The Predators

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The depression was tangible at the first gathering of the day, people talking because they had to but knowing they weren’t offering anything to keep alive the brief hope of the previous day. The clandestine surveillance had produced nothing. Henri Sanglier had agreed with the Belgian squad at Menen that the cafe proprietor was uninvolved and approved direct questioning with the computer-drawn images of the wanted man and woman. The proprietor, a retired Customs officer, recognized neither. Nor did any of his regular users, whose names he’d offered before being asked. None of them resembled the couple or recognized them.

Poncellet said the Belgian police record search had been extended to cover the entire country, not just Brussels. There was no computer graphic match with any arrest photograph in police archives. Nor was there on any Europol or Interpol register. Making up for his previous day’s ignorance the police commissioner said there were only two women with child sex convictions – both with boys, not girls – and neither bore any resemblance to the computer pictures. Both had witness-supported alibis for the day and time Mary Beth McBride had been snatched: one had been in Ghent, visiting a sick mother, the other at a hairdressing salon where she was well known. Both had nevertheless been detained for an identification parade that afternoon that both Johan Rompuy and Rene Lunckner had agreed to attend.

There was nothing for Claudine to contribute. Although John Norris was saying nothing, either, there was more animation about the man: having so studiously ignored her the previous day he now appeared almost anxious to catch her eye, twice openly smiling. It was, Claudine decided, typical of the mood swings recorded against the severe obsessional condition from which she suspected Norris to be suffering. Claudine was anxious for Sanglier’s promised arrival that afternoon. She’d been circumspect on the police headquarters telephone but she’d ensured Sanglier understood the importance of coming direct from Menen to Brussels instead of returning to The Hague. By tonight, after the scheduled five o’clock embassy meeting with McBride, the problem with John Norris should be all over. It had been an unnecessary distraction but it had not interfered with what they were there to achieve. Claudine was dissatisfied. She’d drawn every conclusion she could from what evidence there was, which could practically be fitted on to a pinhead with room to spare for a football match with spectators. Until there was further contact there was absolutely nothing more she could think of doing. And if that contact was still by e-mail she was not certain there would be anything to add to the profile she’d already created. Their continued hope would have to be that Volker’s pursuit would be more successful the next time.

In rare and unsettling self-doubt Claudine wondered if she had been right to guide the ambassador’s public responses as she had. She was sure the messages conveyed disagreement among those holding the child, from which it logically followed one faction dominated the other. And if domination of any sort was a factor, which was a psychologically accepted characteristic of any kidnap, whether sexually initiated or not, then it was right initially to accede to it. But she’d always resisted obedience to supposedly rigid rules in something as inexact as psychology, which as a medical science remained as unexplored as life in outer space.

One eroding doubt created another. Could she be so sure that no contact within twenty-four hours – not twenty-four any longer, little more than twelve – almost certainly meant that Mary Beth was dead? Claudine still thought so. She didn’t want to – it was, she accepted, the subconscious reason for her self-questioning – but after so long without a positive ransom demand, it had to be the strongest possibility. And if Mary Beth was dead, Claudine acknowledged that she’d failed. Others might not think it – Hillary certainly wouldn’t – but Claudine knew it would be so. Which brought her (know thyself! know thyself!) to the very nub of her problem: her reason for reflecting as she now did.

As she’d stood in numbed horror in the doorway of their London home, looking at Warwick’s lifeless body slowly turning from his suicide rope, Claudine had determined never again to fail in a mental analysis, as she’d failed to realize until it was too late her work-stressed husband’s condition. Now she faced failure again but fought against accepting it, as she had before. Things hadn’t fallen out as she’d expected. To allow herself to think as she was thinking at that moment was to panic without cause. A fault she would be the first to criticize in anyone else: a fault that would endanger the child she had to save, if saving her was any longer possible.

Throughout the self-examination Claudine had, as always, remained aware of the justifying discussion continuing all around and was not caught out when it settled upon her. Her surprise, in fact, was that of all people the question came from Jean Smet, further establishing himself as the unelected but so far unquestioned coordinator of their daily, largely unproductive information-sharing. She saw no reason to question it either: someone had to coordinate.

‘Anything you’d like to add?’ asked the Belgian. He was getting the same satisfaction as on the previous day, enjoying himself.

