CONDITION BLACK MASTER Read online

  " I ' m afraid we've missed out. World's upside down and Frederick Bissett's on the bottom."

  "It's like a trap, really, isn't it? And it's difficult to know how to break free."

  Her back arched, her thigh muscles taut. Reaching for him, rising to him. Him deep in her.

  Oh, the fucking goodness of it, of him. When was it last as fucking good? Was it ever as fucking good with Frederick fucking Bissett?

  Grinding her slowly away, breaking her will to compete with him. He was marvellous. Taking her with him .Best ever. . . better than the Ceramics tutor, and that was forever ago. Don't match him. Let him do it all, because that's what he was telling her.

  Kissing him, holding him, running her fingers on his back. She was falling, she was letting her legs slide from against his hips. She was his. Slow, so slow . . . Taking her as she had not been taken.

  Slow, slow, till she'd scream. Oh, oh, fucking good . . . H e r head thrashing on the pillow, Debbie's pillow. Hearing her own voice.

  Recognising Sara Bissett's voice. Little shouts, slight calls. She moaned. He came inside her, deep inside her. She cried out.

  He rolled away. Bloody hell, and the light was still on, the door was still open, and she could hear the shouting and the laughter shimmer up the stairs, and the rattle of plates, and the thump of the music. Didn't care, didn't give a damn. She played patterns with her fingernail in the hair on his chest.

  Her husband was downstairs with the voices and the food and the music, and she didn't give a damn.

  They were still in the corner, left to themselves. To Colt, he was just a target. He felt no emotion towards the man, no pity and no contempt. The time was right. The timing was the gamble.

  It was his alone to choose.

  He said, "There is another way."

  "I don't know it. God knows, I've looked elsewhere. Too high-powered, too specialised, that's the trap."

  "Go abroad."

  Bissett said, "It's against the rules."

  " Y o u go abroad and you don't tell them you're going."

  "That's . . . "

  "That's looking after yourself, Frederick. You go abroad where your work is accorded the respect it deserves, and where it is paid what it deserves."

  "What you mean . . . "

  "I mean, where you are a top man, head of a department. I mean where you are paid a hundred grand a year, no tax."

  "I beg your pardon . . ."

  "A team working for you, superb working and living conditions."

  "I really don't know . . . "

  Colt said, " D r Bissett, you can leave here tonight, you can go to your security people, you can report this conversation. I'll be in shit, and you'll be a hero and poor. On the other hand, you can agree to meet some people, you can discuss a work offer, a meeting without strings. Which, Dr Bissett?"

  He recognised the wife. She came across to them. She said nothing. A beautiful woman. She looked as though she had had one too many.

  Colt wrote a telephone number on a sheet of a notepad from his shirt pocket. He looked into Bissett's face, he saw the trust brimming in his eyes. He handed the paper to Bissett.

  Bissett said, "I think it's time we went home, Sara, don't you?"

  12

  He had had the same fierce throbbing ache - and the same sense of shame the morning after his "stag night", just him and the junior physics lecturer who had agreed, after having his arm twisted, to be his best Man. And, once before , when he graduated. Breakfast this morning was absolutely out ol the question.

  Sara had followed him round the house when they were back inside. "Had he enjoyed himself? Just a little? It hadn't been too frightful, had it?'' He wasn't sure it hadn't, And she hadn't worn her nightdress when they went to bed and she had clung to his back, and all he had wanted was to keep the room from rocking.

  He could hear the clatter of plates and mugs, and he could hear her shouting up the stairs for the boys t»» hurry themselves.

  As he shaved, and then as he dressed, there were the moments of truth remembered from last night. He asked himself what had got into him that he had accepted the telephone number of the young man who called himself Colt. What in Christ's name had he done that for? Why? Well, obviously he'd drunk too much.

  No . . . not just because he had drunk too much, and he was committed to nothing, absolutely nothing. Of course he wasn't committed to anything, it was a conversation at a party . . . That was utter rubbish, and a Senior Scientific Officer at A.W.E.

  didn't have to have it spelled out to him.

