"What flight?"
"Nebuchadnezzar's place, got it?"
"No, I haven't got it. I went to a school, not a seminary."
"Baghdad," Erlich said softly.
" O. K. I got it," said Rutherford.
"You're the only one that I can get there in time who knows what he looks like Terminal Three. State airline desk. Got it?
Due to check in any time from now. Should be one or two friendly faces dotted about, Just don't let go of the man with the briefcase until help arrives. You still got the handcuffs?"
" M y American buddy used them on a nursing sister last night, but I managed to get them back. He's wearing them now. They're rather fetching. I'm on the M25 now. How many people with the briefcase?"
" N o means of knowing. But I don't think he'll be expecting you. Try and do this one right. How's the traffic?"
"It's moving. The whole world is going at about 65. If this keeps up, we'll be there in ten, twelve minutes."
"Fine. Good luck. And Rutherford, one last thing: all of this is out of bounds to your American friend."
" H e won't like that one bit… "
"Correction," said Erlich, "he doesn't like it one bit, but he doesn't give a fuck one way or the other."
"What's that?" Hobbes said.
"It's Erlich," Rutherford said. "He says he'll do exactly what he's told and won't ask any questions."
"Good enough. Time for you to put both hands on the wheel.
'Bye."
Rutherford was pushing the Astra bumper to bumper with a BMW 7 series. White knuckles on the wheel, he cursed the BMW and a Granada that didn't want to pull over out of the way of a toy car. They knifed the traffic lanes, came across out of the fast lane to a cacophony of horns behind them.
"So? What's the hurry?" Erlich said.
" I 'm going to trust you," Rutherford said, "because I may need you. When I was away these last few days, I was checking out a man at our Atomic Weapons place. He'd been caught trying to take some paperwork home. Obviously, I should have bunged him in the slammer, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt, at least until the Colt business was over and done with, and fuck me if the conniving little prick isn't booked onto a flight to Baghdad. He's due at the airport any minute."
"How can I help?"
"I'm wondering. The chief problem at the airport is traffic wardens. The most useful thing you could do would be to handcuff the first two traffic wardens you see to the wheel. That should keep it pinned down for a while, and there's no prospect of your doing it with charm. On the other hand – will you get the fuck out of my way? Jesus!" Rutherford carved his way out of the traffic streams, off the roundabout onto the airport boundary road. Erlich was thinking that at least it took his mind off Jo in Mombasa, or pretty Penny Rutherford. Another five minutes of this and he wasn't going to see either of them again. One more American official murdered by an Englishman. He shut his eyes and the vision of the marmoreal Harry Lawrence in the mortuary lodged in his mind.
"No. I'd like you with me," Rutherford grinned. "There's bound to be an escort, probably armed. If they can't get the runner onto the plane, they'll try and spirit him away. I'll nail the man. You put your delicate paws on all his luggage and beat off all comers. Try and exercise a little British discretion. My people wouldn't want any sort of fuss. Understood?"
"Got you."
Erlich had not seen Rutherford with the blood pulsing before.
He thought he liked what he saw.
The lights of the new Babylon, the high-rise concrete apartment blocks, the huge modern hotels, the status symbols of the new regime, danced off the eddying current of the great, slow-moving Tigris and backlit the ancient domes of the mosques and the timeless narrow outlines of the minarets in the ancient city.
The area around the Embassy and its ten acres of gardens had been sealed. The armoured personnel carriers were in shadow, half hidden under the low foliage of the evergreen trees. Those who lived nearby had retreated behind their gates. The Military Attache estimated that there were a minimum of two hundred troops surrounding the compound. The locally employed staff had been sent home, and told not to return until the matter, the difficulty, had been sorted out. The French had been advised, with regret, that the British Embassy could not be represented at their reception that evening.
The Ambassador met the Colonel at the front door.
" N o, sir, in view of the intolerable situation around this mission, you will not come one step further."
" Y o u are harbouring, Excellency, a criminal."
" Am I? "
" An enemy of the State."
" And what is his name?"
The Ambassador could see the Colonel hesitate and wondered what orders the man had given to the half-dozen heavily armed soldiers who flanked him. Probably just to look as dangerous and nasty as possible but not to shoot anyone. This show of force was as hollow as it was menacing. But that this plausible thug was agitated was not in doubt. Angry, but for the moment, stymied.
"Well, come on, what's the name of this enemy of the State?"
" H e ran in here."
"Who did? People run in and out of here the whole time."
" You know who came."
" How can I identify this criminal if you do not even know his name?"
" Y o u take a risk with me…"
"Kindly remember where you are, my good fellow. You are not in the Abu Ghraib gaol now, you are outside Her Britannic Majesty's legation. Come back in the morning, with a name, with a charge sheet to tell me what crimes have been committed by this anonymous felon, and perhaps we can talk again."
He stared into the eyes of the Colonel. He thought of the agent of the Mossad, prostrate with exhaustion, pretty much at the end of his tether, closeted with his station Officer, and he remembered all that he had read and been told of espionage agents who had been abused into confession and strangled from the gallows, He stared at the Colonel and saw the eyes of a killer, the eyes of a torturer.
He said easily, "And if you come back tomorrow with a clear idea of what you are looking for, and the proper documents, of course, you will be so good as to leave your thugs outside the Embassy's grounds, Goodnight to you."
He walked back inside, He heard the door close behind him.
He heard the bolts pushed to. He saw the merciless smile of his Military Attache, formerly commanding officer of the 2nd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment. He did not trust himself at that moment to walk steadily up the stairs, in full view of his staff, to compose his next signal to London.
It was not original, but it was heartfelt. "God, what a bloody awful couniry," Could someone get me a gin and tonic?"
On the last part of the journey to the airport, Bissett had been quiet. Colt supposed that he would be thinking ol what he had left behind in Lilac Gardens, the woman who wouldn't kiss him goodbye, the kills he hadn't even mentioned tonight Colt talked to him because he felt sorry for the man As he swung the car off the main road and into the airport's feeder lanes, he said, "Heh, Dr Bissett, will you know me when you're there, when you're the big shot?"
"God, Colt, how could you? 'Course I'll remember you…"
"No, no. You'll be in a big car, you'll have a driver. You won't want to know a scruff bum like me."
It was meant lightly. It was just talk, just Colt trying to lift the man.
But in Bissett's answer there was an urgent, passionate sincerity.
"I'll always know you, Colt, for what you've done for me. I am going to tell them that they owe my being there to you. I will make certain that you are properly rewarded…"
"You'll be in your posh compound, Dr Bissett. You'll have taken off."
"Whatever you need, I'll get for you."
"I don't need anything."
"Whatever, a car, a house of your own, anything. "
Colt drove into the long-term car park. He meandered towards a free space. The roar of aircraft engines spilled into the car.