Gerald Seymour - The Contract

Carter at the table with the big notepad, sometimes Mawby beside him and taking a lesser part. Willi sat in a straight chair in which it would be difficult for him to relax. Johnny sat behind the boy.

'He's an old man now, he's close to seventy. Up till his sixty-fifth, birthday he used to go to a gymnasium that was in a sports club near our flat, but he strained himself and he has not gone back. We used to have a dog and he could go for walks with it, but it died several years ago. He said it was too much trouble to have another one. He has a medical check-up each twelve months that is done at Padolsk by the Army. He cannot walk far now. Always he used to like to walk, when Erica and I were younger he liked to go with us to the Hartz Mountains, to Wernigerode or Quedlinburg, and then walk in the hills and the woods. I think that he has a little rheumatism… Why do you ask these questions, Mr Carter?'

'That's not your worry, Willi. Just answer as best you can, like you're doing.'

In the afternoons in the sitting room, Johnny sat with Adrian Pierce.

Military talk and the resurrection of familiar subjects of the old days before Belfast, before the trial, before the return to Cherry Road.

'You're going to be with a man who is expert in armour and its counter-weaponry. It's possible that the objective of the mission will not succeed, that you will not bring him over, but that you will manage to talk with him. It is possible that defection will be beyond him… And bloody daft it would be if the man we've sent has forgotten what the front end of a Main Battle Tank looks like. This is a sort of re- fresher course, Johnny, and by the time we pack you off I want tanks, armour plating widths, squash head, control guidance and all the rest of the paraphernalia running out of your ears.'

Always supper at seven, prompt on the clock, all of them sitting down, napkins spread, glasses filled with water or milk or Coca-Cola. Two tables pushed together. A cotton cloth that was clean each day. All watching the door to the kitchen through which Mrs Ferguson would come with the evening's offering. And after supper back to the sitting room for Johnny and with him Harry Smithson.

'We want you to know as much as is possible before you cross. You'll remember some of the basics from your "I" Corps days, forget that and listen to me. The DDR is a captive state. The regime of the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, that's SED in future, survives because of the permanent garrisoning on her territory of a minimum of 20 full strength Soviet divisions. Effectively the country is beholden to Soviet military command headquarters at Zossen- Wunsdorf outside Berlin.

When you pull this one off, Johnny boy, that's where the squeal's going to come from, that's where the boot will be to kick every arse in sight to kingdom come. I said it's a captive state… Along a frontier of just under 900 miles with West Germany there is a crip- plingly expensive set of border defences, with some 50,000 men deployed to keep their own brothers and sisters from doing a flit to the BDR. So start with an occupying force and the closed frontiers and you begin to get the sour taste in your mouth, you can call me a fascist if you want to and it'll give no offence, but that's my view of the place and I've been detailed to brief you. They enjoy living there so much that at the latest count more than two million nine hundred thousand citizens have skipped it, given their masters two fingers and run. That's the German Democratic Republic, Johnny. Perhaps I'm just an old right wing bastard, but I hate that place because it's sinister, it's tedious, it's drab.' 'Are you going to hurt my father?'

Carter's face slackened with surprise.

'No… nothing like that

'Why do you want to know so much about him, and about his holiday?'

Willi cut across him, his voice strained.

'It's just routine,' Carter hurried. 'We're not going to harm your father, why should we?'

'You're lying to me, Mr Carter.'

'You've done very well so far, Willi, confine yourself to answering our questions.' The slip of Carter's control had been momentary. The cutting chill was once more in his voice. From where he sat Johnny saw it all, admired him for it.

'It's a lie,' the boy shouted.

The click of the door handle alerted Johnny and he turned to see George in the doorway. The boy too would have heard the door, realised its signal. Threatened from front and rear, Willi's protest was stifled.

'That's all right, George. No problems in here, are there, Willi?' A glacial smile from Carter. '… You were telling me, Willi, about your father's programme in Magdeburg. Let's start again with who he will be seeing there.'

The boy hesitated, he would have heard the door close. He turned full round to face Johnny. Johnny looked away, didn't meet him.

'There are many people that he will meet,' Willi said softly. 'He has many friends there. There is a pastor at the Wallonerkirche, he is a friend from many years, my father always attends the evangelist church, and the man who keeps the bookshop beside the Kloster Unser Lieben Frauen, he also is a friend. There is another pastor from the Dom, the cathedral… he will go to see him…'

In the bar of a Gasthaus on the outskirts of Wiesbaden, Adam Percy met with a friend from far back. The service's station officer resident in Bonn had driven the 100 kilometres of autobahn to see a man he had known from the days of the occupation and the first recruitment of German nationals to work in British funded intelligence gathering. Across the table from him, separated by two beers, was an employee of the West German Federal Intelligence Service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst, and well used to the private business that bypassed the official contacts between colleagues of SIS and BND.

Percy, elderly and overweight and unwilling to submit to the dieting prescribed by doctors during his London leave, quizzed quickly through the file that had been passed to him.

'You understand, Mr Percy, it was not easy for me to gain access for this. The section is not one that involves me.'

'I do understand, Karl, and it is a great favour that you do for me…' A costly favour.

'If you went direct to the section responsible… then there would be more for you.'

'Not the mysterious and marvellous way of London. No contact authorised, nothing on top of the table. Adamant about it.'

'You know about these people, Mr Percy? We regard them as dirt, as something evil, you know that.'

'Not for me to reason why. London commands, I provide. I'm a very humble person. Did you have to sign for the file?'

'Of course… you will be careful, Mr Percy, when you deal with this man…'

Percy closed the slim file that carried the name and photograph and identity card number of Hermann Lentzer, pushed it across the table past a small pool of spilt beer. 'Most careful, Karl.'

'They can burn you, these people.'

'It's not a character reference I want, it's a recommenda- tion of effectiveness. I fancy I have that.'

An envelope followed the file across the table and into the German's attache case. The two men drained their beers.

'You'll have seen a tank being brewed, Johnny, I'm sure you've seen it on the range. It's pretty revolting. They don't get out when they're hit by modern anti-tank shells. They get melted down, they get stuck to the inside walls, they blend in with the steel of the turret. There's no tank built that's invulnerable to the new armour-piercing and squash-head mis- siles. All we can do is try and minimise the areas of danger, that and teach the evasion procedures. The tank is the queen of the battlefield, when she's running rampant she's wonder- ful, incisive in the breakout. When she's outmanoeuvred, when the technology is against her, then she's just a death- box. They're developing their counter force while we're working on our hitting arm. It's always that way in military evolution, parallel lines. But now we have a chance to muscle up at their expense. That chance doesn't come often, Johnny Pierce was drawing. Broad lines on the paper, the blunt nose and the guidance fins of a missile.