The Contract

Chapter Twenty

An insipid little car it seemed to Johnny. An impoverished creature with an underpowered engine, a slipping clutch and mushy steering. His foot was hard down on the accelerator, and the needle on the dial in front of him flickered optimistically towards the figure of 90. Kilometres, Johnny, 50 miles an hour that's the maximum you'll beat out of her, and she's straining like a donkey. A pathetic bloody car, and the two doors that were loosely fastened rattled on the poor road surface. Check the dial with the engine temperature, Johnny, check the fuel gauge, and check the forward mirror. Always back to the mirror. And it's left hand driving, Johnny, and it's four years since you've done that. Check, check, check, Johnny, and pray God the road stays clear behind.

Difficult to see the Trabant saloon as the supreme success symbol of a citizen of Barleber village. Would have been the star of his life, and perhaps that was why it was parked outside the front door of the house and not garaged behind the back fence where it would have been unseen.

A bloody good thing that it had been at the front, because that was where Johnny had found it. Not a car you'd drive down Cherry Road for a boast.

Don't knock it, Johnny, it's taking you clear of Magdeburg.

Erica's hair pin had opened the door for Johnny. From under the drawn curtains and upper windows of the house he had silently pushed the car a hundred yards away down the road. Then the pin again, inserted into the slot of the ignition and the engine had spluttered long-sufferingly. Otto Guttmann had been given the back seat and been told to lie down as best he could across it so that only two occupants would show. Erica beside Johnny and holding through the open window a white handkerchief.

That was the justification for haste at this early hour. A medical emergency. A young man driving a young girl, and any who saw the speed- ing car would think only of a person in pain, a person in need of help.

They might have had time, Johnny believed, to block the main roads, but not the secondary routes. The red ribbons on his map he avoided, and also the yellow marked roads where possible until he was forced into the town of Haldens- leben. Small and deserted on a Sunday morning.

Comrade Honecker leered from the hoarding outside the FDGB building. Once Johnny chuckled grimly to himself as a racing green and white car of the polizei hurtled by him heading towards Magdeburg.

Calling reinforcements to the city. So far so good, Johnny.

It was a pretty road out of Haldensleben, winding through woods and curling on slight hills.

There was no talk in the car, no attempt at conversation, because the Stechkin rested on the seat under Johnny's thigh. He had taken the gun from his waist as he had first driven away, tried it on his lap and it had slipped, decided against asking Erica to hold it. The gun maimed his passengers' confidence, slipped them into silence. And if Johnny knew it, then so could Erica and her father realise that each time they swept round a blind corner then that might be the place where the block was in position.

Strangely calm, Johnny felt, as if he had found fulfilment, as if at last he approached some personal summit. Onto the crucial steep slope, and the mountain high, high above him. Through Suplingen, through Ivenrode, and the light haze was creeping on them and the headlights could be cut and the need for more speed from the car because they had lost the shelter of roadside trees for wide fields. One more wood and that would be the limit of the Trabant's usefulness.

The hamlet of Bischofswald was hardly more than a collection of high, brick farm buildings beside a railway station. A small private place.

Home for half a dozen families who would work a Landwirtshaftliche Produktiongenossens… collective farm to you, Johnny… what a bloody mouthful. Six hundred hectares of potato and beet, and a small patch beside each house that could be called the peasant farmer's own, for growing the vegetables that he could take to the market to pay for his luxuries, for his soap and his meat and his wife's best dress… Steady, Johnny, dreaming. More trees, more woods. He looked at the dashboard, at the kilometre figures, snapped out his sums and subtractions. Far enough for the car, far enough for pushing their luck.

He swung the Trabant off to the right and bounced it on full power across the giving compost of the forest floor. Away between the trees until he saw the hollow a hundred metres from the tarmacadam. Otto Guttmann out, Erica out. Johnny plunged the car down, braced himself against the wheel for the last bruising impact. He slid the Stechkin into his waist, slammed the door shut behind him, and ignored the other two as he set about his work. Into the boot by pulling forward the rear seat. It was a chance and he was rewarded; many cars that travelled the north German plain carried a spade that could be used in winter to dig snow from behind the wheels. He tossed it without comment to Erica. There was a towing rope, and that too he took. Next to the bonnet which he lifted and then he began to rip systematically at every foot of wire and cable that he could reach. From the trunk of a birch tree he tore small, leafy branches and methodically brushed at the tyre imprints.

