Condition black

13

Ruane said that what Erlich needed was a bit of home comfort. A couple of minutes past seven a.m. and the phone had gone. Breakfast was across in Grosvenor Square, sharing a table with two marines coming off night duty, surrounded by the clerical staff and the juniors who used the place. Waffles and syrup and a Mexican omelette and as much juice as he could drink and good coffee.

Straight from breakfast into the Embassy car park round the back. Over on the far side of the car park, on a recovery trailer, was the Ford that had been sabotaged outside the village. If Ruane saw it, he didn't care to mention it. He sat Erlich in the passenger seat of his Volvo estate, and pushed into his hands a two-day-old copy of the Los Angeles Times, and he didn't say where they were going.

They were against the traffic. They made good time. When they were out of the city it was a fast road.

Erlich kept his head in the paper. He read about the scandal of the slow movement on the post-earthquake reconstruction in San Francisco, the new programme of the D. E. A. to block the importation of Mexican brown across the border into San Diego, the real estate slump throughout California, a preview of the weekend's football, a profile of Tom Cruise… No mention of London. Nothing on the Middle East. Nothing from Athens, nothing from Rome.

The town they had reached was called Colchester. He laid the folded paper down on the heap of coats on the back seat, and saw the rifle pouch that was partly concealed under the coats. They passed a garrison entrance, and there was a proud flag flying, and he saw the armed sentries in their camouflage smocks. They turned into the entrance to the range.

Ruane said, "Time for some fun, Bill, to take that grim expression off your young lace. Get some fresh air into those bruises, too."

It was a bright morning, hellish cold, and a sharp wind took the big red warning flags. They were Ruane's friends who were waiting for them. Erlich was introduced… There was a U. S. A. F. major from the Mildenhall base. There was an American who had been twelve years in England, who worked in corporate security for Exxon and who had done time in the New York Police Department. There was the range marshal. They were friends and they made Erlich welcome and no one said anything about his face. They loaded the Volvo and bounced out across the rutted track to the far-away butts.

The targets were the old ones, what he knew from the range at Quantico, the outline of a charging infantry man with a Wehrmacht helmet. Erlich hadn't been on a range in the two years since he had left Washington. He thought he might make a real fool of himself.

There was an Ingram sub-machine gun, the close-quarters blaster with the 50-round magazine, he could have taken it. He was given first choice. There was the Armalite carbine that Ruane had brought down in the carrying pouch, and which he had fired twice, an age ago, at Quantico. There was a G-3 German infantry rifle, standard infantry issue for their army, which he declined.

There was a Smith and Wesson revolver,. 38, four-inch barrel.

It was the Smith and Wesson that he knew. It was the Smith and Wesson that he should have had in the tree line overlooking the Manor House, then there wouldn't, by Christ, have been the beating and the kicking. The Smith and Wesson came with the U. S. A. F. guy, and there was a cardboard box of slugs and there was a neat small holster to thread through his trouser belt. He understood what Ruane was at. The Smith and Wesson felt good in his hand.

The range marshal read the riot act, just as the instructors at Quantico would have done. Erlich was listening with half an ear, he was sliding the bullets into the chamber of the Smith and Wesson, he was checking his own "Safety".

Away from him, behind the tail of the Volvo, there were the first cracks of the G-3, and the first blast roar of the Ingram, and the snap of the Armalite. He could hear the whoops of the guy who was in corporate security. He went through his drills.

He unzipped the heavy weatherproof coat Ruane had allocated him and walked to a butt that was 50 paces off. He took up his position. What they said, the instructors, was that each practice must be made to count. Deep, hard breathing, punching the oxygen into his lungs. Not on a range outside a county town in the east of England… going down an alleyway, threading past shop doorways, moving into a house. Into Condition Yellow, unspecified alert. Getting the adrenalin to pump. Into Condition Red, armed encounter. The trembling in the hands and the lead stillness in the knees. Into Condition Black, lethal assault in progress. The takeover of the "flight or fight reflex". Tunnel vision 0n the target. The sense of hearing gone, no longer aware of the beat of the Ingram and the sharp shooting of the G-3 and the Armalite carbine. The target was not a paper cut-out. The target was Colt. Colt in front of him. Adrenalin, epinephrine, bursting into his muscles. The swing of the hip, the open jacket thrown clear of the holster. Righthand on the Smith and Wesson's stock. The revolver coming up. Left hand over the right hand.

Isosceles stance. The triangle of two arms extended and meeting on the Smith and Wesson. "Safety" off. Arms rigid. Knees bent.

Eyea over rear sight and front sight. Index finger squeezing… the belt ol the firing in his ears. Three shots fired, rapid. "Safety" on. Colt was still charging him, Colt with the rifle and the heavy helmet down over his forehead, He was seven paces from Colt, and the bastard was still coming at him He had hit a man-sized target at seven yards with one shot out of three, Thre had once been a jerk in Chicago, the instructor had said and he'd needed 33 hits to finish him, and another jerk that they talked of who had taken 13 hollow-point slugs before he dropped.

