Gerald Seymour - Condition black

Probably half the Establishment would have defected, anywhere, before old Pig Eyes called for help again from Curzon Street.

"That you, Rutherford?"

Yes, it was James Rutherford.

"Get yourself back here."

He hadn't finished. There were a few loose ends.

" Y o u got a goodie?"

No, he didn't think so. No, there was nothing positive. But if he were to be thorough…

"Don't ask me why, starshine, but the Director General wants to take tea with you, and I don't think he means tomorrow."

There were no regrets expressed when he informed the Security Officer that he was called back to Curzon Street. "Basically, Mr Rutherford, the lesson you should carry away with you is that we know how to run our affairs at Atomic Weapons," the Security Officer told him.

As he accelerated away down the Burghfield Common Road, Rutherford thought he'd have to find some polish for his shoes, after tramping round in the rain-splashed compounds of Aldermaston, before he presented himself in the Director General's office.

And that the pubs weren't closed, and he'd get a drink before he reached the motorway. And Bissett – was he a traitor? Well, that could wait, that was apparently on the back-burner. Erlich would probably recite, "Theirs not to reason why", some crap like that.

"It's your decision, Dr Bissett."

"I used to love it, the work there."

"Used to?"

"I'm treated like dirt now."

"Then that's your decision made."

"I'm certain of it, I'm passed over for promotion this year."

"That's unthinkable, a man of your potential… "

"You probably cannot understand, it's hideous to work when you are accorded no respect."

It was dark in the car park of the pub at Stratfield Mortimer.

Their faces were briefly lit by the headlights of the cars of the first customers. Each time they were caught in the lights, Colt ducked his head away, and Bissett was like a rabbit held in a flashlamp's beam.

"Then you walk away."

"That business last year, I read something, that report from the Human Rights crowd."

"The Israelis interfering again, just their propaganda. Me, I'm not aware of torture, that sort of thing. I wouldn't be there if I didn't like the place. Heh, Dr Bissett, you don't believe what you read in the gutter press…?"

"What sort of life would I have?"

"What they told you, Dr Bissett. You'd be head of a whole department. It would be a good life, good accommodation and good facilities."

"And Sara, my wife, and the boys?"

Colt gagged… Corrected himself. "You'd take them?"

"Of course."

"They'd have a great life. They will be happy. It's a very modern country. Good British community, international school, cverydiing.. ."

Colt didn't know what the living conditions were like at Tuwaithah, he didn't even know where Tuwaithah was. He knew there was a small British community, but he had never moved in it, and he had never been within a mile of the British Club. He didn't know, but he thought that the International School might be the pits.

"I don't know what to do."

Colt said quietly, "It's your life."

"It's so difficult… "

" Y o u take your chance, or you turn your back on it."

" Y o u know, Colt, when I came here they all said that I was brilliant, that I had an original mind. I was coming to the place where there was the best original thinking in the country. That's the way it used to be. It used to be a real community of endeavour, but that community's dead now. It's not a place lor scientists any more, it's for accountants, penny-pinchers. You want to get on, you have to be a politician and a safe bureaucrat. It's 20 years since anything outstanding came out of here. They suffocate brilliance and they've strangled me. Brilliance would threaten the little pedestals of the empire builders. They dragged me down, Colt, they squashed out my brilliance… What would I be, there?"

" Y o u r own master, if you go."

"Would I be a traitor?"

Colt's head sagged back against the seat. So what the fuck would the frightened little bastard be?

"Just a word, Dr Bissett. Words don't mean much. If you go, then you are in charge of your own life. If you stay then you are their slave, till you drop, till they give you a gold watch."

"There's something I should tell you."

"What's that?"

"I've had a little… difficulty."

"What sort of difficulty?"

"I was interviewed this morning by a man from the Security Service."

Colt was straight up in the seat. His eyes roved across each of the cars parked close to the Sierra. Mind going flywheel speed.

Looking for a Watcher, looking in the darkness to see if he could isolate the shadow shape of a Watcher… fucking hell… As cool as he could make it. "Why was that, Dr Bissett?"

The blurted answer. "I had to work late, but I couldn'i be in my office because I'd said to Sara I'd look after the boys. I was taking papers home. I was stopped at the gate check. I was interviewed by the Security Officer, but there's been another man down, from London, from the Security Service. He was awful, terribly aggressive… "

The hard cut in Colt's voice. "Did you satisfy him?"

"How would I know?"

Colt said, "If you're to go, you'd better be going fast."

"I don't know, so difficult to know what's best."

"I have to know your answer."

"I tell you, I wouldn't tell another living soul, I'm just so desperately frightened."

Colt's hand rested on Bissett's arm. It was a gesture of friendship, a touch of solidarity. "I go out with you. I am with you each step of the way when you go out."

"I'll ring you."

"Tomorrow."

"I'll ring you tomorrow."

Colt slipped out of the car. He moved back in the car park so that he would not be caught in the headlights as Bissett drove away. And he was sick, sick as a dog, onto the loose chip stone of the car park. He thought he was the small bird over which the fine close-mesh net was thrown. If he flew now, he could escape.

If he stayed, he would be trapped. There was quiet around him, there was the fading of Bissett's car in the lanes. Bissett had attracted the attention of the Security Service… He retched onto the gravel behind his car and before he collected his pistol and searched all the cars in the car park he retched again until there was nothing more for him to bring up.

She heard the Sierra's engine and she broke off the conversation.

Sara put the telephone down.

Beside the telephone, on the little table in the hall, was the post that had come after he had gone to work. She had learned to recognise the type used by the bank.

She heard the car door slam shut.

She was quivering. Through all of her body there was a tightness. Debbie's voice was still in her ears, all of Debbie's regret and Debbie's pleading with her. She opened the front door. He was bent into the back of the car and he was lifting out his briefcase and his raincoat. It was the saddest thing she could remember, telling Debbie that she would not again be coming to the classes… She saw the way that he looked around him after he had locked the car. He looked to the right up Lilac Gardens, and he looked left. She thought he looked like a fugitive. He came fast over the few paces from the car to the front door, and he almost punched her out of his way as he came through the front door and into the hallway. He kicked the door shut behind him, used his heel, and the hall echoed with the rap of the front door closing and latching. She had told Debbie, no explanation, no justification, that she would not again be coming to the classes. .. The television was on in the sitting room, it was where the boys were. Any other day and he would have nodded to her, forced a smile, hurried past her. Any other day he would have gone up the stairs to change out of his jacket into the cardigan that he wore on cold evenings. Any other day, not that day. He clung to her. The angle between the arm and the lens frame of his spectacles gouged at her cheek. So long since he had held her in that way, so fiercely. As though he was struggling to reach her. She felt the trembling in his body. She couldn't see his eyes, she didn't know whether or not he wept. When she broke away it was with the muttered excuse that the supper would be boiling over on the cooker's rings, and that he should greet his boys. She went back into the kitchen. She left them, her husband and her sons who had come to him in the hallway that needed new carpeting… Thank God she had rung Debbie.