The Contract

by Gerald Seymour

  John Dawson was a teacher.

  'I'm sure there will be no difficulty,' the young man said. 'When they pull their fingers out they can move quite quickly.'

  'I hope so. It will be my first time there, a sort of holiday with a difference.'

  'They passed their second constitution in 1968 guaranteeing the freedom of the individual, but it's not a document regulating the power of the state and its organs as it would be in the West. It doesn't curb the authority of government, it legalises that authority. The ideology of the system is with its citizens at all times because they've learned over there that the infrastructure is all-important. Everything is in pyramid formation, everything leads back to the Central Committee of SED. The base of the pyramid is very wide. There's the Freie Deutsche Gewerkschaftsbund which is the trades union organisation with more than 7 million members. There's the Freie Deutsche Jugend, the youth organisation, with 13/4 million kids on the books. There's the Pioneer Ernst Thalmann for the nippers between 5 and 14, 2 million of them.

  The Party, the SED, has 2 million members or just over. You can't get on in this society without belonging or having belonged, you can't just opt out and say you're not interested and then expect to pick up a foreman's job, or get a place at a decent college. And the system perpetuates its own security. It watches over people, smothers them so that they don't know where they can turn for commiseration. There are 500,000 Party cells at the baseplate of the Party. Eyes and ears, the espionage network if you put it that way. It's a honeycomb of ideological reliability. It makes for a suspicious, prying community where people believe in the right to inform on their neighbour or the stranger in their street. You have to be careful, Johnny, careful all the time. You have to watch yourself, because you'll be watched. You'll be mapped and surveyed by people who are more than curious about you.

  The moral is that you go slowly, Johnny, step by step. You don't talk to people there, you don't expect to find a friend . . . they can get 5 years inside for criticising the state to a foreigner . . . you go on your own, you stay on your own. Realise that and you can win, accept the isolation and you'll be fine.'

  The telephone call for Mawby brought Mrs Ferguson scam- pering across the lawns to find him as he strolled under the back trees. The reply was back from Bonn. He was expected on the first flight of the next day.

  A man for him to meet. It was another step forward and an important step because it solidified the commitment of the Service to the operation. He was flying to Germany, and they were no longer at the stage of outline planning.

  As he climbed the stairs to collect his clothes Charles Mawby was surprised that a flush of nervousness warmed his face.

  'Tell us about Erica, Willi.'

  'She is twenty-nine years old. She is loved very dearly by my father.

  In the last few years he has relied much on her for support, that is why she now works with him at Padolsk. She acts there as his secretary, and also as his protector. She answers his telephone and makes his appointments, in that

  way she tries to see that he is not overstrained.'

  'Would she be in the Party, Willi ?'

  'You want always to give the label.. . She is a person who has grown up in a state where the political system is com- munism. How then can she be anything but communist? How could she be a capitalist if she has never known capi- talism? She knows only one colour, and that colour is red.'

  'Is she committed to the Party, Willi?' Carter, wondering at Willi's evasion, recording the last question and the new line of Willi's answer in his notebook.

  'Just labels . . .' Defiance bloomed in his cheeks. 'What do you know of life in Moscow, have you ever been there? Do you think the young people of the Soviet Union and the DDR spend their evenings talking of the grain harvest and the quotas in the building industry of workers'

  flats, and the composition of the Politburo, do you think that? Do you think they talk of the glories of steel production and the output of lignite? You know nothing of life there.'

  'Don't be cheeky, Willi.'

  'They are idiot questions.'

  'I choose the questions ... She was in the Pioneers?'

  'Everyone is in the Pioneers. Every schoolchild has marched in Moscow on May Day. Everyone strives to better themselves.'

  Carter looked across the table, carefully and slowly, weighing his words, creating pressure on the boy, loading it on his young shoulders.

  'Tell me, Willi, if Erica knew that you were not drowned, but that you had defected, would she then love you or would she hate you? Would you be a hero to her or a traitor . . . ?'

