The Waiting Time (22 page)

He drove into the small community, clear roads at that time in the night.

There was a storm out at sea, beyond the darkened peninsula, and the wind came in over the Salzhaff, the spray climbing over the piles of the piers where the trawlers were tied. The ifie would turn the mind of the man, would destroy the man who had been, many years before, an
Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter
of the Staatssicherheitsdienst. Where the man lived now, there would be a fine view of the shore and the sea.

He put the copied file in an envelope, gummed it tight, and the man’s name on it. There was no need to write a message. He walked from his car to the door of a small house and the box beside it for post and circulars. The man who lived, in retirement, in the small house close to the sea at Rerik had known the names of all the witnesses. The man would have friends, would be respected, would be destroyed if it were known that he had been listed as an
Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter
of the Staatssicherheitsdienst, if it were known that he had informed on those who befriended him and respected him.

Dieter Krause swung his car away from the sea and away from the beat of the surf on the shingle shore.

They walked out of the bus station.

There was a whiff of the sea scent in the air. He chose the side streets and the back streets, where the lights were sparse, where they could hug the shadows. She murmured her bloody song . . . The bloody song, played on the forces’ radio, was hers and her boy’s. He was not a part of the bloody song. It was all for love, her love and the boy’s love. He was not included in the love. .

* * *

The last train of the night reached Rostock.

The passengers spilled down onto the platform.

The two men waited at the top of the tunnel from the platform, scanned each half-asleep face, beaded their eyes on each young woman who scurried with her bags from the platform to the tunnel.

They waited for the platform to clear, threw down their cigarettes, and turned away.

It was an old house, three storeys high. The façades of the houses on either side had been pressure-cleaned, but the house with the
pension
sign was grimed with old dirt. He waited at the door. She had dropped back. Through the glass he saw a man at the desk, reading, oil-slicked hair, wearing an overcoat, and behind the man was the row of keys hanging in front of the letter rack. She reached him.

‘Gold medal for picking luxury.’

‘There’s a Radisson in Rostock, and a Ramada, and there’s a new hotel at the railway station, and they are where they would expect us to go.’

‘Don’t be so bloody scratchy.’ She grinned.

He pushed open the glass door. The man looked up from the magazine. The reception desk was worn, unvarnished, and there was the smell of cabbage and boiled sausagemeat. The man shivered in his overcoat. Around the letter rack, where the keys were, the wallpaper was wrinkled, faded. The man greased them a smile.

It was obvious from the keys, hung unevenly from nails, but he asked if the man had accommodation available.

The man leered. ‘One room or two rooms?’

She laughed out loud behind him.

‘Two rooms,’ Josh said.

The man’s hand, the nicotine-stained fingers, flitted over the keys. He took two keys.

The man winked. ‘Two rooms — adjoining.’

She laughed again.

The man asked for documents. Josh took his wallet from his pocket and slid a banknote for a hundred DMs onto the palm of the man’s hand, which did not move. Another banknote. The hand slid with discretion towards the man’s hip pocket. He gave Josh the keys, pointed to the staircase, picked up his magazine again.

They climbed the stairs, up the threadbare carpet. The smell of cabbage and sausage was replaced by the must of stale damp. It was colder on the stairs than at the reception desk. They stood in the corridor on the second floor in the low light and he gave her the second key.

‘Is it off and running in the morning, Mr Mantle?’

‘We don’t run anywhere, at any time. We plan. We take it slowly. Step by step, so there are no surprises. I need to think it through.’

‘Goodnight, Mr Mantle.’

He needed to sleep and, in the morning, he needed to think... and in the morning he needed to tell her that he was Josh and not Mr Mantle. So damn tired...

‘Goodnight, Tracy.’

He had been the first to reach the café. Krause had taken a seat in an alcove where he could view the door. They drifted in from Augusten Strasse. He stood, correctly, for each of them, for the taxi driver who came with the building-site security guard, for the criminal, the property developer. The woman who now owned the café had once managed the canteen in the building on August-Bebel Strasse, she would once have run to take the orders of Hauptman Krause and Leutnant Hoffmann, even Siehi, Fischer and Peters. She had closed the café, kicked out her customers. She had put beer on the table and gone to her kitchen area.

Hoffmann said, ‘I can be away for two days. Too much work for me to be away longer.’

‘I am building a new life.’ Fischer shrugged. ‘In three years I hope to have my own taxi, but I have to work.’

Peters had a meeting in Warsaw the day after tomorrow.

Siehl whined that if he were not back by tomorrow night then he would lose his job, and did the
Hauptman
know how hard it was to find work in Berlin?

Krause wondered if they had walked past the old building before coming to the café and looked for the darkened windows above August-Bebel Strasse that had been theirs, remembering how they had walked with pride, anonymous, through the big door. He wondered if they had glanced down at the windows flush with the pavement behind which had been the interrogation rooms.

