The Contract (33 page)

The lights threw into relief the gloom beyond his window. Late in the evening and the building was quiet and empty save for a scattering of night clerks . . . All the frontiers of the world could be crossed. Through the minefields and wire and high walls there were hidden corridors of communication. The BfV in Bonn could make contact with the SSD in East Berlin. The route was tortuous but could be managed.

He wrote on his notepad the details of the model of Mercedes car driven by Hermann Lentzer, its colour and number plate. He pondered then for a few moments. The bastard deserved no sympathy, no mercy.

The British had made their own bed, they could lie on it, and they had not consulted on a matter that if it failed or succeeded would bring only nuisance to the Federal Republic.

Without emotion he weighed the correctness and the consequences of the action he had proposed to himself. The British had stepped outside the agreed guidelines; he had no responsibility that he owed them. And if he jeopardised the British plan? They had had the opportunity for consultation with the Federal authorities, they had not availed themselves of it. They had avoided the queries raised by BND.

He remembered the displacement camp in which he had stayed for two years after the war. Temporary barrack buildings near to Celle, swill to eat, thin clothes to wear through winter, and the guards of the British Army of Occupation behind the fence with their jeers and cat-calls and the arrogance of the victor. Two years as a number and he had committed no offence, only served with what he had believed to be an officer's honour in the crumbling Wehrmacht. That was how they had treated him, and now they hired an animal, a criminal like Lentzer to do their work for them.

But that was not the reason that he would make the telephone call. The defence of the interests of his country would govern his action, and this was a time when the policy of the Chancellery demanded an improvement of relations with the 'other Germany'.

He dialled the home number of a young art teacher living in the city of Stuttgart.

After his dinner in the restaurant of the International Hotel, Johnny set out for Heydeck Strasse. Alone on the streets, with only the echo of his footsteps for company, his Own shadows swinging to meet him.

One last push in the morning, Johnny, then the bloody thing's finished.

Standing on a chair, Johnny stowed the package on the wardrobe shelf above his hanging jacket and spare pair of trousers. Saturday morning.

The package was lighter than when he had brought it into his room because the Stechkin automatic pistol now rested on his hip, held there by the pressure of his belt, pressed against his skin. He had armed the pistol, slotted it with a magazine. There were extra blankets on the shelf and the maid had already tidied his room while he had taken coffee in the hall and guarded the package between his legs. It would be safe on the shelf, safe till the grenades and the other magazines and the shoulder stock were needed.

When he left the room he locked the door behind him, pocketed the key. Down the corridor to the lifts. Johnny let himself out at the sixth floor.

How do you feel, Johnny? Bloody grim, like nothing ever before.

Worse than standing before the Lord Chief Justice when he'd finished the summing up, put down his pencil, sucked at the stuffy air of the courtroom, pronounced his verdict. Worse than then. Worse than that time when he'd turned into Cherry Road and known that all the neighbours knew, and known his mother would be in the kitchen and all he would see of her welcome would be a cup of tea.

Just a job, Johnny, just do your best. Go tell Mawby that, go tell Mr bloody Mawby in his pinstripe suit.

Room 626.

They're all behind you . . . Mawby, Carter, Smithson and Pierce, even old George, they're all behind you. Right behind, back over the bloody border.

Room 626.

Corridor's clear. Get on with it, lad, don't hang about.

His legs were tight and his muscles fluttering, and there was a pain in his stomach and the forward gun sight bit at his buttocks. In you go, Johnny.

He knocked at the door, knocked twice and sharply.

The girl was in front of him. The dullness of the corridor and the light of the room behind her contrived to shadow and grey her face. He saw the blotched smears at her cheeks, the trembling of her fingers at the door jamb.

Johnny spoke in German. Curt and boorish because he must dominate from the start. He had come to issue instructions, not to plead, that was the Holmbury doctrine. 'I'd like to see your father, Miss Guttmann.'

