Brian Freemantle - The Predators

‘Friends. A party.’

Sanglier felt his throat block. She was very bright, excited, chattering grown-up birdsong. It wasn’t alcohol. He didn’t want to think what it was. ‘I said never the house.’

‘You say lots of things.’

‘Get them out, Francoise.’

‘They’re my friends.’

‘How long has it been going on?’

‘Days. Who knows? Great fun.’

‘I’m coming home,’ lied Sanglier. ‘I want everyone out before I get there.’

‘Don’t be such a pompous shit! Why doesn’t everybody stay so you can join us when you get back?’

Sanglier put the phone down but remained sitting on the side of his bed, eyes tightly shut in despair. What was he going to do? Dear God, what was he going to do?

The effectiveness of Kurt Volker’s computer marauding enabled the enlarged FBI and CIA surveillance operation to be in place by 6 a.m.

Through Europol’s temporary incident room Volker was officially part of the police headquarters system, knowing its password, so it wasn’t even necessary to hack in from the US embassy to access its personnel files, which had no protecting firewall against unauthorized intrusion.

The full print-out of Police Commissioner Andre Poncellet included two photographs clearly taken some years previously but still sufficient for identification – a prime requirement – so Volker digitalized both. There were two listed addresses, one within the city on the rue des Commercants and what was clearly a summer house by the lake at Auderghem. From their dates of birth one daughter was twenty-one, the other twenty-four, making it unlikely either still lived at home. Information about how many people were likely to occupy a property was another essential requirement.

Volker switched from police headquarter records to its computer directory, guessing the access code to the Justice Ministry would be registered, which it was. So he didn’t have to hack an entry there, either. As with police personnel, every ministry file held two subject photographs, full face and profile. Again he digitalized those of the six clerks, as well as those of Jean Smet.

The rue de Flandres was the only listed house for Smet, who was described as a bachelor with no dependants. Two of the Europol-assigned female clerks were married. So were two of the men. Each of the four had school-age children. Only the unmarried man lived outside the city, close to the Astrid park in Anderlecht.

To each of the eight targets Paul Harding assigned a six-man squad, with two ‘floating’ operatives for any unforeseen development or emergency. The necessary forty additional agents twenty from the FBI, twenty from the CIA – had been embarked at Washington’s Andrews Air Force base before Volker completed his computer searches. With them they brought the Bibles and literature to support the textbook CIA cover of overseas Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormon missionaries if they mistakenly approached a still occupied foreign household.

The 6 a.m. deployment of each team was designed to avoid that risk – which it did in every case – by recording each departure against the likely remaining occupancy of premises to be burgled and searched after the target left for work. At that exit, the watching team split, three detaching to maintain the physical surveillance, three remaining to enter the house or apartment after determining it was empty. Each of the forty-eight officers, fifteen of them women, were equipped with Volker’s computer-hijacked personnel print-outs with their essential recognitive photographs.

All the clerks left their homes roughly within fifteen minutes of each other, for their 9 a.m. ministry start. Three dropped their children off at school. The wife of the fourth male clerk left separately, in her own car, with their two children.

The apparently unoccupied houses of the bachelor male clerk who lived at Anderlecht and the unmarried female whose rented home was on the rue Pieremans were the first to be entered. Both were telephoned first, to ensure they were empty. The others were burgled as their occupants left during the course of the day, the last not until 2 p.m. All the burglaries were to an established pattern, two agents entering while the third, the spot man, remained outside to warn of any unexpected return.

Jean Smet’s house was broken into at 10 a.m., fifteen minutes after he left for the ministry and that morning’s meeting of the control group. The team assigned to Andre Poncellet had to wait until 1.30 p.m., an hour after his wife left for her luncheon club meeting; they had to wait an extra half an hour for the departure of the nonresident housekeeper whose earlier arrival they’d noted.

The police commissioner’s home was the only one equipped with a burglar alarm, although it was not set. No house had any dogs, although there were cats in three, one with a litter. There was only one hurried exit at an unexpected return, that of the wife of a clerk living on rue Brogniez. It was achieved without panic or discovery, through an already opened rear door and along an already reconnoitred side path.

The establishment of an escape route was always the first step in the strictly regimented and well-rehearsed entry routine. The sweep was conducted from the very top – the loft, if there was one – and descended to the basement. Before the search of any room began it was photographed from four different angles by Polaroid with one operator checking the other at the completion of the examination to ensure every article, piece of furniture, picture, drawer, ornament, vase, book, magazine or newspaper was replaced precisely in the position in which it had been before they started. Any letter or document they thought might have the slightest relevance was photographed with a more sophisticated camera fitted with a proxile copying lens. So were all bank and financial records and every address book. All pictures, photographs, bureaux and furniture that might have concealed hiding places were moved, particularly in lofts and basements. Listening devices were installed in every telephone and in the light fittings and skirting boards of every room. The primary objective was obviously anything sexual, of any nature whatsoever. All videos were run for their first five minutes on the available television screens. There were two soft porn videos at the home of one of the married male clerks and three, more hard core, at the Anderlecht house of the unmarried man. There were also twelve sex magazines. All the videos and the magazines portrayed heterosexual sex. In every case the ‘floating’ agent on standby outside each house ferried the videos back to the US embassy and waited while Kurt Volker made instant copies.

The unmarried female clerk had two vibrators, one black, in her bedside cabinet and a selection of soft porn male magazines.

Duncan McCulloch and Robert Ritchie carried out the search of Jean Smet’s house. It was immaculately kept, every shirt folded in its drawer, every shoe on its tree, no dust or fallen flower petal anywhere. They took particular care with their Polaroid record and with the loaded Hochner pistol they briefly removed from the bedside table.

So cleverly was it concealed that McCulloch almost missed the safe, only at the last minute lifting the corner of the bedroom carpet that had been extended to cover the bottom of the wardrobe to see its edge, sunk into the floor. He shouted the find to Ritchie, who continued his search while McCulloch hunched over the safe, stethoscope microphone against the combination box. It was hardly necessary. Like nine out of ten people Smet had used the date, month and year of his birth – all of which McCulloch had from Volker’s print-out – for his security. The safe was empty apart from a selection of pornographic photographs, all featuring children – predominantly boys – and two videos. One of the videos was the acquisition from Amsterdam that Smet had shown Felicite three days earlier. It was only after he’d hurried it off to the rue du Regent that McCulloch located his partner in the basement.