The Contract (22 page)

George would be watching them from the patio, sitting on the oakwood bench and pretending the newspaper he had collected from the front gate held his attention. George would be watching the boy.

They started at the rose bed. Willi hoeing at the grass tufts, loosening them and throwing them into the barrow. Carter discarding his jacket onto the branch of a small birch and turning the cleaned earth. They worked close to each other, a few feet apart.

'You remember when we went to London, what I said then, about helping us ?' Carter puffed and his hands rested comfortably on the fork's handle.

The boy chopped at the grass. 'I remember, Mr Carter.'

'I said then that if you helped us, we would help you.'

'You said something like that, Mr Carter.' Willi did not look up, no emotion on his face. A neutered thing they had made of him since his return to the house.

'We are very pleased with the way that you have helped us, Willi, and in particular with the way that you co-operated after Johnny came down here. You've earned the truth from us. And with the truth you'll be able to help us all the better in the last stage of what we plan.'

Willi gouged at the earth beneath the grass roots.

'What is the truth, Mr Carter?'

Carter hadn't reached Johnny and he hadn't reached the boy. He remembered how he had once heard his neighbours talking over the garden fence and unaware that he was within earshot. 'He's a dull old cove', the husband had said; 'a proper queer blighter', the wife had replied. Not a man who excited trust, was he? God knows, and he tried.

And the suit and the briefcase and the tale of government business and the long periods away, they weren't Henry Carter's fault. But that was the verdict of his neighbours. Dull and queer ... If he couldn't find Johnny's soul then he must find the boy's.

Carter said, 'It's our hope, Willi, that within a week you will be reunited with your father . . .'

The boy's head flicked round. A voltage charge through him. Eyes wide, mouth sagging, hoe held limp.

'. . . within a week we will have your father in the West. You will be together again. Your father, yourself, and we presume your sister also.

That's what we have all been working towards. That's what everything that has been happening here has been aimed at. We are bringing your father out.'

Carter smiled with affection, saw a tear dribble on the cheek of the boy, saw the hands clench in astonishment.

God, it was unfair what he had done to the kid. Unfair, and he looked into the opened face and saw the disbelief faltering with the child-joy.

'The DDR are releasing my father to emigrate ?'

'No.'

'It is not possible then . . . how is it possible?'

'I said that we are bringing your father out.'

'You will try to bring him through the frontier?' the boy challenged and the happiness was sinking.

'We will bring him out on the autobahn.'

'What does my father say of this ?'

'At this moment he is unaware of the plan.'

'My father has not been told, he does not know?'

'No.'

'And the authorities in the DDR have not given permission for him to leave?'

'No.'

Willi threw the hoe down onto the ground, slapped his hands together to shake off the earth. He spoke very quietly.

'You take a great risk.'

'We have worked very hard at the plan, Willi.'

'The risk that you take is not with yourselves, it is with my father and my sister. You endanger them.'

Carter gazed into the small and now frightened face of the boy. 'We think that we have minimised the risk to them. Everything has been thought of, most carefully.'

'Johnny is the man who is going to see my father in Magdeburg?'

'Johnny will talk to him.'

'What will he say to him? How will he persuade him to make the journey?'

Carter sighed and his composure was diminished. It was not the path the conversation should have followed. There should not have been the gun rattle of questions, only gratitude and wonderment was wanted from the boy.

' I don't know the details, Willi,' Carter said. Evasive and with his confidence derailed. 'That's Johnny's side and Mawby's. But without you, Willi, the chance slackens. I'm very serious . . .'

'Without me the attempt will fail, or without me my father will not be persuaded to make the journey. Which, Mr Carter?'

Little bugger, clever question. Carter could have slapped him. He held himself, dragged at the reins of self-restraint. 'If you ever want to see your father again you do exactly what we tell you during the next week.

