Gerald Seymour - The Contract

What to do with a tricky little obstacle in the way of Mawby's plan, and Henry Carter's hopes? What does the training tell you? You blast them out of the bloody way. But they're just kids, kids that Smithson would want to kiss for their courage, and they've the same right to slip the fence as you have, Johnny. That's morality, that's logic, that's for outside the Restricted Zone. You couldn't do it, Johnny. Not to a girl who wants a purse full of Deutsche marks and a walk down Jungfernsteig in Hamburg city centre. Not to a boy who has the idea that freedom is a flat that he's saved for and furniture he can afford. You couldn't do it, not follow them to the Hinterland fence. Not take a stick and throw it against the Hinterland fence, activate the alarms, home in the patrols, guide the guns. If they caught them on the Hinterland then the patrolling the next night would be at normal strength, right for Johnny and Otto Guttmann and Erica.. you just couldn't do it.

No one to ask. No one to query the point with. Johnny makes the decisions. Johnny alone. Mawby would say to blast them out of the bloody way. Carter would say to find a way to head them off, negotiate and compromise.

What do you do, Johnny?

Once he had stood in judgement over the life of a girl and once is twice too many, and Maeve O'Connor in a village grave under Slieve Gullion mountain.

She had never seen the wire. If he told her the whole truth of it he would terrify her.

'When we go from here, Jutte, there is no turning back.

From the first step we go on.'

She nuzzled against him with her cheek and nose. ' I know.'

'If we are to go back, it is now.'

The kiss was soft on his lips.

'Jutte, listen… we have to be very quiet when we leave this place. We take a path that leads to a woodman's hut. At one place in the path there is a trip wire. I know where it is, and there is a track that the patrols use to go round it… We come to a woodman's hut and then there is the first cleared strip where there is the Hinterland fence. It is less than two metres high, but the top half is of strands of wire that have alarms and lights that are triggered if the wire is disturbed. Jutte, you have to remember this…' He took her face in his hands, he was so frightened himself, so frightened for her, tears welled into his eyes. 'At the point where I am taking you the Hinterland is close to the border, closer than elsewhere, 400 metres. With your help I can climb the fence without fouling the wires. You come then and when you climb the bells will ring.

We have to go very fast then and we carry sticks. The last fence is three and a half metres high and is fitted with automatic guns. I will throw the sticks against their wires to fire them, then we climb again…'

' I understand.'Jutte with a faint, threadbare voice.

'When we climb you must have your hands inside the cuffs of your coat. The wire at the top is very sharp, you will remember that?'

'Yes.'

'Jutte, we have to run all the way from the Hinterland to the border fence. There will be noise, men shouting, perhaps they will shoot… you must never look back, you must follow. Wherever I lead, you must follow.'

'And you will be with me, close to me?'

Ulf kissed Jutte on the forehead, then pulled her down and snuggled her against his chest, cramped her body against his, felt the beat of her heart and the warmth of her blood.

'We have to go, Jutte…'

They rose to their feet and began to grope their way towards the path, between the bushes and the bracken. They did not see the fleeting shape that trailed them.

They were young and they had each other

They had the capability.

It was not a plan that Johnny would have entertained. They would career between the Hinterland fence and the border with the lights and alarms behind them… Johnny would go with circumspection, weigh each step and evaluate each problem. And Johnny had the carcase of Otto Guttmann to slow him, and there was no love… only a bloody job, only a filthy contract he had signed with Charles Mawby on a grey May morning. They had the capability, and if they were successful then Johnny and Otto Guttmann and Erica would not cross the following night.

Better to fail, Johnny, better to fail and to know yourself Only a stick thrown against the Hinterland fence, and the guards and the jeeps and their guns would be alerted. No witnesses to the treachery.

And he'd live with it every waking hour of his life, every sleeping minute. It could be justified, too, just a silly girl who wanted a shopping spree in Hamburg, not rated high on the pecking order beside Otto Guttmann from Padolsk.

You don't have the stomach for it, Johnny.

The padding of their feet on the path drew him forward. What would they have said, the Guttmanns? The Doctor and Erica who he had brought to the border. Would they say the kids should go to the Hinterland? And not there to be asked, were they? Only Johnny to decide.

They had come to the woodman's hut.

The fence was clear in front of them, flickers of light at the diamond mesh of the lower wire, and above that the strands that were electrified.

The first barrier. An eerie, desperate quiet in the woods behind them and beyond. For a full minute they stood and listened to the deep silence that rocked back at them from the tree walls. They were remote from each other, straining their senses, frightened and coiled.

'You are ready?'

Ulf felt against him the nodded agreement, the constant shiver.

'You remember everything that I said?'

'Yes,' she said, her mind empty.

'Never look back…'

' I love you, Ulf.'

Only the love of the girl would have taken him forward. For nothing less than the dream and the promise would he make the step towards the wire.

He squeezed her hand and broke away and went to the back of the woodman's hut where were stored the logs and branches for kindling fires. He had seen the wood piles as he had patrolled, and they were where he expected to find them. In the darkness his hands ran over the lengths of wood until he had found three branches, all that he needed for his purpose.

'Close to the border is the vehicle ditch, we lie there, protected, while I explode the guns.'

'Yes.'

Still she does not understand, after all that he had said. Lucky Jutte.

Then he had taken her hand, and with a quick, sharp stride he tugged her towards the fence.

The Hinterland fence rose above the level of her eyes. The trees beyond were very close, and opposite her a path opened into the woods. Ulf tossed the branches high over the top wires. Jutte bent down with her fingers locked together and felt Ulfs boot scrape into the palms, his hand on her head steadying himself. She braced her muscles, gathered strength for the impetus of the push that she would give, waited for his command.

A moment of standing time.

'Now…' The hoarse whisper from Ulf.

She heaved her hands upwards, felt his body thrust past her into the air and knew that her strength had failed her, that his leap was false. She stood, petrified, as the wires sung with his impact. A shadow in front of her face, wriggling for support. In the same instant the siren avalanched into her mind, and Ulf s flailing boot smashed against her face.

A hundred metres from them, as if in unison with the alarm, the twin red and green lights flashed out the position of the disturbance.

'Help me… help me.' Ulf screamed, suspended and frantic.

'What do I do…?'

The noise swelled, rose from a growl to a crescendo.

'Push me…'

She saw the threshing arms grasp at a cement post. She reached to her full height and thrust at his body with her fists, pushing him away into the blackness, over the fence.

Even as he fell Ulf could picture the scene at the command bunker. As he dropped and the grass rushed to take him he could see the small white bulb winking on the console. The bursting activity that the light would merit. The charge of the duty personnel towards the microphone that linked the bunker with the radio receivers of the foot patrols, and the watchtowers, and the earth bunkers.