The Contract

'You have to understand, Mr Mawby, that if you launch with this man you can expect us to be alone with him. Even if we subsequently change stance and request it, we'll get no help from BND. The authorities aren't friendly with these people. From the Chancellor down they're condemned. They're seen as jeopardising the free flow along the autobahn, the Soviets are for ever threatening that if Bonn doesn't take a firmer hand, stamp them out, then new controls will be asserted on the autobahn. They're an embarrassment to government here, the groups stand in the way of the gradual thaw in East and West German relations, so they're just not wanted. It's not an area where we'd have active co-operation.'

Mawby turned to watch the How of growing crops and grass shudder past him, felt the trembling roar of an over- taking articulated lorry and trailer.

' I suppose we couldn't do this ourselves?' Mawby be- trayed his unhappiness.

'You could, but you take a risk.'

'Explain yourself.'

'If you have a car with a British driver and you have German passengers with German documentation then you invite inspection. You couldn't give British paperwork to Germans and just hope they weren't singled for questioning, and if it were blown…

Good grief, they'd be scuttling for cover in Outer Mongolia.'

'Quite so.'

'You have to be distant from it, Mr Mawby. Distant from the group and above everything distant from the driver, so the leads and traces back are stifled.'

Mawby looked across at Percy, but the eyes were fixed on the road. Of course he was right and he could afford to be, because it wasn't down to him, the responsibility wasn't going to find its way to Adam Percy's pudgy back.

'How long do we have, before you want the pick-up made?'

'Our man is unavailable after the fifteenth of June,' Mawby said.

'That's sharp.'

'It has to be done in that time.'

'Not much scope for rehearsal, not before the first night. You'll have to hope everybody learns their lines by the curtain lift.'

'It has to be done in that time.'

'So be it,' said Percy. 'Perhaps we should wish each other luck, Mr Mawby.'

They bumped over the cobbled streets of Bonn, were held by traffic lights, cramped by cars as they crawled towards the south side of the city. Mawby had nothing more to say, nothing before the meeting was joined.

'Will your father take any work with him to Magdeburg?'

'Only if there were something very pressing. Only if there was a problem at Padolsk would they contact him.'

'While he's in Magdeburg is he subject to surveillance?'

'A guard, a policeman watching him?… I don't think so. Never before.

But like every outsider, every visitor, his documents must go to Strasse der Jugend…'

'What's that, Willi?'

'To the offices of the City police. For the stamp.'

'Would the Soviet military be in contact with him, or GRU'

'The Red Army, yes. They will know that he is in Magdeburg. They invite him each year for a dinner, perhaps to the garrison camp of the armoured division at Bierderitz

'That's to the east of Magdeburg?'

'East across the river. The GRU, no… there is no reason for the intelligence people to watch him.'

'You are sure he is not under permanent surveillance?'

'I am certain he is not.'

'There is no policeman that is attached to him?'

'There are none.'

'We are now into the age of the tactical nuclear concept and that means the end for fixed defensive positions. With tactical nuclear armouries the Maginot thinking is gone for ever. But you can only justify nuclear reaction to conventional attack if you have lost great tracts of land and territory, and if you have major hostile concentrations to aim the missiles at. The decision to go nuclear will not be made by a field commander, not by a man in denims with four stars on his cap, it will be made by a politician with political considerations uppermost and the risk of setting off a domino run of nuclear escalation giving him nightmares. So the military men on our side have to think in terms of meeting a conventional attack with conventional defence. The order of the day will be small, highly mobile units, low density and self-contained. Our tanks would be operating in platoon formation, four or five together and they will be met by Soviet mechanised infantry with manual controlled missiles. The infantry will have all the cover they want, wrecked villages, forestry, good and hilly terrain. The missile men can have a field day, and their equipment's off the Padolsk design board. You're with me, Johnny?'

The village was tucked within the twin walls of the valley. The church and main street low in the bed beside a stream and the houses scattered indiscriminately above. The leaves were coming to the trees, the grass on the small lawns sprouted, the first flowers were opening. A quiet, private place.