by Adam Hall
'Bit puritan.'
'Of course. Then the Anderson crowd started a rumour that he'd been AWOL in Vietnam for three months, but it turned out he'd been in a military hospital with honourable wounds. Judd's war record is unimpeachable, and they know it. Then last week, by way of a riposte, the Republican tabloids came out with pictures of Tate on a friend's yacht, cruising off Fire Island, and -'
'Tate?'
'Oh for God's sake, do you live down a hole? Senator Tate from Connecticut, running for the Democratic ticket – they got zoom pictures of him with Patsy Stiles perched on his lap in a bikini on the afterdeck. The shock waves rattled the whole of Washington and of course Tate was kicked straight out of the running – and in case you're going to ask me who Patsy Stiles is, she's a celebrated Mafia moll. I tell you, politics can be quite fun in these lively climes. Is it too hot in here?'
'No good opening a window -'
'No, but I can notch up the fan a few revs.' He uncrossed his legs and got off the floor and went across to a wall switch and I noted that he was still supple and moved well and was obviously in some kind of training. It didn't fit in with his job: sleepers tend to get soft.
'I notice you're reeking,' he said, 'of citronella. That's good, they're buggers.' Mosquitoes. 'But mark my word, Mathieson Judd is not to be underestimated. He's a statesman with a world view that we haven't seen since Nixon, and he's not a megalomaniac. He'll get in. He's got to get in.'
So this was why they'd sent me out here. I'd been shown some of the "odd" signals this man had been sending in to London and some of the stuff he'd been putting through the diplomatic bag and we had a case of a first-class shadow executive getting shot up in the line of duty and sent out to the Caribbean to operate as a sleeper and becoming engrossed in US politics to the extent that it was interfering with his job.
The whole picture was totally out of focus and I began listening very attentively because I had to catch everything I could – a false note, the wrong tone, a word out of place – and I hadn't forgotten that first warning with its disarming smile when I'd told him why I was out here in the Caribbean – Not quite your pitch.
This man had been given some of the really big ones, usually in the Middle East because that was his preferred hunting ground, and he'd done some critical reconnaissance work inside the PLO headquarters in Tunisia the week before the Israelis had blown the roof off and he'd infiltrated the Libyan air defence system and the Soviet shipment programme funnelling arms, missiles and material to the Arab states. He was too trained, too experienced and too professional to let anything get in the way of the work he was doing – I mean okay, yes, it was perfectly acceptable for him to fill me in on the local scene over drinks and make his pitch as an interested armchair campaigner for Senator Judd, but this was the kind of stuff he'd been sending the Bureau through signals and the diplomatic bag. It didn't -
The phone rang and he stretched full length across the rug and picked it up.
'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.'
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 som
ething 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?'
'Yes. Is he alone?'
'That's right.' His tone was overly casual. Holmes enjoys understatement at a time of tension and he knew exactly how I'd reacted to the name Ferris: he was one of the elite directors in the field who were sent out only to look after something really major, the only DIF I always asked for but didn't always get. 'The second thing is,' Holmes said, 'we've opened a new board, Barracuda, and it's yours.'
