CONDITION BLACK MASTER

by Unknown

  The Swede never went directly to the box. He followed a procedure given him by his Control. He must always join the longest queue first. He should join the queue, shuffle forward, gradually turn this way and that, he should see everybody in the cavernous hall of the Post Office. He should never hurry when he came to deliver and to receive from the post-restante box.

  He always played the game to himself that the Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council was Sven . . . Each of the techno-mercenaries at Tuwaithah had their own name for the Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council. He was Gunther, he was Pierre, he was Giancarlo . . . They lived in a world whose every wall had ears, where servants were never trusted. They could talk openly of Gunther and Pierre and Giancarlo and Sven. It was the Swede's little joke to himself, that Sven had a new set of teeth.

  The portrait poster was above the benches that were set the length of the wall opposite the post-restante boxes. The Chairman wore the heavily decorated uniform of a paratrooper and round his head was a quaffiya. His smile would have brightened a dark night. Sven's new dentures . . . There were two men sitting under the poster, and he saw that their eyes never left the post-restante boxes. The Swede's hope died a little. He stayed in the queue and he studied again every wall and corner of the interior of the Post Office. It was ten minutes before he was sure.

  There were four more men, other than the two men who sat on the bench under Sven's broad smile, whose attention was fixed upon the post-restante boxes.

  He was the only Westerner so far as he could see. He was tall, he was blond, he was pale-skinned. It was impossible that he had not been noticed. He had seen the men who watched the post-restante boxes, he could not know how many men watched him.

  The sane thing to have done would have been to bend to his shoe lace, retie it, put the tape on the floor, kick it away amongst the sandalled feet, then to walk out. But the tape was too precious to him . . .

  He made a gesture of impatience, he looked long and hard at his watch, he shrugged. He spun on his heel.

  He tried to stop himself from running. The fear surged in him.

  When he was close to the wide door of the new Post Office, he saw a man reach into his jacket pocket and take out a personal radio. Then he ran.

  The bright sunshine, the white concrete dust of the unfinished pavement, blinded him when he came to the bottom of the steps outside. Fear pulsed inside him.

  His eyes cleared, he blinked hard. He saw the two cars on the far side of Al-Kadhim Street, and there were men in each car. He ran.

  The bungalow that had been home for the two Italians driven from Tuwaithah by an unexploded letter bomb was vacant.

  Under the direction of the housing manager, a work force of women was brought that day to the bungalow. It was cleaned, it was scrubbed and it was polished. The rugs were taken outside and beaten. The kitchen was washed from ceiling to floor. New linen was put on the bed in the main bedroom. Fresh flowers were arranged in vases. In the refrigerator were put a dozen cans of beer and two bottles of French white wine and food and cartons of milk.

  The Baghdad flight, it was announced, was delayed indefinitely for operational reasons.

  A few of the passengers, the foreigners, the ones not already checked in and through to the duty-free lounges, vented their anger at the Iraqi Airlines desk. They were the minority. The majority accepted the situation and the free meal vouchers without complaint.

  He was in the heart of the ancient round city. He ran, in fear of his life, in the narrow and dark-shadowed streets.

  He had seen them last when he had stopped, panting, in the shelter of a black awning, and he had seen them quartering, searching, and a car drawing up at a crossing, disgorging others to join the hunt 50, perhaps 60 yards back down the alleyway.

  The alley he was in was not wide enough for a car and down the middle of it ran a sewer carrying grey-blue slime. There were narrow and obscure openings, their steel shutters lifted, where melons and limes and tomatoes were sold, where the metal workers plied their trade, where iced lemon juice was poured into dull dirty glasses. These he passed, sometimes running, sometimes where the press of people was too thick walking briskly, his head down, as if on some anxious errand. Overhead, filtering the sunlight from the blond gold of his hair, were lines of hanging washing. This was the quarter of the poor, the crippled and the bereaved of the war, those ignored now by the regime.

  No voice was raised to point him out to the dark-suited men of the Department of Public Security. The Swede was a fugitive.

  He would not be helped and he would not be hindered.

  It began to settle in the Swede's mind that even if he discarded the tape he could not ever return to Tuwaithah. He had been watched too long in the Post Office. He would be recognised.

  Even if he could reach his car, he would be trapped at a road block. The gathering fear seemed to tug at his legs. The Swede stopped at a stall, bought a black woollen hat and an old khaki greatcoat. He paid for them three times what he would have if he had stopped to barter. He pulled the hat hard over his ears and shrugged into the coat as he left the labyrinthine alleys of the ancient round city. He prayed to his northern, foreign God for the preservation of his life and the safety of his tape.

  It was as he crossed in front of the Central Railway Station forecourt that he saw the man with the personal radio that he had seen in the Post Office. He saw him and turned briskly away.

  Too late. He had been recognised in his khaki greatcoat and his black cap. The man started towards him and then seemed to think better of it. The Swede could hear him shouting into his radio as he ducked into the crowd and began running as soon as he turned the first corner.

  Bissett could imagine it, his situation in three months, six months, when he would be desperate for access to his computer terminal in H3/2. But he did not consider taking any material with him.

  He would take with him only what he could carry in his head.