‘Can I tell you, my friends, the reality? You stay, we all stay, until the matter is completed, until the problem is finished with. We have one week. It is necessary for it to be finished in one week. If you do not stay, you will not be doing anything from a cell in the Moabit gaol. . . That, my friends, is reality.’

‘Because of one girl, height a metre sixty, weight sixty kilos. Not to forget the russet hair. It is just one girl. Easy to recognize her. Ask her to hold up her hands, look at her fingernails, scrape under fingernails for the skin of Hauptman Krause.’ Peters led their laughter.

‘It is amusing? It is the big joke? It is funny? We are together, as at Rerik we were together.’

Hoffmann hesitated. ‘I didn’t kill him.’

Siehl flushed. ‘You killed him and we only obeyed your orders.’

‘So, let me tell you more of reality. The kid, the spy, was chased. Who chased him? He was caught, felled. Who caught him? On the ground, he was kicked. Who kicked him? He was kept still on the ground by a boot across his throat. Who wore the boot? He was taken back to the boat. Who dragged him? He was weighted, he was put into the water. Who lifted him over the side of the boat? More of reality, it would be a common charge. It would be an accusation of conspiracy to murder. We were together at Rerik. If we fail we will be together in the gaol at Moabit. Do you now believe?’

Fischer said, loyal, ‘We did our duty. Again we will do our duty, whatever is necessary.’

He told them where they should watch in the city, what times and at what places, and repeated his description of the young woman. He took the Makharov pistols from his attaché case, each still wrapped in the plastic bags, and passed them over the table, with ammunition and magazines. He handed them the mobile telephones he had hired in the afternoon and had them each write down the numbers. He passed a file to each of them — Jorg Brandt’s to Hoffmann, Heinz Gerber’s to Siehl, Artur Schwarz’s to Fischer, and Willi Muller’s he slipped between the beer glasses to Peters. For each of them there was a responsibffity. He laid his hand, palm down, on the table. Hoffmann’s covered his. Siehl’s covered Hoffmann’s. Fischer’s covered Siehl’s. Peters’ covered Fischer’s. He felt the weight of their hands on his.

They went their ways.

He walked in the shadowed streets towards his car.

He could see the body of the boy, moving in currents of water, held by the weighted pots, flowing against the sand bottom of the Salzhaff. There were crabs crawling at the eyes of the boy, and molluscs fastened to his lips. Eels writhed on the legs and arms. For six nights now he had seen the body and heard the laughter of the boy, mocking and taunting.

He ran, as if when in his car he would no longer see the boy.

Josh slept. A ragged, tossing, restless sleep. He was too tired to dream.

The banging split his mind. He hadn’t dreamed. He was dead to the world. He jerked, like a convulsion. The sheet and the two blankets came
off
his body, along with the coat that had been on top of them. The banging belted at the door.

‘Are you in there, or aren’t you?’

He yawned, gulped. The cold of the room came around him. Bright, brittle sunlight streamed through the thin material of the curtains. He shivered. There was no heating in the room. He blinked, tried to focus his eyes, looked at his watch.

‘If you’re there, then bloody well say so.’

It was past ten o’clock. God, he’d slept nine hours, dead, without a dream. He had been able to do without sleep in Ashford or Osnabruck, when he’d worked the night shifts merging into the day shifts at the Mansoura prison in Aden . . . but Josh Mantle was fifty-four years old and he had missed a whole night’s sleep on the step beside the door at Saarbrucker Strasse. He checked that he was decent, that he wasn’t hanging out of his pyjama trousers, had his coat wrapped tight around him. He turned the key.

She stood in the corridor. She looked at him, made him feel so feeble. She looked from his unshaven face to his coat tight around him, to his waist, to the pyjamas and down to his bare feet.

She grimaced. ‘Christ, that’s a pretty sight.’

‘I’m sorry, I overslept.’

‘Old for it, are you? Need your sleep, do you?’

He bit his lip. ‘I apologize. I’ve slept three hours longer than I intended.’

‘I’ve been sitting in that damp, grotty, freezing bloody room and waiting. What you’ve done,
sir,’
she sneered on the word, ‘is bugger up the day, don’t you know.’

‘I said that I was sorry.’ She was dressed in her heavy walking shoes and jeans, the thick sweater and the new anorak. He stood aside so that she could come into the room. He went, dazed, across the room and moved his clothes from the one wooden chair. ‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter, I hadn’t intended that we’d do much.’

‘That’s good, “intended”. That’s bloody rich. “I hadn’t intended” — great, terrific!’ She had mimicked his words in a west London whine, the drawl of an officer thrown in. ‘You’re taking a bloody liberty.’

