am looking forward to being here for the summer.'
'Would you take a letter for me?' There was a hoarseness in Becker's voice.
The boy recognised the change, was cautioned by it. 'A letter?'
Becker raced his explanation. 'It's Monday, right? I'm going to Berlin on Friday. I have a girl in Berlin. I want her to know that I am coming back for the weekend. You know how it is, you know, — don't you?'
'You want me to deliver a letter tomorrow to your girl?'
'She lives on Karl-Marx Allee. Near to the cinema and the Moskva Restaurant. If you are taking the train from Schone- weide you must go through Alexander Platz, it's 5 minutes' walk from there.'
' I suppose that I could
'I'd really be most grateful.' As if Ulf Becker's gratitude mattered. Gone in the morning for Seggerde and demobilisation. On the way out of Weferlingen and uniform. The gratitude would never be recompensed, and the idiot hadn't the brain to see it.
' I will do that for you.'
' Give me 5 minutes to write something.'
He loped down the corridor to the Operations Room, was given two sheets of scrap paper and an envelope, came back to the communal room and settled at a table.
'Just give me a few minutes, right?'
'Fine,' the boy said. He would tell his father that he had many friends in the company.
Ulf Becker wrote fast in his spider crawl. 'Darling Jutte,
I have found someone who mill deliver this. I am coming to Berlin on Friday night or early on Saturday morning.
You must make some excuse to be away on Saturday night, perhaps an FDJ camp. You must bring waterproof clothing and something warm. Buy two rail tickets — returns — for Suplingen which is a camping place west of Haldensleben.
We should meet on Saturday morning at 10. 30 in front of the Stadt Berlin, Alexander Platz.
I have found that place.
I love you, Ulf.
Weferlingen Monday June 9th.' He folded the two sheets of paper, put them into the envelope, licked that and stuck it tight, and wrote on it the address to which it should be delivered. 'I'm really very grateful to you.' 'It's nothing.'
Of course it was nothing… because if this bastard were at Walbeck next week and Ulf Becker and his girl were in the rifle sights then he would shoot. He would shoot, and there would be no crying over it, not from him and not from any of them in the company.
Would he have written that letter in the morning? After he had slept, when the light had come again, when he'd queued for breakfast, when he had made his bed, when the barracks throbbed in activity, would he have written it then? But it was written and it was in the boy's blouse pocket, and Jutte would have it when she came home in the afternoon of the next day.
'Good night,' said Ulf and walked from the room to his bed.
Over the years it had become the habit for Carter to buy a gift for presentation to Mrs Ferguson on the last morning of the occupancy of the house. Sometimes some flowers, sometimes a piece of imitation jewellery, sometimes a box of dark chocolates.
That would be his final duty before leaving for Heathrow and his flight to Hannover, and George and Willi would go from neighbouring Northolt by regular Air Force transport to West Berlin. He had checked the house to ensure that the traces of DIPPER had been stripped, and the maps were down from the walls, the photographs removed, the bags packed, the mood sombre. They would leave a barren, sterile house.
In the kitchen Carter gave Mrs Ferguson a packet of embroidered handkerchiefs, and she thanked him reservedly as if mistrusting her ability to hide her feelings.
'But we'll be back soon, we're not offering you much peace, Mrs Ferguson. You'll barely have time to get the duster round and change the beds. Back in six days, you'll have the house full on Sunday night.
George and I, Mr Smithson and Mr Pierce, and there'll be another gentle- man and a girl coming… perhaps you could manage something nice for the girl's room, make a bit of a home for her.'
'I'll see to it, Mr Carter.'
'It's a bit quiet, I suppose, when we've all gone.'
'Quiet enough, but I'll have enough work to keep myself busy… will Johnny be using his room on Saturday night?'
'There's no call for him to be back. Bit of a freelance, Mrs Ferguson, he won't be involved after the current bit of nonsense.'
'The girl who you're bringing, she can have his room,' Mrs Ferguson said briskly.
When they were all in the car and the luggage stowed in the boot she waved to them, and stood a long time on the steps after they had gone before returning to the kitchen.
Adam Percy came into the office, hooked his coat to the back of the door, and was followed inside by his secretary and her memory pad.
'There was another call from that fellow in BND, the one who's been trying to reach you, he said he should see you… that it was imperative.'
She was a tall woman, attractive in late middle age, wearing well the widowhood inflicted by the death of her husband on a dirty, snow scattered Korean hill. She had worked for Adam Percy for 14 years.
'Call him back in the morning, tell him I'm on a week's leave to England and fix an appointment for the week after.'
She would lie well for Adam Percy. She was accustomed to that task.
Standing on the viewing gallery on the roof at Hannover Airport, Johnny watched the passengers emerge from the forward door of the Trident.
Henry Carter was one of the first down the steps.
Chapter Fourteen
A taxi took them to the railway station in Hannover. At the 'Left Luggage' they lodged Carter's case. That was where he had left his own bag, Johnny said.
They had hardly spoken in the taxi, nothing of substance, not until they had walked out of the station with the evening falling and found the cafe Augusten and taken a table far from the bar and the loudspeaker that played undemanding piano music. Many hours to be absorbed before Johnny's train. Carter ordered a Scotch with soda water, Johnny a beer, and the drinks were brought to them by a tall girl with flowing dark hair, and a tight shirt and a wraparound skirt. It would all have to be accounted for, that was the way of the Service, every last beer and sandwich and newspaper would have to be down on the printed form.
They wouldn't ask Johnny for receipts, not from Magdeburg.
A pleasant enough little bar. Later it would fill up but this was early and the alcove with the large round table was their own and offered them freedom of talk.
'How's it been, Johnny?'
'Fine, just fine, what I wanted… I talked some German. That was what I wanted… that was important to me.'
'Where did you stay?'
'In Frankfurt… well, it was only two nights. I found a place
… I was hardly there. I just walked about… I went where there were people.
That's the important thing, to hear voices, to hear inflections.'
'It was really important, was it, Johnny?'
'Of course it was, or I wouldn't have gone…' Johnny stamped on the question. 'I said what I wanted to do and I've done it.'
'I just wanted to know,' Carter said evenly. 'It wasn't the way that we would normally have done
