'Yes?'
The earpiece was bound with soiled adhesive tape and the cable was in knots and I wondered if this was his main line to London.
It was a woman's voice at the other end, too faint for me to hear any words or even make out if it was Monique, the woman who'd just left here.
'Not long,' he said in a moment and dropped the receiver back and got onto his haunches again. 'When I say that Mathieson Judd has got to get into the White House I mean he's the only man in this country who can give it a new direction – and I'm not quoting the standard rhetoric. This time, with this man, it's for real.'
I put in a question and let him go on talking and consciously took in what I could while at the back of my mind a sense of unreality was creeping in and a bizarre question flashed suddenly – was this man actually Proctor? Bizarre because I knew without any doubt that he was; he'd changed a bit since I'd seen him last and he'd lost some weight and was showing signs of stress but he was the same man I'd been with throughout two very nasty missions and I knew him to the bone. But the question echoed in the mind.
'… Very much hope the Thatcher government realises what we've got in Mathieson Judd, because the outcome of this election's going to have a major effect on the UK…'
It was almost word for word from one of the signals he'd sent in the week before – repetitive, the communications analyst had noted in the margin, a major theme. I went on listening, but couldn't shake off the feeling of unreality, of lost focus. The air in the room was sultry, electric, even with the fan stirring it: the whole town was held in the eye of the storm and charged with tension, and that didn't help.
'… His understanding of the internecine struggle for power inside the Kremlin is infinitely deeper than we've seen before in any US president – thanks partly to the partial lifting of the veil by glasnost, sure, but Judd isn't missing a trick. The thing is -' he brushed the air with a hand and this time the smile was rueful – 'the thing is that since politics aren't your bag I'm boring the hell out of you. Now listen, can I give you a hand with your mission until -'
'It's not exactly -'
'Your assignment?' his dark eyes narrowing as he smiled, the mouth, the teeth alone showing evidence of friendship, false evidence.
'Good of you.'
I said it straight away but it had taken some fast thinking because he was throwing me at every turn – it's right out of character for any shadow executive to offer to "give a hand" to one of his own kind because when a mission goes on the board it's circumscribed and sacrosanct and the briefing is ultraclassified and totally verbal except for the maps and the frontier papyrus and the relevant documents, and the same goes for an assignment or any official undertaking for the Bureau necessitating a cover name for the field and the cover itself. But I'd said it was good of him to offer his help because it was the answer he'd obviously expected.
Listen, please: He didn't realise that what he'd said was completely out of character, and I was instinctively aware that I mustn't let him know.
Beginning to sweat but it wasn't the heat of the room, it was the nerves. Something was appallingly wrong with Proctor and I was having to talk to him as if he were someone else, as if I had to humour him, and it was a bit like playing Russian roulette because the next wrong word could trigger a full chamber, and I knew now why Croder had picked a top shadow to come out here: someone like Fisher would have blown the whole thing before he'd known what was happening.
I would talk to him with extreme caution.
Monck.
Yes indeed. I'd given this man my reason for being out here and he hadn't accepted it – Not quite your pitch – and in a minute or two he was going to bring the subject back, had already brought it back, lend a hand, so forth, and I was perfectly certain now that every word I said was going on tape, it's not out of the question that he's been turned, noted.
Bang of a shutter somewhere: the wind was rising again at the rim of the eye and the night was stirring across the town.
Every word, and the sweat was running because this man too had been a top shadow and had been put through Norfolk and been trained to interrogate, put through a dozen major operations with the ability and the experience to face another man alone in a room and draw him through a minefield of traps and tripwires with question after question and that bright, treacherous smile under the hanging lamp.
'Tell me,' he said, 'about your assignment.'
Bang of a shutter.
Chapter 3: CONTACT
A tile crashed and the pieces whined through the dark near my face and I got closer to the buildings, not wanting to cross the street to the sheltered side because there was debris flying on the wind and it was difficult to see anything coming through the driving rain. The storm had knocked out the power station feeding this area and the only light came from the few late cars making a run for home.
He'd tried two or three numbers, Proctor, for a taxi, but they weren't turning out.
Something hit a big shop window and the glass burst like a bomb and I ducked and found a doorway and stood there soaked by the rain with my back to the open street as the gale took the shards of glass and flung them through the air. A car forced its way past the doorway against the gusts, throwing silvered beams of light as it wallowed through the floodwater surging at the storm drains, a woman screaming somewhere, inside the car I suppose, terrified or just excited, the sound whipped away by the wind.
It was less than half a mile to my hotel and I got back onto the sidewalk again with my head down, leaning against the force of the rain, fingers against the face as a shower of debris hit me with the dying impetus of shrapnel. More sirens, and the crimson flicker of lights in the distance as a firetruck ploughed through the intersection with its sirens going, a police car taking up station.
Assignment, kept calling it an assignment, just because I'd said there was no actual mission running for me.
Strong wind-gust and I braced against it, the rain beating, lights throwing my shadow in front of me across the littered sidewalk, sound of an engine and a sudden shout – 'Wanna get in?' – speeding up again as I made signs for no and thank you, not easy, I must have looked like a soaked scarecrow trying to keep the birds away. The hotel was only half a block now and I started a slow run to raise the odds against catching something really lethal on my head.
'There's not much to it,' I'd told Proctor. 'There's been no briefing yet.'
'I see,' with the bright understanding smile, the eyes no more than a shimmer between the lids, half his face in shadow under the lamp. 'But I'm sure it'll turn out pretty interesting.'
'Not necessarily -'
'I mean they didn't send someone like you out here just for a bit of housework. I'm surprised -' taking another swallow of bourbon – 'I'm surprised I didn't get wind of it. After all, this is my bailiwick.'
'Got lost in all the buzz.' Signals term for heavy traffic. Nassau and the Florida peninsula formed a tight network with its own console at the Bureau, since the US stations presented a major information exchange between London and Foggy Bottom, and Cuba's proximity offered a rich lode of signals traffic for infiltration and analysis, providing a window on Moscow's interests in the region.
'I'm very good,' Proctor said, chin tucked in, 'at sorting out buzz.'