'Johnny . . .?' mouthed Carter.
'They were both East German nationals. We reckon it's on the Hinterland that most of them fail though it's difficult to be exact. Last night there was a fair bit of radio chatter, that's because they're all keyed up for your lad and his customers.'
'They shot the girl dead ?'
'They don't piss about.' Davies stabbed out his cigarette. 'Time we were off. There are some military doing a border recce north of Helmstedt, one of the other lads was taking them but I've put them under my wing. The East Germans are used to seeing me with troops, so if we go out in a big jolly party it's less conspicuous.'
'However you like it.'
They didn't talk in the car because Charlie Davies's German civilian driver was at the wheel. They drove north and met the troops in the village of Brome. Two Land- Rovers, a party of junior officers and senior NCOs. A pleasant group interested in what they had seen on the Elbe the previous day, and anticipating what they would find on the second half of their formal patrol. Men from a cavalry regiment, wearing their camouflage scarves jauntily, carrying their unloaded weapons easily and happy enough that for a few hours they had escaped the demands of their Chieftain tanks. The stops were frequent, as Charlie Davies with the skill of an expert guide handled their tour.
They gathered at a border marker to look through the close mesh wire and watch a work party of Pioneers erecting a new watchtower.
'The last one blew down,' said Davies. 'With them in it and all. Fair old night it was, hell of a wind and rain too. Down south in the Hartz there was a stretch of mines 2 kilometres long, which means 6,000 mines laid, and 2,000 of them went up when the rain cleared the earth off their pressure plates. Like bloody Guy Fawkes night. . .'
Through binoculars they stared across the sloping grasslands to the hill with its tree line and the Soviet Army observation bunker and listening post, and admired the professionalism of its siting.
'From what we hear there's no contact between the Soviets and the Border Guards, they don't have anything to do with each other, and that includes a quite separate communications system. A few years back a Soviet squaddie came over the wire just beside a manned tower and nobody dared challenge him because he was in Ruskie uniform . . .'
Across from the dark homes and mine workings of Weferlingen they stood on a raised viewing platform, and the white-cased SM 70s were identified on the fence.
'An SS officer designed them during the last war for use on the concentration camp fences, a way to reduce the number of guards required. They have a scatter range of about twenty-five metres, and they set them five metres apart. They're at different heights .. . face, balls and feet. Wicked buggers. This SS man was carted off to Russia after the surrender and they glossed them up there before this lot had the use of them. It's a charge of steel slivers, doesn't make a pretty sight afterwards.
. .' As they pushed on the troops became used to the presence of Carter, and he concocted a tale that he was Foreign and Commonwealth Officer and had a day to spare from his visit to Bonn, and wasn't everything most interesting, and Mr Davies was doing him a real favour by letting him come along.
Another viewing point, where a mud track was close to the fence and marker posts.
'See that down there, that culvert drain, not very wide, right? Not wide enough for any of us, but a kiddie could get through. There was a hell of a shambles some months back down on the Bundesgrenzschutz central sector, a 4 year old wriggled through. He was bawling his eyes out on one side, his mother raising Cain on the other. Should have stuffed him back where he came from, but no-one thought of that. Took bloody hours to get the protocol sorted out and a gate opened by them so he could be sent through. He'd have had a hell of a belt from his mum, that kiddie . . .'
A patter of anecdotes and information.
There was generally a bit of fun as the morning wore on, Charlie Davies warned, when the cameras came out. They reached a viewing platform in the woods south of Weferlingen sector and the Grenzaufklarer reconnaissance troops were waiting. Mud brown denims, rifles with magazines fitted, cameras with telephoto lenses. In front of the wire. Between the border post and the fence. Three of them and little more than a dozen paces away. No smile, no recognition, expressions humanised only by the contempt at their mouths. The Grenzaufklarer photographed the cavalry who photographed the Grenzaufklarer . . . And attention slipped to Carter, the one civilian, and the camera lens followed him, dogged him. Carter hated the man, wanted to shout at him, lob a rock at him. The camera spoiled the cheerfulness of the little party. These were the men who were waiting for Johnny. And the guns were armed.
