‘I don’t know.’
‘What can I do?’
‘There’s nothing: nothing either of us can do.’
‘It’s her fault. Everything’s her fault. We should have disposed of the kid the day she picked her up.’
‘You’re blocking the line if they’re trying to get through,’ Smet said.
‘Don’t call me.’
‘Why not?’
‘Antoinette’s here. It’s difficult.’
‘Then how can I …?’
‘I’ll keep calling you, when it’s convenient here.’
‘Damn!’ said Blake quietly. Rampling shook his head in frustration.
‘You heard from the others?’ asked Smet.
‘No. You?’
‘She called as usual after this morning’s conference. Said they hadn’t got a clue what they were doing. She wasn’t at home when I telephoned her later, about this.’
There was a snort of derision. Then: ‘I’ve got to go. Antoinette’s coming!’
No one spoke for several moments after the line went dead. Through the speaker came the noise of decanter against glass again. Claudine revolved her swivel chair, to face the half-circle of men.
Rampling said: ‘It’s so close I feel I could reach out and touch it!’
More practically, Blake said: ‘It could be the driver.’
‘Whoever the man is he’s not the one who’s holding Mary,’ said Claudine. ‘He’s got a wife or a partner – Antoinette – who doesn’t know what’s going on. And they have fallen out: it’s something to concentrate on.’
‘We’ve got to get a wire in that bloody office,’ said Harding.
‘How long would it take?’ asked Claudine. ‘Minimum, maximum?’
McCulloch shrugged. ‘Seconds to stick a microphone with an adhesive base where he hopefully wouldn’t find it. Five minutes, tops, to put something inside the phone like we’ve done at his house.’
‘We’d put pressure on her if we broke the routine of his always being available in his office when she calls,’ said Claudine reflectively. From behind her there were short bursts of noise as Smet clicked his way through television channels, and then the crackle of static as he roamed radio frequencies in an equally unsuccessful search for a news programme.
‘That’s tomorrow. What about tonight?’ demanded Sanglier.
‘You did warn there might not be anything until tomorrow,’ Harrison reminded him.
‘They’d be frantic by then,’ said Rampling.
‘Smet tried to call her from the office,’ Claudine pointed out. ‘He’s almost bound to try again as soon as he hears from us.’
‘We shouldn’t wait,’ decided Sanglier.
Blake made the call. Smet actually dropped the receiver in his anxiety to pick it up, repeating ‘Yes?’ every few seconds to urge the explanation on.
‘You think you can trace who it is?’ he demanded.
‘It’ll be time-consuming but we’ve got the manpower,’ Blake said. ‘It’s our first direct and positive line. We’re going to get him. And through him everyone else.’
‘The minister will want to know how soon,’ Smet pressed.
Blake said: ‘We could have it all wrapped up in days. By this time tomorrow we could be well on our way.’
Claudine made cutting-off gestures and Blake said: ‘We’re setting things up now. Speak to you tomorrow.’
They waited tensely, silently. At once Smet’s telephone was lifted. A digit – within minutes isolated as 2, the first number of the Brussels code – was punched before the handset was replaced. It was lifted within seconds and 2 pressed again before once more being put down.
‘Come on! Come on!’ hissed Rampling. ‘Make the fucking call!’
Everyone jumped when Smet’s telephone rang, the over-amplified sound echoing into the room.
‘Shit!’ exclaimed Blake.
‘Anything?’ The same voice as before.
‘They’ve worked it out.’
‘What?’ shouted the man, his voice breaking.
Smet even used some of Blake’s exaggerated words and phrases. The other man never once interrupted. Not until the end did he say: ‘That’s it? All of it?’
‘Blake said it was a simple process of elimination.’
‘I’ve got access to the numbers, sure. But I’m much too senior ever to bother to look at them. There are dozens – hundreds – more likely man me. And the phones aren’t traceable to me, either.’
‘You think you’re safe?’
The laugh was genuine, unforced. ‘I am now that I know what to expect.’
Smet gave a loud sigh. ‘Thank God for that.’
‘You told Félicité?’
‘I was going to. I decided to talk to you first. Don’t you think I should bother?’
‘I’d like to frighten the bitch but this wouldn’t. She had me explain everything when I gave her the phones. She knows the only danger is being picked up by a scanner. And she’s only going to use a number once.’
