Quiller Barracuda

by Adam Hall

  Panic will get us nowhere. I shall stay exactly where I am.

  But it wasn't easy. It was not easy, my good friend, to stare at that hideous two-ton killing machine while it stared me back. It had kept still like this, just like this, before it had suddenly shot forward and hit that shoal like a missile.

  For the sake of Jesus Christ get out, get out, get out.

  Sweat crawling on the skin under the wet-suit, itching, making me want to move, to pinch the flesh through the rubber, the only way to scratch. But let us be reasonable; nothing much has changed, when you stop and think. I knew this was dangerous, and I knew Ferris would have tried to stop me if I'd told him what I meant to do, and I knew that by the end of this long day I would come to realise that I was mad, and that when she had given me that wonderful smile, when she had mustered all the courage she had needed just to do it, to give me that flashing beatific smile, I knew that she hadn't thought much of my chances, that she was in all likelihood looking upon this vain and ambitious madman for the last time, and had managed to bring herself to offering him everything of life she could, the gentle valedictum, the grace of her womanhood. I knew those things.

  But somewhere along the line, as they say, I'd been lulled into thinking it was going to be cushy down here after all, because they wouldn't come, the sharks, wouldn't seek me out, wouldn't decide to make of this impudent clown a snatched meal, the jaws coming open as the great body turned with the tail driving it towards the kill, the jaws locking shut on impact and the flesh becoming shreds, the bones -

  Out, get out for Christ's -

  Yes, I'm afraid I got carried away a little, didn't I, and if you weren't quite so shit-scared I wouldn't have to suffer your pusillanimous bloody whining, I'd have a better chance to think.

  Think.

  Move very slowly, paddle with your flippers, arms to the sides, move towards the stern, towards that great grey fish with its tiny eyes, keep close to the hull, just underneath it, part of the ship, just a piece of equipment, nothing alive, nothing of flesh and blood, the jaws coming wide open as it – steady, lad, we came here to do this and we are going to do it, the sweat crawling, ignore it, ignore the itching, driving me crazy, ignore.

  Then it moved and grew enormous as it drove past me and hit the shoal again and the fragments scattered and I held still with the breath blocked in my throat and my senses numbed, held still, a piece of equipment, nothing alive like the little fish over there, some of them crushed but slipping out of that cavernous mouth again, floating to the surface, awkward-looking, their blood trailing in the light of the moon.

  Door banged somewhere, some kind of door, the clang of metal, and then the light was dappled with movement as things began drifting down, touched with silver and sending out small bubbles, some kind of things I didn't know what, my mind was too occupied with the shark over there, nosing through the water while the things went on drifting down, surrounding me, an apple-core moving against the face-mask, an apple-core, mother of God, the things that attract them are light, noise and rapid movement, but watch out if you see garbage being thrown overboard and keep well away from it.

  Egg-shells, a chicken carcass, potato peelings, drifting around me and I started moving forwards, keeping horizontal and just below the hull but too close and the air-bottles banged against the plates and I froze and waited for the shock to pass and then put my head down and went lower, fanning with the flippers, not looking to see where the shark was because it would mean turning and I didn't want to turn, to move more than I had to. It was somewhere behind me now, the big grey fish, but I didn't know how far away. Only a third of the people attacked have reported seeing the shark. It's usually what we call a blind hit.

  But suddenly it was in front of me, small in the distance, and I hadn't seen it go by. It must -

  Two. Two sharks now.

  A vessel of this size, I suppose, would attract attention at night, at feeding time. The memory cells inside those tiny brains would automatically steer them towards garbage. With this amount of light -

  Three. Four.

  They were zeroing in from the featureless expanse of water wherever I looked, and the big one behind me went past at a distance of a dozen feet as I floated just beneath the hull, a part of the equipment. The thing hadn't accelerated this time; it knew that garbage doesn't scatter when attacked. Two others -three others came in much faster, competitively, and went for the debris, brushing one another, making tight turns with their jaws wide, taking in what they could get.

