The Predators Read online

  ‘I’ve made arrangements with my bank about money. I’ve guessed at three million,’ said McBride.

  ‘They were in touch before I left Pennsylvania Avenue. The Director dealt with it himself. The numbers are already being computer logged. And it’ll be marked before coming here in the diplomatic bag.’

  ‘Will three million be enough?’ demanded the woman.

  ‘It’s enough to negotiate with.’

  ‘What else can we do?’ asked McBride.

  ‘Let me talk a few things through with you,’ said Norris.

  McBride appeared to become aware of the hand tremor and put the glass down on his desk. ‘Anything. What?’

  For the first time Norris indicated the other FBI officer. ‘The day your daughter vanished you told Paul that they – the people who’ve got her – had done it to get at you. I don’t understand that, sir.’

  McBride looked blankly at the strangely still man, wishing his hands weren’t shaking so obviously, trying to reassure himself Norris would imagine it was solely concern for Mary. To gain even more time he turned to Harding. ‘I don’t remember saying that.’

  ‘You did, sir,’ insisted the resident officer.

  ‘I was very upset. If I said it I probably meant directed at me as the official representative of the United States of America, not that it was personal.’

  ‘Have there been threats against the embassy? Any reason for thinking that?’ persisted Norris.

  ‘Not directly. But there’s a great resurgence of fascism – neo-Nazism – throughout Europe. Quite a lot of anti-American feeling.’ He didn’t want to go on down this road: it wasn’t sounding convincing enough.

  ‘Let’s look at it from a personal viewpoint. What about your business before your appointment?’

  McBride felt the first twitch of uncertainty, deep in his stomach: he wanted even less to go in this direction. ‘I founded and headed a legitimate armaments corporation that always conducted business at official government levels.’ He pushed what he hoped would sound like outrage into his voice. ‘I’m not aware of offending anyone, which is what I guess you’re implying.’ It was too long ago. If the motherfucker had wanted to hurt him he’d have done it years ago.

  ‘I wasn’t implying anything specific,’ said Norris easily. ‘Just trying to cover all the bases. Arms dealing can have its uncertain aspects, can’t it?’

  The opening for further outrage. ‘I was not operating in dark alleys with people whose names I didn’t know. Mine was the corporation governments came to.’ With a few exceptions. One in particular: the ghost always there to climb out of the closet. But he hadn’t known: genuinely, honestly, hadn’t known. They had to understand that, if it ever leaked.

  Luigi della Sialvo had been a government procurer. Credentials a mile high. Sold a lot of stuff to Italy, every deal one hundred per cent kosher, every End User certificate stamped, sealed and countersigned. Except for that one occasion. Luigi fucking Sialvo working on the side, building up his own special pension with a bullshit line about having known the smiling Mr Lee for years, personally vouching for him, an introduction between trusted friends. And there had been an End User guarantee. Singapore, a toe-hold in the Asian market, a new business opportunity. Thanks, Luigi, you’re a buddy: sure the commission can go into the Zürich bank. Not unusual. Accepted practice. Good deal too. Twenty million to open, all up front, thirty-five to follow, same payment arrangements. And it did arrive, timed to the second. And a Singapore address, a bona fide company, to go with the End User requirement.

  But the Sidewinders and the Cruise and the antipersonnel stuff hadn’t ended up in Singapore. Just passed through, the arms dealers’ law of perpetual motion. New company in Korea, shuffle-shuffle to Indonesia where the transport planes were waiting for the direct flight to Baghdad, all greased and ready for the start of the Gulf War.

  He hadn’t given in to the blackmail when it came. Not James Kilbright McBride’s style. Faced down the no longer smiling Mr Lee when he’d set it all out, embarrassment after embarrassment, to force the order so urgent there wasn’t time to ship through all the cut-outs. If I drop you’ll drop, you bastard: you’ll be the pariah in the arms business, never operate again, so go fuck yourself.

  There was much further to drop now though, if it ever came out. And it wouldn’t be a Chinese entrepreneur falling with him. US President funded by Saddam gold. A no defence catastrophe.