‘I think we should now start to consider bringing them to us,’ announced Claudine, her mind filled with her most recent thoughts.

The concentration upon her was immediate. Smet said: ‘Yesterday you said we should wait.’

‘Not indefinitely,’ qualified Claudine, wishing she’d earlier expressed herself more fully: wishing she’d thought about it more fully, earlier. ‘If there’s nothing by the end of the day, we should change our attitude.’

‘To what?’ demanded Smet.

‘To challenging,’ said Claudine.

‘I thought it was wrong to be confrontational?’ frowned Blake.

‘Initially,’ explained Claudine. ‘We’ve gone past that time now. We’ve got to face down the arrogance: tilt the balance away from them, towards us.’

‘After today?’ pressed Harding.

‘Yes,’ agreed Claudine, guessing from the emphasis it was only half the question. She was conscious of Norris openly smiling, his head going back and forth between her and those questioning her.

‘By which time it’s more than likely she’ll be dead?’ the American finished.

Claudine said: ‘We’ve got to accept that as the strongest possibility. But obviously we’ve got to go on acting in the belief that she’s still alive.’

‘She is,’ asserted John Norris suddenly. And by the end of the day he knew he was going to prove it. He was going to get her back, as well as discovering from James McBride what his corporation’s documented business dealings had been with the indicted Luigi della Sialvo three months before Saddam Hussein’s incursion into Kuwait.

‘I hope you’re right,’ said Smet. There had to be a secret agenda to which this man was working. That was the only possible reason for the American’s inexplicable but obvious uninterest – practically non-participation – in these sessions, empty though most of them were. Another uncertainty he wouldn’t have to worry about after tonight. He wanted Mary Beth dumped as far away as possible and believed he knew how that could be done, too. Gaston Mehre had demanded that others in the group dispose of her, but there was still the body of the Romanian rent boy in the cellar of his antique shop. Which was very much the brothers’ problem, no one else’s. Definitely not his. In their eagerness to avoid becoming physically involved the others would back his insistence that Charles and Gaston get rid of the girl as well as the boy at the same time and in the same place.

‘Something else I may be able to judge from whatever response I can generate,’ said Claudine. Now she was speaking in the first person, ignoring Norris, she realized.

‘You’re surely not thinking of the ambassador again?’ said Burt Harrison, coming into the discussion.

‘Not directly,’ said Claudine. ‘He – they – are just the route. From now on I want them to focus on me.’

She had arranged to meet Henri Sanglier at the Metropole hotel to show him the two listening devices before he went to James McBride, and Claudine had expected Blake to return there with her. But as they broke up Blake said that although it would almost certainly be unproductive he thought he should attend the identification parade including the two convicted women sex offenders.

‘And Harding says there’s something he wants to talk to me about.’

John Norris was tight with excitement, his overriding feeling oddly one of relief that he was at last going to achieve so much in such a short time. He didn’t have the slightest doubt that it would all fall into place precisely as he’d planned it would. That was all it needed, precise and detailed planning, and Norris had all that in order: all the sessions spaced out according to their priority, all the evidence assembled, memorized and ready to be presented. The ambassador first, then the Carter woman. The Iceman myth was going to be well and truly established after today.

During the drive back to the embassy Norris waited, testingly, for the chief of mission to refer to his impending appointment with the ambassador but Burt Harrison said nothing, which Norris regarded as important. McBride obviously hadn’t mentioned it, anxious to contain things between the two of them. A further indicator, Norris decided, to go with the familiar uncertainty he’d detected in McBride’s voice when the ambassador had agreed to see him, that hesitant intonation of nervous guilt he’d heard a thousand times and never once been wrong about.

There was still time to spare when they got back to the embassy and Norris went first to the FBI office, determined everything should be ready there. He carelessly cleared Harding’s desk, with only one exception, opening and filling drawers at random until all that remained on its top was an unmarked blotter, a multi-lined telephone and the overnight Washington dossier he intended carrying intimidatingly into his confrontation with the ambassador. The exception was the top right-hand drawer of Harding’s desk, which Norris withdrew and closed several times to ensure its smoothness before installing its unaccustomed contents, the tape recorder uppermost. His final act, before leaving the room, was to position a single chair directly opposite the one he would occupy on the far side of the desk.

