The Contract

by Gerald Seymour

  Jutte springing to her feet, Ulf sprawled on his back. She saw his face, saw the snapped shut eyes that tried to squeeze out the pain. She saw so clearly, down to the glistening sweat beads at his neck. Ulf was floodlit in her gaze, and she was puzzled and could not realise the source of light.

  Even when the jeep had braked she still could not understand the coming of the light. She wrenched at Ulf's arm to drag him upright.

  'Come on, pig, run.'

  Hatred for the fallen Ulf Becker boiled in her. Scorn grappled at her mouth. She was the daughter of the Director of a Kombinat, he was the son of an engine driver .. . she had given him her trust and he had failed her. Her uncle had said that one of the group must know the border if there was to be success, and this was the one that she had chosen, this was the one she had found and given herself to, this one . . . this shitty pig.

  'Get up . . . get up.'

  A single shot.

  One round fired from a rifle with a killing range of a 1,000 metres. The guard with the rifle at his shoulder and the bright stripe on his arm stood less than 30 metres from Jutte Hamburg. The bullet nicked one of the strands of electrified wire and so was tumbling when it struck her upper back.

  She fell, flung and smashed over Ulf Becker. Her blood flew at his face. Her mouth was wide in anger, her eyes frozen in contempt.

  By the Jeep the sergeant said, 'Why did you shoot?'

  ' I thought she was going to run,' replied Heini Schalke.

  In the tree line Johnny turned away, retraced his steps along the path.

  The Stechkin had been in his hand when the jeep had braked. Stupid, really. Futile and unnecessary, because there had never been the chance of intervention. Never on, never an option.

  He could not have saved them. He walked on a dry path with the same precision as he had in coming, heading for the place where he had left the old man and Erica. It would have been a wasted sacrifice. They had wanted an animal, ice cold and devoid of feeling, when they came to Cherry Road, they had made the right choice ... He would never lose the image of the girl's fury ridden face.

  The price had been paid, access to the border had been bought. He would go the next evening with Otto Guttmann and Erica.

  Away behind him was the noise of the jeep engine. They would be taking their trophies back to the command bunker, the girl who was shot, the boy who would be their prisoner.

  His head small and frail in Erica's lap, Otto Guttmann slept.

  The shot had not wakened him, nor the siren that murmured in the trees around them, nor the flinching of his daughter at the stealth of the approach sounds. Her arms guarded his face as defiantly she waited.

  'Erica . .. it's Johnny . ..' The whisper from the darkness, and then the shadow loomed close, silent and fast, until he crouched beside her.

  'The shooting ... the noise ... I thought it was you. What happened ?'

  'A boy and a girl tried to cross . . .' The gruff response, unwilling answer. 'The guards fired on them.'

  'You saw it?'

  ' I saw it.'

  'Did they succeed, did they go ?'

  'The girl was killed, the boy was captured.'

  'You saw it all happen?'

  ' It was pathetic, they were children, they behaved like children.'

  'But brave . . .?'

  'Brave, yes ... in everything else they were pitiful. I listened to them when they were talking, before they went forward . . . then I thought they had a chance, I thought that until they came to the Hinterland, the first wire ... it finished there. There was never a chance for them.'

  'And for us . .. ?'

  Determination deepened his voice. 'We go tomorrow, we go tomorrow night. For us it is different.'

  'How is it different for us?'

  'Because I am not a child,'Johnny said savagely.

  He eased himself down onto the ground and stretched out beside her, felt his hand brush against her arm, wanted to hold her, wanted to cling to her, wanted her to gather him as she had her father.

  'What would have been their idea of freedom, Johnny? What was their dream?'

  'He wanted to rent a flat and buy furniture. She wanted a pretty frock from the shops in Hamburg.'

  'Did they talk of their freedom, what it meant to them ?'

  ' It's an empty word; it means nothing.'

  'Nothing to you, Johnny, everything to them. If someone comes to this place, dares to come here, then a flame must burn . . . The absence of freedom is outside your experience.'

  ' I have to sleep, Erica.'

