The Waiting Time (10 page)

He took the cup and saucer, and the plate with the cake. He wanted to be gentle. ‘She’ll need your patience and a long rest. Most of all she’s going to need love.’

He drank the tea and ate the cake. He heard the footsteps fast on the stairs, the opening and closing of the door and the clatter of the little front gate. The photographs were of Tracy Barnes as a recruit, sitting with the team at Brigade in Berlin, at Templer, in uniform, smiling, and crouched with a black dog. Josh hadn’t the courage for honesty.

He let himself out.

He drove away. He felt no achievement, no pleasure.

It was only a few minutes’ drive from the street to the car park close to the offices of Greatorex, Wilkins & Protheroe.

She was in a telephone box. There was a car down the road, two men in the car, one smoking and one talking into a mobile telephone. He saw the lustre of her hair, caught by a street lamp. He didn’t stop and shout at her, ‘Go home, stay there, he’s an asset and protected. Go home or you can be hurt. Forget it ever happened.’ He was used to marching into people’s lives and then walking away from them.

A bad taste of failure in his mouth, Julius Goldstein telephoned Raub. The file of Hauptman Dieter Krause showed no evidence of criminal activity in human rights. He reported, also, that pages of the file concerned with Hauptman Krause’s relationship with the Soviet officer, Major Pyotr Rykov, were not present, and a part of the separate file dealing with the military base at Wustrow. He told Raub that it was not possible from the files to find evidence of murder. He was authorized to return to Cologne on the late flight.

The most senior of the researchers escorted him from the basements. ‘You should not take it personally. If you wanted to know which teacher in a school in Saxony-Anhalt informed on his colleagues, then I could find you the answer. Which environment activist was beaten up because his wife betrayed him, which student reported on his colleagues, which poet infiltrated an arts group. I can tell you, names and dates and contact officers. Here, there is only the chaff of human misery, and that does not reach to the level of murder. They were busy in those last days, sanitizing the files, sterilizing the past. That is why, today, they swagger on the streets, certain of their safety. From what you looked for, from what is missing, I can tell you that the link between Hauptman Krause and Major Pyotr Rykov was sensitive in this matter of murder. If there was not guilt then the files would not have been cleansed. Is it important to you, this question of guilt?’

He stepped into the chilly floodlit yard. Julius Goldstein said, ‘The possibility of guilt is important because it can obstruct an advantage that we seek. My thanks to you, goodnight. The advantage is in the man, Rykov.’

‘Is that him?’

‘That’s our boy.’

The Briton and the American stood against the wall, a little apart from the guests in the salon where the Americans always entertained.

‘In the shadow of his man.’

‘I get the impression that the big shot doesn’t go to the toilet without the say-so of Rykov.’ The eyes of the Briton watered from the foul-smelling cigarettes around them. His diplomatic accreditation was for a second secretary (consular).

‘Use the soft tissue, imported, or the local ass scratcher — need a man with a sharp clear mind for the big decisions.’ The American, on the list submitted to the foreign ministry, was a cultural attaché.

From where they stood, with soft drinks, they could see the line of guests filtering into the salon, past the handshakes of the ambassador and the deputy chief of mission. The minister, whose chest flashed ribbons, was in conversation with the deputy chief. The ambassador welcomed the short stocky Russian with the colonel’s insignia on his shoulders and the chest free of decoration colours. A heavy-built woman stepped forward hesitantly to meet the ambassador.

‘And brought his lovely wife with him.’

‘Our Irma — not what you’d call an ocean racer.’

‘More of a bulk carrier, Brad.’

‘Heh, look at that, David. Enjoy that.’

The minister had moved on to the centre of the salon, couldn’t have seen where he was headed. The Colonel had left his wife and was powering to him. The minister had blundered, stormy night and no navigation, into what Brad called the ‘recons’. They’d had eight different names in seven years, so Brad always won a laugh out of David with his name for the reconstructed KGB people. Eyes sparking, a stand-off, mutual
hostility
— military facing up to the ‘recons’. The Colonel had seen the opportunity of confrontation and come fast to his man.

‘You think they might actually fight, bare fist?’

‘I’m out of Montana, they used to have a betting game there. Put colours, for identification, on the back of a couple of rats which hadn’t been fed in several days, drop the rats in a sack and knot the top, tight. Bet on the winner.’

‘The loser’s dead?’

‘One rat lives. Where’d you put your money?’

Without finesse, Rykov had taken the arm of his minister and propelled him round like it was a parade-ground.

