The Contract

by Gerald Seymour

  yards between himself and the couple.

  Across the road was a low roofed, century old stone chapel. There was a stall in front where an elderly woman guarded bundles of cut flowers, cheerful when set against the darkness of her clothes. Willi had talked of the cemetery, of the pilgrimage to the grave that would be made by Otto Guttmann and his daughter.

  Johnny quickened his stride, closed the distance and reached in his inner pocket for the envelope.

  Erica had paid for a spray of roses that were red and bold and erect, her father carried them and they nodded their thanks and passed into the cemetery. They threaded their way between the family plots. The old man struggled to maintain his straight, firm walk and his shoulder was tilted to his daughter as if he leaned more heavily for support. The grave they found was narrow, and there were tufts of grass sprouting between the gravel chips. With a quick gesture of annoyance Erica Guttmann bent down and snatched with her fingers at the grass stems and threw them to the pathway, then rose to stand in silence beside her father. A full minute Otto Guttmann waited, until the tears ran on his cheeks, and the tremble of emotion played at his lips, then he ducked and placed the flowers against the headstone and retrieved himself and stood again in stillness.

  You're a pig, Johnny, you're the man in the night at the window of the Nurses' Home. A foul, nasty creature . . . Turn the screw, Johnny, turn it so that it hurts and brings agony. You're a pig, Johnny, and you don't give a shit.

  Erica walked away from her father, leaving him to his inner contemplation, to the memories of the woman who had been his wife and given him his children, the memories of the woman who had died in the car that he had driven. Memories of holidays with a son and a daughter and picnics in these woods. Memories of shared happiness.

  Erica was away from him and her back was turned and she browsed among other stones, other inscriptions, other flowers.

  Johnny sidled forward, whittled the yards down, came to Otto Guttmann's shoulder.

  'Doctor Guttmann .. .'

  The old man's head cocked, jerked up at the stranger's voice. A spell broken, a mood disintegrated.

  Johnny slid the envelope into the opened palm of Otto Guttmann's hand and as the fingers clenched and the eyes spun he was gone. Gone fast, gone because the work was finished.

  Johnny didn't look back, did not expose his face, hurried in a fast walk to the cemetery gate. You've taken a chisel and hammered it into him, chosen the place where he'd be most vulnerable and beaten the sharp edge into him. You've destroyed him, Johnny.

  On his daughter's arm Otto Guttmann climbed the path of stamped earth through the trees above the cemetery towards the Feudalmuseum.

  This was the show piece of the town, the towering and restored castle that perched on a rock crag pinnacle above the houses. Several groups of walkers passed them because his steps were hesitant and the toes of his shoes bruised the stones in the path. Erica would notice nothing, would relate his stumbling progress to the graveside visit, equate his condition with the emotion generated by the cemetery.

  He had looked once at the photographs in the envelope. Once also he had glanced at the words written on a single sheet of paper.

  'If you ever wish to see your son, Willi, again, tell no-one of what you have been shown.'

  In his mind there was a pandemonium of confusion. Five photographs of his son, cheerful and with a smile and clothes that he had not owned when he had left Moscow for Geneva. Willi on the streets of London because Otto Guttmann knew the symbols behind his son's back .. . the red double decker buses, the policeman with his conical blue helmet, the monuments that were international and famous.

  The photographs said to him that Willi was in London. But Willi was drowned in the Lake of Geneva.

  His body had never been found.

  That was explained. The man from the Foreign Ministry who had telephoned had said that it was possible in those waters for a corpse to stay submerged for many weeks. Possible, but unusual.

  Which image should he take, which image should he accept? Willi with his face swollen and his stomach distended, caught in the weed, held in the slurry of the lake mud. Willi, drowned and dead and the file closed. Was that his son? . . . That, or the boy who posed with the grin and the wide smile of the photographs.

  If it were a cruel trick then who would have the vicious- ness of mind to concoct it? The taunting of an old man with the resurrection of his son from the winding sheet.

