Gerald Seymour - The Contract

Without doubt the grief was genuinely felt, not counterfeit.

Of slight consolation to the Schutzpolizeipresident was the knowledge that his prompt response to Moscow would be noticed, his efficiency would be recorded. Moscow had much influence.

He wrestled again with the text and called through the open door of his office for more coffee.

George as the minder, Pierce as the watcher, accompanied Willi Guttmann on the British army train out of West Berlin. They'd dressed the boy in the standard tweed jacket of a British officer in mufti, given him a tie and a check shirt. Just right he seemed to them, like any young lieutenant from the Berlin garrison.

The daily routine of more than 30 years was enacted at the East German frontier. The carriage doors were locked after the guards had clambered aboard. A small, sealed cell the train had become as it wound through the East German countryside. Before taking bacon and egg in the restaurant car, Pierce had reserved a compartment, bluntly evicting a Dental Corps major. He had seen that the window opened. He had repeated again to Willi where he should stand.

Willi had said little as he toyed with his food. Pierce wondered how he felt, how he would react to seeing his father again… if indeed the old man came to the bridge… he couldn't put himself in the boy's mind and after a moment's reflection saw no particular reason why he should.

It was aggravating that he would have to stand behind the boy when they rolled through Magdeburg. He wouldn't get a decent look at the scenery, and the scenery meant Johnny. Not that he'd be standing at the old man's shoulder, but it would have been special to have seen him. The man they had moulded at Holmbury, it would have given Pierce a particular pleasure to manage a glimpse, however brief, of Johnny's face.

Past Genthin and half an hour out from Magdeburg Pierce made the move for them to return to their compartment. His own excitement consumed him. They were very close now, close enough almost to finger the success of the DIPPER mission.

Johnny distanced himself by a full hundred yards from the bridge. It was bad to have to wait in one place for long, conspicuous, and he willed that the train would be on time.

They had done everything that he had demanded of them in his note and they were standing now, the old man and the girl, in the centre of the bridge and their eyes never wavered from the track that stretched away towards the Biederitzer Busch. Frail and unsafe they seemed to Johnny, close together for comfort, Otto Guttmann holding tightly to his daughter's arm.

The train came, crawling over the tangled web of converging rail, slow and noisy and swaying. Their eyes scanned the length of it, searching into the windows of the forward carriages.

'The third carriage, Father…' Erica cried. The hoarseness grabbed at her throat. 'The third one, the second window

›

'Willi… Willi…' The faint call of the old man, his voice cudgelled and overwhelmed by the pounding wheels.

They were so near to him. A few feet only. The letter had said that they should not wave, and Otto Guttmann's hand clutched at the material of Erica's raincoat, and her own fingers were across his, stifling their movement.

For only a few seconds the hallucination lasted, a trifle of time, and the train had cleared the bridge.

They were left with the images, the sharpness of the memory. Willi at the window. Willi shaved and clean and with his hair combed. Willi with the strained face and the eyes that seemed to call mutely to them. Willi pleading that they should follow, and no path shown to them, no signpost given. There had been two men behind Willi, standing back in the compartment, their faces in shadow.

They came down the steps of the bridge.

The ribbons of tears ran on Otto Guttmann's face. 'The moment is tainted… we should be happy, Willi is alive, more than I ever prayed for

… but there is an evil. You saw the flag of the British on the train… it is not for kindness that they have shown him to us…'

'Why did they do it?' Erica, saucer eyed, her voice strident.

In front of them a man turned his gaze away. A well-built man, youngish and powerful. The man had been watching them, watching as they negotiated the steps of the bridge. He had stood out, strangely different, the clothes and the gait guaranteeing that they noticed him.

Otto Guttmann stared, entranced, captured by the diminishing silhouette of the man who walked away on Rogatzer Strasse, threading his steps between the broken paving stones.

Otto Guttmann flinched. He had seen the contact man, he had seen the man they had sent.

'They are all around us, like rats near an animal that is about to die,' he said quietly.

'What do you mean?' Mid-morning. Daylight swamping the city that Erica had known since childhood. Traffic on the roads, people in the streets, the business of the community under way on every side of her, and she was frightened.

'When they are ready they will come close and say what they want of us.'

'Who are they?'

Otto Guttmann shook his head sadly. 'It does not matter… we must go back to the hotel.'

' I should go to Spitzer, Renate's friend,' Erica said.

'Do that and you kill me.'

In front of them the man did not deign to turn and watch them again. In a little time he was gone from their view. In a business like this, Guttmann knew, nothing would materialise by chance. Everything was calculated, everything was weighed and tested before being allowed to go forward. It would have been intended that he should see his torturer, the courier who thumbscrewed an old man's mind. They would leave him now, leave him to brood and curse. Only when he was broken would they come.

Holding fiercely to Erica's hand, Otto Guttmann started back for the centre of Magdeburg.

Through the afternoon Johnny slept in his room. He was not tired but he knew no other way to chip through the hours till it was time for dinner.

He had undressed, slipped under sheets, closed his eyes and tidied his mind. Two more days and he would have Carter fussing round him, Mawby pressing his hand. Two more days and he could make the telephone call to Cherry Road and he would be standing high on his pride. Two more days and the killing of Maeve O'Connor would be purged. There would be a hell of a party in Helmstedt, he thought of that before the release of a shallow, mottled sleep.

A thousand yards from the International Hotel a middle- aged man dropped a parcel into a deep litter bin behind the back doors of the Kulturhistorische Museum on the narrow Heydeck Strasse. He hid the package with a shallow covering of refuse.

Friday afternoon was the right time for a litter bin 'drop'. The last clearing of the week by the city's cleansing department would have been made in the morning. The bin would be untouched until Monday. The man retraced his steps to the Hauptbahnhof. He would have less than 20 minutes to wait before the departure of the express to Berlin.

She was sorry, very sorry, said the housekeeper, but the pastor had gone for the day to his niece in Cottbus. She told the caller that he would not be back till very late in the evening because it was a long journey to make in one day. Was the matter urgent? Could it wait till the morning?

The pastor would be at the Dom all the next morning, she knew that for certain. She took a pencil and wrote down a message on the notepad beside the telephone. The pastor would find it there when he returned.

'Doctor Otto Guttmann telephoned. It is most important that he should see you. He will come to the Dom tomorrow before lunch.'

A pall of smoke floated over the shell of the T 34 tank. There was much laughter, cheerful banter, as the generals came down from the viewing stand to their transport. Both of the prototype missiles that had been made available for the test firing had run with unerring aim towards their battered target. There was a round of drinks for them when they reached their staff cars.