Gerald Seymour - The Contract

The Brigadier was waiting up for him. There was a champagne bottle in a silver bucket on the sideboard, a linen napkin draped across the neck. The Brigadier looked at Mawby's face, at the shamed eyes, at the pale cheeks. From the cupboard in the sideboard he took a decanter of whisky, poured two fingers, no water, no ice, handed a tumbler to Mawby.

'Was it that bad, Charles?'

'Worse than bad, it was bloody awful.'

'A fiasco?'

Mawby drained the glass, spluttered. A wisp of mischief crossed him.

'I'll tell you how bad it was. Ten years ago if this had happened it would have been a resignation job.'

'And now…?' The Brigadier refilled the glass.

' I can't afford to bloody resign. I'll just be kicked side- ways, I'll never have responsibility again. You asked if it was a fiasco… It is and it can get worse. It's all blown now, it's wide as the open sky, and we have a man in there. A train left 15 minutes ago from Magdeburg to Wolfsburg, if he's not on the train then he's locked inside. That's his only chance.

They're reporting in Signals down on the border that the whole bloody place is awake, there's heavy traffic on their police net. He's our man, and if picked up then… then… it's just a bloody disaster.'

They went to their bedrooms. In the morning the champagne bottle would be returned to the kitchen refrigerator, and Mawby would retrieve two green backed passports of the Federal Republic of Germany from the corner of his room where he had hurled them.

Johnny's flight took him through the camp site and the woods around it, and to Barleber See station.

A primitive place for vacationers and few else. There were no lights nor life nor activity. Five hundred yards away was the autobahn and racing cars and twice Johnny saw that signature of the police, the inanimate and travelling blue lamp.

In front of him was the fragmented pattern of the street lights of Barleber, more than a mile away. When the moon came he could see the far, flat horizon spread beyond the village. No trees, no cover, and he remembered how he had seen it when he had come back on the train on the first day. There were open fields between the railway and the village.

'We have to go on,'Johnny whispered.

'He can't, you can see that,' Erica hissed in his ear.

' If he has to be carried, so be it. We have to go on.'

'How far?'

' I don't know.'

'Where to?'

'Any bloody place but here.'

He could not see her face and did not know with what grace she came.

It was a track, built to carry farm vehicles and trailers, holed and ridged.

Erica and Johnny linked their hands and made a seat for Otto Guttmann and his arms rested around their necks. Weighed enough, and awkward enough, for a bloody bag of bones, Johnny thought. It took a long time to reach the outside of the village, to come within sight of the first set of buildings. Beyond the crop fields they came to a place where the grass had been scythed for a farmer's winter cattle fodder, near to a hedge and a barn where a dog barked. Time to rest and time to think, Johnny. They eased Otto Guttmann to the ground and he sank back and his daughter cradled his head. Time to think, but time was a bloody luxury.

The bastards, Johnny swore silently. The bastards who had not sent the car.

Johnny knelt over Otto Guttmann. He was very close to Erica, could feel her breath on his face, could smell the scent that she had worn for the journey.

'Doctor Guttmann, we have to talk now, but quickly. We have to make a decision and then we have to accept that it is irreversible.. '

'You promised that the car would come. You promised that there was no danger, no risk. What right have you to share a decision with me?'

'And I promised that I would take you to Willi, and I will do that…'

'You are incompetents, you have shown that. There was no car, there was only a trap.'

' I don't have time for debate, Doctor Guttmann. If you come with me I will take you across the frontier.' You're killing yourself, Johnny.

Without him you have a small chance… ' I will take you across the frontier, Doctor Guttmann.'

'And why should I not go back to my hotel, and this afternoon take the train to Berlin, and fly to Moscow tonight? Why not?'

' It's too late to go back. You are hunted now, you must think about that. You cannot explain where you have been. You will never be trusted again, the office at Padolsk will be taken from you and the flat in Moscow, if you are not in prison you will rot the rest of your life under surveillance. That's the future…'

'Again the threat,' Erica said.

' It's the truth… They asked me before I came to take the chance of talking to you, finding anything about your work that I could carry back if the autobahn failed, if I went back on my own. I haven't done that. I asked for nothing. I asked for no drawings, nothing. That's the promise, I'm taking you over the frontier.'

The old man was very still, a prone figure communing with himself.

His head rested easily in the crook of Erica's arm. Johnny looked at his watch… not long till the organisation would have been mustered, till the road blocks were in position, till the trap would snap shut. Perhaps a few more minutes. The sirens told him that there had been panic in Magdeburg, that the sending of the cars had been the first reaction.

Cooler heads would take control within an hour, a plan would be formed.

In the dark Otto Guttmann's hand grabbed at Johnny's. He squeezed, tight and painful, and the bones of his fingers dug at Johnny's skin.

'How do we go to the border?'

' I think we should start by borrowing a car,' Johnny said.

For the moment the tension spilled from them. There was quiet laughter. Johnny and Erica pulled the old man to his feet. They began to walk towards the village.

Ulf Becker and Jutte Hamburg took the stowed tent and the rolled sleeping bags back to the caretaker of the Camp- ingplatz 'Alte Schmiede' at first light. It would be on foot from here he had told her, they would move only in the woods, only in the depths of the Landschaftschutzgebiet that stretched from the town of Haldensleben behind them to the outskirts of Walbeck village. They would cut through a nature zone, crossed by few roads, with few villages.

They went out of the Campingplatz hand in hand. Two products of the regime, two machine-tooled children of the Party. Her blonde hair was whipped back on her shoulders by the wind. Their stride was bold and long. Two young people on whom the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands had lavished care

'How long will it take?' she asked, and the leafy light played at the tan of her cheeks.

' If we go hard we shall be close by tonight. We rest for a few hours and we watch. Tomorrow, early in the morning, we go over.'

So sure, so confident, he seemed to her. She kissed him quickly behind the ear, and did not see the quaver at his lips. In a few minutes they were hidden by tall trees, walking a carpet of fallen autumn leaves, alone together in the territory of wild pigs and fallow deer and foxes. Jutte dreamed of Hamburg and of the car of her uncle and of the house in which he lived. Ulf thought of the automatic guns and the wire and the watchtowers, and of Heini Schalke and an MPiKM high velocity rifle.

Carter stayed by the barrier at the station of Wolfsburg until all the passengers had left the train. Not many of them on the early train of the day out of Magdeburg. And never really a chance that Johnny would have been with them. Straightforward enough at Holmbury. Johnny to see the Guttmanns into the pick-up car, then back to Magdeburg for the station, and nobody had drawn a blueprint for the plan if the autobahn ran off schedule. A wasted journey for Carter and he'd known it before he started. Johnny wouldn't quit, not before it was hopeless, he would have stayed at the autobahn intersection. Stayed till the train was lost to him.