He repeated the procedure with the other rod, using a tattered fish head for bait. Then he leaned on the side of the boat. ‘Just remember,’ he said, ‘the big ones, the billfish, they hit twice.’ He held up two fingers to make his point.
‘First time, they use that schnozz on the end of their nose, they use that to stun their meal, they lay back a second or two, whap, they hit again. That time the hook goes in, okay? You’ll know it. When they make that first hit , the line’ll snap outa the outrigger, the line picks up the slack so the bait don’t run away from the fish, then bang, he’ll hit it again. Then you haul ass, toot-sweet, set that hook in good, or the fucker’ll spit it Out. Then it’s you and him, one on one.’ He waved disdainfully at the other rod. ‘The other line’s fixed for smaller stuff. They’ll hit it and dive deep. Maybe we’ll pick up something tasty for dinner.’
He went back to the bridge and eased up the throttles. The bait skittered along the surface of the water, fifty or sixty feet behind the boat.
Falmouth settled down in one of the two fighting chairs in the stern. ‘I figgered we’d mix a little pleasure with business,’ he said. ‘Grab a chair and let’s chat.’
‘For the record, Tony, why me? Why pick a guy on the dodge?’
‘Well, Sailor, we know each other and you know the territory and you know I’m not a bullshitter.. . Who else would I pick, Walter-bleedin’-Cronkite? Stickin’ it to that bloody Winter Man and bringin’ you in, I felt I owed you that. Once done, you’re the best man I know for the job.’
‘Job?’ O’Hara said.
‘It’s what you do now, isn’t it? Reporting for a living.’ Falmouth lit a cigarette and threw the match to the wind.
‘How come you turned down the Winter Man’s offer?’ O’Hara asked.
‘Hell, we’re friends. Also I don’t like him. It’s bastards like that give the Company a bad name. Besides, Sailor, I wasn’t all that sure I could turn you up. I’m not a tracker. My specialties are planning and execution. And even if 1 had turned you up, I wasn’t that sure I could take you.’
He looked stone-hard at O’Hara for a moment, then laughed.
‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘what son of a bitch would kill a buddy for a lousy twenty-fiver, right?’
‘Maybe that’s why that cheap bastard got such bad help,’ O’Hara said.
Falmouth took off his shirt and threw it on top of the catch box. ‘To begin with,’ he said, ‘I’ll have to tell you a little story, for it to make sense, if there is any sense to it at all, Sailor. It will put the whole thing in proper perspective. But you won’t mind. It’s one helluva yarn.
‘This was in the fall, eighteen months ago. I had pulled a really shit job. But for two years, most of them had been. I got to tell you, Sailor, I was fed up with the Service. Squalid little executions. Agents who’d turned around. Doubles. Defectors. This one was up in Scotland. M15 — which, as you know, is basically counterespionage — had turned up a mole in a very sensitive spot in one of our nuclear installations, way the hell and gone out in nowhere. A place called Tobermory, on the Island of Mull, over in western Scotland. Colder than a banker’s heart and as dreary as a Russian love story. This chap had been sleeping for twelve years, moving slowly up the ladder until he was where they wanted him. I don’t remember now what turned him up. Like I said, it was an edgy situation. He was politically connected, an earl, something like that. Home Office didn’t want to go through a messy trial. So they sent me in.
My cutout was this pissy little bastard named Coalhelms, who did everything as inconveniently as possible. He was a typical civil servant. A really horrid little man. Anyway, there I was, waiting for Coalhelms to show up with the background on the mark. We were to meet at the Thieves’ Inn, an ale house right on the sea, up over the rocks. Got to be the loneliest pub in the bloody fucking world, Always foggy and damp so it cuts through you. I was taking a dram and sitting there, letting my eyes get accustomed to the place, for it s all candlelit, and I was looking across the room, kind of not focusing on anything in particular and suddenly I realized I was staring at this giant of a bugger sitting at the bar and he’s looking back at me with the coldest pair of eyes you’ve ever seen in all your life. Yellow-haired he was, and wearing tweeds with one of them country-squire, gnarled-up shillelaghs. And a tweedy cap over one eye. Beard and moustache, curled up and waxed at the corners, like a Highland colonel. He looked the perfect Scottish squire.
‘And he was — except when I knew him he had red hair, and when last I saw him he was wearing a navy wet suit and his name was Guy Thornley. I recognized him quickly, even though I hadn’t seen him for eight years or more.
‘You may have forgotten who Guy Thornley was, although I’ll wager the name is familiar to you. Thornley was attached to M15, and his specialty was underwater surveillance and sabotage. But he was a bit of a rogue agent. Did what he wanted. The summer of nineteen sixty-eight, the Russians brought several warships up the Thames for some kind of political shindig and among them was a wireless trawler, an electronic spy ship. It was much too tempting a morsel for Sir Guy to pass up, so he decides to go down and take a peek at her underbelly.
‘Nobody ever saw him again. The Thames didn’t give him up. There was never another word from him. He vanished.
‘The accepted theory is that the Russians had a scuba lock team down there, they wasted Thornley, then took him aboard the trawler and dumped him when they were well out at sea.
‘An acceptable and logical theory. I believed it myself until that October night eighteen months ago. Sitting there in the Thieves’ Inn, looking at him, I knew there was no mistake on his part that I recognized him, and no mistake on mine that he made me.
‘What I did, I went outside and lit up a fag. I figgered whatever he was up to, I might as well give him some room. If I had known what he was up to, I would have got out of there straightaway, although I doubt I would have got far.
‘I wasn’t two puffs into the butt, he comes sauntering out. There we are, in fog as thick as chocolate syrup, and he says, “Coalhelms isn’t coming, old man.” Just like that.
‘Twas like I stuck my finger in an open socket. The hair on my arms stood up as straight as the Queen’s Guard. It was a setup, of course; the worrisome thing was that I had walked into it eyes open. I was in the drop because I had trusted that office monkey and suddenly there I was, standing there in the fog with the ocean crashing down below us, talking to a bloody ghost. Worse, I knew we weren’t alone. Someone else was close by. I could feel him breathing down my neck. I figgered to hear Thornley out, however it played.
‘He had seen my K-file, that was obvious, for he knew about Guardio and Trujillo and that take-out in Brazil four
