The Contract

by Gerald Seymour

  'Close

  to,

  but

  not

  up

  alongside,'

  murmured

  the

  Per-

  manent-Under-Secretary.

  'From our point of view it's pretty clear-cut.' The Director of the Security Service who had worked his apprenticeship with the Malayan and Kenyan colonial police, offered no concessions to the small room and the limited company. 'There'll be no difficulty giving the boy a new suit, a new identity when the time comes.'

  ' It's a bit of a strip show, isn't it? Plenty of fans and feathers.' The Major General grinned. 'It promises us the moon, gets us forward in our seats, and then it's lights out and the curtain's across. Do you suppose we'll be seeing any more flesh?'

  The Deputy-Under-Secretary fidgeted, unhappy that he had over-priced his property. 'We haven't by any means exhausted the enquiries by which Guttmann may give us something of great value.'

  The Permanent-Under-Secretary was shuffling his papers, the preparatory move for the agenda's next business. He said politely,

  'Thank you for attending, Mr Mawby, you'll keep us posted I am sure.'

  Mawby started to rise from his chair. He hadn't done well, and neither had the Service.

  The Director's voice boomed out as if addressing a snatch squad about to launch a dawn raid into a tropical township. 'The old man, he goes to Magdeburg each year?'

  Mawby stood by his chair. 'He apparently takes his holiday there.'

  'Magdeburg in the German Democratic Republic?'

  'Yes.'

  'How far is Magdeburg from the border?'

  'Between forty and fifty kilometres.'

  The Permanent-Under-Secretary tugged his spectacles from his face and wiped them vigorously with his handkerchief. 'I'm not following your drift, Director.'

  'Mr Mawby gave us two pieces of significant information. Guttmann senior is not a member of the Party, and is extremely fond of Guttmann junior. As I see it we have a tasty carrot and a non-ideological donkey.

  Couldn't our carrot be used to entice our donkey from one field to another? The fields would seem to be adjoining.'

  'It's a very juicy thought,' the Major General chuckled. 'You'd have us queuing up to chat to him.'

  'You've the sort of chaps on your books who could trek over there and proposition him, haven't you Deputy-Under- Secretary?' The Director beamed.

  The Deputy-Under-Secretary held his head hidden in his hands, his voice was muffled through his fingers. 'Would it have to go to the politicians?'

  The Permanent Under Secretary seemed pained. 'They're so dreadfully squeamish these days, aren't they? You'll bear that in mind when you judge the issue.'

  They were on their way. Quick steps down the corridors and stairs and through the front door and towards the waiting cars. The lunch period had been eaten into and unless they scampered would be lost.

  'Dig into the files, would you, Charles, for a suitable fellow. See if you can come up with a name for me by tomorrow evening,' the Deputy-Under-Secretary said over his shoulder.

  Carter spoke from the dining room door. 'Willi, there's something they want to clarify in London. What are your father's holiday dates ... in Magdeburg this summer?'

  God Almighty, what were they thinking about in their ivory towers?

  What bloody scheme were they hatching up above the cloud level? They weren't going to try to bring the old man out, not through the minefields, not through the bloody fences. Remember the maxim of the Service, Henry; it exists for the gathering of information and how it is acquired is irrelevant. And it's what the old Service would have done. He curbed himself, doused the thought. They wouldn't be so bloody mad.

  'From the first of June to the fifteenth . . .'

  'Thanks, Willi.' Carter glanced at his watch face, read the date. A month till Otto Guttmann went on holiday. Six weeks till he left, that was more positive. What on earth were they playing at in London?

  'Why do you need to know, Mr Carter?'

  'Don't ask me, lad. Don't expect me to be told anything.'

  They had been in the earth bunker at the edge of the Spellersieck wood for eight hours and the relief lorry to collect Ulf Becker and Heini Schalke was late.

  The 0400-1200 duty, the killer time. The duty that started as the first birds broke the night silence and that ended at noon with the head pounding in pain, the legs stiffened, the eyes red rimmed from staring out in concentration over the cleared ground to the border fence.

