" 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?"
"Pretty simple, isn't it?"
" D o please enlighten us," Barker snarled.
Martins beamed. "Find this Colt and shoot him… "
"You're not serious?"
"Find him, shoot him… and bury him deep."
He carried the day. Barker had seen the eye of the Deputy Chairman brighten. He had seen the bully confidence of "Sniper"
Martins win the hour. It did not go into the stenographer's notebook, of course, but that was the decision of the meeting, two votes to one, and Hobbes was not asked his opinion.
Colt was to be found, shot, and forgotten.
Would Barker resign? Would he hell! He was a man who took an order.
The technicians had put on their heavy coats and taken their bread and goat's cheese and their sweet tea out onto the verandah below. The Swede was often alone in his office for that hour of the day. Today there was the music of Beethoven in his ears, the Seventh, and even that beloved symphony was not enough to calm him. He could set his watch from the time they left to the time they would return, his two assistants. He would be alone for an hour. The Colonel had not, so far as he knew, come back.
He could hope for a telephone call, and hope that the rifle microphone could pick up whatever was said by the Director if he were to he telephoned by the Colonel.
For every second that the microphone lay, assembled, against the window side of his desk, he experienced an agony of fear.
The Swede knew the fate of spies working against the regime.
A German chemist had told him, and sniggered as he said it, that spies did not even suffer a clean death by hanging. Spies were stood under the open-air gallows in the execution yard at the Abu Ghraib gaol on a shallow stool. When the stool was kicked away then the spies would kick and strangle to their deaths.
It was because he detested the despot regime of cult and fear that he could justify what he did. He had taught the Pakistani how to play golf. Khan had thought him his friend and Khan was dead. The Swede had felt no regret when Khan did not come back from his European journey. He had not expected that he would.
He knew that security men had been seen, had been interviewing the Iraqi-born scientists and engineers and administrators in the office complex in Tuwaithah. They were searching for the source of the leakage of information. If he went now, and failed to return from leave, the finger would be pointed at him. Where would he run to, that was beyond the reach of the thugs of the regime? Not to a desk in the Chemistry Faculty of the University of Uppsala, not to a hi-tech factory in California. Would they want him in Israel? Would they want his expertise in the Negev desert factory of Dimona? Very probably not. It was enough to make him laugh out loud in his office, his bungalow, the thought that he was safest at Tuwaithah from assassination.
Tonight was Bridge night in the compound, at the bungalow ol the physicist from Salzburg. He knew the dates of the Au strian's next leave, his skiing holiday, and he wondered who would take over the little brick bungalow two down from his own if, as he expected, the Austrian did not return from his leave There were no calls received by the Director during his technicians' lunch hour. The agony was wasted.
The Swede had gone to the limit of the hour. He was barely back at his desk, the rifle microphone returned to its hiding place, when the technicians came back into the office.
He had come downstairs in his stockinged feet in answer to the woman's shout. They must have been getting used to him in the house because the woman didn't bother to come up and knock at his door, just yelled from the hallway.
There was the breathy voice. He wanted a meeting. No, he did not want to go back to London. No, he wanted only Colt.
He sounded to Colt like he was going through hell.
Bissett gave him a rendezvous. A pub at Stratfield Mortimer, beside the Foudry Brook, just across the stream from the railway station. And a time. Colt said he'd be there. The telephone purred in his ear.
Barker had not been back in Curzon Street five minutes before the summons came for him to take a sandwich and a bottle of Malvern in his Director General's top-floor office.
A fierce and rare sunshine splayed through the arms of the blind. The Director General was tiger-striped.
"… You'll do what you're bloody well told, Dickie, and if I don't have, right here and now, your total commitment and support then you have exactly 30 minutes to clear your desk. But before you do anything rash, let me put you in the picture. In the time it has taken you to get back from your meeting Century House has been alerted by their man. He has talked to the Chairman of the J.I.C. and he has called me.
Everyone is giving the decision arrived at at your meeting the go-ahead. You won't have a friend in the whole wide world. Is that understood?"
"However you dress it up, whatever illusion of national security you invoke, it is still murder."
"Thank you, Dickie. Your point is made. Now get me Rutherford in here. Get Rutherford back… "