Quiller Barracuda

Chapter 22: WINDOW

'There are some new clothes for you,' Ferris said, 'in the back. I thought a van would be easier to change in than a car.'

The night was quiet. This wasn't one of the main streets that casino and night-club traffic used. There was only one light that I could see, in a window, apart from the street lamps. The only other vehicle in sight was the dark blue Saab, waiting to take Ferris away when we'd finished the debriefing.

The programme is,' he said, still hunched at the wheel with his eyes on the street, 'to fly you by private jet to Nassau, and put you on a plane for London. You'll be smuggled -'

'Purdom can do nothing.'

First time I'd spoken since he'd told me the news. I think it sounded fairly normal, my tone. Bit of an effort, though, as you can well believe, my good friend.

'You'll be smuggled through to the London plane with great care. For one thing we don't want you seen and shot at before you can get out of the field, and for another thing Croder wants the opposition to believe you're still in operation, in the hope that Proctor will waste his time trying to find you, and Purdom can proceed under the cover of your assumed continuing presence.'

And that is exactly the way that bastard Croder talks, assumed continuing presence, nibbling the words over in his small rat's teeth and then spitting them out.

'You'll be at the airport here,' Ferris said, 'at 06:00 hours, outside the private departure lounge. I'll get into the van and tell you where to go.'

'There is nothing Purdom can do. If I go, the mission goes. You know that.'

I realised I'd got my hands tucked under my folded arms, that I was feeling cold on this sultry Miami night. I suppose that was why Ferris sat hunched over the wheel. He'd directed me in five missions, major ones, and we understood each other, worked well with each other, had mutual respect and trust. It's not always like that – take bloody Loman for instance. But he'd got more to deal with than losing an executive he could rely on. He'd told me that if I got fired from Barracuda he'd go back to London.too. I wouldn't keep him to that – it had been a gesture on his part, bit of civility. But it wouldn't make any difference: if he stayed on here he'd be stuck with a new executive who couldn't make a move. It doesn't always happen but it was true now: I was indispensable to the mission.

'We've got to get Proctor,' I said. 'And we've got to put him under a hood and sweat the whole thing out of him. He's the major objective, in fact the only objective, now that we've lost the Cambridge brief. And the only way we can get Proctor is to let me go on running till I get in his way and draw his fire, expose him, pull him into a trap. Stop me running and Barracuda's dead.'

It didn't hold water but I thought I'd at least try.

I wasn't sure Ferris would trouble to answer, but if he just sat there and let the silence go on it'd leave me looking stupid, and he wouldn't do that.

'It would work,' he said, 'yes, if Proctor were the only danger. But the pre-eminent Mafia family in this town is actively searching for you and they've got your photograph. They total, by the way, ninety-four members. So if you go on moving in the streets it's going to lead to another situation like the one we saw tonight, and that is what brought Croder to his final decision.' He sat back at last and turned his head and watched me with his expressionless amber eyes. 'You've become a danger to yourself, to the mission, and to the overseas Bureau network on this coast, whose main task is to assist the Americans by monitoring British and European underground activity. You are therefore a danger to our hosts, and that is also why Croder has come down on you. It's not London's policy, I hope you'll admit, to run a mission to the point of open street battles inevitably involving the police, which is why Croder had second thoughts on sending in interceptors tonight.' He waited for me to say something. I could think of nothing to say. 'In my opinion he's justified in withdrawing you and sending you home. At least you'll have survived the mission.'

The light up there, the light in the small high window, went out. I'd been watching it, and the thought had been in my mind that as long as it stayed there, as long as it didn't go out, I would somehow manage to stay with Barracuda. So you will understand the state of my mind, my good friend, as I sat there with my director in the field in the small black Chevrolet van, lost in the vastness of the night-quiet streets. I had descended to rabid superstition.

The silence was drawing out, so I asked him, 'What happened to Hood?'

'He's in hospital with concussion, nothing major.'

Treader?'

'The police booked him for speeding. He told them he thought he was being chased by a drug gangster who took him for someone else. He'll be all right.'

'I'm sorry,' I said in a moment, 'for Purdom.'

'I'll tell him that.'

'Tell him I wish I could have left him with at least a direction to take. I've done nothing, you know, since I came here, except stay alive. So I can quite see Croder's point of view.'

Got that over. It hadn't been easy but had to be done, for the sake of the records. The shadow executive is the most important member of a mission, and his personal views are sought at critical times. What I had just said would go down as: The executive has evaluated the decision made by the Chief of Signals and fully understands its necessity.

From the Chief of Signals himself I expected no comparable manners. He could have sent for me and personally explained the situation but had simply told Ferris, instead, to order me out of the field. But then Croder was a worried man, and I didn't envy him. In the normal way he doesn't lack common courtesy.

In a moment Ferris said quietly, 'Final debriefing?'

'What? Yes.' I thought for a minute to get it straight. 'It doesn't amount to much. There's a policewoman on undercover work in the narcotics division, name of Monique Lacroix, a lieutenant. She took up with Proctor in the hope that he might lead her closer to Toufexis, the Mafia chief. She confirms that he telephoned the Soviet Embassy in Washington at least once. She would be helpful to you in finding Proctor, and you should consider letting her have any information on his connection with the Trust. She'd like to get into the FBI.'