  'Can you sleep when you have seen a girl killed ?'

  Johnny's eyes were closed. Exhaustion crawled through his body, mushroomed in his mind. 'When we are across, then we can talk of freedom . ..'

  'Too late then ... you must know what is freedom before you lead us to the wire.'

  ' It's not important.'

  'You think people will risk their lives for something that is not important?'

  ' It's just a job. Erica that's the total of it, that's all.' Johnny propped himself up on his elbow. 'I've been paid to do it, I've taken the money.

  I've an old mother and she needs cheap sausages from the corner shop, and electricity and coal, and a new coat for the winter, and I buy them.

  I'll pay for them because I came to Magdeburg. You understand ? I don't fool with clever words like freedom . . . The girl tonight, all she wanted was some pretty clothes, a new High Street to walk down. That was an idiot reason to get killed.'

  'You're cruel, Johnny . ..'

  'The boy with her, he loved her. They talked of love and it was wasted breath. There's no love now because she's wrapped in a bloody blanket and dead, and he's in chains in the cells.'

  'Did she love him at the end ?'

  Johnny peered into her face. 'Erica, for Christ's sake leave it ... it doesn't matter about love, another bloody irrelevance, all that matters is a plan to cross the wire. Love isn't the bloody leg up .. .'

  'Are we going to cross the wire, Johnny?'

  ' I don't know . ..'

  He sagged back onto the ground and his head was resting on the matted grass and the bent bracken. He unloaded the grenades from his anorak, squirmed down in search of comfort. His hand rose and grasped at the night air and Erica took it and pressed his fingers close to her and gave them warmth.

  'When Willi went from Geneva, was it to find his freedom?'

  'You have to ask him.'

  'Something more than those two you found tonight, what Willi was looking for. Tell me it was something more, Johnny.'

  'He must tell you himself... I'm sorry, Erica.'

  Chapter Twenty-two

  It was the pressure of her hand over his mouth that woke him. The first sensation he knew was of the weight of her fingers on his lips. Even as his eyes functioned and his mind turned he had grasped at her wrist. He could not move her, not until he was awakened and aware, not until he saw the fingers of her other hand splayed in the warning for quiet. She pointed to the undergrowth in the direction of the path.

  Johnny heard the voices. Low, casual, in conversation. The voices of young men. Erica was hunched above him and beside her a few feet from Johnny was her father, alerted, wrapped in the girl's coat. Dreadful, the old man looked to Johnny, his age accentuated by the lack of the razor, by the unbuttoned collar, by the hair that had not been tended. And Erica showed the haggard reward of a night without sleep. Stupid creature to have given her coat away and to have sat through the night in a skirt and a blouse and a light cardigan . . . bloody daft. The whole night standing guard over them, husbanding her strength to play sentry while the men slept. Shame caught at Johnny, he'd slept and he'd rested, and he had not thought of the girl.

  The Border Guards would be working through the area. They'd be at the Hinterland fence and trying to track back along the route of the couple. There was no reason for them to search with great thoroughness.

  One dead, one captured, and no trail beyond the Hinterland. And if they had
dogs then the dew would have formed over the scent of Johnny's tracks and he had been scrupulous in his care for movement in the undergrowth.

  The voices passed, not aroused, not interested. Erica's hand withdrew from Johnny's mouth. The Stechkin dug at the small of his back and he pulled it from his belt and laid it on the ground beside him.

  'They'll be up and down the track for most of the morning, then it'll tail off. . .'

  'My father is very hungry.'

  Hungry and ill, Johnny thought, and at the limit of his resources; a passenger to be coddled.

  'We can't move from here, not for hours . . . none of us.'

  'Look at him . . .'

  The old man met his gaze with a rare, fluttering smile, but that was bravery. Otto Guttmann sought and failed to conceal his helplessness.

  Johnny's resolution sagged.

  'Perhaps later I can go and look for some food . . . but it is a great risk.'

  'We haven't the clothes to sleep like this, in the open . . .'

  ' I know.'

  'But you will try?'

