CONDITION BLACK MASTER

by Unknown

  He was the law-enforcement man. He was small-town America's hero. He was the Mid-West glamour kid. He was the Special Agent, the hero, the good kid, and he had come to get the scum face, the dirt bag, who had dared to stand against Old fucking Uncle fucking Sam. Ride on, Bill Erlich, Special Agent, hero, good kid. He was the guy who rode off into the setting sun, he was the joker that they loved to patronise in their rocking chairs on the verandah behind the white picket fencing. Heh, Bill, how's it going . . . ? Going okay, don't you know. Going good, just have to get into this goddam museum pile, move around a bit, find the mother. Got to shoot, kill, bury the mother.

  Got to line up then for the thanks of the great fat smug ranks of the bastards, so that they can say 'thank you', and light up the barbecue, and unpack the camper trailer, and turn their backs on what their taxes pay for. And who cared . . . ? Did any bastard care on the east side, getting their cocktails in before the Beltway home? Any bastard on the west coast, just back from lunch, care?

  Did they hell . . . He was FBI, he was armed, he was going to shoot a guy who had killed an American government servant.

  It was what a good government and a grateful people paid Bill Erlich to do, to get on with. Did they care? Did they, hell . . .

  He was breathing hard, like he had been taught to, like through the heavy stained door to the back bar was Condition Black . . .

  Holy God . . .

  The wind and the first shower of rain funnelled up the road through the village, caught at the legs and backs of those who watched.

  The group grew. The solicitor stood with his eldest son under a titled golf club umbrella. The bank manager was there, with his pyjama trouser bottoms peeping from underneath the waterproof leggings The Home Farm tenant was there, rubicund and overweight and chewing a cube of cheese and with his dog, Rocco's sire, at his heel. Old Vic and his wife were there, and he had a quarter bottle of rum in his hip pocket .

  In the centre of the road, as far forward as they were allowed to stand, were Billy and Zap, Kev, Zack, Charlie, and Johnny with his arm hard round Fran's shoulder.

  In their clusters they waited.

  The solicitor said that if ever there was a boy born to be hanged it was Colin Tuck, God rest his mother, and his son who was Colt's exact contemporary, who had secretly admired him and who had yearned for Fran for years, said nothing. The District Nurse, who had just joined them, said that il was the blessing of God that Louise Tuck had not lived to witness this final humiliation. And she thought that when it was over she would go to the Manor House and break the news to him, and make him one last pot of tea. The bank manager said that he had heard at Rotary that Colt was wanted for terrorism now and that prison would be too good for him. The Home Farm tenant said that he had always known the kid to be a wrong 'un, stood out a mile since he had got himself involved with those Animal Liberation bastards. Old Vic said he'd miss him, didn't mind who knew it, and his wife said that she had never known anything but politeness from Colt.

  Zack said, and he laughed but sure as hell it wasn't funny to him, that he'd be kissing goodbye, and the rest of them, to what they had raised in the pub. Kev said, bright-eyed in excitement, that Colt had the gun, and that Colt would take them with him. Fran cried and buried her cheek in Johnny's chest.

  All of them, waiting for the action, waiting for it to end, stood among the puddles and the tractor mud. They watched what Colt had brought to their village, his village.

  In a blur of movement the shrouded figures ran to take their positions round the building and the outhouses and garages at the back. Heavy movements because they were weighed down with their bulletproof vests and ammunition pouches and radios and the battery-driven power lamps and the image intensifies on the barrels of their rifles.

  Hobbes tried to scrape the helicopter sound from his ears. He hadn't got a bloody coat, and he had walked across the football pitch from the helicopter and already his London shoes squelched. He was told that an American, an F . B . I . agent, had been allowed forward because he was the only one on site with a handgun.

  "Where forward, Sergeant? The back door?" In a sickening instant Hobbes could see how this nightmare would end.

  "Commander," he yelled.

  "Right beside you, Mr Hobbes," said a calm voice. "We've seen him, and we know where he is. Do you want him out of there?"

