Chapter Seventeen

Friday morning. Johnny rose at six and dressed at once. The noise of the first trams and buses of the day boomed along the street below his window. Friday, and the coming of the critical hours.

He sat at the table and took a sheet of hotel notepaper. Otto Guttmann would have followed instructions, would not have reported the contact.

That was Johnny's feeling and he had backed it by sitting in the foyer the previous evening and watching. He would have seen the policemen coming to the lift… there had been none… Better to use the hotel paper, to blazon the proximity, because anything that disturbed the old man suited Johnny's purpose. He wrote the clear directions that Guttmann should follow and on the reverse side drew a map of the route to the railway bridge by way of Sandtor Strasse and Rogatzer Strasse.

Simple, bold lines for the map. He slipped the paper into an envelope and sealed it.

Johnny took the lift downstairs, walked out into the street and towards the square behind the Centrum. It was where he had seen the telephone kiosks. He rang the number of the International, spoke in natural German, and asked for the number of the room of Dr Otto Guttmann. He was a friend, he said, later he would be sending a book to the hotel and he wanted to ensure that the package was correctly addressed. The girl on the switchboard would be busy at this time of the morning with the waking calls. Over the line he heard the yawn, then the turning of paper as she searched for the information.

'Doctor Guttmann, or Miss Erica Guttmann?'

'Doctor Guttmann.'

'Room 626.'

'Thank you.'

Johnny replaced the receiver and strolled away. It had rained in the night, but the day promised well and the banking clouds were falling behind the Elbe and the sun flickered after them. He went back to the hotel and to any who watched him in the hallway he would have seemed a man who had slept badly and taken an early walk to freshen himself.

Unremarkable behaviour. Johnny had been a good pupil to Smithson.

He nodded the day's greeting to Comrade Honecker… he took the lift to the sixth floor.

There was a maid in the corridor with her trolley and bucket and brooms and stacked clean sheets. Johnny waited, admired a grim water colour of hills and lake shores until she had found a vacated room where she could work. He walked the length of the corridor looking for 626, and paused outside Otto Guttmann's door.

He looked once over his shoulder, heard the sounds of muffled radios in the rooms, the soft voice of the maid as she sang.. The corridor was empty. He bent and pushed the envelope under the door. He knocked.

There was a distant, indistinct grunt of acknowledgement.

'A letter for you, Dr Guttmann,'Johnny called softly.

'What…?'

'A letter for you under the door.'

'Who is it… what time is it…?'

Johnny heard no more. Away down the corridor, light- footed to the lift. The old man would not be quick to find his light switch, stumble to the door, turn the key. If he bothered to search for the carrier of the letter then he would find only a corridor frightening in its emptiness.

Johnny dropped into an armchair across the hallway from the restaurant. He made himself comfortable and waited for the breakfast service to begin.

'What should we do?'

Erica was by the window, a willow figure in a long cotton nightdress.

The letter was in her hand, the photographs were spread on the low table beside the easy chair. Erica was pale and her lips bit tight.

' I have to go to the bridge, as I am told.'

Otto Guttmann stood in the centre of his daughter's room. His dressing gown hung from his thin shoulders, his hair wisped and straggling, his eyes confused.

'What if it is a trick…?'

' It is Willi in the photograph.'

' It's horrible, evil… the people who have done this

'They know that I will follow, to find Willi.'

'Who would tell us that he is alive, who would tell us in this way?'

She gazed into her father's face and her hair that was not combed fell across her cheeks. Erica who was his leaning staff at Padolsk, on whom he depended. Erica as fearful as a child in a darkened house.

A smile broke the smoothness of the skin at his mouth. 'The pictures are taken in London… in the centre of a NATO capital. If they are not a fraud then Willi has gone to the military opponent of the Soviet Union.'

Her fingers crumpled the single sheet of paper, dropped it to the carpet.

'Then Willi is a traitor

'That is how he would be seen by many.'

'What will they want of you?'

' I don't know,' the old man said simply.

'They will want your mind.'

' I don't know.'

'What are you going to do?'

' I must go to the bridge.' Spoken with tenderness, spoken by a man who has seen the precipices of grief and does not believe he can be hurt any further.

