'And having started to build up a trust, they'll break it,' interrupted Norris.

'That's the pattern,' agreed Claudine, pleased. It hadn't all gone!

'So what do we do?' asked the American chief of mission. 'We're pretty strong on psychological theory but I don't see anything practical coming from it, like getting Mary back.'

'We wait for the next message,' declared Norris. 'That'll take us forward: they'll give us the link the next time.'

Claudine sighed, sadly disappointed. 'I don't think we should wait. I think we need to bring them forward. The amba.s.sador publicly cried yesterday-'

'And is as embarra.s.sed as h.e.l.l about it,' disclosed Harrison.

'He shouldn't be,' insisted Claudine. 'He did a lot to help Mary, breaking down like that. They reduced an amba.s.sador of the United States of America, the most powerful nation on earth, to helpless tears. The power their ability to do that makes Mary very valuable to them. Protects her.'

'So what should we do?' persisted Harrison.

'I think the amba.s.sador should meet the media again: television particularly, to enable Mary's abductors to see the effect her disappearance is having. With Mrs McBride, too-'

'I'm not sure either will be prepared to,' intruded Harrison again.

Claudine decided it wouldn't be difficult to become thoroughly p.i.s.sed off by the overbearing, opinionated diplomat. Restraining the temptation verbally to push the man back into his box, she said: 'Why don't we explain the purpose which is to prove just how helpless we are and how much in command they are and give them the chance to make up their own minds? If Mrs McBride cries, even better.'

'Mrs McBride doesn't cry,' said Harrison simply.

'Any emotion the McBrides publicly display will help,' insisted Claudine. 'We've got to establish a two-way dialogue as quickly and as effectively as possible. And the way to do that is for the amba.s.sador to announce verbally, in public, that there has been another message ...' she stopped, not wanting any misunderstanding '... but not, in any circ.u.mstances, saying what mat message was. Not, even, that it arrived by e-mail. That goes way beyond keeping the computer route into the emba.s.sy as free as possible. We're inviting them conceding that they rule our world to take that one step forward and begin a dialogue.'

'From a position of weakness,' challenged Norris at once.

Momentarily Claudine didn't reply, looking away from all of them but focusing on nothing. Like so many doctors able to adjust the Hippocratic oath she'd favoured euthanasia long before helplessly watching the mother she'd adored physically eroded by cancer, just a few months earlier. But, incredibly she now realized, she'd never extended that image of physical erosion and that necessary release to include a mental illness. At that moment she did. Strictly obeying her know thyself creed Claudine fully recognized that her overweening professional confidence the central core around which her life revolved was what motivated her entire existence. As horrifying and as humiliating and as agonizing as her mother's physical decline had been, Claudine decided that for her personally to lose her a.n.a.lytical psychological competence to lose her mind, in fact, as John Norris appeared to have lost his equally justified the quick release of self-destruction. In her case perhaps more so than an irreversible physical condition. At once there came an unsettling unanswerable question. Did she really feel so strongly about euthanasia because of her mother's death? Or did her conviction come from what she couldn't fulfil with Hugo Rosetti because of the permanent, irreversible coma in which his wife existed? Claudine forced herself on, refusing even to attempt an answer, frightened of what it might be.

'John,' she said gently. 'That's exactly what it is, a position of weakness. We know it. They know it. They've got a public forum in which they want everyone else to know it too. We can't change that position until we get into a negotiating stance. You wrote that, in the text books: lectured on it at Quantico.'

Norris frowned, seemingly unable to remember. He didn't argue. Harding, alongside, frowned too towards Rampling but it was an entirely different expression for entirely different reasons. There was a long, unfilled silence.

'John?' prompted Harrison.

'It means exposing the amba.s.sador.' The man tried to recover.

'Which is better than exposing his daughter,' said Blake shortly, and Claudine wished he hadn't.

Harrison said: 'I could suggest it. I understand the reasoning.'

Smet leaned sideways, whispering to the commissioner. At once the portly, uniform-encased man said: 'We have some positive sightings of Mary minutes before she disappeared.'

'Walking? Or getting into a vehicle?' demanded Blake.

'Both,' said Poncellet.