He had hit Colt once, and the target was still coming at him The swivel again, the coat flying clear of the holster. The Smith and Wesson in his hands. "Safety" off. Condition Black, lethal assault in progress. Three shots fired, three hits, three. 38 slugs gouging into the paper and hardboard that was Colt He loaded eight more times. He loaded at speed He always fired in the Isosceles stance, not the F.B.I., crouch, not the Weaver position. He ripped the shit out of Colt Every time three out of three.

He walked back to the Volvo. They were waiting for him.

Ruane had a small smile playing at the side of his mouth. It was all right for Ruane, because he had been there, he had fired and he had killed. Ruane was getting a picnic box out of the tail of the Volvo, and cans of Budweiser.

"Don't go losing that… " Ruane said.

"… Or I'm for a Court Martial," the U.S.A. F. officer said.

Rutherford was in the canteen of Boundary Hall, listening to the conversations around him.

Penny wouldn't have allowed him a breakfast like that, not even on his birthday…

"… There's no problem with the Christian ethic, none at all.

It is perfectly proper for the Christian to arm himself with the nuclear deterrent. We've had peace for 45 years in Europe because we've had the bomb. We love our neighbours, that doesn't mean we have to lie down in front of them. Sinners grow bold if they don't think there's punishment round the corner. I've a quite clear conscience with my Maker… "

He had a photocopy of the Personnel report, and he had a digest from the surveillance and from the telephone intercept.

"… I cannot for the life of me see why more people don't join. There's just about everything to be caught in the Decoy pond. It's a unique opportunity, all those police to keep the poachers at bay, no families with squealing brats at your shoulder, no dogs running round fouling the banks. You've got carp, roach, tench, bream, pike, all queuing up to be hooked. What more do people want? Quite frankly, if it wasn't for the fishing I'd die of boredom in this place

… "

He went through each question that he would put to the little cretin that nobody liked, and who hadn't the bottle to tell his Superintendent that he could get stuffed, that he'd get his paper when it was good and finished, not before. But he wasn't bitching, because the alternative to being given the run-around in Aldermaston was chasing round the countryside with Erlich.

There might be some who rejoiced in the prospect of the collapse of the intelligence-gathering agencies of the Russians and the Czechs and the Poles and the East Germans and the Bulgari-ans, but not everyone was cheering in Curzon Street. It was going to be damn dull without the old friends. Boundary Hall breakfast went on around him. He was ignored. Wouldn't have been ignoring him if they had known he was Curzon Street, but they didn't know and they chattered on.

"… Spain, Portugal, Tenerife, you can keep them. My sister and I, it'll be the 34th year, consecutive, that we've been to Looe.

I've done all the travelling I ever want to. When we came back it was Christmas Island to Honolulu. Honolulu to Vancouver.

Vancouver to Greenland to Brussels. Brussels to London. London to back here. Christmas Island was a real pig of a place. We were in tents for four weeks before the Test. That's no joke, not enough fresh water to keep clean in. Couldn't swim, currents were treacherous, sharks and all out there. Mind you, we had a shark in Cornwall once. .. "

He wondered how often the others had heard it all. If he'd had to share their table morning after morning, he would have hidden himself behind a newspaper or given up breakfast.

Time to go and ring Penny, and then time to go and find out whether Frederick Bissett was a fool or a traitor.

He felt the cold of the barrel against the nape of his neck.

He slipped his hand behind his head, and took the pistol that had been under his pillow while he had slept.

His fingers nestled loosely round the grip. He held the Ruger . 22, and his eyes wavered over the sights towards the bulb in the ceiling. He couldn't be sure that it was the same weapon that had been given him for the hit in London, because all their weapons had the serial smoothed off, but it was a Ruger/MAC Mark I, . 22 calibre, and wavering towards the light bulb was the snake body shape of the integrally silenced barrel.

It was as if it was his reward. Been good, hadn't he? Delivered little Bissett right into their laps so they could fill him with whisky and bullshit, and drop a thousand in notes into his inside pocket.

If it had been the one that he had used in London then they had cleaned it since he had abandoned it in the lock-up garage, and their work was there for him to see, oil on his hands, and oil on the sheet under the pillow.

He put the Ruger into an unmarked plastic bag. He took out two magazines, unloaded them and slowly loaded them again and then wiped the 20 or so Long Rifle hollow-point bullets that were spare, folded them back into the dishtowel and put them into the plastic bag. It would go everywhere with him. Meanwhile he would wait for the call. The call might come that day, might not.

Might come the next day, might not.

Nothing more to it, than to wait for Frederick Bissett to make contact again.

Rutherford knocked. He stood in the corridor outside H3/2, holding his sheaf of papers behind his back. The door opened.

Bissett was a mess. He had cut the edge of his nostril shaving and there was still a staunching peck of cottonwool on the wound.

