The Contract

Sweet, wasn't it? And the Deputy-Under-Secretary had already offered his congratulations, and there would be something to go to the market place with, barter for the friends across the water, and you needed something strong to wring material in exchange out of Washington.

That evening Charles Mawby immersed himself in the technology of weapons code named Snapper, Swatter and Sagger that could destroy a NATO Main Battle Tank at a range of two thousand metres, and read the evaluations of the potential of its untried successor. He buried his mind in blueprint studies that showed skeleton mechanisms with appended titles for Hollow Charge Warhead, and Gyroscopic Controller, and Guidance Wire Spool. He assimilated a paper on the theory of the tactics that the Warsaw Pact would employ with infantry operated anti-tank-war- heads to halt a NATO armoured counter-thrust. He browsed in a Central Intelligence Agency report that detailed the career of a young German scientist attached to rocketry in the Second World War who had not run fast enough to escape the advancing Russian invasion, who had been carried back to the Motherland as a spoil of war and put to work, who had married a local girl and risen through proven ability and intellect to the position of director (Technical Research) at Padolsk, fifty miles south of Moscow.

And Henry Carter was taking Otto Wilhelm Guttmann's son deep into the Surrey countryside, and they were going to start in the morning, gently to prize open the can that held the boy's knowledge of his father's work.

She'd done them well, very well, little Lizzie Forsyth. They'd probably have given her a medal if anyone could think up the wording of the citation.

No talking in the car. George following his headlights and concentrating because they had now left the main roads and were into the rabbit warren of lanes that threaded the Surrey hills. Carter resting and far into his seat and with his eyes closed and his breathing even. Willi Guttmann peered through the dirty glass of the side window and out into the night's blackness.

Willi thought of a girl called Lizzie. He thought of a bar called the Pickwick where the decor was English and where she sat at a stool and bought him drinks that were warm and unfamiliar and that burned his throat, and where her friends gathered and the talk was noisy and happy.

He thought of visits to the cinema after Conference had finished in the afternoon and where moist fingers were held before the rush to be back inside the Residence doors before the last sitting for supper. He thought of the night after the girl who shared a one-bedroomed box of a flat with Lizzie had flown back to England for a job interview and he had been invited back for a toasted cheese sandwich and coffee. He thought of loving Lizzie through the snow carpeted months of February and March in a Swiss city where the idyll had lasted until the meeting when he had seen the strained eyes and the pale cheeks that warned of her day's weeping. He thought of her telling him she was late, had never been late before, and was he going to walk out on her, was he flying back to Moscow at the end of the month. He could not fight a girl in anguish, could not pull the wings off a fallen butterfly. And his father should not know. His father who was an old man and who had caused him no pain should hear only of an accident. Grief was less lasting than the shame of having reared a traitor. There was no retribution that they could bring against the father of a drowned son, no loss of privileges.

He thought of Lizzie with the soft, warm mouth. Lizzie with her arms around his neck in the sitting room of the home of the British Consul.

Lizzie in tears as the Englishman had said that she could follow in three weeks or four to England. Gentle, darling, sweet Lizzie.

The car swung off the tarmac lane and the lights caught at high iron gates that had been opened and a squat lodge house, and the wheels ground on shallow gravel, and high trees dwarfed them, and thickset bushes spilled over the edge of the driveway. He saw the house, its pale stone bright in the lights, before George swung the wheel and braked viciously so that the man beside him started and grunted and was awake.

Before Willi could feel for the handle, George was out and opening the door and after he had stood for a moment and tried to see about him there was a hand on his elbow and he was guided towards a porch where a dull lamp shone.

'Mrs Ferguson said she'd leave some cold cuts out, Mr Carter,' George said as he ferreted in his pocket for the front door key.

'You go along with George, Willi. There's something to eat for you, and he'll show you where you're sleeping. I expect you'll want a good hot bath too…'