I wish to Christ it didn't affect me but it always has, always will, and don't try telling me it's all in the day's work, I'm not standing for that.
Seed pods dropping, big ones, spiralling down through the lamplight and hitting the sidewalk with the sound of autumn hail.
12:34.
He must have been under their own surveillance for quite a time because they didn't ask any questions – they used one car and two men and the snatch didn't take more than ten seconds and the car was gone again, more than a snatch, because the first man to reach him had broken his spine at the first vertebra and they'd dragged him across the sidewalk and thrown him into the back.
There was nothing I could do because the distance was something like a hundred yards and it was over before I could have got out of the car and started running and in any case the executive in the field is strictly forbidden to go to the aid of anyone at all because he'd reveal his presence and that's what they'll sometimes go for, attacking one of the support people to bring the shadow out. It was the only thing about this killing that gave me any comfort: they couldn't have known I was anywhere in the environment or they would have worked more slowly on him to give me time to get there.
What was his name, then, and where was he from and who would tell her? One of the personnel staff, a woman, they did it better, I'm sorry, love, but there's some bad news about Bob, the tyres whimpering under the brakes and the doors flying open and the rush of feet and then death in the warm Miami night.
He'd tried to run, I'd seen that much, turned and tried to get clear somehow because the support people don't carry arms and there were two of them and they were quick, very quick.
I checked the three mirrors again, the one inside and the two others; I'd been checking them at short intervals since I'd passed the limo and made a square and put the Trans Am in the shadows of trees on the far side of the street, and the nerves were raw now because of the death. They weren't in any kind of intelligence, these people; their methods were too direct and they had no interest at all in pulling one of us in for interrogation; they went straight for the kill.
I would have to telephone as soon as I could, to report what those snivelling creeps in Records would call a terminal incident and to warn Ferris that 1330 West Riverside was no longer surveilled. It looked like a one-man station and there wouldn't be a relief until eight in the morning because this was the graveyard shift, and not thus named for nothing.
He'd been nearer the house than I was, and on foot. No blame to anyone, except possibly to himself; I'd no means of knowing whether he'd made some kind of mistake. Put it into the computer and you'd come up with fifty recommendations for doing a surveillance job on foot: you're faster, more mobile, less easily seen, so forth, and fifty recommendations for doing it with a car: you've got permanent cover and armour plating and even though a car makes a bigger profile than a man it attracts less attention parked in a street than a man on foot just standing, doing nothing.
The armour plating hadn't done me any good on the quay but if there's a long shot set up for you it doesn't much matter what you're doing, you're in the cross-hairs and that's it. They could do the same thing again without leaving the house, any second from now, but the risk was very slight because no one had come close enough to see me, to recognise me. I was only running one calculated risk and that too was low: they were keeping surveillance on the street from the house as a matter of routine, and that was how they'd picked up the Bureau man just now; and they might have noticed this dark blue Trans Am pulling in to the kerb and staying there with no one getting out.
Fingers on the ignition key.
They could in point of fact be watching me now as I sat here, with night-lenses and a tripod, beginning to wonder why the pale blur of the driver's face was still behind the windscreen after twenty minutes; they could in point of fact have sent a man out to check on me, but he would double and approach from behind and he couldn't stay out of the mirrors.
Turning the key, a spasm along the nerves in the right arm, from the fingers to the shoulder, and the odd sensation of the mind dipping away from reality, nothing dramatic, just dipping away, but don't start the car for God's sake, they'll pick up the sound, turning the key but slowly, the mind working on the muscles with its subtle, omnipotent demands, the message perfectly clear: You will go to 1330 West Riverside Way at any time before midnight. Not later than that.
Turn the key and wait for the bang of the starter dog against the flywheel and the beat of the engine, turn the key, with half the mind issuing its unquestionable orders and half swinging full-circle in a dizzying attempt to get control, full control.
Logic startled me, saved me. It's gone midnight.No later than midnight, they said.
The hand, the fingers coming away, and for a little while a sickening wave of fright bearing down, it almost happened, they've still got control of you, there's nothing you can do to -
Bullshit.
Yes, let us be forthright about this. Sat up straighter, both hands crossed on my lap, the moment over, the danger done with. Because listen, it was only last night when I was one block from here, as close as one block, and fighting for survival, reeling against the telephone box and forcing a quarter in, hunched like a pariah dog – I need – Yes, you need? – I need to debrief – Where are you? – 1200 block and West Riverside Way. Hurry – for God's sake hurry.
The wave of fright bearing down, bearing away, leaving me with my hands cold in the warmth of the night, my breath steadying. Progress. Progress, you understand. Report to Ferris, briefly and with confidence: Lingering effects of the subliminal programming now diminished; no major problem in combating.
12:47.
Man in the mirror.
I'm sorry, Mr Keyes. It's something I'm unable to pass up. Her phraseology formal, correct; that was her metier. She'd sounded surprised but didn't hesitate – yes, she'd be there in fifteen minutes.
Was there now.
All you have to do is buy one man. The president. But first you have to -
First you have to what?
The man was coming down the sidewalk on the side of the street where I was parked. He was alone and walking steadily, his size increasing in the mirror as I watched.
Question: what had turned Proctor? He'd been dug deep in the ground on allied territory, an established sleeper nursing his wounds, a soft job, a steady job. Had he got bored? Some of us get bored; we work for a bureaucracy and that can drive us straight up the wall. But I didn't think he'd got bored, Proctor. It had been something much more critical than that. He'd done good work for the Sacred Bull, gone out on some of the major missions and come back with honours, put his life on the line time and again and got away with it, and in this he wasn't dissimilar to me. Then what had changed him, turned him? He wasn't a man to fall for the usual male chauvinist toys – money, power, women. He liked women, yes, but he didn't lack their company – Kim, Erica, Monique, perhaps others, of course others.