Brian Freemantle - The Predators

‘I always think it’s best… what I prefer… what I’d like us to do would be to set it out chronologically, from the very beginning,’ said Norris.

‘The Gulf War was a long time ago. Seven, eight years.’

‘There’s no hurry. Your own time.’ He’d won, beaten an ambassador friend of the President!

There wasn’t any purpose in prolonging this charade: it was almost cruel, like a cat taunting a captured mouse. ‘I don’t have any official position in the corporation any more but obviously in the circumstances the board will do as I ask. I’ll send them a very full explanation, immediately. Ask them to cooperate in every way with the Bureau. And advise your Director, of course: send both sides copies of what I’ve told the other. And tell State and the President.’

Norris sat staring at the other man, his mind wiped clean once more. ‘No,’ he said dully.

‘No what?’ McBride frowned.

‘I want you, now… to tell me, now. It’s my case.’

‘There’s nothing to tell you. After so long I can’t remember anyone named Luigi della Sialvo but if he’s an indicted criminal… a fugitive from American justice… then quite obviously my former colleagues have to cooperate in every way they can… as I will if it turns out that I dealt with him personally…’ McBride rose, ending the encounter. ‘You’re to be congratulated for digging deep enough to find this, Mr Norris.’

Norris rose, without any positive intention of doing so, and papers cascaded on to the floor. He had to kneel to pick them up. Still kneeling he said to the other man: ‘Please. Tell me!’

‘I’ve told you, there’s nothing I can help you with at the moment,’ McBride said. ‘It’s too long ago. But your people in Washington will get every help: I guarantee it.’ He came round the monstrous desk to put his hand on Norris’s shoulder, physically urging the man from the study.

In her room at the Metropole, Claudine was disconcerted when the telephone rang. She stared at it for several moments, unwilling to pick it up. It wouldn’t be Hugo. She’d spoken to him much earlier, from the security of the Belgian police headquarters, explaining how – and why – it had been difficult for her the previous night. It was far more likely to be Peter Blake.

‘Something important has come up,’ said Norris, when she finally lifted the receiver. ‘Can you come down here to the embassy?’

‘What is it?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it on the phone.’

Claudine hesitated. Henri Sanglier still hadn’t arrived and the American embassy was where they were going anyway: she could leave a message for Peter to show Sanglier the devices. ‘I’ll be there in half an hour.’

The embassy’s rezidentura – the quarters of the CIA and the FBI – was far away both in distance and appearance from the lavish ambassadorial officialdom Claudine had seen on her first visit, a series of identical, box-like rectangles, four of which now formed part of the emergency communications centre. Those of Rampling and Harding were at the very rear of the complex, slightly larger than the rest to designate their local status of controller, but each restricted by only one door and no windows to outside light. Rampling saw Claudine as she was escorted past and waved but she didn’t see him. To Robert Ritchie, who was with him, Rampling said: ‘You know something I don’t?’

‘I don’t know nothing,’ said Ritchie. ‘It’s called staying alive.’

Norris checked his watch as she entered Harding’s clear-desked room and Claudine at once registered both signs. Excessive cleanliness and rigid conformity, particularly to time, were both features of severe obsession: she had, in fact, made the journey within the promised thirty minutes but she should have avoided the self-imposed stipulation. She was aware of the brief frown when the indicated chair scraped slightly sideways as she sat. There was a sheen of sweat on the man’s sallow face and unusually his jacket was open.

The chair movement wasn’t sufficient to cause a problem, Norris decided. The microphone he’d fed round the desk, taping out of sight beneath its rim the lead to the recorder in the right-hand drawer, was sensitive enough to pick up everything she said.

‘So,’ began Claudine enthusiastically. ‘What’s the big mystery you couldn’t tell me on the phone?’ She’d had misgivings on the way there: not so much misgivings as belated curiosity. The arrangement was for Jean Smet to bring them together if there was a development: Norris, in fact, was the last person who should have done it. But in the man’s mental state there could be a dozen explanations: she hoped at least one of them was useful.

Norris declared: ‘Technically this embassy is American property.’ He was quite sure of the technique to use with her: hit her hard, without giving her any room for manoeuvre.

She’d made a mistake, Claudine knew at once. She said: ‘I know, John. We went through the question of jurisdiction at the beginning, didn’t we?’

‘So you’re in America.’ She had to realize how trapped she was.

‘Listen to me,’ urged Claudine gently. ‘You telephoned me at the hotel. Asked me to come here because you had something to tell me. What was it you wanted to tell me?’

‘That!’ insisted the man irritably. ‘That you’re subject to American law because you’re in America.’ Why was she being so stupid!

She could walk out, Claudine supposed: leave the embassy and get back to the hotel before Sanglier and Blake. She felt a sweep of embarrassment. No one would be able to understand her coming here like this: she couldn’t understand it now. He was a sick man, she reminded herself: a sick man who was going to be confronted very soon with the demand that he be removed from the investigation. She wouldn’t walk away from a sick man. She said: ‘There isn’t anything, is there? Nothing you needed to tell me about the case?’

‘I know,’ Norris announced. He had to maintain the pressure, constantly keep her on edge.

‘What do you know, John? Tell me. Let’s talk about it.’ This wasn’t any sort of treatment – it couldn’t be – but there would be an element of paranoia, his confused mind overcrowded with disjointed delusions, and if she could coax some of them out she might, temporarily, ease his burden.

‘Why don’t you tell me?’ He wasn’t going to lose control, as he’d lost control with the ambassador: find himself answering questions instead of asking them. Couldn’t understand how that had happened. A trick. Wouldn’t do McBride any good.

‘What do you want me to tell you?’

She was giving up! Far easier – far quicker – than he’d expected. But it happened sometimes. You could never tell. ‘All of it. How you managed to get in, on the inside. Where she is, so I can get her out. Everything.’

Claudine felt the first pop of unease, deep in the pit of her stomach. The moment of collapse at the highest point of tension, she thought. ‘We’ve got to work together, John. Help each other. I want to help you and I know you’ll help me.’

‘Just do as I ask. Tell me where Mary Beth is. She’s been missing for too long. I’ve got to get her back.’ Why couldn’t she understand!

Claudine knew she had to establish a central thread, something he could recognize and hold on to. ‘We’re trying to find Mary Beth together.’

She was trying to trick him! The muzziness, the cotton waste feeling, was coming back. And it was hot again. It was the artificial light that had to be on all the time. There should be air conditioning somewhere. Too late to look for it now. ‘You know where she is… who they are…’

‘I don’t.’

‘You do!’ Norris grabbed sideways, for the other item he’d carefully installed in the top right-hand drawer alongside the tape recorder: not the new-issue 9mm that a lot in the Bureau carried because of its stopping power but the Smith and Wesson he’d always preferred. He saw the fear in her eyes when he brought it out and laid it on the table between them, keeping his hand on the butt. ‘If you don’t tell me you’ll be obstructing a federal officer in pursuit of his duties and I am legally authorized, in the United States of America in which at this moment we both technically are, to use whatever force is necessary to make you comply with my requests.’ He brought the weapon up, pointing it directly at her. ‘So, answer my question.’ He had thought he wasn’t going to get through the formal warning – twice he’d almost lost it – but he had. The warmth was satisfaction now, a feeling of complete power. He was legally authoritzed to shoot to kill if she tried to escape. He’d only wound her: put a round in her arm, to break it. Prove he wasn’t making empty threats. He wanted very much to fire the gun: feel the kick and hear the explosion. ‘I’m waiting…’