Condition black

4

Erlich was content just to be on home territory. He couldn't imagine a government servant working abroad who did not feel that tug of pleasure when he walked up the steps of his embassy in a foreign capital. Past the locally employed security man, that didn't count, and up to the best-dress marine. The marine was where Erlich could believe he started to belong. Four minutes sitting in the big lobby and hearing the splatter of the ornamental pool and waterfall, and the lady coming to meet him. In each embassy he knew that had a Legal Attache's office there was a lady who looked like everyone's mother, and who did the confidential typing and the greeting downstairs. Just about time to take in the portraits of the most recent Ambassadors before she was at his side, hair in a bun, flat shoes, blouse and cardigan, and shaking his hand and making him welcome. Up three floors in the elevator, and away down the long corridor that was chaos because the electricians were rewiring the floor, and on to the security gate into Bureau territory. There must have been a blueprint in F. B. I. H. Q. for Legal Attaches' premises, because the set-up in London, the mechanism of the outer security door, was identical to the one in Rome.

Occasionally, behind his back, subordinates called him Desper-ado, to his face he was always Dan. Feds all used their given names, whatever their rank. The Director was the only one who was called by anything but his given name, That was part of the folklore.

Dan Ruane, the Legal Attache, was at home in his office, as if it was an extension of his comfortable house in North London.

The Indian wars prints on the walls were his; he had his own bookcases, his own imitation Georgian partner's desk, and his own tilting leather-backed chair. He was politely apologetic at having had to cancel the day before.

"What have you got, then, Bill?"

"His accent is English. Either his real name, or the name he answers to, is 'Colt'. He works for the Iraqis. It's 99 per cent sure he was the hitman for the dissident. It looks like Harry simply got in the way."

" Harry? "

"Harry Lawrence, Agency, also a friend."

"Friendships should be side-lined for an investigation. But you'd know that. What else have you got on the killer?"

"Nothing else, not yet."

"What's the Agency say down there?"

"They say it's the Iraqis, but no one is going to lift a finger of complaint even, until the case is watertight."

"What do you want here?"

Ruane's giant stockinged feet were on the desk. His chair was tilted back as far as it would go. From the cupboard beside the screwed down floor safe, he had taken a mess tin in which he kept his shoe-shining kit. He rubbed polish in little circles onto the shoes that Erlich thought were impressively polished. A West Point cadet would have been proud of those shoes already. It usually took Erlich little more than 30 seconds to get his shoes presentable, but Ruane was burnishing now with a golden duster.

''I want the bastard named, then I want to be part of a team that goes hunting him."

"Sounds about right."

''And this should be the town where I get him named."

''Did you get much help in Athens?''

''Excuse me, they they pissed on me.,''

The polish and the dusters were folded neatly back into the mess tin. The mess tin went hack into the cupboard. He couldn't see Ruane's face because il was bent below the rim of the desk, as he put his shoes back on. The voice was a growl.

" Y o u like that, Bill, being pissed on?"

"Didn't bother me."

"Won't lose you sleep?"

"Not a lot does."

Ruane took a key from his pocket that was fastened to his waist belt by a fine chain. He unlocked a drawer. He took out a small black leather address book.

" D o you know what the form is in this country, Bill?"

"Never worked here."

"Right, okay, digest… "

The shoes were back on the desk top. Erlich could only see the soles. At least the soles weren't polished.

"… In London I work through three agencies – you note that I say that I work through – I don't know what you guys get in Rome, but here it is through… that's most of the time…"

There was a dry smile. "… The three agencies are, first, Secret Intelligence Service who are involved solely in overseas intelligence gathering, same as the Agency. Second, the Security Service who are internal, have responsibility for counter-espionage and are deep into counter-terrorism. Third, Special Branch of the Metropolitan Police who have about the same job as Security but are more up-front, more visible. What sticks in their throats, any of those outfits, is if we start running around like it's our territory."

"Meaning?"

"It means that I am in a liaison role here. It means that I have to work through these guys. It means that I don't play round here like a Wyoming steer in a glass shop… unless I have to… Enjoy your day yesterday?"

" N o. "

"Pity, it may have been your last day off for I don't know how long,"

The feet swung clear of the desk top. As his weight came off it, the chair heaved upright. Ruane had his address book in his hand when he went to the office door. Erlich heard his instructions to the lady who had brought him up to the third floor. Three names, three numbers, appointments required that day. No excuses, no nonsense about previous engagements, three appointments that day.

Ruane turned back from the door.

"i was your age once. I reckoned to get ahead. Back then, I'd have given my right arm to have had the opportunity you've collared. Do well and you'll be going places, cross me and you won't. You with me? Nothing personal, Bill, but just remember that i work in this town, and for me to work here then I need doors opening up for me. You foul my pitch and you'll be on the next plane back to Athens, whether Harry Lawrence was a friend of yours or not, whether that damns your record

… Got me?"