  ' If it is safe to do so I will try.'

  'And tonight we go ?'

  'When it is dark.'

  'What do we do for today?'

  Johnny grinned, dredging a measure of cheerfulness. He would not allow them to play clock-watchers. Keep the morale alive, because Johnny must lead as they must follow, keep their limbs and minds active.

  ' I've a job for each of you . ..'

  He saw their interest quicken. Johnny reached for the coil of rope that had been taken from the Trabant, passed it to Erica.

  '.. . near to the wire is rough ground, about five metres across, then working backwards is the vehicle ditch.' With the flat of his hand he smoothed the earth beside him. With his finger he mapped the lines. 'I have to have at least two lengths of rope that will reach from the fence to the ditch. I want you to unravel the rope and make the lengths that I need from the strands.'

  'And for me?' asked Otto Guttmann.

  'Figures for you, Doctor .. .'

  'Explain.'

  'The Hinterland fence is one metre eighty-five high. At the top of it metal stanchions project at a forty-five degree angle and carry wires that we cannot disturb. I propose to put a small tree trunk over the wire and bind it to a cement holding post with the cables from the car engine. We will have two more poles and tie them together at the top so that they rest from our side of the fence against the post and clear the tension wires. It will be like a ladder, the struts will be simple to tie in position. From you I must know how long the poles will have to be if they are to avoid the wires.'

  'That is very easy.'

  'That's the plan . . . and bloody good luck to it.'

  Like taking children to the seaside, finding something for them to do, designing a sandcastle and giving them a bucket and spade. Erica soon with a tangle of rope streamers on her knees. Otto Guttmann with a brightness on his face and a pen in his hand and an envelope on his lap. A diagram and a column of figures spreading over the paper.

  'The projection of the stanchion, how long is it?'

  'Fifteen centimetres .. .'

  'You are an exact man.'

  Johnny gazed at Otto Guttmann. 'A boy and a girl came to the wire last night. They failed at the first hurdle because they had no plan. One is dead, one is captured because they had no plan, they were not exact.

  They believed that will alone was enough.'

  'And it is not?'

  ' It is suicide.'

  Otto Guttmann pocketed his pen. 'On our side of the fence the poles should be three metres and thirty-eight to the knot, so three metres and fifty is adequate overall. The pole on the far side that is tied to the post should be two metres and fifty-six . . . that is what you wanted to know?'

  'Right.'

  'You did not manufacture this plan after the autobahn . . . before, you thought of this ?'

  'Yes.'

  'Because you never believed in the car?'

  ' I believe in nothing that I am not myself responsible for.'

  'And when you talked to us, when you gave us the guarantees of safety, and you pleaded that there was no danger, did you then imagine that at the last we would go this way?'

  'No ... it was only myself.'

  'And we are a hazard for your safe crossing of the border?'

  Johnny saw the old man's composure, examined the lined and unshaven face, and the eyes that were alive and piercing. 'Without you it would be easier for me . ..'

  'Why do you take us ?'

  ' It was what they sent me for,' said Johnny quietly. 'It was the reason for coming . . . whatever happened to the car from Berlin that didn't alter the reason.'

  Otto Guttmann persisted. 'Were we wise to trust you, to put faith in you?'

  ' I don't know . ..'

  ' I went to see a man in Magdeburg, my oldest friend, a pastor at the Dom ... I am proud of my faith. We talked of a man called Brusewitz who burned himself to death to bear witness to the conditions of worship in the country of my birth. Brusewitz faced fire, what we have been asked to do is trifling in comparison with the sacrifice of that man.'

  'To cross the fence is your protest?'

  ' It is the only protest that will affect them. When you have taken me across then that is what I will speak of .. . you know there are many ways in which they scourge our church. When they needed room for factories it was the churches in Leipzig and Potsdam that were destroyed to provide the ground. When they wished to widen the road into Rostock it was a church that was demolished. When 15,000 of our brother Catholics wanted to go for their annual pilgrimage and worship at the cathedral of Erfurt they were told the ceremonies were forbidden, on that day the square outside the cathedral was required for the performance of the Soviet State Circus .. . My gesture is a small one, but it will be noted.'

