The Contract

by Gerald Seymour

'What?' Pierce had spun to face Carter. George scrambled towards them.

  Willi alone, Willi abandoned, Willi within earshot.

  ' It's finished . . . DIPPER's called off. The pick-up maestro was arrested at the border checkpoint, he must have been driving into Berlin

  'You're levelling, Henry?' Pierce in disbelief and his mouth sagging open.

  'Smithson said so, and he called it a fucking shambles.'

  'God ... so what's going to happen to them, out there .. . when the chappie starts chattering . . .' Pierce cut himself short.

  Willi was going. The stride into a trot. The trot into a run. The run into a sprint. 'Willi going past the shimmering white of the flag poles, along the central crash barrier. Willi going for the faded line that crossed the road.

  Carter and Pierce rooted to the ground.

  George struggling for speed, but heavy and flat footed. The white line looming, a car going east and slowing to avoid the boy who ran down the long hill, hugging the centre of the road. George losing ground. The voice drifted back to Carter, weak and carried on the breeze, the panic softened by distance.

  'Come back, you little bugger. Willi, come back . . .'

  Willi over the white line, Willi the victor of the race. The searchlight on the tower platform locked on him, circled and held him, followed him on down the road. Brightness all around and Willi ran with the beam that slowly traversed and accompanied his progress.

  From where Carter and Pierce stood the cocking of the machine gun in the tower was sharp and unmistakable. The scraping of the metal spring, the crack as the mechanism locked the bullet in the breech. It would have been deafening to George, he could not be blamed for throwing the towel. The searchlight covering the boy, the machine gun covering George. Willi growing smaller, retreating into the bend of the wide road.

  George was rock steady, standing on the white dividing line.

  Carter thought he was about to be sick.

  He saw a jeep stop beside the running boy, it was stationary for a few moments and then reversed towards Marienborn. When it was gone the road was empty.

  'The car should have come, yes?'

  Johnny could not see Otto Guttmann in the darkness, but the message was of deepening resignation, of tumbling faith.

  'Yes,'Johnny said. He looked at the face of his watch, felt the bite of the insects in the grass.

  The little jokes they had told to each other were finished. Father and daughter both cold, both flattened, and the fear settling on them.

  'By now we should have been at Helmstedt?'

  'Yes.'

  'You promised us the car.'

  ' I promised it.'

  'Why is the car not here?'

  What a daft bloody question. 'I don't know, Doctor, there could be a hundred reasons ... I don't know . . . perhaps there is a crash on the road, perhaps it's blown a tyre .. .'

  'We have only your word that there was ever a car.'

  'There is a car.' Johnny dug into the reserves of his patience. 'There is a car because the whole plan was based on that. Without a car there is no plan.'

  'What do we do, Johnny?' Erica asked.

  'We have to wait. . . just that.'

  The anorak hung close to Johnny, the weight of the Stechkin and the shoulder stock and the magazines and the grenades in his pockets pulled it round him. Sometimes his hand slipped to the pistol, and from the hard steel of the barrel he took a fragile reassurance.

  'We're not at a bloody funeral, you know. You'll wonder why you fussed when it comes,'Johnny said, and he was glad there was no light to show his face. 'It'll be here in a few minutes.'

  They alternated between fists to the body, cold water from a bucket over his head, and the lit cigarette of friendship placed between his swollen lips. There were three men working on Hermann Lentzer who was strapped with leather thongs to the wooden chair, and Gunther Spitzer who leaned against the tiled wall of the cell. In staccato repetition the questions came.

  Why was he making the journey to West Berlin?

  Who was the subject of his escape attempt?

  Where was it planned that the pick-up should be made?

  Who were the people in the BDR that had hired him?

