Harding looked sideways, inviting Norris to respond. When he didn't the local FBI man said: 'I think it would make Washington doubly determined to catch them. The investigation would increase rather than decrease.'

'If this morning's message hasn't carried any negotiation forward what do we do?' asked Poncellet.

Claudine was positive. 'Now's the time to wait.'

'What if they don't come back to us?' said Blake.

'She'll definitely be dead,' declared Claudine. 'And we'll have failed.'

'You'll have failed,' said Norris.

Jean Smet kept his house as the venue but individually warned the others that Felicite would be attending too. She had to know they all had to know everything that had happened. It didn't change the need to get rid of the child it made it all the more necessary, despite Harding's bravado and when she heard how close the investigation was getting Felicite would have to agree. That way they'd all be in it together, without any falling out. Which he wanted as much as the rest of them.

He expected Felicite to arrive last, which she did, but wasn't prepared for the triumphal entrance, a diva commanding the stage. 'Well?' she demanded.

It was Henri Cool, the one most worried about identification, who first realized Felicite actually had her hair in a chignon, although crossed in the way she always wore it, not as it had been shown in the computer picture. 'You're mad! Totally mad!'

She laughed at the schoolteacher. 'I walked here by the longest route I could find. I started in the Grande Place and actually obliged two tourists by taking their pictures in front of the Manneken Pis, imagining what fun we could have had with a chubby little chap with a p.r.i.c.k like that.' She smiled towards Smet. 'Just for you I wandered by the Palais de Justice it really is the ugliest building in Europe, isn't it? and went through the park to the royal palace before making my way here.' She paused again, surveying them all. 'And even with my hair like this no one looked at me a second time.' She snapped her fingers. 'So that for the pictures you were all s.h.i.tting yourselves about.' She slumped into a chair, shaking her clamped hair free of its pins. 'I'm totally exhausted.' She looked at Henri Cool. 'Anything happen to you?'

'I called in sick. Stayed home.'

'That was very clever!' sneered Felicite. 'That wouldn't cause any curiosity in anyone who might have seen a resemblance, would it, you b.l.o.o.d.y fool!' She made a languid gesture towards Smet and said: 'I'll have champagne.'

Smet had two bottles already cooling in their buckets. He gestured for Michel Blott to serve, wanting to concentrate entirely upon the woman. 'Today was incredible. It's gone a long way beyond computer pictures.'

'What is it now?' she sighed wearily.

It was not something he would have admitted to the rest he was reluctant to admit it to himself but Smet had actually come close to enjoying that afternoon. Of course he had been frightened, weighing everything he said and heard, but the fear had even added to the sensation. He found it difficult to define precisely a combination of power, at perhaps being able to influence the very people hunting him; and mockery, at being able to laugh at their stupid ignorance; and the tingling fear itself, at actually being there, so close to them, talking to them, being accepted by them but supposed it was akin to what Felicite felt. The difference between himself and her was that he didn't constantly need the experience, like an addict permanently in search of a better and bigger high. There was even something like a physical satisfaction another manifestation of power, he supposed at the varying, horrified reactions from everyone except Felicite. He'd antic.i.p.ated that, too.

'There was only one more cut-out, after Menen,' disclosed Dehane, hollow-voiced. 'If he'd got through that he would have been back to me! Oh my G.o.d!'

'It was stupid, using the school,' said Felicite.

'What else did I have? You didn't give me anything to identify her with!' retorted Smet. 'That was stupid.'

Felicite didn't like being so openly opposed, certainly not in front of the rest. Nor did she like having to admit, if only to herself, that the man was right: she had been stupid. To Dehane she said: 'You've got a relay bug in the cafe system?'

'Yes.'

'Could you get it out?'

Dehane shook his head doubtfully. 'They would expect me to do it. Be waiting for an unauthorized entry.'

'Would it lead to you, if they found it?'

'No. It's a one-way system: I've got to access it.'

'So there's no danger, even if they find it?'