'All right. Do we need a recorder?'

'No. All I've got for you is this. Proctor brought canisters of video tapes back to the apartment from the Newsbreak studios and someone called for them and brought them back later. Lt Lacroix said they contained video tapes of commercial ads. You'd better note these.' He got the mini Sanyo out of his pocket and pressed for record. 'Syncrest, Honidu -' I spelt that one for him – Discreet – Pizzaria – no, Pizzarita – wait a minute.' I had to recall her voice, light and husky, as a context for the mnemonics. 'Orange Sunset, Tuxedo Junction.'

The light in the window went on again, and the nerves leapt for an instant as hope came, touched off by superstition. It's remarkable, it is quite remarkable, how sensitive the web is, where we sit enmeshed with our environment: someone up there had pressed a switch and activated the nervous system of a man down here in the street, hidden inside this little black van. The superstition itself, of course, rated no more than a cheap laugh: the stranger up there behind the high window hadn't intended to rekindle hope in this poor creature's breast; he'd intended simply to have another pee.

'Is that it?'

'What? Yes. No, I've missed one.' In a minute, 'Yummies.'

'Yummies?'

There was an odd sound coming from my throat, presumably a kind of strangled laughter. If there's anything that makes me fall about more than a pratfall it is bathos.

Watching me, Ferris said, 'You're in better condition than I thought.'

He meant that as an executive just thrown out of the mission and ordered home I didn't appear to be ready to cut my throat.

'Never better,' I said stoutly.

'So what's your thinking on these commercials?'

I believe he'd got it, but had decided to leave the big number to me, which was nice of him. I said, 'It could be a long shot, but if you had those ads analysed on the screen for subliminal content, at either visual or audible wave lengths or even both, you might possibly come across things like Vote for Judd in any number of variations. And if you did, you could then work out the potential impact of those programmes on the American population, to the nearest hundred million.'

He let the silence go on for a bit, then said quietly, 'If you're right, this would go down in your records as a major accomplishment.'

'Fuck the records.' I didn't want a pat on the back from those superannuated old farts in the hierarchy, I wanted the mission, I wanted Barracuda.

'I take your point,' Ferris said. 'You think this has been Proctor's main operation?'

'No. This is an educated guess. I think he began using cocaine, lost control, and was got at by scouts working for the Trust, to give them access to a major television network as an outlet for their subliminal signals.'

'Sorry,' Ferris said, and pressed for record. 'Again?' I did it for him and went on, 'I think the Soviet connection began as a developing relationship between Proctor and a KGB agent in Washington, one of the people he would normally meet in the international intelligence watering holes, such as the Gold Hibiscus in Miami. And I think his major operation is working for both the Trust as an active tool well-versed in subterfuge at high levels, and someone in the Kremlin who needs the Trust monitored without its knowledge.'

Ferris pressed for off and sat for a bit without talking. I let the silence go on. There was a lot more I could give him if I felt like it but they'd ask for it in London at the end-of-tour debriefing – that reads end-of-tour, my good friend, and not end-of-mission, you will please understand, there is a difference.

'I wouldn't say,' Ferris said at last, 'that you've left Purdom without a direction. This is very good product.'

'Mostly assumptions.'

'By a highly experienced agent.'

'Civil of you. But the major objective for the mission is still Proctor, and he's still out of your reach.'

We talked about that for a few minutes but it was a dead end and he put away his little Sanyo and we compared watches and he said, 'I'll stay in Miami until they send out someone to direct Purdom, and then -'

'You don't have to,' I said. 'You can direct him better than anyone.'

'He's not quite my type. I'll have to brief the new man, then I'll get a plane.' He looked at all three mirrors and got out of the van and stood for a moment looking down and around him, hoping to find a beetle to tread on.

'They're all asleep,' I said, 'this time of night. Christ's sake leave them alone.'

He looked up at me with a faint unholy light deep in his eyes. '06:00,' he said, 'at the airport, private lounge.'

I watched him going along the pavement, a tall reedy figure with its wispy hair catching the lamplight; his head was down again, looking from left to right, as I'd seen him in Las Ramblas in Barcelona and at Tegel Airport in Berlin and in Monkey Street, Hong Kong. I do wish he'd leave the poor little buggers alone; the sound of that small crisp explosion sickens me.

When he got into the dark blue Saab and it drove away I waited for a little while to let things settle in my mind, and gradually the panic diminished, the panic of finding myself suddenly isolated, abandoned, cut off from the signals board in London, with nothing more important to do now than change my clothes and get a couple of hours' sleep and drive to the private lounge at the airport, there to be led away and smuggled out of sight, the discomfited embodiment of a fall from grace.

Then I shifted behind the wheel and started up and moved off, and when I passed the tall balconied house the light in the dormer window was still burning, so I stopped again and fished for a map in the glove pocket and found one and looked for Chucunantah Road and moved off again and turned east and then south, with the thought in my mind of seeking Parks.

You don't remember him, I know, but I'll tell you this. He was my only chance, and the opera ain't over till the fat lady sings.