From the Battalion headquarters at Seggerde the instruction was broadcast to the companies at Lockstedt and Dohren and Weferlingen and Walbeck that special vigilance must be maintained. At Walbeck Heini Schalke listened to his Politoffizier's briefing. The bright new stripe on his tunic arm ensured his concentration.
The river was behind them, but the chill of the water he had waded through clung to Johnny's legs, and his shoulders ached from the weight of the piggy-back rides he had given to Otto Guttmann and Erica. Two journeys with his boots sliding on the mud bed, groping for firm stones.
Up to his waist in cold, filthy water, and perhaps a small sewer emptied into the river. He stank when they were over, and there was no time to dry himself properly. He had tried to wipe himself down with a handkerchief that became a sodden mess, he had dropped his trousers to his ankles and wrung them, he had chafed his legs for warmth. The Doctor and Erica had watched him in exhausted silence.
And then they had gone on, headed west with the Aller forded.
By hugging the woods, avoiding the roads, skirting the warning signs that forbade entry without the precious permit paper, going on tip-toe past a pair of Border Guards who smoked and talked, Johnny led Otto Guttmann and Erica into the Restricted Zone.
Where once the trees had been felled, where there now grew dense and sprouting undergrowth, he called a stop. All of their nerves twisted by the long and escalating risk of discovery. Time for a halt, time for the bivouac: No blankets, no food, no drink. Nothing but the chance for rest.
Under the canopy of the forest the evening came quickly, slanting the shadows, tricking the eyes.
They sagged down onto the ground. Erica tended her father, mopped the damp from his forehead, loosened his collar, eased off his shoes. The old man was white faced, frighteningly so, his breathing was ragged and the failing light played at the cavities of his eyes, the hollows of his cheeks.
Food, Johnny, the poor beggar needs food. And only Johnny could make the decision as to whether to forage for Otto Guttmann. He shouild never have brought them with him .. . but Johnny had made a promise, and a promise was as binding as a contract. ..
The sound of the voices swept the thought from his mind.
Furtive voices. Those of a boy and a girl. There was the crack of a broken branch, there was the snapping of a broken frond. Johnny's finger went to his mouth, the urgent plea for total quiet. Who else would come to this bloody, forbidden place at this time? Johnny eased the Stechkin from his trouser waist, checked that it was cocked, saw the lie of the safety catch. Who else would come to the bloody killing zone?
Johnny gestured to Erica that she should stay still. With the sureness of a stalking cat he was gone from her sight.
Chapter Twenty-one
To Ulf and Jutte the forest was a dangerous and alien place. There was no safety here, no gratitude from them for the dark, cloaking cover of the trees and thickets. They huddled close to each other, his arm on her shoulder and her face rested on his cheek. They talked in low, guarded voices, in fragmented sentences that often were stifled as they listened to the night sounds around them.
'When we are across, Ulf, what happens to us, where do we go ?'
'To the first farm, the first house .. .'
'How will they welcome us?'
'. . . they will give us something to eat, they will call the authorities.'
'The police will come to see us?'
'They will take us to a place called Giesen . . . north of Frankfurt. .. they will give us money there . . .'
' Is the money a reward for what we have done?'
' It is just to help us begin our lives.'
' I want to live in Hamburg, where my uncle is . . .'
'Then we will tell them, Jutte, we will give them his name.'
'My uncle has a big factory there, he is the owner of the factory, all of it belongs to him. My uncle is a rich man
'Perhaps he will help us when we are ready to leave Giesen.'
'My uncle will give me a room.'
'Perhaps he will not want to have the two of us living there
»
'He said he would be kind to me.'
'We have to think of the future, Jutte.'
Her head moved angrily away from his face. 'I'm not exchanging one prison for another. In Berlin you could have had a little flat and some cheap furniture. I am not going to Hamburg just to become a housewife
... I am going there to live. ..'
'Yes, Jutte, we are going there to live together.'
'. . . of course, Ulf, of course.'
She leaned her head back to his shoulder and he felt the cool, paper-smooth skin, and he knew that he loved her, that he could not believe that he would ever love another girl. And the price that he must pay for her love was high, as high as the close mesh fence, as high as the crack of the automatic guns, as high as the cry of the Hinterland sirens.
'Did you hear something . . . ?'Jutte was rigid, alert.
'Nothing.'
'Something moved . . . close to us . ..'
She pointed with her hand into the inky darkness, a wasted gesture. He sensed her fear, the panting of her breath.
' I heard nothing.'
'There was a movement. . .'
'Perhaps it was a pig, there are many here.' He remembered once, patrolling in the Spellersieck woods near where the Soviets had their observation bunker, how he had startled a pig. She had had all her young with her, seven or eight of them. He remembered the crash of their rushing flight, his own terror.
'Nobody would come here?'
'Not this close to the border. Not in curfew. There would only be the guards. You'd hear them,' Ulf said viciously. 'You'd hear their blundering feet.'
'Would the pig hurt us ?'
'Nothing will hurt you, I would not allow it. . .'
