Gerald Seymour - The Contract

She knew the language. Some poor swine shitting himself in an underground cell at Number 2, Halber- stadter Strasse. Sitting in a corner and shitting himself. And Spitzer would enjoy it, more than being with her on the big bed. And better at it too, better at terrifying a snivelling cretin in the cells than satisfying Renate.

As the front door slammed she buried her head in the pillow and pounded it with her fists.

Under the canopy of the petrol station on the edge of the Grunewald Park beside the Berlin approach road to the E6 autobahn, Charles Mawby and Adam Percy shaded themselves and waited.

They had arrived early for their rendezvous with Hermann Lentzer, but that was Mawby's way, he said. Never be late if you don't have to be, always give yourself time, easier on the nerves that way. They looked up the road, watched for the car that would come with Lentzer and the two men who would make the drive to Helmstedt.

'I've enjoyed Berlin, Adam, rather an exhilarating place I felt. More going on than I'd expected. You hear of it as a sort of ghost city, all the young people leaving. I thought it was rather lively.'

' I suppose I come too often to notice,' Percy said dourly.

' I'd like to bring the wife, I reckon she'd be fascinated… bit bloody expensive, have to keep her on a rein. Do you ever bring your wife, Adam?'

'My wife died three years ago, Mr Mawby.'

'God, I'm sorry… I'd forgotten.'

' I wouldn't have expected that to be remembered back at Century

…

I'll get some coffee from the machine. White and sugar?'

And they'd drunk the coffee and found a rubbish tin for the beakers, and Mawby had started to flick his fingers, and he'd looked at his watch, and paced out into the evening sunlight, and come back to Percy.

'A damn good holiday we're having. Joyce and I when this is over.

Reckon I'll have earned it. Taking the kids with us, of course. A package trip, but that's the only way you can afford to go these days, down to Greece. Where are you going, Adam?'

' I usually go up to a place near Hull, my sister's family. They put me up for a fortnight, they're very kind.'

' I've heard it's very nice there, Yorkshire, isn't it?'

'Seems to rain the fortnight I'm there.'

'Does it?… I hope this bloody man isn't going to cut it fine.' 'He was very exact with his timings, but from what he said, he's a bit adrift.'

'You stressed the importance of the schedule?'

'Of course, Mr Mawby… I'll get another coffee.'

And the concern grew and the worry was bred and the anxiety draped their faces. The pump attendant gazed with undisguised curiosity at the steadily increasing discomfiture of the two Englishmen who had come in their office suits to stand in his forecourt.

'He couldn't have misunderstood anything, Adam?'

'He had it all pat, Mr Mawby.'

'He's late, you know that?'

Percy looked down at his wrist. 'He's five minutes short of an hour late.'

'It's the centre of the whole damned thing, the car…'

' I know that, Mr Mawby. He's a greedy bugger, he'll be here.'

'Well, he'll get cut down to size when he comes.' Mawby's voice rose and he slapped against his legs the briefcase that contained the two passports of the Federal Republic.

'Would you like something more to drink?'

'Of course I bloody wouldn't…' Mawby strode away and stared again down the road, searching for a crimson BMW. Angry now, taut and stressed, stamping his feet as he walked. A little of panic, a little of temper.

Two hours after the time that Hermann Lentzer should have come, Percy went to a coin box telephone beside the cash desk. He was gone a short time. When he returned his face was pale, sheet white, and he faltered in his stride towards where Mawby was waiting.

'There was a contact number that Lentzer gave me. A woman answered

… she yelled at me, hysterical… some whore that he shacks up with when he's in Berlin. She said it was on the DDR radio that Hermann Lentzer was held this afternoon at Marienborn. Those bastards have got him…'

'Will he talk?' Mawby blurted.

'How the hell should I know?'

Petrol spilled from an overfilled tank. The attendant who held the nozzle did not notice. In fascination he watched the two Englishmen, toe to toe and yelling.

It was raining heavily but then it always did on the second Saturday in June, the day of the village fete. The chestnuts that separated the graveyard from the vicarage gardens dripped steadily on to the roof of the marquee. Only the sale of used clothes and cakes and the White Elephant stand were sheltered; the other stalls were all outside and braving the elements.

But the fete must go on. Without its fund raising the primary school would have no books, the church organ no maintenance, the steeple would have to wait for repair. In Wellington boots, waterproof trousers and his shooting anorak the Deputy-Under-Secretary understudied his wife on the Garden Produce and Plants table. He always left a number where he could be reached and that was why the surly daughter of the vicar came splashing across the quagmire lawn to find him.

There was despair on the Deputy-Under-Secretary's face when he came back and the water ran on his neck and stained his collar. 'I won't be able to go to Hodges's tonight. I'm sorry, dear.'

'Not the bloody office?' she commiserated.

' I shall have to go to Chequers.'

'What does he want?'

' I've requested the meeting. There's a bit of a mess…'

'They're a boring crowd at1 the Hodges', you always say we'll never go again…' she said irrelevantly.

'Darling, tonight I'd have given my eye teeth for a boring evening,' the Deputy-Under-Secretary said. He turned to accept a customer for the last of the potted fuchsias.

At the Campingplatz 'Alte Schmiede' in the woods outside Suplingen tents could be hired for the weekend, and sleeping bags. Just the one they used. Ulf and Jutte wriggling with laughter into the warm constriction of the bag, no clothes, no impediments. The tent was pitched slightly less than 12 miles from the Inner German Border and due east of Weferlingen. Before they had negotiated the constraints of the sleeping bag Jutte had several times asked Ulf how and where they would make their attempt. He would tell her in the morning, he had said… for now she was safe in his arms.

The cell door in the basement corridor crashed shut. As the officer in uniform beside him thrust the bolt across, Gunther Spitzer wiped a blood smear from the leather of his glove with his handkerchief.

'He will know now who he is with… in a little while when he has had time to frighten himself we shall start again.'

Chequers was no easy place to find at night. Far from any main road, outside the village of Great Kimble, a pin-head in the Chiltern Hills, 30 miles west of London. It had taken the Deputy-Under-Secretary more than three hours to negotiate the winding roads with only his taciturn personal guard for company.

An ugly building it was too. Ridiculous that this should be the best that the nation could provide for the Prime Minister's country retreat.

The official cars were parked in an orderly line in the courtyard at the back. The dull cigarette flares betrayed the chauffeurs who waited for the dinner to be finished, the guests to depart. The Deputy-Under-Secretary was shown to the Long Gallery and requested to wait.

Would he like a drink, a cigar, the day's newspapers?

He wanted nothing, only the ear of the Prime Minister.

The dinner party was continuing, the Prime Minister was hosting the Trade Delegation of the German Democratic Republic, and would come as soon as was convenient now that the Deputy-Under-Secretary had arrived. He smiled ruefully at the young man who had escorted him into the house. He was content to wait until it was suitable for the Prime Minister to leave his table. The great irony, the coincidence that could make him vomit… East Germans munching the food and swilling HMG's wine on the floor below and offering their dining room toasts of comradeship and friendship and co-operation. • and Mawby berserk beside a telephone in Berlin, and an agent loose in Magdeburg, and a mission triggered, and damn little but catastrophe in prospect.