'We call these the 150 percenters,' Charlie Davies boomed. 'They're a law to themselves, they can come through the wire whenever they want to, they can come right up to the frontier marker. In all my time I've only ever known one of them step the last yard over .. . Hey, Fritz, don't you go wasting film, do you want me to get the lads in a nice group for you, do you want me to do that? Look at the buggers, not a flicker. The day I get a wave out of that lot, I'll bloody drop dead . . .'
The convoy took a chipstone road that showed the wear of the forestry lorries. The car bumped and rolled. They passed a Bundesgrenzschutz van and Davies waved and was acknowledged and then they were alone again in the vastness of the woods. With the engines killed a quiet came on them. A lonely, green, leafy place till they walked up a soft mud path to within sight of the fence. The ground on either side of the close mesh wire had been cleared years earlier but now the bushes had sprouted and the grass grown and there was only the ploughed strip and the vehicle ditch and the patrol strip to show where the fence builders had tried to halt the encroachment of cover.
Carter was beside Charlie Davies. The troops had dropped behind.
Just another stretch of border to them, and not much of a vantage point because the ground was flat, and they had been to better places and after the meeting with the Grenzaufklarer their interest had flagged.
'This was where he came on the second day, your lad, Johnny. . .'
'What attracted him?'
'Difficult to say. There's no permanent position here. No towers or bunkers, no mines either. That's the plus side . ..'
'And the negative . . . ?'
'There's a Hinterland fence . . . there's a fair concentration of company garrisons all along this stretch, there's vehicles patrolling through the night and less often by day, there's SM 70s on the fence.'
Carter gazed through the mesh into the scrub beyond.
'Where should he be now, if he's coming tonight?'
'Five hundred metres or so the wrong side of the Hinterland.'
'He'd be trying to sleep, I suppose,' Carter said, a private thought.
' If I were stumbling into that lot tonight, I'd not be sleeping . . .'
Carter heard the crack in Davies's voice, recognised the emotion, realised that Johnny had reached and touched another man. The low pitched voices of the troops did not break into Carter's closed concentration. Johnny out there with the scientist and his daughter.
' I'll have to be here tonight. . .'
' I'll bring you up, can't have you running around here on your own,'
Charlie Davies said brusquely. 'But you'll have to appreciate one thing.
Till he gets to where we're standing now there's nothing we can do to help him. Whatever happens out there, nothing . ..'
The morning had passed. The patrol expressed their gratitude. Davies and his driver dropped Carter at the Stettiner Hof. They agreed a rendezvous time for the evening.
The Trade Minister maintained a granite faced faqade of interest as he walked with a covey of managers and shop stewards between the aisles of carburettor engines. His attention was far from the production figures and output quotas for the machinery it was hoped his government would buy. Before leaving the Midlands he had spoken to the First Secretary by telephone.
The new men, he had concluded, were a weaker and poorer breed than tho
se of the Old Guard with whom he had come from Moscow on the last day of April, 1945, to set up the fledgeling civilian administration at Frankfurt-an- der-Oder behind the rolling advance of the Red Army.
Pieck and Grotewohl and Ulbricht would have known their minds, accepted his advice that he should return to Berlin immediately in the face of the criminal violation of the DDR's sovereign territory. But the new men were cautious, subservient. When there was a prisoner, when the net had trapped the fugitive, then he should cut short his visit.
But he believed that he had noted in his conversation with the First Secretary a growing impatience in the offices of the Central Committee at the inability of the forces of the SSD and the Schutzpolizei to track their quarry.
Doctor Frommholtz marched at the head of his entourage towards the canteen.
