Gerald Seymour - The Contract

'It has to be done in that time.'

'So be it,' said Percy. 'Perhaps we should wish each other luck, Mr Mawby.'

They bumped over the cobbled streets of Bonn, were held by traffic lights, cramped by cars as they crawled towards the south side of the city. Mawby had nothing more to say, nothing before the meeting was joined.

'Will your father take any work with him to Magdeburg?'

'Only if there were something very pressing. Only if there was a problem at Padolsk would they contact him.'

'While he's in Magdeburg is he subject to surveillance?'

'A guard, a policeman watching him?… I don't think so. Never before.

But like every outsider, every visitor, his documents must go to Strasse der Jugend…'

'What's that, Willi?'

'To the offices of the City police. For the stamp.'

'Would the Soviet military be in contact with him, or GRU'

'The Red Army, yes. They will know that he is in Magdeburg. They invite him each year for a dinner, perhaps to the garrison camp of the armoured division at Bierderitz

'That's to the east of Magdeburg?'

'East across the river. The GRU, no… there is no reason for the intelligence people to watch him.'

'You are sure he is not under permanent surveillance?'

'I am certain he is not.'

'There is no policeman that is attached to him?'

'There are none.'

'We are now into the age of the tactical nuclear concept and that means the end for fixed defensive positions. With tactical nuclear armouries the Maginot thinking is gone for ever. But you can only justify nuclear reaction to conventional attack if you have lost great tracts of land and territory, and if you have major hostile concentrations to aim the missiles at. The decision to go nuclear will not be made by a field commander, not by a man in denims with four stars on his cap, it will be made by a politician with political considerations uppermost and the risk of setting off a domino run of nuclear escalation giving him nightmares. So the military men on our side have to think in terms of meeting a conventional attack with conventional defence. The order of the day will be small, highly mobile units, low density and self-contained. Our tanks would be operating in platoon formation, four or five together and they will be met by Soviet mechanised infantry with manual controlled missiles. The infantry will have all the cover they want, wrecked villages, forestry, good and hilly terrain. The missile men can have a field day, and their equipment's off the Padolsk design board. You're with me, Johnny?'

The village was tucked within the twin walls of the valley. The church and main street low in the bed beside a stream and the houses scattered indiscriminately above. The leaves were coming to the trees, the grass on the small lawns sprouted, the first flowers were opening. A quiet, private place.

Percy drove up a winding track. He scanned the gateposts of the houses for the number that he wanted. It was a split- level home, modern and freshly-painted and large. As the car drew up, there was a trembling in Mawby's legs, irritating and uncontrolled. They were a far cry from clubland, from the Service, from his home ground. He would rather have been anywhere, anywhere other than climbing from a car, stepping onto a track on the outskirts of a village south of Bonn, anywhere other than walking in this foreign place with morose Adam Percy for company. It was the expectable butterflies, first time at the sharp end for a year or so.

They went up the short driveway.

'No names, eh?'

'He won't want them,' Percy said.

Up to the front door, polished and heavy. Mawby looked behind him over his shoulder, nothing moved, nobody to observe the men in dark suits in the village setting. Percy pressed the bell button.

He was a big man who greeted them, a man of gross power and physique. A short neck, ears hugging his shoulders. A bullet head crowned with a shaven stubble of white hair. Heavy, muscled arms that stretched tight his high folded shirt sleeves. He loomed over them.

Best foot forward, Charles Augustus. Career men don't retreat, career men push ahead. Couldn't have delegated this one, could he? Couldn't have parcelled it off on Carter. This one was for Mawby. And he must not stare at the scar where a revolver bullet probably had nicked the skin high across the right cheek bone, and he must not curl his lip at the waft of cologne. You need him, Charles Augustus. More than he needs you, you need him. Just as you need Johnny Donoghue who killed a girl and never uttered a syllable of remorse. Just as you need the snivelling Guttmann. Just as you need Carter and the prig Pierce, and Smithson.

All of them needed by Charles Augustus Mawby… God Almighty, what furniture. They followed the man into a room dominated by a single picture, a massive canvas of the reclining nude, white skin, angular limbs, a bush of hair, a summit of breasts. Mawby looked away, pained. What you'd expect of the man from what Percy had told him.

But he had come to do business and so he sat in a mauve and green chair and smiled with all the warmth that he could muster.

There was the offer of a drink that Mawby declined; there was the brisk establishment of Christian names. The man called himself Hermann.

He would ask questions to ascertain the nature of the assignment, then they would discuss practicabilities, then they would talk of the price to be paid.

'Is there a date involved, Charles?'

Mawby flinched from the familiarity. 'The thirteenth or fourteenth of June.'

'How many are there to be transported?'

'One elderly man and his adult daughter.'

'Where in the DDR are they living?'

'They will be staying in Magdeburg. On the fifteenth they return to Moscow.'

'They are Russian then?'

'They are German.'

'Who will make contact with them for the arrangements?'

'That will be our responsibility.'

'They could be brought to a point where a car could meet them?'

'We would bring them to that point, yes.'

'For two persons it is difficult to conceal them in a car, they would require documentation. Who would provide the papers?'

'We would provide them with West German passports and general cover material.'

'Is the face of this man known to the DDR authorities, would his picture have been in the newspapers?'

'Never.'

'You are anxious to make it so simple, Charles, but I tell you that it is not easy.' Hermann wheezed with theatrical effect, rolling his eyes to the ceiling.

'To me it is very simple,' Mawby clipped in response.

'Not so. If it were easy then you would manage your own affairs. And you give little time for the arrangements. You have not thought of the linking of the vehicle papers with the documentation of the driver, his assistant and the passengers. Those are two reasons why it is not easy.

Thirdly…'

'Why is there the need of a second man in the car?'

'You know little of the documentation required for this journey, Charles. Any West German who makes use of the Berlin to Helmstedt autobahn is considered as a transit passenger through the DDR territory.

His passport is stamped on entry and exit. So the driver will have his pass- port stamped when he leaves West Berlin. At a suitable moment in the journey he will collect two passengers, but they do not have the stamp and that must be attached while the car is moving towards the DDR checkpoint at Marien- born. The driver cannot do that, he is at the wheel, another must be there to do it. Understand me, Charles, it is not the stamp that is the difficulty, it is the signature that goes with the stamp. The signature for the passengers who are picked up must match with that on the papers of the driver. So the driver must have an assistant and he is the man who will attach the signature, and he must work in the moving car between Berlin and Marienborn, that is their check point opposite Helmstedt. You follow me, Charles?'