Gerald Seymour - Condition black

"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 Bissett?"

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."