The Predators

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘You were. Are.’ Norris shook his head, against the thickness. The gun rattled against the desk top. Everyone stiffened.

  There was no way of guessing how long it would be before Norris completely collapsed. It wouldn’t be long. Stressing the admiration even more, she said: ‘And you’re the master.’

  She was helpless: admitting it. And those at the door were quiet now, attentive like his audiences at Quantico: attentive and respectful. ‘You were careless, taking calls at the hotel about Rome and saying how worried you were about me.’

  There was an opening! She risked a question at last. ‘Is that the way, trusting no one?’

  He smiled, first to Claudine and then to the men behind her: lecturing was always satisfying. ‘I always know a lie. Can find guilt.’

  Claudine hadn’t wanted to put another question until she was surer but she didn’t have a choice. ‘How can you decide who to trust?’ Norris had been responding with reasonable coherence, not taking too long to reply, but now he hesitated, frowning, and Claudine thought, Dear God, don’t let him slip away: don’t let me lose him. She didn’t think she’d get him back even to this uncertain rationality if he drifted away.

  ‘We check everything, don’t we?’ he said, his face clearing, his voice even.

  She was there! She’d got past the mental barriers to what was left of his reasoning mind. She couldn’t guess how long it would last, but for the moment she was through.

  ‘So you had me checked out?’

  He looked at the gun he still loosely held, then at the unseen people behind her, and Claudine decided the frowning was not his mental confusion but his inability to understand what everyone was doing there: most of all what he was doing there.

  ‘So you had me checked out?’ she repeated.

  ‘I’m sorry. I …’

  ‘It was a First I got at the Sorbonne, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said doubtfully.

  It had to start coming from him: it had to be his realization. ‘What about London?’

  ‘First choice criminal psychologist at the Home Office.’ He was knuckling his eyes with his free hand, looking again at the people behind her, and Claudine wondered if McBride was still there.

  How much more time did she have? ‘Your Bureau helped set up our Behavioural Division at Europol.’

  ‘I know. Guy called Scott Burrows was seconded … What’s this all about …? I don’t understand?’

  Claudine snatched at the long sleeve of her dress, baring her left arm and holding it towards the man. The scar from the attempted assassination was still livid and wide, not because of bad surgery but because it had been a professional attempt and the knife had been smeared with excreta to infect the wound, which it had. ‘You know how I got this!’

  The man actually started back, as if he were frightened of the ugliness. ‘A hit. A previous case.’

  She couldn’t risk going any further. Norris had held out far longer and far better than she could have hoped. ‘You know all that to be true, don’t you, John?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘Who do I work for?’

  A wariness flicked across his face.

  ‘Who do I work for?’ persisted Claudine. For God’s sake don’t let there be any intervention from behind.

  Norris said: ‘Europol … I think …’

  ‘John, concentrate!’ demanded Claudine. ‘I work for Europol, don’t I?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I couldn’t have inveigled my way into this investigation, could I?’

  The eyes began to glaze, the grip on the gun tightening. ‘Don’t trick—’

  ‘It’s not a trick, John! Hold on! Concentrate! You’ve made a mistake, because you’re not well. You’ve become ill but we’re all going to help you get better.’

  ‘Gotta get the kid back …’

  ‘We’re going to do that. You’ve got to get better. Go back to America and get some treatment.’

  There was a sudden burst of redness to Norris’s face and his body tensed and Claudine guessed he was making a superhuman attempt to stop his mind clouding once more. Through clamped-together lips he managed: ‘What?’

  ‘Obsession,’ said Claudine. ‘That’s what I think it is, severe obsession. Developed into a psychosis. But it’s treatable: you know it’s treatable.’

  ‘What have I done?’ The words groaned out of him. He was staring down at the gun.

  ‘Nothing! There were some misunderstandings, that’s all. No harm.’

  ‘I was sent personally by the Director. The President knows … The investigation …’

  ‘You didn’t affect the investigation.’

