'He's half hidden by her. He'd know what I was trying to do see my gun if I moved along the inside wall for a full shot,' replied Harding, soft-voiced. 'Oh s.h.i.t!'

'I could hit him,' offered Blake. 'But his reflex would be to pull his own trigger. He couldn't miss her.'

Claudine, unaware of the import of the hushed conversation, said loudly; 'Please be quiet, everyone. Let us alone.'

'Yes,' said Norris distantly. 'That's what I want, everyone to be quiet. Everyone except her.' He was confused by so many people. He was pleased that McBride, all of them, were going to witness how good he was: be taught how to interrogate a felon properly. But he'd lost his concentration. Couldn't think how to pick up the questioning. The gun felt suddenly heavy. He couldn't remember why he'd pulled the weapon. Had she pulled hers, to challenge him? Couldn't see it. To frighten her, he remembered. That was it, to frightened her!

Claudine could detect the rustle of movement behind her but no one was speaking. It was important that they didn't. She didn't want any more anger: didn't want him to lose what little self-control, if any, was left. He was fixated on her involvement, so she couldn't positively confront him; that would make him angry, too. And he'd defied the amba.s.sador, the ultimate authority: the sort of authority to which he'd always deferred in the past. So there was an absolute refusal any longer to acknowledge anyone as his superior, either officially or professionally. It made his paranoia, his delusion, absolute, and him a totally dangerous man, clinically a psychopath: a psychopath sitting a metre away pointing at her a gun with the safety catch off. What was her entry to someone who believed himself above all others? She's got to tell me, no one else, she remembered: not the amba.s.sador, or his Director in Washington. Only John Norris, G.o.d-like among the little people. So he was the entry. The only way to get through to John Norris was through John Norris, the one person he'd listen to: the only person whose opinion made any sense to him. Extremely careful to infuse admiration and to make it a statement, not a question, she said: 'You must feel very satisfied, holding me here like this.'

'I haven't got her back yet.'

No, thought Claudine, anxiously: Mary Beth mustn't come into the conversation. 'I feel very inadequate.'

'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 G.o.d, 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed at the long sleeve of her dress, baring her left arm and holding it towards the man. The scar from the attempted a.s.sa.s.sination 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 G.o.d'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.

'Felicite said I wasn't to go there,' said Charles.

'It's changed.'

'Does Felicite know?'

'Yes.'

'I won't hurt her.'

'You can.'

'But I won't this time. Felicite was angry with me. Shouted.'

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

'Why?'

'That's what Felicite 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 emba.s.sy's bas.e.m.e.nt 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 gla.s.s 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 emba.s.sy 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 gla.s.ses. 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 emba.s.sy-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 emba.s.sy sick bay. She ignored them. As well as the tranquillizer Kenyon gave her his card, with his home as well as his direct emba.s.sy 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.