CONDITION BLACK (24 page)

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."

"We think it pretty important. Cancer in general, leukaemia in particular. We think it's worth a few moments of your time.

May I ask what your name is?"

"Bissett, Sara Bissett. I am in rather . . ."

"Mrs Bissett, do you have children?"

"I've two small boys."

"Then of course you'll be interested in P . A . R . E . " The younger woman smiled, the same smile.

The older woman said, "We are from the Tadley action group, People Against Radiation Exposure, I expect you've read about us."

The younger woman said, "The cancers round the Aldermaston base and the Burghfield Common factory . . . "

The older woman took her cue. They were well rehearsed.

" T h e cancers are way above average in this area."

"That's child cancers, which is mostly leukaemia, and testicular cancer for male adults."

"I don't know whether you are aware, Mrs Bissett, that you are living very close to such danger."

"Both Aldermaston and Burghfield Common have quite appalling safety records."

"Into the water, into the air, they're just spurting out poison.

Nobody knows the long-term effects."

"When the new building at Aldermaston is working we estimate that it will produce two thousand drums of solid waste a year."

"And it will produce a million gallons a year of liquid waste, and where does that go after it's been
treated
? It goes, Mrs Bissett, into the Thames."

"Already the leukaemia rate in this area is six times the national average, and it's going to get worse."

Sara was calm. She rather surprised herself. She just wanted to be rid of them. She wanted to do her shopping, and she wanted to be at the school gate to collect her children. She had no sense of loyalty to Frederick, not at that moment.

"That's a pack of lies."

The older woman's mouth tightened. "Statistical evidence shows . . . "

" L i e s . "

The younger woman's voice keened, " Y o u know what we've got here, Deirdre, one of the 'little women' whose husband works there."

Sara said, "That's right, so just piss o f f . "

" I f you think that learning about the risk of leukaemia in children is wasted time . . . ?"

"She'll just parrot her husband's distortions, Deirdre."

"God, why can't women think for themselves . . . "

They turned away. The younger woman minced to her companion, " I f I were married to a man working at that place, spreading leukaemia around, I'd have left him."

For what? Bed and breakfast with the kids on Social Security, new schools, no roof? She would never leave, not now . . . She was late. "I don't have time to hang about listening to your lies and distortions," Sara snapped.

They had their shoulders back, as if to make their point that they could take abuse and survive. In a few moments they would be at little Vicky's door, and half frightening her to death. Sara locked her door behind her. No, it hadn't been out of loyalty to Frederick. It should have been out of loyalty to him. She should not have sent them packing because she wanted to get supper from the MiniMarket and still be on time at the school. She should have kicked their behinds off her front step for slagging off her husband, and her husband's work. She sat in her car.

Sara knew what she should have done, and she had not done it. And she should not have sat in her car before switching the ignition, and rejoiced that it was her art group again in two days and wondered if Debbie's husband . . . she should straightaway have made up the lost time.

It had taken them time, hut they were getting there.

They were a good team and there was nothing that an investigation could throw up that, between the three of them, they had not confronted before. No rush, but the hours had been worked, and the picture had emerged.

The pieces had started to slot together when Don had received from Ruane, down the wire from London, the photograph of Colin Tuck. Don thought that young Erlich had done well to have gotten the name of Colt, and the photo. He had made an asshole of himself at Athens Counter-Terrorism, nothing but criticism for closing down that source, but this was good work.

Don had sent Vito and Nick out with the photograph, and he had booked the best table at the best restaurant in the Piraeus, and he had treated the head of Counter-Terrorism to the sort of meal that was going to lift an eyebrow or two when the docket reached Administrative Services Division. Smoothly he had opened the doors that had been slammed in young Erlich's face.

Opening the doors had given the team a good young liaison who would go anywhere with them, get past any block, and was at their disposal from the time they woke to the time they hit the sack. The Agency's Station Officer, across on the other wing of the Embassy, said that no one had ever oiled such co-operation out of those Greek mothers as Don had. With the doors open and the liaison in place, Don could sit back in the office and collate what came in. They had the place, the rented room, where Colt had spent the night before the killing, and they had a kind of identification from a Yugoslav who still stayed there, but the room had been cleaned and there were no prints that helped.

Vito and the liaison had done the airport. Every check-in desk for every flight that had gone out from Athens that morning and that afternoon, and when that showed nothing, then he and Nick had worked the lists of the cabin crews of all the Olympic flights.

A stewardess, a week later, back from the mid-morning flight to Ankara had been shown the photograph. She had remembered the man in the photograph as a passenger He had refused coffee and refused food. She had given Vito and Nick a seat number, and the airline computer had given them a name, and the name and the Irish passport had been checked with the Emigration officers on duty that morning. They had had a flight to Ankara.

Of course, the passport was rubbish, not important . . .

Pleasantly calm for Don, Athens, once Vito and Nick had flown to Ankara. A round of golf in the Ambassador's four-ball, a cocktail party at the Station Officer's home. Vito, through on secure communications from the Embassy in Ankara, had reported that he had found the check-in girl who had done the duty that late afternoon. The check-in girl had nodded when shown the photograph. The Iraqi flight had been delayed. There would have been a passport switch in transit at Ankara, a British passport used. She remembered the British passport, and she remembered that she had been shown the Iraqi visa. Ankara airport didn't carry a passenger list for the flight, and they weren't inclined to go asking the Iraqi officials if they had a flight list. Didn't matter . . . They had him, the little bastard, out of Athens and into Ankara transit, and they had a passport switch, and they had him on a delayed flight to Baghdad.

It had taken them time, but they had gotten there.

They sat in the room they had been allocated at the Embassy, and they had a portable radio playing in the room and they talked under the sound of the radio. Old professionals, doing it the way it should be done.

When he had finished the longhand draft of their report, Don read it back.

Nick said, "That's shit in the fan, guys."

Vito said, "Respectfully, Don, that's for the Director's desk."

Don said, " I ' m not arguing."

Nick said, "It's just too clean, to well-organised, for Colt to be hitting for an asshole group."

Vito said, "It's state-sponsored, and what Big Wimp will want to do about that, I just don't know,"

Don shuffled the sheets of paper together. The Athens end was over.

Don said, "We shouldn't take that kind of crap, least of all from a government."