The Waiting Time (19 page)

His eyes seemed to yearn for her, not wanting love but comfort. ‘The one who made you welcome, why did she scratch your face, Dieter? Was that part of the entertainment provided for an honoured guest? But did the young woman not like you, Dieter?’

He turned from her. He had the palms of his hands against the wall beside the oil painting of the nude bathers on the beach at Rugen Island. They would mark the clean paint.

She no longer taunted. She spat the accusation: ‘Is that the life when you go with them? Do they find you whores? Were you too clumsy for the bitch? Did you come too early for her? Couldn’t you do it for her? Does the Jew have a whore? Does Raub? Or is it only Doktor Krause who must be amused when he goes to talk of Pyotr Rykov, his friend? How will it be when you come back from America? Will you be more marked?’

He lifted his head. He shouted to the ceiling, ‘You do not understand.’

‘I understand that some whore, a bitch, has scratched your face.

Did you pay extra for that? Did they pay extra? Do we have, from

England, presents to compensate for your time with a whore?

What, Dieter, with their generosity, have you brought us?’

‘There was no whore. I have brought you nothing.’

‘Nothing? No rubbish from duty free, no trinket from the airport, nothing? Could you not go to the shops because you were too busy with whores? You promised Christina -,

‘If you let me tell you—’

‘— promised Christina the new racquet. For tonight — the tournament starts tonight. You promised.’

He took her shoulder, he forced her down into her chair. She was strong. He pushed her down and told her of the way it had been, of the young woman soldier and the rake of her nails. She held his hand tight.

‘Why?’

‘Because of what happened a long time ago.’

Eva Krause listened. In the apartment on Augusten Strasse, behind the headquarters at August-Bebel Strasse, they never talked of his work. It was not accepted that an officer of the Stasi should talk with his wife of his day, of his problems, his successes. But now he told her that a long time ago a spy had been killed at Rerik and that the woman soldier had attacked him because of the spy who had been killed. ‘People have come now to look for evidence. I apologize, I have to go out.’

‘Where? What evidence? Where do you go? Christina’s match

Who are the people? What is there to find?’

He broke the hold of her hand, left her. She felt as if a darkness closed in on her. She heard the cough of the engine of the big car driving away from the house which had been provided for them.

She sat in the dim light of the room. She thought, for something to cling to, of Pyotr Rykov.

The minister spoke on the telephone.

‘Don’t interrupt me. Don’t threaten me. I have the facts. On my staff is Colonel Rykov. Colonel Rykov tells me that thugs answering to you have arrested a Major Ivanov who serves in the Pechenga garrison in the St Petersburg military district. I am informed by Colonel Rykov, in whom I have total and absolute confidence, that Major Ivanov was pulled from his car this morning by your criminal thugs in connection with a falsified charge of defamation. You will hear what I have to say.’

The minister talked to the General who headed Directorate Z of the Federal Counter-Intelligence Service. Before ‘reconstruction’ the General had headed the Second Chief Directorate of the KGB. Pyotr Rykov had rehearsed his minister well: it was not necessary for him to prompt.

‘The alleged defamation was obtained by the illegal use of a telephone intercept on the home line of Major Ivanov. Hear me, you bastard, never again do you order a telephone intercept on a serving Army officer. You claim that, in talking to his father, Major Ivanov — who is a hero of Afghanistan and who did not stay at home like the shit that your thugs are, who served his country with distinction in combat — referred to the State President as ‘that obese cunt who is in the coat pocket of the Mafia’. Hear me. Within one hour, Major Ivanov is to be returned to his garrison camp at Pechenga, a free man. I believe your people to be stupid and also cowards. If, within one hour, Major Ivanov has not been returned to his camp then he will be taken from your custody by a unit of the Zenith team. I promise you — I honour promises — such action by Special Forces would result, inevitably, in your thugs at Pechenga requiring the attention of nurses or a mortician.’

