The Contract

As a couple that sits at breakfast the morning after an evening of vicious argument and tries to build bridges, so the community of the house at Holmbury led themselves back to the path of the social decencies. The talk was a little more strident, the laughter a little more frequent, the cheerfulness more overt. The flight of Willi must be erased. And Mawby was back again to inject discipline into the team, to stamp out recrimination, to lift and to encourage. Mawby understood leadership because that was his training from the time that he could stagger beyond the range of his nanny's arms. Mawby could take responsibility and carry the group towards efficiency and effectiveness.

But it was pretence and all in the house knew it.

Johnny recognised the fraud, and saw also the worry lines that settled on Mawby's face in the evenings, the glow of growing anxiety that was the bedfellow of the ticking off of the days on the calendar in the interrogation room. Sharp pen strokes towards the change of the month and the coming of June and the highlighted, bracketed dates.

Carter recognised it. He felt a keenness in his questions to the boy as if time was suddenly slipping. All the questions must count, all the answers must be clear and candid. They would not be repeated.

Smithson and Pierce recognised it. Johnny, the pupil, more attentive and straining to accept what they told him, and their own minds turned to the issue of how great an encyclopaedia they could cement into their man's memory in the intervening days.

Willi recognised it. The sessions in the morning were longer, sometimes spilling into the afternoons, and nobody shouted, nobody swore at him.

This was the source of their information and at last he was treated with a grudging deference. Perhaps he had won a trifle of respect from these men. Perhaps their attention was closer to what he said. There were many things that Willi saw… The glimmer light that burned all night in his bedroom. The chrome bar, screwed into the woodwork, that sealed his bedroom window. The camp bed in the corridor outside his door where George now slept, or lay on his back most likely, with his eyes opened and watchful.

A new and different mood for each participant at the house. And overriding and dominating was the calendar and the fugitive days of May.

Spring drifting to summer.

Squirrels on the lawn, leaping and chasing and thrusting out their brush tails. Rabbits coming with a boldness to the lawns from the shrubs.

The small birds of the woods searching in the soft flower beds for grubs.

And all unseen by the men in the house.

Meals in the dining room, briefings in the sitting room, questions in the interrogation room. Earlier in the morning, later in the evening.

Longer days, more crowded hours.

Willi no longer in the centre and under the wide spot- light. Johnny there, Johnny superseding him. No time for walking and for casual conversation.

'Tell me, Willi,' says Carter. 'Your father's affections, who would they be stronger towards, you or your sister?'

'You won't have much of an opportunity to talk to him, Johnny,' says Pierce. 'But if you do, and before you get him in the car and lose him down the autobahn drive, then the critical areas are the warhead and the time factor between ignition and the completion of the target locking. It's conceivable that the Marienborn check will bust him. You see, Johnny, we'd hate to have gone to all this trouble and have nothing to show for it.

You'll try and get something there, won't you?'

*

'You're a teacher,' says Smithson. 'But we can't pretend that you're on a study trip, we can't line you up a list of appointments at education institutions, not in the days we have available. So you have to be on holiday, a single man looking for somewhere out of the ordinary. That's why you're in Magdeburg. There won't be British there, highly unlikely, only other east bloc people. You just play the tourist with the maps and the pocket camera. Do the churches – the Dom and the Kloster Unser Frauen. Do the parks beside the river, do the Kulturhistorische Museum.

For God's sake don't photograph bridges, railway sidings, anything military.'

The barrage of information increased. Sufficient to send Johnny to his bed each night reeling from its variety and complexity. Flesh growing on the old photograph of Otto Guttmann's face, blood coming to his cheeks, colour to his chin, life to his eyes. Finding familiarity and understanding with an old man.

Photographs of Magdeburg. Postcards in sepia, faded by sunlight.

Twin towers of the Dom, cascades of fountains, the flats on Karl Marx Strasse. Brittle and modern and hollow monuments. They didn't help much, not so as Johnny would notice, but just gave a suspicion of comfort. Photographs and maps. The Stadtplan of Magdeburg that Smithson had used, scale of 1 to 20,000 and issued by VEB Tourist Verlag, lay creased on his bedside table.

Remember the police uniforms, Johnny.

Remember the MCLOS firing system.