"Got you, Dan."

The whistle on the kettle and the front door bell went off together.

Major Roland Tuck swore peaceably under his breath. Nurse Jones was a busy woman and he valued the minutes he had with her over a cup of tea when she came down from the bedroom.

He left her propped against the Aga. The kitchen was the warmest room in the house, apart from the sickroom. He went through the hall with the dog at his heels. The dog invariably followed him to the door, as if she expected, with each visitor, that her master would be back.

He opened the door.

There was a young man standing in the porch and looking around him. Not much to look at, because the front lawn and the drive to the Manor were a shambles. The leaves hadn't been swept up, and the gravel was alive With weeds. Behind the young fellow was a small van belonging to a household cleaning firm.

"Major T u c k? "

" Yes. "

"Could I come in, please?"

"What for?"

The man looked around him again, as if he expected that they were being watched. Tuck didn't think they were, not that day.

"I have a letter for you… "

"Good heavens, my dear fellow… come in."

Each time it was a different courier, a different cover. The young man followed him into the hall, carefully wiping his feet on the mat. The dog had lost interest and was heading back towards the kitchen. There had been two letters that year. He wanted the letters, of course, yet each time they had the effect of shattering the quiet routine of the Manor. The boy was their son, God dammit, no escaping that. The courier took an envelope from his inside pocket and passed it to Tuck, and also offered him paper and a pen, so that the receipt could be acknowledged.

Tuck held the envelope in his hand, and his fist was tight, screwing at the paper.

"I've never asked this before."

"Asked what, Major T u c k? "

"Could I send a reply back with you?"

"Don't see why not. I'll give it them, can't promise more than that."

He told the young man to wait in the hall. He went to the kitchen and asked if the nurse would be so kind as to wait, just a few moments, and he was out of the room before she could tell him how tight her schedule was. He left the young man to admire the ibex head that was mounted above the hall clock. He went into his study and shut the door behind him. He opened the envelope. He gutted the four sheets of his son's writing. He sat at the desk, a French antique, and took a sheet of notepaper. He wrote a single sheet. The boy was a wicked little bastard, but he-had the right to know about his mother's illness. He didn't know whether Louise would last until Christmas. He folded the paper and addressed the envelope with the one word COLT.

He went back to the hall, The young man seemed mesmerised by the gentle gaze of the beast on the wall.

"Please ask those who sent you to do their utmost to see that my son gets this letter as quickly as is humanly possible."

He let the young man out through the front door. For a moment he stood with his hand on the courier's shoulder, as though that were a link, however tenuous, with his son. He closed the door. He heard the engine start up outside. He did not think that the house was watched that day. The dog usually knew if the house was watched. When she had the hackles high on her shoulders, when she whined and scratched at the back door, then the house was watched. He went back into the kitchen. Thank the good Lord for that Aga, for its comfort.

Nurse Jones, bless her, had made the pot of tea. She poured her own mug, stirred in two sugars, and then she poured for him.

He had known Nurse Jones for thirty years, she was an institution in the village.

"Just time for a quick one, Major."

"How is she?"

"I've left a shopping list for you – just the chemist in Warminster, and the supermarket."

"Mrs Jones, how is she?"

"Losing the will to go on fighting – but then you'd know that better than me."

" Yes. "

He sat at the kitchen table. On the table was that day's newspaper, and the previous day's, neither unfolded. He cradled the mug in his hands. She told him when she would be back.

She said that she would see herself out.

When he had finished his tea, he slowly climbed the staircase.

She had just had the pains when Colt had last written, not been feeling herself.

Perhaps it had all been his fault. Country people who ran whippets and lurchers and labradors and terriers said that there was no such thing as a bad dog, only bad owners and bad breeders and bad trainers. As the recent months had passed, and as Louise had sickened, he felt the guilt more frequently. He knew many people in the village, almost everyone except the newly arrived and the ones who used the village as a dormitory and who worked in Bath or Chippenham or Swindon, but he knew very few that he could classify as friends. The problem of living in the big stone-built Manor House on the edge of the village, with the trees shielding it from the road, and the drive. He could think of no man, or woman, in the village that he could have gone to and talked with, and been reassured on the question of his guilt. As his wife, as his Louise, had slipped, there was no friend with whom he could share the sorrow he felt over his son. In his own time he had been a maverick, and for being a maverick his grateful sovereign had pinned on his chest the gallantry medal of the Military Cross. In the worst passages of his despair, Tuck could believe that the little bugger had learned to be a maverick from his father.

At the door of her bedroom, he paused. He loathed to be in the room now. It was the room they had shared for 30 years since they had moved in to claim his inheritance. He slept next door now, in his dressing room. He paused, so that he could shed the sorrow that had taken hold of him.

