The Contract

It was a small set back to Johnny, the losing of his passport, for however few hours, and there was the thought in his mind of it being studied and examined for flaws.

No point in producing the breakfast voucher for the day, not after

9.30.

Missed out on his breakfast.

He looked from the window. His room was on the front of the building and he gazed across the wide expanse of grass, with the spaced high pine trees, cut by the lines of the flower beds where women were planting the blooms that would have come from the municipal hot house. Getting the place ready for you, Johnny, only you've come a couple of days early and the red carpet hasn't been unrolled yet. Silly bugger… The Americans had missed the station that was beyond the grass and on the far extremity of the square because the architecture bore the grandiose stamp of the

Third Reich. He saw the Soviet army lorries and jeeps parked to the left of the station. You'll see plenty of them, Pierce had said, the place crawls with the Red Army, Divisional Headquarters and all that.

He locked his door behind him, took the lift down six doors. Comrade Honecker was waiting for him in the hallway, the thin smile beaming from above the reception desk when he handed in his key. Johnny grinned. Someone should do something for the First Secretary's teeth.

He walked out of the hotel and turned right past a pet shop with a mournful parrot chained to its perch and terrapins in stagnant water. Past the window of teenagers' clothes. Run up in a hurry, right Johnny, like there's been art earthquake and the survivors need clothes, even the scruffy kids in Cherry Road would have given them two fingers. Into the length of Wilhelm-Pieck Allee. There was a bookshop and a shelf of maps. He bought the Stadtplan of Magdeburg, paid one mark and fifty for it and acquired that badge of tourism, the street map. It was all he needed for the morning, that and his boots for walking.

He headed past the big church where the bombers had taken the roof and their incendiaries had gutted the interior and he made his way to the fountains and green park lands by the river. Quite pleasant, really, with a bit of a breeze to counter the heat that would come and mothers there with prams and push chairs. Some glanced up at the freelancer with a contract from the British Secret Intelligence Service, some smiled at him, some fussed proudly with their babies. Smithson had warned of the danger factor of the fake sense of security, and he moved on.

You're not judging a clean town competition, Johnny, but the Promenade der Volkerfreundschaft was neat and tended enough with the big waters of the Elbe running fast, the old city walls restored and the cannon offering a glimpse of history in their stone revetments, but the effect was not for ever. With the bridge behind him so the showfront of central Magdeburg was lost. Into the narrow streets, onto the broken pavements, under the dust thrown by the lorries and their trailers, along the avenues of flats that were short of paint and creeping towards dereliction. First on Sandtor Strasse, then on Rogatzer Strasse, through the district of Alte Neustadt. Not much benefit derived from the 30 years of struggle. You're thinking like bloody Smithson, Johnny, spilling all his propaganda, all his prejudice.

Perhaps… Nothing much to excite him in the shops. Tins and sausage in the butchers. Cabbages and beans and potatoes in the greengrocers.

Clothes that were angular and drear in the narrow fronted window of the ladies' dress shop. Perhaps old Smithson was right, perhaps he was on course. Twice he slipped around a street corner and waited for the signs of a following tail, and he found none, and no interest seemed to be shown in him by the two boys in the blue shirts of the FDJ who hurried past him, nor by the green and white police car that cruised smugly on the street. No tail that he knew of, no one following and observing. And what was criminal about a tourist strolling on Rogatzer Strasse?

The railway line was in front. Easy to see because it was built high on an embankment. He looked at his watch. Smithson had said that it would take him 20 minutes to reach this point. Just about right. An exact man, Smithson, for all the cynicism, one who knew the value of information that was tested and proved. On time. Johnny climbed the metal footbridge over the line and busied himself with his map. A bad place to wait, a bloody awful place.