The Predators

by Brian Freemantle

  Norris couldn’t remember! One moment he had the name, the next it had gone, his head thick. Not mush; as if it was filled with cotton waste. ‘Lextop,’ he finally managed.

  ‘Lestrop,’ corrected McBride, curious at the mistake. It was a passing thought, replaced in a moment. So this was the unspecified rumour that was causing the Lestrop stock to slide: where della Sialvo had gone after he’d told the Italian to go fuck himself! It still didn’t help McBride gauge the danger he faced.

  ‘That’s it, Lestrop,’ accepted Norris gratefully. This wasn’t going at all as it should have done: how he’d planned it. By now McBride should have broken, made a mistake he could have picked up and used to trap the man into making more. It was so difficult, keeping things straight and in the order he intended. He didn’t want at this late stage actually to consult the Washington dossier but he couldn’t afford another mistake. At once came the contradiction. The file was intimidatingly thick. Consulting it now might convince McBride it contained more about him than it really did. He dropped one of the indictments taking them out of the folder and had to grope awkwardly under his chair to retrieve it. ‘There’s an international arrest warrant out against della Sialvo. He’s thought to be somewhere here, in Europe.’

  Where he’d be relatively safe and able to operate, McBride knew: international arrest warrants were notoriously difficult to enforce, particularly in countries with different legal systems. He would have known of an active investigation: it would have been inevitable. ‘How did Washington discover the trading with my company?’

  Norris realized the ambassador was questioning him, not the other way round as it should have been. Had to get the order reversed: get everything back on track. It was difficult to keep the loose papers from sliding off his lap, the facts from slipping out of his mind. ‘I asked for an in-depth examination, checking for enemies you might have made. I mentioned the possibility, remember?’

  So it wasn’t yet properly official, a Washington operation. There never had been any secret about the two deals he’d done with della Sialvo. They were totally legal, a matter of public record, apart from the Zürich bank commission payments and that was a problem for Sialvo’s native Italy, not the United States. And the Italian was free and likely to remain so. McBride was glad he’d played the innocent. It made the rest of the meeting easy. He said: ‘This is potentially very worrying.’

  Here it comes, thought Norris triumphantly: it had taken longer than he’d expected – he’d begun to feel uneasy, which was ridiculous – but the first trickle had just seeped through the breach in the dam. It would come in a tidal wave now. It always did. ‘The more you can tell me the better it will be.’

  ‘Quite so.’ MrBride’s mind veered sideways, off on a sharp tangent. Thank God there’d been the confrontation at the beginning, taking the negotiations for Mary Beth’s freedom away from this bumbling, almost incoherent idiot! When it was all over – when Mary was safely back – he’d have the FBI Director’s ass for sending someone like Norris.

  ‘I always think it’s best … what I prefer … what I’d like us to do would be to set it out chronologically, from the very beginning,’ said Norris.

  ‘The Gulf War was a long time ago. Seven, eight years.’

  ‘There’s no hurry. Your own time.’ He’d won, beaten an ambassador friend of the President!

  There wasn’t any purpose in prolonging this charade: it was almost cruel, like a cat taunting a captured mouse. ‘I don’t have any official position in the corporation any more but obviously in the circumstances the board will do as I ask. I’ll send them a very full explanation, immediately. Ask them to cooperate in every way with the Bureau. And advise your Director, of course: send both sides copies of what I’ve told the other. And tell State and the President.’

  Norris sat staring at the other man, his mind wiped clean once more. ‘No,’ he said dully.

  ‘No what?’ McBride frowned.

  ‘I want you, now … to tell me, now. It’s my case.’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell you. After so long I can’t remember anyone named Luigi della Sialvo but if he’s an indicted criminal … a fugitive from American justice … then quite obviously my former colleagues have to cooperate in every way they can … as I will if it turns out that I dealt with him personally …’ McBride rose, ending the encounter. ‘You’re to be congratulated for digging deep enough to find this, Mr Norris.’

  Norris rose, without any positive intention of doing so, and papers cascaded on to the floor. He had to kneel to pick them up. Still kneeling he said to the other man: ‘Please. Tell me!’

