Quiller Barracuda

by Adam Hall

  'Sometimes you won't see one for weeks, then you'll see a whole group, moving in to feed on something.'

  Something like Roget, the black, still floating out there, unless his finger had got jammed inside the trigger guard of the big Suzi and he'd gone all the way down.

  'Have you seen one today?'

  'Couple of dorsal fins. Over there, look.'

  Cutting the surface a hundred yards away, splinters of light flashing as they turned and caught the sun. I hadn't noticed them.

  The noon heat pressed down, its weight seeming to calm the sea. The glare came up from the water blinding bright, flooding the cabin and bouncing, flashing on brasswork and reflecting in barbs of light. The silence was absolute and there was no motion except when the swell rolled under the boat; we floated here in isolation, trapped between sky and sea under the burning-glass of the sun.

  'Did you expect them to be there?' I asked her.

  Sound carried, and we spoke in murmurs.

  'In a way, yes.' She turned the blade again on the stone. 'I've been getting a feeling, lately. A feeling it won't be long.'

  I watched the two fins. I think there was a third now but the light was tricky, the whole surface shimmering. 'Before you find the one you're looking for?'

  'Yes.' Looking up at me, 'Do you get feelings like that? Presentiments?'

  'Yes.' It was a third fin, I could see it clearly now. 'What kind are they?'

  'I'd say they're nurses. Not grey ones, but still aggressive.'

  'How big?'

  'Maybe three metres, fully grown. I've seen -' she broke off as the water flashed over there and a slim metallic body broke the surface. 'No, they're threshers – that one's over four metres. It was a thresher that killed him. I got a close look.' She was silent for a time, her eyes on the rhythmic stroking of the blade. 'They hunt in packs.'

  'How many is a pack?'

  'It varies. Anything from ten to thirty. They've got large eyes,' she said, 'green ones, like mine.' She was watching them all the time now, the knife still in her hand.

  'What's attracting them?' There were more of them now.

  'They come and take a look at boats, quite often. People throw garbage out of boats.'

  She was sitting totally still now, her eyes on the sea, her head angled a little, the knife lying in her cupped hand, her brown legs tucked under her, the toes flexed. They were circling the whole time but slowly coming closer to the boat, and we could hear the sudden sharp splash as one of them flicked a tail, scattering white water.

  Five, six of them now.

  The water was clear below, and I could see the dark line of a reef running across our beam, with shadows moving as the rest of the pack circled, fathoms down.

  'Could you skipper this boat if you had to, do you think?' She was speaking slowly, only half-aware of me.

  'I could work it out.'

  There wasn't anything I could say that would change her mind. It was her own affair.

  'As I said, some people say I just want to follow my Dad, be with him again. One man, I think he was into psychiatry or something like that, said that sticking a knife into a shark was penis envy. Takes all sorts, doesn't it?'

  They were close now, seven or eight of them, their bodies darkening the water just below the surface. She didn't move, looked carved out of bronze under the hot weight of the sun, the knife in her hand. 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.

  I got out of the deck chair and stood at the rail and looked over the side. They were closer than I'd been able to see before, and one of them came right in and nosed along the beam of the boat and I felt its tremor as it grazed the timbers.

  She was wiping the oil, Kim, the oil from the blade, and dropped the rag on to the stone and kept hold of the knife, moving to the rail and looking down into the water, and when she remembered me and looked up against the glare of the sun her eyes were narrowed to slits of pale green in the bronze of her face, watching me for a moment before she said, her voice clear in the unearthly quiet, 'If he's there, I'll know. I'll know the one.' Then she reached behind her and unhooked the turquoise bra and let it fall and tugged the bikini down her legs and over her long narrow feet and swung herself across the rail and broke the surface quietly, sinking as far as her head and then bringing her legs up to lie flat, just below the surface, not moving her arms or hands but only her feet, fanning with them to move away from the boat.

  They were charcoal, the sharks, and she was a light bronze and of course much smaller, but she looked less alien among them than I would have imagined, floating with her body aligned to theirs as they closed in, slowing to get the measure of this other creature.

  I didn't move, could not, I am sure, have moved. She was holding the knife behind her back, that is to say underneath her, so that it wouldn't flash in the light like a lure and attract their attention, and as she took a breath and turned slowly and dived the last I could see was that she was holding it in front of her now, the knife. Then she was gone.

  Fear crept in me, contracting the scrotum, tightening the throat, as I watched those things from the safety of the boat, fear of them, certainly, of their huge size and their latent primitive force, and fear for her, the suddenness of her going from sight leaving a sense of shock, a sense already of loss and appalling danger, of murder down there where I couldn't see, of feasting as they closed in and their curved jaws opened and they ripped and began ravaging.

  Too much, yes, too much imagination, very well, let us regain a little of our control, so forth, she must have done this before and she knows those ghastly things from long experience and all she's doing is playing with life and death and maybe putting on a show for me, proud of her obsession, flaunting it. But even so, even so, my good friend, I didn't relish this, you may well believe.

  And then there was just a lot of blood on the surface, a lot of threshing about and then the blood, Christ, it was a beautiful red, he was a beautiful man, he coloured the whole sea like a flag, like a banner.

