Quiller Barracuda

Chapter 10: CONTESSA

There was nothing I could do.

This was a residential street, large balconied houses, stucco and porticos behind trimmed hedges, wrought iron gates, the residences of old Miami money. Shadows everywhere thrown by the trees and hedges, one of the tall ornate street lamps out, like a dead eye in the night. Heat still rising from the stones and the tarmacadam after the day's unremitting sun, the air moist from the vegetation, from the sea.

I wish to Christ it didn't affect me but it always has, always will, and don't try telling me it's all in the day's work, I'm not standing for that.

Seed pods dropping, big ones, spiralling down through the lamplight and hitting the sidewalk with the sound of autumn hail.

12:34.

He must have been under their own surveillance for quite a time because they didn't ask any questions – they used one car and two men and the snatch didn't take more than ten seconds and the car was gone again, more than a snatch, because the first man to reach him had broken his spine at the first vertebra and they'd dragged him across the sidewalk and thrown him into the back.

There was nothing I could do because the distance was something like a hundred yards and it was over before I could have got out of the car and started running and in any case the executive in the field is strictly forbidden to go to the aid of anyone at all because he'd reveal his presence and that's what they'll sometimes go for, attacking one of the support people to bring the shadow out. It was the only thing about this killing that gave me any comfort: they couldn't have known I was anywhere in the environment or they would have worked more slowly on him to give me time to get there.

What was his name, then, and where was he from and who would tell her? One of the personnel staff, a woman, they did it better, I'm sorry, love, but there's some bad news about Bob, the tyres whimpering under the brakes and the doors flying open and the rush of feet and then death in the warm Miami night.

He'd tried to run, I'd seen that much, turned and tried to get clear somehow because the support people don't carry arms and there were two of them and they were quick, very quick.

I checked the three mirrors again, the one inside and the two others; I'd been checking them at short intervals since I'd passed the limo and made a square and put the Trans Am in the shadows of trees on the far side of the street, and the nerves were raw now because of the death. They weren't in any kind of intelligence, these people; their methods were too direct and they had no interest at all in pulling one of us in for interrogation; they went straight for the kill.

I would have to telephone as soon as I could, to report what those snivelling creeps in Records would call a terminal incident and to warn Ferris that 1330 West Riverside was no longer surveilled. It looked like a one-man station and there wouldn't be a relief until eight in the morning because this was the graveyard shift, and not thus named for nothing.

He'd been nearer the house than I was, and on foot. No blame to anyone, except possibly to himself; I'd no means of knowing whether he'd made some kind of mistake. Put it into the computer and you'd come up with fifty recommendations for doing a surveillance job on foot: you're faster, more mobile, less easily seen, so forth, and fifty recommendations for doing it with a car: you've got permanent cover and armour plating and even though a car makes a bigger profile than a man it attracts less attention parked in a street than a man on foot just standing, doing nothing.

The armour plating hadn't done me any good on the quay but if there's a long shot set up for you it doesn't much matter what you're doing, you're in the cross-hairs and that's it. They could do the same thing again without leaving the house, any second from now, but the risk was very slight because no one had come close enough to see me, to recognise me. I was only running one calculated risk and that too was low: they were keeping surveillance on the street from the house as a matter of routine, and that was how they'd picked up the Bureau man just now; and they might have noticed this dark blue Trans Am pulling in to the kerb and staying there with no one getting out.

Fingers on the ignition key.

They could in point of fact be watching me now as I sat here, with night-lenses and a tripod, beginning to wonder why the pale blur of the driver's face was still behind the windscreen after twenty minutes; they could in point of fact have sent a man out to check on me, but he would double and approach from behind and he couldn't stay out of the mirrors.

Turning the key, a spasm along the nerves in the right arm, from the fingers to the shoulder, and the odd sensation of the mind dipping away from reality, nothing dramatic, just dipping away, but don't start the car for God's sake, they'll pick up the sound, turning the key but slowly, the mind working on the muscles with its subtle, omnipotent demands, the message perfectly clear: You will go to 1330 West Riverside Way at any time before midnight. Not later than that.

Turn the key and wait for the bang of the starter dog against the flywheel and the beat of the engine, turn the key, with half the mind issuing its unquestionable orders and half swinging full-circle in a dizzying attempt to get control, full control.

Logic startled me, saved me. It's gone midnight.No later than midnight, they said.

The hand, the fingers coming away, and for a little while a sickening wave of fright bearing down, it almost happened, they've still got control of you, there's nothing you can do to -

Bullshit.

Yes, let us be forthright about this. Sat up straighter, both hands crossed on my lap, the moment over, the danger done with. Because listen, it was only last night when I was one block from here, as close as one block, and fighting for survival, reeling against the telephone box and forcing a quarter in, hunched like a pariah dog – I need – Yes, you need? – I need to debrief – Where are you? – 1200 block and West Riverside Way. Hurry – for God's sake hurry.

The wave of fright bearing down, bearing away, leaving me with my hands cold in the warmth of the night, my breath steadying. Progress. Progress, you understand. Report to Ferris, briefly and with confidence: Lingering effects of the subliminal programming now diminished; no major problem in combating.

12:47.

Man in the mirror.

I'm sorry, Mr Keyes. It's something I'm unable to pass up. Her phraseology formal, correct; that was her metier. She'd sounded surprised but didn't hesitate – yes, she'd be there in fifteen minutes.