He was expected. There seemed no surprise, only a deep tiredness that he read from her eyes, and almost the trace of relief that a nightmare might be nearing its end. She gestured that he should come into the room, then as an afterthought she moved aside to permit him to pass her.

An obsessive fear of flying led to Hermann Lentzer using his car for the long journey from the outskirts of Bonn to West Berlin. After Cologne he would join the E 73 autobahn that would take him beyond Dortmund.

He would transfer then to the E 8 and from there it was straight for 280

miles via Hannover and Braunschweig and Helmstedt to Berlin. The Mercedes would swallow the distance.

His documents rested in a leather handbag on the imitation fur cover of the seat beside him. His radio was tuned to the station designed for long distance travellers, light music interrupted only by news of road works and traffic accidents that might cause delay. When he returned the following day he would be hugely richer and more importantly he would have kicked the pigs of the DDR, bruised their testicles, chalked up one more scream of pain and anger.

If the frontier crossings were not slow he would be in West Berlin by early afternoon.

Otto Guttmann was sitting in a low chair near to the window. Johnny towered over him.

'Doctor Guttmann, we have some matters to talk of.'

'We have been waiting for you . ..'

'Have you followed the instructions, have you spoken to anybody of the photographs and the train?'

'Only to Erica, only to my daughter.'

Otto Guttmann wore the visage of the priest, of one who has been persecuted and who has felt the slings and arrows. He was not lying, Johnny knew that. The quiet, steady, deliberate voice could not have mustered an untruth.

'Willi is alive and well, Doctor Guttmann. This evening he will be waiting fifty kilometres from here . . .'

'Waiting for what?' The old man's head swayed as he watched through the window the careering flight of a pigeon.

'He will be waiting for you, Doctor Guttmann. From midnight he will be waiting at Helmstedt, waiting for you both to come through the border.'

' It is a sick, cruel game that you play . . .'

'Not my game, Dr Guttmann. It's the facts that are sick and cruel.

You've been in mourning for a boy who's fit and strong and breathing, that's sick, and that's a fact. Your son defected, that's cruel, and that's a fact. We didn't make him, we didn't know him till he came over. If that hurts, I'm not to blame. But there's another fact ... tonight Willi will be waiting and you can join him.'

There was a grim smile on Guttmann's face.

Did you leave him too long, Johnny? Too long, so that the introspection has strengthened and not broken him. Not clasping your bloody hand in gratitude, is he? Far from it. There was a calmness about the old man. A serenity, a sense that he was above and beyond anything that Johnny could do to him.

' It is not possible for us to go to the West,' he said simply.

' It
is
possible. It is arranged, and it will happen.'

' I am an old man. Once I had a wife and she is lost to me. Once I had a son and he too was taken. I no longer believe in promises. I trust only in Erica's love. That is enough for me.'

Harder, Johnny, go harder. Obliterate the disbelief. You have to, Johnny, you have to be bloody vile. 'Doctor Guttmann, listen carefully to me. Your son had no accident on the Lake of Geneva. His actions were intended only to deceive, they were eminently successful. Of his own volition Willi came to London. Once there he renounced the countries of his birth and of his adoption. He has put himself at our disposal

'You are British.?' The whisper, the incredulity from behind.

Damn the girl, damn her for the spoiling of the mood, damn her for bringing her father's gaze darting to the source of interruption. 'Be quiet, Miss Guttmann. He put himself at our disposal. He co-operated fully with us. He is well and happy now, you can see that from the photographs. He has told us of you, Doctor Guttmann, he talked a great deal of you ... he is ashamed of the hurt that he has caused you. Six weeks ago we began to plan a way that would bring you in safety to your son's side. By this time tomorrow you will be reunited with Willi. If you follow me that will happen - I guarantee that, Doctor Guttmann - if you do not take this chance the opportunity will never be repeated. You have one chance, one chance only that you may take advantage of. A car will come down the autobahn tonight from West Berlin. It will carry the necessary documents. The car will pick you up and drive you to Helmstedt. The offer stands for this night . . . for this night only . . . there will never be another car . .'

