Condition black Page 23

No… not just because he had drunk too much, and he was committed to nothing, absolutely nothing. Of course he wasn't committed to anything, it was a conversation at a party… That was utter rubbish, and a Senior Scientific Officer at A.W.E. didn't have to have it spelled out to him.

  He went downstairs. The boys were down already and in their school pullovers, and bubbling to their mother because Vicky had let them sit up and watch television till late. He loved those boys. Sara protested he must eat his toast, the boys hooted with laughter, and the pain of the noise drove him, almost at a run, out of the house.

  The young man had been a very pleasant young man, and he'd talked good sense. No strings, no commitment, just a conversation.

  The Ministry policeman on the gate, he'd know that bastard.

  Same bastard. He produced his I/D card. The man said, "Once more into the breach, Dr Bissett?" and all the way to his office Bissett hunted in his aching head for a stinging, annihilating riposte, but all the best lines seemed inadequate for use on the policeman.

  Carol was handing the day's internal post to Basil. Basil had his bulging briefcase on the floor beside his feet as he flicked through the brown re-usable envelopes. Basil wouldn't be stopped by any bastard of a Ministry policeman when he cycled to H area from Boundary Hall. The Clerical Assistants were shrugging out of their coats, squeezing lipstick onto their faces, filling the coffee machine… and there was the young man. The young man sat close to Carol's desk and he had a raincoat over his knees, and an attache case that he held close against his chest. The young man seemed to be mesmerised by Basil.

  "Morning, Dr Bissett," Carol's singing greeting.

  "Morning, Carol."

  The young man's head didn't jerk. There was nothing obvious in his reaction. The young man's head tilted upwards. A good-looking young man, Bissett thought, didn't look as though he was from the Establishment, might be down from London, the tie was London. Carol was handing him his own mail. He sensed that the young man watched him. He dropped three of his four envelopes into Carol's bin. He headed down the corridor, for his office.

  He heard Carol say, " T h e problem is, Mr Rutherford, that Mr Boll may not be coming straight in. His diary's locked in his room. If he's a meeting first thing then I don't know when he'll be here."

  He was at the door of his office, reaching for his keys.

  A quiet, pleasant voice, " I ' m not in a hurry. On the other hand, if that's coffee that I see being brewed… "

  He could listen. If he listened and did not like what he heard then he could walk away. Frederick Bissett was his own master.

  He could control what he had begun. Why should he not be able to control his destiny?

  A little past eleven o'clock, he left his office. He felt quite calm. He locked the door behind him and he walked down the corridor. He paused by Carol's desk. He didn't have to speak to her. The young man was still sitting in the easy chair near to Carol's desk. The young man was watching him. He didn't have-to offer an explanation to Carol as to why he was leaving H3 in the middle of the morning.

  "I'll be gone for a few minutes, Carol."

  The young man looked to Bissett like a civil servant, perhaps from the Property Services Agency, perhaps from the Directorate of Defence Services, another of the creatures who came down from London, knowing nothing, to pry into the efficiency of the Establishment. The young man was watching him.

  He would only be a few minutes because that was all that it would take for him to drive across to the main canteen area where the public telephones were.

  The telephone shrilled below him. The woman shouted at her baby to be quiet, and he heard her answer the telephone.

  She came up the stairs to him. She knocked and opened the door. She seemed to him broken by the poverty, anxiety, of her life. She looked at him with a sort of longing. Not how Fran looked at him. It was as if she knew that he was free, and she was not free. She told him that there was a man on the phone for him. He went down the stairs fast.

  Bissett, poor bloody Bissett.

  "Hello, Doctor Bissett, very good of you to call me. Inconvenient, not a bit… You would? That's excellent. Of course not, no, just a talk… That's grand."

  Colt said where they should meet, when they should meet. He put the phone down. She might have thought that he was free, but what did she know? Free to go back to Baghdad, to the Haifa Street Housing Project, when he had finished and there he would die a little until the next time he was called to the Colonel's office.

