by Adam Hall
'Dates me, I suppose.'
'No. Becomes you.'
'We're going to Nassau,' Ferris said, 'to meet Monck and a few other people.'
He was watching me steadily with his pale champagne-coloured eyes, watching for nerves, fatigue, signs of disorientation. I'd told him I'd been in that wreckage down there. We'd seen the Mafia boat hanging from a crane at the quayside when we'd taken off.
Toufexis would assume I'd been killed with the others because no one had seen me come ashore, but it was risky to rely on that because of the surveillance they'd mounted on the tug out there: I could have been recognised. I'd never seen such tight security and for once I was glad of it. Two of the Bureau people had picked me up at sea in a converted motor torpedo boat at nightfall and got me from the harbour to the airport in a short-bodied limo with tinted windows and brought it across the tarmac and right up to the Cessna 500 Citation and I didn't see Ferris until I went aboard.
'When did you eat last?'
'A couple of hours ago.'
'Sleep?'
'I caught up.'
'Injuries?'
'Minor.'
'Morale?'
'Very good.'
Because I'd got the diary from Nicko's wallet, and it could give us access to Proctor. I gave it to Ferris and he began peeling the pages apart: it had got soaked and dried again.
'A Mafia type used it when he phoned Proctor.'
'He got the number from it? Proctor's?'
'Or a number where Proctor was, at the time.'
He went through the pages, taking care. Some of the ink had run. Light spread against the cabin roof as we banked over the city's brilliance.
'G.R.P.,' Ferris said, and snapped his belt open and got out of his seat.
'Are you going to use the phone?' I asked him.
'Yes.'
'Then do me a favour. I want some protection for Kim Harvester – can you manage that? Two men?'
'When?'
He didn't ask why, because that could wait. And he didn't cavil. It would mean diverting the services of two men in shifts round the clock and London would want a very good reason indeed and Ferris knew that and he'd have to take the responsibility, and this was one of the things I liked about him: he trusted the man he was running and he didn't ask questions. That little bastard Loman would have wanted forms in triplicate sent from London with a ten-sheet questionnaire and a request for notarisation and God knew how I could ever persuade him to push all that lot past his sphincter muscles.
'As soon as you can arrange it,' I told Ferris.
'Two men, taking shifts?'
'Yes. And they'll need a boat available. Could they use the MTB?'
'Yes.'
'She's bringing the tug in to port early tonight; she would have started back as soon as I was taken off. Berth 19, at the place where they shot me up. Decent of you.'
He went forward into the cockpit and I loosened the laces of my shoes because they'd shrunk a bit when they'd dried out and I'd have to get another pair as soon as I could, because if your feet aren't absolutely comfortable it can take the edge off your speed at a run and that can be fatal if you're pushing things.
Ferris came back. 'I didn't phone that number direct. I'm having it checked for the address.'
'The odds are,' I said, 'that it's 1330 Riverside.'
'It could be anywhere.'
Point taken. The executive tends to get tunnel vision the deeper he goes into the mission, while his director in the field can keep a more open perspective and see things the shadow can miss.
'I haven't,' I said in a moment, 'picked up any more instructions.'
I'd seen it in his eyes when I'd mentioned Riverside. He didn't look relieved. He didn't necessarily believe me. I could have had further subliminal instructions piped into me with an injunction to keep them secret.
He didn't say anything.
'I'm fairly certain,' I told him, 'that there's nothing electronic on board Harvester's boat. She didn't have any more to say about Mathieson Judd; I checked her for that and she just gave me a repetition of what she'd given me before.' He pulled out a mini-recorder and pressed a button. Debriefing had started. 'So she'd picked up that bit at Proctor's – it was the same thing I'd picked up myself when I went there that night. The reason I want her protected is that they're still surveilling the boat and they might make a snatch and force her to give them all the information she'd got about me. None of it's vital but I don't want her to go through interrogation at the hands of people like that.'
In a moment he said without looking at me, 'What's the personal relationship at this point between you and Harvester?'
'None of your bloody business.'
He hesitated a fraction and then pressed rewind and play and got the tape back to hands of people like that and reset for record.
'You ought to know I don't let personal relationships cloud my judgement during a mission.'
'Except for the man you wiped out in the Underground three -'
'That wasn't during a mission. Look -' I hitched round in my seat to face him – 'if you want to make an issue of my relationship with -'
'I don't,' he said, and his eyes stopped me dead.
'What time do we get in?' Making bloody conversation, you notice, to bring the tension down. What annoyed me was that you can't ever win a point with this man. The way I'd reacted to his question about Harvester had told him precisely what he wanted to know.
'Seven,' he said, 'give or take a few minutes.' In the same tone, 'How close did you come to buying it, in the Mafia boat?'
'Oh for Christ's sake, I got my nerve back hours ago.'
Easy, now. You see, my good friend, what I mean? He'd got his answer. I had not got my nerve back hours ago, despite Kim's tender ministrations.
'Do you feel like a little more debriefing?'
'Of course.'
He pressed for record again and I told him about the execution thing on the Mafia boat, naming names and getting the timing right as close as I could remember.
This woman Monique,' Ferris said at last. 'What about her?'
'I don't know. She was with Proctor that night when I went to his place but we didn't say anything more than hello and goodbye – he made it clear he wanted to be alone for the meeting. But on the quay last night she did her best to convince Nicko he'd got the wrong man. Did her very best.'
'Check on the woman Monique,' Ferris said into the mike. To me: 'So you came out of it with the diary. Anything else?'
'My life.' Bridling again, quick to anger.
'It's well understood,' he said courteously, 'that the diary could locate Proctor for us. It's understood that even if you'd brought nothing out of the incident, the life of the executive for Barracuda is of inestimable value. We -'
'You've got Purdom,' I said, 'standing by.' Came out with it very fast and the tone was bitter and the instant it was over I was appalled, because the bloody thing was still running and there was the loud, clear and irretractable record of my hitherto hidden fear: that Purdom had been brought in to follow the mission in the background in case I bought it and he had to take over.
Sweating a little, the nerves heating the blood, debriefing, you see, is not always easy; they'll dig right down into your soul and drag it into the sour light of inspection.
Ferris said quietly, the expression in his amber eyes guileless and to be trusted, 'If Purdom had been down as the executive for Barracuda, I would have refused it, and if he is ever obliged to take over, I would ask London to replace me as the director in the field.'
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 slig
htest 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 t
he 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?'