The Major was a good and valued friend of Pyotr Rykov, had acted as second-in-command of his paratroop company at Herat. And the Major had spoken the truth to his father: the Mafia owned the politicians; without the politicians the Mafia could be crushed by the fist of the military. The Federal CounterInteffigence Service was the tool of the politicians, the bumboy of the Mafia. Politicians, the Federal Counter-Intelligence Service, the Mafia, all were cancers of corruption eating at the strength of Mother Russia.

‘Major Ivanov, on his return to barracks, should confirm his freedom by telephone to Colonel Rykov. One hour.’

The minister put down the telephone.

‘It was as you wanted?’

‘Better than I wanted it. Rumour moves, whispers speak, word travels. In three days, perhaps a week, it will be known in every camp, garrison and base that you stood down those bastards. You will have earned the loyalty, unquestioning, of the corps of officers. That is important for the future.’

‘And earned enmity.’

‘You have the power.’

The minister put his hand on the arm of Pyotr Rykov, gripped it tight. ‘I have the power to confront enemies. Do you? Be careful

· . Be careful of that enmity.’

He did not think he had reached her on the dead space of the old Prinz Albrecht Strasse, and he was bewildered. It was not possible, to Josh Mantle, that a person could not be moved by the imagining of the fear, the bravery, the isolation, the courage and the hopelessness of those brought there. He had walked her by the entrance to the courtyard of the old war ministry building where Klaus von Stauffenberg of the ‘44 bomb plot against the Führer had been executed, and had not spoken of the place and the history. He could not face again the realization, after the pouring out of his emotion, that he could not reach her.

He could not reach her because he did not understand her.

They walked. They were on the wide pavements of the Kurfürstendamm. Just another European city, where history was no longer required, where history was bulldozed. They were among the great blocks of glass and steel, among the hotels of luxury. The past was contaminated, so the past was shut out. Perhaps he was trapped by history, neurotic in his allegiance to the past, perhaps he should have gone home, alone, on the eve- fling flight to be at the papers on his desk in the morning. But he was trapped by the history, by her.

Perkins drove. What he liked about the boy fresh out of kindergarten, Rogers, was that he didn’t talk. He disliked talk for the sake of it. The quiet in the car helped him to wallow in the nostalgia. He had known Berlin as closely as he knew the back of his hand, the wrinkles on his face, as he knew the hairs of his trimmed moustache. It had been his city, on both sides of the Wall. He had the address. He thought he kept good time. The nostalgia flowed, like the good days gone . . . Spittelmarkt was devastated, whole blocks destroyed. Bulldozers and lorries dispersing rubble, as if it was his image of 1945 all over again. A few isolated buildings were left, dark and smoke-grimed, like lost teeth in an old mouth, waiting for the demolition men. He squinted in the gloom to see the number of the block he wanted. He pulled up. The air was choked thick with dust from the lorries and the pile hammers.

You’ll wait for me. While you’re waiting, get me the times of the last trains this evening from Berlin/Lichtenberg, to Rostock.’

He paid for the two tickets.

The light was sliding, throwing the big shadows across the far trees of the Tiergarten.

He had made a child of her.

When she sneered she was foul. Happy, young, without care, to Josh Mantle she was captivating. He gave her the book, let her skim it for the map. He wondered when she had last been in a zoo park. She made a grimace at the unblinking amber eyes of the brown fishing owl. She stood in awe to gaze at the bulk of the American black bear. She watched and squealed as the keeper, final feed of the day, threw fish for the leaping sea lions and was cascade-splashed. She grabbed his arm to point to him where the jaguar slept. As if without thinking, natural, she had taken his hand and squeezed it, excitement, when she saw the panda. It was the end of the day. The crocodile columns of schoolchildren were being marshalled by their teachers, the zoo park was emptying. She hurried him, seemed frightened that it would be closed before she had seen everything. He wondered about her childhood.

She faced him and giggled, the child. ‘But you haven’t told me

— which of them has the name you want to give to me?’

A hooter sounded. The zoo park was closing. He checked the map he had given her. He strode forward.

‘Have you ever seen them, for real, the animals?’

‘Once.’ His guard had slipped.

‘Where?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Africa, India, America, where?’

‘It’s not important.’