'You can go to Renate's friend, to the Schutzpolizei…'

'Then I have disobeyed the instruction.'

' It is your duty to go to the police… to the Spitzer…'

'Then I do not see Willi.'

' If it is not reported, then we have joined the conspiracy, you see that?'

' I am too old to be afraid.'

'Willi is with our enemy…'

'In the photograph Willi is happy, as if he has found friends..

She came quickly to him. The slender arms circled his neck, the softness of her mouth nuzzled against his bristled chin.

' I will come with you to the bridge.'

They stood together a long time, drawing on each other's courage, and the photographs lay on the table, and Willi's smile was with them. They could hear his voice and see his face in laughter. Willi's presence was overwhelming. Their cheeks were damp when at last they broke apart to begin to prepare to face the day.

The Second Secretary, Commercial, slipped out of the British Embassy on Unter den Linden, and hurried towards the bridges over the Spree river. His briefcase weighed heavily in his hand. Twice he stopped and turned in one movement… surveillance of embassy personnel by the Staatssicherheitsdienst followed no regular pattern and he rated his chances of going without observation as best in the early morning.

Before eight and the tourists not yet on the streets.

He was the junior of the two SIS men attached to the embassy staff and working under the wing of diplomatic immunity. This was not the work that he enjoyed, playing the old delivery routines. He was an analyst, an interpreter of information.

The contact would be an older man, an East German national long employed by the British and with an account at a bank in Zurich. Not that he could use the money. But the day would come, the forged passport, the train through the Friedrichstrasse checkpoint. But the contact was not encouraged to think of that time, urged only to soldier on.

For five minutes the Second Secretary sat on a bench in a square across the river and under the Television Tower, then opened his briefcase and took out the package. It was wrapped as for a present. After another minute he left it on the seat, under a newspaper. When he walked back towards the bridge he did not try to watch the collection. Once over the river he stopped at the cafe beside the History Museum and ordered himself a coffee and a pork sandwich.

It was a vulgar scandal when a foreign intelligence service mounted an operation from Federal territory with neither the courtesy of liaison nor the consideration of the repercussions. Vulgar and arrogant.

Since the assault on the Lufthansa jet at Mogadishu, since the British had loaned two 'storm experts' and their equipment, since hostages had been freed and terrorists killed, the British had taken too much for granted. The congratulations and thanks offered by the Chancellor to their Prime Minister had left them with an illusion as to their rights.

Any connivance, official or otherwise, in the use of a commercial organisation to breach the frontier was potentially disastrous. Transit on the corridor autobahn between the Federal Republic and West Berlin was based on a fragile enough agreement, the Soviets had talked only eighteen months before of renouncing the arrangement if the Bonn government did not take acton to curb the escape groups.

The British were blundering onto thinly frozen water, and without authority.

Once in his office the man from BfV switched on his electric kettle, and selected two tea bags from the packet in the lower drawer of his desk. He phoned his clerk to provide him with the file on Hermann Lentzer, he ordered an immediate surveillance put on the man, he started the process of discovering the time schedule of the operation for which the British had employed him.

That done the temper that had lingered with him from the previous evening was improved. He would not have admitted that pique or spite fuelled the remorseless attention he now turned on Lentzer. He regarded himself as a good servant, committed simply to the welfare of his country.

On the table behind his desk the kettle spluttered and the lid bounced over an eruption of steam.

The Prime Minister sat shoulders back, erect and straight.

On the sofa, with his legs crossed and with the unhappi- ness of a man drawn into a dispute for which he has no stomach, was the Secretary to the Cabinet.

'Take a chair, please.' The Prime Minister was aloof.

'Thank you, Prime Minister,' the Deputy-Under-Secre- tary said firmly.

That was what he had learned over the years. The maxim of no surrender. Stare them out and don't whimper. Stand your ground. He looked at the Cabinet Secretary and smiled and received for his pains only a turned head. He would find no ally there; not in this room, not at this moment. Worthwhile to know.

'We had a discussion a few day ago over the areas of consultation that I required between your Service and Downing Street…' Measured words from the Prime Minister.

