'That would be sufficient by itself,' said Claudine easily. 'But we've got digitalized pictures of the man and woman who took Mary-'

'You know who they are!' Hillary interrupted.

'We think we've got a fairly accurate picture of what they look like,' qualified Claudine. 'They'll be ready by late afternoon, early evening. And their impact will be that much more if you appear, reiterating your appeal directly to them.'

'Why didn't you tell me this, John?' McBride demanded.

Norris was sitting primly upright now, his face fixed, knowing Claudine Carter was lying. She wouldn't allow anything like an accurate picture of her accomplices to appear publicly. 'I was waiting to hear from Paul,' he said inadequately. 'There's a danger of getting a lot of bad leads if the pictures aren't good.'

'The witnesses are happy with them,' Claudine a.s.sured him. To the amba.s.sador she added: 'I don't want to expose you or your wife to any more distress than you've already suffered. But I really want these pictures to achieve the maximum impact. Your appearance would ensure that.'

'I made a fool of myself last time,' blurted McBride.

'Not for the first time,' said Hillary.

'You couldn't have done better if you'd been rehea.r.s.ed,' insisted Claudine, pleased to contradict the other woman.

'You sure about that?' asked McBride doubtfully.

Norris was shaking his head vigorously.

'We've got to make the biggest possible impact, to get them to come to us,' repeated Claudine. 'Don't stage a press conference, as such. Make it a television appeal, limited to yourselves and an interview ...' She hesitated, remembering the need for diplomatic correctness. 'Include Poncellet, to talk about the importance of the computer graphics to the investigation.'

'We'll do it,' decided Hillary.

McBride nodded, in agreement. 'I'm to appeal-'

'Plead,' broke in Norris contemptuously.

'Yes!' said Claudine, eagerly again. 'That's what you've got to do. Plead. Do whatever it takes to bring them to us.'

McBride was silent for several moments before saying: 'Will you prep us?'

'Willingly,' said Claudine, relieved. 'We'll rehea.r.s.e it word for word.'

Turning to Harrison, McBride said: 'Fix it through public affairs. And involve Poncellet.'

Norris stayed, listening disparagingly to Claudine's advice but offering none himself. He realized the woman was extremely clever. His mistake had been in underestimating her. It was possible he'd have to take some very direct action. Detain her and interrogate her. Make her talk.

Norris was waiting in Paul Harding's chair at Paul Harding's desk when the local FBI man arrived back at the emba.s.sy. He didn't make any effort to move.

'You should have called me about the computer graphics. The woman wrong-footed me.'

'I was still working!' protested Harding.

'You got print-outs of the pictures?'

Harding offered them across the desk.

'I'm not impressed,' Norris said dismissively. 'Could be anyone.'

'The two motorists who saw them are happy.'

'I think it's all very clever,' said Norris solemnly.

'Their German computer guy is a genius,' agreed Harding, misunderstanding.

Norris frowned. 'What do you know about her?'

Harding's misunderstanding remained. He looked at the digitalized image on the table between them and said: 'We don't have a name, John.'

'Dr Carter!'

Harding couldn't speak for several moments. At last he managed: 'You're losing me here.'

'I've got a bad feeling about her. I want her thoroughly checked out. I've a.s.signed Ritchie and McCulloch but they're drawing blanks. I want you to do better.'

On the scale of bad feelings Paul Harding's score was eleven where the graph stopped at ten. What the f.u.c.k was he going to do! Remembering, he said: 'We checked the school again. The princ.i.p.al had an odd phone call from a woman wanting to know the curriculum languages. The phone number she left was wrong.'

'I'm interested in the Carter woman,' said Norris, dismissive still. 'Concentrate on her.'

Kurt Volker was waiting impatiently for Claudine when she re-entered their offices at the Belgian police HQ. 'I think there's something significant,' he announced.

'It's time to declare yourself,' said Lucien Bigot. He'd made the first approach, all those months ago.

'I know that,' agreed Sanglier.

'So what's it going to be?' demanded the politician.

'I'd like a final meeting.' He had to have the commitment, even if only verbally.

'We'd like that too.'

'For positive undertakings,' said Sanglier.

'That's what we all want,' said the other man.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

Felicite recognized that she was right, as she usually was: there was a s.e.xual excitement about danger. It was, perhaps, why she so much enjoyed cruising the streets, hunting. The pleasure had gone on now for more than half an hour, ever since Jean Smet had burst into the Ans.p.a.ch house babbling about pictures of her and Henri Cool to be shown on television.

