The Contract

'I'll go up and get dressed. Make yourself comfortable.'

'Thank you, Mr Donoghue.' Pierce was conciliatory. 'We're sorry to be barging in so early.'

Johnny nodded, then closed the door behind him and went up the stairs to his room. He dressed in the shirt hanging from his chair, the underclothes that were on the floor, searched for his shoes, took socks from the drawer. The shave would wait. Below him he heard a key in the door, the chatter of a farewell from his mother to a friend. He shoved the shirt-tail into his waist and went to the top of the stairs. The front door closed.

'Mum,' he called.

She stood small in the hallway, engulfed in her coat, wispy grey hair protected by a scarf, shopping bags around her. 'Have you done your breakfast, Johnny?'

'There's some men in the front, came to see me. I'm just dressing.'

'Would they like some tea?' The thin piping voice. After all that had happened this woman could not believe that men who came to the house could be unwelcome.

'They'll not be staying long enough for tea, don't bother, Mum.'

Not having any bastards in dark suits with the whiff of London on them make his mother fuss round to get the best china out and rinse the milk jug and flap herself as to whether the room's tidy enough. He heard her go to the kitchen, and he came down the stairs and into the front room. They were where he'd left them, close together on the sofa and they smiled as if in a chorus act and stood up.

'So how does a government matter affect me?' Straight into the eyes of Smithson, because he'd be the spokesman.

'Quite right, Mr Donoghue, we shouldn't waste time. We shouldn't beat about the bush…'

'Correct.'

'Mr Pierce and I work for that part of the Foreign Office that concerns itself with intelligence gathering…'

'Identity cards, I'd like to see them.'Johnny held out his hand, watched amused as the two dug in their wallets. He took the two plastic coated cards complete with the polaroid photographs. Access to Century House, London, Wl. Good enough.

"Very wise, Donoghue,' Smithson said. 'With your background you will know of the work initiated at Century

House. We've been asked to offer you a job, Mr Donoghue.'

Johnny squinted across, slant-eyed, at the two men. Too bloody early in the morning to be concentrating.

'Why me?'

'In London they think you fit the scheme of things,' Pierce said quietly.

'This is nothing to do with Intelligence Corps. Fresh faces, fresh work.'

'What does it involve?'

'We haven't been briefed, not fully, only that it involves a show in Germany.'

'And that's all you're going to tell me?'

'That's all we can tell you,' Smithson said.

'When do I have to make my mind up, by what time?'

Smithson looked at his watch. 'We're taking the lunch- time train to London. It's our hope that you'll accompany us.'

Johnny slumped back in his chair, closed his eyes, blacked out the sight of the two men opposite him. Nothing more to be said was there?

Couldn't be anything else. Of course they wouldn't travel north and march into the front room of a terraced home and then talk matters of National Security. All that would be in London, and there was no way of finding out more about what was asked of him without getting on the train to the big city. And the more they tell you the harder they'll make it for you to escape. Step onto that train, Johnny, and you're in, the clock hands will turn back… and they're asking for you, all nice and polite and they're asking for you. Sent these men up to this Godforsaken town on a Saturday morning because it's Johnny Donoghue they want, because Monday's too late for them.

What to do, Johnny?

He sat a long time and the quiet burrowed through the room. He'd been kicked bloody hard in the teeth by the establishment. But now they wanted him back. They wanted the man from Cherry Road. He'd never live with himself if they walked back to the station empty-handed.

Johnny smiled, open and wide, the trace of a laugh.

'If I'm to go to London I'd better finish shaving,' he said.

The door was closed on the messenger and Doctor Otto Guttmann carried the suitcase back through the hall of the flat and into the small, pinched living room. He placed it on the floor, in the centre of the carpet and stood quite still and gazed down at the black leatherette case. He saw on its handle the baggage tag for Geneva, and attached by string was a cardboard label that carried the name and address written in a familiar and beloved hand. He looked up then at the plain wooden cross hung from the wall, contemplated it, as if it were a guarantor of strength.

Otto Guttmann was tall, well shouldered, a large and imposing figure, but the sight of the suitcase magnetised his eyes and bowed his body.

The messenger had known what he brought, had hurried to deliver the case and be away.