' I remember, sir. I've asked my people to get something onto paper, there'll be a minute through in the next few days.'

'… Our discussion then followed my complaint that a D notice had been requested without ministerial approval following the disappearance of an East German defector who was in the hands of your people.'

'That's about correct, sir.'

'At that meeting you provided me with a sketchy brief…'

' I explained the young man's relevance. I told you of an area in which he might be of some help to us.'

The Prime Minister ignored the interruption, swept on. 'You led me to understand that this defector was being questioned because he had some slight knowledge of a Soviet anti-tank missile system.'

' I said that, yes.'

' In leaving me with that impression you were at worst lying to me, at best being less than frank…'

'You must be mistaken, sir.' The golden rule of the civil service and practised now by the Deputy-Under-Secretary. Never lose your temper, not with a politician.

' I believe that I am not mistaken. I am informed that at the time we last met the Service was already well started on a project involving the father of this defector. I am informed that a team had been gathered together for a clandestine operation in the German Democratic Republic. I am additionally informed that the objective of this team was the assassination of the father of this defector…'

The Deputy-Under-Secretary gaped. 'That's just not true.'

The Prime Minister gestured him to silence. 'I will not tolerate autonomous action of this type. I will not permit killer squads to be sent abroad.'

' I said it's not true.'

' I demand that this operation, whatever its state of advancement, shall immediately be cancelled. I don't mean postponed, I mean cancelled. Is that clear?'

The Deputy-Under-Secretary closed his eyes, allowed the quiet of the room to swim in his mind. The time for persuasion. No option but conciliation. 'Prime Minister, there is no plan to kill this young man's father. His murder has never been considered. The plan that the Service has initiated is not histrionic. It is a straightforward and, we believe, valuable exercise…'

' I've made my decision.'

'Our target is no more or less than to bring about the voluntary defection of a top authority from the east bloc in the science of Manual Control Line of Sight missiles. He is holidaying in the East German town of Magdeburg. It's close to the frontier and we are offering him the opportunity of following his son into exile.'

' I repeat… I want this plan called off, finished with.'

'The defection of this man would be of enormous advantage, not pnly to this country but to the military technology of all the NATO nations. It is extremely rare that a man of this calibre comes within our reach. The opportunity should not be missed…'

'You haven't been listening to me. I demand cancellation

'We are close, this very morning, Prime Minister, to achieving our objective. We hope for his arrival in West Germany within the next 48 hours. The prize of this defection, sir, is incalculable, I must stress that.

All of my senior officers agree on the value of this man.'

'The issue is not the importance of the information this scientist can give you. The issue is whether the personnel of the Secret Intelligence Service institute policy in the United Kingdom, or whether that function remains in the hands of the democratically elected leaders. Because that point does not seem to have been understood I intend that a lesson shall be learned. The operation is cancelled.'

Damned, damned, damned fool. The Deputy-Under- Secretary squirmed. Pompous, priggish, damned fool. And from where had the leak come? The house at Holmbury? The hours when the boy was loose, when Mawby was in Germany, when an incompetent wretch called Carter was in charge?

For the first time the Secretary to the Cabinet intervened. A softly spoken man. A hesitant, cultured voice. 'Perhaps, Prime Minister, we should hear the nature of the plan to bring out Doctor Guttmann. Perhaps before we make a final decision on this mission we should hear an assessment of the risks of detection for the operation, as seen by the Service.' His influence was vast in the offices of Downing Street. Few decisions of national importance were taken in the face of his disapproval. 'And perhaps DUS can outline the worth to us of this man?'

The Deputy-Under-Secretary was aware of the shimmer of interest from the Prime Minister. He probed steadily forward with his argument.

'I've one of my best men running this show from Germany. Naturally I've studied his plan, most closely. I have no hesitation in telling you that it will succeed.'

'The Service has behaved with extraordinary arrogance

'We deliver, Prime Minister,' said the Deputy-Under- Secretary evenly. 'In the early hours of Sunday morning we intend to deliver Otto Guttmann.'

'The plan has been conceived in flagrant violation of the conditions I laid down at our previous meeting.'

