The Predators

by Brian Freemantle

  All incoming letter mail, including the contents of the diplomatic bag, had first to be opened and examined in an adjoining room, transformed into a sorting office: Norris’s only concession was to agree to the demand from Burt Harrison, the chief of mission, for a member of his staff to be present when the supposedly inviolate diplomatic exchange was sifted.

  Some of the thirty embassy staff whom Norris considered sufficiently senior to be blanket-monitored had been awakened overnight at their homes to agree to listening and recording devices being installed on their telephones and to their incoming personal packages and letters going through the embassy sorting procedure.

  The assessment in the FBI’s much more comprehensive personal file upon Harry Becker, which was faxed in its entirety from Washington, was of a completely responsible and absolutely competent operative, but after only fifteen minutes’ interrogation by Norris the man broke down and confessed to lying about duplicating the call to Mary Beth McBride’s school. Upon Norris’s authority Becker was immediately suspended from duty but not as quickly repatriated, kept in Belgium – although virtually under embassy house arrest – to enable further investigation into his local associations and habits during his posting in the country. Norris personally briefed five of the agents who had arrived with him before assigning them to the task with the warning to forget Becker was – or had been – a colleague. ‘Whatever happens he’s finished. He isn’t any longer one of us: he doesn’t qualify.’

  The full FBI evaluation of James Kilbright McBride was of a man fulfilling every requirement to be a United States’ ambassador, with nothing questionable in his prior personal or professional background. Norris responded with an ‘Action This Day’ priority demand for the armament-dealing background to be gone into again in greater depth.

  Norris’s encounter with Lance Rampling, which the CIA station chief had entered believing it to be a meeting of equals, lasted precisely ten minutes. Rampling emerged, white-faced from a combination of fury and shocked bewilderment, to demand from Harding whether the sonofabitch was fucking real or not. Harding said he thought John Norris was a mutant alien from another planet, although he’d prefer not to be quoted.

  The scene-of-crime forensic expert thought there was nothing whatsoever suspicious about how the nail was embedded in the tyre of the original collection car but Norris had wheel, tyre and nail shipped back in the returning military aircraft for detailed scientific examination in Washington DC.

  Claudine and Blake were early for the coordinating meeting but Norris, flanked by Harding and Rampling, was already waiting in a hastily contrived incident room created from the largest unit of the normal FBI accommodation. André Poncellet was early, too, but from the way he hurried the introductions Norris managed to convey the impression that the perspiring, tightly uniformed Brussels police commissioner had kept them waiting. Neither Harding nor Rampling wore jackets and the CIA resident had his tie pulled loose. Norris sat with both buttons of his jacket fastened: he was facing the window and the light flared off his rimless glasses, making him appear sightless. It was Rampling, a fresh-faced man with an extremely short crewcut, who gestured to the Cona percolator steaming on its hotplate: when Claudine nodded acceptance he poured a cup for her.

  A technician with recording apparatus sat by the door. Seeing Blake’s look Norris said: ‘I like keeping tight records. About everything. Anyone got any objection?’

  Blake shook his head. Claudine didn’t make any response, intently studying the newly arrived American. Poncellet said: ‘No. Of course not. Very wise.’ He spoke too quickly, too nervously.

  ‘In answer to your obvious question,’ Norris began, ‘the embassy has heard nothing of or from Mary Beth since she was last seen by two of her classmates walking off, alone, up the rue du Canal. So she’s now been missing for thirty-six hours …’ He paused, looking towards the recording technician, who nodded at the adequate sound level. ‘I’ve satisfied myself that she has not run away of her own accord. The most obvious conclusion is that she has been grabbed and is being held against her will. I fully accept and recognize under whose authority this investigation has to be conducted …’ He stopped again, looking directly at Blake. ‘We greatly appreciate your involvement and want to work extremely closely with you. My government is committing whatever additional support might be necessary. I brought twenty-five men with me from Washington last night, to be part of whatever force you are assembling. Today we need to evolve a strategy—’

  ‘Won’t that be difficult until we know what we’re investigating?’ Claudine broke in. It could be worse than she’d feared: far worse.

