. . ? Emotion trapped in Ulf s throat, tears caught in his eyes. He did not want to harm them, not his father or mother. They had done nothing to deserve the retribution of the Party.
Jutte's forehead nuzzled against his chin. 'You have found the place?'
'There is a place where it can be done.'
'Where we can cross ?'
'Where it's possible, yes.'
' I will not be frightened, not with you.'
For more than 3 hours Otto Guttmann had sat in the small sitting room in the cottage of the pastor beside the Dom. He had come alone, and Erica had gone to walk in the Pionier-park and had said that she would support his decision, she would follow his choice. The burden was on his back, laid at his door, and one friend to turn to.
Otto Guttmann told the pastor of his work at Padolsk. He went over in detail the events as he had known them surrounding the drowning of his son. He had relived the visit to Wernigerode and the passing of the photographs which he showed to his friend. He talked in a voice stumbling with pain of the sight of Willi from the footbridge over the railway. He recalled the words of the Englishman who had come to his hotel room.
What should he do? he asked. Where lay his loyalty?
The pastor had not interrupted. Only after the housekeeper had carried in on a tray a plate of cold meats and a pot of tea was the monologue exhausted.
He was a small spare man, the pastor. The gestures of his hands as he spoke were quick, decisive. His voice was lulling, persuasive. He had known humiliation and rejection, he had worked all his adult life in the community of Magdeburg. He showed no surprise that his friend had visited him, only an acceptance of the enormity of the option. The words he used were thoughtfully chosen.
'You are a scientist, Otto, a manufacturer of terrible weapons of warfare. I am a pacifist, I have been so ever since the bombers came to our city and 16,000 persons were slaughtered in the holocaust and the firestorm. If you stand before me as a scientist and ask me where your duties lie, then I cannot help you, I offer no advice.'
The cup in Otto Guttmann's hand trembled, tea slopped to his trouser leg.
'. . . But you are, too, a Christian, you are a believer, and there we are joined. As a Christian your blood runs as freely as mine, as if we were brothers. We know what it is to worship alone, we have the comradeship that comes from the mocking of an atheist society, we have suffered the nobility of hardship for our beliefs. In this country it is an act of courage to attend public worship. You remember when the pastor from Zeitz, you remember the name of Brusewitz, you remember when he immolated himself on the steps of his church, poured petrol over himself and took a match, to draw attention to the harassment of young Christians in our society, you remember him? They called him an idiot and said that he was deranged. And after his death, we who were his fellow Christians, we debated amongst ourselves as to whether we had compromised too far with the Party. To me, Brusewitz is as near a saint as we will find in our time in this place. He made the supreme sacrifice in the flames, the sacrifice of Christ. His example was one of heroic faith, and his death demands that we of the church must stay and fight for his ideals, we cannot abandon our people. I speak as a cleric. I could not go, my fight is here.'
The pastor poured more tea, took another slice of meat to his plate and cut it with neat and precise movements.
'You do not have those chains on you, Otto. Neither you, nor your daughter. You are free to go. There is no shame in withdrawing from persecution, no disgrace. Your time runs quickly, you have deserved a latter peace. You should go to the comfort of your family. You have the right to find your happiness. There is no duty that obliges you to remain.'
They went together from the pastor's room and into the high, vaulted cathedral, past the tombs topped by stone carved knights, past the shrapnel pocked figure of Christ, past the place where the leaking roof threw water down on the flagstones. They went to the front line of chairs arrayed in front of the altar. For several minutes they prayed in silence.
Outside in the sunshine they shook hands.
The pastor smiled. ' I will think of you, my friend, I will think of you often.'
His engine idling, his radio playing, a packet of sweets close to his hand, Hermann Lentzer sat in his car at the head of the queue at the Marienborn checkpoint. A kilometre behind him and barely visible up the hill were the fluttering flags of the United States of America and France and Great Britain. He was close to a square-based, tall watchtower, he was hemmed in by the wire that enclosed the checkpoint.
