Quiller Barracuda

by Adam Hall

  Tried an elbow-smash into Nicko's face but he was half-turned away from me and off-balance, going down and dragging me with him and I let him do it because there was a chance of a strike and I straightened one leg with the foot angled to make a blade and thrust hard for Vicente's groin and did some damage and felt him spin sideways and strike the deck with his head, not making a sound, a different breed from Nicko and therefore the more to be wary of.

  Cordite sharp in the lungs, someone coughing, the fat man coming in again and surprisingly fast and I couldn't do anything with him until he made a mistake and left himself open and I found his face exposed and went for the eyes and reached one of them but it galvanised him and he insisted with me, an arm round my neck again and squeezing as Vicente came in with the knife and I waited until it swung up and then turned and left Nicko as the target.

  I don't remember when it was that they began gaining. It took time and much had passed. Vicente was losing blood because I'd managed to turn the blade and rip into him somewhere before I lost my grip on the handle and let it go. I had injured Nicko, perhaps with one of the nerve strikes I'd been working on, but he was still surprisingly strong and very quick, vicious in his anger because he wanted his cake and he'd been looking forward to it and I was trying to take it away from him, take my death away.

  They had both spent a lot of time trying to reach their guns. At first they hadn't wanted to make any more noise after the hammering boom of the Suzuki, but then they'd realised I might get them both under control and they'd stopped worrying about making a noise. I'd sent the first gun – Vicente's – over the rail without any trouble because he was so busy with the bloody thing that he forgot about the combat and left himself open and I'd gone in with an eye strike and got the gun away from him while he was protecting himself.

  Nicko was more difficult and we'd fired a round with his finger on the trigger and the gun pointing nowhere, but then I'd found his throat and he'd panicked and I'd got the gun and lobbed it overboard and this worried them and they became excited. I could have killed Nicko when I'd found his throat exposed but I didn't want to. That had been Proctor he'd phoned from the cabin and I wanted the number because it had become the focus of the whole mission, the only access to Proctor we'd got.

  The stars were swinging through the black reaches of the sky and when the boat heeled as it sped across the surface I began losing orientation, just momentary flashes of knowing nothing, being nowhere, momentary but critical, potentially lethal. I didn't know where the boat was taking us; we knew it was running wild, that was all, the helm free and the throttles open, and the first thing Vicente or Nicko would do if they could get clear of me would be to break for the cabin and get control. I didn't want that to happen because if we hit another vessel and didn't totally smash up I'd have a chance of getting away.

  The stars swung and the bows hammered across the swell and I lurched sometimes, mentally lurched into the oblivion that was waiting for me out there, a limitless void that was there to gather the end of things, the bric-a-brac of lost endeavours, the tattered rags of hope, where – for Christ's sake stay with it don't give up stay with it yes indeed, perhaps I'd taken the blade in somewhere and was losing blood, it felt like that, the onset of lassitude, stay with it, exactly so, but they were gaining, I tell you, they were gaining on me. Twice I found an arm exposed and worked my thumb into the median nerve with force enough to produce great pain but there was no sound, no jerking to free the arm, and after a time I realised that we were locked together, these two men and I, across the body of the Cuban.

  'Nicko,' his voice, Vicente's voice, sounding stifled, with not much breath to spare, 'we've got him, Nicko,' speaking perhaps to boost the fat man's morale, or not speaking to him at all but to me, knowing the value of despair if one can instill it in one's adversary.

  He failed, because I knew the danger, but the thought stayed in my mind on an intellectual level, the thought that they could have got me now, they could be within seconds, shall we say, of bringing me my doom, here under the swinging stars as -

  Dazzling lights swarming against us in the night, their brilliance rising in a wave, towering, the lights of the city breaking over us as the boat hit and the night exploded and I was flung headlong as the hull burst open and glass from the smashed windows in the cabin flew in a bright shower in the light from the shore, then the sensation of falling and the flat sheen of water below and I hit the surface shoulder first and the lights flared and then darkened as I went under.