  Norris looked up at her with quick, bright-eyed clarity, the stiffness easing from his body. ‘I don’t want to be psychopathic’

  ‘You know it can be treated.’

  ‘I’ll have to leave the Bureau.’

  ‘You won’t,’ lied Claudine.

  ‘I’m sorry … for whatever …’ It was becoming difficult for him to understand: one minute clear, one minute fog. ‘You were part … no, sorry … disgraced the Bureau …’

  Claudine detected the movement before the man actually began it, guessing it was safe to move herself. She said: ‘Let me have the gun, John,’ and started forward across the desk and then became properly aware of what he was doing and yelled: ‘NO! DON’T!’ but the barrel was already in his mouth.

  She wasn’t actually aware of the sound although there must have been one. In front of her Norris’s face and head disintegrated in an enormous, gushing burst of red and because she was so close, her hand actually but too late upon his wrist, Claudine was engulfed in the gore.

  ‘By myself?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Gaston Mehre.

  ‘Félicité said I wasn’t to go there,’ said Charles.

  ‘It’s changed.’

  ‘Does Félicité know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I won’t hurt her.’

  ‘You can.’

  ‘But I won’t this time. Félicité was angry with me. Shouted.’

  ‘She’s changed her mind. She wants you to do what I tell you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘That’s what Félicité wants.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘The same. It’s what we all want.’

  ‘You’re very good to me,’ said Charles. ‘You all are.’

  ‘You’ve got to go on doing what we tell you, though,’ warned Gaston. ‘You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you know what we want you to do now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yes. And thank you.’

  ‘Go and do it then.’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Claudine vomited, uncontrollably, over the desk and the headless, tendril-necked body that remained grotesquely upright in its chair, and over Blake who grabbed her and turned her away from the horror. She continued retching, huddled in his arms, long after she couldn’t be sick any more, the empty, stomach-wrenching convulsions turning into constant, violent shaking, uncontrollable again, as the trauma gripped her. She was vaguely aware of Blake and Harding hurrying her from the room, both talking, but she was still deafened by the shot and shook her head uncomprehendingly, unaware that she was crying until Blake started wiping her face. When she saw the contents of the handkerchief she realized, distantly, that it wasn’t tears or even blood he was wiping away but bone and brain debris. She whimpered and the shuddering worsened.

  Others crowded around her in the corridor, a man and two women, taking over, and she went unprotestingly into an elevator which took her downwards. She was striving for control by the time it stopped, tensing her arms tightly by her side to stop the twitching, concentrating upon her surroundings – looking for an outside focus – to bring herself back to reality. She still couldn’t hear what the unknown man was saying and brought her hands up to her ears, to tell him it was deafness, not shock
.

  It was the embassy’s basement gymnasium. She was bustled straight through, past two bewildered men lifting weights, into the women’s changing rooms. At the showers one of the women started to undress her, stripping off the blood – and fragment-covered clothes, but Claudine gestured her away.

  She began to recover in the shower, forcing herself to look at the blood-streaked water streaming off her, turning the spray to its hardest adjustment and holding her breath to stand directly under it. It was several minutes before she could make herself actually wash her hair, not wanting to touch what might still be in it. There was nothing. When she squeezed her eyes shut she saw an immediate mental picture of a crimson explosion and a head disappearing and quickly opened them again. Twice there was loud rapping against the glass door. Only when she shouted for the second time that she was all right did Claudine become aware mat her ears were clearing.

  She stepped away from the water at last but didn’t immediately try to leave the stall, partially extending her arms and looking down at herself. The tremor was still mere but not as bad. Her ribs and stomach ached from the vomiting. Consciously she closed her eyes again, tightly. There was no head-bursting image.

  One of the women was waiting directly outside, offering an enveloping white towelling robe. It had a hood attached but the second nurse handed her a separate towel for her hair.

