The Contract (43 page)

'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.

In two small clusters the Border Guards who were off duty stood in the parking area at the rear of the barracks of the Walbeck garrison and watched as Ulf Becker was led from the building to a Moskwitch car by two plain clothes men of the Schutzpolizei. His wrists handcuffed behind his back, he limped heavily and was supported by his escort. He searched among the faces for a covert greeting.

Heini Schalke was there. Straight-backed, belly protruding, unable to disguise his triumph. Schalke who had aimed the MPiKM and who would get a cash reward and extra leave, and who had won the chance of another stripe on his arm, of another favourable entry in his file at Battalion.

The boy who had carried the letter from Weferlingen to Berlin was there. Nervous and hanging back because he did not know the extent of his implication, only that the boy who had befriended him and asked the favour was in the custody of those who would extract a confession on all matters that interested thern. It was the first day of his secondment to Walbeck. He did not meet Ulf s eyes, looked away.

Willi Guttmann heard the key turn in the door.

A mug of coffee was brought to him.

'Has my father been found, and my sister . . . ?'

They had not been found. He would be told when they had been found.

The door was locked again. Behind the thin window curtains he could see the trellis of bars.

They had been most careful with Willi Guttmann. They had removed his shoe laces, his trouser belt and his tie, and had locked him in an upper room at Halberstadter Strasse.

He was past weeping, had cried himself to sleep the previous evening after the first detailed interrogation by the man from Berlin. There were no more tears as he lay on his back and stared at the ceiling light behind the protective wire.

Carter was shown into Charlie Davies's office.

Handshakes and Nescafe. Wally Smith was there and another man that Carter had not met before.

He wouldn't mind waiting, would he? A few things to be settled, then they'd be off.

Carter looked at the walls and their huge mosaic of black and white photographs. Photographs of the fences, of the National Volks Armee at work, of the Border Guards, of patrol boats on the distant side of the Elbe river, of the SM 70 automatic gun, of the PMK 40 and PMP 71

mines, of watchtowers and earth bunkers, of jeeps and transport lorries, of the RPK drum magazine machine gun . . . photographs that covered three of the four walls. On the fourth wall, from ceiling to floor, was a map, 1 inch to the mile, with its covering and Chinagraph symbols, showing the border.

When they were alone Charlie Davies lit a cigarette and came and sat beside Carter.

'Taken an eyeful of the pictures, have you? Well, you should, because that's what's out there. Two million sterling a mile we reckon it's costing them, and that's big money for those bankrupt buggers

' It sort of clears the mind,' said Carter faintly.

'But they keep coming, God knows why, and about a dozen a year make it that we know of, a dozen a year along 411 miles, they're the ones we hear about. I don't know about the American sector, shouldn't be different. A dozen a year, and we're told there's 2,500 in the gaols that didn't make the run . . . and there's the ones that buy it. . .'

'The ones the bastards shoot

'Or the minefields, or the SM 70s.. . one last night, not on the fence itself but on the Hinterland. The alarms went off and there was a shot reported. I had to think of Johnny, didn't I? The BGS monitoring set the record straight. A girl was killed and a boy captured . . .'

'Johnny . . .?' mouthed Carter.

'They were both East German nationals. We reckon it's on the Hinterland that most of them fail though it's difficult to be exact. Last night there was a fair bit of radio chatter, that's because they're all keyed up for your lad and his customers.'

'They shot the girl dead ?'

'They don't piss about.' Davies stabbed out his cigarette. 'Time we were off. There are some military doing a border recce north of Helmstedt, one of the other lads was taking them but I've put them under my wing. The East Germans are used to seeing me with troops, so if we go out in a big jolly party it's less conspicuous.'

'However you like it.'

They didn't talk in the car because Charlie Davies's German civilian driver was at the wheel. They drove north and met the troops in the village of Brome. Two Land- Rovers, a party of junior officers and senior NCOs. A pleasant group interested in what they had seen on the Elbe the previous day, and anticipating what they would find on the second half of their formal patrol. Men from a cavalry regiment, wearing their camouflage scarves jauntily, carrying their unloaded weapons easily and happy enough that for a few hours they had escaped the demands of their Chieftain tanks. The stops were frequent, as Charlie Davies with the skill of an expert guide handled their tour.

They gathered at a border marker to look through the close mesh wire and watch a work party of Pioneers erecting a new watchtower.

'The last one blew down,' said Davies. 'With them in it and all. Fair old night it was, hell of a wind and rain too. Down south in the Hartz there was a stretch of mines 2 kilometres long, which means 6,000 mines laid, and 2,000 of them went up when the rain cleared the earth off their pressure plates. Like bloody Guy Fawkes night. . .'

