Quiller Barracuda

Chapter 8: SACRIFICE

Her breast brushed against me, her skin copper-coloured in the subdued light, a powdering of dried salt on her shoulder.

There's a special one out there somewhere.

That you want to catch?

That I want to kill.

Green eyes alighting softly on mine, the eyes of a mermaid, of a succuba.

You will go to 1330 West Riverside Way, at any time before midnight.

Flash, flash from the field glasses across the water.

Not later than that.

Her skin bronzed, the down silken above her breasts, the light flashing, flashing on the cylinder of the syringe.

'Can we use your phone?'

Watchful amber eyes, the tick of the jade clock.

'But please.'

The sea had calmed. There was no movement now.

'Get them onto it straight away.'

A man, one of the men, Johnson, no, Upjohn, blotting a wall-lamp out as he passed across my line of vision. The faint beeping of the push-buttons.

'Make a note. 1330 West Riverside Way.'

A shadow across my eyes, then its substance, Alvarez.

'Well now. How do you feel?' His dark face with its black silk beard, his gaze intent. 'How do you feel now?'

'All right.'

'Good!' He rolled my sleeve down.

'What was in it?' The syringe on the tray.

'Valium.' He took the tray away.

'We want you to check out that address.' Upjohn, phoning.

'Utmost caution,' Ferris said.

1:20 on the dial of the jade clock. An hour and twenty minutes' time gap. I can't tell you, for Christ's sake, don't you understand? The last thing I remembered.

'Use utmost caution,' Upjohn said into the phone.

It's an esoteric Bureau term reserved strictly for when, for instance, you're defusing a motion-detonator bomb.

I looked at Ferris, but he was at right angles. Everything was. They'd put me on that bloody couch.

'Ferris.' I got onto my elbows and swung my legs down. No shoes.

'Hello,' he said.

'Did I tell you?'

'Yes.'

The address?'

'Yes. But tell me again, just to confirm.'

Silence, and time going by.

'Where are my bloody shoes?'

'Tell me again,' he said gently.

'Oh, for Christ's sake. 1330 West Riverside Way. Now where are they?'

Somebody fumbling around with my feet.

Take,' I heard Upjohn saying, 'as many people as you need.'

Alvarez, pushing my feet into my shoes. 'I can do that,' I told him.

'Did you hear that, Doc?' Ferris was asking.

'Oh, yes. We are ourselves again!' Sounded terribly pleased.

Ferris said to Upjohn, 'Strictly observation. No entry, no contact.'

'I can tie my own laces,' I told Alvarez. 'Listen, how did you get that needle into me? I don't like needles.'

'Report directly to me,' Ferris said. He was making notes on the debriefing pad the whole time.

'You lost consciousness. We had to catch you.'

'Before you put that thing in?'

'Yes. The stress had become overwhelming. You didn't want to answer his question, do you remember?'

'Report directly to the DIP,' Upjohn was saying.

'I don't know. I don't know what I remember.'

'I think you do. It's a little alarming to you, that's all. But there's no more block.'

'Block?'

'Psychotraumatic inhibition. You'll feel better now. It's all behind you.' Small pearly teeth showed in the black beard.

Behind me? That'd be a relief. That would be, dear God, a relief. 'Can I have some water?'

'Round the clock?' Upjohn was asking.

'Yes,' Ferris told him, then looked at me. 'When you phoned for us to bring you in, you sounded in a bad way. What had happened?'

It was like thinking back through a veil, having to reach for the past. 'Nothing.'

'But you sounded dead beat.' Amber eyes watching me.

'Thank you.' I drank the whole tumbler straight off. It tasted odd.

'Did I? It tastes a bit odd,' I told Alvarez.

'Everything will, for a little while. Your body chemistry has to adjust. There was a great deal of adrenaline in the system, and then there was the Valium. I'm so pleased,' he said, 'to see you in such good shape.'

'Thank you.' I got off the couch and found a chair and dropped into it. Purdom, the top-echelon shadow, got up and went across to the decanter and filled my glass again, which I thought was nice of him. 'Yes,' I told Ferris, 'I was dead beat, that's absolutely right. I was fighting something off.'

'And you won.' Alvarez, at the desk again, his feet on it. 'But it left your reserves critically depleted.'

Ferris asked: 'Fighting what off?'

It meant going back, and it frightened me. I had never known such a force applied against me, such dominance. 'I – I'd been told to go there, and I knew I shouldn't. But I had to. Kind of – compulsion.'

Upjohn came back from the phone and couldn't find a chair; I think I was sitting in it now. 'You did well,' Alvarez said, still pleased. 'Others would not have resisted.'

