CONDITION BLACK (26 page)

The Swede was crossing the garden, when he saw the Director ushering out the Colonel. He recognised the Colonel. He saw that the Director wore no necktie. He saw the insignia on the Colonel's shoulders and the medal bars pinned on his chest, and he saw the holstered pistol at his hip.

"Good morning, Director," the Swede called out.

He was ignored. He hurried on his way. It had been demanded of him that he should seek more complete information. The Colonel had returned to Tuwaithah. The Colonel had come on business so pressing that he had made his appointment before the Director had shaved and before he was fully dressed. Under his breath, as he greeted the members of his laboratory work force already at work, he cursed. An opportunity had been missed.

Reuben Boll said from the doorway of Bissett's office, "I really must have something on my desk tomorrow morning."

"Well, I honestly don't know if . . ."

" M y desk, tomorrow morning, latest."

"I'll do what I can."

"Work through the night if you have to. You know what, Frederick? In the old days here, when a man had work on his desk, then he did not go home until it was finished. Before your time, of course, but that was the old attitude."

Quite simply, he had not the courage to tell Boll. Sara was out that evening, at the parent-teachers meeting at school. She had cleared it with him, that morning, that he would most certainly be home in good time to look after the boys. So he could not work in his office until midnight. He had promised Sara.

" N o sweat, Reuben, by hook or by crook it'll be on your desk in the morning."

Penny was still in her dressing gown, and she was half falling out of that, and there was the warm and sleep-battered look on her face that he loved, before she anointed herself with all the garbage.

"Good grief , w h a t t h e cat brought in
this
morning?"

"Darling, this is Bill Erlich. Bill, this is my wife Penny . . ."

"What in God's name have you two been at?"

"Just be a love, and clean him up."

And don't ask any silly questions. Don't even consider enquiring whether the guest has gone three rounds with a pissed-off buffalo.

She was a State Registered Nurse. She'd have seen worse.

"If she hurts you, Bill, just scream, and I'll come and thump her."

Penny directed Erlich up the stairs, and Rutherford made for the sitting room. He pulled the curtains back, tidied the newspaper from the floor. He preferred to drink in the pub in Shepherd Market, but this morning he poured himself a good measure of whisky. He drank. He had two hands tight on the tumbler. He heard the cascade of the bath water upstairs. He drank again.

They had reached the policeman's house as the first cut of light was coming under the rain clouds. They had powered away in the Astra after five brisk minutes of the policeman's time. Did Desmond, the village constable, know of two young people, one male and one female, capable of administering a cold-blooded beating and kicking? Not much change from the local policeman.

It was a rough and tough community. Could have been any one of a dozen males and any one of half a dozen females. Not much sympathy from the policeman, disturbed from his sleep and his wife also woken, and his children crying. A blunt suggestion that Mr Rutherford might care to spend a Saturday night with the police in Warminster when the pubs turned out if he thought a beating and a kicking were exceptional.

It was the least he could have done, to have brought Erlich home. No way he was going to take an F . B . I , man into the Casualty Out-Patients of a National Health Service hospital, no way. All the way home he'd talked and the American had mouthed through his swelling lips. They couldn't be
certain
it was Colt.

Between them they should have nailed at least one of them and then they would have been certain.

Penny came down the stairs.

She was carrying Erlich's clothes.

"He's nice . . . "

Rutherford said, "He behaved like an idiot, lucky not to have got himself killed."

" H e was hit hard, down under."

"Did you get in the bath with him to see?"

He could see her looking at him, questioning. He had the glass in his mouth, held in two hands.

"I examined his penis and his testicles for injury," Penny said.

"They're quite nastily bruised."

"Was it Colt or was it not?"

The man had said his name was Hobbes.

Rutherford was behind him, subdued, chewing on a peppermint.

Erlich was wearing one of Rutherford's shirts, too small at the collar and with the tie trying to cover the gap, and a pair of Rutherford's socks, and Rutherford's wife had tried to clean his trousers and his jacket. And she had washed the cut on his face and even if he looked like a bum his spirits were a good deal restored. Not every day of the week you get a bath
and
a hot breakfast from an English nurse.

"I don't
know,
but nothing else that I can think of makes sense."

"You don't know, but yet you request an interview to be arranged with Major Tuck?"

"I want to turn him over."

" Y o u will have a meeting, you will most certainly not have 'a hostile interrogation facility'."

"Just a
meeting?"

"Only that, and I would suggest a change of clothes first."

Colt slept. Deep and undreaming sleep. He slept in the small room in the small house in the quiet road on the outskirts of Newbury. The man he had beaten had been staking out the back end of his home, and the man was American, an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and that was not sufficient to disturb his pitch-black sleep. Because of the man, because of the implication of his being in the wood at the back of his father's house, he would not go back. And the farewells and the partings in the dank small hours of the morning, neither were they able now to disturb that depth of sleep. He had held his mother's hand, he had shaken his father's hand, he had ruffled the loose fur at the collar of his dog, and he had gone. He was his own man, waking or resting, and many years since it had been different.

His own father and mother had never gone to the evenings at his school when the teachers sat at their desks and discussed the performance of the pupils. His own father had once said that he was buggered if he was going to change from his work clothes into his funeral and wedding suit, and put on a clean shirt, to spend an hour listening to the patronising chat of school masters, and his mother for once had not contradicted him.

Her
mother and father had been to every open day at her school, come down in the Bentley, picnic hamper in the boot, that's what Sara had told him.

As he drove the length of Third Avenue, he thought it was just the difference in their backgrounds. He had not telephoned her to say that he must work late. He had not asked her to miss her evening at the school, but he had left his desk only when he had known that Sara would be waiting for his return.

The floodlights and the gates were ahead of him. He was held in a column of traffic. He edged forward.

