Quiller Barracuda

I chose the card with the Foreign Office crest and dropped it onto the table and she looked at it carefully.

'May I keep this?'

'By all means.'

Took a purse out of her snakeskin bag, put the card away. 'It's difficult to talk to you if you're standing up.'

'We've talked enough, I think, and you were working late. It was a pleasure -'

'Mr Keyes.' The fright in her voice now. She was looking down again, her small hands flat on the marble top of the table with the fingers spread, the voilet nail varnish glinting under the light. 'I'd be glad if you'd sit down for a moment – is that too much to ask?'

I was surprised because I hadn't expected her to break so completely, but this was simply because I didn't know the Proctor background and her connection with it. It looked critical, because as I sat down again I could see that she was having to make an effort to keep control, and her voice was shaky now.

'Look, you've caught me at a crucial time. I – I need help, if that doesn't sound too melodramatic.'

She waited for me to say something.

Said nothing.

'There's no one I can trust, you see. I mean I've got friends, sure, associates,' pressing the table hard, 'and they're all good people but – but 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.' Driving her hands against the marble, her eyes wide now, then changing, narrowing as she caught an inward glimpse of herself and looked up at last and around her in case anyone were watching, her eyes coming back to me, her voice soft, suddenly, fierce – 'Are you listening to me, for God's sake?'

'Yes.'

'You goddamned British, you won't give an inch will you?' Her hands off the table now, restless, brushing the air – 'But I'm going to take a risk and trust you because I'm gullible enough to feel reassured by the Queen of England's crest on the card you gave me.'

No. Going to trust me because she desperately wanted information on Proctor and I'd guaranteed her a meeting with him as soon as we found him.

Looking around her, then back to me, 'The next ten days are going to be critical for the United States of America and by extension for the rest of the world. Not politically critical because Mathieson Judd is a Republican and if he gets into the White House there won't be any change. But critical internationally, globally. I have a question, since you know George Proctor. Is he a small fish, or a big fish?'

'It depends on the pond.'

'It's a very big pond, so let's try this: would you say he's capable of becoming a big fish, in a very big pond?'

I looked away. One of the Bureau men near the doors was different. Midnight shift. 'Proctor,' I said, 'is capable of anything that requires cold courage, risk and endurance. He shouldn't be underestimated.'

'That's also my opinion. He and I -' she looked down, spreading her hands on the table again, perhaps wanting to feel its stability, wanting to borrow from it – 'he and I were close personally until -quite recently, close enough for me to be quite sure he wasn't the advertising man he purported to be – though he used his connections with Newsbreak pretty well as a front. But 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.' Pause. 'I want to get this right. On a clandestine geopolitical scale.'

'For instance?'

'I'm not saying he's the biggest fish in this thing, by any means, but I believe he's being used as the prime mover. You remember a man called Howard Hughes?'

Said I'd heard of him.

Someone over there was pointing in this direction, one of the waitresses.

'He had a mad dream,' Cambridge said. 'He wanted to buy America.'

'In what sense?'

'He wanted to control it, by buying up its major companies, the machinery behind the throne. He went a long way, but it was the wrong way, the hard way.'

The bodyguard was getting to his feet again.

'There's an easier way.' Her voice quieter, intense, her eyes on me the whole time now. To buy America, all you have to do is buy one man. The president. But first you have to -'

'Excuse me, ma'am.' The bodyguard held out a remote telephone. 'You taking calls?'

'Who is it?'

'Mr Sakamoto.'

'Yes, I'll take it.' Surprise but no hesitation. 'Excuse me, Mr Keyes.'

I picked up a menu.

So first they'd tried her home and been told Miss Cambridge was at the studio, and then they'd tried the studio and been told that if she weren't home she could be anywhere, but she sometimes went to Kruger Drug, and then they'd tried Kruger Drug, so they must have wanted to talk to her quite urgently, at five minutes to midnight.

'You mean right away?' Looking at her diamente watch, 'Oh sure, no problem. Has anything -' then she corrected it and said, 'I'll be there in fifteen minutes,' and gave the phone back to her bodyguard. 'I'm sorry, Mr Keyes, it's something I'm unable to pass up.'

'Of course. This isn't the place, anyway, to talk.'

We left the table, the bodyguard ahead of us. 'When can we meet again?' She sounded torn, under pressure. A woman called Hi, Erica, but she didn't turn.

Tomorrow,' I said. 'I'll phone you.'

She gave me her card and as we got to the doors I passed close to one of the Bureau men, 'Car,' and he left his table and went out in front of us while I was talking to Cambridge in the lobby.

'It's absolutely vital,' she said softly, 'that we get together as soon as possible.' Her eyes with fright still in them. 'I'll make a point of staying in until noon. Call before then.'

The limousine was at the kerbside with a chauffeur at the rear door. 'Can I drop you somewhere?' she asked me.

'I feel like a walk.'

A last glimpse of her face at the smoked window, no more than a featureless smudge, leaving me with the odd impression that she'd been trapped in the big black car, obliterated.

Midnight plus seventeen, the late-night traffic rolling with very little sound through the streets, gathering at the lights and waiting, finding release, changing lanes to go round the work gangs still clearing debris left by the hurricane, the black Lincoln ahead of me with two other cars between until the limousine slowed, letting them past and turning into the driveway of 1330 West Riverside Way.

Chapter 10: CONTESSA

There was nothing I could do.

This was a residential street, large balconied houses, stucco and porticos behind trimmed hedges, wrought iron gates, the residences of old Miami money. Shadows everywhere thrown by the trees and hedges, one of the tall ornate street lamps out, like a dead eye in the night. Heat still rising from the stones and the tarmacadam after the day's unremitting sun, the air moist from the vegetation, from the sea.