Free The Negotiator by Frederick Forsyth Page A

are plainly visible today.
    “Hello,” said a voice by the student’s side and he glanced down. He was tall and gangly; she, short with dark bright eyes and plump as a partridge. “I’m Jenny. I think we’re sharing the same tutor.”
    The twenty-one-year-old freshman, attending Oxford on a junior-year-abroad program after two years at Yale, grinned.
    “Hi. I’m Simon.”
    They walked across to the arched entrance to the college, the young man pushing his bicycle. He had been there the day before to meet the master, but that had been by car. Halfway through the arch they were confronted by the amiable but implacable figure of Tim Ward-Barber.
    “New to the college, are we, sir?” he asked.
    “Er, yes,” said Simon. “First day, I guess.”
    “Very well then, let us learn the first rule of life here. Never, under any circumstances, drunk, drugged, or half-asleep, do we ever push, carry, or ride our bicycles through the arch into the quadrangle. Sir. Prop it against the wall with the others, if you please.”
    In universities there are chancellors, principals, masters, wardens, deans, bursars, professors, readers, fellows, and others in a variety of pecking orders. But a college’s head porter is definitely Senior League. As a former NCO in the 16/5th Lancers, Tim had coped with a few squaddies in his time.
    When Simon and Jenny came back he nodded benignly and told them: “You’re with Dr. Keen, I believe. Corner of the quadrangle, up the stairs to the top.”
    When they reached the cluttered room at the top of the stairs of their tutor in medieval history and introduced themselves, Jenny called him “Professor” and Simon called him “Sir.” Dr. Keen beamed at them over his glasses.
    “Now,” he said merrily, “there are two things and only two that I do not allow. One is wasting your time and mine; the other is calling me ‘sir.’ ‘Dr. Keen’ will do nicely. Then we’ll graduate to ‘Maurice.’ By the way, Jenny, I’m not a professor either. Professors have chairs, and as you see I do not; at least not one in good repair.”
    He gestured happily at the collection of semi-collapsed upholstery and bade his students be comfortable. Simon sank his frame into a legless Queen Anne chair that left him three inches off the floor, and together they began to consider Jan Hus and the Hussite revolution in medieval Bohemia. Simon grinned. He knew he was going to enjoy Oxford.
     
    It was purely coincidence that Cyrus Miller found himself a fortnight later sitting next to Peter Cobb at a fund-raising dinner in Austin, Texas. He loathed such dinners and normally avoided them; this one was for a local politician, and Miller knew the value of leaving markers around the political world, to be called in later when he needed a favor. He was prepared to ignore the man next to him, who was not in the oil business, until Cobb let slip the name of his corporation and therefore his visceral opposition to the Nantucket Treaty and the man behind it, John Cormack.
    “That goddam treaty has got to be stopped,” said Cobb. “Somehow the Senate has got to be persuaded to refuse to ratify it.”
    The news of the day had been that the treaty was in the last stages of drafting, would be signed by the respective ambassadors in Washington and Moscow in April, ratified by the Central Committee in Moscow in October after the summer recess, and put before the Senate before year’s end.
    “Do you think the Senate will turn it down?” asked Miller carefully. The defense contractor looked gloomily into his fifth glass.
    “Nope,” he said. “Fact is, arms cutbacks are always popular among the voters, and despite the odds, Cormack has the charisma and the popularity to push it through by his own personality. I can’t stand the guy, but that’s a fact.”
    Miller admired the defeated man’s realism.
    “Do you know the terms of the treaty yet?” he asked.
    “Enough,” said Cobb. “They’re fixing to slice tens of