‘My paint’s going on Rykov’s back.’

‘Be a hard fight in the sack, he has to be clever and lucky. You rate him lucky enough — clever enough?’

‘I’m told he is. He wears a good face, a strong face.’

‘But you can’t see into the face. The way of this damn place, you never see behind the face of the man who matters...’

In the crowded room, the Briton and the American had eyes only for Colonel Pyotr Rykov. For the last four months, each, in his own way, through his own unshared channels, had sought to explain the man, unmask the character and analyse the influence. Both had failed. They were two veterans, middle-aged, heavy with experience; both had exploited the resources available to them to satisfy the hunger at Langley and Vauxhall Bridge Cross for hard information on the mind of Colonel Pyotr Rykov; both acknowledged that failure.

‘This guy the Germans are hawking...’

Droll. ‘Don’t, Brad, intrude on private grief.’

Chuckling. ‘Heh, is it right that a feisty little cat scratched his face? That’s pretty un-British manners.’

‘When’s he going across to your lot?’

‘A couple of weeks. The guest list’s the best and the brightest. They’re screaming for a profile on Rykov. He has undivided attention.’

They watched the Colonel. He was always a pace behind his minister, and they saw his lips move as if murmuring guidance. He was there for thirty-five minutes, the barest decency, before he was gone, slipping away with his minister and his wife, back into the frozen darkness of Moscow’s night.

It had been a late rail connection to the last ferry boat of the evening.

A squall had whipped off the harbour waters. The wind, even behind the high sea walls of packed rocks, had the strength to shake the pleasure boats, the tugs and the few fishing boats on their moorings, and to roll the ferry before the hawser ropes had been cast off.

Under scudding cloud, it ploughed through the waves, made a direct course across the Channel and towards the coast of Europe. It was the territory of the long-haul lorry drivers and the few passengers prepared to sacrifice comfort and time in the interest of economy.

She stood alone at the forward rail of the ferry boat, as far forward as passengers were permitted to be.

She did not seek the company of the lorry drivers in their lounge or other passengers, who clustered round the gaming table, the fruit machines and the cafeteria’s counter. She was unnoticed and unwatched. The night ferry was, for her, the most suitable way to travel from Britain to the Continent, the passport check would be the briefest. The spray, as the prow of the ferry ducked into the waves, spattered her hair and her face, her shoulders and her body. The tang smell of it was on her. She shouted her anthem to the night wind. It was a song of parting, waiting and death.

And she did not think of them, the men who had intruded into that aloneness and privacy in the last hours, days and weeks. If she had . . . Major Perry Johnson sat solitary in a corner of the mess, isolated, near to that place on the carpet where the drink stain had dried out. He was the man whose corporal had soured an excellent occasion. He was shunned. He was not called to the bar by Captain Dawson, or by Major Donoghue, and in the morning he would try again to attempt the impossible and discover the pattern of Tracy Barnes’s filing system. That afternoon, aggressive spite, he had told Ben Christie to keep the bloody dog out of G/9, and Christie had called him a ‘vindictive old bastard’ and applied for a transfer, immediate. He nursed his drink, he reflected that his world had fallen. . . but she had not thought of him.

The salt of the sea spray was on her lips and in her mouth .

Albert Perkins fought his tiredness. He sat at a plain table in the archive of Defence Intelligence. The material, too old to have been transferred to computer disk, was paper, bulging from a cardboard box, old sheets of typed and handwritten notes that were the bones, not the flesh, of an incident in the past that had a resonance of the present and might affect the future. He was brought coffee, a fresh mug every fifteen minutes. Without it, he would have slumped over the table.

The wind and the spray slicked the hair on her scalp. She did not feel the cold, did not shiver. . . Josh Mantle was by himself in the open area on the first floor. There had been a sharp note waiting for him from the partner, Mr Wilkins. Where had he been? Who was his client? Why had he not cleared his absence with Mr Greatorex? He worked on the cases that Mr Protheroe would be handling before the magistrates the next morning. He had returned to the grind of his daily life. He would be late away from his desk — it would be the small hours before he returned to his high flat near to the London road.

She did not try to wipe the water from her face or to keep the gale wind from her hair. The lights were ahead of her, winking and rolling with the motion of the ferry.

She came off the boat. She bought, from the one shop open in the middle of the night at the harbour terminal, a big gift box of Belgian chocolates and asked for them to be wrapped in fancy paper. She had her rucksack on her back and carried her gift to the waiting train. She huddled in the corner of an empty carriage and before the train pulled out she was asleep, at peace.

