Condition black

17

It was strange ground for Colt. He had been through the airport, right, but as a passenger. He had never reconnoitred Heathrow.

He gave way to his instinct.

He stampeded out through the electronic glass doors, forcing Bissett in front of him.

He had learned many times the lesson of flight. Distance was critical. The first minute of flight was vital, the first five minutes were more vital, the first 30 minutes were the most vital, and the key was distance.

Into the first minute… Following his instinct and praying for luck. He had no plan. He came out of the glass doors and into the cold night air. If the American was there, then the other one must have been there too. And if those two were there, then there must have been others, and chances were, they were armed as well. Christ, they'd been blown all ends up. Anyway, they must all have been shattered by the accident. And who was it, the man who was shot, who had been shouting for Bissett? As he heaved Bissett along, across the taxi lane, there was a double-decker bus cruising past the terminal. He ran round the front of the bus, clinging to Bissett's elbow, and the Ruger was already gouging in the small of his back, tucked safe in the belt of his trousers. He jumped for the open platform at the tail of the bus, and he levered the dead weight of Bissett after him, his feet scrab- bling on the tarmac. The man was ash-pale. There would have been a conductor on the bus, must have been upstairs taking money.

There were eyes on them. Colt smiled, like he and his friend were just happy to have caught the bus. The bus turned away from the terminal and headed for the tunnel. There was his luck. He had his hand under Bissett's armpit, because he thought that if he let go his grip the man might spill down into the aisle of the bus.

Into the first five minutes, into the gaudy orange light of the tunnel. At the roundabout at the end of the tunnel, as they emerged, Colt saw the first police cars, the first blue revolving lights, and the first sirens, bullocking into the traffic heading into the tunnel and towards the terminals. Colt saw that the bus swung up the hill, going left. Distance was what counted. Past the fire station… He saw, out through the grimed windows of the bus, the lines of the cars in the long-term parks. The conductor was halfway down the steps to the upper deck of the bus. They were in traffic themselves, dawdling at perhaps ten miles an hour. Colt was on the tail platform. He didn't tell Bissett. If he had told Bissett then the man might have hung on to something. He had hold of Bissett's arm again, and he jumped, and he took Bissett with him. Colt was on his feet, and Bissett was sprawled, half on the pavement and half in the road, and there was a squeal as the car following the bus braked to miss them. They ran what would have been close to 150 yards, and all the time they ran Bissett was failing. They went into the long-term park.

Into the first 30 minutes… The car started. Colt had Bissett in the passenger seat. He told Bissett to take off his coat, shove it under the seat, and to help Colt get out of his own jacket, and put that too under the seat. He screamed the car towards the exit. Colt took a hand off the wheel and snatched Bissett's spectacles from his face. He paid off the attendant. He muttered something about leaving his passport at home, that was how he explained his coming out with only eighteen minutes on his ticket. There were more blue lights and sirens on the perimeter road, and a police van passed them, going up the wrong side, and then swerved at the airport exit filter to go half across the road. It was six, seven, minutes since they had crashed out of the terminal. Colt was calm. They would have had descriptions, clothes and hair and spectacles. Nothing he could do about the hair, and he had done something about the coat colours and something about Bissett's glasses. He saw the faces of the two young policemen who had been in the blocking van, and they didn't seem to know what they were at, and the one had his ear cocked to his radio on the collar of his tunic. Another minute, another 90 seconds, and they might not have made it out. He was waved through.

He didn't speak.

He wriggled in his seat, he moved his hip so that he could get the pistol clear of his belt, and he laid it on his lap. He heard the deep and sharp panting of Bissett's breath, like the man was in crisis.

Colt was hammering for the motorway.

If Erlich had gone faster, straight off, then he might have made it through before the block was set on the east side perimeter road, close to Cargo.

He had not gone fast. Rutherford was dead. Christ Almighty.

Dead before he could reach him, hold his wrist, his head. Oh no, oh Jesus..!

