CONDITION BLACK (18 page)

The dog stirred, sighed, stretched, lapsed again to sleep across Colt's feet.

The light was spreading in the room. He saw the marks on the carpet. It was the mud from the kitchen garden. It was the way he had always come back to the house when he came in secret.

Through the hole in the kitchen garden wall, where rain and frost had undone the mortar and the stonework, past the ancient privy now cascaded in ivy, to the back door where a spare key was always lodged above a beam and below the slates of the porch.

He heard a door open. He heard his father's first cough of the day. The dog heard his father's tread on the landing and settled closer to Colt's legs.

They were the first down to breakfast, and the first to check out from the guesthouse.

Erlich's Burberry was in the boot of the Astra with his shoes.

He wore the new boots which he now realised were a size too large, and the waterproof coat. Rutherford wore a heavy sweater and ankle-length walking boots.

Once they were off the by-pass, into the lanes, Rutherford drove fast. They surged out and past a lone milk cart. They squirted through the rain puddles in the road. Erlich saw the isolated cottages where the lights were only on upstairs, and he glanced down frequently at the map spread out across his knees.

It was a good time to be calling at Colt's place.

He had gone downstairs and had quietly called the dog and there had been no response. He had looked into the room off the kitchen where the washing machine and the freezer were, and he had seen the empty basket. It was after he had filled the iron kettle and set it on the Aga's hotplate that he saw the mud prints on the kitchen floor, and on the kitchen table, beside yesterday's newspaper, was a bowl with the dregs of cornflakes and milk in it, and in a saucer was the stub of a cheroot sized cigar.

He boiled the kettle. He never hurried himself. It was 48 years since he had learned the lesson, the hard way, that hurrying was for fools. A bad night, a storm blowing hail onto frozen fingers, the railway viaduct north of Rouen, too much haste with chapped fingers, the jabbering French at his shoulders urging him to work faster, the connection between the command wire and the detonators not properly made. It had been a good night to get on the viaduct because the weather had driven the sentries to cover. The explosives had not fired. The weather had changed with the dawn. There had not been another opportunity to blow the viaduct while the sentries huddled away from the wind and the hail. Three weeks of reconnaissance and planning wasted.

He made the tea. He laid the tray and he put the bread in the toaster. He took an extra mug from the cupboard. While he waited for the toast, he wiped the floor clean with the mop. He carried the tray up the stairs, and twice he bent to retrieve lumps of drying mud. He went into the bedroom.

The boy was where he thought that he would be. He saw the boy's head tilt upwards . . . His son. His son beside his still sleeping wife.

He set down the tray on the dark space of the mahogany dressing table. He had not shaved, nor combed his hair. He was in his pyjamas and dressing gown and slippers. He cared not a damn. Never stood on ceremony, and not starting now.

He took his son in his arms.

He held Colt tight against him. God be thanked! No words aloud, nothing to say. He felt the broad sinew of the boy's back, and he felt the quiet breath of the boy against his cheek. This was his son, and he loved him. He looked from Colt's face, from the calm of the boy's face, down to the face of his wife. He wished that she would wake. He would not wake her. He would not interfere with the drugs that the nurse left, administered each evening, but he wished so fervently that she could wake naturally and see her son and her husband holding each other in love.

When he broke away, as the dog was belting his legs with its tail, it was to pour the tea.

He spilled the tea, made a hash of pouring it, because his eyes were never off his son's face.

He brought the mug of tea to his son. He thought that the boy looked well. He was tired, he could see that, hadn't slept properly for two, three nights, but still the boy looked well. And at that moment the smile froze from Colt's face and the hackles rose the length of the dog's spine, and he heard the grate of car wheels on the gravel under the window.

The door opened in front of Rutherford.

Erlich could see over Rutherford's shoulder, into the gloom of the hallway. The dog came first. Dogs didn't hassle Erlich. The drill with dogs was to stand ground, keep the hands still, avoid eye contact, act as if they didn't exist. Somebody must have told Rutherford, once, the same thing. Rutherford didn't acknowledge the dog. Whoever had opened the door was masked by Rutherford's head.