'You've no idea how strong it was. The compulsion.'

'Oh, but I have. It was so strong that your resistance left you "dead beat", to the point where you couldn't resist any further. When you were asked why you left the hotel covertly, you lost consciousness rather than explain.' The intercom on his desk began ringing. 'It was a remarkable manifestation.'

He picked up the phone. 'Si, mi querida?'

Ferris got up and dragged the carved oak chair closer to mine and sat down again with his pad. 'You also said, when you were coming out from under, Those are your instructions. Do you remember that?'

'Todavia no. Es una emergencia.'

'Yes. I was following instructions.'

'Don't worry,' Ferris said.

I'd started shaking, hadn't thought it showed. More water.

'Date vuelta y duermete, mi querida.'

Alvarez put the phone down. Ferris asked me quietly:

'Where did they come from? The instructions'

'I don't know, damn you, I don't know.'

They all brought their heads up. It had sounded very loud. Alvarez hadn't moved. Perhaps I'd woken his wife, upstairs, shouting like this: he'd just told her on the phone it was an emergency case. I had to get control.

Alvarez said to Ferris, 'He really doesn't know, you must understand. It's very frustrating for him.'

Ferris was watching me. 'Don't worry. Take your time.'

'We haven't got any time.'

The mission had been running only forty-eight hours and Proctor had gone to ground and the opposition had put the executive into the cross-hairs and got right inside his mind and left instructions there and I'd come appallingly close to walking straight into a trap. There wasn't a chance to -

Run that through again.

'Ferris,' I said, 'there's something that doesn't match. They wouldn't go for me with a hit and get inside my head with subliminal instructions at the same time.' Ferris was making notes. 'They wouldn't have told me to go to that address if they didn't mean it. They'd set it up as a trap, and I couldn't walk into it if I'd been shot dead first.'

Upjohn said, 'Unless you were given the instructions after they'd failed with the hit.'

'What? No, I was given them before we were back in harbour. Before the shooting.'

Ferris asked quickly – 'How do you know when?'

'Because of her breasts.' Straight from the subconscious.

He tilted his head. 'Say again?'

Alvarez was leaning forward now.

'When I was coming to, I had visual impressions of the girl on the boat, Harvester. But I don't – '

'There was a voice,' Alvarez said, 'overlying the visual impressions?'

Feeling of panic suddenly. I reached for the glass and drank, hand not quite steady, did they notice? 'Yes, the voice was in the background. She was talking, too, but in the foreground.'

Panic because it had just occurred to me that there could be other instructions still inside my head, like a worm in an apple.

'There was music?' Alvarez. 'A radio playing?'

'No.'

Purdom looked across at him. 'It could be radionic. Remote beamed.'

'At what distance?' I asked him.

'I'm not too conversant.'

'I'll talk to Parks,' Ferris said. He was the electronics man who'd checked Proctor's flat for bugs.

'There was a launch,' I said, and told him about the field glasses. 'It followed us into harbour.'

'Noted. But this inconsistency – they wouldn't have put those instructions into your head and then put you under that gun.'

Upjohn said, 'Be unwise to assume it was the same cell. I mean the whole thing's open, isn't it? The drug scene's very big here – eighty per cent of the cocaine used in the States comes in from Cuba, a lot of it by sea. The Harvester girl could be running stuff herself or for one of the cartels. They might've thought you were an undercover man for the Coast Guard or something, bang bang. Happens all the time.'

'Do you think she's in drugs?' Ferris.

'Christ,' I said, 'I wouldn't know. If – '

'She's American?'

'English.'

He turned the top sheet of his pad over and said, 'All right, can you take a debriefing on Harvester?'

'Yes.'

It took forty minutes, because there was a lot of material: her relationship with Proctor and her present feelings about him – he's trash – and the phone call she'd overheard and everything we'd said on the boat and of course the points Ferris picked on:

'Did she try seduction?'

'No.'

'But you mentioned her breasts.'

'She was in a bikini and bra.'

'There would have been,' Alvarez said, 'a certain amount of dream content surfacing when you were coming to. We tend to undress women in our sleep.'

Ferris thanked him and turned back to me.

"The launch,' he said. 'Did you think she knew what it was doing there?'

I got out of the chair, weakness in the legs, getting up quickly to make it look all right, but Ferris caught it.

'When did you last eat, Quiller?'

'Lunch. On the boat.'

'Protein, then,' Alvarez said at once and came out from behind his desk. 'You need some protein. Cheese, yes? Would some mozzarella appeal?'

Debriefing went on.

'The field glasses. You say she noticed them.'