What he remembered of the terminal, coming out of the concourse, hitting the night air, with the big red bus pulling away in front of him, was that sound had slipped back to his ears. He had heard a woman screaming, and he had realised that he still held the Smith and Wesson in his hand, and he had heard the placid voice of the announcer over the speakers. There had been a woman screaming, and he had holstered the revolver, and the announcer had been giving the final call, last call, for passengers on Gulf Airlines to Bahrain and Dubai. He could remember that… He had shot a colleague, and they were calling for the passengers for the flight to Bahrain and Dubai.

He might have been delayed more, but he showed the uniformed officers his F. B. I. I/D. They wouldn't have gotten round yet to worrying about Bill Erlich. Their airwaves would have been full of Colt's description, and what Bissett was wearing… but he wasn't ready for thinking yet, because of the great sickness in his stomach and the numbness in his mind. He was William David Erlich, born May 7th, 1958, son of Gerry Erlich and Marianne (Erlich) Mason, Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and he could not think straighter than a bent dime because he had shot James Rutherford dead, and he had left him. So little of it that he could remember, the shooting. The blurred and fast-moving shape of Colt, "Freeze," he remembered his roar and the lumbering outline of Rutherford…

He had shot pretty Penny Rutherford's man. He knew where he had to go.

What Hobbes saw first was the slack line of the white tape.

He elbowed his way through the quiet and staring crowds. He flashed his card, he bent under the tape. They had not even covered the body. He was careful to avoid the three cartridge cases on the concourse floor. A dozen long strides from the body was a suitcase and a grip bag.

He asked what had happened.

He was told. There were two Branch men who had seen it all and had the crack of emotion in their voices.

The taller Branch man said, "It was really difficult, it was so quick. We didn't know what we were looking for until your man yelled out. There was a fair-haired man, mid-twenties. He had a smaller man with him, glasses and raincoat. They were with two Arabs… "

The other Branch man said, "They were close to the check-in on the delayed Iraqi flight. They train you for this, it's nothing like the training when it happens… "

" O h, God… " t h e taller Branch man mouthed.

"Spit it out," Hobbes demanded.

" W e had a photograph, about two weeks back. Iraqi link.

English… "

" O h, Christ," the shorter Branch man seemed to crumple.

"There's an all airport and all port watch."

Venom in Hobbes's voice. "Just go back to bloody sleep. He's Colin Olivier Louis T u c k. "

Hobbes walked away from them. The equation was sharp in his mind. Colt was with the Iraqis, Bissett was with the Iraqis, Colt was with Bissett. And wasn't life simple, when the light shone on it?

Hobbes spoke fast over his personal radio. He repeated himself three, four times, so that at Curzon Street there was no possibility of a further mistake. Colt was the name he gave over and over again, and the flat statement that he would strangle those responsible, himself and with his own hands, if every airport and every ferry port in Great Britain did not have the photograph of Colt out on the Emigration Desk.

He went back to the Branch men.

Hobbes gave the taller of them the name of Dan Ruane and his office number.

"I want him here. I want him here immediately… God, what a shambles."

He was told what was in place, where the blocks had been set.

He was told it was 29 minutes since the shooting. He was shown where the fair-haired man with the pistol, Colt, had fled, taking Bissett with him, through the concourse door. He was told that the American had followed him out, gone after them.

He stood a few paces from the body. He could hear Barker's

" W e all get what we want, a good result" ringing in his ears. He wondered who Barker would send to break it to Rutherford's wife. There was a wife, because her photograph was in Rutherford's office. It would be a bastard of a job, telling the wife that probably no one from D Branch had met.

Hobbes knew precious little about firearms, but he matched the torn hole in the collar of Rutherford's jacket, and the two more holes in the centre of the back of the jacket, with the three cartridge cases that he had seen. It was what bloody well happened, wasn't it, when some bastard American was allowed to pretend he was on a backstreet in Chicago, and not in a crowded terminal at Heathrow.

