14

The fire was heaped with coal, burning well. He sat in the easy chair and the cat was on his lap. It was a woman's room, he could see that. There was a neatness about the small pieces of furniture and the light-coloured curtains and the delicate china ornaments and the arrangement of the print pictures on the walls. It was a room to be at home in, and there was the smell of the witch hazel.

Bill had not known such a room since he had left his grandparents' home, down by the yacht harbour at Annapolis, since he had gone west to college at Santa Barbara. The room was where to end a great day.

She had poured him good wine. She had cooked him tortellini, good sauce. She was just a hell of a fine girl, she had welcomed him into her home and sat him by the fire, and she had rubbed the witch hazel into the yellow dark bruising of his face and his crotch.

She heard the taxi before him. She cut herself short in her description of how it was to be married into the Service. She had been sitting on the sofa, her ankles tucked up beside her, her skirt tight above her knees.

The taxi drove away. She had stopped talking and her head was raised, listening. The cat hadn't moved. The cat didn't care who came, who went, as long as the lap was warm. Erlich heard the scraping of a key at the front door. He had to grin… James Rutherford coming home, and not able to get his key in the hole.

Hell of a start to your evening home. The third failure with the key, and she swung her legs off the sofa and stamped out into the hall in her stockinged feet.

Erlich heard the front door opened.

He listened.

"Hello, darling."

"You're pissed."

"Good cause, darling."

"Always a good cause."

"Blame the D. – G. "

"Come the other one."

"Honest, darling, he had me in, really. He had me in, he poured me a killer."

The softening in Penny Rutherford's voice, anxiety. "Are you in trouble?"

" Y o u don't get half pints of Scotch if you're in trouble."

"What did he want?"

" Y o u won't believe it…"

" T r y me."

" H e wanted to talk about Buffalo Bill…"

Erlich heard the relief of her laughter.

"Who?'

" Y o u know, chap in your bath, Erlich."

"What did you tell him?"

Erlich heard the bright chime of Penny Rutherford's giggle.

"I said that he was impetuous, more. I said he was too scholarly for the Service, too poetical, really, and anyway, I said, you turn your back on him for the length of a cornflake and he's in the bath with your wife. No, I black-balled him, ha! ha! ha!"

"Come on in, before you fall down."

Penny led. She had the mischief in her eyes. Erlich thought that Rutherford would be struggling out of his coat, and there was the thudding of his overnight bag onto the polished floorboards in the hall. She was beautiful, and the mischief in her was explosive.

Rutherford came in.

Rutherford stopped.

"Oh, Christ… "

"Evening, James," Erlich said.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

Erlich said, quiet and easy with a bit of a drawl like he came from cattle country, "I came to take a bath."

"Come on, you two. We'll watch James have his supper. I think you've had enough to drink, darling. Go and sit down and I'll heat it. Bill, catch him if he looks like falling."

Rutherford stood straight. He stood like he was on parade. He even straightened his tie.

"Apart from the bath…?"

"I was bringing back your laundry, for which, again, thanks."

"Ah, yes, the laundry… I hope they haven't used starch on my shirt," Rutherford said. "The rest of it is fixed, by the by.

We're given carte blanche to track down Colt. This is my full-time priority. No more side-shows, you'll work alongside me because that's the way you'll get to Colt…"

Somewhat later, they both kissed Penny Rutherford goodnight, and slipped out through the front door into the street.

Rutherford let him drive. When he wasn't dozing, when he wasn't giving the directions for the turn off the M3 onto the A303 and the right-hand fork at Stonehenge, he thought of Penny.

That was the trouble, too much thinking about Penny, not enough time to do anything about Penny. Pretty Penny, the wife left at home. .. Bedrock of Curzon Street, the wives that were left at home. On his floor, in the D Branch, he knew of four men who had moved out of their suburban houses that year, and exchanged their own homes for an inner London bedsit, bachelor apartment, studio, or whatever… She could have warned him, she could have whispered and pointed to the sitting room door Perhaps it was her bit of fun, pretty Penny little laugh, to let him lead with his big foot. Actually, all jokes aside, they were washed up. All the excuses could be tripped off, But, no, she hadn't warned him because she hadn't given a toss that he had made a rude bore of himself. He just thanked his stars he hadn't given away the true gist of it. The hair rose on his neck at the thought of it. Still, some comfort there. Tight as an owl and still a good Service man. A good Service man and a piss-awful husband. Go on the way they were heading and he'd be for the bachelor flat in no time, sure.

