CONDITION BLACK MASTER

by Unknown

  An hour after he should have been home, half an hour after she should have left for school, at the time that she should have been sitting in the classroom with Frank's and Adam's teachers, Sara went upstairs to change out of her suit.

  "Aren't you going, Mummy?" A small voice from the bottom of the stairs.

  " N o . "

  "Why aren't you going, Mummy?"

  "Because your father is not home."

  "Don't you want to hear about us?"

  "It's just not possible."

  "Where is Daddy?"

  "I don't know, and I don't bloody care . . . "

  11

  It was a room bare of decoration except for the requisite Annigoni Queen and the tyre company calendar, the one with rural views of his country. At least it was not a cell.

  Bissett sat on a straight-back chair at a small table, his head in his hands. He didn't care, any longer, to look up at the Ministry policeman standing, arms folded, impassive, in front of the door.

  It was the most shameful hour of his life. He had been directed out of the line of cars to the side of the road by the Falcon Gate, up against the high wire fence. There had been two of them at the car door when he had opened it, and one had put a hand on his sleeve to ease him out of the car, and one had reached inside for the briefcase. Another Ministry policeman had been waving through the cars behind him. He had seen all their white staring faces, through their rain-dribbled windows, as he had stood in the wet. People who recognised him, and people who did not, staring at him, wondering why he had been hauled from his car.

  He had started, of course, to try to explain when they had shovelled him into the back of the police van. He had been ignored. Two blank, uninterested faces in the back with him. He had tried anger, and he had tried being reasonable, no response.

  He had been taken into the police building. More faces turned to him. The faces of Ministry policemen on the front desk, and on the staircase and in the corridor. Faces that looked him over, stripped him to the quick.

  They had sat him in the room. An Inspector had been brought in to see him. Bisselt had recognised rank and status. Right, fine, at last time to talk to someone with an ounce of commonsense, someone in charge of these cretins on the gate. Again, he had explained. Perfectly straightforward, pressure of work, need to complete a paper, wife going to a parent-teacher evening, him minding the children. Couldn't have been more reasonable, should have been the end of it . . . hadn't been the end of it. The Inspector hadn't argued, hadn't said anything at all, the Inspector had just walked out. He was left with the Ministry policeman for company.

  He had asked if he could telephone his wife, because she was expecting him, and the Ministry policeman had shaken his head.

  He needed to telephone his wife, he'd said, because she was going out that evening, and again the shake of the head. God, she'd be furious, and for once that was going to be the least of his troubles.

  He sat with his misery and his shame.

  It would be half round the Establishment by the middle of the next morning . . . Frederick Bissett caught at the Falcon Gate, taken out of his car, marched to a police van, taken off for questioning.

  He heard the footsteps approaching in the corridor.

  The Security Officer came in with the Inspector behind him.

  The Ministry policeman was dismissed and the Inspector stood in his place. The Security Officer came forward and took the chair at the table. Bissett could smell the sherry on his breath.

  The small eyes pierced him. He doubted there were more than a dozen out of the 5000 who worked at the Establishment who would not have recognised the Security Officer. The eyes were bright, sparkled at him.

  " D r Bissett, Dr Frederick Bissett?"

  He had to strain forward to hear the softness of the voice.

  " Y e s , that's me."

  "Senior Scientific Officer?"

  "In H3, yes."

  "And how many years have you been with us, Dr Bissett?"

  "Since 1979, that's when I joined . . ."

  " S o you're not a new boy?"

  " N o . "

  " Y o u know the procedures?"

  " Y e s . "

  There was a slow, dead silence in the interview room. The Security Officer's eyes never left his. When he moved his head right, left, dropped it, those eyes followed his. It was what they said a stoat did with a rabbit, first capture its eyes, then create terror, then kill.

  " Y o u are a signatory to the Official Secrets Act, Dr Bissett?"

  He stammered, " Y e s , yes I am . . ."

  " A n d you are cognizant of the security measures applied at this Establishment?"

  "Of course, I am, yes."

  A quiet whiplash in the voice. "What were you doing taking classified papers, that should under no circumstances leave the Establishment, off the premises?"

  He felt so utterly feeble. He explained. The pressure of work as dictated by his Senior Principal Scientific Officer, Reuben Boll. The pressing need for this paper to be completed by the morning. The parent-teacher evening at school. His wife having agreed to attend, his having to be home to be with his young boys, his intention to work at home, through the night if necessary, on this badly needed paper.

  "Has this happened before?"

  "What? Being stopped and searched, do you mean?"

  " N o , Dr Bissett. I mean, is this the first time you've tried to smuggle classified material out of the Establishment?"

  "I can't have that. I'm sorry. I won't have 'smuggled' . . ."

  " Y o u are asking me to believe that your behaviour was not criminal, merely crassly stupid?"

  His head was in his hands again. Unless he laid the weight of his head on his hands he thought his body might keel over from the chair and down to the linoleum-covered floor.

  "I have been very stupid . . . "

  "Just Stupid?"

  He raised his head He looked into the eyes of the Security Officer. What the hell was the bloody man talking about? What in God's name was the bloody man at?

