Quiller Barracuda

by Adam Hall

  'Yes.'

  'I realise he might have undergone some sort of change in personality since then, but would you say he'd be liable to offer information, sufficiently induced?'

  In a minute I said, 'I don't know. I can't say.'

  They don't get out the cutlery in that particular room at the Bureau. I mean they don't use curling tongs, anaesthetics on the eyelids, needles in the urethra, that sort of thing. But they use the hood.

  'You mean you're unsure of his present mental condition?'

  'Well, yes. It's a bit complex now. His head's full of strange ideas and his nerves are possibly strung out on coke, and I'd say he's more like a dangerous psychopath than an intelligence agent. You could try hooding, of course. It might break him.'

  Croder called it "sufficient inducement" because in a trade as uncivilised as ours we reach for euphemisms for the same reason that a coroner reaches for the smelling-salts. Hooding doesn't cause pain and it's physically non-invasive and all they do is shut you in that particular soundproofed room with a black bag over your head until you're ready to tell them what they want to know. The sanitised term is sensory deprivation and I went through a bit of it in Turkey and it's a lot less pleasant than it sounds because after two or three days you start floating about in a mental vacuum until finally the panic begins and then you're done for because when they come to take the hood off you'll either tell them what they want to know and keep your psyche intact or you'll keep your mouth shut and go right over the edge and if you're lucky you'll finish up in the funny farm. Neither of these things happened to me in Turkey because one of the people looking after things came close enough for me to reach his throat and he'd got the keys of the handcuffs on him.

  'One way,' Monck told Croder, 'might be to keep him short of cocaine, catch him while he's screaming his head off.'

  Ferris was making a note.

  'Thank you,' Croder said, 'we could indeed try that.' Turning the sheets of the debriefing book, 'From what I've just told you, then, Quiller, you'll know that if at any time the CIA or the FBI get wind of us and ask you what you're doing in Miami, you'll need to stick closely to your cover. If they decide to detain you on suspicion, your director in the field will ask London to make representations through private diplomatic channels.'

  There is always, for instance, a certain amount of suspicion aroused if you're seen crawling out of a burning car with bullet holes in it, or climbing out of the water a hundred yards from a wrecked Mafia boat at three in the morning. That's why I'd avoided questioning on both occasions.

  'Understood,' I said.

  'Ferris?'

  Ferris nodded and turned to me. 'You also need to know that we found a micro-transmitter concealed in the ceiling fan in Proctor's flat. We've sent it to London for them to look at, but in the meantime Parks has told us he thinks it's designed to broadcast subliminal material from a remote source, buried in the wave structure of any kind of electrical hum – fan, refrigerator. It would also work in a TV set whenever it's receiving a signal. Parks is still taking Proctor's flat to pieces, looking for more electronics.'

  Croder was going through the debriefing book again. 'I'd like some elaboration on this Newsbreak anchorwoman Erica Cambridge. You've reported that she's "anxious to find George Proctor".'

  Ferris had debriefed me on this in the air, but there was a lot I hadn't been able to say. 'She told me she wanted to find him "very much", but that it wasn't for any personal reason.'

  'Do you think that's true?'

  'Yes. I think they were close – in fact she said so – but I sensed that when they broke up there was a lot of unfinished business, political business. She asked me what we were going to do with Proctor when we found him and I said we'd get him out of the country right away.'

  Ferris was making notes again. Croder asked me: 'How did she react to that?'

  'She wanted a meeting with him before we got him out, and I used that as a trade-off -'

  'Yes, you guaranteed she should see him, provided she helped you find him. Perhaps it's not important, but do you feel it's a guarantee we should keep?'

  'Ethically?'

  'Yes.'

  'Your ethics might not be mine. I've been trained to play it rough. But a meeting between those two, suitably bugged, would probably give you a lot of information. If we can find him.'

  I suppose Ferris was making those notes for Purdom, keeping the bastard briefed, ready to take my place. Over my dead body. Joke.