  For his first week there he would sit alone and write out every small item from his memory. Maybe it would take him two or three weeks. When he had cleared his memory, then he would be free to set up his research unit and to plan the administration of his department.

  All morning he funnelled his screen across past papers, past calculations, past reports.

  And then he had concentrated on what they liked in H area to call the "physics of the extreme". Workings and statistics and figures tumbling up in front of his eyes. The heart core of a warhead detonation, reactions at 100,000,000° Centigrade, press ures of 20,000,000 atmospheres. Work from the lasers, studies from the "Viper" fast-pulse reactor that could produce peak power of 20,000 megawatts . . . So much for him to learn again, so little time before the end of his last day. It was like examination revision, which he had done so well at Leeds. Working quietly, methodically, at speed, he could nevertheless reflect that it would be peculiar to communicate his work to a stranger. It wasn't a question of morality, just that it would be peculiar. But then he had never worked anywhere except at the Establishment, had never had strangers as colleagues, never since he had joined.

  He consigned to memory the charts, as much as he could, that dictated beryllium weights, how the tritium material could be melded in minute particles into the molten shape of ochre-coloured plutonium cores, the thickness of the highly enriched uranium that formed the concentric circle around the plutonium inside the quality gold crust.

  There was a knock at his door.

  He felt the frozen stampede of guilt. He swivelled to face the door.

  Carol, hugging a plastic bucket to her waist. "Sorry to disturb you, Dr Bissett. You remember the electrician who had the accident on the A90 site, poor love, there's a collection for him."

  He reached into his trouser pocket.

  "He's paralysed, Dr Bissett."

  He abandoned his trouser pocket. He had four ten pound notes in his wallet, no five pound notes. He took a ten pound note and dropped it into the bucket, amongst the pou
nd coins and the 50

  pence pieces. " O h , that's lovely, Dr Bissett, that's really nice of you. So sorry to have disturbed you. Thanks ever so much." He saw the way that Carol eyed him, like he'd cracked her image of him. It would be all round H3 that Dr Bissett had put ten pounds in her bucket.

  He came out of the lavatory, in the early afternoon, not looking where he was going, struggling to retain the figures, graph shapes, calculation analyses, swimming in his mind, and walked straight into Basil.

  They grabbed at each other. Bissett's hands had hold of the weathered old sinew of Basil's arms below the short sleeves of his shirt. Typical of Basil, late November and dressed as he would have been in June. They made their apologies. Bissett wanted to be away, but Basil would have none of it.

  " Y o u r paper, very good. Reuben showed it me. I thought it was first class."

  Bissett blushed. " T h a n k s . "

  " A n d you may as well know that I have written to the Security Officer to tell him that, in my opinion, you were treated outrage-ously over that business with the files. I have asked that my letter, my assessment of you, should go on your file."

  His voice was a whisper. "That's kind of you, Basil. Thank you very much."

  "Absolutely nothing, Frederick."

  He broke away. He went back to his office. He closed the door behind him. The stranger in the brotherhood. He bent once more to the last hours at his screen. Just a normal day, his last.

  The Swede saw the flag fluttering high above the rich foliage of the trees, and at the same instant he heard the shriek of the siren.

  There was a wide road for him to cross to get to the gates. There was a car thrashing forward through the traffic towards him.

  There were guards in front of the gates, local militia.

  He would not have thought that he could run further, faster.

  He thought the siren was to warn the guards.

  The Swede stumbled out into the road. The traffic parted for him. He had in his sights only the gate, and piercing his ears was the rant of the closing siren. Lead legs, empty lungs, darting crazily through the buses and vans and cars. And then he jerked to his left to avoid a cyclist and the cyclist hit him and he fell.

  Because he fell, crashing knees and hands and chest onto the road, the Peugeot with the siren missed him. From the road, from the hot tarmacadam, he had looked up, the split moment, and he had seen the face of the driver career past him before the car skidded into the cyclist

  He heard a scream and the brake squeal. He pushed himself up. He ran again.

  He staggered off the road, across the wide footpath.

  There was the shouting behind him. He saw the gaping curiosity, the bewilderment, on the faces of the militiamen at the gate. One militiaman tried hall heartedly to block him Willi his rifle barrel.

  He ran on. He ran through the gate. Behind him now the siren and the shouting. He ran up the driveway. He ran through the wide doorway that was the entrance to the principal building of the British Embassy.

  He no longer heard the shunting, he no longer heard the siren.

  He lay on the floor in front of the reception desk, and a voice said, "Good afternoon, Sir, how can I be of help to you?"

  He Jerked up from his bed Rutherford was in the doorway, and he carried his handset telephone, and it looked to Erlich as if Rutherford's world had fallen in.

  Rutherford said, " They pulled us out."

  "I don't have to ask why

  "His father's raised Curzon Street and burned senior ears."

  Erlich said bitterly, "Your people have one hell of an idea of consistent thinking."

  "I can't argue with that."

  "Are they reared on milk and rice?' Haven't they balls when the going's tough?"

  "My orders are crystal clear. Get back to my desk and bring you with me. It's probably not worth saying I'm sorry."

