‘Tell me you’re going to get her back!’
She shouldn’t lie: couldn’t lie if she was going to retain her integrity. ‘I’m going to get her back.’
‘I’ll destroy you, if you don’t.’
‘You won’t have to. I will have destroyed myself. And threats don’t achieve anything, ambassador.’
He didn’t apologize. ‘It’s time.’
‘She’ll definitely make us wait today.’
‘Why?’
‘To prove all the things she needs to prove to herself: maintain her imagined control.’
‘Why late? Why not early? That would have the same effect of disorientating us,’ said Hillary.
Claudine shook her head. ‘That would make her seem too anxious. She can’t ever let herself appear to be that.’
‘Nothing touches you,’ protested McBride abruptly.
If only you knew, thought Claudine. She wasn’t surprised at his wanting to hit out at someone: find a focus for the impotent anger. She said: ‘I couldn’t do my job if I allowed myself to become personally involved. None of us could. The investigators, I mean.’
‘You ever doubt yourself?’ said Hillary.
Stop it! Claudine thought. ‘I can’t allow that, either.’
McBride looked at the large, second-sweep clock reestablished on his desk. ‘She’s almost thirty minutes past schedule.’
‘She has her own design, not a schedule.’
‘I’m not sure how much longer I can go on.’
‘You can go on as long as it takes to save your daughter!’ insisted Claudine forcefully.
‘If you can’t I will,’ challenged Hillary.
‘Nothing’s happening!’
‘This is reality. Not a movie with people and cars going round in circles.’ That hardly made sense, Claudine conceded: that was precisely what they’d done yesterday. But others, not McBride. He just had to sit and wait.
‘I’m sorry,’ said McBride.
‘What for?’
‘Saying I’d destroy you. I didn’t mean it.’
‘I know.’ She welcomed his uncertain smile. He’d stopped moving around the room: been able, for the briefest moment, to put out of his mind what was happening. What they were waiting for.
‘She’s an hour late.’
‘She’s making us suffer. She has to.’
‘How much is she making Mary suffer?’ said Hillary.
Fuck, thought Claudine, angry at her carelessness. ‘We’re going to get her back.’
‘In what sort of physical condition?’
She couldn’t allow the self-pity to go any further. ‘Alive!’
It halted him. He began stop-starting around the room again, stretching his fingers as if they were cramped. ‘You haven’t written out any prompts.’
‘I can do it quickly enough when she calls.’
‘I forgot to ask you if you were all right now,’ said McBride, belatedly solicitous.
‘I’m fine.’
‘It was terrible.’
He wanted to transfer his anguish on to her. ‘Yes.’
‘Did you think you were going to die?’
‘I knew it was possible,’ she said cautiously.
‘What do you think about – feel like – imagining you’re going to die?’
The wrong direction, Claudine quickly recognized. ‘Children as young as Mary don’t think they’re going to die. Death is beyond their imagination.’
‘I can’t begin to think what she’s suffering.’
‘Don’t try,’ urged Claudine. ‘She’s strong.’
‘You don’t know what she is by now. None of us do. We can’t.’ McBride’s wanderings had fortunately brought him close to the desk when the telephone sounded. Again the three of them jumped. Claudine held up a slowing hand as the man darted round the desk. He snatched his receiver up slightly ahead of her.
There was momentary blankness. Then: ‘Dad?’
McBride retched. ‘Honey!’ he managed, coughing.
Claudine kept moving her hand, trying to slow him down.
‘It’s me.’
‘Let me speak to her!’ demanded Hillary.
‘I know…! Oh, honey…’ said McBride.
‘I want to come home, dad.’
The effort to get hold of himself shivered through the man. ‘I want that too, honey.’
The volume was uneven and a blankness came after every exchange, Claudine noted. Two minutes had passed, according to the clock.
‘Why haven’t you fixed it, then?’ The petulance was immediate, angry. ‘Are you and mom fighting?’
Hillary was in front of her husband, beckoning demands.
‘No, honey. We’re not fighting.’
Claudine gestured the woman back. To McBride she mouthed ‘Let her tell me how’ and when the man repeated it, word for word, Mary said: ‘You must do everything she says.’
Perspiration was streaming down McBride’s face now, soaking his shirt. ‘I will! I promise I will! How are you, honey? Tell me how you are.’
‘All right.’ A brief blankness. Then: ‘Is Claudine there?’
Hillary actually tried to snatch McBride’s phone. He physically slapped her away.
‘Hello, Mary,’ said Claudine.
‘I don’t like you!’
‘Why not?’
‘Not letting me speak to dad.’
‘He’s here. You can speak to him now.’ Four minutes, she saw. What Mary had said was important.
‘Not today. Before.’
Satisfaction surged through Claudine. ‘Do you want to speak to mummy? She’s here too.’
‘I’ve got to tell you something. It’s…’
To the still demanding Hillary Claudine shook her head and mouthed ‘No.’
Aloud she said: ‘I think you’re being a very brave girl.’
‘I…’ Silence. ‘Tiny fingers come after tiny toes,’ the child blurted.
McBride squeezed his eyes shut in despair.
Claudine felt perspiration prick out on her face. ‘You’re very pretty. I’ve seen lots of pictures of you.’
‘Thank you,’ said Mary and for the first time Claudine guessed the reply had been unprompted. There was a gap before Mary said: ‘I’ve got to go!’
Claudine gestured against the frantic protest she saw McBride about to make. Anxious for a response she could identify from her hopeful manipulation of Smet, Claudine made the sigh, like the contempt, as obvious as she could in her voice. ‘So she isn’t going to talk herself: just through you? I’m not surprised.’
‘Oh yes I am going to talk!’ came the woman’s voice harshly. ‘Why shouldn’t I want to talk?’
McBride surrendered the phone but Hillary didn’t speak.
‘I can think of a lot of reasons.’
‘You think I’m afraid of you!’
Confirmation of the Smet conduit! thought Claudine, triumphantly. ‘Aren’t you?’
‘You know what you’ve just done? You’ve just cost McBride another two hundred and fifty thousand. That’s my new price. Half a million. And you’ll never guess the good use it’s going to be put to. Not much of a negotiator,