  Of course he would talk before dawn came, if he had a face left to speak through, but in the intervening hours there was entertainment to be had for Gunther Spitzer. There was an obstinacy about the Nazi. He said nothing and spat back the mucus and blood and the chipped tooth fragments, and sometimes his eyes were molten in hatred behind the bruising. They would break him before morning. He would scream for them to stop, and then the discs that held the tapes would slowly circle on the recording machine. He would beg and howl for their mercy. Gunther Spitzer's hands were crossed in front of his stomach, the pleasure was fiery and intense but it should not be seen by the man who punched, the man who tipped the water bucket, the man who held the cigarette packet and breathed the words of kindness. He thought of Renate's body, thought of her whimpering in the blend of excitement and pain as he rose over her, thought of her white skin and the clear curves and the dark hair, thought of his plunging mastery over her . . .

  A junior officer entered the cell.

  There had been a strange affair at Marienborn, a boy was being brought to Magdeburg, when he arrived he would be sent to the Schutzpolizeipresident's office.

  From Marienborn Willi Guttmann had been put in a jeep and driven to Halberstadter Strasse. The major on duty at the checkpoint had heard the explanation of the boy for his dash from west to east and made what he thought to be the sensible decision, pass the parcel on. The Schutzpolizei detachment in Magdeburg took responsibility for the area between the town and the border. They should be the ones to extract some shape from an extraordinary story.

  In the office of Doctor Gunther Spitzer Willi was given a cup of freshly warmed tea, sat down in front of a gas tire.

  The message of his arrival passed down corridors and stairs, came to rest in the building's basement.

  The boy warmed himself. Now he was no longer a cypher, he thought, he was a person of importance who would be listened to. And now he would save his father, he would absolve him from blame and they would be reunited, and everything that he had done would be forgiven him. Willi who had run from Checkpoint Alpha had demonstrated his loyalty, and would be permitted to speak in the defence of his father. He felt confident when the Schutzpolizei- president came into the room followed by a senior officer in uniform, confident because he had come to protect his father from arrest and accusation. He would denounce the conspiracy of the British.

  The Schutzpolizeipresident sat at his desk, his eyes bored at Willi.

  The officer took a pencil and notebook firom his pocket.

  'My name is Spitzer, what is yours ?'

  ' I am Willi Guttmann.'

  'You are a citizen of the Federal Republic?'

  'My father was born in Magdeburg, is now resident in Moscow.'

  The puzzlement clung to Spitzer's face. He was tired and the stump of his arm ached, and distracted too because his attention was with the bloodied mouth of Hermann Lentzer in the cell block below. 'Your father is Doctor Otto Guttmann?'

  'Yes.'

  'And your sister is . . . ?'

  'Erica Guttmann, that is my sister.'

  'But Otto Guttmann's son was drowned on the Lake of Geneva...'

  So, Willi talked and Spitzer listened. He talked of Geneva and the yacht on the lake, and the policeman thought of a dinner with the father of the friend of his mistress. He talked of England and the house in the hills, and the policeman thought of a message despatched the previous day to KGB Headquarters. He talked of Carter and Smithson and Pierce and George, and the policeman closed his eyes and swore softly and felt the chill and the trembling. He talked of a flight to Berlin and a train journey on the line that ran through Magdeburg, and the policeman's eyes were glazed in the fear for self-survival. He talked of a man that he knew only as Johnny who had been in this town for fo
ur days. It was a long story and it took many minutes in the telling. Often Willi repeated himself, and then he apologised and tried again to pick up the threads.

  He talked of Checkpoint Alpha and the abandonment of the autobahn run.

  'Where is your father now?' Spitzer broke his silence.

  'He should be at the autobahn, with the man called Johnny Spitzer shuddered, then scribbled on a sheet of paper, fast, frantic. He thrust the paper at the officer, watched as the man snapped his notebook shut and hurried from the room.

  'Why have you come to tell us this?'

  'So that no blame shall attach to him, to speak in his defence. My father is not a traitor.'

  'That is not for me to decide,' said Spitzer mildly.

  'Anything he did he would have done only for the love of me. They have tortured him these last days. He is only an old man, not a criminal.'

  'Willi, answer me this.' Spitzer chose his words with care. 'Your father you believe has gone tonight to the autobahn, but the collection has not taken place. What was to stop your father returning to his hotel, taking the aircraft tomorrow to Moscow? Who then would have known of the affair?'