Johnny walked back a few yards towards the road then looked again at the place where the car rested. Not good, not bad, the best that he could manage.

'All on foot from here. I reckon we're eight miles from the border, and that means five miles from the Restricted Zone. We start quick and we get slower as we come close, slower and more careful. I want to get into the Restricted Zone at dusk, be near to the Hinterland fence by the time we rest…'

'What is the Hinterland fence?' asked Otto Guttmann. An out of place animal, he seemed, bristle coming to his drawn cheeks, tie slewed sideways, suit crumpled.

'Five hundred yards from the border there's an electrified fence, that's the Hinterland.'

'You can take us through an electric fence?' A spark of awe from Erica.

'… Or under it, or over it. It runs damn near the whole length of the sector. We have to cross it if we are to get to the frontier.'

'What is at the frontier?'

'When we get there, when we're near it, that's the time to talk about the frontier.'

Erica persisted. 'Have we done well so far, Johnny?'

'We've done well, and it's all still in front of us. You've seen nothing yet, just a few lamps and sirens…'

They started to walk. Johnny took his bearings from the gathering sunlight. The same procedure as before. Erica on one side, Johnny on the other, husbanding the strength of Otto Guttmann.

'Why do you do this for us?' the old man asked.

'It's my job.'

'I say again, why. 3'

'It's the job I was given…'Johnny said. 'A contract I was given…'

'By people who were not worthy of you, who did not provide the car.

Why not abandon us, make good your own escape?'

His voice was close to Johnny's ear, and his tone was gentle in age, persuasive in pitch. No witnesses, no tape recorders, nothing to recall and keep in perpetual memory what Johnny might say. No justification for a further lie.

'I have to do it, Doctor, it's a way back for me. It shakes off my past.

You know in battle, in combat, some men go far up the road towards their enemy and get medals for courage, most of them go that far so as not to be called cowards…'

'We would never accuse you of cowardice,' Otto Guttmann said quietly.

'We shouldn't talk any more,' clipped Johnny. 'The sound carries a long way. We make enough noise already.'

They had started at a brisk pace. Johnny had no complaint.

In the Long Gallery at Chequers where the previous evening he had heard of the breakdown of the DIPPER plan, the Prime Minister played host to Oskar Frommholtz, Trade Minister and Politburo member of the German Democratic Republic. The two men were alone with the Downing Street interpreter.

The Prime Minister had showered, had then taken breakfast in his room, had telephoned the Deputy-Under- Secretary for the latest reports.

He was told of the flight of Willi Guttmann. He knew that the Magdeburg police radio had broadcast descriptions of a British passport holder travelling under the name of John Dawson, and of Doctor Otto Guttmann and his daughter, Erica. He knew that checkpoint searches at Marienborn had reduced motor traffic on the Berlin road corridor to a trickle. He was given a brief outline of the East German manhunt to draw in the tatters of the mission.

So the meeting demanded of him now by the Trade Minister was the first of the crisis that would break about his shoulders. And crisis it was, he had no illusions. Much greater than the dismemberment of the adolescent relations between the United Kingdom and the German Democratic Republic. That could be coped with, managed. That was inconsequential to the wider crisis. The damnable incompetence of those people over in Germany would involve him in the recrimination of the Chancellor in Bonn. The Federal Republic was involved because DIPPER had launched from their territory, utilised their nationals, avoided the channels of co-operation. A wretched business the whole damned thing. There would be reverberations in Washington, they were always fast enough to raise questions of the efficiency of their British cousins when an intelligence mission was bungled. If the European newspapers sniffed at the scandal of a botched operation and printed, then the domestic protection of the D notice was invalidated, and the story of failure would slither into the British media. The escape of Willi Guttmann was the final straw. God, how could they have been so stupid?

Stupid and arrogant.

Questions in the House would follow that he would have to evade and sidestep, queries as to his control over the mechanics of government.

There would be a great communal titter. Eisenhower had faced it, he had been confronted with a downed spy plane and a pilot who talked freely in Lubianka gaol. The President of the United States had the name of Gary Powers scratched on his heart, he'd survived. He'd weathered the cyclone… But, God, he'd suffered in the process of the sweeping up of the pieces.

With disaster closing around him the Prime Minister reverted to his most basic talent. He was a good fighter, they said in the party, and not too clean at close quarters. He would kick and hack and scratch, and he reckoned that as his sole possibility of defence.