  'If we can find him,' Monck said, 'yes.' He was watching me steadily. 'What do you think the chances are? It would help us to know your feelings on that.'

  Not really. My feelings weren't terribly sanguine.

  Phone again, and Tench picked it up.

  'Proctor is a professional,' I said. 'A top professional. He's trained and he's dangerous and he's apparently got the whole of the Miami Mafia behind him, and that gives him God knows how many places he can hide.'

  Ferris was on the phone: Tench had passed it to him. Croder said to me, 'You don't think our chances, then, are very high.'

  I tried to keep the tone under control, didn't quite manage. 'Oh for Christ's sake, d'you want it in letters of blood?'

  Then one of those silly coincidences happened, you've known them, I'm sure, because Ferris was saying, 'I'm sorry to break in, but they've checked on that phone number in the diary, the one with the initials G.R.P., and I think you've located Proctor – he's on board the Contessa.'

  Chapter 17: RISK

  'I want a twenty-four-hour watch,' Ferris said on the phone, 'on the cutter for the motor-yacht Contessa. It normally ties up at Quay 19, the Bayside Marina.'

  I noticed Croder's assistant, Tench, watching me obliquely. He'd obviously gathered I'd made some kind of breakthrough; when I caught his eye he looked down, stroking the back of his head. He did that a lot, frightened, I rather think, of Croder and his responsibilities, and the stroking was meant to show how relaxed he was.

  'You'll need four men, two for each shift. I want a photograph of everyone who boards that cutter or disembarks from it, and I'll tell you by radio if I want anyone tagged. Questions?'

  Purdom hadn't reacted. He sat with his head down, waiting for doom. I think he'd made up his mind I was going to finish up with a dum-dum in the left ventricle and his feet were already on the starting blocks. The fact that we now knew where Proctor was didn't guarantee I wouldn't bite the dust at any given moment, according to the terms of the contract the Mafia had put out on me. But I wished he wouldn't sit there with his nerves twanging like that; it didn't help.

  'Starting immediately,' Ferris said, and gave the phone back to Tench, looking at Croder. 'Signal, sir?'

  'Yes, before we leave here.'

  Signal the board for Barracuda, for the eyes of Bureau One. Executive has located objective. C of S informed.

  Mr Shepley would be pleased, and so would Holmes, standing there in the shadows between the floodlit signals boards: it'd take the edge off his nerves, be okay to get himself another cup of coffee, celebrate, so forth, but it might be all that caffeine inside him that keeps him at such a pitch, you know, I've never thought of that.

  'Congratulations,' Croder said, watching me, dark-eyed, brooding, busying his mind already with the future, because it was one thing to locate the objective and another thing to get him away from that privately-owned and well-protected vessel out there and take him to London and fry his brains out under a hood.

  'Now I'd like to talk a little more about the anchorwoman. There's now an obvious question in our minds, isn't there?' Yes indeed. When she went aboard the Contessa last night, had she known Proctor was there? 'Your report was necessarily brief. Can you remember what she actually said about Proctor?'

  'Yes. One thing was, she said it would help us if we let her see him before we got him out of the country. She said she'd got a great deal of information on him.'

  It took another ten minutes to give him a replay of the scene in Kruger Drug last nigh
t; then I called up the other material that hadn't been specifically about Proctor. 'She told me I'd caught her at a critical – no, a crucial time, and that she needed help. There was no one she could trust.'

  'She has no friends?'

  'She didn't know if they'd be strong enough – I quote.'

  'For what?'

  I asked him to give me a minute.

  I don't know how strong they'd be if things got really rough. And none of them know about George Proctor. Okay, we were close, yes, but they don't know about this thing that's happening.

  Told Croder.

  Thing.' He dropped the word like a stone into the silence.