He was smiling when he went into the room.

"Good news, ma petite fleur, a letter from that young rascal of yours, a letter from Colt."

The room was dim because the curtains were half drawn, but he saw the sparkle of her eyes. He walked to the bed, and he sat, and he took the gaunt hand in his own.

"I'll read you what the blighter has to say for himself… "

Erlich didn't know Englishmen. He had never had to work alongside them.

He thought this one must have escaped from the National Theatre down the road.

They were in a pub overlooking the Thames, a stone's throw from Century House, the Secret Intelligence Service offices.

There was no way that S.I.S. would allow Erlich into their tower block, Ruane had warned him in advance.

The stage Englishman wore a pink silk shirt and a lime polka-dot bow-tie. He was old and pompous. They were in the crowded saloon bar with the lunchtime white-shirt crowd, while the other bar was filled with the building trade. To Erlich, it was an idiotic place to meet. They were forced to sit so close that each wrinkle of the boredom on the man's face was apparent. The man seemed to think that everything said to him was excruciatingly tedious and barely worth his attention. Erlich drank Perrier, Ruane drank tomato juice. The Englishman drank two large gin and tonics, without ice, with lemon. Erlich gave him the name of Colt. He was told that it would be checked out.

Outside, watching the man stride away along the pavement, Ruane said, "Just because they speak our language, don't imagine they do things the same way. Right, the Agency has an address, and a signpost at the right turning off the Beltway. These people don't exist, not here anyway. Very shy people…"

"Are all of them that exotic?"

"Colourful, I grant, but underneath that conspicuous plumage you will get to know, if you are as lucky as you are ambitious, a very down-to-earth bird. He organised, was control of, a mission into the Beqa'a Valley. He achieved with a marksman more than a Phantom wing of the Israeli Air Force could have, took out a real bad guy."

Erlich said deliberately, "Sorry I spoke."

Major Tuck's letter to his son, by now encoded, was transmitted by teleprinter to the Defence Ministry in Baghdad. All matters concerning Colin Olivier Louis Tuck were dealt with in that small group of offices behind their own perimeter fence and guarded by their own troops. By the time that Colt's father had warmed a broth to take upstairs with the scrambled egg and toast that he would himself eat for his supper, the letter to his son would have been delivered to the Colonel's department.

Time, in Frederick Bissett's private world, the world of H 3, was referred to as a "shake". Time was "quicker than a shake of a lamb's tail". A shake was measured at 1/100,000, oooth of a second. The nuclear explosive process that would obliterate a city involved a reaction taking place in a few hundred shakes. Distance was counted in new language, because it was necessary to be able to refer to the diameter of a unit as small as that of the electron that orbits the neutron in the core of the atom. The diameter of the electron is a "fermi", named in recognition of the Italian scientist who achieved that mathematical calculation. There are 300,000,000,000,000 fermis in twelve inches. Temperature was talked of in the context of some hundreds of millions of degrees Centigrade, necessary for the stripping away of the electron from the hydrogen atom, vital for the removal of the hydrostatic repulsive forces of the nuclei, leaving them free to collide. The greater the temperature, the greater the force of the collision, the more complete the reaction. Pressure was worked on the scale of 'megabars'. The pressure in the pit of a nuclear explosion was one megabar times one million, equal to 8 billion tons per square inch. Energy was the release of such power that 2.2 pounds weight of the material, plutonium, could in the event of complete fission produce violent strength in the muscle of physics that was equivalent to the detonation of 20,000 tons of conventional explosive.

For his work among those Times, Distances, Temperatures, Pressures and Energies, Senior Scientific Officer Bissett, Grade 8, was paid less than his neighbour the plumber and his neighbour the tinned-food salesman.

Reuben Boll was at his door.

The man's voice boomed in the small room, would be heard down the corridor in the outer office where Carol lorded it over her clerical assistants.

"Tell me, kindly tell me, when is your material going to be ready?"

Bissett did not reply.

Each month the pressure of the work was greater. He should draw a graph of the increasing pressure upon his work.

The Trident programme had seen the start of the pressure, because the submarine-launched system was the priority programme at the Establishment. Everything was sacrificed to Trident. Bissett's own project had been shunted backwards, removing from him colleagues, laboratory time, engineering space, facilities. The staff shortages were the further factor.

Fewer scientists, fewer technicians, fewer engineers. What sort of first-class science graduate would be recruited to A. W. E. when he could earn half as much again or double in the private sector?

There might not be money for Frederick Bissett's salary or funds enough to supply him with badly needed back-up, but by God, oh yes, there was money for the building programme. More than a billion for the A90 complex, and he had heard, and he believed it, that there was ?35 million of money just for the new fencing and perimeter security equipment… money for that, money no object for the bloody contractors.

