Quiller Barracuda

I was half-listening to him, half-listening to the voices that whispered urgently in the dark of the spirit, the thin, whining voices of fright, alarm, paranoia. It wasn't anything new: since the last time out I'd been moving on a collision course with the next one, and it doesn't get any better.

He was waiting for me to say something, Holmes, sitting patiently at his desk, long fingers interlaced, his eyes attentive. Will I see him again, be here in this room again? That was the essence of what was going on, the sense of seeing things, doing things for the last time.

Pre-mission nerves, enough to make you sick. 'I don't know how I stand you,' I said, 'you and your bloody intuition.'

Sudden white smile, head on one side. 'You made the choice, come in here or not come in here. Lesser of evils, or am I being self-indulgent?'

Then the chrome-framed government-issue clock on the wall moved to the hour and I got up and tapped my fingers on his desk to make contact with it, with him, in case it was the last -

'God knows how you got a girl like that,' I told him, the one in the photograph, and went to the door and saw him, as I turned to go out, sitting there looking solemn again.

'Heed the gypsy,' he said.

'Do you know what you're asking?'

'Not very much.'

'But it's not even your concern.'

'Everything that happens here is my concern.'

'That gives you no right to meddle.'

'It gives me the right to a hearing -'

'Not at present. Later on, you -'

'But this can't wait, you know that.'

Heed the gypsy.

'It's for me to know whether it can wait.'

'I want to be told, that's all, what you're going to do with him.'

'It is not your concern.'

He swung away, his shadow moving across the wall, thrown by the bright green-shaded lamp on his desk, the curtains drawn against the rain outside, night before noon, typical of him, Croder, thin and sharp-shouldered like a predator busy in the dark, his black hair brushed close to his head as if by the force of a stoop, his black eyes buried in the bone and lost in shadow, his nose cut by the sculptor's knife in a single stroke and jutting sharply, scenting carrion, a trifle, yes, a trifle exaggerated but it gives you the gist I hope, he's simply, shall we say, a man untouched by the humanities and therefore brilliant, admittedly, at his work, which is to bring his executives back in safety if he can manage it and throw them out if they don't match up to his own exacting standards and with no slightest thought of a second chance.

The thing is, I'd be very careful with Mr Croder.

A little too late for that.

He'd offered me a chair when I'd come in, how was I, so forth, the niceties, he's not an unmannered man, but I decided to get the Fisher thing over before he told me why he wanted to see me, told him I was worried and asked him if he'd let me look after the new recruit for a day or two, didn't, as you may have noticed, go down at all well.

'Look, I'm not talking about giving him charity. He did a good job out there -'

'And came to pieces the moment he got back – I tell you this is not a refuge for burnt-out apprentices.'

'That's not burn-out, it's delayed shock. I've been through it myself -'

'And so have I -' swinging back to face me with his head down and his eyes hooded – 'and so have I,' his artificial hand catching the light.

'Then you can understand -'

'But I did not go to pieces as soon as I came home.' Stood with his eyes on me, black, glittering, green-flecked with the reflection of the lamp.

'Look, they took away his identity but he'll get it back in time. The real -' '

'You will please -' '

'The real problem is guilt because he broke and spoke and he can't live with himself unless he's given a chance to atone. Send him to Norfolk for a couple of weeks, run him through the survival course and then run him through it again, tell them to flay him alive. He's desperate for punishment and until he gets it he won't be able to find his self-esteem and if you don't do it he'll do it on his own – he's tried the window trick already and he'll try it again. But if -' '

That is self-pity -' '

'It's self-disgust but if you'll give him a chance he'll make a first class shadow executive and God knows they're rare enough. It's not as if -' '

He was looking at his watch and I turned and went to the door and pulled it open.

'Quiller.'

I looked back at him.

'You know Proctor, don't you?'

Conversational tone.

'Czardas?'

'Yes.'

'He did a couple with me.'

'So you know him rather well.'

I didn't think he wanted an answer; if you go through a couple of major ones you know your contact in the field rather well, yes.

There were some people coming along the passage and a woman's voice said, 'I think someone's in there with him' and Croder said, 'You'd oblige me by closing the door and sitting down, if you've got a moment.'

Oh Jesus Christ he was in a towering rage but all you could hear were the words, give him that much, he knew how to get control. What he was really saying was that if I didn't come back and sit down in the next five seconds flat he'd hit the second telephone from the left and blast me straight into six months suspended operations and leave me to rot.

But that wasn't why I pushed the door shut. I didn't think we'd finished with the Fisher thing.

'Thank you. Proctor has been doing sleeper in Florida for the past eighteen months.'

'I didn't know.' I thought he'd been laid off, because Czardas had left him with a 9mm slug behind the heart they couldn't get at – he'd caught a side shot at Ferihegy Airport in Budapest when he was taking off in a Partenavia P.68 Victor with half the Defence Ministry's ultra-classified files and one of their younger secretaries on board.

'He's very good,' Croder said, and picked up a phone that had started ringing. 'No later than eighteen hundred hours, and they are not to be armed -that's very important.' He put the phone down. 'He's been sending exemplary material through our routine-grade lines without cessation except for periods of leave, when Hayes took over. But in the last few weeks his signals have – Proctor's, that is – his signals have taken a slightly strange turn. Moreover, he's begun sending material through the diplomatic bag.'

Verboten, in the absence of exceptional circumstances. I didn't say anything.

'I've decided not to call him in for investigation because I believe it's already too late for that. There was a certain amount of delay before I was consulted.' Below in the street a bus throttled up, making a sound just like the rolling of heads. 'It might also seem wise to leave Proctor to go on as he's going, and send someone out there to take a look at things without alerting him. I thought of asking you, because you know the man rather well and there's nothing we can offer you at the moment, unless Krinsley's operation in Dakar comes unstuck, which is unlikely.'