Meanwhile, United States President John Cormack and his Soviet counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev draw up plans for a $100 billion arms reduction bill – the "Nantucket Treaty".

He is joined in his designated London flat, against his wishes, by FBI agent Samantha "Sam" Somerville and CIA officer Duncan McCrea.

Flying back to London, Quinn is drugged, kidnapped and taken to the Russian embassy where KGB chief General Kirpicenko shows him photos of Miller, Scanlon and the three arms manufacturers who had been identified after paying an unexpected trip to a Russian airbase: it is believed they met with General Koslov, head of Soviet Southern High Command, and he gave them the minidet.

Searching the corpses reveals Moss' address book, which eventually yields a coded telephone number which Sam identifies as belonging to a very senior politician.

Quinn calls the number and, mimicking Moss' voice, demands a bonus payment for all the 'unforeseen trouble' he has had to deal with, and arranges a meeting with the man at the 'usual place', which turns out to be near the Vietnam War Memorial.

A newspaper Quinn briefly reads, made redundant earlier by the President's speech, mentions a $5 million anonymous donation to the Vietnam Veterans Paraplegic Hospital and the "accidental and mysterious" death of Treasury Secretary Reed by drowning.

This followed Jones' publication of a column predicting an oil crisis, in which a large amount of the material had been taken directly from Forsyth's novel The Negotiator without any attribution or indication that the source was a work of fiction.