The price had been paid, access to the border had been bought. He would go the next evening with Otto Guttmann and Erica.
Away behind him was the noise of the jeep engine. They would be taking their trophies back to the command bunker, the girl who was shot, the boy who would be their prisoner.
His head small and frail in Erica's lap, Otto Guttmann slept.
The shot had not wakened him, nor the siren that murmured in the trees around them, nor the flinching of his daughter at the stealth of the approach sounds. Her arms guarded his face as defiantly she waited.
'Erica… it's Johnny…' The whisper from the darkness, and then the shadow loomed close, silent and fast, until he crouched beside her.
'The shooting… the noise… I thought it was you. What happened?'
'A boy and a girl tried to cross…' The gruff response, unwilling answer. 'The guards fired on them.'
'You saw it?'
' I saw it.'
'Did they succeed, did they go?'
'The girl was killed, the boy was captured.'
'You saw it all happen?'
' It was pathetic, they were children, they behaved like children.'
'But brave…?'
'Brave, yes… in everything else they were pitiful. I listened to them when they were talking, before they went forward… then I thought they had a chance, I thought that until they came to the Hinterland, the first wire… it finished there. There was never a chance for them.'
'And for us…?'
Determination deepened his voice. 'We go tomorrow, we go tomorrow night. For us it is different.'
'How is it different for us?'
'Because I am not a child,'Johnny said savagely.
He eased himself down onto the ground and stretched out beside her, felt his hand brush against her arm, wanted to hold her, wanted to cling to her, wanted her to gather him as she had her father.
'What would have been their idea of freedom, Johnny? What was their dream?'
'He wanted to rent a flat and buy furniture. She wanted a pretty frock from the shops in Hamburg.'
'Did they talk of their freedom, what it meant to them?'
' It's an empty word; it means nothing.'
'Nothing to you, Johnny, everything to them. If someone comes to this place, dares to come here, then a flame must burn… The absence of freedom is outside your experience.'
' I have to sleep, Erica.'
'Can you sleep when you have seen a girl killed?'
Johnny's eyes were closed. Exhaustion crawled through his body, mushroomed in his mind. 'When we are across, then we can talk of freedom…'
'Too late then… you must know what is freedom before you lead us to the wire.'
' It's not important.'
'You think people will risk their lives for something that is not important?'
' It's just a job. Erica that's the total of it, that's all.' Johnny propped himself up on his elbow. 'I've been paid to do it, I've taken the money.
I've an old mother and she needs cheap sausages from the corner shop, and electricity and coal, and a new coat for the winter, and I buy them.
I'll pay for them because I came to Magdeburg. You understand? I don't fool with clever words like freedom… The girl tonight, all she wanted was some pretty clothes, a new High Street to walk down. That was an idiot reason to get killed.'
'You're cruel, Johnny…'
'The boy with her, he loved her. They talked of love and it was wasted breath. There's no love now because she's wrapped in a bloody blanket and dead, and he's in chains in the cells.'
'Did she love him at the end?'
Johnny peered into her face. 'Erica, for Christ's sake leave it
… it doesn't matter about love, another bloody irrelevance, all that matters is a plan to cross the wire. Love isn't the bloody leg up.. '
'Are we going to cross the wire, Johnny?'
' I don't know…'
He sagged back onto the ground and his head was resting on the matted grass and the bent bracken. He unloaded the grenades from his anorak, squirmed down in search of comfort. His hand rose and grasped at the night air and Erica took it and pressed his fingers close to her and gave them warmth.
'When Willi went from Geneva, was it to find his freedom?'
'You have to ask him.'
'Something more than those two you found tonight, what Willi was looking for. Tell me it was something more, Johnny.'
'He must tell you himself… I'm sorry, Erica.'
Chapter Twenty-two
It was the pressure of her hand over his mouth that woke him. The first sensation he knew was of the weight of her fingers on his lips. Even as his eyes functioned and his mind turned he had grasped at her wrist. He could not move her, not until he was awakened and aware, not until he saw the fingers of her other hand splayed in the warning for quiet. She pointed to the undergrowth in the direction of the path.
Johnny heard the voices. Low, casual, in conversation. The voices of young men. Erica was hunched above him and beside her a few feet from Johnny was her father, alerted, wrapped in the girl's coat. Dreadful, the old man looked to Johnny, his age accentuated by the lack of the razor, by the unbuttoned collar, by the hair that had not been tended. And Erica showed the haggard reward of a night without sleep. Stupid creature to have given her coat away and to have sat through the night in a skirt and a blouse and a light cardigan… bloody daft. The whole night standing guard over them, husbanding her strength to play sentry while the men slept. Shame caught at Johnny, he'd slept and he'd rested, and he had not thought of the girl.
The Border Guards would be working through the area. They'd be at the Hinterland fence and trying to track back along the route of the couple. There was no reason for them to search with great thoroughness.
One dead, one captured, and no trail beyond the Hinterland. And if they had dogs then the dew would have formed over the scent of Johnny's tracks and he had been scrupulous in his care for movement in the undergrowth.
The voices passed, not aroused, not interested. Erica's hand withdrew from Johnny's mouth. The Stechkin dug at the small of his back and he pulled it from his belt and laid it on the ground beside him.
'They'll be up and down the track for most of the morning, then it'll tail off…'
'My father is very hungry.'
Hungry and ill, Johnny thought, and at the limit of his resources; a passenger to be coddled.
'We can't move from here, not for hours… none of us.'
'Look at him…'
The old man met his gaze with a rare, fluttering smile, but that was bravery. Otto Guttmann sought and failed to conceal his helplessness.
Johnny's resolution sagged.
'Perhaps later I can go and look for some food… but it is a great risk.'
'We haven't the clothes to sleep like this, in the open…'
' I know.'
'But you will try?'
