He needed an admission without portraying himself as naive, Sanglier knew. 'If I were to pursue this there would have to be complete truthfulness between us.'

'We wouldn't be sitting here if I didn't expect you to take everything that's said with total seriousness,' said Castille. 'And never for a moment will I be anything but completely truthful: I intend to practise among colleagues the central core of my manifesto.'

He had learned at the EU meetings in Brussels and Luxembourg and Strasbourg! 'Colleagues?' Sanglier demanded, shortly. 'More than simply members of the party in the a.s.sembly?'

The arrival of the food covered what Sanglier guessed would have been a hesitation among the other men. His oysters were superb, the bone-dry Muscadet the perfect complement. Coty reluctantly extinguished his cigarette.

'I've already made it clear we do not see you simply as a parliamentary member,' said Bigot, with a hint of impatience.

Sanglier applied lemon in preference to onioned vinegar. It was the moment to wait, saying nothing.

Coty said: 'You went to Brussels after an extraordinarily successful period as police commissioner here, in Paris. And continued that success there.'

Time for absolute directness, judged Sanglier. 'What role would you see me fulfilling if I were to become part of your administration?'

'Justice Minister,' declared Castille.

'I would consider nothing less,' said Sanglier. 'I am well aware and proud of my achievements here in Paris ...' He paused, determined never to be treated lightly or underestimated. 'Just as I am well aware and perhaps even prouder of the cachet that goes with my name.'

Coty smiled, a flinty expression, fitting another cigarette into its holder. 'The art of politics is a.s.sembling maximum resources to achieve optimum advantage-'

'-consistent with honesty,' Castille hurried in.

'I'm glad we're fully understanding each other,' said Sanglier, content with Coty's admission that like all politicians these men were observing the golden rule of expediency. He recognized that he did not have a positive guarantee anything in writing but acknowledged that to expect that would be naive. 'I have your promise?'

'My absolute word,' said Castille.

'Do we have yours?' demanded Coty.

Sanglier paused, at the very moment of commitment. 'Yes,' he said.

The venison Sanglier had chosen to follow the oysters was excellent, like the Margaux. With something to celebrate now, it was Coty who proposed the toast.

Castille said: 'I have given you my solemn undertaking.'

'Which I accept,' said Sanglier, curiously.

'Now I am seeking undertakings from you,' announced the man. 'I have no wish to cause offence. But there are questions I have to ask you. My platform, remember, is that of honesty, integrity and selflessness towards the people who will put us into office.'

'Yes?' If Sanglier hadn't felt the first stir of uncertainty the unctuous hypocrisy would have been amusing.

Castille turned invitingly to Coty. The eminence grise of the party said: 'Is there anything in your past that could emerge once we're in power once you held a ministerial portfolio that could cause the sort of scandal that has besmirched the present government?'

'No,' declared Sanglier. No going back, he realized.

'I repeat that I do not intend any offence,' said Castille. 'But neither do I intend to allow any risk to my election. Are you prepared for the party secretariat to investigate your past fully, to confirm that a.s.surance independently?'

He had to take the risk about his father. What about Francoise? She was by far the greater danger, prowling too many public places like a b.i.t.c.h permanently on heat. Could he control her persuade her to control herself with the lure of being the wife of a government minister? Close to being an unrealistic question, he forced himself to admit. There'd been enough to lose quite apart from the Sanglier reputation when he was commissioner in Paris before the Europol appointment, and neither consideration had curbed her. It wasn't Francoise or his father that gave him pause. Rather it was his determination to speak and act in every circ.u.mstance as they would expect, to prevent any doubt. Despite Castille's caveat, they would expect him to be affronted. 'Your apparent need to do so hardly fits with undertakings of personal honesty that we've pledged between ourselves.'

'It fits with my intention to establish an administration above reproach,' said Castille, a prepared retort.

'Do you object?' said Bigot.

'Of course not,' said Sanglier. 'I'm prepared to cooperate in any way.'

'That's rea.s.suring,' said Coty. 'It's going to give me great pleasure getting to know the son of a man I greatly admired.'

It was mid-afternoon before the meal ended. They parted with effusive handshakes and a.s.surances of how much each was looking forward to working with the other.

Bigot was the first to speak after Sanglier left. 'It's a coup. And not just for the Sanglier name. His wife was a Dior model: spectacular woman. There'll be a lot of good publicity around the two of them. We could maybe build them up as the perfect couple.'

