Quiller Barracuda

The swell lifted us again and I checked the sailing yacht. It hadn't moved. It was nearly sundown, and I said, 'Are you heading back to port after they've taken me off?'

'Yes. I've got three morning lessons, the first one at six.'

'Is this boat faster than that one over there?'

'Quietly she said, 'I can look after myself, Richard.'

'Do you keep a gun on board?'

'Of course.' She dropped the spliced rope and leaned back, stretching, her slight breasts touched by the light of the setting sun. 'It's rather nice,' she said. 'You know I've played about with bombs and done some undercover work against the Mafia and you've seen what I do with sharks, but you still seem to think of me as a woman, and in need of protection. I like that.'

'Dates me, I suppose.'

'No. Becomes you.'

'We're going to Nassau,' Ferris said, 'to meet Monck and a few other people.'

He was watching me steadily with his pale champagne-coloured eyes, watching for nerves, fatigue, signs of disorientation. I'd told him I'd been in that wreckage down there. We'd seen the Mafia boat hanging from a crane at the quayside when we'd taken off.

Toufexis would assume I'd been killed with the others because no one had seen me come ashore, but it was risky to rely on that because of the surveillance they'd mounted on the tug out there: I could have been recognised. I'd never seen such tight security and for once I was glad of it. Two of the Bureau people had picked me up at sea in a converted motor torpedo boat at nightfall and got me from the harbour to the airport in a short-bodied limo with tinted windows and brought it across the tarmac and right up to the Cessna 500 Citation and I didn't see Ferris until I went aboard.

'When did you eat last?'

'A couple of hours ago.'

'Sleep?'

'I caught up.'

'Injuries?'

'Minor.'

'Morale?'

'Very good.'

Because I'd got the diary from Nicko's wallet, and it could give us access to Proctor. I gave it to Ferris and he began peeling the pages apart: it had got soaked and dried again.

'A Mafia type used it when he phoned Proctor.'

'He got the number from it? Proctor's?'

'Or a number where Proctor was, at the time.'

He went through the pages, taking care. Some of the ink had run. Light spread against the cabin roof as we banked over the city's brilliance.

'G.R.P.,' Ferris said, and snapped his belt open and got out of his seat.

'Are you going to use the phone?' I asked him.

'Yes.'

'Then do me a favour. I want some protection for Kim Harvester – can you manage that? Two men?'

'When?'

He didn't ask why, because that could wait. And he didn't cavil. It would mean diverting the services of two men in shifts round the clock and London would want a very good reason indeed and Ferris knew that and he'd have to take the responsibility, and this was one of the things I liked about him: he trusted the man he was running and he didn't ask questions. That little bastard Loman would have wanted forms in triplicate sent from London with a ten-sheet questionnaire and a request for notarisation and God knew how I could ever persuade him to push all that lot past his sphincter muscles.

'As soon as you can arrange it,' I told Ferris.

'Two men, taking shifts?'

'Yes. And they'll need a boat available. Could they use the MTB?'

'Yes.'

'She's bringing the tug in to port early tonight; she would have started back as soon as I was taken off. Berth 19, at the place where they shot me up. Decent of you.'

He went forward into the cockpit and I loosened the laces of my shoes because they'd shrunk a bit when they'd dried out and I'd have to get another pair as soon as I could, because if your feet aren't absolutely comfortable it can take the edge off your speed at a run and that can be fatal if you're pushing things.

Ferris came back. 'I didn't phone that number direct. I'm having it checked for the address.'

'The odds are,' I said, 'that it's 1330 Riverside.'

'It could be anywhere.'

Point taken. The executive tends to get tunnel vision the deeper he goes into the mission, while his director in the field can keep a more open perspective and see things the shadow can miss.

'I haven't,' I said in a moment, 'picked up any more instructions.'

I'd seen it in his eyes when I'd mentioned Riverside. He didn't look relieved. He didn't necessarily believe me. I could have had further subliminal instructions piped into me with an injunction to keep them secret.

He didn't say anything.

'I'm fairly certain,' I told him, 'that there's nothing electronic on board Harvester's boat. She didn't have any more to say about Mathieson Judd; I checked her for that and she just gave me a repetition of what she'd given me before.' He pulled out a mini-recorder and pressed a button. Debriefing had started. 'So she'd picked up that bit at Proctor's – it was the same thing I'd picked up myself when I went there that night. The reason I want her protected is that they're still surveilling the boat and they might make a snatch and force her to give them all the information she'd got about me. None of it's vital but I don't want her to go through interrogation at the hands of people like that.'

In a moment he said without looking at me, 'What's the personal relationship at this point between you and Harvester?'

'None of your bloody business.'

He hesitated a fraction and then pressed rewind and play and got the tape back to hands of people like that and reset for record.

'You ought to know I don't let personal relationships cloud my judgement during a mission.'

'Except for the man you wiped out in the Underground three -'

'That wasn't during a mission. Look -' I hitched round in my seat to face him – 'if you want to make an issue of my relationship with -'

'I don't,' he said, and his eyes stopped me dead.

'What time do we get in?' Making bloody conversation, you notice, to bring the tension down. What annoyed me was that you can't ever win a point with this man. The way I'd reacted to his question about Harvester had told him precisely what he wanted to know.

'Seven,' he said, 'give or take a few minutes.' In the same tone, 'How close did you come to buying it, in the Mafia boat?'

'Oh for Christ's sake, I got my nerve back hours ago.'

Easy, now. You see, my good friend, what I mean? He'd got his answer. I had not got my nerve back hours ago, despite Kim's tender ministrations.

'Do you feel like a little more debriefing?'

'Of course.'

He pressed for record again and I told him about the execution thing on the Mafia boat, naming names and getting the timing right as close as I could remember.

This woman Monique,' Ferris said at last. 'What about her?'

'I don't know. She was with Proctor that night when I went to his place but we didn't say anything more than hello and goodbye – he made it clear he wanted to be alone for the meeting. But on the quay last night she did her best to convince Nicko he'd got the wrong man. Did her very best.'

'Check on the woman Monique,' Ferris said into the mike. To me: 'So you came out of it with the diary. Anything else?'

'My life.' Bridling again, quick to anger.

'It's well understood,' he said courteously, 'that the diary could locate Proctor for us. It's understood that even if you'd brought nothing out of the incident, the life of the executive for Barracuda is of inestimable value. We -'

'You've got Purdom,' I said, 'standing by.' Came out with it very fast and the tone was bitter and the instant it was over I was appalled, because the bloody thing was still running and there was the loud, clear and irretractable record of my hitherto hidden fear: that Purdom had been brought in to follow the mission in the background in case I bought it and he had to take over.