  ‘I’ve told you, there’s nothing I can help you with at the moment,’ McBride said. ‘It’s too long ago. But your people in Washington will get every help: I guarantee it.’ He came round the monstrous desk to put his hand on Norris’s shoulder, physically urging the man from the study.

  In her room at the Metropole, Claudine was disconcerted when the telephone rang. She stared at it for several moments, unwilling to pick it up. It wouldn’t be Hugo. She’d spoken to him much earlier, from the security of the Belgian police headquarters, explaining how – and why – it had been difficult for her the previous night. It was far more likely to be Peter Blake.

  ‘Something important has come up,’ said Norris, when she finally lifted the receiver. ‘Can you come down here to the embassy?’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it on the phone.’

  Claudine hesitated. Henri Sanglier still hadn’t arrived and the American embassy was where they were going anyway: she could leave a message for Peter to show Sanglier the devices. ‘I’ll be there in half an hour.’

  The embassy’s rezidentura – the quarters of the CIA and the FBI – was far away both in distance and appearance from the lavish ambassadorial officialdom Claudine had seen on her first visit, a series of identical, box-like rectangles, four of which now formed part of the emergency communications centre. Those of Rampling and Harding were at the very rear of the complex, slightly larger than the rest to designate their local status of controller, but each restricted by only one door and no windows to outside light. Rampling saw Claudine as she was escorted past and waved but she didn’t see him. To Robert Ritchie, who was with him, Rampling said: ‘You know something I don’t?’

  ‘I don’t know nothing,’ said Ritchie. ‘It’s called staying alive.’

  Norris checked his watch as she entered Harding’s clear-desked room and Claudine at once registered both signs. Excessive cleanliness and rigid conformity, particularly to time, were both features of severe obsession: she had, in fact, made the journey within the promised thirty minutes but she should have avoided the self-imposed stipulation. She was aware of the brief frown when the indicated chair scraped slightly sideways as she sat. There was a sheen of sweat on the man’s sallow face and unusually his jacket was open.

  The chair movement wasn’t sufficient to cause a problem, Norris decided. The microphone he’d fed round the desk, taping out of sight beneath its rim the lead to the recorder in the right-hand drawer, was sensitive enough to pick up everything she said.

  ‘So,’ began Claudine enthusiastically. ‘What’s the big mystery you couldn’t tell me on the phone?’ She’d had misgivings on the way there: not so much misgivings as belated curiosity. The arrangement was for Jean Smet to bring them together if there was a development: Norris, in fact, was the last person who should have done it. But in the man’s mental state there could be a dozen explanations: she hoped at least one of them was useful.

  Norris declared: ‘Technically this embassy is American property.’ He was quite sure of the technique to use with her: hit her hard, without giving her any room for manoeuvre.

  She’d made a mistake, Claudine knew at once. She said: ‘I know, John. We went through the question of jurisdiction at the beginning, didn’t we?’

  ‘So you’re in America.’ She had to realize how trapped she was.

>   ‘Listen to me,’ urged Claudine gently. ‘You telephoned me at the hotel. Asked me to come here because you had something to tell me. What was it you wanted to tell me?’

  ‘That!’ insisted the man irritably. ‘That you’re subject to American law because you’re in America.’ Why was she being so stupid!

  She could walk out, Claudine supposed: leave the embassy and get back to the hotel before Sanglier and Blake. She felt a sweep of embarrassment. No one would be able to understand her coming here like this: she couldn’t understand it now. He was a sick man, she reminded herself: a sick man who was going to be confronted very soon with the demand that he be removed from the investigation. She wouldn’t walk away from a sick man. She said: ‘There isn’t anything, is there? Nothing you needed to tell me about the case?’

  ‘I know,’ Norris announced. He had to maintain the pressure, constantly keep her on edge.

  ‘What do you know, John? Tell me. Let’s talk about it.’ This wasn’t any sort of treatment – it couldn’t be – but there would be an element of paranoia, his confused mind overcrowded with disjointed delusions, and if she could coax some of them out she might, temporarily, ease his burden.

