Gerald Seymour - The Contract

Abruptly he swung his legs out of the bed and padded across to his bag. No need to pack for a lifetime, Smithson had said. A few shirts and underclothes, a spare pair of shoes, his army boots, his washing bag.

He'd turned himself out well enough when he was in uniform, but that was back in the dark ages. Who looked at him now? He put on a shirt and knotted the old boys tie of the Grammar School, pulled up the trousers that were creased at the back of the knees, eased into his shoes that he should have polished before leaving home. The clothes he would have worn to the Technical College to take the German class.

He let himself out of the bedroom and went carefully down the stairs.

A wide, curved staircase with a polished wooden banister. He walked around the hall, and his feet sank into the pile of the carpet, his eyes on the pictures that were strewn over the timber panelling. They'd have plotted the subverting of the Bolshevik revolution in a place like this.

Nothing would have changed. Extraordinary people, these hidden creatures of the Service. Perhaps the pond they now looked into was too filthy, too slimed for their own hands, and so they needed a contract man to do their work, they'd have an outsider in for the job. And afterwards they'd let him wash and perhaps they'd wave a polite farewell and perhaps they would say he had done well and let him stay for more.

' I hope you slept well, Mr Donoghue?'

Johnny spun round. Caught off balance, caught dreaming. Henry Carter was standing in the doorway that led to the dining room.

'Thank you, yes… I didn't know anyone else was up…'

'We didn't want to disturb you, we thought we'd let you wake in your own good time.'

Johnny looked at his watch. Twenty-five minutes to eight. He blushed.

There's some breakfast in here, if you'd like it,' Carter said. 'We don't usually have much at lunchtime. It'll keep you going till the evening. Mr Mawby's coming down then.'

Carter showed Johnny into the dining room. They sat down by the window.

Of the four other tables only one was occupied. A boy with a face that once had known the sun and a man opposite him who toyed with his teacup, heavily built and expressionless. Neither spoke.

The housekeeper emerged from a far door, advanced across the linoleum floor.

'Eggs and bacon for Mr Donoghue, I should think, Mrs Ferguson,'

Carter said.

Johnny agreed. That was the way it was going to be. He would be told his rest hours, told his work, told what to eat. Carter leaned forward, conspiratorial. 'Over there, that's the lad we're working on. Junior interpreter on the Soviet delegation of the disarmament chat in Geneva.

Defected a bit over a week ago because the English girl he was taking out said she was pregnant and life couldn't go on without the two of them being together. It's not him that interests us. His father's the prime one.

Dad was taken to the Soviet Union after the war along with a truckful of scientists and he's made his name there on the ATGW programme… 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.