Gerald Seymour - The Contract

Mawby's past answering questions like that.'

Carter put the telephone down. He thanked the Military Police corporal for coming to look for him.

Carter stepped back into the night wind, into the drone of the traffic, into the shadow of the high lights.

Willi was watching him. Willi would know. A bloody idiot could see the message, read it from the way he lurched across the concrete, from the way he winced his eyes, from his sunken shoulders, from the way he stumbled to Pierce's side. Willi staring, Willi absorbing.

'The car's not left…'

'Cutting it fine, aren't they?' Pierce had not looked at him, still peered up the road.

"… and it's not coming. Not now, not ever.'

'What?' Pierce had spun to face Carter. George scrambled towards them.

Willi alone, Willi abandoned, Willi within earshot.

' It's finished… DIPPER's called off. The pick-up maestro was arrested at the border checkpoint, he must have been driving into Berlin

'You're levelling, Henry?' Pierce in disbelief and his mouth sagging open.

'Smithson said so, and he called it a fucking shambles.'

'God… so what's going to happen to them, out there… when the chappie starts chattering…' Pierce cut himself short.

Willi was going. The stride into a trot. The trot into a run. The run into a sprint. 'Willi going past the shimmering white of the flag poles, along the central crash barrier. Willi going for the faded line that crossed the road.

Carter and Pierce rooted to the ground.

George struggling for speed, but heavy and flat footed. The white line looming, a car going east and slowing to avoid the boy who ran down the long hill, hugging the centre of the road. George losing ground. The voice drifted back to Carter, weak and carried on the breeze, the panic softened by distance.

'Come back, you little bugger. Willi, come back…'

Willi over the white line, Willi the victor of the race. The searchlight on the tower platform locked on him, circled and held him, followed him on down the road. Brightness all around and Willi ran with the beam that slowly traversed and accompanied his progress.

From where Carter and Pierce stood the cocking of the machine gun in the tower was sharp and unmistakable. The scraping of the metal spring, the crack as the mechanism locked the bullet in the breech. It would have been deafening to George, he could not be blamed for throwing the towel. The searchlight covering the boy, the machine gun covering George. Willi growing smaller, retreating into the bend of the wide road.

George was rock steady, standing on the white dividing line.

Carter thought he was about to be sick.

He saw a jeep stop beside the running boy, it was stationary for a few moments and then reversed towards Marienborn. When it was gone the road was empty.

'The car should have come, yes?'

Johnny could not see Otto Guttmann in the darkness, but the message was of deepening resignation, of tumbling faith.

'Yes,'Johnny said. He looked at the face of his watch, felt the bite of the insects in the grass.

The little jokes they had told to each other were finished. Father and daughter both cold, both flattened, and the fear settling on them.

'By now we should have been at Helmstedt?'

'Yes.'

'You promised us the car.'

' I promised it.'

'Why is the car not here?'

What a daft bloody question. 'I don't know, Doctor, there could be a hundred reasons… I don't know… perhaps there is a crash on the road, perhaps it's blown a tyre…'

'We have only your word that there was ever a car.'

'There is a car.' Johnny dug into the reserves of his patience. 'There is a car because the whole plan was based on that. Without a car there is no plan.'

'What do we do, Johnny?' Erica asked.

'We have to wait… just that.'

The anorak hung close to Johnny, the weight of the Stechkin and the shoulder stock and the magazines and the grenades in his pockets pulled it round him. Sometimes his hand slipped to the pistol, and from the hard steel of the barrel he took a fragile reassurance.

'We're not at a bloody funeral, you know. You'll wonder why you fussed when it comes,'Johnny said, and he was glad there was no light to show his face. 'It'll be here in a few minutes.'

They alternated between fists to the body, cold water from a bucket over his head, and the lit cigarette of friendship placed between his swollen lips. There were three men working on Hermann Lentzer who was strapped with leather thongs to the wooden chair, and Gunther Spitzer who leaned against the tiled wall of the cell. In staccato repetition the questions came.

Why was he making the journey to West Berlin?

Who was the subject of his escape attempt?

Where was it planned that the pick-up should be made?

Who were the people in the BDR that had hired him?

Of course he would talk before dawn came, if he had a face left to speak through, but in the intervening hours there was entertainment to be had for Gunther Spitzer. There was an obstinacy about the Nazi. He said nothing and spat back the mucus and blood and the chipped tooth fragments, and sometimes his eyes were molten in hatred behind the bruising. They would break him before morning. He would scream for them to stop, and then the discs that held the tapes would slowly circle on the recording machine. He would beg and howl for their mercy. Gunther Spitzer's hands were crossed in front of his stomach, the pleasure was fiery and intense but it should not be seen by the man who punched, the man who tipped the water bucket, the man who held the cigarette packet and breathed the words of kindness. He thought of Renate's body, thought of her whimpering in the blend of excitement and pain as he rose over her, thought of her white skin and the clear curves and the dark hair, thought of his plunging mastery over her..

A junior officer entered the cell.

There had been a strange affair at Marienborn, a boy was being brought to Magdeburg, when he arrived he would be sent to the Schutzpolizeipresident's office.

From Marienborn Willi Guttmann had been put in a jeep and driven to Halberstadter Strasse. The major on duty at the checkpoint had heard the explanation of the boy for his dash from west to east and made what he thought to be the sensible decision, pass the parcel on. The Schutzpolizei detachment in Magdeburg took responsibility for the area between the town and the border. They should be the ones to extract some shape from an extraordinary story.

In the office of Doctor Gunther Spitzer Willi was given a cup of freshly warmed tea, sat down in front of a gas tire.

The message of his arrival passed down corridors and stairs, came to rest in the building's basement.

The boy warmed himself. Now he was no longer a cypher, he thought, he was a person of importance who would be listened to. And now he would save his father, he would absolve him from blame and they would be reunited, and everything that he had done would be forgiven him. Willi who had run from Checkpoint Alpha had demonstrated his loyalty, and would be permitted to speak in the defence of his father. He felt confident when the Schutzpolizei- president came into the room followed by a senior officer in uniform, confident because he had come to protect his father from arrest and accusation. He would denounce the conspiracy of the British.

The Schutzpolizeipresident sat at his desk, his eyes bored at Willi.

The officer took a pencil and notebook firom his pocket.

'My name is Spitzer, what is yours?'

' I am Willi Guttmann.'

'You are a citizen of the Federal Republic?'

'My father was born in Magdeburg, is now resident in Moscow.'

The puzzlement clung to Spitzer's face. He was tired and the stump of his arm ached, and distracted too because his attention was with the bloodied mouth of Hermann Lentzer in the cell block below. 'Your father is Doctor Otto Guttmann?'