Quiller Barracuda Read online

  Lowering in the night sky.

  'What's the ETA?' the driver said.

  '11:37. British Airways.'

  'Sure, that could be it.'

  The nose coming up, the lights of the town silvering the wings. 'How long can you wait here?'

  'Maybe a minute. Fuzz here don't have no patience.'

  'Then go in and check the arrival time for Flight 293.'

  'I can't leave the cab.'

  'I'm a generous man.'

  He came back and said the flight was on time.

  'All right, make a circuit.'

  'A what?'

  'Go round again.'

  'Come back here?'

  'Yes.'

  Reversing thrust, the roar waking the night. The cop said something as we pulled out but I only heard the driver.

  'Gimme no shit, man. I wasn't no more than a half-minute.'

  Reek of kerosene blowing through the driving window.

  Ferris.

  I nursed his name, going over all the things it meant: a major mission, for one thing, because of his status and his track record and because I'd seen his name on the board for Catapult when I'd looked into the signals room before I'd left, so they'd pulled him in from Paris overnight and sent him out here direct with no local briefing from Monck unless it had been done on the phone between Nassau and London. Monck would have given Ferris everything he knew without keeping selected material back as he'd done with me, because that's the way it works: the shadow executive in the field is told only what he needs to know at any given time; the background to a major mission can be infinitely complex with areas of ultra-classified material on a government level right up to your-eyes-only files exclusive to the Prime Minister.

  'Go round again.'

  Even Ferris wouldn't have all of it in his hands. His job was to direct the shadow in the field, see that he was fed and watered and kept in signals with London, give him the information he needed to know and send him wherever he had to be sent, wherever the mission took him, protect him from the opposition and from his own paranoia when things got rough, and finally bring him home with enough life left in him to stand up to debriefing for days on end, weeks on end, while they turned off the light over the board in the signals room and got on with something else.

  'Shit, man, I'm getting giddy.'

  'How does this bloody window open?'

  'It's broke.'

  There was reflection on the glass but I could see him now, Ferris, coming through the arrival area but not from the baggage claim; he'd have only one case, prepacked for him and stored by the travel section in the Bureau and marked F.I.P. – For Immediate Pickup.

  'Can you pull in here?'

  Between a limo and a dirty red VW, luggage all over the place, two men with sideboards and black coats and padded shoulders and Panda-style smoked glasses ducking into the Lincoln, a college boy lurching under the weight of a surfboard and scuba gear, somebody's maiden aunt with a carnation corsage and blue hair. And Ferris.

  'That man there,' I said, 'Tall, thin, glasses -'

  'I got him.'

  'Fetch him in here.'

  Exhaust gas thick on the air as the door came open and I shifted over.

  'Where we go now, man?'

  Ferris said the Flamingo on 30th street and the driver pulled out and gave the cop the finger and I told him to turn up the radio nice and loud.

  'It's two blocks from your place,' Ferris said, but I told him I'd need to move out because someone had searched my room at the hotel and I'd been tagged there from Proctor's in the storm.

  'You've made contact already?'

  'Yes. Or they have.'

  Chapter 4: PATCHOULI

  'While you were at Proctor's?'

  'Yes.'

  'He sent someone round to your hotel?'

  'He could have. I phoned him when I left there, to say I was coming. No one else knows me here, and there was no tag from the airport when I got in.'

  'No contact until you called on Proctor.'

  'No. But I suppose Monck could have been blown.'

  The light caught his glasses as he turned his head. 'No. He keeps his cover in the bank.'

  Meaning that Monck was unblowable; so no one had got on to me from there. 'Then it was Proctor. Monck said he might have been turned.'

  'Who by?' Ferris dropped a pair of new socks onto the bed. 'I do wish they'd get it right. Look at this, dogshit brown.' He was already half unpacked. We hadn't talked much in the taxi, even with the music. Ferris is impeccable with his security.

