persuade the Belgians to pick him up.’
McBride thrust up from his desk, stomping to the window overlooking the formal grounds and the avenue beyond. No one spoke. After several minutes, without turning back into the room, he said: ‘My kid’s out there somewhere with a bunch of perverts who could be doing God knows what to her. We know who one of them is. And we can’t do a goddamned thing about it?’
‘I just don’t believe it!’ said Hillary, in rare agreement with her husband.
No one wanted to reply. Claudine looked to Sanglier. Uncomfortably the Europol commissioner said: ‘I know it sounds absurd. But we can’t do anything. Not if we want to save her. It is absurd. But that’s precisely what the situation is.’
McBride turned back into the room, but he did not go immediately behind his desk. Instead he came to Claudine. ‘Which brings it all back to you, Dr Carter. To how well you can mislead him into showing her a direction and how well you can manoeuvre the woman without her realizing it’s being done.’
‘Not totally,’ said Harding. ‘Every telephone and every room in Smet’s house is wired. He can’t make or receive a call, talk to anyone who comes there, without our hearing every word. And we know there’s more than just Smet and me woman. He’s bound to speak to the others. When he does he’ll take us with him.’
‘What’s come from the house since the devices were installed?’ challenged McBride.
Rampling shook his head. ‘Not even an incoming call.’ Bitterly he added: ‘Obviously a guy with a very limited circle of particular friends.’
‘There’s a point about that,’ said McCulloch, nodding sideways to his partner. ‘We combed that house. Gave it a second shake after we’d found the pictures and the cell. I’m sure we didn’t miss anything. There wasn’t an address book. Not one he left lying around in the house, anyway. Nor any personal letter. Just business stuff.’
‘He’ll carry it with him,’ guessed Harding. ‘There’s a damned great briefcase in all this morning’s surveillance pictures.’
‘The entire ring – the woman herself – are most likely in it,’ said Ritchie. ‘So how do we get it?’
‘Not easily,’ said Rampling.
‘But we’ve got to,’ said Blake.
The American looked sourly at him. ‘That so?’
McBride had gone back behind his desk and was listening intently, gaunt-faced, to the operational discussion. For once Hillary was silent.
‘And there’s his office,’ added Blake, unembarrassed. ‘We don’t have any wires there.’
‘The Justice Ministry is an official government building!’ protested Harrison. ‘You’re not suggesting-’
‘You know damned well what he’s suggesting and it sounds good to me,’ snapped McBride impatiently. ‘If anyone wants superior authority, I’ve just given it. And if that’s not enough I’ll get it from the fucking President. You got any problem with that?’
‘No, sir,’ said Harrison.
For the record Sanglier supposed he should voice an official caution but this was a meeting where records were not being taken. He’d have to be very careful of the Americans when he took up office in Paris. But then, he reflected, he’d been careful about everything and everyone ever since he could remember. It would be a relief, just once, to be able to relax: a relief but impossible. He said: ‘What are we going to tell Poncellet?’
‘Nothing,’ said Harding shortly, totally confident now as the overall American supervisor. ‘I don’t imagine he’d have a problem but he is the police commissioner and we are acting illegally. We can’t take the risk he wouldn’t try to intervene in some way: screw everything.’
‘His house is bugged!’ reminded Sanglier.
‘We won’t listen,’ said Harding.
Still with two hours to go before the earliest the woman might call, even if she kept to her roughly established schedule, Sanglier remained with McBride and the chastened Harrison when everyone else left.
With time to kill, the rest moved without any positive decision back to the room made available to the Europol group now that the embassy had become the focal point for the investigation. The accommodation was actually a rarely used briefing room for both the CIA and the FBI and slightly bigger although less comfortable than Rampling’s suite, which they’d used previously. It was also, considerately, at the furthest end of the corridor from where Norris had killed himself: the area remained behind canvas screens but cleaners, workmen and decorators had moved in.
‘I guess we’ve just been given the carte blanche to stage a second Watergate,’ said McCulloch.
‘Let’s hope we do it better this time,’ said Harding. ‘Anyone got any ideas?’
‘We haven’t talked about the mobile telephone,’ suggested Claudine, who didn’t like moving on to new problems with others unsolved.
‘What about it?’ asked McCulloch, a newcomer to the inner circle.
‘The number belonged to the mobile of an accountant in Ghent. It was stolen six days ago: the stop had only just gone through.’
‘So?’ queried Ritchie.
‘It wasn’t the same telephone dumped in the back of the Ford,’ said Harding. ‘It’s a mass-produced, medium-priced instrument. Used by Belgacom as well as a couple of independent mobile companies.’
‘Why bother to transfer the number to another phone?’ questioned McCulloch. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’
‘It must do, to someone,’ said Rampling. ‘But who? And why?’
There was a flurry of movement at the doorway as a beaming Volker hurried in from the adjoining computer room. ‘I’ve accessed the cryptograph entry code on the two paedophile videos,’ he announced. ‘The company is trading out of Amsterdam, offering a whole range of pornographic specialities. Even animals.’
‘Can we get the paedophilia?’ asked Rampling.
‘Already ordered,’ Volker assured him. ‘We thought there was a sex element in the serial killings: there was, but not what we thought. But we established a home page, supposedly of a subscriber in Copenhagen, through several illegal bulletin boards specializing in sex. Used it to close down quite a few outlets since. I’ve ordered through there. Asked for anything new in the past fortnight.’
‘They wouldn’t have made anything featuring Mary as quickly as this,’ said Blake.
‘One of the videos found in Smet’s safe was issued seven days ago,’ said Volker. ‘It’s dated.’
‘Normally I don’t have a problem with dirty movies but I guess this time I will,’ said Ritchie. He became abruptly aware of Claudine and blushed.
‘We all will if Mary’s featured,’ said Rampling.
All the car, motorcycle and helicopter intercepts were reestablished according to the previous day’s pattern. Claudine left the systems check just after it started, less than an hour before the time of the previous day’s call, and made her way to McBride’s study. The ambassador was in shirt sleeves, his tie loosened, away from his desk.
Hillary had changed from what she’d been wearing earlier, into a tailored safari suit. Action Woman, thought Claudine.
McBride’s impatient shifting around the room was now stoked as much – if not more so – by the frustration of not being able to move against Jean Smet as by the obvious nervousness. At least he was ignoring the cocktail cabinet and the Jack Daniel’s bottle.
Claudine sat at once as she had before, trying to quieten the man by her own calmness. Which she didn’t have to force. It had to be frustrating for McBride: double torture. But it couldn’t be much longer now. Disaster was still only one misplaced word away but Claudine didn’t think there was a risk of her uttering it. The pendulum swung abruptly, worryingly. She wouldn’t say the wrong thing but McBride had sat in on a lot – too much – of their operational discussion. And he knew about Jean Smet. It was possible – likely even – that unconsciously he’d blurt something.
Hurriedly she said: ‘Please remember what I said yesterday. No hate, no aggression. And don’t respond to any challenge. As soon as you can, switch the conversation to me. I’m the person she wants to confront.’
‘Are we talking about Mary? Or some private fight between you and the fucking woman?’ demanded Hillary.
‘A private fight between me and the fucking woman,’ responded Claudine. ‘I’ve got to be the person her anger’s directed against all the time: who she’s trying to humiliate. Not Mary.’
McBride stood forlornly before her, gripping and ungripping his hands. ‘I feel so…’ he began.
‘… helpless,’ she finished. ‘I know. But we’re not, not any longer.’