‘Another hundred and ten pounds in the kitty, but earned with blood and sweat, eh, Josh?’

‘I was surprised, Mr Protheroe, that he was given bail.’

‘Sick mother. I expect I laid it on rather heavily, as if the ambulance siren had already started up and she was on her way to intensive care. I tell you, Josh, if my Miriam ever makes the bench then a yob like that will need more than a sick mother to keep him out of the cells. Well, I look upon that revolting little creature as an investment for the future, lorryloads of legal aid at fifty-five pounds an hour where that one’s going.’

Josh Mantle, back in the familiar suit, the old shirt and the poorer shoes, walked across the hallway of the court with the partner.

‘And getting those louts bound over to keep the peace — some hope — was a second triumph for humanity, eh, Josh?’

‘There are serious tensions in the Sikh and Muslim communities. The youths are bound to reflect those tensions in their homes.’

‘You have a sympathetic eye, Josh. You know, Mr Greatorex did a run-through, last week, of the firm’s legal-aid earnings, criminal cases. Bit over a year you’ve been with us? Legal aid’s up for the firm more than twenty per cent. You’ve a good way in the police cells, drumming up business. Heh, God, you must need a damn good scrub when you get home at night, some of the scum you meet. I’m not complaining. . . but very sympathetic.’

‘As long as you’re not complaining, Mr Protheroe.’ Most nights he was on call, or down at the police station at Slough beside the court, to argue for bail, to sit in on the interviews, to take statements from inarticulate and hostile youths. ‘What about this afternoon?’

‘There’s a problem, Josh. The bottle-slashing, yes? It’s a remand in custody, no question of letting him out. I’d rather thought it was for this morning, up and down. The problem is, I’m on the golf course this afternoon, a charity job, good cause. Look after it, will you, Josh? We’re not arguing with a remand. I’m going to dash.’ He was away, hurrying up the street.

She must have seen him with Mr Protheroe, and she must have waited, diffident.

‘Afternoon, Mrs Barnes.’

‘They told me you’d be here — at your work they said you would.’

‘How can I help, Mrs Barnes?’

‘It’s my Tracy. .

She was breathing hard. He wondered how far she had walked to come to the court. There were bag lines at her eyes, as if she had been crying. She seemed to him so tired and so frail.

‘Hold it there, Mrs Barnes. Let’s go and find somewhere we can sit down.’

He took her arm, led her into a deserted court-room and sat her on the polished bench where the public could sit when the court was in session. He saw the fear on her face. He touched her hand. ‘Now, Mrs Barnes, what about Tracy?’

‘She’s gone.’

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Barnes, where has she gone?’ He was trying to concentrate, trying to focus, and she was difficult to hear even in the hush of the empty court-room. ‘Where has she gone?’

From her handbag she took a small piece of paper. It had been crumpled, squashed in a fist and discarded as rubbish, then carefully smoothed out. ‘God forbid, I’d ever spy on her. I went to bed early. I’d got her back — you’d brought her back. I suppose it was the relief. Slept solid. I woke this morning, to go to work. I made my usual cup of tea and one for her. She wasn’t there, her bed wasn’t slept in. It was on the floor, like it’d been dropped.’

She passed him the slip of paper. He did not have to be a solicitor’s clerk, or a former staff sergeant in I Corps, or a one-time captain in the Royal Military Police to register what was on the paper. There were columns of figures, written precisely. He read them as arrival and departure times. Above the figures was the single word ‘Victoria’ and below them ‘Bahnhof Zoo’.

‘What’s it mean, Mr Mantle?’

It meant that she had kicked him in the teeth. It meant that she had taken the boat train from Victoria to Folkestone or Dover, then a ferry, then a train across Europe to the station in Berlin for trans-European trains.

‘She’s gone to Berlin.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s about what’s happened to her.’

‘Please, Mr Mantle, because I’m frightened for her.’

‘I really don’t see what I can do.’

‘I don’t suppose there is anything.’

‘You want me to find her, bring her home. . . I’ve a very busy workload at the moment, Mrs Barnes.’

She was into her handbag. The purse of worn leather was out of it. Her fingers, thin, dried out, took the roll of banknotes from the purse and unfolded them. She held them out for him to take. There would have been a biscuit tin under the bed, or at the back of a drawer, or under the spare blankets in a cupboard. The money would have been her savings. A few coins and the odd banknote would have been put by each week and each month... Her voice shouted in scorn at him, ‘It was murder. Murder is murder. Or do you compromise’ . . . She would have saved the money over many years. He put his hand over hers, pushed it back towards the purse.

