Gerald Seymour: The Contract

Erica looked up sharply at him. 'You have had something, Johnny?'

'He gave me a steak… and some onion rings…'

She sprang to her feet, came fast at Johnny, clasped the sides of his head with her hands, kissed him on the lips. Cold, dry and cracked. Johnny blinked. As fast as she had come she was back on the ground, back beside her father.

Johnny grimaced. 'If that happened more often I'd come here every year.'

Otto Guttmann beamed. Erica dropped her eyes.,

'We have much to thank you for,' the old man said through a mouth full of food.

'Keep the thanks for tomorrow.'

Keep the bloody thanks for tomorrow. For after the Hinterland fence and the vehicle ditch and the ploughed strip, for after the wire that was 3

1/2 metres high. Keep the thanks for tomorrow.

' I'm sorry, I didn't mean that,' said Johnny.

'What do we do now?' Erica asked.

'We have to build the ladder, before it's dark.'

On their hands and knees, as the daylight ran from the woods, they fashioned the ladder from the wire flex and the birch stems and the larch poles.

Johnny stood, Erica kneeled.

Otto Guttmann crouched with lowered head and eyes and spoke the words.

'… And forgive us our trespasses, As we forgive them that trespass against us.. The ladder lay on the ground between Johnny and Erica, two larch poles forming a steep triangle and four birch stems lashed with the flex to them to make the steps. An untidy contraption, but sturdy.

'… And lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from evil.

The two lengths of coiled rope strand were beside the ladder and the third larch pole. They had been measured for length and the knots had been pulled and found strong enough. '… For Thine is the Kingdom, The power and the Glory, For ever and ever 'Amen,' said Johnny.

Time to be moving. Otto Guttmann had wanted the prayer, and Johnny had acquiesced and found something comforting in it.

Now he was anxious to be on the path. He had lectured them on the procedures, made them repeat aloud what he had told them, had drilled the programme for the night into their minds. He would lead, and they would obey his every command instantly. There would be no hesitation, no discussion. Only once had he faltered during his last briefing.

'If anything happens to me… anything at all, and I can't go forward, then you do not try to go on by yourselves. You stand your ground, absolutely still, your hands on your heads. Don't give the bastards the excuse…'

Johnny led them to the path.

He carried the single pole and the rope and the spare flex. Between them Otto Guttmann and Erica must take the ladder frame. They must wait while he went forward and covered the first hundred metres, then he would come back for them. Each hundred metres he would personally clear and vet. The slow way, excruciatingly slow, a painful pace, step by step along the path… but safe, and safety was the jewel. Only Johnny would speak, father and daughter were committed to silence.

Sometimes a twig cracked under his foot, sometimes a dried leaf rustled beneath his boot, sometimes a low branch clutched at his clothing.

Impossible to be truly quiet, to maintain absolute stealth. And all the time the throbbing thought that they would be waiting, listening and concealed, ready to spring, hands on the flashlights, fingers on the rifle triggers. All the time they could be there, and the only way for him was forward.

In the daylight, during his foraging exercise for food and timber, he had rediscovered the trip wire that last night's boy and girl had skirted.

He had paced out the distance between the wire and the hide: 224 paces, and then the diversion into the trees for the bypassing of the danger strand, and Otto Guttmann and Erica followed him blindly and would not know why at this particular place his muffled counting stopped and they must stumble on rough ground for a few yards before returning to the ease of the path.

Johnny ahead of them again, ahead and alone…

There was an explosion of movement not five yards from him.

Johnny froze.

The crashing roar of escape away from him, and pigeons in the high branches clattered into flight. The sounds of desperate, clumsy escape, echoing into the dark distance of the woods. All the bloody world would hear it… Johnny's heart pounding, his breathing petrified. The hand that did not hold the pole was clasped on the butt of the Stechkin.

Bloody pig. The woods were packed tight with them. Not hunted here.

Too close to the frontier. Fucking game reserve… A full minute Johnny stood rock still and as the fear slipped so came a sprinkling of confidence. If the pig had been browsing in the leaf-mould for young roots and had been disturbed by him then there was no other interloper in its territory. The immediate path was clear.

Six times Johnny ventured forward, retraced his steps to Otto Guttmann and Erica, advanced with them, and then set off again on his own. He had known it would be slow, but there was no call for hurry and he must stifle the desire to rush.

An hour and a quarter after they had set out, Johnny saw in front of him the shadow of the woodman's hut and the clear ground beyond and the silvery brightness of the Hinterland fence.

Charlie Davies collected Carter from the Stettiner Hof. The lights lit the Holzberg Square, shone on the leaning and timbered facades of the houses, on the cobbles. Noise and laughter spilled from the bars and cafes, a carefree accordion wheezed at the night. A cheerful community that was soon behind them as they took the road north.

'My wife did a flask of coffee and I put a half of Scotch on the NAAFI slate, and there's some sandwiches…' said Davies as he drove. 'There's a groundsheet in the back, too, and a torch. We could be out there all night..'

'Signals said again this afternoon that the radio traffic over there is still lumping Johnny with Guttmann and his daughter.'

'Not my business, but they're important, are they?'

'They're what Johnny's there for.'

'And he's an old man, this Guttmann?'

'In his seventieth year.'

'Jesus… Who's this caper down to?'

'The high and the mighty, and they've had sod-all luck.'

'Luck doesn't get you far on the wire,' Davies said gently. The mood was oppressive and he sought to change the tempo. 'I can't take the car that close. We'll have to walk the last mile, and death quiet then, no lights, no talking. Right?'

The car was off the main road, coughing along a rough track between the trees. Carter was subdued. A thousand miles from home. A thousand miles from Century House. A thousand miles from the 'Green Dragon' and the snug bar. A thousand miles from everything that was real and dear to him. A thousand miles from Johnny who was across the wire and coming.

Charlie Davies parked the car, ran it off the track and under the trees.

'I think we'll have a last fag here,' he said. 'And maybe we'd better break open the bottle for a quickie.'

He stripped the cap off the small whisky bottle and passed it to Carter.

Johnny looked at his watch. For forty-five minutes they had been in the cover at the back of the woodman's hut. The pattern of the jeep patrol had developed in front of him. Ten minutes after they had come to the hut the vehicle had crawled along the makeshift track on the south to north run.

Fifteen minutes later it had returned, chugging in low gear, its headlights sharp and glinting on the fence. Another fifteen minutes and again south to north and Johnny had seen the silhouettes of the two men through the doorway space of the jeep.

All hinging on the watch face, because Johnny had sneered that he was exact, that he had a plan. All dependent on the moving minute hand.