'Walking first,' dictated Blake, eager to establish the sequence. 'How many positive identifications?'

Poncellet hesitated at the intensity of the Englishman's demands. Claudine withdrew, giving way to a different expertise, interested in watching Blake operate.

Poncellet consulted a folder already set out in front of him. 'Three.'

'Absolutely no doubt it was Mary?'

'A positive identification, every time.'

'Was she by herself? Or with someone?'

'By herself.'

'Anyone close?'

Poncellet hesitated again. 'I don't think so.'

'The question wasn't asked,' decided Blake briskly. 'I'll need to go back to each witness myself, today. Can we get them in here now?'

'We could try.' Poncellet turned at once to the three-clerk secretariat that had arrived with him and Smet. One immediately left the office.

'How was she behaving?' came in Paul Harding. 'Walking normally? Slow? Fast? Agitated? Calm?'

Claudine was alert for any reaction from Norris to the local FBI man's intrusion and suspected that Harding was, too. There was a faint smile on Norris's face, the expression of a master watching inexpert pupils attempting to prove themselves. But nothing else.

'You'll have to ask them that,' said Poncellet. He was beginning to colour and his breathing was becoming difficult.

'How close to the school was the first sighting?' persisted Harding.

'Quite close, I think.'

'Any evidence of a car near her?' asked Blake.

'Not that I've been told.'

'Was she seen talking to anyone?'

'I haven't any reports of her doing so.'

'How reliable are these witnesses?' demanded Harding. 'Believable or questionable?'

'I think you should decide that yourselves.'

'I think we should,' said Harding, pointedly dismissive. He looked without needing to ask the question to Blake, who nodded.

'What about the car sightings?' said Blake.

'Two, of her getting into a vehicle.'

'What sort of vehicle?'

'A Mercedes.'

'No doubt about that?' pressed Harding.

Poncellet shook his head. 'Both are Mercedes drivers themselves.'

'Registration?' asked Harding.

'No.'

'Belgian or foreign designation?'

'I've no record of that.'

'Model?' demanded the American.

'I don't have the complete report.'

'Colour?' said Blake.

'Black, according to one,' said Poncellet, relieved at last to be able to reply positively. 'Blue, according to the other.'

'What about occupants?' said Harding.

'You really do need to speak to them yourselves,' Poncellet finally capitulated.

'We most certainly do,' said Harding. He needed to discover what the f.u.c.k was wrong with the FBI superstar sitting silently beside him, too. The Iceman seemed to be frozen into unresponsive inactivity, unaware of or uninterested in what was going on around him.

The questioning of witnesses was very much a police function but Claudine included herself, without seeking the approval of Peter Blake or anyone else, just as she visited whenever possible the actual scene of a violent crime and the post-mortem examination of its victim. She didn't consider it an arrogant refusal to trust the ability of others, which she knew to have been a London criticism before her transfer to Europol. Unless she had reason to doubt their competence, as she now definitely had with John Norris, Claudine never intruded into the a.s.signed roles of those with whom she worked. What she didn't expect and most certainly didn't want was for those others to think they could do her job for her. One missed question vital to her from someone not examining a situation from her perspective was the difference between success and failure. Professionally it was better to offend than to fail.

She made a particular point of announcing her intention to re-interview the eye-witnesses, fully expecting Norris to stay as well. He didn't, saying it was more important he return to the emba.s.sy with Burt Harrison to prepare the amba.s.sador for the second press conference. Poncellet and Smet did stay, which she had not antic.i.p.ated. From the fleeting expressions she intercepted between them it seemed to surprise Blake and Harding, too. When Claudine pointedly remarked it would intimidate witnesses to be confronted by so many people Poncellet dismissed the clerks, despite what she was sure were Smet's whispered objections.

The first person positively to identify Mary walking away from the school was a 28-year-old mother who took her four-year-old daughter along the rue du Ca.n.a.l at the same time every day to feed whatever birds might be on the nearby waterway: that day there hadn't been any. She definitely recognized Mary from the published photographs and correctly identified the colour blue, trimmed with red of the backpack, a detail that had intentionally been withheld from the media release. Because she was such a regular user of the road at such a regular time she was accustomed to seeing children collected from the school, mostly by car, and was mildly curious at a child walking away unaccompanied. There was no one close or in conversation with Mary, who'd been walking quite normally and not in any obvious hurry and had ignored her and the little girl when she pa.s.sed.