  He went downstairs. The boys were down already and in their school pullovers, and bubbling to their mother because Vicky had let them sit up and watch television till late. He loved those boys. Sara protested he must eat his toast, the boys hooted with laughter, and the pain of the noise drove him, almost at a run, out of the house.

  The young man had been a very pleasant young man, and he'd talked good sense. No strings, no commitment, just a conversation.

  The Ministry policeman on the gate, he'd know that bastard.

  Same bastard. He produced his I/D card. The man said, "Once more into the breach, Dr Bissett?" and all the way to his office Bissett hunted in his aching head for a stinging, annihilating riposte, but all the best lines seemed inadequate for use on the policeman.

  Carol was handing the day's internal post to Basil. Basil had his bulging briefcase on the floor beside his feet as he flicked through the brown re-usable envelopes. Basil wouldn't be stopped by any bastard of a Ministry policeman when he cycled to H area from Boundary Hall. The Clerical Assistants were shrugging out of their coats, squeezing lipstick onto their faces, filling the coffee machine . . . and there was the young man. The young man sat close to Carol's desk and he had a raincoat over his knees, and an attache case that he held close against his chest. The young man seemed to be mesmerised by Basil.

  "Morning, Dr Bissett," Carol's singing greeting.

  "Morning, Carol."

  The young man's head didn't jerk. There was nothing obvious in his reaction. The young man's head tilted upwards. A good-looking young man, Bissett thought, didn't look as though he was from the Establishment, might be down from London, the tie was London. Carol was handing him his own mail. He sensed that the young man watched him. He dropped three of his four envelopes into Carol's bin. He headed down the corridor, for his office.

  He heard Carol say, " T h e problem is, Mr Rutherford, that Mr Boll may not be coming straight in. His diary's locked in his room. If he's a meeting first thing then I don't know when he'll be here."

  He was at the door of his office, reaching for his keys.

  A quiet, pleasant voice, " I ' m not in a hurry. On the other hand, if that's coffee that I see being brewed . . . "

  He could listen. If he listened and did not like what he heard then he could walk away. Frederick Bissett was his own master.

  He could control what he had begun. Why should he not be able to control his destiny?

  A little past eleven o'clock, he left his office. He felt quite calm. He locked the door behind him and he walked down the corridor. He paused by Carol's desk. He didn't have to speak to her. The young man was still sitting in the easy chair near to Carol's desk. The young man was watching him. He didn't have-to offer an explanation to Carol as to why he was leaving H3 in the middle of the morning.

  "I'll be gone for a few minutes, Carol."

  The young man looked to Bissett like a civil servant, perhaps from the Property Services Agency, perhaps from the Directorate of Defence Services, another of the creatures who came down from London, knowing nothing, to pry into the efficiency of the Establishment. The young man was watching him.

  He would only be a few minutes because that was all that it would take for him to drive across to the main canteen area where the public telephones were.

  The telephone shrilled below him. The woman shouted at her baby to be quiet, and he heard her answer the telephone.

  She came up the s
tairs to him. She knocked and opened the door. She seemed to him broken by the poverty, anxiety, of her life. She looked at him with a sort of longing. Not how Fran looked at him. It was as if she knew that he was free, and she was not free. She told him that there was a man on the phone for him. He went down the stairs fast.

  Bissett, poor bloody Bissett.

  "Hello, Doctor Bissett, very good of you to call me. Inconvenient, not a bit . . . You would? That's excellent. Of course not, no, just a talk . . . That's grand."

  Colt said where they should meet, when they should meet. He put the phone down. She might have thought that he was free, but what did she know? Free to go back to Baghdad, to the Haifa Street Housing Project, when he had finished and there he would die a little until the next time he was called to the Colonel's office.

  And his future? That was a big word, too big for Colt. Too far away, anyway, to think about.

  The woman was still trying to calm the baby's crying.

  It was Frederick on the telephone. It was so rare for him to use an Establishment telephone that her first reaction was that it must be catastrophe . . . He told her that he would not be home until late, that he had a meeting, that they were working through the evening. He was always curt on the telephone. She didn't quiz him, and she wasn't sorry that she would be spared the effort of making conversation with her husband that evening.

