‘You tell him?’
‘I said I’d call him back, if it was serious.’
‘What did he want?’
‘He said he doesn’t give a shit what Felicite says. He’s going to get rid of the other thing. It’s beginning to stink.’
‘Let’s talk tomorrow.’
‘I’ll call you.’
‘That didn’t work out at all as it should have done,’ said Harrison, as the call disconnected.
‘I would have liked more,’ agreed Claudine. ‘But we have her name now: Felicite. And the number Smet began to ring puts her within the city, not outside. We’ve got two more given names, Antoinette and Gaston. We know we’re looking for someone at the top – a senior executive – at Belgacom. That hugely narrows down our search there. And if Felicite is only using a stolen number once, she’s got three left. That gives me a time frame for the dialogue.’
‘And he’ll call out,’ Volker said. ‘It’s just bad luck that he hasn’t already. He still might.’
They made arrangements to be immediately alerted if he did, and returned to the Metropole. At dinner Sanglier, anxious at the lack of convenience and freedom to keep in touch with Paris, announced that he intended returning to Europol headquarters the following day and Hugo Rosetti wondered, looking very directly at Claudine, if there was any practical reason for his remaining, either.
‘I’ve got an idea how to get a listening device into Smet’s office but we’ll need your help to achieve it,’ Claudine told the commissioner. To the pathologist she said: ‘The stinking “other thing” that Gaston is going to get rid of will be missing a toe. There might be a lot to learn from that body.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Claudine proposed the office bugging idea but didn’t take part in its implementation, not wanting the slightest suspicion from Smet at her unnecessary presence. Equally objective, although with less enthusiasm than on the previous evening, Henri Sanglier accepted he had to head the delegation as well as impose his authority upon Jean Smet to gain the personal meeting with the Justice Minister immediately after that morning’s planning session, hopefully using the approach to unsettle the lawyer further by refusing to give a reason for the request. Burt Harrison was the obvious US diplomatic counterpart, just as Paul Harding balanced the inclusion of Peter Blake. Duncan McCulloch, with more recent home-based training, went through the basic practicalities with the FBI chief. Harding insisted they weren’t to worry, it would be a piece of cake, and McCulloch wondered by how many years the expression dated the older man.
Claudine did, obviously, attend the regular morning review and exaggerated the analysis of the previous afternoon’s conversation with Felicite, insisting it showed the woman terrified of the confrontation – ‘she’s running away from me’ – and clearly at a loss how to conceive a ransom exchange. Andre Poncellet reacted with the anticipated eagerness to Harding’s suggestion that the available and unemployed FBI and CIA personnel should supplement the mobile phone inquiry within Belgacom.
Smet maintained the reserve of the previous day during the meeting but forcefully bustled into the car with Sanglier and Blake for the trip to the ministry, making Poncellet take the second vehicle with Harding. Before the lead car cleared the forecourt Smet asked openly if there was a reason of which he was unaware for the unexpected request to meet Miet Ulieff (‘I need to know, in case he wants some legal advice’) and when Sanglier remained non-committal made more than one convoluted attempt to get an indication from Blake. Throughout the short trip the lawyer sat with his sagging briefcase clamped between his legs, the way, Blake noted for the first time, that he’d held it at the earlier briefing.
They were swept up to Ulieff’s ornate, rococo-style suite where the greying, urbane man waited surrounded by a retinue of officials, only some of whom – his immediate deputy and the chief public prosecutor – were introduced. Again Smet ingratiated himself into the lead group. He put the briefcase less obviously beside the chair in which he sat, only one place away from Ulieff.
This was, Sanglier supposed, the sort of event to which he had in the near future to become accustomed, a totally pointless charade of high political officials making the pretence of personally contributing to affairs of great importance which underlings were resolving. There was an obligatory photocall of Sanglier and Ulieff shaking hands for the cameras in apparent serious-faced discussion. Before the media were excluded Sanglier responded impromptu to a shouted question that the meeting was to discuss important developments which at that stage couldn’t be publicly disclosed.
As soon as the media left Sanglier announced that he’d wanted to meet Ulieff – and welcomed the inclusion of so many unexpected officials – formally to express on behalf of Europol their gratitude for the total Belgian cooperation at every level in the investigation. Knowing Smet would not yet have had time to brief Ulieff on the mobile telephone discovery he used that to explain his important development remark to the journalist. It was, Sanglier added, the first of what he confidently expected to be many more.
Sanglier listened to himself mouthing the empty words, actually impressed with how he sounded: while he probably needed to become accustomed to such occasions he hardly needed to be any more adept. Following the unwritten script, the moment Sanglier finished the Belgian officials asked their prepared questions – usually one apiece, although Ulieff allowed himself three – to which the answers either had just been given by Sanglier or were already available to them on the daily records. When the questioning concluded Burt Harrison echoed Sanglier’s official thanks on behalf of the United States of America and Ulieff suggested they all adjourn to a larger, adjoining chamber for a reception.
Smet followed, for the first time made too awkward by the briefcase to remain close to where the minister, his deputy and Sanglier were grouped. The man did his best, standing by the very end of the table upon which the drinks were stacked. He took mineral water.
Blake and Harding joined him together. Both chose whisky.
‘Little point at all in that!’ complained the lawyer.
There hadn’t been. The hope had been to get into Smet’s office in advance of the formal gathering and somehow separate the man from his briefcase as well as plant a device within the telephone. It left them with only one final option.
‘Bullshit protocol,’ agreed the disappointed Harding. ‘Greases the wheels of government.’
‘I warned you it would be a waste of time,’ Blake said. Close up he saw Smet was sweating.
‘I don’t see that we’re making much progress at all,’ invited Smet encouragingly.
Blake accepted two more whiskies, handing one to the American. To Smet he said: ‘How about you?’
‘I don’t drink during working hours,’ replied the Belgian, holding up his water glass. ‘I said I don’t see that we’re making much progress.’
‘I know more about the woman than I do my own mother,’ said Harding. ‘And Claudine knows ten times more than me: she’s really inside the bitch’s mind. Claudine will get her. I’ll put my pension on it.’ He hadn’t thought much about his pension lately. He certainly wasn’t worried about it any more.
‘If I was part of her group I’d be shitting myself,’ said Blake, maintaining the pressure.
‘Me and you both,’ agreed Harding.
There was movement from further along the table as the reception began to break up. Sanglier gestured that he was leaving with Ulieff and Poncellet. The detective and the FBI man moved when Smet did, crowding into the same elevator.
‘See you this afternoon,’ said Smet, getting off at the minister’s secretariat level on the second floor.
The two men continued to the ground floor, unspeaking, pressed the ascend button the moment everyone else got off and were back at the second floor in less than a minute. There was a central secretarial pool directly ahead of them, with personal assistants and secretaries separated by a low, wood-slatted barrier. Beyond them were the offices of Ulieff s immediate staff, their names inscribed on each door. Smet’s was facing them.
They strode briskly forward, smiling and calling greetings to the outer circle clerks who took their conference records and reached the gated barrier before anyone began to wonder at their presence. A woman started to stand protectively as they went through. Harding smiled and gestured and said: ‘Changed our mind about Jean,’ to convey
