Quiller Barracuda

Chapter 25: GIRLS

The black Cadillac had been there for more than fifteen minutes at the kerbside. No one had got out.

It was a quiet street, residential. Other cars were parked there, under the lamps or in the shadows between the lamps. I had got here thirty minutes ago. Now that I was here, I could only wait. I needed to see his face, to know that he was here.

If he weren't here, if there were something else in the black Cadillac, I would get out of my car and walk down the street into certain gunfire. I knew that.

I'd picked up a Lincoln an hour ago from Avis, nothing very fast, because we weren't going anywhere, just a car he could recognise easily, if he came, if Proctor came. I sat waiting.

I had telephoned him from Parks' flat, suggesting a rendezvous. He hadn't asked questions; he was a professional and he knew three things. One, that I wasn't trying to bring him off the Contessa into a trap, because I couldn't hope to do that, with the massive armed support he would ask Toufexis to put into the field. Two, I wouldn't suggest a rendezvous unless I'd got something to tell him that would interest him, and interest him to the point where he'd consider sparing my life. Three, that I was ready to trust him with that same life, or I wouldn't be here at all.

It was six minutes before the appointed time. In six minutes I would know what he'd decided to do, and there were only two possibilities. He was either sitting there in the Cadillac and would walk up the street to meet me, or he had let me believe he'd be here and simply told Toufexis that I was set up for the kill at this time and in this place.

If, in six minutes from now, I tried to drive away I would receive a fusillade before I'd gone fifty feet. The same thing would happen if I walked up the street and Proctor wasn't here.

The Cadillac had arrived with an escort of five vehicles, two of them armoured, with door pillars thicker than standard and smoked windows and massive front bumpers and heavy-duty tyres.

Five minutes.

Even if he were here, and we met, and talked, he might not be interested in what I'd got to say. He might disbelieve it, counter it or ignore it. And when he left here he would give the signal for the kill: he wouldn't let a chance like this go begging.

Four minutes.

There was another risk. Even if what I told him made sense, and would normally have interested him to the point where he would decide to spare my life for his own sake, he might be so far gone by now, so subliminally indoctrinated or so high on cocaine, that he would behave irrationally, as they'd already noticed him doing on board the Contessa, according to the tapes.

I don't think there were any other risks. There may have been, and I could be missing them. I was very tired now, dangerously tired, pushing my luck.

And you can't get clear now, even if you wanted to.

I know that. Shuddup.

You're locked in.

It was the only way. Leave me alone.

The minute you get out of this car -

God's sake leave me alone.

That familiar feeling.

Three minutes, two, one.

Familiar feeling, ice along the spine, the hairs lifting at the nape of the neck, the breath quicker and the pulse accelerating, felt it so many times before, never got used to it, always as bad, the mouth dry and the eyes ready to flinch at the crack of a twig or the creak of a door or the click of a rifle bolt, thirty seconds and time slowing, slowing.

Nine o'clock on the facia, nine o'clock and no movement anywhere, no one getting out of the black Cadillac, we'll say nine, he'd said and I had agreed, and now it was nine, the appointed hour, and it would be up to me how long I waited before I realised he hadn't come, before I decided to get it over with and started the engine and pulled away from the kerb and drove into a burst of deadly hail, finito, you were a fool after all, you could have gone home, they had a plane for you, the hail shattering the windscreen and ripping into the bodywork and into my head, my face, my lungs, fool after all, there's one born every Door of the Cadillac opening.

Didn't have, it didn't have to be Proctor, just one of Toufexis's -

One man, only one man, getting out and slamming the door and looking in this direction and starting to walk, Proctor, his hands hanging loosely by his sides. I couldn't see his face but I know people by their walk and this was George Proctor and I got out of the car and shut the door and started along the sidewalk, picking my feet, having to pick my feet up and put them down again, felt like a marionette, did it show, felt like a marionette under slack strings, step at a time, one step at a time, you'll get there, a leaf, a leaf here and there underfoot, the trees breaking in high green wave against the city-bright sky, the shadows deep enough here to conceal -

'It'll have to be good,' he said, Proctor, halting in front of me.

'What? I told you to come alone. You don't listen.'

He studied me, dark eyes shimmering between narrowed lids, the heavy mouth pursed in a false smile. 'You look a bit under the weather.'

'It's just indigestion.'

He didn't laugh. 'I haven't got long.'

