Quiller Barracuda

Chapter 16: BREAKTHROUGH

'Quiller,' with a nod. 'How are you?'

Croder.

'Good enough, sir. And you?'

'Quite well.'

And at this stage of the mission when we didn't yet have certain access to the objective and they'd sent the Chief of Signals out here from London without warning anyone the nerves can get a bit on edge and I was already reading significance into the slightest word: by quite well did he mean considering the executive in the field had made so little progress that the Chief of Signals himself had been sent out here to ask what was happening?

He was the last man I expected to see here, watching me with his black eyes buried into his skull and his thin body held tightly within itself to hide any expression. The last time we'd met we'd had a row over that poor devil Fisher and I wasn't in a mood to put up with any bullshit.

His eyes briefly noting the state of my clothes, 'Shall we sit down, gentlemen?'

She didn't even keep an iron on board, I just hang everything out in the sun, sorry.

Creaking of leather as people moved the chairs around, six of us in here, Ferris, Croder, Monck, a man I didn't know, Purdom and myself, Purdom, dark, big-boned, silent, simmering with frustrated energy, come here to sit on my shoulder like a vulture on a tombstone, damn his eyes, I was not in the mood, I tell you, for being rubbed the wrong way.

'All is well,' Ferris said quietly from the next chair.

My nerves had been showing and I can't stand that: it's appallingly poor security. It had been nothing more than a brush with the infinite out there in that boat last night and I was still alive and it was time to get back into gear for God's sake.

'You've met Mr Monck, of course, but not Tench, have you?'

I hadn't seen him before: short, studious-looking, glasses, almost as held-in as that man Purdom, just nodded to us as we said hello.

'He's here to assist me,' Croder added, which could of course mean anything: he could be a Bureau shrink sent out here to check my condition, note whether my eyes were flickering, whether I was putting out sweat, things like that – they do this sometimes, people like Loman do it, they'll send someone out to the field to give an opinion as to whether the shadow is showing the worse for wear, whether he ought to be recalled before the rot sets in.

But listen, I was still in good shape and Ferris was still in control and I didn't want these bastards -watch it, you'll have to watch it, he's probably nothing more than a cipher clerk sent here to look after signals. Steady the breathing, loosen the hands, go into alpha for a couple of minutes, calm the ego down.

Nice room, it was a nice room, bit modern but not too institutional for a place like this – we were in the Deputy High Commisioner's office in East Street, no one else around or at least not visible: a security guard had shown us in and gone off again. There'd been more security on the way here from the airport, four men deployed at a distance with their jackets bulging and their heads constantly on the swivel, one of them worried when Ferris had wandered off track a bit to tread on a beetle, I wish to Christ you wouldn't do that, but he never takes any notice, It was instantaneous, he's got a laugh like a snake shedding its skin as you know.

'If you'll give me a little time,' Croder said, and began turning the sheets of the debriefing book.

I think I reached alpha but only for a few seconds, felt too restless, got up and walked about to look at the pictures on the wall, tugged at the laces and pulled my shoes off and walked about like that, what a bloody relief, saw Ferris making a note on his pad, new shoes, I suppose, he doesn't miss anything.

The phone rang and Tench picked it up at the first ring and said yes, but was it urgent, and then listened for half a minute and finally said all right and passed the phone to Croder.

'Cocktail, sir.'

I'd seen it on the board before I'd left London: it was Jowett's thing, one of our first in Sri Lanka.

'When was this?'

You can't tell anything from Croder's tone; he talks like a lawyer reading a will. I saw Ferris watching him.

'What are his chances?'

This I didn't need. Jowett had had a wheel come off and his chances weren't worth a damn because the man at the board didn't know how to help him and you do not, you do not raise the Chief through Cheltenham when he's in the next hemisphere with a major mission already on his hands, unless there's a life in the balance.

'Has he got it with him?'

The product. The poor bastard had pushed it right into the end-phase and he'd got the product and he'd been running like hell for the coast on board a plane or in a Hertz or buried under a sack of oats in a truck and someone had blown him or he'd left traces behind and now he was holed up in a telephone box with blood in his shoes and the fear of God in his soul and ringing London, tugging on the lifeline to see if it was still there, still strong enough to get him home, to get him home alive while 'Have you informed Hallows?'

I tell you I did not need this, it wasn't exactly what you'd call reassuring was it, I mean Hallows is the man they send for when something has got to be done extremely fast, not, in my private opinion, in a last-ditch attempt to succour the executive but as a gesture of concern, so that it can be spelled out in the final report that they had tried, at least they had tried.

'Tell him,' Croder said, and I knew the words by heart, 'that every endeavour will be made but that he is confidently expected to use his own discretion.'

