Brian Freemantle - The Predators

‘You did warn there might not be anything until tomorrow,’ Harrison reminded him.

‘They’d be frantic by then,’ said Rampling.

‘Smet tried to call her from the office,’ Claudine pointed out. ‘He’s almost bound to try again as soon as he hears from us.’

‘We shouldn’t wait,’ decided Sanglier.

Blake made the call. Smet actually dropped the receiver in his anxiety to pick it up, repeating ‘Yes?’ every few seconds to urge the explanation on.

‘You think you can trace who it is?’ he demanded.

‘It’ll be time-consuming but we’ve got the manpower,’ Blake said. ‘It’s our first direct and positive line. We’re going to get him. And through him everyone else.’

‘The minister will want to know how soon,’ Smet pressed.

Blake said: ‘We could have it all wrapped up in days. By this time tomorrow we could be well on our way.’

Claudine made cutting-off gestures and Blake said: ‘We’re setting things up now. Speak to you tomorrow.’

They waited tensely, silently. At once Smet’s telephone was lifted. A digit – within minutes isolated as 2, the first number of the Brussels code – was punched before the handset was replaced. It was lifted within seconds and 2 pressed again before once more being put down.

‘Come on! Come on!’ hissed Rampling. ‘Make the fucking call!’

Everyone jumped when Smet’s telephone rang, the over-amplified sound echoing into the room.

‘Shit!’ exclaimed Blake.

‘Anything?’ The same voice as before.

‘They’ve worked it out.’

‘What?’ shouted the man, his voice breaking.

Smet even used some of Blake’s exaggerated words and phrases. The other man never once interrupted. Not until the end did he say: ‘That’s it? All of it?’

‘Blake said it was a simple process of elimination.’

‘I’ve got access to the numbers, sure. But I’m much too senior ever to bother to look at them. There are dozens – hundreds – more likely man me. And the phones aren’t traceable to me, either.’

‘You think you’re safe?’

The laugh was genuine, unforced. ‘I am now that I know what to expect.’

Smet gave a loud sigh. ‘Thank God for that.’

‘You told Felicite?’

‘I was going to. I decided to talk to you first. Don’t you think I should bother?’

‘I’d like to frighten the bitch but this wouldn’t. She had me explain everything when I gave her the phones. She knows the only danger is being picked up by a scanner. And she’s only going to use a number once.’

‘How many has she got?’

‘Six.’ The man cleared his throat. ‘Gaston called.’

‘You tell him?’

‘I said I’d call him back, if it was serious.’

‘What did he want?’

‘He said he doesn’t give a shit what Felicite says. He’s going to get rid of the other thing. It’s beginning to stink.’

‘Let’s talk tomorrow.’

‘I’ll call you.’

‘That didn’t work out at all as it should have done,’ said Harrison, as the call disconnected.

‘I would have liked more,’ agreed Claudine. ‘But we have her name now: Felicite. And the number Smet began to ring puts her within the city, not outside. We’ve got two more given names, Antoinette and Gaston. We know we’re looking for someone at the top – a senior executive – at Belgacom. That hugely narrows down our search there. And if Felicite is only using a stolen number once, she’s got three left. That gives me a time frame for the dialogue.’

‘And he’ll call out,’ Volker said. ‘It’s just bad luck that he hasn’t already. He still might.’

They made arrangements to be immediately alerted if he did, and returned to the Metropole. At dinner Sanglier, anxious at the lack of convenience and freedom to keep in touch with Paris, announced that he intended returning to Europol headquarters the following day and Hugo Rosetti wondered, looking very directly at Claudine, if there was any practical reason for his remaining, either.

‘I’ve got an idea how to get a listening device into Smet’s office but we’ll need your help to achieve it,’ Claudine told the commissioner. To the pathologist she said: ‘The stinking “other thing” that Gaston is going to get rid of will be missing a toe. There might be a lot to learn from that body.’

Claudine proposed the office bugging idea but didn’t take part in its implementation, not wanting the slightest suspicion from Smet at her unnecessary presence. Equally objective, although with less enthusiasm than on the previous evening, Henri Sanglier accepted he had to head the delegation as well as impose his authority upon Jean Smet to gain the personal meeting with the Justice Minister immediately after that morning’s planning session, hopefully using the approach to unsettle the lawyer further by refusing to give a reason for the request. Burt Harrison was the obvious US diplomatic counterpart, just as Paul Harding balanced the inclusion of Peter Blake. Duncan McCulloch, with more recent home-based training, went through the basic practicalities with the FBI chief. Harding insisted they weren’t to worry, it would be a piece of cake, and McCulloch wondered by how many years the expression dated the older man.

Claudine did, obviously, attend the regular morning review and exaggerated the analysis of the previous afternoon’s conversation with Felicite, insisting it showed the woman terrified of the confrontation – ‘she’s running away from me’ – and clearly at a loss how to conceive a ransom exchange. Andre Poncellet reacted with the anticipated eagerness to Harding’s suggestion that the available and unemployed FBI and CIA personnel should supplement the mobile phone inquiry within Belgacom.

Smet maintained the reserve of the previous day during the meeting but forcefully bustled into the car with Sanglier and Blake for the trip to the ministry, making Poncellet take the second vehicle with Harding. Before the lead car cleared the forecourt Smet asked openly if there was a reason of which he was unaware for the unexpected request to meet Miet Ulieff (‘I need to know, in case he wants some legal advice’) and when Sanglier remained non-committal made more than one convoluted attempt to get an indication from Blake. Throughout the short trip the lawyer sat with his sagging briefcase clamped between his legs, the way, Blake noted for the first time, that he’d held it at the earlier briefing.

They were swept up to Ulieff’s ornate, rococo-style suite where the greying, urbane man waited surrounded by a retinue of officials, only some of whom – his immediate deputy and the chief public prosecutor – were introduced. Again Smet ingratiated himself into the lead group. He put the briefcase less obviously beside the chair in which he sat, only one place away from Ulieff.

This was, Sanglier supposed, the sort of event to which he had in the near future to become accustomed, a totally pointless charade of high political officials making the pretence of personally contributing to affairs of great importance which underlings were resolving. There was an obligatory photocall of Sanglier and Ulieff shaking hands for the cameras in apparent serious-faced discussion. Before the media were excluded Sanglier responded impromptu to a shouted question that the meeting was to discuss important developments which at that stage couldn’t be publicly disclosed.

As soon as the media left Sanglier announced that he’d wanted to meet Ulieff – and welcomed the inclusion of so many unexpected officials – formally to express on behalf of Europol their gratitude for the total Belgian cooperation at every level in the investigation. Knowing Smet would not yet have had time to brief Ulieff on the mobile telephone discovery he used that to explain his important development remark to the journalist. It was, Sanglier added, the first of what he confidently expected to be many more.