‘What I was trying to say . . .‘ He stood in the centre of the room, clothes of two days’ wear in hand. ‘I was trying to say that I hadn’t intended we’d do much today — get everything in place, think through...’

Her face lit, mock amazement, savage. ‘You have a misapprehension,
sir.
Do you think I came out here, one hope in my mind, that
Mr
Mantle would come running after me?
Mr
Mantle, bloody white armour, shining, and necessary to me? Can’t do it without
Mr
bloody Mantle, after he’s had his sleep.’

He said, ‘It’s right to plan, take time over it, plan routes and schedules. You work it out, don’t just pitch in, you weigh the options. We plan today, work it through, we go to Rerik tomorrow. Have to have decent maps, have to know what we’re doing.’

‘I’m going out.’

‘That’s not clever.’ Trying to be reasonable and patient.

‘Then I’m not clever, but I’m going out.’

‘Where? Where are you going?’

‘Where I’m not suffocated by you. Where you’re not breathing down my bloody neck.’

‘You want to be stupid and unprofessional, see if I care.’

The sneers had gone, the taunts were wiped away. She said, ‘We were in Rostock a few hours before we went to Rerik, before it was dark and he took the boat, before Hans went. . . We went from here up the river to Warnemunde, and we walked on the beach there and on the breakwater. Do you know about being in love, Mr Mantle?’

‘Not a lot.’ His temper had melted. She was the child, the innocent.

‘I want to go on the beach, on the breakwater, where we were. I want to be alone, just with him. I want to be with him, alone with him. . . I had to drive, after we’d been on the beach and the breakwater, to Rerik because he was too screwed down tight, clawed up, to drive himself. He was dead a few hours after we’d walked on the beach and the breakwater.’

She told him where she would be, and he would get a map after she’d gone and find the place. She had sledgehammered at him, the emotions rioted in him. He wished he could take her in his arms, comfort her, hold her, but he was fifty-four years old and knew so little about love.

‘Just give me two or three hours . . . It’s where we were .

Come and get me. We’ll talk it through, your plan. We’ll have a bloody great meal, and double chips, and a bloody great big bottle. I have to be with him.’

He said gruffly, choked on it, ‘Fine, that’ll be fine. And go carefully.’

She smiled, sadness and youth, a love that he was not a part

of. He heard her go away down the corridor and listened for her singing until he could hear her no longer. He stripped and washed in ice-cold water. The sunlight had gone from the window, the clouds massed low above the roof tops. The room was greyer without the sunlight, without her.

He had made good time. He had left Savignyplatz too early to disturb Rogers: he had paid his bill and slipped away.

He rather enjoyed the quiet of the car, the radio turned low.

As he drove towards the outskirts of the city, ignoring the Dummerstorf-Waldeck turning, he considered the priorities of his day. First priority, a good hotel, if that were possible in Rostock. Second priority, to telephone Helen. Couldn’t remember, not to save his life, whether this was a day on which she had morning, afternoon or evening classes. He tried to call most days when he was abroad. Third priority, to telephone Basil. He called Basil his best friend, and Helen called him his only friend. He sat next to Basil in the Riverside Stand, season-ticket holders. He would not be back for Fu
ll
ham against Bristol City, division two. He disliked the thought of Basil sitting next to an empty place and, if he was away over a home game, always rang him at the car-repair yard to suggest that Basil should call by at Hampton Wick and collect his ticket and take someone else. The fourth priority, to telephone Mr Fleming, just a progress report. Fifth priority, to search out the man who could tell a story, guaranteed to amuse, about the wife

It was important to Albert Perkins to have a day ahead of him filled with priorities. He braked hard, swerved for the slow lane at the sign for Rostock
S
u
d.
He saw the parked car. With a slight gesture, insufficient to arouse attention, he raised his hand so that it would block a view of his face. He noted the man with the trimmed beard and the scars.

He had heard, walking on empty streets away from Savignyplatz, in his imagination, the night before, the howl of a wolf. He smiled, satisfied, because his prediction had been proved correct. The pack had gathered. He drove towards the towering spires of the old churches, and the old walls of the city. The car at the slip-road, watching the traffic off the
Autob
a
hn
from Berlin, told him that they had slipped through in the late evening. The young woman, if she listened to Mantle, stood a chance of achieving the policy objective, if she listened .

He headed past the
R
a
thaus,
onto Lange Strasse, towards the heart of Rostock.

He was not certain.

The former
Fe
l
dwebel,
the taxi driver, eased the vehicle into gear. The hair was correct, but there were many with hair that colour in the city. He thought the height was near to correct, but it was an average height for a young woman. He had been told that the target woman was of slight build, but she wore a heavy sweater, he could see the neck of it and a quilted anorak, and he did not know whether she was slight or heavy.