Discretion, capsule, yes.

He gave the phone back to Tench, who dropped it on to the contact with the sound, I swear, of a coffin-lid closing.

Silence in the room for another ten minutes while Croder got through the rest of the debriefing book and Tench stroked the back of his untidy-looking head and Purdom stared at his hands and Monck sat like a crumpled-looking buddha in the biggest chair and I talked to Croder in the soundless confines of the mind, don't you care about that man Jowett, is that all you can do, send for Hallows to disinfect the final report so that we can all sleep in our beds? You ought to be on that bloody telephone raising all the support you can get for that poor bastard, you should be -

Oh for God's sake spare us the melodrama, there's a ferret in a trap and he can't get out, that's all, it's not the first time it's happened and it won't be the last, RIP, so forth, and let us get on, gentlemen, with the job.

'Very well.'

The coil-spring spine of the debriefing book made a faint discordant medley of notes across Croder's steel hand as he closed it and dropped it onto his lap and looked at me and said, 'Proctor, then. I would value your opinion.'

First obvious question and I'd had the answer ready in my mind. 'I've only met him once, but I'd say he's been suffering the increasing strain of being taken off the active list because of the bullet in his body. It looks as if he's been exposed to some sort of subliminal radionic suggestion, which could have changed his personality at the subconscious level, destroying his sense of loyalty – which used to be very high – and turning him against us. I also found out today that he's been on cocaine for quite a while and manifested illusions of grandeur; he once told Harvester he could have run for the US presidency if he weren't a foreign national. He -'

'Harvester,' with a glance at the book, 'is she a reliable source of information?'

Ferris hadn't moved in his chair but I felt the waves. I think he was expecting Croder to ask me what sort of relationship I had going with Harvester. Ferris likes his fun.

'She was a nurse in England for seven years, she's done some undercover work for the Miami police in their investigations into Mafia operations, and she's currently a civilian volunteer diver the police can call on if they need an extra hand – she was working for them last night when a boat smashed into the quay. I've talked to her over a period of seven or eight hours and in my opinion she's reliable in terms of information and can be trusted.'

'I see.' With care: 'You have a tendency to enter into personal relationships with women, during the course of a mission. I would like to ask -'

'I'd like to tell you that the success I've had in my work for the Bureau indicates a degree of intelligence that would hardly allow my judgement to be swayed in critical situations, but if you've got any doubts about it then you can send me straight back to London so that I don't have to sit here listening to bullshit.'

It was eighty degrees outside but I'm not absolutely sure there wasn't frost on the window. Look, I know I'm rather rude but this bloody man had been going to ask whether I was capable of carrying out the tasks of a senior shadow executive without selling the whole mission down the river at the first sight of a nubile woman and it made me cross, and if you don't understand what I'm talking about it's your problem.

The silence had gone on for an awfully long time. I caught a look in Monck's eyes that could have been amusement; then Ferris said evenly, 'Quiller came very close, sir, to losing his life in the early hours of this morning, and I think -'

'Civil of you,' I said, 'but I can manage my own buttons now.'

Didn't make things any easier, I know, and that was a damned shame. I waited for Croder to ask me for an apology as soon as the smoke cleared a bit, but he did a surprising thing.

'Thank you,' to Ferris, and then to me, 'at this stage of the mission you'll have certain questions in your mind concerning the background, and I think you should have the answers. I'll be brief. Proctor is a British subject and he's become involved in some kind of subversive activity on US soil and seemingly in connection with Senator Mathieson Judd's presidential election campaign.' Waved his steel claw – 'I'm taking this from the debriefing notes and partly from my own information from other sources. The notes, by the way -' to Ferris now – 'for the most part provide a very direct focus on the background data that's been coming in from international sources. You are both closer, I believe, to success in this mission than you're at present able to appreciate.'

I thought that was extremely doubtful because we couldn't get anywhere near the end-phase until we'd found physical access to Proctor. But of course Croder could see the whole picture and I couldn't.

'The fact of Proctor's involvement in US affairs gives us concern that he might cause harm to our ally. It could at least cause embarrassment on a diplomatic level. The American people are at present engrossed and engaged in the elections and any interference by the UK, however unintentional, could hazard the relationship between the two countries. That is one reason why you were sent out here, Quiller, to find Proctor and get him out of the USA as soon as possible and in secret. Another reason is that we cannot warn and advise either the CIA or the FBI and let them take care of the matter, because we've been informed that both those services may have been compromised. Even if that were not so, we are able and prepared to question Proctor, once in our hands, more effectively than could be done in the US, where special methods of inducement could not be practised. And on that subject I have a question. You've been through two missions with Proctor, isn't that so?'

'Yes.'

