The Waiting Time (45 page)

‘Oh dear.’ Albert Perkins swung his feet off the table. ‘A shame, seems tomorrow may be too late.’

The voice, distorted, had faded but came again.

‘The charge against Dieter Krause will be supported by the written and signed statement of Willi Muller, trawler deck-hand, a witness to the murder. Over. Out.’

The voice died, was gone. The static screamed through the control room until the supervisor flicked the switch and killed it.

‘Bad luck, an open transmission, so many people would have heard that. How embarrassing. Can’t shove that under the carpet, can’t ignore evidence . . .‘ Albert Perkins stood. He smiled abject sympathy. ‘I’d much appreciate accompanying you, hitching a ride down there.’

He drove on the road between Kagsdorf and Rerik. He could no longer see the trawler. There were high trees beside the road. It did not seem important to Dieter Krause that he could not see the lights of the trawler. He knew its destination.

‘Where is he?’

‘If he were able to be here, he would be.’

‘Stupid selfish bastard. He knows I never play at my best when he doesn’t watch me — where is he?’

Eva Krause hit her daughter across the face. She picked up the bag and the tennis racquets and threw them out onto the pavement. She dragged her daughter into the street and locked the door behind her. She wore the old clothes, taken from the one suitcase she had kept. The skirt was long and plain. The shoes were
imitation
leather and would let in water if it rained. The blouse was a size too small and buttoned modestly to the neck, the coat was thin and dull. She was the FDGB organizer, the woman who sat in the meetings at the Neptun shipyard and dreamed of the apartment in the Toitenwinkel district, the wife of the
Hauptman
who worked from the second floor of the building on August-Bebel Strasse. She tossed the bag and the racquets onto the back seat of her car, and pushed her daughter down into the front seat. The skirt, the shoes, the blouse, the coat had been the best clothes she had owned. She had seen them that day. She always wore her best clothes when she went to the apartment in the Toitenwinkel district. She had seen them on the video, scattered on the floor, that day, beside the bed.

She drove. Her daughter was sullen quiet beside her.

Josh gave the wheel to Willi Muller. He felt faint. The wind had gone and the sea had calmed. He thought he might be sick and went out onto the deck. They were coming past the peninsula that masked the lights of Rerik. The stink of the fish carcasses was around him. He reached for the spotlight, aimed it at the peninsula shore, and called to Willi to give him the power. The beam burst out across the water and onto the shoreline of the peninsula. The light found the beach where the boy would have landed, and came to the squat concrete bunker where the radar had been housed, which had been his target. The trawler edged along the coast. Near to the end, where it was little more than a spit of sand and dune grass, the beam of the spotlight settled on a low tree, broken and dead, and a big bird flapped mutely away beyond the range of the cone of light. Tracy was beside him, and put her hand on his arm.

Josh said bleakly, You’re never free of ghosts, Tracy, they cling to you and they suck you dry. You should never walk with ghosts.’

She laughed. ‘That’s right bullshit, Josh.’

They rounded the headland. The lights of Rerik were ahead of them, across the Salzhaff. He called out to Willi Muller that he should switch off the lights on the trawler, all the lights, and the night darkness fell on them. . . He thought the boy had died for nothing.

‘We did it, Josh, we did it together. God, I’ve been a proper little bitch to you, don’t think I deserved you. You’ve been fantastic, wonderful.’ She lifted her head, she kissed his cheek. He stared out towards the lights and the piers of Rerik. ‘You all right, Josh?’

He pushed her hand off his arm.

He took the Walther pistol from his pocket, checked it, armed it.

He called through the wheelhouse door: ‘Willi — the officer, the
Hauptman,
will be on the pier. He will kill to preserve your silence. I am in the front. She is behind me, you are behind her. We stand in front of you, Willi.’

They came in fast towards the piers.

He stood where the longest one rose from the shingle and weed of the beach. Josh saw him. There was a light close to the road, behind him, that outlined Dieter Krause. Josh saw that he stood motionless at the far end of the longest pier.

There was no fear, no elation.

Josh, by the wheelhouse door, said, ‘Bring her in gently, With. Bring her home like you would have brought in your father’s boat.’

Josh went forward and took the rope from the deck. They were close to the pier. Smaller fishing boats groaned and swayed in the dropping wind at the shorter, narrower piers.

Perkins saw him. He was the idiot who had gone into man-trap country. Perkins felt, a short moment, the sense of wonderment that was always there — every field officer said it — when an agent, an idiot, came through, stepped out from the man-trap country. Always that stark short moment of almost disbelief when an idiot came out of the darkness of danger, emerged from behind the fences and walls and minefields and wire.

* * *

The trawler boat nudged the pier.

Josh jumped and lashed the rope to a post. Krause stood so still and Josh saw that he held the pistol at the seam of his trouser- leg. The engine cut. There was a silence, then the clatter on the planks of the pier as Tracy came behind him and then the young man. They faced each other. Josh looked down the length of the pier.

‘You should know, Doktor Krause, that we came to find evidence and we have found it. We came for an eye-witness to murder and we have found him. You may have thought, Doktor Krause, that time washes away guilt. It does not.’