The Deputy-Under-Secretary was shown into the Prime Minister's private office. He had requested a meeting at Downing Street within minutes of having received a digest of Henry Carter's communication with Century House. He had been told that the Prime Minister was holding back on a scheduled meeting.
'Thank you for making yourself available at such short notice, sir.'
The Prime Minister stared at him, fascinated by the wreckage of a proud man. 'Please take a seat.'
' I'd prefer to stand and I'll be brief. We have reason to believe that the DIPPER matter will be concluded during the hours of tonight. One way or the other. We think that our man will attempt to break out of the DDR, to cross the frontier into the Federal Republic.'
The Prime Minister shuddered. He had been told before he arrived at Downing Street that many of his predecessors had found the workings and mechanics of the Service to be a narcotic. 'Are you in contact with him?'
'The prognostication is based on contingency plans made before his departure for East Germany.'
A slight smile from the Prime Minister. 'So, you're going to wave a magic wand, Deputy-Under-Secretary, cover the silk hat with a handkerchief, and then, hey presto, you're going to produce the agent safe and well and we're all to fall down before you and exclaim that the Service is the finest in the world.'
' I thought you'd want to know, sir.'
' It will be no credit to the Service if we get out of this without disgrace. It will be because of my efforts with the East Germans.'
' If we get out of this,' said the Deputy-Under-Secretary icily, 'it will be because my man successfully crosses the Inner German Border.'
'What about Guttmann? Have you written him off?' 'With the border in its present security state, we accept it is inconceivable that Dr Guttmann can accompany our man.'
' I must say, the Service's finest hour.'
' I drafted my letter of resignation at lunch-time. It will be with PUS in the morning. I've asked for it to be effective from midnight tomorrow.
Goodbye, sir.'
He had made more noise approaching the hide than he would have liked, but the poles were heavy and he lugged them with difficulty through the undergrowth. He would have left a trail, but it was close to dusk. Three larch poles, strong and straight, and an armful of young birch stems.
They sat with their arms around each other on the ground as Johnny broke cover, and their faces shone with relief at the sight of him. They would have been fearful at the sound of his approach, praying it was Johnny.
His admiration swelled tor them.
'Everything's fine. Just as we wanted.'
Otto Guttmann stared in disbelief at the larch poles, noted that the ends were neatly axe chopped into tapering, sharpened points.
Johnny grinned. 'A woodman gave them to me . . .'
'Gave them?'
' I think he did. He left me a nice pile to choose from . . .'
He saw the tension evaporating, the slow smile of understanding.
'. . . If he didn't mean them as a gift, he can have them back in the morning.'
The old man laughed, and the girl chuckled.
Johnny felt in his anorak pocket, reached amongst the grenades and the pistol's shoulder stock, and produced a greaseproof paper bag. 'He's a decent chap, the woodman, he gave me these for you . . . well, he left them for someone when he put his bag down. I scattered the paper and ripped it a bit, the bag they were in ... I suppose he'll think he gave them to a fox . . . generous of him, whether they were for me or a fox or whoever.'
He tossed the package in a gentle arc so that it fell on Erica's lap. Her hands tore at the paper, exposed the rough bread, the protruding meat. She and her father ate ravenously, stopping only to pick at the dropped pieces that spilled to their legs.
Erica looked up sharply at him. 'You have had something, Johnny?'
'He gave me a steak .. . and some onion rings . . .'
She sprang to her feet, came fast at Johnny, clasped the sides of his head with her hands, kissed him on the lips. Cold, dry and cracked. Johnny blinked. As fast as she had come she was back on the ground, back beside her father.
Johnny grimaced. 'If that happened more often I'd come here every year.'
Otto Guttmann beamed. Erica dropped her eyes.,
'We have much to thank you for,' the old man said through a mouth full of food.
'Keep the thanks for tomorrow.'
Keep the bloody thanks for tomorrow. For after the Hinterland fence and the vehicle ditch and the ploughed strip, for after the wire that was 3
1/2 metres high. Keep the thanks for tomorrow.
