The Contract

Getting serious, weren't they, the big men in London? Had to be serious when they pulled Johnny Donoghue into the game. No longer just play-time out in the school yard for Henry Carter and Willi Guttmann, no longer sparring across the table in the hope of brightening a

'restricted' report. Could be a matter of life and death, couldn't it? Johnny Donoghue's life, Johnny Donoghue's death. And he seemed a nice chap, that was Carter's first impression anyway.

Because the message to the British Embassy in Bonn would be transmitted in cypher, Charles Mawby had come that Sunday morning to Century House. Amongst the security personnel on the door and the weekend rostered clerks there was little surprise at the sight of him striding purposefully through the front hallway and along the corridors of the near-deserted building. He was a workhorse, that one, they said.

All hours the good Lord gave, and his wife must be a saint to put up with it, or a bitch to have driven him that far.

His communication was directed to the SIS officer working from the Embassy in the German Federal Republic's capital. An evaluation was to be made of the feasibility of bringing a Soviet citizen out of the German Democratic Republic. That person would come of his own volition, and the collection point would be in the vicinity of Magdeburg.

The collection could be left to German nationals who dealt in such matters and the commercial rate would be paid for those services.

Co-operation with the West German authorities was not to be sought.

Mawby would be free to travel to Bonn in a few days' time if that were thought desirable by the field station.

The signal was marked priority, and called for a preliminary answer within two days.

The rain slapped into the roof of pine branches high above Ulf Becker and Jutte Hamburg.

All of the group had been walking in the forest when the first heavy drops had fallen in unison with the shell crack of the thunder.

Some had run for the chalets on the shore of the Schwielowsee hard in the wake of the Freie Deutsche Jugend organiser. Others had scattered, allowed the volume of the rain beating on the path to provide the excuse that they were better sheltering and waiting for the "storm to pass over.

Ulf and Jutte had stripped off their blouses and used them as protection against the floor of pine needles. Jutte underneath with her tight, small lemon breasts pushed up into Ulf s face. The boy with his hands groping at the waist of the girl's trousers. The girl with her hands pulling and gouging at the skin beside the boy's backbone. No words, no sentiments.

Trousers slipping, elasticated pants stretching, fingers grasping, mouths meeting hot and wet and seeking each other. And the rain falling in a steady drip on the boy's back and him unaware, and she too uncaring that the water rivers ran on her face and savaged the hair that she had carefully combed that morning. No need for preparation, no vantage from ritual courtship. Her hands drifting beneath the cover of his trousers, and the boy arching and desperate and she wriggling her bottom upwards that he might draw her clothes down, that she should bare herself to him. Ulf panting. Jutte moaning, a sweet and soft treacle sound and the call for her boy. Ulf s trousers at his knees, and his face wrapped in the moment of annoyance as he must lose her and reach for his back pocket. Always when he was on leave from Weferlingen and he would see Jutte he went first to the chemist or the machine in the lavatory at Schoneweide railway station. And always at that time she helped him, he passing it to her, and she tearing the packet open. And always then the fast road to the glory and the escape and the fierce freedom. Rising and falling, the raw wind cutting against their nakedness, wrapped in arms, encircled in legs, till the shriek of pleasure burst in them and the strength failed and eventually crawled away. Hard together they lay, a long time, exposed only to each other, bewildered by the beauty.

'Sweet boy.'

Darling Jutte, darling lovely Jutte.'

'So good.'

'Better than good.'

'Better than the best.' The girl's fingers reached to his neck, held his head close to her shoulder, wound the thin strands from his cropped hair between her nails under which had caught the earth from the forest carpet. 'You are a good son of the Fatherland, Ulf… always you get better, always your production is higher…' She giggled.

'Piss on the Fatherland.' The snarl exorcised the gentleness from his mouth.

'Piss on the Fatherland?' Jutte dreaming, eyes closed in safety. 'Piss on it? Even little Ulf, hero of output in the DDR, protector of its frontier

… even he cannot drown it.'

' Does not even know how to fight it.'

Jutte opened her eyes, pushed his head back so that she could look into his face and the clean bones beneath his skin, and the downy blond hair on his upper lip, and his clean and even-set teeth. 'Does not know how to fight it? Ulf does not know how to fight the Fatherland?'