  'I don't know. Anyone could've turned him, especially out here.'

  He glanced at me again, a black shoe in his hand, brilliantly polished. 'Out here?'

  'It wouldn't have to be anyone political. There are people here earning a million dollars a week running cocaine in from the south. A good sleeper with Proctor's communications could monitor the US Coastguard rather efficiently, and make a pile.'

  'I see. Look at the polish on these bloody shoes, they think I'm Loman?' He had a soft, rather sibilant voice, like a snake shedding its skin. I wouldn't want to be whoever it was in Travel who'd packed his bag. 'All right,' he said, 'you know Proctor well. That's why they sent you out here. Would he be likely to bust his career for big money?'

  'I can't say.' I got up to walk about, not near the window blinds: there was only meant to be one of us in here. 'He's changed. He's changed a lot.'

  'Oh really.' He took a black leather toilet bag into the bathroom and came back, fingering his thin straw-coloured hair. 'Then who'd be sending the product in?'

  'Possibly Cheyney. He -'

  'But you don't mean turned.'

  'I've been out here,' I said, 'for twenty-four hours and I talked to Proctor from ten till eleven tonight, thereabouts. I can't give you processed feedback.'

  'I don't expect it. First we've got to beat the air.' He put a Kent brush on the dressing-table, setting it at a precise angle. They hadn't moved surface things in my room at the hotel but they hadn't remembered that the second drawer down in the bureau had been left half a centimetre open, for one thing.

  'Where are you going to put me?' I asked Ferris.

  'The Cedar Grove, near the airport.'

  'Is that the reserve base?'

  'Dear God,' he said, 'would I do a thing like that?'

  'Sorry.' I wasn't thinking fast enough.

  The reserve base could have been vetted by Cheyney or even Proctor himself and passed on to Travel for recommended use. Tonight it could be a trap, or bugged, or both.

  'I've stayed,' Ferris said, 'at the Cedar Grove. It's small, clean and secluded, even though it's near the airport. Good access, egress and rear-view vision. And cheap, so Molly will be pleased.' He dropped a green-striped shirt into a drawer.

  Molly is that acidic old bitch in charge of Accounts.

  'What about cover?' I asked Ferris.

  'We don't know yet.' Zipping the empty bag and dropping it onto a chair, 'Listen, it's late, so I'm going to give you the basic scene as it looks at the moment, but realise this: Proctor is the key.' He sat on the end of the bed and leaned his elbows on his knees. "The overall picture is vast and as yet undefined. Only three people have seen the actual print-out that comprises the essence of weeks of signals, sleeper-data and private-line conferences that have been shoved through the computers for analysis and evaluation. Only three. I'm not one of them. So what I've got to do is funnel you a selected breakdown of what London gives me, and your position is this: you're in the field to give us the access we've got to have before Barracuda can begin running. That's the code-name for the mission as you probably know because Holmes has doubtless told you.' He ran his fingers through his hair. 'Proctor is therefore the key and he's also the access, because this is the information I've been given to work on and I can give it to you intoto. Do not think of Proctor as a possibly-turned or renegade sleeper who's conceivably been feeding disinformation to London for an unspecified time – or I should say don't think
of him only as that. He is more. He is much more.'

  This was briefing. He hadn't debriefed me yet on the meeting I'd had with Proctor and that was the next thing he'd do but he wouldn't necessarily do it tonight. 'Question,' I said. 'Has Barracuda got anything to do with the American elections?'

  I think it worried him a bit but I didn't know why. Possibly I'd touched on part of the information he'd been instructed to hold back from me. 'Indirectly,' he said in a moment, 'yes.'

  'Because that's the Proctor connection. He's gunning for Senator Judd, and it sounds as if he's right.'

  Ferris was watching his hands. 'Yes, London knows that.' A beat. 'I mean that he's gunning for Judd.'