  'You would have known . . . this morning you arrested the man who has organised the car, that is what the British said. When he is questioned he will implicate my father, there will be no-one to speak for my father

  Spitzer laughed, without sound, without mirth. The cold had come to the room, blanketed the flames of the gas fire.

  'You should be proud of yourself, Willi,' Spitzer said. 'You have done your duty most adequately.' And the text of his report to Moscow pealed in his mind.

  Faintly at first, in the distance, Johnny heard the choral song of the sirens, hurrying from the south, from Magdeburg. The fox that is aware of the baying of hounds, and he reacted, rising to his knee, seeming to sniff around him for confirmation of danger.

  A swelling of noise and closing. He groped in the darkness and took the arm of Otto Guttmann. He felt the dragging at his anorak as Erica clawed with her fingers to find him. The fear of the hunted was shared.

  No argument, no discussion. Father and daughter clung, one to each of Johnny's arms as they came from their hiding place and began to run back towards the camp of Barleber See. They swung off the road and onto the track and Otto Guttmann heaved and gasped for air, and Erica in her shoes tripped on the rough chipped stones, and Johnny looked back.

  The cluster of blue lamps was nearer, the wail of the sirens grew. The Stechkin banged against his hip, the grenades danced in his pocket.

  Johnny pulled them off the track, onto the grass and away behind the line of tents. He would set a cruel race and as he ran his mind was tugged to the alternatives open to him. Precious few, Johnny.

  Where are you going, Johnny? Going west, west is the way to Cherry Road, west is the way back.

  West is where the bloody minefields are, and the fences and the machine guns, right, Johnny? Right, darling, bullseye first time.

  Are you going to ask the Doctor and his daughter if they fancy the glory ride with Johnny? Not now, later. Enough on the rubbish heap, without sifting for detail.

  Perhaps they don't want to go, thought of that, Johnny? Thought of it and ducked it, they'll come . . , with the sirens blasting in their ears, they'll come.

  They're going to slow you down, they'll be lead on your back, and the order for difficulties was quit and run, remember that, Johnny? But a promise was made, that's the end of it. A bloody promise was made.

  The old man tried to keep with them, heavy going and he wheezed and coughed. Johnny on one elbow, Erica on the other. The three of them careering through the trees, and all the time the sirens in the wind.

  A wasp's nest disturbed by the gardener, that was the head- quarters, of the Schutzpolizei on Halberstadter Strasse at past two in the morning.

  Lights erupting in the upper windows, desks manned, telephones busy.

  There was no reason for Gunther Spitzer to doubt the scale of the catastrophe that had befallen him.

  From the International Hotel he was told that the bed of Otto Guttmann was undisturbed, so was that of Erica Guttmann, so was that of a British tourist travelling under the name of John Dawson. His men were at the hotel now, swarming through the rooms, hectoring the staff.

  Right under his eyes they had been, right under the nose of Gunther Spitzer who had entertained the Doctor and his daughter to dinner. And the report he had transmitted to KGB would take pride of place in the ammunition aimed at the Schutzpolizeipresident.

  The telexes went variously to the Ministry of State Security in Berlin, to the offices of SSD, to the duty desk clerk for the Red Army's military intelligence section at Zossen- Wunsdorf, to the home of the First Secretary of the Party at the privileged village of Wandlitz seven miles from the Berlin city boundaries, Fury, recrimination, abuse, burst like a monsoon over the second floor office of Gunther Spitzer. And in the eye of the storm would be the arrival of the men from Berlin, and what he had done to retrieve the disaster would be analysed and criticised because a head must be found for the block.

  In a high whining scream he demanded greater efforts of his subordinates.

  From his bed in the guest wing at Chequers, the Trade Minister of the German Democratic Republic was roused by the telephone. On the line was his country's ambassador to

  Britain. A matter had arisen of great sensitivity and delicacy involving relations between the two countries, a matter that could not be communicated on an open line. The Minister should know that the ambassador was about to leave the Residence for the Embassy where the text was expected soon of a message from the First Secretary to the Prime Minister of Great Britain. The ambassador anticipated that he would be at Chequers before dawn.

