Gerald Seymour - The Contract

I have found that place.

I love you, Ulf.

Weferlingen Monday June 9th.' He folded the two sheets of paper, put them into the envelope, licked that and stuck it tight, and wrote on it the address to which it should be delivered. 'I'm really very grateful to you.' 'It's nothing.'

Of course it was nothing… because if this bastard were at Walbeck next week and Ulf Becker and his girl were in the rifle sights then he would shoot. He would shoot, and there would be no crying over it, not from him and not from any of them in the company.

Would he have written that letter in the morning? After he had slept, when the light had come again, when he'd queued for breakfast, when he had made his bed, when the barracks throbbed in activity, would he have written it then? But it was written and it was in the boy's blouse pocket, and Jutte would have it when she came home in the afternoon of the next day.

'Good night,' said Ulf and walked from the room to his bed.

Over the years it had become the habit for Carter to buy a gift for presentation to Mrs Ferguson on the last morning of the occupancy of the house. Sometimes some flowers, sometimes a piece of imitation jewellery, sometimes a box of dark chocolates.

That would be his final duty before leaving for Heathrow and his flight to Hannover, and George and Willi would go from neighbouring Northolt by regular Air Force transport to West Berlin. He had checked the house to ensure that the traces of DIPPER had been stripped, and the maps were down from the walls, the photographs removed, the bags packed, the mood sombre. They would leave a barren, sterile house.

In the kitchen Carter gave Mrs Ferguson a packet of embroidered handkerchiefs, and she thanked him reservedly as if mistrusting her ability to hide her feelings.

'But we'll be back soon, we're not offering you much peace, Mrs Ferguson. You'll barely have time to get the duster round and change the beds. Back in six days, you'll have the house full on Sunday night.

George and I, Mr Smithson and Mr Pierce, and there'll be another gentle- man and a girl coming… perhaps you could manage something nice for the girl's room, make a bit of a home for her.'

'I'll see to it, Mr Carter.'

'It's a bit quiet, I suppose, when we've all gone.'

'Quiet enough, but I'll have enough work to keep myself busy… will Johnny be using his room on Saturday night?'

'There's no call for him to be back. Bit of a freelance, Mrs Ferguson, he won't be involved after the current bit of nonsense.'

'The girl who you're bringing, she can have his room,' Mrs Ferguson said briskly.

When they were all in the car and the luggage stowed in the boot she waved to them, and stood a long time on the steps after they had gone before returning to the kitchen.

Adam Percy came into the office, hooked his coat to the back of the door, and was followed inside by his secretary and her memory pad.

'There was another call from that fellow in BND, the one who's been trying to reach you, he said he should see you… that it was imperative.'

She was a tall woman, attractive in late middle age, wearing well the widowhood inflicted by the death of her husband on a dirty, snow scattered Korean hill. She had worked for Adam Percy for 14 years.

'Call him back in the morning, tell him I'm on a week's leave to England and fix an appointment for the week after.'

She would lie well for Adam Percy. She was accustomed to that task.

Standing on the viewing gallery on the roof at Hannover Airport, Johnny watched the passengers emerge from the forward door of the Trident.

Henry Carter was one of the first down the steps.

A taxi took them to the railway station in Hannover. At the 'Left Luggage' they lodged Carter's case. That was where he had left his own bag, Johnny said.

They had hardly spoken in the taxi, nothing of substance, not until they had walked out of the station with the evening falling and found the cafe Augusten and taken a table far from the bar and the loudspeaker that played undemanding piano music. Many hours to be absorbed before Johnny's train. Carter ordered a Scotch with soda water, Johnny a beer, and the drinks were brought to them by a tall girl with flowing dark hair, and a tight shirt and a wraparound skirt. It would all have to be accounted for, that was the way of the Service, every last beer and sandwich and newspaper would have to be down on the printed form.

They wouldn't ask Johnny for receipts, not from Magdeburg.

A pleasant enough little bar. Later it would fill up but this was early and the alcove with the large round table was their own and offered them freedom of talk.

'How's it been, Johnny?'

'Fine, just fine, what I wanted… I talked some German. That was what I wanted… that was important to me.'

'Where did you stay?'

'In Frankfurt… well, it was only two nights. I found a place

… I was hardly there. I just walked about… I went where there were people.

That's the important thing, to hear voices, to hear inflections.'

'It was really important, was it, Johnny?'

'Of course it was, or I wouldn't have gone…' Johnny stamped on the question. 'I said what I wanted to do and I've done it.'

'I just wanted to know,' Carter said evenly. 'It wasn't the way that we would normally have done things.'

' It was the way I wanted it.'

'We were very fair with you, Johnny, nobody tried to block it. 7

' I go over tonight a fair amount happier for those two days. Is that good enough?'

'Good enough, Johnny.' Carter looked across at him, tried for the meeting of eyes and wondered why his man lied, and knew that the time before the train was no occasion for interrogation. Unhappy, and he must let it slide. 'We've felt all along on this that what's right for you is right for the operation. That's governed everything,'

Johnny smiled, the cheeks cracked, the teeth shone.

The light was too pale for Carter to judge and assess the sincerity.

'You've done everything that I could have asked for. I've no complaints, Mr Carter.'

But then Johnny had never really had any complaints, Carter thought.

Only the gun and the two days in Germany, otherwise he had never objected, had never argued for a different course of action, a different tack of approach. As if he never quite believed that the work and preparation at Holmbury would ultimately be translated to actuality, to a train journey towards Magdeburg. He'd find out soon enough, wouldn't he? Carter slipped a glance at his watch. He'd find out in the small hours on a station platform where the uniforms were strange and the manners cold. At Obeisfelde as this night was running its course for John Dawson, alias Johnny Donoghue, short contract operative of the Secret Intelligence Service. It was difficult for Carter to know how expertly they had prepared Johnny. Gone through the book, hadn't they? All the military science, all the political science, all the psychological science.

All of that to burst out of the poor bastard's brain. So that it was dripping out of him, so everything was second nature, old and familiar. That was standard procedure, that was easy. But harder to come across to the man and breathe the reassurance into his lungs.

More than a month they'd had Johnny; and Carter, sitting in a cafe near the central station of Hannover, did not know whether a rope bound the two of them together. He should have known that, shouldn't he, should have been certain of that? Did it matter?… Perhaps n o t… Of course it didn't matter. Not going on a joy trip to see the London sights. Going on a survival run, wasn't he?

Nasty that Johnny had lied to him, out of character. Carter saw the girl hovering near their table.

'Another Scotch, another beer, and then we'd like to eat something, please,' Carter called cheerfully. There shouldn't be weighted silences, and leaden hesitations in the byplay of conversation. Must have been like this in the trenches, Pass- chendaele and Ypres and the Somme, when the Staff Officer came down from Brigade to explain the plan and knew that after the coffee was pressed on him and drunk that he would be going back to the cosy billet and they'd be heading forward into the mud and the wire and the machine guns.