'This is complicated.' I thought it through and then said, 'One scenario is this: I noticed them and of course said nothing. She saw them, innocently, and called attention to them, a bit annoyed. Or: she noticed I'd seen them and called them to my attention to clear herself in case I thought she'd seen them and wasn't saying anything because she knew all about them. Knew all about the launch.'

'Did she make anything of the fact that the launch followed you in?'

'No.'

'Do you think she saw that it had followed you in?'

'I was watching for that but I can't be certain. I was tying up the boat.'

'We've got photographs of her, of course. I had a man with a zoom on the quay.'

'When did you put her under surveillance?'

'Before you got there.'

'You're keeping her under surveillance?'

'But of course.' His amber eyes on me. 'I know it hasn't escaped you that she might have set you up for that hit, on Proctor's orders.' In a moment, 'Does that trouble you?'

'No.' But I said it too quickly and he caught it. He can catch flies in flight.

'Perhaps a little.' Making a note. 'She's not unattractive, and you've got some sympathy for her because of what happened to her father.'

'Are you putting down what I think or what you think?' Tone with an edge. I was leaning with my back to the bookshelves, wanting to move about, restless, not able to because of the weakness, not wanting to sit down because I was being put on the defensive – debriefing always has that element in it because you're asked to give reasons for things you said and things you did, to justify every move you made and take responsibility for every signal, every strike, every mistake, and what makes it difficult is that you said those things and did those things in hot blood with the dark coming down and nothing between you and the unmarked grave but a random blow or a desperate last-ditch run that in the cold light of enquiry are seen as ill-advised and potentially hazardous for the mission: the one sin above all others.

Debriefing can leave the spirit naked, and sometimes we rebel. Are you putting down what I think or what you think?

He didn't answer, and with good cause. As the director in the field he had the right, the sacrosanct obligation, to record events as he saw fit, because when the executive's back is to the wall he'll say anything to protect himself.

Some morose and mission-weary shadow with a penchant for statistics has worked it out, slumped over a tea-stained table in the Caff with his busy abacus, that in the first three phases of a mission the executive in the field has been pulled out and replaced on four occasions out of ten because his debriefing proved that he couldn't handle the demands on him, couldn't control the field, couldn't proceed without increasing the risk of blowing his own operation or half the Bureau's ultra-classified files. And whoever they are we forget their names because it scares us to remember them.

'When you asked her for a diving lesson, did she get you to sign a waiver in case of accident?'

'What? Yes.'

'What address did you give?'

The hotel. The first one.'

'She phoned you there.'

'When?'

'Twenty-three minutes after the shots were fired.'

'What did she say?'

'She left a message, asking you to phone her back. She sounded – ' he checked his pad – 'agitated.'

Then she must have seen me pushed into the cab.'

'Not necessarily. She could simply be living in the hope that you'd got clear in some way.'

'No one,' Upjohn said, 'saw him getting into the cab. I was there.'

'Her number?' This was Purdom.

'You'll get all that,' Ferris told him, 'if there's anything you can do.'

Purdom shut up again. I wished he wouldn't just sit in that bloody chair and brood. I could feel vibrations coming out of him that jarred the nerves and I tried the whole time to ignore the man because the truth couldn't be faced: he could have been called out here to replace me the minute the debriefing was over, and he'd seen what the opposition had already done to the shadow in the field, and didn't like it.

What would I do, then, if London sent instructions to pull me out of Barracuda'?

Go to ground.

Vanish and work from the dark, from the silence of the catacombs. A pox on them.

There is nothing worse, my friend, for the executive in the field than to be replaced, to be sent home crippled with his inadequacies, bringing nothing with him but the news of a lost cause and leaving behind him nothing but his bloodied tracks. Nothing worse, you understand, than professional ignominy, the irretrievable loss of face.

Correction, yes. There would be, at this phase of this particular mission, one thing worse.

'You said – ' Ferris, 'that Harvester repeated word for word a political diatribe you'd heard before, from Proctor.'

'Yes.'

I noticed Alvarez shift in his chair.

Ferris said quietly, 'How could you remember it word for word?'

'I – ' and left it. I didn't know.

'Could you repeat it now – ' Alvarez – 'word for word?'

'Yes.' Beginning to sweat because I remembered how Kim Harvester had looked when she'd gone through the same material on board the tug, stabbing at the peach stone with the knife, withdrawn, robotic.

Ferris looked at Upjohn. 'Tape?'

'Sure.' He got the recorder and waited with his finger on the button.

'When you're ready,' Ferris said.