' In the 1980s this country will be building a thousand Main Battle Tanks of new design. We have a small army and for it to be effective we must provide excellent equipment. If Guttmann comes to Britain those tanks will benefit in performance and protection. I urge you, Prime Minister, to reconsider.'

'You can't be certain of success. You can't be certain the whole thing won't blow in our faces. I'll not have myself put in the position of Eden in the '50s, having to tell the House he wasn't told that Intelligence were putting a diver under a Russian cruiser docked in Portsmouth harbour… of Macmillan who wasn't told that his Minister of War was sharing a call girl with the Russian naval attache… of Alec Home who wasn't told that Security were offering immunity to that fellow Blunt… I'll not have myself made a fool of.'

' I can assure you, sir, you'll not be made a fool of. By the weekend I would anticipate that it will be within your power to share with our NATO and American allies what we confidently expect will be the most sensitive information available to the Western Alliance for many years.

I'm sorry if that seems a bit of a speech, but that's how we rate Otto Guttmann.'

The wheel had swung, the pendulum had swayed. The Prime Minister wiped the moisture from the palms of his hands. 'You believe that risk has been eliminated from this affair?'

The Deputy-Under-Secretary felt the flush of victory. ' I do, sir.'

They talked for a few more minutes. The Deputy-Under- Secretary explained the details of the run along the Berlin to Helmstedt autobahn, he spoke of the armoured deficit between the tank forces available to NATO and those of the Warsaw Pact. He titillated with an abbreviated biography of an unnamed agent who had travelled to Magdeburg. Ultimately he offered an apology for what he conceded to be a want of frankness on his behalf.

The Deputy-Under-Secretary and the Secretary to the Cabinet left the Prime Minister's room together.

In the corridor the Secretary to the Cabinet whispered, ' I hope to God you're right, that risk has been eliminated… because if it hasn't then there's nothing on this earth that can save you. You'll be carrion for the crows.'

On an ageing typewriter Dr Gunther Spitzer drafted his reply to the communication from KGB headquarters in Moscow.

A quite puzzling matter for him because no explanation had been offered as to why KGB's own operatives were not involved, nor any of the other Soviet organisations that might have been expected to handle the enquiry. And as he typed, and crossed out what he had set down, and typed again, he remained confused as to what in fact was required of him. He could report that he had met Dr Otto Guttmann, had dined with him, that the drowning of his only son had been spoken of. He could report that the scientist was still deeply affected by the death, to the extent that he, Spitzer, had not felt decently able to press further.

Without doubt the grief was genuinely felt, not counterfeit.

Of slight consolation to the Schutzpolizeipresident was the knowledge that his prompt response to Moscow would be noticed, his efficiency would be recorded. Moscow had much influence.

He wrestled again with the text and called through the open door of his office for more coffee.

George as the minder, Pierce as the watcher, accompanied Willi Guttmann on the British army train out of West Berlin. They'd dressed the boy in the standard tweed jacket of a British officer in mufti, given him a tie and a check shirt. Just right he seemed to them, like any young lieutenant from the Berlin garrison.

The daily routine of more than 30 years was enacted at the East German frontier. The carriage doors were locked after the guards had clambered aboard. A small, sealed cell the train had become as it wound through the East German countryside. Before taking bacon and egg in the restaurant car, Pierce had reserved a compartment, bluntly evicting a Dental Corps major. He had seen that the window opened. He had repeated again to Willi where he should stand.

Willi had said little as he toyed with his food. Pierce wondered how he felt, how he would react to seeing his father again… if indeed the old man came to the bridge… he couldn't put himself in the boy's mind and after a moment's reflection saw no particular reason why he should.

It was aggravating that he would have to stand behind the boy when they rolled through Magdeburg. He wouldn't get a decent look at the scenery, and the scenery meant Johnny. Not that he'd be standing at the old man's shoulder, but it would have been special to have seen him. The man they had moulded at Holmbury, it would have given Pierce a particular pleasure to manage a glimpse, however brief, of Johnny's face.

Past Genthin and half an hour out from Magdeburg Pierce made the move for them to return to their compartment. His own excitement consumed him. They were very close now, close enough almost to finger the success of the DIPPER mission.