His hair wasn't combed. His shirt was unironed.

"Good morning, Dr Bissett. Could I come in, please?"

"Who are you? I'm sorry, I don't know… "

"My name's Rutherford, James Rutherford."

He could see into the office. More confusion. Paper on the floor and over the desk, and around the console, and covering two of the chairs.

"I don't know who you are."

" M r Boll said you would be willing to spare me a few minutes."

Rutherford walked in. The door was closed behind him. He looked around him. He had been careful not to step on any of the print-out sheets.

"What can I do for you?"

Rutherford smiled his ingratiating smile. "You could find me somewhere to sit, Dr Bissett… "

He thought the man had scarcely slept the night before. He had dark grey shadows under his eyes, and his cheeks were pale as death.

Bissett cleared the papers off one of the chairs.

"A few minutes, what for? I've got rather a lot on, well, as you can see."

It would be a brisk interview, that was how Rutherford had planned it over breakfast. Businesslike, straight to the point, no introductory chat.

Bissett had his back to him, was picking his way through the paper minefield, towards the chair behind his desk.

" D r Bissett, I'm from the Security Service… "

The man froze for several seconds and when he reached his desk and turned, the man looked pole-axed.

"… I'm here to deal with your attempt to take classified documents off Establishment premises…"

Bissctt put his hand on his desk, as if to steady himself. He seemed to topple into his chair

"I've… surely, that's… already…"

"Your Security Officer called us in."

"I was told, my department head, Boll, that is, told me it was all finished, cleared up." A wind-blown reed of a voice.

"How would you rate the material in the files you were attempting to take out?"

"We've been through all this, for heaven's sake. It's low-grade, my own work."

"Dealing with what exactly?"

It was as if, all of a sudden, some confidence returned to the man. " D o you understand nuclear physics?"

"I don't."

"Then you won't understand the interaction of a fission explosion."

"I don't, no."

"Then there is not a great deal of point in my explaining the material contained in those papers. Anyone here will tell you it was low-grade."

"Have you ever been approached, Dr Bissett?"

"Approached? I beg your pardon. I don't know… "

" Y o u don't need to be a nuclear physicist to know what that means. Have you ever been approached by an outsider, anyone outside the Establishment, for information concerning your work?"

"That's ridiculous."

"Just answer the question. Yes or no?"

Rutherford thought the man was hyperventilating. Straight question. Should be a straight answer…

" N o. "

"If you were to be approached, Dr Bissett, what would be your reaction?"

"That's hypothetical."

"Then hypothesize… "

"I suppose, well, I'd go, you know, I'd go to the Security Officer."

"But you haven't been approached?"

"I have not."

Rutherford watched Bissett's hands. Bissett's hands were moist. He watched Bissett's lips. The tongue was flicking. If he hadn't been from Curzon Street he might have thought there was something to be made of damp hands and dry lips. But he had learned that the very mention of the Security Service frightened perfectly innocent people into irrational anxiety, even outright fear.

" H o w are your personal finances, Doctor Bissett?"

" M y what?"

" Y o u r personal finances." Good grief, the man was an imbecile.

" I work here… "

"I know that. Just answer the question."

" I f you worked here, then you'd understand. We happen to live in the most affluent part of the country… Don't you work for the government, Mr… I didn't catch your name?"

" D o you have an overdraft, Dr Bissett?"

" D o I have an overdraft?"

" Y e s or no…? "

" Y e s, I have an overdraft. Is this the sort of question you. .."

There was a pattern emerging. It didn't matter one way or the other to Rutherford whether Bissett said he had an overdraft or whether he did not. The pattern was more interesting. Every question bred a return question. Not too much to read into it, that the man threw questions back at him, buying him space to think. Interesting. .. He glanced down at his notes. He had the transcript of a telephone call in front of him.

"Were you at home last night, Dr Bissett?"

"Where was I? "

"Were you at home, Dr Bissett."

"When…?"

"Last night."

" N o. "

"Where were You?"

"I worked late."

" T h e Security at the gate will tell me what time you left."

"Then I went out, I wanted a drink."

"What pub did you go to, Dr Bissett?"

"Well, I didn't actually. I thought of going for a drink, but I didn't… "

"What did you do, Dr Bissett?"

"I just drove around for a bit. I stayed in my car."

"Why was that, Dr Bissett?"

He saw the anger. He had the transcript of Bissett's call to his wife, the claim that he was working late, that he would be home late. He already had the log from the Falcon Gate that told him that it was early evening when Bissett had driven through the checkpoint. He saw a lonely and frightened man in front of him, a man who could not count as a friend any one of his colleagues.

"I just wanted to be on my own."

"Wife trouble, Dr Bissett?"

His fists were clenched. For a moment Rutherford thought he might just come over the top of his desk, launch himself. Bissett exploded.

"It's not your bloody business, is it? Get your bloody nose out of my life… Get out at once. Get out of my bloody office."