"Frederick, I asked when is the material going to be ready?"

He felt so hopeless. "Soon, Reuben."

"What is 'soon', Frederick?"

"When it is ready… "

"I have a meeting in the morning, Frederick."

"I am doing my best."

The fact was that the facilities were not there. Computer time was not possible. Staff were not available. Every time he went across to A area, he was lucky to get half an hour of their time.

He would be heard out, and he would see the shaking heads, and he would be told that facilities and staff were tied down, knotted down, on Trident.

" S o, what do I tell them?"

"Tell them whatever the hell you like…"

He heard the door close.

Absurd of him, because at the end of the following week the annual staff assessments were due to be drawn up by the Superintendents. His own assessment was written up by Boll.

"Nice to see you, Dan. "

" A n d you too."

"Wife enjoy herself?"

"Very much, apart from the prawns."

" A h, the prawns. Not universally successful, the prawns."

Erlich sat back. The chair was not comfortable, but at least they were allowed inside the building. What a heap… They had come back across the river and they were in a street close to the Embassy. He had seen the building the day before when he lit upon a trattoria for his supper, without of course realising what it was. He was learning. The lesson said that neither the Secret Intelligence Service nor the Security Service advertised themselves. There had been no sign on the doorway, just a number. Erlich wondered how men and women could work in such depressing surroundings. They had been allowed in, they had gone past the uniformed security, and then had had to sit and wait in a grey-painted lobby, watched by the plainclothes minders, before the man had come down for them. They were in the building, but only just. They were a dozen paces down a ground-floor corridor, and then ushered into an interview room.

" I ' d like you to meet Bill Erlich, F. B. I. "

" I ' m Bill, pleased to meet you."

"James Rutherford. My pleasure."

Erlich looked across the bare table at Rutherford. He saw a solid man, good shoulders on him and a squat neck and a good head of dark hair. He thought the guy would be about his own age, certainly not more than mid-thirties. His working clothes were bottle-green cords and a russet sweater worn over an open check shirt.

"What do I call you?"

"What you like, Bill."

"Most people just call him 'Prawns', 'Prawns Rutherford',"

Ruane said.

"James will do nicely."

Ruane said, "Christ, are we formal? Okay, work time…

Harry Lawrence, Agency, shot dead in Athens, am I going too fast for you?"

"I read the reports."

" T h e bad news is that the trail leads right into your front garden. Tell him, Bill."

Erlich told Rutherford what he knew of the assassin who spoke with an English accent, and to whom the word "Colt" had been shouted.

"Is that all?''

"That's all I've got so far."

Rutherford hadn't made a note. He had just nodded his head, and then returned to the talk about the social evening, and how difficult it was to be safe with prawns, and he had wanted to know if Dan and his lady would be coming to the Service's New Year's Eve party.

Out on the pavement, Erlich said, "Thanks, Dan, but I wouldn't classify that guy as a picture of enthusiasm."

There was a moment of sharp anger from Ruane. "He's as good, for his age, as they've got, and his wife is one of the sweetest women I know in this town. If you just happen to stick around here you'll learn to sing his praises. He can be a friend, a really fine friend. Oh, and don't tell him your war stories because they might just seem trivial to him."

Debbie said, "But you've got to come…"

Sara shook her head. She pulled a face. "Just no can do."

"So, what do I tell them?"

"Tell them whatever the hell you like… "

He heard the door close.

Absurd of him, because at the end of the following week the annual staff assessments were due to be drawn up by the Superintendents. His own assessment was written up by Boll.

"Nice to see you, Dan."

"And you too."

"Wife enjoy herself?"

"Very much, apart from the prawns."

" A h, the prawns. Not universally successful, the prawns."

Erlich sat back. The chair was not comfortable, but at least they were allowed inside the building. What a heap… They had come back across the river and they were in a street close to the Embassy. He had seen the building the day before when he lit upon a trattoria for his supper, without of course realising what it was. He was learning. The lesson said that neither the Secret Intelligence Service nor the Security Service advertised themselves. There had been no sign on the doorway, just a number. Erlich wondered how men and women could work in such depressing surroundings. They had been allowed in, they had gone past the uniformed security, and then had had to sit and wait in a grey-painted lobby, watched by the plainclothes minders, before the man had come down for them. They were in the building, but only just. They were a dozen paces down a ground floor corridor, and then ushered into an interview room.

"I'd like you to meet Bill Erlich, F. B. I. "

"I'm Bill, pleased to meet you."

"James Rutherford. My pleasure."

Erlich looked across the bare table at Rutherford, He saw a solid man. good shoulders on him and a squat neck and a good head of dark hair. He thought the guy would be about his own age, certainly not more than mid thirties His working clothes were bottle-green cords and a russet sweater worn over an open check shirt.