They laughed sweetly, privately, together and his arm tightened on her shoulder. He wondered if the moon would come, whether the patrols had changed their night routine, whether there had been a variation since he had left the Walbeck garrison.
From the fold in the ground where he lay, Johnny could sometimes see the boy and the girl. Momentarily the moon's brightness would light on the flash of the boy's teeth, a glimpse of the white collar of the girl's blouse. Otherwise two indistinct, merged shapes. Only their voices were clear. Johnny had come silently with the stealth of the expert. He had moved once, at the bite of an insect at his stomach. A quick, stifled action.
Johnny lay still and listened.
'.. . Are you going to love me, before we go ...?' The tease from the girl now that the fear of wild pigs was passed.
'Not now . .. not here.'
'Why not?'
'Because . . . because we have to run tonight.'
'Won't you have the strength?'
'Later. ..'
Johnny like an old man in a dirty raincoat who hides his hands and slinks close to teenagers at night.
First he had come, holding his breath and his nerves screaming, the Stechkin targeting on the voices, and as he had absorbed the talk of young people he could let the spring unwind. He put the safety catch on.
Same as you, Johnny . . . but fantastic. Fantastic that in the thousands of square miles of woodland along the frontier, under the same bloody trees, facing the same bloody sector, there should be another group . ..
Fantastic ... He had heard the girl goading the boy, the boy's gentle answers, and he had been relaxed by the tempo of their talk. He imagined the hands of the girl sliding under the shirt of the boy and he pushing her away, and her mouth nibbling at his ear and him twisting his face . ..
The enormity of what he knew sledge-hammered Johnny.
Going tonight, weren't they? Going over during these hours of darkness.
Footsteps across the ploughed strip, and the follow-up of lights and searches and dogs. New patrols to follow, intensified activity as the Border Guards tried to claw away from their failure. If these two went over then every man in
the Walbeck company would be out at night for a week. That was the procedure, that was what he had been told. They seal it tight once there's a breakout, never the same place twice.
If they go over then you're broken, Johnny.
If they go over, Johnny has to up sticks and head on down the fence to where it's quieter, to where the panic button's been left unpushed. Otto Guttmann could not withstand another cross-country hike. A forced march and a day without food, that's the final limit. What to do, Johnny?
What to do with a tricky little obstacle in the way of Mawby's plan, and Henry Carter's hopes? What does the training tell you? You blast them out of the bloody way. But they're just kids, kids that Smithson would want to kiss for their courage, and they've the same right to slip the fence as you have, Johnny. That's morality, that's logic, that's for outside the Restricted Zone. You couldn't do it, Johnny. Not to a girl who wants a purse full of Deutsche marks and a walk down Jungfernsteig in Hamburg city centre. Not to a boy who has the idea that freedom is a flat that he's saved for and furniture he can afford. You couldn't do it, not follow them to the Hinterland fence. Not take a stick and throw it against the Hinterland fence, activate the alarms, home in the patrols, guide the guns. If they caught them on the Hinterland then the patrolling the next night would be at normal strength, right for Johnny and Otto Guttmann and Erica . . . you just couldn't do it.
No one to ask. No one to query the point with. Johnny makes the decisions. Johnny alone. Mawby would say to blast them out of the bloody way. Carter would say to find a way to head them off, negotiate and compromise.
What do you do, Johnny?
Once he had stood in judgement over the life of a girl and once is twice too many, and Maeve O'Connor in a village grave under Slieve Gullion mountain.
She had never seen the wire. If he told her the whole truth of it he would terrify her.
'When we go from here, Jutte, there is no turning back.
From the first step we go on.'
She nuzzled against him with her cheek and nose. ' I know.'
'If we are to go back, it is now.'
The kiss was soft on his lips.
'Jutte, listen ... we have to be very quiet when we leave this place. We take a path that leads to a woodman's hut. At one place in the path there is a trip wire. I know where it is, and there is a track that the patrols use to go round it.. . We come to a woodman's hut and then there is the first cleared strip where there is the Hinterland fence. It is less than two metres high, but the top half is of strands of wire that have alarms and lights that are triggered if the wire is disturbed. Jutte, you have to remember this . ..' He took her face in his hands, he was so frightened himself, so frightened for her, tears welled into his eyes. 'At the point where I am taking you the Hinterland is close to the border, closer than elsewhere, 400 metres. With your help I can climb the fence without fouling the wires. You come then and when you climb the bells will ring.
We have to go very fast then and we carry sticks. The last fence is three and a half metres high and is fitted with automatic guns. I will throw the sticks against their wires to fire them, then we climb again . ..'
' I understand.'Jutte with a faint, threadbare voice.
'When we climb you must have your hands inside the cuffs of your coat. The wire at the top is very sharp, you will remember that?'
'Yes.'
'Jutte, we have to run all the way from the Hinterland to the border fence. There will be noise, men shouting, perhaps they will shoot . .. you must never look back, you must follow. Wherever I lead, you must follow.'
'And you will be with me, close to me?'
Ulf kissed Jutte on the forehead, then pulled her down and snuggled her against his chest, cramped her body against his, felt the beat of her heart and the warmth of her blood.
