The Contract

Chapter Eighteen

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.'

'Come again in the afternoon.'

'You should not talk of this… if you were to go to the police, if anything were to happen to me then it would go badly for Willi, that's obvious, isn't it?'

She looked at him without anger, without surprise, showed only a smear of disappointment. 'Are the threat and the bribe the only words of your language?'

Johnny walked past her and closed the door quietly behind him.

Sitting by the window in the breakfast room at the Stettiner Hof Henry Carter planned his day. There were only a few courses open to him. He thought that he'd buy a shirt down in the old quarter, on the Neumarker Strasse. He thought he'd wander up to the NAAFI Roadhaus and have a lunch of something and chips and a botde of beer. He thought he'd have a siesta before the evening vigil at Checkpoint Alpha. At least by the evening he'd have company. Pierce and George and Willi had gone through to Hannover on the military train, they'd spent the night in the close security of the British army camp at Paderborn. Pierce had telephoned to report that Willi's behaviour on the train had been faultless. They would all come back to Helmstedt for the end of the run.

A treat for Willi, and he'd earned it. Carter thought that it might be time for him to talk with the boy about the girl Lizzie in Geneva, put the record straight, and it would be the right occasion because the boy would have his head stuffed with the reunion with his father and sister.

It was a subdued, close morning in Helmstedt. Carter hoped the sun would have broken through before he started the trail up to the Roadhaus.

They ran towards each other across the wide, white pavings of Alexander Platz, sprinting, racing to be together.

Ulf and Jutte beneath the mountain of the 'Stadt Berlin' Inter Hotel.

Hands around each other's necks, fingers deep into each other's hair, lips pressed against each other's cheeks. With the world to watch, with the stores calling the Saturday shoppers, with the square crowded with tourists and visitors, she hugged against him, squirmed herself close to him. No words, no talk, only holding, only kissing. It was a warm morning and he felt the roughness of her heavy sweater and the waterproof anorak hung from her elbow. If she had worn the clothes that he had asked for then she would have the rail tickets tight in the pocket at the waist of her trousers.

Instinctively he led, his arm around her shoulder, towards the S-Bahn station on Alexander Platz.

Jutte had told her father and mother that she was camping for the weekend. She had made her farewells short and cheerful and temporary, pecked at the cheek of her father, squeezed the' hand of her mother.. she had not thought whether she would see or hear of them again.

Ulf had survived the annoyance of his father that within hours of his demobilisation he should need to take a weekend with the FDJ out of Berlin. His mother had sat in the kitchen while the father and boy had conducted their whispered argument in the hallway.

He wondered how soon they would hear of his escape. Within a day perhaps, not more than two, after the crossing. The little room where they spent their evenings in front of the television and the electric fire would be crowded with the men of the Schutzpolizei. Submission from his father, terror from his mother, and they never in trouble before. And when his father professed his surprise, astonishment at the action of his son, would the policemen believe him? And if they did not believe him..? Emotion trapped in Ulf s throat, tears caught in his eyes. He did not want to harm them, not his father or mother. They had done nothing to deserve the retribution of the Party.

Jutte's forehead nuzzled against his chin. 'You have found the place?'

'There is a place where it can be done.'

'Where we can cross?'

'Where it's possible, yes.'

' I will not be frightened, not with you.'

For more than 3 hours Otto Guttmann had sat in the small sitting room in the cottage of the pastor beside the Dom. He had come alone, and Erica had gone to walk in the Pionier-park and had said that she would support his decision, she would follow his choice. The burden was on his back, laid at his door, and one friend to turn to.

Otto Guttmann told the pastor of his work at Padolsk. He went over in detail the events as he had known them surrounding the drowning of his son. He had relived the visit to Wernigerode and the passing of the photographs which he showed to his friend. He talked in a voice stumbling with pain of the sight of Willi from the footbridge over the railway. He recalled the words of the Englishman who had come to his hotel room.

What should he do? he asked. Where lay his loyalty?

The pastor had not interrupted. Only after the housekeeper had carried in on a tray a plate of cold meats and a pot of tea was the monologue exhausted.