"What do I call you?"

"What you like, Bill."

"Most people just call him 'Prawns', 'Prawns Rutherford',"

Ruane said.

"James will do nicely."

Ruane said, "Christ, are we formal? Okay, work time…

Harry Lawrence, Agency, shot dead in Athens, am I going too fast for you?"

"I read the reports."

" T h e bad news is that the trail leads right into your front garden. Tell him, Bill."

Erlich told Rutherford what he knew of the assassin who spoke with an English accent, and to whom the word "Colt" had been shouted.

"Is that all?"

"That's all I've got so far."

Rutherford hadn't made a note. He had just nodded his head, and then returned to the talk about the social evening, and how difficult it was to be safe with prawns, and he had wanted to know if Dan and his lady would be coming to the Service's New Year's Eve party.

Out on the pavement, Erlich said, "Thanks, Dan, but I wouldn't classify that guy as a picture of enthusiasm."

There was a moment of sharp anger from Ruane. "He's as good, for his age, as they've got, and his wife is one of the sweetest women I know in this town. If you just happen to stick around here you'll learn to sing his praises. He can be a friend, a really fine friend. Oh, and don't tell him your war stories because they might just seem trivial to him."

Debbie said, "But you've not to come…"

Sara shook her head She pulled a face. "Just no can do,"

"Sara, we are a group of middle-aged, well, nearly middle-aged, housewives, who amuse ourselves while the men are toiling, with a little bit of painting, sketching. There's no one in our cosy little set-up who has a quarter of the talent you have. I won't hear of it."

"It's just not possible."

Debbie persisted. "We go after the kids are safely in school, we're back before they come out. Everyone's got kids. We'll be back in yonks of time… "

Sara looked away. She turned her back on Debbie. She looked out of the window. They were in the dining room of Debbie's house. She looked out through the big picture window and across the manicured lawn and down towards the ponds and away towards the line of birches at the bottom of the garden. It was a big house, at least four good bedrooms, and the garden must have been the best part of two acres.

"Is there a problem? I mean, tell me. Is it just because we're amateurs?"

The classes were at Debbie's house. When she had rung in response to the advertisement card on the board in the Tadley Post Office, she hadn't thought of where the classes might be.

She had wanted to draw again, and to paint, and she had not wondered before the first class as to the group she would be joining. She was the outsider. She came from a housing estate in Tadley, and her husband worked at the Establishment behind the Falcon Gate. She had not stopped to think that she might be inserting herself into a social scene that she had walked away from when she had left home. Rich wives, with rich husbands, simply amusing themselves twice a week. She liked them, that was the trouble.

After the class they treated themselves to lunch, cold poached salmon the first day and the best cut of cold beef the next, and wine to go with it, and a raffle amongst the six of them for a bottle. Five pounds for each class… And there had been her materials. She could say, in all honesty, that she had looked out her college paints and brushes but they had been dried up and beyond recall. It must have been a dozen years since they were last used. For the first class she had just taken two soft pencils, and she had sketched while the others had mixed watercolours for the still life ol a bowl of apples, oranges and pears. For that day's class she had taken her own watercolours, bought with the Visacard in Reading… They were going by minibus to London for the visit to the Tate Gallery, with a driver, and the transport alone was? 1 5 3 head.

Just a miserable mistake.

She had waited behind after lunch. She had helped Debbie clear away. She had wanted to speak to Debbie after the others had left, and all the talk over lunch had been of the trip to the Tate.

She could have bought each of the boys a pair of trainers for what she had spent on the watercolours.

"It's nothing to do with whether I'm good, whether I'm lucky enough to have been given more talent than you, the rest of you…"

It was to do with money, bloody, bloody, money.

She turned back to Debbie. She felt dirtied in her old jeans, and her old student painting smock. The other women hadn't pulled something out of a bottom drawer to come to the classes.

The other women, Debbie and her friends, would have been shopping in Newbury or Hungerford, run round the boutiques, for something careless and suitable. Debbie's husband owned a software business outside Newbury.

"Bloody hell, am I stupid." Debbie's voice had softened.

Sara turned to her. There was a turquoise stone set in a pendant and hanging from a fine gold chain at Debbie's throat. The chain was long, too long, and Debbie had unbuttoned the two top buttons of her blouse so that the stone wouldn't be hidden, Sara thought the stone would have cost all of their own take home money for a month after the mortgage was paid.

"It's boring old money, isn't it?"

Sara nodded She should have been at home. She should have been thinking about the boys' tea, and about Frederick's dinner

"Well, I have the solution," Debbie said. "You're going on the payroll, Sara. You're going on a freebie to the Tate because you're going to be our guide. And here, too, because when we need a model, you will be our model."

