Gerald Seymour - The Contract

A man who identified himself as John Dawson walked into a travel agent's offices on a narrow, battered street close to Dublin's River Liffey.

It had been Carter's idea that Johnny's travel arrange- ments should be launched from the Irish Republic. Better that the visa and accommodation application should come from Dublin than London.

Better, because that would provide the background to fog the computers and screening that the authorities of the DDR might bring to bear on Western visitors to their country.

Mr Dawson understood that the firm specialised in arranging holidays in eastern Europe and said that it was his wish to visit the German Democratic Republic. He wanted to see the city of Magdeburg, he'd read about it and it seemed a fine and historic place, and a good starting point for journeys to the Hartz mountains. He required a single room in the city and the dates that he could get away from work were between the 11th and the 18 th of June. The young man behind the counter had looked up at the wall calendar, grimaced at the time left for him to make the arrangements, and promised that the telex requesting the booking would be sent that day to the East German Berolina Agency in London.

How would Mr Dawson wish to travel? He would go by train. From which West German city? He would go by train from Hannover. Did Mr Dawson wish the agency to book flights from Dublin to West Germany?

No. Mr Dawson had business to fit in while visiting Britain. He would make his own arrangements to get to Hannover, but he would appreciate the rail tickets being purchased in Dublin. Would a?30 deposit be satisfactory? Perfectly satisfactory.

More details. Date of Birth. Place of Birth. Occupation. Passport Number… The information was given by a Secretary of the British Embassy in Dublin working to an exact brief. He offered the number of a passport that still lay in the basements of Century House awaiting the attention of the expert who would apply the various immigration officials' stamps for authenticity.

John Dawson was a teacher.

'I'm sure there will be no difficulty,' the young man said. 'When they pull their fingers out they can move quite quickly.'

'I hope so. It will be my first time there, a sort of holiday with a difference.'

'They passed their second constitution in 1968 guaranteeing the freedom of the individual, but it's not a document regulating the power of the state and its organs as it would be in the West. It doesn't curb the authority of government, it legalises that authority. The ideology of the system is with its citizens at all times because they've learned over there that the infrastructure is all-important. Everything is in pyramid formation, everything leads back to the Central Committee of SED. The base of the pyramid is very wide. There's the Freie Deutsche Gewerkschaftsbund which is the trades union organisation with more than 7 million members. There's the Freie Deutsche Jugend, the youth organisation, with 13/4 million kids on the books. There's the Pioneer Ernst Thalmann for the nippers between 5 and 14, 2 million of them.

The Party, the SED, has 2 million members or just over. You can't get on in this society without belonging or having belonged, you can't just opt out and say you're not interested and then expect to pick up a foreman's job, or get a place at a decent college. And the system perpetuates its own security. It watches over people, smothers them so that they don't know where they can turn for commiseration. There are 500,000 Party cells at the baseplate of the Party. Eyes and ears, the espionage network if you put it that way. It's a honeycomb of ideological reliability. It makes for a suspicious, prying community where people believe in the right to inform on their neighbour or the stranger in their street. You have to be careful, Johnny, careful all the time. You have to watch yourself, because you'll be watched. You'll be mapped and surveyed by people who are more than curious about you.

The moral is that you go slowly, Johnny, step by step. You don't talk to people there, you don't expect to find a friend… they can get 5 years inside for criticising the state to a foreigner… you go on your own, you stay on your own. Realise that and you can win, accept the isolation and you'll be fine.'

The telephone call for Mawby brought Mrs Ferguson scam- pering across the lawns to find him as he strolled under the back trees. The reply was back from Bonn. He was expected on the first flight of the next day.

A man for him to meet. It was another step forward and an important step because it solidified the commitment of the Service to the operation. He was flying to Germany, and they were no longer at the stage of outline planning.

As he climbed the stairs to collect his clothes Charles Mawby was surprised that a flush of nervousness warmed his face.

'Tell us about Erica, Willi.'

'She is twenty-nine years old. She is loved very dearly by my father.

In the last few years he has relied much on her for support, that is why she now works with him at Padolsk. She acts there as his secretary, and also as his protector. She answers his telephone and makes his appointments, in that way she tries to see that he is not overstrained.'

'Would she be in the Party, Willi?'

'You want always to give the label… She is a person who has grown up in a state where the political system is com- munism. How then can she be anything but communist? How could she be a capitalist if she has never known capi- talism? She knows only one colour, and that colour is red.'

'Is she committed to the Party, Willi?' Carter, wondering at Willi's evasion, recording the last question and the new line of Willi's answer in his notebook.

'Just labels…' Defiance bloomed in his cheeks. 'What do you know of life in Moscow, have you ever been there? Do you think the young people of the Soviet Union and the DDR spend their evenings talking of the grain harvest and the quotas in the building industry of workers' flats, and the composition of the Politburo, do you think that? Do you think they talk of the glories of steel production and the output of lignite? You know nothing of life there.'

'Don't be cheeky, Willi.'

'They are idiot questions.'

'I choose the questions… She was in the Pioneers?'

'Everyone is in the Pioneers. Every schoolchild has marched in Moscow on May Day. Everyone strives to better themselves.'

Carter looked across the table, carefully and slowly, weighing his words, creating pressure on the boy, loading it on his young shoulders.

'Tell me, Willi, if Erica knew that you were not drowned, but that you had defected, would she then love you or would she hate you? Would you be a hero to her or a traitor…?'

'You bastard.'

'Would she love you…'

'You have no right to ask.'

'I have every right. You have no rights. You have nothing, Willi Guttmann. Without me, without my help you have nothing. Answer me, would she love you?'

Johnny saw the boy crumple low in his chair, saw his body hunch and slide.

'She would hate me, she would despise me.'

'Why?'

'She would not have done what I did, not for the same reason.'

'Could she not have been in love with a boy, as you were with Lizzie?'

The boy spat out his bitterness. 'She loves no one. She is incapable of loving anyone but my father. She does not have the warmth or the heart to love a stranger, another man… Where is Lizzie?'

'Forget Lizzie.'

The boy was high again in his chair and his hands gripped the sides of the seat, knuckles clear and pale. The muscles gathered at the back of his neck. 'I want Lizzie to be here. I want Lizzie to be with me. You promised.'

' I said that you have to forget Lizzie Forsyth.'

The boy cried out, a wounded animal, deep wounded, the wood saw on the buried nail. 'How do I forget her when she is carrying my child..'