  Forty-five, I would have said, it must have been forty-five seconds since I'd seen her. The great shapes were still circling slowly, not so near the surface now, as if something below were attracting them, their long tails fanning in the clear water, the light of the surface ripples playing along their smooth metallic flanks.

  Could you skipper this boat if you had to, do you think?

  The sun beat down on the sea, pressing it flat, spreading its heat and its molten light from horizon to horizon while I dwelled here on this gilded mote and came as close as I have ever come to praying.

  Fifty seconds, sixty, perhaps, as they circled the slim bronze other-creature in the depths.

  It's not my vessel. I brought it in. And I want to report a death.

  More than a minute, she'd been down there more than a minute now, her lungs beginning to feel the need for oxygen.

  You did nothing to stop her?

  What could I have done?

  You could have talked to her, surely, talked her out of it. You could have restrained her, if necessary.

  She was a responsible adult with a mind of her own.

  A confused adult, surely, intending suicide.

  How do we know? I think she was following her karma.

  Her what?

  Her karma.

  What is that, exactly?

  Movement suddenly in the water there, over there, a fin cutting the surface and flashing in the light, the others circling wider for some reason, oh for Christ's sake come up will you, it's a minute fifteen, a minute and a half.

  What is karma?

  It means fate, loosely translated. Destiny. She was following her destiny. People meddle too much, you know, with other people's lives, we are not our brother's keeper when it comes to the crunch.

  Slowly, very slowly from the depths there was this smaller shape now, a dull gold creature rising with its long hair rip
pling at its sides until the head broke surface and the body followed, turning gently to float as the weakness flowed into my legs and the breath came out of me and I shut my eyes against the brazen light of the sea.

  And even then you didn't try to dissuade her?

  No. It was her wish. Her will. I do the same thing myself, sometimes.

  You go swimming among sharks?

  No, but it's just as dangerous. We like the brink, you see. We like being there.

  The great gray shapes circled, some of them just below the surface with a fin cutting through it here and there like a knife through silk, some of them deeper, no more than dark shadows, and there she was, the female biped, lying in the middle of them with her face to the sky and her eyes closed and her mouth moving as she breathed, breathed deeply to replace the oxygen she'd used down there, a human being with a history and two dead parents and a few boyfriends around and a job to do and a life to live or simply, if you looked at it that way, the way nature looked at it, a morsel of food for these fish, a delicacy with rich sweet-tasting blood and tender flesh, a small feast for them in the heat of noon, an offering in the celebration of life.

  A tail threshed at the surface close to her but she didn't move, didn't turn her head. Perhaps they were playing. Perhaps, I thought with my breath blocked and my blood chilled, they were playing.

  And then she moved at last, rolling gently until she was face down and then jack-knifing, her legs coming out of the water and poising vertically for a second and then sliding out of sight, leaving a small ring of ripples that melted away as the big fish drew closer and I knew what I would finally say when they pressed me to it, yes, I should have tried to talk her out of it, tried to save her life.

  She came up three times to breathe and dived three times, surfacing closer to the boat than before and breaking the pattern, floating across the circle they were making and lifting suddenly from the surface as one of them rose from below and glanced across her back and I had a rope ready in my hands before she got her balance and crawl-stroked to the side of the boat and I helped her across the rail, 'He wasn't there,' with the water streaming from her body, 'the one I was looking for wasn't there,' streaming from her hair as she faced me with her green eyes shimmering as she lived through this little time in that particular state of grace that comes with a release from close communion with death, and then her hands were on me and she drew me down with her and the knife dropped to the hot scented timbers of the deck and lay beside us.

  Blood on the deck.

  'Yes?'

  'I'm at sea, south of Cape Florida, ten miles from the mainland.'

  In a moment: 'Condition?'

  'Fully active.' The knife wound I'd taken last night had slashed the hip but hadn't cut deep muscle. I could still run if I had to.

  She was wiping the blood off the deck over there by the starboard rail – the shark had grazed her shoulder blades when it had lifted her from the surface.

  'The chief of the Miami Mafia,' Ferris said, 'has put out a contract on you, effective immediately. Did you know?'

  'I could have guessed.' It explained the Nicko thing.

  He caught the tone. 'They've made contact?'

  'Yes.'

  Another pause and then he said, 'In any case it's too dangerous for you to disembark at the quay as you did before. You're on board the tug?'

  'Yes.'

  He was keeping the exchange of information as brief as he could: we weren't using a scrambler. 'Stay there till dark and I'll have you taken off. They'll ask for your exact position later. Understood?'

  'Yes.'

  'Anything to add?'

  'Yes. We're under surveillance.' The motor yacht with the limp sails had furled her canvas and had come within a mile of us under power and I'd caught the glint of twin lenses.

  In a moment he said, 'Wait for the dark.'

  Chapter 15: NIGHTFALL

  'So who was firing on you?'

  She was splicing a rope, making a loop-end, sitting on a box; she had a pair of khaki shorts on, nothing else, letting her back heal; all she'd asked me to do was throw sea-water over the abrasions.

