Chapter Twenty-two

It was the pressure of her hand over his mouth that woke him. The first sensation he knew was of the weight of her fingers on his lips. Even as his eyes functioned and his mind turned he had grasped at her wrist. He could not move her, not until he was awakened and aware, not until he saw the fingers of her other hand splayed in the warning for quiet. She pointed to the undergrowth in the direction of the path.

Johnny heard the voices. Low, casual, in conversation. The voices of young men. Erica was hunched above him and beside her a few feet from Johnny was her father, alerted, wrapped in the girl's coat. Dreadful, the old man looked to Johnny, his age accentuated by the lack of the razor, by the unbuttoned collar, by the hair that had not been tended. And Erica showed the haggard reward of a night without sleep. Stupid creature to have given her coat away and to have sat through the night in a skirt and a blouse and a light cardigan… bloody daft. The whole night standing guard over them, husbanding her strength to play sentry while the men slept. Shame caught at Johnny, he'd slept and he'd rested, and he had not thought of the girl.

The Border Guards would be working through the area. They'd be at the Hinterland fence and trying to track back along the route of the couple. There was no reason for them to search with great thoroughness.

One dead, one captured, and no trail beyond the Hinterland. And if they had dogs then the dew would have formed over the scent of Johnny's tracks and he had been scrupulous in his care for movement in the undergrowth.

The voices passed, not aroused, not interested. Erica's hand withdrew from Johnny's mouth. The Stechkin dug at the small of his back and he pulled it from his belt and laid it on the ground beside him.

'They'll be up and down the track for most of the morning, then it'll tail off…'

'My father is very hungry.'

Hungry and ill, Johnny thought, and at the limit of his resources; a passenger to be coddled.

'We can't move from here, not for hours… none of us.'

'Look at him…'

The old man met his gaze with a rare, fluttering smile, but that was bravery. Otto Guttmann sought and failed to conceal his helplessness.

Johnny's resolution sagged.

'Perhaps later I can go and look for some food… but it is a great risk.'

'We haven't the clothes to sleep like this, in the open…'

' I know.'

'But you will try?'

' If it is safe to do so I will try.'

'And tonight we go?'

'When it is dark.'

'What do we do for today?'

Johnny grinned, dredging a measure of cheerfulness. He would not allow them to play clock-watchers. Keep the morale alive, because Johnny must lead as they must follow, keep their limbs and minds active.

' I've a job for each of you…'

He saw their interest quicken. Johnny reached for the coil of rope that had been taken from the Trabant, passed it to Erica.

'… near to the wire is rough ground, about five metres across, then working backwards is the vehicle ditch.' With the flat of his hand he smoothed the earth beside him. With his finger he mapped the lines. 'I have to have at least two lengths of rope that will reach from the fence to the ditch. I want you to unravel the rope and make the lengths that I need from the strands.'

'And for me?' asked Otto Guttmann.

'Figures for you, Doctor…'

'Explain.'

'The Hinterland fence is one metre eighty-five high. At the top of it metal stanchions project at a forty-five degree angle and carry wires that we cannot disturb. I propose to put a small tree trunk over the wire and bind it to a cement holding post with the cables from the car engine. We will have two more poles and tie them together at the top so that they rest from our side of the fence against the post and clear the tension wires. It will be like a ladder, the struts will be simple to tie in position. From you I must know how long the poles will have to be if they are to avoid the wires.'

'That is very easy.'

'That's the plan… and bloody good luck to it.'

Like taking children to the seaside, finding something for them to do, designing a sandcastle and giving them a bucket and spade. Erica soon with a tangle of rope streamers on her knees. Otto Guttmann with a brightness on his face and a pen in his hand and an envelope on his lap. A diagram and a column of figures spreading over the paper.

'The projection of the stanchion, how long is it?'

'Fifteen centimetres…'

'You are an exact man.'

Johnny gazed at Otto Guttmann. 'A boy and a girl came to the wire last night. They failed at the first hurdle because they had no plan. One is dead, one is captured because they had no plan, they were not exact.

They believed that will alone was enough.'

'And it is not?'

' It is suicide.'

Otto Guttmann pocketed his pen. 'On our side of the fence the poles should be three metres and thirty-eight to the knot, so three metres and fifty is adequate overall. The pole on the far side that is tied to the post should be two metres and fifty-six… that is what you wanted to know?'

'Right.'

'You did not manufacture this plan after the autobahn… before, you thought of this?'

'Yes.'

'Because you never believed in the car?'

' I believe in nothing that I am not myself responsible for.'

'And when you talked to us, when you gave us the guarantees of safety, and you pleaded that there was no danger, did you then imagine that at the last we would go this way?'

'No… it was only myself.'

'And we are a hazard for your safe crossing of the border?'