James McBride was alone, stiffly upright and blank-faced behind his overpowering desk, which by comparison with the one Norris had just left was cluttered with papers and files and documents. Norris at once identified the ploy, the workplace of a busy man with little time to spare. It was all so predictable, like a soap opera script.

‘What is it you want me to do?’ demanded McBride briskly.

Clever, conceded Norris: predictable again but still clever. ‘I’d like you to help me about certain things.’ Abruptly there was the briefest sweep of dizziness, gone as quickly as it had come.

‘Harrison’s just told me there were no real developments this morning?’

‘It’s not about your daughter.’ This was what he’d always liked best, the thrust and parry of interrogation. He had it all marshalled in his mind, dates and times ready for any challenge or evasion. He felt very hot: probably the reason for the dizziness.

‘Mr Norris,’ said McBride, with threatening condescension. ‘As well as being a very busy man I’m also a very worried one. There is, in fact, only one concern on my mind at the moment and only one thing I want to talk to you about. And that’s Mary Beth: our only necessary point of contact. I’ll give you all the time you want if it’s to do with her. But if it isn’t I’m going to have to ask you to let me get on with being an ambassador.’

Time to kick the struts away, to bring everything crashing down. ‘Can you tell me about Luigi della Sialvo?’

The question was like a physical blow, low in the stomach: McBride actually came close to feeling breathless. ‘Who?’

‘Don’t you know a Luigi della Sialvo?’

He’d already said he was too busy to discuss anything but Mary Beth, so he could demand the man leave. But if he did that he wouldn’t learn just how much Norris – or the FBI back home – knew. ‘I don’t recognize the name. Who is he? What’s this about?’

That wasn’t right: not the reaction it should have been. McBride should have been more unsteady when the name was thrown at him. It was important to keep up the pressure. He went to speak but then didn’t, his mind suddenly thick, as if it was filled with mush. Forcing himself, he said: ‘Illegal arms dealing.’

McBride told himself not to panic; not to betray any awareness. Not yet. He had to wait for the accusation: demand the proof. Even then he could deny knowing the man, pleading the passage of time. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘Luigi della Sialvo is currently under Grand Jury indictment on five counts of illegal arms dealing with the regime of Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War. A fugitive, in fact.’ That was better. Clear-headed again. Everything assembled in his mind.

Fugitive! McBride seized on the word. Not under arrest, likely to horse-trade or plea-bargain, spilling his guts for a lenient sentence. The sensation of breathlessness began to recede. ‘All my stock is in a blind trust escrow account, but I would have been informed of any investigation into my former corporation…’

Norris had wanted a definite sign by now: the twitching shiftiness that always came just before a collapse. ‘Your own records show your corporation actively traded with Luigi della Sialvo five months prior to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.’ Was it five or seven? The dates he’d wanted to be so pedantic about, showing he knew everything, wouldn’t come. ‘Two deals worth about…’ Norris’s mind blanked again, stranding him ‘… worth many millions of dollars.’

It was right that he should show total shock, decided McBride: appear to be momentarily unable to respond. When he did speak it was loudly, in furious indignation. ‘Are you accusing me – executives in my corporation – of illegal arms dealings? Telling me my companies are under investigation?’

The response came half formed in Norris’s mind, then slipped away again. ‘No accusation… just asking about a man currently under indictment. There isn’t an investigation yet.’

Yet, thought McBride. It was a fishing expedition: the bastard was looking for a confession! ‘On whose authority or instructions did you request this meeting?’

‘I am ranked as a senior field executive of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a deputy division director. I have sufficient personal authority.’ That was better: thinking properly again. He wished the muzziness would stop coming and going: that it wasn’t so hot in the room.

The man had left himself wide open, thought McBride. So which course should he take? Outraged, ambassadorial-level dismissal, or the astonished disbelief of an innocent man at a horrifying possibility of embarrassment? He’d learn more playing the innocent. ‘Which company is named in the indictments against this man?’

Norris couldn’t remember! One moment he had the name, the next it had gone, his head thick. Not mush; as if it was filled with cotton waste. ‘Lextop,’ he finally managed.