' I'm sorry, I didn't mean that,' said Johnny.
'What do we do now?' Erica asked.
'We have to build the ladder, before it's dark.'
On their hands and knees, as the daylight ran from the woods, they fashioned the ladder from the wire flex and the birch stems and the larch poles.
Chapter Twenty-three
Johnny stood, Erica kneeled.
Otto Guttmann crouched with lowered head and eyes and spoke the words.
'. . . And forgive us our trespasses, As we forgive them that trespass against us . . The ladder lay on the ground between Johnny and Erica, two larch poles forming a steep triangle and four birch stems lashed with the flex to them to make the steps. An untidy contraption, but sturdy.
'. . . And lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from evil. .
The two lengths of coiled rope strand were beside the ladder and the third larch pole. They had been measured for length and the knots had been pulled and found strong enough. '. . . For Thine is the Kingdom, The power and the Glory, For ever and ever 'Amen,' said Johnny.
Time to be moving. Otto Guttmann had wanted the prayer, and Johnny had acquiesced and found something comforting in it.
Now he was anxious to be on the path. He had lectured them on the procedures, made them repeat aloud what he had told them, had drilled the programme for the night into their minds. He would lead, and they would obey his every command instantly. There would be no hesitation, no discussion. Only once had he faltered during his last briefing.
'If anything happens to me . . . anything at all, and I can't go forward, then you do not try to go on by yourselves. You stand your ground, absolutely still, your hands on your heads. Don't give the bastards the excuse .. .'
Johnny led them to the path.
He carried the single pole and the rope and the spare flex. Between them Otto Guttmann and Erica must take the ladder frame. They must wait while he went forward and covered the first hundred metres, then he would come back for them. Each hundred metres he would personally clear and vet. The slow way, excruciatingly slow, a painful pace, step by step along the path .. . but safe, and safety was the jewel. Only Johnny would speak, father and daughter were committed to silence.
Sometimes a twig cracked under his foot, sometimes a dried leaf rustled beneath his boot, sometimes a low branch clutched at his clothing.
Impossible to be truly quiet, to maintain absolute stealth. And all the time the throbbing thought that they would be waiting, listening and concealed, ready to spring, hands on the flashlights,
fingers on the rifle triggers. All the time they could be there, and the only way for him was forward.
In the daylight, during his foraging exercise for food and timber, he had rediscovered the trip wire that last night's boy and girl had skirted.
He had paced out the distance between the wire and the hide: 224 paces, and then the diversion into the trees for the bypassing of the danger strand, and Otto Guttmann and Erica followed him blindly and would not know why at this particular place his muffled counting stopped and they must stumble on rough ground for a few yards before returning to the ease of the path.
Johnny ahead of them again, ahead and alone . . .
There was an explosion of movement not five yards from him.
Johnny froze.
The crashing roar of escape away from him, and pigeons in the high branches clattered into flight. The sounds of desperate, clumsy escape, echoing into the dark distance of the woods. All the bloody world would hear it. .. Johnny's heart pounding, his breathing petrified. The hand that did not hold the pole was clasped on the butt of the Stechkin.
Bloody pig. The woods were packed tight with them. Not hunted here.
Too close to the frontier. Fucking game reserve ... A full minute Johnny stood rock still and as the fear slipped so came a sprinkling of confidence. If the pig had been browsing in the leaf-mould for young roots and had been disturbed by him then there was no other interloper in its territory. The immediate path was clear.
Six times Johnny ventured forward, retraced his steps to Otto Guttmann and Erica, advanced with them, and then set off again on his own. He had known it would be slow, but there was no call for hurry and he must stifle the desire to rush.
An hour and a quarter after they had set out, Johnny saw in front of him the shadow of the woodman's hut and the clear ground beyond and the silvery brightness of the Hinterland fence.
The Contract Page 33