The Contract

'You'll have seen a tank being brewed, Johnny, I'm sure you've seen it on the range. It's pretty revolting. They don't get out when they're hit by modern anti-tank shells. They get melted down, they get stuck to the inside walls, they blend in with the steel of the turret. There's no tank built that's invulnerable to the new armour-piercing and squash-head mis- siles. All we can do is try and minimise the areas of danger, that and teach the evasion procedures. The tank is the queen of the battlefield, when she's running rampant she's wonder- ful, incisive in the breakout. When she's outmanoeuvred, when the technology is against her, then she's just a death- box. They're developing their counter force while we're working on our hitting arm. It's always that way in military evolution, parallel lines. But now we have a chance to muscle up at their expense. That chance doesn't come often, Johnny Pierce was drawing. Broad lines on the paper, the blunt nose and the guidance fins of a missile.

A man who identified himself as John Dawson walked into a travel agent's offices on a narrow, battered street close to Dublin's River Liffey.

It had been Carter's idea that Johnny's travel arrange- ments should be launched from the Irish Republic. Better that the visa and accommodation application should come from Dublin than London.

Better, because that would provide the background to fog the computers and screening that the authorities of the DDR might bring to bear on Western visitors to their country.

Mr Dawson understood that the firm specialised in arranging holidays in eastern Europe and said that it was his wish to visit the German Democratic Republic. He wanted to see the city of Magdeburg, he'd read about it and it seemed a fine and historic place, and a good starting point for journeys to the Hartz mountains. He required a single room in the city and the dates that he could get away from work were between the 11th and the 18 th of June. The young man behind the counter had looked up at the wall calendar, grimaced at the time left for him to make the arrangements, and promised that the telex requesting the booking would be sent that day to the East German Berolina Agency in London.

How would Mr Dawson wish to travel? He would go by train. From which West German city? He would go by train from Hannover. Did Mr Dawson wish the agency to book flights from Dublin to West Germany?

No. Mr Dawson had business to fit in while visiting Britain. He would make his own arrangements to get to Hannover, but he would appreciate the rail tickets being purchased in Dublin. Would a?30 deposit be satisfactory? Perfectly satisfactory.

More details. Date of Birth. Place of Birth. Occupation. Passport Number… The information was given by a Secretary of the British Embassy in Dublin working to an exact brief. He offered the number of a passport that still lay in the basements of Century House awaiting the attention of the expert who would apply the various immigration officials' stamps for authenticity.

John Dawson was a teacher.

'I'm sure there will be no difficulty,' the young man said. 'When they pull their fingers out they can move quite quickly.'

'I hope so. It will be my first time there, a sort of holiday with a difference.'

'They passed their second constitution in 1968 guaranteeing the freedom of the individual, but it's not a document regulating the power of the state and its organs as it would be in the West. It doesn't curb the authority of government, it legalises that authority. The ideology of the system is with its citizens at all times because they've learned over there that the infrastructure is all-important. Everything is in pyramid formation, everything leads back to the Central Committee of SED. The base of the pyramid is very wide. There's the Freie Deutsche Gewerkschaftsbund which is the trades union organisation with more than 7 million members. There's the Freie Deutsche Jugend, the youth organisation, with 13/4 million kids on the books. There's the Pioneer Ernst Thalmann for the nippers between 5 and 14, 2 million of them.

The Party, the SED, has 2 million members or just over. You can't get on in this society without belonging or having belonged, you can't just opt out and say you're not interested and then expect to pick up a foreman's job, or get a place at a decent college. And the system perpetuates its own security. It watches over people, smothers them so that they don't know where they can turn for commiseration. There are 500,000 Party cells at the baseplate of the Party. Eyes and ears, the espionage network if you put it that way. It's a honeycomb of ideological reliability. It makes for a suspicious, prying community where people believe in the right to inform on their neighbour or the stranger in their street. You have to be careful, Johnny, careful all the time. You have to watch yourself, because you'll be watched. You'll be mapped and surveyed by people who are more than curious about you.