"Major T u c k ? "

A deep voice in response. "That's me."

" M y name's Rutherford, I'd be grateful if you would invite me inside with my colleague . . ."

He was a big man. Erlich saw him now. A big man in a big old dressing gown with his hair untidy and his stubble not shaved and his eyes sunken. The dog had retreated behind the man's legs, growling and blocking entry.

" . . . It's frightfully early, I do apologise."

Erlich saw those deep eyes rove over the two of them. Their boots were in the car, and their waterproofs. From first light they had been on the high ground at the back of the house. They had been in the wood, under the dripping trees. They had scoured the windows of the house with binoculars. They had seen the lights come on, and damn all else. Erlich smiled at the man, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to come calling at three minutes past eight o'clock in the morning.

"What do you want?"

"Just to come in, just to have a talk," Rutherford said calmly.

"A talk, what about?"

Erlich looked into the eyes of the man, tried to read them, found nothing.

"Government business," Rutherford said.

"What's government business to do with me?"

An edge in Rutherford's voice. " I ' m from the Security Service, Major Tuck. My colleague is from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Government business is your son, Major Tuck. We'd like to come inside . . . "

"I don't entertain at this time of day."

"I've already apologised, Major T u c k . "

"Don't go on apologising. Just don't be any more of a nuisance."

" Y o u are the father of Colin Olivier Louis T u c k ? "

" I am."

Rutherford asked, " D o you know where your son is, Major T u c k ? "

The question hacked at the old man. " N o , no, I don't. I don't know where my son is, no."

"Have you any idea where your son is?"

Composure regained. " N o n e . "

" N o idea at all?"

"Absolutely no idea."

"When did you last see your son, Major T u c k ? "

" T w o years ago."

" N o communication since?"

" N o . "

"Aren't you curious, Major T u c k ? "

"Curious of what?"

Rutherford said, "Curious as to why a member of the Security Service and a representative of the Federal Bureau of Investigation . . . "

"I am not responsible for my son."

Erlich said, "Might I use the lavatory, Major T u c k ? "

Rutherford said, " W e are investigating an incident of state-sponsored terrorism, murder."

Erlich said, " T h e lavatory, please, sir."

"I won't have people storming into my house at all hours to use the lavatory, dammit. No, you can't come in. You'll find a public convenience, which I am sure Mr Rutherford will locate for you, behind the pub in the village. Good day to you both. I'll not be hounded because of my son . . . "

"Hounded, Major Tuck, surely not?"

" M y house watched, my mail opened, my telephone . . . My son makes his own bed . . . Good day."

When they were onto the by-pass, when he could cruise without having to worry about shunting into a lorry round a blind corner, Rutherford said, "I tell you what, I felt sorry for him."

" Y o u did."

" Y e s , I'm not ashamed to say it. I felt sorry for him."

" D o you remember Walter de la Mare's 'Listeners'?"

"Hardly. Not since school . . ."

Erlich recited,

"But only a host of phantom listeners,

That dwelt in the lone house then,

Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight

To that voice from the world of men.

"I felt as if we were listened to, that's all."

Dr Tariq had flown the night before with a Brigadier of the Air Force, a civilian attached to the personal staff of the Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, a laboratory technician, and four bodyguards from the Chairman's own squad.

The aircraft in which they had flown, an HS-125 executive jet, had had the insignia of the Iraqi Air Force removed from it. They had flown out over Saudi air space, down the Red Sea coast, through Egyptian air space, then south over the Sudanese frontier and into Khartoum.

They had slept on the third floor of the Hilton Hotel. There had been rooms assigned to Dr Tariq, the Brigadier, the civilian and the technician, and a fifth room for the bodyguards. At the other end of the corridor were the South Africans. On the floor above were the teams from Argentina and Pakistan. Two floors below, discreetly apart, were the Indians and the Iranians. Most professionally managed, as it should have been, because the Sudanese hosts had conducted such an auction before.