He was a small spare man, the pastor. The gestures of his hands as he spoke were quick, decisive. His voice was lulling, persuasive. He had known humiliation and rejection, he had worked all his adult life in the community of Magdeburg. He showed no surprise that his friend had visited him, only an acceptance of the enormity of the option. The words he used were thoughtfully chosen.

'You are a scientist, Otto, a manufacturer of terrible weapons of warfare. I am a pacifist, I have been so ever since the bombers came to our city and 16,000 persons were slaughtered in the holocaust and the firestorm. If you stand before me as a scientist and ask me where your duties lie, then I cannot help you, I offer no advice.'

The cup in Otto Guttmann's hand trembled, tea slopped to his trouser leg.

'… But you are, too, a Christian, you are a believer, and there we are joined. As a Christian your blood runs as freely as mine, as if we were brothers. We know what it is to worship alone, we have the comradeship that comes from the mocking of an atheist society, we have suffered the nobility of hardship for our beliefs. In this country it is an act of courage to attend public worship. You remember when the pastor from Zeitz, you remember the name of Brusewitz, you remember when he immolated himself on the steps of his church, poured petrol over himself and took a match, to draw attention to the harassment of young Christians in our society, you remember him? They called him an idiot and said that he was deranged. And after his death, we who were his fellow Christians, we debated amongst ourselves as to whether we had compromised too far with the Party. To me, Brusewitz is as near a saint as we will find in our time in this place. He made the supreme sacrifice in the flames, the sacrifice of Christ. His example was one of heroic faith, and his death demands that we of the church must stay and fight for his ideals, we cannot abandon our people. I speak as a cleric. I could not go, my fight is here.'

The pastor poured more tea, took another slice of meat to his plate and cut it with neat and precise movements.

'You do not have those chains on you, Otto. Neither you, nor your daughter. You are free to go. There is no shame in withdrawing from persecution, no disgrace. Your time runs quickly, you have deserved a latter peace. You should go to the comfort of your family. You have the right to find your happiness. There is no duty that obliges you to remain.'

They went together from the pastor's room and into the high, vaulted cathedral, past the tombs topped by stone carved knights, past the shrapnel pocked figure of Christ, past the place where the leaking roof threw water down on the flagstones. They went to the front line of chairs arrayed in front of the altar. For several minutes they prayed in silence.

Outside in the sunshine they shook hands.

The pastor smiled. ' I will think of you, my friend, I will think of you often.'

His engine idling, his radio playing, a packet of sweets close to his hand, Hermann Lentzer sat in his car at the head of the queue at the Marienborn checkpoint. A kilometre behind him and barely visible up the hill were the fluttering flags of the United States of America and France and Great Britain. He was close to a square-based, tall watchtower, he was hemmed in by the wire that enclosed the checkpoint.

He was impatient because it was some minutes since they had taken his passport, and those of other drivers in the queue who had been behind him had already been returned. They had been free to drive away on the autobahn.

He drummed his fingers irritably on the steering wheel and tried to show his annoyance by staring out the young face of the Border Guard who stood in front of the bonnet of his car. Usually it was quick, usually only a formality to gain clearance for the autobahn corridor. Behind him a driver hooted as if to protest that Lentzer by his own choice was blocking the road… stupid bugger.

The fright came slowly, nagged at him gradually, gathered in his stomach. There should not have been this delay. He had never waited so long before at Marienborn. The driver who had hooted passed him and Lentzer scowled at the man's enquiring glance.

Alone in his car, the business of the border around him, a warm lunchtime, the sun high, and the sweat gathering in his armpits, running underneath his vest. There had never been a delay like this at Marienborn. Two hundred metres back towards Helmstedt were the steel barriers that when dropped lay at windscreen height, they could lower them in 6 seconds… no going back, and the Border Guard in front with the sub-machine gun slung from his shoulder and his eyes never leaving the Mercedes.