Everything, to the word, to the letter, without question. Understand this, Willi, we'll try to bring him out anyway, we'll make that attempt. If you obstruct us then we may fail, if you help us then we have a better chance.

It's very simple, Willi.'

'Why do you want my father? He is an old man. Why do you ask him to do this?' Like a cat with a field mouse, the boy would not release the meat from his mouth. 'You threaten him, why? You endanger him, why?'

'You're his son, I should have thought you'd be grateful for what we're doing.'

'I'm not a fool, Mr Carter,' the boy's voice was rising. Behind him George had eased up from the bench, folded a newspaper and placed a stone over it to save the pages from the wind, and was coming across the lawn. 'I'm not an idiot. You do not do this for charity, you do not do it for me. Perhaps even for him you do not do it. Why can you not leave him to live in peace for his last years ?'

'Then you'll never see him again.'

'You make a bait of me, you make me as a tethered goat. I am the bribe that you offer him . ..'

'You said that he loved you.'

'I said that he loved me. I answered your question, I did not know why you asked . . .'

Carter gripped at Willi's arm, trying to turn him, trying to succour him.

Earnest and encouraging. 'We've been thorough, Willi, as thorough as possible. There's no danger to your father. He's going to be safe, and he's going to be with you.'

The boy shrugged the hand away, was at his full height and the colour glowed in his cheeks.

'Who gives you this right to tempt and taunt an old man with the love of his son? What authority do you have to chance the wrecking of my father's life?'

'Without your help we may fail. . .'

'You're evil, all of you. You and Johnny and . . . the man who comes and you all crawl to.'

'With your help we may succeed.',

The tears ran fast now on the face of the boy. 'You play a game with the love of an old man.'

'It won't be like that, lad.' Carter hated tears, was always terrified when his wife wept and he was useless and clumsy and unable to comfort. He tried to put his arm on Willi's shoulder and was pushed away. 'It won't be like that, I promise you, Willi.'

Deftly Carter waved George back. He bent down and lifted the handle of the hoe and passed it again to the boy. Then with his fork he started to dig at the earth that he had trampled flat and beside him he heard the scraping of the hoe and the thud of clotted weeds hitting the walls of the wheelbarrow.

It was a gloomy pilgrimage for the Prime Minister.

The West of Scotland was traditional misery for the politician in office. More of a disaster than a development area. The crowds that had come to see him heckled, the press that had questioned him carped at his answers, the managements that he had met dropped their heads and spoke of bleak forecasts for the future. And damn near a whole week to be spent there. He had walked through shipyards, through shopping centres, through engineering works and with each day he had believed less and less in the buoyant words of his speechwriters.

There were three cars and two police motorcycle outriders in the convoy that drove at speed for the new housing development at Cumbernauld.

His speech in reply to the Mayor's welcome rested typed in his jacket pocket. The red boxes of government papers were in the car behind him that carried the Downing Street team of civil servants. He could sit back in his seat, spaced from his PPS by the arm rest and talk without constraint, confident that at least here he was saved from badgering dispute.

'It's the shame of being away for so many days, the diary is clogged solid when we're back in London,' the Prime Minister murmured. 'Is the weekend clear?'

'Not so as you'd notice, sir. We're hoping to get you off to Chequers after lunch on Friday . . .'

'Thank God for that. It's the closest thing to heaven in this job, going down there, the only thing about it that Dorothy likes.'

'It won't be all fun time. You've a constituency garden party speech on Saturday afternoon, and you've the East German Trade Minister as your dinner guest in the evening.'

'Riveting entertainment that will be.'

'Sunday's clear .. .'

'Small mercy after Saturday night.'

The PPS scrutinised the large desk diary that he regarded as perhaps his most important possession of work. 'Small mercy as you say, and it's heavy too before you can run to the country, sir. There's Cabinet, Overseas Policy and Defence, Questions in the House, and the Censure debate, that's Thursday . . . And one more cross I haven't fitted in yet.

