somebody.' He understood young Hobbes's dislike of the Century House crowd, and in truth shared it to a degree. One day, someone would take the lad aside and tell him just how lucky he had been to be rejected by the Secret Intelligence Service and to have squeezed into Curzon Street instead.
'I suppose Rutherford could do it.'
'What's he up to now?'
'Nannying an F. B. I, fledgling.'
'That American thing…?'
Dickie Barker was 64 years old, one year off retirement. He would have served, to this day, 40 years in the Security Service, He had worked in the Watcher Service of A Branch, the Personnel Vetting section in B Branch, the Soviet Satellite Section of C
Branch, the Political Parties (Left) section of F Branch. In his run-up to retirement he headed D Branch with sections working to him that dealt with the Civil Service, Government Contractors, Military Security and Sabotage Prevention. Many newer men, Hobbes among them, had not been too proud to seek him out for advice on this and that. He had a deep wellof experience and, when his P.A. wasn't off sick, a constantly patient and amiable manner He had helped Jim Skardon interrogate Fuchs, He had been among the watchers who had tailed Alan Nunn May. He had been in the team that kept the bungalow home of Peter Kroger under surveillance. He had observed Bossard, he had prepared the case against Bettany who had worked only two floors below him in the old Leconfield House building. If he had had a very good evening, he would talk of the day. when the F.B. I, heavyweights were over in Leconlield House, running riot through Registry, shitting on the Service and playing the game that every Briton was subversive. It was said of Dickie Barker that second only to his contempt for the Secret Intelligence Service was his dislike of the American agencies.
'I could tell Rutherford to put the American on hold.'
'Yes, Rutherford would do. Tell him to park his pram, prefer-ably in the middle of Oxford Circus. Have him in here before the end of the day.'
Erlich spoke fast, didn't hide his excitement, said what he wanted
… He listened. He replaced the receiver.
Ruane was across the room, getting off his coat, back from lunch.
'You all right, Bill?'
Erlich looked up. He looked into Ruane's face. There was a quiver in his voice.
' I ' m being pissed on, Dan.'
Ruane gestured him to follow, walked smartly into his office.
He held the door open, closed it behind Erlich. A growl in his voice. 'What sort of shit talk is that?'
Erlich said, 'They gave me a liaison. There is a shooting in London, an Iraqi, former government employee, is killed. I'm not informed, I am left to read it in the newspaper. I react. I ring my liaison and I tell him what I want… '
'Want?'
'Want, Dan, because I am here to investigate a murder. Yes, I tell him what I want. I tell him I want every detail on the investigation into this local killing. Anything they've got on identification, etc. etc. My liaison said he was unavailable. He said he had other work, and would be back to me when it was finished. What do I do, Dan?'
Ruane had ducked out of sight. When he reappeared it was with the box of brushes and polish, and his stockinged feet swung to the desk top.
'When I know what I want and no one will give me what I want, then I go and take it.'
'Thanks…'
' Y o u screw up, and I never heard of you. You hear me?'
Colt was still sitting beside his mother when his father returned to the bedroom in the early afternoon.
When his mother had woken he had leaned forward to kiss her check, and she had smiled. Her eyes had closed again, but then, at least, her breathing had been steady, and from the time that she had woken he had loosely held her hand. Her peace brought a calm to Colt. His thoughts were of memories long buried, of the family holidays, and laughter and merrymaking at Christmas in the Manor House. Only good memories concerned him.
It was good she was asleep. If she had been awake then she would have wanted him to talk. He would not have wanted to tell her of the two boys to whom he had taught English, and who had learned nothing, but who had shed their puppy fat and their conceit and learned to pitch tents and make camp fires and shoot a rabbit at a hundred paces with the Colonel's Kalashnikov rifle, and skin the animal and cook it and eat it. Through teaching those boys his own freedom he had further taken the eye of the Colonel and dictated his own transfer from the uplands of rock and desert around the army compound and the Colonel's bungalow to the prison cell that was the apartment on the Haifa Street Housing Project. She would not have wanted to hear that he had been taken from the wild happiness to the capital city to be trained as a killer of targets. Best that she was asleep.
His father carried a tray into the bedroom. Three soup bowls, some buttered toast cut into fingers, a jug of orange juice and three glasses.
His father said that he had been into Warminster to the bank, and that he had needed to do the shopping. Colt thought that his father had found an excuse to leave son and mother together.
His father lifted his mother, propped her high against the pillows, fed her soup with a spoon, and he talked as if she could not hear him.
'They were Security Service and the F.B.I…'
'I heard the voices.'
'I sent them packing.'
'You don't want those bastards in your house.'
'… I told the American to go down to the pub because I couldn't let him inside, because the lavatory door is beside the kitchen door and because this is obviously a non-smoking house, and because on the kitchen table you had left a saucer with a revolting little cigar end in it.'
Soft, murmured words, as he fed the soup into his wife's mouth, and after he had given her each spoonful he wiped carefully at her chin to remove what the shake in his hand had spilled.
' T h a n k s. '
' Y o u always were a careless little sod.'
'What did they want?'
'When I'd seen you, where you were.'
'What did you tell them?'
His father looked into Colt's face. 'That I wasn't responsible for your actions. They said it was about state- sponsored terrorism, I said that you had made your own bed… '
' D i d they believe you?'
'I didn't ask them… ' A coldness in the whisper voice.
'Isn't political murder a cut above your league?'
' I f you say so.'
'I mean, that's not running around with those animal loonies…
'
Colt said, like it was an explanation, ' H e got in the way. He wasn't the target. He was C. I. A. '
'They won't ever let up after a trick like that.'
Colt said, 'I'll never be taken.'
' T h e idiots all say that.'
' Y o u could have turned me in, when you were in Warminster this morning.'
'Could have done… should have done. Could have let the American in before breakfast, for that matter.'
'But you didn't.'
'During the war there were men who died under torture, rather than give my name – your soup will be cold – I would never inform, even on a stranger.'
Colt's glance caught the wartime photograph. There were the clear features of his father and behind were the fading faces of his colleagues in arms. One of them, on the extreme right, had been his mother's uncle. He wondered which of those blurred figures had been taken and tortured, and had held his silence that his father might
