Condition black

by Gerald Seymour

  The first side pocket, not there, just car keys there and a spectacle case.

  The second pocket, He felt the length of cord. He felt the smooth laminated skin. He eased from the pocket an identity card, issued by the Security Office of the Atomic Weapons Establishment In his notebook he wrote down the name on the card, Frederick Bissett, the serial number of the card, the authority given by the card for access to H area, the date of expiry of the card.

  He returned the card to its pocket.

  It was what he had come to find.

  He closed the door behind him. He switched back on the landing light. He went down the stairs. He crossed the hall, and the kitchen.

  The kitchen door was open, wider than he had left it.

  He closed it after him.

  He used his wire to turn the mortice lock.

  Colt stood on the patio, let his breath come in great gasping surges, and the sweat under his balaclava ran to his chest and the valley of his back.

  Sara shovelled herself out of bed. Frederick had his eyes open, lay on his back.

  "A good night?"

  "Great, good sleep."

  "Didn't sound like it…" Sara was at the door, dragging on her dressing gown.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Weren't you up?"

  " N o. "

  "I heard you."

  Frederick pushed himself forward on his elbows. "I was never up."

  She didn't want a fight, not at three minutes to seven o'clock, not when she had the boys to get up, and his sandwiches to do, and the washing basket to clear, and last night's supper to clear away.

  "Sorry, must have been dreaming, forget it…"

  He heard her going heavily down the stairs. He heard her running the tap in the kitchen to fill the kettle. He heard her shout of pure anger. He heard the opening and the slamming of the back door.

  Sara came back up the stairs. "For God's sake, Frederick, can't you be more careful when you lock up? You shut their bloody cat in."

  He was only half awake. "I did?" Yes, he had worked late…

  No, he could not remember opening the back kitchen door…

  She didn't stay to argue. No time in the morning of a weekday to stand around their bedroom and argue.

  Half an hour later, two pieces of toast wolfed down, Bissett presented himself at the Falcon Gate, watched as the Ministry policeman peered down through the opened window of the Sierra to check the I/D hanging from its cord round his neck.

  The first joggers were out on the Common, and the first riders urging their ponies into a canter, when Colt left his message underneath the rubbish barrel.

  He had copied for the text of his message all that was on his notepad.

  He was just another motorist who paused on the Common for a breather, just another motorist who had a plastic bag full of litter in his car, who tucked it into the rubbish barrel on his way to work.

  He was quite unremarkable, quite unnoticed.

  Rutherford was usually early at his desk, but the Clerical Assistant to the section always beat him in. She handed him two message dockets. Erlich, twice. He found Hobbes, arguing with the sandwich machine.

  "How did you do?"

  "I delivered your warning and was lectured on the exceptional quality of the Establishment's security."

  "Wonderful." Hobbes had extracted a sandwich, salami and Stilton. " N o w that is a triumph of intellect over incalculable odds…"

  "The American's jumping up and down, two calls this morning already."

  " Y e s. " A long pause, in which the sandwich machine gave a little heave and a tinkling avalanche of coins, like a fruit machine, seemed about to issue an improbable windfall, but it proved a merely internal matter. "Keep him happy, and try to keep him out of trouble."

  Rutherford hadn't made himself comfortable in his chair before his telephone rang.

  "Hello, Bill, I was just about to call you… "

  Bissett heard the exchange from his office. His door was open because he had just come back from the laboratory at the end of the corridor to collect the first sheets of his paper for checking against the latest results produced by the technicians.

  "But it isn't convenient," Boll protested.

  "Don't tell me, tell him." Carol, enjoying herself.

  "Only me and Basil?"

  "That's what he said, the two of you from H3, ten o'clock sharp."

  "Why not Bissett, can't Bissett go in my place?"

  Carol said firmly, " H e wasn't asked, only you and Basil."

  At ten minutes to ten o'clock precisely, on Bissett's watch as he stood near the window of the laboratory, Boll and Basil were to be seen hurrying across to Boll's car, bent against the wind.

