Adam Hall - Quiller Barracuda

'One way,' Monck told Croder, 'might be to keep him short of cocaine, catch him while he's screaming his head off.'

Ferris was making a note.

'Thank you,' Croder said, 'we could indeed try that.' Turning the sheets of the debriefing book, 'From what I've just told you, then, Quiller, you'll know that if at any time the CIA or the FBI get wind of us and ask you what you're doing in Miami, you'll need to stick closely to your cover. If they decide to detain you on suspicion, your director in the field will ask London to make representations through private diplomatic channels.'

There is always, for instance, a certain amount of suspicion aroused if you're seen crawling out of a burning car with bullet holes in it, or climbing out of the water a hundred yards from a wrecked Mafia boat at three in the morning. That's why I'd avoided questioning on both occasions.

'Understood,' I said.

'Ferris?'

Ferris nodded and turned to me. 'You also need to know that we found a micro-transmitter concealed in the ceiling fan in Proctor's flat. We've sent it to London for them to look at, but in the meantime Parks has told us he thinks it's designed to broadcast subliminal material from a remote source, buried in the wave structure of any kind of electrical hum – fan, refrigerator. It would also work in a TV set whenever it's receiving a signal. Parks is still taking Proctor's flat to pieces, looking for more electronics.'

Croder was going through the debriefing book again. 'I'd like some elaboration on this Newsbreak anchorwoman Erica Cambridge. You've reported that she's "anxious to find George Proctor".'

Ferris had debriefed me on this in the air, but there was a lot I hadn't been able to say. 'She told me she wanted to find him "very much", but that it wasn't for any personal reason.'

'Do you think that's true?'

'Yes. I think they were close – in fact she said so – but I sensed that when they broke up there was a lot of unfinished business, political business. She asked me what we were going to do with Proctor when we found him and I said we'd get him out of the country right away.'

Ferris was making notes again. Croder asked me: 'How did she react to that?'

'She wanted a meeting with him before we got him out, and I used that as a trade-off -'

'Yes, you guaranteed she should see him, provided she helped you find him. Perhaps it's not important, but do you feel it's a guarantee we should keep?'

'Ethically?'

'Yes.'

'Your ethics might not be mine. I've been trained to play it rough. But a meeting between those two, suitably bugged, would probably give you a lot of information. If we can find him.'

I suppose Ferris was making those notes for Purdom, keeping the bastard briefed, ready to take my place. Over my dead body. Joke.

'If we can find him,' Monck said, 'yes.' He was watching me steadily. 'What do you think the chances are? It would help us to know your feelings on that.'

Not really. My feelings weren't terribly sanguine.

Phone again, and Tench picked it up.

'Proctor is a professional,' I said. 'A top professional. He's trained and he's dangerous and he's apparently got the whole of the Miami Mafia behind him, and that gives him God knows how many places he can hide.'

Ferris was on the phone: Tench had passed it to him. Croder said to me, 'You don't think our chances, then, are very high.'

I tried to keep the tone under control, didn't quite manage. 'Oh for Christ's sake, d'you want it in letters of blood?'

Then one of those silly coincidences happened, you've known them, I'm sure, because Ferris was saying, 'I'm sorry to break in, but they've checked on that phone number in the diary, the one with the initials G.R.P., and I think you've located Proctor – he's on board the Contessa.'

'I want a twenty-four-hour watch,' Ferris said on the phone, 'on the cutter for the motor-yacht Contessa . It normally ties up at Quay 19, the Bayside Marina.'

I noticed Croder's assistant, Tench, watching me obliquely. He'd obviously gathered I'd made some kind of breakthrough; when I caught his eye he looked down, stroking the back of his head. He did that a lot, frightened, I rather think, of Croder and his responsibilities, and the stroking was meant to show how relaxed he was.

'You'll need four men, two for each shift. I want a photograph of everyone who boards that cutter or disembarks from it, and I'll tell you by radio if I want anyone tagged. Questions?'

Purdom hadn't reacted. He sat with his head down, waiting for doom. I think he'd made up his mind I was going to finish up with a dum-dum in the left ventricle and his feet were already on the starting blocks. The fact that we now knew where Proctor was didn't guarantee I wouldn't bite the dust at any given moment, according to the terms of the contract the Mafia had put out on me. But I wished he wouldn't sit there with his nerves twanging like that; it didn't help.

'Starting immediately,' Ferris said, and gave the phone back to Tench, looking at Croder. 'Signal, sir?'

'Yes, before we leave here.'

Signal the board for Barracuda , for the eyes of Bureau One. Executive has located objective. C of S informed.

Mr Shepley would be pleased, and so would Holmes, standing there in the shadows between the floodlit signals boards: it'd take the edge off his nerves, be okay to get himself another cup of coffee, celebrate, so forth, but it might be all that caffeine inside him that keeps him at such a pitch, you know, I've never thought of that.

'Congratulations,' Croder said, watching me, dark-eyed, brooding, busying his mind already with the future, because it was one thing to locate the objective and another thing to get him away from that privately-owned and well-protected vessel out there and take him to London and fry his brains out under a hood.

'Now I'd like to talk a little more about the anchorwoman. There's now an obvious question in our minds, isn't there?' Yes indeed. When she went aboard the Contessa last night, had she known Proctor was there? 'Your report was necessarily brief. Can you remember what she actually said about Proctor?'

'Yes. One thing was, she said it would help us if we let her see him before we got him out of the country. She said she'd got a great deal of information on him.'

It took another ten minutes to give him a replay of the scene in Kruger Drug last night; then I called up the other material that hadn't been specifically about Proctor. 'She told me I'd caught her at a critical – no, a crucial time, and that she needed help. There was no one she could trust.'

'She has no friends?'

'She didn't know if they'd be strong enough – I quote.'

'For what?'

I asked him to give me a minute.

I don't know how strong they'd be if things got really rough. And none of them know about George Proctor. Okay, we were close, yes, but they don't know about this thing that's happening.

Told Croder.

Thing.' He dropped the word like a stone into the silence.

'I don't know,' I said, 'what the thing is. But she began talking about Proctor again before we left Kruger Drug.' Pictured her face, her hands spread on the marble-topped table, listened for her voice. He still had a reserve I couldn't get through, and I believe he was doing things unknown to me that would have surprised me – correction, alarmed me, frightened me – not just personally, I mean on a geopolitical scale. I want to get this right – on a clandestine geopolitical scale.

Told Croder. He didn't comment, and I kept on going. 'She said something interesting about the late Howard Hughes, that he had a mad dream about buying America, by getting control of the industry, the machinery behind the throne. She said there was an easier way, that to buy America all you had to do was buy one man: the president.'