The accounts of the two other pedestrians a bookkeeper the end of whose working day coincided with the school dismissal and a hotel waiter who always walked to his evening shift for the exercise tallied in every respect, even to identifying the rucksack. The book-keeper thought Mary was walking fast, not as if she was trying to get away from someone but as if she was anxious to reach a destination.

All three were quite adamant that the child was showing no signs of distress or uncertainty. The waiter, in fact, had been struck by the confidence with which Mary had been walking, as if it was a regular route she knew well. It was that streetwise a.s.surance that had attracted his attention: it was his regular route to work and he couldn't remember seeing her before.

Each of the three had been walking in the opposite direction to Mary and had no reason to look round once she had pa.s.sed, so none had seen a car or the child being accosted.

The breakthrough came with the first car driver. His name was Johan Rompuy and he was a technical translator in English and Italian in the agricultural division of the European Commission. He was a 57-year-old grey-haired, grey-suited bureaucrat who had worked in the governing body of the European Union for eighteen years and thought and talked with the pedantry of a man whose life was governed by detail, order and regularity.

That was why he remembered the incident with Mary so well. He'd been summoned late to a Commission meeting of agricultural ministers and was in a hurry, although obeying the speed limit, which he always did. He'd been following on the inside lane directly behind the black Mercedes when it had suddenly stopped, making him halt just as sharply. The volume of traffic in the outer lane prevented his pulling out to overtake. He'd seen everything because it had happened directly in front of him.

Claudine had positioned herself to the side of the room, giving the encounters over to Blake and Harding, and had the impression of two tensed cats undecided which was to be the first to jump on an unsuspecting mouse: even the timid, grey-featured civil servant fitted the cat and mouse a.n.a.logy. The local FBI man gave the slightest body movement, conceding to the Englishman.

For the briefest of moments Blake hesitated, preparing himself. 'You're very important to us and to this investigation,' he began, and Claudine at once acknowledged the basic psychology of the approach.

Rompuy smiled, a man rarely praised or flattered by superiors. 'I'm glad to be of help.'

'And I want you to be as helpful as possible. There are a great many questions we want answering. You're going to have to be very patient: what might not seem important to you could be of very great importance to us.'

The smile remained. 'I understand.'

'You're sure the car was black?'

'Yes.'

'What model?' asked Harding.

'A 230, I think.'

'Was the registration Belgian or foreign?' said Blake.

'I didn't make a note of it, obviously. But I'm sure it was Belgian. If it hadn't been I might have looked more closely. And I'm sure the country designation was Belgium, too. Again I would have looked more closely if it had been foreign. My job is identifying different nationalities.'

'Was it a Brussels registration?' pressed Harding, taking up the questioning.

'I don't know.'

'Was there anything unusual about the car: a badge or a sign in the rear window?' coaxed the American. 'Anything inside that you could see about the car, I mean, we'll get to the pa.s.sengers in a minute like a sticker or a religious medallion or a permanent parking authority or even the sort of decoration people sometimes hang in their vehicles.'

The man made a visible effort to remember. 'I don't think so.'

'Was there a radio aerial?' asked Blake.

'Yes.'

'Positioned where?'

'At the rear.'

'Was it raised, for the radio to be playing? Or retracted?'

'Retracted.'

'What about a telephone aerial?'

'Yes,' said the man at once. 'In the middle of the rear window, at the top by the roof.'

'A straight aerial or a spiral one?' persisted the American and Claudine was aware of the quick approving look from Blake. Poncellet and Smet were sitting motionless, an audience to a special performance of experts.

'Straight, I think,' said Rompuy doubtfully.

'Now let's talk about the people inside,' encouraged Blake. 'How many were there?'

'Two. A man and a woman.'

There was a stir, from the two Belgians, which Claudine at once regretted because Rompuy looked at them and said: 'There were. I'm sure there were.'