The Predators

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Claudine proposed the office bugging idea but didn’t take part in its implementation, not wanting the slightest suspicion from Smet at her unnecessary presence. Equally objective, although with less enthusiasm than on the previous evening, Henri Sanglier accepted he had to head the delegation as well as impose his authority upon Jean Smet to gain the personal meeting with the Justice Minister immediately after that morning’s planning session, hopefully using the approach to unsettle the lawyer further by refusing to give a reason for the request. Burt Harrison was the obvious US diplomatic counterpart, just as Paul Harding balanced the inclusion of Peter Blake. Duncan McCulloch, with more recent home-based training, went through the basic practicalities with the FBI chief. Harding insisted they weren’t to worry, it would be a piece of cake, and McCulloch wondered by how many years the expression dated the older man.

Claudine did, obviously, attend the regular morning review and exaggerated the analysis of the previous afternoon’s conversation with Felicite, insisting it showed the woman terrified of the confrontation – ‘she’s running away from me’ – and clearly at a loss how to conceive a ransom exchange. Andre Poncellet reacted with the anticipated eagerness to Harding’s suggestion that the available and unemployed FBI and CIA personnel should supplement the mobile phone inquiry within Belgacom.

Smet maintained the reserve of the previous day during the meeting but forcefully bustled into the car with Sanglier and Blake for the trip to the ministry, making Poncellet take the second vehicle with Harding. Before the lead car cleared the forecourt Smet asked openly if there was a reason of which he was unaware for the unexpected request to meet Miet Ulieff (‘I need to know, in case he wants some legal advice’) and when Sanglier remained non-committal made more than one convoluted attempt to get an indication from Blake. Throughout the short trip the lawyer sat with his sagging briefcase clamped between his legs, the way, Blake noted for the first time, that he’d held it at the earlier briefing.

They were swept up to Ulieff’s ornate, rococo-style suite where the greying, urbane man waited surrounded by a retinue of officials, only some of whom – his immediate deputy and the chief public prosecutor – were introduced. Again Smet ingratiated himself into the lead group. He put the briefcase less obviously beside the chair in which he sat, only one place away from Ulieff.

This was, Sanglier supposed, the sort of event to which he had in the near future to become accustomed, a totally pointless charade of high political officials making the pretence of personally contributing to affairs of great importance which underlings were resolving. There was an obligatory photocall of Sanglier and Ulieff shaking hands for the cameras in apparent serious-faced discussion. Before the media were excluded Sanglier responded impromptu to a shouted question that the meeting was to discuss important developments which at that stage couldn’t be publicly disclosed.

As soon as the media left Sanglier announced that he’d wanted to meet Ulieff – and welcomed the inclusion of so many unexpected officials – formally to express on behalf of Europol their gratitude for the total Belgian cooperation at every level in the investigation. Knowing Smet would not yet have had time to brief Ulieff on the mobile telephone discovery he used that to explain his important development remark to the journalist. It was, Sanglier added, the first of what he confidently expected to be many more.

Sanglier listened to himself mouthing the empty words, actually impressed with how he sounded: while he probably needed to become accustomed to such occasions he hardly needed to be any more adept. Following the unwritten script, the moment Sanglier finished the Belgian officials asked their prepared questions – usually one apiece, although Ulieff allowed himself three – to which the answers either had just been given by Sanglier or were already available to them on the daily records. When the questioning concluded Burt Harrison echoed Sanglier’s official thanks on behalf of the United States of America and Ulieff suggested they all adjourn to a larger, adjoining chamber for a reception.

Smet followed, for the first time made too awkward by the briefcase to remain close to where the minister, his deputy and Sanglier were grouped. The man did his best, standing by the very end of the table upon which the drinks were stacked. He took mineral water.

Blake and Harding joined him together. Both chose whisky.

‘Little point at all in that!’ complained the lawyer.

There hadn’t been. The hope had been to get into Smet’s office in advance of the formal gathering and somehow separate the man from his briefcase as well as plant a device within the telephone. It left them with only one final option.