They both pretended to be asleep, and they were both awake.

Midnight chimed on the clock downstairs in the living room.

Sara knew the problem was new. He had slept after the last session with the bank manager, and he had slept after he had come back from being held by the Establishment police. He had played Scrabble with them, and he had made sure that it was always either Frank or Adam who won. He had been like any other parent. He had been like the fathers she saw at the school gate meeting their kids. Beside her, he twisted and turned.

She reached to touch his shoulder, felt him start away from her.

"What is it, Frederick? What's happened?"

It flew from him in a torrent.

"Whatever I've done is for you and for the boys. Whatever I am going to do, is only for you and for Adam and Frank. Only for you, only for them. Whatever I've done, whatever I'm going to do, don't listen to anyone. It's only for you… " And then nothing more.

Her questions rebounded from his angular shoulder.

The car was where it had been the last time, in the driveway of the policeman's house, left in front of his darkened windows.

This night there was more light, half a moon and broken quick moving cloud, and they had skirted the village and come to the wood from the east side.

He heard the crushing of the dead leaves.

He lay in the wood loam. He was using his bivouac as his groundsheet. There was a big wind up high. but where he was the trees shielded him from the cold. There wern't trees heaving, not this night. He hadn't heard the collapse ol a lulling branch.

It wasn't a branch, broken off, that had crushed the leaves.

Rutherford was off to his left, beyond reach IFrom where he was, Rutherford could see the front gate of the Manor House, and could look over the outbuildings of the place, what had once been the pony and trap sheds, right to the front gate. Erlich watched the light on the stair window and he could see the kitchen door.

There was a light on in the empty kitchen

He heard the cracking of a twig.

He heard a soft, dried-breath throat growl

Fast, sudden movement. The weight buckled down onto Erlich. The blow of the weight onto his shoulder, and his back.

The stab of pain at his neck. Groping lot the holsiter. The weight was on his back and heaving down on the fist that scrabbles for the handle of the Smith and Wesson. The throbbing roar in his ears, and the torn hurt in his skin. Hand on the gun, the gun clear, twisting and rolling. The weight and the pain following him as he twisted, rolled. The gun put. The gun pressed against his chest. Foul breath spilling at his lace. The growl roar, and the weight, and the pain.

He fired…

Kept firing…

Erlich kept firing until there was no more noise, until the weight was gone, through the six slugs in the Smith and Wesson chamber, and on round, until there was just the sound of the hammer hitting dead cartridge heads.

Rutherford was above him, and Rutherford's torch played over the tree branches and roots around him, and over the bramble undergrowth. Rutherford asked if he were all right. He heard the concern in Rutherford's voice. Yes, he was O.K. There was pain in the hack of his neck, and the breath had been sucked clean out of his lungs by the weight, and his ears were blasted from the deep throat growl and the hammered gunfire, Bit he was O.K. The torch wavered, came close to him. The torch found it. God, the bastard was huge. Laid out, it's full length stretched, and there was blood at its mouth, blood on its teeth.

He'd only once seen a bigger German Shepherd, half pulling a warden over, at the Federal gaol at Marion, Illinois. There was a head shot and there was a chest shot, and there was a shot that looked to have broken the dog's right rear leg.

They heard the advancing footfall. There was no attempt at concealment. The footfall drove without hesitation through the undergrowth, from the depth of the wood. Goddam fingers shaking. Revolver up, cylinder out, palm of the hand belting the barrel to shake the spent cases clear. The footfall closing on them.

Prising the new cartridges into the chamber.

The torch picked her out. There was her dirt-smeared oil jacket, the jeans and the big boots. There was the rich red flame of her hair. Erlich went to the crouch and to the aim. He could see that she carried no weapon, but he went to the crouch and the aim and his right index finger was crooked level with the trigger. Rutherford held her in the beam of his torch. She never slowed. She seemed to see through the power of the beam that dazzled her. Erlich remembered, too damn well, the beating and the kicking. He remembered his own screams. He remembered the smell of her, when she was a foot from him as he crouched and aimed. She never looked at him.

She picked up the dog. She picked it up like it was a sheep, or a dead deer. It must have weighed 40 kilos. She slung it across her shoulders, and the blood from the dog's mouth dribbled down her jacket.

She looked at him then, and he felt the hate in her.