‘Lestrop,’ corrected McBride, curious at the mistake. It was a passing thought, replaced in a moment. So this was the unspecified rumour that was causing the Lestrop stock to slide: where della Sialvo had gone after he’d told the Italian to go fuck himself! It still didn’t help McBride gauge the danger he faced.

‘That’s it, Lestrop,’ accepted Norris gratefully. This wasn’t going at all as it should have done: how he’d planned it. By now McBride should have broken, made a mistake he could have picked up and used to trap the man into making more. It was so difficult, keeping things straight and in the order he intended. He didn’t want at this late stage actually to consult the Washington dossier but he couldn’t afford another mistake. At once came the contradiction. The file was intimidatingly thick. Consulting it now might convince McBride it contained more about him than it really did. He dropped one of the indictments taking them out of the folder and had to grope awkwardly under his chair to retrieve it. ‘There’s an international arrest warrant out against della Sialvo. He’s thought to be somewhere here, in Europe.’

Where he’d be relatively safe and able to operate, McBride knew: international arrest warrants were notoriously difficult to enforce, particularly in countries with different legal systems. He would have known of an active investigation: it would have been inevitable. ‘How did Washington discover the trading with my company?’

Norris realized the ambassador was questioning him, not the other way round as it should have been. Had to get the order reversed: get everything back on track. It was difficult to keep the loose papers from sliding off his lap, the facts from slipping out of his mind. ‘I asked for an in-depth examination, checking for enemies you might have made. I mentioned the possibility, remember?’

So it wasn’t yet properly official, a Washington operation. There never had been any secret about the two deals he’d done with della Sialvo. They were totally legal, a matter of public record, apart from the Zurich bank commission payments and that was a problem for Sialvo’s native Italy, not the United States. And the Italian was free and likely to remain so. McBride was glad he’d played the innocent. It made the rest of the meeting easy. He said: ‘This is potentially very worrying.’

Here it comes, thought Norris triumphantly: it had taken longer than he’d expected – he’d begun to feel uneasy, which was ridiculous – but the first trickle had just seeped through the breach in the dam. It would come in a tidal wave now. It always did. ‘The more you can tell me the better it will be.’

‘Quite so.’ MrBride’s mind veered sideways, off on a sharp tangent. Thank God there’d been the confrontation at the beginning, taking the negotiations for Mary Beth’s freedom away from this bumbling, almost incoherent idiot! When it was all over – when Mary was safely back – he’d have the FBI Director’s ass for sending someone like Norris.

‘I always think it’s best… what I prefer… what I’d like us to do would be to set it out chronologically, from the very beginning,’ said Norris.

‘The Gulf War was a long time ago. Seven, eight years.’

‘There’s no hurry. Your own time.’ He’d won, beaten an ambassador friend of the President!

There wasn’t any purpose in prolonging this charade: it was almost cruel, like a cat taunting a captured mouse. ‘I don’t have any official position in the corporation any more but obviously in the circumstances the board will do as I ask. I’ll send them a very full explanation, immediately. Ask them to cooperate in every way with the Bureau. And advise your Director, of course: send both sides copies of what I’ve told the other. And tell State and the President.’

Norris sat staring at the other man, his mind wiped clean once more. ‘No,’ he said dully.

‘No what?’ McBride frowned.

‘I want you, now… to tell me, now. It’s my case.’

‘There’s nothing to tell you. After so long I can’t remember anyone named Luigi della Sialvo but if he’s an indicted criminal… a fugitive from American justice… then quite obviously my former colleagues have to cooperate in every way they can… as I will if it turns out that I dealt with him personally…’ McBride rose, ending the encounter. ‘You’re to be congratulated for digging deep enough to find this, Mr Norris.’

Norris rose, without any positive intention of doing so, and papers cascaded on to the floor. He had to kneel to pick them up. Still kneeling he said to the other man: ‘Please. Tell me!’

‘I’ve told you, there’s nothing I can help you with at the moment,’ McBride said. ‘It’s too long ago. But your people in Washington will get every help: I guarantee it.’ He came round the monstrous desk to put his hand on Norris’s shoulder, physically urging the man from the study.

In her room at the Metropole, Claudine was disconcerted when the telephone rang. She stared at it for several moments, unwilling to pick it up. It wouldn’t be Hugo. She’d spoken to him much earlier, from the security of the Belgian police headquarters, explaining how – and why – it had been difficult for her the previous night. It was far more likely to be Peter Blake.