"Thank you, Dr Bissett, I think that will do for the time being."

He sat at his desk, his head buried in his hands. He squeezed at his temples and he could not rid himself of the pulsing pain.

Desperately and cruelly frightened. The fear was a barb inside him. His door was closed, and it offered no protection from the fear. The sweat ran on his spine, was clammy in his vest. The sickness was in his throat, he could not shed it. When he moved from his desk, he went to the radiator by the window, and he carried the envelope that he had been given in the Great Western Hotel at Paddington station. It was as though the envelope was the sure sign of his guilt He had not opened the envelope, not in the train, nor when he had reached home and climbed the stairs to bed and found Sara already asleep, nor in the morning.

The envelope was his guilt, to open the envelope was to secure that guilt. He could not judge what the man from the Security Service knew. His world, Frederick Bissett's world, was crum-bling. No strings, no commitment tell that to the bloody Security Service. Easy enough to say it, whisky in his hand, flattery in his ears… no strings, no commitment. All around him was the calm, slow, complacent life beat of the Atomic Weapons Establishment, around him and beyond his reach. All he knew was fear and pain and sickness. As far as he could push it, he stuffed the envelope down behind the radiator under the window.

It was the sort of meeting that Barker detested. It was the Whitehall machine at its wretched best. The Deputy Chairman of Joint Intelligence Committee was referee. Barker knew him as the former commander of an armoured division in Germany, brought home with the cut-backs, tidied into an area that he knew nothing of to work through to his pension.

He had Hobbes with him, to make up the numbers.

Martins he had met on a handful of occasions. He knew of the reputation of so-called "Sniper" Martins, that the man was a celebrity at Downing Street. He thought him second-rate. And the meeting shouldn't have been held at Century, it should have been at J.I.C.'s quarters, the annexe to the Cabinet Office. But Barker quickly understood why the meeting was held at Century.

The Deputy Chairman was lunching with the Deputy Director General in the executive suite on Century's nineteenth floor. The Deputy Chairman and the Deputy Director General were distant cousins, had been at school together, and then at Mons Officer Cadet College together. Barker didn't have any cousins who were worth knowing, had been to grammar school, had been rejected for military service because of a right leg shortened in childhood by a polio virus.

The stenographer cleared away the coffee cups. The Deputy Chairman took his place at the head of the long table. Martins eased himself down opposite Barker.

For Barker to start… marvellous. He would start, Martins would follow. They would kick it around. He would do his summary, and then Martins would have the last word.

Hobbes had written the paper that Barker paraphrased. There had been a shooting in Athens, an Iraqi dissident killed, and an Agency man, who was with him, killed too. The killer's driver had shouted the name of "Colt". The shooting in Clapham of an Iraqi whose hand had been in the state airline till. The face of the same killer might have been identified. In both killings the weapon had been a silenced. 22 calibre pistol. This Colt was British, a fugitive from justice, already wanted on a charge of attempted murder. Colt had recently been in Britain, might still be within the jurisdiction. Iraqi involvement clear-cut. Another matter – not connected – but the warning of a prospective Iraqi fishing expedition amongst the staff of the Atomic Weapons Establishment… What to do? When and where to stamp on the Iraqis?"… And the Americans, of course, wish for a result."

A dry smile from "Sniper". Wouldn't have been even the ghost of a smile when Barker had first met the man, before that lunatic escapade in the Beqa'a, no more than a cringing little arse licker he'd been then.

"And that has very little to do with us."

"I merely state the position."

" Y o u don't have enough to go to court."

"That's for the Director of Public Prosecutions."

" I ' m simply observing, Deputy Chairman, that he'd be laughed out of the Central Criminal Court."

"I wasn't aware, Deputy Chairman, that Mr Martins had any experience of British criminal law." The Deputy Chairman flapped a hand down the table, as if to wave the combatants apart.

" W e have, in my view, enough to justify the expulsion of at least five or six members of their embassy staff," Barker snapped.

"I would most strongly oppose that course of action, Deputy Chairman." Martins cracked his palm down onto the sheened table surface. Another new gesture, acquired since the man had dined with the Prime Minister, Barker supposed.

"With or without evidence to satisfy a jury, we cannot tolerate Iraqi terrorism, state-sponsored terrorism, on the streets of London."

"Talk i s cheap… "

"That is insulting and unwarranted."

"Have you the faintest inkling of the consequences of the action you propose?"

"I am interested solely in the security of this country."

Martins turned so that he faced the Deputy Chairman. He ignored his adversary.

" W e are, damn near, near as makes no difference, in a state of war with Iran. We have, because of quite colossal bungling, no network inside Iran. We are blind in that country, and deaf.