  McBride made a conscious, determined effort to curb the panic, pressing one shaking hand down upon the other. All in the past: too long ago in the past. Before the appointment he’d been Bureau vetted, as a matter of course. Come through squeaky clean. Like he would again. Ridiculous to think there was any danger.

  ‘What about you, Mrs McBride?’

  Hillary gave no outward, surprised reaction to the question. She said: ‘I may have offended a few people in the past but none that would have done a thing as unspeakable as this.’

  ‘You sure about that?’ demanded the emotionless man.

  ‘I’m talking secretaries or staff I’ve had to let go, for inefficiency. I don’t like inefficiency.’

  ‘Secretaries and staff have kidnapped in the past. You got names?’

  Hillary frowned. ‘I suppose there’ll be records somewhere: not here, home in Virginia.’

  ‘Can you arrange for them to be made available to the Bureau there?’ said Norris.

  ‘I suppose so, if you consider it important.’

  ‘Everything’s important to get your daughter back.’

  ‘I don’t need to be told that!’ snapped the woman. ‘I’ll arrange it.’

  McBride discovered his glass was empty and offered it sideways to Harding, who hesitated and then took it. Yes’m boss, thought the FBI man. Fuck it, he thought again, filling his own glass while he was about it. He didn’t bother with as much ice this time: the last one had become very watered down at the end.

  ‘We’ll need to filter everything coming into the embassy, certainly to you or Mrs McBride personally,’ said Norris. ‘That includes everything in the diplomatic bag, in the event that this might be a conspiracy starting out in Washington. The Director’s arranging for State to confirm my level of security clearance. Some of the people with me are communication experts. There’ll be a tap on every landline in and out of the embassy. Scanners will monitor mobiles. We’ll get a daily telephone printout from Belgacom. Those precautions will, of course, cover the ambassadorial residence and extend to the homes of every senior official in the embassy. I’ll need a list. I accept it’s an invasion of individual privacy but I want it made clear that has to be secondary to recovering your daughter. My sole interest – the sole interest of everyone with me – is the whereabouts of Mary Beth …’ He paused to emphasize the importance of what he was going to say. ‘Everything that comes to our attention during the investigation will be considered with the utmost discretion: nothing that isn’t part of this case is of any interest to us whatsoever. I’d like that assurance circulated throughout the embassy, along with my request for absolute cooperation from everyone.’

  ‘Give me an honest answer, Mr Norris,’ demanded Hillary. ‘How bad does it look?’

  ‘Bad.’

  ‘You think she’d dead?’ The woman’s voice was quite firm.

  ‘I think we need to hear something very soon.’

  ‘How long?’ said the ambassador.

  ‘Twenty-four hours.’

  McBride closed his eyes, the despair genuine. ‘I keep thinking, trying to imagine, what she’s going through.’

  ‘Don’t,’ urged Norris. ‘It doesn’t help. Doesn’t achieve anything.’

  ‘What does?’ asked Hillary.

  ‘Nothing, in the position we’re in at the moment.’

  As they walked towards the Bureau offices Norris checked, turning fully behind him to ensure no one was within hearing, before saying: ‘Shaking a lot at the beginning, wasn’t he?’

  ‘He’s lost a daughter, for Christ�
�s sake!’ said Harding, emboldened by the whisky.

  ‘So’s Mrs McBride. She was holding herself OK.’

  ‘What did you expect from McBride?’ asked Harding.

  ‘More outrage: exaggerated threats about what he’d like to do to whoever’s got her.’

  ‘That happen always?’

  ‘It’s a common reaction.’

  ‘You’re the psychologist.’

  ‘Add a request to what you’re going to ask Washington for, on Harry Becker. I want everything that came out of the vetting procedure on McBride before his ambassadorial appointment was confirmed. And get that stuff on Mrs McBride picked up. I’ll message the Bureau myself, authorizing every single person she’s ever fired to be traced and interviewed.’

  ‘Did you mean it, about not being interested in anything other than what might apply to this specific investigation?’ queried Harding.