  'You bastard.'

  'Would she love you . . .'

  'You have no right to ask.'

  'I have every right. You have no rights. You have nothing, Willi Guttmann. Without me, without my help you have nothing. Answer me, would she love you ?'

  Johnny saw the boy crumple low in his chair, saw his body hunch and slide.

  'She would hate me, she would despise me.'

  'Why?'

  'She would not have done what I did, not for the same reason.'

  'Could she not have been in love with a boy, as you were with Lizzie?'

  The boy spat out his bitterness. 'She loves no one. She is incapable of loving anyone but my father. She does not have the warmth or the heart to love a stranger, another man . . . Where is Lizzie?'

  'Forget Lizzie.'

  The boy was high again in his chair and his hands gripped the sides of the seat, knuckles clear and pale. The muscles gathered at the back of his neck. 'I want Lizzie to be here. I want Lizzie to be with me. You promised.'

  ' I said that you have to forget Lizzie Forsyth.'

  The boy cried out, a wounded animal, deep wounded, the wood saw on the buried nail. 'How do I forget her when she is carrying my child . . .'

  'She is carrying nobody's child. Not yours, not anybody else's. She's not pregnant and she's not coming to England. She's not coming because she doesn't want to.'

  He was very quiet, silent but for the whimper, still but for the shaking that heralded the first tears. George was in the doorway and moving over the carpet with the disciplined stealth of the hospital orderly who must handle a troublesome patient. When George led Willi out of the room he had a strong hand at the boy's elbow. The door closed.

  'Why did you do that?'Johnny asked.

  'I don't really know,' said Carter.

  'You scratched him hard.'

  'I'm not proud of myself, Johnny,' Carter said. 'Just fractured a bit, I suppose. And what does it matter? The problem is bigger than the boy's sensibilities.'

  'What problem ?'

  'Do us a favour, Johnny. I'm asking these questions to get crucial information for you, not for the pleasure of hearing my own bloody voice. The problem of persuasion, your problem. With the old man we stand a chance. We've evaluated that and we believe in the possibility of winning him. But how to cope with the sister, that's the new problem and Willi is the way round it.'

  Chapter Seven

  Charles Mawby, with the advantage of a diplomatic passport, was quickly off the plane and through Immigration. He walked at a busy pace through the Customs area and out onto the concourse and his eyes roved for the man meeting him. Adam Percy, SIS resident in the German capital, stood back from the waving greeters and welcome carriers who awaited other passengers from the London flight. Mawby saw him, strode forward, there was a brief and perfunctory handshake and they were on their way to the car park.

  They looked what they were. The man on the ground who was the junior and at the airport to meet his chief from head office. The twinge of deference, had it been a good journey? The fact that the plane had not been delayed, the weather should hold up. With Percy driving they moved off for the autobahn heading south.

  'What seems to be the form, Adam?'

  'I held off calling you, Mr Mawby, until I'd lined a man for you to talk with.'

  'Thank you for that.'

  'We're going now to a
village just the far side of Bonn, to see a man who deals in the matters we're concerned with.' The mole bulged on the left face of Percy's nose, his lips were flaccid and creased and bloodless.

  In the Service his name was synonymous with dogged and persistent endeavour. 'I'd heard some years ago of this group. Bringing people out of the East for cash, it's their speciality. They deliver - I checked the man out with Bundesnachrich- tendienst.'

  'Who do we deal with now at BND ?'

  'This was back door, an after hours request, as you wanted. The usual source.'

  'Who are we seeing?'

  'He's not the sort you'd have for cocktails, not a pleasing example of the human species, but that's not the job sheet, is it? His motivation would be categorised as political. A junior SS officer at the end of the war, but too junior to warrant retribution from the legal system. All the ideology was stored up and left to fester. He's a communist hater, and this is his way of goading them. He runs a small group that manages with a fair regularity to bring out unhappy citizens from the DDR in exchange for fat returns from their relatives and friends living on this side. Most of his scene of action is along the Berlin to Helmstedt autobahn.'

