Quiller Barracuda

Chapter 9: NEWSBREAK

She's petite, strawberry blonde, violet eyes, great cheekbones, very trim. Age thirty-one.

11:03.

Make-up. Highlight the cheekbones, deep eyeshadow, hairspray. She applied her own lipstick. Impatient with her cosmetician, small curt gestures, eyes on the mirror, on her face.

Most people hate her, especially men who have to work for her, under her – the show's director, technicians, those people. She enjoys emasculating them.

The hand of the big clock moved to 11:04 but there was no significance attached to this: she wasn't going out live tonight – this show was to be pre-taped.

I don't know why. She normally goes out live. There was some mess-up, I guess. You may find out when you're there.

I could only see part of her, waist up, through the glass partition. Two of the monitors were blank; the third was showing a Buick ad.

She can use that kind of clout, you see – Chuck Baker, called in by Ferris to brief me on her – because some people say she's arguably the single most accurate and important source of information on current events for one-fifth of the American people, through syndication programmes. Okay, other people say that's just hype, but I'd say it's a close guess. The Nielson Media Research figures give 'These Are My Views' twenty-one million households per broadcast.

She threw off the make-up gown and crossed into the studio, moving with care to preserve the fluffed-up, Luster-Gel coiffure. Looked at her hands, set the tourmaline ring facet-uppermost, checked her nails. Other people came in now, two men and three women, some of them technicians with audio-gear, clipboards, papers. One of the men switched on the TelePrompTer and checked the display.

I could see her better now. This was one of the monitor rooms and someone had come in a minute ago and asked where Harry was and I told him I didn't know. I'd got the studio lapel pass from Chuck Baker. But I guess it's up to you to tell people what you're doing there, if they ask, okay?

At this hour most of the studio was dark, and the man who'd asked about Harry was the only one I'd seen.

She and Brokaw were called the sexiest anchors in the industry, by a poll conducted last June. TV Guide printed a joint opinion of influential critics that puts her as the first most trustworthy anchor on the screen, in terms of news accuracy and her own deeply considered views. She's strictly non-partisan, and that comes through for her, though at this time of course she's down here from the National Newsbreak network in Washington to pitch for Florida's Senator Judd.

I could hear her voice faintly now through the panel as she began rehearsing. The other people were moving about the whole time now, checking equipment, and one of the monitor screens lit up and began showing her image as a camera started shifting its angles, zooming in on her face, pulling back to head-and-shoulders.

In the last quarter her show cost $80,000 a night and brought in $150,000, giving a profit for the network of more than $4,500 a minute. They pay her a million dollars a year and she's obviously worth it, with all the syndications thrown in.

One of the technicians was taking a quick bite at a sandwich as she worked, and the anchorwoman said without turning her head, 'No food in here, you know the rules. This isn't a goddamned construction site.' A man looked in from the corridor and one of the crew put his thumb up and the man went out again.

'Cameras?'

'I'm ready, Jeff.'

'Where's Harry?'

'He took a day off and forgot to tell anyone.'

'Jesus. Get Phyllis in here.'

'Erica, what's our timing?'

'When I'm ready I'll tell you.'

She's a legend in her time already. She can go into a studio cold turkey and in ten minutes you can start the cameras and she can hit thirty or forty million people with the kind of charm and authority and sheer presence that hasn't ever been seen before. Offstage she's gotten a reputation for being a real personal bitch, but on-stage she's got a red-light reflex you wouldn't believe. The minute the light goes on, she projects herself right into those twenty-one million households and stops everything right there, and all people can do is watch. You know something? She could stop a family fight, knives, guns, you name it, without even leaving the studio.

'Bennie.'

'Uh?'

'Cut those lights.'

'Sorry, Erica.'

The backdrop behind the anchor desk was a map of the United States covering the whole flat, with a backlit transparency of downtown Miami by night. One of the on-screen monitors lit up with a still head-and-shoulders shot of Senator Mathieson Judd, smiling and waving.

