She turned with a model’s grace, jutting out her left hip. ‘What do you think?’
There was still some distorting soreness around the small tattoo of a yellow and blue bird, high on her thigh. ‘What is it?’
‘A love bird. Maria’s got one to match.’
‘Who’s Maria?’
‘She makes films: sometimes very special films. I love her very much.’ Gauging his sudden interest, she said: ‘But not enough to leave home. It suits me to be married to you, just as it suits you to be married to me. We adorn each other.’
Once but not any more, thought Sanglier. How – and when – was he going to tell her about returning to Paris? Not yet. She’d probably be glad to be going back. She hated The Hague. ‘I was with Claudine Carter in Brussels.’
‘One of the few to get away,’ pouted Francoise, in mock regret. ‘Why did you bring us together?’
‘Another mistake,’ conceded Sanglier.
‘You’d never think of involving me in a situation to get rid of me, would you?’ demanded Francoise.
‘With a member of my own staff? Hardly!’
‘Don’t even think about it,’ she warned.
She would embarrass him one day, Sanglier knew. And he did want to get rid of her, so very desperately.
CHAPTER TEN
The message said MARY, MARY QUITE CONTRARY IS MISSING BILLY and at the first combined gathering of the day Claudine stressed that she might have missed the identification without Norris’s complete background on the McBride family. Initially she actually held back, hoping the American himself would isolate what was so glaringly obvious from the ten other possibilities thrown up by Kurt Volker’s fast-track word-recognition selection, but Norris didn’t. He didn’t respond to her praise, either.
The success anyway was more Kurt Volker’s than hers. He’d filleted Norris’s background information of trigger words for his tracer program, which had instantly flagged the only reference to Mary’s pet in any of the incoming e-mail. It also activated a print-out, and timed the duration of the message precisely at sixty seconds – confirming Volker’s earlier estimate – before clearing.
‘What about a trace on the source?’ demanded Norris, hiding any approval he might have felt, which Claudine didn’t think was much.
Volker shook his head. ‘There’s still too much incoming, slowing down any possible response. All the key words – in this case “contrary” “Mary” and “Billy” – spelled with an “ie” as well as with a “y” just in case – had to be matched by my comparison program. It’s like trying to swim against a tide.’
‘Could you get a location if the traffic eases?’ asked Poncellet, responding to Jean Smet’s obvious prompting.
‘Yes,’ said Volker, immediately and confidently.
Poncellet went sideways, to a fresh nudge from the ministry lawyer, before asking in apparent disbelief: ‘In as little as sixty seconds?’
‘I think so.’
Looking invitingly at Norris, Claudine said: ‘They’ve maintained contact!’ Come on, she thought, hopefully: analyse it as you should be able to and show me I haven’t done as much harm as I think I have. Harding, Rampling and Harrison were all looking expectantly at the FBI supervisor.
‘Not properly,’ complained Norris. ‘There should have been a negotiating link established by now. They’ve been frightened off by the publicity.’
‘Don’t you think we might still be in the power stage, their showing us they’re calling the shots?’ she suggested. How could she hope to help this man – treat this man – when saving the child took precedence over everything?
‘They already know that.’
‘But psychologically they need to prove it, to themselves more than to us at the moment. It’s the predictably established formula: your formula,’ said Claudine. By trying too hard to be kind she was coming close to exposing the man’s mental limitation!
‘The longer it goes on, the more dangerous it gets for Mary,’ insisted Norris.
‘I agree,’ said Claudine at once. ‘Today’s message was important.’
‘How?’ demanded Blake. He was the only one in the room aware of how much reconciliation Claudine was attempting with Norris and he was professionally impatient with it. Having operated alone for so long in Ireland Blake was unused to working with or considering the feelings of over-sensitive committees. It was diplomatic bureaucracy and that wasn’t the way to solve crime. He was anxious to start an investigation he wasn’t yet prepared to discuss with anyone, not even Claudine, and he was personally unsettled by the previous evening. He certainly wasn’t prepared to discuss that with her, either. He’d hoped, perhaps stupidly, that the days of having to carry the Beretta in his belt-line, where it was chafing him now, were past, too.
‘It wasn’t composed by the same person who wrote the first Mary, Mary rhyme,’ declared Claudine, grateful for the opportunity Blake created. ‘The first approach was considered, measured: a look-at-me, aren’t-I-clever message. Today’s wasn’t. It was hurried: impatient or nervous. But that’s important. The immediate significance of their knowing the name of Mary’s pet is that they’ve begun mentally to work on her: to confuse her by how they treat her, so that she won’t know what’s going to happen next: what’s right or wrong, real or unreal. They’re talking about her pet: might even have told her the sort of message they were going to send-’
‘And having started to build up a trust, they’ll break it,’ interrupted Norris.
‘That’s the pattern,’ agreed Claudine, pleased. It hadn’t all gone!
‘So what do we do?’ asked the American chief of mission. ‘We’re pretty strong on psychological theory but I don’t see anything practical coming from it, like getting Mary back.’
‘We wait for the next message,’ declared Norris. ‘That’ll take us forward: they’ll give us the link the next time.’
Claudine sighed, sadly disappointed. ‘I don’t think we should wait. I think we need to bring them forward. The ambassador publicly cried yesterday-’
‘And is as embarrassed as hell about it,’ disclosed Harrison.
‘He shouldn’t be,’ insisted Claudine. ‘He did a lot to help Mary, breaking down like that. They reduced an ambassador of the United States of America, the most powerful nation on earth, to helpless tears. The power – their ability – to do that makes Mary very valuable to them. Protects her.’
‘So what should we do?’ persisted Harrison.
‘I think the ambassador should meet the media again: television particularly, to enable Mary’s abductors to see the effect her disappearance is having. With Mrs McBride, too-’
‘I’m not sure either will be prepared to,’ intruded Harrison again.
Claudine decided it wouldn’t be difficult to become thoroughly pissed off by the overbearing, opinionated diplomat. Restraining the temptation verbally to push the man back into his box, she said: ‘Why don’t we explain the purpose – which is to prove just how helpless we are and how much in command they are – and give them the chance to make up their own minds? If Mrs McBride cries, even better.’
‘Mrs McBride doesn’t cry,’ said Harrison simply.
‘Any emotion the McBrides publicly display will help,’ insisted Claudine. ‘We’ve got to establish a two-way dialogue as quickly and as effectively as possible. And the way to do that is for the ambassador to announce verbally, in public, that there has been another message
…’ she stopped, not wanting any misunderstanding ‘… but not, in any circumstances, saying what mat message was. Not, even, that it arrived by e-mail. That goes way beyond keeping the computer route into the embassy as free as possible. We’re inviting them – conceding that they rule our world – to take that one step forward and begin a dialogue.’
‘From a position of weakness,’ challenged Norris at once.
