Quiller Barracuda

Chapter 2: MONCK

'Gin?'

'Just some tonic.'

Glass crashed again, musically.

'Good flight?'

'Bit bumpy coming in.'

'I'm not surprised.' He gave me the tonic. 'There's still a bit of turbulence about.' Baggy alpaca jacket and trousers, cracked suede shoes worn to a shine along the sides, fifty, I suppose, thin silver hair across a peeling scalp, name of Monck. 'Lost my boat.'

'I'm sorry.' I'd seen litter across the bay as we'd come into the approach, two or three yachts wallowing in the dark sea, capsized. Maria, the captain had told us, was approaching the Florida coast by now and well out of our way, but she'd done some damage, with an estimated death toll of fifty.

'Good timing,' Monck said, 'on your part,' and gave a slow winning smile. 'Cheers.'

More glass fell: a huge Bahamian was at the top of a ladder clearing away the smashed window panes, a trickle of blood down one arm, which I didn't think he'd noticed.

'You really mean she was a write-off?'

'What?'

'Your boat.'

'Oh. Pretty well. Salvage some of the interior teak and brass and so on, perhaps. Pretty Polly.' A quick brave smile. 'Long may she sail the Elysian seas, what? Let's go and sit over there.' We were in a kind of conservatory where they'd put a bamboo bar and filled the rest of the place with huge palms and hibiscus and birds-of-paradise. Some of the floor was still flooded where the coloured tiles had broken over the years, leaving hollows.

Wicker creaked under us, and Monck balanced his drink on a leaning stool. He'd met me at the airport and brought me here in a clapped-out Austin, no air-conditioning, any more than there was in this place.

'How long do you think you'll be here?'

'A few days.'

'You're going to see Proctor, I believe.'

'Yes.' I hadn't been formally briefed in London but Croder had said that Monck was persona grata and would give me any help I needed.

'Then you'll be more than a few days. He's back in Florida. You just missed him – he was on the last plane out before they stopped traffic because of the hurricane.'

'Where's his base, here or -?'

'Miami. He shuttles a bit; quite a few people do. Judd was here last week; he's got a place. Have you studied Judd?'

'No, if you mean the senator.'

'Don't worry,' he said, and got a crumpled packet of cigars out of his jacket. 'You're not politically inclined, as I know. Proctor is, at least he is now, and that's the main problem.' He scraped a match. 'You can consider this as interim briefing, you understand, filling you in a bit before the other people arrive.'

His face was pink in the light of the flame; the lamps weren't on in here yet and the place looked like a jungle, the plants beginning to crowd in as the dying sun fired the walls and windows.

'Other people?'

Monck let smoke trickle out of his mouth, watching the huge man on the ladder. 'You'll be taking a look at Proctor, but it won't stop there. You didn't bring much baggage, but you can do a little shopping when you've the time.' He faced me suddenly, the wickerwork creaking, his faded blue eyes resting quietly on mine. 'I'm fully conversant with your record, and it must have occurred to you that Mr Croder wouldn't lightly toss you the chore of checking on a sleeper who's started sending in funny signals.'

This man, for all his baggy suit and thinning hair, wasn't coming across as a semi-retired staffer put out to grass in the dependencies. For one thing I knew the tone: he was telling me precisely what he wanted me to know and that was all, and he answered only those questions that called for it.

But I decided to take him head-on: 'Did Bureau One want me out here?'

The big overhead fans sent the smoke streaming away on the sticky air. His eyes were still on me, and when he was ready he said, 'Surely Mr Croder told you.'

'At the time, I wasn't ready to listen.'

Softly, 'Then I hope you're listening now.'

Glass crashed again and it sent a flicker along the nerves. It hadn't been bullshit, then, on Croder's part: the head of the Bureau had told his Chief of Signals to send this particular executive out here and I hadn't believed it because there wasn't even a mission on the board, but Monck had spelt it out for me a minute ago: You'll be taking a look at Proctor, but it won't stop there.

But Croder must have known that the mention of Bureau One would have got me out of London with no trouble at all – he hadn't needed to use Fisher like that.

'You say it won't stop,' I told Monck, 'at Proctor. But are we talking about an actual mission?'