'I realise he might have undergone some sort of change in personality since then, but would you say he'd be liable to offer information, sufficiently induced?'

In a minute I said, 'I don't know. I can't say.'

They don't get out the cutlery in that particular room at the Bureau. I mean they don't use curling tongs, anaesthetics on the eyelids, needles in the urethra, that sort of thing. But they use the hood.

'You mean you're unsure of his present mental condition?'

'Well, yes. It's a bit complex now. His head's full of strange ideas and his nerves are possibly strung out on coke, and I'd say he's more like a dangerous psychopath than an intelligence agent. You could try hooding, of course. It might break him.'

Croder called it "sufficient inducement" because in a trade as uncivilised as ours we reach for euphemisms for the same reason that a coroner reaches for the smelling-salts. Hooding doesn't cause pain and it's physically non-invasive and all they do is shut you in that particular soundproofed room with a black bag over your head until you're ready to tell them what they want to know. The sanitised term is sensory deprivation and I went through a bit of it in Turkey and it's a lot less pleasant than it sounds because after two or three days you start floating about in a mental vacuum until finally the panic begins and then you're done for because when they come to take the hood off you'll either tell them what they want to know and keep your psyche intact or you'll keep your mouth shut and go right over the edge and if you're lucky you'll finish up in the funny farm. Neither of these things happened to me in Turkey because one of the people looking after things came close enough for me to reach his throat and he'd got the keys of the handcuffs on him.

'One way,' Monck told Croder, 'might be to keep him short of cocaine, catch him while he's screaming his head off.'

Ferris was making a note.

'Thank you,' Croder said, 'we could indeed try that.' Turning the sheets of the debriefing book, 'From what I've just told you, then, Quiller, you'll know that if at any time the CIA or the FBI get wind of us and ask you what you're doing in Miami, you'll need to stick closely to your cover. If they decide to detain you on suspicion, your director in the field will ask London to make representations through private diplomatic channels.'

There is always, for instance, a certain amount of suspicion aroused if you're seen crawling out of a burning car with bullet holes in it, or climbing out of the water a hundred yards from a wrecked Mafia boat at three in the morning. That's why I'd avoided questioning on both occasions.

'Understood,' I said.

'Ferris?'

Ferris nodded and turned to me. 'You also need to know that we found a micro-transmitter concealed in the ceiling fan in Proctor's flat. We've sent it to London for them to look at, but in the meantime Parks has told us he thinks it's designed to broadcast subliminal material from a remote source, buried in the wave structure of any kind of electrical hum – fan, refrigerator. It would also work in a TV set whenever it's receiving a signal. Parks is still taking Proctor's flat to pieces, looking for more electronics.'

Croder was going through the debriefing book again. 'I'd like some elaboration on this Newsbreak anchorwoman Erica Cambridge. You've reported that she's "anxious to find George Proctor".'

Ferris had debriefed me on this in the air, but there was a lot I hadn't been able to say. 'She told me she wanted to find him "very much", but that it wasn't for any personal reason.'

'Do you think that's true?'

'Yes. I think they were close – in fact she said so – but I sensed that when they broke up there was a lot of unfinished business, political business. She asked me what we were going to do with Proctor when we found him and I said we'd get him out of the country right away.'

Ferris was making notes again. Croder asked me: 'How did she react to that?'

'She wanted a meeting with him before we got him out, and I used that as a trade-off -'

'Yes, you guaranteed she should see him, provided she helped you find him. Perhaps it's not important, but do you feel it's a guarantee we should keep?'

'Ethically?'

'Yes.'

'Your ethics might not be mine. I've been trained to play it rough. But a meeting between those two, suitably bugged, would probably give you a lot of information. If we can find him.'

I suppose Ferris was making those notes for Purdom, keeping the bastard briefed, ready to take my place. Over my dead body. Joke.

'If we can find him,' Monck said, 'yes.' He was watching me steadily. 'What do you think the chances are? It would help us to know your feelings on that.'

Not really. My feelings weren't terribly sanguine.

Phone again, and Tench picked it up.

'Proctor is a professional,' I said. 'A top professional. He's trained and he's dangerous and he's apparently got the whole of the Miami Mafia behind him, and that gives him God knows how many places he can hide.'

Ferris was on the phone: Tench had passed it to him. Croder said to me, 'You don't think our chances, then, are very high.'

I tried to keep the tone under control, didn't quite manage. 'Oh for Christ's sake, d'you want it in letters of blood?'

Then one of those silly coincidences happened, you've known them, I'm sure, because Ferris was saying, 'I'm sorry to break in, but they've checked on that phone number in the diary, the one with the initials G.R.P., and I think you've located Proctor – he's on board the Contessa.'