  "What's he doing, for Christ's sake?"

  " H e looks as though he's counting to a hundred before he goes through the back door."

  "Well . . . My God Almighty would certainly say that he's earned the privilege, going in first. Your cat's paw, eh, Commander? Just don't have him shot by one of ours. Or the boffin, for heaven's sake. Got that?"

  " Y e s , Mr Hobbes."

  He thought that Colt should have been back.

  All the time he watched the staircase. It must have been three, four minutes since he had last heard Colt's step from the ceiling above the back bar.

  He did what Colt had done. He untied the laces of his shoes and he retied them tight, strained the cord and then tied a double knot. They would be running across fields, couldn't have his shoes sucked off in the mud, not if he were running and needing to keep up with Colt.

  It was the third time that he had undone his laces and retied them, reknotted them.

  They should have been, if they had taken off from the airport when he had been told they would take off, somewhere over the Eastern Mediterranean, somewhere over Greece, or over Cyprus.

  They should have been beyond recall, sharing a drink and a meal with Colt in the safety of the aeroplane. He was tired, so tired . . .

  The dragging on of the day that had started with breakfast in Lilac Gardens, and with the drive up Mount Pleasant and Mulfords Hill, and with the check at the Falcon Gate, and with the examination of his I/D at the H3 barrier. So tired . . . He thought of the hours he had spent in front of his screen, working, concentrating. So tired . . . and he heard again Basil's muttered and embarrassed praise of his paper, and the cheerfulness of Boll's departure. So tired . . . and there was a meeting in the morning of Senior Principal Scientific Officers and Senior Principal Engineering Officers at which he was expected. It was all madness, and sharp through the exhaustion of his mind was the shouting of his name in the airport, the clatter of gunfire, the collapse of a man in pursuit.

  So tired, and so scared by the running away. But they had still the chance of the ferry.

  He watched the staircase behind the bar counter. He looked for the reckless and vivid smile of Colt.

  He was ready, ready to run with Colt.

  " M r s Bissett, until we can resolve our differences, you won't get to bed, I won't move out of your house, and you don't get your children back."

  "I have nothing to say."

  The Security Officer settled again on the kitchen chair. The house was quiet. There were only two policemen left in the house with them, and they were sprawled out in the sitting room. The search was over. She knew they had found nothing, because as the ripping and tearing went on she had heard the bad temper replace their earlier laughter and chat. She had not heard them attempt to repair what they had broken.

  She stared out through the window. She had not turned when the telephone had rung, nor when the Security Officer had been called out of the kitchen, nor when he had come back and the chair had groaned under his weight.

  " M r s Bissett, please listen to me very carefully. Your husband was being escorted from the country by a man wanted for murder in Athens, London and Australia. He was intercepted. This young man . . . "

  She muttered the name, the name was Colt.

  " . . . is armed. He is dangerous and unstable. We have to fear for your husband's safety. They are together at the moment in a public house in Wiltshire. They are ringed by armed police.

  There is a distinct possibility that the young man will reject ail sensible courses of action, that he will try to break out. He is armed, so he may open fire on police officers, and the armed offi
cers may be forced to return fire . . . "

  She shuddered.

  ". . . and then Frederick would be in the gravest danger. It is a small thing to ask of you, but it could save his life."

  She thought of him going out into the dusk, going through her front door, stumbling after Colt, the humiliation of her rejection.

  " . . . We can put you in direct contact with the police there . . ."

  " N o . "

  " S o that you speak to Frederick, and urge him to surrender . . . "

  " N o . "

  " W e want him out of there, Mrs Bissett, away from the potential crossfire."

  "I said, no."

  She stared at the window set in the kitchen door, at the raindrops dancing on it like a curtain in the wind.

  The Security Officer said, "With a bitch like you for a wife, it's no wonder the poor devil wanted out."

  His hand was on the door latch.

  He had the Smith and Wesson tight in his hand, barrel against his ear.