  The attentive man said: ‘Kenyon, Bill Kenyon. I’m the embassy physician. Can you hear me?’

  Claudine nodded: there was still a vague echoing sensation but his words were quite audible. She said: ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You’re a doctor. You know you’re not,’ the man said. ‘We’ve got a small emergency infirmary here but I think you should go to hospital.’

  Kenyon had blond, almost white, hair and rimless glasses. Claudine saw mat the nurse who’d put her arm round her had blood on the side of her uniform. She said: ‘I am a doctor – a psychologist – and I know about posttraumatic stress. I’m not going to your infirmary or to an outside hospital.’

  ‘You can’t shrug off what’s just happened to you,’ the physician protested.

  ‘I’m not trying to shrug it off: the very opposite. I’m fully acknowledging it – think I know, even, why it happened – and I believe I can go on.’

  ‘You’re making a mistake,’ he insisted.

  ‘If I am then I’ll recognize that, too. I’ll be all right.’

  Kenyon shook his head, unconvinced. ‘I could let you have some chlordiazepoxide.’

  It could be a useful precaution to have a tranquillizer available, Claudine conceded. ‘That would be very kind.’

  By the time Kenyon returned from his dispensary the nurses – the blonde was named Anne, the brunette Betty – had located an embassy-issue track suit in Claudine’s size, still in its wrapping, and training pants for underwear. Claudine said she wanted everything she’d been wearing incinerated. Both nurses tried to persuade her to rest at least for a few hours in the embassy sick bay. She ignored them. As well as the tranquillizer Kenyon gave her his card, with his home as well as his direct embassy number. ‘Call me. I mean it. I’m here. Promise?’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘I want to go back upstairs.’ Claudine was pleased she could remember in which direction the lift had brought her. She still felt suspended between reality and disbelief. The disorienting echo was intermittent in her ears.

  ‘You’re wrong, you know,’ said Kenyon.

  ‘No, I do know,’ insisted Claudine. But did she really know how strong she was?

  ‘I’ll arrange a car to take you back to your hotel,’ offered Betty.

  ‘I want to find everyone else,’ Claudine said positively. ‘I didn’t take much notice of the route on my way down here. That’s all the help I need.’

  ‘Let’s hope you’re right,’ said Kenyon cynically.

  ‘I might not be. And if I’m not, I’ve got your numbers.’ She conjured the contact card between her fingers.

  Claudine’s arrival in the ambassador’s suite was met with astonishment.

  ‘I didn’t … I thought …’ groped McBride, standing awkwardly but bringing everyone else to their feet with him.

  ‘I just want to be here,’ said Claudine awkwardly. ‘I’m all right.’ She saw Peter Blake was the only person in the room without a jacket and remembered his pulling her into him, swamped in Norris’s gore and her own vomit. Then she saw him crossing towards her.

  ‘You sure this is a good idea?’ he said, too quietly for anyone else to hear.

  ‘No,’ Claudine admitted. The shaking had gone, but despite the comforting thickness of the track suit she felt suddenly cold.

  ‘Why then?’

  ‘Because I want to.’

  Claudine was pressing her eyes tightly together again (no blood-red explosion!) when Sanglier arrived close behind Blake. Until that moment she hadn’t been aware of his being in the room.

  ‘You don’t need to be here,’ insisted the Frenchman.

  ‘I want to be,’ she repeated. Now she was there, she wasn’t sure that was true.

  From behind his protective desk McBride, still standing, said: ‘Dr Carter, I want to say …’ but Claudine, faint-voiced, stopped him.

  ‘There’s no need to say anything. It’s over.’

  *

  Claudine had never known the sensation before: never wanted to know it again. It was as if she were suspended above them all, in an out-of-body experience in which she could hear and see them but they were unaware of her presence. Her uncertain ears even made their words echo, ghost-like, and she had to hold very tightly on to her ebbing and flowing concentration: several times, when it ebbed, her vision actually blurred, merging people together with distant voices.