  They had come under the arch of the castle gatehouse, they had paused to find the coins for the admission charge, they had stepped into the strong light of the battlements adorned with cannon. He had no recollection of the man who had come in stealth behind him, could remember nothing of his face or features. He could recall only a slouched and disappearing back and the feel of the thin paper of the envelope in his fingers. If the palm of his hand had not been able to find the clear edges of the photographs in his pocket he would have known he had dreamed, imagined, that the mind of an old man could be harsh and vindictive.

  He made an excuse to his daughter. He must find a lavatory. He would only be a few minutes. He left her to gaze down from the high walls across the panorama of the houses set in trees in the slope of the valley, and beyond to the rising woodlands and the Brocken mountain.

  Behind a bolted door, cramped and closeted, he took the photographs from his pocket. The pictures admitted no possibility of doubt, nor of deception. Even in the meagre light he could see there was nothing fraudulent, no super- imposition, no trick . . . Willi in the centre of London ... He felt his knees weaken and reached for the whitewashed walls for support. The tears flowed and he wept without inhibition.

  Willi, his son. Willi, walking and alive and breathing the good air. He found his handkerchief, wiped his eyes and snivelled into its folds.

  Why had the man come with such subterfuge? Why had he not stayed to offer explanation? Why did he torture him with such cruelty? When Otto Guttmann joined his daughter on the battlements she quizzed him sharply as to whether he felt faint, and he said that he was well.

  This year, as every year, they set off to tour the state- rooms of the Feudalmuseum.

  Too early for lunch, too early for the train back to Magdeburg, Johnny meandered along a wood path away from the cemetery. To his right, half hidden from him by trees was the road winding to the horizon of the hills. That would be the road to the Brocken, the summit at 1140 metres above sea level, the highest peak in the Hartz. Pierce had spoken of the Brocken, of the antennae of the Soviet technicians, of the principal Warsaw Pact listening post in the DDR. Triple towers rising into the skyline that could monitor NATO radio transmissions across West Germany. Less than 10 miles away and the most sensitive installation in the country and close to the frontier. And down the road he'd be drifting into the

  Schutzzone that Smithson had warned of. He retraced his steps, turned his back on the far hill and its pylons.

  The sign of the forking of the paths directed him to the Wildpark Christianental.

  There were deer and pigs here that gazed sorrowfully from inside their wire lined compounds. A fox in a cement floored cage stared back at him and having no escape curled itself again into a fur ball. A wild cat scurried for its artificial cave. They were not the creatures that caught at Johnny's eye. It was the birds of the mountain that drew him. The buzzard and the sparrow hawk, the harrier and the peregrine, the merlin and the kestrel. Each with his stumpy wooden perch, each with his own chain for denying flight. What the bloody place is all about, a great sodding empire of clipped wings and restricted movement.

  And Johnny would cut Otto Guttmann free. He would have loved to take a wire cutter to the birds, loved to watch them climb and soar again in the upper currents of the wind.

  Suppose Otto Guttmann won't come, rejects it, won't entertain the drive down the autobahn . . . what then, Johnny? Cut the wires on those birds and they'll rise. Guttmann is the same, or he's a bloody lunatic.

  It had taken J
ohnny half an hour to walk through the Wildpark. In front of him was the main road into Wernigerode.

  Nothing more for him to do in this town. The dart had been thrust into the mind of Otto Guttmann. Its poison should be given time to run.

  He would catch the early afternoon train to Magdeburg.

  A pleasant sunshine in West Berlin. Crowds out on the Kaiser-Damm and the Bismarck Strasse. The people of this frenetic, isolated city around which 11 Divisions of the Red Army were stationed bobbed in and out of the department stores, crowded the pavements, jostled for seats in the cafes.

  With the Brigadier's wife as his guide, Charles Mawby was shopping.