Johnny distanced himself by a full hundred yards from the bridge. It was bad to have to wait in one place for long, conspicuous, and he willed that the train would be on time.

They had done everything that he had demanded of them in his note and they were standing now, the old man and the girl, in the centre of the bridge and their eyes never wavered from the track that stretched away towards the Biederitzer Busch. Frail and unsafe they seemed to Johnny, close together for comfort, Otto Guttmann holding tightly to his daughter's arm.

The train came, crawling over the tangled web of converging rail, slow and noisy and swaying. Their eyes scanned the length of it, searching into the windows of the forward carriages.

'The third carriage, Father…' Erica cried. The hoarseness grabbed at her throat. 'The third one, the second window

'Willi… Willi…' The faint call of the old man, his voice cudgelled and overwhelmed by the pounding wheels.

They were so near to him. A few feet only. The letter had said that they should not wave, and Otto Guttmann's hand clutched at the material of Erica's raincoat, and her own fingers were across his, stifling their movement.

For only a few seconds the hallucination lasted, a trifle of time, and the train had cleared the bridge.

They were left with the images, the sharpness of the memory. Willi at the window. Willi shaved and clean and with his hair combed. Willi with the strained face and the eyes that seemed to call mutely to them. Willi pleading that they should follow, and no path shown to them, no signpost given. There had been two men behind Willi, standing back in the compartment, their faces in shadow.

They came down the steps of the bridge.

The ribbons of tears ran on Otto Guttmann's face. 'The moment is tainted… we should be happy, Willi is alive, more than I ever prayed for

… but there is an evil. You saw the flag of the British on the train… it is not for kindness that they have shown him to us…'

'Why did they do it?' Erica, saucer eyed, her voice strident.

In front of them a man turned his gaze away. A well-built man, youngish and powerful. The man had been watching them, watching as they negotiated the steps of the bridge. He had stood out, strangely different, the clothes and the gait guaranteeing that they noticed him.

Otto Guttmann stared, entranced, captured by the diminishing silhouette of the man who walked away on Rogatzer Strasse, threading his steps between the broken paving stones.

Otto Guttmann flinched. He had seen the contact man, he had seen the man they had sent.

'They are all around us, like rats near an animal that is about to die,' he said quietly.

'What do you mean?' Mid-morning. Daylight swamping the city that Erica had known since childhood. Traffic on the roads, people in the streets, the business of the community under way on every side of her, and she was frightened.

'When they are ready they will come close and say what they want of us.'

'Who are they?'

Otto Guttmann shook his head sadly. 'It does not matter… we must go back to the hotel.'

' I should go to Spitzer, Renate's friend,' Erica said.

'Do that and you kill me.'

In front of them the man did not deign to turn and watch them again. In a little time he was gone from their view. In a business like this, Guttmann knew, nothing would materialise by chance. Everything was calculated, everything was weighed and tested before being allowed to go forward. It would have been intended that he should see his torturer, the courier who thumbscrewed an old man's mind. They would leave him now, leave him to brood and curse. Only when he was broken would they come.

Holding fiercely to Erica's hand, Otto Guttmann started back for the centre of Magdeburg.

Through the afternoon Johnny slept in his room. He was not tired but he knew no other way to chip through the hours till it was time for dinner.

He had undressed, slipped under sheets, closed his eyes and tidied his mind. Two more days and he would have Carter fussing round him, Mawby pressing his hand. Two more days and he could make the telephone call to Cherry Road and he would be standing high on his pride. Two more days and the killing of Maeve O'Connor would be purged. There would be a hell of a party in Helmstedt, he thought of that before the release of a shallow, mottled sleep.

A thousand yards from the International Hotel a middle- aged man dropped a parcel into a deep litter bin behind the back doors of the Kulturhistorische Museum on the narrow Heydeck Strasse. He hid the package with a shallow covering of refuse.

Friday afternoon was the right time for a litter bin 'drop'. The last clearing of the week by the city's cleansing department would have been made in the morning. The bin would be untouched until Monday. The man retraced his steps to the Hauptbahnhof. He would have less than 20 minutes to wait before the departure of the express to Berlin.

