'And you disobeyed me. Both of you. All of you. You sent Charles to kill her, didn't you?'

'No,' Smet said, keeping to the rehea.r.s.ed story they'd agreed with Gaston to follow. 'You know what Charles is like. And he's getting worse. Has been for months.'

'How could we have known what he was going to do?' protested Dehane unconvincingly.

'You're a liar. You're all liars. None of you are to go near her any more.'

'I don't want to go near her at all,' said Smet.

Dehane said nothing.

'I'm not sure that I'll let any of you, even when we have the party.' She wished there was a greater penalty she could impose. Hurt them, disgrace them in some way that wouldn't involve her.

'Claudine knows all about you,' declared the Justice Ministry lawyer. 'Knows what sort of person you are. It's frightening, how accurately she's described you.'

'Did she really say I was mad?'

'Yes,' said Smet petulantly. 'And she's right: you are.'

'Tell me everything,' ordered Felicite.

'They've excluded me,' announced Smet dramatically. 'The b.a.s.t.a.r.d Poncellet!'

'How?'

'They're staging a big operation at the emba.s.sy for your call. To trap you. The others would have accepted my being there as a matter of course but Poncellet made a fuss about its having nothing to do with liaison: said I'd get a transcript later for the Ministry. I'd have drawn too much attention to myself if I'd argued against it.'

'To trap me!' echoed Felicite, looking to Dehane. 'I hope you've got the phone ready!'

'Don't do it!' pleaded the man. 'I've no idea what sort of tracking equipment they'll have but it's bound to be state of the art.'

Felicite's hand was already outstretched. She snapped her fingers and said: 'Give it to me.'

Reluctantly Dehane pa.s.sed over the instrument.

'Whose number is it?' she asked.

'A director of a restaurant group. His phone was stolen from his car two nights ago. It hasn't been recovered yet.'

'Excellent,' said Felicite, dropping the mobile into her satchel handbag. 'Now I need to know everything mat's happened ...' She paused. 'But most of all I want to hear her opinion of me.'

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

Only Claudine saw a twisted contradiction in her guiding James McBride in the rudiments of negotiation so soon after what she considered her disastrous attempt to talk John Norris into compliant surrender. She tried to drive the thought from her mind: to drive everything from her mind except preventing the man from making any mistake in the telephone confrontation that was to come.

Her first concern was that it should not be a public spectacle, as it had been with her the previous day. Her attempted insistence that only she and McBride be in the room was met with shouted objections from Hillary, to whom Claudine had to concede. Everyone else was relegated to the communication centre and its audible, two-way reception.

Claudine briefed the amba.s.sador in the sealed office, too, wanting him to become accustomed to the circ.u.mstances in which he had to conduct the conversation. It was ludicrous to expect the man to be relaxed but Claudine strived to achieve something as close to it as possible. It didn't help having Hillary there. Nor did the woman's sneer that if McBride became incapable she would take over.

There was no way Claudine could know that McBride's initially intrusive euphoria had almost as much to do with the death of his personal embarra.s.sment along with John Norris as it did with his learning the severed toe was not his daughter's, although the disclosure led to another brief dispute with Hillary, who complained that she hadn't been told that a toe had been found and demanded that in future she be informed of everything. 'Everything! You understand?'

The over-excitement made McBride dangerously confident. It was essential to bring him down to a manageable level of self-a.s.surance without swinging the pendulum too far in the other direction and making him realize the real danger the amputation still represented to his daughter.

'If the woman keeps to her timing which I think she will because it's all part of her control syndrome in two hours' time you'll be speaking to the monster who s.n.a.t.c.hed your child,' said Claudine. She used the word intentionally.

'Yes?' said McBride.

Claudine was pleased at the body language, the way McBride's lips tightened and he straightened in his chair. 'A possible s.e.x monster,' she said, using the word again.

'Yes?' The voice was quieter.

'Someone who's maimed your child.'

'But ...'

'We've avoided your first mistake,' declared Claudine. 'I don't want her to know we've discovered the toe isn't Mary's. It's part of her control: it mustn't be taken away from her yet.'

'OK,' said McBride doubtfully.

'You hate her,' said Claudine. 'You'd like to kill her, wouldn't you?'

McBride blinked. 'Yes.'

'And if she were in the room with you, instead of on the other end of a telephone, you'd probably try.'

'I would,' said the man. 'And I'd do it. I want her dead.' He'd loosened his tie and taken his jacket off.

'Good,' said Claudine, pleased with the admission. 'Make yourself think hate.'

'I don't have to make myself.'

'You can't kill her, though.'

'I will, if I ever get to her.'

'But you can't, not today.'

'No,' he conceded.

'So what can you do to her today?'

McBride looked at Claudine uncertainly. 'What you tell me, I suppose.'

He'd come down as far as she wanted. 'Use your hate to beat her,' she said.

'How?'

'You negotiated a lot, in business?'

'Yes?' McBride thought uneasily of his recent fear of Norris.

'How often did you lose a negotiation?'

'A few times.'

'Did you ever hate the people you negotiated with?'