  He had bought a cut glass vase for Joyce, now looked for something for the children. And he was frittering time, eating at the hours that stood before the launch- ing of DIPPER's run. He was poor company for the Briga- dier's wife, little that was amusing in his conversation, and the shopping expedition did nothing but aggravate the cutting edge of his impatience. The obsession that he could not share trampled on him. He carried full responsibility yet he would not be in Magdeburg when Johnny Donoghue met Otto Guttmann. He would not be on the autobahn for the pick-up. He would not be at Marienborn when the documents and passports were produced. He had taken responsibility but when the Dipper bird soared he could not influence its flight.

  In three days the mission would be done with, finished. Either way, success or failure, it would be completed. In his working life he thought that he had never felt such choking awareness of the stakes for which he played.

  On a scheduled Interflug flight the Trade Minister of the German Democratic Republic and his advisory team arrived at Heathrow.

  The group was taken by car from the apron to the Queen's Building suite where was waiting for them a welcoming party formed of a junior minister, two senior civil servants from the Department of Trade and Industry and the East German ambassador to London. There was much smiling as the interpreters grappled with the introductions, many firmly clasped handshakes, an impression of lasting friendship. The Trade Minister was an important figure in the regime and the Party, a member of the Politburo, one of the 'old guard', a colleague of the founders of the

  'other' Germany, a friend of Ulbricht and Stoph and Grotewohl and Pieck. A hardline man whose political career had been at its peak when Stalin sat in the Kremlin, an advocate of the march of the Red Army into Czechoslovakia.

  The pleasure shown by Dr Oskar Frommholtz at his reception was a patchy mask, as if the guard over his face sometimes slipped to allow suspicion to flourish, the glimmer of caution to cloud his warm words.

  There were short speeches, polite applause and then the Trade Minister was led to a News Conference.

  It was not an auspicious start to the visit.

  When a senior functionary of another country, whether from the socialist or capitalist camp, came to the German Democratic Republic a room full of journalists was guaranteed. All the trappings of serious scribblers hanging on the words of the visitor, and arc lights and microphones and turning cameras.

  To hear Dr Frommholtz there had gathered only the Press Association, the airport news agency of Brenards, the BBC world service, and the representative of the communist Morning Star. Interest had been muted, the questions sparse until the proceedings were brought to a sharp close.

  The request by the PA reporter for information on the release date of a young East German writer named by Amnesty International as a Prisoner of Conscience and charged with espionage ended the conference. The chairs had been snappily vacated, while the visitors sulked and the hosts twitched in embarrassment.

  Facing the first Censure motion that the Opposition had tabled since he had assumed office, the Prime Minister had reacted with annoyance to the charges of incompetence and maladministration thrown across the Despatch Box of the House of Commons. In the morning he had been tetchy with his colleagues in Cabinet and Overseas Planning and Defence. In the afternoon he had given no quarter when fielding his twice weekly Questions. Uneasily his supporters on the benches behind him had cheered as he steam-rollered his opponents on the far side of the Chamber.

  He had sat on in the front row of government when the Censure debate had commenced aware that he could expect only a difficult and acrimonious passage when his own time came to wind up the government case before the 10 o'clock voting division. He had heard out the opening exchanges, then with a walk of theatrical indifference left the Chamber.

  Now in his private office the Prime Minister was weighing the paragraph cards of his speech when his PPS introduced the Member for Guildford, Sir Charles Spottiswoode.

  'Nice to see you again, Charles.'

  'Good of you to see me, Prime Minister.'

  'You'll take a drink?'

  'A small gin, thank you.'

  The PPS poured the drinks at the walnut cabinet, and excused himself.

  He had no doubt that with the third party gone the pleasantries would be short lived. Within 15 minutes he would have concocted a reason to return and break up the session.

  The two men watched the door close.

  'What can I do for you, Charles ?'

  'You can clear up a rather unpleasant and unacceptable bit of government action in my constituency.' Spottiswoode watched with a fleeting smile the flicker of discomfiture on the Prime Minister's face.

  'Go on . . . let's have the complaint, and the reason why it was necessary to bring it to me.'

