Condition black

8

He drove out of London, with a road map across his knees. He might just get the New York posting if he fouled up. Some of the instructors at Quantico said that hunches were good, and some – more – said they were crap. Ruane had been out when Bill had got back to the Embassy and his hunch told him to get down into the country again. New York-based Agents earned less than the city's garbage collectors, and the only worse posting than New York H.Q. on Foley Square was the regional office at Brooklyn-Queens. If he really fouled up it would be the fast heave out of Rome, and if he fouled up really bad then it could be Brooklyn-Queens, New York City.

He edged his way along amid the commuter traffic flow.

The Quantico bible, verse one, chapter one, said that Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. The seven big Ps. He had two P's worth on the back seat of his Ford along with his waterproof coat and the Wellington boots. He had bought himself some thermals and a sleeping bag and a camouflaged bivouac cover.

The motor was fine, cramped but he could cope with thai and where he was going was just right for a dismal-looking little motor.

Once he was past Reading the traffic had thinned. He drove care fully, and the light had gone by the time he could take the turn off the motorway for the cross-country route to Warminster.

Erlich was a town boy. He had lived in Annapolis, Maryland, L with his grandparents, then he had gone to Santa Barbara, University of California, then to Battle Creek and the town school, then to Quantico and on to Atlanta and Washington. Country was not his place. There was big, raw, country where his mother now lived, out on the White Mountains and on the long trail, but he had never felt at home in country. He did not know the way of the country, nor the pace of the country. Or the suspicion of the country.

Two miles short of the village, his headlights picked out the gate. The entrance into the field had been solidified with stone chips. He reckoned it was a good place for him.

He parked the Ford in the field, hard against the hedge. The hedge was thick holly and would screen his car from the road.

In the darkness he put on his boots and slipped on his waterproof coat. He rolled his sleeping bag tight inside the camouflage bivouac screen. He felt in his pocket, checked that he had his monocular glass.

Between the trees ahead he could see the dull gold glow of the village lights.

When the Serious Crime Squad boys came down to the village and bothered to announce themselves then, they always asked to see Desmond's log. His wife was in the kitchen and his supper would be up in a quarter of an hour, and the small ones were in bed. It was a useful time for Desmond to get his log up to date.

The log listed as many of the visitors to the Manor House as he knew of. Pretty dull reading it made, but it was what Serious Crime wanted.

He knew about the flowers being delivered because the van driver had called in at the shop to ask directions. Desmond knew just about everything involving the shop because he had won Mrs Williams' gratitude when he had put two kids in court for breaking her plate-glass window the last New Year's Eve. Nothing surprising about the flowers because obviously Mrs Tuck was very ill. The young constable felt he was a coming man. How many policemen in the Wiltshire force could boast a visit from an F. B. I. Special Agent plus an officer from the Security Service?

He wondered what poor Mrs Tuck's son had done to warrant the attention of the Security Service and the F.B.I. Properly speaking, that visit would have to go into the log too, and Serious Crime could make what they would of it.

He wondered, too, whether that pig of a son would come back to see his mother before she died

The flowers were on the compost heap and the voluminous cellophane wrapping and the ribbons were in the rubbish bin beside the back door, He wouldn't have the bloody flowers in a vase and on display She was upstairs and dying, his wife, and he was damned if he would allow their bloody intrusion into his life and into her death.

" Y o u owe them nothing… They make a joke of your mother's illness. Flowers, damn them, just to get a message to you. How can you owe them more than you owe your mother and me? How could you involve us in the infernally dangerous mess you are in?"

"I'll be gone by the morning," Colt said.

He was involved, Major Tuck was most emphatically involved.

He was involved because before he switched on the light in any room he first went to the window and drew the curtains closed.

He was involved because he cared for his son's freedom. He was involved because in the late afternoon dusk he had walked the dog around the garden and known that the dog would show him if the house was watched from the kitchen garden wall and the paddock hedgerow or the front garden wall on either side of the front gates.

"Will I see you again?"

