She turned on her heel and started to walk back towards the farm gate.
Her boots squelched on the grass and mud. The dog was close to her, and a couple of paces behind Willi Guttmann followed.
Carter slammed down the telephone and took the stairs three at a time.
He ran down the corridor to Johnny's room.
Thank God. Thanks be to anyone who's listening. Down on his knees he'd be that evening at the old bedside, grovelling his gratitude. A sharp knock at Johnny's door and Carter's fist was on the handle and turning it.
'Come on, Johnny boy. Time to go and fetch the truant back.'
Johnny was thrusting the bedclothes away, swinging from the bed, groping for his trousers.
'You've got him ?'
'Right first time.'
'Christmas and birthday rolled into one for George?' Socks on, shirt over his head, shoes at his feet.
'George looks tolerably pleased at the prospect of renewing his friendship with young Willi.'
Johnny was hurrying after Carter towards the door. 'He won't have had time to do any damage, will he?'
They went down the stairs in a scamper and clatter of feet. ' I haven't heard much,' Carter said. 'The little that did come through seemed to say that he'd been in the woods all night.'
'Then we're still on course.'
Carter sensed the satisfaction blooming from Johnny. Never panicked, had he? This was a cool one, steady and rational as he'd been every day since he'd come to Holmbury. This was the man for Magdeburg.
George was already in the driving seat, the engine ticking gently.
The directions they followed were not complete, but they had no difficulty in finding their destination. A slim country lane, with the high banks broken by the drives to the homes of those who could afford to live in the country, four bed- rooms and half an acre, and to commute daily to London. There were three police cars in the road, blue roof lights rotating, and a milling mass of activity that blocked the entrance.
George braked, cut off the'engine, snapped open his door and was first out. 'Switch those bloody lights out, it's not a frigging circus.'
Two men from Security stood beside a uniformed Inspector. 'I've the place surrounded,' the Inspector said evenly, turning the cheek. 'Your boy is in there with the lady who found him and the local constable, chap called Potterton.'
'No photographs . . . keep your eyes off his bloody face when we bring him out, and no talking to him.' George marched towards the closed gates.
'We'll hang around just to see you don't lose him again.' There was a smile at the mouth of one of the Security men. He spoke in a firm whisper and his words carried and he weathered the furious glare as George passed him.
George led to the front door, Carter and Johnny close with him. The doorbell chimed in a brief treacle melody. There were the sounds of a key being turned, a bolt withdrawn. The door opened. George surged forward to find his way barred by a uniformed policeman.
'Yes?'
'We've come for the boy,' snapped George.
'Everything's all right, officer,' Carter chivvied from the porch. 'We've come to take the lad back. We're most grateful for your help.'
'You should know, sir, that Mr Guttmann has made some serious allegations against. . .'
The droning country accent of the constable was sliced to silence by George. 'Forget them . . . where is he now?'
'Allegations which I shall have to report to my superior.' The constable would not be bulldozed, held his ground.
'Put that report in and you'll be digging potatoes for the rest of your natural. I'll make bloody certain of that.' George's voice was ice quiet.
'Don't do anything till you've heard from your senior officer, that would be the right course of action, I think.' Carter peered over George's shoulder, deftly poured his oil, and the constable stood aside.
Through an open doorway off the hall they saw Willi Guttmann, bare legs and naked chest under a loosely wrapped dressing gown, shrunk in a high-backed chair, gripping a mug of tea between his two hands. George was away, the hound after the stag. Into the neat and freshly papered and gloss-painted living room, muddied feet trailing on the fitted carpet.
Johnny saw a woman sitting on a sofa close to the boy. Trim hair, tweed skirt, blouse and cardigan. Good imitation pearls at her neck, a dog that growled without menace at her feet. Her eyes shone in helpless, proud annoyance at the ravishing of her home and hospitality.
'Come on, Willi, get yourself dressed and we'll be on our way. I'm sure we've caused this lady enough trouble,' George said.
Willi stood up, put the mug carefully down on the chair arm.
'I've only just put his clothes in the washing machine,' the woman bridled.
'Then get them out, madam, if you would be so kind.'
She looked once at George, then at the impassive faces of Carter and Johnny, her nerve failed and she scurried for her kitchen.
Eyeball to eyeball, George and the boy. All the threat, all the intimidation absorbed in the devastated, pallid features of Willi Guttmann. George slipped off his raincoat and handed it without comment to the boy who undraped the dressing gown, stood for a moment in his underpants, and then drew the coat, many sizes too large, around him.
'Stay by my side, lad. All the way, and don't you bloody leave it.'
They walked from the room, Carter with them. Johnny heard their shoes grinding the gravel of the driveway.
The woman came back from the kitchen and handed to Johnny a supermarket shopping bag that contained the sodden bundle of Willi's clothes.
'What's this all about?' Chin out, aggressive now that the minder had gone.
Johnny grinned. 'It's called "national security", with all that that involves, all the rigmarole.'
'He said you were trying to kill someone.'
' If I were you I'd dig a hole and drop everything the kid said into it, and then fill the hole in and stamp the earth down. That's my advice.'