I went and leaned my back against the railings of the garden, hibiscus in bloom, red in the lamplight, brought one foot up to rest on the low stone wall, where to start, where are we going to start? 'You know I didn't get you here to waste your time, Proctor, or mine, so you'd better listen, because it's true.' I turned my head and saw men standing beside their cars, turned and looked the other way, same thing, a small army, I just wanted to know I'd been right: he'd asked Toufexis to bring a small army here… Turning to look at Proctor, 'You were very good, once, first class, we did two big ones together, didn't we, and then you had a bit of bad luck with that bullet and it brought you out of the action and you've been getting so bloody frustrated that you finally hit the drugs and let the Soviets turn you and now you're deep in all that shit they're peddling on the Contessa, and that is absolutely true. Were you listening?'

'For what it was worth.' The eyes very bright, not with anger or anything but worse, with amusement.

'I came here to take you home,' I said.

His eyes changed very slightly, and he was lifting his head back a degree, sighting me, and I realised something I hadn't ever thought of. He was thinking that I had lost my reason.

Perhaps I had.

'Home,' he said, 'I see.' Watching me carefully, 'You missed out, you know. You should have joined forces with me. It's an incredible thing they've come up with, a real master plan, a -'

'Call it world dictatorship.'

He shrugged. 'If you like. But a benign dictatorship. A new order, with -'

"The Thousand Year Reich,' I said, 'lasted twelve years.'

'This is so very different. This isn't socialism.' His hands began gesturing and his eyes brightened again. 'This is one world in the making, and we're -'

'Happy for you,' I said. 'Another thing you should listen to, Proctor, is this. You've been influenced by subliminal suggestion, ever since those people picked on you to work the Soviet connection. They've turned you into a robot.'

Stood waiting, letting it sink in. It had got home, I'd seen that. He knew all about subliminal suggestion: he'd had those commercial tapes doctored for the Trust.

In a moment he asked me, 'How much do you know?'

'About what?'

'About the Trust.'

The whole thing.'

He took a long time now. He didn't think I was mad any more. 'If you know everything, why do you want me to go home?'

'That's the mission. Always has been. You're the objective. You're out of your depth here.'

He asked suddenly – 'What makes you say they've had me under subliminal suggestion?'

The focus was here, then.

'We found a transmitter in your flat.'

'A bug?'

'No. A transmitter, putting out information. It was very powerful – I picked up some of the stuff when I was there that night, political stuff, and instructions. They were for you, of course, not me.'

His face was dead-pan, a trained face, conditioned to express nothing; but his eyes were changing all the time now, glittering, excited, then deadening, darkening. Perhaps it was the cocaine, but I didn't think so. I'd started some kind of struggle inside him.

'What were the instructions?'

To go to 1330 West Riverside Way.'

Quickly – 'Did you go there?'

'No.'

I waited, thinking there was a chance still, but he said, 'Whatever happened, I've become a valued member of an organisation that can give us a new world. And all you can offer me is the old one, if I come home. They want me for debriefing, don't they? That's what your real mission is – you're here to blow the Trust. That bloody woman Thatcher's given this one to the Bureau to look after.' He left his eyes on me for another five seconds and then looked at his watch.

'You're wasting my time.'

'I haven't finished.'

'Yes,' he said, 'you have.' He swung his head and stared along the perspective of the street. A man was standing by the nearest vehicle, an armoured limousine, smoke curling from a cigarette under one of the lamps.

Ice in the blood, the scalp shrinking.

I don't like it when there's only one last throw.

Turning back to me he said, 'You knew the risk. Have you got a capsule on you?'

'I don't need one.'

'It'd be less noisy,' he said.

I brought my foot down off the little wall and leaned away from the railings, wanting, I suppose, to be standing up straight when they did it, or perhaps I was just stretching my legs, felt so bloody tired. 'There's something I meant to ask you, Proctor. How far do you trust those people?'

'Toufexis's?'

'No. Simitis and Lord Joplyn and the others.'

His eyes were excited again. 'Why?'

'You think they're putting you in charge of their intelligence, don't you? Their global intelligence network.'

It had been on one of the tapes.

'How do you know?'

'I know everything. But look, work it out for yourself, for Christ's sake. That's a job they'd offer Bureau One, yes, or Croder, even Loman, or the chief of MI5 or MI6 or the CIA. But a shadow? A ferret in the field? You're not even thinking straight.'

He watched me without saying anything for so long that I thought the coke had phased him out in some way; but his eyes were still very bright. God knew what was going on inside his mind, but I think I'd found another focus, and this time it was trust. It had got to be.

