The chauffeur was standing at the rear door of the limousine and another man climbed out, tall, slightly stooping, bareheaded, dark glasses, moving at once to the motor launch as the crew snapped into the salute. I recognised him from the photographs that were all over the town: Senator Mathieson Judd, the Republican candidate for the presidency.

Chapter 11: NICKO

'Get your fuckin' ass outa here right now or you'll get your fuckin' brains blown all over the place, you know what I mean?'

Black, heavy-barrelled Suzuki, an inch from my face.

He smelled of chewing-gum.

'Which way?' I asked him.

The quay was narrow here; this was more than a mile from the boat marina; there were three other cars standing further along towards the warehouses, figures near them, the glow of a cigarette in the shadows thrown by the cranes.

'Turn around. Make a U-turn. C'mon now!'

A jerk of the big gun. Lights came behind me and I stopped halfway through the turn. An engine idling.

'Who's he?'

'Just a guy.'

'What's he doing here?'

'Gettin' his ass out.'

Slam of a car door, footsteps. I left both hands on the wheel in plain sight. One of the men standing by the cars further along the quay broke away and started walking towards us, dropping his cigarette, head up, alerted.

Blinding light in my eyes – 'Turn this way – this way!'

Couldn't see a thing, just the dazzling white fire of the light.

'Who are you?'

'Charlie Smith.'

'What're you doing here?'

'I'm looking for the marina.'

'There's ten thousand marinas in this place. Listen, I've seen you before somewhere.'

I shut my eyes against the glare.

'How long's he been here?' To the other man, the black.

'Listen, I'm doin' my job, man, I told him to get his ass -'

'Jesus, I think I know.'

The glare blacked out, leaving an after-light under my lids. I'd taken this route because there weren't so many overhead lamps; the streets up there were day-bright and my face was known to a few people, among them the man who'd had me in his sights yesterday.

'Is this you?'

Holding a black-and-white photograph, shining the torch on it.

'No.'

'I think it's you.' The light dazzling again as he moved it.

'I know my own face.'

'Goddamn,' he said 'this is you.'

Said nothing. These weren't intelligence people; I'd simply walked into some kind of drug-trade situation. But they had my photograph.

'Hold him there, Roget.'

'Okay,' The Suzuki swung up again. 'Cut them lights, an' the motor. C'mon.'

It was the other man I watched, the white man. He was walking down to the group of cars, his gait busy, energised. He'd sounded pleased when he'd looked at the photograph, as if it were something to eat: he was a fat man, with small delicate hands for picking currants out of cake.

I started thinking about egress, about, yes, getting my ass out of here, but the front of the Trans Am was pointing straight at the water between the rusting mass of a dredger and a timber jetty and even if they let me go it would take a couple of bites with the wheel to get me facing the other way and if they'd wanted me in a rat trap they couldn't have done a better job.

Tomorrow,' I told Ferris on the phone, and he'd agreed: I hadn't got anything urgent to debrief tonight and I wanted some sleep. 'But you've lost one of your people.'

'Lost?'

The connection wasn't too good; the phone box had taken a battering and the armoured cord was frayed. I spelled it out for him and his voice was icy when he spoke again.

'I didn't realise we'd invited that much attention.'

There was the long shot,' I said.

'But that had a specific target. Tonight it was over-reaction.''

I knew what he meant. In the course of intelligence operations we don't kill off the infantry just for being there; a beating-up as a warning would have been the normal response. But these people weren't in government-style intelligence, and that made it even more dangerous because they behaved unpredictably and there weren't any rules.

'You'll need to be very careful,' I told Ferris, 'if you're going to replace that man.'

Telling him his job I suppose because he just said, 'What about Erica Cambridge?'

'I'll give you a replay tomorrow, but you should know that she went aboard a motor-boat tonight in the company of a Japanese from 1330 Riverside. And Senator Judd.'

Silence, then: 'Name of the boat?'

'Contessa.'

'That's a cutter. The Contessa is a 2,000 ton yacht anchored in the Bay.' I think he was going to say more about it but changed his mind. 'We're getting a lot of information in with a direct bearing on Barracuda. I'll brief you tomorrow.'

Over and out. He wouldn't sleep well for the rest of the night, with a death on his hands. He'd feel responsible, but more than that, it would change his whole approach to the running of the mission: he couldn't afford to deploy support for the executive or even passive surveillance people in these streets without risking their lives, and he wouldn't be prepared to do that.

It's an ill wind. I didn't want support.

He was coming back, the white man, someone with him, a woman. He shone the torch on me again and I contracted the facial muscles to bring the ears back and pushed some air into my mouth to fatten the cheeks, all I could do.

'Is this the guy?'

I couldn't see her face because of the glare.

In a moment: 'No.'

'Don't give me that shit!'

He shook the photograph.

'I haven't seen him before.'

'But he was there, for Christ's sake. At the apartment.'

'This is someone else.'

A hint of patchouli on the air.

'How long were you with him?' Anger in his voice, frustration, wanted his currant cake.

'Long enough to remember what he looked like. This isn't the man.'

'Well Jesus Christ this is the face of the guy in the photograph!'

'You'd better take care, Nicko. Don't kill too many, for your own sake.'

'Get back to the car.'

Walking away – 'I'm warning you, Nicko.'

The scent of patchouli… a link with Proctor, subtle and tenuous but a link. And a question: why had she lied? She'd said nothing more than good evening that night in the apartment but I recognised her voice, just as she'd recognised me. A black girl, petite, slender, more than attractive, vibrant, her arm hanging like a model's in the light of the brass lamps, the hand turned outwards a little for effect, her dark eyes taking me in. So why had she lied? I haven't seen him before.

'Out!' He jerked the door open. 'Out of the car!' He turned to the other man, the minion. 'Frisk him.' Then he squeezed himself into the car and rummaged around for guns, taking the keys from the ignition and opening the trunk and throwing things around, the jack and the breakdown kit and the fire extinguisher, half pleased with himself, I thought at this stage, and half worried that he'd got it wrong and I wasn't the guy, the guy in the photograph.

Don't kill too many, she'd said.

Had Nicko killed the man on surveillance in Riverside an hour ago? He couldn't have done it himself; he wasn't quick enough on his feet, with his hands. But I didn't think he'd even ordered it. The setup with 1330 Riverside and Erica Cambridge and Mathieson Judd and the cutter for the Contessa was strictly political. The setup here was cocaine.

'He's naked, Nicko.'

But there was the link with Proctor. Was Proctor on cocaine?

'Okay, take him down there and put him in the car. In the Line, not the Chewy. Keep the gun on him. You let him go, Roget, you're dead.'

That would explain Proctor's changed personality, if he'd got himself into cocaine.