"Will I involve you again?" Colt asked, and there was the careless smile at the boy's mouth.

God's truth, he'd miss the little bugger. God's truth, he wanted him gone because when he was gone then at least he knew the boy was safe and at liberty. God's truth, the smile on his wife's face, as the boy had sat with her and held her hand, had been the best thing in his life for months. God's truth, he could no longer remember how he had been at that age, in France, alone, a satchel of gelignite for company.

" I f you can come again… "

" I will."

She took the pheasant from the snare. She loosened the wire from its throat. In three of her snares there were strangled pheasants, two cock birds and a hen. She could move in the fields without light, her father had taught her well – it was six years since the keepers had last caught him, since he had last been before the magistrates in Warminster. Her footfall was without sound, her breathing was silent. She was a wraith moving in the care of the darkness, back towards the village.

He came past the empty keg barrels that were piled as haphazardly to await collection by the brewery as they had always been. He came past the oil tank and the rusted plough that had been at the back since he could first remember. He went through the outside back door and through the gents toilet.

Colt came into the back bar.

The beer smell was in his nostrils. The cigarette smoke was in his eyes. The jukebox music was in his ears. He paused in the doorway.

He saw the faces and he saw the astonishment. He might not have been away. Two years back, and they had all been in the bar. Billy and Zap, the brothers who worked in the bike garage in Frome… Charlie on the dole and proud of it… Kev from the farm on the Shepton Road… Dazzer who had tried to be a postman but who wouldn't pack in the evening drinking and couldn't get up in the morning… Zack, who had done time for

• sheep stealing from Home Farm, three months in Horfield…

Johnny, whose grandfather had left the plough at the back to wipe off his slate twenty years before, at least… and old Brennie. He was back two years. Old Brennie by the guttering fire, where he had been two years back, where he had been with the German Shepherd sleeping on its side at his feet when Colt had last come to the pub. The village boys were around him.

Billy and Zap, Charlie, Kev, Dazzer, Zack, Johnny, all around Brennie. Christ, and old Brennie had on the same brown Windsor soup jacket that he had worn that night two years back. Fran was the only one who hadn't seen him. She was beside her father, with her back to the door.

They were all staring at him. As if he was a ghost. Not a word spoken.

Fran turned. She swung her shoulders to see what had killed the talk around the fire. Her face lit up, then she frowned and her eyes blinked, like they weren't sure.

As she stood, her heavy coat was caught for a moment against her father's leg, and the lining showed and the deep pocket and a cock pheasant's head jutting from the pocket. For a moment, Fran's fingers clung to old Brennie's shoulder, because it could not be real.

He stood his ground in the doorway.

Then the explosion of her movement. She ran across the room.

Four feet from him, she jumped. Her thighs were on his hips, her arms were round his neck.

Not a word said. Not a word from any of them.

Colt kissed Fran. Fran kissed Colt.

Old Brennie grunted something, and none of the kids knew what he said. But old Brennie went to the bar and he slapped down his pound coin, and told old Vic to get up a bitter dash.

Colt felt the pulsing energy of his Fran and her warmth. And when he had let her down, then he held her face in his hands, let his fingers rest on her cheeks, and he kissed her lips and her chin and cheeks and her nose and her eyebrows and her ears. He kissed her until old Brennie shook his arm and handed him the pint. He held her against his chest, and he drank the pint straight down, and tossed the glass at the group of them, and Zack caught it, and old Vic was already pulling his pump.

They were all on their feet and round him.

Zack said, "Shit, boyo, you shouldn't be here…"

Kev said, "Colt, the filth watch for you, they're here regular.. . "

Dazzer said, "There was a Yank in the village… "

Charlie said, "You show yourself here, Colt, you're for the fucking jump… "

Billy said, "The pretty boy, the copper, he's always sniffing round your house… "

Johnny said, "What we heard, they've guns when they come looking for you… "

"Have you come back for your Ma, young 'un?"

"Yes, Brennie, I came back to see her… "

"I was sorry to hear about your Ma."