She is also – and this is pretty rare in the industry – she's also of what they call good family. They came over on the Mayflower and Jonathan Cambridge II is the founder and president of Marlborough Chemical Bank. She doesn't mix very much in high society – she went through a leftist kick just out of high school and left the ancestral home to live by herself in a sixth-floor cold-water walk-up on Lexington for two years – but the pedigree's there if she needs it. She could walk in to just about anyone's country house and they'd ask her to stay.

Some people were moving one of the theatrical flats and adjusting the lights. A man was kicking cables clear and using duct tape. Another monitor screen came live with a tight head shot of the woman at the desk and the camera pulled back. The girl who'd been eating the sandwich loaded the Tele-PrompTer and checked it and stood away, not looking at the woman at the desk but just waiting. Others were standing back, one of them twisting a rubber band round and round his fingers. There was no sound now.

'Bennie, is that your stuff hanging there?'

'Yes, I'll -'

'For God's sake put it somewhere else, it's distracting me. Jeff, are we ready?'

'When you are.'

'All right, let's go.'

A flood of light, no movement anywhere until her eyes had reacted to the glare, then her head tilted to look straight up at the TelePrompTer and the red lamp came on at the main camera and she flashed a brief, brilliant smile.

'Good-evening. I'm Erica Cambridge, and these are my views. Yesterday in New Hampshire it looked as if Senator Mathieson Judd was for the first time pandering to the dictates of those on his campaign staff who have been trying to persuade him to "throw in a little healthy theatricality", as Josh Weinberg of The Post has put it, to counterbalance the Republican candidate's serious and perhaps solemn approach to the matter in hand. But in my view, ladies and gentlemen, the matter in hand is indeed serious and indeed solemn, nothing less than the task of your goodselves, the people, of choosing the man who will become one of the two – and I say this advisedly – one of the two most powerful statesmen on this planet.'

Pause, a glance to the papers on the desk to give weight to the silence, the violet eyes lifting again. 'And Senator Judd himself knows the seriousness and the solemnity of this occasion, and had more than once declared himself categorically disinterested in cheapening his respect and regard for the electorate. So what happened yesterday in New Hampshire was not rehearsed, was not premeditated. It was real. Some of you were there, I believe. You saw the little boy with the childishly-lettered placard on his chest, reading I HAVE AIDS BUT IT'S OKAY TO HUG ME. You saw Mathieson Judd's instinctive move towards him in the crowd, brushing aside his bodyguards. You saw him hug that little boy, and if you were close enough you saw the sudden springing of tears on that man's face as he stood with his arms around his small, suffering fellow-American for those few seconds of amazing grace.'

And again a pause, but this time her eyes remained on the TelePrompTer. 'I do not think, ladies and gentlemen, that I need to translate that scene into the banality of mere words for you. Allow me to say only that those who consider Senator Judd a figure of almost majestic dedication to the serious and solemn business of leadership, those who consider him as no more than an intellectual devoid of feeling, should now rejoice in the knowledge that he is also a man of heart. And it is this, above all, that we must have in the White House – a man who will not only lead this nation with the high skills of management and statesmanship, but a man graced with humanity.'

Her eyes on the TelePrompTer for two seconds, three; then she looked down and shuffled the papers.

'Haven't seen you around here before, Mr Keyes.'

Faint smell of sweat.

'I'm not surprised.'

He'd come in quietly a minute ago and I'd checked his reflection in the glass panel without looking up. Thick-bodied, bland-faced, moved like a cat. Sitting beside me now, been working out somewhere and hadn't had time for a shower.

'You're not surprised?'

I wished he'd go away. 'But Governor Anderson's theme -' Erica Cambridge on the monitor screen – 'is that there's so much wrong with America after the Republican four-year term -'

'Mr Keyes?'

He didn't know me; he'd read the name on my lapel pass.

'If you want to talk to me you'll have to do it when Miss Cambridge has finished.'

' – Whereas Senator Judd's theme is reassuring. The country is in good shape -'

I could have read this for myself. Word for word.

The chill came creeping, hadn't expected it. I'd been trying to think it was all over now, done with, the subliminal infiltration of my mind.

'I have to check up. Are you with the crew?'