  And his future? That was a big word, too big for Colt. Too far away, anyway, to think about.

  The woman was still trying to calm the baby's crying.

  It was Frederick on the telephone. It was so rare for him to use an Establishment telephone that her first reaction was that it must be catastrophe… He told her that he would not be home until late, that he had a meeting, that they were working through the evening. He was always curt on the telephone. She didn't quiz him, and she wasn't sorry that she would be spared the effort of making conversation with her husband that evening.

  And she hadn't called Debbie. She would have to be braver before she could speak to Debbie, thank her for the party, tell her that Frederick had enjoyed himself.

  The party was still just a bad dream, and in the nightmare was the beauty of Justin's loving. She went back to the kitchen, back to turning the collars on the boys' second school shirts. Odd, really, that Frederick had actually seemed to enjoy himself, hadn't bitched all the way home.

  Oh, but he'd been good, better than anything ever before, Justin Pink and his loving.

  Colt spilled his information. They heard him out. They talked between themselves. When they switched back to him they explained what they wished of him. Faud shook his hand. Namir kissed his cheek.

  Faud's question. "But why, Colt?"

  "Why what?"

  "Why does he come to us?"

  " M o n e y. "

  "Just for that?"

  "Well, he's flattered, too, but most of all he wants the money.

  You saw the state of his accounts."

  "You're of his country, don't you mind?"

  An absurd question. Colt didn't care. "All that nationalist crap is for the birds."

  They did not understand the world of the mercenary, they did not understand how a Senior Scientific Officer would agree to meet with agents of a foreign power. They couldn't understand it because in their own country the traitor was going to fetch up in the cells of the Department of Public Security and from there straight on to the Abu Ghraib gaol, and from there, no change, the Medical City Mortuary. Either that or they were shot in Athens, or in London. That's what they did to their own.

  They said it would all be in place. They went over again what Colt had to do. They said the arrangements were in hand to provide him once more with a pistol.

  Rutherford asked Boll to tell Carol that no calls should be put through. He reached for the radio on the window ledge, tuned it to classical, turned the volume half-way up. The Senior Principal Scientific Officer hadn't apologised for keeping him waiting the whole of the morning, so he didn't ask his permission to switch on the radio.

  He hadn't messed with any Home Office nonsense. He had told Boll that he was from the Security Service, he had invited Boll to check his credentials with the Security Officer, which of course, he had.

  "Frederick Bissett…"

  The antagonism cut across the room. Nothing new and he could cope with it. Nobody loved the man from the Security Service.

  "What about Bissett?"

  "Just running a routine check."

  " A s I understand it, the matter at the Gate was cleared up to the complete satisfaction of the Security Officer."

  "Well, you know the form, you working for government just the same as me, these things sort of have a way of developing their own momentum… "

  "Come to the point… What do you want to know?"

  "I just want to talk about Dr Bissett."

  Rutherf
ord didn't have a notebook out, and he hadn't wired himself with the pocket cassette recorder that he carried in his attache case.

  "What about Bissett?"

  "His work."

  "You're not cleared to hear about his work."

  "Let's say, the quality of his work…"

  "It is quite satisfactory."

  "But he needed to take work home."

  " W e are not all time servers, Mr Rutherford. When we have a job to do, then we get it done."

  "Would it not have been more natural for Bissett to have requested permission to take those two files off the Establishment?"

  "I can't recall exactly the circumstances that day, perhaps I wasn't here."

  Rutherford noted it, the hesitation. He would remember that.

  It was safe to assume that the Security Officer had spoken to Boll already. The man gave away that he had been warned.

  "Is he a good worker?"

  "I 've no reason to think otherwise."

  "A good member of the team in this building?"

  "Quite… satisfactory."

  "A man who makes friends?"

  "It's difficult, Mr Rutherford, to be well liked here. We're not a soccer squad. We are a group of expert nuclear scientists. We have our own work to get on with, that's how we live. Is this a social club? No, it is not. Do we prop up a bar all night? No, we don't. Most of us, from the style and nature of our work, are private people. I doubt, Mr Rutherford, that where you live you are the life and soul of your neighbourhood."

