Gerald Seymour: The Contract

'Mr Donoghue? Mr John Donoghue?' The older man spoke. Police?

Army? London, anyway.

'That's me.'

'I'm Harry Smithson.'

'My name's Pierce.'

'Can we come in?' Smithson asked. Not happy at having to ask, not happy on the pavement.

' It depends what you want.'

Smithson looked around him, the automatic response. The glance over each shoulder as if in Cherry Road there might be a listener or an eavesdropper. His voice dropped. 'We were sent from London to see you, Mr Donoghue. It's a government matter.'

'Who sent you? What do they want?'

'It would be better inside… it's not trouble, Mr Donoghue, nothing like that.' Pierce seemed the same age as Johnny and better equipped to communicate.

He would have liked to send them away, liked to have spun them round and packed them away up the road, but they'd crucified him, hadn't they? A government matter, and that pricked his interest. He'd had his fill, the overbrimming cup, of men on government business. The army's Special Investigation Branch detectives who had taken his statement. The solicitor appointed to prepare his defence. The barrister paid out of public funds who represented him in court. The pin-striped suit who had come from Ministry of Defence and said that Guilty or Not Guilty there would be no place for him again in Intelligence Corps. But a government matter… and not trouble… his curiosity won through.

'You'd better come in.'

Strange how a house could quickly lose its warmth when outsiders came. Johnny apologised for the size of the living room, scuttered forward to retrieve his cigarettes and matches, to empty last night's ashtray into the grate, to gather up yesterday's newspaper, to smooth down the cushions on the sofa. And he hated himself for his concern.

'I'll go up and get dressed. Make yourself comfortable.'

'Thank you, Mr Donoghue.' Pierce was conciliatory. 'We're sorry to be barging in so early.'

Johnny nodded, then closed the door behind him and went up the stairs to his room. He dressed in the shirt hanging from his chair, the underclothes that were on the floor, searched for his shoes, took socks from the drawer. The shave would wait. Below him he heard a key in the door, the chatter of a farewell from his mother to a friend. He shoved the shirt-tail into his waist and went to the top of the stairs. The front door closed.

'Mum,' he called.

She stood small in the hallway, engulfed in her coat, wispy grey hair protected by a scarf, shopping bags around her. 'Have you done your breakfast, Johnny?'

'There's some men in the front, came to see me. I'm just dressing.'

'Would they like some tea?' The thin piping voice. After all that had happened this woman could not believe that men who came to the house could be unwelcome.

'They'll not be staying long enough for tea, don't bother, Mum.'

Not having any bastards in dark suits with the whiff of London on them make his mother fuss round to get the best china out and rinse the milk jug and flap herself as to whether the room's tidy enough. He heard her go to the kitchen, and he came down the stairs and into the front room. They were where he'd left them, close together on the sofa and they smiled as if in a chorus act and stood up.

'So how does a government matter affect me?' Straight into the eyes of Smithson, because he'd be the spokesman.

'Quite right, Mr Donoghue, we shouldn't waste time. We shouldn't beat about the bush…'

'Correct.'

'Mr Pierce and I work for that part of the Foreign Office that concerns itself with intelligence gathering…'

'Identity cards, I'd like to see them.'Johnny held out his hand, watched amused as the two dug in their wallets. He took the two plastic coated cards complete with the polaroid photographs. Access to Century House, London, Wl. Good enough.

"Very wise, Donoghue,' Smithson said. 'With your background you will know of the work initiated at Century

House. We've been asked to offer you a job, Mr Donoghue.'

Johnny squinted across, slant-eyed, at the two men. Too bloody early in the morning to be concentrating.

'Why me?'

'In London they think you fit the scheme of things,' Pierce said quietly.

'This is nothing to do with Intelligence Corps. Fresh faces, fresh work.'

'What does it involve?'

'We haven't been briefed, not fully, only that it involves a show in Germany.'

'And that's all you're going to tell me?'

'That's all we can tell you,' Smithson said.

'When do I have to make my mind up, by what time?'

Smithson looked at his watch. 'We're taking the lunch- time train to London. It's our hope that you'll accompany us.'

Johnny slumped back in his chair, closed his eyes, blacked out the sight of the two men opposite him. Nothing more to be said was there?

Couldn't be anything else. Of course they wouldn't travel north and march into the front room of a terraced home and then talk matters of National Security. All that would be in London, and there was no way of finding out more about what was asked of him without getting on the train to the big city. And the more they tell you the harder they'll make it for you to escape. Step onto that train, Johnny, and you're in, the clock hands will turn back… and they're asking for you, all nice and polite and they're asking for you. Sent these men up to this Godforsaken town on a Saturday morning because it's Johnny Donoghue they want, because Monday's too late for them.

What to do, Johnny?

He sat a long time and the quiet burrowed through the room. He'd been kicked bloody hard in the teeth by the establishment. But now they wanted him back. They wanted the man from Cherry Road. He'd never live with himself if they walked back to the station empty-handed.

Johnny smiled, open and wide, the trace of a laugh.

'If I'm to go to London I'd better finish shaving,' he said.

The door was closed on the messenger and Doctor Otto Guttmann carried the suitcase back through the hall of the flat and into the small, pinched living room. He placed it on the floor, in the centre of the carpet and stood quite still and gazed down at the black leatherette case. He saw on its handle the baggage tag for Geneva, and attached by string was a cardboard label that carried the name and address written in a familiar and beloved hand. He looked up then at the plain wooden cross hung from the wall, contemplated it, as if it were a guarantor of strength.

Otto Guttmann was tall, well shouldered, a large and imposing figure, but the sight of the suitcase magnetised his eyes and bowed his body.

The messenger had known what he brought, had hurried to deliver the case and be away.

Memories bounced into Otto Guttmann's mind. Memories of a small boy laughing and bickering with his father and mother on picnics on the Lenin Hills outside the city. Memories of a child dressed and scrubbed for school. Memories of a teenager complaining of lack of attention.

Memories of the adulthood of his son and the pride of the boy that by his own efforts he had achieved selection to the interpreter school of the Foreign Ministry.

Such a short time ago, it seemed, since Otto Guttmann had seen the case open and the clothes and trivial possessions placed in it and then its top pushed down and zipped and the lock fastened, and he heard again the laughter and excitement before the departure to the airport. The first time that one of his children had left the nest that he had made of the flat after the death of their mother. He stared down at the bag and in his hand was the key that the messenger had given him and he knew that by himself he lacked the will to open the fastenings. Old men can cry, are permitted to weep, it is the young who must not demonstrate their feelings of sorrow at bereavement. The tears came slowly and then rained on and on.