'In what sense?'

'He wanted to control it, by buying up its major companies, the machinery behind the throne. He went a long way, but it was the wrong way, the hard way.'

The bodyguard was getting to his feet again.

'There's an easier way.' Her voice quieter, intense, her eyes on me the whole time now. To buy America, all you have to do is buy one man. The president. But first you have to -'

'Excuse me, ma'am.' The bodyguard held out a remote telephone. 'You taking calls?'

'Who is it?'

'Mr Sakamoto.'

'Yes, I'll take it.' Surprise but no hesitation. 'Excuse me, Mr Keyes.'

I picked up a menu.

So first they'd tried her home and been told Miss Cambridge was at the studio, and then they'd tried the studio and been told that if she weren't home she could be anywhere, but she sometimes went to Kruger Drug, and then they'd tried Kruger Drug, so they must have wanted to talk to her quite urgently, at five minutes to midnight.

'You mean right away?' Looking at her diamente watch, 'Oh sure, no problem. Has anything -' then she corrected it and said, 'I'll be there in fifteen minutes,' and gave the phone back to her bodyguard. 'I'm sorry, Mr Keyes, it's something I'm unable to pass up.'

'Of course. This isn't the place, anyway, to talk.'

We left the table, the bodyguard ahead of us. 'When can we meet again?' She sounded torn, under pressure. A woman called Hi, Erica, but she didn't turn.

Tomorrow,' I said. 'I'll phone you.'

She gave me her card and as we got to the doors I passed close to one of the Bureau men, 'Car,' and he left his table and went out in front of us while I was talking to Cambridge in the lobby.

'It's absolutely vital,' she said softly, 'that we get together as soon as possible.' Her eyes with fright still in them. 'I'll make a point of staying in until noon. Call before then.'

The limousine was at the kerbside with a chauffeur at the rear door. 'Can I drop you somewhere?' she asked me.

'I feel like a walk.'

A last glimpse of her face at the smoked window, no more than a featureless smudge, leaving me with the odd impression that she'd been trapped in the big black car, obliterated.

Midnight plus seventeen, the late-night traffic rolling with very little sound through the streets, gathering at the lights and waiting, finding release, changing lanes to go round the work gangs still clearing debris left by the hurricane, the black Lincoln ahead of me with two other cars between until the limousine slowed, letting them past and turning into the driveway of 1330 West Riverside Way.

Chapter 10: CONTESSA

There was nothing I could do.

This was a residential street, large balconied houses, stucco and porticos behind trimmed hedges, wrought iron gates, the residences of old Miami money. Shadows everywhere thrown by the trees and hedges, one of the tall ornate street lamps out, like a dead eye in the night. Heat still rising from the stones and the tarmacadam after the day's unremitting sun, the air moist from the vegetation, from the sea.

I wish to Christ it didn't affect me but it always has, always will, and don't try telling me it's all in the day's work, I'm not standing for that.

Seed pods dropping, big ones, spiralling down through the lamplight and hitting the sidewalk with the sound of autumn hail.

12:34.

He must have been under their own surveillance for quite a time because they didn't ask any questions – they used one car and two men and the snatch didn't take more than ten seconds and the car was gone again, more than a snatch, because the first man to reach him had broken his spine at the first vertebra and they'd dragged him across the sidewalk and thrown him into the back.

There was nothing I could do because the distance was something like a hundred yards and it was over before I could have got out of the car and started running and in any case the executive in the field is strictly forbidden to go to the aid of anyone at all because he'd reveal his presence and that's what they'll sometimes go for, attacking one of the support people to bring the shadow out. It was the only thing about this killing that gave me any comfort: they couldn't have known I was anywhere in the environment or they would have worked more slowly on him to give me time to get there.

What was his name, then, and where was he from and who would tell her? One of the personnel staff, a woman, they did it better, I'm sorry, love, but there's some bad news about Bob, the tyres whimpering under the brakes and the doors flying open and the rush of feet and then death in the warm Miami night.

He'd tried to run, I'd seen that much, turned and tried to get clear somehow because the support people don't carry arms and there were two of them and they were quick, very quick.

I checked the three mirrors again, the one inside and the two others; I'd been checking them at short intervals since I'd passed the limo and made a square and put the Trans Am in the shadows of trees on the far side of the street, and the nerves were raw now because of the death. They weren't in any kind of intelligence, these people; their methods were too direct and they had no interest at all in pulling one of us in for interrogation; they went straight for the kill.

I would have to telephone as soon as I could, to report what those snivelling creeps in Records would call a terminal incident and to warn Ferris that 1330 West Riverside was no longer surveilled. It looked like a one-man station and there wouldn't be a relief until eight in the morning because this was the graveyard shift, and not thus named for nothing.

He'd been nearer the house than I was, and on foot. No blame to anyone, except possibly to himself; I'd no means of knowing whether he'd made some kind of mistake. Put it into the computer and you'd come up with fifty recommendations for doing a surveillance job on foot: you're faster, more mobile, less easily seen, so forth, and fifty recommendations for doing it with a car: you've got permanent cover and armour plating and even though a car makes a bigger profile than a man it attracts less attention parked in a street than a man on foot just standing, doing nothing.

The armour plating hadn't done me any good on the quay but if there's a long shot set up for you it doesn't much matter what you're doing, you're in the cross-hairs and that's it. They could do the same thing again without leaving the house, any second from now, but the risk was very slight because no one had come close enough to see me, to recognise me. I was only running one calculated risk and that too was low: they were keeping surveillance on the street from the house as a matter of routine, and that was how they'd picked up the Bureau man just now; and they might have noticed this dark blue Trans Am pulling in to the kerb and staying there with no one getting out.

Fingers on the ignition key.

They could in point of fact be watching me now as I sat here, with night-lenses and a tripod, beginning to wonder why the pale blur of the driver's face was still behind the windscreen after twenty minutes; they could in point of fact have sent a man out to check on me, but he would double and approach from behind and he couldn't stay out of the mirrors.

Turning the key, a spasm along the nerves in the right arm, from the fingers to the shoulder, and the odd sensation of the mind dipping away from reality, nothing dramatic, just dipping away, but don't start the car for God's sake, they'll pick up the sound, turning the key but slowly, the mind working on the muscles with its subtle, omnipotent demands, the message perfectly clear: You will go to 1330 West Riverside Way at any time before midnight. Not later than that.