Brian Freemantle - The Predators

James McBride was alone, stiffly upright and blank-faced behind his overpowering desk, which by comparison with the one Norris had just left was cluttered with papers and files and documents. Norris at once identified the ploy, the workplace of a busy man with little time to spare. It was all so predictable, like a soap opera script.

‘What is it you want me to do?’ demanded McBride briskly.

Clever, conceded Norris: predictable again but still clever. ‘I’d like you to help me about certain things.’ Abruptly there was the briefest sweep of dizziness, gone as quickly as it had come.

‘Harrison’s just told me there were no real developments this morning?’

‘It’s not about your daughter.’ This was what he’d always liked best, the thrust and parry of interrogation. He had it all marshalled in his mind, dates and times ready for any challenge or evasion. He felt very hot: probably the reason for the dizziness.

‘Mr Norris,’ said McBride, with threatening condescension. ‘As well as being a very busy man I’m also a very worried one. There is, in fact, only one concern on my mind at the moment and only one thing I want to talk to you about. And that’s Mary Beth: our only necessary point of contact. I’ll give you all the time you want if it’s to do with her. But if it isn’t I’m going to have to ask you to let me get on with being an ambassador.’

Time to kick the struts away, to bring everything crashing down. ‘Can you tell me about Luigi della Sialvo?’

The question was like a physical blow, low in the stomach: McBride actually came close to feeling breathless. ‘Who?’

‘Don’t you know a Luigi della Sialvo?’

He’d already said he was too busy to discuss anything but Mary Beth, so he could demand the man leave. But if he did that he wouldn’t learn just how much Norris – or the FBI back home – knew. ‘I don’t recognize the name. Who is he? What’s this about?’

That wasn’t right: not the reaction it should have been. McBride should have been more unsteady when the name was thrown at him. It was important to keep up the pressure. He went to speak but then didn’t, his mind suddenly thick, as if it was filled with mush. Forcing himself, he said: ‘Illegal arms dealing.’

McBride told himself not to panic; not to betray any awareness. Not yet. He had to wait for the accusation: demand the proof. Even then he could deny knowing the man, pleading the passage of time. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘Luigi della Sialvo is currently under Grand Jury indictment on five counts of illegal arms dealing with the regime of Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War. A fugitive, in fact.’ That was better. Clear-headed again. Everything assembled in his mind.

Fugitive! McBride seized on the word. Not under arrest, likely to horse-trade or plea-bargain, spilling his guts for a lenient sentence. The sensation of breathlessness began to recede. ‘All my stock is in a blind trust escrow account, but I would have been informed of any investigation into my former corporation…’

Norris had wanted a definite sign by now: the twitching shiftiness that always came just before a collapse. ‘Your own records show your corporation actively traded with Luigi della Sialvo five months prior to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.’ Was it five or seven? The dates he’d wanted to be so pedantic about, showing he knew everything, wouldn’t come. ‘Two deals worth about…’ Norris’s mind blanked again, stranding him ‘… worth many millions of dollars.’

It was right that he should show total shock, decided McBride: appear to be momentarily unable to respond. When he did speak it was loudly, in furious indignation. ‘Are you accusing me – executives in my corporation – of illegal arms dealings? Telling me my companies are under investigation?’

The response came half formed in Norris’s mind, then slipped away again. ‘No accusation… just asking about a man currently under indictment. There isn’t an investigation yet.’

Yet, thought McBride. It was a fishing expedition: the bastard was looking for a confession! ‘On whose authority or instructions did you request this meeting?’

‘I am ranked as a senior field executive of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a deputy division director. I have sufficient personal authority.’ That was better: thinking properly again. He wished the muzziness would stop coming and going: that it wasn’t so hot in the room.

The man had left himself wide open, thought McBride. So which course should he take? Outraged, ambassadorial-level dismissal, or the astonished disbelief of an innocent man at a horrifying possibility of embarrassment? He’d learn more playing the innocent. ‘Which company is named in the indictments against this man?’

Norris couldn’t remember! One moment he had the name, the next it had gone, his head thick. Not mush; as if it was filled with cotton waste. ‘Lextop,’ he finally managed.

‘Lestrop,’ corrected McBride, curious at the mistake. It was a passing thought, replaced in a moment. So this was the unspecified rumour that was causing the Lestrop stock to slide: where della Sialvo had gone after he’d told the Italian to go fuck himself! It still didn’t help McBride gauge the danger he faced.

‘That’s it, Lestrop,’ accepted Norris gratefully. This wasn’t going at all as it should have done: how he’d planned it. By now McBride should have broken, made a mistake he could have picked up and used to trap the man into making more. It was so difficult, keeping things straight and in the order he intended. He didn’t want at this late stage actually to consult the Washington dossier but he couldn’t afford another mistake. At once came the contradiction. The file was intimidatingly thick. Consulting it now might convince McBride it contained more about him than it really did. He dropped one of the indictments taking them out of the folder and had to grope awkwardly under his chair to retrieve it. ‘There’s an international arrest warrant out against della Sialvo. He’s thought to be somewhere here, in Europe.’

Where he’d be relatively safe and able to operate, McBride knew: international arrest warrants were notoriously difficult to enforce, particularly in countries with different legal systems. He would have known of an active investigation: it would have been inevitable. ‘How did Washington discover the trading with my company?’

Norris realized the ambassador was questioning him, not the other way round as it should have been. Had to get the order reversed: get everything back on track. It was difficult to keep the loose papers from sliding off his lap, the facts from slipping out of his mind. ‘I asked for an in-depth examination, checking for enemies you might have made. I mentioned the possibility, remember?’

So it wasn’t yet properly official, a Washington operation. There never had been any secret about the two deals he’d done with della Sialvo. They were totally legal, a matter of public record, apart from the Zurich bank commission payments and that was a problem for Sialvo’s native Italy, not the United States. And the Italian was free and likely to remain so. McBride was glad he’d played the innocent. It made the rest of the meeting easy. He said: ‘This is potentially very worrying.’

Here it comes, thought Norris triumphantly: it had taken longer than he’d expected – he’d begun to feel uneasy, which was ridiculous – but the first trickle had just seeped through the breach in the dam. It would come in a tidal wave now. It always did. ‘The more you can tell me the better it will be.’

‘Quite so.’ MrBride’s mind veered sideways, off on a sharp tangent. Thank God there’d been the confrontation at the beginning, taking the negotiations for Mary Beth’s freedom away from this bumbling, almost incoherent idiot! When it was all over – when Mary was safely back – he’d have the FBI Director’s ass for sending someone like Norris.