Nightmare Time Read Free Page A

boy misunderstood what his father promised him as to a return time?”
    “You heard his story. Did you think the boy was hysterical?”
    I had to admit I didn’t.
    “I’ve lived my professional life trusting my instincts about people,” Chambrun said.
    “The kid’s eleven years old, probably with an eleven-year-old’s imagination,” I said, playing devil’s advocate.
    “Ham Willis told his son he and the boy’s mother would be gone an hour—fifteen minutes one way or the other. The kid felt so safe he fell asleep. Four hours later Willis hadn’t appeared or checked with young Guy about a change in plans. Out of character, cause for alarm quite real.”
    “All kinds of unexpected things can happen in a big city,” I said. “A mugger, a hit-and-run driver, a face-to-face with an old friend you haven’t seen for years.”
    “But this is a special man,” Chambrun said. “Anyone can be a target for a mugger. I was, and Ham Willis saved my bacon. But that was outside the hotel. Willis and his wife didn’t plan to leave the hotel. Muggings don’t happen inside the Beaumont. Neither do hit-and-run drivers cruise through our lobby. Meet an old friend and the Willises decide to stay out longer, they call the boy. Willis is in Intelligence. The boy said ‘Star Wars.’ Doesn’t that raise a few prickles on the back of your neck, Mark? We are a headquarters for friends and foes of the United States, all under the umbrella of the United Nations. I’m suggesting that Major Willis came face-to-face, not with an old friend, but a dangerous enemy.”
    “Just because he’s stayed out later than he originally planned?”
    “Because he is what he is, he wouldn’t change his plans without notifying the boy.”
    The private phone on Chambrun’s desk rang. It is connected to a squawk box which, when operating, makes the phone conversation audible to whoever else is in the office. Chambrun switched on the box and answered the phone.
    “Pierre Chambrun here.”
    A cold, impersonal voice came through the box. “This is Colonel Steve Martin, United States Air Force. You called me, Mr. Chambrun?”
    “I did. Let me tell you, Colonel, before we talk, that one of my trusted people is listening in on this call.”
    “Get him off,” the cold voice said.
    “No point,” Chambrun said. “Whatever we discuss I will repeat to him later. He might as well hear it firsthand.”
    “You talk, then,” Colonel Martin said.
    Chambrun sketched out the story of Major Willis’s disappearance and young Guy Willis’s concern.
    “So Willis was having a good time and forgot to call the boy,” Martin said.
    “I don’t think so, Colonel. To begin with, the Major, wearing his Air Force uniform, never went to the Blue Lagoon, the nightclub he was supposed to be headed for. There was the gun-toting priest who stinks to high heaven. Willis is your man and your problem, Colonel. He happens, also, to be a friend to whom I owe a debt. I’m doing everything that can be done here to locate him. But I’m afraid it may all involve information about which I have no knowledge, dangers which are beyond my control.”
    There was a moment of silence. Colonel Martin’s voice was a little less icy when he spoke again. “Thank you for alerting us, Mr. Chambrun. I’m sending a man to go into detail with you. He’s in New York and should be with you in a half hour, forty-five minutes. His name is Clinton Zachary. He is an Air Force officer and he will approach you as a civilian. I’m giving you a number where you can call me. You will be put through at any time. Thanks again for calling.”
    He gave us a number in Washington and that was that.

Two
    R EPORTS BEGAN to trickle in from the hotel’s security people. No one had seen an Air Force major in uniform, accompanied by an attractive lady or anyone else, all evening. Willis and his wife appeared to have been the invisible couple. The elevators serving the seventeenth floor at nine o’clock