He was nothing to do with the studio. He was probably her bodyguard. Blue suit, black shoes, rubber soles.

' – to consolidate the gains that have been made under the present administration.'

Word for word.

I remembered Ferris, leaning across the desk, talking to the psychiatrist, Purdom watching me from his chair, Upjohn switching off the recorder.

Then Ferris had turned to me. Do you know how long you spoke for?

No.

Nineteen minutes, with no interruption. Do you know what you were talking about?

Yes. Anderson's campaign theme. And Judd's.

I sat for a long time watching the woman with the violet eyes, listening to the words she spoke, the words that I had spoken before.

When had she thought of them, written them?

The man had gone out.

' – is to thank you for letting me be with you this evening. I'm Erica Cambridge, and these are my views.'

Brilliant smile, hold, fade, credits.

I waited until most of the people had left the main studio; then I went in there.

'Who are you?'

The bodyguard hadn't followed me in. Either I'd cooled him off or he didn't want to start anything that could bring Cambridge down on him for being stupid: for all he knew I could be the head of the studio.

'My name is Richard Keyes.'

'I don't know you.'

'We need to talk.'

Getting her long slim snakeskin bag, checking her watch, swinging towards a door – 'Bennie?'

'You want me?' Voice off.

'Where did you put the transcripts?'

'I sent them for copying.'

'All of them?'

'He's doing them tonight. They'll -'

'Oh for God's sake, I need the originals to take home.'

His face in the doorway, patient, enduring, 'I sent them ten minutes ago, Erica, and they'll be back here practically now.'

'Next time, Bennie, get it right.'

She picked up one of the phones on the desk, remembered me and said: 'You can make an appointment through my secretary.'

I said, 'We need to talk tonight.'

'I don't know you. Please leave.'

She dialled, and I went to the main door. 'George Proctor sends his regards.'

The bodyguard was waiting for her outside and she came past him and caught up with me at the elevator. 'Who?'

'I haven't time,' I said, 'to make appointments.'

She wasn't biting her lip but it looked like that. Her make-up girl had taken off the heavy studio masque and fluffed the gel out of her hair and she looked younger and more human. 'How much time do you have?'

'We'll play it by ear.'

'I need to make one short call, okay?' Turned to the man in the blue serge. 'Is the car there?'

'Yes, ma'am.'

'Go down and wait.'

It was 11:40 when we came out of the building into the street and got into the limousine.

She leaned across the small marble-topped table. 'When did you see him last?'

Ferris had told his people to check on the second most frequent number on George Proctor's telephone bills and it had been unlisted but they'd got around it through contacts and the name they'd come up with was Erica Cambridge.

'Two nights ago.'

She looked away. 'Was he with anyone?'

I think she regretted it immediately but of course it was too late.

'Yes.'

She'd learned already, and just went on watching the people. 'Has he contacted you since then?'

'No.'

'Have you contacted him?'

'No. He's missing.'

I was watching her carefully and there was a lot of reaction in the eyes as she brought them back to me and looked down, too late again. 'You can't say someone's missing when you saw them so recently.'

'He took everything with him.'

'I see.' She straightened up, pulling the white silk stole round her bare shoulders. 'Have you been here before?'

I suppose I'd looked interested in the environment, which was true enough: two of the Bureau people had come in here soon after we had and taken up station near the doors. I didn't recognise anyone else but that didn't mean I was safe. I hadn't seen the marksman on the quay or anyone else in his cell and they could be in here now, sitting with a coffee, playing the juke box, using one of the payphones.

'No,' I told her. Hadn't been here before. The neon sign outside had said Kruger Drug.

'It's rather like Schwarb's Pharmacy,' she said, 'on the Strip in LA, but that's gone now. This was just a drugstore at first but it stayed open all night so people came in here for company – night-club types looking for something different, late-night workers, actors, that kind of crowd. Now there's just everyone – Cuban traders, cops, drug dealers, the survivors of family fights, you name it. Coffee?'

'Yes.'

'They have nineteen different kinds.'