Johnny saw the old man's composure, examined the lined and unshaven face, and the eyes that were alive and piercing. 'Without you it would be easier for me…'

'Why do you take us?'

' It was what they sent me for,' said Johnny quietly. 'It was the reason for coming… whatever happened to the car from Berlin that didn't alter the reason.'

Otto Guttmann persisted. 'Were we wise to trust you, to put faith in you?'

' I don't know…'

' I went to see a man in Magdeburg, my oldest friend, a pastor at the Dom… I am proud of my faith. We talked of a man called Brusewitz who burned himself to death to bear witness to the conditions of worship in the country of my birth. Brusewitz faced fire, what we have been asked to do is trifling in comparison with the sacrifice of that man.'

'To cross the fence is your protest?'

' It is the only protest that will affect them. When you have taken me across then that is what I will speak of… you know there are many ways in which they scourge our church. When they needed room for factories it was the churches in Leipzig and Potsdam that were destroyed to provide the ground. When they wished to widen the road into Rostock it was a church that was demolished. When 15,000 of our brother Catholics wanted to go for their annual pilgrimage and worship at the cathedral of Erfurt they were told the ceremonies were forbidden, on that day the square outside the cathedral was required for the performance of the Soviet State Circus… My gesture is a small one, but it will be noted.'

' It will be noted,' Johnny grinned. He took himself as a fly to the ceiling of the office of the Politburo on Berlin's Marx- Engels Platz, to the corridors of Defence Ministry in Moscow, to the laboratories at Padolsk. They'll go bloody mad, Doctor.

'Where will Willi be?'

'Near the border but perhaps today he has gone back to London.'

' It will be wonderful to see Willi. I will be an old man and cry and make a fool of myself.'

Johnny glanced across at Erica. She was looking at her father. Radiant, gentle, and proud. The love blossomed from her.

Later he would take the spade and hack down some birches for the cross-struts of his ladder and dig up some young larches for his main poles, later he would leave this private communion between father and daughter. Later because the guards who examined the Hinterland fence must be given their time.

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

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

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

Willi Guttmann heard the key turn in the door.

A mug of coffee was brought to him.

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

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

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

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

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

Carter was shown into Charlie Davies's office.

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

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

Carter looked at the walls and their huge mosaic of black and white photographs. Photographs of the fences, of the National Volks Armee at work, of the Border Guards, of patrol boats on the distant side of the Elbe river, of the SM 70 automatic gun, of the PMK 40 and PMP 71 mines, of watchtowers and earth bunkers, of jeeps and transport lorries, of the RPK drum magazine machine gun… photographs that covered three of the four walls. On the fourth wall, from ceiling to floor, was a map, 1 inch to the mile, with its covering and Chinagraph symbols, showing the border.

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

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

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

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

'The ones the bastards shoot

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

'Johnny…?' mouthed Carter.

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

'They shot the girl dead?'

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

'However you like it.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

'An SS officer designed them during the last war for use on the concentration camp fences, a way to reduce the number of guards required. They have a scatter range of about twenty-five metres, and they set them five metres apart. They're at different heights… face, balls and feet. Wicked buggers. This SS man was carted off to Russia after the surrender and they glossed them up there before this lot had the use of them. It's a charge of steel slivers, doesn't make a pretty sight afterwards..' As they pushed on the troops became used to the presence of Carter, and he concocted a tale that he was Foreign and Commonwealth Officer and had a day to spare from his visit to Bonn, and wasn't everything most interesting, and Mr Davies was doing him a real favour by letting him come along.

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

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

A patter of anecdotes and information.

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

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

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

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

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

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

'What attracted him?'

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

'And the negative…?'

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

Carter gazed through the mesh into the scrub beyond.

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

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

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

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

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

' I'll have to be here tonight…'

' I'll bring you up, can't have you running around here on your own,'

Charlie Davies said brusquely. 'But you'll have to appreciate one thing.

Till he gets to where we're standing now there's nothing we can do to help him. Whatever happens out there, nothing…'

The morning had passed. The patrol expressed their gratitude. Davies and his driver dropped Carter at the Stettiner Hof. They agreed a rendezvous time for the evening.

The Trade Minister maintained a granite faced faqade of interest as he walked with a covey of managers and shop stewards between the aisles of carburettor engines. His attention was far from the production figures and output quotas for the machinery it was hoped his government would buy. Before leaving the Midlands he had spoken to the First Secretary by telephone.

The new men, he had concluded, were a weaker and poorer breed than those of the Old Guard with whom he had come from Moscow on the last day of April, 1945, to set up the fledgeling civilian administration at Frankfurt-an- der-Oder behind the rolling advance of the Red Army.

