Quiller Barracuda

'Yes.'

'What if I kept Fisher on and sent him to Norfolk?'

'I'd go to Miami.'

'I have your word on that?'

'Yes.'

I looked in on Holmes before I left the building.

'He's going to keep Fisher on,' I said.

In a moment, 'Yes. He told me this morning. I'm sorry I couldn't say anything – for some reason he put me under strict hush.'

Chapter 2: MONCK

'Gin?'

'Just some tonic.'

Glass crashed again, musically.

'Good flight?'

'Bit bumpy coming in.'

'I'm not surprised.' He gave me the tonic. 'There's still a bit of turbulence about.' Baggy alpaca jacket and trousers, cracked suede shoes worn to a shine along the sides, fifty, I suppose, thin silver hair across a peeling scalp, name of Monck. 'Lost my boat.'

'I'm sorry.' I'd seen litter across the bay as we'd come into the approach, two or three yachts wallowing in the dark sea, capsized. Maria, the captain had told us, was approaching the Florida coast by now and well out of our way, but she'd done some damage, with an estimated death toll of fifty.

'Good timing,' Monck said, 'on your part,' and gave a slow winning smile. 'Cheers.'

More glass felclass="underline" a huge Bahamian was at the top of a ladder clearing away the smashed window panes, a trickle of blood down one arm, which I didn't think he'd noticed.

'You really mean she was a write-off?'

'What?'

'Your boat.'

'Oh. Pretty well. Salvage some of the interior teak and brass and so on, perhaps. Pretty Polly.' A quick brave smile. 'Long may she sail the Elysian seas, what? Let's go and sit over there.' We were in a kind of conservatory where they'd put a bamboo bar and filled the rest of the place with huge palms and hibiscus and birds-of-paradise. Some of the floor was still flooded where the coloured tiles had broken over the years, leaving hollows.

Wicker creaked under us, and Monck balanced his drink on a leaning stool. He'd met me at the airport and brought me here in a clapped-out Austin, no air-conditioning, any more than there was in this place.

'How long do you think you'll be here?'

'A few days.'

'You're going to see Proctor, I believe.'

'Yes.' I hadn't been formally briefed in London but Croder had said that Monck was persona grata and would give me any help I needed.

'Then you'll be more than a few days. He's back in Florida. You just missed him – he was on the last plane out before they stopped traffic because of the hurricane.'

'Where's his base, here or -?'

'Miami. He shuttles a bit; quite a few people do. Judd was here last week; he's got a place. Have you studied Judd?'

'No, if you mean the senator.'

'Don't worry,' he said, and got a crumpled packet of cigars out of his jacket. 'You're not politically inclined, as I know. Proctor is, at least he is now, and that's the main problem.' He scraped a match. 'You can consider this as interim briefing, you understand, filling you in a bit before the other people arrive.'

His face was pink in the light of the flame; the lamps weren't on in here yet and the place looked like a jungle, the plants beginning to crowd in as the dying sun fired the walls and windows.

'Other people?'

Monck let smoke trickle out of his mouth, watching the huge man on the ladder. 'You'll be taking a look at Proctor, but it won't stop there. You didn't bring much baggage, but you can do a little shopping when you've the time.' He faced me suddenly, the wickerwork creaking, his faded blue eyes resting quietly on mine. 'I'm fully conversant with your record, and it must have occurred to you that Mr Croder wouldn't lightly toss you the chore of checking on a sleeper who's started sending in funny signals.'

This man, for all his baggy suit and thinning hair, wasn't coming across as a semi-retired staffer put out to grass in the dependencies. For one thing I knew the tone: he was telling me precisely what he wanted me to know and that was all, and he answered only those questions that called for it.

But I decided to take him head-on: 'Did Bureau One want me out here?'

The big overhead fans sent the smoke streaming away on the sticky air. His eyes were still on me, and when he was ready he said, 'Surely Mr Croder told you.'

'At the time, I wasn't ready to listen.'

Softly, 'Then I hope you're listening now.'

Glass crashed again and it sent a flicker along the nerves. It hadn't been bullshit, then, on Croder's part: the head of the Bureau had told his Chief of Signals to send this particular executive out here and I hadn't believed it because there wasn't even a mission on the board, but Monck had spelt it out for me a minute ago: You'll be taking a look at Proctor, but it won't stop there.

But Croder must have known that the mention of Bureau One would have got me out of London with no trouble at all – he hadn't needed to use Fisher like that.

'You say it won't stop,' I told Monck, 'at Proctor. But are we talking about an actual mission?'

He looked away, picking a bit of cigar-leaf off his lip and studying it with abstract care. A plump woman came through the doorway with her arms on her hips.

'Justin! You come on down from there, I need your he'p in the kitchen, man! Now you jus' come on down!'

'This stuff gonna fall on people's heads!'

'Ne' mind about they heads, they have to watch out for theyselves. You c'm'on down now, y'hear me?'

Monck didn't say anything until the huge man had got down the ladder and gone out. 'An actual mission… well I'm not sure, you see. My job -' he faced me again with a sudden swing of his head – 'is to keep you out here in the Caribbean until such time as things develop. Until we know where best to deploy you. Does that -?' He waited.

'Not really.'

'I didn't think so.' Shifting his weight in the chair, "I'll put it like this. Vibrations have been coming out of this region over the past few months and they've started to reach London. All departments have been working into the night for a long time now, especially Signals and Data Analysis and of course Codes and Cyphers. At first it had the look of a major narcotics development, understandable in this area; and then we thought it was something political involving Fidel Castro – again understandable, given the geography.' He dropped ash, watching it blacken on the wet tiles. 'We still don't know much, but we know differently. What it does concern is the upcoming American election, in which of course Senator Mathieson Judd is actively engaged. It also concerns the balance of power between East and West as it exists at the present time, which is precariously. So we're talking about something rather more than the requirements of a mission.' His faded blue eyes still on me, 'Let me put it this way. If the extent of things proves as far-reaching as we've begun to believe, I shall find it difficult to sleep soundly in my bed.'

Black girl, extremely pretty, more than that, vibrant, demanding male attention, petite in a silk dress that you could have hidden in one hand, watching me as I came in, so that I hardly noticed him in the shadows between the hanging brass lanterns, noticed him only when he moved slightly. I'd rung the bell and he'd called out for me to come in; they were standing quite a few feet apart, as if they'd been talking but not intimately.

'Here you are,' said Proctor, as if he hadn't quite expected me to come, though I'd phoned him ten minutes ago from the hotel.

I would talk to him, Monck had said at the airport in Nassau, with extreme caution. It's not out of the question that he's been turned.

And was wired, or had a bug running.

The door swung shut behind me; it was probably on a spring, though I hadn't felt it; there was no draught; the air in Miami tonight was deathly stilclass="underline" they said we were in the eye of the hurricane, the eye of Maria, though it had been downgraded to a storm after blowing itself out across the ocean.