'Into the water, into the air, they're just spurting out poison.
Nobody knows the long-term effects.'
'When the new building at Aldermaston is working we estimate that it will produce two thousand drums of solid waste a year.'
'And it will produce a million gallons a year of liquid waste, and where does that go after it's been treated? It goes, Mrs Bissett, into the Thames.'
'Already the leukaemia rate in this area is six times the national average, and it's going to get worse.'
Sara was calm. She rather surprised herself. She just wanted to be rid of them. She wanted to do her shopping, and she wanted to be at the school gate to collect her children. She had no sense of loyalty to Frederick, not at that moment.
'That's a pack of lies.'
The older woman's mouth tightened. 'Statistical evidence shows.. . '
' L i e s. '
The younger woman's voice keened, ' Y o u know what we've got here, Deirdre, one of the 'little women' whose husband works there.'
Sara said, 'That's right, so just piss o f f. '
' I f you think that learning about the risk of leukaemia in children is wasted time…?'
'She'll just parrot her husband's distortions, Deirdre.'
'God, why can't women think for themselves… '
They turned away. The younger woman minced to her companion, ' I f I were married to a man working at that place, spreading leukaemia around, I'd have left him.'
For what? Bed and breakfast with the kids on Social Security, new schools, no roof? She would never leave, not now… She was late. 'I don't have time to hang about listening to your lies and distortions,' Sara snapped.
They had their shoulders back, as if to make their point that they could take abuse and survive. In a few moments they would be at little Vicky's door, and half frightening her to death. Sara locked her door behind her. No, it hadn't been out of loyalty to Frederick. It should have been out of loyalty to him. She should not have sent them packing because she wanted to get supper from the MiniMarket and still be on time at the school. She should have kicked their behinds off her front step for slagging off her husband, and her husband's work. She sat in her car.
Sara knew what she should have done, and she had not done it. And she should not have sat in her car before switching the ignition, and rejoiced that it was her art group again in two days and wondered if Debbie's husband… she should straightaway have made up the lost time.
It had taken them time, hut they were getting there.
They were a good team and there was nothing that an investigation could throw up that, between the three of them, they had not confronted before. No rush, but the hours had been worked, and the picture had emerged.
The pieces had started to slot together when Don had received from Ruane, down the wire from London, the photograph of Colin Tuck. Don thought that young Erlich had done well to have gotten the name of Colt, and the photo. He had made an asshole of himself at Athens Counter-Terrorism, nothing but criticism for closing down that source, but this was good work.
Don had sent Vito and Nick out with the photograph, and he had booked the best table at the best restaurant in the Piraeus, and he had treated the head of Counter-Terrorism to the sort of meal that was going to lift an eyebrow or two when the docket reached Administrative Services Division. Smoothly he had opened the doors that had been slammed in young Erlich's face.
Opening the doors had given the team a good young liaison who would go anywhere with them, get past any block, and was at their disposal from the time they woke to the time they hit the sack. The Agency's Station Officer, across on the other wing of the Embassy, said that no one had ever oiled such co-operation out of those Greek mothers as Don had. With the doors open and the liaison in place, Don could sit back in the office and collate what came in. They had the place, the rented room, where Colt had spent the night before the killing, and they had a kind of identification from a Yugoslav who still stayed there, but the room had been cleaned and there were no prints that helped.
Vito and the liaison had done the airport. Every check-in desk for every flight that had gone out from Athens that morning and that afternoon, and when that showed nothing, then he and Nick had worked the lists of the cabin crews of all the Olympic flights.
A stewardess, a week later, back from the mid-morning flight to Ankara had been shown the photograph. She had remembered the man in the photograph as a passenger He had refused coffee and refused food. She had given Vito and Nick a seat number, and the airline computer had given them a name, and the name and the Irish passport had been checked with the Emigration officers on duty that morning. They had had a flight to Ankara.
Of course, the passport was rubbish, not important…
Pleasantly calm for Don, Athens, once Vito and Nick had flown to Ankara. A round of golf in the Ambassador's four-ball, a cocktail party at the Station Officer's home. Vito, through on secure communications from the Embassy in Ankara, had reported that he had found the check-in girl who had done the duty that late afternoon. The check-in girl had nodded when shown the photograph. The Iraqi flight had been delayed. There would have been a passport switch in transit at Ankara, a British passport used. She remembered the British passport, and she remembered that she had been shown the Iraqi visa. Ankara airport didn't carry a passenger list for the flight, and they weren't inclined to go asking the Iraqi officials if they had a flight list. Didn't matter… They had him, the little bastard, out of Athens and into Ankara transit, and they had a passport switch, and they had him on a delayed flight to Baghdad.
It had taken them time, but they had gotten there.
They sat in the room they had been allocated at the Embassy, and they had a portable radio playing in the room and they talked under the sound of the radio. Old professionals, doing it the way it should be done.
When he had finished the longhand draft of their report, Don read it back.
Nick said, 'That's shit in the fan, guys.'
Vito said, 'Respectfully, Don, that's for the Director's desk.'
Don said, ' I ' m not arguing.'
Nick said, 'It's just too clean, to well-organised, for Colt to be hitting for an asshole group.'
Vito said, 'It's state-sponsored, and what Big Wimp will want to do about that, I just don't know,'
Don shuffled the sheets of paper together. The Athens end was over.
Don said, 'We shouldn't take that kind of crap, least of all from a government.'
He reached for the telephone. He rang the restaurant down in the Piraeus to hook the table by the plate-glass window with a view over the yacht harbour. Next, he rang the Station Officer to say they'd be gone in the morning.
After dark, Colt left the house and walked three streets to where he had parked the car.
Colt was the moth, his mother was the flame. He headed for his home and for her bedside.
10
'Of course, I wanted her to see you but, God help me, I don't want you taken… '
' I f you shout, you'll wake her, and she needs all the sleep she can get.'
'Damn you… '
The boy was his agony. Still so clear in his mind, the dawn raid of the police. He and Louise in their dressing gowns in the hall while uniformed men and detectives swarmed over the house.
The detectives had carried handguns when they had run through the hall in the moment after he had opened the front door.
The armed detectives and uniformed men, who carried pickaxe handles and sledgehammers that would have taken down the door if he had not immediately opened it, had ransacked their home in frustration. The whole village had known. The road outside the main gate to the drive had been blocked for an hour, and there had been more guns outside, guns carried in the garden and in the fields beyond the paddock at the back. That was what the boy