She said, accusingly, ‘What’s wrong with my money? Good enough, isn’t it?’

‘It won’t be necessary.’

Tracy Barnes walked out of the Bahnhof Zoo. It was seven years since she had been in Berlin. There were men doing the hard stuff outside the station, small swarthy men against the wall of the station, protected by their dogs. Seven years ago there had been men here doing hard drugs. She heard the music against the traffic hum. She had always liked the music on the plaza by the ruined Nikolaikirche. She carried the wrapped gift and idled towards the church, which had been firebombed more than half a century before and was kept as a monument to war’s ravage. She watched the band. They might have been from Peru, or perhaps from Costa Rica.

She was another youngster come to the city of history. She was unnoticed. She was small and overwhelmed by her rucksack and unremarkable, just another kid who had travelled to the heartbeat, the core, the junction point of Europe.

She walked boldly towards the east, a fine strong stride, as if she were not intimidated by the city, as if she were not cowed by the history of Berlin. Past the funfair, where she remembered it. Through the Tiergarten, the trees bared by winter and snow powdered on the ground. She came to the Brandenburger Tor. At the great gate of grey-brown stone old history had been renovated and new history had been destroyed. She paused on the pavement corner and faced it: the cars swarmed between the columns over which was the victory chariot.

Either side of the gate was emptiness, where the Wall had been seven years before. The Wall had been her life. Through it she had carried the equipment, the unexposed films and the instructions for Hansie, and she had brought back the equipment, the exposed films and the reports he had made. The Wall had gone. In place of the Wall were cranes. She had never seen so many in one place. Huge, lofty, caterpillar-driven cranes replaced the Wall . . . She was about to cross the wide road, green light showing, when she saw the crosses. Fifteen white plastic crosses were tied to a fence between the pavement and the Tiergarten. They had been there seven years before, but prominent and confronting the Wall. Now, they were tied to a fence. Behind them was an advertisement board for a museum and they were ignored. The young men and women who had died on the Wall were forgotten, their memory consigned to plastic crosses pinned in obscurity against a fence, hard to see.

She crossed the road. She walked past the emptiness where the cranes gathered, where the Wall had been.

She went by the stalls where the Romanians or Poles or Turks sold military souvenirs of the Soviet Army and the NazionalVolksArmee, the caps and camouflage uniforms, the binoculars
and flags, the gear of the men who had killed those remembered by the white plastic crosses, who had murdered her Hansie.

She reached the small garden. It was on the junction of Prenzlauer and Saarbrucker in the hinterland of the Unter den Linden. A long time ago, she had stood on the pavement beside the garden, and Hansie had given the camera to a stranger. They had posed. One snapshot, a boy and a girl. One picture with which to remember him. For many hours, in the chill wind, Tracy Barnes sat on a bench in the garden. The leaves were no longer swept away, as she remembered they had been. On a crude shaped stone in the garden was the relief portrait of Karl Liebknecht, revolutionary, tortured and killed in the Tiergarten in 1919, on a day as cold as this one. Hansie had told her about the life and death of Karl Liebknecht. His face was marked with bird droppings. Who remembered him? Who remembered Hans Becker? Twice a snow shower came. When it had passed over she brushed the frozen flakes from her chest and shoulders.

She waited for dusk to fall on the city, and the memories danced in her mind.

‘I’m very sorry for the inconvenience, but I’ve given my word.’

‘For how long?’ snapped Greatorex.

‘I know where the daughter will have gone. One night and one day will be sufficient.’

‘Who’s paying?’ whined Wilkins.

‘I will. I hope at a later date to be able to recover the expenses.’

‘Who’s going to handle your workload?’ demanded Protheroe.

‘I’ll work late this evening and early tomorrow before court. If I went tomorrow at the end of the day, then I’d be up and running at the start of the day after, and back that night. I’d seek to cause the minimum disruption.’

Greatorex said, ‘As I would hope. Your late wife may have been a valued client of this firm, but you should be damn grateful that we lifted you out of the gutter. Is this the way to repay us?’

After her death, after his collapse and living as a derelict, after he had been taken to a police station and was about to be charged with vagrancy, after Mr Greatorex had seen him and recognized him, he had been given the chance. He was fifty-four years old and he worked as a clerk.