She walked away, back into the depth of the wood.

He was crouched, he aimed at her all the time that the torch brain held her.

The sounds carried over the fields where the light frost was gathering. He heard all of the shots fired.

He had only slept fitfully since his son had last sat with his wife, held her hand. Not a poacher's shotgun, not a hunting rifle.

He had recognised the full chamber of a revolver discharged.

There were no revolvers in the village, none that he had ever heard of. Revolvers were for soldiers, and for armed policemen.

He lay on his back in the cold and companionless bed.

A man had told him once, a friend of his father, a man who had shot game in Tanganyika between the wars, that the most dangerous animal in the bush was the leopard. The man had said that a leopard was only safe when its head had been sliced off.

He thought that the American at the Reform Club would have thought of his boy as a leopard. And if the bruises on the man's face were anything to go by and the screams in the wood in the night a week ago, then the American was right about the leopard.

And six shots were for killing. Six shots were what he would have fired, nearly 50 years before in France, for killing.

He lay on his back, he stared up at the darkness of the ceiling.

He would be told, they would come to tell him. He listened for the scratch of car wheels on the gravel of the drive.

The shots were heard all around the village.

Every living soul fed from the gossip that Colt had been home, that a car had been stripped of its tyres, that an American had been savaged until he screamed for his life in the high copse behind the Manor House, that Colt was watched for.

Billy and Zap and Charlie and Kev and Dazzer and Zack and Johnny, and the bank manager from Warminster, and the solicitor from Shepton, and the District Nurse, and old Vic in the pub, and the woman above the Post Office, and the tenant of Home Farm, they all heard the shots, and they all thought of Colt.

When Fran reached her home, the cottage on the dirt track past where the church bad once been, old Brennie was in his chair beside the stove. Fran stood in the doorway with the dog, her Rocco, on her shoulders and she saw the anger that he shared with her. They took a spade, and the flash that he used for pinioning rabbits in their fear, and they went to the old tumbled stone wall that marked the edge of the disused cemetery of the church. There had been enough rain to make it easy for deep digging. They took their turns, they dug in silence.

To Erlich it was pointless that they should stay, but he wasn't going to be the first to call a halt. He had picked up the cartridge cases, they had scraped leaves over the dog's blood, they had moved a hundred yards east. It was still just possible to see the kitchen door of the Manor House, and most of the driveway.

At the first grey dawn smear Rutherford broke the long silence between them.

"Where did you get that thing?"

"I got it, and I'm keeping it."

"It's a miracle half the county's police aren't scouring the woods for you. Perhaps they are. They won't make a hundredth of the noise you made."

"What would you have had me do?"

"Bloody good covert surveillance, a real A-team."

"Don't piss on me. I'm not some Rambo kid out of the mountains.. . "

" N o, indeed."

"You'd have had me use a kitchen knife? That monster would have had my throat."

"I was merely observing that we have gone rather public."

Erlich said, "But there's nowhere else."

Rutherford said, "That's the pity of it. It's where we have to stay."

"Every goddam night till he comes…"

She didn't have to look so damned surprised. He had only said that he would take the boys to the school gate, drop them, and then drive to the Establishment. She didn't have to look as though he had suggested running naked round Buckingham Palace.

It was Frederick Bissett's decision to take the boys to school and to arrive 15 minutes later than usual at the Establishment.

He would decide when he should telephone Colt. He would decide whether or not he would accept their offer of employment.

For once she didn't argue with him. Just that once she didn't dispute her husband's authority. She wasn't going to dispute anything when he was head of a department, when he was running a research unit, when he was rich and respected.

He drove the boys to the school gate. He did his best. He talked about the Liverpool team, and their new striker. He talked about the cricket side for Australia. He stopped at the newsagent on Mulfords Hill and he bought them each two comics…

They'd settle, they'd work it out. Plenty of families went abroad to work and took their children with them. It was their future that he was concerned with, their future and Sara's.

He dropped the boys. They didn't kiss him. He would have liked them to show him affection. They ran from the car and into the school playground… There was one thing he'd miss, by God, he'd miss it: the chance to see the faces of Reuben Boll and Carol and sickly little Wayne and the Security Officer when they discovered where he had gone.

On the first floor of a decaying building in the ancient Old City, the part of Baghdad settled twelve centuries before by Abu Jafar al-Mansur, the radio transmitter was found. It was the discovery of the transmitter in the room where he lived, alone, that re-doubled the torture inflicted on the Kurd, and doubled, too, the number of officers who now involved themselves in the investigation.

