What would I do, then, if London sent instructions to pull me out of Barracuda’?

  Go to ground.

  Vanish and work from the dark, from the silence of the catacombs. A pox on them.

  There is nothing worse, my friend, for the executive in the field than to be replaced, to be sent home crippled with his inadequacies, bringing nothing with him but the news of a lost cause and leaving behind him nothing but his bloodied tracks. Nothing worse, you understand, than professional ignominy, the irretrievable loss of face.

  Correction, yes. There would be, at this phase of this particular mission, one thing worse.

  ‘You said — ‘ Ferris, ‘that Harvester repeated word for word a political diatribe you’d heard before, from Proctor.’

  ‘Yes.’

  I noticed Alvarez shift in his chair.

  Ferris said quietly, ‘How could you remember it word for word?’

  ‘I — ‘ and left it. I didn’t know.

  ‘Could you repeat it now — ‘ Alvarez - ‘word for word?’

  ‘Yes.’ Beginning to sweat because I remembered how Kim Harvester had looked when she’d gone through the same material on board the tug, stabbing at the peach stone with the knife, withdrawn, robotic.

  Ferris looked at Upjohn. ‘Tape?’

  ‘Sure.’ He got the recorder and waited with his finger on the button.

  ‘When you’re ready,’ Ferris said.

  It was frightening because I went straight into it without any hesitation, bringing it out at a measured pace, He’s a statesman with a world view that we haven’t seen since Nixon … half his face in shadow beside the brass hanging lamp … very much hope the Thatcher government realises what we’ve got in Mathieson Judd … the first stirring of the wind as the eye of the storm began moving across the town … his understanding of the internecine struggle for power inside the Kremlin … my voice distant-seeming, the words unnaturally paced, until it was finished and the voice stopped, and I looked up to see Alvarez watching me, leaning forward, intent.

  ‘Finished?’ Ferris.

  ‘Yes.’ The skin crawling.

  Upjohn shut down the recorder. No one spoke so I said, ‘What did I look like?’

  Short silence and then Upjohn said, ‘Bit switched off.’

  ‘You were in an altered state of consciousness,’ Alvarez said, ‘somewhere between alpha and theta waves.’

  I got the decanter and emptied it into the glass, only half full, took it at a gulp while Upjohn asked Alvarez where the tap was. ‘That was where I picked it up,’ I told Ferris. ‘I got visuals with it.’

  ‘Proctor.’

  ‘Yes. But I mean it wasn’t just that he’d told me that stuff viva voce. I wouldn’t have remembered it word for word. I was picking it up from the background.’

  ‘Just as he had, before.’

  ‘Yes. The same subliminal source.’

  ‘Again,’ Alvarez asked, ‘was there music playing?’

  ‘No. Nothing in the background.’

  Ferris was making notes. ‘Is that all you’ve got in your mind about Mathieson Judd?’

  ‘Yes.’ Poured some more water and drank it.

  ‘You don’t know anything about the elections?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You haven’t followed the news.’

  ‘Christ,’ I said, ‘I haven’t had much time to read the papers.’

  ‘So you have no ideas,’ Alvarez said, ‘about Senator Judd’s chief competitor, Governor Anderson?’

  ‘No.’ The water was cool, and I savoured it. ‘Except of course that he’s trying to tell the voters that there’s so much wrong with America after the Republican four-year term that the country needs taking apart and rebuilding,’ the water cool in a dry mouth, a quietness in the room as deep as the quietness that snow brings, ‘whereas Judd’s theme is reassuring - the country’s in good shape and all we need to do is consolidate the gains that have been made under the present administration,’ the glass making a small musical sound when I put it back on the silver tray, the quietness settling.

  ‘Go on,’ someone said gently.

  ‘So it’s not a question of whether each argument is right or wrong, but a question of which message is the more likely to appeal to the nation. Obviously, Senator Judd’s.’

  And then after a long time I couldn’t hear my voice any more and I saw Ferris leaning across the desk talking to the psychiatrist and Purdom watching me from his chair and Upjohn switching off the recorder. I’d been walking about, I think, and now I sat down.

