Gerald Seymour - The Contract

'It's not easy for me to say, exactly. The bones seemed to be that an East German boy who had defected ran away from his debrief. Peter Fenton's crowd reached me because the police had to be called in to try and find the boy. They'd discovered him by the end of the day but there were police shoulder to shoulder for a few hours in south Surrey, it was the sort of thing that would have given the populars a bit of fun.'

'Why the devil can't I be told anything?'

'Perhaps it came through and you missed it, perhaps the secretaries didn't think it worth your time,' the Vice-Admiral was fishing and lamely.

'They have direct access to me. Whose pigeon would this be?'

'It was Security that called me… but it was on behalf of SIS, the boy was theirs.'

' I'll teach 'em a damned lesson. I'll not be kept in ignorance The Prime Minister's wife was at his side. He shouldn't be hiding himself away. The bitterness snapped from the Prime Minister's face and the public smile flowed.

'Of course, my dear, of course. Thank you, Barney, thank you for your guidance.'

The snow had crept from the grass a bare fortnight earlier leaving the ground bleak and without lustre. Far away the forests ringed the great expanse of the test firing range outside the town of Padolsk. No sunshine could pierce the ceiling of cloud that crushed down on them and in the long distance the target tank was wreathed in mist and indistinct to the watchers on the raised, plank dais. The generals always came from the Defence Ministry for a first time test firing.

Otto Guttmann in his suit and overcoat tried to separate himself from the military but the size of the viewing platform made this an empty gesture. This was when he was nervous, when even an old man who had witnessed and taken part in these occasions many times would feel apprehensive. Uniforms around him, heavy trench coats of sand khaki, polished boots of dark brown, wide brimmed caps that sat high on Slav featured faces, and the tongue that he had coexisted alongside without fully mastering. He was jostled for a place on the front row of the platform. He could deal with these men in his office or when they came to the laboratory, could stall and baffle them with the science of his trade. Now the reckoning. It was the first time that the mechanism had been put to the test of field trials.

The binoculars were out. A hush and an excitement and a score of eyes latched on to the group of soldiers in field combat dress who assembled the equipment from the solid wooden crate in which it had travelled from the workshops. Guttmann shuffled in impatience, but the soldiers were right to be methodical and painstaking. The weapon was new to them, and he himself had instructed that procedures should be followed to the letter.

It was intended that combat should be simulated. The generals were anxious to see the weapon in active service conditions.

Far to the right a machine gun spattered through a belt of blank rounds.

Out in the middle distance between the soldiers and the derelict tank there were crisp detonations and the swirl of smoke rising from the ground. Guttmann saw the glint of buried ecstasy on the faces of the older officers who watched, those who remembered, those who treasured their youth and the great battles of Stalingrad and Smolensk and Kursk.

The thought was momentary, the distaste fast and quickly swallowed.

The soldiers had completed the assembly drill.

It was not to be a simple firing. First they must cross 200 metres of open ground through the crescendo of make- believe battle. They must weave and duck and crawl and take cover, above all else they must expose the equipment to the rough usage and tribulation of combat.

Guttmann winced as the soldier who carried the warhead threw himself into a prepared trench and even at that distance he seemed to hear the thudding impact of the metal casing on the granite, long frozen ground.

Through the smoke, faint amongst the firing, came the orders.

The line on the T34, flame blackened, the useless hull and turret, the impotent damaged gun, a battered veteran of the fight against the Panzers, hit many times, holed like a colander and of use now only as a punch bag for the sport of the generals. None of them looked at Guttmann, all ignored him, all peered through magnified vision at the tank, the target. Men who wait for the death of a cock, or a bull or a pig that is wounded and that is trailed by the dogs. He wanted to turn away, wanted to create a chasm between himself and the men pressing around him. The grinning faces of expectation were all about him. The soldiers had stopped near to the top of a short reverse slope to the tank.

The launcher barrel would be peeping lethally over the rim, aiming, lining.

The single bellowed command. 'Fire.'

The flash of light.

Blinding, brilliant on a dulled afternoon. A moment of festive illumination that caught the crouching figures behind the launcher.

The warhead was away, shooting like a tracer a dozen feet into the air.

Locking at that height for a fraction of time, the kestrel that needs for the last time to isolate the tuft of grass where the field mouse shelters, then is homing and scrambling for its prey.

Two kilometres it must travel. Striking low over the ground, beckoned to right and left, restored to target with the impulses transmitted by the aimer. A trail of light, and a rushing roar beating across the open range.

On course, on target.

Otto Guttmann blinked in pleasure, felt the dry smile creeping across his cheeks and then wiped it as surely as if he had ripped his hand across his mouth.

The warhead veered far to the right, swung away in a sweet, looping arc till it was hastening at right angles from the tank. Two hundred and seventy-five feet per second ground speed. Three hundred kilometres per hour. Skimming the grey grass, hunting out the tree line. Out of control, beyond recall, mechanical discipline discarded. Breathtakingly fast. The concerted gasp of horror and astonishment from the platform was stifled by the distant report of the explosion amongst the trees. A blast of sharp flame that was short and edited and then a wallowing silence as the smoke gathered, was caught in the wind and taken from the trees.

There was a shuffle of feet and the heads were turned on Otto Guttmann and the eyes beneath the cap peaks struck and stung him. He must speak first. Always the inventor must explain, always he must offer a reason.

He stood his ground and faced them.

The smoke grew and drifted towards them, not hurrying, not impatient, but dispersing gently from the impact point.

'You saw it, you saw it yourselves… the launch was perfect. The initial aim was perfect… It was only after that, afterwards that it went to the right. You have hurried me, I have told you that many times. The problem has been the protection of the circuitry of the aim mechanism.

You saw with your own eyes how it was thrown to the ground. It is a delicate computer, not a sack of turnips. If the soldier had been careful then it would have been perfect.' He heard his own words as if spoken by another, recognised the guttural German resonance that always showed through when he spoke the Russian language. He saw the contempt on the officers' faces. He knew that he wheedled for their sympathy, sucked for their consolation, and could not help himself. ' I have to have more time to strengthen the circuits if they are to withstand abuse. It is not like Sagger, a rough machine with a cable to guide it. Electronic impulses are delicate…'

'When do we see it again?' The chill response of a Major General with a chest brightened by medal and decoration ribbons.

'Three weeks, perhaps more, perhaps less. It is complex…'

'It must withstand that treatment and more. It is to be a weapon handled by infantry not scientists.'