With the arrival of each new officer at the Department of Public Security's interrogation cells, so the demand for confession grew, so the screw was turned.

By the time that the Colonel reached the basement cells, the Kurd, and it was all he prayed to his God for, was close to death.

The Colonel had seen the carnage inflicted by the traversing machine guns on the human waves of the enemy outside Basra.

He had seen the heads of men blown apart by revolver fire; he had seen the kicking death throes of those hanged from make-shift gallows. But even the Colonel was nauseated, felt the bile rise in his throat, when he saw what had been done to the Kurd.

They had taken the fingernails from his hands, the toenails from his feet. They had beaten the soles of his feet with rubber truncheons. They had used the al-mangana, the clamp on his toes that was tightened. They had torn off one of his ears. They had pounded his penis to a bloodied prune. The cell echoed with the Colonel's fury. He had the Kurd taken down from the manacles that suspended him from the ceiling. He demanded that the doctor be brought immediately. He had no feeling for the Kurd, but he had uncontrolled anger for those who had supervised an interrogation that had lost them their suspect.

The Kurd had not talked. And even as he was lowered from the ceiling, his prayer was answered and, sinking deeper into wave after wave of pain, he died. It was 21 hours since his arrest.

The Colonel demanded continued discreet surveillance of the post-restante box. It was all they had. He promised a charge of treason for any man who failed in his duty.

There was a knock. His door opened. It was Boll in the doorway.

" A h, Frederick, you have a moment?"

Funny, but actually he wasn't frightened of the man any more.

They would make him suffer when it was discovered that he had lost a Senior Scientific Officer.

"What can I do for you, Reuben?" He heard the coolness in his own voice. There had been times when he had stood up when Boll came into his room.

"That man who came… "

"What about him?"

"I wanted you to know that I thought his investigation here disgraceful."

"I expect that he would have said that he was only doing his job. .. "

"That is extraordinarily reasonable."

"… Nevertheless, I told him to get the hell out."

" Y o u told him to get out?"

" O h, yes. That's what I told him. He went too far, frankly.

I'm not sure I didn't offer him some violence. Anyway, he went, as instructed."

He saw the surprise on Boll's face. "I just wanted you to know that you had my sympathy."

"Thank you, Reuben."

" O h, and you should know that I rated your paper very highly.

Good work… "

"Thank you again, Reuben. I hope you have a pleasant trip to the United States."

He stared at the closing door.

If he went fast, if he went when Colt wanted him to, then Boll would just have arrived at Livermore or Los Alamos, or wherever the bastard was feting himself. Just have got his feet under the table when the alarm button would go. A Senior Scientific Officer from H area disappeared, that would get Boll's fat little feet under his fat little arse scurrying back onto the plane home.

It was time to make his call.

From her desk by the window Carol saw everything that moved at the front of the H3 building. She saw Frederick Bissett go and she realised that he must have left the building through the emergency fire door beside the entrance to the laboratory section.

She saw that he was hunched, as il he were frozen cold, as if he had compressed his neck into the collar of his raincoat, almost as if he tried to hide his face. Boll was on the telephone, staring out of his window. Boll saw hint get into his car, and thought, with fresh amazement, of Bissett s throwing the man Rutherford out of his office.

Basil was performing the painful weekly duty that distressed him, still, after so many years at the Establishment. Basil was sealing the plastic bags that held his faeces and his urine. Basil detested going to the lavatories of Health Physics to perform, and he had the dispensation to provide Ins weekly samples wherever he chose. Basil rapped at the window. The tyre of his bicycle was punctured. He banged on the window and shouted. He wanted Bissett to take his samples over to Health Physics, not too much to ask. But Bissett had his raincoat collar turned up past his ears and he hadn't heard. Basil watched in irritation as the Sierra pulled out of the parking area.

Colt wrote down what time Bissett hoped to reach Paddington station, told him at all costs to avoid being followed to the station.

There was the faint threshing of fear at his gut. He hated the fear. Colt wanted to be out, gone, beyond the reach of fear.

