Gerald Seymour - The Contract

'The opportunities for evasion to a tank commander are negligible.'

'When is the German back?'

'Guttmann returns in two days.'

'Where is he now?'

'Still in Magdeburg.'

'He should be told of the success of the firing. He deserves congratulation.'

'We have witnessed the birth of a famous weapon…'

The message from Padolsk went via Defence Ministry in Moscow to Soviet military headquarters in East Germany at Zossen-Wunsdorf, was then relayed to Divisional head- quarters for the Magdeburg region. An army motorcyclist brought the communication to the International Hotel, and took it by hand to the sixth floor because he must bring back a signature of receipt.

The motorcyclist was admitted to the hotel room by a girl, tall and blonde and who at a different time might have been considered striking and pretty. She was pale, and her eyes bulged in the aftermath of weeping. The room was dark from the gathering night, the lights had not been switched on, the curtains had not been drawn, open sandwiches from 'Room Service' had not been eaten. An old man sat by the window, seemingly unaware of the intrusion until the girl brought the docket to him and he wrote his name quickly, then reverted to his empty stare across the skyline of the city.

Alter the motorcyclist had withdrawn, his boots beating away down the corridor, Erica Guttmann ripped open the envelope.

'It is from the commandant at Padolsk. The test firing was successful,' she said without emotion. 'They say it was completely satisfactory

… they offer their warmest congratulations… they call it a triumph of military technological development…'

She passed the sheet of paper to her father. As if with reluctance he held out his hand to receive it, then peered at the typed words in the half light. Abruptly he opened his hand and let the paper flake to the floor.

By the finish of the working day the reports ordered by the BfV official were arriving at his desk. An efficient and effective organisation. The safe return of the homing pigeons.

The neighbours of Hermann Lentzer had been spoken with, discreetly.

His telephone had been tapped at the local exchange, with official authorisation.

His personal file had been taken from the archive collections at Wiesbaden and teletyped to Bonn.

Gazing through the shallow lenses of the spectacles that he wore for close work, puffing occasionally at his pipe, the man from BfV read through the material that had been collated for him.

Lentzer in a training battalion of the Waffen-SS and finding his combat baptism in the 33 day battle to obliterate the Warsaw Ghetto, the battle that was fought until every Jew inside the perimeter was either dead or in transport for the extermination camps. Lentzer, who had stood guard at the fences of Auschwitz in the latter months of the war before slipping into peace-time obscurity. Now, Lentzer the trafficker.

They came again, these people. Their filth was never destroyed.

Where was he now?… The young man who had fired his rifle into the tottering, tragic remnants of the Ghetto, who would have marched the emaciated prisoners to the bulldozed pits of Auschwitz… What was his punishment? A secure future and immunity from prosecution. A big house in a pleasant village outside Bonn, a big car to drive, a big account in black at the bank. Where was the repayment of the debt for the disgrace of his country? They were scum, these people, scum at the rim of the cess-pit.

He read on.

Hermann Lentzer was going to Berlin. That afternoon he had made a telephone call, he had announced his arrival time. He had spoken to an Englishman and neither had used their name. He often went to Berlin, the neighbours said, because sometimes they saw beside his rubbish bins the plastic bags that carried the names of the stores on Kurfusten-Damm and Bismarck Strasse. And when he travelled, Lentzer went by car, the neighbours said. He would use false papers, the BfV man reflected, but the car would not change, the number plate would not be altered… How could the British associate with such dirt? Was this the courtesy of an ally?

The lights threw into relief the gloom beyond his window. Late in the evening and the building was quiet and empty save for a scattering of night clerks… All the frontiers of the world could be crossed. Through the minefields and wire and high walls there were hidden corridors of communication. The BfV in Bonn could make contact with the SSD in East Berlin. The route was tortuous but could be managed.

He wrote on his notepad the details of the model of Mercedes car driven by Hermann Lentzer, its colour and number plate. He pondered then for a few moments. The bastard deserved no sympathy, no mercy.

The British had made their own bed, they could lie on it, and they had not consulted on a matter that if it failed or succeeded would bring only nuisance to the Federal Republic.

Without emotion he weighed the correctness and the consequences of the action he had proposed to himself. The British had stepped outside the agreed guidelines; he had no responsibility that he owed them. And if he jeopardised the British plan? They had had the opportunity for consultation with the Federal authorities, they had not availed themselves of it. They had avoided the queries raised by BND.

He remembered the displacement camp in which he had stayed for two years after the war. Temporary barrack buildings near to Celle, swill to eat, thin clothes to wear through winter, and the guards of the British Army of Occupation behind the fence with their jeers and cat-calls and the arrogance of the victor. Two years as a number and he had committed no offence, only served with what he had believed to be an officer's honour in the crumbling Wehrmacht. That was how they had treated him, and now they hired an animal, a criminal like Lentzer to do their work for them.

But that was not the reason that he would make the telephone call. The defence of the interests of his country would govern his action, and this was a time when the policy of the Chancellery demanded an improvement of relations with the 'other Germany'.

He dialled the home number of a young art teacher living in the city of Stuttgart.

After his dinner in the restaurant of the International Hotel, Johnny set out for Heydeck Strasse. Alone on the streets, with only the echo of his footsteps for company, his Own shadows swinging to meet him.

One last push in the morning, Johnny, then the bloody thing's finished.

Standing on a chair, Johnny stowed the package on the wardrobe shelf above his hanging jacket and spare pair of trousers. Saturday morning.

The package was lighter than when he had brought it into his room because the Stechkin automatic pistol now rested on his hip, held there by the pressure of his belt, pressed against his skin. He had armed the pistol, slotted it with a magazine. There were extra blankets on the shelf and the maid had already tidied his room while he had taken coffee in the hall and guarded the package between his legs. It would be safe on the shelf, safe till the grenades and the other magazines and the shoulder stock were needed.

When he left the room he locked the door behind him, pocketed the key. Down the corridor to the lifts. Johnny let himself out at the sixth floor.

How do you feel, Johnny? Bloody grim, like nothing ever before.

Worse than standing before the Lord Chief Justice when he'd finished the summing up, put down his pencil, sucked at the stuffy air of the courtroom, pronounced his verdict. Worse than then. Worse than that time when he'd turned into Cherry Road and known that all the neighbours knew, and known his mother would be in the kitchen and all he would see of her welcome would be a cup of tea.