He passed her, idling in the road, drove by her and then stopped so that he could see her in his mirror. In former times, when Ulf Fischer had served as a
Feidwebel
at the headquarters on August-Bebel Strasse he had not been required to make a decision, to act on initiative. As a taxi driver he did not make decisions, went where he was told to go. The
Hauptman
would be on the far side of the city, on the slip-road. He was nervous of alerting the
Hauptmnn
and being wrong. He rang Hoffmann on the mobile phone.

She came past him, but her head was turned away. He thought she walked towards the
Hauptbahnhof.

The second secretary (consular), each week and alternating between their Moscow embassy offices, met the cultural attaché for lunch. It was a source of some small annoyance to the London man from the Service that the Washington man from the Agency had the resources to serve up the better meal.

‘This Krause guy, the one your lady soldier rolled over, they’ve gotten into heavy excitement about him back home.’

‘Soon be there, the warrior wearing his wounds.’

‘They’ve moved the auditorium for him, at the Pentagon. He’s going where they can fit another fifty seats.’

The annoyance, to the Briton, was that the American was provided with quality equipment for his kitchenette — gas rings, a microwave and a fridge-freezer large enough to store half an ox, a coffee-bean grinder and a percolator. The room at the American embassy where they lunched was metal-walled, sheet steel plate on the windows, secure against electronic audio surveillance.

‘The man of the moment, the good Colonel Rykov. . . I can tell you, Brad, there’s a monumental inquest back home. Heads will roll for what happened to Krause. Is it right that the Germans are going over the pond mob-handed? It’s what I heard.’

‘Chipping away at the cement of the special relationship, David. What I hear, at Langley there’s a powerful number enrolling for German classes — hey, David, that’s intended as a joke. These days, for all the kids, the clerks, who go jogging in the lunch hour, Elgar is strictly dated, they’ve all put Beethoven tapes in their Walkpersons. OK, so that’s not funny, but can I hint to you, prickly Brit, that the special relationship still lives?’

‘I feed from the floor under your table.’

It was usual for them to share at their weekly lunches. Half an hour later, the Briton was on his way back to his embassy and formulating in his mind the text of the message that would go in cypher to Vauxhall Bridge Cross. Colonel Rykov, through his minister, had kicked with accuracy the testicles of the ‘reconstructed’ KGB, which was a dangerous old game, a game where the kicker might incur a serious hurt. It would go as a priority signal.

‘I think you did well, Fischer.’

‘I was not certain. I didn’t wish to waste the time of the
Han ptrnan.’

They stood beside a café, closed for the winter. The sun had gone. The sleet came in the wind from the low cloud merged with the sea and whipped the beach. Hoffmann held his hand flat above his eyes to keep it from his face, to see better. She was a small grey figure holding bright flowers and she sat on the dull sand near the water line.

‘I think the
Han ptman
will be pleased with you, Fischer.’

‘Thank you.’ Ulf Fischer flushed with pride. She sat alone on the beach. Hoffmann made the call to Krause on the slip-road. Hoffmann had met him at the
Hauptbahnhof,
they had tried to track the train on the S-Bahn line north from the city to Warnemunde, had been held at red traffic lights behind a police van. They had seen her, for a few seconds, at a distance, near to the Hotel Neptun, had lost her because they could not park the car, found her again. The flowers moved, bobbed, carried by the faint figure as she pushed herself up from the dull sand. She was against the sea and the cloud and the sleet. She walked slowly on the beach, meandered, towards them, towards the breakwater over which the waves burst.

He used to tell his wife, when he came home in the evening from August-Bebel Strasse, each time that the
Hauptman
praised him.

He had the route, not the direct way, down the E22, the main road, through Bad Doberan and Kropelin. On the map he had marked the minor roads through the villages skirting the two towns and then coming to Rerik from the south, using Neubukow as the crossing point over the E22. Slower roads and a greater distance, but safe. Painstakingly, using a sliver of rolled paper, he measured the distance on the minor roads, so that he would know how long the journey would take. It had to be thought through. It was important to know the detail. He had telephoned for a hire car, using the trade directory, not a company from the centre but a small business in the
Sudstadt,
and he would pay extra and the car would be delivered to the
pension.

When he was finished, Josh folded away the map and went methodically through his room, through the pockets of his clothes, through his bag. He left nothing that identified him. With his nail scissors from the wash-bag he cut out the label tabs in English on every item that would be left in the room. He satisfied himself. When he brought her back he would do the same in her room, bully her into allowing him to destroy her identity. His telephone rang, his hire car was downstairs. He checked the money in his wallet. It was later than he had hoped to be. She would have longer to walk on her beach and her breakwater.