  Point scored. Rutherford took it. Penny always said that he was so private that the rest of the street wouldn't know he was alive.

  "I am merely trying to establish the motives of Dr Bissett, in taking classified files out of his office, in direct contradiction of standing instructions."

  "Then you'd better ask him."

  "I will. Is Bissett in line for promotion?"

  "I don't know, not my decision."

  "Would you recommend him for promotion?"

  "I haven't made up my mind."

  "Would this business affect his chance of promotion?"

  "I would have thought the quality of his work would determine that, not a moment of silliness."

  " T o your knowledge, are his financial affairs in order?"

  "I haven't the faintest idea."

  "There are usually signs… "

  "That's something else you'll have to ask him."

  He was at the door. He could be ingratiating when it suited him. He thanked Boll for his help.

  "I will be seeing Dr Bissett, but I will be seeing other people first. I don't want the nature of this enquiry discussed at all. I can count on your co-operation, I know."

  He had been with Boll for 35 minutes, and in that time he had heard not a kind word about Bissett. No praise, no affection, no support.

  James thought that to be interesting.

  Colt had parked on Praed Street, in Paddingion, close to the hotel. He had booked and paid for the room. He had arranged for the canapes from the kitchen, for the whisky and the gin and the splits.

  He wondered if Bissett would show.

  Much of the work was routine, and it was just routine that it should be recorded that the radio signals that afternoon from the Delence Ministry in Baghdad to the Embassy in London had increased above their usual volume. It was also noted that the code used was of a different pattern to that usually employed.

  The signals were recorded at the Government Communications Headquarters at Cheltenham in the west of England. In the Middle East Department priority was at that lime given to transmissions from Iran and the guerrilla groups in the Lebanon, but notification of the traffic surge was filed.

  Likewise, it was basic routine that a tape would be sent each evening from the Telecom exchange in Newbury to Curzon Street. With the many intercepts ordered by Curzon Street, it was impossible to detach someone from the Service to monitor each interception. For those intercepts that did not have the highest priority a tape recorder, installed only by senior management, could be hooked to a number and activated by incoming and outgoing calls. The tape would be messengered to London each evening. Just routine.

  "It's good of you to see me, sir."

  "We'll get this straight from the start, Mr Rutherford. If 5000 people here think it good enough to call me Basil, then Basil it will have to be for you as well."

  Rutherford couldn't help but like him. The Security Officer had told him that Basil Curtis was the principal innovator on the Establishment. He knew that he lived in Boundary Hall, permanently cramped into a single room, that his only company was the one cat allowed in the accommodation block, that he rode a bicycle, that when he went to Los Alamos he was considered too valuable to be sent on a commercial flight and had to put up with an R. A. F. transporter. And the Security Officer had said, first time the creature had smiled, that Curtis was paid more than the Director because some joker in charge of Special Pay Additions at the Ministry had evaluated his work, compared his salary with American salaries, and put in the extra so that he wouldn't defect to Los Alamos or Sandia or Livermore. The Security Officer had added that Curtis would have worked at the Establishment, just as happily, just as successfully, for a machine fitter's weekly money.

  "Well, Basil, thank you anyway."

  They walked on a sanded path that ran through copses of birch alongside the edge of C area, towards the Establishment's power station. It had stopped raining, and the late afternoon skies had cleared. There was a sharp wind. Rutherford was shivering in his raincoat, whipped cold. Curtis wore thin slacks and old leather sandals and an open sports shirt under his pullover. There was an air sampler barging against his barrel chest. There was a pipe Curtis wasn't tall, wouldn't have made it into the old Metropolitan Police, but he exuded strength and presence. Rutherford wasn't paid to like people, he rarely did at first sight, but he instinctively warmed towards this man.

  " S o, you're a spycatcher… "

  "On the bottom rung."

  "A hunter of traitors…"

  "A washer of bottles, really."

  " A n d you're investigating the unhappy Dr Bissett…?"