It couldn't have been a nightmare from which he now awoke. No nightmare, because the crash of the firing was still in his ears, and the fleeting vision of the crouched marksman was still in his mind, and there was the tear in the knee of his trousers where he had fallen from the bus. Each time his fingers went back to the frayed edge of the material, to the bleeding, grazed knee, he knew, more certainly, that it was not a nightmare from which he could awake. They were off the motorway… He pieced it together in his memory, which was worse than a nightmare. Colt was talking with two of the men who had greeted him, who had both on each occasion been in the hotel at Paddington. Then he was ignored. There was some anxiety, something about the delay on the flight. And then his own name shouted. A man running towards him, and shouting his name. Colt's gun up, and Colt dragging him. The sight of the marksman going to the crouch with the handgun held out in front of his face. The other man shouting his name and running between them and the marksman, and the battering of the gun. He thought he had seen the running man fall. They had shot their own man…

Colt had brought the car off the motorway. They were past Crowthorne, past Bramshill. Close to Stratfield Saye where he and Sara had twice taken the boys to walk round the Wellington estate. Close to Stratfield Mortimer, where he had met Colt in the pub car park. He felt through the tear at the knee of his trousers, and his fingers were sticky from his own blood.

"Are you all right, Colt…?"

"I'm in great shape."

"What happened, Colt…?"

He heard the hoarse, dry laugh. "We got stuffed."

"Who were they?"

"One was the Security Service, he got in the way of the one from the F.B.I., the one who yelled. They were waiting for us, Dr Bissett. That flight wasn't going anywhere because they knew we were travelling. You got me? We were set up."

"No, not by me."

"Not by you."

"You don't think I betrayed it?"

"You didn't know the flight we were going on, you didn't know anything."

He saw the young man's face. There was no panic, apparently no fear. Colt drove faster than he would have attempted on the smaller roads they now took.

"Are we together, Colt?"

"Have you a better idea, Dr Bissett?"

"Where are we going?"

The same dry-throat laugh of Colt. They were through Mattin-gley and Rotherwick, village roads, going south and west.

The car jolted through a pothole. It was the moment he remembered. The man who had been in the outer office of H3, sitting beside Carol's desk. The man who had come to see him.

The man younger than himself… He remembered Rutherford, the man who had brought the stench of fear into his room, into H3/2.

"Colt, I cannot go back."

"You go back, Dr Bissett, and it's to gaol till you die."

He heard the reed whine of his own voice. "Are you frightened, Colt?"

"When I have my back to the wall, when I have nowhere to run to, then I'll be frightened Not before

Bissett shuddered He had seen the crouched stance of a marksman. He had seen a gun aimed at him, It was worse than a nightmare because he could not go back, could not wake. He could go only where Colt ran.

His fingers played in the tear at the knee of his trousers, which was the stark living nightmare of his world.

"You take a rifle to a man like that," Martins said. "You give it to a professional. What you do not do is put such a matter into the hands of a bungling amateur."

He rolled the brandy in the glass. He had helped himself twice while they had waited for Barker's return. The Deputy Director General nodded agreement.

Barker said, "A rifle, no doubt a sniper's rifle, is your only policy, Percy. Can we put the old trophies back in mothballs, where they belong, and see if we can retrieve this appalling situation? I take it that that's what we are here to do. And just let me remind you: it's a situation brought about by your friends the Iraqis."

There was a tired smile on Martins's face. He was the man who had sent a sniper beyond reach and beyond help into the Beqa'a Valley. His authority seemed unassailable.

Barker would have been back in Curzon Street not more than ten minutes before he had heard the news from Heathrow and Hobbes's report, been turned around, spun like a top, sent back to Century House.

Martins said, "When the report goes to the Prime Minister, as most assuredly it will, I will be remarkably happy that it is beyond my remit to explain how the only firepower directed against a known terrorist, in a crowded and public place, was in the hands of a rather junior American, along for the ride."

"A terrorist in the pay of your friends."

Please, gentlemen, please."

"My advice, D.D.G., we maintain strictest silence on this matter, It may be fashionable in some circles to represent the Iraqis as just the refuse of the Middle East, but thankfully, we do not conduct our affairs on the say-so of Amnesty International.

