CONDITION BLACK MASTER Read online

  He might have been delayed more, but he showed the uniformed officers his F . B . I . I/D. They wouldn't have gotten round yet to worrying about Bill Erlich. Their airwaves would have been full of Colt's description, and what Bissett was wearing . . .

  but he wasn't ready for thinking yet, because of the great sickness in his stomach and the numbness in his mind. He was William David Erlich, born May 7th, 1958, son of Gerry Erlich and Marianne (Erlich) Mason, Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and he could not think straighter than a bent dime because he had shot James Rutherford dead, and he had left him. So little of it that he could remember, the shooting. The blurred and fast-moving shape of Colt, "Freeze," he remembered his roar and the lumbering outline of Rutherford . . .

  He had shot pretty Penny Rutherford's man. He knew where he had to go.

  What Hobbes saw first was the slack line of the white tape.

  He elbowed his way through the quiet and staring crowds. He flashed his card, he bent under the tape. They had not even covered the body. He was careful to avoid the three cartridge cases on the concourse floor. A dozen long strides from the body was a suitcase and a grip bag.

  He asked what had happened.

  He was told. There were two Branch men who had seen it all and had the crack of emotion in their voices.

  The taller Branch man said, "It was really difficult, it was so quick. We didn't know what we were looking for until your man yelled out. There was a fair-haired man, mid-twenties. He had a smaller man with him, glasses and raincoat. They were with two Arabs . . . "

  The other Branch man said, "They were close to the check-in on the delayed Iraqi flight. They train you for this, it's nothing like the training when it happens . . . "

  " O h , God . . . " t h e taller Branch man mouthed.

  "Spit it out," Hobbes demanded.

  " W e had a photograph, about two weeks back. Iraqi link.

  English . . . "

  " O h , Christ," the shorter Branch man seemed to crumple.

  "There's an all airport and all port watch."

  Venom in Hobbes's voice. "Just go back to bloody sleep. He's Colin Olivier Louis T u c k . "

  Hobbes walked away from them. The equation was sharp in his mind. Colt was with the Iraqis, Bissett was with the Iraqis, Colt was with Bissett. And wasn't life simple, when the light shone on it?

  Hobbes spoke fast over his personal radio. He repeated himself three, four times, so that at Curzon Street there was no possibility of a further mistake. Colt was the name he gave over and over again, and the flat statement that he would strangle those responsible, himself and with his own hands, if every airport and every ferry port in Great Britain did not have the photograph of Colt out on the Emigration Desk.

  He went back to the Branch men.

  Hobbes gave the taller of them the name of Dan Ruane and his office number.

  "I want him here. I want him here immediately . . . God, what a shambles."

  He was told what was in place, where the blocks had been set.

  He was told it was 29 minutes since the shooting. He was shown where the fair-haired man with the pistol, Colt, had fled, taking Bissett with him, through the concourse door. He was told that the American had followed him out, gone after them.

  He stood a few paces from the body. He could hear Barker's

  " W e all get what we want, a good result" ringing in his ears. He wondered who Barker would send to break it to Rutherford's wife. There was a wife, because her photograph was in Rutherford's office. It would be a bastard of a job, telling the wife that probably no one from D Branch had met.

  Hobbes knew precious little about firearms, but he matched the torn hole in the collar of Rutherford's jacket, and the two more holes in the centre of the back of the jacket, with the three cartridge cases that he had seen. It was what bloody well happened, wasn't it, when some bastard American was allowed to pretend he was on a backstreet in Chicago, and not in a crowded terminal at Heathrow.

  It couldn't have been a nightmare from which he now awoke. No nightmare, because the crash of the firing was still in his ears, and the fleeting vision of the crouched marksman was still in his mind, and there was the tear in the knee of his trousers where he had fallen from the bus. Each time his fingers went back to the frayed edge of the material, to the bleeding, grazed knee, he knew, more certainly, that it was not a nightmare from which he could awake. They were off the motorway . . . He pieced it together in his memory, which was worse than a nightmare. Colt was talking with two of the men who had greeted him, who had both on each occasion been in the hotel at Paddington. Then he was ignored. There was some anxiety, something about the delay on the flight. And then his own name shouted. A man running towards him, and shouting his name. Colt's gun up, and Colt dragging him. The sight of the marksman going to the crouch with the handgun held out in front of his face. The other man shouting his name and running between them and the marksman, and the battering of the gun. He thought he had seen the running man fall. They had shot their own man . . .

  Colt had brought the car off the motorway. They were past Crowthorne, past Bramshill. Close to Stratfield Saye where he and Sara had twice taken the boys to walk round the Wellington estate. Close to Stratfield Mortimer, where he had met Colt in the pub car park. He felt through the tear at the knee of his trousers, and his fingers were sticky from his own blood.

  "Are you all right, Colt . . . ?"

  "I'm in great shape."

  "What happened, Colt . . . ?"

  He heard the hoarse, dry laugh. "We got stuffed."

  "Who were they?"

  "One was the Security Service, he got in the way of the one from the F.B.I., the one who yelled. They were waiting for us, Dr Bissett. That flight wasn't going anywhere because they knew we were travelling. You got me? We were set up."