  There was no friendship between these two boys as they squatted in the half dark. Becker from Berlin, Schalke from Leipzig. No basis for mutual understanding or trust. The orders of the company commander insisted that sentries should talk together only on matters that affected their operational readiness. And if one spoke in the earth bunker or the watch tower or the patrol jeep then he must know first that his colleagues would not denounce him, and it was the skill of the officers and the NCOs and their rosters that the conscripts never knew with whom they were safe. The boys watched each other with lonely, hawk suspicion.

  Becker was close to the end of his eighteen month service in the Border Guard of the National Volks Armee of the German Democratic Republic, Schalke was new and raw and barely introduced to the barracks back in the farming village of Weferl- ingen.

  The cold seeped inside the walls of the bunker, edged through their mudstained denims, caught at their ears and cheeks, and the hands that gripped their MPiKM automatic rifles. They must always be close to their rifles because the earth bunker had been dug one hundred and fifty metres from the border fence and this was the shooting zone where challenge was unnecessary. If there is a civilian close to the wire, shoot.

  That was the order given to the boys in the company at Weferlingen.

  Shoot to kill. Do not challenge and offer the fugitive the opportunity to run for the wire and try to climb. Shoot to prevent the fence being breached. For that duty they were armed with the MPiKM automatic rifle and two magazines of ammunition. Each time he lay in the bunker or climbed the watchtower or rode in the jeep, Becker posed for himself the same question. Why was it necessary more than thirty years after the founding of the state to maintain a wall of wire, to lay a field of mines, to build a line of watchtowers, why were there still young people prepared to challenge the barricade and the excellence of its defences. Schalke would have no answer, not this lout from the factories at Leipzig who never in his life had doubted the religion of the Party.

  Becker had never spoken of the erosion of his faith.

  From the far distance, muffled by the trees of Spellersieck came the drone of the lorry.

  Becker grinned at the fatty, pallid face of Schalke. He had much to look forward to. From the lorry to Weferlingen. A shower to wash away the night dirt and a change into his best uniform. Transport to Haldensleben, a train to Magdeburg and a connection to Berlin. A 48

  hour pass. There would be an obligatory visit to his parents' flat in the Pankow sector of the capital and then he would be away with the Freie Deutsche Jugend group to the camp site at Schwielowsee, 30 kilometres from the city; and in the party would be Jutte. For two days Heini Schalke could crawl into his bunker, or mount his watchtower, or freeze his arse, or learn his manual without Ulf Becker for company. It would be his last weekend pass before demobilisation in June. The lorry braked in front of the bunker.

  They came out together, emerged into the daylight.

  An officer jumped down from the driver's cab onto the patrol track, two guards from the back tailboard.

  'Anything to report?'

  'Nothing to report,' Becker said to the officer. He did not salute: such mannerisms were not required in the National Volks Armee. He nodded without affection at the men who would replace him in the bunker and occupy the position till eight in the evening.

  He was well built and finely muscled and he climbed easily onto the back of the lorry, Schalke, overweight, struggled to lever himself up
wards with his pack and rifle and night-sight binoculars. He was offered no help.

  On the pavement outside Century House the two men who had come from Charles Mawby's office reckoned themselves lucky to have flagged down a taxi. At that time, late in the afternoon, it could take more than half an hour to get from the north end of Westminster Bridge to Euston Station. Adrian Pierce checked the rail vouchers, first class return to Lancaster, and settled to the evening paper. Harry Smithson gazed sightlessly at the passing metropolis, his thoughts brooding on the file of a man called Johnny Donoghue.

  Chapter Three

  The clouds pushed hard down over the honeycomb of small streets between Willow Lane and the railway line and the River Lune. The slate roofs shone with a dull polish, the first fires of the day had been lit and thrust thin grey spirals into the early day. The brickwork of the houses, terraced and semi-detached in haphazard pattern, was weathered red, and solid. This was Lancaster, a county town rich with history, its castle a monument to the work of five centuries before, its prospects in decline, its usefulness outgrown. Not that there was such history in Cherry Road, but the houses had a steadfast, enduring appearance.

