The man had gone out.

' – is to thank you for letting me be with you this evening. I'm Erica Cambridge, and these are my views.'

Brilliant smile, hold, fade, credits.

I waited until most of the people had left the main studio; then I went in there.

'Who are you?'

The bodyguard hadn't followed me in. Either I'd cooled him off or he didn't want to start anything that could bring Cambridge down on him for being stupid: for all he knew I could be the head of the studio.

'My name is Richard Keyes.'

'I don't know you.'

'We need to talk.'

Getting her long slim snakeskin bag, checking her watch, swinging towards a door – 'Bennie?'

'You want me?' Voice off.

'Where did you put the transcripts?'

'I sent them for copying.'

'All of them?'

'He's doing them tonight. They'll -'

'Oh for God's sake, I need the originals to take home.'

His face in the doorway, patient, enduring, 'I sent them ten minutes ago, Erica, and they'll be back here practically now.'

'Next time, Bennie, get it right.'

She picked up one of the phones on the desk, remembered me and said: 'You can make an appointment through my secretary.'

I said, 'We need to talk tonight.'

'I don't know you. Please leave.'

She dialled, and I went to the main door. 'George Proctor sends his regards.'

The bodyguard was waiting for her outside and she came past him and caught up with me at the elevator. 'Who?'

'I haven't time,' I said, 'to make appointments.'

She wasn't biting her lip but it looked like that. Her make-up girl had taken off the heavy studio masque and fluffed the gel out of her hair and she looked younger and more human. 'How much time do you have?'

'We'll play it by ear.'

'I need to make one short call, okay?' Turned to the man in the blue serge. 'Is the car there?'

'Yes, ma'am.'

'Go down and wait.'

It was 11:40 when we came out of the building into the street and got into the limousine.

She leaned across the small marble-topped table. 'When did you see him last?'

Ferris had told his people to check on the second most frequent number on George Proctor's telephone bills and it had been unlisted but they'd got around it through contacts and the name they'd come up with was Erica Cambridge.

'Two nights ago.'

She looked away. 'Was he with anyone?'

I think she regretted it immediately but of course it was too late.

'Yes.'

She'd learned already, and just went on watching the people. 'Has he contacted you since then?'

'No.'

'Have you contacted him?'

'No. He's missing.'

I was watching her carefully and there was a lot of reaction in the eyes as she brought them back to me and looked down, too late again. 'You can't say someone's missing when you saw them so recently.'

'He took everything with him.'

'I see.' She straightened up, pulling the white silk stole round her bare shoulders. 'Have you been here before?'

I suppose I'd looked interested in the environment, which was true enough: two of the Bureau people had come in here soon after we had and taken up station near the doors. I didn't recognise anyone else but that didn't mean I was safe. I hadn't seen the marksman on the quay or anyone else in his cell and they could be in here now, sitting with a coffee, playing the juke box, using one of the payphones.

'No,' I told her. Hadn't been here before. The neon sign outside had said Kruger Drug.

'It's rather like Schwarb's Pharmacy,' she said, 'on the Strip in LA, but that's gone now. This was just a drugstore at first but it stayed open all night so people came in here for company – night-club types looking for something different, late-night workers, actors, that kind of crowd. Now there's just everyone – Cuban traders, cops, drug dealers, the survivors of family fights, you name it. Coffee?'

'Yes.'

'They have nineteen different kinds.'

She waved to someone and the brilliant smile flashed and died again, leaving the nerves showing just under the skin. It could have been because of her job, or her temperament; I didn't know anything about her, except that she might know where Proctor was.

That remains your immediate objective. Ferris.

Not really. My immediate objective was to stay on my feet and run through this town while they watched me, followed me, waiting to see if there were anything left inside my head, any traces of the subliminal material that had been put in there, waiting to see if the worm were still in the apple, eating its way through.

Waiting over there by the doors.

Sat here feeling the chill but I'd have to get used to it for Christ's sake, deal with it. Find Proctor and the rest would take care of itself. Proctor had been turned and gone to ground and for all I knew he'd been the principal who'd set me up for the kill down there on the quay.

'Hi, Dorothy.' The smile flashed again.

She liked being seen, came in here, probably, to be seen, but at the same time wanted privacy, which was why she'd chosen this table right in the corner and put her bodyguard close enough to fend off anyone she didn't want to see.

'I liked your show,' I said.

'Thank you. Which of the nineteen?'

'What? Oh. Whatever you're having.'

The girl went away with the order. 'I had to tape it because there's a meeting tomorrow evening with the Senator's campaign manager and I'm invited.'

The presence of her bodyguard two tables away would not, of course, do me any good if anything started; nor would the presence of the two Bureau people. The whole town had become a red sector two days after the mission had begun running and that put me at great risk but there hasn't been a single operation in the Bureau records that didn't go through the end-phase with the executive working on the very edge of extinction: it's the nature of the trade; and there was the obvious possibility that if I could find Proctor at some time during the last hours of this night I could turn him in for interrogation and give them a chance to shut down the board for Barracuda if they could get him to break.

'That little scene,' I said, 'in New Hampshire. Was it true?'

She looked down. 'In this business, truth is what you make it. That's the only way to play. Who else was there, that night?'

'With Proctor?'

'Yes.'

'A friend, just leaving.'

'A woman.' It wasn't a question.

'Yes. I think they'd been having a row.' As a gesture.

'And she doesn't know where he's gone?'

'I haven't asked her. I don't know where she lives.'

The bodyguard stood up suddenly, turning two women away. In speech at a distance the vowels stand out better than the consonants, and when we'd come in here I'd heard ameidge from several tables, and now there was au-oh-ah from one of the women, with small moans of disappointment.

The guard sat down again.

'Sugar?'

'No.'

'I want,' she said without looking at me, 'to find George Proctor, very much.'

'So do I. Perhaps we can help each other. If you want to tell me the places where he used to go, I can have them checked out.' It wasn't necessarily a thin chance. Proctor was a top-echelon executive and he knew how to go to ground without leaving a trace, but he could be operating as part of a cell or part of a whole network and he'd have to keep in contact and that would be where I could find him: by catching a stray signal, tripping on a wire, crossing a courier line and working inwards from there.

I knew one thing: it could be fatal to underestimate Proctor. Monck, briefing me in Nassau three days ago: What it does concern is the upcoming American election, in which of course Senator Mathieson Judd is actively engaged. It also concerns the balance of power between East and West as it exists at the present time, which is precariously. Let me put it this way. If the extent of things proves as far-reaching as we've begun to believe, I shall find it difficult to sleep soundly in my bed.