The Prime Minister poured coffee, added cream and milk, and beamed pleasantly at the cold, hostile face of the Trade Minister.

' I hope we can get whatever it is you wanted to say out of the way quickly. I've about 15 minutes… you'd like some coffee… I have to go to church… what can I do for you?'

' I have been instructed by my First Secretary to deliver a Note of protest… a Note of the most serious protest…'

The Prime Minister passed the cup of full coffee. 'They take it rather badly when I'm not at Morning Service, I read the second Lesson.'

'… on a matter that gravely affects the relations between our two countries…'

'You take sugar… do go on, I'm listening.'

' I have been instructed to protest most vigorously at the criminal intrusion into the sovereign territory of the DDR by British espionage agents.'

The Prime Minister waited sentence by sentence for the interpreter.

' I have been working particularly hard for the improvement of relations between our two peoples, not their deterioration.'

'We regard it as an insult that at this moment when I am here on a mission of friendship that British saboteurs should be at work inside our frontiers.'

' I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about. The fact that you are my guest here, at Chequers, should be an indication of the importance that we attach to your visit to our country. This nonsense about saboteurs… come to the point, please.'

In front of the Trade Minister the coffee cup remained untouched. One of the old iron men, this one. The advocate of the erection of the Wall dividing Berlin. The opponent of the amnesty for political prisoners at the 30th anniversary of the State. The Prime Minister found himself fascinated by the peculiarity of the East German's hair, a pale powder grey and extraordinary how it stood upright with the firmness of a garden brush.

'We have thorough proof provided by a boy named Willi Guttmann, who from his love of the socialist principle came across the Inner German Border last night, of British machinations against our people.

Evidence of a criminal plot to kidnap this boy's father from our territory.'

'Preposterous, Trade Minister… I've seen the name of that boy somewhere, I think I can recall that name,' the Prime Minister said easily. 'He defected to us in Geneva… A silly young chap, infatuated with an English secretary and wanted to build a love nest for her. Then she found she wasn't pregnant after all and threw him over. I hope that before you start bandying around these allegations you've better evidence than that.'

'Within the next two days the television service of the DDR will broadcast these allegations. Willi Guttmann will be produced to tell his story so that the peoples of freedom loving nations may appreciate the criminal behaviour of your agents.'

' I've seldom heard such rubbish. What was he going to do with this scientist, sling him on his shoulder and jump that fence of yours? I find it most distressing that your government should stoop to such smears and untruths…' The Prime Minister turned to the interpreter. 'The strongest words you've got, Rodgers, I don't want any prissiness.'

'Last night…' the Trade Minister snapped his reply to the interpreter.

'Last night a spy who came to the city of Magdeburg under the name of John Dawson intended to kidnap Doctor Otto Guttmann, a most eminent scientist, and to smuggle him illegally beyond our borders.'

'You should pass to the First Secretary my advice that he should be most careful of the weight he attaches to the gossip of this Guttmann boy

…'

'We have incontrovertible evidence.'

'When you are my guest, Trade Minister, do me the goodness of hearing me out. It would be most unfortunate if the ramblings of a jilted youth were permitted to sour British and East German co-operation. I would not welcome anything that jeopardised the good relations between our countries, certainly not a concocted story like this. Where is this British agent, this saboteur?'

' In a few hours he will have been arrested.'

'So the evidence is quite unsubstantiated?'

'To us the evidence is satisfactory.'

'To me it sounds ridiculous. I would like you to stress to the First Secretary my total commitment to the bettering of understanding between your country and ours. From the hospitality shown to you here you will have seen for yourself the value we have put on your visit. Are you forgetting that because of a youth's hysteria, I hardly think so…

You haven't touched your coffee…'

'Thank you… I must return to London.'

'You're due in the Midlands tomorrow, the Lucas and British Leyland factories.'

' If I have not been recalled to Berlin.'

'That would be a very great disappointment to the people who have tried to make you feel most welcome here.'

' I must consult with the First Secretary.'

'My advice is that he should not be precipitate in his actions. Assure him, please, that should he provide concrete evidence of the presence of a British agent in the German Democratic Republic, evidence incontrovertibly proved by his arrest, then a most far reaching enquiry will be instituted into the behaviour of our Services. The First Secretary has my word that I know nothing of this matter.'