'Think about it, Proctor. The minute you've done what they recruited you for they'll throw you to the dogs.'

Very quietly, 'You can't say that.'

I'd hit the nerve.

He'd already suspected it; he'd seen the signs and chosen to ignore them. We believe what we want to believe.

'You're trusting those people with your life, you know that?'

I think he might have started listening, at that point, but the months of continual indoctrination had left him unable to think for himself. He looked along the street at the man standing by the limousine, and said again, 'You knew the risk,' and turned away.

Last chance.

'Proctor, you'd better have this.'

I went for my pocket and then froze, not thinking fast enough: God knew how many guns were trained on me here.

'Get it out of my pocket. This one. Tape recorder.'

He hesitated, his dark eyes narrowed, then did as I'd told him.

'Push the play button.'

Last chance, yes. It would depend, really, on how much control he'd still got, control of himself, his persona, how much he'd be able to understand what he was listening to.

He is to be eliminated.

Lord Joplyn.

'You recognise the voice?'

'Yes.'

The lamplight pooling in the street, the men watching us from their cars.

But how can that be done? Toufexis is protecting him.

His eyes darkening as he listened.

We own Toufexis… He'll do as we tell him.

I'd asked Parks to make a new tape, this one, putting it all together and bridging the gaps, all the stuff about Proctor.

He's too dangerous now. Apostolos brought him aboard here and gave him too much trust, in my opinion.

It began just then, a kind of fever in him, in Proctor. He'd suspected this already: he was an experienced shadow, trained to look into mirrors within mirrors, and he'd caught an incautious glance, picked up a careless word, and begun piecing things together. All I was doing tonight was giving him the substance and the proof, and he was shaking now, swinging his head, and I felt the energy coming off his thick strong body as the rage took hold.

He's now privy to very sensitive information on the whole project, and his behaviour is becoming a little irrational, as perhaps you've noticed.

He turned from side to side, swinging like a trapped bear, and I took the recorder from him as he went to the railings and took hold of them, the knuckles of his big knotted hands going white as he shook the bars.

Brink agrees with me. He is to be allowed to go ashore once more, and then Toufexis will be given instructions.

Shaking the railings, not saying a word, returning to the primitive, a wounded animal. I was worried that he might turn and vent his rage on me; he was a big man, strong, and at the moment I could hardly stay on my feet, lost more blood than I'd thought, lost too much sleep, call it accumulated mission fatigue, it had been a hard five days since I'd flown out here from London.

Let the matter rest with me…

Von Brinkerhoff and I will take full responsibility, if any question arises afterwards…

When it was finished I put the recorder away.

'You'd better get control, Proctor. They're watching us.' I looked along the lamplit perspective of the street, and saw the man by the limousine turn and reach through the window. 'Listen, this is your last trip ashore and they can get those instructions any time now and that man down there is answering his phone. We're playing it too bloody close – get in the car.'

We stood at the corner of Bayshore and 22nd street, traffic going past, long hair blowing in open cars, the night still young under the bright Miami moon. There was a club just here, with music floating out across the sidewalk.

'We'll be going home,' I said, 'through the Bahamas, take it easy round the pool for a couple of days.'

He stood shivering, head down, buried in himself. God knew how long it was going to take them to straighten him out, but that'd be their problem, in London.

Then he said an extraordinary thing.

'I apologise.'

For making life so difficult for me, I suppose. Civil of him.

That's all right. Happens in the best of families. You know Monck, don't you, in Nassau?'

'Yes.'

'We'll be looking in on him while we're there.'

For major debriefing, the definitive debriefing on Barracuda. Then I'd drop those tapes on the table. I didn't think there'd be any trouble with Proctor, but one man's testimony wouldn't be enough to blow an organisation that size. They'd need first-hand evidence, recognisable voices, and that's what we'd got.

'Good club,' I said. 'Popular.'

Didn't answer, head on his chest, perhaps didn't hear.

Cabs pulling in, dropping people off at the marquee, some of them in fancy dress, some sort of gala. Then a car stopped by the kerb and Ferris got out and came across to us, people going by, a flurry of girls, giggling, covered in streamers, pretty dresses, silks and coloured plumes, a bit tiddly, I wouldn't wonder, one of them touching my arm as she trotted past – 'Oh boy, have you had a hard day last night!' A gust of laughter.

'Hello Proctor,' Ferris said, 'long time no see,' and we got into the car.