  Bissett had no idea where they were going, what was the summons that was of such importance.

  Erlich said, "What I want is a hostile interview facility. I want to turn him over, jazz him so he doesn't know what day it is, shake him."

  "That's not easy, Bill… "

  "It's not supposed to be easy, for fuck's sake. Nothing is easy when an American government servant has been murdered."

  Rutherford swivelled his chair. Rutherford's body was positioned between Erlich and the floor safe… Good form, so that he couldn't see the combination that Rutherford used on the dials, typical… Rutherford turned back. He opened the file that he had taken from the safe. Rutherford was turning pages, not offering them for Bill to read.

  " H e has a Military Cross."

  " S o? "

  " H e has the Croix de Guerre."

  " S o? "

  "They are gallantry medals. They aren't the sort of decorations picked up in little adventures down in Panama or Grenada, or for cocking up in Beirut. Here, he's a war hero, that would be how we would regard Major T u c k. "

  "His son's a killer."

  "We don't know that for certain."

  "Well, I know it. I can't prove it of the Athens killing, though I am sure of it, but I am one hundred per cent sure of it of the Clapham killing."

  "Bill, I'm sorry, it's not by any means certain that Colt shot Saad Rashid."

  "I have an eyewitness, dammit."

  "Who is not saying to the Anti-Terrorist Branch what you say she said to you. Nevertheless… "

  "They don't know their business."

  "Nevertheless…, I will request on your behalf a 'hostile interrogation facility' with Major Tuck. I will also, and you're pretty damn lucky for that, accompany you down to that nasty little village so that we can conduct surveillance without you falling on your face in the mud, so that the Embassy of the United States doesn't run too short on transport."

  There were times, yes, in the small brick bungalow in the foreigners' compound that he dreamed of walking away from the danger and the fear. Occasions, now, when he took his twice annual leave to Europe and met with the Mossad men and did not have the courage to tell them, face to face and one to one, that his nerve was exhausted. He thought it would require more courage to quit than to go on.

  He had guessed that from the first day of his arrival at Tuwaithah, and from the first day that he had used the courier.

  He was cut out from the courier. The cut-out was a post-restante box at the new Post Office on Al Kadhim Street in the old Juafir district of the city. He had a key to the post-restante box, and the courier had a matching key. They would never meet.

  He read the message. He came once a week to Baghdad and shopped and look lunch at the Ishtar Sheraton, and walked across the Jumhuriyah Bridge and towards the old circled city and into the new Post Office on AI Kadhim Street.

  He drove back towards Tuwaithah.

  They had never before asked the chemical engineer from Sweden for more complete information.

  They were all Grade 5 and Grade 6. All divisional heads and their Superintendents.

  They were from Mechanical Engineering and Weapons Electronics and Assembly and Special Projects, from Applied Physics and Materials, from Chemical Technology and Explosives
and Metallurgy. Reuben Boll and Basil had come over to F area from Mathematical Physics in H3. Twenty men and women had gathered at the Security Officer's summons, and there was coffee and biscuits.

  Not one among them, none of these senior engineers and chemists and scientists, would have claimed that he was glad of a summons to the Security Officer's conference room. They all worked in areas of great secrecy. Their papers were marked with the highest classification used at the Ministry of Defence, Top Secret (Atomic). They were subject to positive vetting. They were encouraged not to discuss their work either with wives or with colleagues. They were all signatories to the Official Secrets Act. Their knowledge was hardly shared, and only a handful of civil servants in Whitehall had anything that approached a full picture of their work, while the number of elected members of government who were trusted to be taken into their confidence was tiny, a small Cabinet sub-committee.