What little we know of the political goings-on inside Iran comes courtesy of the intelligence agencies of Iraq… is that point taken? I make another point… Iraq is currently rebuilding her entire infrastructure. They have billions of oil dollars to spend, they are hunting high and low for contractors with the expertise they require and, God willing, contracts will come our way…

And yet here we are being asked, on the flimsiest of evidence, to march up to their front door and toss half a dozen accredited diplomats out of the country. I lose my major intelligence-gathering source in Iran, my country loses – and the French and the Germans will pick them all up – billions of dollars' worth of trade, all because the Americans want a result."

" Y o u r attitude is craven."

" Y o u r way, I'll tell you what will be achieved, sweet nothing

… except that we lose contracts, lose goodwill, lose good information. I won't sit back while a painstaking process is sacrificed for a wasteful gesture. Century is the real world, apparently Curzon Street is not."

Barker looked to Hobbes for support. Hobbes looked away.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen…" said the Deputy Chairman.

" A n d you have not, Mr Martins, addressed the issue of the Atomic Weapons Establishment… "

" I f indeed, sir, it is an issue. The Israelis have been asked for more detail. They have been unable so far to provide it. It's in their court."

The Deputy Chairman smiled again. Barker thought that if such a man had ever commanded an armoured division then the army needed winding down.

" S o what is your suggestion, Mr Martins?"

"Pretty simple, isn't it?"

" D o please enlighten us," Barker snarled.

Martins beamed. "Find this Colt and shoot him… "

"You're not serious?"

"Find him, shoot him… and bury him deep."

He carried the day. Barker had seen the eye of the Deputy Chairman brighten. He had seen the bully confidence of "Sniper"

Martins win the hour. It did not go into the stenographer's notebook, of course, but that was the decision of the meeting, two votes to one, and Hobbes was not asked his opinion.

Colt was to be found, shot, and forgotten.

Would Barker resign? Would he hell! He was a man who took an order.

The technicians had put on their heavy coats and taken their bread and goat's cheese and their sweet tea out onto the verandah below. The Swede was often alone in his office for that hour of the day. Today there was the music of Beethoven in his ears, the Seventh, and even that beloved symphony was not enough to calm him. He could set his watch from the time they left to the time they would return, his two assistants. He would be alone for an hour. The Colonel had not, so far as he knew, come back.

He could hope for a telephone call, and hope that the rifle microphone could pick up whatever was said by the Director if he were to he telephoned by the Colonel.

For every second that the microphone lay, assembled, against the window side of his desk, he experienced an agony of fear.

The Swede knew the fate of spies working against the regime.

A German chemist had told him, and sniggered as he said it, that spies did not even suffer a clean death by hanging. Spies were stood under the open-air gallows in the execution yard at the Abu Ghraib gaol on a shallow stool. When the stool was kicked away then the spies would kick and strangle to their deaths.

It was because he detested the despot regime of cult and fear that he could justify what he did. He had taught the Pakistani how to play golf. Khan had thought him his friend and Khan was dead. The Swede had felt no regret when Khan did not come back from his European journey. He had not expected that he would.

He knew that security men had been seen, had been interviewing the Iraqi-born scientists and engineers and administrators in the office complex in Tuwaithah. They were searching for the source of the leakage of information. If he went now, and failed to return from leave, the finger would be pointed at him. Where would he run to, that was beyond the reach of the thugs of the regime? Not to a desk in the Chemistry Faculty of the University of Uppsala, not to a hi-tech factory in California. Would they want him in Israel? Would they want his expertise in the Negev desert factory of Dimona? Very probably not. It was enough to make him laugh out loud in his office, his bungalow, the thought that he was safest at Tuwaithah from assassination.

Tonight was Bridge night in the compound, at the bungalow ol the physicist from Salzburg. He knew the dates of the Au strian's next leave, his skiing holiday, and he wondered who would take over the little brick bungalow two down from his own if, as he expected, the Austrian did not return from his leave There were no calls received by the Director during his technicians' lunch hour. The agony was wasted.

The Swede had gone to the limit of the hour. He was barely back at his desk, the rifle microphone returned to its hiding place, when the technicians came back into the office.

He had come downstairs in his stockinged feet in answer to the woman's shout. They must have been getting used to him in the house because the woman didn't bother to come up and knock at his door, just yelled from the hallway.

There was the breathy voice. He wanted a meeting. No, he did not want to go back to London. No, he wanted only Colt.

He sounded to Colt like he was going through hell.

Bissett gave him a rendezvous. A pub at Stratfield Mortimer, beside the Foudry Brook, just across the stream from the railway station. And a time. Colt said he'd be there. The telephone purred in his ear.

Barker had not been back in Curzon Street five minutes before the summons came for him to take a sandwich and a bottle of Malvern in his Director General's top-floor office.

A fierce and rare sunshine splayed through the arms of the blind. The Director General was tiger-striped.

"… You'll do what you're bloody well told, Dickie, and if I don't have, right here and now, your total commitment and support then you have exactly 30 minutes to clear your desk. But before you do anything rash, let me put you in the picture. In the time it has taken you to get back from your meeting Century House has been alerted by their man. He has talked to the Chairman of the J.I.C. and he has called me.