  ‘I told you how I operate on the way in from the airport,’ Norris reminded him. ‘There’s no such thing as a half-right or a half-wrong. We wouldn’t be doing our duty if we looked the other way when we discovered a wrongdoing, would we?’

  ‘No,’ Harding managed. Holy shit, he thought.

  Claudine liked the vaguely faded, turn-of-the-century ambience of the Metropole, complete with its over-furnished art deco lobby, exuberantly potted foliage and rattling, open-grilled elevator. Peter Blake was already waiting, wedged into the corner of the inappropriately small bar for a complete view of the lounge, the lobby beyond and the hotel entrance to the sidewalk café. His beer glass was half empty. She chose white wine. They touched glasses.

  ‘More guidance for a new boy,’ demanded Blake. ‘What’s Europol like for expenses?’

  Claudine frowned. ‘OK, I guess. I never got a query the last time. But they like receipts. Why?’

  ‘The concierge recommends La Maison du Cygne, which is just around the corner on the Grande Place,’ said the man. ‘But says it’s expensive. Chez François is good for fish and is slightly cheaper but it’s not so close, on the Quai au Brigues. Your choice.’

  Getting-to-know-each-other time, realized Claudine. That slightly surprised her, too: on the train from Holland Blake hadn’t made much of an effort, engrossed for most of the journey in a book by Elmore Leonard, whom he’d called the best detective writer in the world. The name of the fish restaurant was an unfortunate reminder of Sanglier’s marauding wife, Françoise. ‘Let’s walk around to the Grande Place.’

  La Maison du Cygne was old, with a lot of dark wood and an air of being sure of itself without conceit. It reminded her of the Michelin-starred restaurant her mother had run in Lyon until her death, eight months earlier. Claudine had the lobster, which was superb, Blake had moules and chose the wine without consulting her, which is what Hugo Rosetti had done during their first outings.

  Claudine was curious, although not apprehensive, about this initial encounter. It hadn’t taken her long to realize that sex and the pursuit of it was the only way Europol’s ghetto barriers were breached, the majority of the polyglot male detectives and crime staff appearing automatically to consider the majority of the polyglot female contingent available prey to be hunted, with no closed season. There was an irony, she recognized, in the fact that after becoming so adept at rejection it was Hugo Rosetti, the one man she wouldn’t have rebuffed, whose principles prevented his attempting what most other men in the organization tried all the time.

  Careful not to be obvious – determined against any irritating misunderstanding – she studied the man, as intent upon any signs she might professionally isolate as she was upon his physical appearance. He didn’t have the awkwardness of a lot of big men and on balance she decided the always direct look from those oddly blue eyes was polite, unstraying attention, not appraisal. She liked, too, the fact that he hadn’t invaded her space escorting her from the hotel: there had been no physical contact, cupping her elbow or putting his hand at her back to guide her. Extremely confident, she thought again, without the need for gap-filling gestures or movement. She guessed the barely discernible Irish accent had been exaggerated on the assignment that preceded Europol.

  ‘Who’s going to go first?’ he demanded openly.

  ‘I didn’t think you liked talking about yourself?’

  ‘The observant psychologist!’

  ‘You made it pretty obvious whenever anyone tried to make you.’

  ‘I can’t be bothered to help people get off listening to imagined James Bond exploits.’

  ‘Weren’t they James Bond exploits?’

  He held his wine glass in both hands, staring at her over its rim. She was too strongly featured to be a beautiful woman but there was a very positive attractiveness he found intriguing. He liked the way she wore her black hair short, cut into her neck, and how the grey eyes met him, in neither challenge nor flirtation: if there was a message it was that they were equals. Strictly professional, he thought, remembering her remark at their first meeting. ‘I didn’t drink vodka martini, get seduced by any big-breasted virgins or drive a car that fired rockets.’

  Claudine recognized the self-parody avoidance. She went only partially along with it. ‘But it was one bloody great gamble?’

  Blake had been half smiling, inviting her to join in the mockery. Abruptly he became serious. ‘There was an attempt on you, during the serial killing investigation? An attack? I read the archives, after Sanglier’s briefing.’