  The Security Officer had been the rounds in the Intelligence Corps before being invited to quit two years before his army retirement date. He had held the rank of brigadier, with an O.B.E. as reward for 30 years of service. He had served in Aden, in Whitehall; he had been deputy to the senior intelligence officer at the Land Forces H.Q. at Lisburn outside Belfast; Germany for two tours; the Ministry of Defence again. He had been offered the position of Security Officer at Atomic Weapons Establishment. He was answerable to the Ministry of Defence and the Controller Establishments Research and Nuclear, but a call from Curzon Street was adequate cause for him to jump.

  "Good morning, gentlemen, I very much appreciate your finding the time to attend, and at such short notice… "

  In the Directors' dining room he most often ate alone because he came early to the table. He was joined only when there were no other chairs available. He had long ago realised that his office would leave him friendless and an object of suspicion. There was nothing formidable in his appearance, a bright bald scalp, small and close-set eyes.

  "… Just a warning, nothing more serious. It has been brought to my attention, and I am duty bound to pass it on, that there is a remote possibility that the Atomic Energy Commission of Iraq may attempt to recruit personnel from the Atomic Weapons Establishment. I expect that sounds quite ridiculous… "

  A chemist giggled. There was a general release of tension.

  "… In my own view, not so much ridiculous as preposterous.

  Some of you may remember talk a few years ago about the Iraqis putting together a nuclear device, and that led to the bombing of their reactor by the Israeli Air Force. Last year, of course, there were further rumours that the programme had been reactivated; unsubstantiated rumours. What has now crossed my desk is a somewhat unspecific warning that the Iraqis may be attempting to recruit top-grade scientists from abroad, and I would be failing in my job if I did not, without overemphasis, pass on that warning. Obviously, I am not for one moment imagining that any single one of you would entertain such an approach should it be made… "

  There was a ripple of muttered conversation.

  "… but I do ask that you come straight to me if any attempt is made to approach you. From what we read of recent happenings in Iraq, an individual would have to be clean off his or her whistle, certifiable, to entertain an offer, however lavish, from that quarter, but, as I say, we are warned. That's all, and thank you again for your time."

  There was laughter. The Security Officer smiled warmly. He had done his bit, and now he could return to the very much more pressing anxiety of vetting the construction workers from the Republic of Ireland currently employed on the fitting out of the A90 complex.

  "That was balls," Basil said. Boll was at his car door. He'd brought his keys out of his trouser pocket along with a fistful of change that was spinning in all directions on the tarmac.

  "I beg your pardon." On his knees now, reaching under the chassis.

  Basil said, " T h e man's an idiot, couldn't catch his own tail."

  "Who's an idiot?" Boll brushing himself down, finally unlocking the doors.

  "Security officer. He implied that the Iraqis hadn't the tech-nology, the quality of workforce, the capability, that's just balls.

  If he thinks we are the sort of people they'd be after, that's balls too. We're yesterday's men, Reuben, the administrators and the paper pushers. If they are serious, the Iraqis won't be looking for geriatrics like you and me, they'll be after the youngsters…"

  Boll drove back to H area. He didn't speak. He was rather offended that Basil, the acknowledged brain of the Establishment, should regard him as geriatric. But he never quarrelled with Basil Curtis, because he, Reuben Boll, was one of the few who were privy to the tragedy of the man's life, who had known Basil's wife, who had comforted him after she had died at the wheel of her car. What love Basil Curtis still possessed was now vested in the atrociously smelly cat in his quarters at the Boundary Hall accommodation complex. He made every allowance possible for Curtis's behaviour, which wavered between the eccentric and the spiteful. Somewhere, there was a son, who would be middle-aged now, and Boll had heard that all contact with him had been cut.

  Anyway, Grade 6 and Senior Principal Scientific Officer Boll, with the title of Superintendent, certainly did not regard himself as a "yesterday's man".

  Erlich stood. He had the telephone at maximum stretch. He shouted, "It's just great, great to hear you, J o. "

  " A n d you, Bill. How are you?"

  "Surviving, you could say that."

  " I n London, and that's all you're doing. What's it about?"

  "It's an open line, Jo… Shit… It's about Harry."

  "It's what you've been waiting f o r. "

  " Y e s. "

  "When you'll get noticed."

