Gerald Seymour - The Contract

'We've done nothing for him. We've crippled him, chopped his foot off at the ankle… he won't be thinking well… at best he's an outcast for the rest of his natural, at worst he's a traitor.'

'We owed him nothing.'

'There's no basis for his loyalty… but he won't have a car.'

'I'll hang him by his bloody thumbs when I get him back.' Carter spat his anger across the room.

'You need manpower out there.'

'There'll be bloody hell to pay.'

'You have to call for help,' said Johnny. 'Anyone who can get your feet on the ground, and soon.'

'Rather it was any other bugger than me…' Carter walked without enthusiasm towards the mahogany desk on which the telephone rested.

'Johnny, it's not my field, tell me, where's he going to be?'

'Out there.' Johnny waved towards the hazed distance beyond the window glass. 'Not far and scared half to death, blundering off the trees.

He'll be in the woods crying his bloody heart out. He won't be calm and he won't be rational. He won't have an idea of what he should be doing, where he should be going. He's not that sort of kid.'

'Hope to God that you're right.' Carter began to dial. 'I can just see Mawby's bloody face…'

The Night Duty desk at Leconfield House in London's West End, home of the Security Service, received and duly logged the telephoned advice from Henry Carter.

The clerk called the home of the Director. There had been a lengthy pause on the line and then a rattle of instructions, as if Security as well was involved in SIS's loss of their precious property.

Scotland Yard's Special Branch police were alerted, the description of Willi Guttmann telexed to their night operations room, the request was made for intensive surveillance of airports and harbours. A team of detectives would be hustled together and sent to Holmbury. Special Branch would undertake liaison with Surrey Constabulary and their headquarters on the hill above Guildford, ten miles from the scene of the disappearance of the boy. Surrey Constabulary would inform their outlying stations of a Missing Persons call and would add the rider that the matter was covered by Official Secrets.

More calls for the clerk.

The naval officer who had retired from the service with the rank of Vice-Admiral and who had been given the job of directing the country's D notice procedures was next on the list. The clerk explained word by word what he had been told to communicate by his Director. It was requested that advice of a D notice be served on all newspapers and broadcasting outlets urging them neither to publish nor communicate any material relating to the defection, arrival in Britain, and subsequent flight of Willi Guttmann. The clerk knew the wording well — Paragraph 4

Section a, 'You are requested to publish nothing about… the secret activities of the British Intelligence, or Counter Intelligence Services, undertaken inside or outside the United Kingdom for the purpose of national security.'

That was the necessary precaution. Once the civilian police were brought in the matter would be leaky as a sieve. Chatter among the wives, chatter in the saloon bar with most favoured journalists. Bring the civilian police onto the scene and security was at terminal risk.

The clerk's work done his imagination could wander and he sensed as a sharp smell the atmosphere on Night Desk at Century House across the city. For a long time the grin remained on his face.

The submission of his catastrophe to the Security Service had provided Carter with the required adrenalin to wake the Deputy-Under-Secretary.

Should have done it hours before, shouldn't he? Should have done it when the men were still out hunting through the grounds. Should have, but he hadn't. Carter hadn't spoken to the Deputy-Under-Secretary for three years, could be more. Johnny watching, silent and sympathising.

Mrs Ferguson slipped into the room. Still in her dressing gown, still in her slippers, still with the pink curlers embedded in her hair. More coffee, steaming and augmented with a plate of biscuits. Both men might have kissed her.

When she was gone Johnny poured.

'I'm grateful for your help, Peter.'

The Deputy-Under-Secretary sat on the side of the bed in his usual room at the Travellers' Club. There was the faint drone of a vacuum cleaner on a faraway landing, the clink in the corridor of the tea cups and saucers being brought to the early risers. The garish ceiling bulb hovered over his head, accentuating the pits of his eyes, the concave bowls of his cheeks. The telephone rested on the sheets beside him.

'Don't think about it, it's nothing. If we can't help each other what can we do?'

It was a sharp barb. Fenton had long been the advocate of inter-departmental liaison, was a founder member of the 'bigger is best' brigade, had written a paper two years back on the desirability of merging Intelligence and Security, and had faced for his pains waspish opposition from SIS and its parent Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

He was wide awake, in control and confident, but then Security never enjoyed the dinner round that was the privilege of the Service. Peter Fenton would warrant a fraction of the hospitality that was available to the Deputy-Under- Secretary.

' I'm advised that this matter cannot be mounted unless Guttmann is co-operative.'

'More to the point, if a breath of this drops out of the bucket then there'll be half a dozen heavies from GRU or KGB on father Guttmann's shoulder crowding his vacation, yes? That is in the unlikely event they let him travel to Magdeburg.'

'There was no option, I suppose, but to bring in the police?'

'Had to be done. You want the boy and you want him fast. For that you need a manhunt. We don't have the necessary numbers and neither do you.'

'I hate to say it about ourselves, but it has been a pretty poor effort by our people down there…'

The rare candour cut at the toughness of the Director. 'Take my advice, leave the inquests till we have the boy back.

Keep the court martial till we know the scope of the damage

'There'll be damage, but it's good advice.' There was the whiff of desperation. 'I'm not going to lose this thing, Peter.'

'We'll keep in touch through the morning.'

The Deputy-Under-Secretary began to dress, and he rang for the porter and asked if a cup of tea could be brought to him.

At first he had run hard.

Panting for air. Crashing through the undergrowth. Cannoning from the trees that loomed around him in the darkness. Sprinting where there were no paths. Around him were only the devastating sounds of his own movements and the thunder in the high leaves of disturbed pigeons.

Running, crashing, panting, sprinting. But the boy's shoulder hurt him now, hurt far down in the muscles and wounded him in the hidden nerves by his collar bone and rib cage. The shoulder that had cracked into the low stone wall as he had pitched forward in the shallow, camouflaged ditch. The pain came often, surged and subsided. The intensity billowed with the exhaustion in his legs and the ache in his chest as he gulped for breath. He had no map, had followed no plan. He could only run. He ran with the darkness of the woods and trees closing on his flight as he passed, cloaking his trail. He knew that sometimes he had turned back on his path, that often he had sacrificed distance for the needs of concealment and so as to skirt the scattered homes beyond the trees. He could not calculate how far he had gone in the hours since he had climbed onto the rusted, rainwater pipe. Many hours, enough to waste his strength and exacerbate the throb in his forehead.

The wetness of the morning's dew gathered at his shoes and at the ankles of his socks. Water flaked to his arms and legs from the previous evening's rain on the leaves.

So where was Willi Guttmann running? What was his goal? Only a vision for company. Willi running to his Lizzie. The pigs had lied to him, the pigs had told untruths, had separated him from his Lizzie. Going to Lizzie.