If she had not seen the E II R insignia on the Englishman's briefcase, the landlady might well have called the police. They were two filthy creatures. They tramped their mud across her hallway, across her breakfast room, up her stair carpet, and all over two of her bedrooms. The Englishman had given as his address, in her Registration Book, "c/o Home Office, Queen Anne's Gate, London", and the American had written, "c/o Embassy of the United States of America, Grosvenor Square, London". Well, anyone can invent an address and there was mud all over their faces, on their hands and their clothes. And she hadn't lived in Warminster all her life that she couldn't recognise the smell on the waterproof jacket of the American. Mr Erlich stank of cordite. Well, obviously, they had been playing army games at the School of Infantry and Mr Erlich might have been the dirtiest American she'd ever seen, but his manners were lovely. And Mr Rutherford had paid a week's booking fee in advance, in cash.

Through the morning and the afternoon the landlady was alone in the guesthouse with the two sleeping men. Her usual guests, commercial representatives for the most part, would not be back until the time she served her early supper. The Englishman and the American had said they would not be eating in.

In the late afternoon, after she had taken her retriever for a walk, she went up the stairs with her plastic watering can to anoint her geraniums. She had seen the American, wearing only his boxer shorts, come out of the Englishman's room and carry a portable telephone through his own door.

It was her joy, her pleasure – her late husband used to call it her vice to overhear the conversations of her guests.

"Jo, I can't. I just can't…"

The American's voice was surprisingly soft and wheedling for such a big man, she thought.

". Jo, that is not reasonable. You want to go to Mombasa, great I would like to go to Mombasa. You can, I can't. End of story..

He was getting rather cross, and she didn't think she liked this

|o. Here was poor Mr Erlich up to his ears in mud and guns…

"Jo, don't go on, don't get goddam scratchy. The beginning and the end of it is that I cannot break away. No, no chance.

Heh, Jo, did you hear what happened to the All Stars in Naples?. .. That's too bad, that's dreadful… Listen, it is not my choice. Get that into your head… You want to go to Mombasa, you go to Mombasa. That is not fair, Jo… Yes, you send me a postcard, you do just that..,"

She glided to the far end ofl the landing, She heard the American come out of his room, walk to the Englishman's door.

They were gone at dusk, as the first of her evening guests checked in. The Englishman was brusque, as he had been that morning. The American was subdued, poor thing, and seemed to jump about two feet when the dog came out of her sitting room and sniffed his trousers. She had never been outside the United Kingdom for a holiday, but she thought it must be disappointing for the American not to be able to take time off from his work to accompany his Jo to Mombasa. On the other hand, she always said, life was not complete without disappointment, and she had learned in long widowhood that this was true.

The Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee was not liked by the Director General. He had taken early retirement from the bench of the Court of Appeal. He was typically aloof, the Director General thought, an arrogant, high-climbing judge, and utterly out of place in the corridors of Curzon Street.

"I will brief the Prime Minister. You may rely on me."

"It is my department that is affected."

"Not exclusively true. Century have a position too, as you have yours. Better that a third party should speak for both of you."

"This could get very messy, and frankly, we're not happy."

"It will just be the Prime Minister's ear, no others. I assure you that there will not be fall-out, provided that your people perform satisfactorily.''

"You're taking a huge risk… "

The former judge, a man accustomed to the craven subservience of his court, bridled. "I don't think the Prime Minister will see it that way. I don't. We want this creature dead. Unhappily, we want our relations with that country intact. And we want the Americans off our backs. This course satisfies all three requirements. Where is the difficulty?"

"Shooting people, even Englishmen who inconveniently kill Americans, is the difficulty."

"Quite honestly you astonish me. I had not expected to find anyone in your position squeamish."

The Director General said flatly, "It's in motion, if he's still in the country and if he can be reached then it will happen."

"First class… You have my support, and you will have the Prime Minister's, provided your people do the job properly."

"You ask a lot of my people… "

"Quite right, too. And you won't be able to convince me that you have never carried out an execution. I imagine your department is full of experienced people. I certainly hope so."

When the Director General left, it was as much as he could do to stop himself slamming the Chairman's door. He walked out into Whitehall from the Cabinet Office. He dismissed his car. He walked back to Curzon Street tailed by his bodyguard. He wanted to be alone, he wanted to think. He wanted to consider James Rutherford, junior in D Branch, on whose inexperienced shoulders so much had been laid. So much was asked of his people, of young Rutherford, and of the American whom he had not met and didn't want to know.

Colt stood beside the hotel room door because he knew where the camera was secreted inside the wardrobe, behind the fractionally opened door. He knew that the door of the wardrobe cut out all vision of him from the video camera.

