The Predators Part 3

'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 b.u.t.tocks, 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 Ans.p.a.ch 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 gla.s.ses in a toast. 'To something we haven't done before,' the woman declared.

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.

CHAPTER FIVE.

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 spa.r.s.e, 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 a.n.a.lysis 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, h.e.l.l 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 emba.s.sy. 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 b.u.t.ton 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed a frowning glance across the car. 'How?'

Norris sighed impatiently. 'You've got to understand something about me, Paul. I don't believe in G.o.d. 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 emba.s.sies use it so the princ.i.p.al and the governors are as careful as h.e.l.l, knowing what there is to lose. They're s.h.i.tting 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 emba.s.sy. 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 amba.s.sador'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 emba.s.sy. It was difficult to conceive the problems he was going to have with this dead-faced, rigor-mortised sonofab.i.t.c.h. 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 p.i.s.sed off not being included in the meeting with the amba.s.sador.'

'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 amba.s.sador: 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 amba.s.sador and doesn't let anyone forget it. Makes a lot of people's lives a misery ...' Antic.i.p.ating the question seconds before Norris asked it, Harding added hurriedly: 'But definitely not enough to make anyone s.n.a.t.c.h her: do her any real harm. She just needs her a.s.s 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 b.u.t.ton, but I expected her to show up with some fancy story. But she wouldn't have stayed away this long.'

Norris remained silent for several minutes. 'So what's the local situation?'

'We've been given total Belgian cooperation, guaranteed at Justice Minister level. The police commissioner, Andre Poncellet, is personally involving himself. And they've called in Europol, which is-'

'I know what Europol is,' snapped the other man. 'We advised, when they were set up. Same rules as with the local force. We'll take everything they've got to offer but I don't want them getting in the way of our investigating.' He shifted in his seat for the first time. 'That means maintaining the closest, day-to-day contact: officially we accept they're in charge, running the operation. You know how big a force Europol are committing?'

'No. I haven't got any names, either. Just know they're coming in tonight. I've scheduled a leaders' conference at the emba.s.sy tomorrow. Included Poncellet.'

'Good deal,' said the thin man. 'Anything else that needs saying?'