Brian Freemantle - The Predators

It was Marcel who had taught Felicite his own definition of hedonism, the pursuit of ultimate pleasure in all things, without bounds. And Felicite accepted she’d been an eager pupil. There’d been a sexual excitement – still was – in working the stock markets of Europe, which he’d been so adept at plundering, rarely losing as she rarely lost. But most of all in laughing at other people’s naivety, even those in their special sex group who imagined they were bound by a common bond, when all the time she and Marcel had laughed at their inadequacies, mocking them.

Laughing at everyone else, too. It was still amusing to serve on the charities, two of which Marcel had actually founded for tax reasons, and hearing herself described as a good person.

She had deeply and genuinely loved Marcel. She knew she could never love anyone else.

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.’