They have a stable regime in a turbulent area…"

Barker snarled, "They send a murderer onto our streets, they suborn one of our nuclear scientists; they lay siege to our embassy in Baghdad – and all you want to do is to send them a basket of flowers. They are dangerous, these people. They are thieves and muggers on the grand scale. Unless a line is drawn and they are stopped on that line, they have the potential of causing catastrophe."

"A pretty speech but hollow. In other words, they do what quite a lot of people do. Frankly, Dickie, I ' d have expected a little more sophistication from someone in your position. Nevertheless, I want their gunman dealt with, and I want our scientist returned, and I want the siege on our embassy lifted, and I want a blanket over the whole wretched matter."

"Well, we agree on that at least, and now, if you will excuse me, I have business to do and I have a young widow to visit."

Barker pushed back his chair.

" Y o u also have an American to find, before he does any more damage… " Martins drank deeply. "Well, that's it then, D. D. G ., and I'm glad you agree with me that this is a matter for the Prime Minister's desk… "

"I had to come, to tell you… "

Erlich stood in the hallway of the small house.

"… i t was my gun, and I shot him… "

The door to the street was open behind him.

"… I had the target in the sights. I just didn't see him.. ."

Penny Rutherford stood in front of him. She would have been changing flowers in the sitting room when he had rung the bell.

She was still holding the flowers, chrysanthemums, and they were dead.

". he wouldn't have known anything, I promise you, no ti pain…

She turned away from him. She walked the length of the hallway, and into the kitchen. He watched as she put the flowers into the garbage. He watched her, down the length of the little house that was her home.

"… I'll never forgive myself, Penny, I'm just so sorry."

She turned and her voice was the clear-cut wind streaming from the storm's eye.

"All your crap about dedication, all your bloody duty, and what am I left with? You stupid, silly little man. He was mine, God, what else did I have? Go away, go away from me. Go back to your bloody kindergarten, where you came from, go back to your bloody guns and toys. Go somewhere where you can't hurt good people. Get out, I don't want you here. I don't want your apologies, for God's sake. Just go."

He closed the door behind him.

Erlich drove away fast. There was only one place now he could head for.

Dan Ruane stood in the middle of the concourse. There were high white sheet-screens around the shooting scene. Rutherford's body was still there, but covered by a blanket. There was the fast flash of the photographer's bulb, Scene of Crime completing their work. The suitcase and the grip bag were now open. The clothes were being lifted out, checked, noted, piled. There were chalk circles round the three spent cartridge cases.

"We lost a brave and able young man because your cowboy didn't know what the hell he was doing… "

"Crap."

"… and because he couldn't face the music, he ran."

"You won't like it, Hobbes, but you're going to get them, home truths, stuffed up your gullet. The failure was yours. You moved nowhere on this. Every break you had, every lead, came from Bill Erlich. You sit in your goddam ivory towers, you think you matter in the world, whatever world. Erlich came here expecting action, expecting a good scene, and he got himself pissed on. Your resources are pathetic. Your work rate is pathetic.

Your commitment, beside Bill Erlich's, well, it's laughable."

The photographer with the flash camera on the tripod was watching him. The two detectives on their knees and taking the clothes from the suitcase and the grip bag were listening to him.

The policeman with the chalk mess on his fingers eyed him. And Dan Ruane, the big man, didn't give a damn who listened.

Hobbes stood his ground. " H e ran away… "

"Say that again, and I'll put your teeth at the back of your throat."

Hobbes stood his full height. "Grow up, Ruane. This isn't the Wild West. Just tell me where you think he's gone."

It might just be, just, that Erlich had one more chance, not more than one more chance. And it might just be, just, that if Erlich didn't take that chance then Dan Ruane would be on the flight out with him. One more chance, and that was stretching it, that was all Erlich had.

"He'll have gone where he reckons Colt's gone… Have you a better idea where he should have gone?"

" W e have very little time, Dr Bissett."

" Y e s. "

"What we have going for us, and it's not a lot, is that with everything else that's queuing up, they take time to get their act in place."