He was impatient because it was some minutes since they had taken his passport, and those of other drivers in the queue who had been behind him had already been returned. They had been free to drive away on the autobahn.
He drummed his fingers irritably on the steering wheel and tried to show his annoyance by staring out the young face of the Border Guard who stood in front of the bonnet of his car. Usually it was quick, usually only a formality to gain clearance for the autobahn corridor. Behind him a driver hooted as if to protest that Lentzer by his own choice was blocking the road . . . stupid bugger.
The fright came slowly, nagged at him gradually, gathered in his stomach. There should not have been this delay. He had never waited so long before at Marienborn. The driver who had hooted passed him and Lentzer scowled at the man's enquiring glance.
Alone in his car, the business of the border around him, a warm lunchtime, the sun high, and the sweat gathering in his armpits, running underneath his vest. There had never been a delay like this at Marienborn. Two hundred metres back towards Helmstedt were the steel barriers that when dropped lay at windscreen height, they could lower them in 6 seconds ... no going back, and the Border Guard in front with the sub-machine gun slung from his shoulder and his eyes never leaving the Mercedes.
He wiped his forehead, and fiddled with his radio, and took another sweet. Not until they were all around the car and a pistol held hard against his ear was he aware of the Border Guards. They pulled open the door and dragged him from his seat. His hands were first flung across the car roof while they frisked him for a weapon, then pulled behind his back for the handcuffs. Never upright nor still enough to protest, he was frogmarched into the administration block.
A Border Guard, unable quite to conceal his fascination in the finish and fittings of the Mercedes drove Hermann Lentzer's car behind the building and parked it amongst the unit's lorries and jeeps.
An inexact science, wasn't it? No bloody text book to tell Johnny the technique necessary for the persuasion of a man to abandon the life of 35
years and turn his face towards strangers. Willi was the bludgeon in his argument, but Guttmann had shown a resilience that he had not expected. The girl was different, strange that, as though Willi had talked of a casual friend and not of his sister. The girl would bend her father, perhaps.
Now Johnny could waiit no longer for his answer.
Again it was Erica Guttmann who opened the door to him. Again the old man was sitting in the chair beside the window. Erica moved to stand beside her father.
'We will come with you,' Erica said quietly.
A great smile split his face. God, he could have shouted, lifted the bloody ceiling off the room.
'Thank you.'
' It is not because of anything you have said. It is for a reason that you would not understand.'
' It doesn't matter.'
' It is not just because of Willi that we are going with you.'
' It's not important why.'
'We put our trust in you. If anything were to harm my father after the promise that you have made, then it would lie with your conscience for the rest of your life.'
He was taking them to the bloody autobahn, packing them into a car with only forged papers to protect them, and all the skill and all the vigilance of Marienborn waiting for them, and the shield they looked for was Johnny Donoghue's conscience. The bombast in him peeled. God, who'd chance as much as their freedom on Johnny Don
oghue's word ?
'Nothing will harm you.'
'What do we have to do ?'
Johnny clenched his fist so that the fingernails cut at the palms of his hands. Trust was devastating, trust could crucify. A brave old man, a brave and pretty girl, and both watching him in naivete, hanging on his words.
'You should have dinner tonight in the hotel. After that you must walk across to the Hautbahnhof and you must take the train on the local line to Barleber See . . . there is one just after eight, another 20 minutes later, you can take either. At Barleber See you must walk along the path towards the camping site. Before you reach the tents you will find a cafeteria and a place where people sit in the evening. You wait there and I will come to you.'
'There are many things that we should know.'
'None of them necessary,'Johnny said drily. 'Do you sew, Miss Guttmann?'
A hollow, shy laugh. 'A little.'
