Gerald Seymour - The Contract

A grudging acceptance. 'Pretty much right, Prime Minister.'

'Why wasn't I told when the defector first came to us? Why wasn't I told of his escape…'

'Fairly small beer. A young fellow, a junior interpreter in the Soviet" delegation to the Geneva disarmament conference. He doesn't rate very highly. If you want the detail, I can give it you, Prime Minister. Willi Guttmann aged 24, without access to secret and sensitive material inside the

Soviet delegation, meets an English secretary attached to the World Health Organisation. Their rendezvous is a bar called the Pickwick in central Geneva. She becomes pregnant, won't consider an abortion and persuades Guttmann to make his life with her. For that reason he defects

… Is this the material you feel cheated of, Prime Minister?… The girl's family is quite well placed, I believe. Name of Forsyth. Chambers in the Inner Temple, her father… Not a vastly edifying affair…'

'Don't sidetrack me with irrelevance,' snapped the Prime Minister. 'A D notice was activated. A D notice implies a matter of national security, an issue that if revealed to public gaze would harm the interests of this country. In your own words the boy is small beer, how then does he warrant such a response?'

The Deputy-Under-Secretary was not a man to be stampeded. 'Two reasons, Prime Minister. Guttmann's method of defection has led the Soviet authorities to believe that he drowned in a boating accident, they are not aware that he is in this country and helping us, were they to have that knowledge we believe his life would be endangered and his family in Moscow would be open to reprisal. I don't think we would want that.

Secondly, the boy has provided information on the new projected Soviet anti-tank missile system…'

'And that you call small beer?'

'Information that is interesting to us because of our own preparations for the mass production of the Main Battle Tank of the late nineteen eighties. There are several thousand jobs dependent on that programme.

Many of them, I believe, to be found in the constituency of the Secretary of State for the Social Services…'

'And shouldn't I have been told of this? With a visit approaching by a senior minister of the German Democratic Republic, shouldn't I have known that someone with connections in that country is currently aiding our intelligence effort?'

Tell the Prime Minister and you tell how many? Which aides see a memorandum, which personal secretaries? How many learn the contents of a file over cocktails and during weekends in the country? And not the occasion to speak of DIPPER, not the place, not the time.

'I will give instructions that in future you will be kept more fully in the picture. I trust you won't find our affairs tedious.' The Deputy-Under-Secretary was experienced in the tactical warfare of the civil service. It was unwise to join with a politician in head-on combat.

You deflected attack, you retired in good order, you lived for another day.

The Prime Minister was sweetened. 'Don't think that I'm not sympathetic to the work of the Service. I think I know the procedures, but I want more than I'm getting in the way of information.'

'You must do as you think fit, Prime Minister. The Service will be gratified at the interest shown in its efforts. That interest, I trust, will be reflected in Treasury grants?'

That scored, the Deputy-Under-Secretary observed, forced the predictable sidestep. 'I think it goes without saying that it would be extremely disadvantageous to us were the East Germans to know of the presence here of this defector. They sell to the United Kingdom almost twice the value of goods that they buy from us…'

'You can rest assured that there is no action contemplated by the Service that would jeopardise the improvement of our trade balance with the DDR.'

The Deputy-Under-Secretary smiled from an open face at the Prime Minister. He thought of the Dipper bird, remembered what Mawby had told him. A dark and camouflaged little creature, hard to see in the gloom of a river bank, and it walked covertly on the stream bed. He remembered what Mawby had said of a contract man who would go to Magdeburg. Not the place and not the time.

He rose from his chair. 'I'll set in hand a small working party to see how we can keep you more fully informed without swamping your desk.'

They had eaten well at an Italian restaurant close to Victoria station, taken pasta and veal and drunk a litre and a half of white wine. Carter had paid, playing the father figure, extracting a wad of five pound notes from his wallet, explaining that he'd raided petty cash at Holmbury. On the government, he'd said, and no offence to Mrs Ferguson but this was the best meal they'd had in weeks. Much of the wine had found its way to Willi's glass, as intended.

In a little group they walked past Buckingham Palace and the red tunicked sentries, along the wide Mall where Americans and Japanese jostled for camera angles, they paused in Trafalgar Square and George bought a bag of nuts for Willi to scatter for the pigeons. They came down Whitehall and showed the boy the narrow entrance to Downing Street and passed on towards the House of Commons. Willi lapped up the history and George, who was always near to him, was a sure guide, humorous and interesting. Near to him, but never beside, always the few feet away so that Carter's Instamatic camera as it clicked incessantly would not include George in the pictures of the boy admiring and wondering at the sounds and sights of a great city. Carter used two cassettes of film.

They moved in a regulated, planned formation. Carter leading. George alongside Willi. Johnny in the rear and sliding for the background each time the camera came to Carter's eye. No reason that he should have worried, the photographic section would have painted him out.

Johnny wondered what the boy thought. Wondered how sharply the experience of escape and return to the house had cut. Wondered why the boy had not mentioned the girl again from Geneva. Wondered how he would respond to Carter's appeal for friendship and help. Didn't know any of the answers, didn't fathom the mind of the boy, alien to Johnny.

But then Willi Guttmann was a prisoner and his feelings would be masked and closed, flies tightly zipped, protecting himself. Not the only prisoner, Johnny, was he? Not the only one who's trying to be a good kid because that's the way towards remission. Johnny and Willi, two of a kind. Both used, second-hand persons. And after the work was finished, what then for Johnny and Willi? Forget Willi, what then for Johnny? He didn't give a shit for the boy who walked in front of him. So what then for Johnny when the work was finished?… No way of finding the certain answer until he came back from Magdeburg with Otto Guttmann in his pocket…

They had an ice cream each, dripping from cornets, and George cleaned Willi's mouth with his handkerchief, and Willi said it was good ice cream, and Carter said that it bloody well ought to be at 8 old shillings a portion.

They started back for the car. All tired, all footsore.

One morning a week the Member of Parliament for Guildford held open house at his constituency offices.

Ten till twelve on a Wednesday and that was sufficient for him to be able to boast each time that he sought the electorate's support that his door was always wide to those in difficulty. They came in a hesitant dribble to ask whether something could be done about the drain that smelled by the bus stop, whether there could be an additional pedestrian crossing for the school children, whether there could be greater police presence to combat young people's vandalism, whether the transport service could be improved. A telephoned message from the Member of Parliament would motivate the local Council to action. But not many of the class and affluence of Dennis Tweedle availed themselves of the opportunity to meet him at the public 'surgery'. The likes of Dennis Tweedle were private patients, met for lunch in London or for a drink at a club in St James's. But Tweedle had said that he must see his Member of Parliament that day, could not wait for a more socially convenient occasion, and so had waited out in the corridor with the rest, subject to a hard wooden bench and the exhortations of the party slogans on the walls.