'You people, your sort, you make me sick.'
'That's your privilege.'
Johnny headed for the door, closed it gently behind him, and walked to the car.
Chapter Nine
As a couple that sits at breakfast the morning after an evening of vicious argument and tries to build bridges, so the community of the house at Holmbury led themselves back to the path of the social decencies. The talk was a little more strident, the laughter a little more frequent, the cheerfulness more overt. The flight of Willi must be erased. And Mawby was back again to inject discipline into the team, to stamp out recrimination, to lift and to encourage. Mawby understood leadership because that was his training from the time that he could stagger beyond the range of his nanny's arms. Mawby could take responsibility and carry the group towards efficiency and effectiveness.
But it was pretence and all in the house knew it.
Johnny recognised the fraud, and saw also the worry lines that settled on Mawby's face in the evenings, the glow of growing anxiety that was the bedfellow of the ticking off of the days on the calendar in the interrogation room. Sharp pen strokes towards the change of the month and the coming of June and the highlighted, bracketed dates.
Carter recognised it. He felt a keenness in his questions to the boy as if time was suddenly slipping. All the questions must count, all the answers must be clear and candid. They would not be repeated.
Smithson and Pierce recognised it. Johnny, the pupil, more attentive and straining to accept what they told him, and their own minds turned to the issue of how great an encyclopaedia they could cement into their man's memory in the intervening days.
Willi recognised it. The sessions in the morning were longer, sometimes spilling into the afternoons, and nobody shouted, nobody swore at him.
This was the source of their information and at last he was treated with a grudging deference. Perhaps he had won a trifle of respect from these men. Perhaps their attention was closer to what he said. There were many things that Willi sa
w .. . The glimmer light that burned all night in his bedroom. The chrome bar, screwed into the woodwork, that sealed his bedroom window. The camp bed in the corridor outside his door where George now slept, or lay on his back most likely, with his eyes opened and watchful.
A new and different mood for each participant at the house. And overriding and dominating was the calendar and the fugitive days of May.
Spring drifting to summer.
Squirrels on the lawn, leaping and chasing and thrusting out their brush tails. Rabbits coming with a boldness to the lawns from the shrubs.
The small birds of the woods searching in the soft flower beds for grubs.
And all unseen by the men in the house.
Meals in the dining room, briefings in the sitting room, questions in the interrogation room. Earlier in the morning, later in the evening.
Longer days, more crowded hours.
Willi no longer in the centre and under the wide spot- light. Johnny there, Johnny superseding him. No time for walking and for casual conversation.
'Tell me, Willi,' says Carter. 'Your father's affections, who would they be stronger towards, you or your sister?'
'You won't have much of an opportunity to talk to him, Johnny,' says Pierce. 'But if you do, and before you get him in the car and lose him down the autobahn drive, then the critical areas are the warhead and the time factor between ignition and the completion of the target locking. It's conceivable that the Marienborn check will bust him. You see, Johnny, we'd hate to have gone to all this trouble and have nothing to show for it.
You'll try and get something there, won't you?'
*
'You're a teacher,' says Smithson. 'But we can't pretend that you're on a study trip, we can't line you up a list of appointments at education institutions, not in the days we have available. So you have to be on holiday, a single man looking for somewhere out of the ordinary. That's why you're in Magdeburg. There won't be British there, highly unlikely, only other east bloc people. You just play the tourist with the maps and the pocket camera. Do the churches - the Dom and the Kloster Unser Frauen. Do the parks beside the river, do the Kulturhistorische Museum.
For God's sake don't photograph bridges, railway sidings, anything military.'
The barrage of information increased. Sufficient to send Johnny to his bed each night reeling from its variety and complexity. Flesh growing on the old photograph of Otto Guttmann's face, blood coming to his cheeks, colour to his chin, life to his eyes. Finding familiarity and understanding with an old man.
Photographs of Magdeburg. Postcards in sepia, faded by sunlight.
Twin towers of the Dom, cascades of fountains, the flats on Karl Marx Strasse. Brittle and modern and hollow monuments. They didn't help much, not so as Johnny would notice, but just gave a suspicion of comfort. Photographs and maps. The Stadtplan of Magdeburg that Smithson had used, scale of 1 to 20,000 and issued by VEB Tourist Verlag, lay creased on his bedside table.
Remember the police uniforms, Johnny.
Remember the MCLOS firing system.
Remember the distance from the city centre to the autobahn intersection.
Remember the capabilities of squash head and high explosive.
Remember the military train, Berlin to Helmstedt, via Magdeburg, remember the train times because that was sweet and clever, and that was Johnny's idea.
Carter and Smithson and Pierce, all of them feeding him, pouring the rich grain down his captive throat as if he were a turkey fattening for a feast. Each evening in his bed the minutiae seeped and swam in his mind and jockeyed for priority till he slept. This was the way back, this was the track to acceptance. The end of the shame of the Crown Court of Belfast and the field in South Armagh, was to be found on the streets of Magdeburg. The banishment of the disgrace of a teenage girl's funeral and the whipping sarcasm of the Lord Chief Justice, would be made on the Berlin to Helm- stedt autobahn. A shit heap of a place to go for rehabilitation, Johnny would say quietly to himself. A shit heap, but he wanted back.
