The Contract

Right under his eyes they had been, right under the nose of Gunther Spitzer who had entertained the Doctor and his daughter to dinner. And the report he had transmitted to KGB would take pride of place in the ammunition aimed at the Schutzpolizeipresident.

The telexes went variously to the Ministry of State Security in Berlin, to the offices of SSD, to the duty desk clerk for the Red Army's military intelligence section at Zossen- Wunsdorf, to the home of the First Secretary of the Party at the privileged village of Wandlitz seven miles from the Berlin city boundaries, Fury, recrimination, abuse, burst like a monsoon over the second floor office of Gunther Spitzer. And in the eye of the storm would be the arrival of the men from Berlin, and what he had done to retrieve the disaster would be analysed and criticised because a head must be found for the block.

In a high whining scream he demanded greater efforts of his subordinates.

From his bed in the guest wing at Chequers, the Trade Minister of the German Democratic Republic was roused by the telephone. On the line was his country's ambassador to

Britain. A matter had arisen of great sensitivity and delicacy involving relations between the two countries, a matter that could not be communicated on an open line. The Minister should know that the ambassador was about to leave the Residence for the Embassy where the text was expected soon of a message from the First Secretary to the Prime Minister of Great Britain. The ambassador anticipated that he would be at Chequers before dawn.

The conversation had been monitored by the Duty Officer in the Chequers' switchboard. It was debated whether the Prime Minister should be woken.

'Frankly, if he's to be in the firing line in the morning and you'd seen him just before he turned in, you'd leave him in bed,' advised a civil service aide. 'He was well maggoted, and beauty sleep's going to be like gold dust for him.'

The interpreter at Chequers for the visit of the East German delegation had translated the tape recording of the telephone conversation. The Prime Minister was permitted to sleep on.

In Berlin Brigade a scrambler call had been patched through for Mawby to talk from the offices of Military Intelligence to Century House and the Deputy-Under-Secretary. They talked curtly, unemotionally of the night's events. Both men at that moment lived in a house of glass, neither would hurl rocks. Later it would be different, later the bitter inquest would begin. Mawby had said that there was no further business for him in Berlin, he would be returning to London in the morning. After the call he walked back across the floodlit parade area.

The Brigadier was waiting up for him. There was a champagne bottle in a silver bucket on the sideboard, a linen napkin draped across the neck. The Brigadier looked at Mawby's face, at the shamed eyes, at the pale cheeks. From the cupboard in the sideboard he took a decanter of whisky, poured two fingers, no water, no ice, handed a tumbler to Mawby.

'Was it that bad, Charles?'

'Worse than bad, it was bloody awful.'

'A fiasco?'

Mawby drained the glass, spluttered. A wisp of mischief crossed him.

'I'll tell you how bad it was. Ten years ago if this had happened it would have been a resignation job.'

'And now…?' The Brigadier refilled the glass.

' I can't afford to bloody resign. I'll just be kicked side- ways, I'll never have responsibility again. You asked if it was a fiasco… It is and it can get worse. It's all blown now, it's wide as the open sky, and we have a man in there. A train left 15 minutes ago from Magdeburg to Wolfsburg, if he's not on the train then he's locked inside. That's his only chance.

They're reporting in Signals down on the border that the whole bloody place is awake, there's heavy traffic on their police net. He's our man, and if picked up then… then… it's just a bloody disaster.'

They went to their bedrooms. In the morning the champagne bottle would be returned to the kitchen refrigerator, and Mawby would retrieve two green backed passports of the Federal Republic of Germany from the corner of his room where he had hurled them.

Johnny's flight took him through the camp site and the woods around it, and to Barleber See station.

A primitive place for vacationers and few else. There were no lights nor life nor activity. Five hundred yards away was the autobahn and racing cars and twice Johnny saw that signature of the police, the inanimate and travelling blue lamp.

In front of him was the fragmented pattern of the street lights of Barleber, more than a mile away. When the moon came he could see the far, flat horizon spread beyond the village. No trees, no cover, and he remembered how he had seen it when he had come back on the train on the first day. There were open fields between the railway and the village.

'We have to go on,'Johnny whispered.

'He can't, you can see that,' Erica hissed in his ear.

' If he has to be carried, so be it. We have to go on.'

'How far?'

' I don't know.'

'Where to?'