The Contract (7 page)

Ulf creased his lips, a swift spasm of rage. He hated, detested it when she spoke of life at the University in Berlin. Jutte the second year student of Mechanical Engineering. Ulf the second year border guard of the National Volks Armee. She the daughter of the Director of an industrial Kombinat. He the son of a lorry driver. Jutte the product of the Party elite. Ulf the product of the Party faithful.

'What did they say at the Humboldt?'

She grinned up at him, careless and happy in her power. 'They said there was only one way to fight them.'

'What way was that?' Hoarseness crawled into Ulf s voice.

'To run away from them . . .' Her laugh tinkled close to him. 'That they hate. That is why they have so many of you pretty boys on the border.

The ones who run from them are the ones who fight them.'

He shrugged, uncertain. 'It is impossible.'

'Some do it,' she whispered. 'We see it on the television that comes over from the West. Two families and they made a balloon, they did it.

The man with the glider, the man who swam with the air tanks, the man who pushed the boat with his wife and daughter across the Elbe There was a nervousness now about the boy, and he bridled. 'You have not seen it.'

'It has been done so it must be possible.'

'If you saw it for yourself then you would not say that. There are automatic guns, there are mines, the wire is more than three metres high, there are dogs . . . vicious horrible things. If you had seen the frontier you would not say that it is possible.'

He pulled her upright, then bent to pick up her brassiere and to shake the pine needles from her blouse. She stood with her trousers at her ankles.

'Why do they go there, those who come to the frontier and face the gun that you hold ?'

'We should get back, or we will be missed.'

'The boy who said piss on the Fatherland, that boy is afraid that the FDJ nursemaid will miss him ?'

He knelt at her feet. A ridiculous posture, and his nose brushed against her upper legs and he kissed her and pulled at her trousers till they were at her waist. He flicked the mud from her blouse and pushed her hair back to its parting. 'What do you want of me, Jutte?'

She took his hand and they went slowly to the path. 'I want you to know that my father is going this afternoon to Dresden, some dreary meeting early tomorrow, and my mother is going with him. I want you in their bed at home when these children's games are finished.'

' I have to get the train at midnight.'

'Piss on the Fatherland, the boy said. Silly boy, you'll get your train.'

He put his arm around her waist, squeezed her. The girl pressed her hips close to his as they went back towards the chalets. They would be in time for lunch. Lunch would be Stew, that was usual for the Sunday meal at the Schwielowsee camp.

It had been a low, wearing day for Johnny. Marking time, treading water, waiting.

He had walked the grounds, mapped the geography of the small wood, and the orchard and the thick-grassed tennis court, and the lawns and the outbuildings, once stables. The place smacked of a lost grandeur, everything had slipped out of hand. Only the chain link fence topped with the single strand of barbed wire that ringed the boundary was new.

They'd be bound to pick a house like this, he thought, with a warren of rooms and ivy clinging to the stonework and eating through the mortar, and the paint falling from the window frames. Crumble right into the bloody undergrowth if they weren't careful. Smithson and Pierce had brought the Sunday papers back with them. In the afternoon Johnny curled in a chair in the hall and read. It was a long wait before the car came, scraping on the gravel.

Charles Mawby came thrusting through the front door. Instinctively Johnny stood up. This was the power, the head of patronage.

George, the sheepdog, herded them into the living room while Mawby settled his bag in his bedroom. Carter brought from the interrogation room and holding his notepad. But not Willi. Smithson and Pierce roused from their siesta. And Johnny who was there to be told of a mission.

They stood, eyeing the chairs, as if even those on the team were uncertain of the seating protocol. The fire was not lit, the curtains not drawn. A virile chill in the air.

Mawby came in, closed the door firmly behind him, took an armchair and waved them down. Johnny sat back a little way from the inner circle.

He was not yet a part of their plan.

'We'll have some tea later. I don't want Mrs Ferguson fussing about us just as we get going,' Mawby said. There was a slim chorus of agreement.

