The Predators

CHAPTER SEVEN

Henri Sanglier was furious. It was procedurally correct that he should publicly represent Europol at the ambassador’s side the following day, but Blake should have consulted him first. There was nothing he could do: no protest or rebuke he could make. But by appearing at a press conference he would be identifying himself as a controlling Europol executive – the controlling Europol executive, shortly to ascend even greater heights – while knowingly involved in an act not just flagrantly illegal but of incalculable diplomatic implications if it ever became known.

He would also be appearing beside a US ambassador aware – but again helpless to protest – that the Americans despised both him and his organization. It was like being cuckolded, which in fact he had been for years by countless women in the marriage of convenience that had provided Francoise with a husband of legendary name and him with the adornment of one of France’s most beautiful and legendary models. Who, by her outrageous lesbian promiscuity, was increasingly becoming a career risk.

And finally there was Claudine Carter. Sanglier found it difficult to believe how many mistakes he’d made about her, in his inability to believe that her appointment to Europol had been a coincidence. Yet that was surely all it could have been. Had she known the truth about his father’s wartime exploits – the truth he himself only suspected – she would have given some indication by now. All he’d done in his determination to protect the family name and reputation was probably to make himself look ridiculous. He would be adding to that stupidity if he tried to make amends. And he would, anyway, soon be away from her and Europol: how much he wished he could free himself from Francoise too. He’d make a superb Justice Minister. All he had to do was avoid any scandal or embarrassment – like being involved in hacking into a US embassy computer system – until the conclusion of the final negotiations, now interrupted by having to be here in Brussels, instead of in Paris.

The value of visiting the Belgian police headquarters went far beyond accepting the offered working accommodation: Andre Poncellet’s obvious ignorance of the computer contact confirmed the contempt with which the Americans were treating the Belgian police as well as Europol. The local police commissioner was effusively attentive, personally escorting them round the first-floor, five-roomed corner suite and then insisting upon dispensing drinks in his own lavish quarters to discuss the following day’s public appearance and an intended meeting afterwards at the Justice Ministry.

It was, therefore, two hours after taking up their accommodation before Sanglier was finally alone with Claudine, Blake and Kurt Volker. Even then it took another thirty minutes for Volker to access his on-line computers at Europol to check for any further messages before closing that tracer down to log on to the embassy circuits from the newly provided Belgian machines.

By the time any worthwhile discussion was possible Sanglier had become tight with frustration, stumping aimlessly around their allocated space and for a lot of the time gazing unseeingly through the panoramic window in the direction of the EU’s Palais d’Berlaymont building, trying to rearrange the mental disorder into some comfortable, logical sequence. He failed. He turned at the German’s entry and said: ‘Well?’

‘Nothing,’ said Volker.

‘You sure you would have picked it up, had there been anything?’ demanded Blake.

Volker’s customary amiability briefly faded at the question. ‘There are two obvious pathname words: Mary and McBride. Before I left Europol I created programs to record both, either separately or together, in any communication into or out of the embassy. There’s been nothing. I’ve downloaded everything on to my system here now.’

Claudine sat back easily in her chair, for the moment content for Sanglier and Blake to go through the preliminaries, even able mildly to amuse herself at Blake’s lingering surprise at meeting Kurt Volker for the first time. As always the German looked like a scarecrow that had been left out in the rain, the blond hair a disarrayed thatch over the owlishly bespectacled face, the shapeless suit crumpled and strained around an indulged figure unaccustomed to weighing scales or tape measures. Blake wasn’t allowing any time-wasting reactions, but he was still regarding Volker like a rare species in a natural history museum.

‘I want to understand how it was done,’ persisted Sanglier.

‘Simple,’ said Volker patiently. ‘And like most simple things, it’s brilliant. Whoever’s got Mary knows about computers and how to hack in and out of them. The embassy’s e-mail address is available on the Internet through the US Information web site server. All they had to do was access it and send their message.’

‘That doesn’t help us,’ protested Blake. ‘Surely the sources of e-mail messages are recorded? So we must know where it came from.’

Volker nodded, his chubby cheeks wobbling. ‘In the majority of correspondence, yes. Otherwise the receiver wouldn’t know who to reply to. But whoever sent the message didn’t want a reply…’ the man hesitated, looking apologetically at Claudine ‘… and they beat me. I didn’t time it – I will the next one, obviously – but I calculate that the message was displayed for precisely sixty seconds, not long enough for me to get a print-out. But I do know there wasn’t a respond address. It was the logical thing to look for. The embassy uses the UNIX Internet server. I went straight into it when the message closed down. There was no trace.’