"Thank you, Brennie."

Old Vic had come into the bar from behind the counter. He carried the filled pint sleeve glass to Colt. Old Vic went to the main bar door and he pushed it shut and he set the bolt across.

Colt saw it in old Vic's face. He was expected to drink up, and he was expected to get his arse out. Old Vic wouldn't want trouble. Old Vic had taken his position by the counter, his arms folded across his chest. He was waiting for Colt to be gone.

"Where you been, Colt?" Kev asked.

Colt drank.

Where he had been, what he had done, that would mean nothing to any of them. Old Brennie used to claim that he had never in his life travelled further than Warminster and the magistrates's Court. Billy and Zap had been as far as Southampton, to watch football, and given that up as a waste of weekend drinking time. Zack had been to Bristol for Crown Court and prison, Australia was the moon, Iraq was the stars. Kev had been to the special school in Warminster that handled pupils too disruptive for the comprehensive.

"I've been around," Colt said. "Here and there…"

His father would not have known the names of any of them.

His mother would have known their mothers through the Institute. They were the dregs of the village, Colt's father would have said.

Fran said, "Are you going to drink, or are you going to come walking?"

She took off her heavy coat and slung it to her father, and the pheasant spilled on the flagstones.

Nothing changed, not in two years. The poacher's daughter was tall, big-boned, big-hipped. She had red flame hair that would have been on her shoulders if it had not been caught in a pony tail with an elastic band. Strong as a bullock, old Brennie had said. She took Colt's hand and walked him to the door. None of them would tell on him. Most likely, they'd have one of old Brennie's snare wires round their neck if they did.

They went out through the yard at the back of the pub. They crossed two fields, bent and close to the hedgerows.

There was a pillbox on the high ground above the village, to the west. There were brambles across the entrance, and under one of the gun-slits there were the diggings of a badger sett. It was where they had always come, it was where they had been two years back.

"Is the American for you?"

" Y e s. "

"What does he want with you?"

"First choice would be to kill me, second choice would be to take me."

"We'll give him a run," she said.

It wasn't raining now and Frlich used the bivouac cover as a groundsheet. He was a lew yards back into the trees, but he had a clear view down the slope of the fields to the house. He reckoned that he was six hundred yards from the house. An image intensifier would have been a help, but he would have to make do with the monocular glass. From his vantage point he could see the high narrow window on the stairs and he could see the kitchen window, both lit. The rest of the house was dark. The bedrooms were on the front of the house.

The isolation oppressed him. He must have been mad to have taken himself off to a God-awful lonely wood where the birch saplings were dripping and the cold rain water splattered from the big oak branches. He thought of Don and Nick and Vito and their so far empty bulletins, and imagined their warm, convivial evening in an Athens taverna. He saw Colt's father, clear, come down the stairs. He saw him framed in the back door at the kitchen, and he thought he saw the dog come past the man's legs, and a few minutes later the door was opened again, then closed.

The kitchen light went out. And then the stair light. After those fights had gone Erlich's spirits sank. He felt dismally alone. The shouting from the car park at the pub carried to him, and the revving of car engines, and after that only deeper silence beyond the sighing of the wind in the trees above him. He was scared. He nearly jumped out of his sleeping bag when a young roe buck passed ten feet from him, hugging the edge of the field. And he muttered an expletive in fear when a pigeon, alarmed by the slight shift of his body, exploded out of the trellis of branches over his head. He heard a fox vixen call, and once he heard the death screams of a rabbit and didn't know what predator was at its throat. There had been a moon to start with, occasional and in between the fast-moving cloud formations, but that moon was lost in thick cloud.

When it started to rain, he wrapped himself tight in the bivouac cover. He lay still. It was the first time since he had left Washington that he had missed the comfort of the sharp shape against his chest of a standard issue,. 38 calibre, Smith and Wesson revolver.

Good loving, just as it had been two years back.

She said that she had known he was back when she found the car hidden away in the old barn at the edge of the twelve acre.