'You'll be recognized! Identified!' The man was unable to keep still, striding about the room as he had at the beach house, his mind b.u.t.terflying from anxiety to anxiety, his words jumbled. He'd tried to smoke, too, but Felicite had forbidden it. She detested the smell of stale tobacco in her home.

'Sit down!' she ordered sharply. 'How can they know about me?'

'Two motorists saw you pick her up.' Smet remained standing, shifting from foot to foot.

It was the first comprehensible sentence the man had uttered and Felicite felt another spurt of excitement. She rose and put both hands against Smet's shoulders to press him into a chair on her way to the drinks tray, where she poured brandy for both of them. As she handed his gla.s.s to him she said: 'From the beginning. Everything that was said, how it was said.'

Smet made a slurping sound with his first drink and the cognac caught his breath, making him cough. He tugged a tightly folded wad of paper from inside his jacket and said: 'Read it yourself. That's a copy of today's report to the Minister.'

Felicite took her time, sipping her drink as she read, acknowledging that this investigation appeared much more thorough than the previous one. Which was why it was that much more satisfying. When she finished the account she remained looking down at it, turning several sheets over before looking up. 'So where's the computer graphic?'

'I only heard there was going to be one in a telephone call from Poncellet on his way to the television studio! We're not getting a copy until tomorrow, in time for our cooperation meeting. And that's the problem I'm trying to make you understand. I don't know everything they're doing, not all the time! And not quickly enough.'

There was still ten minutes to go before the special newscast, Felicite saw. She waved the report. 'You read this?'

'Of course I've read it: I wrote most of it. And it's you, isn't it!'

'It's a very general description of a woman who is older than me and wears indeterminate blond hair in a chignon.' Felicite ran her fingers exaggeratedly through the lightly waved hair that fell almost to her shoulders. 'Which I never do except when I'm choosing someone new: precisely because it will be confusing, if I'm seen. My hair is more golden than blond. The estimate of how tall I am makes me almost into a giant. Cool too. It's ridiculous. They haven't even got the car right: it's dark green, not blue or black. And it's a 320.' She cupped her breast with her free hand. 'And I'm not at all flat-chested: I've got nice t.i.ts. You like them, don't you?'

Smet shook his head, although not in answer to her question. 'This isn't anything to joke about.'

'Nor is it anything to wet yourself about.' She had imagined far more from the man's garbled rambling and her excitement was going. 'You told the others?'

'I wanted to speak to you first.'

Too frightened to do anything by himself, Felicite thought. Or even to be trusted. There could never be any question of Smet going to the authorities. He was too deeply involved, as legally culpable as the rest of them. Which he well knew. But the risk not a danger by which she was s.e.xually aroused was in his making a stupid mistake. Unlikely, she rea.s.sured herself. Not that he wouldn't make a mistake as nervous as he was Felicite didn't doubt he'd do something wrong but that it would in any way direct attention towards them. But Smet was still a weak link, useful only because of the position he occupied. Not just weak. Boring, too. Boring like them all: as Marcel had complained, just before he died. Maybe she should abandon them, after this. There'd be nothing they could do about it and she had other connections, through Lascelles and Lebron. Moving on, finding new people, was definitely something to think about.

'It's time,' announced Smet, anxiously.

It wasn't but Felicite turned the television on anyway and was glad because the introduction had already begun, with a clip from the earlier conference at which the amba.s.sador had openly wept. The main newscast anchorman talked over the old footage, announcing a different format. Tonight was not going to be a media event. It was to be a personal appeal, by McBride and his wife, following important new evidence that the Brussels police commissioner would disclose. On that cue the previous conference faded, to be replaced by a screen-filling photograph of Mary Beth McBride which held for at least thirty seconds before cutting to the studio.

McBride and his wife were seated at an oval table, with Andre Poncellet to their right. The three were facing the anchor, an eagerly talking, dark-haired man who spoke in sound bites. To his prompting Poncellet described the eye-witness information as dramatic, sensational, vital, a breakthrough, only just stopping short of predicting an early arrest.

The camera focused tight on the amba.s.sador's face for the man's appeal. There were no tears but McBride was grave-faced, Hillary visibly strained beside him. They held hands, although listlessly. McBride's plea was for private and immediate contact with Mary's captors.

'Come on! Come on,' said Felicite impatiently. 'Where am I?'

Smet broke away from the screen, frowning curiously at the woman.

