you know what that is, Anti-Tank Guided Weapons.'
Memories for Johnny, memories of 'I' Corps days. ' I know.'
'He's specialised in MCLOS, you read that?'
Johnny nodded. ' I know what that is.'
'Well that's about all I can tell you.' Carter chuckled. 'Nothing changes in the Service. There are the princes, the God Almighties . . . that's Charles Mawby, and there are the carriers of pitchers of water. I lug buckets around and do what I'm told and that way if it spills then I don't get it in the neck . . .' Carter paused, looked again at Johnny, and keenly.
'You were a German specialist in Intelligence?'
'Army Intelligence.'
'But a specialist in German theatre?'
'For seven years.'
'Fluent?'
'Grade five.'
'What does that mean ?'
'Grade four and five classify you as having colloquial capability. It means you can pass as a citizen.'
There was a little gleam of understanding from Carter, as if another jigsaw piece had slid into place. The housekeeper carried in a laden plate for Johnny. Carter seemed not to notice, absorbed in what he had heard. Johnny began to eat, fast and without finesse.
' I was listening to what the two who brought you here last night were saying, you were upstairs unpacking your bag.' Carter was now companionable, sympathetic. 'They said that you had a bit of bother over in Ireland . . .'
'Right.'Johnny, mouth full and brusque.
'Well, that's all behind you.'
If it could ever be behind him, if it could ever be forgotten. Maeve O'Connor aged 15 years, not old enough to wear mascara, the girl blasted to death by the single shot from Johnny Donoghue's Armalite. It would never be forgotten.
Johnny finished his food, swilled the last of his coffee and stood up, Carter rising with him.
'Pierce and Smithson have gone for a walk. They're chalk and cheese.
God knows what they find to talk about. Nothing really happens till Mr Mawby shows, he's the one that chose you.'
They went out through the door and Johnny said, 'I think I'll just stroll around a bit. Get my bearings.'
'Please yourself, but I'd rather you didn't leave the grounds.'
Carter called back into the dining room for Willi and together they set off for the interrogation room and the start of the morning session.
Getting serious, weren't they, the big men in London? Had to be serious when they pulled Johnny Donoghue into the game. No longer just play-time out in the school yard for Henry Carter and Willi Guttmann, no longer sparring across the table in the hope of brightening a
'restricted' report. Could be a matter of life and death, couldn't it? Johnny Donoghue's life, Johnny Donoghue's death. And he seemed a nice chap, that was Carter's first impression anyway.
Because the message to the British Embassy in Bonn would be transmitted in cypher, Charles Mawby had come that Sunday morning to Century House. Amongst the security personnel on the door and the weekend rostered clerks there was little surprise at the sight of him striding purposefully through the front hallway and along the corridors of the near-deserted building. He was a workhorse, that one, they said.
All hours the good Lord gave, and his wife must be a saint to put up with it, or a bitch to have driven him that far.
His communication was directed to the SIS officer working from the Embassy in the German Federal Republic's capital. An evaluation was to be made of the feasibility of bringing a Soviet citizen out of the German Democratic Republic. That person would come of his own volition, and the collection point would be in the vicinity of Magdeburg.
The collection could be left to German nationals who dealt in such matters and the commercial rate would be paid for those services.
Co-operation with the West German authorities was not to be sought.
Mawby would be free to travel to Bonn in a few days' time if that were thought desirable by the field station.
The signal was marked priority, and called for a preliminary answer within two days.
The rain slapped into the roof of pine branches high above Ulf Becker and Jutte Hamburg.
All of the group had been walking in the forest when the first heavy drops had fallen in unison with the shell crack of the thunder.
Some had run for the chalets on the shore of the Schwielowsee hard in the wake of the Freie Deutsche Jugend organiser. Others had scattered, allowed the volume of the rain beating on the path to provide the excuse that they were better sheltering and waiting for the "storm to pass over.
