and the “accidental” death of Treasury Secretary Reed, by drowning.
Plagiarism as Fact
In 1990 Australian broadcaster Alan JonesAlan Jones (radio broadcaster)
Alan Belford Jones AO is an Australian radio broadcaster, former rugby union and rugby league coach and administrator.Jones hosts Sydney's most popular breakfast radio program, on radio station 2GB...
had been a regular writer for The Sun-Herald
The Sun-Herald
The Sun-Herald is an Australian tabloid newspaper published on Sundays in Sydney by Fairfax Media. It is the Sunday counterpart of The Sydney Morning Herald. In the 6 months to September 2005, The Sun-Herald had a circulation of 515,000...
when the newspaper announced that Jones' column would no longer appear following a petition by staff calling for his removal as a contributor. This followed Jones' publication of a column predicting an oil crisis, in which a large amount of the material had been taken directly from Forsyth's novel 'The Negotiator' without any attribution or indication that the source was a work of fiction.