Pieck and Grotewohl and Ulbricht would have known their minds, accepted his advice that he should return to Berlin immediately in the face of the criminal violation of the DDR's sovereign territory. But the new men were cautious, subservient. When there was a prisoner, when the net had trapped the fugitive, then he should cut short his visit.

But he believed that he had noted in his conversation with the First Secretary a growing impatience in the offices of the Central Committee at the inability of the forces of the SSD and the Schutzpolizei to track their quarry.

Doctor Frommholtz marched at the head of his entourage towards the canteen.

The Deputy-Under-Secretary was shown into the Prime Minister's private office. He had requested a meeting at Downing Street within minutes of having received a digest of Henry Carter's communication with Century House. He had been told that the Prime Minister was holding back on a scheduled meeting.

'Thank you for making yourself available at such short notice, sir.'

The Prime Minister stared at him, fascinated by the wreckage of a proud man. 'Please take a seat.'

' I'd prefer to stand and I'll be brief. We have reason to believe that the DIPPER matter will be concluded during the hours of tonight. One way or the other. We think that our man will attempt to break out of the DDR, to cross the frontier into the Federal Republic.'

The Prime Minister shuddered. He had been told before he arrived at Downing Street that many of his predecessors had found the workings and mechanics of the Service to be a narcotic. 'Are you in contact with him?'

'The prognostication is based on contingency plans made before his departure for East Germany.'

A slight smile from the Prime Minister. 'So, you're going to wave a magic wand, Deputy-Under-Secretary, cover the silk hat with a handkerchief, and then, hey presto, you're going to produce the agent safe and well and we're all to fall down before you and exclaim that the Service is the finest in the world.'

' I thought you'd want to know, sir.'

' It will be no credit to the Service if we get out of this without disgrace. It will be because of my efforts with the East Germans.'

' If we get out of this,' said the Deputy-Under-Secretary icily, 'it will be because my man successfully crosses the Inner German Border.'

'What about Guttmann? Have you written him off?' 'With the border in its present security state, we accept it is inconceivable that Dr Guttmann can accompany our man.'

' I must say, the Service's finest hour.'

' I drafted my letter of resignation at lunch-time. It will be with PUS in the morning. I've asked for it to be effective from midnight tomorrow.

Goodbye, sir.'

He had made more noise approaching the hide than he would have liked, but the poles were heavy and he lugged them with difficulty through the undergrowth. He would have left a trail, but it was close to dusk. Three larch poles, strong and straight, and an armful of young birch stems.

They sat with their arms around each other on the ground as Johnny broke cover, and their faces shone with relief at the sight of him. They would have been fearful at the sound of his approach, praying it was Johnny.

His admiration swelled tor them.

'Everything's fine. Just as we wanted.'

Otto Guttmann stared in disbelief at the larch poles, noted that the ends were neatly axe chopped into tapering, sharpened points.

Johnny grinned. 'A woodman gave them to me…'

'Gave them?'

' I think he did. He left me a nice pile to choose from…'

He saw the tension evaporating, the slow smile of understanding.

'… If he didn't mean them as a gift, he can have them back in the morning.'

The old man laughed, and the girl chuckled.

Johnny felt in his anorak pocket, reached amongst the grenades and the pistol's shoulder stock, and produced a greaseproof paper bag. 'He's a decent chap, the woodman, he gave me these for you… well, he left them for someone when he put his bag down. I scattered the paper and ripped it a bit, the bag they were in… I suppose he'll think he gave them to a fox… generous of him, whether they were for me or a fox or whoever.'

He tossed the package in a gentle arc so that it fell on Erica's lap. Her hands tore at the paper, exposed the rough bread, the protruding meat. She and her father ate ravenously, stopping only to pick at the dropped pieces that spilled to their legs.

Erica looked up sharply at him. 'You have had something, Johnny?'

'He gave me a steak… and some onion rings…'

She sprang to her feet, came fast at Johnny, clasped the sides of his head with her hands, kissed him on the lips. Cold, dry and cracked. Johnny blinked. As fast as she had come she was back on the ground, back beside her father.

Johnny grimaced. 'If that happened more often I'd come here every year.'

Otto Guttmann beamed. Erica dropped her eyes.,

'We have much to thank you for,' the old man said through a mouth full of food.

'Keep the thanks for tomorrow.'

Keep the bloody thanks for tomorrow. For after the Hinterland fence and the vehicle ditch and the ploughed strip, for after the wire that was 3

1/2 metres high. Keep the thanks for tomorrow.

' I'm sorry, I didn't mean that,' said Johnny.

'What do we do now?' Erica asked.

'We have to build the ladder, before it's dark.'

On their hands and knees, as the daylight ran from the woods, they fashioned the ladder from the wire flex and the birch stems and the larch poles.

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