"We were betrayed in London."
"What…? And Bissett…?"
" They knew. It appears they would not have allowed our flight to leave. There was a shooting in the airport, at our airline's desk.
There were security men there, waiting for Bissett."
" H e was shot? It is incredible."
"It seems not. My information is that one of their policemen was the casualty. We have to assume that Bissett was arrested."
"Betrayed… " It was as a bell that tolled in the Director's mind, the chime of disaster. He was the man responsible for Tuwaithah. He had the plutonium; he had the yellow-cake from which the highly enriched uranium could be produced; he had the hot cell boxes; he had the engineering expertise; he had the technicians; he had the chemists. He lacked so little. He had given undertakings to the Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council. Dr Tariq felt the cold of the night around him.
"From within," the Colonel said. "It was why I telephoned you. It was a simple deduction. The leakage had to be from inside. There was a European we chased. I needed to know who, today, was absent from his work, and the description of your man who was missing. My mistake was to have rushed to his safe haven before I telephoned you."
The Colonel spoke of the tall, gangling scientist, with the pallor of northern Europe, with long fair hair. The man who had taken refuge in the British Embassy.
The Swede had been the guest of the Director at dinner, and he had brought back delicacies from Stockholm for the Director's table.
It was Dr Tariq himself, a quarter of an hour later, who found the rifle microphone stowed inside the tubular metal walking stick. He held the rifle microphone in his shaking hand. He looked into the face of the Colonel. He saw the mirror of his own fear. They were both no more than servants of a regime that ruled by the noose and the accident and the bullet from close quarters in the nape of the neck.
The act that Colt feared was remorselessly put into place. The description and photograph of Frederick Bissett were sent to every commercial airport in the country. The same were despatched to every ferry port. With the photograph and description went the order that if any official slipped their detail to the media then retribution would be savage. There was no wish to boast that a Senior Scientific Officer of the Atomic Weapons Establishment had been lost. Firearms were drawn from police armouries by selected and trained officers. And the last thing Dickie Barker did before he left to offer his condolences to the widow of James Rutherford was to order the despatch of a team of Special Branch marksmen and detectives trained in covert surveillance to Wiltshire, to liaise there with his man, Hobbes.
There were six of them in the house, and Sara had seen that two of them wore holsters strapped to their chests underneath their jackets. She had seen the guns in the holsters when they had reached up to push aside the narrow hatch into the roof space.
They had begun the search without waiting for the Security Officer.
She was not asked whether she agreed, she was told that it would be better that the boys go to a neighbour's house, and she was told that would happen as soon as a woman police constable was available. It was quite systematic, the way in which they had begun to pull the house, her home, apart. When the woman police constable had arrived, let in by a detective because she was no longer mistress of 4, Lilac Gardens, she was asked which of her neighbours should have the boys. She pointed next door, not to little Vicky. She pointed to the plumber's house.
She could not protest when her boys were ushered out of her kitchen by the woman police constable. They were white-faced when they went, and she thought they were too much in shock to have cried. And the boys who were ten years old and eight years old held each other's hand, and the woman police constable had her cool uniformed arm round the younger, smaller, shoulder as she took them through the front door.
She felt the shame. She knew the awful, sick depths of despair.
Within a minute, two minutes, of the children being taken from her, the Security Officer had arrived. He had introduced himself and then clumped away up the stairs to assess the state of the search. Now he was back, now he crowded into her kitchen.
God, Frederick Bissett, you bastard… Her husband. Her choice.
Sara reached towards her kettle. She looked at the Security Officer. He nodded. She was permitted to make herself a pot of tea. While the kettle boiled, while she took her milk out of the fridge and a mug from the cupboard, he busied himself with the file that he had brought. She made her pot of tea. She poured a mug of tea for herself, and stirred in the milk. She didn't ask the Security Officer if he wanted tea, didn't offer it to him. Behind his glasses she saw the sharp bright blinking from small eyes. She saw that he wore old corduroy trousers, and that the buttons of his cardigan were tight on his gut. It seemed to matter to him not at all that she had not offered him a cup of tea.
Frederick Bissett, her husband, had brought this creature into her house.
She sipped at the tea. From upstairs she could hear the clatter of drawers being pulled out, and she could hear the whine of the vinyl being lifted from its adhesive, and she could hear the scream as the floorboards were prised up. It was her house, and it was being torn apart. Sometimes she heard laughter. It was just a job of work to them.
She sat with her mug of tea and her shame and her despair.
"Now then, Mrs Bissett, can we get on?"
His elbows were out over the kitchen table. He overwhelmed the chair on which Frederick usually sat. If he had come through the door at that moment, her husband, into her home that was being wrecked, she might have taken a kitchen knife to him.
"When did you first know, Mrs Bissett, that your husband was a traitor?"
But, he was her husband…
"Come on now, Mrs Bissett, I don't wish to be unpleasant, but my inescapable duty now is to minimise the damage your husband can do to this country. I need answers, and I need them quickly. It would be very nice, Mrs Bissett, if we could sit down in your lounge, make some small talk, and eventually ease round to the business of my visit. But that's not possible. I am in charge of security at A. W. E. and from the point of view of the national interest, that is the most sensitive base in Britain. So I don't have time to mess around. Believe me, I get no pleasure seeing what is happening to you and your children and your home, but I will have answers, and fast."
He was her husband, and she had chosen him, for better and for worse…
" H o w long has Dr Bissett been in the pay of the Iraqi Government?"
She had told him that he owed them loyalty. She looked into the slug's face across the table.
" M r s Bissett, if you do not co-operate then it will come a great deal harder for you, and a great deal harder for your children."
He had said that what he did was for her, and for their boys, whatever anybody would say…
"Where is he?"
"I don't have to answer questions, Mrs Bissett."
There was her brittle and frightened laugh. "Don't you know where he is?"
"That's other people's work, to find him. My work is to close down the damage he has done to A.W.E… You're an educated woman, Mrs Bissett, I don't need to spell out to you how intolerably unstable a world it could be if people like the Iraqis can buy their way into the nuclear club… What did he take with him?"
"I have nothing to say to you."
"Did he take papers with him?"
"1 have nothing to say."
"It's the worst sort of traitor, Mrs Bissett, your greedy little rat."
"Nothing."
The eyes of the Security Officer were beaded at her. "I suppose that he thought he had a grievance, was that it? There are 5000 people working at the Establishment. Life is not roses for all of them, for some of them, life is damned hard. They soldier on, they don't believe there is an alternative, they weather their problems. Your husband is unique in the history of the Establishment, not for having a sense of grievance, nor for finding life hard. He is unique in that, the greedy little rat, he took foreign gold, and he betrayed every trust that had been put in him."