'What pub did you go to, Dr Bissett?'
'Well, I didn't actually. I thought of going for a drink, but I didn't… '
'What did you do, Dr Bissett?'
'I just drove around for a bit. I stayed in my car.'
'Why was that, Dr Bissett?'
He saw the anger. He had the transcript of Bissett's call to his wife, the claim that he was working late, that he would be home late. He already had the log from the Falcon Gate that told him that it was early evening when Bissett had driven through the checkpoint. He saw a lonely and frightened man in front of him, a man who could not count as a friend any one of his colleagues.
'I just wanted to be on my own.'
'Wife trouble, Dr Bissett?'
His fists were clenched. For a moment Rutherford thought he might just come over the top of his desk, launch himself. Bissett exploded.
'It's not your bloody business, is it? Get your bloody nose out of my life… Get out at once. Get out of my bloody office.'
'Thank you, Dr Bissett, I think that will do for the time being.'
He sat at his desk, his head buried in his hands. He squeezed at his temples and he could not rid himself of the pulsing pain.
Desperately and cruelly frightened. The fear was a barb inside him. His door was closed, and it offered no protection from the fear. The sweat ran on his spine, was clammy in his vest. The sickness was in his throat, he could not shed it. When he moved from his desk, he went to the radiator by the window, and he carried the envelope that he had been given in the Great Western Hotel at Paddington station. It was as though the envelope was the sure sign of his guilt He had not opened the envelope, not in the train, nor when he had reached home and climbed the stairs to bed and found Sara already asleep, nor in the morning.
The envelope was his guilt, to open the envelope was to secure that guilt. He could not judge what the man from the Security Service knew. His world, Frederick Bissett's world, was crum-bling. No strings, no commitment tell that to the bloody Security Service. Easy enough to say it, whisky in his hand, flattery in his ears… no strings, no commitment. All around him was the calm, slow, complacent life beat of the Atomic Weapons Establishment, around him and beyond his reach. All he knew was fear and pain and sickness. As far as he could push it, he stuffed the envelope down behind the radiator under the window.
It was the sort of meeting that Barker detested. It was the Whitehall machine at its wretched best. The Deputy Chairman of Joint Intelligence Committee was referee. Barker knew him as the former commander of an armoured division in Germany, brought home with the cut-backs, tidied into an area that he knew nothing of to work through to his pension.
He had Hobbes with him, to make up the numbers.
Martins he had met on a handful of occasions. He knew of the reputation of so-called 'Sniper' Martins, that the man was a celebrity at Downing Street. He thought him second-rate. And the meeting shouldn't have been held at Century, it should have been at J.I.C.'s quarters, the annexe to the Cabinet Office. But Barker quickly understood why the meeting was held at Century.
The Deputy Chairman was lunching with the Deputy Director General in the executive suite on Century's nineteenth floor. The Deputy Chairman and the Deputy Director General were distant cousins, had been at school together, and then at Mons Officer Cadet College together. Barker didn't have any cousins who were worth knowing, had been to grammar school, had been rejected for military service because of a right leg shortened in childhood by a polio virus.
The stenographer cleared away the coffee cups. The Deputy Chairman took his place at the head of the long table. Martins eased himself down opposite Barker.
For Barker to start… marvellous. He would start, Martins would follow. They would kick it around. He would do his summary, and then Martins would have the last word.
Hobbes had written the paper that Barker paraphrased. There had been a shooting in Athens, an Iraqi dissident killed, and an Agency man, who was with him, killed too. The killer's driver had shouted the name of 'Colt'. The shooting in Clapham of an Iraqi whose hand had been in the state airline till. The face of the same killer might have been identified. In both killings the weapon had been a silenced. 22 calibre pistol. This Colt was British, a fugitive from justice, already wanted on a charge of attempted murder. Colt had recently been in Britain, might still be within the jurisdiction. Iraqi involvement clear-cut. Another matter – not connected – but the warning of a prospective Iraqi fishing expedition amongst the staff of the Atomic Weapons Establishment… What to do? When and where to stamp on the Iraqis?'… And the Americans, of course, wish for a result.'
A dry smile from 'Sniper'. Wouldn't have been even the ghost of a smile when Barker had first met the man, before that lunatic escapade in the Beqa'a, no more than a cringing little arse licker he'd been then.
'And that has very little to do with us.'
'I merely state the position.'
' Y o u don't have enough to go to court.'
'That's for the Director of Public Prosecutions.'
' I ' m simply observing, Deputy Chairman, that he'd be laughed out of the Central Criminal Court.'
'I wasn't aware, Deputy Chairman, that Mr Martins had any experience of British criminal law.' The Deputy Chairman flapped a hand down the table, as if to wave the combatants apart.
' W e have, in my view, enough to justify the expulsion of at least five or six members of their embassy staff,' Barker snapped.
'I would most strongly oppose that course of action, Deputy Chairman.' Martins cracked his palm down onto the sheened table surface. Another new gesture, acquired since the man had dined with the Prime Minister, Barker supposed.
'With or without evidence to satisfy a jury, we cannot tolerate Iraqi terrorism, state-sponsored terrorism, on the streets of London.'
'Talk i s cheap… '
'That is insulting and unwarranted.'
'Have you the faintest inkling of the consequences of the action you propose?'
'I am interested solely in the security of this country.'
Martins turned so that he faced the Deputy Chairman. He ignored his adversary.
' W e are, damn near, near as makes no difference, in a state of war with Iran. We have, because of quite colossal bungling, no network inside Iran. We are blind in that country, and deaf.
What little we know of the political goings-on inside Iran comes courtesy of the intelligence agencies of Iraq… is that point taken? I make another point… Iraq is currently rebuilding her entire infrastructure. They have billions of oil dollars to spend, they are hunting high and low for contractors with the expertise they require and, God willing, contracts will come our way…
And yet here we are being asked, on the flimsiest of evidence, to march up to their front door and toss half a dozen accredited diplomats out of the country. I lose my major intelligence-gathering source in Iran, my country loses – and the French and the Germans will pick them all up – billions of dollars' worth of trade, all because the Americans want a result.'
' Y o u r attitude is craven.'
' Y o u r way, I'll tell you what will be achieved, sweet nothing
… except that we lose contracts, lose goodwill, lose good information. I won't sit back while a painstaking process is sacrificed for a wasteful gesture. Century is the real world, apparently Curzon Street is not.'
Barker looked to Hobbes for support. Hobbes looked away.
'Gentlemen, gentlemen…' said the Deputy Chairman.
' A n d you have not, Mr Martins, addressed the issue of the Atomic Weapons Establishment… '
' I f indeed, sir, it is an issue. The Israelis have been asked for more detail. They have been unable so far to provide it. It's in their court.'
The Deputy Chairman smiled again. Barker thought that if such a man had ever commanded an armoured division then the army needed winding down.
' S o what is your suggestion, Mr Martins?'
