Gerald Seymour - The Contract

Gently he pulled his arm clear of her and they started to walk again towards the approach road. Only the autobahn lights to guide him. He would want to see Erica again, Johnny thought, when it was over.

They came to the approach road that snaked up to the traffic lanes.

Johnny held one of Otto Guttmann's hands, Erica the other. As if at a signal they scurried forward, bent low. Their feet stampeded on the tarmac and then they were buried in the undergrowth. The branches whipped at their faces, low roots caught at their feet, the grass sank and heaved under their shoes. Johnny knelt and they followed him down.

Near to the autobahn and the cars and lorries hammered towards Helmstedt above them. The sweet and sticky smell of green leaves and green grass was around them. The damp of the evening clung to their clothes. Johnny moved and wriggled in the bushes before he found the view that he wanted, the road down from the autobahn on which the car would come. He looked at his watch. Fifteen minutes, perhaps a little more or less. He felt Erica against him and the softness of close-clinging summer clothes, and he heard the breathing of her father as if the short run to their hiding place had winded him.

'Well done,'Johnny whispered. 'Strange carry-on, isn't it? But this is the way it happens. For all the cleverness we end up with grass stains on our knees. Silly.'

'How long to wait?'

'Fifteen minutes, Doctor Guttmann. Around midnight, The pick-up has to be open-ended, you can't be exact as to how long it will take the driver from Berlin. They should have practised it, but we still have to wait for them.'

'What will happen?' Erica's voice pitched high and nervous.

Johnny playing the expert. Making believe that most weeks of his working year he slogged his way into the German Democratic Republic and lifted the best of the Warsaw Pact scientists… 'The car will come off the autobahn at this turn off. When he's turning he will flash his lights once, at the top of the incline. About where we are you'll have seen the

"Give Way" sign, he stops level with that. The driver will get out and look at his tyres, one by one, the passenger will open the door behind him, the near side. You have to move fast, Erica first, Dr Guttmann, you follow. The car spins and it's back to the autobahn. I wave and find a beer.'

'You don't come with us?' Erica shrill and close.

' I have my own way out.' The smile wiped from Johnny's face.

'Who will be in the car?'

'Germans, who work for us. They have the paperwork for you to have been travelling with them from West Berlin. You are from Frankfurt.. you have been to see an aunt in Berlin, what you like. It's very straightforward.'

'Why don't you come with us?'

'He does not come with us,' Otto Guttmann said quietly, 'because if it is not straightforward he does not wish the involvement of being in our company…'

'That's nonsense… four is enough in the car, and a foreigner would only complicate.'

Johnny edged a little way from them. Not the time for a debate on the plan, he should separate himself. His gaze was on the gap between the bushes and the upper curve of the approach road. Waiting for the car, for the transport. He checked his watch. He was very tense and his legs were cold and numb. Staring into the darkness for flashing head- lights. He was half aware of the low pitched conversation behind him, what they would do the next morning. Warm baths and newspapers, and talking to Willi and whether there might be a church service they could attend, and with Erica gone what would happen to the cat at the laboratory at Padolsk. How Erica would need new clothes and Otto Guttmann would need money.

Bloody innocents, Johnny thought, like a couple of kids from the provinces going to London for the weekend.

Again he looked at the luminous face of his watch. Come on you bastards you're not going to be bloody late, are you? Not tonight. Please God, not late tonight.

It was easy for them in the approaching car to see Carter.

The floodlights on the tall stanchions at either side of the road highlighted him as he stood in front of the two storey building, and beneath the sign. 'Allied Check Point'. The rooms were bright behind him and a Military Policeman sometimes came to the window and wondered at the presence of the bald and elderly Englishman who waited patiently while the traffic ran steadily past him from west to east.

Some strange beggars came at night to Alpha, he would have thought.

They parked the car behind the Bundesgrenzschutz pass- port control and walked the last few yards to Carter. Pierce was spruced in a three piece cement grey suit, a closed rose bud at his buttonhole. Willi trailing but with an eagerness in his face and a bounce in his step. George was a pace behind the boy and dressed as if for winter, a roll neck sweater under the leather coat.

'The road was foul, that's why we're late. Have you spoken to Mawby?'

Pierce asked Carter.

Willi stood a little away from them. Clean in his new clothes, fresh with the air on his face, hair waving and falling.

' I tried to call him earlier. He wasn't on the HQ number… but that was some time ago… I've been stuck here waiting for you, I didn't want to go off to chase a phone in case they came through early.'

' I'd give a fair bit to know if they took off from Berlin on time.'

Willi motionless, Willi peering into the growing lights that edged forward from the far cluster of the Marienborn checkpoint across the shallow valley, across the line of the watch- towers and the wire and the whitewashed strip on the road that wheels had worn to a smudge.

'They could be here any time now,' Carter said.

'Did you leave a number where you could be reached?'

'Berlin Military know I'm at Alpha. Mawby will be beside the phone later, when I report the arrival.'

Willi with his hands clasped, his trousers pressed, shoes cleaned. Willi watching the cars approaching across no- man's land.

Pierce turned his wrist, looked down at his watch. 'Shouldn't they have been here by now?'

'They might have been, but they're not late yet.'

The door of the building flew open, spilling out light, bathing the faces of the men who waited, tensed faces, harassed tired faces. The Military Police corporal hesitated.

'Excuse me, gentlemen… is one of you a Mr Carter?'

'Yes, it's me.'

'You're wanted on thephone, sir. A Mr Smithson, in Berlin.'

Carter shrugged, went into the doorway, disappeared from Pierce's sight.

Willi saw him go… Willi with the stress at his mouth, the flicking wet tongue. Willi with the picture of his father bulging in his mind. Not knowing which car to watch for, restless, pacing.

'Where the hell have you been?' shouted Smithson, distant and furious, and in Berlin.

'I'm at Alpha…'

' I know you're at bloody Alpha now. Why didn't you call in?'

' I did and nobody knew where to find Mawby.'

The Military Police in the office turned their heads away from Carter as his face flushed and his forehead knitted in anger. In front of the electric fire their alsatian dog stirred, cocked its ears towards the raised voices.

'What a fucking shambles… not that it matters now, it's off..'

'What's off?'

'What do you bloody think? The run's off… Do you want it in one syllable words? It's off, there's no fucking car coming. They've knocked off the pick-up merchant coming through the border…'

'How?'

'About the least relevant question you could ask on an open line, Carter.

Just take it from me, no car has left Berlin, no car is gong to leave. It's finished, the whole thing.'

'What am I supposed to do, what does Mawby say?'

'Find yourself a fat frau and a bottle of whisky, that's my advice

…