She was sorry, very sorry, said the housekeeper, but the pastor had gone for the day to his niece in Cottbus. She told the caller that he would not be back till very late in the evening because it was a long journey to make in one day. Was the matter urgent? Could it wait till the morning?

The pastor would be at the Dom all the next morning, she knew that for certain. She took a pencil and wrote down a message on the notepad beside the telephone. The pastor would find it there when he returned.

'Doctor Otto Guttmann telephoned. It is most important that he should see you. He will come to the Dom tomorrow before lunch.'

A pall of smoke floated over the shell of the T 34 tank. There was much laughter, cheerful banter, as the generals came down from the viewing stand to their transport. Both of the prototype missiles that had been made available for the test firing had run with unerring aim towards their battered target. There was a round of drinks for them when they reached their staff cars.

'The opportunities for evasion to a tank commander are negligible.'

'When is the German back?'

'Guttmann returns in two days.'

'Where is he now?'

'Still in Magdeburg.'

'He should be told of the success of the firing. He deserves congratulation.'

'We have witnessed the birth of a famous weapon…'

The message from Padolsk went via Defence Ministry in Moscow to Soviet military headquarters in East Germany at Zossen-Wunsdorf, was then relayed to Divisional head- quarters for the Magdeburg region. An army motorcyclist brought the communication to the International Hotel, and took it by hand to the sixth floor because he must bring back a signature of receipt.

The motorcyclist was admitted to the hotel room by a girl, tall and blonde and who at a different time might have been considered striking and pretty. She was pale, and her eyes bulged in the aftermath of weeping. The room was dark from the gathering night, the lights had not been switched on, the curtains had not been drawn, open sandwiches from 'Room Service' had not been eaten. An old man sat by the window, seemingly unaware of the intrusion until the girl brought the docket to him and he wrote his name quickly, then reverted to his empty stare across the skyline of the city.

Alter the motorcyclist had withdrawn, his boots beating away down the corridor, Erica Guttmann ripped open the envelope.

'It is from the commandant at Padolsk. The test firing was successful,' she said without emotion. 'They say it was completely satisfactory

… they offer their warmest congratulations… they call it a triumph of military technological development…'

She passed the sheet of paper to her father. As if with reluctance he held out his hand to receive it, then peered at the typed words in the half light. Abruptly he opened his hand and let the paper flake to the floor.

By the finish of the working day the reports ordered by the BfV official were arriving at his desk. An efficient and effective organisation. The safe return of the homing pigeons.

The neighbours of Hermann Lentzer had been spoken with, discreetly.

His telephone had been tapped at the local exchange, with official authorisation.

His personal file had been taken from the archive collections at Wiesbaden and teletyped to Bonn.

Gazing through the shallow lenses of the spectacles that he wore for close work, puffing occasionally at his pipe, the man from BfV read through the material that had been collated for him.

Lentzer in a training battalion of the Waffen-SS and finding his combat baptism in the 33 day battle to obliterate the Warsaw Ghetto, the battle that was fought until every Jew inside the perimeter was either dead or in transport for the extermination camps. Lentzer, who had stood guard at the fences of Auschwitz in the latter months of the war before slipping into peace-time obscurity. Now, Lentzer the trafficker.

They came again, these people. Their filth was never destroyed.

Where was he now?… The young man who had fired his rifle into the tottering, tragic remnants of the Ghetto, who would have marched the emaciated prisoners to the bulldozed pits of Auschwitz… What was his punishment? A secure future and immunity from prosecution. A big house in a pleasant village outside Bonn, a big car to drive, a big account in black at the bank. Where was the repayment of the debt for the disgrace of his country? They were scum, these people, scum at the rim of the cess-pit.

He read on.

Hermann Lentzer was going to Berlin. That afternoon he had made a telephone call, he had announced his arrival time. He had spoken to an Englishman and neither had used their name. He often went to Berlin, the neighbours said, because sometimes they saw beside his rubbish bins the plastic bags that carried the names of the stores on Kurfusten-Damm and Bismarck Strasse. And when he travelled, Lentzer went by car, the neighbours said. He would use false papers, the BfV man reflected, but the car would not change, the number plate would not be altered… How could the British associate with such dirt? Was this the courtesy of an ally?

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.

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