She wanted so much to belong, could not help herself.

Debbie said, "You're prettier than any of us, anyway. You'll be brilliant."

Sara said, "I really don't… "

"You're not modest, are you?"

The Chief Inspector was not a snappy dresser. If he had been working for three days and three nights then it was in the suit he was wearing now, and his shoes had mud on them, and Erlich didn't think Ruane would be impressed.

A yawn, then a big sigh. They were in a small office on the fourth floor, and one wall of the office was glass, and the heater was full on. Again the yawn.

" N o w, what can I do for you, gentlemen?"

Erlich was getting sharp on the routine. He could get through it in a minimum of words. The voice was English, the face was Caucasian. Height, about 5' 10". Age, mid-twenties. Eyes, bluish.

Complexion, tanned. Build, solid without spare weight. Hair, short and fair. The name he answered to, "Colt".

The Chief Inspector of Special Branch no longer yawned. " A n Englishman shoots a C.I.A. staff man and an Iraqi journalist in Athens, that's a pretty bizarre set-up, Mr Erlich. What's the motive?"

"Iraqi state-sponsored terrorism. Our opinion, they would have set it up, used your national as the contract man."

"Can't be all that many Englishmen qualified for work of that sort, don't grow on trees. A single shot, you say, through the head at twelve paces. He ought to be quite an interesting young man."

Erlich said, "I want an identification."

" I ' m sure you would… Working for Iraqi intelligence? An Englishman? If we find him for you, I fancy we'd value a few minutes of his time ourselves, if we find him… "

And the yawn broke again on the Chief Inspector's face.

Erlich said, " I ' m asking for your best effort, sir."

" D o what I can, can't promise more."

Erlich thought that he wouldn't be doing anything before he'd put his head down. Trouble was, if he put his head down then he might not wake up again for 24 hours.

He went through the hallway of New Scotland Yard with Ruane, past the flame that burned alongside the Book of Remem-brance. Outside, he braced himself as the wind lashed them.

"Will he do us the business, Dan?"

"Maybe. He'll do his best."

Erlich said, "I didn't get the message we were exactly priority."

Ruane said, "They may have a crowd in town from Abu Nidal.

That's to say, they do have a very dangerous crowd, they just think they're Abu Nidal. They have no line on a target, but they have four addresses staked. He came off that to meet you."

"Good to hear that somewhere at least the killing of an American matters."

" N o, it's not t h a t… he owes me at poker."

Colt was escorted into the Colonel's office.

He was invited to sit, he was offered a cigarette. He sat opposite the Colonel. He declined the cigarette, he lit for himself a small cigar. The Colonel beamed across at Colt.

Not for Colt to ask why he had been summoned to the Intelligence Section of the Ministry. He rarely asked questions of them.

He had learned early on that they did not appreciate questioning.

They appreciated only answers to their own questions. He jolted.

Away along the corridor from the Colonel's office, a man screamed. A rising wail of pure agony. And then a shorter second scream. And then silence.

Colt had already shut the sound from his head, and the colonel showed no sign of having heard it. When a rabbit was in a snare, pinioned, and the fox closed in, then the rabbit screamed in tear and agony. Colt knew the sound, he knew the ways of the regime that was his host.

"Are you well, Colt?"

"Very well, sir."

"Not damaged?"

"Girls I know, sir, could have hurt me worse."

The Colonel smiled. "I won a bet on you, Colt."

"I hoped you would, sir."

"I bet my friend, who commands the 4th Battalion of the Presidential Guard, that he could deploy $0 men and that none of them would lay hands on you. But you were impertinent to take their kit."

"I hope it was a good bet to win, sir."

"The favours of a Thai whore… "

Colt grinned, and the Colonel laughed. Colt sat upright in the chair, there was less ache in his spine that way, less of a throb in his kidneys. His body was still a rainbow of bruises.

"Colt, will you tell me about your father?"

He spoke in a flat monotone, suppressing all the emotion he might have felt. " H e comes from what in England is called a good family. His parents had status, what a good family means.

He is 70. Being of a so-called good family doesn't mean much these days, and the sort of money required to keep things ticking over a few years back doesn't get you anywhere now. After the war, when he was out of the army, he tried his hand at several things, and they were all pretty much a disaster. The money he had inherited with the house just wasn't enough. He tried business, just about anything. When I was a child he was selling insurance, then he was offloading imported sheepskin coats in the London street markets, then it was free range eggs. None of them worked. I really don't know where the money comes from these days They live, him and my mother, in one of those damn great draughty houses in the country. I suppose it's just about falling to pieces. It was after the war that he married. My mother is French, they met in the war. Truth is that everything that was best in my father's life happened during the war. He was a young regular officer, Brigade of Guards, at the start of the war, and he went to France with the Expeditionary Force. You'll have heard that they lifted the army off the beaches at Dunkirk. They took most of them off, but the rearguard and the wounded were left behind. My father was in that last line that protected the beach-head. When he knew they were going to surrender in the morning, he slipped away from his unit. I suppose you could say that he deserted. He moved out into the countryside, and eleven months later he was back in England. He had moved himself right across France and through Spain to get himself repatriated.