‘Bullshit protocol,’ agreed the disappointed Harding. ‘Greases the wheels of government.’

‘I warned you it would be a waste of time,’ Blake said. Close up he saw Smet was sweating.

‘I don’t see that we’re making much progress at all,’ invited Smet encouragingly.

Blake accepted two more whiskies, handing one to the American. To Smet he said: ‘How about you?’

‘I don’t drink during working hours,’ replied the Belgian, holding up his water glass. ‘I said I don’t see that we’re making much progress.’

‘I know more about the woman than I do my own mother,’ said Harding. ‘And Claudine knows ten times more than me: she’s really inside the bitch’s mind. Claudine will get her. I’ll put my pension on it.’ He hadn’t thought much about his pension lately. He certainly wasn’t worried about it any more.

‘If I was part of her group I’d be shitting myself,’ said Blake, maintaining the pressure.

‘Me and you both,’ agreed Harding.

There was movement from further along the table as the reception began to break up. Sanglier gestured that he was leaving with Ulieff and Poncellet. The detective and the FBI man moved when Smet did, crowding into the same elevator.

‘See you this afternoon,’ said Smet, getting off at the minister’s secretariat level on the second floor.

The two men continued to the ground floor, unspeaking, pressed the ascend button the moment everyone else got off and were back at the second floor in less than a minute. There was a central secretarial pool directly ahead of them, with personal assistants and secretaries separated by a low, wood-slatted barrier. Beyond them were the offices of Ulieff s immediate staff, their names inscribed on each door. Smet’s was facing them.

They strode briskly forward, smiling and calling greetings to the outer circle clerks who took their conference records and reached the gated barrier before anyone began to wonder at their presence. A woman started to stand protectively as they went through. Harding smiled and gestured and said: ‘Changed our mind about Jean,’ to convey an impression they were expected and physically blocked her way so that Blake could knock on Smet’s door and enter at the same time.

Smet was behind his desk, about to sit. There was no sign of the briefcase. He looked visibly frightened at their entry and said: ‘What the…!’ before fully recognizing them.

‘Hi!’ said Harding cheerfully. ‘We’ve had a great idea!’

‘All we’ve done is meet round a conference table,’ added Blake. ‘Let’s lunch.’

Smet seemed to need the chair. He lowered himself swallowing heavily, giving a dismissive gesture to the hapless secretary in the doorway. He forced a smile. ‘I can’t possibly. The minister expects a report on this morning’s meeting.’

‘He just got it from Sanglier,’ said the American, leaning forward invitingly over the man’s desk. ‘Take a break. We deserve it.’

‘Maybe another time. I’ve got other things to keep up to date with, as well as the kidnap.’

‘You sure you can’t make it?’ pressed Harding. ‘We’ve got pagers: they could get us at once if anything breaks.’

Smet had recovered. ‘No. Thank you, but no.’

‘Our guests,’ insisted Harding.

‘No.’

‘OK then,’ said Harding. ‘Another time.’

‘Until this afternoon,’ said Blake, at the door.

In the car Harding said: ‘There’s a great little restaurant on the Avenue Adolphe Buyl.’

‘Sounds good,’ said Blake. ‘Pity the whole thing didn’t work out. The briefcase particularly.’

‘We’ve got something into his office. It’s better than nothing.’

‘Where did you put it?’

‘Under the desk edge when I leaned forward the first time. As near as I could to the telephones.’

‘There was what looked like an individual private line, next to the multi-extension bank.’

‘That’s the one I got closest to.’

It had been premature to celebrate installing a bug in Jean Smet’s office. They learned from the two relevant calls among a lot of extraneous inter-office communication not to expect contact that day from Felicite, and while that allayed the apprehension there would otherwise have been Claudine thought that only to be able to hear Smet’s side of a conversation was almost worse man not being able to listen to anything at all.