She waved to someone and the brilliant smile flashed and died again, leaving the nerves showing just under the skin. It could have been because of her job, or her temperament; I didn't know anything about her, except that she might know where Proctor was.

That remains your immediate objective. Ferris.

Not really. My immediate objective was to stay on my feet and run through this town while they watched me, followed me, waiting to see if there were anything left inside my head, any traces of the subliminal material that had been put in there, waiting to see if the worm were still in the apple, eating its way through.

Waiting over there by the doors.

Sat here feeling the chill but I'd have to get used to it for Christ's sake, deal with it. Find Proctor and the rest would take care of itself. Proctor had been turned and gone to ground and for all I knew he'd been the principal who'd set me up for the kill down there on the quay.

'Hi, Dorothy.' The smile flashed again.

She liked being seen, came in here, probably, to be seen, but at the same time wanted privacy, which was why she'd chosen this table right in the corner and put her bodyguard close enough to fend off anyone she didn't want to see.

'I liked your show,' I said.

'Thank you. Which of the nineteen?'

'What? Oh. Whatever you're having.'

The girl went away with the order. 'I had to tape it because there's a meeting tomorrow evening with the Senator's campaign manager and I'm invited.'

The presence of her bodyguard two tables away would not, of course, do me any good if anything started; nor would the presence of the two Bureau people. The whole town had become a red sector two days after the mission had begun running and that put me at great risk but there hasn't been a single operation in the Bureau records that didn't go through the end-phase with the executive working on the very edge of extinction: it's the nature of the trade; and there was the obvious possibility that if I could find Proctor at some time during the last hours of this night I could turn him in for interrogation and give them a chance to shut down the board for Barracuda if they could get him to break.

'That little scene,' I said, 'in New Hampshire. Was it true?'

She looked down. 'In this business, truth is what you make it. That's the only way to play. Who else was there, that night?'

'With Proctor?'

'Yes.'

'A friend, just leaving.'

'A woman.' It wasn't a question.

'Yes. I think they'd been having a row.' As a gesture.

'And she doesn't know where he's gone?'

'I haven't asked her. I don't know where she lives.'

The bodyguard stood up suddenly, turning two women away. In speech at a distance the vowels stand out better than the consonants, and when we'd come in here I'd heard ameidge from several tables, and now there was au-oh-ah from one of the women, with small moans of disappointment.

The guard sat down again.

'Sugar?'

'No.'

'I want,' she said without looking at me, 'to find George Proctor, very much.'

'So do I. Perhaps we can help each other. If you want to tell me the places where he used to go, I can have them checked out.' It wasn't necessarily a thin chance. Proctor was a top-echelon executive and he knew how to go to ground without leaving a trace, but he could be operating as part of a cell or part of a whole network and he'd have to keep in contact and that would be where I could find him: by catching a stray signal, tripping on a wire, crossing a courier line and working inwards from there.

I knew one thing: it could be fatal to underestimate Proctor. Monck, briefing me in Nassau three days ago: What it does concern is the upcoming American election, in which of course Senator Mathieson Judd is actively engaged. It also concerns the balance of power between East and West as it exists at the present time, which is precariously. Let me put it this way. If the extent of things proves as far-reaching as we've begun to believe, I shall find it difficult to sleep soundly in my bed.

Proctor had been turned and gone over to the Soviets and for all we knew he could be at the very centre of the opposition network, the centre of an organisation that had moved in on me the instant they felt I was a danger – the instant when I'd telephoned Proctor to say I wanted to see him. They'd searched my room and tagged me through the streets and put me in the cross hairs and infiltrated my brain within hours of my arrival in Miami. Whoever Proctor was operating for now, they were important, perhaps international, even multi-national, and he would have a major role to play.

'I can tell you,' Erica Cambridge said, 'the places where he used to go, yes, but I doubt if you'll find him there.'

'We could find traces. That's all we need.'

'I think I should tell you -' a moment of hesitation, but she decided to go on – 'I think I should, tell you that my need to find that man isn't… personal.'

She was looking down again; she did it a lot. I said, 'Are you sure?'

'Oh yes. Yes, in spite of my asking you -' she left it.