‘Something important has come up,’ said Norris, when she finally lifted the receiver. ‘Can you come down here to the embassy?’

‘What is it?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it on the phone.’

Claudine hesitated. Henri Sanglier still hadn’t arrived and the American embassy was where they were going anyway: she could leave a message for Peter to show Sanglier the devices. ‘I’ll be there in half an hour.’

The embassy’s rezidentura – the quarters of the CIA and the FBI – was far away both in distance and appearance from the lavish ambassadorial officialdom Claudine had seen on her first visit, a series of identical, box-like rectangles, four of which now formed part of the emergency communications centre. Those of Rampling and Harding were at the very rear of the complex, slightly larger than the rest to designate their local status of controller, but each restricted by only one door and no windows to outside light. Rampling saw Claudine as she was escorted past and waved but she didn’t see him. To Robert Ritchie, who was with him, Rampling said: ‘You know something I don’t?’

‘I don’t know nothing,’ said Ritchie. ‘It’s called staying alive.’

Norris checked his watch as she entered Harding’s clear-desked room and Claudine at once registered both signs. Excessive cleanliness and rigid conformity, particularly to time, were both features of severe obsession: she had, in fact, made the journey within the promised thirty minutes but she should have avoided the self-imposed stipulation. She was aware of the brief frown when the indicated chair scraped slightly sideways as she sat. There was a sheen of sweat on the man’s sallow face and unusually his jacket was open.

The chair movement wasn’t sufficient to cause a problem, Norris decided. The microphone he’d fed round the desk, taping out of sight beneath its rim the lead to the recorder in the right-hand drawer, was sensitive enough to pick up everything she said.

‘So,’ began Claudine enthusiastically. ‘What’s the big mystery you couldn’t tell me on the phone?’ She’d had misgivings on the way there: not so much misgivings as belated curiosity. The arrangement was for Jean Smet to bring them together if there was a development: Norris, in fact, was the last person who should have done it. But in the man’s mental state there could be a dozen explanations: she hoped at least one of them was useful.

Norris declared: ‘Technically this embassy is American property.’ He was quite sure of the technique to use with her: hit her hard, without giving her any room for manoeuvre.

She’d made a mistake, Claudine knew at once. She said: ‘I know, John. We went through the question of jurisdiction at the beginning, didn’t we?’

‘So you’re in America.’ She had to realize how trapped she was.

‘Listen to me,’ urged Claudine gently. ‘You telephoned me at the hotel. Asked me to come here because you had something to tell me. What was it you wanted to tell me?’

‘That!’ insisted the man irritably. ‘That you’re subject to American law because you’re in America.’ Why was she being so stupid!

She could walk out, Claudine supposed: leave the embassy and get back to the hotel before Sanglier and Blake. She felt a sweep of embarrassment. No one would be able to understand her coming here like this: she couldn’t understand it now. He was a sick man, she reminded herself: a sick man who was going to be confronted very soon with the demand that he be removed from the investigation. She wouldn’t walk away from a sick man. She said: ‘There isn’t anything, is there? Nothing you needed to tell me about the case?’

‘I know,’ Norris announced. He had to maintain the pressure, constantly keep her on edge.

‘What do you know, John? Tell me. Let’s talk about it.’ This wasn’t any sort of treatment – it couldn’t be – but there would be an element of paranoia, his confused mind overcrowded with disjointed delusions, and if she could coax some of them out she might, temporarily, ease his burden.

‘Why don’t you tell me?’ He wasn’t going to lose control, as he’d lost control with the ambassador: find himself answering questions instead of asking them. Couldn’t understand how that had happened. A trick. Wouldn’t do McBride any good.

‘What do you want me to tell you?’

She was giving up! Far easier – far quicker – than he’d expected. But it happened sometimes. You could never tell. ‘All of it. How you managed to get in, on the inside. Where she is, so I can get her out. Everything.’

Claudine felt the first pop of unease, deep in the pit of her stomach. The moment of collapse at the highest point of tension, she thought. ‘We’ve got to work together, John. Help each other. I want to help you and I know you’ll help me.’