Felicite’s was the first and obviously complaining call, Smet apologizing at once for being kept from his office by Ulieff’s reception when she’d first called. There was a comprehensive account of that morning’s briefing, an apparent agreement that the investigation was stalled and a lot of subservient grunts from the lawyer. Several times he asked the woman to explain whatever it was she’d told him and at the end a long period of silence before the line closed down.

From Smet’s responses Claudine at once identified the second caller as the Belgacom executive. She guessed the man to be more concerned than he’d ended up the previous night from Smet’s saying it had not been one of that morning’s decisions that the Belgacom investigation should start at senior management level.

It was only at the very end mat Smet’s remarks became unambiguously clear. The lawyer declared outright: ‘She’s not calling them today,’ and when the man obviously asked why said: ‘She wants to make them sweat for a day. Says she wants to teach them a lesson.’

There was initially more lost bewilderment man anger from the ambassador and his wife. After having the appropriate remark replayed twice McBride said dully: ‘Nothing until tomorrow?’

‘No,’ said Claudine. ‘But it’s an attack on me, not Mary.’

‘What the fuck reassurance is that! You’re safe, here! Mary’s with a monster. Mary isn’t safe.’

She didn’t have an adequate reply. ‘It’s not just to make us sweat. She will attempt a ransom.’

‘A day!’ insisted the man, irrational anger taking over. ‘If she doesn’t make a definite demand – set out how she wants it paid – in twenty-four hours I’m going to insist Smet is picked up, by our people if necessary. I don’t give a penny fuck about legality. I’ll make him talk myself if I have to. I want it over. I want my baby back.’

There wasn’t any point in arguing, Claudine knew. ‘Twenty-four hours,’ she agreed.

Mary was squatting cross-legged in front of the television on the other side of the river-view room, a tub of popcorn in her lap, engrossed in the satellite cartoon channel.

Felicite, who had already delayed the call twice, finally picked up the house phone. As usual, Lascelles answered at once.

‘Everything is going to be in place for tomorrow.’

‘Wonderful!’ said the doctor. ‘We’ve got our special guests. The boy is named Robert. The girl is Yvette.’

‘How are they being taken down?’

‘Separately, of course.’

‘Either by you?’

‘No.’

‘I need to get the key from the agents in Namur. And someone to drive me. By myself Mary might try to get away.’

‘You want me to pick you up?’

‘I’ll call McBride at three.’

‘She’ll see my face.’

‘That’s not going to matter, is it?’

‘I suppose not.’

‘I don’t want it to hurt. Is there something? An injection?’

‘Of course. Pills, too: a choice of pills.’

‘There mustn’t be any pain.’

‘There won’t be.’

‘She wouldn’t know?’

‘She’d just go to sleep. Feel nothing.’

‘That’s what I want.’

‘You must have grown very fond of her?’

‘I love her,’ said Felicite.

Although there was a specific understanding between them that Francoise never brought her friends to the house, Sanglier warned her of his return after an hour-long conversation from his Europol office with Lucien Bigot in Paris. He was immediately alarmed by the unknown, Paris-registered Citroen parked at the head of the drive, his first thought was that it might be someone carrying out the background investigation that Castille had talked about, although he would have expected Bigot to have mentioned it and Francoise had said nothing about a visitor.

They met him in the hallway, Francoise with her arm round the shoulders of a startlingly attractive dark-haired girl. She wore jeans and a shirt that was too tight, so that her nipples protruded. Francoise wore trousers, too, part of a black silk evening suit.

‘I wanted you to meet Maria,’ announced Francoise. ‘I told you about her.’

Sanglier said nothing.

‘Hello,’ the girl smiled.

Still Sanglier said nothing, waiting.

‘Aren’t you going to say hello?’ demanded Francoise.

‘I want you to go. Immediately,’ Sanglier told the girl.

‘She was just leaving anyway.’ Francoise kissed Maria lightly on the cheek and said: ‘I told you he was a bore, didn’t I?’

That night the naked body of a boy was found on the edge of a forest near Dilbeek, on the outskirts of Brussels. The big toe was missing from the left foot.