The Chief Inspector came back in with two plastic containers of coffee. Erlich thought that the Chief Inspector looked, if it were possible, more tired. He thought that any Special Agent who dressed like this guy would be disciplined.
The Chief Inspector took his pipe from his pocket, filled it slowly, methodically, and lit it, and when the room seemed to Erlich dangerously full of smoke, he lit it again. 'For the last week I've had my head into Irish files, got me? In this country Irish files come first, and every time I'm into an Irish case I find myself cursing just about everything American, got me? American money keeps the Provos alive… And one more thing. We put a hell of a lot of time and effort into feeding your crowd detail on the Provos on your side of the water, and trying to get your judges to extradite the bastards back here is harder than getting water out of rock.'
'You'll have to forgive me, Chief Inspector, I've got a one-track mind and I'm here only to locate the man called Colt, the Englishman who murdered an Agency man in Athens.'
'Just so you know what kept us busy.' The Chief Inspector put flame to his pipe once more and under cover of the smoke-screen took a thin file out of the desk. 'We have a movement here called the Animal Liberation Front,' he said. 'It's made up of anarchists in part and in part middle-class softies. This is a free country and people are allowed to sound off about the fur trade, about vivisection, about experimenting with live animals.
These people do all that, but they are also known to plant fire bombs and rough people up who work in laboratories where animals are used for experiments. A couple of years ago, the A. L. F. was getting out of hand. There were two department stores gutted by incendiaries; there was a laboratory where three dozen beagle dogs were 'liberated'; a bomb was put under a car hut failed to explode; a scientist who was trying to find an antidote for cystic fibrosis was beaten up. There was a special unit set up here, Animal Rights National Index, but these idiots had tight security, a good cut-off cell system, and it took us a hell of a long time to open the can. The breakthrough was a squat we turned ovei on the south coast, two years back. We found a set of initials there. We were able to put names to all the initials. Four males, two females. Three males and one female were arrested. The fourth male was identified as a boy named Tuck. '
'And that's Colt?'
The Chief Inspector ferreted again for matches.
'That's Colin Olivier Louis T u c k. '
Erlich said, and he meant it, 'Great thing, this special relationship, and thank you very much.'
The Chief Inspector leaned over the desk, his voice hissed in anger. 'I'll tell you what I think of this so-called special relationship. It's whatever you want, and when you want it.'
Erlich did not understand the hostility of this man. He had been given a name. He had said what he thought was the decent thing to say, and had it chucked back at him.
'What's your problem, Chief Inspector?'
'My problem? By Christ, I'll tell you what my problem is. My son has been dead for three years. My problem, as you call it, is that he was 19 and serving his first year in the Light Infantry, in the Bogside of Londonderry, and the weapon that shot him dead was an MI6 high-velocity rifle, product of America, put into the hands of those scum by scum in America protected by American judges.'
Erlich dropped his head. ' I ' m sorry,' he said.
He was told that the liaison procedures were being sorted out.
By tomorrow they would be in place.
Erlich let himself out of the room.
In the outer office a young detective intercepted Erlich.
' M r Erlich?'
'That's me.'
'A Mr Rutherford has been trying to reach you. He said would you call by, Curzon Street, side door.'
The passport that the Colonel had given him was in the inside pocket of his anorak. The contact telephone number and the contact address he had memorised.
He was going home, aind home meant to him no more and no less than the room where his mother was dying. The Colonel had no need to pressure him to return again to Baghdad after his mission was completed, and after he had visited his mother who was dying. They might as well have had a rope round his ankle.
He was a fugitive from the justice of his own country. He knew the sentences that had been handed down to his associates. Twelve years the men, seven to the girl. Of course, he was a fugitive.
His own country offered him only the deathbed of his mother, and twelve years' imprisonment, Of course, he would come back to Baghdad. It was rare for him to feel gratitude to any person, but the nearest was his feeling for the Colonel. He had drifted into the Colonel's orbit. He had come from a bulk tanker that had tied up in the oil terminal in Kuwait harbour, thanked the Master who had allowedhim to work his passage from the port of Perth, and gone ashore. He had gone because the great forward deck had in its turn become another confining space to him.
Kuwait meant nothing to him, but the place was crawling with his countrymen, in the hotels and eating houses, on the streets and beaches. Brits were bad for Colt, so he had hitched a ride away from the city, to the fronier, and crossed over to Iraq. He had smiled at the frontier guards and kept walking with his rucksack slung over one shoulder… until the hand had clamped on his collar, and the boots had pitched him into a cell. Bruised and bloodied from days of interrogation on the floor of a cell that was an inch deep in his own shit and piss, the Colonel had found him and freed him. Of course, he would return to Baghdad. They had a need of him, he a need of them.
At the gate of the security zone where there was access directly onto the apron, he formally shook the Colonel's hand. The Colonel kissed him on both cheeks.
'The Thai whore, sir, she was good?'
The Colonel hugged his shoulders, and he laughed.
'If you had lost the bet, sir, what would you have paid them?'
The hands moved to the back of Colt's neck and squeezed.
It would have been a long story, the warming of friendship and respect between the barrel-chested Iraqi Colonel and the young man from England who had proved he could stalk and kill. But a long story was an indulgence. Colt could only abide a short story. So it was a short story as he told it to himself, of an English runaway crossing the frontier from Kuwait, and failing in spite of many beatings to satisfy his interrogators until the arrival of the Colonel at the Public Security base at Basra. Colt seldom lied, not now, not then. He told the Colonel his life story between puffed lips, chipped teeth, and the Colonel was amused.
He had been taken to the Colonel's bungalow. He had been told that he would teach two overweight, spoilt teenage boys the English language. Colt, bottom of the class before he was expelled, now Colt the tutor. He had been lifted from a detention cell and given the job of English teacher because the Colonel liked a boy who could smile into the face of an interrogator who wielded a rubber truncheon. And Colt, after long days of torture, had recognised in the Colonel someone he could like, someone whose trust he would value.
'Until we meet, Colt.'
He was the last passenger onto the aircraft.
Rutherford sensed Erlich's impatience from across the room.
'Right, Mr Erlich…'
'Bill.'
'Right, Bill… concerning Colin Tuck, who we shall call Colt, I am your liaison while you are in Britain. Anything you want, you put in a request to me. Any actions you may think necessary will be vetted by me, any interviews you wish to carry out will be arranged through m e. ' Rutherford hoped that he spoke with sufficient polite force to nail the message home. ' M r Ruane will have told you, no doubt, you adhere, most strictly, to the guidelines that we lay down. That way you get all the help and co-operation we can provide, any other way and you get shown the door. Are we quite clear?'
He saw the American rise. He was like the pellet led rainbows in the Fishery waters near Penny's parents. But the American rose and didn't take, had more sense than those daft trout
'Thank you for hearing me out, Bill. Sorry for the i laptrap, but the rules are important to all of us.'
'Quite understood. Tell me about Colt.'
There wasn't too much to tell, and after Rutherford had finished he would leave the American in the room with the file and let him gut it for himself. He gave him the digest. He told the story of a loner, a drifter, a maverick