  'I don't know,' I said, 'what the thing is. But she began talking about Proctor again before we left Kruger Drug.' Pictured her face, her hands spread on the marble-topped table, listened for her voice. He still had a reserve I couldn't get through, and I believe he was doing things unknown to me that would have surprised me – correction, alarmed me, frightened me – not just personally, I mean on a geopolitical scale. I want to get this right – on a clandestine geopolitical scale.

  Told Croder. He didn't comment, and I kept on going. 'She said something interesting about the late Howard Hughes, that he had a mad dream about buying America, by getting control of the industry, the machinery behind the throne. She said there was an easier way, that to buy America all you had to do was buy one man: the president.'

  I sat back.

  'You must have asked her to elaborate on that.'

  'I would have, but her bodyguard brought her a remote phone. She had to go.'

  'Who was the caller? Did you -'

  'A Mr Sakomoto.'

  'Was he the Japanese you saw boarding the cutter with her?'

  'I don't know. He -'

  'You tagged Cambridge -', Ferris, 'from Kruger Drug to 1330 Riverside, and she came out of the house with the Japanese and you tagged them to the quay, is that right?'

  'Yes. But he wasn't necessarily Sakomoto.'

  'There could be several Japanese,' Croder said, 'in that house.'

  'Yes.'

  'And how did you leave the Cambridge woman?'

  'Leave -?'

  'At Kruger Drug. What was said, do you remember?'

  'She asked me when we could meet again, and I said I'd phone her the next day. She -'

  'Today.'

  'Yes. She said it was vital that we met again as soon as possible, and that she'd stay at her phone until noon.'

  Croder scuffed through the book. 'You didn't telephone her.'

  'I was on board Harvester's boat all the morning. At that time I wasn't certain I could trust her, and I only used the phone once, to call Ferris, just a two-word signal.' Shadow safe. 'It looks,' Ferris said, 'as if you'll need to meet Cambridge again.'

  'Especially now.'

  'Now that she's been on board the Contessa, and may have seen Proctor.'

  'She may be still there,' Croder said. 'On board.'

  'I doubt that. She goes on the air every day.'

  'In a minute from now,' Monck said. 'Tench, is there a TV in that cabinet?'

  He pulled open the double doors. 'Yes, sir.'

  'Turn it on and cut the sound down and play the channels. We're looking for These Are My Views, you know the one?'

  'Erica Cambridge, oh yes.'

  'Channel 6,' Monck said. 'Half past nine.'

  'Thank you, sir.'

  Flick, flick, flick, and the juiciest cheeseburger you ever saw, dripping with some kind of sauce, then lots of them with lots of people with big white glistening teeth all biting into them with the cheese pulled out into strings, fade out, fade in some shadowed cleavage.

  'No,' Ferris was saying on the phone, 'but you can leave a signal there. How is Jowett doing?'

  'Tench,' I said, 'use that other phone and get me the number for Newsbreak studios, Miami, will you?'

  'Jowett?' asked Croder when Ferris had rung off.

  'There's no news.' Jowett had run Cocktail into the shit in Sri Lanka.

  Knocking on the door. Tench went across and opened it. The security guard and a man in a khaki suit and carrying a worn leather bag, looking around. 'Who's the patient?'

  This is Dr Hornby,' Ferris said. Bloody doctors. He must have sent for him. I pulled my shirt up and Hornby came over and looked at the dressing and began loosening it.

  Tench asked me if I wanted him to get Newsbreak.

  'Yes. I want to leave a message for Erica Cambridge.'

  'It's good of you to turn out,' Ferris said, and took a look at the wound.

  'I was only mending a rod. Fishing rod. Was it a clean knife, or dirty?'

  'I'd say clean.'

  'Woman did these? These stitches?'

  'Yes.'

  'Thought so. Wonderfully drawn. Nurse?'

  'Yes.'

  'They're underrated, you know.'

  'She'd like to meet you.'

  Good evening. I'm Erica Cambridge, and these are my views. The violet eyes, the brilliant smile. Shuffling the papers. Yesterday in New Hampshire it looked as if Senator Mathieson Judd was, for the first time, pandering to the dictates of those on his campaign staff who have been trying to persuade him -

  'I've got Newsbreak on the line, sir. Her show.'

