'What is he going to test me for?'
'Drugs.' Ferris watched me steadily. There was a chandelier over the desk and that was where I was facing.
'Can we have that thing out? Bloody bright. What sort of drugs?'
Ferris turned his head and one of the other people got out of his chair and went to the wall switch. 'Oh,' Ferris said, 'any sort, really. We'll come to that.'
He looked less cold now in the softer light from the wall lamps, less hostile. So we will come to that, will we? Meant, I suppose, that I'd been behaving a bit oddly of late. Damn his eyes, I'd nearly got my head shot off, enough to shake anyone up.
The man sat down again and I said to Ferris, 'Who are these people?'
'Upjohn,' he said, turning his head again. 'And Purdom.'
'I need to know more than that.' Said it with an edge. The director in the field calls the shots at every phase of the mission but he is also there to succour, support and sustain the executive, who may indeed look like a snotty-nosed little ferret down in the catacombs but who is nevertheless the only man who can bring the mission home, and when I'm brought into a room to debrief and there are total strangers hanging around I want to know who they bloody well are, if you'll be so kind.
'Upjohn,' Ferris said, 'is a sleeper here. He knew Proctor, though not well. It's possible that he can help us find him, if he listens to the debriefing. Unless you object.'
A small man, Upjohn, with a spotty skin and a slanting eye and a pucker in the face for a mouth, terrible haircut, stuck up like bristles, the kind who can surprise you, former lieutenant-colonel in the special services or something like that.
'I don't object,' I said.
Thank you. Purdom,' Ferris said evenly, 'is here from London to get experience in the field.'
I jerked my head to look at the man, saw red suddenly – 'Experience in the what? You were in China, weren't you, on Pagoda? You did Mirage, didn't you, for that bastard Loman in Morocco? Jesus Christ, what sort of experience - '
Watch it.
It mustn't happen a third time. This was the last thought I wanted to put into their heads – that I couldn't keep my control.
Silence opening like a grave.
Then Ferris said gently, 'Experience in the United States. He hasn't worked here.'
Of course. Entirely reasonable. But the thought was still there, chilling the nerves. I'd heard of Purdom, seen him in the Caff now and then, seen his name on some of the boards, certainly the board for Pagoda and the one for Mirage and possibly others: he was one of the high-echelon shadows and no one had sent him out here from London just to 'get experience'.
Looking at the wall, not at me, the wall or the door or whatever was there behind me, a dark man, big-boned, his body hunched in the chair, thick hands folded and his legs crossed, almost twisted together, a quietly-ticking bomb with some clothes round it and some hair on top, an exaggeration, of course, but you get the picture – it was his nerves I was picking up on, his held-in energy. I watched him for a moment, taking him in, not wanting to look at Ferris because if I looked at Ferris I was liable to put it straight into words, get it over with.
Is Purdom out here to replace me?
Someone was speaking, his voice very soft, reaching me as if from a distance. It was Ferris. 'You're among friends, Quiller.'
He didn't know what he was saying because he hadn't been there in London when that bastard Loman had said exactly the same thing: You're among friends.
Friends? Loman had flinched. It was the time when they were trying to get me to think twice about resigning because they'd put that bloody bomb under the driving seat of that truck in Murmansk, deciding that I was expendable. I still couldn't trust these people.
Not even Ferris?
'Am I?' Among friends.
'But of course.' His voice still gentle as he watched me with his pale honey-coloured eyes. I'd have to think, you know, think a little more carefully, because this man had saved my skin so many times – Berlin, Hong Kong, Murmansk – where other people would have left me to rot in the red sector and vouchsafed their sleep with a lie. Communications compromised, opposition in control, executive unreachable…
Trust, then, perhaps, this one man among them all. Because, in any case, if you can't trust your own director in the field you're dead. I'd proved that in Northlight: I hadn't been able to trust Fane and I'd come close to getting blown into Christendom in that truck.
'All right,' I said, heard myself saying, meaning all right, I was ready to believe I was among friends. 'I'm a bit tired, that's all.'
'Of course.' His voice still gentle. 'And there's a bit of delayed shock hanging around, according to Greenspan.'
'Possibly.'
'So you might not feel quite ready for debriefing.' Paused, giving me a chance to say no, not quite ready. I said nothing. 'But if you're willing, we could make some progress. London's a tiny bit fidgety.'
'Why?'
In a moment, 'First Proctor was missing. Then you.'
I sank into the chair, letting the muscles go, trying to centre. It wasn't going to be easy. 'You sent signals?'
'I had to. I didn't know where you were.'
'It was only for a short – ' and left it. I didn't remember how long it had been, didn't want to.
'I need to know,' Ferris said, 'why you left the hotel covertly.'
'I wanted to walk for a bit, without a whole troop of people around me. You know I hate support.'
The other two were looking at me now; I'd noticed their heads turn, the light catching their eyes. They shouldn't watch me. It made me nervous. Ferris ought to tell them not to watch me. He was unzipping a flat pigskin briefcase and getting a book out, a ballpoint from his pocket, opening the book.
He asked me: 'To walk where?'
'Oh, just around, for the exercise.'
1330 West Riverside -
'You were shot at,' Ferris said, 'and were therefore revealed as a target for the opposition, whose intention it was to kill. Having been recognised, then, and set up as that target, you obviously realised that this town has become a red sector for you.' A beat. 'Yet you went for a walk in the open street, "for the exercise".'
I got out of the chair and turned my back on him because it was the only way I could talk to him without letting him see my eyes. 'Is this a debriefing, for Christ's sake, or an inquisition?' Wheeled on him, anger in the eyes now and I wanted him to see it. 'You don't consider that the executive hand-picked by Bureau One himself for this mission isn't capable of deciding whether he can safely walk in the bloody streets or not?' Folded my arms, wrong posture because defensive but too late to change it, not one of these bastards looking at me, all looking down or into the middle distance, embarrassed perhaps because my voice was hitting back from the glass panels of the display case and the lacquered Chinese screen in short-range echoes, shouting, you might call it, you might call it that. 'I'd been cooped up in that stinking hotel for hours on end and I was still full of adrenaline from the lark on the quay and I wanted some exercise, yes, and I didn't want half a regiment keeping me under mobile surveillance because it could have attracted attention.' Tried to keep my voice under control, failed. 'I think that makes sense but if you think I'm out of my mind then you'd better send for your bloody shrink.'
Watching me now, Ferris was watching me.
'Why don't you come and sit down? You'll feel more comfortable.' Turning his head to the man on his left, Johnson, no, Upjohn, saying quietly, 'See if he'd mind joining us for a few minutes.'