He was already rather tired, he would be in good shape, if he didn't fall asleep, and he had warned Carol that he would need someone in early to type up his paper. He slipped forward, low gear.

"Identification, please."

The Ministry policeman was bent towards the car's side window.

He produced his card. He held it up. He saw the rain-spattered face against the glass, and the grey toothbrush of the moustache.

"This is a security check, Dr Bissett."

"Jolly good, and we had the same yesterday, all our yesterdays."

"Were you checked going out of H area, Dr Bissett?"

" I was not."

" D o you have a briefcase, Dr Bissett, an attache case?"

Shit, derision, fuck . . .

" Y e s , yes, I do . . . "

"Could I see inside your briefcase, Dr Bissett?"

" M y wife is waiting, if you don't mind . . ."

"Just see inside, thank you very much, Dr Bissett."

"I really am in a very great . . . "

"Then the sooner I've seen inside your briefcase, Dr Bissett, the sooner you'll be on your way."

"Don't you people have anything better to do?"

"Very droll, Dr Bissett. Now, could I please see inside your briefcase?"

His car was flooded with light from the cars behind. He turned and he looked through the rear window. He thought there might be 20 cars waiting their turn to come through the check. It was almost a year since he had last been stopped, last asked to open his briefcase for inspection.

There was the great sinking weight in his stomach.

"I've a great deal of work to get done by the morning."

The Ministry policeman said briskly, "Please, Dr Bissett . . ."

He was down in the low seat of the Sierra. The Ministry policeman was above him. He could see the face, and the veins in the cheeks and the hair in the nostrils, and the rain falling from the rim of the helmet. His briefcase was beside him. His briefcase was stamped by the lock in faded gold with his initials.

He reached for the briefcase.

He undid the catch fastener.

He had the briefcase on his lap, and he opened it. There was his empty sandwich box, and there was his empty thermos flask, and there were the two files of papers. There was the sticker, red letters on white background, on each of the files.

The letters made the word that was S E C R E T . Oh, shit and derision . . .

The barrier was down in front of him. For a moment the Ministry policeman straightened, and Bissett could hear him talking into his personal radio. He felt sick. He felt the sweat damp on his back. He felt faint . . .

The politeness was gone from the Ministry policeman's voice, a sharp bark.

"Get that car over to the side, and hurry it."

The Security Officer was on the point of leaving his office, locking it, going to his weekly meeting with the Director. He rather enjoyed these sessions. A glass of sherry, a general chat, a chance to sit with the one man in the whole place who did not seem nervous in his company.

His principal telephone rang.

He picked it up, he listened. He did not interrupt.

"Thank you, Inspector, thank you. I'm not able to get down for a bit, might be an hour. Just put him on ice. No access, no telephone, don't attempt to question him. Just let him sit and reflect for a while, until I can get down. Yes, it will be as soon as possible. Thank you, Inspector."

The Security Officer put down the telephone. He gathered up his coat from the chair by the door. His face showed neither excitement nor sadness nor anger. It was this mask-like quality in his face which chiefly made his colleagues uneasy. He walked the corridors and up the stairs to the Director's office. For the life of him, he had not an inkling who Frederick Bissett was.

An hour after he should have been home, half an hour after she should have left for school, at the time that she should have been sitting in the classroom with Frank's and Adam's teachers, Sara went upstairs to change out of her suit.

"Aren't you going, Mummy?" A small voice from the bottom of the stairs.

" N o . "

"Why aren't you going, Mummy?"

"Because your father is not home."

"Don't you want to hear about us?"

"It's just not possible."

"Where is Daddy?"

"I don't know, and I don't bloody care . . . "

11

It was a room bare of decoration except for the requisite Annigoni Queen and the tyre company calendar, the one with rural views of his country. At least it was not a cell.

Bissett sat on a straight-back chair at a small table, his head in his hands. He didn't care, any longer, to look up at the Ministry policeman standing, arms folded, impassive, in front of the door.

It was the most shameful hour of his life. He had been directed out of the line of cars to the side of the road by the Falcon Gate, up against the high wire fence. There had been two of them at the car door when he had opened it, and one had put a hand on his sleeve to ease him out of the car, and one had reached inside for the briefcase. Another Ministry policeman had been waving through the cars behind him. He had seen all their white staring faces, through their rain-dribbled windows, as he had stood in the wet. People who recognised him, and people who did not, staring at him, wondering why he had been hauled from his car.

He had started, of course, to try to explain when they had shovelled him into the back of the police van. He had been ignored. Two blank, uninterested faces in the back with him. He had tried anger, and he had tried being reasonable, no response.

He had been taken into the police building. More faces turned to him. The faces of Ministry policemen on the front desk, and on the staircase and in the corridor. Faces that looked him over, stripped him to the quick.

They had sat him in the room. An Inspector had been brought in to see him. Bisselt had recognised rank and status. Right, fine, at last time to talk to someone with an ounce of commonsense, someone in charge of these cretins on the gate. Again, he had explained. Perfectly straightforward, pressure of work, need to complete a paper, wife going to a parent-teacher evening, him minding the children. Couldn't have been more reasonable, should have been the end of it . . . hadn't been the end of it. The Inspector hadn't argued, hadn't said anything at all, the Inspector had just walked out. He was left with the Ministry policeman for company.

He had asked if he could telephone his wife, because she was expecting him, and the Ministry policeman had shaken his head.

He
needed
to telephone his wife, he'd said, because she was going out that evening, and again the shake of the head. God, she'd be furious, and for once that was going to be the least of his troubles.

He sat with his misery and his shame.

It would be half round the Establishment by the middle of the next morning . . . Frederick Bissett caught at the Falcon Gate, taken out of his car, marched to a police van, taken off for questioning.

He heard the footsteps approaching in the corridor.