The Contract

I've an old mother and she needs cheap sausages from the corner shop, and electricity and coal, and a new coat for the winter, and I buy them.

I'll pay for them because I came to Magdeburg. You understand? I don't fool with clever words like freedom… The girl tonight, all she wanted was some pretty clothes, a new High Street to walk down. That was an idiot reason to get killed.'

'You're cruel, Johnny…'

'The boy with her, he loved her. They talked of love and it was wasted breath. There's no love now because she's wrapped in a bloody blanket and dead, and he's in chains in the cells.'

'Did she love him at the end?'

Johnny peered into her face. 'Erica, for Christ's sake leave it

… it doesn't matter about love, another bloody irrelevance, all that matters is a plan to cross the wire. Love isn't the bloody leg up.. .'

'Are we going to cross the wire, Johnny?'

' I don't know…'

He sagged back onto the ground and his head was resting on the matted grass and the bent bracken. He unloaded the grenades from his anorak, squirmed down in search of comfort. His hand rose and grasped at the night air and Erica took it and pressed his fingers close to her and gave them warmth.

'When Willi went from Geneva, was it to find his freedom?'

'You have to ask him.'

'Something more than those two you found tonight, what Willi was looking for. Tell me it was something more, Johnny.'

'He must tell you himself… I'm sorry, Erica.'

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.'