He looked away, picking a bit of cigar-leaf off his lip and studying it with abstract care. A plump woman came through the doorway with her arms on her hips.

'Justin! You come on down from there, I need your he'p in the kitchen, man! Now you jus' come on down!'

'This stuff gonna fall on people's heads!'

'Ne' mind about they heads, they have to watch out for theyselves. You c'm'on down now, y'hear me?'

Monck didn't say anything until the huge man had got down the ladder and gone out. 'An actual mission… well I'm not sure, you see. My job -' he faced me again with a sudden swing of his head – 'is to keep you out here in the Caribbean until such time as things develop. Until we know where best to deploy you. Does that -?' He waited.

'Not really.'

'I didn't think so.' Shifting his weight in the chair, "I'll put it like this. Vibrations have been coming out of this region over the past few months and they've started to reach London. All departments have been working into the night for a long time now, especially Signals and Data Analysis and of course Codes and Cyphers. At first it had the look of a major narcotics development, understandable in this area; and then we thought it was something political involving Fidel Castro – again understandable, given the geography.' He dropped ash, watching it blacken on the wet tiles. 'We still don't know much, but we know differently. 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. So we're talking about something rather more than the requirements of a mission.' His faded blue eyes still on me, '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.'

Black girl, extremely pretty, more than that, vibrant, demanding male attention, petite in a silk dress that you could have hidden in one hand, watching me as I came in, so that I hardly noticed him in the shadows between the hanging brass lanterns, noticed him only when he moved slightly. I'd rung the bell and he'd called out for me to come in; they were standing quite a few feet apart, as if they'd been talking but not intimately.

'Here you are,' said Proctor, as if he hadn't quite expected me to come, though I'd phoned him ten minutes ago from the hotel.

I would talk to him, Monck had said at the airport in Nassau, with extreme caution. It's not out of the question that he's been turned.

And was wired, or had a bug running.

The door swung shut behind me; it was probably on a spring, though I hadn't felt it; there was no draught; the air in Miami tonight was deathly still: they said we were in the eye of the hurricane, the eye of Maria, though it had been downgraded to a storm after blowing itself out across the ocean.

'Monique, this is Richard Keyes.' I'd told him my cover name on the phone. 'Monique.' He didn't say her last name. She stood with one dark slender arm hanging with the hand turned for effect, like a model's, as she studied me, her eyes a sultry glimmer set in the black mascara.

'Good evening,' she said on her breath, then looked at Proctor. 'Call me?'

'Of course.' He didn't go to the door with her; as she passed me she left the air laced with patchouli.

I thought I heard a shutter bang in the wind, but it must have been someone upstairs, perhaps slamming a door: it was too soon for the storm to start up again.

'When did you get in?' He didn't offer to shake hands.

'Earlier on.'

'You come direct?'

'Through Nassau. You look good. Long time.'

'I'm all right. What'll you have?'

'Tonic.'

He went to the built-in bar where there was a ship's lamp burning; the glint of mosquitoes passed through the light. He didn't actually look all that good but I didn't think it was because of the bullet in him; Monck had said it didn't trouble him providing he didn't get into any kind of action. It looked, I thought, more like natural wear and tear: booze and late nights and girls like that one, a bit of a man, Monck had said, for the ladies.

'Lime or lemon?'

'I don't mind. Nice place.'

'It's all right.'

Lots of wicker and bamboo and big cushions nixed up with some Miami Beach art deco mirrors and wall plaques, fixtures, I would have thought, they wouldn't be his. Not much light anywhere, the walls mottled by the filigree work of the lamps hanging all over the place on chains, a Moorish touch. Big-screen TV set and VCR cluttered with boxes of tapes. a pile of glossies spilling onto the Persian rug – Vogue, Harper's, Elle, Vanity Fair. He'd established deep cover as an advertising rep, working through the major US east coast and Bahamian stations.

'Still on the wagon?'