  Ferris was facing me suddenly. ‘Do you know how long you spoke for?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nineteen minutes, with no interruption.’

  I felt drained, emptied of something. Looking up at Ferris, not wanting to believe it. ‘That bad?’

  ‘Do you know what you were talking about?’

  ‘Yes. Anderson’s campaign theme. And Judd’s.’

  ‘There’s nothing buried,’ Alvarez said, ‘you must understand. The material is quite near the surface,

  an integral part of the conscious, even though it was ingested subliminally, by the subconscious.’

  Ferris sat down again and got his pad. Off-handedly, not looking at me, ‘Have you any more instructions?’

  The nerves sent a tremor through the organism. In a moment, ‘What instructions?’

  Still not looking at me, busy writing, ‘I mean is there anywhere you’ve got to go, anything you’ve got to do? It’s only a thought, you don’t need to worry about it.’

  Time going by, while the skin chilled under the sweat and their faces watched me, not with their eyes, with their heads turned, listening.

  Instructions.

  After a long time, ‘No. I don’t think so. I don’t know.’ And then I was on my feet suddenly and looking down at Alvarez. ‘How much stuff have I got in there, for God’s sake? How much more?’

  He said: ‘We may never know.’

  03:14.

  Ferris made a final note on the debriefing pad and put it into his briefcase and looked at Alvarez. ‘May I use the phone, Doctor?’

  ‘By all means.’

  ‘I need to call London.’

  ‘I understand. The switch is just under the desk here.’ At the door he said, ‘I shan’t be far away, if you need me.’

  Did he expect me to go berserk or something?

  Control, yes. Mea culpa.

  Ferris went behind the carved redwood desk and picked up the phone and sat with it, elbows on the big green blotter, his eyes nowhere, thinking. Then he dialled.

  I got up again, not wanting to go on sitting there waiting, moved about a little, took another look at those bloody elephants, God what a waste of a good tusk.

  We may never know.

  Like an echo in the mind. How big, then, was the worm in the apple, how healthy, how vigorous? As big as a snake? As a dragon?

  ‘Miami,’ Ferris said. ‘Get me Board 3.’

  Board 3 was for Barracuda.

  8:15 in the fair city of Londinium, with the double-deckers jamming Piccadilly Circus and the taxis dodging through the gaps, their black tops bright with rain.

  ‘Yes, good morning. I’m switching to scramble.’

  I have no wish, not the slightest wish, to go to London, whatever they say, whatever they decide.

  Purdom moved now, got out of his chair. He was like me, couldn’t just sit still nursing his nerves. If you were to ask me for whom the bell tolled, I would tell you that it tolled for him too.

  ‘Is Mr Shepley there?’

  He would make a good psychiatrist, this man Ferris, looks the part, thin, ascetic, totally calm, though perhaps he is a shade too coldblooded, and of course might even find it not abnormal for a patient lying there on that bloody couch to explain that his problem was that he couldn’t stop strangling mice.

  ‘Yes, sir. There’s been an unexpected development, and I’ve asked Monck to fly in from Nassau. He’ll be here in twenty minutes. I haven’t worked with him before, and I need to know whether he qualifies for major Classified One decision-making.’

  Purdom was standing by the bookshelves looking at the titles, if that’s what you want to believe. I suppose I hated him in an infantile way, because there was nothing in his square balanced-looking head, I mean nothing coiled there, no worm.

  ‘Yes, I can give him the whole picture. We’ve just interim-debriefed the executive.’

  Upjohn hadn’t budged from his chair. I didn’t like him much either, not because of his acne or his broom-head haircut of course; I disliked his detachment, or rather his ability to detach himself from what was going on. I could believe his blood was colder than Ferris’s, if there were any in his veins at all.

  ‘All right, sir. Understood. Do I fax the debriefing?’