  ' It will be noted,' Johnny grinned. He took himself as a fly to the ceiling of the office of the Politburo on Berlin's Marx- Engels Platz, to the corridors of Defence Ministry in Moscow, to the laboratories at Padolsk. They'll go bloody mad, Doctor.

  'Where will Willi be?'

  'Near the border but perhaps today he has gone back to London.'

  ' It will be wonderful to see Willi. I will be an old man and cry and make a fool of myself.'

  Johnny glanced across at Erica. She was looking at her father. Radiant, gentle, and proud. The love blossomed from her.

  Later he would take the spade and hack down some birches for the cross-struts of his ladder and dig up some young larches for his main poles, later he would leave this private communion between father and daughter. Later because the guards who examined the Hinterland fence must be given their time.

  In two small clusters the Border Guards who were off duty stood in the parking area at the rear of the barracks of the Walbeck garrison and watched as Ulf Becker was led from the building to a Moskwitch car by two plain clothes men of the Schutzpolizei. His wrists handcuffed behind his back, he limped heavily and was supported by his escort. He searched among the faces for a covert greeting.

  Heini Schalke was there. Straight-backed, belly protruding, unable to disguise his triumph. Schalke who had aimed the MPiKM and who would get a cash reward and extra leave, and who had won the chance of another stripe on his arm, of another favourable entry in his file at Battalion.

  The boy who had carried the letter from Weferlingen to Berlin was there. Nervous and hanging back because he did not know the extent of his implication, only that the boy who had befriended him and asked the favour was in the custody of those who would extract a confession on all matters that interested thern. It was the first day of his secondment to Walbeck. He did not meet Ulf s eyes, looked away.

  Willi Guttmann heard the key turn in the door.

  A mug of coffee was brought to him.

  'Has my father been found, and my sister . . . ?'

  They had not been found. He would be told when they had been found.

  The door was loc
ked again. Behind the thin window curtains he could see the trellis of bars.

  They had been most careful with Willi Guttmann. They had removed his shoe laces, his trouser belt and his tie, and had locked him in an upper room at Halberstadter Strasse.

  He was past weeping, had cried himself to sleep the previous evening after the first detailed interrogation by the man from Berlin. There were no more tears as he lay on his back and stared at the ceiling light behind the protective wire.

  Carter was shown into Charlie Davies's office.

  Handshakes and Nescafe. Wally Smith was there and another man that Carter had not met before.

  He wouldn't mind waiting, would he? A few things to be settled, then they'd be off.

  Carter looked at the walls and their huge mosaic of black and white photographs. Photographs of the fences, of the National Volks Armee at work, of the Border Guards, of patrol boats on the distant side of the Elbe river, of the SM 70 automatic gun, of the PMK 40 and PMP 71

  mines, of watchtowers and earth bunkers, of jeeps and transport lorries, of the RPK drum magazine machine gun . . . photographs that covered three of the four walls. On the fourth wall, from ceiling to floor, was a map, 1 inch to the mile, with its covering and Chinagraph symbols, showing the border.

  When they were alone Charlie Davies lit a cigarette and came and sat beside Carter.

  'Taken an eyeful of the pictures, have you? Well, you should, because that's what's out there. Two million sterling a mile we reckon it's costing them, and that's big money for those bankrupt buggers

  ' It sort of clears the mind,' said Carter faintly.

  'But they keep coming, God knows why, and about a dozen a year make it that we know of, a dozen a year along 411 miles, they're the ones we hear about. I don't know about the American sector, shouldn't be different. A dozen a year, and we're told there's 2,500 in the gaols that didn't make the run . . . and there's the ones that buy it. . .'

  'The ones the bastards shoot

  'Or the minefields, or the SM 70s.. . one last night, not on the fence itself but on the Hinterland. The alarms went off and there was a shot reported. I had to think of Johnny, didn't I? The BGS monitoring set the record straight. A girl was killed and a boy captured . . .'