  Nowhere.

  It wasn't dark down here, not now. They'd set up a generator and floodlights, or perhaps it was one of the fire trucks with its search lamps going. The coloured flashes of the police cars dappled the surface above me and I could hear sirens dying towards the quay. I could see sharp outlines close to me, debris turning as it sank, and blurred shapes farther off, the huge body of the boat angled bows down with the stern breaking the surface.

  But he was nowhere, Nicko.

  I was, yes, losing blood: I could see it now, blackish whorls forming in the water as I moved, blowing like smoke. But it couldn't be anything serious, worth surfacing for. I had already been up a dozen times to breathe, for a while floating face upwards to reorientate, having to take the risk of being seen. I didn't want to be hauled out and questioned, at least until I'd found Nicko, or they had. If they found him, I'd know: I was watching their progress every time I surfaced.

  I would rather find him myself. I had something to ask him: the telephone number. The access to Proctor. It wouldn't be easy to ask him if they found him first and put him into an ambulance; I'd have to make out I needed medical attention so as to go with him, stay with him. But I would have said that the chances of finding him alive by now were thin, unless he was bobbing on the surface somewhere among the debris and they hadn't seen him yet.

  Sound of a helicopter vibrating through the water, then more light came flooding down, silvering some of the bits and pieces that had been blown out of the boat. I dived lower, using the light, one hand on an anchor chain to keep my bearings, and there was Fidel below me, his arms and legs opened out, his face turning towards the light and then vanishing, the dark smoke of blood still curling from his skull. He would be going down there to wait for his little Juanita, to wait a long time for her in the limbo of the lost, his arms and legs windmilling slowly, disturbing the slime where a fish flashed in the light, then another, scenting his blood.

  I surfaced again and floated, drawing flotsam around me and sighting along the surface. There was more noise here, the thin wail of the sirens piercing the boom of the chopper's rotors; the surface was ruffled by the airstream and the debris was tossed in circles. Then it rose suddenly: I suppose it had come lower to look at something, ready to deploy the salvage net. On the jetty a frogman was settling his mask and flip-flopping towards the water.

  I took a final breath and went down again into the half-lit netherworld and saw him almost at once, Nicko, his arms stretched out as the Cuban's had been, the current tugging at the cloth on his little fat legs, and as I swam towards him the light was mottled with the slow drifting of leaves, rising and whirling and spreading out, some of them touching his hands, Nicko's hands, then drifting away, turning and catching the light and darkening again, hundreds of them, puzzling me until I saw they were banknotes, the suitcase on the surface somewhere among the other things, burst open and empty now.

  Still losing, I was still losing blood, the muscles languid and the mind starting to wander a little, mesmerised by the whirling of the banknotes, but I went for him, scissors-kicking through the light and shadow and missing him the first time as the current turned him so that for a moment he was upright, standing there with his arms reaching to touch his windfall, to play with it, while fish darted at his face, at the hollows of his eyes. I got close to him at the second attempt, and danced with him as I caught the folds of his clothes and began searching the pockets; but the lungs were pulling for air and I had to surface
and float there taking in a snatched breath and then another until I could breathe rhythmically, taking the necessary time but worrying because he could drift away, Nicko, and I might lose him.

  Down again and I couldn't find him, had to go deeper, as far as the mud and the litter of cans and tyres and broken spars and then look upwards, catching his silhouette against the light and rising for him, working on the pockets again, the light troubling me now, flooding into my head and staying there when I closed my eyes, the weakness spreading from the muscles to the will, the will to go on moving instead of letting go, drifting in the shadows, dancing with my little fat friend as he – watch it - dancing among the leaves – wake up for Christ's sake – yes, no time for dancing is there, taking his keys and his wallet, drifting with him as he turned, wallet in my hand, wallet with perhaps the telephone number in it, the access to Proctor, drifting and turning in the eerie underwater light with the mind hallucinating, weaving patterns of its own, the scene swinging as I turned again and looked into the face of Kim Harvester.