'We want to negotiate,' McBride was insisting, keeping strictly to Claudine's instructions, even using the words she'd suggested. 'But that's not possible on the Internet. Find another way. Tell us and we'll follow it: we'll obey every instruction. Please let us know that Mary Beth is unharmed.'

The camera pulled back again to include the anchorman who used a renewed selection of sound bites to reintroduce Poncellet and the digitalized computer images of Felicite Galan and Henri Cool.

Felicite stretched towards the screen, feeling the sensation return. It was a reasonable impression, she conceded. But not good enough for a positive identification. She'd been made too thin-faced and her nose was too p.r.o.nounced and elongated, as if it dominated her face, which in reality it didn't. And the graphic showed her hair pinned right to left, which was opposite to the way she wore it. Henri Cool was made to look much too heavy and again the nose was too p.r.o.nounced. On the right hand side of each graphic the physical description was printed, making them both much too tall. Pedantically Poncellet recited every statistic.

'It's you!' whispered Smet breathily. 'It's definitely you and Henri!'

'No it's not,' snapped the woman brusquely. 'There's a resemblance, nothing more. Certainly insufficient to bring anyone knocking on my door. Henri's either. You're recognizing us because you know it's us. That's altogether different. And the printed description is too vague, as well.' Abruptly she felt deflated, disappointed. Trying to bring back the feeling she said: 'See the power we've got. How we're making them beg and plead?'

'What are we going to do now?'

'You mean what am I going to do now?'

'Yes,' mumbled the lawyer. 'You.'

'I'm in no hurry,' said Felicite. 'I like a worldwide stage. We'll change our approach when I feel like it, not because James McBride wants us to.'

'Let's get it over with,' the man implored.

Felicite ignored him. 'You can write the next message,' she decided. 'Make it better than Michel's: another rhyme, maybe.'

'I'm doing too much as it is,' Smet argued. 'Let someone else do it.'

'I want you to do it,' insisted Felicite, ending the protest. She paused. 'It was a pity there wasn't time to get to Antwerp and watch the broadcast with Mary: let her see how desperately dependent her big important papa is upon us ...'

The telephone jarred into the room, interrupting her. Smet, his nerves stretched, noticeably jumped. Felicite said: 'It'll be one of the others, s.h.i.tting himself like you.'

The expectant smile with which she answered the telephone faded almost at once. It was a very short conversation, with Felicite constantly interrupting. As she replaced the receiver she said vehemently: 'd.a.m.n Charles Mehre!'

'What is it?' demanded Smet, in fresh alarm.

'He's killed,' said Felicite shortly.

A television had been installed in the largest of their allocated rooms and they watched McBride's appeal in silence. When the programme finished Claudine said: 'I wish I'd had time to brief Poncellet: he exaggerated far too much. But McBride was better than I expected: caught exactly the right note. Even Hillary saying nothing but looking like she did fitted what I wanted, a couple totally at the mercy of those who've got their child. They even held hands as I asked them, which they didn't want to do.'

'Can you imagine what it's like!' said Volker sympathetically.

'Maybe it's not enough to rea.s.sure them I might be interpreting it wrongly but I think Mary's still alive,' announced Blake quietly.

Claudine and Volker looked at him, waiting.

'I thought I'd check the school again: see if anyone had remembered anything, after all the publicity,' said Blake. 'It probably wouldn't have meant anything to Madame Flahaur if it hadn't been the only call like it she's had, since Mary disappeared. A woman telephoned two days ago, asking about the curriculum, particularly about the languages that are taught. That's all she appeared interested in, according to Madame Flahaur. The prospectus she sent out was returned this morning: the address doesn't exist. Neither does the phone number the woman left: I checked both with Belgacom on my way back.'

'What language did the woman speak?' demanded Claudine, immediately understanding.

'French.'

'Mary learning it?'

Blake nodded. 'She started it late, behind all the other pupils. It's her second semester.'

'Comprehension?'

'Below average for her age, because of the late start.'

'It's got the arrogance of our blond in the Mercedes,' judged Claudine slowly. 'Arrogance coupled with clever caution. If you're right and I think you might well be we now know whoever have Mary are French-speaking. But don't want Mary to understand what they're saying in front of her.'

Volker nodded, also understanding now. 'It could be a crank call. A lot of the e-mail stuff so far has been, particularly after the press conference identification.'

'It's feasible,' agreed Claudine. 'I don't think it's sufficient to rea.s.sure the parents that Mary's still alive and risk their agony if we're wrong but I think it's something we can add to the profile as a possibility.'