  Mawby dived him a quick glance. 'That's possible, is it?'

  'It's possible. Possible but hazardous.' Percy kept his eyes on the road.

  'Not straightforward, not for people like this?'

  'Hazardous, Mr Mawby, and that cannot be overstressed. In theory the DDR is obliged under the terms of the postwar Four Power Agreement to provide unimpeded motor access between West Germany and West Berlin. In effect over the last 2 years they have substantially raised the numbers of cars stopped and searched at the Marienborn checkpoint.

  The two principal methods of evasion involve persons hidden in a vehicle, or those provided with false papers, forged documents and attempting to bluff their way through. They're not idiots on the border, they've a fair idea what they're looking for . . . there are some 500 West Germans serving time. The drivers, the fixers, the link-men, they'll testify to the thoroughness of the scrutiny at the border. There's a considerable intelligence effort mounted by the Staatssicherheitadienst that's aimed specifically at infiltrating the groups, giving them a length of rope and then strangling them.'

  Perhaps even in the warm interior of the speeding car, Charles Mawby felt a faint and winnowing chill. Why did the wretched man start with the difficulties? Mawby had spoken in London of the feasibility of the concept, he had not lingered on the ruts and pot-holes in the road.

  'How tight is our group ?'

  'How long is an Irish mile, Mr Mawby? The bad ones don't last, and this one has survived, that's on his side. Security is always going to be the greatest strain though. If nobody knows of them then they don't attract the trade, and they're commercial, so they need an order list. In a vague way they have to go out and tout for business. They have to be known, and the BND knows about our merchant.'

  'You've called me over to meet this man, so what tells you he has the necessary security factor to be suitable for us ?'

  His politics. He detests them over there, detests and loathes them.

  His whole life is kicking them, and around him are like-minded people. To you and me his pay-roll is made up of thugs and fascists ...

  It wouldn't be simple to infiltrate that kind of group.'

  'That makes sense.' Mawby sighed a bellows blast of relief. The start of the good news, but the moment was short.

  'You have to understand, Mr Mawby, that if you launch with this man you can expect us to be alone with him. Even if we subsequently change stance and request it, we'll get no help from BND. The authorities aren't friendly with these people. From the Chancellor down they're condemned. They're seen as jeopardising the free flow along the autobahn, the Soviets are for ever threatening that if Bonn doesn't take a firmer hand, stamp them out, then new controls will be asserted on the autobahn. They're an embarrassment to government here, the groups stand in the way of the gradual thaw in East and West German relations, so they're just not wanted. It's not an area where we'd have active co-operation.'

  Mawby turned to watch the How of growing crops and grass shudder past him, felt the trembling roar of an over- taking articulated lorry and trailer.

  ' I suppose we couldn't do this ourselves?' Mawby be- trayed his unhappiness.

  'You could, but you take a risk.'

  'Explain yourself.'

  'If you have a car with a British driver and you have German passengers with German documentation then you invite inspection. You couldn't give British paperwork to Germans and just hope they weren't singled for questioning, and if it were blown . . .

  Good grief, they'd be scuttling for cover in Outer Mongolia.'

  'Quite so.'

  'You have to be distant from it, Mr Mawby. Distant from the group and above everything distant from the driver, so the leads and traces back are stifled.'

  Mawby looked across at Percy, but the eyes were fixed on the road. Of course he was right and he could afford to be, because it wasn't down to him, the responsibility wasn't going to find its way to Adam Percy's pudgy back.

  'How long do we have, before you want the pick-up made?'

  'Our man is unavailable after the fifteenth of June,' Mawby said.

  'That's sharp.'

  'It has to be done in that time.'

  'Not much scope for rehearsal, not before the first night. You'll have to hope everybody learns their lines by the curtain lift.'

  'It has to be done in that time.'