'Of course not. It was business.'

'What about those who beat you?'

'No.'

'Ever lose your temper?'

'That's the way to lose negotiations.'

Claudine smiled. 'Exactly! You're going to be talking to the woman who's got your child, a woman you think of as a monster who's prepared to disfigure her and whom you hate. But if for one single moment you allow that hate to come through, lose your temper, then you're going to lose Mary Beth. Show emotion plead, cry, beg but don't genuinely lose your temper and threaten to kill her like you did just now. She's got Mary Beth to hurt you with. You've got nothing, except the words you use and the money you're prepared to pay. And at the moment it comes down to words.'

McBride nodded, in what Claudine read as determination, not despair. For once Hillary was listening too, not trying instinctively to compete.

'What do I do?'

'Follow her lead. Let her be in control all the time. Only argue or oppose her when I tell you. I'm going to be right here, directly beside you. If you're unsure let it show that you're unsure, stumble to give me time to guide you.'

'Will she settle it today? Demand a ransom and say how it's to be delivered?' demanded Hillary.

'There's no way I can answer that,' replied Claudine, who didn't expect things to move that fast.

'If I can talk long enough we might get a positional fix: be able to get her back?' suggested McBride.

Claudine was worried the confidence was sinking below the optimum level. 'You're the key. You. And what you say and how you say it.'

McBride stared at her, swallowing, all thoughts of his escape by John Norris's death wiped from his mind. Ignoring Hillary's presence, he said: 'I've never been so frightened in my life.'

'It doesn't matter at all if she realizes that,' Claudine a.s.sured him. 'Now we're going to do something you'll probably think is ridiculous but isn't, believe me.'

'What?'

'I'm going to be the woman who's got Mary. Negotiate with me to get her back.'

The emba.s.sy communications room was the focal point of the operation and Claudine went to it an hour before the expected kidnap call, needing to know what the backup was going to be.

One wall was dominated by a hugely magnified map of central Brussels, with linked adjoining charts spreading out into the city's major suburbs. On each were marked the outwardly radiating waiting positions of thirty unmarked radio-controlled cars and fifteen anonymous motorcycles ready to be dispatched in a pincer movement at the first indication of a route being established by the woman's call: when Claudine got to the crowded room the cars and motorcycles were testing in turn for sound levels and interference, each separately identified by a flashing light against its numbered designation on the central control panel in front of which sat three technicians, all American.

One was slightly apart from the other two, connected at a divided section of the control board not to the road vehicles but to two helicopters at that moment preparing to lift off from the NATO military complex close to Zaventem airport to be in a spotting formation directly over the city at the time of the antic.i.p.ated call: two replacements were being held at the base in case a contact delay encroached into the fuel reserves of the airborne machines.

There were two separate mobile telephone scanners, both linked to roof-mounted satellite dishes installed that day and each again operated by a three-man crew. There was so much apparatus to record every spoken word and command if an operation were initiated that it had needed to be a.s.sembled in two banks, one behind the other, one man responsible for every two machines.

After a guided tour of the communication and tracking systems Sanglier led a retreat out into the less congested corridor.

'How's McBride?' he said.

'All right, I think. I've rehea.r.s.ed him as much as I believe I safely can. Once he lost his self-consciousness he did quite well. His wife being there is a nuisance.'

'I'll go to see if there's anything he wants,' announced Harrison.

'No,' said Claudine. 'He needs to be left alone.'

'And we don't have to be told what he wants,' said Harding heavily. 'What either of them wants.'

Claudine went back to McBride's office fifteen minutes before the expected call. McBride was at the open c.o.c.ktail cabinet, the Jack Daniel's bottle already in his hand. He turned and said: 'You want anything?'

'No,' said Claudine. 'And I don't think you should.' d.a.m.n! Something else she'd overlooked.

'Listen to her if you won't listen to me,' said Hillary.

'I can handle one.'

'I don't think you need it.' When he stayed with the bottle she said: 'She'd be winning, before you even started to talk.'

McBride shrugged, replacing the whiskey and closing the doors. 'I'm OK.'

'I know you are.'

'I wish I knew it as well,' said the other woman.

'You're not helping, Mrs McBride,' said Claudine. 'In fact, you're making things more difficult.'

'Who the h.e.l.l do you think you're talking to?'

'Let's think about helping Mary, shall we?' said Claudine, refusing the argument.

'What if she doesn't call?'

'She will.' The woman was too unpredictable for such a guarantee and Claudine accepted she'd lose credibility if there was no contact, but McBride couldn't be allowed any doubt. She didn't like the nervousness obvious from his pacing round the study but said nothing. Hillary lounged contemptuously in a chair. As he walked McBride constantly checked his watch. To calm him, Claudine sat easily in her already arranged chair, positioned the special, large-faced clock with the sweep second hand where they would both be able to time the call and then toyed reflectively with the prepared jotting pad before beginning to write a series of quick, tom-off notes.

'What are you doing?' demanded the amba.s.sador.

To her relief he stopped moving. 'There are things I can antic.i.p.ate. Prepare for.'