‘Just do as I ask. Tell me where Mary Beth is. She’s been missing for too long. I’ve got to get her back.’ Why couldn’t she understand!

Claudine knew she had to establish a central thread, something he could recognize and hold on to. ‘We’re trying to find Mary Beth together.’

She was trying to trick him! The muzziness, the cotton waste feeling, was coming back. And it was hot again. It was the artificial light that had to be on all the time. There should be air conditioning somewhere. Too late to look for it now. ‘You know where she is… who they are…’

‘I don’t.’

‘You do!’ Norris grabbed sideways, for the other item he’d carefully installed in the top right-hand drawer alongside the tape recorder: not the new-issue 9mm that a lot in the Bureau carried because of its stopping power but the Smith and Wesson he’d always preferred. He saw the fear in her eyes when he brought it out and laid it on the table between them, keeping his hand on the butt. ‘If you don’t tell me you’ll be obstructing a federal officer in pursuit of his duties and I am legally authorized, in the United States of America in which at this moment we both technically are, to use whatever force is necessary to make you comply with my requests.’ He brought the weapon up, pointing it directly at her. ‘So, answer my question.’ He had thought he wasn’t going to get through the formal warning – twice he’d almost lost it – but he had. The warmth was satisfaction now, a feeling of complete power. He was legally authoritzed to shoot to kill if she tried to escape. He’d only wound her: put a round in her arm, to break it. Prove he wasn’t making empty threats. He wanted very much to fire the gun: feel the kick and hear the explosion. ‘I’m waiting…’

Five streets away Robert Ritchie shouldered his way into the familiarly crowded bar on the rue Guimard, checking himself at the unexpected sight of the Englishman at the same table as Harding and McCulloch. He realized at once that they’d seen him so he had to continue, saying ‘Hi’ and glad-handing as he made his way through the crush.

Ritchie didn’t say anything when he reached their table. McCulloch said: ‘He’d already found the wire: both of them. And made you, the first night. I always said you were shit at surveillance. Their commissioner’s coming in this afternoon to stop the whole fucking nonsense.’

‘She’s with Norris at the embassy now,’ disclosed Ritchie. ‘I checked the transcript. He called her room, just over an hour ago: said something had come up that was too important to tell her over the phone.’

‘Nothing has come up,’ said Blake.

She had to bring him back from the edge, give him the thread. Her life hung upon her being able to open whatever door there might be to what remained of his rational, reasoning mind. If nothing did remain, then it was almost inevitable he would shoot her. From a metre away, he couldn’t miss. ‘We were supposed to work as a team, you and I.’

‘Inveigled yourself in, so they’d know everything we were doing, right?’

It would be a mistake to pander to the delusion, letting it grow. ‘I’m not involved with those who’ve got Mary Beth. I couldn’t be.’

‘No one saw it but me.’

He was closed off against her. ‘What did you see?’

‘You getting inside. Knowing everything we were doing.’

‘It made you angry, didn’t it, my replacing you?’

Trying to change the order, making him answer questions again. ‘Didn’t replace me. Thought you did but you didn’t. I’m still in charge.’

Why wasn’t she frightened when a gun was being held unwaveringly on her from point blank range? There were feelings – anger at being tricked, frustration at not being able to reach him mentally – but no actual gut-dropping fear. She isolated the pride – the boastfulness – in the man’s remark, wondering if it might be the chink she was seeking. There was the sudden flurry of movement behind her, obviously from the only door. She didn’t turn.

‘John!’ said a voice she recognized as Harding’s. ‘What’s the problem here, John?’

‘No problem: sorting everything out,’ said Norris, his eyes flicking over Claudine’s shoulder. ‘No need for you here: no need for any of you. Get out!’ The gun came up towards her.

‘We don’t need the gun, John. Let’s put the gun down, OK?’

‘Get out!’

‘Do as he says,’ insisted Claudine, still not turning.

‘John, I tell you what I’m going to do,’ said Harding. ‘I’m going to come on in here. Help things along a little.’ There was a nervous laugh. ‘It’s my office, for Christ’s sake! Guy’s gotta be able to get into his own office.’

‘Don’t need help!’ shouted Norris, his voice cracking. ‘My case. I’ll bring it in.’ The gun abruptly shook, in his fury.

