The Contract

So, Willi talked and Spitzer listened. He talked of Geneva and the yacht on the lake, and the policeman thought of a dinner with the father of the friend of his mistress. He talked of England and the house in the hills, and the policeman thought of a message despatched the previous day to KGB Headquarters. He talked of Carter and Smithson and Pierce and George, and the policeman closed his eyes and swore softly and felt the chill and the trembling. He talked of a flight to Berlin and a train journey on the line that ran through Magdeburg, and the policeman's eyes were glazed in the fear for self-survival. He talked of a man that he knew only as Johnny who had been in this town for four days. It was a long story and it took many minutes in the telling. Often Willi repeated himself, and then he apologised and tried again to pick up the threads.

He talked of Checkpoint Alpha and the abandonment of the autobahn run.

'Where is your father now?' Spitzer broke his silence.

'He should be at the autobahn, with the man called Johnny Spitzer shuddered, then scribbled on a sheet of paper, fast, frantic. He thrust the paper at the officer, watched as the man snapped his notebook shut and hurried from the room.

'Why have you come to tell us this?'

'So that no blame shall attach to him, to speak in his defence. My father is not a traitor.'

'That is not for me to decide,' said Spitzer mildly.

'Anything he did he would have done only for the love of me. They have tortured him these last days. He is only an old man, not a criminal.'

'Willi, answer me this.' Spitzer chose his words with care. 'Your father you believe has gone tonight to the autobahn, but the collection has not taken place. What was to stop your father returning to his hotel, taking the aircraft tomorrow to Moscow? Who then would have known of the affair?'

'You would have known… this morning you arrested the man who has organised the car, that is what the British said. When he is questioned he will implicate my father, there will be no-one to speak for my father

Spitzer laughed, without sound, without mirth. The cold had come to the room, blanketed the flames of the gas fire.

'You should be proud of yourself, Willi,' Spitzer said. 'You have done your duty most adequately.' And the text of his report to Moscow pealed in his mind.

Faintly at first, in the distance, Johnny heard the choral song of the sirens, hurrying from the south, from Magdeburg. The fox that is aware of the baying of hounds, and he reacted, rising to his knee, seeming to sniff around him for confirmation of danger.

A swelling of noise and closing. He groped in the darkness and took the arm of Otto Guttmann. He felt the dragging at his anorak as Erica clawed with her fingers to find him. The fear of the hunted was shared.

No argument, no discussion. Father and daughter clung, one to each of Johnny's arms as they came from their hiding place and began to run back towards the camp of Barleber See. They swung off the road and onto the track and Otto Guttmann heaved and gasped for air, and Erica in her shoes tripped on the rough chipped stones, and Johnny looked back.

The cluster of blue lamps was nearer, the wail of the sirens grew. The Stechkin banged against his hip, the grenades danced in his pocket.

Johnny pulled them off the track, onto the grass and away behind the line of tents. He would set a cruel race and as he ran his mind was tugged to the alternatives open to him. Precious few, Johnny.

Where are you going, Johnny? Going west, west is the way to Cherry Road, west is the way back.

West is where the bloody minefields are, and the fences and the machine guns, right, Johnny? Right, darling, bullseye first time.

Are you going to ask the Doctor and his daughter if they fancy the glory ride with Johnny? Not now, later. Enough on the rubbish heap, without sifting for detail.

Perhaps they don't want to go, thought of that, Johnny? Thought of it and ducked it, they'll come.., with the sirens blasting in their ears, they'll come.

They're going to slow you down, they'll be lead on your back, and the order for difficulties was quit and run, remember that, Johnny? But a promise was made, that's the end of it. A bloody promise was made.

The old man tried to keep with them, heavy going and he wheezed and coughed. Johnny on one elbow, Erica on the other. The three of them careering through the trees, and all the time the sirens in the wind.

A wasp's nest disturbed by the gardener, that was the head- quarters, of the Schutzpolizei on Halberstadter Strasse at past two in the morning.

Lights erupting in the upper windows, desks manned, telephones busy.

There was no reason for Gunther Spitzer to doubt the scale of the catastrophe that had befallen him.

From the International Hotel he was told that the bed of Otto Guttmann was undisturbed, so was that of Erica Guttmann, so was that of a British tourist travelling under the name of John Dawson. His men were at the hotel now, swarming through the rooms, hectoring the staff.