  "What else?"

  " T o work at home with those papers would be stupid, to have any other purpose for those papers could be criminal He pushed himsell up from the table. He felt his voice surge.

  "That's idiotic, and I'm not having it."

  "What's idiotic, Dr Bissett?"

  "The suggestion that I'm a criminal . . ."

  "I don't think you heard me say that, Dr Bissett. I don't think you heard me accuse you of any such thing I expect you'd like to go home now, Dr Bissett."

  From the upper window of the interview room, through the marginally raised Venetian blind, the Security Officer watched Bissett, a pathetic creature, led from the doorway of the police building to a car.

  Before he left the police building, he congratulated the Inspector on the vigilance of his men, and he took away with him the files marked SECRET.

  Before he left for home, he put through a call to the Night Duty officer of the D Branch of the Security Service to request that a telephone intercept procedure should, immediately, be commenced on the home receiver of Frederick Bissett, 4 Lilac Gardens, Tadley, Berks. Merely precautionary, he explained, probably this Bissett was over stressed, no more. He would review the request in a week.

  The Inspector's men, some of the younger and brighter members of his force, God willing, would be sufficient to keep a covert watch in Lilac Gardens overnight. And the rest could wait until the morning.

  The boys were in the living room, watching 'Dynasty'. It was past their bedtime, and they were still dressed. Neither of them had looked at him. They were both bright, they both did well at school. They would both have been given high marks by their teachers if their mother or father had been at the meeting tonight.

  Neither looked at him. He loved those boys, and there were too many times when he did not know how to show them his love.

  Sara was not in the dining room, and she was not in the kitchen.

  His supper was on to
p of the oven. A plate covered by an upturned plate. The sausages had died, the beans congealed, the mashed potato was the colour of lead. The plates were stone cold.

  He climbed the stairs, and went into their bedroom. She was in bed, and she had her shoulder turned away from the door.

  There was the prettiness of her hair upon the pillow, and the clear white of her shoulder against the hair. Her light was off.

  He sat on the bed beside her. He tried to take her hand, but she wouldn't give it him.

  He told her what had happened. He told her of the paper that had to be finished by the morning; of his intention to work at home while she was at the school; of his arrest; of the long wait in the police building; of being interviewed by the top Security Officer. He told her what the Security Officer had said to him.

  She turned to face him at last.

  " H e was quite right. 'Crassly stupid', on the nail."

  " H e said I was stupid, not a criminal."

  " Y o u wouldn't have the balls to be a criminal, but I don't suppose criminal is what he had in mind. If they sent for the top man I expect they were more fussed about your being a spy or a traitor. Well, I could have reassured them on that front as well."

  He left her in the darkened room, and went down to the kitchen to see if any alternative could be found to the supper on offer.

  The courier was brought from Heathrow to the Embassy by a car carrying C.D, plates. In the Embassy basement, next to the coding and enciphering room, was the secure Communications Area. The Communications Area was no more than a metal box that measured twelve feet by twelve feet by seven feet high. It was the one area of the Embassy where the Military Attache felt able to discuss the confidential aspects of their work with Faud of the Cultural Centre and Namir who was the chauffeur to the Commercial Attache. The box was regularly scanned with a voltmeter and a spectrum analyser. The briefing from the Colonel was read by each of them in turn. From the briefing's requirements, a list of priorities was drawn up. A message was prepared, to be taken that night to the drop on Wimbledon Common.

  When they were out of the suffocating atmosphere of the box, Faud took a taxi to Sussex Gardens and the home of the Trade Attache. Once there, he requested in a whisper that the Trade Attache immediately, despite the late hour of the evening, telephone Mr Justin Pink and arrange a meeting in the morning, on a serious matter involving a contract.

  He had wondered whether they would come again in an early-morning call with their handguns and sledgehammers. Instead there came, by messenger, a handwritten letter from the Home Office addressed to Major R. Tuck, M.C. C.de G . , inviting him, civilly enough it had to be said, to lunch at the Reform Club.

  The signature, spelled out in capitals underneath the scrawl, was of a name that he did not know.

  After he had seen that Louise was sleeping as well as possible, he had laid out a clean shirt and he had brushed the dust from his best double-breasted pinstripe and he had sponged his Brigade of Guards tie. And while the dog was out for the last time he had bossed his black shoes to a gleaming shine. Years since he had last dressed up, probably not since Louise and he had gone to the school, seen the headmaster, pleaded awkwardly for the boy's expulsion to be cancelled, and been turned down flat.

  He doubted if he could have found an excuse that would have satisfied them. The letter had made it clear that an arrangement had been made for the District Nurse to be at the Manor House for all of the hours he would be gone. They obviously knew his circumstances backwards.

  That night, before he climbed into his cold bed, he drank two and a half fingers of whisky. He wanted to sleep decently, for once, so that he would be alert, when he was at the Reform, when the agenda was his son.

  " I f I ask too much of you, Frederick, then you must say so."

  Bissett stood in front of Boll's desk. He had the two files in his hands. He had been to the Security Officer's room, first thing, and they had been handed back to him without comment.