'We have to go, Jutte ...'
They rose to their feet and began to grope their way towards the path, between the bushes and the bracken. They did not see the fleeting shape that trailed them.
They were young and they had each other
They had the capability.
It was not a plan that Johnny would have entertained. They would career between the Hinterland fence and the border with the lights and alarms behind them . . . Johnny would go with circumspection, weigh each step and evaluate each problem. And Johnny had the carcase of Otto Guttmann to slow him, and there was no love .. . only a bloody job, only a filthy contract he had signed with Charles Mawby on a grey May morning. They had the capability, and if they were successful then Johnny and Otto Guttmann and Erica would not cross the following night.
Better to fail, Johnny, better to fail and to know yourself Only a stick thrown against the Hinterland fence, and the guards and the jeeps and their guns would be alerted. No witnesses to the treachery.
And he'd live with it every waking hour of his life, every sleeping minute. It could be justified, too, just a silly girl who wanted a shopping spree in Hamburg, not rated high on the pecking order beside Otto Guttmann from Padolsk.
You don't have the stomach for it, Johnny.
The padding of their feet on the path drew him forward. What would they have said, the Guttmanns? The Doctor and Erica who he had brought to the border. Would they say the kids should go to the Hinterland? And not there to be asked, were they? Only Johnny to decide.
They had come to the woodman's hut.
The fence was clear in front of them, flickers of light at the diamond mesh of the lower wire, and above that the strands that were electrified.
The first barrier. An eerie, desperate quiet in the woods behind them and beyond. For a full minute they stood and listened to the deep silence that rocked back at them from the tree walls. They were remote from each other, straining their senses, frightened and coiled.
'You are ready?'
Ulf felt against him the nodded agreement, the constant shiver.
'You remember everything that I said?'
'Yes,' she said, her mind empty.
'Never look back . . .'
' I love you, Ulf.'
Only the love of the girl would have taken him forward. For nothing less than the dream and the promise would he make the step towards the wire.
He squeezed her hand and broke away and went to the back of the woodman's hut where were stored the logs and branches for kindling fires. He had seen the wood piles as he had patrolled, and they were where he expected to find them. In the darkness his hands ran over the lengths of wood until he had found three branches, all that he needed for his purpose.
'Close to the border is the vehicle ditch, we lie there, protected, while I explode the guns.'
'Yes.'
Still she does not understand, after all that he had said. Lucky Jutte.
Then he had taken her hand, and with a quick, sharp stride he tugged her towards the fence.
The Hinterland fence rose above the level of her eyes. The trees beyond were very close, and opposite her a path opened into the woods. Ulf tossed the branches high over the top wires. Jutte bent down with her fingers locked together and felt Ulfs boot scrape into the palms, his hand on her head steadying himself. She braced her muscles, gathered strength for the impetus of the push that she would give, waited for his command.
A moment of standing time.
'Now . . .' The hoarse whisper from Ulf.
She heaved her hands upwards, felt his body thrust past her into the air and knew that her strength had failed her, that his leap was false. She stood, petrified, as the wires sung with his impact. A shadow in front of her face, wriggling for support. In the same instant the siren avalanched into her mind, and Ulf s flailing boot smashed against her face.
A hundred metres from them, as if in unison with the alarm, the twin red and green lights flashed out the position of the disturbance.
'Help me .. . help me.' Ulf screamed, suspended and frantic.
'What do I do . . .?'
The noise swelled, rose from a growl to a crescendo.
'Push me . . .'
She saw the threshing arms grasp at a cement post. She reached to her full height and thrust at his body with her fists, pushing him away into the blackness, over the fence.
Even as he fell Ulf could picture the scene at the command bunker. As he dropped and the grass rushed to take him he could see the small white bulb winking on the console. The bursting activity that the light would merit. The charge of the duty personnel towards the microphone that linked the bunker with the radio receivers of the foot patrols, and the watchtowers, and the earth bunkers.
He landed hard, awkwardly, and the pain was immediate, coursing through his ankle. They would be running for the jeeps.
'Give me your hand
Jutte's cry was far from him, detached and unreal. He was so tired, so weak, he wanted only to rest on the cool grass beside the fence, he wanted only to lie and sleep there. In shock, in exhaustion, in agony.
But the siren in the air would not let him sleep, the siren and the pain in his leg, the pain and the cry from Jutte.
'Help me. Stop fucking snivelling, help me . . .'
'Go back . . .' screamed Ulf.
'We can't. . .'
'We have to.'
'Help me.' She spat the words at him through the close mesh.
She leaped at the wire. The fence rocked, sagged under her weight.
She climbed, lost her footing, fell back, climbed again. There was a new sound to compete with the siren, a new intruder. Jutte was not aware of it, knew nothing but the effort of heaving herself astride the top of the wire. Ulf heard it, heard and recognised the running roar of the jeep. He staggered to his feet, lurched as the river of pain burst in his shin and thigh, retrieved himself, stood uncertainly and waited to break her fall.
She dropped from the wire and her weight and swinging arms caught his chest and his face and both together they were pitched to the ground.
The Contract Page 31