He wiped his forehead, and fiddled with his radio, and took another sweet. Not until they were all around the car and a pistol held hard against his ear was he aware of the Border Guards. They pulled open the door and dragged him from his seat. His hands were first flung across the car roof while they frisked him for a weapon, then pulled behind his back for the handcuffs. Never upright nor still enough to protest, he was frogmarched into the administration block.

A Border Guard, unable quite to conceal his fascination in the finish and fittings of the Mercedes drove Hermann Lentzer's car behind the building and parked it amongst the unit's lorries and jeeps.

An inexact science, wasn't it? No bloody text book to tell Johnny the technique necessary for the persuasion of a man to abandon the life of 35 years and turn his face towards strangers. Willi was the bludgeon in his argument, but Guttmann had shown a resilience that he had not expected. The girl was different, strange that, as though Willi had talked of a casual friend and not of his sister. The girl would bend her father, perhaps.

Now Johnny could waiit no longer for his answer.

Again it was Erica Guttmann who opened the door to him. Again the old man was sitting in the chair beside the window. Erica moved to stand beside her father.

'We will come with you,' Erica said quietly.

A great smile split his face. God, he could have shouted, lifted the bloody ceiling off the room.

'Thank you.'

' It is not because of anything you have said. It is for a reason that you would not understand.'

' It doesn't matter.'

' It is not just because of Willi that we are going with you.'

' It's not important why.'

'We put our trust in you. If anything were to harm my father after the promise that you have made, then it would lie with your conscience for the rest of your life.'

He was taking them to the bloody autobahn, packing them into a car with only forged papers to protect them, and all the skill and all the vigilance of Marienborn waiting for them, and the shield they looked for was Johnny Donoghue's conscience. The bombast in him peeled. God, who'd chance as much as their freedom on Johnny Donoghue's word?

'Nothing will harm you.'

'What do we have to do?'

Johnny clenched his fist so that the fingernails cut at the palms of his hands. Trust was devastating, trust could crucify. A brave old man, a brave and pretty girl, and both watching him in naivete, hanging on his words.

'You should have dinner tonight in the hotel. After that you must walk across to the Hautbahnhof and you must take the train on the local line to Barleber See… there is one just after eight, another 20 minutes later, you can take either. At Barleber See you must walk along the path towards the camping site. Before you reach the tents you will find a cafeteria and a place where people sit in the evening. You wait there and I will come to you.'

'There are many things that we should know.'

'None of them necessary,'Johnny said drily. 'Do you sew, Miss Guttmann?'

A hollow, shy laugh. 'A little.'

'In the drawer of the room desk you will find the hotel's needles and cotton. All the labels on your clothes show them as made here or in Moscow, they must be removed and replaced.' Johnny handed her a small plastic bag filled with the identification of manufacturers in West Berlin and Frankfurt.

'Will we be searched?' The nervousness narrowed her lips.

'It's a precaution,' said Johnny.

The telephone rang from the hallway, called through the door of the darkened bedroom. An insistent, howling whine. It stripped the provocation and the tease from the face of the woman. It drew an obscenity from the man who drove his gloved fist into the softness of the mattress to lever himself better from her body. He rolled beside her, his face clouded in the shades of frustration. The telephone was a prior claim on him and he shrugged away her reaching arms, and strode naked and white-skinned to the door.

No sheet to cover her, Renate screamed at the broad back, 'Tell the bastards to go to hell… you said they would not call you on a Saturday..'

She watched him through the open door. The anger withered, the giggles rose. Her lover in profile at the telephone, thin and spindly legs, only the glove to clothe him. She shook with quiet laughter.

'Spitzer… I will come immediately… nobody is to talk to him… the SSD should be informed that I have taken personal charge of him… that is all.'

The telephone was slapped down. He made for the heap of clothes around the bedside chair, pulled on his underpants and vest.

'Aren't you going to finish…?'

No response. Preoccupation with the shirt buttons, with the trouser zip, with finding a missing sock.

'What's so important…?'

He laced his shoes, retrieved his knotted tie, slid his jacket from the back of the chair.

'When are you coming back…?'

