Brian Freemantle - The Predators

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.