  In the terraced homes the layout was uniform and identical for all.

  A narrow hallway with a front sitting room leading off and behind it a parlour where the chairs were comfortable and the television stood in glossy splendour permitting the sitting room to be left for best. At the end of the hall and beyond the bent staircase was the kitchen with a back door into a stone flagged yard. Upstairs was one large front bedroom and then space only for one smaller bedroom, and the bathroom. Not a large house, but sufficient for the needs of Johnny Donoghue and his mother.

  When he had first come home to live here, a year and a half ago, he had tried to freshen and brighten the old house, to warm its walls with colour, and for months he had busied himself with his paintbrush and his electric drill and the ladder he stored in the yard.

  A little paradise, his mother called it, the nicest house in Cherry Road, and didn't the neighbours admire the effort he had put in? Nothing more to do now at the weekends, and so Johnny could lie in his bed, lie on his back and brood.

  His mother had adapted well to the changes of fortune that had cudgelled Johnny Donoghue. Few enough mothers could have acted out the pretence that a catastrophe had not struck at their lives. A tiny nest-fledgeling of a woman but with strength, and the bitter disappointment at Johnny's plunging fall had been carried in her short, scurrying stride. Tough as a boot, he thought her, and it was right that he should have come back home to live and find himself again.

  Born in 1945, the only son of Herbert and Charlotte Donoghue. The first six years of his life eked out in married quarters of the British Army of Occupation in Germany. His father had been an officer, but made up from the ranks, and was promoted to Captain when aged 43 and two decades older than most of the other men in the mess. Just a small gratuity had been paid him when he left the army and then there was a hardware shop that was open six days a week in the centre of Lancaster and behind the Town Hall. The King's Commission was exchanged for trade, Saturday night drinks in the mess for glasses of beer in the British Legion, card games for dominoes. And with his only child reaching for his ninth birthday, Herbert Donoghue had without warning or previous illness fallen dead across the wide counter of the shop. Hard times for a widow. The business was sold up, the house purchased outright because Charlotte Donoghue said the home was the bedrock of the family, four mornings a week cleaning for a family that lived in a big house out on the Heysham road.

  When he lay in bed of a morning at the weekend and gazed at the flower print curtains, Johnny Donoghue thought often of his childhood.

  Johnny at eleven winning a scholarship to the Royal Grammar School and being given a new shirt as a reward. At fifteen collecting a Modern Languages prize for his German and mother sitting in the Great Hall of the school and beaming her unashamed pride. At eighteen leaving school with a clutch of examination passes and a glowing testimonial from his headmaster. At nineteen getting a scholarship to the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst and going away on the train from Lancaster station with his mother's waving handkerchief the last glimpse of home.

  At twenty-two at Passing Out, and at the march past in front of the College, back straight, arms straight, and wondering how his mother was coping out there amongst all the other families who had come to watch their sons. A small woman in a green coat, with a hat she could not afford, and they had left The Academy by taxi queuing at the exit gate with the Daimlers and the Bentleys and the Jaguars.

  With his knowledge of German, backed by good school French, he was just what they wanted, they said, in the Intelligence Corps. A fine future was predicted. Straight indulgence, that's what it was, even to think back, because those days were gone, obliterated.

  Ten years after entering the army, ten years after winning his dress sword, Johnny Donoghue had walked from the station to Cherry Road, dressed in slacks and a sports jacket. Uniform sold, mess bill paid up, an engagement ring returned by a civil servant's daughter. An embarrassment to his friends, a wound to his mother. In his suitcase he brought his boots, and three plate silver mugs awarded for marksmanship the sole relics of a military career. Awkward in his disgrace, embittered by the treatment meted out to him, Johnny had come home.

  After a full breakfast Adrian Pierce and Harry Smithson paid their bills and checked out of the Royal King's Arms Hotel. From the cut of their suits, the trim of their hair, the knot of their ties both were plainly southern creatures. Strangers in Castle Park and heading for Willow Lane.

