Gerald Seymour - The Contract

In his tiredness he did not think of aeroplanes and travel documents and money and fresh clothes. Lizzie was outside the house, Lizzie was across the fence. Lizzie was out there, out beyond the darkness, and he was no longer in their cage. He had achieved a kind of freedom.

And they were going to kill his father. That was as clear as the lies they had told about Lizzie. They were going to kill him in Magdeburg — from a car — with a silenced pistol, by a knife thrust. Why else did they ask where his father would go in Magdeburg, who he would meet, whether he would be guarded? They had taken him from Lizzie, now they sought to take the life of an old man.

The day came with a hint of rain and the taste of the low, hill-hugging clouds. There was a wind, too, that caught the moisture on his clothes, tugged at them. The stamina for running had deserted the boy. The strength remained only to walk, to plod forward. There was nothing in his room that he could have taken that would have helped him. The bastards had left him nothing. Not even a bar of chocolate, not even a packet of sweet biscuits. Bastards, and he spat the phlegm from the dried soreness of his throat. He was walking and the trees now were sharp to his eyes, and the hedges clear and the pain of his shoulder concentrated his mind.

Time for the boy to think, and with the thoughts that came to his tired mind there welled a horrible loneliness, a hopelessness that was the friend of desperation… He should break from the thinking, because thinking would hurt, would always bring to mind Lizzie and his father.

And thinking would also be of George and his quiet shoes, and Mr Carter and his smile and the questions, and the one called Johnny who sat and listened and said nothing and who would be the man that killed his father. He had the eyes of a man who could kill, the one called Johnny, eyes that were never still… Against a thorn hedge the boy flopped down. The brush of the wind could not reach him. He sprawled on his side and closed his eyes. So tired. Legs and arms draped haphazard on the soft grass. He must find someone to tell of the danger to his father. He must find someone to speak with of Lizzie and of the lies that had been told him. He would find someone… He pushed himself up, tried to rise trom the ground, but his energy was sapped, his will weakened.

He would find someone, but later.

From the towns of Guildford and Dorking and Horsham police units were moved into the area of the hills around Holmbury.

A photograph had been issued, plus height and weight, and a note of the clothes that the boy was believed to be wearing. There had been more than a buzz of interest at the police station briefings as the Superintendents had rolled their eyes and given the half wink and let it be known that this was a matter falling into the realm of national security.

Two car loads of Special Branch had travelled from London with the paraphernalia of fingerprint and photographic equipment believing they were visiting a sc ene of crime, and the argument had been loud and vicious when George, heavy in aggression, had refused them permission to enter the grounds of the house without the prior authorisation of Henry Carter.

A party had come from Leconfield House, stern-faced, brush-moustached, unmistakably military men in civilian order.

They had gone with Carter to the sitting room and talked for more than an hour in an attempt to explore the mind of Willi Guttmann and gauge his intentions.

Johnny went to bed. Not his problem, not for him to hold Henry Carter's hand.

When the bank close to the Music Academy on Koblenzer- strasse opened, Charles Mawby and Adam Percy were there and waiting by the front door. This was where the SIS 'out station' in Bonn kept their funds for operational use. Percy wrote a cheque for 25,000 marks, Mawby scribbled the receipt that would go through Percy's paperwork. They were the first to be served, receiving a stack of 100 mark notes. Mawby counted them, Percy slid the money into a plain buff envelope, and then they were out onto the street and striding to the car.

The advance payment would be made, and the morning would be spent in the discussion of detail, the establishment of a liaison link, the understanding of the plan. With luck Mawby would be on the late afternoon flight to Heathrow. Percy had picked him up early from the Steigenberger Hotel, had not called at his office on the way and so the coded telex from Century House addressed to Charles Mawby lay unread.

They drove in heavy traffic out onto the Bad Gotesburg road. The money burned in Mawby's inside pocket.

'It's not the way I'd have wanted it, Adam. I'd have preferred our own people doing the driving. We can't contemplate it.'

'You have to allow for failure, and if the worst comes to the worst then you absolutely cannot afford any connection.'

'It's the reliability of this man…'

'We can guarantee nothing. But he's as good as you'll find, that's what I'm told.'

'They wouldn't play with us?'

'BND? The masters would, but not the man I talk to.'

It was a hell of a way to work, reflected Mawby. To take a matter so delicate and rich and pass it to this thick-fisted pig for delivery. But those were the rules.

'I don't know how you stick it here, Adam.'

Adam Percy looked with a trace of surprise at his passenger. 'I don't fret much, Mr Mawby. That way it's just about tolerable.'

The woman normally took her dog for a walk in mid- morning if it were not raining. Not far, not more than a mile from the farm gateway in which she could park her car. Enough to let the labrador run and stretch in the fields and sniff around and cock his leg. There were no sheep here off the Ewhurst to Forest Green road, only cattle and the dog would not disturb them and could be allowed to run and ferret for himself far ahead of his mistress. She had thought twice about going out that morning, but eventually had risked it, armed with raincoat and head scarf. She stayed at the edge of the field and looked up at the tree line and beyond it to the squashed-down peaks of Pitch Hill and Holmbury Hill and Leith Hill.

Even on a threatening day, with the mist low and muzzling the beauty of the trees, it was an exhilarating outing. She was well bedded in her thoughts when the barking of the dog alerted her. Hackles up, shoulders flexed, back legs tensed and ready to spring, furious at a centre of attention that was hidden from her view by the hedge. He wasn't going to set up a fox…

'Rufus, Rufus, heel…' She ran forward.

He never came back to the call if it were a fox.

The boy lay on the ground. His knees were drawn up to cover his stomach, his hands across his face for protection.

She stared down at him, then reached for the dog's collar and heaved the animal back and hooked the leash in the collar ring and took the strain as it rose on its back legs and pawed at the air.

The boy was soaked, his clothes drenched through, his hair streaked and tangled. Face white, eyes cowering. She would have run for her car if the dog had not been with her, but the animal gave her courage.

'What are you doing here?' Her voice shrill.

The boy did not reply, did not look at her, and his eyes were held by the slobbering, teeth-filled mouth of the dog.

'Don't you know you're trespassing? This is Mr Daniel's land…'

Now the boy gazed up at her. In her life she had never seen such terror.

There was not the look of a gypsy, an itinerant, about him. Too well dressed for that, and by his face he was not someone used to sleeping in the rough.

'This is private property. You have to have permission

'Will you help me? Please help me, please.'

She recoiled, and the croak of the voice renewed the demand of the dog to be at the boy, and he wormed away.