The Contract

Was this the time to remember that his country had kicked him… in the groin, in the crutch, kicked him bloody hard and bent him double?

No, you have to forget that, Johnny, because if you don't forget it where is the future? Is it for ever Cherry Road and German classes at the Technica College?

'Whatever happened in Ulster, Johnny, doesn't matter. As far as every one of us here is concerned you start with a clear sheet and a damn fine record behind you.'

Turn your back now, Johnny, and you're away back tc Cherry Road.

Just as you were a year and a half ago. Home in the shame, back into the shadow.

'I'd like to give it a go.'

He lifted his head and Mawby was beaming at him, Pierce shook his hand, Carter with evident pleasure and welcome on his face waited his turn and Smithson slapped him on the hack. George, with an eye on Mawby, stayed still and distant.

Working from an office temporarily provided for him at headquarters on Dzerzhinsky Street, Valeri Sharygin wrote in longhand what he hoped would be his final report on the disappearance of Willi Guttmann. No, not the disappear- ance, the drowning… The KGB major frowned privately, his head turned away from the typist by the window. The absence of the interpreter's body irritated him, but he could wait no longer. Leave beckoned before the departure of the delegation to the United Nations in New York for the summer session of the Conference.

Perhaps before he flew to the United States he would telephone Foirot in Geneva.

He had been thorough in the writing of the report. Thorough enough to have visited personally the mes- senger from the Foreign Ministry who had taken the Guttmann possessions to his father's flat. Thorough enough to have registered the bitter swell of bereavement that had greeted the messenger.

What could he achieve by further delay? He anticipated that while he took his fortnight at Sochi the corpse would drift to Lake Geneva's surface.

It was peculiar that it had not already done so.

Chapter Five

Lizzie Forsyth ran up the two flights of stairs to the flat of the British Consul. She rang the doorbell, and heard the muffled whisper of a door opening deep inside and the murmur of annoyed voices. Who came on Sunday evening to do busi- ness with the Consul? He'd be placating his wife, saying he wouldn't be long, wondering what matter could not wait till the morning. Lizzie reordered her hair, raised herself hand- some on her heels and waited.

'Yes?'

Lizzie smiling. 'You remember me, Lizzie Forsyth?' Lizzie radiant, a grin and white teeth. 'I wanted to see you.'

He had started back, as if exposed to danger. The Consul; remembered Lizzie Forsyth. Not every day that he played host to a Soviet defector, that he entertained a man from Intelligence in his drawing room. He would not forget Lizzie Forsyth and her shivering boy and the quiet competence of the man who had taken him away. Unhappily he gestured her inside and led the way to his office, calling to a closed door on the way that he would not be long.

'What can I do for you, Miss Forsyth?'

She spoke with the fervour of a gale at an open window.

'I've just had the most marvellous thing happen. Just like that and without warning… my period's come. I'd given up hope, resigned myself to it, having the baby, and now it's come. God knows why I was as late as that. Well, it's come now… so the problem's over.'

'You're not…'

'I'm not pregnant, isn't it marvellous? I want to tell Willi I didn't know how to write to him. Where to send a letter.'

'You're not pregnant?'

'It's wonderful, I think it's the happiest thing that's ever happened to me.' 'And now you want to tell Willi?'

'He'll want to know. I'm a bit ashamed really… I sort of railroaded him.'

She was quieter now, calmer, the flood tide running steadily. 'I don't know whether he ever specially wanted to marry me. Willi ought to know, oughtn't he? It'll make everything different…'

The Consul winced, pain clear on his face, and he held up his hand for her to stop.

'Pray, how does this make everything different?' He looked into her clear, azure eyes and watched the light run against them and heard her certainty and sureness.

'We don't have to get married, well not in a hurry anyway.'

He put his hands to his chin, rubbed at the skin. 'There was no more compelling reason for Willi Guttmann's defec- tion than that you had told him you were pregnant and that he must stand by you?'

'About right, yes.'

'And now that you are no longer pregnant, what do you think should happen?'

'Well, he's free, isn't he?'

'Free to do what?'

'He can go home, if he wants to,' she blurted. 'He's under no obligation to me.'

'He's defected. For your sake he has made himself a traitor.' The Consul paused, sighed. 'There is no second chance, there is no change of mind.

He came across and that's that. He is somebody that we are interested in, that his own side cares about… Willi Guttmann no longer has a home.

'It was as much his fault as mine.'