Brian Freemantle - The Predators

And Claudine Carter and Peter Blake reached the Metropole Hotel on the Place de Brouckere.

‘This is the first time I’ve arrived on a case without knowing what it was,’ said Claudine.

‘I’ve done it far too often,’ said Blake.

John Norris, who tried hard to know everything, knew that more than once local FBI stations had been advised by Bureau headquarters of his impending arrival with the words The Iceman Cometh. And liked it, although there wasn’t any similarity between him and the way he operated and any of the has-been characters in O’Neill’s play, which he’d particularly gone to see when he discovered the intended in-house mockery. Norris didn’t see it as a lampoon of his style and character. He was quite happy to accept it as an accurate description.

He was a sparse, bespectacled man who had learned totally to control what emotions he possessed, which were limited to begin with. He neither drank, smoked nor swore and his devotion to the Bureau was to the absolute exclusion of everything else: whenever he spoke of the Bureau’s founder Norris called him Mr Hoover. His marriage to a college sweetheart, his one and only relationship, had ended in divorce and her accusation that he preferred to be at Pennsylvania Avenue than at home with her. Norris had agreed with her. What little physical need he had was met once a month – usually on a Friday – always in the missionary position and lasting no more than fifteen minutes, by a discreet but expensive professional who worked out of an apartment in the Watergate complex. She’d long ago decided he’d get as much satisfaction riding an exercise bike but she was a working girl and wasn’t going to argue with how he spent his $500. He’d telephoned before leaving Washington, to tell her he was going out of town and couldn’t make that Friday. She’d said she’d miss him and to hurry back. He’d cancelled the paper and magazine delivery, too.

His Masters degree was in psychology. As the Bureau’s foremost expert on hostage, siege and kidnap negotiations Norris lectured on behavioural science at the FBI’s National Centre for the Analysis of Violent Crime at their training academy at Quantico when his operational commitments allowed. He knew the Iceman tag was common knowledge there. It was useful, being preceded by a hard man reputation: saved time having to make people understand that when John Norris said jump they had to jump through fire, hoops, hell and high water. He didn’t take prisoners. He got them released.

From the nervous way he was driving, both hands white-knuckled around the wheel, it was obvious Paul Harding had heard about the Iceman: idly Norris wondered if the term had even been used in the overnight advisory cable. He listened in disconcerting, unmoving silence while Harding obeyed his instruction to go verbally through everything that had happened since the first alarm at the embassy. People sometimes spoke more openly – more carelessly – trying to express themselves verbally than they did writing official reports. Listening without movement or interruption – letting echoing silences into conversations – hurried people into unthought revelations.

‘I don’t like it that there hasn’t been any contact by now. That doesn’t fit,’ said Norris. He had a nasal, New England accent.

‘You think she’s dead?’

‘I will do if there’s nothing in the next twenty-four hours.’

‘I hit the button the moment it became a crisis,’ Harding reminded him quickly.

Back-covering time, recognized Norris. ‘What about the others? Our man, Boles? And the local driver, Luc? They clean?’

‘Absolutely. It was a puncture, pure and simple.’

‘How?’

Harding snatched a frowning glance across the car. ‘How?’

Norris sighed impatiently. ‘You’ve got to understand something about me, Paul. I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe in coincidences. I don’t believe in accidents. I don’t believe there are good people, only bad people. I work on the principle – so you’ll work on that principle too – that everyone’s guilty until I – me, no one else – decide otherwise. And it takes a lot for me to decide otherwise. You got all that neatly memorized, so there won’t be any misunderstandings between us?’

Two positive indications that he was going to remain part of the investigation, realized Harding, relieved. ‘I got it.’

‘So. How?’

‘Single nail.’

‘Wall or tread of the tyre?’

‘Tread.’

‘Just the nail? No base to keep it upright in the path of the car?’

‘Just the nail.’

‘You’ve kept it, of course, as evidence? Haven’t had the wheel fixed?’

Harding swallowed with fresh relief. ‘All kept.’

‘Good. Very good. What about the school? Anything wrong there?’

Harding hesitated, knowing there was no way of avoiding the answer but wishing he could. ‘Vetted the place myself, before the kid was enrolled. Quite a few embassies use it so the principal and the governors are as careful as hell, knowing what there is to lose. They’re shitting themselves over what’s happened.’

Norris winced at the profanity. ‘So they should. Who made the mistake with the duplicate call?’

Survival time, thought Harding: sorry, Harry. ‘Becker says he didn’t but he was on security dispatch duty. Boles says it was Harry he spoke to from the car.’

‘You checked Becker’s background?’

‘I’ve gone through everything we’ve got locally, at the embassy. He’s been here for two years. There’s never been any trouble.’

‘He drink?’

‘No more than anyone else.’

There was the impatient sigh again. ‘So he drinks?’

‘Yes.’

‘Gamble?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘Local friends?’

‘None that I know.’

‘The ambassador’s been told I want to see him immediately?’

‘He’s waiting.’

‘I want you to sit in on that. As soon as it’s over, I want you to check Becker again but better than you already have. I want everything Washington’s got on him, for starters. Take as many people as you want, from those I brought in. I want to know if he’s in debt or has got a drink problem or is involved with a local woman – or man if he’s gay. I want to know anything that could have compromised Becker: exposed him to blackmail. Any problem with that?’

‘None at all,’ lied Harding, glad they would soon be at the embassy. It was difficult to conceive the problems he was going to have with this dead-faced, rigor-mortised sonofabitch. It was chilling just being close to. Determined not to be caught between a rock and a hard place, Harding said: ‘The CIA station here – Lance Rampling’s the resident-in-charge – are pissed off not being included in the meeting with the ambassador.’

‘Langley’s been told who’s running the show. Rampling should have been messaged by now, making it clear they’re subsidiary. I’ll see him after the ambassador: straighten him out.’

‘He asked for a meeting.’

Dismissive of any CIA distraction, Norris said: ‘What about the kid herself?’

‘Awkward little brat. Knows she’s the daughter of an ambassador and doesn’t let anyone forget it. Makes a lot of people’s lives a misery…’ Anticipating the question seconds before Norris asked it, Harding added hurriedly: ‘But definitely not enough to make anyone snatch her: do her any real harm. She just needs her ass slapped.’

‘Is she wilful enough to have run away: staged the whole business?’

‘That was my first thought. Like I said, I didn’t wait to hit the button, but I expected her to show up with some fancy story. But she wouldn’t have stayed away this long.’