He waited until the dry-heaving finally abated. “Dianne,” he said. “Dianne, we have to talk.”
Her shoulders pumped up and down. She pressed the handkerchief to her face like a talisman. “Have to talk.”
“Paris. The George V. Malik.”
She swallowed hard. “We took the Friday train from Waterloo. We…we’d…” She bit her lips, then wiped at her nose, which was wet.
Tom said nothing. There were perhaps eight, nine, ten seconds of silence. And then she inhaled deeply to get herself under control, wiped her nose with her sleeve, and began again. “We’d decided to take the day off. We met on the platform. I’d come from my flat by subway.” Her French was perfectly enunciated and unmistakably upper-crust British in its inflection. She sounded somewhat like the late and unlamented Princess Di-the same nasal, stiff-upper-lip Sloane Ranger tone.
“Where is your flat?”
She held the handkerchief to her face and inhaled deeply. “I live in Islington. On Gerrard Road-just above the canal.” She looked at him strangely. “I’ve been over this material before.”
Tom ignored her. “Of which canal do you speak?”
Her eyes were eloquent. They said,You absolute shit. You are doing this for no reason at all other than you can. But still, she responded to his question. “The Grand Union.”
“How long is the walk from your flat to the Metro stop?” He purposely misspoke.
She gave him a reproving glance. “We call it the Underground in Britain.”
Tom rephrased the question.
“About four blocks.”
“And you carried your baggage the whole distance?”
“I had a carry-on. I could wheel it.”
“And the train took you directly to Waterloo Station?”
“I had to change once-at Euston.”
“What underground did you travel?”
“The Northern Line.”
“The whole time?”
“The whole time.”
Tom adjusted the straight-backed chair on his side of the table, then dropped onto it. “And you met Malik at Waterloo.”
She put the handkerchief to her face and inhaled again. “Yes.”
“Who arrived first?”
“I did.”
“Where did you meet?”
“There is a board, showing all the departing trains.”
“Yes?”
“We met in front of it.”
“When did you buy your tickets?”
“Malik had bought them.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. He had them when he arrived.”
“So you went directly to the train?”
“Yes.”
“Where did you sit?”
“In first class.”
Tom nodded. What he’d just done was to pose a series of neutral “control questions,” in order to gauge her physical reactions under nonthreatening conditions. She’d responded as he’d hoped she would: breathing even, eye contact steady and nonevasive, and hand-and-foot movement minimal.
He was taking her back to the Paris trips for another reason. The Israelis had been interested in her relationship with Malik because they were deconstructing the bombing. Reverse-engineering everything leading up to the event so they could see where the chinks were, and how they could be closed.
Tom had his own ideas about Malik. The obvious thing was that he’d recruited her as a mule, to carry the explosives. Virtually all agent recruitments are based on four behavioral elements: ego, money, sex, or ideology. EMSI, pronounced “emcee,” was the abbreviation they taught at the Farm. Dianne’s was a classic sex recruitment. The scenario with plain-Jane targets usually followed similar patterns: a taste of the good life-a few bottles of the bubbly, followed shortly by a romantic French dinner, followed thereafter by a healthy bout of the old in-and-out at a stylish bachelor flat. Tom’s eyes scanned the prisoner, read her body language, demeanor, and aura. She was an open book. One great, sweaty orgasm and she’d be wrapped around Malik’s little finger forever.
“How did you meet Malik?”
“It was an accident.”
“An accident.”
“I was having a drink with a friend. We’d been to Beauchamp Street. The sales, you know-the January sales? And we’d stopped at this pub for a glass of wine.”
“Which pub?”
“The Bunch of Grapes. It’s on Brompton Road.”
“Who were you with?”
“Deirdre. Deirdre Ludlow. We’d gone to school together. Known one another since we were eight.” Dianne gave Tom a wistful look. “She was always the pretty one. I was always the bright one.”
“You say you’d been shopping?”
“We’d been in and out of stores for at least two hours.”
“And?”
“Malik spilled a glass of champagne all over my arm.”
Tom thought, I wonder where he spotted her. It was obvious to him that Malik had been trolling. Knightsbridge during the January sales was the perfect place to target young women. It was all becoming clear now: the plain wren with her beautiful friend. But what was it Malik had seen? What scent had Dianne thrown off that the predator knew she was the weak one?
Tom already knew the answer. All Malik had had to do was look at the two of them. That was hint enough if he was the pro Tom believed he’d been. He’d probably spotted Dianne by appearance alone. Her clothes were expensive but frumpy. Salah had displayed them to Tom. The labels came from the best shops in Knightsbridge. So having spotted her, Malik had watched from afar and assessed. She wore no engagement or wedding ring. Her beverage of choice? Safe white wine. He’d confirm his first impressions by reading her body language. She was no type A personality. No alpha bitch. She obviously did as she was told, something he was able to confirm by the manner in which she constantly deferred to her better-looking companion. There was more: her eyes always downcast. That meant she was probably submissive.
The recruitment planets aligned, Malik stalked until the time was right. Then he pounced, utilizing an inventive but not unexpected form of cold pitch. “You said Malik spilled his drink on you.”
“Yes, and he was so apologetic. He bought us a bottle of champagne. He ran outside and found a flower seller and bought me roses. He was just so…effusive.”
“How long was it before you went to bed with him?”
Her cheeks grew red. “That night,” she said. Her eyes fell and she focused on the table in front of her. “He asked if he could take me to dinner as a way of apologizing. He took me to Che, on St. James’s Street.”
“And?”
“Che,”she said earnestly. “One reads about the people who go there. You have to bookweeks ahead. But Malik didn’t. We took a cab to St. James’s and strolled in as if he owned the place. The manager, who was as pretty as any movie star, kissed him on the lips, gave him a big hug, took us right up the escalator, and gave us the best table in the house.”
“And?”
“And?”She looked at him as if he were an idiot. “What do you think? We had champagne. And dinner with wine. He was charming and delightful and extremely attentive. We were sitting next to one another on a banquette. We started holding hands. And then all of a sudden, just before they brought coffee and cognac, he started rubbing the top of my thigh, and then he…he, well you know, put his hand underneath my skirt. No one had ever done anything that…risky before. It made me tremendously excited.” She looked at Tom. “He leaned over and kissed me-a passionate kiss, I can assure you. He told me I excited him. ThatI excitedhim. And that I could, you know, feel him to see. And I did. And hewas.” Another huge tear rolled from the corner of her eye down her cheek and droppedplop off her chin.
“Oh, my God. It was the first time in my life I’d ever caused that reaction on a man that good-looking and that sophisticated and that attentive.” She looked at Tom coldly. “Of course I went to bed with him that night. I’d have done anything he wanted me to.”