Kurt Volker tracked the third message.

He wasn't suffering any hangover from the previous night and was actually early at his emba.s.sy-linked terminals when the e-mail was delivered. Because he'd established a program of as many connections to Mary Beth McBride as possible the sender address instantly registered, which gave him at least forty seconds to follow backwards the stepping stones between sender and emba.s.sy before the disconnection.

Claudine and Blake arrived at their police headquarter offices as it was happening, unaware of the potential breakthrough until being beckoned urgently into the computer room by one of the early shift Belgian operators ploughing through the renewed incoming deluge prompted by the previous night's TV appearance.

Several other operators had abandoned their stations, crowding round the German, but even their excitement was subdued. Volker himself appeared quite relaxed, although his hands were darting with astonishing coordination between the keyboards of three terminals in a semicircle in front of him. Claudine was once more reminded, as she had been on their first a.s.signment together, of a theatre act to which she had been taken as a child to watch a man perform simultaneously upon three pianos. Completing the impression, Volker was humming, at first tunelessly but then something vaguely Wagnerian. No one else was making any sound.

Claudine had no idea what she was watching: didn't try, even, to read the words and the instructions that kept appearing, becoming fainter each time, upon the main screen in front of the German. At one stage, like the theatre pianist, Volker operated his central keyboard with his left hand and with his other punched keys on the board to his right, conjuring e-mail addresses on to the connected screen.

'Bah!' he exclaimed, in final frustration, when the screen directly in front of him remained blank after the message faded. 'Lost him!'

He spun the swivel chair, scattering the other operators, to face Claudine and Blake. 'They'd buried themselves in at least four different systems, moving just as I thought in source-covering sequence from one to the other ...' He stabbed a finger at the last address on the side screen. 'That's where I lost them ... at least I think I did. There's an outside chance a very outside chance it could be where they're operating from.'

'Where is it, for Christ's sake!' demanded Blake urgently.

Volker turned another revolution, accessed INEX, and typed in the address. At once the screen filled with a blank home page of a computer cafe in Menen, on the Belgian-French border. 'It would certainly be easy,' said Volker, still looking at his screen. 'You can be quite anonymous in places like this. You just go in, get allocated a terminal to surf wherever you want and simply walk away after you've paid.'

'Get me the rest,' demanded Blake, hurrying from the room.

Claudine followed, accepting that apart from a.n.a.lysing the latest message she was largely superfluous. And she didn't hurry with the message.

Needing the operation-initiating authority of the Belgian Justice Ministry Blake first telephoned Jean Smet and asked for total surveillance to be placed upon the Menen cafe. Before disconnecting he cancelled that morning's scheduled conference with the promise to reconvene at the already arranged afternoon time unless a new development intervened. He gave the same undertaking and account to Andre Poncellet and Paul Harding, in that order.

Finally Blake tried to reach Sanglier. Told the commissioner was unavailable, he sent a full account to the man's secretariat, with a request for Sanglier to contact him as soon as possible.

By the time Blake finished, Volker had located the Internet-linked computers through which Mary Beth's abductors had ridden Sinbad-like to reach the US emba.s.sy home page. From the specialized Menen cafe the message had travelled unseen and unsuspected to the Foreign Ministry system in Bonn. From there it had been sent to a Trojan Horse unknowingly installed in the mainframe computer of the American Express office at the foot of the Spanish Steps, in Rome. From there it had been automatically routed to the flagship of the Kempinski hotel chain on Berlin's Kurfurstendamm. The last stage from there had been to the school on the rue du Ca.n.a.l from which Mary Beth McBride had disappeared, six days earlier, whose e-mail address Volker had put on to his search program.

Claudine realized her own need to talk to Sanglier had become secondary in the light of the morning's developments, but remained determined to insist he use his authority to stop the nonsense degenerating any further. She wasn't interested in playing silly games and using her knowledge of the tap to their own advantage. They had to recover a child and to achieve that a paranoid man had to be removed before he caused G.o.d knew how much damage.

By midday Blake's flurry of activity had eased. Smet telephoned that the computer outlet was under intense observation and Volker had independently accessed the cafe's system and attached tracers programmed to react to the emba.s.sy's e-mail address.

Blake was at Claudine's shoulder when she at last spread the print-out of the latest communication between them. It was written in two lines and read: WE DETERMINE HOW AND WHEN. YOU WAIT AND OBEY.

'We're not going to get much from that, are we?' he said.

