Oh for God's sake piss off.
'When you see me getting out of the car I shall want your personal signal as to whether you think I should go into the building. You're Hood, aren't you?'
'Yes.'
Seen him before, North Africa, Loman had put him into the field for Tango, he'd impressed me, knew how to drive, how to subdue, a man, how to make no noise, ask no questions, I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't send him up to Norfolk for training as a shadow if he lived long enough, though it's a fraction chancy for the troops, as you know, look at the one they got last night in Riverside Way.
'All right,' I said, 'tell someone to get my car moved within sight of her limo. She -'
"That's been taken care of. You're on the west side, three rows from the gates and five cars along from the middle aisle. She's on the same side, two rows from the gates and six along, the gaps counting as cars, because there's a lot of movement down there now with people still leaving. Your driver's waiting for you there, name of Treader. I'd better fade.'
I moved round the room, keeping behind people when I could, watching for Erica. In ten minutes she came through one of the arches with a man, talking intently. I hadn't seen him before. Hood was watching him from the bar. I moved again, this time towards the reception area, and I was outside by the time she came across the porch. She was still talking to the man, listening to him, neither smiling, nothing social, and when they parted she simply turned away and he went back inside.
There were other people drifting across the lawns and along the pathways, dinner jackets, bare suntanned arms, cigars, the glitter of jewellery, sudden laughter, a drunk getting rather loud and then being hushed, chauffeurs coming forward, some of the men in blue serge moving into the crowd, music still coming from the building through the open french windows, a three-quarter moon afloat in a clear sky above the turreted roof, a fine night, windless but close, oppressive.
I didn't know where Croder was, or if in fact he was here by now; he hadn't necessarily been on board the shuttle chopper I'd heard earlier. There was another one on the pad with its rotor turning but I think it was taking off, not landing. Croder might not be here at all, though I assumed he'd be somewhere in Miami by now. There was still a chance that Erica would agree to meet him, give him the whole thing.
That had been Ferris, I think, doing his homework, going through my debriefing on the Kruger Drug meeting and suggesting that Croder follow me in to Miami in case Erica was ready to talk.
She was walking down to the gates, another man with her now, a bodyguard, keeping pace from a short distance behind, his head turning the whole time. Someone was laughing in the little group on the west side of the car park – the chopper was airborne over the pad and some balloons were blowing across the people's heads in the down draught.
I went through the gates not far behind Erica and peeled off to the left, walking five cars along and three rows down. I was in a small open space now, with no one near me, and I saw the man signal me from the limousine. I didn't see anyone looking in my direction, but I'd seen Hood over towards the aisle, covering me, and I felt the pressure coming off, the pervasive fear that had been with me since I'd arrived here.
My shoes – Monck's shoes – slipped a little over the brick-red tiles; I suppose they were new ones. The chopper was passing overhead now and some of the coloured balloons were sent blowing to the ground and bouncing and flying up again in the draught from the rotors as the chopper slowed, hovering, and I looked up and saw the door coming open a few inches and the submachine gun poking through the gap and the dark orange flame as it began firing.
Chapter 19: MAZDA
Picked up the phone and dialled.
'Yes?'
Voice I didn't know.
'DIF.'
'He's not here.'
'Then give me the number.'
Rage, great rage.
'Parole?'
'Barracuda. Give me that number.'
'He's mobile. Here it is.'
Wrote it down on the pad. 'Christ,' I told the driver, 'is this the best you can do?'
'We're jammed solid,' he said. Treader.
Ringing tone.
Smoked windows, I couldn't see much more than highlights outside, glass, chromium, police cars with their roofs lit up. Sirens fading in, a fire truck, an ambulance, rage, great rage.
'Yes?' Ferris.
'Listen,' I said, 'they've hit Cambridge.' Get in control, accommodate it, but Jesus Christ we should have seen it coming. We -'
'Where are you?' Ferris asked.
'In the limo, outside the Yacht Club.'
Good evening. Brilliant smile. This is Erica Cambridge, and these are my views.
The bloody thing pumping out rapid fire and her white silk dress turning crimson and the bodyguard trying to reach her but going down too, his body humped and jerking as the shots went in, then the chopper lifting suddenly and very fast, leaving the balloons blowing across the car park, blue and green and red and yellow, whirling in the wind above the people's heads as some of the women screamed and went on screaming until a kind of silence came, the sound of the chopper fading across the sea.
'Get in!"
Treader, dragging me to the car and hustling me into the back, slamming the door and getting behind the wheel and starting up and moving off, someone hysterical in the crowd just here where the woman was lying, the woman and the man, their blood pooling in the moonlight.
Rage, fierce rage.
And these are my views.
Let them stand.
'You saw it happen?' I heard Ferris asking.
'Yes. I saw it happen.'
Get in control. It was nasty but the executive in the field is reporting to his director and there is the need for control, for decorum, you understand, there is no room here for personal feelings.
'How did it happen?'
You're perfectly right, how indeed did it happen, they'll want it for the signals board in London. 'A chopper took off from the pad here and came across the car park and someone opened the door and used a submachine gun at a range of fifty feet.'
In a moment, 'Where were you?'
'Not that close. They weren't making any mistake. It was a straight, accurate hit.'
We moved forward, slowed again. The cars were jamming at the stop sign where the Yacht Club drive met the main road. Police whistles blowing – they were trying to clear the exit roads but it was difficult because a lot of people had obviously stopped their cars to see what had happened, some of them standing on the roof.
'They didn't know you were there,' Ferris said. 'The chopper didn't shift its -'
'No. This was just for her.'
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.
Not now.
'All right.' Ferris sounded a touch over-controlled, very cool, his articulation precise. We had come, after all, so very close to wrapping this one up and going home. 'Your instructions are to -'
'Listen,' I said, 'her phone must have been tapped. They picked up her call to Nassau tonight.'
'You think so?'
'She'd been on the yacht and she asked me along to the club to meet Stylus von Brinkerhoff and said it was very important for me to meet him. She also named Proctor. We were bugged. We must have been.'
'It didn't cross your mind,' Ferris asked carefully, 'at the time?'
'All that crossed my mind was that she could be trying to trap me.'