Ulf and Jutte had stripped off their blouses and used them as protection against the floor of pine needles. Jutte underneath with her tight, small lemon breasts pushed up into Ulf s face. The boy with his hands groping at the waist of the girl's trousers. The girl with her hands pulling and gouging at the skin beside the boy's backbone. No words, no sentiments.
Trousers slipping, elasticated pants stretching, fingers grasping, mouths meeting hot and wet and seeking each other. And the rain falling in a steady drip on the boy's back and him unaware, and she too uncaring that the water rivers ran on her face and savaged the hair that she had carefully combed that morning. No need for preparation, no vantage from ritual courtship. Her hands drifting beneath the cover of his trousers, and the boy arching and desperate and she wriggling her bottom upwards that he might draw her clothes down, that she should bare herself to him. Ulf panting. Jutte moaning, a sweet and soft treacle sound and the call for her boy. Ulf s trousers at his knees, and his face wrapped in the moment of annoyance as he must lose her and reach for his back pocket. Always when he was on leave from Weferlingen and he would see Jutte he went first to the chemist or the machine in the lavatory at Schoneweide railway station. And always at that time she helped him, he passing it to her, and she tearing the packet open. And always then the fast road to the glory and the escape and the fierce freedom. Rising and falling, the raw wind cutting against their nakedness, wrapped in arms, encircled in legs, till the shriek of pleasure burst in them and the strength
failed and eventually crawled away. Hard together they lay, a long time, exposed only to each other, bewildered by the beauty.
'Sweet boy.'
Darling Jutte, darling lovely Jutte.'
'So good.'
'Better than good.'
'Better than the best.' The girl's fingers reached to his neck, held his head close to her shoulder, wound the thin strands from his cropped hair between her nails under which had caught the earth from the forest carpet. 'You are a good son of the Fatherland, Ulf. . . always you get better, always your production is higher . . .' She giggled.
'Piss on the Fatherland.' The snarl exorcised the gentleness from his mouth.
'Piss on the Fatherland?' Jutte dreaming, eyes closed in safety. 'Piss on it? Even little Ulf, hero of output in the DDR, protector of its frontier
. .. even he cannot drown it.'
' Does not even know how to fight it.'
Jutte opened her eyes, pushed his head back so that she could look into his face and the clean bones beneath his skin, and the downy blond hair on his upper lip, and his clean and even-set teeth. 'Does not know how to fight it? Ulf does not know how to fight the Fatherland?'
He rolled from her and hastened to pull up his underclothes and trousers. She made no move to follow and lay quite still on the two crumpled blouses.
'Ulf is a soldier, he should know how to fight the Fatherland ... if that is his wish.'
'It is easy to talk of it.'
'Some boys were talking at the Humboldt...'
Ulf creased his lips, a swift spasm of rage. He hated, detested it when she spoke of life at the University in Berlin. Jutte the second year student of Mechanical Engineering. Ulf the second year border guard of the National Volks Armee. She the daughter of the Director of an industrial Kombinat. He the son of a lorry driver. Jutte the product of the Party elite. Ulf the product of the Party faithful.
'What did they
say at the Humboldt?'
She grinned up at him, careless and happy in her power. 'They said there was only one way to fight them.'
'What way was that?' Hoarseness crawled into Ulf s voice.
'To run away from them . . .' Her laugh tinkled close to him. 'That they hate. That is why they have so many of you pretty boys on the border.
The ones who run from them are the ones who fight them.'
He shrugged, uncertain. 'It is impossible.'
'Some do it,' she whispered. 'We see it on the television that comes over from the West. Two families and they made a balloon, they did it.
The man with the glider, the man who swam with the air tanks, the man who pushed the boat with his wife and daughter across the Elbe There was a nervousness now about the boy, and he bridled. 'You have not seen it.'
'It has been done so it must be possible.'
'If you saw it for yourself then you would not say that. There are automatic guns, there are mines, the wire is more than three metres high, there are dogs . . . vicious horrible things. If you had seen the frontier you would not say that it is possible.'
He pulled her upright, then bent to pick up her brassiere and to shake the pine needles from her blouse. She stood with her trousers at her ankles.
