Quiller Barracuda

"Not in the men's room, let us hope!' More laughter.

'There are some people I have to talk to, Richard, before I can leave. But not about this. Let's meet on the front porch in fifteen minutes. We'll go to my apartment and I'll show you what I'm talking about. It's actually on paper, duplicated. You know what I'm saying? A whole brief, do you understand?'

The product. Mission completed.

Unless it was a trap.

I didn't know how good an actress she was. I didn't know if the fright in this woman, the feeling of awe, didn't derive from the knowledge that she was about to do what they'd briefed her to do when she was on board the Contessa: lead a man to his death. Proctor had been there on that yacht. Let that be borne in mind, because yesterday he'd asked La Cosa Nostra to put out a contract on me, and they'd come so very close to a kill.

Don't go with her.

You have a point.

'I need to know a little more,' I told her.

'We can't talk now. I asked you to come here to meet that man, not to discuss what I know. My apartment has a security guard, and you'll be absolutely -'

'I'm used to looking after my own security. That's why I need to know more.'

She looked hunted, glancing around her. 'But in a public place like this -'

'It's very private, actually. There are no bugs in the walls. Give me the gist. I need to know how serious this thing is.' Whether, in fact, it was serious enough to force me to take the risk of going to her apartment.

She looked around her again, pressed, frightened. That was my impression. 'All right,' she said in a moment, 'here it is.' She moved back against the wall, against the big mural of sails heeling across a choppy sea with spindrift blowing, and said quickly and softly, 'I told you there were plans, with Senator Judd as the prime mover, to buy America. I know more about it now. On board the Contessa there's a faction calling itself the Trust, frighteningly powerful, awesomely influential in world affairs. It has people like Apostolos Simitis, the shipping magnate, Lord Joplyn of Eastleigh, who controls more than half the mineral deposits in South Africa, Takao Sakomoto, the leading industrialist in Japan. Maybe you haven't heard of these men -'.

'No -'

'Then take it from me, they're the puppet masters behind the scenes of international finance. People like Stylus von Brinkerhoff, the Swiss banker – the man I was hoping you could meet here tonight. They -' she broke off as someone came through the arches towards the rest rooms, passing within a dozen feet of us. In a moment – 'My God, this is so dangerous, talking in a place like this. But you wanted the gist, and it's this, Richard. These men plan to buy America – and sell it to the Soviets. In the declared interests of the final and permanent laying down of arms among nations, they propose the creation of a single world government, behind whose public throne they can exert their private power. And to meet the enormous demands of demographic reorganisation they envisage the setting of that throne to be in Moscow.'

Watching me for my reaction, didn't see anything. But my pulse was elevated: I could feel it. It was going to be worth it, then, worth going to her flat, taking the risk, because she couldn't be making this up: it had the appalling ring of truth.

'We'll go there separately,' I said.

To my apartment?'

'Yes.'

'I have the limo here. We can talk -'

'No,' I said. 'For the sake of security.'

'Yours, or mine?'

It seemed to worry her.

'Both.'

Mine, if this whole thing was a trap. Hers, if they put me in the cross hairs out there and missed, and hit her instead. It wasn't a night for taking chances.

'Okay. You have my address?'

'You gave me your card.'

She got up, straightening the lame belt. 'I'll be there inside of forty-five minutes, depending on the traffic. You'll be alone?'

'Of course.'

She left me.

Setting me up.

She's setting you up.

Probably.

This is a trap, you know that.

Probably.

So don't go there. Don't be such a -

Oh for Christ's sake shut up. I know what I'm doing.

It's a trap, it's a trap, it's -

Shuddup.

Snivelling little bloody organism, scared of its own shadow, one of them over there by the french windows, he'd been there since I'd first come in, another one by the doors, talking to a girl, chatting her up, good cover, another one on the dance floor, engrossed, or seemingly engrossed until he saw my signal and said something at once to the girl and she laughed quickly so I imagine he'd said if he didn't go and wring out a kidney soon there'd be an accident, because he was coming towards the men's room and I went back through the archway and cut across him in the corridor, a small neat-looking man with glasses, never look at him twice unless you noticed his eyes, cold as the eyes of a reptile, the kind of man I like to see when they're meant to be keeping me as far as possible from the slab in the morgue, stretched out under the shroud and stinking of formaldehyde, it's a trap, oh for God's sake bugger off.

'Have you seen Lucas?' he asked me.

'No, but I've seen Baldwin. The way I want it is like this. She's leaving here in about fifteen minutes and it's going to take her another thirty to reach her flat. Here's the address. I'm -'

'I know the address.'

'I'm going over there by the bar and wait until I see her leave. I want her tagged and I want you to see if she makes any kind of signal and if she does I want you to see who gets it and what he does, where he goes, if he -'

'Normal routine,' he said.

Starchy bastard, as bad as Ferris, put on a pout when they think they're being told how to do their job, but I liked that because only the real professionals have got that degree of pride and tonight I wanted real professionals about me, my good friend, not yonder Cassius.

'Whatever happens, I'm going to follow her to her flat as if I didn't know any better, and if you people find you've got a lot to deal with I want you to do exactly as much as you need to, including deadly force if you think I'm endangered – has C of S cleared you on this?'

'Yes.'

'What have you got for me out there? Something with smoked glass?'

'A limo, yes.'

'I'll sit in the back. Providing -'

'As long as you don't tell Nancy, you know what I mean?'

'She thinks you don't sleep around?'

'That's exsh – exactly what she thinks.'

Peals of restrained mirth, their voices fading.

'Providing I reach her flat without any diversions, I want all the cover you can give me at the moment when I get out of the car. How many people are there outside her flat now?'

'Four. Crosby, Mace -'

'Where will you be?'

'Following your limo, two cars behind. Black Honda coupe, Florida plates.'

'All right, when you -' broke off to let him concentrate on the two men over there by the reception desk. He turned his head an inch and got a signal from the man standing by the curtains picking at his nails.

'They're okay.'

'Have you seen any Sicilians here?'

'Nine. They haven't seen you, not to recognise.'

'Where are they?'

'Five outside, two of those are in the car park. The others are in here, that one over there, the one on the far side with the cummerbund, those two by the bar.'

He meant he'd seen them before or they'd been seen before by one or more of the other support people here tonight, seen and recognised. There could be a dozen more of them, a hundred, they've got a vote too, got political views, go to political parties, eat cookies, crap, close in on you, aim for the head, splinters of bloodied bone from the site of exit in the skull, you're taking a risk, you're playing Russian roulette again, you -