Asking me about the woman.

'If it's not personal,' I said, 'it's political?'

'In the United States of America within ten days of the presidential election, the way a dog scratches a flea is political. But with George Proctor -' hesitation again – 'it's something even more than political. There's something going on that -' this time she broke off and her eyes became wary. 'Mr Keyes – did I get your name right? – I don't have the slightest idea who you are or what you were doing in the Newsbreak studios.'

'I'm looking for George Proctor.'

'Sure, but a minute ago you said that "we" could perhaps find traces of him.'

'My organisation.'

'There's no deal, Mr Keyes.' Her eyes were hard now. 'Unless you're prepared to name names.'

'I may do that later,' I said. 'Not now.'

Her head turned to look at the bodyguard, then back to me. 'I have to go soon, Mr Keyes. I come here sometimes to – you know – unwind, be by myself.'

I didn't get up. 'You won't find him,' I said, 'by yourself.'

'Will you?'

'Not immediately. Not for a day or two. But we'll find him.'

'Then why did you come to me?'

'Because you might have helped us to find him sooner. If we pooled our information we'd shorten the time. We'd rather not wait two days, but it won't be more than that. You'll need longer, and you may be too late.'

Looking down, running a fingertip round and round the rim of the little espresso cup, her breath quickening, the lift and fall of her breasts under the white silk catching the light from overhead, a vibration in her that I half-caught through the senses, half-felt across the space between us at the small round table, an emanation from her etheric body, from her nerves.

Then she looked up, and I caught a touch of fear. 'Only two days?'

'No more than that.'

'When you find him, what will you do?'

'We'll get him out of the country, very fast.'

Watching me steadily, the fright still there. 'It's – important for me to see him first.'

'We couldn't allow that.'

Looking away now, trapped. I waited.

'Hi, Erica!'

A woman waving, the bodyguard on his feet and turning for instructions, Cambridge giving a quick little shake of her head.

It was going to be all right but I put three dollar bills onto the check as a gesture.

'It would be very helpful to you,' Cambridge said, leaning closer, 'if you let me see him before he leaves. I have a great deal of information on him.'

'Then give it to me now and you'll see him before he leaves. That's guaranteed. I'm sorry, it's the best I can do.' Stood up, buttoned my jacket.

'Mr Keyes, is your "organisation" the British government?'

'I would have thought it was rather clear. Proctor's a British national. But look, get in touch with me some time tomorrow, if you want to – though I'm not easy to reach. We -'

'May I see some kind of ID?'

I chose the card with the Foreign Office crest and dropped it onto the table and she looked at it carefully.

'May I keep this?'

'By all means.'

Took a purse out of her snakeskin bag, put the card away. 'It's difficult to talk to you if you're standing up.'

'We've talked enough, I think, and you were working late. It was a pleasure -'

'Mr Keyes.' The fright in her voice now. She was looking down again, her small hands flat on the marble top of the table with the fingers spread, the voilet nail varnish glinting under the light. 'I'd be glad if you'd sit down for a moment – is that too much to ask?'

I was surprised because I hadn't expected her to break so completely, but this was simply because I didn't know the Proctor background and her connection with it. It looked critical, because as I sat down again I could see that she was having to make an effort to keep control, and her voice was shaky now.

'Look, you've caught me at a crucial time. I – I need help, if that doesn't sound too melodramatic.'

She waited for me to say something.

Said nothing.

'There's no one I can trust, you see. I mean I've got friends, sure, associates,' pressing the table hard, 'and they're all good people but – but I don't know how strong they'd be if things got really rough. And none of them know about George Proctor – okay, we were close, yes, but they don't know about – this thing that's happening.' Driving her hands against the marble, her eyes wide now, then changing, narrowing as she caught an inward glimpse of herself and looked up at last and around her in case anyone were watching, her eyes coming back to me, her voice soft, suddenly, fierce – 'Are you listening to me, for God's sake?'

'Yes.'

'You goddamned British, you won't give an inch will you?' Her hands off the table now, restless, brushing the air – 'But I'm going to take a risk and trust you because I'm gullible enough to feel reassured by the Queen of England's crest on the card you gave me.'

