Gerald Seymour - Condition black

" 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."

Carol, of course, was back, holding court in the outer office, back from her day at the Falcon Gate replenished with gossip. On the picket line she had gathered more weapons-grade scandal in a day than she would normally have accumulated in a month.

Bissett's open door was well within range.

Carol said…

The A90 building was awash with Department of the Environment fraud investigators.

Carol said…

The best bit was that-you're not going to believe this-a bulldozer had been ordered on the Establishment account, but delivered to A90 when it should have gone to the man's home where he ran a landscaping business. Wasn't that awful?

Carol said…

On the A90 site, it had been decided that 3500 metres of ductwork to carry nitrogen into the glove boxes where the plutonium would be worked, if the place ever worked, was going to have to be ripped out and replaced because the 2000 welds connecting the ductwork weren't up to scratch, couldn't be repaired. Five million taxpayers' pounds down the plug. Wasn't that dreadful?

Carol said…

He heard the rise and fall of Carol's voice as she distributed her precious discoveries from the picket line. The door opened across the corridor. Boll going for a late lunch in the Directors' dining room, taking a short break from the annual assessments.

Bissett hunched himself over his desk as Boll went by. Thanks to Carol's shattering revelations, thanks to the bank manager's renewed assault, thanks to his humiliation at Boll's hands over the lecture invitation, it had not been a productive morning. How would he, indeed, assess himself? " T h e work of this gifted, original physicist is undervalued in the Establishment." Was it?