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.
I would find out who had turned him when I found him. They were probably in that house over there with its gracious old-world balconies and wrought iron gates. We already thought we knew how they had changed him: by some kind of subliminal programming, and the thing that made me really frightened was that I'd been exposed to the same influence and felt its insidious power, the subtle, devouring power of the worm in the apple.
And might be exposed again.
His footsteps now audible, his humped body moving into the chrome rim of the mirror. My driving window was down but the one on the passenger's side was closed, and I could see him more clearly than he could see me because the facia was dark and the street lamps overhead were throwing reflections on the outside of the glass.
His dark figure came into the edge of the vision field and then the details began to clear; he walked with his head down and his hands in his pockets, his gait tipping him forward a little as if he were being pushed along, away from somewhere he wanted to be or towards some place where he didn't want to go -
I didn't move. With my head at this angle I could see all I needed to see but there wouldn't be anything I could do if he turned within the next second and smashed the window in and fired and kept on firing. I didn't think he would do that. I thought that one day, perhaps tomorrow, in a few hours, they would do that, or something like that, because they knew by now that their first attempt had drawn blank, walking on, he was walking on, and they would try again. But not tonight, or not, at least, at the present moment because he didn't turn to look into the car, didn't know I was here, knew only that he was unable to do more than keep moving along the sidewalk, pushed steadily from behind towards an undesired destination, his humped body arched forward and his head down, a lone unwilling traveller in the night.
And my well-loved and unwitting friend, because he had not in fact come to smash the window in and fire and go on – but there'd been no risk of that – oh really well how do you bloody well know – you said yourself there was no – it doesn't matter what I say, for Christ's sake, it's what I think, it's what the fear thinks, it's always like this when there's a threat to life, don't you understand?
Relax, yes indeed, relax, the moment is over and all is well, we live on our nerves, for God's sake give us a break.
But Governor Anderson's theme is that there's so much wrong with America after the Republican four-year term that we need major changes, whereas Senator Judd's theme is reassuring – the country is in good shape.