  The metal door clanged again and more garbage mottled the surface, dark at first and then catching the light as it sank, and the four sharks – five – became excited, dog-fighting their way through the debris, and one of them broke off and brushed against the propellers, jaws open, ready to attack anything, any shape at all, then it turned very fast and came for me head-on and I held still for as long as I could and then I was looking directly into the gape of the jaws and brought the cylinder up and squeezed the lever and felt the coarse hide graze past my shoulder as the toxic fluid clouded the water like milk and the tail fin hit me and the air-bottles rang against the hull.

  Sake of Jesus Christ get out, get away.

  Things not good, a degree of concussion, it had been a blow to the head, but I was aware of what was going on, though not terribly interested, blood in the water now ahead of me, 'a blossoming of crimson, perhaps one of them had gone for another, becoming frenzied, I didn't actually care whether -

  God's sake get out, get out -

  Yes, the voice of reason, moved my head down and turned with the flippers fanning, clear water now in front of the mask, fast as we can now, yes, usually call a blind hit, keep a cool head, so forth, blood again and the whole scene flashing and swirling in the moonlight as they circled just aft of the ship, the drift of milky toxin still hanging in a cloud, the blood worse now, a mist of crimson, you've turned, you shouldn't see them any more, you're not going straight, this was true, yes, I was wallowing, I think, not able to steer too well -

  God's sake turn again, turn and go straight -

  Using one arm, paddling, turning and seeing clear water ahead, moving faster now, feeling a little brighter, thing hit me like a train and I blacked out -

  Blacked out, the music, the music of the spheres, a blind hit, that was what had happened, and the organism was trying to run on its own now, autonomically, the eyes still open and watching for clear water, the balance mechanism of the inner ear correcting, adjusting, but there was redness in the water and my feet were not moving, the blind hit had ripped the wet-suit away at the shoulder and broken the skin, the feet not moving, we need to move, my feet just lying in the water, move them, it is necessary.

  Life is necessary, we are moving ahead again, fanning slowly, and the truth is that one of two things will happen, I will continue to move, to leave behind me the frenzied dance of the big grey bloodied fish, or one of them will come for me again and this time use its jaws to better effect and close on my body and shake me, crush me, with my arms and legs obscenely sticking out from that great shape like the legs of a frog I had once seen in the mouth of a golden carp, and then shall it be written, finis, finito, on the final pages of this man's life -

  Move your feet, keep moving -

  Philosophy, a rush of cheap philosophy through this semi-conscious mind, I agree, will get us nowhere.

  The water was still clear ahead of me through the mask, and I rose a little and broke the surface and let the full light of the moon strike down against my eyes. The Coral Rock, she had said, would be my marker to the east, and there it was, a red winking eye in the night, and behind me, as I turned my head, the lights of the motor-yacht afloat on the sea, quite a distance from me already – I'd come farther than I would have thought. I went down again, to swim below the surface for a time, the legs feeling stronger now and the head clearing.

  Six of them. I had set only six of them, not eight, but the fish had come and there'd been no choice. It mig
ht be enough, six. let us hope so.

  Fat lady sing, now.

  Fat lady sing.

  Chapter 24: BOMB

  It's all very well for them. I haven't had a woman in three weeks, they think we're bloody robots?

  All day.

  I haven't seen him, sir. He said he was going on deck.

  We'd been here all day.

  I asked him, 'How long will those batteries last?'

  'Thirty-six hours. That's their normal endurance.'

  They'd been running since midnight and it was now seven in the evening. They'd been running for nineteen hours. We'd got until noon tomorrow.

  So the judge asks him, what makes you rob banks, then? And this guy says, that's where the money is.

  Laughter. TV show.

  The shivering hadn't stopped. I don't know if Parks had noticed. It felt like a fever, without the temperature, cold, if anything, the skin clammy. I'd had a row with Kim: she'd said, 'You've got to sign in at a hospital for a bit. Shock needs treatment. It's as important to treat shock as if you were bleeding to death. I know this, I've been trained and I've seen what happens if people neglect shock. It can kill.'

