CONDITION BLACK (6 page)

On the day alter the Cease Fire he had been granted an audience with the Chairman of the Revolutionary Council and he had argued his case for the revitalisation of his dream.

And now the Zionists had attacked him again. Professor Khan had been a crucial cog in the great mesh of wheels that made up the whole for the creation of an Iraqi nuclear warhead. He was a foreigner, he had been bought, just as Frenchmen had been bought, and Italians.

In the brigade post at Fao, Dr Tariq had won his day The Chairman gave orders for the military helicopter to fly the scientist back to Baghdad.

In spite of the headset that he wore for the flight, his ears were still ringing when he climbed down from the helicopter. Waiting for him was an army officer, squat and powerful, rocking on the soles of his paratroop boots.

The voice of the Colonel was faint, hard to understand, as they scurried bent low from the helicopter's hatch door to safety beyond the reach of the thrashing rotor blades.

"I am at your service, Dr Tariq. Whatever it is that you wish, I am instructed to provide."

In the late afternoon, Erlich was back from the airport. Protocol and politeness had taken him out to the airport to meet the Temporary Duty men off the flight. It was what should have happened to him when he had come in from Athens, and hadn't.

Nothing better than a smoothed way through Customs and Immigration, and ready transportation for the trip into a new city.

They would be on the same corridor as him in the Embassy's accommodation annexe, and later they would talk through the case history together.

The three T . D . Y . s were all senior to him, all had done more than ten years in the Bureau. He hadn't met any of them before.

That was the way of these things. Only a small chance that an overseas liaison Fed would know the guys coming in as firemen from Stateside The one who was born Greek and fluent, had lost his baggage, presumably in transit in London, and wanted action, and seemed to think that young Erlich would do the needful.

Erlich smiled coldly at him and said nothing. All three were exhausted, and two, the older two, would crash out and try and sleep away the jet lag, and the Greek ethnic could shout all afternoon and all night into the telephone for his bags. What it came down to was that Erlich had one last evening as an independent, and that from first light, from waffles and coffee time, he'd be part of their team and doing their bidding. The senior man, who had come in from Los Angeles to F . B . I . H . Q . after Erlich had left Washington, he'd be everybody's friend, he'd have them eating out of his hand down at Counter-Terrorism, he'd probably take out citizenship. The other older one had been in Chicago, moved to Washington less than a year back, and Erlich knew his name because he'd the distinction of having run the sting in the Board of Trade's soybean futures pit. He left them to get their heads down.

They were all top of the ladder. He didn't know their long-term histories, but each one of them would have had the break far back, hooked into it, started climbing. He didn't reckon to waste his last evening as an independent.

He had the Embassy driver take him out, again, to 28th October Street.

He told the driver that he would find his own way back.

He started 011 the left side of the road.

Some of the gates were electronically controlled. He had to identify himself from the pavement. "I am Bill Erlich, of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States of America.

I would be most grateful if you could spare me a few moments of your time." One gate that he could open himself let him into a front garden patrolled by two Dobermans, but he was okay with dogs because there had always been dogs at his mother's home, and at his grandparents' home. He could talk his way past dogs. Some of the villa front doors were wide open to him. He talked to maids, struggling with his limited Greek, sometimes doing better in Italian, and to the camp boy servant of an old woman, he talked to wives and husbands and teenage children.

Some gave him their answer at the door, others invited him inside and sat him down to ask his question. To a few he was a nuisance, to most he was merely a curiosity. As each door opened to him, he made the same statement. "A colleague of mine, an American official of our Embassy, was killed here yesterday morning. Did you, or anyone in this household, sec anything of the incident?"

Some gave him their life history, then came round to saying that they were in bed, in the back of the villa, in the bath, already gone to work. Some were brusque. They had seen nothing, they knew nothing. It was dark by the time he had finished with the left side of the road. He thought that none of those he had spoken to could have told him anything of the killing. He believed their denials.