  He was watching me now instead of his hands, and I felt a tremor in the nerves. I'd missed a point somewhere but Ferris hadn't. I didn't flinch when the telephone rang but it felt like that.

  He swung across the bed. 'Yes?'

  I couldn't hear the voice at the other end.

  'When?'

  His thin body was bent over the phone. I don't think he was looking at me but I couldn't tell: the light was across his glasses. I'm never completely comfortable with this man, even though I've always asked for him as my director in the field every time out and even though he's handled me with total expertise and brought me home still functioning. Opinions and preferences vary among the shadow executives but I count him the most brilliant DIF in the Bureau, and there are seven or eight of them in operation at any given time.

  'It's running now?'

  What makes me uncomfortable is the man himself, the way he treads on bugs and the way he'll look at you with his quiet amber eyes for so long without blinking that you start getting paranoid. It had happened just now.

  'No. But there's been contact made.'

  Searched my room, yes, and tagged me from Proctor's place. This could be Monck on the line.

  Quite a few other people don't like him either -I mean Ferris. They say that when he's bored with the telly he strangles mice.

  'I'll tell him.'

  He put down the receiver and got off the bed, pushing his long pale hands deep into his pockets and moving around, stooping like a don.

  'Other questions?'

  Not going to tell me who'd phoned or why. Not good for the little ferret he was about to shove down the hole, down there in the dark where the tunnels were, a chill along the nerves still because of the slip I'd made.

  Had it been a slip? What kind? What did I have to hide?

  'Yes,' I said. 'What are we doing out here in the US?'

  'You mean where do we stand vis-a-vis the FBI?'

  'And the Company.'

  He gave a sigh, releasing tension, and I knew that in one second flat he'd had to scan right through the not-for-my-eyes material and decide how much it was safe to unclassify.

  'They could have been compromised.'

  Mother of God.

  'You weren't meant to know that,' Ferris said with his head at an angle, 'at this stage. But it was a good question and I've got a certain amount of leeway in terms of discretion. We don't know the FBI and the CIA have been compromised at any particular level, so I want you to keep things in perspective; but there's a risk, so we're not liaising with them or reporting to them or requesting their help at this point.'

  The scene was coming into focus for me now. Let me put it this way – Monck – if the extent of things proves as far-reaching as we've begun to believe, I shall find it difficult to sleep soundly in my bed. And Ferris, a few minutes ago – The overall picture is vast, and as yet undefined.

  'Can I get some water?'

  Technically he was my host.

  'What? Yes.'

  I went into the bathroom and unwrapped one of the glasses.

  'Would you like some tonic or something? There's probably some in the fridge.' He was in the doorway and I caught sight of his face in the mirror, watching me as I turned on the tap, and I didn't know what he was thinking, what was on his mind.

  'It's just a thirst.'

  When I came back into the room he said again, 'Other questions?' That was all right; he normally briefed like this – the general picture and then questions, to save time.

  'Yes. The two major intelligence organisations of the United States of America could possibly be compromised, and London's sent one little ferret in here to check up on one little sleeper?'

  'I know what you mean, but life is a local affair. The problem, you see, with Barracuda is that there's so much going on in the background that the communication data's started to jam the computers. That's why London – Croder, under Shepley's personal direction – is working the analysts round the clock before the networks start crossing wires and picking up other people's signals and going to ground. One by one,' he said with soft emphasis, 'the stations are switching codes and channels and frequencies as they get scared of leaking their data, and at any time at all the analysts in London are going to be sitting there on their hands with the computers shut down for want of input. The onus is already on you to provide it.'

  I said faster than I meant to – 'I'm not signed up yet.'

  'I've sent for someone,' Ferris said.

  'For someone?'

  To clear you and get your signature.' Watching me all the time, his thin mouth set in amusement, not quite a smile, the way it looked, I could easily believe, when he was busy strangling mice. 'But I'm expecting more questions, before he comes.'

  Drank some water; the nerves have got a thirst of their own.