She had known he was back and had carried three bales of straw to the pillbox.

She had stripped him off, she had stripped herself off.

They were on the rough straw in the pillbox.

She was great and she cared about nothing, other than getting the condoms on him.

The third time, she tickled him to life, so he could be useful to her again, with a stalk of straw.

Her on Colt, Colt on her, her back on Colt.

Soft and gentle loving, and fun.

And the talk was soft and gentle. Not heavy and not serious, because that wasn't their way, but fun…

" D o you remember…?"

When they had gone to the pheasant pens on the estate, let the lot out, screwed up the whole season's shooting for the posh crowd.

When they had been out at night, the night before the hunt had been due on the estate and the Home Farm land, and they had laid the trails with the aniseed in the sacking bag, and they had sat the next morning on the high ground and watched and laughed till it hurt at the chaos, and the Master looking as though he'd do his heart.

Fran hadn't joined the Front. Fran had said, after Colt had taken her to one meeting, that the A. L. F. were a load of ponces and poseurs. What she had meant was that the activists were too serious. She couldn't be doing with serious.

When Colt was flat on his back with the goosepimples working up the bareness of his thighs, and when there was the big warmth ol her breasts on his chest, then Colt told his Fran where he had been and what he had done. It was natural for him to tell her.

He told her about the rush out of the Manor House, and the flight out of Heathrow before the law was organised, He told her about Australia, and about the man who had tried to roll him when he was sleeping rough off the highway down to Fremanlle.

He told her about his escape from Australia on the tanker where they used bicycles to get from bow to stern. He told her about Kuwait and making his way into Iraq. He told her about a job teaching English to the children of an Iraqi Colonel, about his friendship with the Colonel's family, about his recruitment and about the shooting of two men in Athens, and the shooting of a man in south London. He told her about his life since they had last been, naked and cuddling, in the pillbox overlooking the village that was their home.

Fran told him what she knew, that there was a car parked behind the holly hedge of a field on the Frome road.

Desmond was shaving and his wife was still in bed and the little ones were still asleep when he heard the rapping at the front door.

If he hadn't already wiped his face then Desmond wouldn't have recognised him. Mud from head to toe, like he had been crawling in a gateway where the cattle had churned the ground. A line of rips in his coat, like he had been caught in wire and hadn't the calm to unpick the barbs. The American's chest was heaving. He was at the end of his tether. Obviously not a time for talking, because the American was already walking towards the panda car in the car port. Desmond grabbed his coat and his keys.

The place was halfway between the police house and the village.

The hatchback of the Ford had been forced. The jack from the Ford was abandoned in the mud beside the car. Close to the car, on the field side of the holly hedge, were the four wheels. The Ford was beached, stranded. He could have laughed, but he hadn't the nerve.

Rutherford thought it was the sort of job that he would be looking for when he was that age, a cosy little number.

He sat in the Security Officer's room on the top floor of the main block of F area. "I tell you, Mr Rutherford, we have a happy community here. Fm not talking about the general workforce, I am referring to the senior scientific and engineering staff."

"Quite."

"And you would do well to consider that while Defence has had traitors, so has your Service, so has Intelligence, so has G.C.H.Q.. .. Atomic Weapons Establishment has had no blots on its escutcheon at all."

"Of course not."

"The loyalty of our scientists and engineers is the last thing I shall be losing sleep over. They are first-class people. They know what their job is and they get on with it."

"It's just a general warning… "

To Rutherford, the place reeked of complacency, but it wasn't his concern. He was just the messenger, packed off on the errand of communicating a 'general warning'.

" T h e Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission, you say."

"That's where we believe a threat to security might come from."

"… They would need very specialised knowledge. They'd have to know who they were looking for, where that individual worked, and then they'd have to compromise him. Not the least of their problems, you see, Mr Rutherford, would be in identifying one of our scientists. Practically impossible. The Establishment prides itself on its discretion."

"That's very gratifying."

