Gerald Seymour - Condition black

And he hadn't the heart to tell Erlich that at least one of them had been a woman. When he had gripped at a sweater his fingers had caught a bra strap. Might just ruin Erlich's night altogether.

A car came past them fast, sprayed them with road water, heading away from the village. It was a long two miles to the next village, to the policeman's house.

Dr Tariq sipped at his fresh pressed juice, as he waited for the Colonel to be admitted. Dr Tariq had little respect for the military men of his country, but his contempt was kept concealed. They were the power of the regime, they were the provider of resources.

He had no interest in the executioners and the torturers and the interrogators of the regime. He was a scientist, he was responsible only to his work. A laboratory technician had come to him the previous month, spoken of a cousin taken into custody and no word of him had been heard by the family. Could the Director, please, please, use his highly esteemed influence? He had not picked up the telephone. It was not his business. Only his work was his business.

The Colonel, too, was all business. No niceties with the Colonel of Intelligence, Dr Tariq thought. The Colonel said the name.

The name was that of Frederick Bissett.

He repeated the name. "Frederick Bissett of the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston."

"And his rank?"

"Senior Scientific Officer."

"His department?"

"His identification card gives him access to the H3 building."

He stared out of the window of his office at the broken upper structure that had housed the Osirak reactor. The jagged, wrecked shapes of the crippled reactor were never far from his thoughts, as present as a most recent bereavement.

" H 3 is where a most acclaimed team of scientists work on the study of implosion, Colonel… Bissett, how could he be attracted?"

"Money, no doubt."

"You know that?"

The Colonel opened his briefcase. He passed to Dr Tariq a transcript of the message from London.

Dr Tariq read it and smiled faintly. "A Senior Scientific Officer, in that department, I would want him, Colonel, subject to your being absolutely satisfied that you are not importing a foreign spy into my team. To have any scientist from Britain's best team would be so exceptionally unusual as to create suspicion on this score, but I will grant that the circumstance of your discovering his possible willingness to join us are themselves so, well, so exceptionally unusual that I believe luck will be on your side."

Dr Tariq outlined the terms that could be offered to Frederick Bissett, and stated that he would have prepared, by that evening, a list of questions to be put to Frederick Bissett, before a deal would be struck.

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'."