' I have no doubts that such evidence will be produced.'

'My warmest regards to the First Secretary.'

'Thank you.'

After the withdrawal of the Trade Minister and the interpreter, the Prime Minister reached for the coffee.

He pondered to himself. He had come to the cul-de-sac after all and he was linked with the Service. All that he had feared and sought to avoid had happened, and he was hamstrung in the web that the Service wove.

The same web that had caught Anthony Eden on the affair of Commander Crabbe. The same web that had dictated the bland denials from Harold Macmillan that Harold Adrian Russell Philby was a lifelong traitor. The head of government could not dissociate himself from his Intelligence establishment. He had bought himself a little time, and had not yet counted the cost of the purchase. The Trade Minister's scarcely civil departure had indicated that the message would be relayed to the First Secretary, it was possible the advice might be accepted.

Now he must await a miracle. The freelancer that he had been told of, a man called Johnny Donoghue, must bring an elderly scientist and his daughter through this impenetrable border. A border that was sealed tight, the Deputy-Under- Secretary had told him, a border that was festooned with automatic guns and minefields. That alone could save him from the humiliation of involvement in the DIPPER failure.

He drank his coffee. All a question of faith, he supposed. And in the matter of political miracles he regarded himself as an agnostic. Beyond possibility to believe the freelancer would offer salvation.

His wife came into the room, two Prayer Books and a Bible in her hand.

'We really must hurry, darling.'

' I suppose so,' said the Prime Minister. 'I'm not feeling terribly like church.'

Carter came out of the communications wing at the Roadhaus. All despondency and gloom in London, all waiting for the Berlin team to come trooping back for the inquest of the afternoon. He was told that the name of John Dawson had been heard on the Magdeburg police radio.

He'd be sitting on his hands and hoping that the dust would have settled before he, too, received his travel orders.

He walked across the car park to the NAAFI bar. Yes, he was on duty.

No, there was no harm in a couple of beers. Sunday lunchtime, wasn't it?

'Morning, Mr Carter,' a big cheerful welcome. 'Christ, you look as. if it was a hard old night. Come for the hair of the dog, have you?'

Charlie Davies of the British Frontier Service leaned easily against the bar.

'Good morning, Mr Davies.'

'Found myself short of fags, so I popped in for some. Cheapest ones you can get here, cheaper than duty free at the airport, that's what I told the wife.'

'Yes, it was a bit of a rough night

Charlie Davies called for two beers.

'Going back soon, are you?'

' I don't know… I mean nobody's told me. They can run the shop well enough without the likes of me.' Carter smiled ruefully. ' If I was here six months they wouldn't notice back there.'

The warm grin slipped from Davies's face. 'There's a fair old flap over the other side,' he said dropping his voice. ' I was talking to a BGS fellow

… they're tearing the cars apart at the checkpoint, there's a mile's tail-back at Marienborn. Good job it's Sunday, be right chaos if the lorries were on the road as well. It's said the security on the autobahn is really fierce…'

' I know,' said Carter. As a seeming afterthought, he added, 'Would you care to take a breath of fresh air with me, Mr Davies?'

The NAAFI manager had recently laid out a rough putting course beside the drive way. An RAF sergeant and his wife and small daughter were coaxing a ball down the green. Out of earshot of Carter's low and hesitant voice.

'You'll forgive me for what's going to sound a pretty daft question, Mr Davies…' Carter stared down at the thick tufted grass. 'But what's the chances of a chap making it out right now?'

'Depends who he is, what he knows.'

'Resourceful, thirtyish, fit physically… I don't know how much he knows.'

Davies looked at his companion with a strand of sympathy. 'Your lad over there, is he? Is that what's stirring them up?'

'Could be,' said Carter.

'He's about five foot ten…?'

Carter gazed into Davies's face.

'… dark brown hair, a blood spot on the right side of his nose.'

'Something like that.'

'Calls himself Johnny, doesn't bother with the last name. Accent a bit north country.'

'He was here?'

'A week ago,' said Charlie Davies carefully. 'He had two days here

… came out with us in daylight and kept us talking half the night.'

Two missing days, Johnny wanted to brush up on his German. Clever, thoughtful Johnny. Come to the border to find the experts, the men who know. Slipped into place. Johnny buying his own insurance, Johnny taking his own precautions. Johnny disbelieving all the bromide that Mawby and Carter poured down his throat at Holmbury.