'Why do they go there, those who come to the frontier and face the gun that you hold ?'
'We should get back, or we will be missed.'
'The boy who said piss on the Fatherland, that boy is afraid that the FDJ nursemaid will miss him ?'
He knelt at her feet. A ridiculous posture, and his nose brushed against her upper legs and he kissed her and pulled at her trousers till they were at her waist. He flicked the mud from her blouse and pushed her hair back to its parting. 'What do you want of me, Jutte?'
She took his hand and they went slowly to the path. 'I want you to know that my father is going this afternoon to Dresden, some dreary meeting early tomorrow, and my mother is going with him. I want you in their bed at home when these children's games are finished.'
' I have to get the train at midnight.'
'Piss on the Fatherland, the boy said. Silly boy, you'll get your train.'
He put his arm around her waist, squeezed her. The girl pressed her hips close to his as they went back towards the chalets. They would be in time for lunch. Lunch would be Stew, that was usual for the Sunday meal at the Schwielowsee camp.
It had been a low, wearing day for Johnny. Marking time, treading water, waiting.
He had walked the grounds, mapped the geography of the small wood, and the orchard and the thick-grassed tennis court, and the lawns and the outbuildings, once stables. The place smacked of a lost grandeur, everything had slipped out of hand. Only the chain link fence topped with the single strand of barbed wire that ringed the boundary was new.
They'd be bound to pick a house like this, he thought, with a warren of rooms and ivy clinging to the stonework and eating through the mortar, and the paint falling from the window frames. Crumble right into the bloody undergrowth if they weren't careful. Smithson and Pierce had brought the Sunday papers back with them. In the afternoon Johnny curled in a chair in the hall and read. It was a long wait before the car came, scraping on the gravel.
Charles Mawby came thrusting through the front door. Instinctively Johnny stood up. This was the power, the head of patronage.
George, the sheepdog, herded them into the living room while Mawby settled his bag in his bedroom. Carter brought from the interrogation room and holding his notepad. But not Willi. Smithson and Pierce roused from their siesta. And Johnny who was there to be told of a mission.
They stood, eyeing the chairs, as if even those on the team were uncertain of the seating protocol. The fire was not lit, the curtains not drawn. A virile chill in the air.
Mawby came in, closed the door firmly behind him, took an armchair and waved them down. Johnny sat back a little way from the inner circle.
He was not yet a part of their plan.
'We'll have some tea later. I don't want Mrs Ferguson fussing about us just as we get going,' Mawby said. There was a slim chorus of agreement.
'You've all met each other now,' Mawby said quietly. 'You've had the opportunity to see a bit of Mr Donoghue, though from this stage on I'm going to call him Johnny . . He smiled. 'For everyone's benefit,' Mawby continued, 'we'll take the history first and then the plan. Willi Guttmann, Soviet citizen, junior diplomat, defects from Geneva. He is of little value to us, but for the accident of his birth. Willi Guttmann is the son of Doctor Otto Guttmann who is as important to this country and her allies as the boy is unimportant. Otto Guttmann heads a major and highly specialised weapon research team that is currently working on the replacement for the Red Army of the MCLOS Sagger in the ATGW
range
Mawby paused, let that sink in. Johnny looked across at Henry Carter and saw the trace of a wry smile.
'Otto Guttmann is now an old man, close to his seventieth birthday. We can assume that if the Soviets did not regard his work as of the foremost importance they would have pensioned him off. They have not done so, nor are there any signs that before this present programme is completed he will be permitted to retire. The British interest in Dr Guttmann is quite straightforward. We are about to launch the building programme for the new Main Battle Tank of the late eighties. It involves a minimum of a thousand vehicles, at an average cost per weapon of half a million pounds. Thousands of jobs are tied into the manufacture process. In the event of conventional hostilities in Europe that tank will have to face the weapon currently being pre- pared by Doctor Guttmann at Padolsk in the Soviet Union. I think I make myself clear.' It wasn't a question, but there was a faint mutter of assent from Smithson and a drawled acknowledgement from Pierce. Carter toyed with his wed- ding ring as if nothing had been said that was new to him. Johnny sat very still. It was coming closer to him, the tide on its way to his sand castle, sneaking nearer.
