They're very pleased,' I said. 'I got it from Croder.' Slip but it was too -
'I send to Bracknell.'
'He's on Croder's watch.' It was true and he knew that but it had been a close thing. But use the chance – 'You still happy out here?'
In a moment, the smile not there any more. 'Is that what you're here for, in fact?'
'Not sure I'm with you.' Sweat itching on the skin.
There was no danger, of course, no physical danger unless he'd got a gun and I'd already walked into a trap, not out of the question that he's been turned, it's a rotten word, frightening, with its sense of turning to show a different face, once an ally's and now an enemy's, with trust knocked away and betrayal springing suddenly to life, betrayal and treachery. But if Proctor had been turned I didn't think there was a case for trapping me into anything, not physically: I'm not that paranoid. Yet in a way it could be worse than that: I could be moving into territory where I could become lost before I had time to see the danger.
I knew at least that Moscow wasn't involved. Proctor had never liked them over there since they'd put him through five weeks in a psychiatric ward in an attempt to make him break and speak; it had taken him six months to get the shock out of his system. But he could have been got at by any one of a hundred international factions in need of a spook of his experience, and these days the money was big and the girls much more sophisticated.
Who was Monique?
'It's just that it occurred to me,' Proctor was saying, 'that they might have sent you out here to check up on what I'm doing.'
Out in the open now.
I needed time and there wasn't any. 'Not quite that. They asked me to look you up while I'm out here on the Castro thing, to see if you're happy.'
Tilting his head a fraction: 'Is that how they put it?'
'No. It was Croder. He called it a psychological evaluation – you know bloody Croder.'
In a moment: 'I see.' The tone was icy now and even that false bright smile was dying away. 'And why would he want to have me psychologically evaluated?'
'I think it makes sense. Otherwise I'd have told him to let someone else do it: Cheyney's still in the area. But we've done a few jobs together, so I know you better than most people – that was their thinking.'
And now I'd found out it was wrong. I'd known Proctor, not this man. This wasn't Proctor. Fencing with him, having to listen with every nerve and watch every word, I didn't have time to think what could have happened to him, but the obvious answer was drugs.
'You know me better than most people,' he said. 'You think that's true?'
'In this trade no one knows anybody else too well, do they? It's relative. But look, if you'd rather Cheyney or someone else talked to you, all you've got to do is signal Croder. I didn't ask for the job.'
'Quite so.' He was on his feet suddenly and moving around with his thumbs hooked in the pockets of his worn blue jeans, his shadow swooping on the walls as he passed the hanging lamps. To see if I'm happy, yes, that's how you put it, not Croder,' swinging to look down at me, 'but why shouldn't I be happy?'
I got up too because we were about the same calibre and I didn't want to be on the floor if he decided to start anything; his tone was silkily hostile and if he was on angel dust or something he could suddenly take fire.
'Look at it this way, Proctor. You were into a lot of action in those missions and you were bloody good – I know you that much. But since the bullet thing you've been doing what amounts to a desk job and frankly if it had happened to me I'd have blown up by this time.'
Coming close suddenly, watching me with the glimmer between the lids – 'Do I look as if I'm about to blow up?'
'With you, it wouldn't show.'
But that wasn't true: it was showing very clearly; he'd lost the ability to keep his nerves under the skin. In Czardas and Lighthouse we'd both come as close to Christendom as we'd ever been but he'd had a face like a mask the whole time, even when they'd taken him out of the interrogation cell in Zagreb and he'd looked back at me with his eyes absolutely steady and the signal perfectly clear but only to me: Don't worry, they didn't find the pill. Capsule, potassium cyanide, the instant exit.
Then let me assure you,' he said with the accents honed, 'that I am not about to blow up. I'm perfectly happy here and I can quite believe that Croder is pleased with the product I'm sending in.' His blunt head turned as the shutter banged again and some glass crashed somewhere in the street. A wind was getting up, fluting through a crack in the door.
'Here we go again,' Proctor said, his tone suddenly normal. He went to the phone and sat there on his haunches, pressing out a number and looking up at me. 'You said your hotel's ten minutes from here?'
'Yes.'
'You mean walking or driving?' I said walking and the line came open and he asked them to send a taxi but it obviously didn't work and he tried some other numbers, looking at the pad by the phone, then getting up. 'We've left it a bit late; they're all staying put.' Looking at his watch, 'I'd ask you to stay for some spaghetti or something, but -'
'I've got to go anyway.' Not long, he'd said to the woman on the phone.
'Let's keep in touch, then.' The tone still normal, no trace of hostility, no bright smile. I found it unnerving – it was like suddenly talking to someone else.
'Let's do that,' I said. He came to the door with me. 'In the meantime I'll tell them you're perfectly happy, is that right?'
In a moment he said, 'Perfectly happy', as if he wasn't sure what I was talking about but felt it was the right answer.
The rain had started soon after I left him but there was nothing I could do about it and for most of the journey I was hardly aware of getting soaked because the chance of fetching something conclusive on top of the head was more of a worry – that, and the knowledge that the Bureau had a sleeper out here manning a sensitive network and going through some kind of personality change.
And there was something worse, something that had a degree of horror to it that I couldn't quite identify as the rain whipped through the streets and the sirens began again in the distance. And then as the blacked-out facade of the hotel loomed up the chill truth came into my mind and I broke my run is if I'd hit something.
It wasn't only that Proctor had started to go through some kind of personality change. There was this: He didn't know it.
The red light was blinking on the phone in the hotel room and I asked for messages but there was only one. The name was Mr Jones, code identity for the Bureau, with only an extension number, 59. I used the prefix and dialled long distance direct. It was coming up to 05:00 hours in London.
'Are we clear?'
Holmes' voice. He meant were there any bugs.
'As far as I know.' There could be a lot of stuff all over the place but it was unlikely because I'd switched rooms as soon as I'd booked in, as a matter of routine.
'A couple of things,' Holmes said. 'Mr C wanted to tell you himself but they've had a wheel come off with Snapdragon and he's at the console now. First thing is, he wants you to meet Ferris. He's -'
'Spelling?' There was some lightning around but the line wasn't too bad: I just wanted to make absolutely sure. He spelt it and a flicker went through the nerves.
Ferris.
'He gets in to Miami in thirty minutes,' Holmes said, 'your time, unless that storm's still on. Is it?'
They've started traffic again.'
'All right, he's British Airways Flight 293 direct from Heathrow. I'm sorry I couldn't give you more notice, but you weren't there earlier. Can you meet him?'