The Member for Guildford, Spottiswoode, he wants to see you.'

'What about?' the Prime Minister drawled, he was close to sleep.

'Wouldn't tell a lowly minion. But I'm to have my back- side kicked if it's not attended to, that's a promise.'

'He's a poisonous old bastard, like every other passed over politician.

A buffoon who has to be tolerated because he gets a damned great cheer at Party Conference each autumn. Fit him in at the House on Thursday evening, I'll

see him in my room while the debate's on.' 'Good of you to have come in, Charles, you must be up to your neck.'

'A touch frantic, sir. The lad goes over tomorrow night. . .'

' I remember the feeling. A long time back, but I don't suppose things have changed much.' Late evening, and Charles Mawby had been called to the Deputy-Under-Secre- tary's office high in Century House, and had been sat down with a glass of amontillado sherry. 'Always a little fraught in the last few hours.'

'We've worked pretty hard at it, it's been a good team effort, and I'm very happy with the freelancer

'From what you tell me you chose well, doesn't sound the sort of chappie who'll let you down.'

'He's level headed enough, I've a deal of confidence in him.'

Mawby talked of the specifics of DIPPER and this was an armchair session, a conversation without pen and paper. There were few questions to interrupt him. It was perhaps the highest enjoyment known to the Deputy-Under-Secre- tary, to bask in the commitment of his subordinates, to hear of their skills and preparation. He heard again of Johnny and the progress of the last days at Holmbury. He listened to the resume of the plan for the autobahn pick-up. He was told of the documentation that had been printed to bring Otto Guttmann and his daughter through the Marienborn check. He nodded in approval as the need for the forger in the car was explained. His face tickled in amusement at Mawby's scathing word portrait of Hermann Lentzer.

'It's first class, Charles.'

'We're all of us pretty happy with it.'

'And you've every right to be. You seem to have been up all the cul-de-sacs, given them the once over, and fenced them off. We don't deserve to have this go wrong on us.'

Mawby hesitated. Easy here in the safety and cosiness of the Deputy-Under-Secretary's office, simple to be confident and assured.

And he hadn't stressed the vagaries of 'local conditions'. He had not highlighted the shadow areas of uncertainty.

'It can't be watertight, sir. There has to be an area of the imponderable..

.'

'Of course, Charles ... I understand, I've done it myself. I stood once at Helmstedt waiting for a car to come through. Hideous experience, in '49

or '50, damned cold and middle of winter. Three days I was there, and the car never came. Seemed important at the time.'

' I think we're fine with this one.'

' I'm sure you are, and when you've a few more under your belt you'll wonder why you ever worried.'

'The concept is straightforward. That's been the planning strategy from the start. No frills and no histrionics. I'm relying a lot on that.'

' I don't think you do yourself justice, Charles. You'll ring me when you have the old man over . . .'

'You'll know immediately.'

The pleasant smile slipped from the Deputy-Under- Secretary's face, exchanged for a keenness that beckoned attention from Mawby. 'There can't be a slip, not with this one. Downing Street have a senior East German minister in tow when you're tripping down the autobahn. I don't want any embarrassments, no messes on the floor. You're with me . . .

? '

'At Downing Street, do we have approval or ignorance?' Mawby asked, the junior man intruding into the uplands of policy, the nervous question.

'Just ring me when you're all wrapped up, Charles, I'll be waiting for the call.'

From his room in the Prime Minister's Glasgow hotel, the PPS

telephoned the House of Commons office of Sir Charles Spottiswoode.

'Good evening, Sir Charles, I've spoken to the Prime Minister about your request for a meeting. He's a very heavy schedule when he gets back to London, but he'll see you on

Thursday in his room at the House. He wants to hear the start of the debate, and then he'll have to make the revisions for his own speech, so I've written you in for 6.30 ... It's been nothing, Sir Charles, the PM is always anxious to be available to the back benches . . . It's kind of you to say that . .. Good night. . .'