‘Pick it up,’ said Claudine calmly.
McBride did so, hesitantly, but remembered to look sideways to her so that both receivers came off their cradles together. ‘Hello?’
‘McBride?’ The voice was faint.
‘Yes.’
‘How do I know?’
Claudine mouthed ‘You must tell me’ and the American repeated the words aloud.
‘What’s Granny McBride’s birthday?’ asked the caller.
‘August second,’ replied the ambassador at once.
‘And grandpa’s?’
‘Grandpa’s dead.’
‘When did he die?’
‘Two years ago. November.’
There was a laugh, overlaid at the end by outside traffic noise. ‘Hello, Mr Ambassador!’
Quickly Claudine slipped across the first of her notes. It read: ‘Horror. She’s maimed your child.’
McBride said: ‘You’ve hurt Mary! Badly. Please give her back, so I can get her treated: get her to hospital!’
There was a pause at the other end. Claudine nodded approvingly to the man beside her. The line had been open for almost two minutes.
‘She’s been properly treated.’
‘Who by?’ mouthed Claudine.
‘By a doctor?’
‘How?’
‘She’s not in any pain.’
Claudine’s second note read: Anger but not hatred. Frustration.
‘Bastard,’ said McBride. ‘Why? I want to pay to get her back: pay anything.’ He was performing far better than Claudine could have hoped.
‘I wanted you to know you’ve got to do everything I demand…’
The line faded into silence and McBride said urgently: ‘I didn’t hear! The line’s gone…’
‘… demand or something worse will happen to her,’ echoed down the line as the volume returned.
‘No!’ protested McBride, unprompted. ‘There’s no need to hurt her any more. Just tell me what you want and I’ll do it: let’s just end this.’
‘We want two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,’ announced the woman.
Claudine had been making profile notes throughout. She pressed down at the ransom figure so heavily the pencil point broke. She switched to another, angry at her over-reaction, important though the demand was. Hurriedly she passed another note.
Responding to it McBride said: ‘You can have it now! Tonight! Tell me how to deliver it and you can have it tonight… so I can get Mary back tonight…’
Four minutes, Claudine saw. Surely with the sort of technical equipment at the other side of the embassy they would have got a fix by now!
‘All in good time: I can’t have us walking into a trap.’
‘I promise…’
Before Claudine’s headshake registered with McBride the woman cut him off. ‘I know that won’t be true, so don’t lie. You don’t want Mary coming to any more harm, do you?’
The man opened his mourn to speak but Claudine held up a stopping hand, mouthing her instruction.
‘I’m sorry… I didn’t mean… I’m so desperate to get Mary back,’ stumbled McBride obediently.
The volume collapsed into static. Almost six minutes, noted Claudine. The words were indistinct when the sound came back. Then the voice said: ‘Guess you didn’t hear that: I lost you too. And how’s the clever lady today? I know you’re there, Claudine!’
The remark reverberated through Claudine’s head like a pistol shot. She’d been right in thinking she’d missed something but she wasn’t missing it any more and the recognition was so astonishing that momentarily Claudine’s mind blocked. She was conscious of McBride’s startled expression and of his intention to speak and urgently shook her head. She said: ‘I’m very well, Mercedes. Trying to be a clever lady yourself?’
The laugh was uneven. ‘It was obvious you’d listen in. Just as it’s obvious they’ll be trying to trace this call. That’s why I won’t be talking to you much longer.’
Could she do it! She had to, Claudine told herself. There was a risk but she’d already made up her mind about the chances of getting Mary Beth back alive. Abandoning everything she’d rehearsed with the ambassador, she embarked on an approach she’d considered at the very beginning. ‘We’re having the toe scientifically examined, to establish if it’s from Mary.’ She held her free hand up against any interruption from McBride.
‘Your idea?’
‘Yes,’ said Claudine. ‘And I’ve got a lot more.’ Bite! she thought desperately.
‘The clever psychologist, imagining you know my mind!’
Claudine felt another sweep of disbelief. ‘Oh, I know your mind very well, Mercedes: probably better than you know it yourself.’ There was so much to think about: considerations to weigh. But later. Not now. Now her entire concentration had to be upon every nuance and word of this conversation.
‘You’re a conceited fool!’
Claudine was pleased at the irritated edge in the woman’s voice. ‘One of us is, Mercedes.’ She hoped the woman discerned the contempt she was trying to infuse into her voice every time she uttered the ridiculous assumed name.
‘Didn’t you hear the warning I gave McBride about what would happen to Mary if he annoyed me?’
Once more Claudine shook her head against any interruption from the ambassador. The door on the opposite side of the office opened softly but urgently. Without coming any further into the room Blake gave exaggerated nods to indicate a location followed by one of the familiar rolling gestures with his hands for the woman to be kept on the line. Trying to make the sneer in her voice as obvious as she could, Claudine said: ‘You didn’t actually say annoyed, Mercedes, but then I guess you’re confused-’
‘I’m not at all confused!’ broke in the woman.
Dare she go on? If she were right – and Claudine didn’t doubt that she was – there was another way, a much more effective way, for her to achieve what she wanted. McBride, beside her, was damp with sweat, smelling of it. ‘It’s a common belief…’ Claudine said, letting her voice trail. At the same time she slid another prompt sheet to the man.
McBride said: ‘Let me speak to Mary. Talk to her to know she’s all right.’
‘Where’s Claudine? I want Claudine!’
Claudine allowed the briefest of pauses, aware of the satisfaction surging through her: so much, so quickly. Dismissively, she demanded: ‘What?’
‘What’s a common belief? What are you talking about?’
Quite irrespective of anything else, they’d kept the woman talking for a further three minutes: she had to be surrounded now, on the point of arrest. ‘The ambassador wants to talk to Mary.’
‘You haven’t answered my question!’
‘The only thing we need to talk about is the arrangement for getting Mary back.’
‘I’ll-’ began the woman loudly, but then stopped. There was a sound as if the instrument had been hurriedly dropped, and distant talking, in French too indistinct to decipher, but no police sirens or the shouts and yells Claudine would have expected at a moment of arrest.
‘What…?’ started McBride, but Claudine gestured him down.
For precisely four more minutes, timed by the clock in front of them, the indistinct talking continued. Claudine thought she detected a child’s voice and from the disbelieving look on his face she knew McBride had heard it too. Then there were sirens, a screaming cacophony, and the expected shouting began: there was definitely at least one child’s voice among the screaming before all the noise was drowned by the whuck-whuck of descending helicopters.
‘They’ve got her!’ said McBride, his voice trembling. ‘They’ve got the woman and they’ve got Mary back.’
‘Come on!’ shouted Claudine, already running towards the door.
Way was made for McBride and his wife to squeeze into the communications room, alongside Sanglier against the wall at the very rear. The only sound, the volume adjusted to be properly audible, not deafening, was relayed over an open channel that all could hear. It was in French. There was definitely a child’s cry. Demands, clearly from the arresting officers, for the adults not to move and to keep their hands and arms visible. One voice kept repeating a threat to shoot. Claudine’s first dip of uncertainty came with the sound of a man’s voice, close to hysteria, demanding to know what was happening and pleading that no one shoot. And of a child screaming, hysterical too.