  Past Flight or Fight, way beyond that.

  Erlich would fight . . .

  As he raised the latch he heard the first shimmer of the grating of the metal pieces.

  No more caution.

  His hip barged into the unfastened door.

  The light spilled into his face, and he was moving.

  Erlich came into the back bar, and he cannoned off a table, glasses flying, smashing, and he tripped on a chair, and he stumbled, and all the time he was in motion. It was Condition Black. He saw the table peel away towards the fireplace, and the chair career towards the bar counter. He saw the line of upended bottles with optics on their necks, the mounted fox's head with its teeth bared, and the half-finished glasses on the other tables and the ashtrays full. All the time moving until he reached the solid protection of the jukebox. He was crouched down. He was at Isosceles stance, and he pivoted his upper body behind the aiming position of his revolver in Turret One.

  He saw the man from the airport on his knees, dark curly hair, his eyeline caught him, thick-rimmed heavy spectacles, dismissed him. He quartered the back bar . . . No sign of Colt . . .Shit . . .

  The adrenalin draining from him. All the push, drive, impetus of belting his way into the back bar, safety off, index finger inside the trigger guard, and he did not find Colt.

  He yelled, "Where is Colt?"

  The man seemed frozen in the position of tying his shoe-laces.

  He was met by the empty, terrified stare of the man, and the silence trimmed his shout.

  He gazed down at the man over the V-sight and foresight of the revolver, and he could see that there was the increasing shake of his locked fists. Keyed up to go in, and he had lost the brilliance of surprise and his nerves caught at him and the barrel cavorted in the grip of his hands.

  "Where the fuck is he?"

  He saw the man's head turn. He saw the man look back towards the counter, and beyond the counter was the gape of the open door that led to the staircase and darkness. He could see the first steps of the staircase. The man's head swung back, as if he knew he had been caught out.

  Erlich eased himself up from behind the cover of the jukebox.

  He was panting . . . One thing to open the door and charge into the back bar, another thing to go walkabout up a staircase into darkness . . . He rocked again on his feet. His decision. Quantico teaching said that an agent should never, alone, follow a man up a staircase, and never, ever, into an unlit staircase.

  He was on the line, he was alone.

  "Good God," Basil Curtis was bemused. " Y o u quite astonish me.

  The Security Officer invited himself into the bedsitting room.

  There was a strong smell of cat. He looked around him. More books than he had ever seen in such a room, three walls of them, from floor to ceiling and piles of them elsewhere. And a cat litter-tray in one corner. Quite extraordinary to the Security Officer that Curtis, famously the best brain at A . W . E . , paid more, certainly, than anyone else there, should choose to live in a single man's quarters in the Boundary Hall accommodation.

  " H e was going to Iraq, it's cut and dried."

  He saw that Curtis had covered, with the newspaper he had been reading in bed, a half-written letter on his desk. The cat emerged from the wardrobe and observed the Security Officer with distaste. Curtis stood in his striped flannel pyjamas, holding a mug of cocoa.

  "I wouldn't have believed it . . . but, of course, I didn't know him well."

  He could see a pink hot-water bottle peeping from under the back-turned bedclothes.

  The Security Officer said, "I am beginning to understand why Bissett ran."

  "I think that we should allow events to run their course, away from view. I don't want anything public, Mr Barker. I only want a message sent in private to that regime of blood. My advice, go home, get a solid night's sleep."

  "Very good, Prime Minister."

  "Good night, Mr Barker."

  Too old and too tired to wrestle through the night with the new world of the Rutherfords and the Erlichs, the Colts and the Frederick Bissetts. He would have one more word with Hobbes at the Pig and Whistle to let him know that both he and the Prime Minister required a total blanket over the outcome, tell him to push the goggling bystanders back another 200 yards, confiscate any cameras etc etc. As to the outcome, it scarcely troubled him to consider it. There was not a lot he could do to influence the outcome now. These sieges had a habit of going on for half a day, minimum.