'In the drawer of the room desk you will find the hotel's needles and cotton. All the labels on your clothes show them as made here or in Moscow, they must be removed and replaced.' Johnny handed her a small plastic bag filled with the identification of manufacturers in West Berlin and Frankfurt.
'Will we be searched ?' The nervousness narrowed her lips.
'It's a precaution,' said Johnny.
The telephone rang from the hallway, called through the door of the darkened bedroom. An insistent, howling whine. It stripped the provocation and the tease from the face of the woman. It drew an obscenity from the man who drove his gloved fist into the softness of the mattress to lever himself better from her body. He rolled beside her, his face clouded in the shades of frustration. The telephone was a prior claim on him and he shrugged away her reaching arms, and strode naked and white-skinned to the door.
No sheet to cover her, Renate screamed at the broad back, 'Tell the bastards to go to hell ... you said they would not call you on a Saturday .
. .'
She watched him through the open door. The anger withered, the giggles rose. Her lover in profile at the telephone, thin and spindly legs, only the glove to clothe him. She shook with quiet laughter.
'Spitzer ... I will come immediately . . . nobody is to talk to him . . . the SSD should be informed that I have taken personal charge of him . ..
that is all.'
The telephone was slapped down. He made for the heap of clothes around the bedside chair, pulled on his underpants and vest.
'Aren't you going to finish . . . ?'
No response. Preoccupation with the shirt buttons, with the trouser zip, with finding a missing sock.
'What's so important.. .?'
He laced his shoes, retrieved his knotted tie, slid his jacket from the back of the chair.
'When are you coming back . . . ?'
' I will not be coming back tonight.'
'On a Saturday . .. ?'
'A man has come to see me and I have waited 7 years for the meeting.'
She saw the excitement bright in his small blue eyes, and not for her.
She knew the language. Some poor swine shitting himself in an underground cell at Number 2, Halber- stadter Strasse. Sitting in a corner and shitting himself. And Spitzer would enjoy it, more than being with her on the big bed. And better at it too, better at terrifying a snivelling cretin in the cells than satisfying Renate.
As the front door slammed she buried her head in the pillow and pounded it with her fists.
Under the canopy of the petrol station on the edge of the Grunewald Park beside the Berlin approach road to the E6 autobahn, Charles Mawby and Adam Percy shaded themselves and waited.
They had arrived early for their rendezvous with Hermann Lentzer, but that was Mawby's way, he said. Never be late if you don't have to be, always give yourself time, easier on the nerves that way. They looked up the road, watched for the car that would come with Lentzer and the two men who would make the drive to Helmstedt.
'I've enjoyed Berlin, Adam, rather an exhilarating place I felt. More going on than I'd expected. You hear of it as a sort of ghost city, all the young people leaving. I thought it was rather lively.'
' I suppose I come too often to notice,' Percy said dourly.
' I'd like to bring the wife, I reckon she'd be fascinated . . . bit bloody expensive, have to keep her on a rein. Do you ever bring your wife, Adam?'
'My wife died three years ago, Mr Mawby.'
'God, I'm sorry ... I'd forgotten.'
' I wouldn't have expected that to be remembered back at Century .. .
I'll get some coffee from the machine. White and sugar ?'
And they'd drunk the coffee and found a rubbish tin for the beakers, and Mawby had started to flick his fingers, and he'd looked at his watch, and paced out into the evening sunlight, and come back to Percy.
'A damn good holiday we're having. Joyce and I when this is over.
Reckon I'll have earned it. Taking the kids with us, of course. A package trip, but that's the only way you can afford to go these days, down to Greece. Where are you going, Adam?'
' I usually go up to a place near Hull, my sister's family. They put me up for a fortnight, they're very kind.'
' I've heard it's very nice there, Yorkshire, isn't it?'
'Seems to rain the fortnight I'm there.'
'Does it? ... I hope this bloody man isn't going to cut it fine.' 'He was very exact with his timings, but from what he said, he's a bit adrift.'
'You stressed the importance of the schedule?'
