Quiller Barracuda

Ferris was making notes again. Croder asked me: 'How did she react to that?'

'She wanted a meeting with him before we got him out, and I used that as a trade-off -'

'Yes, you guaranteed she should see him, provided she helped you find him. Perhaps it's not important, but do you feel it's a guarantee we should keep?'

'Ethically?'

'Yes.'

'Your ethics might not be mine. I've been trained to play it rough. But a meeting between those two, suitably bugged, would probably give you a lot of information. If we can find him.'

I suppose Ferris was making those notes for Purdom, keeping the bastard briefed, ready to take my place. Over my dead body. Joke.

'If we can find him,' Monck said, 'yes.' He was watching me steadily. 'What do you think the chances are? It would help us to know your feelings on that.'

Not really. My feelings weren't terribly sanguine.

Phone again, and Tench picked it up.

'Proctor is a professional,' I said. 'A top professional. He's trained and he's dangerous and he's apparently got the whole of the Miami Mafia behind him, and that gives him God knows how many places he can hide.'

Ferris was on the phone: Tench had passed it to him. Croder said to me, 'You don't think our chances, then, are very high.'

I tried to keep the tone under control, didn't quite manage. 'Oh for Christ's sake, d'you want it in letters of blood?'

Then one of those silly coincidences happened, you've known them, I'm sure, because Ferris was saying, 'I'm sorry to break in, but they've checked on that phone number in the diary, the one with the initials G.R.P., and I think you've located Proctor – he's on board the Contessa.'

Chapter 17: RISK

'I want a twenty-four-hour watch,' Ferris said on the phone, 'on the cutter for the motor-yacht Contessa. It normally ties up at Quay 19, the Bayside Marina.'

I noticed Croder's assistant, Tench, watching me obliquely. He'd obviously gathered I'd made some kind of breakthrough; when I caught his eye he looked down, stroking the back of his head. He did that a lot, frightened, I rather think, of Croder and his responsibilities, and the stroking was meant to show how relaxed he was.

'You'll need four men, two for each shift. I want a photograph of everyone who boards that cutter or disembarks from it, and I'll tell you by radio if I want anyone tagged. Questions?'

Purdom hadn't reacted. He sat with his head down, waiting for doom. I think he'd made up his mind I was going to finish up with a dum-dum in the left ventricle and his feet were already on the starting blocks. The fact that we now knew where Proctor was didn't guarantee I wouldn't bite the dust at any given moment, according to the terms of the contract the Mafia had put out on me. But I wished he wouldn't sit there with his nerves twanging like that; it didn't help.

'Starting immediately,' Ferris said, and gave the phone back to Tench, looking at Croder. 'Signal, sir?'

'Yes, before we leave here.'

Signal the board for Barracuda, for the eyes of Bureau One. Executive has located objective. C of S informed.

Mr Shepley would be pleased, and so would Holmes, standing there in the shadows between the floodlit signals boards: it'd take the edge off his nerves, be okay to get himself another cup of coffee, celebrate, so forth, but it might be all that caffeine inside him that keeps him at such a pitch, you know, I've never thought of that.

'Congratulations,' Croder said, watching me, dark-eyed, brooding, busying his mind already with the future, because it was one thing to locate the objective and another thing to get him away from that privately-owned and well-protected vessel out there and take him to London and fry his brains out under a hood.

'Now I'd like to talk a little more about the anchorwoman. There's now an obvious question in our minds, isn't there?' Yes indeed. When she went aboard the Contessa last night, had she known Proctor was there? 'Your report was necessarily brief. Can you remember what she actually said about Proctor?'

'Yes. One thing was, she said it would help us if we let her see him before we got him out of the country. She said she'd got a great deal of information on him.'

It took another ten minutes to give him a replay of the scene in Kruger Drug last night; then I called up the other material that hadn't been specifically about Proctor. 'She told me I'd caught her at a critical – no, a crucial time, and that she needed help. There was no one she could trust.'

'She has no friends?'

'She didn't know if they'd be strong enough – I quote.'

'For what?'

I asked him to give me a minute.

I don't know how strong they'd be if things got really rough. And none of them know about George Proctor. Okay, we were close, yes, but they don't know about this thing that's happening.

Told Croder.

Thing.' He dropped the word like a stone into the silence.

'I don't know,' I said, 'what the thing is. But she began talking about Proctor again before we left Kruger Drug.' Pictured her face, her hands spread on the marble-topped table, listened for her voice. He still had a reserve I couldn't get through, and I believe he was doing things unknown to me that would have surprised me – correction, alarmed me, frightened me – not just personally, I mean on a geopolitical scale. I want to get this right – on a clandestine geopolitical scale.

Told Croder. He didn't comment, and I kept on going. 'She said something interesting about the late Howard Hughes, that he had a mad dream about buying America, by getting control of the industry, the machinery behind the throne. She said there was an easier way, that to buy America all you had to do was buy one man: the president.'

I sat back.

'You must have asked her to elaborate on that.'

'I would have, but her bodyguard brought her a remote phone. She had to go.'

'Who was the caller? Did you -'

'A Mr Sakomoto.'

'Was he the Japanese you saw boarding the cutter with her?'

'I don't know. He -'

'You tagged Cambridge -', Ferris, 'from Kruger Drug to 1330 Riverside, and she came out of the house with the Japanese and you tagged them to the quay, is that right?'

'Yes. But he wasn't necessarily Sakomoto.'

'There could be several Japanese,' Croder said, 'in that house.'

'Yes.'

'And how did you leave the Cambridge woman?'

'Leave -?'

'At Kruger Drug. What was said, do you remember?'

'She asked me when we could meet again, and I said I'd phone her the next day. She -'

'Today.'

'Yes. She said it was vital that we met again as soon as possible, and that she'd stay at her phone until noon.'

Croder scuffed through the book. 'You didn't telephone her.'

'I was on board Harvester's boat all the morning. At that time I wasn't certain I could trust her, and I only used the phone once, to call Ferris, just a two-word signal.' Shadow safe. 'It looks,' Ferris said, 'as if you'll need to meet Cambridge again.'

'Especially now.'

'Now that she's been on board the Contessa, and may have seen Proctor.'

'She may be still there,' Croder said. 'On board.'

'I doubt that. She goes on the air every day.'

'In a minute from now,' Monck said. 'Tench, is there a TV in that cabinet?'

He pulled open the double doors. 'Yes, sir.'

'Turn it on and cut the sound down and play the channels. We're looking for These Are My Views, you know the one?'

'Erica Cambridge, oh yes.'