" Y e s. "

"What I reckon is that the ferries are our best chance. You with me?"

"Which ferries?"

"Weymouth, Bridport down south, boat across to France. One of the night sailings. They'll take time to get their act in place, that's our best hope."

" I f you say so, Colt."

They were past Salisbury. Colt drove into the lay-by beside the darkened windows of the shop. The village was called Bishopstone. It was a small place, tucked away from the great world in vast tracts of farmland. He had followed the side roads, as far as was possible, through the villages. He was safe among the villages and on the high-hedged lanes, because that was the country he knew. Bishopstone and Heathrow, they were not of the same world.

" W e have to decide where we go from here," Colt said.

" Y o u make the decision."

There was a quiet grimace on Colt's face. "It's rather awkward.. . They'll give it back to you, of course, but I don't have enough money for the ferry tickets. Will you lend me what we need?"

"I've just small change."

" Y o u haven't…?"

"I left my cheque book at home, for Sara… I doubt I've five pounds… "

"Jesus… "

Colt heard the cringe in Bissett's voice. "I left my cheque card, too. I didn't think I'd need English money in Baghdad."

Colt's eyes never left the road.

He drove on. Wild and lovely and lonely country, on from Bishopstone, and once he braked hard and threw Bissett forward, and he missed the big sow badger that treated the road as its own. At Broad Chalke, he found a telephone box that was not vandalised. He took coins from his pocket. He parked under trees, away from the lights near the telephone box and the bus stop.

She was out in the scullery, working to a hurricane lamp because the electricity had never been run into the damp stone extension of the kitchen.

The telephone rang.

Fran was good at it and old Vic, down at the pub, would take all the plucked pheasants she could bring to him.

She came out of the scullery, and the breast feathers were spilling off her arms and her chest, through the kitchen and through the small room where old Brennie grunted before the closed fire. The cottage was bitter quiet without Rocco's snore, without the jangle of his collar chain. She never knew whether it was real, him sleeping through the telephone's ringing. He said it was the war, the trench slits, sleeping in them and all, under the artillery at Monte Cassino.

She heard his voice. "Thought you were gone, Colt."

He said that he was in deep trouble.

"They going to get you, Colt?"

He said that a man had been shot, likely killed, because they were trying to get to him.

"What you wanting from me?"

He said that the boys would have money, Billy and Zap, Charlie and Kev, Dazzer and Zack, Johnny. He said that without money he was gone, and she should try old Vic. He said that he needed five hundred.

"I can't get that sort of money, Colt, not quick."

He said that if he did not have the money, then he was gone.

He said that he would be there in an hour, in the village, for the money. And they'd get it back, he'd see to that.

"They been here for you, Colt. You shouldn't be coming. They shot Rocco in the Top Spinney and they went into your house, Colt. They went into your mother's room with guns."

He asked, were they in the village now.

"I been in all evening, I don't know whether they're back in Top Spinney."

"One hour, and I'm sorry as hell about Rocco…" he said.

"Colt, you wouldn't have known, your mother died this evening."

She heard in the telephone the sharp gasp of breath, and the purring when the line was cut.

Namir and Faud were seen arriving back at the Embassy. The time of their arrival was noted, they were photographed. The building was under observation by the Watchers from B Branch.

All calls into and out of the Embassy were intercepted. The urgent summons for the Military Attache to return to his office was picked up. A telex marked MOST URGENT – IMMEDIATE ACTION was sent to Government Communications Headquarters calling for exceptionally thorough monitoring of all frequencies used by the Embassy for transmissions to Baghdad.

The first transmission from the Embassy was sent 22 minutes after the return of the Military Attache.

In London there were no troops, no machine guns, no armoured personnel carriers, but the Iraqi Embassy was as effec-tively sealed as the British Embassy in Baghdad. B Branch Watchers were peeled off duty outside the Soviet Embassy, and the Syrian Embassy, away from the mosque that attracted the fundamentalist fringe in Holland Park, away from the Kilburn and Cricklewood pubs where the songs of Irish rebellion were sung. The Watchers gathered on the street corners near the building, and they sat in cars that were hazed with cigarette smoke. The building was surrounded, and a telephone call ensured that Faud's car, with one wheel on a double yellow line, was clamped.

