Gerald Seymour - The Contract

'What was the question again, Mr Carter?'

'The chance of him making it…'

'On his own, is he?'

' I don't know.'

Davies considered. 'He spent the whole of his second morning in one sector, he seemed satisfied enough with what he saw. He's not a lad that talks much, is he?'

' If he was coming he would have started early this morning, but not in circumstances of his choosing, you know what I mean?'

' If he made it to the fence, when would he be over… that's what you're asking?'

'Yes.'

'We talked about that. I said to him that most of the people that get across have lain up for a full 24 hours in the immediate area, soaked up the patrol patterns, that sort of thing.'

'And so…'

' If he followed that he wouldn't come tonight. It would be Monday night that he was giving it a go.'

Carter sighed, breathed the air that now carried the faint moisture of hope. 'What was the sector that he looked at?'

'He seemed to like a piece of what we call the Roteriede forest, just about opposite the village of Walbeck on their side… I'll run you out there tomorrow morning.'

'Thank you.'

'We all thought him a hell of a nice bloke. He came back to my place and had a meal with the family, got everybody laughing. He knows all there is that's important about the last few yards, but what you see from our side isn't the half of it. You know that, don't you…?'

'What time shall I come in the morning?'

'Try about 10. I'll have cleared the post, we'll take a coffee and then run out there.'

'You never answered my question,' Carter said in mild reproach. 'His chances?'

'And you didn't answer mine, Mr Carter, whether he's on his own..

I'll put it this way, if he hadn't been here this week then I'd say Sweet Fanny for his chances. He soaked everything we could give him on the border, and he'll need that and the rest. If he's passengers in tow, and they're not of the same quality… well, then it's obvious, isn't it?'

Carter nodded morosely.

' I'm out of turn, Mr Carter, but it's a bit queer to me, the whole business. You in Helmstedt, Johnny over there, and you not knowing your lad was here this week casing the place… I'll tell you what he said.

Nobody had spent five minutes working out how he was going to run for home if whatever he was up to slipped… I knew he was going over, he said as much. He reckoned you'd left him bare arsed, that's why he came to see us.'

'As you said, Mr Davies' out of turn… I'll see you in the morning.'

Carter felt like an old man as he walked to the Stettiner Hof and the bed that he had missed last night. An irrelevance on the pavement as the procession marched by. He had no power of intervention, could do nothing to affect the fate of Johnny. Run fast, Dipper, run deep. He remembered the rifle that he had seen in the hands of the guard beside the river, the height of the wire and the automatic guns that had gleamed in the early morning light. And Charlie Davies said that wasn't the half of it.

Willi Guttmann had been taken from Gunther Spitzer's office.

He sat now in a hare walled ante-room with a man who watched him in silence, who wore thick lensed spectacles close to his face, and who had not removed his raincoat. Through the morning he had talked with many people, teams from SSD and Soviet Military Intelligence and KGB had come from the East German capital to interrogate him. His run from Checkpoint Alpha seemed not to impress them. When he asked about his father the questions were ignored. They were interested only in Holmbury, the men he had talked to there, and the limits on information of Padolsk that he had given to the British.

If they had not reunited him with his father, if they had not told of Otto Guttmann's arrest, then that could mean one thing only. His father and Erica and Johnny were running, running blind and hard for safety.

He ate his lunch from a steel tray, stringy meat and boiled cabbage. His father's survival from capture lay in the hands of Johnny. He remembered Johnny at Holmbury, quiet and reflective and sitting in a chair behind him as Carter questioned. Johnny who laughed rarely and distanced himself from the others. He remembered when he had looked down from his bedroom window high in the house, down on to the patio and watched the evening work-out, the strengthening of legs and shoulders and stomach. He heard again the pounding of the boots.

And he had betrayed Johnny, he had spoken of him to the men from Berlin, and Johnny alone could take his father and Erica beyond the reach of their punishment.

Willi pushed the tray with the half emptied plate away from him. The man who sat across the table said nothing and Willi dropped his head into his hands.

Gunther Spitzer had been sent home for the night because men of greater seniority had taken over the organisation of the hunt for the scientist, his daughter and the agent of British Intelligence. A stranger had sat in the chair behind his desk and given orders to his staff, newcomers had handled his telephone. They came and went through his door without acknowledgement.

When he reached his flat the tiredness and self-pity and frustration broke over Renate. She was the only target within reach.

She lay on their bed and her moaning, whimpering, trebled in his ears as he stayed hunched in the chair across the room from her. The blood from the cut below her right eye seeped to the pillow covers. The bruises spread in technicolour at her throat.

He had screamed at her with an anger she had never seen before.

'You must have known… You told me nothing… you were her friend.

She would speak to you, you must have known… You made me pay for their dinner, you made me bow and scrape to him as if he were a great man, you must have known… Bitch, bitch, and you have destroyed me..'

And through the accusations he had punched and pummelled her. She had not fought back, just cowered and used her arms to protect herself from the agonies inflicted by the gloved hand.

'She didn't tell me anything… I promise… she said nothing, Gunther.'

A small, low, choking voice.

During the day the trains to the West were searched with great thoroughness. All stopped at the Marienborn junction where the lines were enclosed by high wire. Border Guards with machine guns flanking the carriages, eight man teams climbing aboard with torches and rods for poking into the narrow recesses of the roof, with ladders and a painstaking commitment to the task. The delays grew, the trains ran late.

The tracker dogs brought from Magdeburg found the place of crushed and trampled grass beside the approach road to the autobahn, but lost the scent on the roadway and sat sadly at the handlers' knees. New orders came for widening the hunt.

It was seven hours between the time that the schoolmaster of Barleber reported the theft of his Trabant car to the Volkspolizei Kreisamt and the arrival of that information on the desks of the men who had come from Interior Ministry.

And the trail grew cold.

There were no grounds for panic amongst the men who directed the manhunt. No reason for anxiety. Let the Englishman and his followers run and blunder in the countryside. They must come to the border, they must flee in that direction. There they would be taken. Inevitable. They would be driven towards the frontier, the fence and the guards.

From the Battalion headquarters at Seggerde the instruction was broadcast to the companies at Lockstedt and Dohren and Weferlingen and Walbeck that special vigilance must be maintained. At Walbeck Heini Schalke listened to his Politoffizier's briefing. The bright new stripe on his tunic arm ensured his concentration.

The river was behind them, but the chill of the water he had waded through clung to Johnny's legs, and his shoulders ached from the weight of the piggy-back rides he had given to Otto Guttmann and Erica. Two journeys with his boots sliding on the mud bed, groping for firm stones.