The lump, the specialist’s diagnosis, the holiday, the first failed treatment. A week’s holiday with Libby in the Tanzanian game park at Serengeti, sandwiched between diagnosis and treatment.

He had drained the excitement from Tracy, as if she recognized that he did not trust her with confidences. He could have kicked himself, so savagely, for having let his guard slip, for having broken her mood of child’s happiness.

She no longer held his hand and sulked beside him.

He took her to the hippopotamus house. The keeper eyed them, as if they were too late in the afternoon. The heat in the glass-sided house brought out the sweat in them. The creatures were in a wide
pool
topped with green slime and the stench of their excrement was sucked to his nose. There were limp-leafed plants in tubs beside the pool, to give it a fraudulent impression of African water, where he had been with Libby before the treatment started, and when they had known it was short time, borrowed time.

‘You’d better tell me,’ she said. ‘What’s my bloody name?’

It was ten years since he had been in the zoo park. He’d assumed that the hippopotamus was dead and commemorated.

‘I’m sorry, I was married then. I went with my wife to Africa, just once. I’m sorry that I was foul with you. The memory hurts . .

She said, sour, ‘Don’t mind me. I’m only a bloody clerk.’

He pointed to the tooth. It was in a cabinet on the wall. An immense curving tooth was all that commemorated the animal.

He smiled, weak. ‘More history, Tracy. Don’t interrupt me, I’m not in the mood. I wanted somewhere good for you while we used time. The history. The zoo park was one of the last battlegrounds for Berlin in nineteen forty-five. It was the final line protecting the bunker where Hitler was. There were young guys in trenches, kids, fighting till they’d no more ammunition. There had been bombing as well, but the real killing was in the close- quarters fighting. There were five thousand creatures when the battle started, and ninety-one still alive when the final line broke. There was this big hippopotamus, monstrously big — he weighed several tons. When the shooting stopped and the smoke cleared, he came up to the surface of his pool. All through the battle he’d been down at the bottom in the mud. He was starved, thin, if you can imagine it. He was called Knautschke. He was a survivor. He stayed down in the mud, underwater, while there was all the shit and chaos up above. He became famous, a symbol of the spirit of isolated Berlin. He waited for the right time, the good time, then he came up from the mud...’

She pulled a face, mock grotesque. ‘I’m Knautschke?’

‘Right.’

‘I’m a big hideous bastard with a tooth a foot long, stinking of shit and mud, with a mouth you’d drive a bus into? Is there any more history?’

‘No.’

‘Can we go to Rostock now?’

‘Yes.’

A wizened little man, with a cat that stank on his lap, in an uncleaned room, faced Albert Perkins.

‘A thousand American dollars, yes? You have to understand, Doktor Perkins, that these are hard times for persons such as myself. I am an expert on matters of security, on the gaining and analysis of information, on the administration of any large corporate body — I cannot find work, Doktor Perkins. You would imagine that a person with my skills would not face a problem of poverty. Many of my illustrious colleagues, they have not faced a problem as I have, but they did not operate from inside the personal office of the minister. I think I am a very few years older than yourself, Doktor Perkins, but I am in the graveyard of life. You hear much talk of victims of the old regime. I myself am a victim. You agree, a thousand American dollars? I thank you, Doktor Perkins. I believe you are a very sympathetic and understanding gentleman. Cash, yes?

‘Hauptman Dieter Krause? It is right that you should know why I talk of him, not only because you pay me one thousand American dollars in cash, why I talk frankly of him. I had no feeling for that woman, she was a fuck, she was information, it was mechanical, it was a good source. But, believe me, I refused the offer to go to Bonn and give evidence against her. They came here, the supercilious pigs of the BfV, to ask that I travel to Bonn as a state witness. I refused them. I have my pride. My pride told me that, by expertise, we had destroyed the security of the West’s government. To us, they were donkeys, rubbish, quite lacking in the imagination necessary for intelligence officers. They wanted me to help to clear their garbage, and I refused. Krause offered himself, named the woman, sent her to prison, to ingratiate himself. The killing was on the twenty-first of November nineteen eighty-eight, Doktor Perkins. I have a very clear memory for dates and places and situations.