‘OK! OK!’ said Harding urgently. ‘Everything’s down to you.’

There was renewed sound from behind and Claudine guessed more people had arrived. She heard McBride say: ‘Norris! John! This is the ambassador. You hearing me?’

‘Of course I’m hearing you.’ He wasn’t looking away from Claudine now.

‘What’s going on here?’

‘Getting your daughter back, sir. That’s what I was sent here to do.’ The gun wavered up and down, gesturing to Claudine. ‘She knows where Mary is. She’s going to tell me.’

‘Good man,’ said McBride. ‘Well done. I want you to put the gun down and we’ll take Dr Carter back to my office and she can tell me herself. Then I’m going to cable your Director just how damned well you did on this.’

‘She’s got to tell me, no one else!’ Norris’s thumb moved, visibly, flicking off the safety catch.

At the doorway McBride whispered to Harding: ‘Could you hit him from here? Disable him?’

‘He’s half hidden by her. He’d know what I was trying to do – see my gun – if I moved along the inside wall for a full shot,’ replied Harding, soft-voiced. ‘Oh shit!’

‘I could hit him,’ offered Blake. ‘But his reflex would be to pull his own trigger. He couldn’t miss her.’

Claudine, unaware of the import of the hushed conversation, said loudly; ‘Please be quiet, everyone. Let us alone.’

‘Yes,’ said Norris distantly. ‘That’s what I want, everyone to be quiet. Everyone except her.’ He was confused by so many people. He was pleased that McBride, all of them, were going to witness how good he was: be taught how to interrogate a felon properly. But he’d lost his concentration. Couldn’t think how to pick up the questioning. The gun felt suddenly heavy. He couldn’t remember why he’d pulled the weapon. Had she pulled hers, to challenge him? Couldn’t see it. To frighten her, he remembered. That was it, to frightened her!

Claudine could detect the rustle of movement behind her but no one was speaking. It was important that they didn’t. She didn’t want any more anger: didn’t want him to lose what little self-control, if any, was left. He was fixated on her involvement, so she couldn’t positively confront him; that would make him angry, too. And he’d defied the ambassador, the ultimate authority: the sort of authority to which he’d always deferred in the past. So there was an absolute refusal any longer to acknowledge anyone as his superior, either officially or professionally. It made his paranoia, his delusion, absolute, and him a totally dangerous man, clinically a psychopath: a psychopath sitting a metre away pointing at her a gun with the safety catch off. What was her entry to someone who believed himself above all others? She’s got to tell me, no one else, she remembered: not the ambassador, or his Director in Washington. Only John Norris, God-like among the little people. So he was the entry. The only way to get through to John Norris was through John Norris, the one person he’d listen to: the only person whose opinion made any sense to him. Extremely careful to infuse admiration and to make it a statement, not a question, she said: ‘You must feel very satisfied, holding me here like this.’

‘I haven’t got her back yet.’

No, thought Claudine, anxiously: Mary Beth mustn’t come into the conversation. ‘I feel very inadequate.’

‘You were. Are.’ Norris shook his head, against the thickness. The gun rattled against the desk top. Everyone stiffened.

There was no way of guessing how long it would be before Norris completely collapsed. It wouldn’t be long. Stressing the admiration even more, she said: ‘And you’re the master.’

She was helpless: admitting it. And those at the door were quiet now, attentive like his audiences at Quantico: attentive and respectful. ‘You were careless, taking calls at the hotel about Rome and saying how worried you were about me.’

There was an opening! She risked a question at last. ‘Is that the way, trusting no one?’

He smiled, first to Claudine and then to the men behind her: lecturing was always satisfying. ‘I always know a lie. Can find guilt.’

Claudine hadn’t wanted to put another question until she was surer but she didn’t have a choice. ‘How can you decide who to trust?’ Norris had been responding with reasonable coherence, not taking too long to reply, but now he hesitated, frowning, and Claudine thought, Dear God, don’t let him slip away: don’t let me lose him. She didn’t think she’d get him back even to this uncertain rationality if he drifted away.

‘We check everything, don’t we?’ he said, his face clearing, his voice even.

She was there! She’d got past the mental barriers to what was left of his reasoning mind. She couldn’t guess how long it would last, but for the moment she was through.

‘So you had me checked out?’