  He said a few other things that weren’t important. The important bit was over now, I knew that, but I hadn’t heard Shepley’s answer to the question. I wasn’t looking at Ferris when he put the phone down, had my back to him. I heard him flip the scrambler switch and get out of the chair.

  ‘Monck was in Croder’s place,’ he said, ‘before he left London. He’s still on that level, overseas section.’ I’d turned round and was facing him. ‘Whatever decisions have to be made, he has the power to make them.’ Getting his briefcase, looking at his watch. ‘I’m meeting him at the airport, cutting it a bit fine. Why don’t you catch up on some more sleep at the hotel? It’s still secure. Upjohn will take you there.’

  Didn’t really want an answer: these were orders.

  Then everyone was moving about and Ferris called Alvarez back and thanked him for his hospitality and then came with me to the alleyway at the back of the house where there were two cars standing in shadow.

  Try not to give it any more thought,’ he told me. ‘Just try to sleep. When I’ve talked to Monck and asked him what we’re going to do, I’ll contact you, probably in an hour or so.’ Got into his car.

  ‘But I like the town, because it’s crazy.’

  Upjohn drove through the lit streets, knew his way. I sat beside him, like an aristo in a tumbril. Ferris knew what was going to happen already, but couldn’t give London the whole picture without faxing it and there wasn’t really time even for that. Barracuda couldn’t go on running without an executive and the only executive it had was a man who might at any time break loose and start following instructions he wasn’t even aware of at this moment - and instructions that could tell him to blow the whole thing up.

  Shivering a little, not unexpected.

  ‘It’s got everything, after all. Drug trade, casinos, refugees, the mafia, you name it. Sight more interesting than Streatham.’

  I suppose I answered him now and then on the way, but I don’t remember clearly. When we got to the hotel he opened the gates at the back and drove the car through and got out to shut them again before I left the car.

  ‘Feel like company? Play some poker?’

  I thanked him and said I needed some sleep, and he nodded and stood there in the half-lit yard until I was inside the hotel.

  Lying in the dark with my clothes on, watching the reflection of the traffic lights at the corner of the street below, listening to the creak of the plumbing and the thin whistling of the first jet landing as the night drew towards dawn, I looked at this thing in the face and got rid of illusions.

  There would be only one thing worse, yes, than being sent back to London and seeing my name gone from the board and the final entry on the form I’d have to sign, executive recalled from mission, only one thing worse than losing Barracuda and handing over to Purdom, and that would be for them to order me to stay with it and do what I could.

  Because the only reason for their doing that would be to find out what I would do if they gave me room, where I would go if they set me running again, how they could profit if the worm in the apple went on eating and drove me across hazardous ground, into a red sector, into a trap.

  And that would be terrible, to run through these streets not as the shadow for the mission but as a rat in a maze, an experiment, a subject for sacrifice.

  That would be their only reason for keeping me in.

  Red to green, amber to red, a toilet flushing on the floor above, a jet turning onto the taxying lane with its sound and the echoes fading, red to green and the silence settling in and then the explosive shock of the phone bell jarring the nerves.

  I reached for the receiver.

  ‘They’re leaving you in,’ Ferris said.

  My hand clammy on the smooth plastic, the dark room crowding me, a sense of disbelief. I suppose I wanted it spelled out for me, so that there shouldn’t be any misunderstanding.

  ‘My name is still on the board for Barracuda?’

  Someone was whistling, down in the yard, as daybreak came.

  ‘Your name is still on the board for Barracuda.’

  So help me God.

  Chapter 9 : NEWSBREAK

  She’s petite, strawberry blonde, violet eyes, great cheekbones, very trim. Age thirty-one.

  11:03.

  Make-up. Highlight the cheekbones, deep eyeshadow, hairspray. She applied her own lipstick. Impatient with her cosmetician, small curt gestures, eyes on the mirror, on her face.

  Most people hate her, especially men who have to work for her, under her - the show’s director, technicians, those people. She enjoys emasculating them.

  The hand of the big clock moved to 11:04 but there was no significance attached to this: she wasn’t going out live tonight - this show was to be pre-taped.