It was not possible at that early stage in the operation to crack the code the Iraqis were using, but the volume of the radio traffic grew to an abnormally high level.

"We were betrayed."

The Director had come from his dinner table. He had waved the Colonel to a seat, but the Colonel had preferred to stand, sensing that Dr Tariq had not understood what he had said.

"We were betrayed in London."

"What…? And Bissett…?"

" They knew. It appears they would not have allowed our flight to leave. There was a shooting in the airport, at our airline's desk.

There were security men there, waiting for Bissett."

" H e was shot? It is incredible."

"It seems not. My information is that one of their policemen was the casualty. We have to assume that Bissett was arrested."

"Betrayed… " It was as a bell that tolled in the Director's mind, the chime of disaster. He was the man responsible for Tuwaithah. He had the plutonium; he had the yellow-cake from which the highly enriched uranium could be produced; he had the hot cell boxes; he had the engineering expertise; he had the technicians; he had the chemists. He lacked so little. He had given undertakings to the Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council. Dr Tariq felt the cold of the night around him.

"From within," the Colonel said. "It was why I telephoned you. It was a simple deduction. The leakage had to be from inside. There was a European we chased. I needed to know who, today, was absent from his work, and the description of your man who was missing. My mistake was to have rushed to his safe haven before I telephoned you."

The Colonel spoke of the tall, gangling scientist, with the pallor of northern Europe, with long fair hair. The man who had taken refuge in the British Embassy.

The Swede had been the guest of the Director at dinner, and he had brought back delicacies from Stockholm for the Director's table.

It was Dr Tariq himself, a quarter of an hour later, who found the rifle microphone stowed inside the tubular metal walking stick. He held the rifle microphone in his shaking hand. He looked into the face of the Colonel. He saw the mirror of his own fear. They were both no more than servants of a regime that ruled by the noose and the accident and the bullet from close quarters in the nape of the neck.

The act that Colt feared was remorselessly put into place. The description and photograph of Frederick Bissett were sent to every commercial airport in the country. The same were despatched to every ferry port. With the photograph and description went the order that if any official slipped their detail to the media then retribution would be savage. There was no wish to boast that a Senior Scientific Officer of the Atomic Weapons Establishment had been lost. Firearms were drawn from police armouries by selected and trained officers. And the last thing Dickie Barker did before he left to offer his condolences to the widow of James Rutherford was to order the despatch of a team of Special Branch marksmen and detectives trained in covert surveillance to Wiltshire, to liaise there with his man, Hobbes.

There were six of them in the house, and Sara had seen that two of them wore holsters strapped to their chests underneath their jackets. She had seen the guns in the holsters when they had reached up to push aside the narrow hatch into the roof space.

They had begun the search without waiting for the Security Officer.

She was not asked whether she agreed, she was told that it would be better that the boys go to a neighbour's house, and she was told that would happen as soon as a woman police constable was available. It was quite systematic, the way in which they had begun to pull the house, her home, apart. When the woman police constable had arrived, let in by a detective because she was no longer mistress of 4, Lilac Gardens, she was asked which of her neighbours should have the boys. She pointed next door, not to little Vicky. She pointed to the plumber's house.

She could not protest when her boys were ushered out of her kitchen by the woman police constable. They were white-faced when they went, and she thought they were too much in shock to have cried. And the boys who were ten years old and eight years old held each other's hand, and the woman police constable had her cool uniformed arm round the younger, smaller, shoulder as she took them through the front door.

She felt the shame. She knew the awful, sick depths of despair.

Within a minute, two minutes, of the children being taken from her, the Security Officer had arrived. He had introduced himself and then clumped away up the stairs to assess the state of the search. Now he was back, now he crowded into her kitchen.

God, Frederick Bissett, you bastard… Her husband. Her choice.