  Chapter 14: GRACE

  Honing the knife.

  The noon heat pressed down from a brassy sky, and the glare off the water hit the inside of the cabin like a floodlight. The sea was mirror-smooth, with a long swell running. We were somewhere south of Cape Florida, she'd told me, ten miles from the mainland. We didn't want, she'd said, anyone looking at us through field glasses again.

  Honing the knife, turning the blade on the stone, a big knife, long, curving to a fine point. One of her breasts showed inside the loose turquoise bra, the nipple raised. She wasn't sitting like that, leaning forward, to invite my interest; she was just used to being alone on board.

  'I shall have to make it a clean kill,' she said.

  The swell lifted the tug, lowered it. I could see the Cape, north by north-east, and two other vessels, one of them moving out of the bay under limp sails, and a motor yacht on the south horizon. She'd said it was the Contessa.

  'Right into the brain, through the eye. If I don't do it cleanly, he'll flash away. They don't like being hurt – and he'd remember.' Looking up, her green eyes seeing the shark, not me. 'Don't underestimate those beasts.'

  She hadn't wanted to bring me to the tug, early this morning. She'd moved with me through the pale underwater light but I hadn't gone straight to the quay; there were a lot of people milling around there, silhouetted against the floodlights, and the Coastguard helicopter was still hovering above the sunken boat. I'd surfaced to breathe and then dived again, leading her past the end of the jetty before I climbed onto a moored boat well clear of the action and reached the quay.

  'Are you all right?' Her mask off, watching me.

  'Yes. Can you get me away from here?'

  'You need an ambulance,' she said. 'You're hurt.'

  Blood reddening the water trickling from my clothes. 'Look, get me away, will you? I don't want people asking a lot of questions.' It was dangerous, perhaps, to trust her, but I'd been losing blood and hadn't slept and if I dropped suddenly she'd go for one of the ambulances and I didn't want that. There'd be some of Nicko's friends in that crowd along there and my photo was in circulation. I didn't want a police enquiry either because it'd hold things up.

  'Why don't you want them to ask questions?' Not letting it go, not taking anything for granted, watching me hard with her green eyes.

  I'd said the wrong thing, you see, not feeling terribly bright at the moment. 'In any case, I don't want anyone to see me. They're still trying to kill me.'

  She'd remember the shooting, yesterday. Swaying a little now, swaying comfortably, enjoying the rhythm, the lights of the city swinging away, swinging back, watch it, yes, don't want ambulance.

  'Who are? The police?'

  Oh Jesus Christ, what made her think that? The drug scene, I suppose, she was so used to it, thought I was a dealer, man on the run. 'No. Toufexis. His people.'

  'Toufexis?' Didn't take her eyes off me. 'All right, I'll take you out of here, but I want to know who you are.'

  'Government.' The whole city swinging, swinging back, the lights dizzying. 'HM Government.'

  'You'll have to prove that, or I'm turning you in.' She searched for the knife wound, somewhere under my shirt, left side, found it. 'Handkerchief? Okay, keep it pressed there while I get the car.'

  On the way to the tug I showed her my identity and told her there were two bodies back there, Fidel's and Nicko's, and perhaps a man still alive, Vicente, in the water, she could phone the rescue team and tell them that. Then I lost the whole thing and woke up on the boat.

  'I was a nurse,' she said, 'for seven years. Does that hurt?'

  'No.' Morning light across the sea. I'd slept nearly five hours and woke feeling successful, in a way, because I'd got that man's wallet and it had Proctor's number in it, or the number of the place where he could be reached, where Nicko had reached him from the boat.

  'I liked it,' she said, 'being a nurse. But those male chauvinist pigs finally got under my skin and I quit, slammed the door of the emergency room in one of their faces, as a matter of fact, broke his nose. They think we're just their assistants, but nursing's a profession too; we're professionals like they are, and we spend a lot more time with the patients, and get very much closer, and that matters, you know, it's very often a question of life and death if you hold someone's hand at the right moment. But those bastards just think we're scullery maids. Keep your arm away, this is the last one.' Curved needle, going into the flesh and out again across the wound, she might have been sewing a sock, very expert. 'I keep this kit for me, really. How do you feel?'