Was there now.

All you have to do is buy one man. The president. But first you have to -

First you have to what?

The man was coming down the sidewalk on the side of the street where I was parked. He was alone and walking steadily, his size increasing in the mirror as I watched.

Question: what had turned Proctor? He'd been dug deep in the ground on allied territory, an established sleeper nursing his wounds, a soft job, a steady job. Had he got bored? Some of us get bored; we work for a bureaucracy and that can drive us straight up the wall. But I didn't think he'd got bored, Proctor. It had been something much more critical than that. He'd done good work for the Sacred Bull, gone out on some of the major missions and come back with honours, put his life on the line time and again and got away with it, and in this he wasn't dissimilar to me. Then what had changed him, turned him? He wasn't a man to fall for the usual male chauvinist toys – money, power, women. He liked women, yes, but he didn't lack their company – Kim, Erica, Monique, perhaps others, of course others.

I would find out who had turned him when I found him. They were probably in that house over there with its gracious old-world balconies and wrought iron gates. We already thought we knew how they had changed him: by some kind of subliminal programming, and the thing that made me really frightened was that I'd been exposed to the same influence and felt its insidious power, the subtle, devouring power of the worm in the apple.

And might be exposed again.

His footsteps now audible, his humped body moving into the chrome rim of the mirror. My driving window was down but the one on the passenger's side was closed, and I could see him more clearly than he could see me because the facia was dark and the street lamps overhead were throwing reflections on the outside of the glass.

His dark figure came into the edge of the vision field and then the details began to clear; he walked with his head down and his hands in his pockets, his gait tipping him forward a little as if he were being pushed along, away from somewhere he wanted to be or towards some place where he didn't want to go -

I didn't move. With my head at this angle I could see all I needed to see but there wouldn't be anything I could do if he turned within the next second and smashed the window in and fired and kept on firing. I didn't think he would do that. I thought that one day, perhaps tomorrow, in a few hours, they would do that, or something like that, because they knew by now that their first attempt had drawn blank, walking on, he was walking on, and they would try again. But not tonight, or not, at least, at the present moment because he didn't turn to look into the car, didn't know I was here, knew only that he was unable to do more than keep moving along the sidewalk, pushed steadily from behind towards an undesired destination, his humped body arched forward and his head down, a lone unwilling traveller in the night.

And my well-loved and unwitting friend, because he had not in fact come to smash the window in and fire and go on – but there'd been no risk of that – oh really well how do you bloody well know – you said yourself there was no – it doesn't matter what I say, for Christ's sake, it's what I think, it's what the fear thinks, it's always like this when there's a threat to life, don't you understand?

Relax, yes indeed, relax, the moment is over and all is well, we live on our nerves, for God's sake give us a break.

But Governor Anderson's theme is that there's so much wrong with America after the Republican four-year term that we need major changes, whereas Senator Judd's theme is reassuring – the country is in good shape.

Her eyes lifted to the TelePromTer, her attitude serious, informed. I could have given it to her word for word, so when had she written it? I would have to ask her; it could be important, the timing. And there she was.

Coming out of the house on the opposite side of the street. At this distance I couldn't see her face clearly and in any case she was now wearing dark glasses and a headscarf; but I know people by their walk and this was Erica Cambridge, crossing the sidewalk under the magnolia tree to the limousine at the kerb, her bodyguard with her and another man, short, deftly moving, also with dark glasses on, ushering her into the car and getting in after her. Chauffeur and bodyguard to the front, the doors slamming and the lights coming on.

12:56.

The moon in its third quarter, lowering across the heights of the city; a helicopter's lights tracing a path along the east horizon over the sea; the masts of yachts riding on calm water in the lamplit marina; the smell of seaweed that had been torn by the hurricane and brought to the surface to lie rotting under the day-long sun.

I stopped short of the quay, finding shadow. The limousine was nearer the row of power boats, the engine idling for a moment and then dying away. The bodyguard got out first, scanning and moving a little away from the car and standing with his back to it, containing the environment. Then the chauffeur got out and opened a rear door and there was Cambridge again, and the short man, a Japanese, both of them still with dark glasses on. He touched her elbow and they moved quickly across the flagstones to the first boat in the marina, a motor launch with the crew in white ducks and a name at the stern in gold letters: Contessa. Cambridge and the Japanese were handed aboard with a lot of courtesy, a flurry of salutes. They didn't move into the cabin but stood waiting near the rail, turning to face the quay.

The chauffeur and bodyguard had got back into the Lincoln and now it turned and headed towards the ramp and the street. At first I thought it was coming back, but this car was smaller, a black sedan, slowing and stopping just beyond the motor launch. Four men got out the moment the wheels had stopped rolling; they all faced the way they had come, towards the street, two of them buttoning their dark blue jackets, tugging at them, not speaking to each other, watching the ramp. The limousine came past me less than fifty feet away; I turned my head to darken the image as a matter of routine. As it rolled to a stop by the launch three men got out, the driver and two bodyguards, and a third car came down the ramp and took up station behind the limo, four men getting out and scanning immediately, all well-trained, well-drilled.

The chauffeur was standing at the rear door of the limousine and another man climbed out, tall, slightly stooping, bareheaded, dark glasses, moving at once to the motor launch as the crew snapped into the salute. I recognised him from the photographs that were all over the town: Senator Mathieson Judd, the Republican candidate for the presidency.