  Spottiswoode dramatised a moment of silence, pondered his tie, brushed his nose with a handkerchief. 'In the hills between Guildford and Dorking, at Holmbury, is a country house that many years ago was taken over by the Secret Intelligence Service, or one of their agencies, a hush-hush place. A bit over a fortnight back, I have the exact date in my briefcase, if you want it. . .'

  'That can wait, go on.'

  '. . . a bit over a fortnight back, a young man with a German name but some sort of Soviet connection escaped from that place and was discovered half frightened to death - and I emphasise that, scared out of his wits - in a field between Ewhurst and the village of Forest Green. One of my constituents found him. Nothing appeared in the papers, of course, because government slapped on a D notice. You presumably were aware of that, Prime Minister?'

  ' I was aware of the use of a D notice which applied to the presence in this country of a Soviet defector. That notice is

  still in force, Sir Charles . . .' The admonition was sharply put.

  Spottiswoode stiffened. 'You call him a defector, Prime Minister, which to me implies someone who has chosen and quite voluntarily to come to our country. This young man was in a state of abject terror when found, which I suggest is hardly the characteristic of a willing participant in whatever matter the Intelligence people were hatching ... I will continue. He was taken to the home of my constituent, soaked and chilled, and while he was there he specifically requested protection from the people holding him at Holmbury. He made a most serious allegation there in the presence of the householder and the local constable who had been summoned by telephone. He claimed that he was being forced to provide information which was to be used to facilitate the murder of his elderly father. I understand that his father is a citizen of the Soviet Union, but of East German extraction and that he takes his holiday in the country of his birth each summer, where the killing will take place. This young man alleged that the plan was far advanced, that the actual assassin was present at Holmbury.'

  'It sounds a complete tale of fabrication.' A flush was in the Prime Minister's cheeks, the testiness in his words.

  ' I haven't finished. I'm sure you'll want to hear me out. . .'

  Spottiswoode said. 'As a result of the information being passed through police channels that the boy had been taken to the house of my constituent, these freebooters from Holmbury were told of his presence.

  They arrived, abused the police there, were vilely rude to a most pleasant lady, and dragged this young man from the premises half naked. There was no questi
on of returning him into the hands of his former captors of his own free will.'

  Anger was settling on the Prime Minister's face. He should have been sitting quietly, brooding with his speech, left to himself and his closest cronies. 'I'll look into it, you can be sure of that.'

  'It's my hope that you will look into it, and most thoroughly at that.'

  Spottiswoode was not to be easily moved from his bone and the marrow fat. 'Personally, I think it's a damned scandal if government agencies can cloak themselves in secrecy to cover what is at best disgusting behaviour, at worst a heinous and criminal act...'

  ' I have said, Sir Charles, I will look into the matter.'

  'This is not a land of private armies, nor is this a police state. We should not tolerate Security and Intelligence carrying on like bandits ... I have assumed throughout this interview, Prime Minister, that the actions of these people at Holmbury in this case do not have government approval

  'You won't expect me to pass comment on that.'

  The Prime Minister shifted in his chair, his fingers twisted on the fountain pen in his hand. Irritation and embarrassment. Could he admit that the Service often acted without informing the head of government?

  Well enough known that was a fact, whispered about in the corridors of Westminster that the Service was a law to itself. But not for him to say in his own office to a querulous backbencher that he did not control the day to day activities of SIS. Admit that and he was not fitted for the high office he held.

  But this was the grey area of the unmentionable - National Security -

  the area discussed by politicians with the same enthusiasm that a table of cigarette smokers will bring to the topic of terminal cancer. One of his predecessors, Harold Macmillan, had told the House that 'it is dangerous and bad for our national interest to discuss these matters'. Another occupant of Downing Street, Sir Harold Wilson, had written that a Prime Minister questioned in this field should phrase his answers to be

  'uniformly uninformative'.

  'I trust that those responsible in this case will be brought to heel and sharply. It would be unfortunate if people in this country, hard working and law abiding people, were to believe that there are agencies here that operate above democratic life . . . beyond your control, Prime Minister.'