  He might as well have gone to Mombasa. He didn't think that he would see Jo again, and it had been for nothing. his virtuous stuff about duty. What did she think? That he could drop everything and head for the African sunshine? He might as well leave tonight before they threw the book at him. Probably Ruane had a transcript of Major Tuck's observations on his desk even now, with an acid memo from Mr Barker about the great astonishment of Her Majesty's Government that Mr Erlich should be armed with a Smith and Wesson rather than the regulation-issue kitchen knife.

  "We should have checked the car."

  "We should have stayed in the office and moved paper round, what every other bastard does."

  Erlich said, "If he'd been there, I'd have shot him."

  "Can you be ready to leave in ten minutes?"

  "I'll be ready."

  They came in turn to see the Swede in a small room in the heart of the Embassy building. There were no windows and the walls were reinforced, sound-proofed. He had drunk five glasses of fresh orange juice.

  The first to see him had been the Information Attache, who swept up all loose strands of the Embassy's work, and he had gone away to deliver his report. There was a military policeman outside the door. The military policeman, on the Diplomatic List, was the Ambassador's driver, and he carried a Browning automatic pistol in a shoulder holster under his blazer jacket.

  After the Information Attache, the Swede was interviewed briefly by t he Assistant Military Attache, and then again left alone. From the Ambassador's first floor windows, the deployment of militia and plainclothes men from the Department of Public Security was clearly visible.

  Next in line was the Charge, the Ambassador's deputy. The Swede was not to know that while he sat with the Charge a telephone call had been received from the Foreign Ministry demanding the immediate expulsion from the protection of diplomatic premises of a dangerous foreign criminal. The Charge left him, and the Military Policeman give him some English newspapers and offered him the choice of tea or coffee. There was some difficulty with the supply of the fresh oranges. The Swede gratefully accepted tea. Sometimes he heard muffled talk in the corridor outside, but it was too distorted for him to understand.

  The fourth man who came was different.

  He was athletically thin. He had the old-fashioned razored moustache trim on his upper lip, and he wore rumpled jeans and a loose knit cardigan and a check shirt without a tie. The fourth man was what he had waited for. The Swede stood.

  " Y o u don't need my name, and I don't need yours, the Station Officer said. "Best you come with me, my office is quiet, and there's a tape recorder."

  "Good night, Carol." She looked up. Her console was already under its plastic sheet, and she was filing.

  "Good night, Dr Bissett . . . and thanks for the ten pounds, that was great . . . are you coming in first in the morning, or going straight to that meeting?"

  " E r , I'll decide tomorrow. Good night, then "

  He had left his office as he had always left it. He had left behind the photograph of Sara and the photograph ol Adam and Frank. He carried in his briefcase only his empty sandwich box and his empty vacuum flask..

  He drove away from the H area.

  He passed Basil, pedalling into the wind along Third Avenue.

  He passed the towering outline of the building that was A90.

  He passed Wayne, waiting at the bus stop for the transport to the main gate and the coach park, and he remembered that he had heard Wayne say that his Mini had gearbox trouble.

  He passed the signposts to the A area, the plutonium factory, where in the morning there was to be a meeting in A45/3 of Senior Principal Scientific Officers and Senior Principal Engineering Officers. He passed Carol's husband, the lathe operator, hurrying towards the canteen area and the bar where he would have managed three pints before his better half dragged him out and home. He passed the mole-hill mounds that were the testing and manufacturing areas for the chemists who worked with explosives.

  Bissett came to the falcon Gate. He showed his identity card, he was waved through. He braked at the junction with the Burghfield
Common to Kingsclere road. He waited for the traffic to allow him to enter the flow . . . and further on turned left into Mulfords Hill.

  The end of a normal day.

  The tape recorder was switched off.

  For a few moments, in silence, the Station Officer continued his scrawled longhand precis of what he had heard.

  "Thank you . . . Perhaps you wouldn't mind just waiting in here for a little while . . . oh, and don't go near the windows."

  He let himself out of his office. He told the military policeman that no one, not even the Ambassador, was to go through that door without his permission. He waited long enough to see the military policeman draw his automatic pistol from his shoulder holster and hold it behind his buttocks.

  The Station Officer walked swiftly down the corridor, down the stairs, down into the basement to the Embassy's communications area.

  "You're not serious . . . ?"

  "It's my chance."

  "You can't possibly expect me to take you seriously."

  "Can't you just once listen . . .?"

  It had started downstairs. Bissett had begun it in the kitchen.

  He had followed Sara into the kitchen, left the children in front of the television, and he had put his arms round Sara's waist as she had been stirring the soup on the hob, and he had told her.

  Too late to wonder if there might have been a better time. It could have been after the party at those awful friends of hers, or when he had first gone to London, or after the meeting in Stratfield Mortimer, or last night. Could have been any of them, but it hadn't been, it had been in the kitchen with the digital clock throwing up the numbers, telling him that the minutes were rushing away from them.

  It had started in the kitchen. It had gone on through the hallway, where the boys could hear her, and up the stairs, and into their bedroom.

  She could have listened to him.

  She could have been quiet at least, and supportive.

  She could have let him finish his explanation.