Gerald Seymour - The Contract

'Johnny, Johnny.'

He started in the bed, tightness on the face, the peace gone and fled. A sharpness of movement, the fast clearing of the mind. Carter had thrown a pebble into still waters. The private face was gone, Carter would not recapture it.

'Johnny, I brought some tea for you.'

Johnny propped on one elbow. Johnny gazing at him and seeking a reason. Johnny who slept so tidily that the parting of his hair was still intact.

' I brought some tea.'

Brought some tea because that was a personal gesture, that was a bridge between pointman and planner, that was the way Carter hoped to span the chasm. Carter could not have said why he needed the relationship, nor where could be found its importance to DIPPER. He knew only that without it there would be an emptiness, that the mission would have no heart. And if there were catastrophe then Johnny would need the knowledge that he belonged and was a part of something greater that supported and upheld him. That was why Carter had gone down to Mrs Ferguson's kitchen and boiled the kettle and made the tea.

'Playing the housemaid?'

'I never sleep at weekends, I never just lie in. When I'm at home, when we haven't a show on, then I'd be out in the garden or walking the dog…

I thought you'd like a mug of tea.'

'Thanks.'

'I always like one myself, early on.'

'You were right to wake me. I'm trying to marry the post- card snaps to the map. They're both ersatz, substitutes.' Johnny yawned, threw back his head, scratched at his chest. 'I was at it late last night, must have been at it a couple of hours after we went up.'

'You'll be all right, Johnny. We all think so, we're all very pleased with the way it's gone so far.'

'Thanks.'

'It's a special day today, Johnny, did you know that?' He was playing the parent figure, couldn't help himself.

'What day is it today?'

'It's the first of the month.'

'What happens on the first of the month?'

'It's the first of June, come on… it's the day Otto Guttmann goes to Magdeburg.'

'You brought me a cup of tea to remind me? Just for that?'

Carter flinched. 'Not like that, no. I just thought it was a bit of a landmark for us all. I'm sorry, I should have let you sleep…'

'Not to worry.' Johnny heaved himself out of bed, shook his head to achieve the effect of a bucket of cold water poured on his face.

' I spoke to Mawby again last night, after you'd gone up. He's off again to Germany, not coming here today. About the weapon, I worked on him a bit… he's not happy but he's agreed… he took a bit of persuading…'

There was a pride in Carter's voice at his achievement against the habits of the Service. 'There'll be a drop-off point organised for you in Magdeburg… You know we're going outside normal practice on this one, it's irregular.'

'What are you giving me?'

'Probably the APS, the Stechkin. Nine millimetre, twenty round magazine. They'll get one with a tubular shoulder stock which'll bump the range up to a couple of hundred metres.'

'That would be right.'

'I suggested to Mawby that if you were to be armed we had better make it effective. In for a penny, and that nonsense. We can also make available up to 4 fragmentation grenades, we reckoned the RGD 5s. That makes the pay load all east bloc… might confuse them a bit.'

'Good for you.' Johnny had begun to dress, peeling off his striped pyjamas.

'It wasn't easy to get Mawby to agree.'

'I'm sure it wasn't.'

Carter fidgeted on his feet, wondered whether he should withdraw. If he did so then he would have aborted the whole journey up the stairs with the mug that still cooled on the bedside table, untouched.

'Not that the weaponry affects the main problem, the persuasion of old man Guttmann

Johnny's eyes lit up. 'Of course it bloody doesn't. Why do you think I go off each night and sit in this bloody hole? Why do you think I'm always first away in the evenings?… Because all the crap downstairs doesn't help me with the main issue. I'm not a bloody idiot you know.'

Carter stumbled for the door. Felt a pain, a desperate sadness and his mind was filled with the anger of Johnny's face, the anger that was the overcoat of fear.

As he went out of the room Johnny called to him.

'Thanks, thanks for bringing the tea. Give me five minutes and I'll be with you for breakfast.'

A small voice, a small brave voice.

Erica Guttmann tilted her window seat back, waved away the stewardess with the meal on the tray, and was content to sink and flow with the even motion of the aircraft. Non stop to Berlin-Schonefeld. High above the cloud layer, distanced from the turbulence. Her eyes were closed, her hands limp on the seat arms, a magazine lay unopened on her lap.

So tired from all that had gone before.

Otto Guttmann sat, as always, upright and serious, considering a technical journal, hissing between his teeth either in exasperation at what he read, or at the pleasure of new discovery. She wore the new skirt and blouse that she had bought for the holiday, she had made the effort to lift her morale. Her father was dressed in his perennial dark suit, scornful of concessions towards a vacation.

He had wearied her in these last weeks. First the task of confronting the lethargy that had seeped over him after the news of Willi. And when at last there was light and his cold grief had thawed imperceptibly there had been the sledge hammer set back of the firing range at Padolsk. The experience had left him flaccid and without enthusiasm for the breakaway from his laboratory and drawing board. Erica had to sort the clothes that he would take with him, Erica had to pack his suitcase, Erica had to write the letters to the friends in Magdeburg and give their arrival and departure dates. In his depression the old man had renewed his work on the guidance circuitry of the weapon, calling for greater effort from his technical team. Driving himself, pushing forward, moving beyond the perimeters of possibility for the health of an old man. Let the bastards do it themselves, she had told herself. He had earned his retirement, was owed a rest haven far from the badgering complaints of the generals from Defence… But it would not be granted. Their thanks would be confined to the few scientists and military officers who were detailed to walk behind his casket and stand in patronising quiet while the speeches were made over a worn down corpse.

Once she had pushed her hand against his and squeezed the hard, boned fingers and he had leaned towards her and his roughened lips had kissed behind her ear. The smartness of her new costume would have appealed to him. The perfume that an officer stationed at Padolsk had brought back from Romania and which she had dabbed against her skin would give him pleasure. Her long and carefully brushed fair hair would draw his pride.

From the cockpit came the pilot's information that they had entered the air space of the German Democratic Republic at Schwedt to the north of Berlin. They had received landing permission. The weather on the ground was clear and fine.

The drone of the aircraft engines switched in tone as the Tupolev sagged through its descent. She roused herself, straightened in her seat and looked at her father. Still trapped in his reading, still remorseless in his study. Pale cheeks. The small puff of cotton wool at his neck where he had slashed the skin while shaving in the hurry of the early morning at the flat. His hair, greying and unruly after the barest efforts of the comb before they had locked the front door of their home.

Absently she reached across his waist and buckled his seat belt.

'A few more minutes, then we land.'

His eyes, huge and blurred through the lenses of his spectacles, turned to her and he nodded. She thought, perhaps, it would have been better if she had held his head against her shoulder and let him weep with the fluency of an old man.