"They couldn't even trawl around and fail. The slightest approach made and that scientist, that engineer, would be straight in here, my door is always open. Government has done very well by this place. Conventional forces may be feeling the draught what with the changes in Eastern Europe, but we've been left untouched. Everybody here has job security."

"It was a general warning and I've passed it on."

"And I've noted it… Don't get me wrong, Mr Rutherford.

Anyone, everyone, here would be appalled at the suggestion that a regime as bestial and madcap as that of Iraq could get its hands on nuclear weapons. They will not get any sort of help from anyone at A.W.E. Now the French, that's another matter. The Italians, I am afraid, quite a different kettle of fish. On the other hand, Mr Rutherford, if your people come up with something a little more specific, by all means be in touch again."

"I'm sure you'll do what's necessary."

"Well, we won't be scaremongering."

Rutherford said quietly, "The sort of people who could help the Iraqi programme, how many are we talking about?"

"Twenty, not more."

"It would be good if you could keep a weather-eye on them, those 20."

" Mr Rutherford, take a message back to London… Those 20 men and women are some of the finest brains employed in government science. They are all, each last one of them, people who deserve society's respect. If you think that, on the basis of some intelligence tittle-tattle, I am going to order phone intercepts, mail opening, bank statement access, against our foremost individuals, then

… "

Rutherford stood up. "I'll tell them in London that the Iraqis will have to look elsewhere."

Again, he could not fault them. He presumed they had learned from the Soviets, but then they might just as well have learned it off the British. They told him enough for him to know that it was foolproof whether it had come from the Soviets or from the British.

They told Colt, the two men that he met in mid-morning in the puddled car parking area on Wimbledon Common, that they had used the scatter and disperse procedure. They told him that there would always be at least one car from the Security Service or from Special Branch watching the front of the Iraqi delegation's building. They told him that their tactic was to overwhelm the watchers. The Military Attache and two Second Secretaries, who were sensitive and known to the Service and the Branch, had left the building one after the other. One had turned right down the street, two had gone left. Three trails to follow, two cars at most for the job… Two minutes later, the two men had left the building. They had come via taxi, underground train, mainline train, and taxi again.

He called the taller of the two Faud, and the shorter Namir.

Faud had joked that he was listed as being on the staff of the Cultural Centre in Tottenham Court Road, and Namir had said that he was listed as a chauffeur to the Commercial Attache. Faud had pointed out the rubbish bin in the car park that was emptied on Mondays and Fridays. Namir had said that a message could be left there on any Sunday or Thursday, and that the bin would be checked by himself on those evenings. Faud had shown Colt the decoded telex from Baghdad, Namir had burned it with his cigarette lighter when Colt had read it.

Colt had the address. He had his start point.

And he was told that he had done well, that he was a favoured son, that there was great pleasure at the sending to Hell of Saad Rashid, the thief.

The Metro Vanden Plas went first.

He was down the road, on the verge. Straight after the Vanden Plas came the Saab Turbo. He saw the B. M. W. come out and cross the traffic and it was nothing short of miraculous that it missed the gravel lorry and when the lorry driver hammered his horn she gave him two fingers. There was the E-type and the Audi. He had time to smoke a small cigar before the Fiat crept out of the gates. The Fiat with the A registration, that would be the car. His engine had been idling. He allowed a van and an estate to get in front of him before he came off the verge. Colt did not know the name of the woman, only that he was to follow her because her husband worked as a scientist at the Atomic Weapons Establishment. He followed her off the main roads, and through a housing estate. When he saw her at her front door, her sketch pad under one arm and rummaging in her bug for her key, Colt thought her a good-looking woman.

On every house there was a Neighbourhood Watch sticker. Colt had driven to Newbury and had bought a calculator and an accounts ledger and a book of receipt dockets. He sat, now, in the car in Lilac Gardens. He had positioned himself directly under a street light. He invented receipts, and he entered those receipts in the accounts ledger. He wore a clean shirt and a tie.

He was the sales representative clearing his day's paperwork. He was the rep who had found a quiet place to get his paperwork tidied up before his last appointment of the day.