  ‘I got trapped into some publicity: French police wanting their pictures on television. Mine was there too …’ Claudine slightly lifted her left arm, along which the knife scar ran from shoulder to wrist. ‘That’s why I have to wear long sleeves.’ The advice was to wait another year before considering cosmetic surgery. She looked steadily at him. ‘We were talking about you, in Ireland?’

  ‘No we’re not.’

  There were mental scars and she guessed they were deep. ‘You’re not showing any signs.’

  ‘It took a while to get rid of them: to get rid of a lot.’

  ‘Inpatient?’

  ‘For three months.’

  ‘What about medication now?’

  ‘I carry it, as a precaution.’

  ‘Worried about the pressure of this?’

  ‘I don’t think so. It’ll be a lot different from what I did before.’

  ‘Sure you don’t want to talk about it?’

  ‘Positive. It’s locked away.’

  Was there guilt, as well as stress: the sort of eroding remorse that a mentally well balanced person would suffer if he’d had to go as far as killing someone? Angrily she stopped the reflection: she was behaving – thinking at least – like his cocktail party interrogators. ‘If anything starts to become unlocked and you think I can help, professionally, while we’re here …’

  ‘It won’t,’ he insisted. ‘I’ve thrown away the key. But thanks.’

  Claudine knew she should move on but she didn’t want to. It was impossible for her to make any proper judgement without knowing what he’d gone through, but in her professional opinion traumas weren’t adjusted to by sealing up the experience and pretending it never happened. She’d lost a husband who’d thought he could handle a mental problem like that. ‘How was it for your family?’

  ‘There isn’t one. No wife, current or prior. Only child. Both parents dead. I was well selected.’

  There was bitterness, so the door wasn’t as securely bolted as he would have liked to imagine. ‘Selected?’ she challenged. ‘You would have had to have volunteered, surely?’

  ‘I did,’ he admitted.

  ‘So you got yourself into whatever it was. You weren’t pushed into it unwillingly.’

  Blake nodded ruefully. ‘Thank you, doctor.’ There was a grin, to show there was no offence. ‘So far this has all been a bit one-sided, hasn’t it?’

  Claudine didn’t mention it was through being an English representative at the Lyon-based Interpol that her father had met her mother. Nor did she mention that her father’s arc
hival investigation into Sanglier’s father’s wartime heroism had created the fluke she was now convinced formed the basis of the man’s uneven and at times bewildering attitude towards her. She talked of her husband’s death but not that it had been suicide from work-stressed depression she’d been too professionally preoccupied even to notice. And she didn’t say anything about Hugo Rosetti.

  ‘And what about Kurt Volker?’ he demanded. ‘You seemed very keen to get him aboard?’

  ‘Kurt you’ve got to see for yourself!’

  Blake regarded her with raised eyebrows. ‘Sorry if I’m venturing on a personal situation!’

  ‘You’re not. Not that way. Just wait, if this comes to anything. How do you want to handle tomorrow’s meeting?’ she asked, in a suddenly decided test. There’d been some distracting, who’s-in-charge problem with the French detective with whom she’d worked during the serial killing investigation.

  He shrugged. ‘According to all the warnings about how Europol is viewed it looks as if it’s going to be you and me against the world. I think it should be a double act, don’t you?’

  It wasn’t the reply Claudine had expected but she liked it. She thought she was going to enjoy working with this man. Only, of course, professionally.

  ‘Your fault!’ screamed Hillary.

  ‘You agreed Mary Beth should go to a local school,’ McBride yelled back.

  ‘I didn’t want it.’

  ‘It’s too late to talk like that now.’

  ‘If she’s dead – if anything happens to her – it’ll be your fault. On your conscience.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  John Norris and his squad swept through the American embassy with the Washington-backed force and disruption of a Force Nine hurricane. By 8 a.m. the following morning – less than twelve hours after their arrival in Brussels – the Boulevard du Régent legation as well as the official residence of James McBride was totally isolated, electronically as well as physically.

  No telephone, fax or e-mail communication could be received or sent without passing through the specially installed, twenty-four-hour-manned communications centre complete with its own roof-mounted satellite dish.