Gerald Seymour: The Contract

Johnny held the stick that was stripped of leaves and their stems as a blind man walks with a wand. He held it loosely between forefinger and thumb and rocked it forward and back with a great gentleness in front of his legs.

By his estimate they were half way between the Hinterland fence and the final cleared cutting in the forest.

It had been cripplingly slow along the path, torture to their nerves, and now the stick's swing was blocked. The impediment was at knee height.

Three times he had swung the stick. To the right of his legs, to the left of them, to his front. Each time the thin stick stumbled against the obstruction. He had allowed Otto Guttmann and Erica to be with him for the last push, had reckoned there was a greater terror for them if they were behind and cut off from him. They wanted to be with him, close to the source spring of encouragement. He pushed Otto Guttmann softly back to avoid being crowded into error.

The stick was his guide in the darkness and his fingers found the contact point where it met the trip wire. They were not so sensitive, these wires, not like those on the Hinterland. A man's whole weight would activate the alarm, but not the impact of a running hare or a wandering fox. The wire was tight stretched, there for the unwary, there for the fool.

He reached out and coaxed Otto Guttmann forward and lifted him over the single wire, and Erica after him.

It pleased Johnny to have found the trip. If there was a wire on the path then there could be no foot patrols.

The wind played at his face because the tall trees were no longer around them. They were into the space that had been cleared and where only intermittent waist-high undergrowth had come to replace the pines.

He remembered the place as he had seen it from the far side, remembered the cover that stretched to the dull grey of the patrol road and the sandy earth of the ploughed strip.

Close to midnight, a good time for them to be coming. The time of the change of the Border Guard details. The time when some were cold and hungry and tired for their beds, when others had not accustomed their eyes to the night.

They had eaten the sandwiches, they had drained half the bottle, they had broached the coffee flask. The groundsheet was spread across the track that ran parallel to the line of the border. A desperate, lonely place, Carter reckoned, the

Roteriede at night. No life here. except when the moon passed beyond the wire and threw colours of light between the bushes.

Not a job for Carter, not his end of the business, not here wet and half frozen. Should have been someone half his age.

There was an owl somewhere in the tree above. Could have been a tawny from its call, Strix aluco and fifteen inch wingspan. An awkward, cussed creature, for ever stamping at its perch. Each time it shouted, Carter flinched. Lucky bugger, with its night sight, and elevation. Carter could see damn all from the level of the groundsheet.

'If he comes, do you know where it will be, how far either side of us?'

Carter whispered in Charlie Davies's ear.

'Right here.'

'Where we are now?'

'Where we're lying is where he stood, right here, there's something of a path that comes out opposite us…'

Nothing more to be said, and Davies offering no encouragement for conversation. Only the waiting and the straining for a sound of the coming of Johnny.

Why did the bastard jeep come so often?

Johnny had clocked it, watched the pattern. When it passed them going north it returned in two minutes, when it passed them going south it was with them again in six minutes. Shit, that was tight time. Six minutes, but that took no account of the speed with which it would return once the automatic guns were detonated. Then it would be racing, accelerator down, roaring forward on the patrol road. So much to bloody do. The run to the fence, the fastening of the ropes, the exploding of the SM 70s, the climbing of the wire. And the jeep could never be more than three minutes from the firing of the SM 70s, never more and always less.

Not a yard of cover from where they knelt in the undergrowth beside the patrol road to the wire.

He could do it on his own, no sweat, he was not alone. One old man and one girl to go first. Johnny was down the order. Otto Guttmann, scientist from Padolsk, had first priority on the fence.

Should they lie up another night and hope the patrol pattern tailed off?

But when daylight came and the foot patrols were out by the Hinterland then there would be the trampled grass, the disturbed earth from the sharpened poles. The dogs would come, heaving their handlers along Johnny's trail.

Has to be tonight, Johnny. What's the problem, Johnny? Frightened?

Scared witless, what else.

It's a hell of a way to the fence. I can bloody see, every time the bloody jeep goes by.

The guns are set close here. They're set close every bloody place.

Johnny reached out, felt Erica's shoulder, slid his fingers down the sleeve of her coat, found her hand and held it. There would be another time for them, wouldn't there? Somewhere removed from this bastard evil place.

The jeep went past, the regular throb of its engine, the regular speed of its wheels.

There had to be another bloody chance, for Johnny and Erica, somewhere as comforting as the hand that held his own. Somewhere, anywhere; any time, all the time. Over the other side of that bastard fence.

'Doctor Guttmann. It's the last time I say it, I promise, but you have to listen…'Johnny whispered and a nervous smile flickered at his lips. 'The patrolling is very thorough, so it won't be easy but we can manage.

Nothing to spare but we can manage. When we go, then you and Erica run straight for the ditch, down on your faces, take all the cover the ditch gives you. I go first to the fence with the ropes, then I come back to you and we fire the guns. I can't over-emphasise it, but we have very little time after the guns go. Very, very little. We stop for nothing, we wait for nothing. Doctor Guttmann goes first, then Erica. There are no guns, no mines on the other side, but you must run straight for the trees, at least fifteen metres and you must make a hiding place. Don't call out, don't shout… or you'll be fired on. Can you do it?'

'You ask me to do nothing,' Otto Guttmann said. 'You take everything on yourself. You are a fine boy. Both of us think that.'

Johnny let go of Erica's hand, took the long loops of rope.

'As soon as the jeep is past, we go.'

'We are ready.'

'Remember your hands on the top of the wire… Pull your cuffs right into the palms of your hands.'

'Yes.'

'You too, Erica.'

'Yes, Johnny…'

The engine sounds of the jeep. Johnny saw the glow of the driver's cigarette. No door on the jeep, because on the border a door could mean delay. He closed his eyes.

The jeep was ten yards gone. Johnny was on his feet and running forward, hunched and fast and stretched. Slower steps behind him, he did not look back. Go, Johnny, go. All the way, darling. All the way, you crazy bugger. Off the patrol road and into the ploughed strip his feet sinking and slipping into the loose earth, over the ditch his fingers clawing at the top rim of cement blocks and he pulled himself up. Only the fence now.

Calm, Johnny, calm for God's sake. You have to take time to find the wires, find the rope ends, tie the loose knots. Twenty-five yards killing range the bastard guns have, and there's one that's white and protected in its shield and it's five bloody feet from your guts. They rip your insides out, Johnny, it'll spread you back over the ploughed zone. They're razor sharp, the bits inside, Johnny. Cut your face, your bones, your veins, gouge your eyes, strip your skin. Two firing wires you have to find. You have to take time, you have to be right.