Brian Freemantle - The Predators

‘It wasn’t composed by the same person who wrote the first Mary, Mary rhyme,’ declared Claudine, grateful for the opportunity Blake created. ‘The first approach was considered, measured: a look-at-me, aren’t-I-clever message. Today’s wasn’t. It was hurried: impatient or nervous. But that’s important. The immediate significance of their knowing the name of Mary’s pet is that they’ve begun mentally to work on her: to confuse her by how they treat her, so that she won’t know what’s going to happen next: what’s right or wrong, real or unreal. They’re talking about her pet: might even have told her the sort of message they were going to send-’

‘And having started to build up a trust, they’ll break it,’ interrupted Norris.

‘That’s the pattern,’ agreed Claudine, pleased. It hadn’t all gone!

‘So what do we do?’ asked the American chief of mission. ‘We’re pretty strong on psychological theory but I don’t see anything practical coming from it, like getting Mary back.’

‘We wait for the next message,’ declared Norris. ‘That’ll take us forward: they’ll give us the link the next time.’

Claudine sighed, sadly disappointed. ‘I don’t think we should wait. I think we need to bring them forward. The ambassador publicly cried yesterday-’

‘And is as embarrassed as hell about it,’ disclosed Harrison.

‘He shouldn’t be,’ insisted Claudine. ‘He did a lot to help Mary, breaking down like that. They reduced an ambassador of the United States of America, the most powerful nation on earth, to helpless tears. The power – their ability – to do that makes Mary very valuable to them. Protects her.’

‘So what should we do?’ persisted Harrison.

‘I think the ambassador should meet the media again: television particularly, to enable Mary’s abductors to see the effect her disappearance is having. With Mrs McBride, too-’

‘I’m not sure either will be prepared to,’ intruded Harrison again.

Claudine decided it wouldn’t be difficult to become thoroughly pissed off by the overbearing, opinionated diplomat. Restraining the temptation verbally to push the man back into his box, she said: ‘Why don’t we explain the purpose – which is to prove just how helpless we are and how much in command they are – and give them the chance to make up their own minds? If Mrs McBride cries, even better.’

‘Mrs McBride doesn’t cry,’ said Harrison simply.

‘Any emotion the McBrides publicly display will help,’ insisted Claudine. ‘We’ve got to establish a two-way dialogue as quickly and as effectively as possible. And the way to do that is for the ambassador to announce verbally, in public, that there has been another message

…’ she stopped, not wanting any misunderstanding ‘… but not, in any circumstances, saying what mat message was. Not, even, that it arrived by e-mail. That goes way beyond keeping the computer route into the embassy as free as possible. We’re inviting them – conceding that they rule our world – to take that one step forward and begin a dialogue.’

‘From a position of weakness,’ challenged Norris at once.

Momentarily Claudine didn’t reply, looking away from all of them but focusing on nothing. Like so many doctors able to adjust the Hippocratic oath she’d favoured euthanasia long before helplessly watching the mother she’d adored physically eroded by cancer, just a few months earlier. But, incredibly she now realized, she’d never extended that image of physical erosion and that necessary release to include a mental illness. At that moment she did. Strictly obeying her know thyself creed Claudine fully recognized that her overweening professional confidence – the central core around which her life revolved – was what motivated her entire existence. As horrifying and as humiliating and as agonizing as her mother’s physical decline had been, Claudine decided that for her personally to lose her analytical psychological competence – to lose her mind, in fact, as John Norris appeared to have lost his – equally justified the quick release of self-destruction. In her case perhaps more so than an irreversible physical condition. At once there came an unsettling unanswerable question. Did she really feel so strongly about euthanasia because of her mother’s death? Or did her conviction come from what she couldn’t fulfil with Hugo Rosetti because of the permanent, irreversible coma in which his wife existed? Claudine forced herself on, refusing even to attempt an answer, frightened of what it might be.

‘John,’ she said gently. ‘That’s exactly what it is, a position of weakness. We know it. They know it. They’ve got a public forum in which they want everyone else to know it too. We can’t change that position until we get into a negotiating stance. You wrote that, in the text books: lectured on it at Quantico.’

Norris frowned, seemingly unable to remember. He didn’t argue. Harding, alongside, frowned too towards Rampling but it was an entirely different expression for entirely different reasons. There was a long, unfilled silence.

‘John?’ prompted Harrison.

‘It means exposing the ambassador.’ The man tried to recover.

‘Which is better than exposing his daughter,’ said Blake shortly, and Claudine wished he hadn’t.

Harrison said: ‘I could suggest it. I understand the reasoning.’

Smet leaned sideways, whispering to the commissioner. At once the portly, uniform-encased man said: ‘We have some positive sightings of Mary minutes before she disappeared.’

‘Walking? Or getting into a vehicle?’ demanded Blake.

‘Both,’ said Poncellet.

‘Walking first,’ dictated Blake, eager to establish the sequence. ‘How many positive identifications?’

Poncellet hesitated at the intensity of the Englishman’s demands. Claudine withdrew, giving way to a different expertise, interested in watching Blake operate.

Poncellet consulted a folder already set out in front of him. ‘Three.’

‘Absolutely no doubt it was Mary?’

‘A positive identification, every time.’

‘Was she by herself? Or with someone?’

‘By herself.’

‘Anyone close?’

Poncellet hesitated again. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘The question wasn’t asked,’ decided Blake briskly. ‘I’ll need to go back to each witness myself, today. Can we get them in here now?’

‘We could try.’ Poncellet turned at once to the three-clerk secretariat that had arrived with him and Smet. One immediately left the office.

‘How was she behaving?’ came in Paul Harding. ‘Walking normally? Slow? Fast? Agitated? Calm?’

Claudine was alert for any reaction from Norris to the local FBI man’s intrusion and suspected that Harding was, too. There was a faint smile on Norris’s face, the expression of a master watching inexpert pupils attempting to prove themselves. But nothing else.

‘You’ll have to ask them that,’ said Poncellet. He was beginning to colour and his breathing was becoming difficult.

‘How close to the school was the first sighting?’ persisted Harding.

‘Quite close, I think.’

‘Any evidence of a car near her?’ asked Blake.

‘Not that I’ve been told.’

‘Was she seen talking to anyone?’

‘I haven’t any reports of her doing so.’

‘How reliable are these witnesses?’ demanded Harding. ‘Believable or questionable?’

‘I think you should decide that yourselves.’

‘I think we should,’ said Harding, pointedly dismissive. He looked without needing to ask the question to Blake, who nodded.

‘What about the car sightings?’ said Blake.

‘Two, of her getting into a vehicle.’

‘What sort of vehicle?’