The Contract

He went through the gateway of the Barleber See camping site. Past the administration building, past the rows of planted tents, past the yellow sand of the lakeside beach, past the children that played with buckets and spades, past the men and women that walked listless in their swimming clothes. Jesus, and what sort of a holiday was this? A fortnight beside a flyblown lake 3 miles down the road from the power station or the chemical works or the railway engine repair yard. He reached a wide patio where the tables were shaded by multi-coloured umbrellas. Take more than that, Johnny, to swing the Barleber See camp site into life.

A bar here. The prospect of a large beer, the chance to case his boots loose. And it would be the train back after the beer.

Smithson had done his homework. The pick-up place was good, right for concealment. The camping place was good, right for whiling away the hours till he was ready to head for the autobahn slip road. Have to give Smithson a pat when he saw him. Johnny rummaged in his pocket for coins, paid for the lukewarm beer and ambled to the comfort of a chair.

It had been a good morning.

Well, good as far as it went… and how far was that? Everything was gloss before the contact was forged. One step at a time, Johnny. He would see Guttmann tonight at the hotel. Not to talk to, of course, but to look at and evaluate.

One step at a time.

The desk in front of Valeri Sharygin was cleared, all the work finished that must be completed before his departure to New York. From his office in the headquarters building he carried the single sheet of typed paper down the stairs to Transmission section and the bank of telex machines and operators. He still smarted from the apathy of the

KGB

colonel to whom he had explained that day the unanswered queries in the case of Willi Guttmann and a yacht out on a foul afternoon on the Lake of Geneva. Down many flights of stairs, along many corridors, and with each step and stride Sharygin's annoyance increased; he might have been with his children, at his home with his wife, he had no need to expose himself to a superior officer's sarcasm and poorly disguised scepticism. But the body of young Guttmann had still not been found, and without the corpse an area of ill- defined suspicion was entitled to remain. The matter remained in Valeri Sharygin's mind, irritating and margin- ally obsessive.

With faltering enthusiasm he had asked his colonel whether KGB in Germany could ascertain with certainty from surveillance of Doctor Otto Guttmann whether he, at least, believed in the death by drowning of his son. He had been told peremptorily that manpower in Berlin did not run to such poorly substantiated luxuries.

He had suggested that GRU might complete the investigation, and been slapped down for the suggestion that military intelligence should take on the spade work of KGB.

He had followed the one course left open to him.

The Schutzpolizei in Magdeburg would follow without question a directive from Moscow. They alone were lowly enough in the ladder of east bloc security to accept instruction from a major in KGB. And he did not ask much of them, only the confirmation that would dash his diminishing caution in this matter.

The message that he brought to Transmission section was addressed to Doctor Gunther Spitzer, Schutzpolizeipresi- dent of the city in which Otto Guttmann and his daughter now took their holiday.

The noise of the argument billowed from the shop onto the street pavement.

Erica Guttmann was window gazing and easily distracted. She cocked her head and sought the source of the shouting. The radio and television shop was in front of her. She was in no hurry, had nowhere to go, and the baying carried the prospect of amusement. Through the opened doorway she saw the crowd gathered at the shop counter – gesturing hands confronting the assistant at the record counter. The shop would only just have opened from the lunchtime closing and the young people would have lined up patiently outside for the new delivery of records and found when they were admitted that there were none for them. A mirthless grin dappled her face. Pathetic… Not teenagers, these ones, but boys and girls in their twenties with their tempers roused because they could not buy music with the money they had saved. Then the crowd was surging.

Up to a hundred and sprinting from the shop, stampeding across the Julius-Bremer Strasse towards the Centrum. She crossed after them, caught by the silly excitement of the rush. Into the Centrum, avoiding the counters of clothes and cosmetics and china, off into the depths of the shop. The newcomers joined the already formed twin queues that shuffled towards a wooden trestle table where piles of long playing records were stacked. She saw the pleasure of those who examined with a kind of love the sleeve of the record they took away.