'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.
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.