  The worst of it was that she probably thought I was carrying on out of bravado, but that was not the case, it was not, my good friend, the case at all. I would have given a great deal to report to a hospital and flop out onto a bed with nice clean sheets and a gentle nurse to wipe my fevered brow and hold my hand, a very great deal. But this, if you remember, was the last chance I'd got of bringing home Barracuda, however thin, however desperate.

  We'll talk about that when we meet. Apostolos doesn't want anything said before then. We need to keep open minds.

  Apostolos Simitis.

  The voices coming in to the recorder weren't always as intelligible as that. They were coming through a mass of unrelated and conflicting sounds – other voices, music, static, interference, coming in on six channels from the six transmitters, and Parks was doing what he could to keep them separate and edit them before they went onto the tapes. He was sitting like a spider in the middle of a dense array of equipment – amplifiers, modifiers, input balancers, audio monitors, with signal-strength needles swinging across the dials the whole time.

  He'd started editing and recording the moment I'd placed each transmitter and pushed the contact under the rubber shield; by the time I'd reached here at three this morning he'd filled three sixty-minute tapes, with nothing much on them in the way of voices: most of the crew and passengers had been asleep.

  'You all right, are you?' he asked me.

  'I'm fine.'

  He'd noticed the shivering, then, but of course that wasn't all: I must have looked like something out of a car crash when I'd got here. She'd said the blood loss wasn't critical but I'd need to have the dressings changed in twelve hours. That thing had ripped flesh off the whole of the upper arm and left the triceps exposed. 'I'm not a doctor,' she'd said, 'I could be up on criminal charges, practising medicine on you and not even reporting it.'

  I don't think the shock was because of the wound; there was the lingering horror of having been out there with the huge dark shape of the vessel blotting out most of the surface overhead while those bloody things had come at me through the open expanse of water like the angels of death.

  'More tea?'

  Said yes.

  He was looking peeky himself, hadn't slept since transmission had started nineteen hours ago, hadn't taken a break, because I'd told him we mustn't miss anything, mustn't miss a word.

  'Don't fancy anything to eat?'

  'No. Don't let me stop you.'

  I didn't think I'd ever want to eat again; I was just this side of nausea, slumped here in the big lopsided armchair stinking of iodine and God knew what else. 'It's normally the dog's bed,' Parks had said, 'but I've put him in the kitchen.'

  But you shouldn't have come here, darling. This is a terribly small ship. I told you, I'll come to your cabin whenever I can.

  That had been in French. So far we'd heard English, French, German, Russian and Japanese coming in to the tapes. There were five women on board, three of them secretaries. We'd heard several people identified by name during conversations: Takao Sakomoto, Simitis, de Lafoix, Lord Joplyn, Abraham Levinski, Stylus von Brinkerhoff. We'd heard only the first names of the women, except for Madame St Raphael.

  He said he'd cover that sort of thing at the meeting. I couldn't make him budge.

  Parks was watching me, and I nodded. It was the third time we'd heard people mention a meeting.

  'I wish they'd say when,' I told him.

  'That's what we're after, is it? Some kind of meeting?'

  'We're after anything we can get.'

  'I see.'

  His tone told me he thought I was playing it close, shutting him up, and that was true. Anything at all going onto the tapes from the Contessa was by its nature ultra-classified, except for the private conversations, and if the batteries held out long enough to give us the scheduled meeting we could be listening to material as vital as the briefing that Erica Cambridge had brought off the ship. It could give us the whole of Barracuda.

  'If we get what I'm hoping for,' I said, 'they'll want you to come with me to London for special debriefing. Consider this stuff Ears Only for Bureau One, you know what I mean?'