'Of course, Mr Mawby .. . I'll get another coffee.'
And the concern grew and the worry was bred and the anxiety draped their faces. The pump attendant gazed with undisguised curiosity at the steadily increasing discomfiture of the two Englishmen who had come in their office suits to stand in his forecourt.
'He couldn't have misunderstood anything, Adam?'
'He had it all pat, Mr Mawby.'
'He's late, you know that?'
Percy looked down at his wrist. 'He's five minutes short of an hour late.'
'It's the centre of the whole damned thing, the car . ..'
' I know that, Mr Mawby. He's a greedy bugger, he'll be here.'
'Well, he'll get cut down to size when he comes.' Mawby's voice rose and he slapped against his legs the briefcase that contained the two passports of the Federal Republic.
'Would you like something more to drink?'
'Of course I bloody wouldn't.. .' Mawby strode away and stared again down the road, searching for a crimson BMW. Angry now, taut and stressed, stamping his feet as he walked. A little of panic, a little of temper.
Two hours after the time that Hermann Lentzer should have come, Percy went to a coin box telephone beside the cash desk. He was gone a short time. When he returned his face was pale, sheet white, and he faltered in his stride towards where Mawby was waiting.
'There was a contact number that Lentzer gave me. A woman answered
. .. she yelled at me, hysterical .. . some whore that he shacks up with when he's in Berlin. She said it was on the DDR radio that Hermann Lentzer was held this afternoon at Marienborn. Those bastards have got him . . .'
'Will he talk?' Mawby blurted.
'How the hell should I know?'
Petrol spilled from an overfilled tank. The attendant who held the nozzle did not notice. In fascination he watched the two Englishmen, toe to toe and yelling.
It was raining heavily but then it always did on the second Saturday in June, the day of the village fete. The chestnuts that separated the graveyard from the vicarage gardens dripped steadily on to the roof of the marquee. Only the sale of used clothes and cakes and the White Elephant stand were sheltered; the other stalls were all outside and braving the elements.
But the fete must go on. Without its fund raising the primary school would have no books, the church organ no maintenance, the steeple would have to wait for repair. In Wellington boots, waterproof trousers and his shooting anorak the Deputy-Under-Secretary understudied his
wife on the Garden Produce and Plants table. He always left a number where he could be reached and that was why the surly daughter of the vicar came splashing across the quagmire lawn to find him.
There was despair on the Deputy-Under-Secretary's face when he came back and the water ran on his neck and stained his collar. 'I won't be able to go to Hodges's tonight. I'm sorry, dear.'
'Not the bloody office?' she commiserated.
' I shall have to go to Chequers.'
'What does he want?'
' I've requested the meeting. There's a bit of a mess . . .'
'They're a boring crowd at1 the Hodges', you always say we'll never go again . . .' she said irrelevantly.
'Darling, tonight I'd have given my eye teeth for a boring evening,' the Deputy-Under-Secretary said. He turned to accept a customer for the last of the potted fuchsias.
At the Campingplatz 'Alte Schmiede' in the woods outside Suplingen tents could be hired for the weekend, and sleeping bags. Just the one they used. Ulf and Jutte wriggling with laughter into the warm constriction of the bag, no clothes, no impediments. The tent was pitched slightly less than 12 miles from the Inner German Border and due east of Weferlingen. Before they had negotiated the constraints of the sleeping bag Jutte had several times asked Ulf how and where they would make their attempt. He would tell her in the morning, he had said . . . for now she was safe in his arms.
The cell door in the basement corridor crashed shut. As the officer in uniform beside him thrust the bolt across, Gunther Spitzer wiped a blood smear from the leather of his glove with his handkerchief.
'He will know now who he is with ... in a little while when he has had time to frighten himself we shall start again.'
Chequers was no easy place to find at night. Far from any main road, outside the village of Great Kimble, a pin-head in the Chiltern Hills, 30
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