'Not really. And it would take a very long time, no matter how good this man Volker is.'

'So we can use what they think is a breakthrough to our advantage again,' said Felicite. 'We simply leave dozens of policemen wasting their time in a part of the country we're never going to go near again.'

The insane b.i.t.c.h still didn't intend changing her plans, Smet realized. The others had to hear her say it, to convince them later what was necessary. 'We mustn't go on with it.'

'It doesn't alter anything,' chanted Felicite, like a mantra.

'We've got to get rid of her.'

'There's nothing to discuss. I've told all of you what's going to happen. And it will. Exactly as I say.'

'You can't be serious!' protested the other lawyer. 'This doesn't make any sense at all.'

Felicite was extremely serious, although still outwardly showing the sangfroid with which she'd arrived an hour earlier. The investigation everything was very different from the last time. Nothing was like what had happened then: not so technical nor as determined nor with such an inexhaustible supply of police and specialists to be called upon at a moment's notice.

So it would be madness to prolong it much further: madness to try to recapture the exquisite, first-time pleasure of last night, being with Mary but ultimately holding back from touching her. Ecstasy from abstinence: priestly fulfilment.

She couldn't wouldn't! give the slightest indication that they'd been right, of course. They hadn't been right. It was the investigators who had been better: investigators she still had to confront to prove who, ultimately, was best.

'We'll further confuse them, beyond Menen,' she announced. 'Now they've got so much manpower invested in e-mail, we'll change our approach.' She turned to Dehane. 'How many Belgacom mobile telephones get stolen every day, not just here in Belgium but throughout Europe?'

Dehane snorted in disbelief. 'Thousands. Tens of thousands.'

'And all the losses and the numbers get recorded, to prevent their unauthorized use, don't they?'

The telephone executive shifted uneasily. 'Eventually.'

'Exactly!' smiled Felicite. 'I want you to programme newly reported stolen numbers into unprogrammed telephones for me. We'll only use a number once, before switching to another. Even if a number is scanned and the holder identified, it won't lead to us. All it will do is compound the confusion we started at Menen.' Her smiled widened. 'Now isn't that the cleverest thing!'

No one replied immediately.

Smet said: 'Who's going to make the telephone contact?'

'Me, of course! Unless any of you want to volunteer.'

The silence this time was longer.

'That's settled then,' said Felicite, hurrying now as she came to another decision: it would be easy enough to bring forward that night's dinner with Pieter Lascelles. Everyone ate unnaturally early in Holland anyway. 'And I'll go to the house again tonight to look after Mary.'

'What about tomorrow?' asked Cool.

Felicite extended a wavering finger, moving it back and forth between the a.s.sembled men before coming back to the schoolteacher. 'You!' she decided. 'Unless, that is, I change my mind.'

'We were all agreed, even before what happened today,' reminded Smet. 'So there's nothing more to discuss, is there?'

'Except who's going to do it,' said Gaston Mehre.

'He likes it,' said Smet, looking at the man's brother. Gaston was holding Charles's hand comfortingly. Charles appeared to have retreated into his private world, unaware of the discussion around him.

'We're all part of it, whoever actually kills her,' said the other lawyer.

'When?' asked Gaston Mehre.

'Tomorrow,' said Smet. 'We don't know how long Felicite will stay at the house tonight.'

'You've got to get rid of the body,' insisted Gaston. 'Charles can kill her but the rest of you must get rid of the body.'

'Of course,' said Blott, too eagerly.

'I could have come to Antwerp,' offered Lascelles. He was extremely thin as well as being tall and he held himself forward, so his body appeared concave. He had a soft, cajoling voice.

'It won't take me long to drive back.' Their table was in a cubicle shielding them from the rest of the diners. She pa.s.sed the brochure of the Namur chateau across to him. 'This is it.'

Lascelles studied the ill.u.s.trations and said: 'It looks magnificent. Have you shown Lebron?'

'Two days ago. He was impressed. He's probably bringing as many as ten of his people.'