  Norris frowned, both at the interruption and because it came from a woman. He needed to know what her function was. ‘I think we should proceed on the assumption that she has been kidnapped.’

  ‘Why?’ demanded Claudine. ‘Thirty-six hours is a long time without a demand, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not necessarily, in my experience.’

  Harding managed not to show any reaction, although Norris’s reply directly contradicted what he had said on the way in from the airport the previous night.

  So Norris was the negotiator, Claudine thought. And clearly the man in charge of the FBI and CIA contingent. ‘She could have been attacked. Be lying injured somewhere. Had an accident and be – or need to be – in a hospital. I don’t see the point of maintaining the silence about her disappearance that I understand has been asked for.’

  ‘I don’t want to panic whoever’s got her,’ said Norris flatly.

  ‘We don’t know that anyone has got her,’ protested Claudine. ‘How long do you think we should sit around doing nothing?’

  Norris’s face became tinged with pink at the unfamiliarity of being confronted so openly. Before he could speak Poncellet declared with triumphant eagerness: ‘The Brussels police force hasn’t sat around doing nothing. I have assigned squads to the rue du Canal at the precise time she walked along it. Everyone – and I mean everyone – will be stopped and questioned and shown a photograph of the child, in the hope they regularly use the road at that time and might have seen her. In addition there will be road blocks stopping all vehicles for their drivers to be questioned. Checks were started, within an hour of our being told of her disappearance, on every shop, business and private house along the entire length of the road, not just in the direction in which she was seen to walk but also the opposite way.’ He looked proudly around those assembled in the room, saddened at the lack of approval.

  ‘What’s come out of the premises check?’ demanded Blake.

  In his disappointment Poncellet tried condescension. ‘If there had been anything I would have obviously told you.’

  Unperturbed, Blake said: ‘How long’s it been going on?’

  ‘Since the opening of commercial business this morning,’ said Poncellet tightly.

  Blake nodded, as if the reply confirmed something. ‘And this afternoon one of the city’s busiest thoroughfares is going to be virtually closed off. By this evening it will have leaked that the daughter of the American ambassador has vanished. It would be better to have a media release, with a photograph, than run the risk of speculation’s getting out of hand and having to be corrected.’

  ‘I do not consider that’s the right way to operate at this time,’ said Norris.

  ‘I thought our understanding – the only possible jurisdictional understanding – was that it was how we considered it right to operate,’ said Claudine. So much for diplomatic niceties. They were always bullshit anyway. She’d expected antagonism – come prepared to confront it, which she was doing – but not to be as worried as she was becoming.

  Norris grew redder. ‘Kidnappers are frightened once they’ve got a victim. Premature publicity can panic them, as I’ve already tried to make clear. I don’t want …’ He stopped, in apparent awareness of the implications of talking in the first person. ‘It would be a mistake for anyone to be panicked. It’s better for negotiations to be conducted
as quietly and as calmly as possible.’

  ‘Quantico text book,’ identified Claudine.

  ‘With which I am extremely familiar,’ said Norris, who’d contributed two of the manuals from which it had been created.

  ‘So am I. I’ve read it,’ said Claudine, who had, as part of her hostage negotiation lectures. Throwing the man’s condescension back at him she said: ‘We don’t yet know we’re investigating a kidnap. We’re looking for a missing child. Missing children are best and most often found through public appeal. And as Europol is the jurisdictional investigatory body into the disappearance of Mary Beth McBride this is the way we consider this investigation should begin. A lot of time has already been wasted: I hope not too much.’

  Norris was astonished at the effrontery, and then furious. ‘Have you forgotten who the victim is?’

  ‘It’s because of who the victim is that we are here,’ Blake reminded him. ‘Lack of contact for thirty-six hours hardly indicates panic. It indicates the very opposite, if she has been snatched.’

  Inwardly Harding and Rampling wished they could wave flags or punch the air. Poncellet could hardly believe either the dispute or his good fortune in being safely on the periphery.