'Enough,' said Claudine gravely. 'Maybe more than enough.'

'What?'

'I need to think more about it,' Claudine said. 'Make sure I've got all there is to get.'

Nothing occurred to alter the scheduled afternoon session and by the time they a.s.sembled disappointment had begun to erode the initial excitement of the cybers.p.a.ce chase. Volker explained, stage by stage, stopping short only of his newly installed monitor of the cafe's inward and outward traffic. As if on cue Smet said the Justice Ministry had asked Belgacom to suggest any electronic check that might be possible on the Menen outlet, completing the irony by pointing out that to attach an eavesdropping facility would be illegal, although they were seeking a ruling from a High Court judge. The physical surveillance was absolute, insisted the lawyer. Computer literate plainclothes officers had been drafted in to use the facility during the day, taking the observation actually inside the cafe to identify regular users, and there were rotating squads watching from outside. A separate team had been a.s.signed to investigate the registered owners and all their known a.s.sociates. If it was established the cafe's use was innocent the owners and all its regular users would be specifically questioned about the computerized pictures. The cafe was on the outskirts of a pedestrian and shopping precinct and all security camera film was being collected, again for comparison with Volker's digital images.

Andre Poncellet picked up as soon as Smet finished, describing as 'overwhelming' the response within Brussels to the previous night's television and that day's newspaper publication of the kidnap computer graphics. It was going to take several days maybe even longer to investigate every one.

Claudine always regarded what she did as a contribution to an investigation, not its most important element, and was content for the practical discussions to dominate the meeting. It was, she acknowledged, the first time this supposed overall planning group had been given the opportunity to operate in anything like a proper, practical way. Consciously Claudine let the discussion swirl about her, always aware of it, listening to it, but at the same time instinctively lapsing as well into people-watching.

From their earlier encounters she hadn't expected quite such a forceful emergence from Jean Smet, although she accepted Blake's direct approach that morning had lifted the Justice Ministry lawyer's partic.i.p.ation beyond its original liaison remit. Andre Poncellet was showing no surprise at the other Belgian's occupying centre stage: seemed prepared, even, to surrender a leading role to the man.

Claudine's greatest concentration was upon John Norris. When she'd first entered the room in which Norris was already waiting she'd been briefly gripped by the fury she'd felt finding herself tiptoeing around her hotel room, actually taking care to avoid cupboard-closing or clothes-rustling noises. She was completely controlled now, still angry but able to find an excuse for what had happened in the man's illness. She hoped it wouldn't be too much longer before she was able to reach Sanglier: certainly before the day was out. His not being available was a nuisance.

Norris appeared as attentive as everyone else, but there was an artificial studiousness about the way he was avoiding her gaze: several times it seemed difficult for the man to stop himself smiling in a situation in which there was no reason to smile. And he was making no contribution to the discussion.

She was frightened, Norris decided: guessing how close he was although there was no way she could know how he'd got there. She'd have to wait to learn that: wait for the confrontation. He'd look directly enough at her then. Face her down: force an admission. He had enough on tape from the hotel recording. Words that could only have one meaning: words that told him she was involved in the kidnapping and how scared she was at being caught out.

The Americans send a negotiator?

He's the problem.

She didn't know the half of it. She'd even conceded that, too. There are a lot of problems we didn't expect.

Other parts of the conversation presented themselves in his mind, each as d.a.m.ning as the other.

Can you handle it?

I'm going to have to.

She wasn't going to be able to, though. Not after that morning's computer chase that they were all so excited about: that he was excited about, because it had given him the positive tie-in. From Bonn to Rome: to Rome and the convenient money-managing expertise of an American Express office. Which fitted perfectly with another part of last night's taped exchange.

Aren't you going to Rome?

'What about the message itself?' Norris was suddenly conscious that Poncellet was directing the question not to him but to the woman.

Claudine did not bother with the pretence of including Norris, consciously subjugating her still lingering medical distaste. 'It worries me,' she admitted bluntly.

'Why?' demanded Smet.

'It hasn't taken us any further forward,' said Claudine. 'The amba.s.sador and his wife performed brilliantly last night. Psychologically it should have got a different response.'

