Gerald Seymour - The Contract

The train heaved and struggled on the steel frame of the bridge.

The bridge at Obeisfelde, the bridge over the Aller.

The train bucked and swayed and was slowing. Take it in, Johnny, all there for you to see. Two lines of wire, three and a half metres high and floodlit and past… gone behind. Can't see the frontier wire any more… can't see it because you're inside now, Johnny. Inside their bloody cage.

But there never was an opt-out, was there? Not since the morning in Cherry Road when the men came, not since then.

The first train through that Wednesday and it roused the dogs, brought them barking out of their kennels, yapping and pulling at the running wires alongside the track. Big brutes, fierce and hostile, hungry and aggressive. Another tower, looming close to the carriage and Johnny caught the vision of the pale face that peered through the opened glass on the high platform. Wire alongside the track. Wire as far as he could see and lights hovering over the line and obliterating the pale power of the bulbs in the carriage, hurrying the day forward, punishing the darkness. The train was slowing, the wheels grinding.

Nervous, Johnny? Be a bloody idiot not to be.

The train stopped. Johnny sat in his seat. Moments of desperate, complete silence, then the banging of the doors opening.

Where it starts. Good luck, you bugger. On a prayer and a wing. Poor old Carter, touching a coronary, he'd be.

The compartment door was wrenched back. Four men. Dull green and grey uniforms. Two with holstered pistols, two with sub-machine guns.

Johnny drew his passport from the inside pocket of his jacket, offered it without request along with the travel folder from Dublin.

The passport was scanned by one man, the folder was opened. Three other men staring at him. Johnny low in his seat. Difficult to be comfortable, impossible to be easy, not with guns and men in uniform close and pressing. The message from Dublin had said that he would simply present the hotel voucher and the visa formalities would be handled then and there on the train. Some hope, Johnny boy. There was an indifferent gesture of the head, the indication that he must leave the train. He pointed up to the rack and his bag and it was lifted down for him. The compartment doorway was cleared for Johnny to pass. His thigh brushed against the metalled barrel of a snub-nosed gun as he stepped into the corridor.

'To Kontrol.' The guttural, cracked order.

Far from the cafe Augusten and the pretty men in their light trousers and open shirts and hanging necklaces. Far from the pub on the corner of Cherry Road. Far from the bustling attention of Mrs Ferguson displaying her breakfasts. Into the bloody cess-pool, Johnny, far from everything you've known.

There was a chill in the air as he walked the deserted platform. A crisp morning and a clear sky. He passed the guards who watched the train, passed the guns and the dogs on their leashes. Don't look, Johnny, don't rubberneck. Eyes front, straight and steady stride. Into a long, low building. The first photograph of Comrade Honecker cheaply framed, high on the wall. You'll get to know him, Johnny, because he'll be staring at you from everywhere that's public, with the greying hair that was freshly combed and the steel glasses and the thin lips and the uneven teeth. You'll get to know the First Secretary of the Party. He remembered the story that Smithson had told, the banning of the revue in Leipzig the previous year that had shown Comrade Honecker rehearsing in front of the mirror for spontaneous meetings with his supporters. Brave bastards they'd have been, the actor and the theatre manager, and Smithson said both had lost their jobs, both had been scrubbed from public life. Good morning, Comrade Honecker, you don't know me now, but you will, you'll hear of Johnny, you'll hear of him and it's going to bollock your Sunday morning, it's going to wreck the taste of your coffee.

Johnny walked to the counter, again offered the pass- port, and stood and waited as it was taken. His face was checked with a quick glance against the photograph, there was a wintry smile and the stamp was produced with the flick of fingers for money. Fifteen West German marks. The stamp thumped down filling a page. A one week tourist visa.

A postage stamp was licked and stuck. Another stamp across it. The entry point into the DDR was noted. Another stamp. The wave that he should move on. God, doesn't anyone speak in this bloody place? On to Customs.

'Tourist?'

'Yes,' Johnny said, and tried to demonstrate the enthusiasm of a holidaymaker. 'Yes, I'm here for tourism.'

'Coffee?'

'No. I don't have any coffee.' Should have brought a bottle of Scotch, though, because he was ready for one now, ready to pull the top off the bottle.

He was waved on past last year's slogans on the wall. Thirty years of DDR achievement, 30 years of progress and advancement. That was last year, that was sweetness… Past the photographs that were faded and that showed the interior of a power station, and a line of combine harvesters in a sunlit field. Gripping stuff, Johnny, rich in inspiration…

He went to the Staatsbank. A tired looking girl at the desk behind the glass and one customer to serve. None in front of him, none behind. All the other passengers locked on the train, only foreigners allowed off to clear their documentation. They'd all be pensioners, those from the other carriages, the old ones that they allowed out because they were useless, unoccupied in the factories, non-contributors to society. Only the old ones were accorded permission to travel outside the borders of the DDR to visit relatives in the West. Coming home, weren't they? Coming home to the guns and the uniforms and the dogs. He changed 200 West marks at one for one.

Johnny took a seat in the station cafe, looked again at another Honecker, waited for the train search to be completed. He shivered and sat very still wishing he had something to read, and officers from the Border Guard marched in their boots behind him and took two tables and ordered tea. It was the right way to come in, Johnny, in the middle of the night. It had been a cursory and sloppy check. But that's for starters, Johnny.

The door onto the platform opened. Another man, another gun, another wave for him to follow. He picked up his bag and walked to the train.

One hour and 7 minutes later Johnny was in Magdeburg.

The sun was rising and it would be hot later and the station was busy with people. He walked out onto the pave- merit and was confronted with the view of the International Hotel. Bloody inviting it looked, but then anywhere would have been inviting if it boasted a bed booked in the name of John Dawson.

What the hell are you doing here, Johnny? Don't know. Might be able to tell you on Sunday morning. Not till then.

For a little less than four hours Johnny slept, before the light woke him.

It took him some moments to adjust to the room because he had hardly accepted the furnishings when he'd thrown off his clothes and plunged down onto the narrow, single bed. Functional and adequate, could have been worse, and the sheets were clean. And a television and a radio. He ran himself a shower in the small bathroom, shaved and dressed.

Trousers and the sports shirt and his wallet in his pocket.

They had given him a voucher at the desk for his break- fast when he had registered, and when they had taken his passport. Quite a pretty girl she'd been, the one at the reception. His passport would be back by lunchtime, she said. It was routine that all personal documents must go to the police, and her eyes expressed the hope that he would understand.

It was a small set back to Johnny, the losing of his passport, for however few hours, and there was the thought in his mind of it being studied and examined for flaws.