The Contract

Footsteps across the ploughed strip, and the follow-up of lights and searches and dogs. New patrols to follow, intensified activity as the Border Guards tried to claw away from their failure. If these two went over then every man in the Walbeck company would be out at night for a week. That was the procedure, that was what he had been told. They seal it tight once there's a breakout, never the same place twice.

If they go over then you're broken, Johnny.

If they go over, Johnny has to up sticks and head on down the fence to where it's quieter, to where the panic button's been left unpushed. Otto Guttmann could not withstand another cross-country hike. A forced march and a day without food, that's the final limit. What to do, Johnny?

What to do with a tricky little obstacle in the way of Mawby's plan, and Henry Carter's hopes? What does the training tell you? You blast them out of the bloody way. But they're just kids, kids that Smithson would want to kiss for their courage, and they've the same right to slip the fence as you have, Johnny. That's morality, that's logic, that's for outside the Restricted Zone. You couldn't do it, Johnny. Not to a girl who wants a purse full of Deutsche marks and a walk down Jungfernsteig in Hamburg city centre. Not to a boy who has the idea that freedom is a flat that he's saved for and furniture he can afford. You couldn't do it, not follow them to the Hinterland fence. Not take a stick and throw it against the Hinterland fence, activate the alarms, home in the patrols, guide the guns. If they caught them on the Hinterland then the patrolling the next night would be at normal strength, right for Johnny and Otto Guttmann and Erica. .. you just couldn't do it.

No one to ask. No one to query the point with. Johnny makes the decisions. Johnny alone. Mawby would say to blast them out of the bloody way. Carter would say to find a way to head them off, negotiate and compromise.

What do you do, Johnny?

Once he had stood in judgement over the life of a girl and once is twice too many, and Maeve O'Connor in a village grave under Slieve Gullion mountain.

She had never seen the wire. If he told her the whole truth of it he would terrify her.

'When we go from here, Jutte, there is no turning back.

From the first step we go on.'

She nuzzled against him with her cheek and nose. ' I know.'

'If we are to go back, it is now.'

The kiss was soft on his lips.

'Jutte, listen… we have to be very quiet when we leave this place. We take a path that leads to a woodman's hut. At one place in the path there is a trip wire. I know where it is, and there is a track that the patrols use to go round it… We come to a woodman's hut and then there is the first cleared strip where there is the Hinterland fence. It is less than two metres high, but the top half is of strands of wire that have alarms and lights that are triggered if the wire is disturbed. Jutte, you have to remember this…' He took her face in his hands, he was so frightened himself, so frightened for her, tears welled into his eyes. 'At the point where I am taking you the Hinterland is close to the border, closer than elsewhere, 400 metres. With your help I can climb the fence without fouling the wires. You come then and when you climb the bells will ring.

We have to go very fast then and we carry sticks. The last fence is three and a half metres high and is fitted with automatic guns. I will throw the sticks against their wires to fire them, then we climb again…'

' I understand.'Jutte with a faint, threadbare voice.

'When we climb you must have your hands inside the cuffs of your coat. The wire at the top is very sharp, you will remember that?'

'Yes.'

'Jutte, we have to run all the way from the Hinterland to the border fence. There will be noise, men shouting, perhaps they will shoot… you must never look back, you must follow. Wherever I lead, you must follow.'

'And you will be with me, close to me?'

Ulf kissed Jutte on the forehead, then pulled her down and snuggled her against his chest, cramped her body against his, felt the beat of her heart and the warmth of her blood.

'We have to go, Jutte…'

They rose to their feet and began to grope their way towards the path, between the bushes and the bracken. They did not see the fleeting shape that trailed them.

They were young and they had each other

They had the capability.

It was not a plan that Johnny would have entertained. They would career between the Hinterland fence and the border with the lights and alarms behind them… Johnny would go with circumspection, weigh each step and evaluate each problem. And Johnny had the carcase of Otto Guttmann to slow him, and there was no love… only a bloody job, only a filthy contract he had signed with Charles Mawby on a grey May morning. They had the capability, and if they were successful then Johnny and Otto Guttmann and Erica would not cross the following night.