‘A computer. Everything is done by computer. The only human Contact I have on the top side is a man named Quill.’
‘He’s your cutout?’
‘Yes.’
‘Quill?’
‘Yes, Quill.’
O’Hara shook his head. ‘Sounds like you’ve been reading too much Dickens,’ he said.
‘Well, that’s his name, dammit. Quill. Never met him and the only way to reach him is through Master.’
‘And Master’s the computer?’
‘Right. To get into it, you have to go through a series of checks. Voice prints. Number intersects. Variable code names, like that. The operation’s so simple it’s terrifying. A job comes in. Quill programs Master, determines the best man for the job and makes contact. Everything is taken care of. Tickets, money, contacts, hotel reservations, cars. Even weapons, if there’s something special you might need. The pay is deposited in the account of your choice before you get your bags packed. It works as smooth as sand running through an hour glass.’
‘What about the man himself — what’s his background?’
‘Never seen him. Wouldn’t know him if he came up out of the water there and spit in my eye.’
‘You’ve been at this for eighteen months, you’ve never seen any of the top Players?’
‘And maybe never will. It isn’t necessary.’
‘How about some of the operations?’
As the sun swept overhead, boring relentlessly down on them, Falmouth detailed the Guardio operation and then went on, describing the accidental murder of Marza and the destruction of the Aquila car, how he set up the bomb in the computerized dash, where he stayed, trains and planes he took.
‘The Aquila job was so clean they’re still trying to figure out what went wrong. It’s delayed work on the car for months. They still haven’t recovered from the shock of Marza’s death.’
‘I want a deposition from you with all those details.’
Falmouth thought for a moment. ‘When the money’s paid,’ he agreed.
O’Hara pondered that for a moment and then nodded. ‘That seems fair enough,’ he said. ‘There’s got to be a pattern to all of this, something that ties it all together.’
‘I tell you, Sailor, stop looking for some kind of logical order to it.’
But O’Hara’s mind was trained to consider both the logical and illogical possibilities of any situation. There has to be some common thread, some ultimate goal in this madness, he thought, but Falmouth laughed at him when he said so.
‘It’s the Game for fun and profit, plain and simple. There’s a fortune being made. What do you think the Marza play cost? My end was a hundred and fifty thousand. They probably charged the client half a million.’
O’Hara was still unconvinced. To him, there had to be an overall objective to the Master operation other than ‘fun and games.’ Perhaps only Chameleon knew what it was.
‘You try to figger some kinda conspiracy in it, you’ll have a Chinese puzzle on your hands,’ Falmouth insisted. ‘Sometimes the jobs make no sense at all.’ He recounted Hinge’s tale of killing a man in Hawaii to retrieve the negatives of a dozen photographs, then destroying the film he had just killed to acquire.
‘And who is this Hinge?’ O’Hara asked.
‘Bloody cowboy. Kills without thinking or hesitation. Men or women, no matter. He can do the trick with gun or knife, he can do it with darts or with rope. Hell, he could probably spit us both to fucking death.’
‘Nobody can kill you, Tony.’
‘I used to think so, until I worked with this new lad two days ago in Caracas.’
‘What the hell were you doing in Caracas the day before yesterday?’
‘I got an assignment. I didn’t know whether you were going to make it or not. I couldn’t turn them down without showing my hand.’
Who’s this young hotshot, a mere?’
‘Was, before this.’
They’re a dime a dozen, Tony.’
‘Not this one. There aren’t a dozen like him. Made a kill from nineteen hundred feet in Vietnam. And j was using a bloody night scope!’
‘What was this job you two did?’
‘Chap named Lavander got lifted by some local muchachos. We had to bring him in. But it’s what’s happened since that may give you the hook you’re looking for.’
‘And how’s that?’
Falmouth leaned over, his eyes gleaming, and smiled. ‘I’ll tell you that when we have a deal,’ he said.
O’Hara was watching movement twenty or so yards beyond the lines that skittered along the surface ,f the sea. He was still uncomfortable about turning over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to Tony Falmouth, but if Falmouth had additional information for him, it could change his mind.