And his mother would be happy. She'd be pleased, if it worked out. . .
The Prime Minister moved easily amongst his guests.
A tall, angular, gaunt man who maintained an uncanny fitness on the privacy of a cycling machine and who believed that good health was the elixir for the self-confidence without which political leadership sagged and was spent. Around 60 visitors stood with glasses in their hands pecking at oddments of food in the first floor reception room of his official residence. A babble of talk and gossip. He liked these occasions at Downing Street, enjoyed making the home that he occupied while in office something more than a factory of daily government. Some diplomats here, some military, some cronies of the long years in the party.
'Nice that you were able to come, Barney, how goes it?'
'The villains of the media are behaving themselves.' The retired Vice-Admiral was an old friend, long trusted. 'Particularly last week, I was actually quite proud of them, all rallied round the flag like good lads.'
The Prime Minister nodded to his left to acknowledge a departing guest, thrust his fist to his right for a handshake of farewell. Distracted and content. Good to have some noise in the place, good to blow the cobwebs out of this archaic tomb. 'What was that last week?'
The Vice-Admiral laughed. 'The defector who tried the double defection. Quite a flap really.'
'I didn't hear of it.' The Prime Minister ignored his duties as host, let the sea of people flow on either side of him, permitted his wife across the room to receive the smiled gratitudes and compliments.
'The East German boy, or Russian, there was some confusion there ...
we slapped a D notice down and Fleet Street and the broadcasters all fell into line. Very pleasing, not a bitch from one of them.'
'You have the advantage over me. What East German boy? What defector?'
'I'm surprised, sir. They seemed to think it important, they heaved me out of bed at some Godawful hour over it . . .'
The Prime Minister took his friend by the elbow and propelled him to an emptied corner of the room. He said slowly, specifically, 'They never tell me anything. They apply a "need to know" tourniquet to me. They believe they're autonomous, those people. Every time I chase them all I get is something about not wishing to disturb me with nonessentials ...
So what was this one about?'
The Vice-Admiral looked anxiously around him, seeking escape, no one caught his eye and the Prime Minister's hand still gripped his elbow.
'It's not easy for me to say, exactly. The bones seemed to be that an East German boy who had defected ran away from his debrief. Peter Fenton's crowd reached me because the police had to be called in to try and find the boy. They'd discovered him by the end of the day but there were police shoulder to shoulder for a few hours in south Surrey, it was the sort of thing that would have given the populars a bit of fun.'
'Why the devil can't I be told anything?'
'Perhaps it came through and you missed it, perhaps the secretaries didn't think it worth your time,' the Vice-Admiral was fishing and lamely.
'They have direct access to me. Whose pigeon would this be?'
'It was Security that called me . . . but it was on behalf of SIS, the boy was theirs.'
' I'll teach 'em a damned lesson. I'll not be kept in ignorance The Prime Minister's wife was at his side. He shouldn't be hiding himself away. The bitterness snapped from the Prime Minister's face and the public smile flowed.
'Of course, my dear, of course. Thank you, Barney, thank you for your guidance.'
The snow had crept from the grass a bare fortnight earlier leaving the ground bleak and without lustre. Far away the forests ringed the great expanse of the test firing range outside the town of Padolsk. No sunshine could pierce the ceiling of cloud that crushed down on them and in the long distance the target tank was wreathed in mist and indistinct to the watchers on the raised, plank dais. The generals always came from the Defence Ministry for a first tim
e test firing.
Otto Guttmann in his suit and overcoat tried to separate himself from the military but the size of the viewing platform made this an empty gesture. This was when he was nervous, when even an old man who had witnessed and taken part in these occasions many times would feel apprehensive. Uniforms around him, heavy trench coats of sand khaki, polished boots of dark brown, wide brimmed caps that sat high on Slav featured faces, and the tongue that he had coexisted alongside without fully mastering. He was jostled for a place on the front row of the platform. He could deal with these men in his office or when they came to the laboratory, could stall and baffle them with the science of his trade. Now the reckoning. It was the first time that the mechanism had been put to the test of field trials.
The binoculars were out. A hush and an excitement and a score of eyes latched on to the group of soldiers in field combat dress who assembled the equipment from the solid wooden crate in which it had travelled from the workshops. Guttmann shuffled in impatience, but the soldiers were right to be methodical and painstaking. The weapon was new to them, and he himself had instructed that procedures should be followed to the letter.
It was intended that combat should be simulated. The generals were anxious to see the weapon in active service conditions.
Far to the right a machine gun spattered through a belt of blank rounds.
Out in the middle distance between the soldiers and the derelict tank there were crisp detonations and the swirl of smoke rising from the ground. Guttmann saw the glint of buried ecstasy on the faces of the older officers who watched, those who remembered, those who treasured their youth and the great battles of Stalingrad and Smolensk and Kursk.
The thought was momentary, the distaste fast and quickly swallowed.
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