  'Crikey.' The kettle was whistling and he said, 'Look, could you -'

  'Stay exactly where you are.' I got up and went over to the stool where he'd set up the makeshift canteen, and the ceiling came right down at an angle and I threw a hand out behind me and broke the fall and lay on the floor listening to the constant rush of static and voices, and Parks got off his stool at the console and I told him to sit down again and get on with what he was doing, we mustn't miss, floating in front of me, the canteen floating in front of me, miss a word, not a word.

  Got up and tried again.

  'You ought to have something to eat,' Parks said.

  So I found some bread and made the tea and went back to the armchair. 'Bread?' I asked him.

  'Not just now.' Sitting there like a leprechaun on his toadstool, face pinched with fatigue, eyes nickering as he monitored the signals, all I'd offered him was some bread, poor little bugger, as soon as I felt a bit better I'd go and find some eggs or something.

  … He is to be eliminated.

  But how can that be done? Toufexis is protecting him.

  We own Toufexis. He will be given the task of eradicating crime throughout the United States, once the new order is established. He'll do as we tell him.

  Interference came in and saturated the voices, then cleared a little.

  … He's too dangerous now. We used him to work on the tapes for the selected commercials at the studios and that was fine, but then Apostolos brought him aboard here and gave him too much trust, in my opinion. He's now privy to very sensitive information on the whole project, and his behaviour is becoming a little irrational, as perhaps you've noticed. Brink agrees with me. He is to be allowed to go ashore once more, and Toufexis will be given instructions… This is… but no later than…

  We were both crouching, Parks and I, watching the console, but static was coming in overwhelming bursts.

  'Talking about Proctor?'

  'It sounds like it,' I said.

  Parks knew about him; Ferris had sent him in to search Proctor's flat for bugs the day after he'd cleared out and gone to ground. I wasn't surprised they'd decided to put him out of the way. The last time I'd talked to him he'd looked perilously near the brink, with his psyche undermined by cocaine and subliminal indoctrination, and by now he could be coming slowly apart.

  … You brought me aboard as your mistress, Baptiste, not as your servant. I would like some sleep, if you'll be so kind… When I have… Otherwise…

  Eight. Eight in the evening.

  At nine Parks showed me how to adjust the volume and selector controls to keep the stuff channelled as it came in, and went into the kitchen and made us some eggs on
toast and some coffee.

  By midnight I was feeling stronger, and took over from Parks while he got an hour's sleep. The signals flow was down to a trickle now, mostly comprising private conversations and snatches of speech from the bridge.

  I slept between two o'clock and six, and then went through the only tape that Parks said might interest me; but it wasn't anything to do with the project and there was only one reference to a meeting, with no time mentioned.

  … And in that case you have my full authority to arrange the takeover. If they wish to contest our offer of three and a half billion US dollars, I'm prepared to listen to a counter offer, but the bottom line must be three and a quarter billion. I am calling Weiner today, to get his opinion…

  Ten in the morning.

  'Doesn't look too good,' Parks said.

  I do wish people wouldn't state the obvious. Of course it didn't look too bloody good when we'd got two hours left, two hours before those bloody batteries ran out, did he think I didn't know the situation? Those bloody things coming at me with their jaws wide open and putting the fear of Christ in me and in the end what'd we got, nothing, nothing I could take to Ferris.

  Eleven.

  Eleven o'clock.

  Most of it was useless. Talk of corporate infrastructures and aggressive trade policies, snatches of talk shows and dirty stories below deck, the imbecilic beat of heavy steel and the rise and fall of the Dow Jones Average on the financial services programmes, long discussions on the advisability or otherwise of asking the Vatican if it wanted limited participation in order to persuade the South American states to accept the proposed status quo without the inconvenience of rebellion.

  Nothing I could use, no statement of aims, no commitment to illegal acts, no material on rigging the imminent elections, nothing on Mathieson Judd, nothing on the Moscow connection, nothing, nothing, nothing.

  Noon.

  Fifteen minutes later Parks said, 'The first one's starting to fade.' He was fiddling with a volume knob, watching a dial.

  'Batteries?'