‘How many has she got?’
‘Six.’ The man cleared his throat. ‘Gaston called.’
‘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 Félicité 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: Félicité. 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 Félicité 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 Félicité, 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. André Poncellet reacted w
ith 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 an impression they were expected and physically blocked her way so that Blake could knock on Smet’s door and enter at the same time.
Smet was behind his desk, about to sit. There was no sign of the briefcase. He looked visibly frightened at their entry and said: ‘What the …!’ before fully recognizing them.
‘Hi!’ said Harding cheerfully. ‘We’ve had a great idea!’
‘All we’ve done is meet round a conference table,’ added Blake. ‘Let’s lunch.’
Smet seemed to need the chair. He lowered himself swallowing heavily, giving a dismissive gesture to the hapless secretary in the doorway. He forced a smile. ‘I can’t possibly. The minister expects a report on this morning’s meeting.’
‘He just got it from Sanglier,’ said the American, leaning forward invitingly over the man’s desk. ‘Take a break. We deserve it.’
‘Maybe another time. I’ve got other things to keep up to date with, as well as the kidnap.’
‘You sure you can’t make it?’ pressed Harding. ‘We’ve got pagers: they could get us at once if anything breaks.’
Smet had recovered. ‘No. Thank you, but no.’
‘Our guests,’ insisted Harding.
‘No.’
‘OK then,’ said Harding. ‘Another time.’
‘Until this afternoon,’ said Blake, at the door.
In the car Harding said: ‘There’s a great little restaurant on the Avenue Adolphe Buyl.’
‘Sounds good,’ said Blake. ‘Pity the whole thing didn’t work out. The briefcase particularly.’
‘We’ve got something into his office. It’s better than nothing.’
‘Where did you put it?’
‘Under the desk edge when I leaned forward the first time. As near as I could to the telephones.’
‘There was what looked like an individual private line, next to the multi-extension bank.’
‘That’s the one I got closest to.’
It had been premature to celebrate installing a bug in Jean Smet’s office. They learned from the two relevant calls among a lot of extraneous inter-office communication not to expect contact that day from Félicité, and while that allayed the apprehension there would otherwise have been Claudine thought that only to be able to hear Smet’s side of a conversation was almost worse man not being able to listen to anything at all.
Félicité’s was the first and obviously complaining call, Smet apologizing at once for being kept from his office by Ulieff’s
reception when she’d first called. There was a comprehensive account of that morning’s briefing, an apparent agreement that the investigation was stalled and a lot of subservient grunts from the lawyer. Several times he asked the woman to explain whatever it was she’d told him and at the end a long period of silence before the line closed down.
From Smet’s responses Claudine at once identified the second caller as the Belgacom executive. She guessed the man to be more concerned than he’d ended up the previous night from Smet’s saying it had not been one of that morning’s decisions that the Belgacom investigation should start at senior management level.
It was only at the very end mat Smet’s remarks became unambiguously clear. The lawyer declared outright: ‘She’s not calling them today,’ and when the man obviously asked why said: ‘She wants to make them sweat for a day. Says she wants to teach them a lesson.’
There was initially more lost bewilderment man anger from the ambassador and his wife. After having the appropriate remark replayed twice McBride said dully: ‘Nothing until tomorrow?’
‘No,’ said Claudine. ‘But it’s an attack on me, not Mary.’
‘What the fuck reassurance is that! You’re safe, here! Mary’s with a monster. Mary isn’t safe.’
She didn’t have an adequate reply. ‘It’s not just to make us sweat. She will attempt a ransom.’
‘A day!’ insisted the man, irrational anger taking over. ‘If she doesn’t make a definite demand – set out how she wants it paid – in twenty-four hours I’m going to insist Smet is picked up, by our people if necessary. I don’t give a penny fuck about legality. I’ll make him talk myself if I have to. I want it over. I want my baby back.’
There wasn’t any point in arguing, Claudine knew. ‘Twenty-four hours,’ she agreed.
Mary was squatting cross-legged in front of the television on the other side of the river-view room, a tub of popcorn in her lap, engrossed in the satellite cartoon channel.
Félicité, who had already delayed the call twice, finally picked up the house phone. As usual, Lascelles answered at once.
The Predators Page 31