' I will not be coming back tonight.'

'On a Saturday…?'

'A man has come to see me and I have waited 7 years for the meeting.'

She saw the excitement bright in his small blue eyes, and not for her.

She knew the language. Some poor swine shitting himself in an underground cell at Number 2, Halber- stadter Strasse. Sitting in a corner and shitting himself. And Spitzer would enjoy it, more than being with her on the big bed. And better at it too, better at terrifying a snivelling cretin in the cells than satisfying Renate.

As the front door slammed she buried her head in the pillow and pounded it with her fists.

Under the canopy of the petrol station on the edge of the Grunewald Park beside the Berlin approach road to the E6 autobahn, Charles Mawby and Adam Percy shaded themselves and waited.

They had arrived early for their rendezvous with Hermann Lentzer, but that was Mawby's way, he said. Never be late if you don't have to be, always give yourself time, easier on the nerves that way. They looked up the road, watched for the car that would come with Lentzer and the two men who would make the drive to Helmstedt.

'I've enjoyed Berlin, Adam, rather an exhilarating place I felt. More going on than I'd expected. You hear of it as a sort of ghost city, all the young people leaving. I thought it was rather lively.'

' I suppose I come too often to notice,' Percy said dourly.

' I'd like to bring the wife, I reckon she'd be fascinated… bit bloody expensive, have to keep her on a rein. Do you ever bring your wife, Adam?'

'My wife died three years ago, Mr Mawby.'

'God, I'm sorry… I'd forgotten.'

' I wouldn't have expected that to be remembered back at Century

…

I'll get some coffee from the machine. White and sugar?'

And they'd drunk the coffee and found a rubbish tin for the beakers, and Mawby had started to flick his fingers, and he'd looked at his watch, and paced out into the evening sunlight, and come back to Percy.

'A damn good holiday we're having. Joyce and I when this is over.

Reckon I'll have earned it. Taking the kids with us, of course. A package trip, but that's the only way you can afford to go these days, down to Greece. Where are you going, Adam?'

' I usually go up to a place near Hull, my sister's family. They put me up for a fortnight, they're very kind.'

' I've heard it's very nice there, Yorkshire, isn't it?'

'Seems to rain the fortnight I'm there.'

'Does it?… I hope this bloody man isn't going to cut it fine.' 'He was very exact with his timings, but from what he said, he's a bit adrift.'

'You stressed the importance of the schedule?'

'Of course, Mr Mawby… I'll get another coffee.'

And the concern grew and the worry was bred and the anxiety draped their faces. The pump attendant gazed with undisguised curiosity at the steadily increasing discomfiture of the two Englishmen who had come in their office suits to stand in his forecourt.

'He couldn't have misunderstood anything, Adam?'

'He had it all pat, Mr Mawby.'

'He's late, you know that?'

Percy looked down at his wrist. 'He's five minutes short of an hour late.'

'It's the centre of the whole damned thing, the car…'

' I know that, Mr Mawby. He's a greedy bugger, he'll be here.'

'Well, he'll get cut down to size when he comes.' Mawby's voice rose and he slapped against his legs the briefcase that contained the two passports of the Federal Republic.

'Would you like something more to drink?'

'Of course I bloody wouldn't…' Mawby strode away and stared again down the road, searching for a crimson BMW. Angry now, taut and stressed, stamping his feet as he walked. A little of panic, a little of temper.

Two hours after the time that Hermann Lentzer should have come, Percy went to a coin box telephone beside the cash desk. He was gone a short time. When he returned his face was pale, sheet white, and he faltered in his stride towards where Mawby was waiting.

'There was a contact number that Lentzer gave me. A woman answered

… she yelled at me, hysterical… some whore that he shacks up with when he's in Berlin. She said it was on the DDR radio that Hermann Lentzer was held this afternoon at Marienborn. Those bastards have got him…'

'Will he talk?' Mawby blurted.

'How the hell should I know?'

Petrol spilled from an overfilled tank. The attendant who held the nozzle did not notice. In fascination he watched the two Englishmen, toe to toe and yelling.