  ‘Why don’t you tell me?’ He wasn’t going to lose control, as he’d lost control with the ambassador: find himself answering questions instead of asking them. Couldn’t understand how that had happened. A trick. Wouldn’t do McBride any good.

  ‘What do you want me to tell you?’

  She was giving up! Far easier – far quicker – than he’d expected. But it happened sometimes. You could never tell. ‘All of it. How you managed to get in, on the inside. Where she is, so I can get her out. Everything.’

  Claudine felt the first pop of unease, deep in the pit of her stomach. The moment of collapse at the highest point of tension, she thought. ‘We’ve got to work together, John. Help each other. I want to help you and I know you’ll help me.’

  ‘Just do as I ask. Tell me where Mary Beth is. She’s been missing for too long. I’ve got to get her back.’ Why couldn’t she understand!

  Claudine knew she had to establish a central thread, something he could recognize and hold on to. ‘We’re trying to find Mary Beth together.’

  She was trying to trick him! The muzziness, the cotton waste feeling, was coming back. And it was hot again. It was the artificial light that had to be on all the time. There should be air conditioning somewhere. Too late to look for it now. ‘You know where she is … who they are …’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘You do!’ Norris grabbed sideways, for the other item he’d carefully installed in the top right-hand drawer alongside the tape recorder: not the new-issue 9mm that a lot in the Bureau carried because of its stopping power but the Smith and Wesson he’d always preferred. He saw the fear in her eyes when he brought it out and laid it on the table between them, keeping his hand on the butt. ‘If you don’t tell me you’ll be obstructing a federal officer in pursuit of his duties and I am legally authorized, in the United States of America in which at this moment we both technically are, to use whatever force is necessary to make you comply with my requests.’ He brought the weapon up, pointing it directly at her. ‘So, answer my question.’ He had thought he wasn’t going to get through the formal warning – twice he’d almost lost it – but he had. The warmth was satisfaction now, a feeling of complete power. He was legally authoritzed to shoot to kill if she tried to escape. He’d only wound her: put a round in her arm, to break it. Prove he wasn’t making empty threats. He wanted very much to fire the gun: feel the kick and hear the explosion. ‘I’m waiting …’

  Five streets away Robert Ritchie shouldered his way into the familiarly crowded bar on the rue Guimard, checking himself at the unexpected sight of the Englishman at the same table as Harding and McCulloch. He realized at once that they’d seen him so he had to continue, saying ‘Hi’ and glad-handing as he made his way through the crush.

  Ritchie didn’t say anything when he reached their table. McCulloch said: ‘He’d already found the wire: both of them. And made you, the first night. I always said you were shit at surveillance. Their commissioner’s coming in this afternoon to stop the whole fucking nonsense.’

  ‘She’s with Norris at the embassy now,’ disclosed Ritchie. ‘I checked the transcript. He called her room, just over an hour ago: said something had come up that was too important to tell her over the phone.’

  ‘Nothing has come up,’ said Blake.

  She had to bring him back from the edge, give him the thread. Her life hung upon her being able to open whatever door there might be to what remained of his rational, reasoning mind. If nothing did remain, then it was almost inevitable he would shoot her. From a metre away, he couldn’t miss. ‘We were supposed to work as a team, you and I.’

  ‘Inveigled yourself in, so they’d know everything we were doing, right?’

  It would be a mistake to pander to the delusion, letting it grow. ‘I’m not involved with those who’ve got Mary Beth. I couldn’t be.’

  ‘No one saw it but me.’

  He was closed off against her. ‘What did you see?’

  ‘You getting inside. Knowing everything we were doing.’

  ‘It made you angry, didn’t it, my replacing you?’

  Trying to change the order, making him answer questions again. ‘Didn’t replace me. Thought you did but you didn’t. I’m still in charge.’

  Why wasn’t she frightened when a gun was being held unwaveringly on her from point blank range? There were feelings – anger at being tricked, frustration at not being able to reach him mentally – but no actual gut-dropping fear. She isolated the pride – the boastfulness – in the man’s remark, wondering if it might be the chink she was seeking. There was the sudden flurry of movement behind her, obviously from the only door. She didn’t turn.

