CONDITION BLACK (43 page)

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 U R G E N T - IMMEDIA T E 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."