It was raining heavily but then it always did on the second Saturday in June, the day of the village fete. The chestnuts that separated the graveyard from the vicarage gardens dripped steadily on to the roof of the marquee. Only the sale of used clothes and cakes and the White Elephant stand were sheltered; the other stalls were all outside and braving the elements.

But the fete must go on. Without its fund raising the primary school would have no books, the church organ no maintenance, the steeple would have to wait for repair. In Wellington boots, waterproof trousers and his shooting anorak the Deputy-Under-Secretary understudied his wife on the Garden Produce and Plants table. He always left a number where he could be reached and that was why the surly daughter of the vicar came splashing across the quagmire lawn to find him.

There was despair on the Deputy-Under-Secretary's face when he came back and the water ran on his neck and stained his collar. 'I won't be able to go to Hodges's tonight. I'm sorry, dear.'

'Not the bloody office?' she commiserated.

' I shall have to go to Chequers.'

'What does he want?'

' I've requested the meeting. There's a bit of a mess…'

'They're a boring crowd at1 the Hodges', you always say we'll never go again…' she said irrelevantly.

'Darling, tonight I'd have given my eye teeth for a boring evening,' the Deputy-Under-Secretary said. He turned to accept a customer for the last of the potted fuchsias.

At the Campingplatz 'Alte Schmiede' in the woods outside Suplingen tents could be hired for the weekend, and sleeping bags. Just the one they used. Ulf and Jutte wriggling with laughter into the warm constriction of the bag, no clothes, no impediments. The tent was pitched slightly less than 12 miles from the Inner German Border and due east of Weferlingen. Before they had negotiated the constraints of the sleeping bag Jutte had several times asked Ulf how and where they would make their attempt. He would tell her in the morning, he had said… for now she was safe in his arms.

The cell door in the basement corridor crashed shut. As the officer in uniform beside him thrust the bolt across, Gunther Spitzer wiped a blood smear from the leather of his glove with his handkerchief.

'He will know now who he is with… in a little while when he has had time to frighten himself we shall start again.'

Chequers was no easy place to find at night. Far from any main road, outside the village of Great Kimble, a pin-head in the Chiltern Hills, 30 miles west of London. It had taken the Deputy-Under-Secretary more than three hours to negotiate the winding roads with only his taciturn personal guard for company.

An ugly building it was too. Ridiculous that this should be the best that the nation could provide for the Prime Minister's country retreat.

The official cars were parked in an orderly line in the courtyard at the back. The dull cigarette flares betrayed the chauffeurs who waited for the dinner to be finished, the guests to depart. The Deputy-Under-Secretary was shown to the Long Gallery and requested to wait.

Would he like a drink, a cigar, the day's newspapers?

He wanted nothing, only the ear of the Prime Minister.

The dinner party was continuing, the Prime Minister was hosting the Trade Delegation of the German Democratic Republic, and would come as soon as was convenient now that the Deputy-Under-Secretary had arrived. He smiled ruefully at the young man who had escorted him into the house. He was content to wait until it was suitable for the Prime Minister to leave his table. The great irony, the coincidence that could make him vomit… East Germans munching the food and swilling HMG's wine on the floor below and offering their dining room toasts of comradeship and friendship and co-operation. • and Mawby berserk beside a telephone in Berlin, and an agent loose in Magdeburg, and a mission triggered, and damn little but catastrophe in prospect.

The Prime Minister swept through the door. A brandy glass for an orb, a cigar for a sceptre. A little flushed, a little loud, a little overwhelming.

Saturday night, the night off, the night without crisis, and the Deputy-Under-Secretary recognised the inroads of the decanter and the bottle.

'What can I do for you, my friend?'

The Deputy-Under-Secretary sketched the news that had been relayed to him by Century House.

'What am I supposed to bloody well do?'

' I thought you should know the situation, sir, and I've been very frank.'

' I had a damned promise from you, Deputy-Under- Secretary. I remember your words, you told me risk had been eliminated… that's what you told me… it was a bloody lie…' And his eyes rolled and his brow furrowed, and he sought to concentrate his resentment.