  "That's about it."

  "We've never had a spy here, nor a traitor." A throaty chuckle.

  "Well, if we have, we haven't known about it."

  " D i d you ever meet Fuchs?"

  "Cocky little Klaus Fuchs, no, before my time. He was never here, of course. He was before this place was set up. i am Harwell', that was his boast. Dead now, poor old thing, plonked away in East Germany somewhere. He would have hated to see Honecker and his gang given the bird. And it's just as well he's dead, because it's come out since that most of the stuff he bunged at the Soviets was false. Turns out they learned more from sampling air particles from the atmosphere after the American tests than ever they learned from Fuchs' material. That's enough to make a man frightfully depressed, when he's spent nine years in gaol and 30 years in East Germany for his efforts… They're not relevant now, Fuchs and Nunn May and Pontecorvo, they were committed to a political ideology that's gone up the chimney… "

  " S o, what's today's spy?"

  Curtis stuffed the bowl of his pipe. Rutherford's help was enlisted. They huddled together to shield the flame from the wind.

  "He's a greedy little beggar."

  "Just that?"

  "Greedy, and resentful… We were lectured, you know, by our resident Gauleiter to be on our guard against seduction by the Iraqis. He had it all wrong, he said that we – the senior buffers – were the ones at risk… quite untrue."

  "Who is at risk?"

  " I f it was the Iraqis who were headhunting then you'd have to know their personnel structure. You'd have to know what knowledge they were short of. Could be a scientist, could be a chemist, could be an engineer… you'd have to know what hole they were trying to plug. But it would be a youngish man, on the way u p. "

  Rutherford stopped. "Greedy, resentful, a youngish man on the way up, is that Biss
ett?"

  Curtis smiled quietly. "Isn't that for you to decide, Mr Rutherford?"

  "Would it surprise you?"

  "I'd prefer to answer a question that you haven't asked, if you'll bear with me. To some, the Establishment is a beach of shipwrecked dreams. Hear me out… Many young scientists arrive here believing that we have not changed from those rather exciting days of 20 years ago and more. At that time, this place harboured the cream of our scientific community. We were the innovators, belting at the horizons of knowledge. A young man comes here, and can be sadly disillusioned. We're a factory, Mr Rutherford. We are making do on the minimum of innovation. We're not at the top of the tree any more. We are a frightened gang of time servers, hoping to get to our pensions before what's left of this lifestyle is taken from us… When young Bissett came, with his very pleasant wife, he believed he had arrived , his enthusiasm was almost embarrassing. Have you met Boll? Of course you have. Boll could stifle the enthusiasm of a puppy. Bissett's dreams were beached. There was no wonderful and vigorous community of science, only a gossipy in-bred society. He gave a fork supper once. He sent out at least two dozen invitations, and I was the only one who turned up. They learned. Am I helping you at all, Mr Rutherford?"

  "Friendless, lonely Bissett, is that relevant?"

  "Fuchs was actually much loved, there were enough people surprised by him, and by Alan Nunn May and by Pontecorvo.

  Don't these flotsam always surprise those who are closest to them ..? But you've asked for my opinion… Not to be held against me?"

  "Of course not."

  Curtis said, " I ' m rather ashamed of myself. I see him every day, sometimes several times a day. I'd like to be more supportive of a colleague, but I am afraid my answer is rather negative. You see, I just don't know."

  They turned. A second conversation, and the second absence of a single word of praise, affection, support, for Frederick Bissett. They walked in silence, with the wind pecking at their legs, back towards H area.

  There were three platforms at which Bissett could arrive from Reading. Colt stood at the end of the middle one of the three.

  Three trains had come in from Reading, all within the time window that Bissett had given him. He had watched 500 faces pass him, perhaps 1000 faces, and he had not found Bissett's face. As his impatience rose, Colt was cursed with the thought of his mother. She had been asleep when he had gone. He had told his father that he would not return. She had been asleep and he had gently loosened his hand from her fingers. She was the only person that he cared for in all the world.