  " Y e s. "

  "That's what you want, important."

  " B u t it's about Harry."

  "That was bad… Why are you only surviving in London?"

  " T h e y don't love me here."

  " Y o u giving them too much Pepsi culture?"

  "Prickly crowd."

  " L e t them know who's boss, Bill, like you always do. Let them know they're just the hired help, eh…"

  " T o o right… Jo, I been calling you each day, twice a day."

  "Got in this morning."

  "Where from?"

  " Y o u could have called the office, they wouldn't eat you…

  Bucharest."

  "Christ, where?"

  "Bucharest, air head. They ran a facility down there to show us a new housing project. It's a real fun place, you'd love it. We got one slot on the Breakfast, two others are holding pending (he trash can, and I'm scratching all over."

  "What's Bucharest like?"

  "Creepy, horrible… When are you coming home?"

  "I don't know."

  " I ' m lonely already…"

  "Get yourself a stud off the beach."

  " T h e stud I've got, he's pulling my panties off now… Love you, Bill, that sort of crap."

  "Take care, J o. "

  "Come home."

  "Ciao, J o. "

  Perhaps he should have told her that he loved her. He sure as hell missed her, but they weren't supposed to love each other.

  When they were together, great. When they were apart, too bad.

  Jo wasn't going to throw up a Field Producer's job with a network to shuffle round after a Fed. They were just career people, and busy. And he had forgotten to ask her what was the result of the game in Naples. She was on the edge of that scene with him, bringing in a picnic in the summer and a thermos of soup when the Saturday mornings came colder. He thought that theirs was what was called an "adult relationship", and the best they could manage. Rutherford had a wife at home, lucky old Rutherford.

  Rutherford had his shirts washed and his trousers pressed and his meals served up on demand. Erlich put together his boots and his waterproofs and his bivouac. Rutherford would be waiting for him, down on the street in the car.

  Colt found himself a room on the south side of Newbury
.

  He paid?80 to the man, and because he hadn't jibbed at the ?40 a week, two weeks in advance, he thought the man regretted not asking for more. The house was virtually new and the builders were only a hundred yards away putting roof beams on for the next phase of the development. There were worry lines on the man's lace, and he had passed the notes straight to his wife who was behind him, holding a baby.

  He stood in the room. The man was by the door. A bed, a table, a chair, and a wardrobe which didn't close properly.

  Colt said, "I've moved up from the West, looking for work. I may be on days or nights. I just don't know at the moment what my hours will be. I hope you don't mind that, me coming in and out at all hours. But I'll be quiet. Is that all right?"

  " N o problem, mate."

  The door closed on them. He had found a room in a quiet street. He could come and go at will. He was only eight and a half miles from Tadley. He kicked off his shoes. He lay on the bed. He would rest until it was dark.

  Sara had seen them through the sitting room window, working the far side of Lilac Gardens.

  " Y e s? "

  She had her coat on and she was in time, if she left quickly, to get to the MiniMarket before turning up at the school gate.

  "Good afternoon… "

  "Can I help you?"

  The older woman had a pale face, shoulder-length auburn hair tied in two plaits and she wore a long overcoat tightly buttoned.

  The younger woman had short-cut fair hair with a parting and was bright in her yellow raintop and mauve shirt. Not Salvationists, not Jehovahs. The younger woman carried a clipboard and she stood behind her companion with a pencil poised. Sara really, actually, did not have time to be polled on detergents or politics or…

  The older woman smiled. It was the sort of smile that was taught in charm classes, wide, brilliant and signifying nothing.

  "We're from P. A. R. E. "

  " D o you want money?" Of course, they wanted money. Why rise would anyone tramp round tedious Lilac Gardens if not for money. I low much would it take to get rid of them? She had three?10 notes in her purse, and damn near nothing in small change, Could she give them a tenner, and ask for nine in change?

  "We just want to tell you about P. A. R. E. "

  "Oh, I am in rather a hurry."