Claudine said: ‘So how did the sender remain anonymous?’

‘I’ve introduced my own entry code as a bug to their main terminal,’ said Volker. ‘Only I know what it is so the Americans aren’t aware I’m there: and there’s no way they can discover me. I can go in and out whenever I want.’ He gestured to the three newly installed blank screens glowing in the adjoining room. ‘I’m permanently linked, waiting for the next communication using the names Mary or McBride.’ He paused, frowning at the lack of comprehension from the two other men, then explained. ‘I believe that’s how whoever’s holding Mary is operating, with a slight variation. They certainly won’t be working from their own traceable terminal. They will have hacked into somebody else’s system – that’s their initial concealment, quite apart from avoiding any user costs – and installed their own entry code in what’s usually referred to as a Trojan Horse. That’s a program in which automatic commands can be stored. In this case I’m guessing they didn’t want their Trojan Horse to be permanent, as I want mine to be. I imagine they’ll have added to their bug a program that self-destructs to a certain trigger: a timed suicide, in fact. I believe they got into somebody’s system, like a cuckoo in the nest, and sent their message, and after sixty seconds the Trojan Horse destroyed itself instead of the host system, which is the normal way such viruses work.’

Claudine said: ‘They wanted McBride to know they’ve got his daughter but didn’t give the man any way of responding. That doesn’t fit a usual kidnap pattern.’

‘What are they doing then?’ demanded Sanglier, needing to catch up. At the same time, like a mantra in his head, he was thinking: What am I doing, sitting here, calmly discussing breaking the law, condoning it, agreeing to it, learning how it’s done?

‘Amusing themselves, taunting McBride,’ said Claudine. She looked briefly at Blake. ‘And it fits how Mary was grabbed in the first place. I think she’s being held by paedophiles.’

‘What!’ demanded Sanglier, incredulous, just ahead of Blake, who said: ‘How the hell do you reach that conclusion?’

Speaking more to the detective than the commissioner, Claudine said: ‘We’ve already decided it didn’t start as a planned abduction. She was snatched by chance, a child looking younger than her age. The message is derived from a child’s nursery rhyme: that’s paedophile thinking, maybe more subconscious than a positive choice. It’s a taunt-’

‘Aren’t you literally reading a lot from very little?’ broke in Blake.

‘That’s what I’m supposed to do,’ Claudine said, unoffended. ‘And I haven’t finished. There are variations of Mary, Mary Quite Contrary recited in continental Europe but it’s really an English nursery song

…’ She paused again, looking at Volker. ‘And the message sent to the embassy was in English?’

‘Yes,’ he confirmed.

‘And although it’s a pretty rotten poem the English was good,’ continued Claudine. ‘One or more of the people holding the child could be English by birth, although I doubt it. I think it’s more likely that they were educated at an expensive private school where English was well taught as a second language: it might be, even, that the person who wrote the message had an English governess or nanny.’

‘So they’ll be rich?’ suggested Blake, prepared for the moment to go along with Claudine’s reasoning.

‘Possibly,’ she agreed. ‘Or were, once.’

‘How does that square with the computer use?’ demanded Blake. He looked at Volker. ‘The contact method might seem simple to you but it’s not to me. To me it’s complicated and technically obscure. Only someone who uses computers all the time would have that level of expertise. How many rich people need to reach that level of computer literacy?’

‘Mary is being held by more than one person,’ said Claudine. ‘Paedophiles usually hunt in packs and take their pleasure in packs. It doesn’t follow that the person who wrote the message was the one who physically sent it.’

Blake switched his attention fully to the German. ‘Now you think you know how they’re going to communicate, will it be possible to trace a source before the thing self-destructs next time?’

‘Maybe,’ said Volker cautiously. ‘I’m ready to go into UNIX the moment another message appears. But don’t forget it literally is the World Wide Web. The next message could originate from somewhere in Belgium – right next door to this building if you like – and ride piggy-back through two or more totally unsuspecting host systems in two or more countries anywhere around the globe before appearing on the embassy screens back here.’

Momentarily there was complete silence as the awareness settled in the room. Blake said: ‘Are you saying we can’t stop them? Or find them?’

Volker said: ‘It’s not going to be easy. They can come from anywhere and close down before we’ve alerted any local police force. And I really mean anywhere in the world.’

‘But at some time there’ll have to be proper contact if they want a physical hand-over of a ransom,’ said Blake.

‘ If they make it a proper kidnap,’ Claudine pointed out. ‘The messages might just be an additional amusement that they’ll tire of…’ She hesitated. ‘And even if they do try to get money they’ll still use Mary in the way they originally snatched her for.’