He started down the pier, towards the beach, the road and the lights in the windows of the houses, towards Dieter Krause. He went steadily, his own pace, slow steps. Krause clasped the pistol in his fist and slowly raised it. Josh walked forward.

The aim of the pistol locked.

‘Don’t, Doktor Krause, because it is over. For you, it is finished.’ Josh was a dozen paces from Krause. It was the moment he realized that Krause would shoot. Krause would have seen the slow, sad smile pass on Josh’s face, as if he didn’t care, as if he was too wearied and beaten to care. The finger, Josh saw it, moved on the trigger, tightened .

The light burst from behind Dieter Krause.

The big spotlamp beam trapped Krause, threw his shadow forward to Josh’s feet, blinded Josh. The brilliant white light was in Josh’s face. He could see nothing. He heard the clatter as the Makharov pistol landed on the planks of the pier.

The shadow forms moved warily forward, huge and grotesque, and Dieter Krause raised his hands high above his head.

Raub hissed, ‘Run, Krause, run for the darkness.’

He heard, ahead of them, his head half turned.

Goldstein said, ‘If he runs, Raub, he runs over my dead body.’

Raub spat, ‘It was history. Too long ago. The past, the past is gone.’

Goldstein said, ‘There is no honoured history without justice. Tell a Jew that the past is gone, tell a German Jew that the past can be forgotten. He will go over my dead body.’

Krause held his hands above his head.

Perkins chuckled, ‘Well said, Julius, sensibly spoken.’

Josh stumbled, so tired and drained. He asked Tracy for the statement, and she took the notepad from under her coat, her sweater and her T-shirt. It was warm from her skin. The senior policeman held Krause’s arm and the handcuffs twisted his wrists into the small of his back. Josh led Willi Muller to the senior policeman and he identified the witness, and he gave him the notepad and showed him the written pages and the signature on each page.

‘You will go to your home, Willi?’

The young man shrugged.

‘You should g our home.’

‘For the night, taps. My boat is my home.’

‘Because you did not run from the principle of justice, Willi, I am proud to have known you.’

The voice blared, nasal, behind him. ‘Mantle, come here, Mantle.’

At the edge of the light Perkins was with Tracy, holding her hand as an uncle would have done. Perkins grinned. ‘I was just telling Miss Barnes . . . Hey, come on, Mantle, don’t look so damned miserable . . . Just telling Miss Barnes what a quite fantastic young woman she was. If a quarter of the snot-nosed pillock recruits coming into Vauxhall Bridge Cross had her resourcefulness our Service would be the envy of all. With a bit of help from you, you old hack, and I’m being generous, she has achieved our policy aims, bagged, packaged, wrapped .

An asset is destroyed, a public trial beckons, recriminations commence. Poor old Dr Raub, my German colleague, still walks in the time warp, thought they could slide the guilt out of sight, the modern equivalent of putting him on a boat to Paraguay. No chance. Mantle, she is fantastic. All for love. Marvellous thing, love, so they tell me. My suggestion, get back to Rostock and buy our Tracy an impressively expensive dinner. Hey, Mantle, your old pencil hold any lead still?’

Tracy took his arm. Perkins walked away and his laughter rang in the night. The cars were revving. Josh saw Krause pushed down, awkward, into the back of a car. He loosed her hand. He walked back down the pier.

The trawler rolled gently beside him. He took the Walther pistol from his waist and threw it high, far, into the water of the Salzhaff. The cars pulled away, made a convoy. He stared at the distant treeline on the shore of the base, the home of ghosts. He stood on the pier along which the boy, wounded, had been dragged. She called again. There was one car left in the road and she ran to it. It was all history, it was all gone. It was the past, it was finished. It was all for love.

He fed the message.

Status: SECRET.

Information flash — ex Moscow staffer to Russia Room. Status of info, unconfirmed, but from ‘reliable source’.

RYKOV, Pyotr Nikolai, army rank Col., current position P/A to Mm. of Def., arrested 18.00 local by Fed. Tnt. Service, and held on espionage/treason charge. Believed SIS involvement — requested we onpass to VBX, London. It’s dirty, I have a bad smell on this one.

Understand RYKOV subject of German junket at Pentagon, Langley, Rand Corp. — suggest you cancel and leave bottles corked and keep
sauerkraut
in the refrigerator.

My assessment: If RYKOV arrested by FIS, then he is dead in the water, irrelevant.

Bestest, Brad.

End.

The message was sent.

She had taken her bag and rummaged in it. She had changed in the lavatories. While she had changed, Josh had picked from his suit trouser legs, meticulously, the last of the fish scales.

She came through the swinging door into the hotel’s lobby. She wore her cleanest T-shirt, from the Peenemunde day, and the least crumpled of her old jeans. There was dark lipstick at her mouth and shadow colouring at her eyes, and the copper-gold of her hair was spiked up. She took his hand. She was the woman a man could love for the rest of his life, all of his life. She squeezed his hand, laughed. ‘Come on, Josh, a bloody great meal and a bloody great bottle, it’s what we’re owed.’

She led him towards the restaurant door, behind which the band played.