  " W e are a team here, Frederick, and a team is only as good as the weakest link."

  He had scarcely slept. Sara had not spoken to him as she had prepared the children for school. He had made his own breakfast.

  "While we want for nothing here, every other civil service department complains of cutbacks. Only through being an outstanding team can we justify our privileged position. You understand that, Frederick?"

  There was something nauseating about the reasonableness that Boll play-acted. Obviously the Security Officer had been in contact with Boll. They all knew, he was sure they all knew, because Carol had not told him that he was late for the typist that he had booked. Carol had merely told him that Boll was asking for him.

  ". . . D o you hear me, Frederick?" Bissett had lost the thread altogether, but he mumbled his assent. "There are too many now who are prepared to deride our work here as mediocre. There are too many who say that original thinking in this Establishment gave out ten years ago. There are too many who say that we only survive off the backs of the Americans. But we are not a backwater and I want the best from the people who work for me, only the best."

  "I hope to have my paper completed by lunchtime, Reuben."

  " T h e silly episode of last night is now forgotten, Frederick."

  "Thank you, Reuben."

  Forgotten? Not quite forgotten.

  The Security Officer might well have been inclined, on reflection, and on Reuben Boll's say-so, to forget the matter of Dr Bissett's taking classified documents off Establishment premises.

  He would have entered a short note in his file and that would have been that. But it would not now be left solely to the Security Officer's discretion. He had made a request for a telephone intercept to be put on all calls from Bissett's house, and he had asked for covert surveillance from the Ministry police. By 9.15

  the Security Officer knew that Bissett had driven straight home, had not used his own telephone, nor gone out to use a public call box, nor made any stop on his way in to the Falcon Gate. If there had been anything sinister in the affair, in the Security Officer's belief, he would at some stage last evening have warned a contact of his temporary arrest. The Security Officer had gone through the Personnel file.

  Bissett was a junior scientist in the mould of most of his contemporaries. Pretty bright, judging by his assessments. Absolutely no sign of erratic, even eccentric, behaviour. Everything about the record of Dr Bissett was reassuring.

  But the matter was not going to be forgotten because Curzon Street had rung and left a message to inform him that that prig Rutherford would be back, later in the day. Just a precaution, of course.

  "You'll come?"

  "I don't know, it's not . . ."

  "Got to come."

  "It's not easy getting someone to babysit."

  "Find someone, go on, make the effort."

  "Well . . ."

  "Just a few friends, let our hair down a bit, nice people."

  " I ' m not sure thai Frederick . . ."

  "Drag him along, don't take any excuses."

  "He's not very . . . "

  "He'll be all right. We have great parties, Sara. May not be able to do much else, hut we do throw a great party."

  Sara smiled. " O . K . We'll be there."

  "That's the girl."

  For a very brief moment, Pink's hand brushed against Sara's hip. Debbie was in the kitchen, heating the coffee. The girls were in the dining room, setting up their equipment.

  "Got to earn the old crust."

  "I'll see you this evening, then, and thank you . . . "

  Erlich toyed with The Times and stared around him. The great expanse of the hall and the gallery and the gathering of clubland for its lunch. It looked to Erlich like a cross between a Hollywood set, with any number of David Niven look-alikes, young and old, mostly old, and the Rome Stock Exchange. He was surprised by the noise. He thought London clubs were for sleeping, even dying, in.

  Major Tuck cut a good figure. He wasn't the shambling old
man who had refused them entry at his front door. He looked good, well turned out too, and he sat straight in a high-backed leather chair, ignoring the throng round about him.

  He had a handful of what looked to Erlich like military journals on a table beside him and he devoured them one by one. He had never once looked up. He was letting them come to him.

  And, by God, Rutherford was taking his time, but if they were keeping him waiting then Colt's father didn't seem to give a damn.

  Had he and I but met

  By some old ancient inn

  We should have sat us down to wet

  Right many a nipperkin!

  But ranged as infantry,

  And staring face to face,

  I shot at him as he at me,

  And killed him in his place.

  I shot him dead because

  Because he was my foe,

  Just so: my foe of course he was:

  That's clear enough; although . . .

  Erlich shifted in his chair, to settle the dull pain in his crotch.

  Contemplation of the melancholy figure opposite, who in a different world, thought Erlich, would have been a man he would have liked to know, wet a nipperkin with, whatever that was, gave way to thoughts of Penny Rutherford looking him over in the bath.

  "Are you Erlich?"

  Erlich looked up. A small man, thinning with age, a stoop in his shoulders. His suit seemed a size too big. He had a grey, gaunt face and his sparse hair was brushed down in tracks over his scalp.

  " I ' m Bill Erlich, yes."

  "That's rather a nasty bang you've had. Rutherford said I'd recognise you."

  He said his name was Barker, Dickie Barker, actually. Only when he could see into Barker's eyes did Erlich find any strength in the man. The eyes were good, the rest of him looked worn out.

  Erlich was up from his chair. "Are you with Rutherford?"

  "Rutherford is sometimes with me . . . " A glacial smile. "Out of town today, his section head tells me. It's his section head that answers to me . . . Come on then, Mr Erlich."