It was frightening because I went straight into it without any hesitation, bringing it out at a measured pace, He's a statesman with a world view that we haven't seen since Nixon… half his face in shadow beside the brass hanging lamp… very much hope the Thatcher government realises what we've got in Mathieson Judd… the first stirring of the wind as the eye of the storm began moving across the town… his understanding of the internecine struggle for power inside the Kremlin… my voice distant-seeming, the words unnaturally paced, until it was finished and the voice stopped, and I looked up to see Alvarez watching me, leaning forward, intent.

'Finished?' Ferris.

'Yes.' The skin crawling.

Upjohn shut down the recorder. No one spoke so I said, 'What did I look like?'

Short silence and then Upjohn said, 'Bit switched off.'

'You were in an altered state of consciousness,' Alvarez said, 'somewhere between alpha and theta waves.'

I got the decanter and emptied it into the glass, only half full, took it at a gulp while Upjohn asked Alvarez where the tap was. 'That was where I picked it up,' I told Ferris. 'I got visuals with it.'

'Proctor.'

'Yes. But I mean it wasn't just that he'd told me that stuff viva voce. I wouldn't have remembered it word for word. I was picking it up from the background.'

'Just as he had, before.'

'Yes. The same subliminal source.'

'Again,' Alvarez asked, 'was there music playing?'

'No. Nothing in the background.'

Ferris was making notes. 'Is that all you've got in your mind about Mathieson Judd?'

'Yes.' Poured some more water and drank it.

'You don't know anything about the elections?'

'No.'

'You haven't followed the news.'

'Christ,' I said, 'I haven't had much time to read the papers.'

'So you have no ideas,' Alvarez said, 'about Senator Judd's chief competitor, Governor Anderson?'

'No.' The water was cool, and I savoured it. 'Except of course that he's trying to tell the voters that there's so much wrong with America after the Republican four-year term that the country needs taking apart and rebuilding,' the water cool in a dry mouth, a quietness in the room as deep as the quietness that snow brings, 'whereas Judd's theme is reassuring – the country's in good shape and all we need to do is consolidate the gains that have been made under the present administration,' the glass making a small musical sound when I put it back on the silver tray, the quietness settling.

'Go on,' someone said gently.

'So it's not a question of whether each argument is right or wrong, but a question of which message is the more likely to appeal to the nation. Obviously, Senator Judd's.'

And then after a long time I couldn't hear my voice any more and I saw Ferris leaning across the desk talking to the psychiatrist and Purdom watching me from his chair and Upjohn switching off the recorder. I'd been walking about, I think, and now I sat down.

Ferris was facing me suddenly. 'Do you know how long you spoke for?'

'No.'

'Nineteen minutes, with no interruption.'

I felt drained, emptied of something. Looking up at Ferris, not wanting to believe it. 'That bad?'

'Do you know what you were talking about?'

'Yes. Anderson's campaign theme. And Judd's.'

'There's nothing buried,' Alvarez said, 'you must understand. The material is quite near the surface,

an integral part of the conscious, even though it was ingested subliminally, by the subconscious.'

Ferris sat down again and got his pad. Off-handedly, not looking at me, 'Have you any more instructions?'

The nerves sent a tremor through the organism. In a moment, 'What instructions?'

Still not looking at me, busy writing, 'I mean is there anywhere you've got to go, anything you've got to do? It's only a thought, you don't need to worry about it.'

Time going by, while the skin chilled under the sweat and their faces watched me, not with their eyes, with their heads turned, listening.

Instructions.

After a long time, 'No. I don't think so. I don't know.' And then I was on my feet suddenly and looking down at Alvarez. 'How much stuff have I got in there, for God's sake? How much more?'

He said: 'We may never know.'

03:14.

Ferris made a final note on the debriefing pad and put it into his briefcase and looked at Alvarez. 'May I use the phone, Doctor?'

'By all means.'

'I need to call London.'

'I understand. The switch is just under the desk here.' At the door he said, 'I shan't be far away, if you need me.'

Did he expect me to go berserk or something?

Control, yes. Mea culpa.

Ferris went behind the carved redwood desk and picked up the phone and sat with it, elbows on the big green blotter, his eyes nowhere, thinking. Then he dialled.

I got up again, not wanting to go on sitting there waiting, moved about a little, took another look at those bloody elephants, God what a waste of a good tusk.

We may never know.

Like an echo in the mind. How big, then, was the worm in the apple, how healthy, how vigorous? As big as a snake? As a dragon?

'Miami,' Ferris said. 'Get me Board 3.'

Board 3 was for Barracuda.

8:15 in the fair city of Londinium, with the double-deckers jamming Piccadilly Circus and the taxis dodging through the gaps, their black tops bright with rain.

'Yes, good morning. I'm switching to scramble.'