'Pretty much.' I took the glass. It was more, I could see now as he stood close to a lamp, than natural wear and tear. He had a good face, unusually well-balanced, the dark eyes level and the nose dead straight and the chin squared, but the skin had started to go, even at his age, forty or so, because of the stress, which had made him start losing weight. It was in and around his eyes, too; they were less steady than they'd looked when we'd been waiting there in the cellar in Szeged near the Yugoslavian border the last time out together, waiting ten hours for them to find us and throw a bomb in and leave the pieces there for the rats to pick over. Czardas.

He didn't look as if he could ever go into the field again, although I couldn't tell whether some of the stress he was showing, or all of it, wasn't to do with me: he might not always be like this.

We sat on cushions on the floor – the only chairs were grouped around the bamboo table – and I went into the routine according to briefing, just thought I'd look him up, heard he was out here, so forth.

'Sure, it's good to see you.' He'd poured bourbon for himself, a big one, neat. 'Some kind of vacation?' The accent was still English but he was picking up the US vernacular.

'Not really. We think Castro's putting in some new off-shore listening posts on instructions from the Komitet. The High Commission signals room's been getting crossed lines.'

In a moment, 'Not your usual pitch.' His smile had a certain confiding charm, and it was there to take the danger out of the comment. It didn't.

'It's not on the board,' I said. There was no one else they could send out here. But I got a guarantee from Croder.' If there was a bug running I couldn't do anything about it. I was meant to be out here on the Castro thing and thought I'd look in on Proctor for old times' sake: that was the script and I had to stay with it.

'Guarantee?'

'That he'll pull me back to London if a mission comes up.'

'How long has it been?'

'Getting on for two months. You know what it's like.'

He scratched at the black hairs on his chest through the vee of his shirt. 'I used to.'

'You miss it?'

Things are all right here. This election's warming up, you know. What do you think of our Senator, Judd?'

'Politics aren't my bag.'

They can be quite amusing, the way they play them here. Someone started a rumour last month that Judd had been a pot addict, and they finally pinned it down to a single drag on a joint in high school, thought it was an ordinary cigarette. But it could have crippled his campaign – these good people don't care about a man's foreign policy, so long as he's Mr Clean.'

'Bit puritan.'

'Of course. Then the Anderson crowd started a rumour that he'd been AWOL in Vietnam for three months, but it turned out he'd been in a military hospital with honourable wounds. Judd's war record is unimpeachable, and they know it. Then last week, by way of a riposte, the Republican tabloids came out with pictures of Tate on a friend's yacht, cruising off Fire Island, and -'

'Tate?'

'Oh for God's sake, do you live down a hole? Senator Tate from Connecticut, running for the Democratic ticket – they got zoom pictures of him with Patsy Stiles perched on his lap in a bikini on the afterdeck. The shock waves rattled the whole of Washington and of course Tate was kicked straight out of the running – and in case you're going to ask me who Patsy Stiles is, she's a celebrated Mafia moll. I tell you, politics can be quite fun in these lively climes. Is it too hot in here?'

'No good opening a window -'

'No, but I can notch up the fan a few revs.' He uncrossed his legs and got off the floor and went across to a wall switch and I noted that he was still supple and moved well and was obviously in some kind of training. It didn't fit in with his job: sleepers tend to get soft.

'I notice you're reeking,' he said, 'of citronella. That's good, they're buggers.' Mosquitoes. 'But mark my word, Mathieson Judd is not to be underestimated. He's a statesman with a world view that we haven't seen since Nixon, and he's not a megalomaniac. He'll get in. He's got to get in.'

So this was why they'd sent me out here. I'd been shown some of the "odd" signals this man had been sending in to London and some of the stuff he'd been putting through the diplomatic bag and we had a case of a first-class shadow executive getting shot up in the line of duty and sent out to the Caribbean to operate as a sleeper and becoming engrossed in US politics to the extent that it was interfering with his job.

The whole picture was totally out of focus and I began listening very attentively because I had to catch everything I could – a false note, the wrong tone, a word out of place – and I hadn't forgotten that first warning with its disarming smile when I'd told him why I was out here in the Caribbean – Not quite your pitch.