Sara reached towards her kettle. She looked at the Security Officer. He nodded. She was permitted to make herself a pot of tea. While the kettle boiled, while she took her milk out of the fridge and a mug from the cupboard, he busied himself with the file that he had brought. She made her pot of tea. She poured a mug of tea for herself, and stirred in the milk. She didn't ask the Security Officer if he wanted tea, didn't offer it to him. Behind his glasses she saw the sharp bright blinking from small eyes. She saw that he wore old corduroy trousers, and that the buttons of his cardigan were tight on his gut. It seemed to matter to him not at all that she had not offered him a cup of tea.

Frederick Bissett, her husband, had brought this creature into her house.

She sipped at the tea. From upstairs she could hear the clatter of drawers being pulled out, and she could hear the whine of the vinyl being lifted from its adhesive, and she could hear the scream as the floorboards were prised up. It was her house, and it was being torn apart. Sometimes she heard laughter. It was just a job of work to them.

She sat with her mug of tea and her shame and her despair.

"Now then, Mrs Bissett, can we get on?"

His elbows were out over the kitchen table. He overwhelmed the chair on which Frederick usually sat. If he had come through the door at that moment, her husband, into her home that was being wrecked, she might have taken a kitchen knife to him.

"When did you first know, Mrs Bissett, that your husband was a traitor?"

But, he was her husband…

"Come on now, Mrs Bissett, I don't wish to be unpleasant, but my inescapable duty now is to minimise the damage your husband can do to this country. I need answers, and I need them quickly. It would be very nice, Mrs Bissett, if we could sit down in your lounge, make some small talk, and eventually ease round to the business of my visit. But that's not possible. I am in charge of security at A. W. E. and from the point of view of the national interest, that is the most sensitive base in Britain. So I don't have time to mess around. Believe me, I get no pleasure seeing what is happening to you and your children and your home, but I will have answers, and fast."

He was her husband, and she had chosen him, for better and for worse…

" H o w long has Dr Bissett been in the pay of the Iraqi Government?"

She had told him that he owed them loyalty. She looked into the slug's face across the table.

" M r s Bissett, if you do not co-operate then it will come a great deal harder for you, and a great deal harder for your children."

He had said that what he did was for her, and for their boys, whatever anybody would say…

"Where is he?"

"I don't have to answer questions, Mrs Bissett."

There was her brittle and frightened laugh. "Don't you know where he is?"

"That's other people's work, to find him. My work is to close down the damage he has done to A.W.E… You're an educated woman, Mrs Bissett, I don't need to spell out to you how intolerably unstable a world it could be if people like the Iraqis can buy their way into the nuclear club… What did he take with him?"

"I have nothing to say to you."

"Did he take papers with him?"

"1 have nothing to say."

"It's the worst sort of traitor, Mrs Bissett, your greedy little rat."

"Nothing."

The eyes of the Security Officer were beaded at her. "I suppose that he thought he had a grievance, was that it? There are 5000 people working at the Establishment. Life is not roses for all of them, for some of them, life is damned hard. They soldier on, they don't believe there is an alternative, they weather their problems. Your husband is unique in the history of the Establishment, not for having a sense of grievance, nor for finding life hard. He is unique in that, the greedy little rat, he took foreign gold, and he betrayed every trust that had been put in him."

She shook her head, she had nothing to say.

She thought that her life was destroyed. She thought that her children would struggle into manhood before they could shrug off the disgrace brought to them by their father. She heard a floorboard above them, in the bathroom, splinter and break. She heard a cackle of laughter.

She scraped her chair round, she faced the door. She thought of the man at Debbie's party who had been called Colt. Her back was to the Security Officer. She thought of the eyes of Colt, blue and cold. She thought of the man who had taken her husband from her.

The voice behind her intoned, "You are making life harder for yourself, Mrs Bissett."

She turned and spat, "What did you do for him? What did any of you do for him, ever? When he cried for help, which of you answered?"

She would not say another word. She would sit through the rest of the evening while her home around her reverberated with the search.

