Gerald Seymour: The Contract

He landed hard, awkwardly, and the pain was immediate, coursing through his ankle. They would be running for the jeeps.

'Give me your hand

Jutte's cry was far from him, detached and unreal. He was so tired, so weak, he wanted only to rest on the cool grass beside the fence, he wanted only to lie and sleep there. In shock, in exhaustion, in agony.

But the siren in the air would not let him sleep, the siren and the pain in his leg, the pain and the cry from Jutte.

'Help me. Stop fucking snivelling, help me…'

'Go back…' screamed Ulf.

'We can't…'

'We have to.'

'Help me.' She spat the words at him through the close mesh.

She leaped at the wire. The fence rocked, sagged under her weight.

She climbed, lost her footing, fell back, climbed again. There was a new sound to compete with the siren, a new intruder. Jutte was not aware of it, knew nothing but the effort of heaving herself astride the top of the wire. Ulf heard it, heard and recognised the running roar of the jeep. He staggered to his feet, lurched as the river of pain burst in his shin and thigh, retrieved himself, stood uncertainly and waited to break her fall.

She dropped from the wire and her weight and swinging arms caught his chest and his face and both together they were pitched to the ground.

Jutte springing to her feet, Ulf sprawled on his back. She saw his face, saw the snapped shut eyes that tried to squeeze out the pain. She saw so clearly, down to the glistening sweat beads at his neck. Ulf was floodlit in her gaze, and she was puzzled and could not realise the source of light.

Even when the jeep had braked she still could not understand the coming of the light. She wrenched at Ulf's arm to drag him upright.

'Come on, pig, run.'

Hatred for the fallen Ulf Becker boiled in her. Scorn grappled at her mouth. She was the daughter of the Director of a Kombinat, he was the son of an engine driver… she had given him her trust and he had failed her. Her uncle had said that one of the group must know the border if there was to be success, and this was the one that she had chosen, this was the one she had found and given herself to, this one

… this shitty pig.

'Get up… get up.'

A single shot.

One round fired from a rifle with a killing range of a 1,000 metres. The guard with the rifle at his shoulder and the bright stripe on his arm stood less than 30 metres from Jutte Hamburg. The bullet nicked one of the strands of electrified wire and so was tumbling when it struck her upper back.

She fell, flung and smashed over Ulf Becker. Her blood flew at his face. Her mouth was wide in anger, her eyes frozen in contempt.

By the Jeep the sergeant said, 'Why did you shoot?'

' I thought she was going to run,' replied Heini Schalke.

In the tree line Johnny turned away, retraced his steps along the path.

The Stechkin had been in his hand when the jeep had braked. Stupid, really. Futile and unnecessary, because there had never been the chance of intervention. Never on, never an option.

He could not have saved them. He walked on a dry path with the same precision as he had in coming, heading for the place where he had left the old man and Erica. It would have been a wasted sacrifice. They had wanted an animal, ice cold and devoid of feeling, when they came to Cherry Road, they had made the right choice… He would never lose the image of the girl's fury ridden face.

The price had been paid, access to the border had been bought. He would go the next evening with Otto Guttmann and Erica.

Away behind him was the noise of the jeep engine. They would be taking their trophies back to the command bunker, the girl who was shot, the boy who would be their prisoner.

His head small and frail in Erica's lap, Otto Guttmann slept.

The shot had not wakened him, nor the siren that murmured in the trees around them, nor the flinching of his daughter at the stealth of the approach sounds. Her arms guarded his face as defiantly she waited.

'Erica… it's Johnny…' The whisper from the darkness, and then the shadow loomed close, silent and fast, until he crouched beside her.

'The shooting… the noise… I thought it was you. What happened?'

'A boy and a girl tried to cross…' The gruff response, unwilling answer. 'The guards fired on them.'

'You saw it?'

' I saw it.'

'Did they succeed, did they go?'

'The girl was killed, the boy was captured.'

'You saw it all happen?'

' It was pathetic, they were children, they behaved like children.'

'But brave…?'

'Brave, yes… in everything else they were pitiful. I listened to them when they were talking, before they went forward… then I thought they had a chance, I thought that until they came to the Hinterland, the first wire… it finished there. There was never a chance for them.'

'And for us…?'

Determination deepened his voice. 'We go tomorrow, we go tomorrow night. For us it is different.'

'How is it different for us?'

'Because I am not a child,'Johnny said savagely.

He eased himself down onto the ground and stretched out beside her, felt his hand brush against her arm, wanted to hold her, wanted to cling to her, wanted her to gather him as she had her father.

'What would have been their idea of freedom, Johnny? What was their dream?'

'He wanted to rent a flat and buy furniture. She wanted a pretty frock from the shops in Hamburg.'

'Did they talk of their freedom, what it meant to them?'

' It's an empty word; it means nothing.'

'Nothing to you, Johnny, everything to them. If someone comes to this place, dares to come here, then a flame must burn… The absence of freedom is outside your experience.'

' I have to sleep, Erica.'

'Can you sleep when you have seen a girl killed?'

Johnny's eyes were closed. Exhaustion crawled through his body, mushroomed in his mind. 'When we are across, then we can talk of freedom…'

'Too late then… you must know what is freedom before you lead us to the wire.'

' It's not important.'

'You think people will risk their lives for something that is not important?'

' It's just a job. Erica that's the total of it, that's all.' Johnny propped himself up on his elbow. 'I've been paid to do it, I've taken the money.

I've an old mother and she needs cheap sausages from the corner shop, and electricity and coal, and a new coat for the winter, and I buy them.

I'll pay for them because I came to Magdeburg. You understand? I don't fool with clever words like freedom… The girl tonight, all she wanted was some pretty clothes, a new High Street to walk down. That was an idiot reason to get killed.'

'You're cruel, Johnny…'

'The boy with her, he loved her. They talked of love and it was wasted breath. There's no love now because she's wrapped in a bloody blanket and dead, and he's in chains in the cells.'

'Did she love him at the end?'

Johnny peered into her face. 'Erica, for Christ's sake leave it

… it doesn't matter about love, another bloody irrelevance, all that matters is a plan to cross the wire. Love isn't the bloody leg up.. '

'Are we going to cross the wire, Johnny?'

' I don't know…'

He sagged back onto the ground and his head was resting on the matted grass and the bent bracken. He unloaded the grenades from his anorak, squirmed down in search of comfort. His hand rose and grasped at the night air and Erica took it and pressed his fingers close to her and gave them warmth.

'When Willi went from Geneva, was it to find his freedom?'

'You have to ask him.'

'Something more than those two you found tonight, what Willi was looking for. Tell me it was something more, Johnny.'

'He must tell you himself… I'm sorry, Erica.'