The concentration upon her was immediate. Smet said: ‘Yesterday you said we should wait.’
‘Not indefinitely,’ qualified Claudine, wishing she’d earlier expressed herself more fully: wishing she’d thought about it more fully, earlier. ‘If there’s nothing by the end of the day, we should change our attitude.’
‘To what?’ demanded Smet.
‘To challenging,’ said Claudine.
‘I thought it was wrong to be confrontational?’ frowned Blake.
‘Initially,’ explained Claudine. ‘We’ve gone past that time now. We’ve got to face down the arrogance: tilt the balance away from them, towards us.’
‘After today?’ pressed Harding.
‘Yes,’ agreed Claudine, guessing from the emphasis it was only half the question. She was conscious of Norris openly smiling, his head going back and forth between her and those questioning her.
‘By which time it’s more than likely she’ll be dead?’ the American finished.
Claudine said: ‘We’ve got to accept that as the strongest possibility. But obviously we’ve got to go on acting in the belief that she’s still alive.’
‘She is,’ asserted John Norris suddenly. And by the end of the day he knew he was going to prove it. He was going to get her back, as well as discovering from James McBride what his corporation’s documented business dealings had been with the indicted Luigi della Sialvo three months before Saddam Hussein’s incursion into Kuwait.
‘I hope you’re right,’ said Smet. There had to be a secret agenda to which this man was working. That was the only possible reason for the American’s inexplicable but obvious uninterest – practically non-participation – in these sessions, empty though most of them were. Another uncertainty he wouldn’t have to worry about after tonight. He wanted Mary Beth dumped as far away as possible and believed he knew how that could be done, too. Gaston Mehre had demanded that others in the group dispose of her, but there was still the body of the Romanian rent boy in the cellar of his antique shop. Which was very much the brothers’ problem, no one else’s. Definitely not his. In their eagerness to avoid becoming physically involved the others would back his insistence that Charles and Gaston get rid of the girl as well as the boy at the same time and in the same place.
‘Something else I may be able to judge from whatever response I can generate,’ said Claudine. Now she was speaking in the first person, ignoring Norris, she realized.
‘You’re surely not thinking of the ambassador again?’ said Burt Harrison, coming into the discussion.
‘Not directly,’ said Claudine. ‘He – they – are just the route. From now on I want them to focus on me.’
She had arranged to meet Henri Sanglier at the Metropole hotel to show him the two listening devices before he went to James McBride, and Claudine had expected Blake to return there with her. But as they broke up Blake said that although it would almost certainly be unproductive he thought he should attend the identification parade including the two convicted women sex offenders.
‘And Harding says there’s something he wants to talk to me about.’
John Norris was tight with excitement, his overriding feeling oddly one of relief that he was at last going to achieve so much in such a short time. He didn’t have the slightest doubt that it would all fall into place precisely as he’d planned it would. That was all it needed, precise and detailed planning, and Norris had all that in order: all the sessions spaced out according to their priority, all the evidence assembled, memorized and ready to be presented. The ambassador first, then the Carter woman. The Iceman myth was going to be well and truly established after today.
During the drive back to the embassy Norris waited, testingly, for the chief of mission to refer to his impending appointment with the ambassador but Burt Harrison said nothing, which Norris regarded as important. McBride obviously hadn’t mentioned it, anxious to contain things between the two of them. A further indicator, Norris decided, to go with the familiar uncertainty he’d detected in McBride’s voice when the ambassador had agreed to see him, that hesitant intonation of nervous guilt he’d heard a thousand times and never once been wrong about.
There was still time to spare when they got back to the embassy and Norris went first to the FBI office, determined everything should be ready there. He carelessly cleared Harding’s desk, with only one exception, opening and filling drawers at random until all that remained on its top was an unmarked blotter, a multi-lined telephone and the overnight Washington dossier he intended carrying intimidatingly into his confrontation with the ambassador. The exception was the top right-hand drawer of Harding’s desk, which Norris withdrew and closed several times to ensure its smoothness before installing its unaccustomed contents, the tape recorder uppermost. His final act, before leaving the room, was to position a single chair directly opposite the one he would occupy on the far side of the desk.
James McBride was alone, stiffly upright and blank-faced behind his overpowering desk, which by comparison with the one Norris had just left was cluttered with papers and files and documents. Norris at once identified the ploy, the workplace of a busy man with little time to spare. It was all so predictable, like a soap opera script.
‘What is it you want me to do?’ demanded McBride briskly.
Clever, conceded Norris: predictable again but still clever. ‘I’d like you to help me about certain things.’ Abruptly there was the briefest sweep of dizziness, gone as quickly as it had come.
‘Harrison’s just told me there were no real developments this morning?’
‘It’s not about your daughter.’ This was what he’d always liked best, the thrust and parry of interrogation. He had it all marshalled in his mind, dates and times ready for any challenge or evasion. He felt very hot: probably the reason for the dizziness.
‘Mr Norris,’ said McBride, with threatening condescension. ‘As well as being a very busy man I’m also a very worried one. There is, in fact, only one concern on my mind at the moment and only one thing I want to talk to you about. And that’s Mary Beth: our only necessary point of contact. I’ll give you all the time you want if it’s to do with her. But if it isn’t I’m going to have to ask you to let me get on with being an ambassador.’
Time to kick the struts away, to bring everything crashing down. ‘Can you tell me about Luigi della Sialvo?’
The question was like a physical blow, low in the stomach: McBride actually came close to feeling breathless. ‘Who?’
‘Don’t you know a Luigi della Sialvo?’
He’d already said he was too busy to discuss anything but Mary Beth, so he could demand the man leave. But if he did that he wouldn’t learn just how much Norris – or the FBI back home – knew. ‘I don’t recognize the name. Who is he? What’s this about?’
That wasn’t right: not the reaction it should have been. McBride should have been more unsteady when the name was thrown at him. It was important to keep up the pressure. He went to speak but then didn’t, his mind suddenly thick, as if it was filled with mush. Forcing himself, he said: ‘Illegal arms dealing.’
McBride told himself not to panic; not to betray any awareness. Not yet. He had to wait for the accusation: demand the proof. Even then he could deny knowing the man, pleading the passage of time. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘Luigi della Sialvo is currently under Grand Jury indictment on five counts of illegal arms dealing with the regime of Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War. A fugitive, in fact.’ That was better. Clear-headed again. Everything assembled in his mind.
Fugitive! McBride seized on the word. Not under arrest, likely to horse-trade or plea-bargain, spilling his guts for a lenient sentence. The sensation of breathlessness began to recede. ‘All my stock is in a blind trust escrow account, but I would have been informed of any investigation into my former corporation…’
Norris had wanted a definite sign by now: the twitching shiftiness that always came just before a collapse. ‘Your own records show your corporation actively traded with Luigi della Sialvo five months prior to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.’ Was it five or seven? The dates he’d wanted to be so pedantic about, showing he knew everything, wouldn’t come. ‘Two deals worth about…’ Norris’s mind blanked again, stranding him ‘… worth many millions of dollars.’
It was right that he should show total shock, decided McBride: appear to be momentarily unable to respond. When he did speak it was loudly, in furious indignation. ‘Are you accusing me – executives in my corporation – of illegal arms dealings? Telling me my companies are under investigation?’
The response came half formed in Norris’s mind, then slipped away again. ‘No accusation… just asking about a man currently under indictment. There isn’t an investigation yet.’