But there was fear there, shrouded by some with belligerence, hidden by others with courtesy. It wasn't any different from what it would be back home. None of them wanted trouble. Erlich had been on his last months in Washington when he had read the lesson, digested it, that safe folks crossed the road from danger, and didn't mind who they turned their backs on. He was in Washington, and Mrs Sharon Rogers was living her life out in San Diego, California.

Trouble was that Mrs Sharon Rogers' husband had been commander of the U.S.S.
Vincennes.
Down in the Gulf, the
Vincennes
had blown an IranAir jet liner out of the skies and killed more than 250 people. The hit squad blew her vehicle off the road, and she was lucky to have jumped clear before the main explosion. How did the good citizens of San Diego react? Erlich would not criticise a timid woman or a timid man in the Kifisia suburb of Athens . . .

The parents of the kids at the school where Mrs Rogers taught had her barred from the school, in case the hit squad came back for a second try. If Americans didn't stand up for Americans, why should Greeks stand up for . . . ? He worked his way down the right side of the road.

Of course, he remembered the front gates. The front gates Were across the road from where Harry had died.

The flowers were still there. The rain and the wind had done them damage.

He walked through the gates.

He felt a stabbing pain at the back of his ankle.

A Pekinese had hold of his ankle. He kicked hard with his free foot. He heard the dog whimper. His trouser was torn, and there was blood on his fingers when he rubbed the wound, and he wiped it away on his handkerchief. He rang the front door bell.

"Good evening, ma'am. Do you speak English?"

It was the woman who had brought the flowers to the pavement.

He could sense her fear. She stood with her hands on the door latch, as if she were ready to throw the door back in his face.

" M y name is Bill Erlich. I am an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from the United States. Yesterday morning, an old friend, an Embassy officer, was shot dead in this road . . . "

" Y e s . "

" I t was very much appreciated, your flowers . . ."

"It was nothing."

She wore good jewellery, and her hair was freshly made up.

She was not attractive, her jaw was too prominent, and her eyes too close set . . . Steady, Bill . . . It was the 28th house he had called at. The pain had gone from his ankle, but a throbbing replaced the pain.

" I ' m looking for an eyewitness, ma'am."

"Somebody who saw . . . ?"

"Somebody who saw my friend killed."

" I s that not the job of our local police?"

"Indeed it is, but it is also my job."

He saw that she hesitated. She wavered. Perhaps she recognised him from yesterday. The dog was at his ankle, and wary of passing him. She must have looked down at the dog, and seen the blood stain and the tear on his trouser. She must have understood why the dog hung back.

" I s it important to you, to find an eyewitness?"

" Y e s . "

"Would you come in, please, Mr . . . ?"

"Erlich, ma'am Bill Erlich."

She opened the door fully. He walked into the hall, and brushed his feet hard on the mat. This was money, serious money. He could see the money in the paintings and he could see also the alarm wires leading to them. Money in the drapes, and in the pottery that had a shelf to itself by the wide, dark wood staircase.

Money in the rugs over which her slippered feet moved. She didn't take him to one of the two formal reception rooms opening off the hall. She went ahead of him into the living room. A television set was playing
Indiana Jones.
The dog slunk past him and settled in front of the electric fire and growled back at him.

He saw a child's head peer round the wing of the comfortable chair, the child from last night. She switched off the film, she waved for him to sit down. She motioned for the child to sit on her lap. Erlich thought the boy was about eleven, could have been younger. She spoke quietly in Greek to the boy, soothing his annoyance at the turning off of the video.

" M r Erlich, more than forty years ago my country was divided by civil war. My father took one side, perhaps it was the right side and perhaps it was the wrong side. He was killed by the Communists. Mr Erlich, no one came to ask in that village for eyewitnesses . . . "

She held her child against her.

". . . He is a bright boy, Mr Erlich. We had an English girl as a nanny for three years. Andreas learned good English from her."

Carefully, no sudden movements, Erlich took from his inside pocket his notebook, and removed the top from his ballpoint.