'Everything you were told yesterday, sir, we believed at that time to be true.'

' I told you myself, I told you to cancel it. I gave that instruction.'

'And after deliberation with Cabinet Secretary you changed your mind, sir.'

'You're a crafty bugger, Deputy-Under-Secretary, you've trapped me.. You tricked me, you've landed me. I'm not afraid of taking responsibility for my decisions, but I damn well expect the briefings to be straight. I've the right to demand that.' The Prime Minister's anger was sudden.

'We have to face the fact, sir, that there can be repercussions. They will be questioning this man with whom we have dealt. We have to be prepared to deny their allegations. We may have to ride a bit of a storm.'

'The run can't be managed?'

'At this notice we don't have the paperwork capability. More important, if this man provides them with information then the pick-up zone is compromised.'

'You have to wind it all up… P'

'Yes.'

'And your man there, what happens to him?'

'He has to get clear… we have to hope that's possible. We'll not know till the morning the extent of the damage.'

'There's no way to salvage something… you can't pull anything back from it?'

'I'm afraid not, sir.'

'It's a damned shame. You know I'm really rather sorry. I think I'd started to root a bit for this freelance fellow of yours. Things are going to be horrid for him, I suppose.'

'That's fair comment.'

The Prime Minister shrugged, tried to focus his eyes on the Deputy-Under-Secretary. '… Are you sure you won't have a drink yourself?'

'Thank you, sir, no. I'm going back to London. I ought to be on the road

… I am desperately sorry, Prime Minister.'

'It's a damned shame.'

The fool doesn't understand, the Deputy-Under-Secretary thought.

Getting high, loosening his collar with the German Democratic Republic, sliding his feet under the table. But he would understand in the morning, and God help the Service then.

He left the Prime Minister to his cigar and his glass, an empty room and the unlit grate, left him ruminating behind closed eyes.

Time to run for London. Time to be in Communications, to be watching the telexes and reading the telephone transcripts.

The Deputy-Under-Secretary brooded in the back of his car while the bodyguard drove towards Century House.

What in Heaven's name had Mawby thought he was at? Six weeks he'd had to plan DIPPER, all the resources and finance he'd asked for. And it ended like this, in crawling apologies to his Prime Minister who was tipsy in the company of the opponents of the day. What a damned mess.. Where did the blame lie, at whose door? He had pushed Mawby hard, pushed him because that was the way to gain the best from an ambitious Assistant Secretary. Pushed him too far…? He remembered the caution that Mawby had shown in his office on the last night, at the final briefing.

The fiasco would lie on the desk of the

Deputy-Under-Secretary.

The Prime Minister had called it a damned shame. Not for Mawby, he would be shuffled, slotted into Agriculture and Fisheries or Social Services. A damned shame for the Deputy-Under-Secretary, and he'd called it the best show of the year.

'Family well…?'

'Very well, sir, thank you. The little girl's just starting school.'

' I don't suppose you see much of them.'

'Not too much, sir, no.'

Not the problem of the Deputy-Under-Secretary. He would see all he wanted of his wife and sons and his grand- children, all he wanted of his home in the country. He wondered whether the bodyguard would be allocated to his successor.

Under the lights that hung from poles that were intended to provide the Barleber See Cafeteria with the happy image of a holiday playground, Johnny saw Otto Guttmann and his daughter. Their clothes identified them to him. The only man in a suit, the only girl with a city raincoat over her shoulders. In the shadows, hidden by the perimeter darkness of the patio, Johnny circled them. Better to be safe, better to know if they had buckled in their resolution and gone to the Schutzpolizei. He was very thorough; the lavatories, the back of the bar where the bottle crates were stacked and where a man could hide, the trees around the cafe. He watched the faces of the campers who had come to talk and drink. He saw no surveillance, no watchers.

He strolled to their table and they managed an unobtrusive welcome.

Then Johnny went and queued at the bar and came back with two small beers and an orange juice for the Doctor.