  I don’t know why. She normally goes out live. There was some mess-up, I guess. You may find out when you’re there.

  I could only see part of her, waist up, through the glass partition. Two of the monitors were blank; the third was showing a Buick ad.

  She can use that kind of clout, you see - Chuck Baker, called in by Ferris to brief me on her - because some people say she’s arguably the single most accurate and important source of information on current events for one-fifth of the American people, through syndication programmes. Okay, other people say that’s just hype, but I’d say it’s a close guess. The Nielson Media Research figures give ‘These Are My Views’ twenty-one million households per broadcast.

  She threw off the make-up gown and crossed into the studio, moving with care to preserve the fluffed-up, Luster-Gel coiffure. Looked at her hands, set the tourmaline ring facet-uppermost, checked her nails. Other people came in now, two men and three women, some of them technicians with audio-gear, clipboards, papers. One of the men switched on the TelePrompTer and checked the display.

  I could see her better now. This was one of the monitor rooms and someone had come in a minute ago and asked where Harry was and I told him I didn’t know. I’d got the studio lapel pass from Chuck Baker. But I guess it’s up to you to tell people what you’re doing there, if they ask, okay?

  At this hour most of the studio was dark, and the man who’d asked about Harry was the only one I’d seen.

  She and Brokaw were called the sexiest anchors in the industry, by a poll conducted last June. TV Guide printed a joint opinion of influential critics that puts her as the first most trustworthy anchor on the screen, in terms of news accuracy and her own deeply considered views. She’s strictly non-partisan, and that comes through for her, though at this time of course she’s down here from the National Newsbreak network in Washington to pitch for Florida’s Senator Judd.

  I could hear her voice faintly now through the panel as she began rehearsing. The other people were moving about the whole time now, checking equipment, and one of the monitor screens lit up and began showing her image as a camera started shifting its angles, zooming in on her face, pulling back to head-and-shoulders.

  In the last quarter her show cost $80,000 a night and brought in $150,000, giving a profit for the network of more than $4,500 a minute. They pay her a million dollars a year and she’s obviously worth it, with all the syndications thrown in.

  One of the technicians was taking a quick bite at a sandwich as she worked, and the anchorwoman said without turning her head, ‘No food in here, you know the rules. This isn’t a goddamned construction site.’ A man looked in from the corridor and one of the crew put his thumb up and the man went out again.

  ‘Cameras?’

  ‘I’m ready, Jeff.’

  ‘Where’s Harry?’

  ‘He took a day off and forgot to tell anyone.’

  ‘Jesus. Get Phyllis in here.’

  ‘Erica, what’s our timing?’

  ‘When I’m ready I’ll tell you.’

  She’s a legend in her time already. She can go into a studio cold turkey and in ten minutes you can start the cameras and she can hit thirty or forty million people with the kind of charm and authority and sheer presence that hasn’t ever been seen before. Offstage she’s gotten a reputation for being a real personal bitch, but on-stage she’s got a red-light reflex you wouldn’t believe. The minute the light goes on, she projects herself right into those twenty-one million households and stops everything right there, and all people can do is watch. You know something? She could stop a family fight, knives, guns, you name it, without even leaving the studio.

  ‘Bennie.’

  ‘Uh?’

  ‘Cut those lights.’

  ‘Sorry, Erica.’

  The backdrop behind the anchor desk was a map of the United States covering the whole flat, with a backlit transparency of downtown Miami by night. One of the on-screen monitors lit up with a still head-and-shoulders shot of Senator Mathieson Judd, smiling and waving.

  She is also - and this is pretty rare in the industry - she’s also of what they call good family. They came over on the Mayflower and Jonathan Cambridge II is the founder and president of Marlborough Chemical Bank. She doesn’t mix very much in high society - she went through a leftist kick just out of high school and left the ancestral home to live by herself in a sixth-floor cold-water walk-up on Lexington for two years - but the pedigree’s there if she needs it. She could walk in to just about anyone’s country house and they’d ask her to stay.