Through binoculars they stared across the sloping grasslands to the hill with its tree line and the Soviet Army observation bunker and listening post, and admired the professionalism of its siting.

'From what we hear there's no contact between the Soviets and the Border Guards, they don't have anything to do with each other, and that includes a quite separate communications system. A few years back a Soviet squaddie came over the wire just beside a manned tower and nobody dared challenge him because he was in Ruskie uniform . . .'

Across from the dark homes and mine workings of Weferlingen they stood on a raised viewing platform, and the white-cased SM 70s were identified on the fence.

'An SS officer designed them during the last war for use on the concentration camp fences, a way to reduce the number of guards required. They have a scatter range of about twenty-five metres, and they set them five metres apart. They're at different heights .. . face, balls and feet. Wicked buggers. This SS man was carted off to Russia after the surrender and they glossed them up there before this lot had the use of them. It's a charge of steel slivers, doesn't make a pretty sight afterwards.

. .' As they pushed on the troops became used to the presence of Carter, and he concocted a tale that he was Foreign and Commonwealth Officer and had a day to spare from his visit to Bonn, and wasn't everything most interesting, and Mr Davies was doing him a real favour by letting him come along.

Another viewing point, where a mud track was close to the fence and marker posts.

'See that down there, that culvert drain, not very wide, right? Not wide enough for any of us, but a kiddie could get through. There was a hell of a shambles some months back down on the Bundesgrenzschutz central sector, a 4 year old wriggled through. He was bawling his eyes out on one side, his mother raising Cain on the other. Should have stuffed him back where he came from, but no-one thought of that. Took bloody hours to get the protocol sorted out and a gate opened by them so he could be sent through. He'd have had a hell of a belt from his mum, that kiddie . . .'

A patter of anecdotes and information.

There was generally a bit of fun as the morning wore on, Charlie Davies warned, when the cameras came out. They reached a viewing platform in the woods south of Weferlingen sector and the Grenzaufklarer reconnaissance troops were waiting. Mud brown denims, rifles with magazines fitted, cameras with telephoto lenses. In front of the wire. Between the border post and the fence. Three of them and little more than a dozen paces away. No smile, no recognition, expressions humanised only by the contempt at their mouths. The Grenzaufklarer photographed the cavalry who photographed the Grenzaufklarer . . . And attention slipped to Carter, the one civilian, and the camera lens followed him, dogged him. Carter hated the man, wanted to shout at him, lob a rock at him. The camera spoiled the cheerfulness of the little party. These were the men who were waiting for Johnny. And the guns were armed.

'We call these the 150 percenters,' Charlie Davies boomed. 'They're a law to themselves, they can come through the wire whenever they want to, they can come right up to the frontier marker. In all my time I've only ever known one of them step the last yard over .. . Hey, Fritz, don't you go wasting film, do you want me to get the lads in a nice group for you, do you want me to do that? Look at the buggers, not a flicker. The day I get a wave out of that lot, I'll bloody drop dead . . .'

The convoy took a chipstone road that showed the wear of the forestry lorries. The car bumped and rolled. They passed a Bundesgrenzschutz van and Davies waved and was acknowledged and then they were alone again in the vastness of the woods. With the engines killed a quiet came on them. A lonely, green, leafy place till they walked up a soft mud path to within sight of the fence. The ground on either side of the close mesh wire had been cleared years earlier but now the bushes had sprouted and the grass grown and there was only the ploughed strip and the vehicle ditch and the patrol strip to show where the fence builders had tried to halt the encroachment of cover.

Carter was beside Charlie Davies. The troops had dropped behind.

Just another stretch of border to them, and not much of a vantage point because the ground was flat, and they had been to better places and after the meeting with the Grenzaufklarer their interest had flagged.

'This was where he came on the second day, your lad, Johnny. . .'

'What attracted him?'

'Difficult to say. There's no permanent position here. No towers or bunkers, no mines either. That's the plus side . ..'

'And the negative . . . ?'

'There's a Hinterland fence . . . there's a fair concentration of company garrisons all along this stretch, there's vehicles patrolling through the night and less often by day, there's SM 70s on the fence.'

Carter gazed through the mesh into the scrub beyond.

'Where should he be now, if he's coming tonight?'

'Five hundred metres or so the wrong side of the Hinterland.'

'He'd be trying to sleep, I suppose,' Carter said, a private thought.

' If I were stumbling into that lot tonight, I'd not be sleeping . . .'

Carter heard the crack in Davies's voice, recognised the emotion, realised that Johnny had reached and touched another man. The low pitched voices of the troops did not break into Carter's closed concentration. Johnny out there with the scientist and his daughter.