Her eyes lifted to the TelePromTer, her attitude serious, informed. I could have given it to her word for word, so when had she written it? I would have to ask her; it could be important, the timing. And there she was.
Coming out of the house on the opposite side of the street. At this distance I couldn't see her face clearly and in any case she was now wearing dark glasses and a headscarf; but I know people by their walk and this was Erica Cambridge, crossing the sidewalk under the magnolia tree to the limousine at the kerb, her bodyguard with her and another man, short, deftly moving, also with dark glasses on, ushering her into the car and getting in after her. Chauffeur and bodyguard to the front, the doors slamming and the lights coming on.
12:56.
The moon in its third quarter, lowering across the heights of the city; a helicopter's lights tracing a path along the east horizon over the sea; the masts of yachts riding on calm water in the lamplit marina; the smell of seaweed that had been torn by the hurricane and brought to the surface to lie rotting under the day-long sun.
I stopped short of the quay, finding shadow. The limousine was nearer the row of power boats, the engine idling for a moment and then dying away. The bodyguard got out first, scanning and moving a little away from the car and standing with his back to it, containing the environment. Then the chauffeur got out and opened a rear door and there was Cambridge again, and the short man, a Japanese, both of them still with dark glasses on. He touched her elbow and they moved quickly across the flagstones to the first boat in the marina, a motor launch with the crew in white ducks and a name at the stern in gold letters: Contessa. Cambridge and the Japanese were handed aboard with a lot of courtesy, a flurry of salutes. They didn't move into the cabin but stood waiting near the rail, turning to face the quay.
The chauffeur and bodyguard had got back into the Lincoln and now it turned and headed towards the ramp and the street. At first I thought it was coming back, but this car was smaller, a black sedan, slowing and stopping just beyond the motor launch. Four men got out the moment the wheels had stopped rolling; they all faced the way they had come, towards the street, two of them buttoning their dark blue jackets, tugging at them, not speaking to each other, watching the ramp. The limousine came past me less than fifty feet away; I turned my head to darken the image as a matter of routine. As it rolled to a stop by the launch three men got out, the driver and two bodyguards, and a third car came down the ramp and took up station behind the limo, four men getting out and scanning immediately, all well-trained, well-drilled.
The chauffeur was standing at the rear door of the limousine and another man climbed out, tall, slightly stooping, bareheaded, dark glasses, moving at once to the motor launch as the crew snapped into the salute. I recognised him from the photographs that were all over the town: Senator Mathieson Judd, the Republican candidate for the presidency.
Chapter 11: NICKO
'Get your fuckin' ass outa here right now or you'll get your fuckin' brains blown all over the place, you know what I mean?'
Black, heavy-barrelled Suzuki, an inch from my face.
He smelled of chewing-gum.
'Which way?' I asked him.
The quay was narrow here; this was more than a mile from the boat marina; there were three other cars standing further along towards the warehouses, figures near them, the glow of a cigarette in the shadows thrown by the cranes.
'Turn around. Make a U-turn. C'mon now!'
A jerk of the big gun. Lights came behind me and I stopped halfway through the turn. An engine idling.
'Who's he?'
'Just a guy.'
'What's he doing here?'
'Gettin' his ass out.'
Slam of a car door, footsteps. I left both hands on the wheel in plain sight. One of the men standing by the cars further along the quay broke away and started walking towards us, dropping his cigarette, head up, alerted.
Blinding light in my eyes – 'Turn this way – this way!'
Couldn't see a thing, just the dazzling white fire of the light.
'Who are you?'
'Charlie Smith.'
'What're you doing here?'
'I'm looking for the marina.'
'There's ten thousand marinas in this place. Listen, I've seen you before somewhere.'
I shut my eyes against the glare.
'How long's he been here?' To the other man, the black.
'Listen, I'm doin' my job, man, I told him to get his ass -'
'Jesus, I think I know.'
The glare blacked out, leaving an after-light under my lids. I'd taken this route because there weren't so many overhead lamps; the streets up there were day-bright and my face was known to a few people, among them the man who'd had me in his sights yesterday.
'Is this you?'
Holding a black-and-white photograph, shining the torch on it.
'No.'
'I think it's you.' The light dazzling again as he moved it.
'I know my own face.'
'Goddamn,' he said 'this is you.'
Said nothing. These weren't intelligence people; I'd simply walked into some kind of drug-trade situation. But they had my photograph.
'Hold him there, Roget.'
'Okay,' The Suzuki swung up again. 'Cut them lights, an' the motor. C'mon.'
It was the other man I watched, the white man. He was walking down to the group of cars, his gait busy, energised. He'd sounded pleased when he'd looked at the photograph, as if it were something to eat: he was a fat man, with small delicate hands for picking currants out of cake.
I started thinking about egress, about, yes, getting my ass out of here, but the front of the Trans Am was pointing straight at the water between the rusting mass of a dredger and a timber jetty and even if they let me go it would take a couple of bites with the wheel to get me facing the other way and if they'd wanted me in a rat trap they couldn't have done a better job.
Tomorrow,' I told Ferris on the phone, and he'd agreed: I hadn't got anything urgent to debrief tonight and I wanted some sleep. 'But you've lost one of your people.'
'Lost?'
The connection wasn't too good; the phone box had taken a battering and the armoured cord was frayed. I spelled it out for him and his voice was icy when he spoke again.
'I didn't realise we'd invited that much attention.'
There was the long shot,' I said.
'But that had a specific target. Tonight it was over-reaction.''
I knew what he meant. In the course of intelligence operations we don't kill off the infantry just for being there; a beating-up as a warning would have been the normal response. But these people weren't in government-style intelligence, and that made it even more dangerous because they behaved unpredictably and there weren't any rules.
'You'll need to be very careful,' I told Ferris, 'if you're going to replace that man.'
Telling him his job I suppose because he just said, 'What about Erica Cambridge?'
'I'll give you a replay tomorrow, but you should know that she went aboard a motor-boat tonight in the company of a Japanese from 1330 Riverside. And Senator Judd.'
Silence, then: 'Name of the boat?'
'Contessa.'
'That's a cutter. The Contessa is a 2,000 ton yacht anchored in the Bay.' I think he was going to say more about it but changed his mind. 'We're getting a lot of information in with a direct bearing on Barracuda. I'll brief you tomorrow.'
Over and out. He wouldn't sleep well for the rest of the night, with a death on his hands. He'd feel responsible, but more than that, it would change his whole approach to the running of the mission: he couldn't afford to deploy support for the executive or even passive surveillance people in these streets without risking their lives, and he wouldn't be prepared to do that.