things.'
' It was the way I wanted it.'
'We were very fair with you, Johnny, nobody tried to block it. 7
' I go over tonight a fair amount happier for those two days. Is that good enough?'
'Good enough, Johnny.' Carter looked across at him, tried for the meeting of eyes and wondered why his man lied, and knew that the time before the train was no occasion for interrogation. Unhappy, and he must let it slide. 'We've felt all along on this that what's right for you is right for the operation. That's governed everything,'
Johnny smiled, the cheeks cracked, the teeth shone.
The light was too pale for Carter to judge and assess the sincerity.
'You've done everything that I could have asked for. I've no complaints, Mr Carter.'
But then Johnny had never really had any complaints, Carter thought.
Only the gun and the two days in Germany, otherwise he had never objected, had never argued for a different course of action, a different tack of approach. As if he never quite believed that the work and preparation at Holmbury would ultimately be translated to actuality, to a train journey towards Magdeburg. He'd find out soon enough, wouldn't he? Carter slipped a glance at his watch. He'd find out in the small hours on a station platform where the uniforms were strange and the manners cold. At Obeisfelde as this night was running its course for John Dawson, alias Johnny Donoghue, short contract operative of the Secret Intelligence Service. It was difficult for Carter to know how expertly they had prepared Johnny. Gone through the book, hadn't they? All the military science, all the political science, all the psychological science.
All of that to burst out of the poor bastard's brain. So that it was dripping out of him, so everything was second nature, old and familiar. That was standard procedure, that was easy. But harder to come across to the man and breathe the reassurance into his lungs.
More than a month they'd had Johnny; and Carter, sitting in a cafe near the central station of Hannover, did not know whether a rope bound the two of them together. He should have known that, shouldn't he, should have been certain of that? Did it matter?… Perhaps n o t… Of course it didn't matter. Not going on a joy trip to see the London sights. Going on a survival run, wasn't he?
Nasty that Johnny had lied to him, out of character. Carter saw the girl hovering near their table.
'Another Scotch, another beer, and then we'd like to eat something, please,' Carter called cheerfully. There shouldn't be weighted silences, and leaden hesitations in the byplay of conversation. Must have been like this in the trenches, Pass- chendaele and Ypres and the Somme, when the Staff Officer came down from Brigade to explain the plan and knew that after the coffee was pressed on him and drunk that he would be going back to the cosy billet and they'd be heading forward into the mud and the wire and the machine guns.
Carter fumbled onwards.
'You didn't write any letters when you were at the house, Johnny. You know we didn't even do a blood chit form What are you at, Carter? There has to be a blood chit form, there has to be a next of kin procedure.
Should have been wrapped up on the last night at Holmbury, over drinks and with suitable ribaldry, should have been done then, not when the next stop is Platform Eleven on Hannover Station. Should have been, but it hadn't. 'You didn't get in touch with anyone?'
Johnny looked quizzically across the table. 'You wouldn't have expected me to send out a rash of postcards.'
'Let's put it formally. If there's any… trouble, an accident, something like that… well, who we do we notify?'
Johnny let him sweat. The girl came with the drinks. Carter paid and she reached in the leather purse she wore behind her apron for the change. She left the menu on the table.
'We have to have a name, Johnny.'
'Charlotte Donoghue, number 14 Cherry Road,
Lancaster,'Johnny rapped. 'You'd better write it down.'
A notebook was produced and a Biro pen. Carter wrote the name and address carefully. 'Anyone else?'
'No-one else.'
'It won't happen, of course, but it's part of the paperwork. I'd get my balls chewed if I hadn't looked after it.'
A tremble at Johnny's eyelids, a quick half smile. 'If it happened you'd go easy with her… Promise me that.'
' I promise you that, Johnny.'
'She's an old woman, and alone. She doesn't know about this sort of thing.'
' I'd make it my business to do it myself. Does that help?'
'That's fine, thanks.'
Johnny's hand snaked across the table, gripped at Carter's, squeezed it.
The gesture of affection and gratitude. Carter blinked. Christ he was too old and the thread too worn and the steel too rusted, too old to be sending young men across frontiers.
'She hasn't understood anything for years,' said Johnny quietly. 'It's a fair old time since she had anything to cheer about… She was very proud in the Sandhurst days, each time I went home in the kit she always seemed to be about to head for the shops because she wanted me to go with her down the street and hold her bag and have everyone see how well her kid had done… The trial crucified her.'
' I can understand.'
'You can, perhaps, but try and tell a pensioner widow how it is. Little Johnny's across the Irish Sea fighting terrorists. Little Johnny's away and trying to save the lives and property of decent people from the forces of evil. Little Johnny's on hush work but it's very important. Little Johnny may be in line for a medal, a bravery gong… That was all right for her, that was simple enough, and then it changed, didn't it?… Little Johnny's charged with murder, he's under arrest in army custody, he's before the Lord Chief Justice, he's accused of handing down 'untrustworthy evidence', he's slated for bungling. He's a bloody failure… That's a hard meal for an old woman to swallow. It's shame that hurts the old people.'
' I understand, Johnny,' Carter whispered.
' I was engaged, you'll know that from the file. You'll have read that.
The bitch treated me as if I had the scabs. Just a bloody letter. Didn't come to Belfast, had her father answer the telephone when I called from the airport to say it was 'Not Guilty'
'Just the one girl, was there?'
'Just the one,' the savagery bit in Johnny's words. ' I bloody near smashed my mother… It's not the English way, is it? A man close to bloody middle age and living with his mother and talking about her. Get type-cast, don't you? Into the realms of the pansies.. She was crippled, really cut about. I owed her something. You know that? We're both bloody owed something…'
'We'd better have something to eat,' Carter said.
He would remember Johnny for the rest of his life, remember the hand that had held his in the vice grip, remember the tremble of the hard man.
They had soup, and a schnitzel each with fried potatoes and sauerkraut and a litre of sweet wine from a carafe and watched the bar filling and the fluent noise of people who had no care, no sense of crisis. Pretty girls and young comfortable men and a random affluence and no attention paid to the two outsiders who sat at the far table and slowly cleared their plates. A cup of thick dark coffee, and then Carter went to the bar and the girl wrote quickly on the receipt slip and added for him, and Carter thanked her, and they edged their way through the throng and the silky warmth, and went out into the night.
The noise of the cafe Augusten dogged them as they walked away along the narrow pavement. They alone with work to be accomplished, they alone set aside from the noisy happiness of a bar in the centre of Hannover. There was nothing more to be said that was relevant, they went in silence.
First to the 'Left Luggage' and the collection of the bags. They stood then in the middle of the walkway that runs underneath the platform and track and solemnly checked Johnny's wallet and inside pockets. The identity of Johnny Donoghue was erased. No envelopes, no bills, no driving licence, no credit cards. John Dawson supreme. Around them the station shops were closed down, darkened and locked. The tourists' place, the flower stall, the sex cinema, the newspaper and book stand.
Hours still to wait, but not in this place of the whores and the pimps and the police in pairs.