'You've all met each other now,' Mawby said quietly. 'You've had the opportunity to see a bit of Mr Donoghue, though from this stage on I'm going to call him Johnny . . He smiled. 'For everyone's benefit,' Mawby continued, 'we'll take the history first and then the plan. Willi Guttmann, Soviet citizen, junior diplomat, defects from Geneva. He is of little value to us, but for the accident of his birth. Willi Guttmann is the son of Doctor Otto Guttmann who is as important to this country and her allies as the boy is unimportant. Otto Guttmann heads a major and highly specialised weapon research team that is currently working on the replacement for the Red Army of the MCLOS Sagger in the ATGW

range

Mawby paused, let that sink in. Johnny looked across at Henry Carter and saw the trace of a wry smile.

'Otto Guttmann is now an old man, close to his seventieth birthday. We can assume that if the Soviets did not regard his work as of the foremost importance they would have pensioned him off. They have not done so, nor are there any signs that before this present programme is completed he will be permitted to retire. The British interest in Dr Guttmann is quite straightforward. We are about to launch the building programme for the new Main Battle Tank of the late eighties. It involves a minimum of a thousand vehicles, at an average cost per weapon of half a million pounds. Thousands of jobs are tied into the manufacture process. In the event of conventional hostilities in Europe that tank will have to face the weapon currently being pre- pared by Doctor Guttmann at Padolsk in the Soviet Union. I think I make myself clear.' It wasn't a question, but there was a faint mutter of assent from Smithson and a drawled acknowledgement from Pierce. Carter toyed with his wed- ding ring as if nothing had been said that was new to him. Johnny sat very still. It was coming closer to him, the tide on its way to his sand castle, sneaking nearer.

'Willi Guttmann managed his defection with a brilliance that those of us who have had dealings with him here find hard to credit. He sought to protect his father from having a son who had betrayed his adopted country, so for his escape the boy feigned a drowning accident. From what we have been able to discover subsequently the hoax was successful. Both his father and the Soviet authorities apparently believe that Willi Guttmann drowned in Lake Geneva. Willi Guttmann was close to his father, it was a loving parent and child relationship.

'Willi has told us that each year his father takes a two-week holiday in his former home city of Magdeburg in the German Democratic Republic. Magdeburg is 48 kilometres, that's 30 miles, from the Inner German Border. Half an hour's drive down the autobahn. Dr Guttmann will be slaying at the International Hotel on Otto von Guericke Strasse from Sunday the first to June the 15th. It is our inten- tion while he is in Magdeburg to persuade Otto Guttmann to take advantage of escape facilities that we shall provide and so follow his son to the West.'

A hundred questions, a thousand negatives, bounced in |ohnny's mind.

Only difficulties, only problems, only dangers. But that was the way of' '

I ' Corps; always to fling ice water over any new plan.

'We've read all we can about you, Johnny. On Friday afternoon I spoke to as many people as I could reach who had commanded you during your time in the army. The reports are very good, it's a series of commendations . . . We would like you, Johnny, to go to Magdeburg, to persuade Dr Guttmann to take the opportunity to rejoin his son, to deliver him to the pick-up. That's the proposition.'

Johnny sighed, drew the air deep into his lungs, wanted to look around him, but they would all be gazing at him, and he stared instead at the carpet, tried to concentrate on its pattern while his mind reeled and lurched and his heart. thumped.

'You wouldn't be involved in the actual transfer, Johnny, you've no worries on that score, it'll be taken care of.'

Johnny Donoghue back on the inside, lining out on the team.

'Your job will be strictly the approach and persuasion in Magdeburg.

It goes without saying that coercion is not involved.'

Almost a time for tears. Almost a time to leap up and grab these men, wrap his arms around them and hold them close to him and thank them, thank them from the deep depths.

'You'll learn more as the days pass, but that's the broad outline and there will be a big team working on the details. There'll be all the support you need.'

