His fists were clenched at the seams of his trousers. His breath came in short pants.
'Steady down, Dr Bissett.'
He could see that his bank manager was further back in his chair, almost cowering.
The bank manager waited until Bissett was at the door, until he was sure of his safety.
'I have to say it again, Dr Bissett, we cannot go on like this.'
The door slammed. The papers leaped on his desk. In fairness, the bank manager would concede, he could not see where the poor fellow could make another economy and continue to live a half-way acceptable life. But the man needn't have shouted…
Anyway, the whole thing was ridiculous, maintaining that white elephant when every school child knew that the Cold War was over and done with.
Erlich's morning was a write-off. He hadn't expected the red carpet to be unrolled for him, but he had thought that at last he would be at work, setting up his meetings, on the move. The Legal Attache 1 was once more apologetic, he had a late runner in his programme, a problem with a fraud extradition. There were problems with the warrant, and the Legal Attache was going to be down at New Scotland Yard for the morning, and probably for the afternoon.
Could Erlich manage eight o'clock the next morning?
He rang Rome, the Legal Attache's office, and spoke to the girl who typed his letters and answered his telephone. He didn't know when he'd be back and she should cancel everything for the next several days. A lunch with the Capo dello Squadro Anti-Terrorismo that he had been waiting a year for, a session with a good guy in the Guardia di Finanze, and a squash game with Dieter who was number two to the Legal Attache, and he just didn't know whether he'd be back before the Little League All Stars trip to Naples and the game against the Sixth Fleet which was the high point of the season which they played now courtesy of the Italian sunshine into late fall. Everything on his desk to go into Pending.
He had never been a happy sightseer and until his work was done, until Harry Lawrence's killer was identified and caught he couldn't see himself playing the tourist at the Changing of the Guard, or the Tower of London, even Poets' Corner which he had longed to see, as a passionate student of English poetry… that would have to wait. When this assignment was well and truly nailed he would ask Jo, long chance, if she could get over here. It would be a pleasure to share these glories with Jo. By mid morning he had been through the day's edition of the Herald Tribune. Under the dateline of Rome, that caught his eye, he read that increasing mystery surrounded the murder of Professor Zulfiqar Khan. It was now known that the body of the Professor who specialised in nuclear physics had been claimed by the Iraqi Embassy in Rome. It was not yet known what had brought the Professor to the city…
By the time he hud read the Herald Tribune from front page lead to back page comic strip, the maid had come to make up his room. There was a sniff of disapproval signifying that it was out of court for a grown man to be still in his bedroom in mid-morning, and not at a place of work.
Her vacuum cleaner drove him into the street, in search of a coffee shop.
Two espressos and a Danish pastry later, he was reduced to buying postcards. One for Jo. He had tried again in the early morning, and again the phone hadn't been picked up. He could have rung the C.B.S. office in Rome, and asked where she was, where they'd shipped her. But Jo never rang him at work, and he never rang her office secretary to find what flight she'd taken.
That was their way, their understanding. The Herald Tribune had told him that there was more confusion in Prague, more rioting in Zagreb, an O.P.E.C. meeting in Geneva, and a European summit starting that evening in Madrid. She could have been assigned to any one of them. He wouldn't have admitted it to Jo, but deep down he resented it when she was out of town and not picking up his calls. They met whenever she had a free evening and he had a free evening, and it wasn't often. It was even rarer that they could share a weekend in the villages round Orvieto.
They spent their evenings together in a trattoria on the square beside the Ponte Milvio or down in Trastevere, before a couple of hours at his place, or half a night at her apartment. They each said that it suited them, that kind of relationship. He wrote, 'Jo honey, will you pick up the goddam phone? It's me, your friend, and I need to hear your voice. Where are you? Maybe you're in London. Will look more closely at all the girls in future. Just in case.'
One for his mother. His mother had married Herbie Mason just three years after his father had been killed. They ran a hardware store and diner in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, serving the hikers and campers up on the Appalach-ian trail. He rarely heard from his mother, but he rang her each Christmas morning, wherever he was, and on her birthday, and he sent her maybe a dozen postcards a year.
One for his grandparents. They were his mother's people, they had an old weathered brick house close to the harbour moorings at Annapolis, Maryland. He was fond of them both. A bit correct for a small boy, a little formal, but they had been his proxy parents for school terms after his father's death, and after his mother had taken off with Herbie. Good people. They had never once criticised his mother's behaviour in their grandson's hearing. School terms in Annapolis, and holidays in the White Mountains, it could have been a lot worse. His grandfather was retired Navy, action in the Pacific and off Korea, where he had his own command.
If his father had lived he would now have been in his sixtieth year. Every time that he wrote postcards to his mother and to his grandparents memories of his father revived. Memories of a man going overseas in his best uniform. Memories of a man coming home for burial, with full military honours… Such a very long time ago.
He had once heard an Englishman say that what he knew of nuclear physics could be written on the back of a blackcurrant.
It was an expression that still gave him pleasure and he would have used it to describe his own limited grasp of the subject, but it would have been wasted on the sparrow-sized man across the big desk from him. The Colonel had swiftly appreciated that if he needed to describe Dr Tariq's sense of humour the backside of a blackcurrant was all he needed, and to spare.
Soldiering was what the Colonel understood. As a young paratrooper he had fought in the north against the Kurdish rebels. It was where his reputation had been forged. It was his battalion's heroic defence of their positions on the Basra to Baghdad road, when the rats from Iran had swarmed in their thousands from the marshlands, that had given him his present renown. He had commanded a unit of the Presidential Guard which provided close escort to the Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council. When the traitor scum, the creatures of the Al Daawa al Islamiya, last tried to assinate the Chairman, six of the Guard had been killed, the Colonel had taken a bullet to the stomach, but the Chairman had survived untouched. Rewards followed. The rewards of the Chairman could be generous. But the Colonel had seen to it that his name did not go forward for promotion. He could learn from the fate of those who had climbed too high. He would never be a rival, he would remain the loyal servant of the Chairman. Now he directed a section of the Military Intelligence unit concerned with the security of the state from threats outside its boundaries.
Dr Tariq told him of the death of Professor Khan, of the defection of the two French engineers, and of the Italian laboratory engineers, of a letter bomb that had been received, correctly addressed, to the same complex, to the very building alongside the one in which he now sat. He was told of Dr Tariq's passage throughout the offices and laboratories, his attempt to steady the morale of the Germans, the Austrians and of two more Italians and of a Swede. He was told that the fear must be cauterised, that the defections must be stopped.
'I shall be frank, Colonel. I have no time to waste.'
'Of course.'
'We can delude ourselves, and we could delude others, as to the real situation here, and what do we achieve? Only a crucial loss of time.'
'I understand, Dr Tariq.'
'If this complex had not been bombed by the Zionists in 1981, then we would by now have the capability for the production of nuclear warheads. During the war with the Khomeini zealots, I could not command the necessary resources to reactivate the programme following the '81 setback. I now have the necessary resources. I have the commitment of the Chairman. But – and this is why I am obliged to require your co-operation – at a certain level there are gaps in my team. In specific areas of the programme I am short of men of the required experience. I had recruited abroad in those areas, Do you understand me?'
'I understand you.'
'I had recruited Professor Khan… '
