Gerald Seymour - Condition black

Thank God it was over… When she came back into the hall, Sara could see Frederick's face. Like he'd aged ten years since he had gone to work that morning.

Sara said that supper would be a few minutes.

He said that after supper they would all play Scrabble, then he saw the letter from the bank. She watched as he tore the envelope, unopened, into small pieces.

The Kurd from the city of Kirkuk had been under surveillance for a week, and it had been observed that he had come to the new Post Office and been seen at the post-restante boxes on three days of the last seven. The man was arrested as he came away from the new Post Office on Al Kadhim street in the old Juafir district.

He was one amongst the four million Kurds struggling for a life-hold inside Iraq. He was of the people that had been shelled and bombed and attacked with the odourless gas canisters. The man was a member of the "Peshmerga", the guerrilla army that fought, poorly armed, to hold back the regime of the Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council. The man was also a field agent of the Mossad. Because he was a Kurd, he had always run the risk, in Baghdad, that he would come under observation.

There were three of them. They carried their Makharov pistols under their coats. They had closed on him. He saw them. He might have stood his ground. He might have stated, baldly, that he awaited a letter from a cousin living in Turkey, he might have spun any tissue of lies… He had run.

He had burst past them. He had turned once to see how far behind him they were. He had turned as he ran and he had seen them reaching for their handguns from their shoulder holsters.

He had collided into the woodframe stall, pushed on old pram wheels by a seller of pistachio nuts. He had fallen.

The sirens howled across the city, and the Kurd was held in the basement cells of the Department of Public Security.

It was the best day Erlich had known since he had come to London.

A good breakfast, good company, a good picnic, good shooting.

After the picnic he had let go a magazine of the Ingram, and he had fired the G-3 through a telescope sight and he'd had a better group than Joe from corporate security and he had a $20 bill, proper old greenback, to prove it. He had told Ruane, until the big man had looked tired of hearing it, that he was grateful for his day.

He stood on the corner of South Audley Street and Grosvenor Square, searching for a free taxi. He held the paper bundle against his chest. The bundle was a shirt that he had been lent, and a singlet and a pair of underpants and grey socks, laundered and ironed. A taxi veered across to the kerb in front of him.

He had the weight of the Smith and Wesson, in its holster, pulling at his belt, and he felt good.

"You're Rutherford?"

" Y e s, sir."

" Y o u did well in Northern Ireland."

"Thank you, sir."

"Tell me, Rutherford, why did you join the Service?"

"I thought I would be doing something worthwhile."

" D o you still believe that?"

" I f I didn't, sir, I'd leave."

"Committed to the Service, Rutherford?"

" Y e s, sir."

"What's the hardest thing about maintaining that commitment?"

" T h e enforced privacy, sir."

"It's true. We're a lonely breed. Can you cope with that, being outside the pale?"

"I hope so, sir."

" T h e Service has to be first, always first."

The Director General walked to his cabinet. He knew that young Rutherford had been drinking already, could smell it. No concern of his. If he had run an abstainers' show then Curzon Street would have been as empty as a cemetery at night. He poured two whiskies. He added a splash of water.

It was his pleasure, from time to time, to chat with his junior Executive Officers. Something to do with growing old, he supposed. He liked their company, he enjoyed their certainty.

" T h e American, Erlich, what do you make of him?"

"He's an ex-teacher, not the usual F. B. I, material, and not terribly skilled – you couldn't imagine him surviving a day in Belfast, for example. I have no doubt this is his first major assignment and he wants to make double certain it works for him. Career-wise, he doesn't intend the grass to grow under his shoes. He's a curious mixture. He'll go through a brick wall and back, he's belligerent and impatient, and he knows more Victorian poetry than I can bear to listen to."

"Not your run-of-the-mill gunslinger, then?"

" O h, he'd shoot, sir, shoot first, ask questions afterwards.. . that's metaphorical, of course."

" A n d the feelings of Erlich for the Tuck boy?"

"It's become a very personal thing, sir. The Agency man who was killed in Athens was Erlich's friend. And some days ago Bill Erlich was jumped – we were watching the Tuck place at night

– and got himself pretty badly beaten. That looked like Colt's work, too."

"He'd want him dead?"

" I f he had the chance, sir, no question."

The Director General had started to pace. They were good strides, they would have graced a fairway. There was a swell in the filled tumbler and then a trail behind him of whisky splashed on the carpet. He couldn't call in a committee to evaluate the competence of young Rutherford. Young Rutherford didn't fidget, and he liked that. Young Rutherford stood his ground. It was his decision. If he was right, well, then, he would receive no praise because his decision would never be known of. If he was wrong, well, then, disgrace…

"Major Tuck told Mr Barker and Erlich that his son had been at home. He said that his son was now gone."

" D i d he, sir?"

"If this boy, this Colt, were still in Britain, where would you look for him?"

"His mother's dying, sir. That's where I'd look for him."

"Find him, please, Rutherford, and take Erlich with you."

" Y e s, sir."

"What will you do when you find him?"

" T h e local P.C. is a very good man, sir…"

" N o, no, no. I wouldn't do that, Rutherford." The Director General gazed into Rutherford's face. He thought this could have been a pleasant young man if he had had a proper job, if he hadn't chosen to work in Curzon Street. " T h e political implications here are as long as your arm. The Iraqi connection, etc. etc. No, the best way out of this hornet's nest would be to get Erlich to kill him. No publicity, please, just dead."

The fire was heaped with coal, burning well. He sat in the easy chair and the cat was on his lap. It was a woman's room, he could see that. There was a neatness about the small pieces of furniture and the light-coloured curtains and the delicate china ornaments and the arrangement of the print pictures on the walls. It was a room to be at home in, and there was the smell of the witch hazel.

Bill had not known such a room since he had left his grandparents' home, down by the yacht harbour at Annapolis, since he had gone west to college at Santa Barbara. The room was where to end a great day.

She had poured him good wine. She had cooked him tortellini, good sauce. She was just a hell of a fine girl, she had welcomed him into her home and sat him by the fire, and she had rubbed the witch hazel into the yellow dark bruising of his face and his crotch.

She heard the taxi before him. She cut herself short in her description of how it was to be married into the Service. She had been sitting on the sofa, her ankles tucked up beside her, her skirt tight above her knees.

The taxi drove away. She had stopped talking and her head was raised, listening. The cat hadn't moved. The cat didn't care who came, who went, as long as the lap was warm. Erlich heard the scraping of a key at the front door. He had to grin… James Rutherford coming home, and not able to get his key in the hole.

Hell of a start to your evening home. The third failure with the key, and she swung her legs off the sofa and stamped out into the hall in her stockinged feet.