  Norris was momentarily dumbstruck. Struggling desperately, he said: ‘It’s an official diplomatic request that this situation is not made public for at least another twenty-four hours.’

  ‘What’s diplomacy got to do with it?’ challenged Claudine. ‘If it is a consideration – and I cannot imagine how it can be – then perhaps it would be better if my colleague and I discussed it personally with the ambassador. We’re not achieving a lot here.’

  ‘This is ridiculous!’ Norris was floundering.

  ‘I agree. Totally ridiculous,’ said Blake. ‘We came here today to arrange cooperation: a strategy, to use your word. This discussion so far isn’t doing that. If the child is in danger all we’re doing is furthering it.’

  Norris looked sideways, suddenly reminded of the tape. He couldn’t retreat. It wasn’t his style. And certainly not on record. Compromising wasn’t retreating: compromising was an essential part of negotiation, give a little here to gain much more there. And what was the point of confrontation anyway? These two weren’t going to be actively involved: just given the impression that they were running things. And on the way in from the airport he’d put a time limit on what he considered might be the worst scenario and thought there was a way he could avoid losing face. Looking from the recording apparatus to the plump Belgian, Norris said: ‘The road block and street checks do create a risk of ill-informed speculation.’

  ‘Which should be avoided,’ reiterated Claudine. The man had to be given a way out in front of his own people. ‘The release could be timed for this evening: that would catch television and radio and ensure fuller cover in tomorrow morning’s newspapers. That, effectively, fits with the time scale you were thinking about, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I think so. Yes,’ said Norris. The bitch was patronizing him.

  Claudine was conscious of Blake’s attention. She didn’t respond to it. Instead she said: ‘As we’re devising strategy, the Quantico guidelines favour paying ransom, don’t they?’

  ‘The prime consideration is a safe release,’ said Norris, seizing his escape. ‘The perpetrators can be pursued afterwards.’

  ‘What about the victim’s becoming disposable if a ransom is paid?’ asked Blake. ‘Once the kidnappers have got the money the consideration is minimizing their risk of being identified.’

  ‘It’s better to pay,’ insisted Norris.

  ‘You’re a negotiator?’ challenged Claudine.

  ‘The Bureau’s chief negotiator.’

  ‘You’ve always paid?’

  ‘Yes.’ Norris’s colour had been subsiding. It began to return at the obvious direction of the questioning. He looked again at the recording equipment.

  ‘How many victims have you lost?’

  ‘I’ve got six released, unharmed,’ declared the American. ‘All the kidnappers were arrested, in every case.’

  ‘That wasn’t the question,’ Claudine reminded him. Why did the silly bastard run head-on into every argument contrary to his own? Because, she reasoned, he was unaccustomed to having to argue in the first place. But this wasn’t negotiation! This was confrontation. Her unease deepened as her professional assessment of the man hardened.

  ‘Two died,’ admitted Norris.

  ‘What about the kidnappers?’

  ‘They weren’t caught.’ Norris looked between Claudine and Blake, positively settling on Claudine. ‘You’re Europol’s negotiator.’

  ‘I will be, if it comes to that.’ He should at least be allowed the appearance of revenge, she supposed. But only the appearance. He was the creator of his own problems. She didn’t want him to be the creator of hers. Or those of a missing child.

  ‘How many kidnap victims have you successfully freed?’ Norris pounced.

  ‘None,’ admitted Claudine at once. ‘I haven’t yet been called upon to do so.’

  Norris stretched the silence, exaggerating his astonishment in his determination not just to recover but to crush this arrogant woman in the process. Spacing the words as he uttered them he said: ‘You haven’t operated in a kidnap situation until now?’

  ‘No,’ said Claudine easily. ‘But before joining Europol I freed a hundred and twenty people from an airliner hijacked by Islamic fundamentalists. And ended four separate sieges, one by a convicted murderer who took a hostage to avoid capture.’ She paused. ‘No one died.’ Touché, she thought. Mixing the metaphor, she added: Game, set and match.