I have no wish, not the slightest wish, to go to London, whatever they say, whatever they decide.

Purdom moved now, got out of his chair. He was like me, couldn't just sit still nursing his nerves. If you were to ask me for whom the bell tolled, I would tell you that it tolled for him too.

'Is Mr Shepley there?'

He would make a good psychiatrist, this man Ferris, looks the part, thin, ascetic, totally calm, though perhaps he is a shade too cold-blooded, and of course might even find it not abnormal for a patient lying there on that bloody couch to explain that his problem was that he couldn't stop strangling mice.

'Yes, sir. There's been an unexpected development, and I've asked Monck to fly in from Nassau. He'll be here in twenty minutes. I haven't worked with him before, and I need to know whether he qualifies for major Classified One decision-making.'

Purdom was standing by the bookshelves looking at the titles, if that's what you want to believe. I suppose I hated him in an infantile way, because there was nothing in his square balanced-looking head, I mean nothing coiled there, no worm.

'Yes, I can give him the whole picture. We've just interim-debriefed the executive.'

Upjohn hadn't budged from his chair. I didn't like him much either, not because of his acne or his broom-head haircut of course; I disliked his detachment, or rather his ability to detach himself from what was going on. I could believe his blood was colder than Ferris's, if there were any in his veins at all.

'All right, sir. Understood. Do I fax the debriefing?'

He said a few other things that weren't important. The important bit was over now, I knew that, but I hadn't heard Shepley's answer to the question. I wasn't looking at Ferris when he put the phone down, had my back to him. I heard him flip the scrambler switch and get out of the chair.

'Monck was in Croder's place,' he said, 'before he left London. He's still on that level, overseas section.' I'd turned round and was facing him. 'Whatever decisions have to be made, he has the power to make them.' Getting his briefcase, looking at his watch. 'I'm meeting him at the airport, cutting it a bit fine. Why don't you catch up on some more sleep at the hotel? It's still secure. Upjohn will take you there.'

Didn't really want an answer: these were orders.

Then everyone was moving about and Ferris called Alvarez back and thanked him for his hospitality and then came with me to the alleyway at the back of the house where there were two cars standing in shadow.

Try not to give it any more thought,' he told me. 'Just try to sleep. When I've talked to Monck and asked him what we're going to do, I'll contact you, probably in an hour or so.' Got into his car.

'But I like the town, because it's crazy.'

Upjohn drove through the lit streets, knew his way. I sat beside him, like an aristo in a tumbril. Ferris knew what was going to happen already, but couldn't give London the whole picture without faxing it and there wasn't really time even for that. Barracuda couldn't go on running without an executive and the only executive it had was a man who might at any time break loose and start following instructions he wasn't even aware of at this moment – and instructions that could tell him to blow the whole thing up.

Shivering a little, not unexpected.

'It's got everything, after all. Drug trade, casinos, refugees, the mafia, you name it. Sight more interesting than Streatham.'

I suppose I answered him now and then on the way, but I don't remember clearly. When we got to the hotel he opened the gates at the back and drove the car through and got out to shut them again before I left the car.

'Feel like company? Play some poker?'

I thanked him and said I needed some sleep, and he nodded and stood there in the half-lit yard until I was inside the hotel.

Lying in the dark with my clothes on, watching the reflection of the traffic lights at the corner of the street below, listening to the creak of the plumbing and the thin whistling of the first jet landing as the night drew towards dawn, I looked at this thing in the face and got rid of illusions.

There would be only one thing worse, yes, than being sent back to London and seeing my name gone from the board and the final entry on the form I'd have to sign, executive recalled from mission, only one thing worse than losing Barracuda and handing over to Purdom, and that would be for them to order me to stay with it and do what I could.

Because the only reason for their doing that would be to find out what I would do if they gave me room, where I would go if they set me running again, how they could profit if the worm in the apple went on eating and drove me across hazardous ground, into a red sector, into a trap.

And that would be terrible, to run through these streets not as the shadow for the mission but as a rat in a maze, an experiment, a subject for sacrifice.

That would be their only reason for keeping me in.

Red to green, amber to red, a toilet flushing on the floor above, a jet turning onto the taxying lane with its sound and the echoes fading, red to green and the silence settling in and then the explosive shock of the phone bell jarring the nerves.

I reached for the receiver.

'They're leaving you in,' Ferris said.

My hand clammy on the smooth plastic, the dark room crowding me, a sense of disbelief. I suppose I wanted it spelled out for me, so that there shouldn't be any misunderstanding.

'My name is still on the board for Barracuda?'

Someone was whistling, down in the yard, as daybreak came.

'Your name is still on the board for Barracuda.'

So help me God.