  'So be it,' said Percy. 'Perhaps we should wish each other luck, Mr Mawby.'

  They bumped over the cobbled streets of Bonn, were held by traffic lights, cramped by cars as they crawled towards the south side of the city. Mawby had nothing more to say, nothing before the meeting was joined.

  'Will your father take any work with him to Magdeburg?'

  'Only if there were something very pressing. Only if there was a problem at Padolsk would they contact him.'

  'While he's in Magdeburg is he subject to surveillance?'

  'A guard, a policeman watching him? ... I don't think so. Never before.

  But like every outsider, every visitor, his documents must go to Strasse der Jugend . . .'

  'What's that, Willi?'

  'To the offices of the City police. For the stamp.'

  'Would the Soviet military be in contact with him, or GRU'

  'The Red Army, yes. They will know that he is in Magdeburg. They invite him each year for a dinner, perhaps to the garrison camp of the armoured division at Bierderitz

  'That's to the east of Magdeburg?'

  'East across the river. The GRU, no .. . there is no reason for the intelligence people to watch him.'

  'You are sure he is not under permanent surveillance?'

  'I am certain he is not.'

  'There is no policeman that is attached to him?'

  'There are none.'

  'We are now into the age of the tactical nuclear concept and that means the end for fixed defensive positions. With tactical nuclear armouries the Maginot thinking is gone for ever. But you can only justify nuclear reaction to conventional attack if you have lost great tracts of land and territory, and if you have major hostile concentrations to aim the missiles at. The decision to go nuclear will not be made by a field commander, not by a man in denims with four stars on his cap, it will be made by a politician with political considerations uppermost and the risk of setting off a domino run of nuclear escalation giving him nightmares. So the military men on our side have to think in terms of meeting a conventional attack with conventional defence. The order of the day will be small, highly mobile units, low density and self-contained. Our tanks would be operating in platoon formation, four or five together and they will be met by Soviet mechanised infantry with manual controlled missiles. The infantry will have all the cover they want, wrecked villages, forestry, good and hilly terrain. The missile men can have a field day, and their equipment's off
the Padolsk design board. You're with me, Johnny?'

  The village was tucked within the twin walls of the valley. The church and main street low in the bed beside a stream and the houses scattered indiscriminately above. The leaves were coming to the trees, the grass on the small lawns sprouted, the first flowers were opening. A quiet, private place.

  Percy drove up a winding track. He scanned the gateposts of the houses for the number that he wanted. It was a split- level home, modern and freshly-painted and large. As the car drew up, there was a trembling in Mawby's legs, irritating and uncontrolled. They were a far cry from clubland, from the Service, from his home ground. He would rather have been anywhere, anywhere other than climbing from a car, stepping onto a track on the outskirts of a village south of Bonn, anywhere other than walking in this foreign place with morose Adam Percy for company. It was the expectable butterflies, first time at the sharp end for a year or so.

  They went up the short driveway.

  'No names, eh?'

  'He won't want them,' Percy said.

  Up to the front door, polished and heavy. Mawby looked behind him over his shoulder, nothing moved, nobody to observe the men in dark suits in the village setting. Percy pressed the bell button.

  He was a big man who greeted them, a man of gross power and physique. A short neck, ears hugging his shoulders. A bullet head crowned with a shaven stubble of white hair. Heavy, muscled arms that stretched tight his high folded shirt sleeves. He loomed over them.

  Best foot forward, Charles Augustus. Career men don't retreat, career men push ahead. Couldn't have delegated this one, could he? Couldn't have parcelled it off on Carter. This one was for Mawby. And he must not stare at the scar where a revolver bullet probably had nicked the skin high across the right cheek bone, and he must not curl his lip at the waft of cologne. You need him, Charles Augustus. More than he needs you, you need him. Just as you need Johnny Donoghue who killed a girl and never uttered a syllable of remorse. Just as you need the snivelling Guttmann. Just as you need Carter and the prig Pierce, and Smithson.