  ‘John!’ said a voice she recognized as Harding’s. ‘What’s the problem here, John?’

  ‘No problem: sorting everything out,’ said Norris, his eyes flicking over Claudine’s shoulder. ‘No need for you here: no need for any of you. Get out!’ The gun came up towards her.

  ‘We don’t need the gun, John. Let’s put the gun down, OK?’

  ‘Get out!’

  ‘Do as he says,’ insisted Claudine, still not turning.

  ‘John, I tell you what I’m going to do,’ said Harding. ‘I’m going to come on in here. Help things along a little.’ There was a nervous laugh. ‘It’s my office, for Christ’s sake! Guy’s gotta be able to get into his own office.’

  ‘Don’t need help!’ shouted Norris, his voice cracking. ‘My case. I’ll bring it in.’ The gun abruptly shook, in his fury.

  ‘OK! OK!’ said Harding urgently. ‘Everything’s down to you.’

  There was renewed sound from behind and Claudine guessed more people had arrived. She heard McBride say: ‘Norris! John! This is the ambassador. You hearing me?’

  ‘Of course I’m hearing you.’ He wasn’t looking away from Claudine now.

  ‘What’s going on here?’

  ‘Getting your daughter back, sir. That’s what I was sent here to do.’ The gun wavered up and down, gesturing to Claudine. ‘She knows where Mary is. She’s going to tell me.’

  ‘Good man,’ said McBride. ‘Well done. I want you to put the gun down and we’ll take Dr Carter back to my office and she can tell me herself. Then I’m going to cable your Director just how damned well you did on this.’

  ‘She’s got to tell me, no one else!’ Norris’s thumb moved, visibly, flicking off the safety catch.

  At the doorway McBride whispered to Harding: ‘Could you hit him from here? Disable him?’

  ‘He’s half hidden by her. He’d know what I was trying to do – see my gun – if I moved along the inside wall for a full shot,’ replied Harding, soft-voiced. ‘Oh shit!’

  ‘I could hit him,’ offered Blake. ‘But his reflex would be to pull his own trigger. He couldn’t miss her.’

  Claud
ine, unaware of the import of the hushed conversation, said loudly; ‘Please be quiet, everyone. Let us alone.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Norris distantly. ‘That’s what I want, everyone to be quiet. Everyone except her.’ He was confused by so many people. He was pleased that McBride, all of them, were going to witness how good he was: be taught how to interrogate a felon properly. But he’d lost his concentration. Couldn’t think how to pick up the questioning. The gun felt suddenly heavy. He couldn’t remember why he’d pulled the weapon. Had she pulled hers, to challenge him? Couldn’t see it. To frighten her, he remembered. That was it, to frightened her!

  Claudine could detect the rustle of movement behind her but no one was speaking. It was important that they didn’t. She didn’t want any more anger: didn’t want him to lose what little self-control, if any, was left. He was fixated on her involvement, so she couldn’t positively confront him; that would make him angry, too. And he’d defied the ambassador, the ultimate authority: the sort of authority to which he’d always deferred in the past. So there was an absolute refusal any longer to acknowledge anyone as his superior, either officially or professionally. It made his paranoia, his delusion, absolute, and him a totally dangerous man, clinically a psychopath: a psychopath sitting a metre away pointing at her a gun with the safety catch off. What was her entry to someone who believed himself above all others? She’s got to tell me, no one else, she remembered: not the ambassador, or his Director in Washington. Only John Norris, God-like among the little people. So he was the entry. The only way to get through to John Norris was through John Norris, the one person he’d listen to: the only person whose opinion made any sense to him. Extremely careful to infuse admiration and to make it a statement, not a question, she said: ‘You must feel very satisfied, holding me here like this.’

  ‘I haven’t got her back yet.’

  No, thought Claudine, anxiously: Mary Beth mustn’t come into the conversation. ‘I feel very inadequate.’