Takeover by Lisa Black Page A

added, “it’s too late now. The secretary’s going to land any minute, and—”
    “Okay,” Torello broke in smoothly. “We’ll keep our security detail informed of what’s happening here, and they can make their own decisions. Surely these two don’t have any sort of direct assault planned, since they couldn’t affect the convention center from a block and a half away unless they set off a nuclear bomb. Let’s talk about his demands. You, sir—you’re the Fed president?”
    “Vice president,” Kessler told him. “The president is in Washington at a Federal Open Market Committee meeting. The presidents of all twelve Reserve banks are there, plus the board of governors,” he added morosely. “They only meet eight times a year, and it had to be today. I don’t—”
    Cavanaugh interrupted. “Are you willing to give them four million dollars?”
    “It’s not mine!” Kessler protested at first, then hedged: “Can you guarantee we’ll get it back?”
    Receiving no response from Cavanaugh, he appealed to Torello, who said, “No.”
    Mulvaney, the man in fatigues, announced without heat, “We don’t deal with terrorists.”
    “No, we don’t deal with terrorists,” Cavanaugh clarified. “But we’ll negotiate with anyone. At least I will. We want them to take the money and leave the hostages. It’s only money. It’s not worth lives.”
    Maybe I could like Chris Cavanaugh, Theresa thought, even if it’s his own reputation he’s really trying to protect.
    “And if they will, then our situation goes from being a complicated standoff to the relatively simple pursuit of an armed felon. The problem is,” he went on, “that the money is usually the stalling point. I can put people off for hours over the difficulties in raising alarge amount of cash. But in this case the money is right there and he knows it. Mr. Kessler, you said those robots aren’t designed to use the lobby elevators?”
    “Correct.”
    “Okay, we’ll use that. Meanwhile the car. Where is it?”
    “We sent it to the medical examiner’s office,” Theresa told him, wincing as nearly every man in the room turned to wonder who the hell she was.
    “That gives me something to work with. His insistence on a flatbed will help, too. I can delay about finding one.”
    “Tell him they’re all broken,” Viancourt suggested.
    “He won’t believe that. Besides, I can’t lie to him. Stretch the truth, maybe—after all, the robots aren’t designed for the lobby, and we don’t have a flatbed standing by.”
    “He’s a scumbag,” Mulvaney said. “Lie through your teeth.”
    Cavanaugh inched his console farther out onto the table, expanding his personal work area and lessening everyone else’s. Theresa wondered if that was one of the tricks they taught you in negotiator school. “That won’t work, and it gets people killed. The two hardest things about this are, first, figuring out what it is they’ll give themselves up to get. Usually they don’t even know, and that’s what makes it tough. Second is resisting the urge to promise them anything, including the moon. Unless they’re mentally disabled, they’ll see through it in a second, and then people can get hurt. Theresa, what’s special about this car?”
    Again he caught her off guard, which annoyed her. “What?”
    “Usually they ask for a car. But he wants his car. You examined it—what’s so special?”
    “Nothing. It’s a Benz with a nice paint job and a clean interior.”
    “Maybe that’s all the reason there is,” Frank said. “It’s hard to find a decent used car these days.”
    Cavanaugh persisted. “Has it been modified in any way? Police scanner installed? High-performance engine?”
    “I didn’t look under the hood.” She didn’t add that she wouldn’t know a high-performance engine from a four-cylinder econobox.
    “Go look. And take someone from the bomb squad with you—they might have explosives strapped to the frame as some sort of Plan