  'I don't know,' I said.

  'I saw the whole thing. The fire and everything.' She worked at the rope. 'Did you think I'd set you up, Richard?'

  'Why should I?'

  'You were so wary of me, that day, is what I mean. So untrusting.' With a brief glance at me, 'But then I suppose you're wary of everyone, in your business, whatever that is.' Her tone changed, became more formal. 'There's nothing you want to tell me, and I understand that, but I need to know enough about last night, the boat crash, to satisfy myself that I'm not an accessory after the fact or concealing evidence or harbouring a criminal. I've got a good record and I work for the Miami police whenever they can use an extra diver, so I want to make sure I'm not getting involved in anything illegal. You've shown me your Foreign Office card but you can get those printed by some backstreet forger if you know where to find one.'

  There were two steps down into the cabin and we were sitting at the forward end, out of sight from the sea. She knew about the surveillance: she'd seen the field glasses too.

  The head of the Mafia,' I said, 'has put out a contract on me. Hence the shooting on the quay and hence my boat trip last night.' I told her about it. 'Hence also the surveillance they've put on us again. I want you to know,' leaning forward, 'that as soon as I'm taken off this boat I shall keep well out of your way.'

  She looked up. 'Why?'

  'Because it puts you at risk.'

  'I know that. But I want to see you again.'

  'One day.'

  'Look, I'm hardly a tender blushing rose. I know Luigi Toufexis. I've met him. I did -'

  'He's the Mafia chief?'

  'Yes. I did a bit of undercover work for the police here once, got involved by accident and made myself useful. Toufexis is deadly, but you don't need telling that. Look, I pick up quite a bit of scuttlebut in my job – I know most of the boat owners and some of the Coastguard crews.' She looked down, making another splice. 'And the rumour that started going around a couple of days ago is that you're an international cocaine dealer working under UK Government cover and you came here to put Toufexis out of business. Hence, as you say, the contract.' She looked up to catch my expression. Wasn't any.

  What she'd told me fell right into place: it had Proctor's signature on it. He wanted me blown away and he'd picked the most powerful weapon in Miami to do it with. Logical Bureau procedure.

  'Is it true?' Kim asked me.

  'No. George Proctor put that story out to bring Toufexis down on me.'

  'You know that?'

  'I know Proctor.' He would have preferred to make the kill personally, as a matter of honour, but he was obviously too occupied with other things. 'Does he use cocaine?'

  'Yes. Or he did when I knew him.'

  That fell into place too. Proctor had been known for his integrity, and that was why Croder was concerned about his lapses in signals to London. And he wasn't a man to blow his mind on cocaine just for kicks, so it must have been a response to his increasing frustration: the bullet near the heart had left him unusable as a shadow executive and he'd felt out of it, a has-been, felt emasculated, and the coke had given him back the strength-of-ten-men feeling, the grand illusion.

  'Was he subject,' I asked Kim, 'to illusions of grandeur?'

  'Sometimes. He told me once that he could run for the presidency if he weren't a foreigner.'

  For the presidency. Fell into place again: he'd been exposed to subliminal influence and knew enough about Senator Mathieson Judd to imagine himself in Judd's position as a presidential candidate.

  'Tell me about this man Judd, will you?'

  Her mouth came open and for a moment she seemed disoriented; then she said without hesitation, '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's got to get into the White House because he's the o
nly man in this country who can give it a new direction…'

  My own thoughts dipped away and her voice sounded fainter; then I surfaced to the full light of consciousness and knew without any question that there hadn't been any time lapse: I hadn't missed anything she'd been saying.

  '… It's not just the Americans who are concerned, this time – the whole world's involved, and much more than usual when there's a change of administration here. I 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 word perfect: I could hear the echo of my own voice in my head. '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 lifting of the veil by glasnost, sure, but Judd isn't missing a trick.'

  She stopped, and in a moment looked down and pulled another strand into the splice. The swell lifted the boat again and I leaned lower, sighting along the stern rail. The yacht was still at the same distance. I couldn't see the light on the lenses this time.

  'Go on,' I said.

  She looked up. 'What?'

  Tell me more about Judd.'

  'That's all I know.'

  A point, then, for the debriefing: Kim Harvester had come under the subliminal influence only in Proctor's flat, and not for very long. We could assume there was no radionic device on board the tug. She was not therefore a target, like Proctor. My own exposure had been different: I'd picked up some background material on Judd and also picked up instructions, which hadn't necessarily been for me.

  The swell lifted us again and I checked the sailing yacht. It hadn't moved. It was nearly sundown, and I said, 'Are you heading back to port after they've taken me off?'

  'Yes. I've got three morning lessons, the first one at six.'

  'Is this boat faster than that one over there?'

  'Quietly she said, 'I can look after myself, Richard.'

  'Do you keep a gun on board?'

  'Of course.' She dropped the spliced rope and leaned back, stretching, her slight breasts touched by the light of the setting sun. 'It's rather nice,' she said. 'You know I've played about with bombs and done some undercover work against the Mafia and you've seen what I do with sharks, but you still seem to think of me as a woman, and in need of protection. I like that.'