This man had been given some of the really big ones, usually in the Middle East because that was his preferred hunting ground, and he'd done some critical reconnaissance work inside the PLO headquarters in Tunisia the week before the Israelis had blown the roof off and he'd infiltrated the Libyan air defence system and the Soviet shipment programme funnelling arms, missiles and material to the Arab states. He was too trained, too experienced and too professional to let anything get in the way of the work he was doing – I mean okay, yes, it was perfectly acceptable for him to fill me in on the local scene over drinks and make his pitch as an interested armchair campaigner for Senator Judd, but this was the kind of stuff he'd been sending the Bureau through signals and the diplomatic bag. It didn't -

The phone rang and he stretched full length across the rug and picked it up.

'Yes?'

The earpiece was bound with soiled adhesive tape and the cable was in knots and I wondered if this was his main line to London.

It was a woman's voice at the other end, too faint for me to hear any words or even make out if it was Monique, the woman who'd just left here.

'Not long,' he said in a moment and dropped the receiver back and got onto his haunches again. 'When I say that Mathieson Judd has got to get into the White House I mean he's the only man in this country who can give it a new direction – and I'm not quoting the standard rhetoric. This time, with this man, it's for real.'

I put in a question and let him go on talking and consciously took in what I could while at the back of my mind a sense of unreality was creeping in and a bizarre question flashed suddenly – was this man actually Proctor? Bizarre because I knew without any doubt that he was; he'd changed a bit since I'd seen him last and he'd lost some weight and was showing signs of stress but he was the same man I'd been with throughout two very nasty missions and I knew him to the bone. But the question echoed in the mind.

'… Very much hope the Thatcher government realises what we've got in Mathieson Judd, because the outcome of this election's going to have a major effect on the UK…'

It was almost word for word from one of the signals he'd sent in the week before – repetitive, the communications analyst had noted in the margin, a major theme. I went on listening, but couldn't shake off the feeling of unreality, of lost focus. The air in the room was sultry, electric, even with the fan stirring it: the whole town was held in the eye of the storm and charged with tension, and that didn't help.

'… His understanding of the internecine struggle for power inside the Kremlin is infinitely deeper than we've seen before in any US president – thanks partly to the partial lifting of the veil by glasnost, sure, but Judd isn't missing a trick. The thing is -' he brushed the air with a hand and this time the smile was rueful – 'the thing is that since politics aren't your bag I'm boring the hell out of you. Now listen, can I give you a hand with your mission until -'

'It's not exactly -'

'Your assignment?' his dark eyes narrowing as he smiled, the mouth, the teeth alone showing evidence of friendship, false evidence.

'Good of you.'

I said it straight away but it had taken some fast thinking because he was throwing me at every turn – it's right out of character for any shadow executive to offer to "give a hand" to one of his own kind because when a mission goes on the board it's circumscribed and sacrosanct and the briefing is ultraclassified and totally verbal except for the maps and the frontier papyrus and the relevant documents, and the same goes for an assignment or any official undertaking for the Bureau necessitating a cover name for the field and the cover itself. But I'd said it was good of him to offer his help because it was the answer he'd obviously expected.

Listen, please: He didn't realise that what he'd said was completely out of character, and I was instinctively aware that I mustn't let him know.

Beginning to sweat but it wasn't the heat of the room, it was the nerves. Something was appallingly wrong with Proctor and I was having to talk to him as if he were someone else, as if I had to humour him, and it was a bit like playing Russian roulette because the next wrong word could trigger a full chamber, and I knew now why Croder had picked a top shadow to come out here: someone like Fisher would have blown the whole thing before he'd known what was happening.

I would talk to him with extreme caution.

Monck.

Yes indeed. I'd given this man my reason for being out here and he hadn't accepted it – Not quite your pitch – and in a minute or two he was going to bring the subject back, had already brought it back, lend a hand, so forth, and I was perfectly certain now that every word I said was going on tape, it's not out of the question that he's been turned, noted.

Bang of a shutter somewhere: the wind was rising again at the rim of the eye and the night was stirring across the town.

Every word, and the sweat was running because this man too had been a top shadow and had been put through Norfolk and been trained to interrogate, put through a dozen major operations with the ability and the experience to face another man alone in a room and draw him through a minefield of traps and tripwires with question after question and that bright, treacherous smile under the hanging lamp.

'Tell me,' he said, 'about your assignment.'

Bang of a shutter.