  'You could be wasting his time.'

  'Possibly. We've got Meddick standing by – they pulled him in from Stuttgart tonight.'

  'Meddick's all right,' off-hand, 'so long as he can keep his sphincter muscles under control when it comes to the crunch.'

  This man Ferris laughs through his teeth, you know, like a snake hissing. 'The questions,' he said, and glanced at his watch.

  But I still didn't like it. This, all right, yes, was the moment of truth we all go through when they offer us a mission and it's never easy, because you've got to decide whether to play it safe and turn it down and wait till something more attractive comes along or go for it and pick up the pen and commit yourself to the high likelihood of walking into the cross-hairs or taking amp; curve too fast or hitting the floor before they can get at the capsule and rake it out of your mouth, the moment of truth, yes, and the point of no return.

  But this time the nerves were nearer the surface than usual and I didn't know why. Correction, I did know why but I didn't want to face it. Not yet.

  Questions, yes. 'All right, what's the field for Barracuda?'

  'The Caribbean.'

  'Is it exclusively mine?'

  'Exclusively.'

  'There must be concurrent operations running if this thing's as big as you say.'

  'Yes, in Zurich, Capetown and Hong Kong. But they are financial and political, not active.'

  Behind the closed teakwood doors and in the private international clubs, not in the midnight streets or the interrogation cells. 'Am I the only active shadow in the whole of the enterprise?'

  'Yes. But don't let it phase you. Bureau One is in charge and Croder is in Signals and I am directing you in the field. You can have, of course, any kind of support you need, without number. This', he said softly, 'is Classification One.'

  I suppose I should've expected that, with Shepley and Croder running the board in London and Ferris out here with me in the field, but it came as a surprise and I was impressed because Classification One gives the shadow executive in the field total support and facilities – communications, courier lines, the strategic deployment of paramedical units and liaison with the local British embassy or consulate and diplomatic status in case of unavoidable transgression of the host country's laws.

  Very few of the top shadows have been offered a C.1 – Thorne, Fosdyck, Barrett and I believe Tasman – because in any case a mission of this size doesn't often break.

  'I don't want it,' I told Ferris, and f
inished the glass of water.

  'Too posh for you.' Watching me carefully, 'Even with your degree of arrogance.'

  No takers. 'Too bloody busy. Look, I haven't changed, Ferris, and you know I can only work if you bastards leave me alone.' No heat in the tone, but I wanted him to get the message.

  'But if you do need help?'

  'Then you'd better be there.'

  'Well it's nice,' he said, 'to know we're of some comfort, even if you don't want to admit it.'

  'Bullshit.'

  He was trying to rile me but it wasn't just to amuse himself; the man he'd sent for to clear me for Barracuda could be here at any time and Ferris would need my signature straight away because if I turned this thing down he'd have to bring Meddick in from London to take over – if in fact they'd got that man standing by, which I somewhat doubted because they'll do this to you, you know that? They'll drag every nerve out of your body if it suits their book. I've seen them kick a man headlong into a mission with the absolute certainty that when he'd done the job he'd never get back through the frontier alive and then they'd pulled off the impossible and brought him in still ticking and debriefed him just in time before he went and walked under a bus.

  The Bureau is the Sacred Bull and our heads, my friend, are never far from the sacrificial stone.

  'So if I'm going in,' I told Ferris, 'I'm going in alone, and if I want help I'll ask for it.'

  'Understood.'

  Questions. 'What about Proctor? Are you going to put tags on him? Bugs in?'

  He got his lean body off the bed and went into the bathroom and broke the plastic off the other glass and turned the tap on. 'I've got a thirst too. You're driving me too hard.' Joke. 'We put a tag on him yesterday and we're mounting a round-the-clock watch. And we put bugs in.'

  I asked him: 'At what time?' And waited.

  Watching me from the doorway, the glass of water in his hand. 'Just before you went there.'