  I took the phone. 'Who is this?'

  'Bennie.'

  – Has put it, to counterbalance the Republican candidate's serious and perhaps solemn approach to the matter in hand. But in my view, ladies and gentlemen -

  I thought she looked a degree nervous, just a degree.

  'Bennie, this is Richard Keyes. Ask Miss Cambridge to telephone me, would you, as soon as she comes off the air? She can find me at -'

  'She's not here, Mr Keyes.'

  'She taped the show tonight?'

  'That's right.'

  'Look, if she happens to call, give her this number.'

  'See me in four days,' Hornby said. 'Here's my card.'

  – His respect and regard for the electorate. So what happened in New Hampshire was not rehearsed, was not premeditated. It was real. Some of you were there, I believe.

  I thanked Hornby and tucked my shirt in again. Had she met Proctor on that yacht? That would make her nervous, a degree nervous. Unless of course she'd been lying, unless she'd known already that he was there.

  I phoned her apartment.

  'She's not here, Mr Keyes, I'm sorry.'

  'Can you tell me where I can find her?'

  'She just went out, that's all I know.'

  I left both numbers where she could find me and Ferris picked up the other phone.

  Monck told him, 'Ask your people if they saw her come off the cutter.'

  'But of course.' The tone acid. Ferris can get touchy when people give the impression he can't think straight.

  'We need that woman,' Croder said. 'We need her badly.'

  'Yes,' I said.

  We'd begun feeling jumpy now, all of us, especially Purdom. When we'd parted company at Kruger Drug last night she'd told me it was vital we got together again as soon as possible and since then she'd gone to 1330 Riverside and she'd gone aboard the yacht out there and if she still wanted to talk to me she might give me the evidence we needed to push Barracuda straight into the end-phase.

  'She is our new objective,' Croder said, 'for the mission,' the thin body buried in its clothes, the gaunt head sunk onto the shoulders, the obsidian-black eyes watching me to see if I understood how very important Cambridge had suddenly become to us all.

  'If she'll cooperate,' I said.

  'We shall do all we can to persuade her.'

  The bleak, bright, bare-walled scene of an interrogation cell flashed across my mind, triggered by the word persuade. But of course he didn't mean that. We would approach Erica Cambridge, if we could, with civilised blandishments and exhortations, like the gentlemen we are.

  'What time was that?'

  Ferris, on the phone.

  'You said she uses a bodyguard?' Croder asked me.

&
nbsp; 'She was using one last night.'

  'I need two people,' Ferris said, 'on the Newsbreak building, front and rear, and I want you to keep a watch for her limousine. You've got the number. If she's seen anywhere at any time I want to know immediately, and don't let her out of your sight. This is -'

  'Ferris,' Croder said.

  'Hold it,' looking across at him.

  'If she's not using a bodyguard, tell them to give her protection.'

  Ferris repeated that and said it was fully urgent and rang off and then everyone was standing up and Monck said, 'Don't waste any time,' and I tied my shoe-laces and Purdom opened the door and we were on our way out when one of the telephones began ringing.

  I went back and picked it up.

  'Is Mr Keyes there, please?'

  'Speaking.'

  'This is Erica Cambridge.' The tone quiet and urgent. 'I'm speaking from the limo. They called me with your message. Why didn't you call me? I waited until noon.'

  'I was prevented.' They were all watching me and I gave a slow nod. 'Where can we meet?'

  "I'm on my way to the party at the Marina Yacht Club. They're giving it for Senator Judd – that's why I had to tape my show for today. Did you catch it, by any chance?'

  'I was at a meeting.'

  'I'm sorry you missed it. Some of the things I said were a little different. A lot of things are different now, Mr Keyes. I want to tell you about them. Can you get to the party? You're in Nassau right now, aren't you?'