  "No, not by me."

  "Not by you."

  "You don't think I betrayed it?"

  "You didn't know the flight we were going on, you didn't know anything."

  He saw the young man's face. There was no panic, apparently no fear. Colt drove faster than he would have attempted on the smaller roads they now took.

  "Are we together, Colt?"

  "Have you a better idea, Dr Bissett?"

  "Where are we going?"

  The same dry-throat laugh of Colt. They were through Mattin-gley and Rotherwick, village roads, going south and west.

  The car jolted through a pothole. It was the moment he remembered. The man who had been in the outer office of H3, sitting beside Carol's desk. The man who had come to see him.

  The man younger than himself... He remembered Rutherford, the man who had brought the stench of fear into his room, into H3/2.

  "Colt, I cannot go back."

  "You go back, Dr Bissett, and it's to gaol till you die."

  He heard the reed whine of his own voice. "Are you frightened, Colt?"

  "When I have my back to the wall, when I have nowhere to run to, then I'll be frightened Not before

  Bissett shuddered He had seen the crouched stance of a marksman. He had seen a gun aimed at him, It was worse than a nightmare because he could not go back, could not wake. He could go only where Colt ran.

  His fingers played in the tear at the knee of his trousers, which was the stark living nightmare of his world.

  "You take a rifle to a man like that," Martins said. "You give it to a professional. What you do not do is put such a matter into the hands of a bungling amateur."

  He rolled the brandy in the glass. He had helped himself twice while they had waited for Barker's return. The Deputy Director General nodded agreement.

  Barker said, "A rifle, no doubt a sniper's rifle, is your only policy, Percy. Can we put the old trophies back in mothballs, where they belong, and see if we can retrieve this appalling situation? I take it that that's what we are here to do. And just let me remind you: it's a situation brought about by your friends the Iraqis."

  There was a tired sm
ile on Martins's face. He was the man who had sent a sniper beyond reach and beyond help into the Beqa'a Valley. His authority seemed unassailable.

  Barker would have been back in Curzon Street not more than ten minutes before he had heard the news from Heathrow and Hobbes's report, been turned around, spun like a top, sent back to Century House.

  Martins said, "When the report goes to the Prime Minister, as most assuredly it will, I will be remarkably happy that it is beyond my remit to explain how the only firepower directed against a known terrorist, in a crowded and public place, was in the hands of a rather junior American, along for the ride."

  "A terrorist in the pay of your friends."

  Please, gentlemen, please."

  "My advice, D.D.G., we maintain strictest silence on this matter, It may be fashionable in some circles to represent the Iraqis as just the refuse of the Middle East, but thankfully, we do not conduct our affairs on the say-so of Amnesty International.

  They have a stable regime in a turbulent area . . ."

  Barker snarled, "They send a murderer onto our streets, they suborn one of our nuclear scientists; they lay siege to our embassy in Baghdad - and all you want to do is to send them a basket of flowers. They are dangerous, these people. They are thieves and muggers on the grand scale. Unless a line is drawn and they are stopped on that line, they have the potential of causing catastrophe."

  "A pretty speech but hollow. In other words, they do what quite a lot of people do. Frankly, Dickie, I ' d have expected a little more sophistication from someone in your position. Nevertheless, I want their gunman dealt with, and I want our scientist returned, and I want the siege on our embassy lifted, and I want a blanket over the whole wretched matter."

  "Well, we agree on that at least, and now, if you will excuse me, I have business to do and I have a young widow to visit."

  Barker pushed back his chair.

  " Y o u also have an American to find, before he does any more damage . . . " Martins drank deeply. "Well, that's it then, D . D . G . , and I'm glad you agree with me that this is a matter for the Prime Minister's desk . . . "

  "I had to come, to tell you . . . "

  Erlich stood in the hallway of the small house.

  ". . . i t was my gun, and I shot him . . . "

  The door to the street was open behind him.

  " . . . I had the target in the sights. I just didn't see him . . ."

  Penny Rutherford stood in front of him. She would have been changing flowers in the sitting room when he had rung the bell.

  She was still holding the flowers, chrysanthemums, and they were dead.

  " . he wouldn't have known anything, I promise you, no ti

  pain . . .

  She turned away from him. She walked the length of the hallway, and into the kitchen. He watched as she put the flowers into the garbage. He watched her, down the length of the little house that was her home.

  ". . . I'll never forgive myself, Penny, I'm just so sorry."

  She turned and her voice was the clear-cut wind streaming from the storm's eye.

  "All your crap about dedication, all your bloody duty, and what am I left with? You stupid, silly little man. He was mine, God, what else did I have? Go away, go away from me. Go back to your bloody kindergarten, where you came from, go back to your bloody guns and toys. Go somewhere where you can't hurt good people. Get out, I don't want you here. I don't want your apologies, for God's sake. Just go."

  He closed the door behind him.

  Erlich drove away fast. There was only one place now he could head for.

  Dan Ruane stood in the middle of the concourse. There were high white sheet-screens around the shooting scene. Rutherford's body was still there, but covered by a blanket. There was the fast flash of the photographer's bulb, Scene of Crime completing their work. The suitcase and the grip bag were now open. The clothes were being lifted out, checked, noted, piled. There were chalk circles round the three spent cartridge cases.

