I ask.
'To the hotel.' I follow him outside and he waves an arm peremptorily. An old but well-kept Jaguar XJ6 pulls up and the driver jumps out to open the door. 'Get in.' I almost fall into the seat, but manage to cushion my briefcase just in time to save the laptop. Griffin shoves the door shut on me then gets into the front passenger seat and raps the dashboard: 'To the Sky Tower! Chop-chop.'
I can't help it: my eyes slide closed. It's been a long day and my snatch of sleep aboard the airbus wasn't exactly refreshing. My head's spinning as the Jag pulls out onto a freshly resurfaced road. It's oppressively hot, even with the air conditioning running flat-out, and I just can't seem to stay awake. Seemingly seconds later we pull up in front of a large concrete box and someone opens the door for me. 'Come on, get out, get out!' I blink, and force myself to stand up.
'Where are we?' I ask.
'The Sky Tower Hotel; I've booked you in and swept the room. Your team will be working out of a rented villa when they arrive — that's in hand, too. Come on.' Griffin leads me past reception, past a stand staffed by Barbies giving away free cosmetic samples, into an elevator, and down another anonymous hotel-space passage decorated randomly with cane furniture. We end up in some corporate decorator's vision of a tropical hotel room, all anonymous five-star furniture plus a French door opening onto a balcony exploding with potted greenery. A ceiling fan spins lazily, failing to make any impression on the heat. 'Sit down. No, not there, here.' I sit, suppress a yawn, and try to force myself to look at him. Either he's frowning or he's worried. 'When are they due, by the way?' he asks.
'Aren't they here yet?' I ask. 'Say, shouldn't you show me your warrant card'
'Bah.' His mustache twitches, but he reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a thing that anyone who isn't expecting a warrant card will see as a driving license or a passport. There's a faint smell of sulfur in the air. 'You don't know.'
'Know what'
He peers at me sharply, then apparently makes his mind up. 'They're late,' he mutters. 'Bloody cock-up.' Louder: 'Gin and tonic, or whisky soda'
My head's still throbbing. 'Have you got a glass of water?' I ask hopefully.
'Bah,' he says again, then walks over to the minibar and opens it. He pulls out two bottles and two glasses. Into one of thern he pours a double-finger of clear spirits; the other he puts down next to the tonic water. 'Help yourself,' he says grudgingly.
This isn't what I'm expecting from a station chief. To tell the truth, I'm not sure what I should be expecting: but antique Jaguars, regimental ties, and gin-tippling in midafternoon isn't it. 'Have you been told why I'm here?' I ask tentatively.
He roars so loudly I nearly jump out of my skin. 'Of course I have, boy! What do you think I am, another of your goddamn paper-pushing Whitehall pen-pimps?' He glares at me ferociously. 'God help you, and God help both of us because nobody back home is going to. Bloody hell, what a mess.'
'Mess?' I try to sound as if I know what he's talking about, but there's a quivery edge to my voice and I'm feeling fuzzy about the edges from jet lag. 'Look at you.' He looks me up and down with evident contempt — or mild disdain, which is worse — in his voice.
'You're a mess. You're wearing trainers and a two-guinea suit, for God's sake you look like a hippie on a job interview, you don't know where your fucking backup team has gotten to, and you're supposed to get into Billington's hip pocket!'
He sounds like Angleton's cynical kid brother. I know I mustn't let him get to me, but this is just too much 'Before you go on, you ought to know that I've been up for about thirty hours. I woke up in Germany and I've already crossed six time zones and had a roomful of flesh-eating zombies try to chow down on my brain.' I gulp the glass of water. 'I'm not in the mood for this shit.'
'You're not in the mood?' He laughs like a fox barking.
'Then you can just go to bed without your dinner, boy.
You're not in London anymore and I'm not going to put up with temper tantrums from undisciplined wet- behind-theears amateurs.' He puts his glass down. 'Listen, let's get one thing absolutely clear: this is my turf. You do not fly in, shit all over the place, squawk loudly, and fly out again, leaving me to pick up the wreckage. While you're here, you do exactly as I say. This isn't a committee exercise, this is the Dutch Antilles and I'm not going to let you fuck up my station.'
'Eh?' I shake my head. 'Who said anything about...'
'You didn't have to,' he says with heavy and sarcastic emphasis. 'You turn up six hours behind a FLASH notice from some dog-fucker in Islington who says you're to have the run of the site facilities and I'm to render all necessary et cetera. If you get the opposition stirred up you'll be dead in a gutter within six hours and I'll get landed with the paperwork.
This isn't Camden Matket and I'm not the bloody hotel concierge. I'm the Laundry point man for the Caribbean, and if you put a step wrong on my patch you can bring all the hounds of Hell down on our collective neck, boy, so you're not going to do that. While you're working on my station, if you want to fart you ask me for permission first. Otherwise I'll rip you a new sphincter. For your own good. Got that'
'I guess.' I do a double-take. 'What's the opposition presence like, hereabouts?' I ask. Actually I want to say, What is this 'opposition' you speak of, strange person? — but I figure it'll just make him shout at me again.
Griffin stares at me in disbelief. 'Are you trying to tell me they haven't briefed you about the opposition'
I shake my head.
'What a mess. This is the Caribbean: Who do you think the opposition are? Tourists! Wander around, drop in on the casinos and clubs, and what do you see? You see tourists. Half of 'em are Yanks, and maybe half of those are plants. Okay, not half, maybe one in a hundred thousand. But you see, we're about 200 miles from Cuba here, which means they're always trying to sneak assets into the generalissimo's territory.
And you wouldn't want to mess with the smugglers, either. We've got money laundering, we've got the main drug pipeline into Miami via Cuba, and we've got police headaches coming out of our ears before we add the fucking opposition trying to use us as a staging post for their crazyass vodoun pranks.' He shakes his head then stares at me. 'So you've got to keep one eye peeled for the tourists. If the oppo send an assassin to polish your button they'll be disguised as a tourist, you mark my words. Are you sure they didn't brief you'
'Um.' I do my best to consider my next words carefully, but it's difficult when your head feels like it's stuffed with cotton wool: 'You are talking about the Black Chamber when you use the term 'opposition,' aren't you? I mean, you're not really trying to tell me that the tourists are all part of some conspiracy — '
'Who the hell else would I be talking about?' He stares at me in disbelief, chugs the rest of his glass back, and thumps it down on the side table.
'Okay, then I've been briefed,' I say tiredly. 'Listen, I really need to get settled in and catch up on my briefing papers. I don't think they're going to assassinate me, my boss has arranged an, uh, accommodation.' I manage to stand up without falling on the ceiling, but my feet aren't responding too well to commands from mission control. 'Can we continue this tomorrow'
'Bloody hell.' He looks down his nose at me, his expression unreadable. 'An accommodation. All right, we'll continue this tomorrow. You'd better be right, kid, because if you guessed wrong they'll eat your liver and lights while you're still screaming.' He pauses in the doorway. 'Don't call me, I'll call you.'
5: HIGH SOCIETY
THE NEXT HOUR PASSES IN A HAZE OP EXHAUSTION.
I lock the door behind Griffin and somehow manage to make it to the bed before I collapse face-first into the deep pile of oblivion. Only strange dreams trouble me — strange because I seem to be dressing up in women's clothing, not because my brain's being eaten by zombies.