No. Going to trust me because she desperately wanted information on Proctor and I'd guaranteed her a meeting with him as soon as we found him.

Looking around her, then back to me, 'The next ten days are going to be critical for the United States of America and by extension for the rest of the world. Not politically critical because Mathieson Judd is a Republican and if he gets into the White House there won't be any change. But critical internationally, globally. I have a question, since you know George Proctor. Is he a small fish, or a big fish?'

'It depends on the pond.'

'It's a very big pond, so let's try this: would you say he's capable of becoming a big fish, in a very big pond?'

I looked away. One of the Bureau men near the doors was different. Midnight shift. 'Proctor,' I said, 'is capable of anything that requires cold courage, risk and endurance. He shouldn't be underestimated.'

'That's also my opinion. He and I -' she looked down, spreading her hands on the table again, perhaps wanting to feel its stability, wanting to borrow from it – 'he and I were close personally until -quite recently, close enough for me to be quite sure he wasn't the advertising man he purported to be – though he used his connections with Newsbreak pretty well as a front. But he still had a reserve I couldn't get through, and I believe he was doing things unknown to me that would have surprised me – correction, alarmed me, frightened me – not just personally, I mean on a geopolitical scale.' Pause. 'I want to get this right. On a clandestine geopolitical scale.'

'For instance?'

'I'm not saying he's the biggest fish in this thing, by any means, but I believe he's being used as the prime mover. You remember a man called Howard Hughes?'

Said I'd heard of him.

Someone over there was pointing in this direction, one of the waitresses.

'He had a mad dream,' Cambridge said. 'He wanted to buy America.'

'In what sense?'

'He wanted to control it, by buying up its major companies, the machinery behind the throne. He went a long way, but it was the wrong way, the hard way.'

The bodyguard was getting to his feet again.

'There's an easier way.' Her voice quieter, intense, her eyes on me the whole time now. To buy America, all you have to do is buy one man. The president. But first you have to -'

'Excuse me, ma'am.' The bodyguard held out a remote telephone. 'You taking calls?'

'Who is it?'

'Mr Sakamoto.'

'Yes, I'll take it.' Surprise but no hesitation. 'Excuse me, Mr Keyes.'

I picked up a menu.

So first they'd tried her home and been told Miss Cambridge was at the studio, and then they'd tried the studio and been told that if she weren't home she could be anywhere, but she sometimes went to Kruger Drug, and then they'd tried Kruger Drug, so they must have wanted to talk to her quite urgently, at five minutes to midnight.

'You mean right away?' Looking at her diamente watch, 'Oh sure, no problem. Has anything -' then she corrected it and said, 'I'll be there in fifteen minutes,' and gave the phone back to her bodyguard. 'I'm sorry, Mr Keyes, it's something I'm unable to pass up.'

'Of course. This isn't the place, anyway, to talk.'

We left the table, the bodyguard ahead of us. 'When can we meet again?' She sounded torn, under pressure. A woman called Hi, Erica, but she didn't turn.

Tomorrow,' I said. 'I'll phone you.'

She gave me her card and as we got to the doors I passed close to one of the Bureau men, 'Car,' and he left his table and went out in front of us while I was talking to Cambridge in the lobby.

'It's absolutely vital,' she said softly, 'that we get together as soon as possible.' Her eyes with fright still in them. 'I'll make a point of staying in until noon. Call before then.'

The limousine was at the kerbside with a chauffeur at the rear door. 'Can I drop you somewhere?' she asked me.

'I feel like a walk.'

A last glimpse of her face at the smoked window, no more than a featureless smudge, leaving me with the odd impression that she'd been trapped in the big black car, obliterated.

Midnight plus seventeen, the late-night traffic rolling with very little sound through the streets, gathering at the lights and waiting, finding release, changing lanes to go round the work gangs still clearing debris left by the hurricane, the black Lincoln ahead of me with two other cars between until the limousine slowed, letting them past and turning into the driveway of 1330 West Riverside Way.