It was for her that he had done it, that is what her husband had said, for her and for their boys.

She would sit for the whole of the rest of the evening not hearing the questions of the Security Officer, not listening to the breaking of her home, and she would stare out of the window in the kitchen door into the blackness of the night.

He had taken a position in the shadow under the old kitchen-garden wall, very near where he had crossed it with James so few hours ago. There was an owl calling in the oak beyond the wall, and before it had settled onto a perch close to the ivy drape of the main trunk, he had seen the white silent wing flap as it had swooped close to him. He had cowered from the bird, but now the bird with the haunting call was his company. Erlich who was hidden by the wall of a kitchen garden and the silver-white owl on the perch above him, watched the Manor House together. It was good to have the owl there. He thought that when the owl went, flew away in fear, then he would know that Colt had come back to the Manor House. There was a light on the stairs. He could see no other fight in the house, and he had seen no movement. For comfort, and because his spirits were so low, he said to himself:

All of the night was quite barred out except

An owl's cry, a most melancholy cry

Shaken out long and clear upon the hill,

No merry note, nor cause of merriment,

But one telling me plain what I escaped

And others could not, that night, as in I went.

And salted was my food, and my repose

Salted and sobered, too, by the bird's voice

Speaking for all who lay under the stars,

Soldiers and poor, unable to rejoice.

And the verses were short comfort. His mind turned, was driven to those whom he had destroyed by that ambition to climb the success ladder. James Rutherford was dead and pretty Penny Rutherford was bereaved. And he would have lost the respect, so important to him, of Dan Ruane.

Snap out of it, Bill. Stop whining and get the job done.

It was, to Bissett, madness.

He thought they were all yobs in the pub, louts, all of them except for the old man who was little better than a tramp, and except for the girl. It was quite ridiculous to have gone into the pub.

Colt stood with his back to the open fire, and the old man with the rough torn trousers and the winter overcoat held together at the waist with baling twine was sitting. All the rest were standing, and the pub bar was alive with their talk, country accents, and their obscenities and their excitement and their laughter. It was the court of King Colt. He stood in front of the fire, a pint glass in his hand, the handle of the Ruger pistol bulging from his belt and the fat shape of the silencer tautening his trousers below his hip. Sheer madness.

The girl was pretty. He noticed that. He did not often think that a girl was pretty. But there was something extravagant and untamed about this girl, and the rich red of her hair was thrown back long on her shoulders, and he could see blood stains with the dirt on her fingers, and there were down feathers hooked to the thread of her sweater, and her boots scattered mud on the flagstone floor. She had kissed Colt when they came in and held his body and squeezed herself against him. He watched the girl… The girl was moving among them, and each in turn, with the play-acting of reluctance, was adding to the rolled wad of bank notes in her blood-stained, dirt-stained hands.

Of course, they needed the money. The money was vital to them. The money was for their ferry tickets, but Colt had said in the car that their time was short. They should have taken the money in the car park, not switched off the engine, taken the money and gone, made for the coast. She had been round all of the men… how was it possible that these yobs and louts had so much money in their hip pockets? And the old man who looked like a tramp took? 1 0 notes out of a tobacco tin and put them in the girl's hands. Bissett watched her as she went to the bar, and he heard the tinkle bell as the till sprung open, and the man behind the bar gave her more.

She passed the money to Colt. They were all applauding, all of the yobs and louts. This was their hero. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed… None of them looked at him as he stood beside the door. He had refused a drink. He coughed. He thought that by coughing he could hurry Colt.

Colt looked at him, and there was the raffish, reckless smile.

Colt thrust the wad of money into his trouser pocket. He came to Bissett.

"It's your business, Colt, I know, but we've lost an awful amount of time."

Colt said, "Won't be much longer. I'm sorry, Dr Bissett, just a little bit longer… "

" W e don't have any more time to waste."

"A few minutes only."

"What on earth for…?"

A terrible sadness pinched Colt's face. " T o go home."

The heavy oak plank door of the back bar whined open.