  Hobbes could, by God, earn a spur here after his craven performance at Century. Yes, he would go to bed and be ready to pick up the pieces in the morning. With Tuck's boy and the lunatic Erlich in the frame, there would, by God, be pieces.

  Later, he would leave through the basement tunnel, he would walk out via the doors of the Cabinet Office. He would wait on the wide Whitehall pavement for a cruising taxi. And he would wonder if Penny Rutherford slept, whether she had taken the pill that the Curzon Street doctor would have left her. And he would wonder - if Erlich got the better of Tuck's boy - if he could persuade Ruane to send him away, right away, before Rutherford's funeral.

  He could walk out through the back door and put his gun back in his holster, and he could tell the guys from the Special Weapons unit that there was no way Bill Erlich was going to do the right thing by his friend if it meant climbing a staircase into darkness.

  His decision.

  He could shift his ass up the stairs and search till he found the bastard, and hit down each door, and belt open each cupboard, and kick over each bed, until he found the mother.

  He wasn't as good as when he had come in. It was going away from him, ebbing with each of the slow seconds as the time slipped by him. His eyes had never left the staircase. All the time he had expected to see the barrel that was the integral silencer and the fast-coming bulk shape of Colt behind it.

  He started to move. The man was in front of him.

  There was the raised hatch that cut off the barman's place from his customers. His route would be through the hatch and behind the counter and onto the bottom step of the staircase.

  All the time watching the opening to the staircase . . .

  He heard the crash of the breaking glass.

  Erlich half swivelled.

  The man had stood, and he had a glass in his hand with the drinking rim broken, and the man stood across Erlich's path and the broken glass was his weapon.

  "Put that down."

  "You're not going up."

  "Get out of my way."

  "Not going up."

  The sound of their voices . . . Erlich thought Colt would be at the top of the staircase. It was goddam crazy. Why not send him a message Western Union, Federal Express . . .

  "You'd better move, buddy, or you're going to get yourself hurt."

  The man held his ground. Erlich hardly saw the broken drinking end of the glass. Eyes on the staircase. The staircase was Colt.

  Colt was danger. Danger was not a nutcake with a br
oken glass, like he was high on smack or hash. Danger was Colt, sober and cold. He took a pace forward.

  He saw, from the corner of his eye, that the glass was aimed at his face.

  Erlich tried to sound calm, "Stand back."

  The glass was held at arm's stretch. The broken end was a foot from his face.

  "He's my friend."

  "I don't even know who you are."

  "I am Colt's friend."

  He saw the veins in the man's throat, and he saw the tremble in the wrist that held the glass. This was the man he had seen at the airport. Then he had been a craven passenger of Colt's. He was a man with no pedigree of violence, who just once and only once had wound himself to the point of no return.

  " H e ' s a psychopath, your friend. A killer, do you understand that?"

  The glass was in front of Erlich's face.

  " H e gave me a chance, no one else did."

  "You're not my quarrel, buddy, so put that thing down and if you know what's good for you, you'll walk right through that back door with your hands in the air."

  Erlich went forward. The glass rose towards his eyes.

  " N o one else," the man screamed.

  He felt the judder of pain at his cheek and his chin.

  Erlich fired.

  He saw the man pitch away from him. He could not remember the name that Rutherford had shouted at the airport. He heard nothing. He saw the glass fall and break apart. He heard nothing . . . He saw the blood dribble on the floor and the blood splattered on the wall and over a glass case with a pair of stuffed pheasants.

  The rain fell hard about him. It ran on his face. The rain and the wind that drove it and the cloud mist were his freedom.

  It was his joy when he had felt the sting of the rain as he had first pushed up the skylight window. The happiness had been with him all along the roof gulley, and after he had dropped down beside the old water barrel. He had rejoiced to be free as he had crawled flat on his stomach along the rows of cabbages and between the stems of the laurel bushes that made the overgrown edge between the outbuildings and the open field.