“Your target is Kalkstadt”—a little grin—”hitherto famous only for a remarkably fine fourteenth-century church.”
They laughed, Leiser too. It was so good, Leclerc knowing about old churches.
He had brought a diagram of the crossing point, done in different inks, with the border drawn in red. It was all very simple. On the western side, he said, there was a low, wooded hill overgrown with gorse and bracken. This ran parallel to the border until the southern end curved eastward in a narrow arm stopping about two hundred and twenty yards short of the border, directly opposite an observation tower. The tower was set well back from the demarcation line: at its foot ran a fence of barbed wire. It had been observed that this wire was laid out in a single apron and only loosely fixed to its staves. East German guards had been seen to detach it in order to pass through and patrol the undefended strip of territory which lay between the demarcation line and the physical border. That afternoon Leclerc would indicate the precise staves. Mayfly, he said, should not be alarmed at having to pass so close to the tower; experience had shown that the attention of the guards was concentrated on the more distant parts of their area. The night was ideal; a high wind was forecast; there would be no moon. Leclerc had set the crossing time for 0235 hours; the guard changed at midnight, each watch lasted three hours. It was reasonable to suppose that the sentries would not be as alert after two and a half hours on duty as they would be at the start of their watches. The relief guard, which had to approach from a barrack some distance to the north, would not yet be under way.
Much attention had been given, Leclerc continued, to the possibility of mines. They would see from the map—the little forefinger tracted the green dotted line from the end of the rise across the border—that there was an old footpath which did indeed follow the very route which Leiser would be taking. The frontier guards had been seen to avoid this path, striking a track of their own some ten yards to the south of it. The assumption was, Leclerc said, that the path was mined, while the area to the side of it had been left clear for the benefit of patrols. Leclerc proposed that Leiser should use the track made by the frontier guards.
Wherever possible over the two hundred odd yards between the foot of the hill and the tower, Leiser should crawl, keeping his head below the level of the bracken. This eliminated the small danger that he would be sighted from the tower. He would be comforted to hear, Leclerc added with a smile, that there was no record of any patrol operating on the western side of the wire during the hours of darkness. The East German guards seemed to fear that one of their own number might slip away unseen.
Once across the border Leiser should keep clear of any path. The country was rough, partly wooded. The going would be hard but all the safer for that; he was to head south. The reason for this was simple. To the south, the border turned westward for some ten kilometers. Thus Leiser, by moving southward, would put himself not two but fifteen kilometers from the border, and more quickly escape the zonal patrols which guarded the eastern approaches. Leclerc would advise him thus—he withdrew one hand casually from the pocket of his duffle coat and lit a cigarette, conscious all the time of their eyes upon him—march east for half an hour, then turn due south, making for Marienhorst Lake. At the eastern end of the lake was a disused boathouse. There he could lie up for an hour and give himself some food. By that time Leiser might care for a drink—relieved laughter—and he would find a little brandy in his rucksack.
Leclerc had a habit, when making a joke, of holding himself at attention and lifting his heels from the ground as if to launch his wit upon the higher air.
“I couldn’t have something with gin, could I?” Leiser asked. “White Lady’s my drink.”