'I'll probably have around the same. Maybe more. They're looking forward to it.'

'When will you make your s.n.a.t.c.h?'

'Not until you give me a definite date.'

'Certainly the weekend after next. Maybe sooner.'

'You've caused a sensation.'

Felicite smiled. 'It's exciting.'

'You will be careful, won't you?'

'Don't you lose your nerve, like the others.'

It was still only nine o'clock when Felicite reached the Antwerp house overlooking the Schelde river. She smiled at the child waiting anxiously just inside the heavy door.

'h.e.l.lo, darling,' said the woman. 'Are you pleased to see me?'

'Very glad,' said Mary. She liked the woman being kind to her: kinder than her mother and father, who didn't seem to care what was happening to her.

In Brussels Blake finally got a call from Henri Sanglier, who said that after picking up the message from his secretariat he'd decided to go to Menen personally to ensure the surveillance was properly in place. He rang off before Blake could transfer the call to Claudine.

At the city's Zaventem airport the American emba.s.sy's diplomatic bag arrived from Washington carrying the information John Norris had requested about McBride's armaments corporation.

At the cafe on the rue Guimard that the FBI had made their own Duncan McCulloch said: 'If you won't talk to Blake tomorrow I will. It's f.u.c.king ridiculous.'

'I'll do it,' undertook Harding, finally overcoming his reluctance. He was d.a.m.ned if he did and d.a.m.ned if he didn't, he decided. And just three years before he would have been out of it all.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

The depression was tangible at the first gathering of the day, people talking because they had to but knowing they weren't offering anything to keep alive the brief hope of the previous day. The clandestine surveillance had produced nothing. Henri Sanglier had agreed with the Belgian squad at Menen that the cafe proprietor was uninvolved and approved direct questioning with the computer-drawn images of the wanted man and woman. The proprietor, a retired Customs officer, recognized neither. Nor did any of his regular users, whose names he'd offered before being asked. None of them resembled the couple or recognized them.

Poncellet said the Belgian police record search had been extended to cover the entire country, not just Brussels. There was no computer graphic match with any arrest photograph in police archives. Nor was there on any Europol or Interpol register. Making up for his previous day's ignorance the police commissioner said there were only two women with child s.e.x convictions both with boys, not girls and neither bore any resemblance to the computer pictures. Both had witness-supported alibis for the day and time Mary Beth McBride had been s.n.a.t.c.hed: one had been in Ghent, visiting a sick mother, the other at a hairdressing salon where she was well known. Both had nevertheless been detained for an identification parade that afternoon that both Johan Rompuy and Rene Lunckner had agreed to attend.

There was nothing for Claudine to contribute. Although John Norris was saying nothing, either, there was more animation about the man: having so studiously ignored her the previous day he now appeared almost anxious to catch her eye, twice openly smiling. It was, Claudine decided, typical of the mood swings recorded against the severe obsessional condition from which she suspected Norris to be suffering. Claudine was anxious for Sanglier's promised arrival that afternoon. She'd been circ.u.mspect on the police headquarters telephone but she'd ensured Sanglier understood the importance of coming direct from Menen to Brussels instead of returning to The Hague. By tonight, after the scheduled five o'clock emba.s.sy meeting with McBride, the problem with John Norris should be all over. It had been an unnecessary distraction but it had not interfered with what they were there to achieve. Claudine was dissatisfied. She'd drawn every conclusion she could from what evidence there was, which could practically be fitted on to a pinhead with room to spare for a football match with spectators. Until there was further contact there was absolutely nothing more she could think of doing. And if that contact was still by e-mail she was not certain there would be anything to add to the profile she'd already created. Their continued hope would have to be that Volker's pursuit would be more successful the next time.

