Free Time of Terror by Hugh Pentecost

the FBI man, headed for Chambrun’s office in midafternoon and I managed to flag him down. Had he found out anything about the Army For Justice and Coriander?
    “The Army seems to be new as far as our records are concerned,” he told me. “The CIA draws a blank on it, too. Our best unofficial contacts also draw a blank.”
    “Yet there are a couple of hundred of them milling up and down out on the sidewalk,” I said.
    “There always has to be a first exposure,” Brand said.
    “Coriander?” I asked him.
    His face hardened. “The number of amputees out of Vietnam would make you sick at your stomach,” he said. “It’s going to take a long time to check out on how many lost an arm, and specifically a left arm. By the time we come up with an answer, the ball game may be over.”
    Later on while I was passing through the lobby, I saw Johnny Thacker guiding a three-star general toward Chambrun’s office. The Pentagon was obviously responding to the outrageous notion that they should be held responsible for civilian massacres in Indochina carried out by some young punk lieutenants.
    Valentine, the big, gray bomb squad man, was very much in evidence, and the hotel was generally swarming with men who couldn’t be anything else but cops. Late in the afternoon I called Ruysdale to ask her if Cleaves had reported back with a hatful of money.
    “He’s called in,” Ruysdale told me. “He’s working on it. He made it sound as though the going was tough.”
    “Anything from Mrs. Cleaves?”
    “She’s in your apartment, isn’t she?”
    “She’s gone somewhere,” I said.
    I have to admit I’d called my rooms on the house phones a few times. No answer.
    Just before six o’clock we had a small riot in the lobby. A couple of dozen of the pickets, all young males and females, long-haired, bearded, navels bared, barged in carrying their signs. FREE THE VIETNAM POLITICAL PRISONERS. JUSTICE IN THE PENTAGON. THE SINS OF THE FATHER SHOULD NOT BE PAID FOR BY HIS CHILDREN. PEACE WITH HONOR FOR REAL. LET THE RIGHT PEOPLE LIVE AND THE WRONG PEOPLE DIE.
    These young people, screaming and yelling, gave us a picture of how tight the security was. They’d hardly got through the door from the street when they were surrounded by an army of cops, some uniformed, some in plain clothes, and a dozen of Jerry Dodd’s hotel security people. They were swept back out onto the street so fast they must have thought they’d been hit by a cyclone. The hotel guests must have wondered if they’d really seen what they’d seen.
    About six-thirty I went back up to my apartment and tried knocking. There was no answer, so I let myself in with my key again. The place was just as I’d left it a few hours back: the unopened packages from the boutique on the couch, and no Connie. I was beginning to be genuinely anxious about her, and not on account of my possible love life. I decided I’d go down the hall and report this matter to Chambrun, but just as I reached the door, my phone rang.
    It was Chambrun. “You’re wanted,” he said.
    “On my way,” I said.
    “Not here,” he said in a flat voice that I knew spelled trouble. “Fifteen A. Coriander wants you on the double. There’s something wrong, Mark.”
    “What?”
    “No idea. He won’t talk to anyone but you in person.”
    “Have we got anything for him?” I asked. “Money? Concessions?”
    “Nothing yet.”
    “I was just coming to tell you that Constance Cleaves has taken a powder on me. She’s been missing for about four hours. She ordered stuff from the boutique but she didn’t stop to open the packages.”
    “You come on too strong?” he asked.
    “What are you talking about?”
    “I know you, Mark. I know you. Jim Priest’s remarks about the lady opened new vistas for you.”
    “She’d gone before I could make an ass of myself,” I said.
    “Get upstairs as quickly as you can,” Chambrun said. “Coriander could explode if you keep him waiting.”
    And so, with my