Bissett had nearly kissed him when they had met at the end of the platform at Paddington station. He had pumped his hand, he had clung to his arm all the way across the concourse of the station and into the Great Western and across the hotel's lobby to the lift and the ride up to the room.

Colt listened.

He was behind Bissctt.

There was the Military Attache and the Assistant Military Attache and Faud and Mamir. It was their job to do the talking.

Colt's job was to have brought Bissett, and to escort him away.

That was the extent of his job. They'd put a drink down Bissett, and Colt had seen the nervousness of the man as he had held the glass in his two hands and still slurped it from the side of his mouth and down his shirt front. They had filled his glass again, and they had sat Bissett down and they had gone through the questionnaire. Like a job application… not that Colt knew anything that mattered about job applications. They were pushing to be certain that they had the real thing. The questions and the answers roved over Colt's head. Place of work: H3 building…

Work to: Reuben Boll and Basil Curtis… Current work: Implosion physics… Specific current work: Development of cruise warhead as replacement for WE-177 bomb drop warhead…

Detail of current work: Physical interaction of material elements at detonation macro-second… Colt didn't know what was tritium, and he didn't know about beryllium. He had not heard of gallium. He had no concept of a fashioned plutonium sphere.

He saw that confidence was restored in Bissett. Bissett had the message. These chaps hadn't a clue about tritium, either, or beryllium or deuteride-oxide or gallium or plutonium, they were just working to a brief that had come in code off the teleprinters.

Bissett's confidence was growing because even he could fathom that the questions had been supplied to them. Bissett was the swot at school with all the answers. Bissett blossomed.

The Military Attache left the room. He carried away with him the question papers and the answers that Bissett had supplied.

Bissett was asked by the Assistant Military Attache if he would please to be patient. Namir fed him another drink. There were no canapes this time.

Bissett was talking too much, like the drink had got to him and like his self-importance had overcome the fear. He was asking all the questions. Where would he live? What would be the work area? Who would his working colleagues be?

They seemed to take it in turns to give him the bullshit. He would live in the finest accommodation, fitted with the best European appliances. His work area would be the most modern and sophisticated that money could build. His colleagues would be the finest scientists who had come from all over die world to join the team that had very many distinguished achievements to its credit already and would welcome the arrival of I)r Bissett.

The Assistant Military Attache, Faud and Namir, soaped the bastard, and all the time they flattered him. They had Frederick Bissett eating out of their hands, and the drink flowed. After an hour the Military Attache returned.

He stood stiffly in front of Bissett, and he shook the pathetic bastard's hand.

"We are sincerely honoured."


The glasses were raised. Colt could see the flush of pleasure spewing on Bissett's face. Not Colt's problem, not if Bissett wanted to go and bury himself in Iraq when he didn't have to.

"You will be a most valued member of our scientific community.. . "

Colt said, "Sooner rather than later. We have not offered Dr Bissett the opportunity to tell you that he has been under the scrutiny of the Security Service, and that he was interrogated yesterday morning. It would be advisable to move him fast."

Bissett gabbled his explanation. There was the anxiety on their faces.

Colt said, "We just lift him out, before the net closes."

Bissett was just the package. He was left to his drink, and his embarrassment. Around him they talked flight times, schedules.

He had been propositioned, he had accepted, he was no longer the centre of attention.

The Military Attache said, "Tomorrow night, we can hold the aircraft.''

Colt said, "He works tomorrow, perfectly normally. He leaves work, I'll pick him up, get him to Heathrow."

The Military Attache nodded. "Tomorrow night."

Bissett cut through both of them, his head was shaking, his finger jabbing. "Hold on a minute. You're forgetting… I mean, well, my family arrangements have to be…"

The Military Attache said, "You tell no one, Dr Bissett. You make no arrangements. You have the normal day."

"But I can't just… My wife, she has to…"

He supposed that it was where all such things ended up. A grubby little man with too much drink and not enough food in his stomach standing and whingeing his confusion in a hotel bedroom. No time now for flattery, no time to make arrangements, to talk the wife round. And way too far down the road to back off.

Colt said, "If you don't do as you're asked, Dr Bissett, you'll go down for 20 years."

In his unlit office, the cold bristling through the opened window, the Swede heard snatches of the conversation.

"… He could be better, he could be worse."