Early in the war, in London, they set up something called Special Operations Executive, and my father was a natural for it. He was recruited. In the next three years he was twice parachuted into Occupied France. There are parts of France, used to be anyway, where he was almost a legend. Won't be too many places he'd be remembered these days, all those who could remember him are dead, or trying to die. He was an explosives man. Signal boxes on the railway, power lines, bridges. When they sent more men across, to liaise with him, it didn't work. He was his own man, never a team player… As long as the planes came to drop his explosives he didn't give a damn for the rest of the war effort.

When it was over he was given a Military Cross by the British, and the Croix de Guerre by the French. It was the best time of his life, and everything since has been second best. He's older than his years and I don't know how much longer he can last."

" You are proud of him?"

" We used to fight, morning, noon and night. Once with fists and boots and teeth."

"Is your father proud of his son?"

He could remember clearly, when he had last been at the Manor House, the day he left. His mother had been crying as she had rifled the house for money for him, and as she had made sandwiches to put in greaseproof paper because it would be dangerous for him to stop at cafes on his way to the airport. His father had followed him from room to room, half a dozen strides behind him all through that late afternoon. When the telephone call had warned that Micky and Sissie had been arrested, there had been no option but to run. There was bound to be something in their squat that would lead the police to him. He had gone out through the kitchen door. He had left his dog tied to a drainpipe by the kitchen door, so that it could not follow him. At the end of the kitchen garden, by the stile to the open fields, he had looked back. They were framed by the kitchen doorway. His mother's head was bowed in her tears. His father had stood erect, his arm round his mother's shoulder. His father had not spoken a single word to him, just followed him around the house, not a solitary word. His mother had waved him on his way, not his father.

"I doubt he'd think there was much to be proud of."

The Colonel bent to retrieve a sheet of paper from his briefcase, then pushed the decoded typescript across the desk towards Colt.

Colt read the letter that had been written that same morning, in haste, by his father.

"I need to go home, sir."

James Rutherford, first thing after he had closed the door behind him, took a tumbler of malt whisky up the narrow staircase to his wife.

Penny said, " If it doesn't kill the prawn bugs, it'll finish m e . "

"Are we on the mend?"

"Reckon so."

" Dan called by today. You're not alone, his missus has the same."

Rutherford knew that his wife liked Dan Ruane, always had a good word for him. Service wives were not generally involved in the social scene, only when it was an American evening. Penny would have known more wives from the Agency and from the Bureau than she would have met wives from the Service. She was sitting up in bed, and she drank, spluttered, and grinned.

"Brilliant… what did Dan want? Sorry, sorry, wasn't thinking … "

She was the well-drilled Service wife. She had to be. Service wives did not grill their husbands about bloody work. She made it her rule that Belfast, the Provisional wing of the Irish Republican Army, casual atrocities never crossed her lips, not after his last trip away, because the man who had come back to her from Northern Ireland had been frightened of his own shadow. She hoped to God that he would never have to go back there again.

But James Rutherford didn't give two tosses for that particular tenet of Service discipline.

" The American killed last week in Athens, Agency man, looks like he was shot by a Brit."

"You're joking?"

"No. Some sort of renegade, some dreadful little creature looking for a cause to pin himself to, I expect. The Library's trawling for him."

"And how was Dan?"

"Didn't really have a chance to talk to him. He'd a chap in tow who is doing the case. Civil enough young fellow, bit gauche, bit wet behind the ears."

Penny giggled. The malt was working the colour back to her cheeks.

"Well, he's American, isn't he?"

Erlich sat in his quarters in South Audley street. He had half an hour before Ruane took him to dinner. There was a card game next door whose progress he could hear through the partition wall

When he had left the University of California, Santa Barbara, he had taught literature at a school in Battle Creek, Michigan.

He taught the children of ''Cereal City". Everyone worked for Kelloggs, and the plant turned out, each day, enough for ten million people's breakfasts. The kids didn't want to know about life outside Battle Creek. They wanted to get on the production line and turn out more breakfasts. They were enough to stretch a teacher who wanted them to learn the beauty of poetry. They'd stretched him, but they hadn't snapped him. While he had been kicking his heels yesterday he had spent an hour in a tiny bookshop in Curzon Street and had come away with a paperback edition of the Parsons Rosenberg and the Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes's anthology. He had left home so hurriedly as to have packed not one of the poetry volumes that he was very seldom without

While he waited lor Ruane to be announced from the hall desk, he read.

