The Contract

'You are young and no doubt brave to have come here, you are clever and resourceful or you would not have been chosen. I ask you those questions so that you may appreciate that I am sceptical of angels who speak with the motives of mercy and freedom. You want me only as a traitor, as a turncoat.'

The silence hung in the room. The memories of the briefings at Holmbury turned in Johnny's mind. Stand your ground, they'd said.

Don't debate and don't argue. Let the blood ties gnaw at him.

'You must decide where your affections lie. It may be many years in your life since you have had the Opportunity to choose your own future.

You have that chance now. The choice lies in whom you betray. It may be Defence Ministry in Moscow,' it may be your son who will be at Helmstedt tonight.'

Not bad, Johnny. Smithson would have enjoyed that. Otto Guttmann had turned back to the window and the grey cloud basket.

'What is your name?'

Johnny swung round to face Erica Guttmann, pirouetted on his toes. 'It's Johnny.'

'You ask much of us, Johnny,' she said. 'We have a security here, of a sort… You ask us to go blindfold after you.'

'Yes.'

'It is a crude bait that you offer.'

'Yes.'

'This car, it will really come?' She was urging the confirmation from him.

' I promise that the car will come.'

'What is the danger to him?'

'We are careful people, Miss Guttmann. There is no danger.'

'He loved Willi,' she spoke as if her father were no longer in the room. '

I think he loved him more than he loved my mother… there is no risk to him?'

It was Erica who they had said at Holmbury he would have to claw his way past to get to the side of the old man, and Johnny saw only sweetness and worry and the tumbling in her mind on the decision that would be hers to make.

'There is no risk…'

' I will talk to him.'

'Yes.'

'You will come again, later.'

'Yes.'

'When will you come?'

'You have all the hours of daylight to talk. All the day. By evening you must be clear on your intentions. There is no argument after that. If you accept then you follow me without question.' A half smile, a little chuckle came to Johnny. 'You should come, Miss Guttmann, ride the wind beyond the fence. Willi is waiting there and a great horizon… don't turn your back on it, don't choose this bloody drab heap.'

'Come again in the afternoon.'

'You should not talk of this… if you were to go to the police, if anything were to happen to me then it would go badly for Willi, that's obvious, isn't it?'

She looked at him without anger, without surprise, showed only a smear of disappointment. 'Are the threat and the bribe the only words of your language?'

Johnny walked past her and closed the door quietly behind him.

Sitting by the window in the breakfast room at the Stettiner Hof Henry Carter planned his day. There were only a few courses open to him. He thought that he'd buy a shirt down in the old quarter, on the Neumarker Strasse. He thought he'd wander up to the NAAFI Roadhaus and have a lunch of something and chips and a botde of beer. He thought he'd have a siesta before the evening vigil at Checkpoint Alpha. At least by the evening he'd have company. Pierce and George and Willi had gone through to Hannover on the military train, they'd spent the night in the close security of the British army camp at Paderborn. Pierce had telephoned to report that Willi's behaviour on the train had been faultless. They would all come back to Helmstedt for the end of the run.

A treat for Willi, and he'd earned it. Carter thought that it might be time for him to talk with the boy about the girl Lizzie in Geneva, put the record straight, and it would be the right occasion because the boy would have his head stuffed with the reunion with his father and sister.

It was a subdued, close morning in Helmstedt. Carter hoped the sun would have broken through before he started the trail up to the Roadhaus.

They ran towards each other across the wide, white pavings of Alexander Platz, sprinting, racing to be together.

Ulf and Jutte beneath the mountain of the 'Stadt Berlin' Inter Hotel.

Hands around each other's necks, fingers deep into each other's hair, lips pressed against each other's cheeks. With the world to watch, with the stores calling the Saturday shoppers, with the square crowded with tourists and visitors, she hugged against him, squirmed herself close to him. No words, no talk, only holding, only kissing. It was a warm morning and he felt the roughness of her heavy sweater and the waterproof anorak hung from her elbow. If she had worn the clothes that he had asked for then she would have the rail tickets tight in the pocket at the waist of her trousers.

Instinctively he led, his arm around her shoulder, towards the S-Bahn station on Alexander Platz.

Jutte had told her father and mother that she was camping for the weekend. She had made her farewells short and cheerful and temporary, pecked at the cheek of her father, squeezed the' hand of her mother. .. she had not thought whether she would see or hear of them again.