Adam Hall: Quiller Barracuda

'Good evening,' she said on her breath, then looked at Proctor. 'Call me?'

'Of course.' He didn't go to the door with her; as she passed me she left the air laced with patchouli .

I thought I heard a shutter bang in the wind, but it must have been someone upstairs, perhaps slamming a door: it was too soon for the storm to start up again.

'When did you get in?' He didn't offer to shake hands.

'Earlier on.'

'You come direct?'

'Through Nassau. You look good. Long time.'

'I'm all right. What'll you have?'

'Tonic.'

He went to the built-in bar where there was a ship's lamp burning; the glint of mosquitoes passed through the light. He didn't actually look all that good but I didn't think it was because of the bullet in him; Monck had said it didn't trouble him providing he didn't get into any kind of action. It looked, I thought, more like natural wear and tear: booze and late nights and girls like that one, a bit of a man, Monck had said, for the ladies.

'Lime or lemon?'

'I don't mind. Nice place.'

'It's all right.'

Lots of wicker and bamboo and big cushions nixed up with some Miami Beach art deco mirrors and wall plaques, fixtures, I would have thought, they wouldn't be his. Not much light anywhere, the walls mottled by the filigree work of the lamps hanging all over the place on chains, a Moorish touch. Big-screen TV set and VCR cluttered with boxes of tapes. a pile of glossies spilling onto the Persian rug – Vogue, Harper's, Elle, Vanity Fair . He'd established deep cover as an advertising rep, working through the major US east coast and Bahamian stations.

'Still on the wagon?'

'Pretty much.' I took the glass. It was more, I could see now as he stood close to a lamp, than natural wear and tear. He had a good face, unusually well-balanced, the dark eyes level and the nose dead straight and the chin squared, but the skin had started to go, even at his age, forty or so, because of the stress, which had made him start losing weight. It was in and around his eyes, too; they were less steady than they'd looked when we'd been waiting there in the cellar in Szeged near the Yugoslavian border the last time out together, waiting ten hours for them to find us and throw a bomb in and leave the pieces there for the rats to pick over. Czardas.

He didn't look as if he could ever go into the field again, although I couldn't tell whether some of the stress he was showing, or all of it, wasn't to do with me: he might not always be like this.

We sat on cushions on the floor – the only chairs were grouped around the bamboo table – and I went into the routine according to briefing, just thought I'd look him up, heard he was out here, so forth.

'Sure, it's good to see you.' He'd poured bourbon for himself, a big one, neat. 'Some kind of vacation?' The accent was still English but he was picking up the US vernacular.

'Not really. We think Castro's putting in some new off-shore listening posts on instructions from the Komitet. The High Commission signals room's been getting crossed lines.'

In a moment, 'Not your usual pitch.' His smile had a certain confiding charm, and it was there to take the danger out of the comment. It didn't.

'It's not on the board,' I said. There was no one else they could send out here. But I got a guarantee from Croder.' If there was a bug running I couldn't do anything about it. I was meant to be out here on the Castro thing and thought I'd look in on Proctor for old times' sake: that was the script and I had to stay with it.

'Guarantee?'

'That he'll pull me back to London if a mission comes up.'

'How long has it been?'

'Getting on for two months. You know what it's like.'

He scratched at the black hairs on his chest through the vee of his shirt. 'I used to.'

'You miss it?'

Things are all right here. This election's warming up, you know. What do you think of our Senator, Judd?'

'Politics aren't my bag.'

They can be quite amusing, the way they play them here. Someone started a rumour last month that Judd had been a pot addict, and they finally pinned it down to a single drag on a joint in high school, thought it was an ordinary cigarette. But it could have crippled his campaign – these good people don't care about a man's foreign policy, so long as he's Mr Clean.'

'Bit puritan.'

'Of course. Then the Anderson crowd started a rumour that he'd been AWOL in Vietnam for three months, but it turned out he'd been in a military hospital with honourable wounds. Judd's war record is unimpeachable, and they know it. Then last week, by way of a riposte, the Republican tabloids came out with pictures of Tate on a friend's yacht, cruising off Fire Island, and -'

'Tate?'

'Oh for God's sake, do you live down a hole? Senator Tate from Connecticut, running for the Democratic ticket – they got zoom pictures of him with Patsy Stiles perched on his lap in a bikini on the afterdeck. The shock waves rattled the whole of Washington and of course Tate was kicked straight out of the running – and in case you're going to ask me who Patsy Stiles is, she's a celebrated Mafia moll. I tell you, politics can be quite fun in these lively climes. Is it too hot in here?'

'No good opening a window -'

'No, but I can notch up the fan a few revs.' He uncrossed his legs and got off the floor and went across to a wall switch and I noted that he was still supple and moved well and was obviously in some kind of training. It didn't fit in with his job: sleepers tend to get soft.

'I notice you're reeking,' he said, 'of citronella. That's good, they're buggers.' Mosquitoes. 'But mark my word, Mathieson 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'll get in. He's got to get in.'

So this was why they'd sent me out here. I'd been shown some of the "odd" signals this man had been sending in to London and some of the stuff he'd been putting through the diplomatic bag and we had a case of a first-class shadow executive getting shot up in the line of duty and sent out to the Caribbean to operate as a sleeper and becoming engrossed in US politics to the extent that it was interfering with his job.

The whole picture was totally out of focus and I began listening very attentively because I had to catch everything I could – a false note, the wrong tone, a word out of place – and I hadn't forgotten that first warning with its disarming smile when I'd told him why I was out here in the Caribbean – Not quite your pitch.

This man had been given some of the really big ones, usually in the Middle East because that was his preferred hunting ground, and he'd done some critical reconnaissance work inside the PLO headquarters in Tunisia the week before the Israelis had blown the roof off and he'd infiltrated the Libyan air defence system and the Soviet shipment programme funnelling arms, missiles and material to the Arab states. He was too trained, too experienced and too professional to let anything get in the way of the work he was doing – I mean okay, yes, it was perfectly acceptable for him to fill me in on the local scene over drinks and make his pitch as an interested armchair campaigner for Senator Judd, but this was the kind of stuff he'd been sending the Bureau through signals and the diplomatic bag. It didn't -

The phone rang and he stretched full length across the rug and picked it up.

'Yes?'

The earpiece was bound with soiled adhesive tape and the cable was in knots and I wondered if this was his main line to London.

It was a woman's voice at the other end, too faint for me to hear any words or even make out if it was Monique, the woman who'd just left here.

'Not long,' he said in a moment and dropped the receiver back and got onto his haunches again. 'When I say that Mathieson Judd has got to get into the White House I mean he's the only man in this country who can give it a new direction – and I'm not quoting the standard rhetoric. This time, with this man, it's for real.'