He was 75 yards from the front of the house, under the light, positioned so that he faced the junction of Lilac Gardens with Mount Pleasant. He had seen the wife again. He had seen her go out in her car, and he had watched her back with her two small boys. It was important for him to know the numbers of the household, and later he would watch for the bedroom lights so that he would know where the family slept, but that would be later. He watched the men of Lilac Gardens coming home from their day's work. He saw a Cavalier pull into the forecourt of the house to the right. He saw a flash Ford, a newer model than he recognised, accelerate up the cul-de-sac, brake, and turn squealing into the opened garage of the house to the left. Colt thought that he had never before watched the herd of workers actually come home. He saw the lights of the Sierra. He had never, himself, worked in his life, he didn't count the part time that he had thrown in with the farmers around the village, harvest-time tractor driving. The Sierra was slowing. There had always been money from his mother for what he needed, beer money, cigarette money, petrol money. He had never gone short, even in Australia, always picked up a bit here and there. Now of course he had in his hip pocket the fat brown envelope that had been handed to him in the car park on Wimbledon Common. The headlights of the Sierra caught his face then swung away, turned onto the concrete and stopped behind the Fiat. He saw the man who came out of the car.

There was a light rain. He flicked the windscreen wipers across once, killed them.

He saw the sports jacket. He saw the dark hair. He saw the man run with his briefcase to the front door. Colt saw the face of his target.

An electric fan purred in the corner, its face traversing a narrow arc, and every few seconds the papers on the desktop gently lifted, then fell back.

There were filing cabinets, each drawer with a solid pad-lock fastening it. There was a floor safe, old enough to have carried the papers of the founding fathers. There was a desk, and hard chairs against the walls. No decorations of any kind.

Typical of them, Tork thought. That room symbolised everything that he admired about the men of the Mossad. No frills, no bullshit.

"What you are suggesting is blatantly ridiculous."

"I'm not their apologist," Tork said.

"Arc they too stupid to interpret the threat?"

"I simply cannot say what they have or have not read into it."

"If the Iraqis were prepared to use chemical agents against their own people, their Kurds, would they hesitate to use a nuclear device against us? They have the Condor missile, capable ol reaching any of our cities. A missile with Condor's range is not designed to carry a sackful of conventional explosive."

"We must assume that Century is au Jait on Condor and its current state of development." With his hand Tork flapped away thr smoke from the Israeli's cigarette. If he ever developed cancer of the lungs it would be from passive smoking in the offices of the Mossad.

"And do they also know that Dr Tariq has recently purchased 15 kilos of weapons-grade plutonium?"

"Has he now?" Tork wrote a sharp note in his pocket pad.

"And they want an even bigger picture drawn for them?"

"I think what it is, is that Century, in consultation no doubt with the boffins, regards it as inherently improbable that the programme directors at Tuwaithah would dream of targeting a British scientist. So much so that they – well, obviously there are more plausible targets – want something pretty specific before they are willing to turn Sellafield or Aldermaston upside down looking for Iraqis under the bed. At least, that's the gist of it."

"So, they will do nothing until there is a warhead on the Condor, the Middle East at Baghdad's mercy? Most politic."

"In a separate communication," Tork said, "my own Desk Head asked particularly that I should say that he hoped very much that you would be in a position to give them something more. Then he'll go straight in to bat. That's to say…"

" Y e s, yes, we know all about batting, Tork. This is not cricket.

This is survival."

There was a cursory handshake. He was escorted from the building.

He liked to walk. He felt that when he walked on Ben Yehuda, and on the other arteries of Tel Aviv, then he could soak up something of the atmosphere of the society on which he had reported to London for the last eleven years. There was much in that society which he disliked. His private opinion, never expressed, was that the Israeli military had demeaned its reputation in its handling of the intifada war against the Palestinian teenagers. And there was much in that society which he admired.