  'Do you think he'll be easy, Harry?'

  'Not too easy I wouldn't have thought.'

  'Not after what they did to him.'

  'There are always casualties, bound to happen when you put troops in to do policemen's work.'

  'A bit hard, to charge him with murder.'

  'Bloody ridiculous.' They were crossing the railway bridge and Smithson paused to watch an express train rocketing beneath them.

  'A dreadful place that Belfast. I go down on my knees each night and pray God I'm not sent there.'

  'Keep your nose clean on the German Desk and the Lord will look pleasantly upon you. Not much of a place this, either.' Smithson sniffed unhappily at the air. They crossed Willow Lane and Smithson glanced at the scribbled directions given him by the hotel porter.

  A damn good career officer, that's what Johnny Donoghue was in the mind of Adrian Pierce, damn good till they posted him to Army Headquarters at Lisburn, Northern Ireland. He'd taken the file from Smithson, read it in bed, tried to colour the portrait of the man they were sent to collect. A damn good career officer, a captain knocking on major.

  Expert on Germany, steady and reliable. But the great appetite of the Northern Ireland commitment for manpower meant that Intelligence Officers must be seconded from the main battle forces of northern Europe to the twilight of counter-insurgency just past the British back door.

  It had been a surveillance stake out. Donoghue and two squaddies lying up in a hide for three days and nights to watch an explosives cache and a figure approaching it at night, trousers and anorak, and it was raining and there was something in the hand. Perhaps he should have challenged, that was procedure. But why the hell should he have done that with three hundred soldiers dead and buried and the police and reservists to keep them company? Why the hell should he? Fire first and ask questions later, that's what any other army does.

  The poor bastard must have damned near died of shock when he found he'd hit a child, a fifteen-year-old girl . . . must have fetched his food up at the very least. Not Guilty, of course. Not Guilty of murder. But the stain was there, and the judge's sarcasm. Cutting words that read no less viciously on paper than they would have sounded in the Belfast Crown Court. And nobody had wanted to know Johnny Donoghue afterwards. No celebration party back at Lisburn. Just a chilly goodbye and an escort to the RAF wing at Aldergrove Airport. N
ow he was back home with his mother. Now he was teaching German at night classes at the Technical College. And Smithson had said that Donoghue wouldn't be easy. Who'd blame him for that?

  They walked into Cherry Road.

  'Number 14,' said Smithson.

  In the bathroom at the back of the house, standing at the basin in pyjama trousers, his face wet with shaving cream, Johnny Donoghue heard the beat of the knocker on the front door. Not Mrs Davies from next door because she'd know that his mother was at the shops, and she never came before eleven to share a pot of tea. Not the milk bill, not the paper bill because they came with the delivery. Who would come that early to Cherry Road? Not the meter reader, not on a Saturday morning. He cursed and scraped on with the plastic handled razor. Another knock.

  His mother always left the front sitting room window ajar, so they'd know there was someone in the house. And he'd left the curtains drawn.

  He sluiced the soap off his face. A fine sight he'd look, dark hair and therefore a dark beard and half of it scratched off and the other cheek set with bristles and alive. He pulled his dressing gown off the hook on the back of the door, slipped it on and tied the belt.

  'Coming,'Johnny shouted.

  There was an answering note. A high, clean call of thanks. No hurry.

  A voice of the middle class, of the south. Johnny paused a moment on the stair in indecision, and then opened the front door. The morning light struck him and he blinked. The two men were in shadow, their features indistinct.

  'Mr Donoghue? Mr John Donoghue?' The older man spoke. Police?

  Army? London, anyway.

  'That's me.'

  'I'm Harry Smithson.'

  'My name's Pierce.'

  'Can we come in?' Smithson asked. Not happy at having to ask, not happy on the pavement.

  ' It depends what you want.'

  Smithson looked around him, the automatic response. The glance over each shoulder as if in Cherry Road there might be a listener or an eavesdropper. His voice dropped. 'We were sent from London to see you, Mr Donoghue. It's a government matter.'