  The conversation had been monitored by the Duty Officer in the Chequers' switchboard. It was debated whether the Prime Minister should be woken.

  'Frankly, if he's to be in the firing line in the morning and you'd seen him just before he turned in, you'd leave him in bed,' advised a civil service aide. 'He was well maggoted, and beauty sleep's going to be like gold dust for him.'

  The interpreter at Chequers for the visit of the East German delegation had translated the tape recording of the telephone conversation. The Prime Minister was permitted to sleep on.

  In Berlin Brigade a scrambler call had been patched through for Mawby to talk from the offices of Military Intelligence to Century House and the Deputy-Under-Secretary. They talked curtly, unemotionally of the night's events. Both men at that moment lived in a house of glass, neither would hurl rocks. Later it would be different, later the bitter inquest would begin. Mawby had said that there was no further business for him in Berlin, he would be returning to London in the morning. After the call he walked back across the floodlit parade area.

  The Brigadier was waiting up for him. There was a champagne bottle in a silver bucket on the sideboard, a linen napkin draped across the neck. The Brigadier looked at Mawby's face, at the shamed eyes, at the pale cheeks. From the cupboard in the sideboard he took a decanter of whisky, poured two fingers, no water, no ice, handed a tumbler to Mawby.

  'Was it that bad, Charles?'

  'Worse than bad, it was bloody awful.'

  'A fiasco?'

  Mawby drained the glass, spluttered. A wisp of mischief crossed him.

  'I'll tell you how bad it was. Ten years ago if this had happened it would have been a resignation job.'

  'And now . .. ?' The Brigadier refilled the glass.

  ' I can't afford to bloody resign. I'll just be kicked side- ways, I'll never have responsibility again. You asked if it was a fiasco ... It is and it can get worse. It's all blown now, it's wide as the open sky, and we have a man in there. A train left 15 minutes ago from Magdeburg to Wolfsburg, if he's not on the train then he's locked inside. That's his only chance.

  They're reporting in Signals down on the border that the whole bloody place is awake, there's heavy traffic on their police net. He's
our man, and if picked up then .. . then .. . it's just a bloody disaster.'

  They went to their bedrooms. In the morning the champagne bottle would be returned to the kitchen refrigerator, and Mawby would retrieve two green backed passports of the Federal Republic of Germany from the corner of his room where he had hurled them.

  Johnny's flight took him through the camp site and the woods around it, and to Barleber See station.

  A primitive place for vacationers and few else. There were no lights nor life nor activity. Five hundred yards away was the autobahn and racing cars and twice Johnny saw that signature of the police, the inanimate and travelling blue lamp.

  In front of him was the fragmented pattern of the street lights of Barleber, more than a mile away. When the moon came he could see the far, flat horizon spread beyond the village. No trees, no cover, and he remembered how he had seen it when he had come back on the train on the first day. There were open fields between the railway and the village.

  'We have to go on,'Johnny whispered.

  'He can't, you can see that,' Erica hissed in his ear.

  ' If he has to be carried, so be it. We have to go on.'

  'How far?'

  ' I don't know.'

  'Where to?'

  'Any bloody place but here.'

  He could not see her face and did not know with what grace she came.

  It was a track, built to carry farm vehicles and trailers, holed and ridged.

  Erica and Johnny linked their hands and made a seat for Otto Guttmann and his arms rested around their necks. Weighed enough, and awkward enough, for a bloody bag of bones, Johnny thought. It took a long time to reach the outside of the village, to come within sight of the first set of buildings. Beyond the crop fields they came to a place where the grass had been scythed for a farmer's winter cattle fodder, near to a hedge and a barn where a dog barked. Time to rest and time to think, Johnny. They eased Otto Guttmann to the ground and he sank back and his daughter cradled his head. Time to think, but time was a bloody luxury.