Volker, who doted on his five children, said: ‘Are you absolutely sure she was originally taken for sex?’

‘That’s my professional opinion,’ said Claudine bluntly.

The German shuddered, very slightly. ‘Would they let her go, afterwards? Exchange her for a ransom, I mean?’

‘There are too many variables for me to give a definite opinion,’ Claudine replied. ‘The most difficult to assess is the Americans and their negotiator, Norris. We’re not on the inside by invitation, remember.’

‘No. We’re inside illegally,’ protested Sanglier. ‘We can’t officially do anything about what we know. We can’t even tell the Belgian police, with whom we’re supposed to be working. Can you imagine how it could affect us: affect Europol?’

Looking directly at the Frenchman, Claudine said pointedly: ‘I can certainly imagine how it could affect a ten-year-old child.’

Sanglier flushed. ‘Don’t misunderstand me.’

No one spoke because no one had to.

Hurriedly, Sanglier said: ‘There can’t be any question of the Americans’ keeping us out?’

Claudine hesitated momentarily, undecided if it was the right time to introduce her concern. Then she said: ‘Whether they do or not, it’s my professional judgement that John Norris is incapable of conducting a proper negotiation even if the opportunity arises.’

‘What are you talking about?’ said Sanglier, knowing how the other three had interpreted his concern at legality and hot with self-anger because of it.

In clinical detail – itemizing her indicators against Norris’s attitude and remarks – Claudine recounted that morning’s meeting with the FBI negotiator. ‘People like Norris, on the verge of losing personal control, invariably overcompensate by imposing as much external command as possible on those over whom they believe they have authority,’ she concluded. ‘The operational danger is in their thinking they have authority over those with whom they’re negotiating. That’s the road to disaster for a victim caught between opposing sides each believing they can manipulate the other: quite literally it’s the rock and a hard place syndrome.’

Sanglier, who hated betraying any weakness, felt totally helpless at his inability to think of anything. The other three were actually looking at him expectantly! ‘I think I should meet the ambassador before the conference.’ It sounded positive, but only just.

‘McBride will be guided entirely by Norris,’ Claudine warned him.

Sanglier said: ‘And I can use your opinion as a counterargument. You’re clearly right about a planned kidnap’s being the wrong assumption from which to begin the investigation. If I can make McBride see that – realize Norris’s fallibility – his attitude might change.’

‘I’m sure I’ll get any more e-mail correspondence,’ said Volker. ‘If there’s something as positive as a suggested meeting are we going to hold back from acting upon it?’

Claudine saved Sanglier from having to admit that he didn’t know. She said: ‘Nothing is going to be as positive as an arranged meeting. We’re watching a game that’s only just begun.’

The relief was incomplete and short-lived and ended in bitter ill temper. The combined, disbelieving fury of James and Hillary McBride was the greatest and most easily understandable. When the amateur poem had faded from the computer screens, Hillary had swept in to join the inquest in her husband’s study, shouting for answers that no one had.

‘What the fuck’s going on? I hear from someone who’s got my daughter but doesn’t tell me how to get back to him!’ McBride said.

‘It doesn’t make any sense!’ Hillary added. ‘How can we pay without knowing who or how or when or where?’

‘I don’t know,’ admitted Norris uncomfortably.

‘You!’ demanded the ambassador, jerking a wavering finger at the computer programmer in Norris’s team. ‘What the hell happened? Why wasn’t there an address to get back to?’

‘It’s not always automatic,’ said Howard Williams. He was a thin-haired, facially twitched young man whose elbow-scaled psoriasis was on fire from the nerve-racked tension of being in charge of a communications team that appeared to have failed its first test. Williams was an excellent technician who could dismantle and reassemble any known make of computer, but a virginal stranger to the shadowed side roads of cyberspace along which Kurt Volker prowled with the sure-footedness of an alley cat.

‘You didn’t even record the fucking message!’

‘It closed down before there was time,’ said Williams miserably. ‘We didn’t expect it to come like it did.’

‘Then why the hell were four supposed computer experts included in the Task Force? You told us you’d set up a foolproof system!’ Hillary directed the question to Norris, not the dejected specialist.

Norris, who never allowed himself a single mistake, inwardly squirmed at having to accept the ultimate responsibility. ‘Telephone links go down all the time,’ he tried, desperately.

‘Is this what happened here, something stupid like a bad connection?’ McBride asked Williams, who shuffled uncomfortably, refusing to meet the ambassador’s bulging-eyed stare.

‘I don’t think it was an actual line collapse, sir. I think it was intentionally wiped at source.’