'Perhaps your advice was wrong,' said Norris at once. McBride was a separate issue but Norris was sure he had something there, too. The indictments against Luigi della Sialvo were all for illegal arms dealing with Baghdad during the Gulf War, obtaining weaponry from a corporation that at the time had been McBride's chief rival and was now the subject of four separate and enjoined indictments. Norris found it difficult to believe that whoever in the Bureau had checked out McBride before the amba.s.sadorial appointment hadn't taken the inquiry further, comparing the computer-recorded volume of material leaving McBride's company against End User certificates for the Far East della Sialvo's favoured route during Operation Desert Storm. He'd put an 'Utmost Priority' tag on his request, after studying the indictments, so he expected to hear within twenty-four hours. It didn't matter whether McBride was a close personal friend of the President or a major campaign contributor. If he'd broken the law he had to answer to it.

'My advice wasn't wrong,' insisted Claudine, confronting the American verbally as well as physically. 'This isn't a response to the broadcast. This is an angry message.'

'What's there to be angry about?' queried Harding. 'McBride pleaded: virtually said he'd pay anything.'

'I don't think the anger is directed at us,' said Claudine. 'I think there's some disagreement among the people who've got Mary: irritation that subconsciously came through in the message.'

Oh, this was clever, thought Norris: trying to confuse them all with psychological double-talk no one could recognize except him.

'Couldn't it be rea.s.serting the control you say is so important to them?' suggested Smet.

The lawyer now very clearly considered himself an active player in the group, decided Claudine. Why not? He was a lawyer and all his questions and comments so far had been valid. She said: 'There's an aggression that wasn't in the earlier contacts. And this one, incidentally, was written by yet another person, so we know there are at least three.'

'What could the disagreement be about?' wondered Blake.

'The most obvious reason is that they're not unanimous over how to continue the situation,' said Claudine.

'What situation?' protested Harding. 'They've hardly started yet!'

'That's another thing that worries me,' conceded Claudine quietly.

'You think the danger's s.e.xual? Or worse even than that?' asked Poncellet.

'I don't know,' said Claudine, unhappy at a further admission. 'But I think there's more now to the arrogance that I talked about in the beginning.'

'Like what?' demanded Smet.

Claudine paused, briefly unsure whether to express the fear. 'They've s.n.a.t.c.hed a child: not just a child, the daughter of an American amba.s.sador. They should be frightened: apprehensive at least. But they're not: not enough. So they've done it before: s.n.a.t.c.hed a child and not been caught.'

'We're still working through investigations over the past three years, re-interviewing child s.e.x suspects against whom no charges were brought as well as convicted paedophiles,' said Poncellet. 'Everyone will be compared to the computer graphic, obviously.'

'Any women involved?' demanded Blake.

Poncellet looked uncomfortable. 'Not that I'm aware of: I'll make a specific check.'

'Could the sort of disagreement you think this message shows be making them careless?' asked Harding, smiling apologetically to the German in advance. 'Kurt wasn't able to follow a trail before.'

'They had to risk it this time,' said Claudine quickly, seeing Volker's offended frown. 'They had to let us pick up the school address: that's the proof the message is genuine, not a crank response from last night's broadcast. They had to leave it on the screen long enough for it to be recognized: Kurt's genius was in having created a program that identified it in seconds far more quickly than they probably expected and then being able to follow it back as far as he did.'

'Thank you,' said Volker, the frown replaced by an even-toothed smile.

She was extremely convincing, thought Norris, in reluctant admiration. But that was hardly difficult for her, knowing it all from the inside as she did. This was going to be one of his most successful investigations spectacular even exposing her for what she was.

'But the fact that they used the school for proof could be another cause for concern,' Claudine continued. 'The first two messages had identification that could have only come from Mary herself. Why didn't the third, to maintain the pattern?'

'You think she's dead?' demanded Harding.

Was she trying to soften them up, prepare them for something that had happened? wondered Norris. That couldn't be right: he couldn't save Mary prove to everyone that he'd been right if she was already dead. So it couldn't be true. It didn't fit. 'No! She can't be.'

Blake and Harding regarded the American psychologist in surprise, as if they'd forgotten he was in the room. Seemingly abruptly aware of their attention, Norris said: 'I don't read the message as Dr Carter does. In my opinion Mary Beth's still alive.'

There were discomfited looks between Blake and Harding. Poncellet openly shook his head. Only Smet gave no reaction.

Forcefully Claudine said: 'The lack of anything that must have come from the child herself is the strongest indicator so far that Mary's dead. It could even be the reason for the anger that I believe is there.'

'How much more difficult will it be to find them if she is dead? If the body is buried or disposed of?' queried Smet.