Gerald Seymour: The Contract

It was the pressure of her hand over his mouth that woke him. The first sensation he knew was of the weight of her fingers on his lips. Even as his eyes functioned and his mind turned he had grasped at her wrist. He could not move her, not until he was awakened and aware, not until he saw the fingers of her other hand splayed in the warning for quiet. She pointed to the undergrowth in the direction of the path.

Johnny heard the voices. Low, casual, in conversation. The voices of young men. Erica was hunched above him and beside her a few feet from Johnny was her father, alerted, wrapped in the girl's coat. Dreadful, the old man looked to Johnny, his age accentuated by the lack of the razor, by the unbuttoned collar, by the hair that had not been tended. And Erica showed the haggard reward of a night without sleep. Stupid creature to have given her coat away and to have sat through the night in a skirt and a blouse and a light cardigan… bloody daft. The whole night standing guard over them, husbanding her strength to play sentry while the men slept. Shame caught at Johnny, he'd slept and he'd rested, and he had not thought of the girl.

The Border Guards would be working through the area. They'd be at the Hinterland fence and trying to track back along the route of the couple. There was no reason for them to search with great thoroughness.

One dead, one captured, and no trail beyond the Hinterland. And if they had dogs then the dew would have formed over the scent of Johnny's tracks and he had been scrupulous in his care for movement in the undergrowth.

The voices passed, not aroused, not interested. Erica's hand withdrew from Johnny's mouth. The Stechkin dug at the small of his back and he pulled it from his belt and laid it on the ground beside him.

'They'll be up and down the track for most of the morning, then it'll tail off…'

'My father is very hungry.'

Hungry and ill, Johnny thought, and at the limit of his resources; a passenger to be coddled.

'We can't move from here, not for hours… none of us.'

'Look at him…'

The old man met his gaze with a rare, fluttering smile, but that was bravery. Otto Guttmann sought and failed to conceal his helplessness.

Johnny's resolution sagged.

'Perhaps later I can go and look for some food… but it is a great risk.'

'We haven't the clothes to sleep like this, in the open…'

' I know.'

'But you will try?'

' If it is safe to do so I will try.'

'And tonight we go?'

'When it is dark.'

'What do we do for today?'

Johnny grinned, dredging a measure of cheerfulness. He would not allow them to play clock-watchers. Keep the morale alive, because Johnny must lead as they must follow, keep their limbs and minds active.

' I've a job for each of you…'

He saw their interest quicken. Johnny reached for the coil of rope that had been taken from the Trabant, passed it to Erica.

'… near to the wire is rough ground, about five metres across, then working backwards is the vehicle ditch.' With the flat of his hand he smoothed the earth beside him. With his finger he mapped the lines. 'I have to have at least two lengths of rope that will reach from the fence to the ditch. I want you to unravel the rope and make the lengths that I need from the strands.'

'And for me?' asked Otto Guttmann.

'Figures for you, Doctor…'

'Explain.'

'The Hinterland fence is one metre eighty-five high. At the top of it metal stanchions project at a forty-five degree angle and carry wires that we cannot disturb. I propose to put a small tree trunk over the wire and bind it to a cement holding post with the cables from the car engine. We will have two more poles and tie them together at the top so that they rest from our side of the fence against the post and clear the tension wires. It will be like a ladder, the struts will be simple to tie in position. From you I must know how long the poles will have to be if they are to avoid the wires.'

'That is very easy.'

'That's the plan… and bloody good luck to it.'

Like taking children to the seaside, finding something for them to do, designing a sandcastle and giving them a bucket and spade. Erica soon with a tangle of rope streamers on her knees. Otto Guttmann with a brightness on his face and a pen in his hand and an envelope on his lap. A diagram and a column of figures spreading over the paper.

'The projection of the stanchion, how long is it?'

'Fifteen centimetres…'

'You are an exact man.'

Johnny gazed at Otto Guttmann. 'A boy and a girl came to the wire last night. They failed at the first hurdle because they had no plan. One is dead, one is captured because they had no plan, they were not exact.

They believed that will alone was enough.'

'And it is not?'

' It is suicide.'

Otto Guttmann pocketed his pen. 'On our side of the fence the poles should be three metres and thirty-eight to the knot, so three metres and fifty is adequate overall. The pole on the far side that is tied to the post should be two metres and fifty-six… that is what you wanted to know?'

'Right.'

'You did not manufacture this plan after the autobahn… before, you thought of this?'

'Yes.'

'Because you never believed in the car?'

' I believe in nothing that I am not myself responsible for.'

'And when you talked to us, when you gave us the guarantees of safety, and you pleaded that there was no danger, did you then imagine that at the last we would go this way?'

'No… it was only myself.'

'And we are a hazard for your safe crossing of the border?'

Johnny saw the old man's composure, examined the lined and unshaven face, and the eyes that were alive and piercing. 'Without you it would be easier for me…'

'Why do you take us?'

' It was what they sent me for,' said Johnny quietly. 'It was the reason for coming… whatever happened to the car from Berlin that didn't alter the reason.'

Otto Guttmann persisted. 'Were we wise to trust you, to put faith in you?'

' I don't know…'

' I went to see a man in Magdeburg, my oldest friend, a pastor at the Dom… I am proud of my faith. We talked of a man called Brusewitz who burned himself to death to bear witness to the conditions of worship in the country of my birth. Brusewitz faced fire, what we have been asked to do is trifling in comparison with the sacrifice of that man.'

'To cross the fence is your protest?'

' It is the only protest that will affect them. When you have taken me across then that is what I will speak of… you know there are many ways in which they scourge our church. When they needed room for factories it was the churches in Leipzig and Potsdam that were destroyed to provide the ground. When they wished to widen the road into Rostock it was a church that was demolished. When 15,000 of our brother Catholics wanted to go for their annual pilgrimage and worship at the cathedral of Erfurt they were told the ceremonies were forbidden, on that day the square outside the cathedral was required for the performance of the Soviet State Circus… My gesture is a small one, but it will be noted.'

' It will be noted,' Johnny grinned. He took himself as a fly to the ceiling of the office of the Politburo on Berlin's Marx- Engels Platz, to the corridors of Defence Ministry in Moscow, to the laboratories at Padolsk. They'll go bloody mad, Doctor.

'Where will Willi be?'

'Near the border but perhaps today he has gone back to London.'

' It will be wonderful to see Willi. I will be an old man and cry and make a fool of myself.'

Johnny glanced across at Erica. She was looking at her father. Radiant, gentle, and proud. The love blossomed from her.

Later he would take the spade and hack down some birches for the cross-struts of his ladder and dig up some young larches for his main poles, later he would leave this private communion between father and daughter. Later because the guards who examined the Hinterland fence must be given their time.