"I'll not have my name on any bloody piece of paper."
"Pipe down, Dickie, and get me Rutherford."
Rutherford was in the small room next to the Security Officer. He was deliberating whether to call Hobbes and recommend that one more day was needed at Aldermaston. He didn't know, that was the problem. He wanted someone to talk through with him what he had assembled. He simply didn't have the experience in this sort of investigation. He hadn't known Bettany, hadn't been involved in the case at all. He didn't know what had made Bettany different to any of the rest of them. He hadn't worked on Prime, because he had still been sharpening pencils when the team had gone down to G.C.H.Q. to rout through the Soviet agent's past history. He had only the book to fall back on. The book said that the danger was M.I.C.E. M.I.C.E. was Money, Ideology, Compromise, Ego.
Money was an overdraft. Under this government everybody had an overdraft, but Money was worth looking at further.
Ideology, post-Cold War, was pretty ludicrous. He couldn't see the International Brigade and the Fight against Fascism or the Fight against Communism, for that matter, making any sense a propos Iraq. Ideology was probably better off in the British Museum, and he'd have to have a word with the instructors and have them dig up a new acronym. Compromise was cash or sex.
What they said on the course was that anyone could be reached by cash or by a woman's thighs. Anyone, all the way to an ambassador. He didn't know, not yet, just how critical was Bissett's financial crisis. Sara Bissett he'd seen, the night before when she had come home from the school. Good-looking woman, very pretty if she hadn't been creased with worry lines. He'd have been willing to bet that Bissett was going short, and he'd have bet more that Bissett wasn't complaining… Ego was the key. Ego, in his case, was carrying around a damn great chip on his shoulder, believing that the world was selling the big talent short. Maybe he had seen disappointment, but he hadn't seen arrogance and he hadn't seen vanity. Bissett was alone, maybe not of his own choice…
He was called to the secure line in the Security Officer's room.
There must have been a meeting in progress, because there were half a dozen men and women filing out of the office, including the Security Officer. This was one way to make himself popular.
Probably half the Establishment would have defected, anywhere, before old Pig Eyes called for help again from Curzon Street.
"That you, Rutherford?"
Yes, it was James Rutherford.
"Get yourself back here."
He hadn't finished. There were a few loose ends.
" Y o u got a goodie?"
No, he didn't think so. No, there was nothing positive. But if he were to be thorough…
"Don't ask me why, starshine, but the Director General wants to take tea with you, and I don't think he means tomorrow."
There were no regrets expressed when he informed the Security Officer that he was called back to Curzon Street. "Basically, Mr Rutherford, the lesson you should carry away with you is that we know how to run our affairs at Atomic Weapons," the Security Officer told him.
As he accelerated away down the Burghfield Common Road, Rutherford thought he'd have to find some polish for his shoes, after tramping round in the rain-splashed compounds of Aldermaston, before he presented himself in the Director General's office.
And that the pubs weren't closed, and he'd get a drink before he reached the motorway. And Bissett – was he a traitor? Well, that could wait, that was apparently on the back-burner. Erlich would probably recite, "Theirs not to reason why", some crap like that.
"It's your decision, Dr Bissett."
"I used to love it, the work there."
"Used to?"
"I'm treated like dirt now."
"Then that's your decision made."
"I'm certain of it, I'm passed over for promotion this year."
"That's unthinkable, a man of your potential… "
"You probably cannot understand, it's hideous to work when you are accorded no respect."
It was dark in the car park of the pub at Stratfield Mortimer.
Their faces were briefly lit by the headlights of the cars of the first customers. Each time they were caught in the lights, Colt ducked his head away, and Bissett was like a rabbit held in a flashlamp's beam.
"Then you walk away."
"That business last year, I read something, that report from the Human Rights crowd."
"The Israelis interfering again, just their propaganda. Me, I'm not aware of torture, that sort of thing. I wouldn't be there if I didn't like the place. Heh, Dr Bissett, you don't believe what you read in the gutter press…?"
"What sort of life would I have?"
"What they told you, Dr Bissett. You'd be head of a whole department. It would be a good life, good accommodation and good facilities."
"And Sara, my wife, and the boys?"
Colt gagged… Corrected himself. "You'd take them?"
"Of course."
"They'd have a great life. They will be happy. It's a very modern country. Good British community, international school, cverydiing.. ."
Colt didn't know what the living conditions were like at Tuwaithah, he didn't even know where Tuwaithah was. He knew there was a small British community, but he had never moved in it, and he had never been within a mile of the British Club. He didn't know, but he thought that the International School might be the pits.
"I don't know what to do."
Colt said quietly, "It's your life."
"It's so difficult… "
" Y o u take your chance, or you turn your back on it."
" Y o u know, Colt, when I came here they all said that I was brilliant, that I had an original mind. I was coming to the place where there was the best original thinking in the country. That's the way it used to be. It used to be a real community of endeavour, but that community's dead now. It's not a place lor scientists any more, it's for accountants, penny-pinchers. You want to get on, you have to be a politician and a safe bureaucrat. It's 20 years since anything outstanding came out of here. They suffocate brilliance and they've strangled me. Brilliance would threaten the little pedestals of the empire builders. They dragged me down, Colt, they squashed out my brilliance… What would I be, there?"
" Y o u r own master, if you go."
"Would I be a traitor?"
Colt's head sagged back against the seat. So what the fuck would the frightened little bastard be?
"Just a word, Dr Bissett. Words don't mean much. If you go, then you are in charge of your own life. If you stay then you are their slave, till you drop, till they give you a gold watch."
"There's something I should tell you."
"What's that?"
"I've had a little… difficulty."
"What sort of difficulty?"
"I was interviewed this morning by a man from the Security Service."
Colt was straight up in the seat. His eyes roved across each of the cars parked close to the Sierra. Mind going flywheel speed.
Looking for a Watcher, looking in the darkness to see if he could isolate the shadow shape of a Watcher… fucking hell… As cool as he could make it. "Why was that, Dr Bissett?"
The blurted answer. "I had to work late, but I couldn'i be in my office because I'd said to Sara I'd look after the boys. I was taking papers home. I was stopped at the gate check. I was interviewed by the Security Officer, but there's been another man down, from London, from the Security Service. He was awful, terribly aggressive… "
The hard cut in Colt's voice. "Did you satisfy him?"
"How would I know?"
Colt said, "If you're to go, you'd better be going fast."
"I don't know, so difficult to know what's best."
"I have to know your answer."
"I tell you, I wouldn't tell another living soul, I'm just so desperately frightened."
Colt's hand rested on Bissett's arm. It was a gesture of friendship, a touch of solidarity. "I go out with you. I am with you each step of the way when you go out."