…’ She paused again, looking at Volker. ‘And the message sent to the embassy was in English?’
‘Yes,’ he confirmed.
‘And although it’s a pretty rotten poem the English was good,’ continued Claudine. ‘One or more of the people holding the child could be English by birth, although I doubt it. I think it’s more likely that they were educated at an expensive private school where English was well taught as a second language: it might be, even, that the person who wrote the message had an English governess or nanny.’
‘So they’ll be rich?’ suggested Blake, prepared for the moment to go along with Claudine’s reasoning.
‘Possibly,’ she agreed. ‘Or were, once.’
‘How does that square with the computer use?’ demanded Blake. He looked at Volker. ‘The contact method might seem simple to you but it’s not to me. To me it’s complicated and technically obscure. Only someone who uses computers all the time would have that level of expertise. How many rich people need to reach that level of computer literacy?’
‘Mary is being held by more than one person,’ said Claudine. ‘Paedophiles usually hunt in packs and take their pleasure in packs. It doesn’t follow that the person who wrote the message was the one who physically sent it.’
Blake switched his attention fully to the German. ‘Now you think you know how they’re going to communicate, will it be possible to trace a source before the thing self-destructs next time?’
‘Maybe,’ said Volker cautiously. ‘I’m ready to go into UNIX the moment another message appears. But don’t forget it literally is the World Wide Web. The next message could originate from somewhere in Belgium – right next door to this building if you like – and ride piggy-back through two or more totally unsuspecting host systems in two or more countries anywhere around the globe before appearing on the embassy screens back here.’
Momentarily there was complete silence as the awareness settled in the room. Blake said: ‘Are you saying we can’t stop them? Or find them?’
Volker said: ‘It’s not going to be easy. They can come from anywhere and close down before we’ve alerted any local police force. And I really mean anywhere in the world.’
‘But at some time there’ll have to be proper contact if they want a physical hand-over of a ransom,’ said Blake.
‘ If they make it a proper kidnap,’ Claudine pointed out. ‘The messages might just be an additional amusement that they’ll tire of…’ She hesitated. ‘And even if they do try to get money they’ll still use Mary in the way they originally snatched her for.’
Volker, who doted on his five children, said: ‘Are you absolutely sure she was originally taken for sex?’
‘That’s my professional opinion,’ said Claudine bluntly.
The German shuddered, very slightly. ‘Would they let her go, afterwards? Exchange her for a ransom, I mean?’
‘There are too many variables for me to give a definite opinion,’ Claudine replied. ‘The most difficult to assess is the Americans and their negotiator, Norris. We’re not on the inside by invitation, remember.’
‘No. We’re inside illegally,’ protested Sanglier. ‘We can’t officially do anything about what we know. We can’t even tell the Belgian police, with whom we’re supposed to be working. Can you imagine how it could affect us: affect Europol?’
Looking directly at the Frenchman, Claudine said pointedly: ‘I can certainly imagine how it could affect a ten- year-old child.’
Sanglier flushed. ‘Don’t misunderstand me.’
No one spoke because no one had to.
Hurriedly, Sanglier said: ‘There can’t be any question of the Americans’ keeping us out?’
Claudine hesitated momentarily, undecided if it was the right time to introduce her concern. Then she said: ‘Whether they do or not, it’s my professional judgement that John Norris is incapable of conducting a proper negotiation even if the opportunity arises.’
‘What are you talking about?’ said Sanglier, knowing how the other three had interpreted his concern at legality and hot with self-anger because of it.
In clinical detail – itemizing her indicators against Norris’s attitude and remarks – Claudine recounted that morning’s meeting with the FBI negotiator. ‘People like Norris, on the verge of losing personal control, invariably overcompensate by imposing as much external command as possible on those over whom they believe they have authority,’ she concluded. ‘The operational danger is in their thinking they have authority over those with whom they’re negotiating. That’s the road to disaster for a victim caught between opposing sides each believing they can manipulate the other: quite literally it’s the rock and a hard place syndrome.’
Sanglier, who hated betraying any weakness, felt totally helpless at his inability to think of anything. The other three were actually looking at him expectantly! ‘I think I should meet the ambassador before the conference.’ It sounded positive, but only just.
‘McBride will be guided entirely by Norris,’ Claudine warned him.
Sanglier said: ‘And I can use your opinion as a counterargument. You’re clearly right about a planned kidnap’s being the wrong assumption from which to begin the investigation. If I can make McBride see that – realize Norris’s fallibility – his attitude might change.’
‘I’m sure I’ll get any more e-mail correspondence,’ said Volker. ‘If there’s something as positive as a suggested meeting are we going to hold back from acting upon it?’
Claudine saved Sanglier from having to admit that he didn’t know. She said: ‘Nothing is going to be as positive as an arranged meeting. We’re watching a game that’s only just begun.’
The relief was incomplete and short-lived and ended in bitter ill temper. The combined, disbelieving fury of James and Hillary McBride was the greatest and most easily understandable. When the amateur poem had faded from the computer screens, Hillary had swept in to join the inquest in her husband’s study, shouting for answers that no one had.
‘What the fuck’s going on? I hear from someone who’s got my daughter but doesn’t tell me how to get back to him!’ McBride said.
‘It doesn’t make any sense!’ Hillary added. ‘How can we pay without knowing who or how or when or where?’
‘I don’t know,’ admitted Norris uncomfortably.
‘You!’ demanded the ambassador, jerking a wavering finger at the computer programmer in Norris’s team. ‘What the hell happened? Why wasn’t there an address to get back to?’
‘It’s not always automatic,’ said Howard Williams. He was a thin-haired, facially twitched young man whose elbow-scaled psoriasis was on fire from the nerve-racked tension of being in charge of a communications team that appeared to have failed its first test. Williams was an excellent technician who could dismantle and reassemble any known make of computer, but a virginal stranger to the shadowed side roads of cyberspace along which Kurt Volker prowled with the sure-footedness of an alley cat.
‘You didn’t even record the fucking message!’
‘It closed down before there was time,’ said Williams miserably. ‘We didn’t expect it to come like it did.’
‘Then why the hell were four supposed computer experts included in the Task Force? You told us you’d set up a foolproof system!’ Hillary directed the question to Norris, not the dejected specialist.
Norris, who never allowed himself a single mistake, inwardly squirmed at having to accept the ultimate responsibility. ‘Telephone links go down all the time,’ he tried, desperately.
‘Is this what happened here, something stupid like a bad connection?’ McBride asked Williams, who shuffled uncomfortably, refusing to meet the ambassador’s bulging-eyed stare.
‘I don’t think it was an actual line collapse, sir. I think it was intentionally wiped at source.’
McBride went back to the FBI commander, purple-faced but speaking once more with ominous quietness. ‘Mr Norris, we were connected to the bastards who’ve got my little girl. And they got away. You want to explain mat to me in a way I’ll understand so that I won’t think you and your team are a bunch of losing, fucking incompetents? Because that’s what I’d like you to do, starting now!’
There was a sweep of mind-blanking dizziness and Norris thought he might have stumbled – fallen even – if he hadn’t fortunately been sitting in one of the few chairs fronting the ambassador’s football-pitch desk.
Although he despised his superior – thought him a total, off-the-wall jerk – Paul Harding momentarily felt sorry for the man. Lance Rampling was trying mentally to compose the message to Langley that would convey the