  And she hadn't called Debbie. She would have to be braver before she could speak to Debbie, thank her for the party, tell her that Frederick had enjoyed himself.

  The party was still just a bad dream, and in the nightmare was the beauty of Justin's loving. She went back to the kitchen, back to turning the collars on the boys' second school shirts. Odd, really, that Frederick had actually seemed to enjoy himself, hadn't bitched all the way home.

  Oh, but he'd been good, better than anything ever before, Justin Pink and his loving.

  Colt spilled his information. They heard him out. They talked between themselves. When they switched back to him they explained what they wished of him. Faud shook his hand. Namir kissed his cheek.

  Faud's question. "But why, Colt?"

  "Why what?"

  "Why does he come to us?"

  " M o n e y . "

  "Just for that?"

  "Well, he's flattered, too, but most of all he wants the money.

  You saw the state of his accounts."

  "You're of his country, don't you mind?"

  An absurd question. Colt didn't care. "All that nationalist crap is for the birds."

  They did not understand the world of the mercenary, they did not understand how a Senior Scientific Officer would agree to meet with agents of a foreign power. They couldn't understand it because in their own country the traitor was going to fetch up in the cells of the Department of Public Security and from there straight on to the Abu Ghraib gaol, and from there, no change, the Medical City Mortuary. Either that or they were shot in Athens, or in London. That's what they did to their own.

  They said it would all be in place. They went over again what Colt had to do. They said the arrangements were in hand to provide him once more with a pistol.

  Rutherford asked Boll to tell Carol that no calls should be put through. He reached for the radio on the window ledge, tuned it to classical, turned the volume half-way up. The Senior Principal Scientific Officer hadn't apologised for keeping him waiting the whole of the morning, so he didn't ask his permission to switch on the radio.

  He hadn't messed with any Home Office nonsense. He had told Boll that he was from the Security Service, he had invited Boll to check his credentials with the Security Officer, which of course, he had.

  "Frederick Bissett . . ."

  The antagonism cut across the room. Nothing new and he could cope with it. Nobody loved the man from the Security Service.

  "What about Bissett?"

  "Just running a routine check."

  " A s I understand it, the matter at the Gate was cleared up to the complete satisfaction of the Security Officer."

  "Well, you know the form, you working for government just the same as me, these things sort of have a way of developing their own momentum . . . "

  "Come to the point . . . What do you want to know?"

  "I just want to talk about Dr Bissett."

  Rutherford didn't have a notebook out, and he hadn't wired himself with the pocket cassette recorder that he carried in his attache case.

  "What about Bissett?"

  "His work."

  "You're not cleared to hear about his work."

  "Let's say, the quality of his work . . ."

  "It is quite satisfactory."

  "But he needed to take work home."

  " W e are not all time servers, Mr Rutherford. When we have a job to do, then we get it done."

  "Would it not have been more natural for Bissett to have requested permission to take those two files off the Establishment?"

  "I can't recall exactly the circumstances that day, perhaps I wasn't here."

  Rutherford noted it, the hesitation. He would remember that.

  It was safe to assume that the Security Officer had spoken to Boll already. The man gave away that he had been warned.

  "Is he a good worker?"

  "I've no reason to think otherwise."

  "A good member of the team in this building?"

  "Quite . . . satisfactory."

  "A man who makes friends?"

  "It's difficult, Mr Rutherford, to be well liked here. We're not a soccer squad. We are a group of expert nuclear scientists. We have our own work to get on with, that's how we live. Is this a social club? No, it is not. Do we prop up a bar all night? No, we don't. Most of us, from the style and nature of our work, are private people. I doubt, Mr Rutherford, that where you live you are the life and soul of your neighbourhood."

  Point scored. Rutherford took it. Penny always said that he was so private that the rest of the street wouldn't know he was alive.

  "I am merely trying to establish the motives of Dr Bissett, in taking classified files out of his office, in direct contradiction of standing instructions."

  "Then you'd better ask him."

  "I will. Is Bissett in line for promotion?"

  "I don't know, not my decision."

  "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 tr
affic 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.