Red fangs have torn His face,

God's blood is shed.

He mourns from his lone place

His children dead.

His father would never have heard of Isaac Rosenberg, an English poet, killed in the last weeks of the "war to end all wars". His father had died at somewhere called Due Co that was somewhere in the Central Highlands in Vietnam. He thought of the cruel death of Isaac Rosenberg and the death of his father in the breaking of the siege of the Due Co Special Forces camp.

Move him into the sun -

Gently its touch awoke him once,

At home, whispering of fields unsown.

Always it woke him, even in France,

Until this morning and this snow.

If anything might rouse him now

The kind old sun will know.

This he could recite without the book, a poem of Wilfred Owen's which he had impressed into the minds of every one of his pupils in Battle Creek.

Think how it wakes the seeds, -

Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.

Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,

Full-nerved – still warm – too hard to stir?

Was it for this the clay grew tall?

– O what made fatuous sunbeams toil

To break earth's sleep at all?

He thought of his father, killed thousands of miles beyond reach, of Wilfred Owen, killed, of Harry Lawrence, his friend whose death he could avenge. And of Elsa and her children. He had made his promise. For Erlich there was no way that promise could be undone…

The telephone rang. Ruane was downstairs.

He went fast down the stairs.

"Have they got anything?"

Ruane said, "One fence at a time, Bill."

Carol had told him before he went home, so Bissett knew what to look for – Carol was the conduit of all the gossip for H3 – and it put him in his best humour of the day.

He made a detour to see it. Across Fourth Avenue, right up to the inner perimeter round B area. Through the close-mesh fence topped by razor wire he could see the wide double doors large enough to let a three-ton lorry into the huge earth mound.

He saw the aerosoled message: " WE WOZ ' E E ".

As Carol had heard it, the Special Air Service had somehow broken through all the perimeter fences in the night, evaded the Ministry police and then bloody dogs, and reached the doors of the earth mound where the chemical explosives were stored, Carol had said that the S A S had also penetrated A area where the plutonium spheres were fashioned, walked right into the Citadel of the Establishment Never mind about A area, in B area it was plain to any Tom, Dick or Harry, bloody well done, the S.A.S.

Bissett, along with almost everyone else at A.W.E., had a pro-found disrespect for the Ministry police. So many times held up at the Falcon Gate, so many times made to open his briefcase and his empty sandwich box and turn Ins empty coffee flask upside down when he was anxious to gel home, so many times subjected to their questions when he was going about his business visiting other corners of the Establishment He could see the savage glower on the face of the Ministry policeman some 50 yards ahead of him. So, the S.A.S. had been in and demonstrated that the Ministry police security was a load of rubbish… Bloody well done, the Special Air Service. He imagined with pleasure the bollocking that would be administered to the men who had been on duty the previous night Perhaps they would be a little less arrogant in future.

"In London, in 1934 when the knowledge of the power of the atom was a dream in very few minds," Dr Tariq said, "there was a Hungarian refugee. His name was Leo Szilard. It was he who first comprehended the potential of that atom. He foresaw a release of energy utterly beyond anything considered by scientists before him. He was standing on the pavement of a street called Southampton Row. The idea of this power, this energy, came to him as he waited for the traffic lights to change so that he could cross. If he had been able to cross immediately then perhaps the idea might never have formed in his mind. It was pure luck. But also his very great skill and his dedication – the fact that he was a Jew does not undo his skill and dedication – earned Leo Szilard his luck. If you work with great skill, Colonel, and with great dedication then you will earn your luck."

The Colonel elaborated on the straightforward business of the reference section of the Ministry preparing for him a dossier on the British nuclear weapons programme. He also reported to Dr Tariq that he had put a London Embassy staffer, who worked directly to him, exclusively to following up one or two specific leads. He did not vouchsafe that this particular staffer was routinely tailed by the British secret services. They would all need luck, he reflected.

Dr Tariq did not vouchsafe to the Colonel the news that had reached him that morning, that a Frenchman, home on leave, had sent by letter his resignation. Nor did he tell him that a German was now packing up his quarters, having refused to work another day. The Colonel, whose information on the morale inside Tuwaithah was by now almost as good as Dr Tariq's, was not surprised that this news was withheld. It would be one more damaging admission of cracks in his programme, and Dr Tariq was a vain man, his vanity complicated certainly by fear. Fear of failure. Fear, too, of the consequences of failure.

Dr Tariq saw the slackened jowl of the Colonel, he noted the way that the man dragged at the butt of his cigarette, his third, he watched the fidget of the man's fingers. It would be too soon, he thought, to remind the Colonel of the fate inescapably awaiting those who failed a mission which had the total support of the Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council.

" You should seek, Colonel, to earn your luck."