Everyone is giving the decision arrived at at your meeting the go-ahead. You won't have a friend in the whole wide world. Is that understood?"

"However you dress it up, whatever illusion of national security you invoke, it is still murder."

"Thank you, Dickie. Your point is made. Now get me Rutherford in here. Get Rutherford back… "

"I'll not have my name on any bloody piece of paper."

"Pipe down, Dickie, and get me Rutherford."

Rutherford was in the small room next to the Security Officer. He was deliberating whether to call Hobbes and recommend that one more day was needed at Aldermaston. He didn't know, that was the problem. He wanted someone to talk through with him what he had assembled. He simply didn't have the experience in this sort of investigation. He hadn't known Bettany, hadn't been involved in the case at all. He didn't know what had made Bettany different to any of the rest of them. He hadn't worked on Prime, because he had still been sharpening pencils when the team had gone down to G.C.H.Q. to rout through the Soviet agent's past history. He had only the book to fall back on. The book said that the danger was M.I.C.E. M.I.C.E. was Money, Ideology, Compromise, Ego.

Money was an overdraft. Under this government everybody had an overdraft, but Money was worth looking at further.

Ideology, post-Cold War, was pretty ludicrous. He couldn't see the International Brigade and the Fight against Fascism or the Fight against Communism, for that matter, making any sense a propos Iraq. Ideology was probably better off in the British Museum, and he'd have to have a word with the instructors and have them dig up a new acronym. Compromise was cash or sex.

What they said on the course was that anyone could be reached by cash or by a woman's thighs. Anyone, all the way to an ambassador. He didn't know, not yet, just how critical was Bissett's financial crisis. Sara Bissett he'd seen, the night before when she had come home from the school. Good-looking woman, very pretty if she hadn't been creased with worry lines. He'd have been willing to bet that Bissett was going short, and he'd have bet more that Bissett wasn't complaining… Ego was the key. Ego, in his case, was carrying around a damn great chip on his shoulder, believing that the world was selling the big talent short. Maybe he had seen disappointment, but he hadn't seen arrogance and he hadn't seen vanity. Bissett was alone, maybe not of his own choice…

He was called to the secure line in the Security Officer's room.

There must have been a meeting in progress, because there were half a dozen men and women filing out of the office, including the Security Officer. This was one way to make himself popular.

Probably half the Establishment would have defected, anywhere, before old Pig Eyes called for help again from Curzon Street.

"That you, Rutherford?"

Yes, it was James Rutherford.

"Get yourself back here."

He hadn't finished. There were a few loose ends.

" Y o u got a goodie?"

No, he didn't think so. No, there was nothing positive. But if he were to be thorough…

"Don't ask me why, starshine, but the Director General wants to take tea with you, and I don't think he means tomorrow."

There were no regrets expressed when he informed the Security Officer that he was called back to Curzon Street. "Basically, Mr Rutherford, the lesson you should carry away with you is that we know how to run our affairs at Atomic Weapons," the Security Officer told him.

As he accelerated away down the Burghfield Common Road, Rutherford thought he'd have to find some polish for his shoes, after tramping round in the rain-splashed compounds of Aldermaston, before he presented himself in the Director General's office.

And that the pubs weren't closed, and he'd get a drink before he reached the motorway. And Bissett – was he a traitor? Well, that could wait, that was apparently on the back-burner. Erlich would probably recite, "Theirs not to reason why", some crap like that.

"It's your decision, Dr Bissett."

"I used to love it, the work there."

"Used to?"

"I'm treated like dirt now."

"Then that's your decision made."

"I'm certain of it, I'm passed over for promotion this year."

"That's unthinkable, a man of your potential… "

"You probably cannot understand, it's hideous to work when you are accorded no respect."

It was dark in the car park of the pub at Stratfield Mortimer.

Their faces were briefly lit by the headlights of the cars of the first customers. Each time they were caught in the lights, Colt ducked his head away, and Bissett was like a rabbit held in a flashlamp's beam.

"Then you walk away."

"That business last year, I read something, that report from the Human Rights crowd."

"The Israelis interfering again, just their propaganda. Me, I'm not aware of torture, that sort of thing. I wouldn't be there if I didn't like the place. Heh, Dr Bissett, you don't believe what you read in the gutter press…?"

"What sort of life would I have?"

"What they told you, Dr Bissett. You'd be head of a whole department. It would be a good life, good accommodation and good facilities."

"And Sara, my wife, and the boys?"

Colt gagged… Corrected himself. "You'd take them?"

"Of course."

"They'd have a great life. They will be happy. It's a very modern country. Good British community, international school, cverydiing.. ."

Colt didn't know what the living conditions were like at Tuwaithah, he didn't even know where Tuwaithah was. He knew there was a small British community, but he had never moved in it, and he had never been within a mile of the British Club. He didn't know, but he thought that the International School might be the pits.

"I don't know what to do."