In rare and unsettling self-doubt Claudine wondered if she had been right to guide the amba.s.sador's public responses as she had. She was sure the messages conveyed disagreement among those holding the child, from which it logically followed one faction dominated the other. And if domination of any sort was a factor, which was a psychologically accepted characteristic of any kidnap, whether s.e.xually initiated or not, then it was right initially to accede to it. But she'd always resisted obedience to supposedly rigid rules in something as inexact as psychology, which as a medical science remained as unexplored as life in outer s.p.a.ce.

One eroding doubt created another. Could she be so sure that no contact within twenty-four hours not twenty-four any longer, little more than twelve almost certainly meant that Mary Beth was dead? Claudine still thought so. She didn't want to it was, she accepted, the subconscious reason for her self-questioning but after so long without a positive ransom demand, it had to be the strongest possibility. And if Mary Beth was dead, Claudine acknowledged that she'd failed. Others might not think it Hillary certainly wouldn't but Claudine knew it would be so. Which brought her (know thyself! know thyself!) to the very nub of her problem: her reason for reflecting as she now did.

As she'd stood in numbed horror in the doorway of their London home, looking at Warwick's lifeless body slowly turning from his suicide rope, Claudine had determined never again to fail in a mental a.n.a.lysis, as she'd failed to realize until it was too late her work-stressed husband's condition. Now she faced failure again but fought against accepting it, as she had before. Things hadn't fallen out as she'd expected. To allow herself to think as she was thinking at that moment was to panic without cause. A fault she would be the first to criticize in anyone else: a fault that would endanger the child she had to save, if saving her was any longer possible.

Throughout the self-examination Claudine had, as always, remained aware of the justifying discussion continuing all around and was not caught out when it settled upon her. Her surprise, in fact, was that of all people the question came from Jean Smet, further establishing himself as the unelected but so far unquestioned coordinator of their daily, largely unproductive information-sharing. She saw no reason to question it either: someone had to coordinate.

'Anything you'd like to add?' asked the Belgian. He was getting the same satisfaction as on the previous day, enjoying himself.

'I think we should now start to consider bringing them to us,' announced Claudine, her mind filled with her most recent thoughts.

The concentration upon her was immediate. Smet said: 'Yesterday you said we should wait.'

'Not indefinitely,' qualified Claudine, wishing she'd earlier expressed herself more fully: wishing she'd thought about it more fully, earlier. 'If there's nothing by the end of the day, we should change our att.i.tude.'

'To what?' demanded Smet.

'To challenging,' said Claudine.

'I thought it was wrong to be confrontational?' frowned Blake.

'Initially,' explained Claudine. 'We've gone past that time now. We've got to face down the arrogance: tilt the balance away from them, towards us.'

'After today?' pressed Harding.

'Yes,' agreed Claudine, guessing from the emphasis it was only half the question. She was conscious of Norris openly smiling, his head going back and forth between her and those questioning her.

'By which time it's more than likely she'll be dead?' the American finished.

Claudine said: 'We've got to accept that as the strongest possibility. But obviously we've got to go on acting in the belief that she's still alive.'

'She is,' a.s.serted John Norris suddenly. And by the end of the day he knew he was going to prove it. He was going to get her back, as well as discovering from James McBride what his corporation's doc.u.mented business dealings had been with the indicted Luigi della Sialvo three months before Saddam Hussein's incursion into Kuwait.

'I hope you're right,' said Smet. There had to be a secret agenda to which this man was working. That was the only possible reason for the American's inexplicable but obvious uninterest practically non-partic.i.p.ation in these sessions, empty though most of them were. Another uncertainty he wouldn't have to worry about after tonight. He wanted Mary Beth dumped as far away as possible and believed he knew how that could be done, too. Gaston Mehre had demanded that others in the group dispose of her, but there was still the body of the Romanian rent boy in the cellar of his antique shop. Which was very much the brothers' problem, no one else's. Definitely not his. In their eagerness to avoid becoming physically involved the others would back his insistence that Charles and Gaston get rid of the girl as well as the boy at the same time and in the same place.

'Something else I may be able to judge from whatever response I can generate,' said Claudine. Now she was speaking in the first person, ignoring Norris, she realized.