Brian Freemantle - The Predators

‘I haven’t misled you, ever.’

‘I’m bloody glad I don’t have any religion!’ she said, with sudden bitterness.

‘It isn’t just my being Catholic. In fact that’s the least of it. As you know.’

‘Are you going to see her this weekend?’ Claudine could not think why she’d asked. He went most weekends to the Rome clinic where Flavia, who’d suffered brain damage in the car crash, lay in the irreversible coma into which she’d lapsed after being told Sophia had been killed.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘What’s this British detective like?’

Claudine was momentarily thrown by the obvious change of subject. ‘Big. The rumour is that he did something special in Northern Ireland but no one’s found out what it was.’

‘Maybe you will.’

Claudine shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

‘Did you like him?’

Claudine began to concentrate, curious at the remark. ‘I’ve not really met him before. Haven’t now, really. I haven’t formed an opinion.’

‘If it becomes a proper case – kidnap, I mean, not anything professional as far as I’m concerned – maybe I could come down. Brussels isn’t far.’

‘Your choice,’ said Claudine. Heavily she added: ‘Like everything’s your choice. I just want you to make it.’

Mary couldn’t understand why it was taking so long. She’d been held for almost a whole day from the time she’d been tricked into the car and dad still hadn’t got her out. Maybe the woman and the stupid men in masks had been caught. That could be it: caught while trying to collect the money and refusing to say where she was. Except that one man hadn’t been caught. The one who giggled a lot, like some of the girls at school, Martha especially, when they were nervous or expecting a surprise.

She’d managed to make pee pee twice – and do the other thing – without him seeing her through the peephole. And she’d eaten all the bread he’d brought for breakfast and the roll at lunch. You couldn’t poison bread, could you? But she hadn’t drunk the soup. Or the milk that morning. Just in case. It wasn’t difficult to cup her hands and drink water from the sink faucet, in the cell.

She wished dad would hurry up. She still wasn’t properly frightened, not all the time anyway. It was just boring, in this silly room. Silly room and silly men. She was glad the woman hadn’t come. She didn’t like the woman. Gently she put her tongue against her cut cheek. It still hurt.

She jumped, startled at the sound of a key turning in the lock but had recovered by the time the heavy door swung open. The sniggering man blocked the opening.

‘Am I going home?’ Mary demanded at once.

‘You’ve got to come into the big room, for exercise,’ said Charles Mehre.

He scarcely moved aside, forcing her to brush against him to get by. She didn’t like it. Mary looked cautiously around the huge underground chamber. It was empty, apart from the man, and not as hot as the previous day. There wasn’t the sweet smell, either. ‘Where are the others?’

‘Not here.’

‘Where?’ Mary insisted.

‘Don’t know.’

‘The police have probably got them,’ she declared.

‘I’d have known,’ said the man, although uncertainly.

‘How?’ persisted Mary.

‘I would,’ insisted the man, with child-like logic. ‘You’re to shower, in there.’ He pointed to a door, as if recalling a mislaid instruction.

He’d probably look at her with no clothes on, through a peephole she couldn’t see. Mary said: ‘I don’t want to shower.’

‘She said you must. She doesn’t like smelly girls,’ protested Mehre.

‘Who said?’

‘You know.’

‘You tell me.’

‘No,’ said Mehre, looking away as if to avoid her direct stare. ‘Don’t shower if you don’t want to.’

That had been easy, Mary decided. Easy and interesting.

‘You’re to walk around. Exercise,’ ordered the man, although weakly.

Mary began at once, not to obey him but because she wanted to think, to see how far she could take things. She was right not to be frightened of this man. There was nothing to be frightened about. She could bully him, the way she made girls at school do things when she wanted. He stood in front of the large screen, making small grunting sounds, and Mary was sure he hadn’t realized she was gradually making her way towards the door leading up to the panelled hall. She was very close when she lunged at it, grabbing the handle and pulling at the same time. The door remained solid, unmoving, and behind her Mehre expanded his childish giggle into an open laugh. ‘I knew you’d do that. I locked it. I’m clever. But you’re a bad girl.’

Mary, who hated appearing foolish in anything, turned furiously back into the room. Momentarily not knowing what to do, how to recover, she pointed to the huge screen and said: ‘I want to watch television.’

There was a snicker. ‘We only watch special films.’

‘I’ll watch a film then.’

‘Not until you’re allowed. Until she says.’

‘Why not?’

‘She’s got to say so.’

‘Who?’ Mary tried again.

‘The others,’ he generalized.

‘Who are the others?’

‘You’re not allowed to know.’

‘What are your names?’

‘You’re not allowed to know that either.’

‘Do you know who my father is?’

‘Yes.’

‘He’s a very important man.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘He’ll be very angry.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘If you let me go I’ll tell him you were kind to me. I’ll tell him not to be angry at you as he is going to be at the others. At her.’

‘I think you should go back into your cell,’ said Mehre. ‘You’ve been bad. Naughty. Now you won’t get any supper.’ He held her wrist with one hand and put his other on her buttocks, but not to push her forward. Mary twisted away from the groping fingers before pulling her arm free to enter the cell by herself.

She hadn’t liked the way the man had touched her bottom because it was rude but otherwise she felt very sure of herself. He was what mom called simple-minded: did what he was told. There was a gardener’s help like that back home in Virginia. She’d make this man do what she wanted, like the gardener’s boy. Trick him, so that she could get away, the way girls got away from bad people in the adventure books.

He caught her making pee pee but she didn’t care. She had to let him look if he wanted: let him think there was nothing she could do. It wasn’t as if he could see anything. She didn’t want him to squeeze her bottom again, though.

She hunched on the bunk, watching the second hand on her watch bring the time round to six o’clock. The time she usually fed Billy Boy. She couldn’t trick the silly man tonight. Maybe not even tomorrow. She hoped mom and dad weren’t arguing about her, as they often did: didn’t imagine that she’d run away on purpose. She couldn’t understand why no one was doing anything to get her away.

A lot of people were preparing to.

At Brussels airport the US military aircraft touched down carrying twenty-five FBI and CIA personnel, under the overall command of the Bureau’s deputy operational director and chief hostage negotiator John Norris.

Paul Harding was waiting at the bottom of the ramp when Norris disembarked. Harding said: ‘There’s nothing new.’

‘If there had been you’d have patched it through to the plane, wouldn’t you?’ Norris was impatient with empty words and gestures.

At her creeper-clad Brussels mansion off the Boulevard Anspach Felicite Galan personally poured the champagne for the two men with her and said: ‘So there! It’s all going to work perfectly.’ When neither replied, she said to Jean Smet: ‘There’s nothing to worry about.’ And to August Dehane: ‘You’ve done very well: very well indeed.’ Reluctantly they followed her lead, raising their glasses in a toast. ‘To something we haven’t done before,’ the woman declared.