Colt said quietly, "It's your life."

"It's so difficult… "

" Y o u take your chance, or you turn your back on it."

" Y o u know, Colt, when I came here they all said that I was brilliant, that I had an original mind. I was coming to the place where there was the best original thinking in the country. That's the way it used to be. It used to be a real community of endeavour, but that community's dead now. It's not a place lor scientists any more, it's for accountants, penny-pinchers. You want to get on, you have to be a politician and a safe bureaucrat. It's 20 years since anything outstanding came out of here. They suffocate brilliance and they've strangled me. Brilliance would threaten the little pedestals of the empire builders. They dragged me down, Colt, they squashed out my brilliance… What would I be, there?"

" Y o u r own master, if you go."

"Would I be a traitor?"

Colt's head sagged back against the seat. So what the fuck would the frightened little bastard be?

"Just a word, Dr Bissett. Words don't mean much. If you go, then you are in charge of your own life. If you stay then you are their slave, till you drop, till they give you a gold watch."

"There's something I should tell you."

"What's that?"

"I've had a little… difficulty."

"What sort of difficulty?"

"I was interviewed this morning by a man from the Security Service."

Colt was straight up in the seat. His eyes roved across each of the cars parked close to the Sierra. Mind going flywheel speed.

Looking for a Watcher, looking in the darkness to see if he could isolate the shadow shape of a Watcher… fucking hell… As cool as he could make it. "Why was that, Dr Bissett?"

The blurted answer. "I had to work late, but I couldn'i be in my office because I'd said to Sara I'd look after the boys. I was taking papers home. I was stopped at the gate check. I was interviewed by the Security Officer, but there's been another man down, from London, from the Security Service. He was awful, terribly aggressive… "

The hard cut in Colt's voice. "Did you satisfy him?"

"How would I know?"

Colt said, "If you're to go, you'd better be going fast."

"I don't know, so difficult to know what's best."

"I have to know your answer."

"I tell you, I wouldn't tell another living soul, I'm just so desperately frightened."

Colt's hand rested on Bissett's arm. It was a gesture of friendship, a touch of solidarity. "I go out with you. I am with you each step of the way when you go out."

"I'll ring you."

"Tomorrow."

"I'll ring you tomorrow."

Colt slipped out of the car. He moved back in the car park so that he would not be caught in the headlights as Bissett drove away. And he was sick, sick as a dog, onto the loose chip stone of the car park. He thought he was the small bird over which the fine close-mesh net was thrown. If he flew now, he could escape.

If he stayed, he would be trapped. There was quiet around him, there was the fading of Bissett's car in the lanes. Bissett had attracted the attention of the Security Service… He retched onto the gravel behind his car and before he collected his pistol and searched all the cars in the car park he retched again until there was nothing more for him to bring up.

She heard the Sierra's engine and she broke off the conversation.

Sara put the telephone down.

Beside the telephone, on the little table in the hall, was the post that had come after he had gone to work. She had learned to recognise the type used by the bank.

She heard the car door slam shut.

She was quivering. Through all of her body there was a tightness. Debbie's voice was still in her ears, all of Debbie's regret and Debbie's pleading with her. She opened the front door. He was bent into the back of the car and he was lifting out his briefcase and his raincoat. It was the saddest thing she could remember, telling Debbie that she would not again be coming to the classes… She saw the way that he looked around him after he had locked the car. He looked to the right up Lilac Gardens, and he looked left. She thought he looked like a fugitive. He came fast over the few paces from the car to the front door, and he almost punched her out of his way as he came through the front door and into the hallway. He kicked the door shut behind him, used his heel, and the hall echoed with the rap of the front door closing and latching. She had told Debbie, no explanation, no justification, that she would not again be coming to the classes. .. The television was on in the sitting room, it was where the boys were. Any other day and he would have nodded to her, forced a smile, hurried past her. Any other day he would have gone up the stairs to change out of his jacket into the cardigan that he wore on cold evenings. Any other day, not that day. He clung to her. The angle between the arm and the lens frame of his spectacles gouged at her cheek. So long since he had held her in that way, so fiercely. As though he was struggling to reach her. She felt the trembling in his body. She couldn't see his eyes, she didn't know whether or not he wept. When she broke away it was with the muttered excuse that the supper would be boiling over on the cooker's rings, and that he should greet his boys. She went back into the kitchen. She left them, her husband and her sons who had come to him in the hallway that needed new carpeting… Thank God she had rung Debbie.

Thank God it was over… When she came back into the hall, Sara could see Frederick's face. Like he'd aged ten years since he had gone to work that morning.

Sara said that supper would be a few minutes.

He said that after supper they would all play Scrabble, then he saw the letter from the bank. She watched as he tore the envelope, unopened, into small pieces.

The Kurd from the city of Kirkuk had been under surveillance for a week, and it had been observed that he had come to the new Post Office and been seen at the post-restante boxes on three days of the last seven. The man was arrested as he came away from the new Post Office on Al Kadhim street in the old Juafir district.