McBride went back to the FBI commander, purple-faced but speaking once more with ominous quietness. ‘Mr Norris, we were connected to the bastards who’ve got my little girl. And they got away. You want to explain mat to me in a way I’ll understand so that I won’t think you and your team are a bunch of losing, fucking incompetents? Because that’s what I’d like you to do, starting now!’

There was a sweep of mind-blanking dizziness and Norris thought he might have stumbled – fallen even – if he hadn’t fortunately been sitting in one of the few chairs fronting the ambassador’s football-pitch desk.

Although he despised his superior – thought him a total, off-the-wall jerk – Paul Harding momentarily felt sorry for the man. Lance Rampling was trying mentally to compose the message to Langley that would convey the full extent of the FBI fuck-up without letting the intercepting Bureau realize every error, no matter how small, would go into the CIA’s infighting armoury, to be broken out and fired at the first skirmish of a political battle between the two agencies.

‘I’m waiting,’ threatened McBride.

‘It wasn’t a demand,’ Norris said desperately. ‘It was to tell us they’ve got Mary. For us to be ready. They’re softening us up: proving they’ve got all the winning cards.’ The last part, admitting that he wasn’t orchestrating everything, hurt almost with a physical pain. Whoever had the child would pay, for making him do that. He’d teach them who was the boss, the moment they began proper negotiations. And then really teach them, once Mary was safely recovered. They’d know what it was like to be hunted by the time he’d finished with them.

‘You saying we’ve got to wait until they feel like getting back to us?’ asked Hillary.

Norris fervently sought an alternative but couldn’t think of one. ‘It’s a negotiating ploy.’

‘I don’t give a shit what it is,’ said McBride. ‘I’m not waiting. We are ready. The money’s here. I want to get back to them. How are we going to do that?’

Norris felt a sink of helplessness, unthinkingly half turning towards Williams. Anxiously the technician blurted: ‘We could log a message on the browsers.’

‘What the hell’s that?’ said McBride sharply.

‘A browser is like a subject directory or index, in a classified telephone book. People surf the Net through browsers, searching for information logged there. We’re doing the press release tonight so there’s no need for secrecy any more. Why don’t we make an entry – it’s called starting a thread – naming Mary through News-cape and Microsoft Explorer? It would be inviting them to come back to us.’

It sounded good, some positive action, conceded Norris. Eager to contribute – and to illustrate his psychological ability – he said: ‘To let them know it’s aimed at them and that we want to deal, our response should be along the lines of their message to us.’

‘Whatever it takes,’ insisted McBride. ‘Get it done! Get Mary back.’

They were very late returning from Antwerp – they hadn’t driven down until after Jean Smet had left his office – but he still invited Felicite Galan into his house off the rue de Flandres to watch his latest movie from Amsterdam. Afterwards Felicite said: ‘One of the boys was at least sixteen. And a professional.’

‘It was still good,’ defended Smet. ‘The others will like it.’

‘I wonder what Mary will think of it.’

‘You said she wasn’t going to be touched,’ said Smet.

‘I said no one else was to touch her. And it was only a little slap on her ass.’

‘It was a hiding. You hit her too hard.’

She knew the man was right. ‘A necessary lesson. She’ll do as she’s told in future, so I won’t have to do it again.’

‘Dehane did very well with the message, didn’t he?’

‘I knew it was technically possible. And I told you it would be completely undetectable.’

‘I still don’t like it,’ said the man weakly.

‘Why hasn’t the Justice Ministry created a supervisory committee the way they did when the boy died?’ she asked, ignoring the man’s protest.

Smet smiled. ‘It was proposed before I left the ministry this afternoon.’

‘And?’ asked Felicite, smiling too.

‘I’m responsible for establishing it, just like before. And I head the legal advisory team that will sit with it.’

Felicite’s expression broadened in satisfaction. ‘So everything will be as foolproof as last time.’

‘The Americans have brought in a huge team of people, apparently. And Europol’s involved.’

‘We anticipated it would be more high-powered than before,’ Felicite said dismissively.

‘Would you have done it? Broken up the group if we hadn’t agreed about Mary?’ asked the ministry lawyer, no longer smiling.

‘I want things my way,’ said the thin-faced woman. ‘I get tired of telling you mat.’

*

The military aircraft repatriating Harry Becker and his family was delayed for two hours that night to enable the even more distressed Howard Williams to travel back to Washington on Norris’s personal authority.

From the US embassy Norris sent a ‘Respond This Day’ reminder to Washington for the requested in-depth reinvestigation into McBride’s business affairs. That request as well as the browser message to the unknown holders of Mary Beth McBride, were both instantly picked up by Kurt Volker’s ever attentive Trojan Horse.