Nightmare Time Read Free Page B

that evening had not been on self-service. That meant the Willises could not have reached the lobby without being noticed by one of our employees. There must have been dozens and dozens of people milling through the lobby at that time of night who weren’t guests of the hotel and who had no way of knowing that we would be looking for someone wearing an Air Force uniform who might have been circulating when they were.
    “But our people are always watching who comes and goes,” Chambrun said when I pointed that out to him. “And they knew what Ham Willis means to me. A special reason to notice him.”
    Nothing came our way but negatives for the next thirty-five minutes, and then Mike Maggio, the night bell captain, appeared in the door to Chambrun’s office.
    “A Captain Zachary to see you, Boss,” Mike said. “Jerry Dodd said to bring him straight to you.”
    Zachary, wearing a plain gray tropical-worsted suit, was somehow impressive. His dark hair was crew cut, his gray-blue eyes narrowed and intense. He moved with the lithe grace of an athlete. I wouldn’t have wanted to be faced by him in a tight situation. I felt reassured. This man wasn’t any kind of stuffed-shirt brass.
    “Colonel Martin told you to expect me,” Zachary said, his voice cold, clipped.
    “Come in, Captain.”
    “Let’s get out of the habit of calling me ‘Captain’ while I’m on this case,” Zachary said. “Colonel Martin gave me a sketchy account of what is supposed to have happened here. It isn’t much.”
    “The Willises left their eleven-year-old son in their suite, 17C, to go down to our nightclub, the Blue Lagoon. The boy expected them back in an hour. He fell asleep watching television and when he woke at one o’clock his parents hadn’t returned. The boy had been told to call me if he found himself in any trouble.”
    “I know about your experience with Willis and some Arab terrorists,” Zachary said. “It’s in his record file.”
    “So you understand why I have taken an active role in this as soon as I was notified,” Chambrun said.
    “Willis talked to you when he checked in?” Zachary asked. “Told you the boy might be left alone and need help?”
    “As a matter of fact, we had only the briefest telephone conversation,” Chambrun said. “He was busy, I was up to my ears. We made a date to have lunch here in my office tomorrow—today, that is.”
    “He mentioned that he’d given your name to the boy in case there was trouble?”
    “No, which suggests that he didn’t anticipate any trouble, doesn’t it?”
    “In our business—intelligence—you can’t anticipate anything but trouble,” Zachary said. “Let me just say this, Mr. Chambrun. Willis has access to highly classified information that enemies of this country would give an arm and a leg to get. Willis could be a target for any kind of terror tactics imaginable that might force him to tell what he knows.”
    “The boy mentioned Star Wars.”
    “Not far off target, I think,” Zachary said. The grim lines at the corners of his mouth deepened. “There are always two sides to every coin. Willis could be tortured into giving away vital secrets. He could also be persuaded to sell them for the right price.”
    Chambrun’s face showed his surprise. “Are you suggesting treason?”
    “It may surprise you, Mr. Chambrun, to know that something like four hundred thousand people have access to some level of classified information. We’re supposed to check out on them, but it would take an army to cover them all more often than once every five years. Some carefully screened people get to know about really high-level stuff. Willis was one of those. But who knows what turns an apple bad in the barrel?”
    “You’re suggesting that Willis, tested and trusted, is selling out on you?”
    “I have to look at both sides of the coin,” Zachary said. “Willis can have, somehow, been abducted by the enemy. Or he can have gone bad, sold us out, and taken a