He was one amongst the four million Kurds struggling for a life-hold inside Iraq. He was of the people that had been shelled and bombed and attacked with the odourless gas canisters. The man was a member of the "Peshmerga", the guerrilla army that fought, poorly armed, to hold back the regime of the Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council. The man was also a field agent of the Mossad. Because he was a Kurd, he had always run the risk, in Baghdad, that he would come under observation.

There were three of them. They carried their Makharov pistols under their coats. They had closed on him. He saw them. He might have stood his ground. He might have stated, baldly, that he awaited a letter from a cousin living in Turkey, he might have spun any tissue of lies… He had run.

He had burst past them. He had turned once to see how far behind him they were. He had turned as he ran and he had seen them reaching for their handguns from their shoulder holsters.

He had collided into the woodframe stall, pushed on old pram wheels by a seller of pistachio nuts. He had fallen.

The sirens howled across the city, and the Kurd was held in the basement cells of the Department of Public Security.

It was the best day Erlich had known since he had come to London.

A good breakfast, good company, a good picnic, good shooting.

After the picnic he had let go a magazine of the Ingram, and he had fired the G-3 through a telescope sight and he'd had a better group than Joe from corporate security and he had a $20 bill, proper old greenback, to prove it. He had told Ruane, until the big man had looked tired of hearing it, that he was grateful for his day.

He stood on the corner of South Audley Street and Grosvenor Square, searching for a free taxi. He held the paper bundle against his chest. The bundle was a shirt that he had been lent, and a singlet and a pair of underpants and grey socks, laundered and ironed. A taxi veered across to the kerb in front of him.

He had the weight of the Smith and Wesson, in its holster, pulling at his belt, and he felt good.

"You're Rutherford?"

" Y e s, sir."

" Y o u did well in Northern Ireland."

"Thank you, sir."

"Tell me, Rutherford, why did you join the Service?"

"I thought I would be doing something worthwhile."

" D o you still believe that?"

" I f I didn't, sir, I'd leave."

"Committed to the Service, Rutherford?"

" Y e s, sir."

"What's the hardest thing about maintaining that commitment?"

" T h e enforced privacy, sir."

"It's true. We're a lonely breed. Can you cope with that, being outside the pale?"

"I hope so, sir."

" T h e Service has to be first, always first."

The Director General walked to his cabinet. He knew that young Rutherford had been drinking already, could smell it. No concern of his. If he had run an abstainers' show then Curzon Street would have been as empty as a cemetery at night. He poured two whiskies. He added a splash of water.

It was his pleasure, from time to time, to chat with his junior Executive Officers. Something to do with growing old, he supposed. He liked their company, he enjoyed their certainty.

" T h e American, Erlich, what do you make of him?"

"He's an ex-teacher, not the usual F. B. I, material, and not terribly skilled – you couldn't imagine him surviving a day in Belfast, for example. I have no doubt this is his first major assignment and he wants to make double certain it works for him. Career-wise, he doesn't intend the grass to grow under his shoes. He's a curious mixture. He'll go through a brick wall and back, he's belligerent and impatient, and he knows more Victorian poetry than I can bear to listen to."

"Not your run-of-the-mill gunslinger, then?"

" O h, he'd shoot, sir, shoot first, ask questions afterwards.. . that's metaphorical, of course."

" A n d the feelings of Erlich for the Tuck boy?"

"It's become a very personal thing, sir. The Agency man who was killed in Athens was Erlich's friend. And some days ago Bill Erlich was jumped – we were watching the Tuck place at night

– and got himself pretty badly beaten. That looked like Colt's work, too."

"He'd want him dead?"

" I f he had the chance, sir, no question."

The Director General had started to pace. They were good strides, they would have graced a fairway. There was a swell in the filled tumbler and then a trail behind him of whisky splashed on the carpet. He couldn't call in a committee to evaluate the competence of young Rutherford. Young Rutherford didn't fidget, and he liked that. Young Rutherford stood his ground. It was his decision. If he was right, well, then, he would receive no praise because his decision would never be known of. If he was wrong, well, then, disgrace…

"Major Tuck told Mr Barker and Erlich that his son had been at home. He said that his son was now gone."

" D i d he, sir?"

"If this boy, this Colt, were still in Britain, where would you look for him?"

"His mother's dying, sir. That's where I'd look for him."

"Find him, please, Rutherford, and take Erlich with you."

" Y e s, sir."

"What will you do when you find him?"

" T h e local P.C. is a very good man, sir…"

" N o, no, no. I wouldn't do that, Rutherford." The Director General gazed into Rutherford's face. He thought this could have been a pleasant young man if he had had a proper job, if he hadn't chosen to work in Curzon Street. " T h e political implications here are as long as your arm. The Iraqi connection, etc. etc. No, the best way out of this hornet's nest would be to get Erlich to kill him. No publicity, please, just dead."