He looked at the gun he still loosely held, then at the unseen people behind her, and Claudine decided the frowning was not his mental confusion but his inability to understand what everyone was doing there: most of all what he was doing there.

‘So you had me checked out?’ she repeated.

‘I’m sorry. I…’

‘It was a First I got at the Sorbonne, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ he said doubtfully.

It had to start coming from him: it had to be his realization. ‘What about London?’

‘First choice criminal psychologist at the Home Office.’ He was knuckling his eyes with his free hand, looking again at the people behind her, and Claudine wondered if McBride was still there.

How much more time did she have? ‘Your Bureau helped set up our Behavioural Division at Europol.’

‘I know. Guy called Scott Burrows was seconded… What’s this all about…? I don’t understand?’

Claudine snatched at the long sleeve of her dress, baring her left arm and holding it towards the man. The scar from the attempted assassination was still livid and wide, not because of bad surgery but because it had been a professional attempt and the knife had been smeared with excreta to infect the wound, which it had. ‘You know how I got this!’

The man actually started back, as if he were frightened of the ugliness. ‘A hit. A previous case.’

She couldn’t risk going any further. Norris had held out far longer and far better than she could have hoped. ‘You know all that to be true, don’t you, John?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘Who do I work for?’

A wariness flicked across his face.

‘Who do I work for?’ persisted Claudine. For God’s sake don’t let there be any intervention from behind.

Norris said: ‘Europol… I think…’

‘John, concentrate!’ demanded Claudine. ‘I work for Europol, don’t I?’

‘Yes.’

‘I couldn’t have inveigled my way into this investigation, could I?’

The eyes began to glaze, the grip on the gun tightening. ‘Don’t trick-’

‘It’s not a trick, John! Hold on! Concentrate! You’ve made a mistake, because you’re not well. You’ve become ill but we’re all going to help you get better.’

‘Gotta get the kid back…’

‘We’re going to do that. You’ve got to get better. Go back to America and get some treatment.’

There was a sudden burst of redness to Norris’s face and his body tensed and Claudine guessed he was making a superhuman attempt to stop his mind clouding once more. Through clamped-together lips he managed: ‘What?’

‘Obsession,’ said Claudine. ‘That’s what I think it is, severe obsession. Developed into a psychosis. But it’s treatable: you know it’s treatable.’

‘What have I done?’ The words groaned out of him. He was staring down at the gun.

‘Nothing! There were some misunderstandings, that’s all. No harm.’

‘I was sent personally by the Director. The President knows… The investigation…’

‘You didn’t affect the investigation.’

Norris looked up at her with quick, bright-eyed clarity, the stiffness easing from his body. ‘I don’t want to be psychopathic’

‘You know it can be treated.’

‘I’ll have to leave the Bureau.’

‘You won’t,’ lied Claudine.

‘I’m sorry… for whatever…’ It was becoming difficult for him to understand: one minute clear, one minute fog. ‘You were part… no, sorry… disgraced the Bureau…’

Claudine detected the movement before the man actually began it, guessing it was safe to move herself. She said: ‘Let me have the gun, John,’ and started forward across the desk and then became properly aware of what he was doing and yelled: ‘NO! DON’T!’ but the barrel was already in his mouth.

She wasn’t actually aware of the sound although there must have been one. In front of her Norris’s face and head disintegrated in an enormous, gushing burst of red and because she was so close, her hand actually but too late upon his wrist, Claudine was engulfed in the gore.

‘By myself?’

‘Yes,’ said Gaston Mehre.

‘Felicite said I wasn’t to go there,’ said Charles.

‘It’s changed.’

‘Does Felicite know?’

‘Yes.’

‘I won’t hurt her.’

‘You can.’

‘But I won’t this time. Felicite was angry with me. Shouted.’

‘She’s changed her mind. She wants you to do what I tell you.’

‘Why?’

‘That’s what Felicite wants.’

‘What do you want?’

‘The same. It’s what we all want.’

‘You’re very good to me,’ said Charles. ‘You all are.’

‘You’ve got to go on doing what we tell you, though,’ warned Gaston. ‘You know that, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you know what we want you to do now?’

‘Yes.’

‘You sure?’

‘Yes. And thank you.’

‘Go and do it then.’