' It's Johnny that I'm waiting for,' said Carter. One turn round the course completed. The sergeant's daughter squealed with delight nearby.

'What was the question again, Mr Carter?'

'The chance of him making it…'

'On his own, is he?'

' I don't know.'

Davies considered. 'He spent the whole of his second morning in one sector, he seemed satisfied enough with what he saw. He's not a lad that talks much, is he?'

' If he was coming he would have started early this morning, but not in circumstances of his choosing, you know what I mean?'

' If he made it to the fence, when would he be over… that's what you're asking?'

'Yes.'

'We talked about that. I said to him that most of the people that get across have lain up for a full 24 hours in the immediate area, soaked up the patrol patterns, that sort of thing.'

'And so…'

' If he followed that he wouldn't come tonight. It would be Monday night that he was giving it a go.'

Carter sighed, breathed the air that now carried the faint moisture of hope. 'What was the sector that he looked at?'

'He seemed to like a piece of what we call the Roteriede forest, just about opposite the village of Walbeck on their side… I'll run you out there tomorrow morning.'

'Thank you.'

'We all thought him a hell of a nice bloke. He came back to my place and had a meal with the family, got everybody laughing. He knows all there is that's important about the last few yards, but what you see from our side isn't the half of it. You know that, don't you…?'

'What time shall I come in the morning?'

'Try about 10. I'll have cleared the post, we'll take a coffee and then run out there.'

'You never answered my question,' Carter said in mild reproach. 'His chances?'

'And you didn't answer mine, Mr Carter, whether he's on his own..

I'll put it this way, if he hadn't been here this week then I'd say Sweet Fanny for his chances. He soaked everything we could give him on the border, and he'll need that and the rest. If he's passengers in tow, and they're not of the same quality… well, then it's obvious, isn't it?'

Carter nodded morosely.

' I'm out of turn, Mr Carter, but it's a bit queer to me, the whole business. You in Helmstedt, Johnny over there, and you not knowing your lad was here this week casing the place… I'll tell you what he said.

Nobody had spent five minutes working out how he was going to run for home if whatever he was up to slipped… I knew he was going over, he said as much. He reckoned you'd left him bare arsed, that's why he came to see us.'

'As you said, Mr Davies' out of turn… I'll see you in the morning.'

Carter felt like an old man as he walked to the Stettiner Hof and the bed that he had missed last night. An irrelevance on the pavement as the procession marched by. He had no power of intervention, could do nothing to affect the fate of Johnny. Run fast, Dipper, run deep. He remembered the rifle that he had seen in the hands of the guard beside the river, the height of the wire and the automatic guns that had gleamed in the early morning light. And Charlie Davies said that wasn't the half of it.

Willi Guttmann had been taken from Gunther Spitzer's office.

He sat now in a hare walled ante-room with a man who watched him in silence, who wore thick lensed spectacles close to his face, and who had not removed his raincoat. Through the morning he had talked with many people, teams from SSD and Soviet Military Intelligence and KGB had come from the East German capital to interrogate him. His run from Checkpoint Alpha seemed not to impress them. When he asked about his father the questions were ignored. They were interested only in Holmbury, the men he had talked to there, and the limits on information of Padolsk that he had given to the British.

If they had not reunited him with his father, if they had not told of Otto Guttmann's arrest, then that could mean one thing only. His father and Erica and Johnny were running, running blind and hard for safety.

He ate his lunch from a steel tray, stringy meat and boiled cabbage. His father's survival from capture lay in the hands of Johnny. He remembered Johnny at Holmbury, quiet and reflective and sitting in a chair behind him as Carter questioned. Johnny who laughed rarely and distanced himself from the others. He remembered when he had looked down from his bedroom window high in the house, down on to the patio and watched the evening work-out, the strengthening of legs and shoulders and stomach. He heard again the pounding of the boots.

And he had betrayed Johnny, he had spoken of him to the men from Berlin, and Johnny alone could take his father and Erica beyond the reach of their punishment.

Willi pushed the tray with the half emptied plate away from him. The man who sat across the table said nothing and Willi dropped his head into his hands.

Gunther Spitzer had been sent home for the night because men of greater seniority had taken over the organisation of the hunt for the scientist, his daughter and the agent of British Intelligence. A stranger had sat in the chair behind his desk and given orders to his staff, newcomers had handled his telephone. They came and went through his door without acknowledgement.

