‘I’ll do this on my own.’ Lawson left them and strode off down the pavement. He heard steps behind him — Davies and little Charlie, the cuckoo girl. He went fast and fancied they hurried to keep up. Once he flicked his fingers, irritably, behind his back as a gesture that he didn’t want them close, but they ignored him and kept coming. He had been fast asleep, dreamless as usual, when the call had come, and he had pulled on clothes over his pyjamas.
He remembered Clipper Reade’s story. Clipper had had a good story for a similar situation … Dennis had said: From the body language of him, we’re about to lose him. It was the same as Clipper had faced on the bench in the park below the old fortress at Gdansk. He’d listened well to the big American’s story, told over two pots of Earl Grey, some thirty years before.
He came to him.
He looked down into the dark of the doorway. The man was curled up, foetal, his shoulders seemed to shake, his hands were clasped tight below his knees but still trembled, and his head was sunk. Well, small mercies, while half recovering from the confusion of that damn call coming in he had made one correct and important decision: to keep bloody Shrinks out of it.
He turned. Caught Davies and the cuckoo girl in his glance. ‘You stay back. On no account do you interfere. You are not a part of this.’
He crouched. With a short jabbing movement, he slapped November’s cheeks, right and left, little stinging blows — and the eyes in front of him opened wide.
‘Do I have your attention?’
The eyes, glazed, stared back at him.
Lawson spoke briskly: ‘I’m not getting into a debate about your state of mind. Neither will I tolerate some navel-gazing examination of what we’re about and where we’re going. I will, however, remind you of one thing. You were a volunteer.’
He saw his man stiffen and anger glowed in the eyes. Better.
‘It’s not acceptable, if you didn’t know it, to be Volunteer Man on Monday, everyone gets to speed on Tuesday, and become Quit and Run Man on Wednesday. There is a team behind you, good men and women at the top of their game, but your response is to hunker down in a doorway and snivel. You happy with that?’
A fist clenched and the body, Lawson thought, was coiled with anger.
‘Right now you’re pathetic. You’re a disappointment, at acute level, to those working with you. So the going’s rough. Well, sonny boy, you volunteered. Get up off your backside, start walking, and walking fast — oh, and before that, tell me, words of one syllable, about dinner at Reuven Weissberg’s, and when the move out is scheduled for.’
He had to strain to listen, but his man was now standing. Lawson leaned close, had an arm on the shoulder, felt the tightness of the muscles, and heard the story of the evening.
‘Right, that’ll do for a start. We’re here, think on it, in your wake — and think also that you’re one cog, just one, in a complex but dedicated machine. Not least yourself, you’ve let down many people this evening, this morning. It cannot happen again. When the pace quickens, you may have cause to cringe in a corner, but not now. Now we’re barely started. On your way, young man.’
Lawson was shouldered off the step, and nearly fell. He had to grope for the wall, where there was a brass plate, to steady himself. He had felt the aggression as the shoulder had buffeted him aside. Aim achieved.
His man, November, shambled a few paces, then stopped. Lawson watched. He saw November kick out a leg, then almost march forward, as if a decision had been taken. Lawson breathed hard. Saw him reach the corner, shoulders thrown back, turn into the next street, and lost sight of him.
From behind, Davies hissed, ‘That was pretty unnecessary, about as savage as anything I’ve ever seen, and—’
Lawson said evenly, ‘Well, you’re young, inexperienced, and have seen very little, so your comment is quite simply inappropriate.’
‘—was brutal and vicious, and I feel dirty to be part of it. Have you made a career of walking over people and—’
‘Keep your toys in the pram.’ Suddenly so bloody tired. He started to go, slowly, back up the street towards where the surveillance men were. She skipped up to be alongside him. Little Charlie, the cuckoo girl, matched his step and her head bobbed by his elbow. Yes, so bloody tired.
Matter-of-fact, she said, ‘I’ve been putting it together, Mr Lawson, the little bits and pieces that drop from your table, what you’ve said for us low-life to hear, and what’s happened. If the people I work with knew what you’d done they’d be standing in a line to kick your head in. It’s all very clever, Mr Lawson. I suppose that winning, to you, justifies everything.’
He did not say that losing was unacceptable. If he was right in his judgement, and a warhead was now travelling overland towards some damn place on some damn border from faraway Sarov, for purchase and collection, then — indeed — losing was not an acceptable option.
‘How did it go, Mr Lawson?’ Adrian asked him.
‘He’s fine.’
‘Stiffen his spine, Mr Lawson?’ Dennis asked him.
‘Did what was necessary.’
He slid into the car’s seat, was bloody near asleep as soon as he did so.
He kissed the cheeks of his wife gently so that she wouldn’t wake. Then, in stockinged feet, the Crow went out into the corridor and along it. He pushed open the door to the children’s bedroom, went to each bed and kissed the forehead of each child.
In the hall he put on his shoes, lifted his bag and hitched it on his shoulder. He left nothing behind him, no mobile phone or laptop computer from which evidence might later be taken. He unlocked the front door, and the first smear of dawn was coming from across the Gulf sea. In the middle distance, he could see the crane on the building site. A taxi waited for him. He did not know when, if, he would return home to his wife and children. He hoped to, but did not know if it would be possible.
The taxi drove away. If he never again saw his wife, whom he loved dearly, or his children, if he took delivery of the weapon and was successful in moving it on to the target zone, he believed the sacrifice of his family would be easy.
The taxi took the Crow to the airport.
His mind churned with the implications of what he was committed to, and Sak had not slept. In the narrow single bed, he lay on his back and the thoughts rampaged.
If, when he had embarked on his journey, he was suddenly aware of men round him with guns, would he run or would he stand and raise his hands? Would they give him the chance to raise his hands or would they shoot him down? He had seen himself, in the night, spreadeagled on a pavement with a pistol barrel crushed against his ear, or crumpled, with blood flowing from the bullet wounds and a crowd gathered at safe distance from him.
Also in his mind, intruding, were the images and voices of his visit to Summers, the chief security officer. Your clearance to work here is, with effect today, withdrawn and security and the safety of the nation demand, in these difficult times, that we make hard decisions; he doubted, now, that any at Aldermaston remembered him, that any recalled seeing him walk like a zombie from the headquarters building to the hostel, clear his room and pack his bags, and that any spoke of his going to the main gate, feeding his card into the machine, knowing it would not be returned, and going to the bus stop. He had fear, but had hate to counter it.
The house was quiet. He yearned to sleep but could not. The thought jolted him.
At his journey’s end he would not be a lowly technician in a school physics laboratory. He would be a man of importance, substance and stature, integral to the plan of those who had recruited him. Could hold his head high, yes, because the examination he would make and the utilization of his expertise were not for money. He was not owned by greed, avarice, could tell himself that his acts were governed by principle.