Too easy, wasn't it? Slow down, Johnny. It can't be that simple. Don't look up. If it looks easy, it isn't. The only piece of advice he ever had from his father. So where's the catch?

'We're reacting to events, Johnny. The authorisation for us to set this running came just 48 hours ago. That doesn't bother us, we have the capability, we have the expertise, and for a critical part of the plan we want you.'

Was this the time to remember that his country had kicked him ... in the groin, in the crutch, kicked him bloody hard and bent him double?

No, you have to forget that, Johnny, because if you don't forget it where is the future? Is it for ever Cherry Road and German classes at the Technica College?

'Whatever happened in Ulster, Johnny, doesn't matter. As far as every one of us here is concerned you start with a clear sheet and a damn fine record behind you.'

Turn your back now, Johnny, and you're away back tc Cherry Road.

Just as you were a year and a half ago. Home in the shame, back into the shadow.

'I'd like to give it a go.'

He lifted his head and Mawby was beaming at him, Pierce shook his hand, Carter with evident pleasure and welcome on his face waited his turn and Smithson slapped him on the hack. George, with an eye on Mawby, stayed still and distant.

Working from an office temporarily provided for him at headquarters on Dzerzhinsky Street, Valeri Sharygin wrote in longhand what he hoped would be his final report on the disappearance of Willi Guttmann. No, not the disappear- ance, the drowning . . . The KGB major frowned privately, his head turned away from the typist by the window. The absence of the interpreter's body irritated him, but he could wait no longer. Leave beckoned before the departure of the delegation to the United Nations in New York for the summer session of the Conference.

Perhaps before he flew to the United States he would telephone Foirot in Geneva.

He had been thorough in the writing of the report. Thorough enough to have visited personally the mes- senger from the Foreign Ministry who had taken the Guttmann possessions to his father's flat. Thorough enough to have registered the bitter swell of bereavement that had greeted the messenger.

What could he achieve by further delay? He anticipated that while he took his fortnight at Sochi the corpse would drift to Lake Geneva's surface.

It was peculiar that it had not already done so.

Lizzie Forsyth ran up the two flights of stairs to the flat of the British Consul. She rang the doorbell, and heard the muffled whisper of a door opening deep inside and the murmur of annoyed voices. Who came on Sunday evening to do busi- ness with the Consul ? He'd be placating his wife, saying he wouldn't be long, wondering what matter could not wait till the morning. Lizzie reordered her hair, raised herself hand- some on her heels and waited.

'Yes?'

Lizzie smiling. 'You remember me, Lizzie Forsyth?' Lizzie radiant, a grin and white teeth. 'I wanted to see you.'

He had started back, as if exposed to danger. The Consul; remembered Lizzie Forsyth. Not every day that he played host to a Soviet defector, that he entertained a man from Intelligence in his drawing room. He would not forget Lizzie Forsyth and her shivering boy and the quiet competence of the man who had taken him away. Unhappily he gestured her inside and led the way to his office, calling to a closed door on the way that he would not be long.

'What can I do for you, Miss Forsyth?'

She spoke with the fervour of a gale at an open window.

'I've just had the most marvellous thing happen. Just like that and without warning . . . my period's come. I'd given up hope, resigned myself to it, having the baby, and now it's

come. God knows why I was as late as that. Well, it's come now ... so the problem's over.'

'You're not. . .'

'I'm not pregnant, isn't it marvellous? I want to tell Willi I didn't know how to write to him. Where to send a letter.'

'You're not pregnant?'

'It's wonderful, I think it's the happiest thing that's ever happened to me.' 'And now you want to tell Willi ?'

'He'll want to know. I'm a bit ashamed really ... I sort of railroaded him.'

She was quieter now, calmer, the flood tide running steadily. 'I don't know whether he ever specially wanted to marry me. Willi ought to know, oughtn't he? It'll make everything different. . .'

The Consul winced, pain clear on his face, and he held up his hand for her to stop.

'Pray, how does this make everything different?' He looked into her clear, azure eyes and watched the light run against them and heard her certainty and sureness.