“How… ?” she said, staring at his face. “How did you… ?”

He smiled. “A simple capillary net,” he said.

“I… I didn’t know… I didn’t think it was possible…” She had heard that capillary nets were still at the prototype stage of development, still undergoing tests.

He ignored her. “Thirteen years ago,” he was saying, “I was a private investigator hired by your mother to find you.”

Rana recalled the man she had seen with her mother in the restaurant, all those years ago.

She stared at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She told herself not to panic. There was, after all, a simple solution to the situation. She clicked her jaw, opening communications with Control. Now they would hear her every word, discern that something was amiss. She waited for the voice of the duty officer to sound in her ear.

Klien was smiling at her, something almost playful in his expression. He smiled, and clicked his jaw in an arrogant, mocking gesture, and said, “You didn’t think for one second, did you, that I would let you get away with that?”

From the breast pocket of his suit he produced a compact silver oval, the size of a cigarette case. A scrambler.

“Nice try, Sita,” he said.

Rana had never felt more naked or vulnerable. This man, of all the people on the planet, knew her secret. He was in a position of inestimable power, and it was not knowing quite how he intended to use this power that was terrifying.

She glanced across the room at the Chinese print, behind which was the alarm. She would make her way very casually towards it, then lean against the print, and with luck security would arrive before he killed her.

“I know that you are Sita Mackendrick.”

He moved from the window and perched on the arm of a chair, something proprietorial and arrogant in his posture. He was a metre away from the picture. There was no way she might reach it, now, without arousing his suspicion.

He smiled at her. “As I said, consider the irony. For so long I have been looking for you, and last night you actually found me. Remarkable… I could hardly believe my fortune.”

“How…” she began. The words, the admission of her true identity after so many years of denial, had to be forced out. “How did you know… ?”

“Your mother made available a few pix of you, of course. Over the years I’ve had them updated, computer- aged. I knew who I was looking for… if, that is, you were still alive. It did occur to me that the people who robbed your father’s safe might have killed you, but I hoped not. I assumed there might be a ransom demand, but when none came I began to worry. Perhaps they had killed you, after all. You saw them entering your house, you could identify them, and so you had to die. But I kept up my search. The consequences were too important not to.”

His smug expression, his assumption of superiority, was sickening.

“What… what do you want?” she managed.

Klien stood, moved away from the picture on the wall and strolled around the room. Rana’s heart began a laboured pounding. This was her chance. She moved towards the Chinese print.

Klien stared at her. “I want to know who they were, Sita,” he said.

“Don’t call me that!” she cried.

She reached the wall, folding her arms protectively across her chest, and leaned back. She felt the picture give beneath her shoulder blades and at the same time experienced a terrible sense of anti-climax. She prayed that the alarm would be sounding loud and clear at the local police station.

“But Sita is your name, isn’t it?” Klien paused, licked his lips. How he was enjoying this, his moment of victory after years of disappointment. “I want to know the identities of the people who kidnapped you.”

She stared at him. Her one satisfaction, amid all her fear, was the knowledge that he was so wrong. She would play along with his little game.

She shook her head. “I don’t know who they were. They took me and locked me up. I managed to escape.”

Klien was shaking his head. “It doesn’t make sense, Sita. Why would they take you from the house and simply lock you up? They would either demand a ransom, which they didn’t, or kill you, which they didn’t. So… are you going to tell me the truth, Sita?”

“I don’t know what you want from me.”

“Shall I tell you what I think happened?” he asked. “I think they took you, locked you up as you said, and were going to demand a ransom, but something happened?”

She shook her head. “What?”

“I think that, while they held you, a certain rapport developed. It often happens between kidnappers and hostages. You grew close to them, and they perhaps to you. They took you away with them, perhaps you even worked for them at, what? Thieving? Prostitution? For whatever reasons, you never returned home. Either they kept you captive for years, or you actually enjoyed the life you were leading.” He shook his head. “But that is irrelevant. What matters is that you know the identity of the people who took you, and I want to know who they are.”

He was no longer smiling, and the sudden transformation, from condescending affability to controlled but obvious rage, filled her with fear. She stared at him, shaking her head, “I… I don’t know.”

He stood, and in one fluid menacing movement slipped a hand inside his jacket and produced a laser pistol. He held it almost casually at his hip, directed at her chest.

“Who were they? Where are they now? Tell me.”

“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.”

He nodded with a show of reasonableness. “Very well, I’ll explain. They took something from your father’s safe, something that is very important to me. It is called a softscreen, and it contains information that I need. Now do you understand, Sita? I need to know who kidnapped you so that I can trace them and locate the softscreen. Now, are you going to tell me, or should I resort to more than mere verbal persuasion?”

The softscreen… She wondered what information the softscreen might contain that was so vital to him.

“Now, Sita, tell me: who were they?”

The very fact that he wanted information from her, she realised, might prove to be her salvation. He would hardly kill her if he thought she might be able to lead him to the screen. She decided, then, to tell him the truth. She would tell him what he wanted to know, play for time, and hope that the security team would arrive before she had finished her explanation of the screen’s whereabouts.

“Who were they?” he asked again, raising the laser.

She imagined herself as his latest victim, one side of her face burned beyond recognition, the other scored with a bloody crucifix.

No, she told herself. He needs me alive.

“I’ve killed many people, Sita,” Klien told her matter-of-factly. “I would suffer no compunction at killing you, too.”

She wanted to call his bluff, then, tell him that if he killed her he would never know who kidnapped her. But something in his manner made her realise that this would be a mistake. He had lost his urbane charm, or arrogance, and he was close to breaking point. There was a light in his eyes that was almost maniacal.

She shook her head. “You’ve got it all very wrong, Mr Klien. You see, there were no kidnappers.” String it out, she told herself. Play for time…

He barked a laugh. “No? Then who robbed your father’s safe? Who took the softscreen?”

“I took the softscreen, Mr Klien. I ran away from home, but first opened the safe and took some money and the screen.” She shrugged. “People must have thought that I was taken by whoever stole the softscreen, but that wasn’t how it happened.”

That gave him pause to consider. He watched her, his mind ticking over.

He nodded slowly and licked his lips. “Very well.” His voice was no longer the sophisticated drawl. The words caught in his throat. He was so close, after all, to what he had sought for such a long time. “Very well, Sita. Now tell me, what did you do with the softscreen?”

She smiled. “I kept it, of course. I lived on the streets for five years and kept it with me. It was a source of great entertainment for me and my friends. We—”

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