Willi pushed the tray with the half emptied plate away from him. The man who sat across the table said nothing and Willi dropped his head into his hands.
Gunther Spitzer had been sent home for the night because men of greater seniority had taken over the organisation of the hunt for the scientist, his daughter and the agent of British Intelligence. A stranger had sat in the chair behind his desk and given orders to his staff, newcomers had handled his telephone. They came and went through his door without acknowledgement.
When he reached his flat the tiredness and self-pity and frustration broke over Renate. She was the only target within reach.
She lay on their bed and her moaning, whimpering, trebled in his ears as he stayed hunched in the chair across the room from her. The blood from the cut below her right eye seeped to the pillow covers. The bruises spread in technicolour at her throat.
He had screamed at her with an anger she had never seen before.
'You must have known… You told me nothing… you were her friend.
She would speak to you, you must have known… You made me pay for their dinner, you made me bow and scrape to him as if he were a great man, you must have known… Bitch, bitch, and you have destroyed me..'
And through the accusations he had punched and pummelled her. She had not fought back, just cowered and used her arms to protect herself from the agonies inflicted by the gloved hand.
'She didn't tell me anything… I promise… she said nothing, Gunther.'
A small, low, choking voice.
During the day the trains to the West were searched with great thoroughness. All stopped at the Marienborn junction where the lines were enclosed by high wire. Border Guards with machine guns flanking the carriages, eight man teams climbing aboard with torches and rods for poking into the narrow recesses of the roof, with ladders and a painstaking commitment to the task. The delays grew, the trains ran late.
The tracker dogs brought from Magdeburg found the place of crushed and trampled grass beside the approach road to the autobahn, but lost the scent on the roadway and sat sadly at the handlers' knees. New orders came for widening the hunt.
It was seven hours between the time that the schoolmaster of Barleber reported the theft of his Trabant car to the Volkspolizei Kreisamt and the arrival of that information on the desks of the men who had come from Interior Ministry.
And the trail grew cold.
There were no grounds for panic amongst the men who directed the manhunt. No reason for anxiety. Let the Englishman and his followers run and blunder in the countryside. They must come to the border, they must flee in that direction. There they would be taken. Inevitable. They would be driven towards the frontier, the fence and the guards.
From the Battalion headquarters at Seggerde the instruction was broadcast to the companies at Lockstedt and Dohren and Weferlingen and Walbeck that special vigilance must be maintained. At Walbeck Heini Schalke listened to his Politoffizier's briefing. The bright new stripe on his tunic arm ensured his concentration.
The river was behind them, but the chill of the water he had waded through clung to Johnny's legs, and his shoulders ached from the weight of the piggy-back rides he had given to Otto Guttmann and Erica. Two journeys with his boots sliding on the mud bed, groping for firm stones.
Up to his waist in cold, filthy water, and perhaps a small sewer emptied into the river. He stank when they were over, and there was no time to dry himself properly. He had tried to wipe himself down with a handkerchief that became a sodden mess, he had dropped his trousers to his ankles and wrung them, he had chafed his legs for warmth. The Doctor and Erica had watched him in exhausted silence.
And then they had gone on, headed west with the Aller forded.
By hugging the woods, avoiding the roads, skirting the warning signs that forbade entry without the precious permit paper, going on tip-toe past a pair of Border Guards who smoked and talked, Johnny led Otto Guttmann and Erica into the Restricted Zone.
Where once the trees had been felled, where there now grew dense and sprouting undergrowth, he called a stop. All of their nerves twisted by the long and escalating risk of discovery. Time for a halt, time for the bivouac: No blankets, no food, no drink. Nothing but the chance for rest.
Under the canopy of the forest the evening came quickly, slanting the shadows, tricking the eyes.
They sagged down onto the ground. Erica tended her father, mopped the damp from his forehead, loosened his collar, eased off his shoes. The old man was white faced, frighteningly so, his breathing was ragged and the failing light played at the cavities of his eyes, the hollows of his cheeks.
Food, Johnny, the poor beggar needs food. And only Johnny could make the decision as to whether to forage for Otto Guttmann. He shouild never have brought them with him… but Johnny had made a promise, and a promise was as binding as a contract…
The sound of the voices swept the thought from his mind.
Furtive voices. Those of a boy and a girl. There was the crack of a broken branch, there was the snapping of a broken frond. Johnny's finger went to his mouth, the urgent plea for total quiet. Who else would come to this bloody, forbidden place at this time? Johnny eased the Stechkin from his trouser waist, checked that it was cocked, saw the lie of the safety catch. Who else would come to the bloody killing zone?
Johnny gestured to Erica that she should stay still. With the sureness of a stalking cat he was gone from her sight.
Chapter Twenty-one
To Ulf and Jutte the forest was a dangerous and alien place. There was no safety here, no gratitude from them for the dark, cloaking cover of the trees and thickets. They huddled close to each other, his arm on her shoulder and her face rested on his cheek. They talked in low, guarded voices, in fragmented sentences that often were stifled as they listened to the night sounds around them.
'When we are across, Ulf, what happens to us, where do we go?'
'To the first farm, the first house…'
'How will they welcome us?'
'… they will give us something to eat, they will call the authorities.'
'The police will come to see us?'
'They will take us to a place called Giesen… north of Frankfurt… they will give us money there…'
' Is the money a reward for what we have done?'
' It is just to help us begin our lives.'
' I want to live in Hamburg, where my uncle is…'
'Then we will tell them, Jutte, we will give them his name.'
'My uncle has a big factory there, he is the owner of the factory, all of it belongs to him. My uncle is a rich man
'Perhaps he will help us when we are ready to leave Giesen.'
'My uncle will give me a room.'
'Perhaps he will not want to have the two of us living there»
'He said he would be kind to me.'
'We have to think of the future, Jutte.'
Her head moved angrily away from his face. 'I'm not exchanging one prison for another. In Berlin you could have had a little flat and some cheap furniture. I am not going to Hamburg just to become a housewife
… I am going there to live…'
'Yes, Jutte, we are going there to live together.'
'… of course, Ulf, of course.'
She leaned her head back to his shoulder and he felt the cool, paper-smooth skin, and he knew that he loved her, that he could not believe that he would ever love another girl. And the price that he must pay for her love was high, as high as the close mesh fence, as high as the crack of the automatic guns, as high as the cry of the