  Claudine clung, like a drowning person to a fragile handhold, to her decision to be there. It was right that she should be. Not to contribute: she wasn’t able to contribute to anything at that precise moment. But she could listen, difficult though that might physically be.

  Claudine sat apart from the closely arranged group round the ambassador, welcoming the distance although becoming aware that, mostly unconsciously, the discussion was directed towards her, not for approval but from courtesy. McBride did most of the talking.

  For Claudine irony piled upon irony when the ambassador insisted that American sovereignty in US embassies overseas made John Norris’s suicide a matter entirely removed from Belgian jurisdiction or public awareness. Without mentioning Claudine or even looking in her direction McBride said there had been sufficient witnesses to the incident for an internal inquest, to be held that evening, prior to the body’s being returned to America. It had been the climax of a series of extremely unfortunate incidents – here at last he looked at Claudine – for which he apologized but in no way did he expect it to affect the principal reason – the only reason – for their all being there. No replacement negotiator, either FBI or CIA, was being sent from Washington. Paul Harding was to assume overall command of the combined agencies’ commitment, with the assurance at presidential level that it was seconded to Europol.

  McBride was about to launch into a formal speech of congratulation to Claudine when he was interrupted by the sound of the telephone. He stared at Harrison, who said: ‘I held all calls! Except …’

  McBride snatched up the phone, not immediately speaking. Holding the receiver away from him, as if it were hot against his ear, he said to Claudine: ‘It’s a woman. She says Mary got a B for the geography paper that was in her backpack.’

  ‘Check that!’ Claudine told Blake, as she moved towards the telephone.

  ‘I want McBride.’

  English but accented. French possibly. Claudine said: ‘I’m speaking on his behalf.’

  ‘The wife?’

  ‘No.’ The only lies she could risk were those she couldn’t be caught out on. Damn her hearing! The voice kept rising and falling.

  ‘Ah, the clever little mi
nd-reader!’

  ‘We want to negotiate.’ This was probably the most difficult part, establishing the rapport from which to manipulate the woman without her being aware it was happening.

  ‘Of course you do.’

  ‘Tell me about Mary.’

  ‘Demanding!’

  Blake and Harding hurried back into the room together. The note Blake slipped in front of her said: ‘School confirm B grade.’ Harding made a rolling-over motion with his hands, encouraging her to extend the conversation as much as possible.

  The woman’s reaction was exactly what Claudine wanted. ‘We have to know she’s all right.’ The sound abruptly dipped and Claudine said urgently: ‘Hello! Hello!’ She saw Rampling re-enter the room, shaking his head to Blake and Harding.

  There was a jeering laugh. ‘You haven’t lost me! You won’t find me, either.’

  ‘My name is Claudine. Claudine Carter.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I wanted you to know.’ Was she moving too quickly?

  The laugh came again. ‘What name would you like me to have?’

  ‘Your choice.’

  ‘How about Mercedes? That’s appropriate, isn’t it?’

  Claudine felt a stir of satisfaction. The woman was responding, nibbling the unsuspected bait! ‘Is it appropriate?’

  There was a silence. She’d never get it, Claudine guessed: would the woman actually admit it?

  ‘You tell me.’

  Good enough. ‘In its original Spanish it’s a name that means compassionate or merciful. Are you compassionate and merciful?’

  ‘You have to tell me that, too. And isn’t name comparison invidious?’

  Claudine didn’t want her too angry: she had the child to take the irritation out on. ‘I don’t follow,’ she admitted.

  ‘In Latin, the name Claudine means the lame one.’

  Anxious to show her cleverness: that was good. ‘Let’s hope you’re Mercedes the merciful.’

  The pause this time had nothing to do with the uneven sound. In apparent awareness the woman said: ‘You are the mind-reader, aren’t you?’

  She had to avoid responding to questions as much as possible, always making the woman come to her. ‘We need to know that Mary is all right,’ Claudine repeated.