  Blake appeared to think so, too. Smiling, he said: ‘I think that covers the relevant CVs, don’t you?’

  Rampling couldn’t avoid the brief smirk, although not at Claudine, and was glad they were sitting in a way that prevented Norris from seeing it. Claudine was unconcerned that the thin American could see her brief sideways smile, which wasn’t in any case an intended sneer at the man.

  Norris took it as such, but more than matched it when Blake disclosed that the Europol force at the moment consisted of just himself and the woman. ‘I can’t believe what you’re telling me. Europol isn’t taking this seriously! This isn’t an investigation on Europol’s part: it’s a joke.’

  ‘It’ll be an investigation within an hour of its becoming clear what there is to investigate,’ promised Blake, unimpressed by the other man’s obviously overstrained amazement.

  Norris shook his head. The woman had irritated him into pointless argument, but it didn’t matter any more. His only annoyance now was at himself, for allowing it to happen. These two – their entire cockamamy organization – were of no importance. They had just made themselves irrelevant by admitting – casually admitting! – they considered that the disappearance of an American ambassador’s child could be handled by just two people, with the further incredible admission that the appointed negotiator had never conducted a kidnap release in her life! McBride – probably the President himself – would hit the roof when they were told: not just hit it, go right through it!

  It all came down to giving him a clear, unimpeded run. All he needed to do was go through the barest of motions – which, he reflected, was all he’d intended from the start – and get them out of the way. Out of his way.

  It took them thirty minutes to agree the wording of the proposed media release and that the greatest impact would come from the ambassador’s personal appearance at any requested press conference. Norris promised to put the idea to McBride, and Poncellet brightened visibly at Blake’s suggestion that the Belgian police commissioner should also appear. Commissioner Henri Sanglier would be Europol’s representative, added Blake, to Claudine’s well-disguised surprise. Norris’s contempt grew as he inferred that neither Blake nor Claudine was permitted to represent their organization. It perfectly summed up their inadequacy.

  It was as they decided upon daily morning and afternoon conferences that Norris apologized
that there was not enough space at the embassy’s FBI facility for Blake and Claudine to work from there. André Poncellet at once offered whatever facility and accommodation Europol might need at Brussels’ central police headquarters.

  The entire charade lasted five minutes short of an hour and ended with an exchange of emergency contact numbers and smiling assurances that they had made a good beginning for whatever they were going to face in the immediate future.

  Claudine held back until she was safely halfway across the open embassy forecourt before exploding: ‘What a fucking pantomime!’

  Blake showed no surprise at the outburst. ‘I’ve seen better,’ he agreed mildly.

  ‘It was frightening,’ insisted Claudine. She turned, looking directly at the man. ‘And I really mean that. Frightening.’

  Although the road checks hadn’t started the rue du Canal was already congested. They were still early for their meeting so they abandoned the taxi and found a pavement café some way from the school, in the direction in which Mary was known to have walked. As they sat there two detectives, one a woman visibly carrying a photograph of Mary Beth McBride, were escorted from inside by a shoulder-shrugging manager. Blake shook his head against making contact and Claudine held back as well.

  ‘So what’s so frightening?’ demanded Blake.

  ‘In my professional opinion, Norris is very close to being mentally ill,’ declared Claudine starkly. ‘I believe he’s severely obsessional, which is a clinical condition that needs treatment.’

  Blake stared at her, coffee cup half raised. ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘That would be something to be very frightened about. You sure?’

  ‘He’s beyond challenge: won’t consider any argument contrary to his own. Because he doesn’t believe there is any opinion other than his own. You saw it yourself, if you examine it hard enough. He won’t countenance any possibility beyond kidnap. That’s not the rationale of a psychological investigator: it’s the very antithesis of it. Everything is possible at this moment: at the beginning. I don’t think he’s capable of being either objective or subjective …’ She paused. ‘Most worrying of all, I think John Norris is on the edge of losing control. And if he loses control during any negotiation for Mary’s freedom, then she’ll die, if she hasn’t already been killed.’