When he reached his flat the tiredness and self-pity and frustration broke over Renate. She was the only target within reach.

She lay on their bed and her moaning, whimpering, trebled in his ears as he stayed hunched in the chair across the room from her. The blood from the cut below her right eye seeped to the pillow covers. The bruises spread in technicolour at her throat.

He had screamed at her with an anger she had never seen before.

'You must have known… You told me nothing… you were her friend.

She would speak to you, you must have known… You made me pay for their dinner, you made me bow and scrape to him as if he were a great man, you must have known… Bitch, bitch, and you have destroyed me..'

And through the accusations he had punched and pummelled her. She had not fought back, just cowered and used her arms to protect herself from the agonies inflicted by the gloved hand.

'She didn't tell me anything… I promise… she said nothing, Gunther.'

A small, low, choking voice.

During the day the trains to the West were searched with great thoroughness. All stopped at the Marienborn junction where the lines were enclosed by high wire. Border Guards with machine guns flanking the carriages, eight man teams climbing aboard with torches and rods for poking into the narrow recesses of the roof, with ladders and a painstaking commitment to the task. The delays grew, the trains ran late.

The tracker dogs brought from Magdeburg found the place of crushed and trampled grass beside the approach road to the autobahn, but lost the scent on the roadway and sat sadly at the handlers' knees. New orders came for widening the hunt.

It was seven hours between the time that the schoolmaster of Barleber reported the theft of his Trabant car to the Volkspolizei Kreisamt and the arrival of that information on the desks of the men who had come from Interior Ministry.

And the trail grew cold.

There were no grounds for panic amongst the men who directed the manhunt. No reason for anxiety. Let the Englishman and his followers run and blunder in the countryside. They must come to the border, they must flee in that direction. There they would be taken. Inevitable. They would be driven towards the frontier, the fence and the guards.

From the Battalion headquarters at Seggerde the instruction was broadcast to the companies at Lockstedt and Dohren and Weferlingen and Walbeck that special vigilance must be maintained. At Walbeck Heini Schalke listened to his Politoffizier's briefing. The bright new stripe on his tunic arm ensured his concentration.

The river was behind them, but the chill of the water he had waded through clung to Johnny's legs, and his shoulders ached from the weight of the piggy-back rides he had given to Otto Guttmann and Erica. Two journeys with his boots sliding on the mud bed, groping for firm stones.

Up to his waist in cold, filthy water, and perhaps a small sewer emptied into the river. He stank when they were over, and there was no time to dry himself properly. He had tried to wipe himself down with a handkerchief that became a sodden mess, he had dropped his trousers to his ankles and wrung them, he had chafed his legs for warmth. The Doctor and Erica had watched him in exhausted silence.

And then they had gone on, headed west with the Aller forded.

By hugging the woods, avoiding the roads, skirting the warning signs that forbade entry without the precious permit paper, going on tip-toe past a pair of Border Guards who smoked and talked, Johnny led Otto Guttmann and Erica into the Restricted Zone.

Where once the trees had been felled, where there now grew dense and sprouting undergrowth, he called a stop. All of their nerves twisted by the long and escalating risk of discovery. Time for a halt, time for the bivouac: No blankets, no food, no drink. Nothing but the chance for rest.

Under the canopy of the forest the evening came quickly, slanting the shadows, tricking the eyes.

They sagged down onto the ground. Erica tended her father, mopped the damp from his forehead, loosened his collar, eased off his shoes. The old man was white faced, frighteningly so, his breathing was ragged and the failing light played at the cavities of his eyes, the hollows of his cheeks.

Food, Johnny, the poor beggar needs food. And only Johnny could make the decision as to whether to forage for Otto Guttmann. He shouild never have brought them with him… but Johnny had made a promise, and a promise was as binding as a contract…

The sound of the voices swept the thought from his mind.

Furtive voices. Those of a boy and a girl. There was the crack of a broken branch, there was the snapping of a broken frond. Johnny's finger went to his mouth, the urgent plea for total quiet. Who else would come to this bloody, forbidden place at this time? Johnny eased the Stechkin from his trouser waist, checked that it was cocked, saw the lie of the safety catch. Who else would come to the bloody killing zone?

Johnny gestured to Erica that she should stay still. With the sureness of a stalking cat he was gone from her sight.