Tick, Tick, Tick

By John Skow

TIME BOMB

by James D. Atwater

Viking; 239 pages; $8.95

The drill is to walk to the bomb alone, describing what can be seen. Major Thomas, weary and middleaged, too old for the game, takes shelter behind a pillar in Westminster Abbey as his friend Osgood makes the first approach. Speak ing for the tape recorder that is the hedge against future failure, Osgood reports that the thing is in a neatly made wooden box, as usual. No wires or fuses are visible. The customary message is scrawled across the top: "Bugger the Queen Mum." The I.R.A., of course.

Osgood returns for a brief conference with Thomas, in which there is nothing useful to say. This was to have been Thomas' turn, but Osgood has taken his place. Thomas is the most experienced bomb-disposal expert in England, called out of retirement when Irish terrorists began stepping up their bombing attacks in Northern Ireland. But he has exhausted his supply of nerve. It is not a matter of steady hands; a watchmaker's skill is not required. All that is necessary is to pry the top off the wooden box and cut a single wire before the hour hand of the alarm clock reaches the soldered contact point. Usually there is time. Thomas is no longer sure.

Now Osgood makes his second approach to the bomb in Westminster Abbey, calmly reporting his progress. And disappears in a great flash of blue light. When Thomas, who is stunned by the blast, recovers consciousness, he finds that a new and much cleverer bomb maker is working for the terrorists. He must deal with the man because there is no one else to do it.

Author James D. Atwater, a TIME associate editor who has lived in London and patrolled with bomb-disposal units in Belfast, has shadowed this gritty, convincing thriller in shades of gray. He knows the variegated forms of middle age, of working-class London, of fear: "A thin spiral of smoke was curling up from one corner of the top. He could smell the almond scent. 'You son of a bitch,' said Thomas, looking straight down into the box . . . The hour hand was nearly touching the nipple of metal." Atwater's stage machinery creaks a bit as Thomas and his bomb-making opponent are brought together, but the resolution is authentic, and properly somber. The rights and wrongs of the Catholic-Protestant, Irish-English struggle are lost in echoes of past foulness. The gray of gelignite is the only visible future. -- John Skow

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