'What can I do for you, Peter?' The Deputy-Under-Secre- tary was guarded when in contact with his opposite number from Security.
Different men, different standards.
'Nothing that's very important… I just wondered if you felt the change of dates put out by FCO this afternoon for the DDR trade visit affected the business you were putting together.'
'You're ahead of me, Peter. I've been in one meeting after another, I haven't managed to get at my tray.'
'The visit of Oskar Frommholtz, FCO informed us because we have an escort commitment. It seems Comrade Frommholtz has asked for a change of dates. He was due here for the last week in June, that's been brought forward because he's a COMECON commitment on the original date.'
The Deputy-Under-Secretary fished in his memory. 'We trying to turn the trade imbalance, they looking for a foreign protocol… Why should it affect anything we're doing?'
'The visit will coincide with the Guttmann dates. Frommholtz will be being wined and dined on Whitehall when the good scientist is nippin over the border.'
'It's a covert operation, nothing to link it with us.'
'Quite right… if it works, but it would be a pretty mess if your nursemaid were picked up… Are you still there?'
'Yes, Peter.'
'I think the PM should know. I think the PM should sanction it. That's my advice anyway…'
'I'll not give it up.'
'Nothing went into the minutes of JIC. If he's not told, and if the thing trips, they'd have our skins.'
'I'll not lose this to a politician with a weak stomach and a short future.'
'That's your decision then…'
'Thank you for calling,' the Deputy-Under-Secretary said. 'Good night, Peter.'
He replaced the receiver. Perhaps he would say something to Downing Street. Not at this time, but later, something that would not arouse curiosity. Of course there was risk, but without risk the Service died, dried on the branch. And when he produced Otto Guttmann that would rank as a rare moment of success. A success that he would not tolerate the faint-hearted to deny him. And Fenton had no right to talk of failure, damned old woman wringing his hands. The Deputy-Under-Secretary sat at his desk and read again the message from Mawby. He had authorised the payment, he had stood by his Assistant Secretary. Mawby was a good man, young and a little green, but sound for all that. Mawby believed in the plan, that should be enough for him, shouldn't it?
Security was always parsimonious in initiative, that was the difference between them and the Service. Mean, weren't they, when a bit of dash was required? The Deputy- Under-Secretary smiled. It was going to be a damned good show. He would not be balked.
With the curtains across the French windows not drawn, the lights of the sitting room lit the outside patio. From his chair Carter watched Johnny in the towelling top they had found for him and the loose trousers, listened to the thudding beat of his boots. There was an old oak garden chair on the patio. Right foot onto the chair, left foot following. Right foot onto the concrete flags, left foot following. The steady rhythm of the boots. The pumping of Johnny's breath. The press-ups. The jogging on the lawn. Only when it was quite dark, when the night had closed on the house would Johnny come back inside, and there would be a towel round his neck, and he would tramp towards the kitchen for a pot of tea.
Awesome to Carter because he was a desk man, who had not in recent years called upon the strength in his legs, the wind in his lungs. The division between them. Carter would be at the Departures desk in the airport concourse, or on the railway platform. Johnny would be flying on, Johnny would be travelling. That was the division, and Carter could not read his book as the boots pounded from the patio to the garden chair.
No movement since the patrol jeep had passed. Nothing stirred. And the ink darkness was cut savagely by the lights that fell on the fence, clasped it in false daylight, played on the sharp mesh and the attached guns.
Relief at four. Two more boys to climb the metal rungs on the inside of the tower and come to the closed platform 40 feet above the fields. Two more boys to take the places of Ulf Becker and Heini Schalke.
Open ground in front, 300 metres of grass, scythed twice a summer by workmen who were brought close to the wire and covered by the guns of the Border Guard. Open ground all the way from the electrified fence and the trip wires on the embankment of the railway line that had once served the brick works of Weferlingen, all the way to the vehicle patrol strip and the ditch and the fence with the automatic guns. Open ground.
Ulf Becker would never run on that open ground, not with Heini Schalke high and unimpeded above him in the tower. Not with Heini Schalke pulling the hard stock of the MPiKM against his shoulder and squinting with his pig eyes down the foresight.
Not here… an impossibility here.
Cold in the shadow of the tower. Cold in the night air. Gone was the heat and the touch of Jutte. Find me that place, she had said. Find me that place, she had shouted from the platform at Schoneweide. But there was no place on the ground west of Weferlingen. If he were to come on foot to the south of the village, use the Siedlung Hagholz woods for concealment and cross the road that leads to the lime works, and stay beyond the old brick buildings of the railway yards… Then there was the tower and the night- sight binoculars, then there were the lights, then there were the fences, then there were the spring guns, and still there was Heini Schalke and a hundred more in the company.
A chill eddied in the tower, carried on the wind, bitter and penetrating because the windows must be open so as not to delay them if they must shoot and because the binoculars were less effective through glass.
Jutte, it is not possible here.
Find me that place.
Away to his left he saw the lights of the approaching jeep. The border, lethal to those who intruded on its ground, was alive only with armed and watchful men.
There was a pleasing peace in the house. Close to midnight. Smithson and Pierce away to their beds. Carter back into his book. The slow hours of the late evening. The best time of the day for Johnny, when the quiet took command.
'You know, Johnny, we haven't a name for this caper, and we're under a month.' Carter looked up. 'We have to have a name for you.'
'Not a bloody Greek god, don't give me one of them.'
'Of course, lad. I've found it here, just the number.'
Johnny was amused. Johnny wondered whether Carter's hands ever sweated, whether he shouted at his wife, threw his temper at his children, whether he panicked, whether he screamed. He had seen a rough side with the boy, but that was tactical, that showed neither strength nor weakness. Carter would be escorting Johnny to Hannover, working on the fine detail of the pick-up. He'd want to have faith in this man, Johnny would want to trust him, to the full. The one who ironed the creased details of organisation… and who was filching ideas from a guide to European birds.
'What are you going to call me?'
Carter looked over the top of his reading spectacles. 'The Latin is cinclus cinclus. There are many names, different in parts of the country — water blackbird, water crow, water pyet. These are the characteristics…
'straight, fast flight. Can swim both on the surface and under water, enters water by either wading in or diving, habitually walks submerged on the stream bed.' That's what we want of our lad, creeping along the floor of the river while the Volkspolizei sit on the banks in blissful ignorance. I reckon that's rather apt. They call it most often the Dipper.
I'm going to put it to Mawby. You'll be the Dipper man, Johnny. I think it's rather good…'
Johnny had not replied. There were feet drumming down the staircase.
The crash of doors being wrenched open. George's voice angry and raised and cursing.
Carter snapped his book shut, drove his glasses into his breast pocket, started up from his chair.
The door of the living room arched towards them. George was in silhouette, the hall lights blazing behind him. Half dressed, hair dishevelled, eyes wide with anger.
'He's gone… Guttmann. I can't find the bugger anywhere.'
It was Johnny who discovered the imprint of shoes in the soft earth of the flower bed beside the rainwater pipe beneath the boy's window.