Johnny saw the old man's eyes drift away from him.

Otto Guttmann no longer listened. 'You know that I am elderly, you think, too, that I am a fool?'

Johnny was halted and the words, careful and rehearsed, deserted him.

There was a limpness in his reply, forced by the bluntness of the question. 'I know that you are no fool, you have a reputation for brilliance in your held of study.'

'You believe that at this time my grief for Willi is keenest. You believe that when I come to Magdeburg next year I will be less susceptible to your blackmail.'

'You owe these people nothing, Doctor Guttmann.'

'And what do I owe to your people?'

Johnny hesitated. He glanced back over his shoulder at Erica, wondered whether she was a source of support. She stared back at him, bland and impassive. 'We offer you freedom, Doctor Guttmann.'

The old man stared at Johnny. 'You are the representative of freedom?

You who spy on me, you who hides himself without a name. What is freedom to you?'

'You should know better than to ask, Doctor Guttmann,' Johnny snapped back. 'You have lived in Hitler's Germany. You have worked in Stalin's and Khrushchev's and Brezhnev's Russia. You should know what is freedom.'

' If I follow you what is the price that I must pay?'

'You will make your own choice on the repayment of the debt. That is the freedom that we offer you.'

'You know my work?'

'Willi told us.'

'You know that the team I direct has been working on the prototype missile to succeed Sagger?'

'Your son told us.'

'You know the prototype has been completed and tested ?'

'We assumed the project was in the final stage.'

'Yesterday that prototype was fired at Padolsk, and I have received a message of congratulation from General of Ordnance Grivchenko. You cannot know that?'

'Of course not.'

'You are young and no doubt brave to have come here, you are clever and resourceful or you would not have been chosen. I ask you those questions so that you may appreciate that I am sceptical of angels who speak with the motives of mercy and freedom. You want me only as a traitor, as a turncoat.'

The silence hung in the room. The memories of the briefings at Holmbury turned in Johnny's mind. Stand your ground, they'd said.

Don't debate and don't argue. Let the blood ties gnaw at him.

'You must decide where your affections lie. It may be many years in your life since you have had the Opportunity to choose your own future.

You have that chance now. The choice lies in whom you betray. It may be Defence Ministry in Moscow,' it may be your son who will be at Helmstedt tonight.'

Not bad, Johnny. Smithson would have enjoyed that. Otto Guttmann had turned back to the window and the grey cloud basket.

'What is your name?'

Johnny swung round to face Erica Guttmann, pirouetted on his toes. 'It's Johnny.'

'You ask much of us, Johnny,' she said. 'We have a security here, of a sort . . . You ask us to go blindfold after you.'

'Yes.'

'It is a crude bait that you offer.'

'Yes.'

'This car, it will really come?' She was urging the confirmation from him.

' I promise that the car will come.'

'What is the danger to him?'

'We are careful people, Miss Guttmann. There is no danger.'

'He loved Willi,' she spoke as if her father were no longer in the room. '

I think he loved him more than he loved my mother . . . there is no risk to him?'

It was Erica who they had said at Holmbury he would have to claw his way past to get to the side of the old man, and Johnny saw only sweetness and worry and the tumbling in her mind on the decision that would be hers to make.

'There is no risk . . .'

' I will talk to him.'

'Yes.'

'You will come again, later.'

'Yes.'

'When will you come?'

'You have all the hours of daylight to talk. All the day. By evening you must be clear on your intentions. There is no argument after that. If you accept then you follow me without question.' A half smile, a little chuckle came to Johnny. 'You should come, Miss Guttmann, ride the wind beyond the fence. Willi is waiting there and a great horizon . . .

don't turn your back on it, don't choose this bloody drab heap.'