" H e wants to come, Dr Tariq… Wants to, surely that is important?"

" H e is not a senior man, but then senior men are buried with administration… You have done me well, Colonel."

"It is the privilege of all of us to serve the Revolutionary Command Council."

" T h e putting together of a team is a delicate affair. This man is not, in himself, important. But to the overall performance of the team he is quite vital."

His fingers, in the darkness, were clumsy on the dials of the receiver. He could almost hear the slow turning of the spools.

" M y people say he is very impressive, a good man… "

He had the left side of his headset clamped on the ear, he had the right side behind the ear. With his left ear he heard the talk, as best he could. With his right he listened for any footstep in the corridor. Each slow minute was the worst, each last minute was torture. With his handkerchief he mopped at the sweat gathering on his forehead. They wanted more, and he had as yet so little. He heard the jangle of a telephone in his left ear. Then only the drum..I an air conditioner. Then in his left ear the Colonel's report, ''He's coming. It isconfirmed, Dr Bissett is coming tomorrow night. We will hold a plane-, if necessary; he will be on the flight from London tomorrow night,''

" Y o u are to be congratulated, Colonel."

"There has heen an unexpected difficulty with Bissett; s security, Dr Tariiq Thai is why he must leave at once "

" Y o u would not lose him, Colonel?"

" T h e hands on him, Dr Tariq, they are excellent hands The Swede gulped at the air. So worn down by the late evening vigil. He gulped at the air, and his sigh sang his relief. He had what they wanted of him. Feverishly he dismantled the rifle microphone, and the receiver, and the aerial. He reached between the slats of the blind and drew his window slowly shut.

Fifteen minutes alter the Colonel had reported to the Director of the Atomic Energy Commission that Frederick Bissett would travel from London to Baghdad the following evening, the Swede walked from his workplace to his small bungalow. The tall, shambling, blond-haired figure was familiar to all the guards who patrolled the area between the offices and laboratories and the accommodation area. He was not challenged and he was not searched.

"This is just dumb, James."

"Wouldn't have thought a hero from the Bureau would have noticed a drop of rain, a little breeze… "

"Notice? I can't even notice the face of my wristwatch."

"It's eight minutes to two o'clock."

"That's all you know. I reckon your watch got drowned an hour ago. It feels more like time to go back to bed to m e. "

The wind crowed in the treetops and the rain fell steadily. For a long time neither spoke, nor moved. Only watched. Once, twice, the bedroom lights came on. And the second time Rutherford watched the old man go down the staircase and the kitchen light went on and when he went back upstairs the kitchen light stayed on.

Erlich suddenly said, "I rang my girl this afternoon. She's with C.B.S. in Rome. Sorry, but you're paying for the call…"

" I f we do all that's expected of us, young Buffalo, I don't suppose they'll kick up much of a fuss."

"She wanted me to go to Ruane, tell him that I needed a vacation, get myself down to Mombasa. I mean, that is just idiotic. Wasn't even friendly when I said I was tied up here. Do you know what I'll do when this business is over? I'll go into the mountains. My Mom is up in the mountains. Got a hardware store and a diner with my stepfather. Do a bit of walking, bit of shooting, never read a paper, put the television in the garbage."

"They all say that. It's impossible… Heh."

"We haven't gone on vacation together in months…"

"Heh, Bill."

"Never her fault when she can't synchronise with me, always my fault when I'm working and she's free. That's women… "

"Bill, shut up…"

Erlich stared out into the night. The rain was on his nose and in his eyes. And the kids going all the way down to Naples and having the game scratched because it rained. Can't have been rain like this. He saw the car headlights coming slowly, then almost to a stop. He saw the lights swing and they caught at the big trees. Erlich rose to the crouch on his knees.

"Got me, Bill?"

"Got you."

"We struck lucky, Bill?"

"Right."

Erlich drew the Smith and Wesson,. 38 calibre, from his waist holster. He checked it, he could do that by feel in the darkness.

A clean bill for the Smith and Wesson.

" Y o u okay, Bill?"

"Never been better."

They left the tree line. They came out into the force of the wind and the teeth of the rain. They started walking. Down the long field sloping to the Manor House. Lights coming on downstairs in the big building. They walked to the first hedgerow.

They trotted to the second briar and thorn line.

" Y o u got him, Bill."

"Damn right."

Both of them running, both sprinting through the mud to the Manor House ahead, to the target man.

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