Adam Hall - Quiller Barracuda

But more immediately: 'A pickup of cocaine?'

'Of course.'

"This boat is carrying the cash?'

'The cash is in the other car.'

'How much?'

'I do not know. I am not on this run. When you say you might do something, what -'

'I'll tell you when the time is right. How many runs have you done, Fidel?'

'Many.'

'With Nicko?'

'Sometimes.'

'How much cash is usually taken on board?'

'It depends. Different sources, different deals. Maybe half a million, maybe a million.'

'American dollars.'

'Of course.'

Nicko was nodding to the other man; then he turned and began walking towards the Chevrolet. The two men on the quay started scanning the environment, each with one hand tucked inside his jacket. Nicko brought a black suitcase from the Chevrolet, ducking to talk to someone inside, Monique perhaps. Then he nodded and slammed the door and began walking with the suitcase towards the jetty. Almost as an afterthought he turned his head to look at Roget, the black, and jerked his free hand, gesturing towards the boat.

It was then that the reality of the thing hit me and I was made to know that I had been whistling in the dark in order to keep panic away because there was nothing I could do if I got inside that man's mind, no argument I could use to stop his hand. I was one of the two tiny people who would be dropped into the sea and that was it.

The only chance of getting clear would be in some kind of action between the Lincoln and the boat and Roget would have his big black Suzuki trained on us and even if I could get it away from him the other men were armed and would be too far away for me to work on them. If the -

'Outa the car!' Jerking the Suzuki. 'C'mon, outa the fuckin' car!'

I saw Fidel go into spasm as if a bullet had hit him; then he opened the door and its edge caught against the wall and he had to pull it away, walking round the front of the car with his eyes on the sky, praying again I suppose.

'You! Outa the fuckin' car!'

I opened the door and pushed it shut after me and noted everything I could as I walked to the jetty. Roget was of course at our backs; Nicko was halfway along the jetty with the suitcase, leaning a little backwards as fat men have to, leaning a little to the left to counter the weight of the suitcase in his right hand, not looking back, or towards us, towards Fidel and me, taking care as he got hold of the boat's rail and stepped aboard. Monique was still in the Chevrolet: I wouldn't expect her, or any woman, to be present at an execution.

'Keep walkin'!'

I think Fidel had slowed his step, understandably; when I glanced at him I saw that he had paled and was walking with that jerky motion, head down now, that I'd seen in him earlier, as if he knew exactly what had to be done. He'd been here before, not like this but behind a gun, herding some other man to the slaughter-house.

We were on the jetty now with the boat twenty, twenty-five feet away and black water immediately on my left. It was inviting, because once I was under the surface I could move a long way unseen; but there wouldn't be time to dive; Roget would pump the big Suzuki as a reflex action.

That was the last chance that offered; once on the boat there would be no more, and as I followed the Cuban onto the deck I caught some of the aura, and felt the fear wash into me, chilling me to the bone.

Seen from the ocean Miami is beautiful by night, a blaze of light floating from horizon to horizon on the water and reflected there. The night lends a semblance of purity to most cities; their light flowers from them as if from unsullied soil.

I saw the bright frieze of the skyline at intervals, when the swell dropped the boat into the long indigo troughs: Fidel and I were sitting in the scuppers on the afterdeck, our knees drawn up, Roget standing with his back to the opposite rail with the big gun trained on us. When I could see the water I noticed that flotsam was everywhere, the detritus of smashed pontoons and jetties and small boats thrown up by the hurricane and strewn across the sea. Perhaps there were bodies there; I looked for none.

She was a single-deck motor yacht with twin diesels and a cluster of antennae on the cabin roof; I estimated our speed at fifteen knots, and we were a mile from the shore, heading out.

'We don't tolerate thieves!'

Fidel didn't voice any reaction to the kick; his limbs jerked and were still again. It displeased Nicko. I think he'd wanted a scream.

'You know Mr Toufexis. He doesn't tolerate thieving!'

A hiss of breath as the kick raked across his legs, leaving him spilled on the deck with his groin exposed, and the fat man went for that and got his scream.

'There's got to be trust , you understand me? Trust . With this kind of money around and this kind of merchandise, we've got to trust everyone else, and they've got to trust us. You understand what I'm saying?'

Fidel the Cuban was prone now and vomiting, couldn't answer, wouldn't have answered anyway. I'd seen the two men in the control cabin look around when Fidel had screamed. They didn't like Nicko: I'd noticed it before. I would have said they were more like professional traders than men of the criminal type as such; they weren't here to take their revenge on society but simply to make money, a great deal of money. They were business men, not thieves; hence Nicko's nice distinction. This didn't mean they weren't dangerous.

'Get up!' Standing over the Cuban, hands on his hips, his face red with rage, a show of monstrous petulance. 'Clean that up!'

The swell lowered us smoothly into a trough and there was the city again, looking beautiful. The throb of the diesels was low and sensual, the warm air rich with the scent of seaweed.

'You're too fat, Nicko,' I said.

He looked down at me.

'What did you say?'

'You're too fat.'

He was a short man, didn't carry his weight with majesty like Sidney Greenstreet or Orson Welles. Nicko was just a dumpling of a man, spoiled, a cakeseeker. I thought he might be sensitive about it and he was. It was as quick as he could manage but it was done in rage, which lowered the muscle tone, and I had a lot of time to monitor the kick as it came, and when it came I caught it, nothing more than that, caught it and held the ankle until he began losing his balance, because I didn't want him to fall – the moment had come and gone.

It had been an essay, that was all. Nicko was standing over me and blocking Roget completely, and it might have been possible to use the fat man for my purposes, which were of course to avoid death. But I would need to make physical contact with him before I could do anything to him, and I couldn't have got to my feet and started work because there wouldn't have been enough time – he would have come at me right away. So I'd had to get him to make the first contact, and things had come very close because I could have done a lot more than just hold his ankle -1 could have straightened up and pitched him back against the man with the gun and Roget would probably, would very probably have loosed off at least one shot in his surprise.

I wouldn't of course have stopped there: that would have been the beginning, with two people off balance and wide open and the ship's rail immediately behind them. It could have been quite elegant in a way, though somewhat too easy to claim any credit. I didn't attempt it because there were some unpredictable factors. Nicko and the black would have had their throats well exposed and would have been dead before they went over the rail; but I couldn't have told where that first impulsive shot would have gone: it could have gone straight through Nicko and into me. There had also been no predicting how fast the two men in the control cabin would have reacted and got to their guns. In the end, within those few milliseconds when I was holding the fat man's ankle, I let the subconscious make the decision for me because it could scan the whole range of data very much faster than the forebrain and it would be much more accurate.