'Willi Guttmann managed his defection with a brilliance that those of us who have had dealings with him here find hard to credit. He sought to protect his father from having a son who had betrayed his adopted country, so for his escape the boy feigned a drowning accident. From what we have been able to discover subsequently the hoax was successful. Both his father and the Soviet authorities apparently believe that Willi Guttmann drowned in Lake Geneva. Willi Guttmann was close to his father, it was a loving parent and child relationship.
'Willi has told us that each year his father takes a two-week holiday in his former home city of Magdeburg in the German Democratic Republic. Magdeburg is 48 kilometres, that's 30 miles, from the Inner German Border. Half an hour's drive down the autobahn. Dr Guttmann will be slaying at the International Hotel on Otto von Guericke Strasse from Sunday the first to June the 15th. It is our inten- tion while he is in Magdeburg to persuade Otto Guttmann to take advantage of escape facilities that we shall provide and so follow his son to the West.'
A hundred questions, a thousand negatives, bounced in |ohnny's mind.
Only difficulties, only problems, only dangers. But that was the way of' '
I ' Corps; always to fling ice water over any new plan.
'We've read all we can about you, Johnny. On Friday afternoon I spoke to as many people as I could reach who had commanded you during your time in the army. The reports are very good, it's a series of commendations . . . We would like you, Johnny, to go to Magdeburg, to persuade Dr Guttmann to take the opportunity to rejoin his son, to deliver him to the pick-up. That's the proposition.'
Johnny sighed, drew the air deep into his lungs, wanted to look around him, but they would all be gazing at him, and he stared instead at the carpet, tried to concentrate on its pattern while his mind reeled and lurched and his heart. thumped.
'You wouldn't be involved in the actual transfer, Johnny, you've no worries on that score, it'll be taken care of.'
Johnny Donoghue back on the inside, lining out on the team.
'Your job will be str
ictly the approach and persuasion in Magdeburg.
It goes without saying that coercion is not involved.'
Almost a time for tears. Almost a time to leap up and grab these men, wrap his arms around them and hold them close to him and thank them, thank them from the deep depths.
'You'll learn more as the days pass, but that's the broad outline and there will be a big team working on the details. There'll be all the support you need.'
Too easy, wasn't it? Slow down, Johnny. It can't be that simple. Don't look up. If it looks easy, it isn't. The only piece of advice he ever had from his father. So where's the catch?
'We're reacting to events, Johnny. The authorisation for us to set this running came just 48 hours ago. That doesn't bother us, we have the capability, we have the expertise, and for a critical part of the plan we want you.'
Was this the time to remember that his country had kicked him ... in the groin, in the crutch, kicked him bloody hard and bent him double?
No, you have to forget that, Johnny, because if you don't forget it where is the future? Is it for ever Cherry Road and German classes at the Technica College?
'Whatever happened in Ulster, Johnny, doesn't matter. As far as every one of us here is concerned you start with a clear sheet and a damn fine record behind you.'
Turn your back now, Johnny, and you're away back tc Cherry Road.
Just as you were a year and a half ago. Home in the shame, back into the shadow.
'I'd like to give it a go.'
He lifted his head and Mawby was beaming at him, Pierce shook his hand, Carter with evident pleasure and welcome on his face waited his turn and Smithson slapped him on the hack. George, with an eye on Mawby, stayed still and distant.
Working from an office temporarily provided for him at headquarters on Dzerzhinsky Street, Valeri Sharygin wrote in longhand what he hoped would be his final report on the disappearance of Willi Guttmann. No, not the disappear- ance, the drowning . . . The KGB major frowned privately, his head turned away from the typist by the window. The absence of the interpreter's body irritated him, but he could wait no longer. Leave beckoned before the departure of the delegation to the United Nations in New York for the summer session of the Conference.
The Contract Page 5