He had breakfasted in his room, relaxed in the knowledge that his laboratory technician would have been collected from the hotel along with the other teams' technicians before first light, and with his equipment taken to the airport.

In mid-morning, Dr Tariq was driven to the international airport. The destination was an old aircraft hangar beyond the main runway. An oppressively hot morning, and inside the great tomb of a building the heat was worse. The technician reported that from the tests carried out with a remote-controlled drill, he could guarantee that the merchandise was indeed weapons-grade plutonium. He said, though Dr Tariq was more interested in the quality of the material than its origin, that the plutonium had come from a company in West Germany. The civilian in Dr Tariq's party was a senior member of the staff of the Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council. His presence ensured that funds for the purchase of the 15 kilograms of plutonium would be available.

A grey-suited European, perspiring, masked by outsized polar-oid dark glasses, moved amongst the groups who had taken their positions 30 paces apart on the circumference of a circle round the packing cases on the dust-drenched floor. The European moved from group to group, taking bids.

In less than ten minutes, Dr Tariq was the highest bidder.

He agreed the payment of $2,300,000 for each kilo.

And, within a further half an hour, five packing cases that held the containers, sealed with concrete and lead lining, were loaded onto his aircraft. Dr Tariq followed his delegation into the plane.

He left the South Africans and the Pakistanis and the Argentinians and the Iranians and the Indians to haggle over what was left.

Nobody called him "Sniper" to his face, only behind his back -

the older ones with a taint of envy, the younger ones with a slight sneer. But they all acknowledged that Percy Martins carried weight.

Martins said, "Tork's trouble is that he's been there too long."

The Deputy Director gazed at the slow movement of the barges and the dredgers and the pleasure craft on the river. The Desk Head (Israel) drummed the blunt end of his pencil on the highly polished table.

Martins said, "He's gone native, become a bum boy for the Israelis."

Percy Marlins could say what he liked these days, and he did.

But everything about the Service, everything about Century House, had chaged since he had run a mission into the Beqa'a Valley of eastern Lebanon in which a marksman had taken the life of the murderer of a British diplomat. He was a hero of the good old former times. The fiasco of the capture by Iranian Revolutionary Guards of the Desk Head (Iran) while pottering about after archaeological remains in Turkey, the disastrous consequences of his interrogation in an Iranian gaol in Tabriz, the loss of an entire network of Field Agents, ensured that all was now different. Martins, O . B . E . , hero of the Beqa'a, had established his reputation before Whitehall had put a stop to any mission that smacked of derring-do or risk.

Martins now headed the Desk that watched over Jordan and Syria and Iraq, and he was safe until he cared to retire.

"That's not entirely fair," Desk Head (Israel) said.

The Deputy Director said gently, "I tend to agree, Percy, not entirely fair."

Martins said, "What have we got? We have H area, A area, and B area. Tork is pushing the Israeli belief that this means Aldermaston. Maybe they are right, don't get me wrong, but where else are there H and A and B areas? Shouldn't we be checking at Sellafield or Harwell? And at the French nuclear centre, and in America, and in South Africa, and in Pakistan for that matter?"

The Deputy Director inclined his head. He was already 15

minutes late for his weekly session with Personnel. "I believe Percy has a point."

Martins powered on. "A typical Israeli tactic, involve everybody else with their difficulties. They love it, having everyone rush around doing their work for them."

The Desk Head (Israel) snapped, "A serious warning, strongly suggestive of an attempt on the part of Iraq to steal nuclear secrets or possibly to entrap or seduce one of our own nuclear scientists is not to be taken lightly."

" Y o u call this a serious warning? It's altogether too airy-fairy in my view."

The Deputy Director took his cue. "I think we may justifiably request, via Tork, more detailed information from our friends in Tel Aviv, yes?"

"So, you'll do nothing?" The Desk Head (Israel) began to riffle his papers together.

"Speak a few words in a few ears, not make a panic." The Deputy Director smiled. "Good enough, Percy?"

Martins tugged at his small moustache. " I f the Israelis want us to spring about in every direction they will have to share with us something rather more concrete."