will be back himself and there's three more coming tonight, they'll all be in time for dinner
… if that's possible? Mr Mawby asked me to apologise for not having given more notice.'
'It'll be no trouble.'
'Something a little unusual, I think,' Carter confided.
'I like the house full. It's such a waste when it's empty.'
'It'll be a bit like the old days.'
'And that'll be welcome,' she said placidly.
Carter closed the door on her privacy. He walked into the main sitting room and pondered his own instructions, changed again by London. The boy, Willi, was to talk about his father. His personality, not his research work. Everything about the man himself, his habits, his interests, his life-style. Another blow at the consistency that Carter had been trained to believe was the hallmark of the debrief.
Could they really be thinking of bringing Otto Guttmann out of East Germany? The repercussions if it went sour, by God. Carter felt his knees weaken and flopped into an armchair. Perhaps he was going too fast. Perhaps, but where else did the trickle of circumstantial information point?
Chapter Four
Because of the very stillness of the house Johnny woke early.
Noise didn't concern him, not after the dawn bustle of a day starting in Cherry Road and the grind of the buses in Willow Lane, and the farther thunder of the fast trains through the town. Not after the daily rumble of Mrs Davies forcing her man out of bed beyond the common wall, and his mother on the move for the first of the kettle boilings, and the children pitched on to the pavements because it was a long walk to the new comprehensive school. He could stomach that. But the quiet was a killer, a destroyer.
No one moved beneath him and he lay in his bed soaking up the silence, alert for any noise. An uncanny vacuum of sound, as if he were alone. But that couldn't be true because he'd seen a man who introduced himself as Henry Carter on his way to bed, and he'd climbed the stairs with Smithson and Pierce, and there was also the boy who was spoken of as Willi, and the shadow at his back, his minder. He hadn't actually seen the boy, but he had been told of him. And there was the housekeeper too.
But none of them had stirred in Johnny's hearing that morning.
He had cantered out of Lancaster almost without a backward glance.
He had kissed his mother firmly on both cheeks, told her that he had been offered something special, that he would be away for a while, that the money was going to be good and could she be sure to give this envelope to the Prentice boy to take to the Tech — that he was turning the corner on the past. He had left her confused and struggling for composure, standing on the front doorstep shyly waving as he walked away.
A couple of whiskys had been downed the previous night and there had been sporadic talk with Carter and Smithson and Pierce weighing him, and Johnny turning his concentration at them, evaluating their capabilities. But Johnny had it over them. He had the high ground. A contract man was only brought into the tight web structure of an operation to fulfil a pinnacle role. If it were too easy, too simple then one of the pension scheme men could have been recruited. When the going would be rough they looked for the contract man. Rough and dangerous, Johnny.
Abruptly he swung his legs out of the bed and padded across to his bag. No need to pack for a lifetime, Smithson had said. A few shirts and underclothes, a spare pair of shoes, his army boots, his washing bag.
He'd turned himself out well enough when he was in uniform, but that was back in the dark ages. Who looked at him now? He put on a shirt and knotted the old boys tie of the Grammar School, pulled up the trousers that were creased at the back of the knees, eased into his shoes that he should have polished before leaving home. The clothes he would have worn to the Technical College to take the German class.
He let himself out of the bedroom and went carefully down the stairs.
A wide, curved staircase with a polished wooden banister. He walked around the hall, and his feet sank into the pile of the carpet, his eyes on the pictures that were strewn over the timber panelling. They'd have plotted the subverting of the Bolshevik revolution in a place like this.
Nothing would have changed. Extraordinary people, these hidden creatures of the Service. Perhaps the pond they now looked into was too filthy, too slimed for their own hands, and so they needed a contract man to do their work, they'd have an outsider in for the job. And afterwards they'd let him wash and perhaps they'd wave a polite farewell and perhaps they would say he had done well and let him stay for more.
' I hope you slept well, Mr Donoghue?'
Johnny spun round. Caught off balance, caught dreaming. Henry Carter was standing in the doorway that led to the dining room.
'Thank you, yes… I didn't know anyone else was up…'
'We didn't want to disturb you, we thought we'd let you wake in your own good time.'
Johnny looked at his watch. Twenty-five minutes to eight. He blushed.
There's some breakfast in here, if you'd like it,' Carter said. 'We don't usually have much at lunchtime. It'll keep you going till the evening. Mr Mawby's coming down then.'
Carter showed Johnny into the dining room. They sat down by the window.
Of the four other tables only one was occupied. A boy with a face that once had known the sun and a man opposite him who toyed with his teacup, heavily built and expressionless. Neither spoke.
The housekeeper emerged from a far door, advanced across the linoleum floor.
'Eggs and bacon for Mr Donoghue, I should think, Mrs Ferguson,'
Carter said.
Johnny agreed. That was the way it was going to be. He would be told his rest hours, told his work, told what to eat. Carter leaned forward, conspiratorial. 'Over there, that's the lad we're working on. Junior interpreter on the Soviet delegation of the disarmament chat in Geneva.
Defected a bit over a week ago because the English girl he was taking out said she was pregnant and life couldn't go on without the two of them being together. It's not him that interests us. His father's the prime one.
Dad was taken to the Soviet Union after the war along with a truckful of scientists and he's made his name there on the ATGW programme… you know what that is, Anti-Tank Guided Weapons.'
Memories for Johnny, memories of 'I' Corps days. ' I know.'
'He's specialised in MCLOS, you read that?'
Johnny nodded. ' I know what that is.'
'Well that's about all I can tell you.' Carter chuckled. 'Nothing changes in the Service. There are the princes, the God Almighties.. that's Charles Mawby, and there are the carriers of pitchers of water. I lug buckets around and do what I'm told and that way if it spills then I don't get it in the neck…' Carter paused, looked again at Johnny, and keenly.
'You were a German specialist in Intelligence?'
'Army Intelligence.'
'But a specialist in German theatre?'
'For seven years.'
'Fluent?'
'Grade five.'
'What does that mean?'
'Grade four and five classify you as having colloquial capability. It means you can pass as a citizen.'
There was a little gleam of understanding from Carter, as if another jigsaw piece had slid into place. The housekeeper carried in a laden plate for Johnny. Carter seemed not to notice, absorbed in what he had heard. Johnny began to eat, fast and without finesse.
' I was listening to what the two who brought you here last night were saying, you were upstairs unpacking your bag.' Carter was now companionable, sympathetic. 'They said that you had a bit of bother over in Ireland…'