  "We lost a brave and able young man because your cowboy didn't know what the hell he was doing . . . "

  "Crap."

  ". . . and because he couldn't face the music, he ran."

  "You won't like it, Hobbes, but you're going to get them, home truths, stuffed up your gullet. The failure was yours. You moved nowhere on this. Every break you had, every lead, came from Bill Erlich. You sit in your goddam ivory towers, you think you matter in the world, whatever world. Erlich came here expecting action, expecting a good scene, and he got himself pissed on. Your resources are pathetic. Your work rate is pathetic.

  Your commitment, beside Bill Erlich's, well, it's laughable."

  The photographer with the flash camera on the tripod was watching him. The two detectives on their knees and taking the clothes from the suitcase and the grip bag were listening to him.

  The policeman with the chalk mess on his fingers eyed him. And Dan Ruane, the big man, didn't give a damn who listened.

  Hobbes stood his ground. " H e ran away . . . "

  "Say that again, and I'll put your teeth at the back of your throat."

  Hobbes stood his full height. "Grow up, Ruane. This isn't the Wild West. Just tell me where you think he's gone."

  It might just be, just, that Erlich had one more chance, not more than one more chance. And it might just be, just, that if Erlich didn't take that chance then Dan Ruane would be on the flight out with him. One more chance, and that was stretching it, that was all Erlich had.

  "He'll have gone where he reckons Colt's gone . . . Have you a better idea where he should have gone?"

  " W e have very little time, Dr Bissett."

  " Y e s . "

  "What we have going for us, and it's not a lot, is that with everything else that's queuing up, they take time to get their act in place."

  " Y e s . "

  "What I reckon is that the ferries are our best chance. You with me?"

  "Which ferries?"

  "Weymouth, Bridport down south, boat across to France. One of the night sailings. They'll take time to get their act in place, that's our best hope."

  " I f you say so, Colt."

  They were past Salisbury. Colt drove into the lay-by beside the darkened windows of the shop. The village was called Bishopstone. It was a small place, tucked away from the great world in vast tracts of farmland. He had followed the side roads, as far as was possible, through the villages. He was safe among the villages and on the high-hedged lanes, because that was the country he knew. Bishopstone and Heathrow, they were not of the same world.

  " W e have to decide where we go from here," Colt said.

  " Y o u make the decision."

  There was a quiet grimace on Colt's face. "It's rather awkward . . . They'll give it back to you, of course, but I don't have enough money for the ferry tickets. Will you lend me what we need?"

  "I've just small change."

  " Y o u haven't . . . ?"

  "I left my cheque book at home, for Sara . . . I doubt I've five pounds . . . "

  "Jesus . . . "

  Colt heard the cringe in Bissett's voice. "I left my cheque card, too. I didn't think I'd need English money in Baghdad."

  Colt's eyes never left the road.

  He drove on. Wild and lovely and lonely country, on from Bishopstone, and once he braked hard and threw Bissett forward, and he missed the big sow badger that treated the road as its own. At Broad Chalke, he found a telephone box that was not vandalised. He took coins from his pocket. He parked under trees, away from the lights near the telephone box and the bus stop.

  She was out in the scullery, working to a hurricane lamp because the electricity had never been run into the damp stone extension of the kitchen.

  The telephone rang.

  Fran was good at it and old Vic, down at the pub, would take all the plucked pheasants she could bring to him.

  She came out of the scullery, and the breast feathers were spilling off her arms and her chest, through the kitchen and through the sma
ll room where old Brennie grunted before the closed fire. The cottage was bitter quiet without Rocco's snore, without the jangle of his collar chain. She never knew whether it was real, him sleeping through the telephone's ringing. He said it was the war, the trench slits, sleeping in them and all, under the artillery at Monte Cassino.

  She heard his voice. "Thought you were gone, Colt."

  He said that he was in deep trouble.

  "They going to get you, Colt?"

  He said that a man had been shot, likely killed, because they were trying to get to him.

  "What you wanting from me?"

  He said that the boys would have money, Billy and Zap, Charlie and Kev, Dazzer and Zack, Johnny. He said that without money he was gone, and she should try old Vic. He said that he needed five hundred.

  "I can't get that sort of money, Colt, not quick."

  He said that if he did not have the money, then he was gone.

  He said that he would be there in an hour, in the village, for the money. And they'd get it back, he'd see to that.

  "They been here for you, Colt. You shouldn't be coming. They shot Rocco in the Top Spinney and they went into your house, Colt. They went into your mother's room with guns."

  He asked, were they in the village now.

  "I been in all evening, I don't know whether they're back in Top Spinney."

  "One hour, and I'm sorry as hell about Rocco . . ." he said.

  "Colt, you wouldn't have known, your mother died this evening."

  She heard in the telephone the sharp gasp of breath, and the purring when the line was cut.

  Namir and Faud were seen arriving back at the Embassy. The time of their arrival was noted, they were photographed. The building was under observation by the Watchers from B Branch.