  'Good shape.'

  'Because you've lost some blood, as you know, but we can't tell how much. You're a bit white still, but that could be shock hanging about. Hold absolutely still while I get a bandage.'

  Came back and I said, 'Are you a police reservist or something?'

  'Volunteer diver, that's all. They beeped me. So I want to know all about it, Richard, because I could be some kind of accessory after the fact or concealing evidence or a dozen other things.' Looking at me straight. 'I took a risk, bringing you here, and you owe me. But all I want is the truth.'

  Told her the whole thing and there wasn't any danger in that because she already knew I was looking for Proctor and the only thing I was adding now was that Proctor was looking for me.

  'When you say he's "looking for you", what exactly does that mean?'

  'He'd like to find me.'

  It wasn't an answer and she knew that. In a moment – 'Is he trying to kill you?'

  'I think so.'

  She dropped the unused bandage into the medical kit and snapped the lid shut. 'Was that him, shooting at your car?'

  'No.'

  'How d'you know?'

  'He's no good with a gun.'

  'All right, then did he set you up?'

  'Either he did, or whoever he's working for.'

  'Is he working for Toufexis?'

  'I don't know.'

  'Look, if you'd rather -'

  'I don't honestly know. But I'd like to.'

  'Well that's the point.' She'd seen the yacht with the slack canvas coming out of the bay, and watched it for a moment. 'If you want to find Proctor, maybe I can help. But you'll have to tell me more about things, and if you'd rather not, then say so.'

  'Why would you want to help me?'

  In the labyrinth, where you can't see much more than the next corner, it's nice to know which side people are on, and even nicer to know why. People change their minds sometimes, and that's because their motivation isn't strong enough to keep them stable: it happens all the time.

  'I think I want to help you,' she said in a moment, 'because I like you. Not like, exactly. I find you intriguing. First you get shot at and bloody nearly burned alive and the next time I see you it's six fathoms down with bodies and banknotes all over the place.' She held her gaze for a while. 'Turns me on. And as I told you, he's an absolute shit and I'd very much like to see you put him
in the gun sights and drop him stone cold dead.' Looking down, 'I phoned your hotel, after that shooting, to see if you were still in the land of the living.'

  'Kind of you.'

  In a moment she said, 'I did a year in bomb disposal when I was still in England. It -'

  'That was before you lost your father?'

  She looked up quickly. 'Yes. Why?'

  'I mean you had these -' wrong start, had these suicidal tendencies was not very flattering – 'these urges to push things to the brink quite a while ago.'

  She watched me quietly and when she spoke again her voice was lower. 'I suppose so. We're a bit alike, aren't we? It used to turn me on – and this is why I mentioned it, actually, about bomb disposal – it used to give me a real kick to sort of be in their presence, just sitting quietly in front of those things, knowing how much awful power there was in them. And being close to you gives me the same feeling, I mean the tension comes off you in absolute waves. And I like that.'

  She got up and took the medical kit to the other end of the cabin and put it into a cupboard and then went into the head, and this was the first chance I'd had so I went over to the phone and dialled the number.

  'Yes?'

  'Shadow safe.'

  I left it at that and hung up. He would have had support people watching my hotel and they would have expected me there after I'd called him last night from the quay, and they'd have started worrying by first light and Ferris would have signalled the board as a matter of routine, executive missing, and that boat had made a lot of noise with all the police and everything and he might have put things together and started a search.

  When Kim came back she said, 'I want you to rest for a bit longer,' and dropped a pile of magazines onto the bamboo stool, 'just till you get your colour back.'

  That had been hours ago and now she was honing the knife and not talking very much. She'd gone into a kind of shell, and I didn't disturb her, spoke only when she spoke.