Quiller Barracuda

The thing is, I'd be very careful with Mr Croder.

A little too late for that.

He'd offered me a chair when I'd come in, how was I, so forth, the niceties, he's not an unmannered man, but I decided to get the Fisher thing over before he told me why he wanted to see me, told him I was worried and asked him if he'd let me look after the new recruit for a day or two, didn't, as you may have noticed, go down at all well.

'Look, I'm not talking about giving him charity. He did a good job out there -'

'And came to pieces the moment he got back – I tell you this is not a refuge for burnt-out apprentices.'

'That's not burn-out, it's delayed shock. I've been through it myself -'

'And so have I -' swinging back to face me with his head down and his eyes hooded – 'and so have I,' his artificial hand catching the light.

'Then you can understand -'

'But I did not go to pieces as soon as I came home.' Stood with his eyes on me, black, glittering, green-flecked with the reflection of the lamp.

'Look, they took away his identity but he'll get it back in time. The real -' '

'You will please -' '

'The real problem is guilt because he broke and spoke and he can't live with himself unless he's given a chance to atone. Send him to Norfolk for a couple of weeks, run him through the survival course and then run him through it again, tell them to flay him alive. He's desperate for punishment and until he gets it he won't be able to find his self-esteem and if you don't do it he'll do it on his own – he's tried the window trick already and he'll try it again. But if -' '

That is self-pity -' '

'It's self-disgust but if you'll give him a chance he'll make a first class shadow executive and God knows they're rare enough. It's not as if -' '

He was looking at his watch and I turned and went to the door and pulled it open.

'Quiller.'

I looked back at him.

'You know Proctor, don't you?'

Conversational tone.

'Czardas?'

'Yes.'

'He did a couple with me.'

'So you know him rather well.'

I didn't think he wanted an answer; if you go through a couple of major ones you know your contact in the field rather well, yes.

There were some people coming along the passage and a woman's voice said, 'I think someone's in there with him' and Croder said, 'You'd oblige me by closing the door and sitting down, if you've got a moment.'

Oh Jesus Christ he was in a towering rage but all you could hear were the words, give him that much, he knew how to get control. What he was really saying was that if I didn't come back and sit down in the next five seconds flat he'd hit the second telephone from the left and blast me straight into six months suspended operations and leave me to rot.

But that wasn't why I pushed the door shut. I didn't think we'd finished with the Fisher thing.

'Thank you. Proctor has been doing sleeper in Florida for the past eighteen months.'

'I didn't know.' I thought he'd been laid off, because Czardas had left him with a 9mm slug behind the heart they couldn't get at – he'd caught a side shot at Ferihegy Airport in Budapest when he was taking off in a Partenavia P.68 Victor with half the Defence Ministry's ultra-classified files and one of their younger secretaries on board.

'He's very good,' Croder said, and picked up a phone that had started ringing. 'No later than eighteen hundred hours, and they are not to be armed -that's very important.' He put the phone down. 'He's been sending exemplary material through our routine-grade lines without cessation except for periods of leave, when Hayes took over. But in the last few weeks his signals have – Proctor's, that is – his signals have taken a slightly strange turn. Moreover, he's begun sending material through the diplomatic bag.'

Verboten, in the absence of exceptional circumstances. I didn't say anything.

'I've decided not to call him in for investigation because I believe it's already too late for that. There was a certain amount of delay before I was consulted.' Below in the street a bus throttled up, making a sound just like the rolling of heads. 'It might also seem wise to leave Proctor to go on as he's going, and send someone out there to take a look at things without alerting him. I thought of asking you, because you know the man rather well and there's nothing we can offer you at the moment, unless Krinsley's operation in Dakar comes unstuck, which is unlikely.'

'What's he doing?'

'But then,' Croder said, 'Africa's not your preferred field, is it?'

'It's time the whites got out of there and left it to the natives. It's their land.'

A phone rang again and he picked it up; it wasn't the red one. 'Switch calls to Costain.' I thought that was interesting, considering the Proctor thing didn't sound terribly urgent. And there was another thing: I wouldn't have thought the Chief of Signals would have been asked to send out a top-echelon shadow executive to the United States to check out a sleeper with a screw loose. But I didn't give it a lot of attention because I was coming down from the anger about Fisher and the adrenalin was washing around and leaving the system sour, a taste in the mouth.

'Have you been there before? Miami?'

I said I hadn't.

'Not unpleasant, this time of the year.'

'It's too risky.'

'In what way?'

'I mean I could be out there nursing Proctor and you could have a mission come onto the board and you'd give it to someone else. And I need one.'

'I understand that.' He looked down. Carefully: 'You are normally less sensitive.'

Let it go. 'I'm down for the next one in, and I've got to be here. I'm on standby.' He couldn't do anything about that; it's recognised that if they leave a shadow too long with nothing to do he's going to claw the wallpaper off.

There might be time,' Croder said, 'to call you in from Miami.' Looking up, 'I would consider it a personal favour, if you'd agree to take this on.'

'I'd like to oblige.' I don't take charm from a vampire.

His expression didn't change. 'It was Mr Shepley, I should perhaps tell you, who asked me to send someone out.'

Bullshit. Shepley was Bureau One, king of kings and host of hosts, and he wouldn't give his Chief of Signals a thing like this to play with when there were five missions running on the boards. I suppose he knew I was giving him some bullshit too: I certainly didn't want to be way out there in the States when a new mission came up in London because I couldn't trust them to call me in, but I could ask for a formal guarantee and expect to get it. But I wasn't going to ask, because it was giving me a certain amount of dark joy to keep on saying no to the man, considering he wouldn't give me even a minute of his time on the Fisher thing.

'I'm sorry,' I said. 'I don't want to leave London.'

'You make it difficult, Quiller,' hooded eyes brooding on my face in the greenish light of the lamp.

'With regret.' Politesse for tough shit.

'I could of course require your acquiesence.' For require read order, but as I say he's not unmannered.

'Of course.'

'But I would prefer to persuade you.' Dark head sinking lower onto his shoulders, I could see the feathers.

'There's no chance,' I said.

He pulled a drawer open and dropped some papers onto the desk, some kind of forms on top, I think. Then he reached for a pen. To put it formally, then, you decline to undertake this assignment, despite my repeated request?'