The boy talked.

It was before he had gone to school. He was in the front garden with the dog.

He had seen two men walking in the road. He had seen them through the gates.

A car had come fast behind them, a silver-grey car, and it had braked sharply.

A man had climbed out of the car. A whitc-faccd man, with fair to golden hair. The man had in his hand a gun with a long and fat barrel.

The man had held the gun out in front of his chest with both hands, away from his body.

The man had shouted. In front of him the two men had separated, reacted to the shout, and then to the sight of the gun.

The firing of the gun, a soft thudding. The smaller man was hit first, and then the taller man had seemed to move across to him, and then he had been hit.

The man with the gun had stopped, stared. And the driver had shouted. The man with the gun had run back to the car.

The car had turned and driven away.

That was it. The death of his friend, told in the simplicity of a child's-eye view.

"What were the shouts, Andreas?"

" T h e driver of the car, he shouted 'Colt'."

" Y o u are certain?"

" C o l t . "

"Couldn't have been anything else?"

" C o l t . "

He believed the boy. The belief was instinctive. He wrote the word " C o l t " in his notebook, and each time the boy spoke the word Erlich underlined it again.

"What sort of age?"

" O l d . "

" H o w old?"

The boy turned to his mother. " A s old as Nico."

She said, smiling, "Younger than you, Mr Erlich, perhaps 25

years."

" H o w tall? Heavy or light built?"

The boy's response was immediate. " N o t fat, just ordinary height."

" H a i r ? "

"Fair, like Redford, but shorter."

Erlich paused. He let the words sink, and he wrote sharply, and his eyes never left the boy.

" T h e other shout, the shout of the man with the gun?"

" I t w a s ' H e y , there

" H o w did he say it?"

The boy shouted, " H e y , there."

Erlich tried to smile. " D i d he say it like Harrison Ford would have said it?"

"English, not American."

" Y o u know that difference?"

" L i k e Nanny Parsons would have said it, English."

"Andreas, this is really extremely important . . . "

"It was English, Mr Erlich."

"I could waste an awful lot of my time . . ."

"English."

The words " H e y , there" were underlined and across the top of the page he had written in bold capitals E N G L I S H .

He apologised for his intrusion. The boy had been good. He had no doubts about the boy. Because he had taught school before becoming a Fed he had some experience of kids. Erlich helped out with the Little League team in Rome that played and practised at the American School on the Via Cassia most Saturday mornings. When he was in Rome, when Jo was off somewhere, he enjoyed being one of the helpers. The coach liked having him there. The coach was an Embassy staffer in Rome and said that it was twice as good having helpers who weren't parents. The Little League baseball squad was fine relaxation for Erlich. It had given him the chance to go on talking to and getting to know children and he was sure he would know if a boy was telling him the truth. He said no to tea, thank you, or a scotch and soda. He walked down the driveway to the main gates of the villa. He crossed the road. He bent by the flowers, and tidied them.

He went down the road to the junction to look for a taxi.

3

"That's all you've got, Bill, the testimony of an infant child."

Don was a Fed from his shined shoes to the loosened necktie at his throat. Old guard, old school. Don had led the "rotten apple"

investigation five or six years back. The arrest of that worm had been the greatest cross Don had ever had to carry, the most dangerous traitor ever in the history of the government's security service. Erlich remembered his face from the network news, bleak and uncompromising and shamed, when the announcement was made. Don pushed away the breakfast plate and lit his pipe.

"Ninety-nine times out of a hundred a kid will tell you what he thinks you want to hear," Vito said.

Vito was too sharp a dresser to look like a Fed. Gold bracelet, sports shirt, and a small crucifix dangled from a 24-carat chain round his throat. The soybean sting in Chicago had been his.

Fantastic to have run two agents inside the sealed world of the soybean futures pit. It was said in Washington, at the level that Erlich had worked, that Vito could tackle anything, other than Mafia. He'd have been good there, with his background, but his wishes were respected.