His private opinion was that the men and women of the Mossad left his own Service for dead. But they were ruthless, the case officers of the Mossad, and he wondered what poor devil, living a buried life of danger, would be ordered to produce "more" that the hesitations of Century might be quelled.

"I'll take them," Frederick said.

"Are you sure?"

" I ' d like to."

"I've got a splitting headache."

"I'll take them."

" I t would be marvellous…"

"I'll do it."

She couldn't quite believe it, that Frederick would take the boys swimming. He never took them. Not to Cubs, nor to the Saturday morning soccer.

"Has something happened?"

"Should it have done?"

" A t work?" Hope in her voice.

"Just another bloody day in another bloody factory."

She turned away. She didn't want him to see her disappointment. She went to get the boys' costumes and their towels. When she came downstairs again the boys were at the front door, and she could see the way they looked at their father, hesitant because of the change in a precious routine. They were super swimmers, that's what she'd been told last month at the pool, and they should be encouraged. Well, that was encouragement, their father taking them.

"Watch Frank's freestyle, won't you? Adam, you'll show Daddy how you can do backstroke now?"

Sara kissed Frederick's cheek.

She saw them through the door.

She waved them off. It was three years since she had last packed her bag and started to fill suitcases with the boys' clothes.

It was before they had put the small house on the market and moved to Lilac Gardens. It hadn't been a particular row, just an accumulation of tension and frustration and the slow building of the ice wall that blocked communication with each other. As she had packed and filled the suitcases and bags she had not thought through where she would have headed for. Not her mother's home, where she would have been crippled by the recrimination of what had taken her into this ill-fitted marriage, God, no. Not any friend's home, because she had no friends with whom she was close enough to share the agony of a failed relationship. It would have been a bed and breakfast place somewhere. And that afternoon he had come home early because he was sickening with the 'flu that was going round, and she had kicked the bags under the bed. She had decided that she would stay, that they would exist together. There was still the sensation of Frederick's cheek on her lips. So stiff, so taut, as if the muscles of his face were in spasm. God, the poor man. Poor old Frederick…

He sat in the gallery above the pool, watched the man who walked alongside the pool calling encouragement to a small boy struggling with a backstroke. The man walked barefoot, carrying his shoes with his socks hanging from them.

He could have done with something to eat. He hadn't eaten that morning, nor that afternoon, nor that evening. He'd have to find time to eat, because if he didn't eat then the motion of his stomach would wake the dead. What he would really have liked to have eaten was a bowl of pistachio nuts and a plate of lamb filled with rosemary and spiced rice at the Khan Murjan.

His eyes were never off the man, not for the 75 minutes that the man was at the pool with two boys.

"So it's Indian country."

Down there, Custer would be messing his pants."

''Hostile natives…?"

''If you'd jummped out of a hit Phantom over North Vietnam then you'd get a better welcome than down there,"

Ruane had his shoes on the desk, spotless and polished "Did he do it?"

Erlich said, "Not necessarily, according to the local lawman.

He says that it might have been thought a police cair, or they might have thought it was Customs and Excise snooping to check whether the farmers are using iheir tractor diesel in their cars They're just not very friendly people down there."

" D o you think he's there?"

"I don't know but I know he's close. He shot that Iraqi in Clapham Junction, that's for sure, Dan."

Ruane pushed bai across his desk the five-page report that Erlich had hammered out once he had returned from the country Each page was now initialled by the Legal Attache for trans mission to Washington and Athens. Erlich was calm now. His anger had been steadily dissipated in the bath at the policeman's house, and on the platform of the railway station, and on the train back to London, and in the accommodation on South Audley Street where he had hung out his wet clothes and changed into clean, and when he had sat at his desk and punched out the report on the hard scene of Colt in London and the killing. He thought Ruane was great, no post-mortem about the car, not a word about going off alone without consultation. He only said,

"Where do you go next?"

"Back to Rutherford, in case he's forgotten me. I'll put some hassle under him."

Ruane said, "They like to piss on us, Bill. If they do then you catch it in a bucket and chuck it back at them."