CONDITION BLACK MASTER

by Unknown

  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."

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

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

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

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

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

  "Where is he?"

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

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

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

  "I have nothing to say to you."

  "Did he take papers with him?"

  "1 have nothing to say."

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

  "Nothing."

  The eyes of the Security Officer were beaded at her. "I suppose that he thought he had a grievance, was that it? There are 5000

  people working at the Establishment. Life is not roses for all of them, for some of them, life is damned hard. They soldier on, they don't believe there is an alternative, they weather their problems. Your husband is unique in the history of the Establishment, not for having a sense of grievance, nor for finding life hard. He is unique in that, the greedy little rat, he took foreign gold, and he betrayed every trust that had been put in him."

  She shook her head, she had nothing to say.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  All of the night was quite barred out except

  An owl's cry, a most melancholy cry

  Shaken out long and clear upon the hill,

  No merry note, nor cause of merriment,

  But one telling me plain what I escaped

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

  And salted was my food, and my repose

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

  Speaking for all who lay under the stars,

  Soldiers and poor, unable to rejoice.

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

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

  It was, to Bissett, madness.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "A few minutes only."

  "What on earth for . . . ?"

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

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

  18

  The village constable stepped into the back bar of the pub.

  Because he lived in the next village along, he was not seen in this community as often as he would have liked. Once a fortnight, at least that, he committed himself to spending an evening, whatever the weather, just walking through the village. It was nearly half past nine when he came into the back bar of the pub . . . He had been away from his car for an hour now. His car was parked, and locked securely, beside the football pitch and the play swings. He was quite unaware of the increasingly anxious radio traffic beamed from Warminster towards that car.

  And, on the
back seat of the car was his personal radio, gone down that morning, crossed wires or something broken in its innards, and ready to be taken to the Warminster stores in the morning for replacing.

  Desmond nodded to old Vic, a good publican who kept a good house, a proper village pub. He thought old Vic didn't look well.

  Being away from his car for an hour had been breaking pretty basic rules because he was out of radio contact all that time. He had called in on Mrs Williams to check that the new wire window-guards were ready to be erected on the shop next week, and he had knocked on the solicitor's door to remind him that his shotgun licence needed renewing, and as was his custom, he had stood for 15 minutes against the trunk of one of the big beech trees at the end of the Manor House drive until he had felt a sense of shame at prying on the world of the bereaved. He had been on his way back to his car when he had passed the pub car park and seen that two vehicles there had their lights still on.

  The noise died around him. The talk, the chat, fled the back bar. O . K . , O . K . , so the local Law had wandered in, but it wasn't the first time and it wouldn't be the last. There was no call for them to be reacting like he was Inland Revenue . . . and old Vic looked fit to drop behind the bar counter.

  "Evening, Vic, a Cortina and a Nova out there, lights on. The time you close this place up, they'll be dead in the batteries . . ."

  Old Vic had his mouth hanging open. The jukebox was playing.

  ". . . Know whose they are?"

  He turned.

  He smiled affably. They were scattered around the back bar and they all stared at him. He knew them all . . . old Brennie, Poaching, convictions going back 48 years, last time done under the Armed Trespass Act of 1968 . . . Fran, nothing ever proved, should have been, and would be . . . Billy and Zap both for Receiving and Handling lead off a church roof in Frome . . .

  Zack, Larceny and Aggravated Assault, gone inside for it . . .

  K e v , once breathalysed for an eighteen-month ban, twice in court for Driving without Insurance, fined . . . Johnny, still on probation for Vandalism, smashing up the bus shelter . . . He knew them all, and he smiled warmly to each in turn. Normally, every other time that he came into the pub, his ritual visits, he took a bit of banter. Coexistence, wasn't it? He was local, they were local. Normally, there was banter that didn't go way over.