CONDITION BLACK by Gerald Seymour Read Free Book Online Page B

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