Bugsy spoke. ‘I’m not one to cringe. Don’t get me wrong, Guv’nor. I’m up for this like we all are. How safe is this thing likely to be? I think it’s only fair we should know.’
‘Drop it on your foot, Bugsy, and there will not be a mushroom cloud but you will have a broken toe. In the heart of this weapon — the pit — if it’s to be sold on, there will be plutonium or highly enriched uranium. Pack round that pit several kilos of commercial or military explosive, along with a detonator and a wire to a button switch or a remote, and you will have what we laughingly call a “dirty bomb”. A dirty bomb, when triggered, will contaminate a city centre to the extent that it has to be abandoned. It is a dirty bomb that Reuven Weissberg will take delivery of and sell on, and Josef Goldmann is in place to make payment for it, then accept payment on sale. I hope, with your help — and November’s — to stop him. Questions?’
He sensed it had welled up, but was controlled. Young Davies asked. ‘Did you consider sharing your suspicions?’
‘With whom?’
‘Well, for a start, we’re in Germany — sharing with the BfV. Allies, aren’t they?’
‘Unreliable, burdened with bureaucracy. Next question.’
‘If the device is coming from Russia, and the Cold War’s over, why not share with them?’
‘For a decade the Russians have rebuffed insinuations that their nuclear arsenals are porous. It is not accepted that a weapon could be missing — it would be regarded as “provocation” to suggest it. The Cold War’s over, is it?’
‘So, just us and the agent stand between peace for the great unwashed and Armageddon. Too damn proud to share … Down to us and him?’
‘About right,’ Lawson said.
‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘It’s the way it will be.’
‘And should we fail on the interception, should we lose it, or inconveniently lose them, what happens? Do I hear you say, Mr Lawson, “Let’s go for a beer”? Do we stand at the bar, wait for the big bang and—’
‘I think we’re aware of your opinion and the prejudice it carries.’
‘You’ll be damned, Mr Lawson — oh, did Clipper Reade not share? — if you fail.’
‘I do not intend to fail.’ He was hurt. Wouldn’t have shown it. The sneering reference to Clipper had wounded. Couldn’t have explained his reverence and respect for the big Texan. The best damn years of his life had been with Clipper, and Lawson could well recall his desolation when the American had left Berlin and taken the flight down the corridor out of Tempelhof. He had known that Clipper, in a week, would be en route to the States and retirement. He had written once, now twenty-seven years ago, to the Agency’s personnel department, just a chatty note in his own handwriting, and it had been returned in a clean envelope with a slip inside stating Addressee instructed no forwarded mail. Had only the memories, the wisecracks and the wisdom to hold on to. He had shredded that chatty note, never written again, and had never asked Agency people what had happened to his mentor, but had kept the past alive … And a little wet-behind-the-ears bastard had sneered at that name. ‘And with your help and co-operation I shall not fail.’
The silence hung inside the minibus, as if it was a burden.
He was anonymous, a stranger in the city. The Crow had not visited Damascus before. He was in a lodging-house, two streets back from the north end of Semiramis Square. He had bought food from a street stall and taken it back to his room.
He lay on the bed. An electric fan on the table ruffled his hair but its constant whine was insufficient to distract him. He reflected. Of course, the Crow felt no resentment at what he believed his future held. Alone in the aircraft that had brought him to Syria, and on the pavements of its capital city, he had considered his position, and the future. Some, faced with such a situation, cut off thoughts of those they had loved, found a new woman and a new life. He would not. He couldn’t imagine being in the bed of another woman or holding other children in his arms. They knew nothing of what he did, what he planned. Those he had left behind were in complete ignorance of who he was. They would learn.
It would happen. It was inevitable. In the hour before dawn, in a week, a month or a year, the front door of his home would be bludgeoned open and men of the Interior Ministry’s investigation unity, the mabaheth, would pour into the villa, with Americans of the Agency trailing behind them. While rooms were ripped apart, his wife and children would cower in a corner and questions would be screamed at them. It would happen. However close the security around an operation, traces were always left. So many of the leaders’ names were known once the work of an operation was completed. The very attack opened the road for the investigators to follow. Now the Crow was unknown, but in the hours after an explosion and as computers pored over the minutiae of travel arrangements, his name and picture would materialize. He would be running, would be in hiding until the day he made a mistake or was betrayed … The love of his wife and children would be stretched to breaking-point as investigators rifled through their home.
He would have inflicted that pain on them. He couldn’t apologize. He couldn’t ask their forgiveness. He was a soldier, committed to war, and he believed he had the chance to attack and wound his enemy.
‘Please, don’t do that,’ Sak said, emphasized it.
‘What’s the problem?’ His mother stood in the kitchen doorway, hands on her hips, her head shaking in confusion.
‘There is no problem.’
‘I said, reasonably enough, if we need to reach you while you’re away we’ll get your accommodation address from the school.’
‘Don’t.’
‘Why the mystery? You’re on school business. They’ll know where you are.’
‘You shouldn’t call the school. They wouldn’t like it.’
His father, more confused than his mother, intervened from the sofa. ‘But you said yourself that your mobile won’t be on.’
‘Don’t call the school.’ He flounced out, crossed the hall, stamped up the stairs, slammed the door of his room.
Sak fell on his bed.
He imagined them. His father would again be slumped in front of the television and his mother would be doing her final tidy of the kitchen before coming upstairs for the night, and he had perplexed them both. It had been an aside from his mother: ‘You said you didn’t know your hotel when you’re away. Should we need to contact you, I don’t know why, but — well, the school secretary will tell us … because you say your mobile won’t be switched on.’ All innocence. His mother, almost, had caught him in the lie of his doing reconnaissance for a school trip later in the year. He was a poor conspirator, recognized it.
He wouldn’t have dared now to back out of the conspiracy.
There had been a moment when he had stood in front of a metal-faced gate to the garden of a villa on the outskirts of Quetta when he might have. But he had sucked in a big breath and pressed the bell. Inside, under a walnut tree, sitting on the dried earth, welcomed, propositioned, he couldn’t have backed out — hadn’t wished to, and had felt himself, at last, to be important. Couldn’t have backed out when the car had pulled up beside him as he walked away from the school gate, and he was told what he should do, and when — not in the form of a request but as an instruction. He had been told to take holiday from work, to find an excuse for his absence from his family, and he had been ordered to leave his mobile phone behind, because, when switched on, a mobile phone left a footprint.
He lay on his bed, with his packed bag close to the door. A life of failure swam past him. Sak had no idea of the enormity of the conspiracy he had joined, or of the many who were part of it.